Democrats And Republicans Support Positions At Odds With Their Bases

     From Ronald Brownstein writing for the National Journal:

One reason a serious budget negotiation seems unlikely this fall is that any meaningful assault on the federal deficit would require each party to confront the contradictions between its fiscal agenda and its electoral coalition. ...

The GOP presidential nominee has carried most white seniors in four consecutive presidential elections, and by greater margins each time....

These older whites deeply resist any changes in Social Security and Medicare, which most consider insurance they have paid for, not a government benefit ...

But the demands from GOP leaders to squeeze middle-class entitlements such as Medicare in any budget deal still collide with the preferences of both older and blue-collar whites ...

Democrats face the opposite dilemma. For decades, they have watched expanding entitlements tilt federal spending toward the elderly. In 1960, children and seniors each consumed around one-fifth of federal domestic spending, the Urban Institute calculates. Today, children receive less than one-third as much as seniors, a trend reinforced by the sequester ...

Entering negotiations, many Democrats have made opposition to entitlement cuts a litmus test. But with the senior population projected to double through 2040, rejecting all entitlement reductions ensures both more pressure on discretionary investments like education that help young people and unsustainable tax burdens on future workers. That leaves Democrats confronting their own contradiction: They are now favoring programs that benefit predominantly white seniors who lopsidedly vote against them over policies that benefit the heavily diverse young people who strongly support them. Even a near-term trade of trimming entitlements to restore sequester-starved domestic investment could make sense for Democrats.