And part of the article’s point is that the center of American voters are without firm identification, and can easily sway an election according to their emotional ‘set’ at the moment. Which is scary, as they are especially suseptible to a Karl Rove type campaign spending lots and lots of money.

And since the country is for sale, and corporations are individuals, unlimited money is available to some candidates.

1) The Big Shots: The Daddy Warbucks Crowd, AKA the One Percenters, The Ownership Class, the Managerial/Executive Caste, the Makers, Job Creators etc. In Marxist terms, they control the means of production, distribution, communication and finance. Although tiny in number, they comprise the Oligarchy, the Plutocracy, the Power Elite. They maintain their position by using their wealth to influence the economy and the political arena. Ideologically, they’re pretty moderate. They don’t care about your race, gender, sexual orientation, or your views on contraception, abortion or religion, although they are quite adept at exploiting those factors when it serves their purpose. In fact, some of them even view themselves as Liberals. All they really care about is that they have complete and unrestricted access to profit and complete freedom to accumulate more of it. That means no unions, no regulations, no taxes, high unemployment (which keeps salaries low and workers docile), and the constitutional right to buy elections. They call this “freedom”.

2) The Babbitts: The administrative and professional class, small businessmen. HL Mencken called them the Booboisie. The Big Shots have convinced them that if they keep their noses clean and follow the rules that someday they’ll be Big Shots too. And the Babbitts have bought it, hook, lyin’ and sinker. They see themselves as Big Shots in training, they ape BS habits, copy their style, adopt their ethos, kiss their ass and polish their balls. They will suffer the most in the coming double-cross, and they already see their numbers dwindling and their influence diminishing as they become less and less useful to the Big Shots, lose their grip and backslide into Bunkerville and beyond.

3) The Bunkers: Named after the prototypical and archetypal Bunker, Archie himself. These are the skilled workers, technicians and white collar types who now find themselves increasingly outsourced, mechanized, NAFTA’d, marginalized, left out and replaced by automation, foreign and immigrant labor. All they ever wanted out of life was a chance to be a Babbitt someday, or at least, for their kids to have that chance. The Bunkers know now that isn’t going to happen, but can’t figure out why or who’s responsible. They need a scapegoat, they need someone to blame. Providing that for them has become the primary function of Conservative politics, and it is the one task which it seems to be most successful at.

4) The Bubbas: Guns, Jesus, the Flag, Bigotry, Mullet haircuts, Country Music, pickup trucks and Crystal Meth. Bubbas don’t like anyone who’s not a Bubba but they are convinced they are entitled to exploit their own workers someday because they are genetically superior entrepreneurs and have inherited a racially and culturally guaranteed work ethic. One day they’ll own their own business (usually a ranch) if it just weren’t for those damn (insert minority du jour here). Nice middle class folks like us don’t know much about Bubbas, although there are an awful lot of them, and more and more every day. See also: White Trash.

We are evolving rapidly into a two-tier society: Bigshots and Bubbas.

“It’s easy to assume American politics is defined by liberals on one side, and conservatives on the other.

“But it turns out the reality is far more nuanced, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.

“Using new survey data, Pew Research was able to divide Americans into eight political types.”

When I was born, people with my politics, people like my parents, somewhat left of center, were called “New Deal Democrats”. Now the Conservatives call us “jackbooted statists”.

But that’s OK. I call them fascist turds.

Although I do feel the way some of the questions were phrased was somewhat biased. For example, I answered three questions as a conservative, and there were several others that I answered as a liberal but felt uncomfortable about the answers; but the right wing alternatives were so exaggerated and unreasonable that I went with the lefty response even though I was somewhat hesitant about them. Still, I am comfortable with the overall ranking. My own guess before I began would be that I am more liberal than about 80% of the population, but that about 20% of the USA is to my left.