"Americans are... overt, tub-thumping, FDR progressives..."

[ClassWarrior]

A reality check as we approach the 2006 election season, courtesy of Jim Hightower (http://alternet.org/story/29788):

It doesn't get covered by the corporate media (imagine that), but mainstream polls consistently find that big majorities of Americans are not meek centrists, but overt, tub-thumping, FDR progressives who are seeking far more populist gumption and governmental action than any Democratic congressional leader or presidential contender has dared to imagine. In recent polls by the Pew Research Group, the Opinion Research Corporation, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News, the American majority has made clear how it feels. Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that you'd think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:

1. 65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.
2. 86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").
3. 60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.
4. 66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
5. 77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.
6. 87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.
7. 69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."
8. 69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent saying it's headed in the right direction.

Americans might not call themselves progressive -- but there they are. On the populist, pocketbook issues that are rooted in our nation's core values of fairness and justice, there's a progressive super-majority. It flourishes in red states as well as blue, cutting through the establishment's false dichotomy of liberal / conservative.

Thanks to bvar for posting this on another thread.

16+5=2006

NGU.

[BillZBubb]

1. Everyone is for our issues until it's time to vote.

Then their real priorities come to light: gotta keep gays from marrying, gotta kill those Arabs, gotta have a strong leader (i.e dictator) to protect me, gotta keep my guns, gotta stop them libruls.

[rurallib]

3. I think the reps are a one issue party

and that issue is abortion. If we could just bust through their dam of lies on that there would be a flood of Dem votes that would sweep most of the repressives back to their holes.

[ClassWarrior]

4. There is a way to drive a wedge into that issue...

This is from an article pubished by an ultra-right columnist in Arkansas in 2004 entitled, dig this:

Against abortion? Vote Kerry

The political marriage between moral and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party has not been an altogether holy one. Election after election, the controlling fiscal elites have deceived the well-meaning with empty campaign pledges on issues such as abortion.

The truth is that Republicans created - and have preserved - the Constitutional right to abortion that many, including myself, deplore. The striking down of the state sodomy laws in 2003 was also quite Republican, but that topic is for another day. The federal judiciary has been appointed by Republican presidents for 24 out of the last 36 years. Seven justices of the United States Supreme Court are Republican, while only two are Democrats.

Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee, wrote the Roe v. Wade decision which gave Constitutional protection to certain abortions in 1973. At the time, Governor Ronald Reagan of California was an ardent abortion supporter, as was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, George Bush (the former president).

In case after case, the 77 percent Republican Supreme Court has upheld abortion. Why? Republican elites know that if millions of unwanted children were required by law to be born, the government's welfare liability would explode.

The link - http://www.thedailycitizen.com/articles/2004/10/28/news/opinion/opiniontaylor.txt - is expired, so if you want to read the whole thing, PM me and I'll send it to you.

NGU.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Just added this post to my Journal's personally selected post recs --

excellent piece!

[ClassWarrior]

5. Thanks Mom!

:hi:

NGU.

[stickdog]

6. Yep. (nt)