From quiet minority to struggling majority

Choppy waters ahead:

Regardless of the merits of the left's arguments on each of those individual debates, there's a structural reason why Obama and Congressional Democrats may not prove as responsive to their demands as they hope. Liberals aren't as big a component of the Democratic coalition as many of the Left's leaders believe. Moderate voters are much more important to Democratic success than liberal voters. And liberals are also less important to Democrats than conservatives are to Republicans. That means liberals generally have less leverage than they recognize in these internal party arguments-and less leverage than conservatives can exert in internal struggles over the GOP's direction. "Liberals are less central to the Democratic coalition than conservatives are to the Republican coalition," says Andy Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

That contrast is apparent from two different angles: identification and behavior. In cumulative Pew data for 2008, Kohut says, only one-third of self-identified Democrats described themselves as liberals; the rest identified as moderates or conservatives. For Republicans the proportions were reversed: two-thirds of Republicans considered themselves conservatives, while only one-third identified as moderates or liberals. Gallup's findings are similar: in their cumulative 2008 data, just 39% of self-identified Democrats described themselves as liberals, while 70% of Republicans identified as conservatives.