Americans overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders' economic policies -- so how'd we end up here?

[DonViejo]

SATURDAY, JAN 14, 2017 06:00 AM EST

Americans overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders’ economic policies — so how’d we end up here?

Most Americans want single-payer health care, economic justice and action on climate change. That day will come

CONOR LYNCH

During a CNN town hall held by Sen. Bernie Sanders last Monday, the Vermont senator and progressive icon tried to drive home a point that he has frequently made in the past: There is widespread support for most of the economic policies that he ran on, even if they were often portrayed as radical and divisive by the media.

“The overwhelming majority of the American people — including many people who voted for Mr. Trump — support the ideas that we’re talking about,” insisted Sanders. “On many economic issues you would be surprised at how many Americans hold the same views. Very few people believe what the Republican leadership believes now: tax breaks for billionaires and cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Public polling tends to support his claim. A Gallup survey from last May, for example, revealed that a majority of Americans (58 percent) support the idea of replacing the Affordable Care Act with a federally funded health care system (including four in 10 Republicans!), while only 22 percent of Americans say they want Obamacare repealed and don’t want to replace it with a single-payer system. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from last year had similar results: Almost two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) had a positive reaction to “Medicare-for-all,” while only a small minority (13 percent) supported repealing the ACA and replacing it with a Republican alternative. These are surprising numbers when you consider how the Sanders campaign’s “Medicare-for-all” plan was written off by critics as being too extreme.

On other issues, a similar story presents itself. Public Policy Polling (PPP) has found that the vast majority (88 percent) of voters in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four crucial swing states, three of which went to Trump this fall — oppose cutting Social Security benefits, while a majority (68 percent) oppose privatizing Social Security. Similarly, 67 percent of Americans support requiring high-income earners to pay the payroll tax for all of their income (the cap is currently $118,500), according to a Gallup poll. America’s two other major social programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are also widely supported by Americans, and the vast majority oppose any spending cuts to either. In fact, more Americans support cutting the national defense budget than Medicare or Medicaid.

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/14/americans-overwhelmingly-support-bernie-sanders-economic-policies-so-howd-we-end-up-here/

[HopeAgain]

1. No shit...

Third-Way Neoliberalism is DEAD (except in the Democratic leadership).

[raging moderate]

2. His supporters think most Black people live on welfare.

Last edited Sat Jan 14, 2017, 12:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Again and again, I read/hear right-wingers repeating this lie. They also believe that many Latinos live on welfare. They think that both groups of people hate to work and that liberal whites swallow all their sob stories and sign them all up for welfare. That awful rancher Cliven Bundy told a reporter that he had passed a housing development in Las Vegas and thought to himself how all these Black people lounging around would have been much better off if they had been kept in slavery because that had made them bustling and cheerful and healthy, whereas the terrible liberals had reduced them to aimless freeloading drunkards and druggies. It didn't seem to occur to him that most of the adults he saw might have been night-shift workers who were just not on-duty at that moment.

These right-wingers listen to fake news such as Breitbart, so they believe that most of the federal budget is devoted to welfare for the undeserving and that most of US debt and deficit are due to the buildup of borrowing to make these welfare payments. Again and again, they send to Congress the most viciously right-wing representatives they can find, who report back to them that they can't get the liberal government to stop giving away tax money to the undeserving poor (code for Black/Brown people), and that's why their taxes are still so high. IF the President is a Democrat, their representative also implies that the President has free access to the Treasury, conveniently overlooking the fact that it is Congress that has the power to allocate the funds. It never occurs to these right-wingers that their representatives have had the majority in the House of Representatives, and usually in the Senate as well, for decades now.

If asked, these right-wingers give low marks to Congress, but that is a fantasy Congress they are describing, not the real Congress that keeps voting to give away bundles to our right-wing billionaires and their right-wing billionaire buddies overseas.

[JI7]

6. yup.

[Garrett78]

9. The economic conditions we decry have been enabled largely by racism.

As several of us have written here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2677264

From the Salon article:

The point Sanders has attempted to make over the past two years, it seems, is that class can help transcend other social and cultural divisions and promote an economic solidarity that would go a long way toward overcoming deeply entrenched parochial beliefs and attitudes.

And he's wrong, as evidenced in part by the poor performance of those he backed most strongly in the 2016 campaign. Sanders and others have it backward. Strategically diminishing bigotry, particularly racism, is the key to sustainable progress. Meanwhile, dog whistling and overt bigotry was key to Trump getting as many votes as he got. Without racism, there's no viable Republican Party.

Until we recognize and address this, we'll just keep swinging back and forth on the pendulum of power. In that other thread, I posted the following 3 articles about the importance of anti-racism to the labor union movement:

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Other-News/Unions-Must-Address-Racism

http://www.workers.org/2016/02/11/how-black-workers-were-decimated-by-racism/#.WHpVr0QS88p

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19038/unions-labor-black-lives-matter-anti-racist-racial-justice

[E.A.B.]

3. Needs more of an answer

The initial article raises a great question, but I wish it went further in trying to give an answer. Saying "power elite" explains more about how we ended up with two wealthy candidates in November than it does about why one won.

Thanks for posting.

[uponit7771]

4. Really?!?!?! This bullshit?!?!

[JI7]

5. racism and other bigotry

[alarimer]

7. Corporate money in politics

Like the vote the other day on drug reimportation. There was a clear delineation in who voted against it based on the pharma contributions.

I think we could go a long way towards fixing it by banning corporate money and lobbying. It is poisoning everything.

[crosinski]

8. Yeah, people are for social programs as long as they feel everyone gets the same deal.

They're so pissed about health care because they assume people get care for free, paid for by their tax dollars, while they have insurance with such a high deductible that it's practically useless. I hear that a lot from Don the Con voters on the health forums I belong to.

I think we're gonna need a big big dreamer to run next time. Someone who can make people believe that everyone can have a piece of the same pie. And, this person is gonna have to be able to deliver, and that is no small thing.