Krugman on the Better Nation We've Become

     As we saw in the previous post, some conservatives are now accepting reality-that Obama will be remembered as a President of accomplishment and achievement and that they have to accept this reality going forward.

   Following his great speech yesterday the question is being asked

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/01/is-obama-great-president.html

   Krugman has an interesting post today though that suggests that a real problem for the GOP going forward is that we've become a much better country over the last 20 years or so. This is a fascinating-and accurate-point. He points out that while obviously we've come a long way in a very short time on for example, gay rights.

  Arguably, Bush's win 8 years ago was helped significantly by opposition to gay marriage. Now even the many conservatives say that opposition to gay marriage is not a high priority of theirs.However, Krugman points out that racial attitudes have changed a lot more than we realize as well. In the Reagan 80s, more than half of people didn't think interracial marriage was ok.

   Even in 1993 only 48% approved of it. Now a full 86% do. What's interesting about Krugman's chart documenting this, is that it shows that between 1993 to 1998 support for it rose from 48% to 64%. Comparably, in 1983 43% thought it acceptable. So it had gone up only 5% during the period.

   What happened in 1993 was the start of President Clinton's term. Did he have something to do with this sudden strong rise? I tend to think so. Recall the very high level of support that African Americans had for Clinton and particularly Toni Morrison's striking comment that Clinton was the first Black President...

   "Republicans pine for the glory days of Ronald Reagan — but that was a different country, a county with a lot more raw racism, a country in which only a minority of Americans found interracial marriage acceptable. And yes, that had a lot to do with GOP political strength."

    "And I don’t think the right has a clue how to operate in the better nation we’ve become."

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/seneca-salem-and-stonewall/

    Very good point. I have to say, part of why I'm always saying "the future's so bright, we're going to have to wear shades!" is I think the country has grown up a lot in 20 years. I think that we are a better country in many ways. I was so impressed that the public wasn't fooled by Romney-Ryan tactics in this election even when certain Very Serious People in the media tried to go along with it, pretending that the election was nothing but a simple referendum on Obama.

    We are a better country and we're going to start to enjoy the fruits of this.

     P.S. While it's true that the Reagan Revolution was called over in Obama's speech yesterday, Krugman's right that racism was a large part of GOP strength,Pat Buchanan on the Right has said the same thing-of course the lesson he takes form it is that we should have put up much more fences-the strategy actually started with Nixon's New Majority-Buchanan of course was a charter member of the Nixon team.

    So what we're also seeing is the final unravelling of the Nixon strategy that doesn't work at the national level anymore.