In the recent Gallup Poll taken last month it reveals something I have known for quite awhile, a majority of Americans 41% embrace ideas from both sides of the aisle. I certainly do, there are conservative and liberal values I accept and embrace. For instance, I think the government spends too much money period, and I think a good chunk of it doesn’t help the general public one single bit. Locally, just take the 2nd penny. Originally it was meant to build roads and other needed infrastructure, that idea has been dismantled. In fact in the 2021 budget only around 40% of the 2nd penny goes toward needed infrastructure. It is a travesty. That means in 2021 around $138 million that is supposed to go towards this is spent on ‘other stuff’.

I saw an article in 2018 that said the extreme right and left combined only make up about 14% of the voting body while about 67% are pretty much right in the middle. So why do so many of us listen or allow their garbage to proceed? We shouldn’t. We need to put an end to extremist views on both sides.

We can talk about the hot button issues all we want, but a majority of Americans just want a fair shake, and whether they know it or not, that kind of leans our country to the left (progressive), just a little bit.

By l3wis

10 thoughts on “Most Americans lean middle to left”
  1. But, but, white America is increasingly voting a racist vote by voting for Republicans and they are doing this because of white fear.

    The willingness of the agricultural community to stick with Trump even with his trade policies exemplifies this racist vote more than anything else.

    Normally, Democrats would have won the senate seats in Montana and Iowa last year just because of Trumps ag/trade policies, but Democrats lost those two races because the underlying issue was race and not agricultural policy.

    1976, was the last time a Democratic presidential nominee received a majority of the white vote. This trend by white voters towards Republicans has been going on for forty years and only further heightened or emboldened by the politics of Donald Trump.

    There is a disconnect among many white voters in this country about how they feel about most issues and how they actually vote. Add abortion and guns to the mix and the reality is that white America votes its emotions and not its pocketbook.

    This reality will never really change, except as the white vote becomes a plurality at best in the mid part of this century, its impact will be lessened and hopefully public policy will be the better for that reality.

  2. I might also add, as the south in our country changes in terms of demographics, and thus, politics; a reality we have already seen in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama with certain recent political races. The ‘New South’ will be the northern plains which will be the last great stronghold of the white vote.

    The realities of this stronghold are already evident in the growing number of mindless pieces of legislation which our state legislature in South Dakota debate over, which are emotional and not scholastic in nature, and are further emboldened by gerrymandering, which is the great tool of the racists in our time.

    This ‘New South’ will be stubborn and reactionary in their politics even as the white dominance nationally will have been lost, which will only further weaken the ability of state and local governments in the northern plains, or the ‘New South’, to govern appropriately and with any compassion for the real issues that matter; or to be even relevant to the rest of the country at the national level.

    For South Dakota, only energy development and climate change could change the demographics of our state in any realistic manner to thus change or limit our white politics. But dreaming of fossil fuels and climate change as a solvency to our politics in this state and region only further demonstrates the conundrum that our politics are truly in right now.

  3. The vast majority of Americans do want a fair shake. They are not getting it. It plays out every day in every way imaginable. It happens every day on the federal, state, county, local, and neighborhood levels. Prime example. Last years CARES package to “help” us all in the time of Covid. Go down this list slowly, ask yourself how much of this PPP money made it into the hands of those truly needed it. Filter the link by PPP and State of SD.

    https://covidbailouttracker.com/

  4. A ten paragraph treatise tosses this post into the ring of racism.
    We aspire to live in a world blind to race and color.
    Yet, for some, it must always be about race and color.

  5. “… climate could change the demographics of our state …”
    Tell us more?

  6. “… climate ‘change’ could change the demographics of our state”. Tell us more?

    South Dakota and the northern plains in general are known for brutal winters. If climate change changes that then ironically our region becomes more marketable as a place to live, which could change our politics.

    “A ten paragraph treatise tosses this post into the ring of racism. We aspire to live in a world blind to race and color. Yet, for some, it must always be about race and color.”

    Don’t we all ‘inspire’, but it is all about race. Take race out of the picture and Trump would have never gone beyond the 2016 Iowa caucuses with much fanfare.

    Race is the core issue of our politics, that all of us need to talk about. Like President Obama has said many times that this nation needs to have a honest dialogue about race in this country, which it hasn’t yet. Those who claim to be color blinded to this issue, and thus progressive or positive, are actually nothing but ostriches in the sand.

  7. As for the winters – Winter is even more brutal in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Plenty of lefties there, notwithstanding the harsh winter weather.

  8. TGfG,

    Minnesota lefties, mostly found in the Twin Cities, are the result of a larger metropolitan area, which the Dakotas have never been able to benefit from, or experience, because the need for another larger congregation of population in our part of the world has not been necessary to service the greater outlying areas which are less populated.

    Rapid City, the second largest city in our state, exists in a less populated part of our state for the same reason for western South Dakota, that Minneapolis exists as a gateway to the the northern plains.

    Rapid City is far more conservative than the Twin Cities, however, but that speaks to the fact that though both metropolitan areas service a greater area, a metropolitan area needs to expand to a greater level of population, like the Twin Cities, before a heterogeneous society unfolds, which then tends to benefit a left of center political reality.

    However, I’ll reiterate once again, that one of the ironies of climate change is, that at least initially, there are some winners from climate change if you consider population change, or increases, to be a winning reality, and that “winning” can, or could, be a political demographic change for the good in the northern plains.

  9. I might also add that the word “need” – mentioned in my first paragraph above – supersedes a distain for weather if the market necessitates it. It’s the same reason that trading posts once existed out in the middle of no where back in the day.

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