Like, DUH!
Paul Taylor at the Pew Research Center writes that in the six years since President Bush was first elected, two unprecedented things have happened to America's optimists. They've become much more Republican. And there are fewer of them.
These trends are revealed by Election Day exit polls taken in 2000 and 2006 as well as longer-term patterns found by the "ladder of life" battery of questions that is administered by the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Poll every few years since 1964.
The nationwide Election Day exit poll question asks voters: "Do you expect life for the next generation of Americans to be better than life today, worse than life today, or about the same?"
A plurality (40%) of voters on Nov. 7 said "worse," while 31% said "better" and 29% said the "same." Six years earlier -- in an election that took place before September 11 and after a sustained period of economic prosperity -- voters had been much more optimistic. In the 2000 exit poll, nearly half (49%) of respondents said the next generation would do better, while just 21% said it would do worse and the remainder (30%) said it would do the same.
What do you suppose this implies about voters? About this nation? Where do you fit into this poll question? Although I remain an Independent voter who leans to the left, (i. e.; I am not a Democrat, I am a secular humanist) I am a realist and my answer to this question would be "worse".
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If you want to convincingly pose as an Independent, I suggest you use the term 'Dummycrats' in apposition to 'Rethuglicans'.
...another secular humanist, who wonders how he can manage to lean away from all of them.
If the country is getting worse and it has at least two more years to keep getting worse, stating this nasty little fact has nothing to do with one's personal 'optimism', it is just astute observation (need not be astute - some things are just too obvious).
Actually, I am quite optimistic for the future. I think this period (1980-2008) is the last desperate attack of the injured beast of the pre-Enlightement conservatism, after which it will be relegated to the margins of society where it belongs.
Coturnix, I really hope you are right. I've been telling my friends for years now that the tide was about to turn and been wrong so often I have a hard time believing my own prognostication.
We are just a few decades behind Europe and a few decades ahead of the Middle East. It will happen, but the process is slow.
I too am cautiously optimistic. Technology will do them in. The faster it moves, the more out of touch their ever-cemented views will get.
coturnix:
I wish I could agree with you on that. But this sort of religious movement has happened four times in our history at least, and although I think we're finally seeing the beginning of the end of this one, there's no reason to assume there won't be another one thirty, forty, fifty years down the road.
A favorite mondegreen of mine, from "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who: "The party on the left, is now the party on the right, and the beards have all grown longer overnight". I'm not sure what the actual lyrics say, to be honest, because they don't make a whole lot of sense, but that particular misinterpretation I think rather captures the spirit of political change. Best example: the neo-cons, whose philosophical forbears were generally liberal but were left behind by the social upheaval of the 1960s. Or all the money-grubbing yuppies of the 80s, who would swear to you up and down they were still the same as they were 15 years before.
Yup, I was thinking short-term, as in 'next couple of decades". It is hard to predict what wil happen 50 years from now.
Dude, I'm surprised the number of those who think things are getting "better" is so high. I don't who these people are, but I want whatever socio-economic position they have. It's getting harder and harder simply to cope with everyday living expenses, let alone attain an upward mobility.