IdeaLog

Mainstream America is now substantially progressive

Posted on February 10, 2021

The media likes to say that President Biden is a centrist who is moving left to satisfy his base. That is nonsense.

Progressivism has become the center of American politics; polls show that voters strongly favor a progressive economic program. For example:

* A CBS News poll found that 79 percent of Americans think that Biden’s economic relief package is either about the right size (39 percent) or not enough (40 percent). Only 20 percent think the package is too much.

* A Hill-HarrisX poll found that 55 percent of voters support raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour while an additional 27 percent want to raise the minimum wage but to a lesser amount. Only 19 percent think the federal minimum wage should be kept as-is or eliminated altogether.

* A Yahoo/YouGov poll found that 65 percent favor “more federal funding for research and development to assist domestic manufacturing” and “investing in renewable energy infrastructure,” while opposition is negligible, at 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

* Yahoo/YouGov also found that Americans support “stopping family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border” by a margin of 64 percent to 20 percent; “creating a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children” by 61 percent to 23 percent; and “enacting comprehensive criminal-justice reform” by 63 percent to 12 percent.

* The same poll found Americans favor “cutting carbon emissions to zero by the year 2050” by a margin of 54 percent to 23 percent; “rejoining the World Health Organization” by 57 percent to 28 percent; “giving all Americans the option of buying Medicare-like public health insurance” by 57 percent to 22 percent; “providing more federal funding for community policing measures” by 51 percent to 21 percent; and “reversing the recent tax cuts for Americans making more than $400,000” by 50 percent to 30 percent.

Further, if you peruse PollingReport.com, you’ll also see that:

* A Quinnipiac poll found that voters agree with Roe v. Wade by a margin of 66 percent to 27 percent.

* A CBS News poll found that 68 percent of Americans believe that teachers are “paid too little” while only 5 percent think they are paid too much.

* A CBS News poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe that “gay, lesbian or bisexual people should be protected under civil rights laws” while on 14 percent said they should not.

* An NPR/PBS/Marist poll found that 63 percent of Americans think “a Green New Deal to address climate change by investing government money in green jobs and energy efficient infrastructure is a good idea” while only 32 percent think it’s a “bad idea.”

* An NPR/PBS/Marist poll found that 62 percent of Americans “think a wealth tax – that is, a higher tax rate on income above one million dollars – is a good idea” while only 34 percent think it’s a bad idea.

Progressivism is mainstream. Biden hasn’t moved his political position compared to the American people. Americans have changed with the times. Put another way, as White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on Twitter, “This IS a bipartisan agenda.”