Monday, May 12, 2014

Three Kinds of Democrats

Joel Kotkin writes in the Orange County Register that Republicans aren't the only party with internal divisions. Democrats, he notes, wrestle with three constituencies whose interests can experience real conflict: the gentry liberals, the populist progressives, and the old social democrats.

The Obama administration has favored the gentry liberals of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Boston - green dudes with money and glamour. In particular, the old social democrats in the labor movement have not been influential recently and populist redistributionism has mostly involved putting millions of people on the dole in various destructive ways.