Writing for New York magazine, and echoed outside their paywall by msn.com, Jonathan Chait observes the interesting dilemma confronting the Democrats. He notes two interesting things:
The wealthy hold a disproportionate influence on the elite in both parties, pulling Democrats to the left of their voters on social issues, and Republicans to the right of their voters on economic issues.
Stripped of their ability to run on taxing the rich, Democrats lose the backbone of their populist connection to Americans of modest means. The party’s long-term political crisis is rooted in the defections of its non-college-educated voters: The white working class has fled, and now the non-white working class is beginning to drift away, too. The party is being trapped in a worldview shaped by the cultural priorities of its college-educated elite.
Meanwhile, as I wrote Wednesday, enrollments in higher education have dropped by over a million in the last two years. That decline will be reflected in fewer "college-educated" potential Democrats going forward.
Comments concerning the proximity of rocks to hard places seem appropriate at this juncture, do they not?
