Remember all the advice over the years the left has given the GOP about how to become a big tent, namely, by opening the door to social liberals (a move that suits the relatively wealthy, who tend to be mre liberal)? Well, according to Peter Beinart, Pelosi's Democrats have taken the same advice on the flip side: expanding their franchise by making economics more important than social-issue litmus tests. Here's Peter Beinart:
The House's passage of health-care reform is the clearest sign yet that the Democratic Party is, once again, for better and for worse, a big tent. By essentially sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi restored the old hierarchy that between the 1930s and the 1960s helped Democrats establish dominance on Capitol Hill. Today, to a degree we haven't seen since then, the Democratic Party is about economic protection first, and cultural freedom second.
More:
Without this top-down and bottom-up shift, the House would not have passed health-care reform last Saturday night. It passed because the House contains dozens of culturally conservative Democrats, many of whom voted yes on reform. Had Democrats nominated cultural liberals for those seats, those seats would now be held by Republicans, who would certainly have voted no. And had Democrats tried to force those conservative Democrats to vote for a bill that permitted government funding of abortion, the Democrats themselves would have voted no.For cultural liberals, it was ugly. They had better get used to it: Big parties are ugly. But if you want to rebuild the American welfare state, there is no alternative. A profound shift is under way, one that will likely endure even if Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections next year. The Republican Party is growing smaller and more ideologically pristine; the Democratic Party has grown larger and more untidy. Conservative activists seem positively thrilled by their party's newfound purity. I hope they enjoy it. Meanwhile, in the messy real world, the party of FDR and LBJ is back.
While I would not describe myself as wanting to rebuild the American welfare state, that the Democrats make serious room for social and cultural conservatives makes it much more likely they'll pick up votes from time to time from people like me: voters who are culturally conservative but economically moderate. As a general matter, I'll vote for a pro-life Democrat over a pro-choice Republican -- and the 2005 Pew political typology, while somewhat out of date by now, showed growth opportunity for the Dems from among the surprisingly large number of socially conservative/economically moderate demographic.
One interesting thing to me: the Venn diagram of People Who Swing Right on Cultural Issues, People Who Swing Left(ish) on Economic Issues, and People In the Media, creates a tiny space at the intersection. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting either a conventional liberal or a libertarian ("fiscal conservative, social moderate/liberal") in newsrooms or online -- same with conventional conservatives. Which may explain why the large number of social conservatives/economic moderates-to-liberals who show up in the Pew survey are largely invisible to writers on the left and the right.

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