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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
In his speech, Obama invoked the history
of struggles for equality with a remarkable triptych: Seneca (women’s
rights), Selma (black rights), and Stonewall (gay rights). And there has
been remarkably little blowback — a sign of how much the country has
changed.
What many people may not realize is how recent those changes are. Gay rights may be relatively obvious — it’s just 8 years since opposition to gay marriage arguably played a significant role in Bush’s victory. But the big changes on the racial front are also more recent than widely imagined (obligatory disclaimer — yes, there’s a lot of racism remaining, and it can be truly ugly; we’re just talking about relative changes). Here’s a poll trend that seems meaningful to me:
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.
What many people may not realize is how recent those changes are. Gay rights may be relatively obvious — it’s just 8 years since opposition to gay marriage arguably played a significant role in Bush’s victory. But the big changes on the racial front are also more recent than widely imagined (obligatory disclaimer — yes, there’s a lot of racism remaining, and it can be truly ugly; we’re just talking about relative changes). Here’s a poll trend that seems meaningful to me:
And I don’t think the right has a clue how to operate in the better nation we’ve become.
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