Reply #61: and let me add that polls indicate that the American public is to the left

[Douglas Carpenter]

of every Democratic nominee since McGovern - but not in name. And I would also agree that there has been some degree of class shift. Despite their obvious differences both the DLC and Moveon (for example) reflect a constituency of different spectrum's of relatively affluent voters.

So perhaps it is not so much the left that are marginalized in the Democratic Party as much as it is the American people who are marginalized in American democracy:

recent polls by the Pew Research Group, the Opinion Research

Corporation, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News

http://alternet.org/story/29788

1. 65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.
2. 86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of self described "social conservatives").
3. 60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.
4. 66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
5. 77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.
6. 87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.
7. 69 percent agree that corporate off-shoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe off-shoring is good because "it keeps costs down."
8. 69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent saying it's headed in the right dire
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Borrowed from:
LynnTheDem
a super-majority of Americans are liberal in all but name
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/alterman
Public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans embrace liberal rather than conservative positions...
http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2002-04-16-liberal.shtml
The vast majority of Americans are looking for more social support, not less...
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/borosage-r.html

http://people.umass.edu/mmorgan/commstudy.html

Some more polls:

http://www.democracycorps.com/reports/analyses/Democracy_Corps_May_2005_Graphs.pdf

http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-poll-2

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcare031020_poll.html

http://www.cdi.org/polling/5-foreign-aid.cfm