This was the title of an op-ed piece by Marc Hetherington picked up today by my local paper (sorry, no link). Hetherington is a professor of PoliSci at Vanderbilt and wrote
Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism last year.
His thesis in a nutshell is that liberal policies are only appealing to the public when the public trusts government. He says that even though government distrust is high right now and is directed at a Republican administration, most Americans will not embrace liberal programs because too few trust the entire delivery system. If liberals turn the party to the left, they will be throwing Republicans a life preserver forever.
I'm just the messenger, and a very liberal one at that, so don't shoot me. Some quotes that support his thesis below the fold.
Contrary to liberals' claims, Americans are increasingly likely to perceive differences between the parties. In 1972, only 46% of Americans said they saw "important differences." In 2004, 78% did, by far the highest percentage ever recorded by the National Election Study.
Liberals are correct that specific conservative policies are not popular. In fact, a plurality of Americans tends to favor the Democrats on most domestic issues that people care about ranging from Social Security to the environment to health care. Instead conservatives have used powerful symbols to negate this Democratic strength.
No symbol has been more helpful to conservatives and more damaging to liberals than that of an incompetent federal government. Conservatives have dominated the post-Jimmy Carter era because public trust in government collapsed in the 1970s. The public took to heart Ronald Reagan's mantra that "government is the problem, not the solution?'
My research demonstrates that nothing is more predictive of the liberalness of policy outcomes than how much Americans trust the federal government In 1964, 76 % of people said they trusted the government in Washington to do what was right either "almost always" or "most of the time," the highest percentage ever recorded. Great Society programs were popular; Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater; the Democrats won huge majorities in both houses of Congress.
When people do not trust government, they prefer conservative policies and candidates. In 1980, only 25 % of Americans trusted the federal government to do what was right "almost always" or "most of the time," the lowest percentage recorded to that date. Liberal policies fell into disfavor; Ronald Reagan won a landslide; the Republicans captured the Senate; and the ensuing Congress passed more significant pieces of conservative legislation than any time in the post-World War II era.
Snip...
Liberal policies require Americans to trust the government because they tend to require at least perceived sacrifice from the better off to benefit the less well off. For a middle-class person to support increased spending on food stamps, she has to trust that government spending will make the country better. For someone happy with his health insurance to support changes to the system, he has to trust that government can aid the uninsured without hurting him. 0therwise these sacrifices asked can be rightly seen as punitive.
As a yellow dog Democrat with a degree in Public Health, I love social programs and don't mind paying for them for the good of all. But I wonder if I and my YDD friends here are barking up the wrong tree these days.
Hetherington's points tie loosely with my diary yesterday about an important forthcoming study by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus that has Washington Dems in a tizzy fascinating and depressing article here in American Prospect. It says that Dems' traditional social causes are no longer what floats the boat of our usual constituency - the cultural trends are moving and we're not tracking.
I'm all for being pure, like Nader's people were pure to the end (this is the end), but I'm sick of losing. And I'm scared that we're gonna lose again if we don't get our shit together.