The reportage of the
presidential primaries has been heavy on personalities and the latest numbers,
and light on information useful to voters. Comparisons to a horse race are apt.
Were the news to take a documentary approach instead, the campaigns would be
revealed as they are: something existing contrary to the public’s interests.
One need only consult the
public opinion record to see the primaries (and their coverage) in the correct
light. In other words, by looking at the polling data on the various
issues—putting aside party ideology, the artificial liberal-conservative
polarity, and the cult of personality—it becomes immediately clear how
Americans would vote outside the highly charged blue-red contest.
American public opinion, on
almost all major policy issues, exists as a solid majority, belying the
persistent myth that the country is politically divided. The reality is that
most Americans—generally by about two-thirds—stand united; they just don’t
agree with Capitol Hill.
Yet, within the partisan
atmosphere, grievances and frustrations get channeled into the narrow confines
of party and candidate rhetoric. The GOP, in particular, has managed to advance
a so-called conservative agenda, by speciously appealing to religious devotion
and white, blue-collar anger. The party can’t rely on the limited votes of
millionaires (its actual constituency) so votes must be secured elsewhere.
According to a recent CNN/ORC
poll, 69 percent of Americans claim to be very or somewhat angry with regard to
“the way things are going” in the country. Similarly, a recent NBC/Wall Street
Journal poll indicated about the same percentage agreeing with this statement:
“I feel angry because our political system seems to only be working for the
insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington,
rather than it working to help everyday people get ahead.”
The GOP has championed (with
Democratic cooperation) the very economic agenda that produced this anger in
the first place, while managing to redirect their voters’ aggravations toward
distractions such as immigration. Lowering taxes for the wealthy, deregulating
the financial sector, and aiding in the deindustrialization of the country are
the causes of the downward economic trend of the last thirty years, and the
reason for the above statistics.
The anger is real and
justified and rational. So what do Americans want? A sampling of public
opinion:
Support for raising the
minimum wage: 70 percent.
Support for free public
college: 55 percent.
Support for addressing “now”
the rich-poor gap: 65 percent.
Support for raising taxes on
people earning more than $1 million per year: 68 percent.
Support for Medicare-for-all
universal healthcare: 58 percent.
Support for the US-Iran
diplomatic agreement: 55 percent. Support for the right to a legal abortion
(including “certain circumstances”): 75 percent.
Disagreement with the Supreme
Court’s Citizens United decision allowing corporate money to flood the
political process: 78 percent.
Despite a plurality of
Americans describing themselves as “conservative,” the majority of Americans
are, in reality, situated at the liberal center—what is described in the
political discourse as progressive or far-left or “socialist.” As summarized in
a 2011 academic paper by political scientists Christopher Ellis and James A.
Stimson,
“When asked about specific
government programs and specific social goals, the American public generally
wants the government to do more, spend more, and redistribute more. But at the
same time, citizens are considerably more likely to identify themselves as
conservatives than as liberals. The American public, in other words, generally
wants more government-based solutions to social problems, but overwhelmingly
identifies with the ideological label that rejects those solutions….”
If we calibrate the center of
the political spectrum according to where most Americans stand on most issues,
what we find is that Bernie Sanders resides squarely at the political center.
And it merely follows that Hillary Clinton and certainly all the Republican
candidates are positioned to the right of the population. Therefore, the
bipartisan debate does not pertain to what Americans actually want from a
candidate.
There’s little question as to
how America would vote in a rational setting.
What if on election day,
Americans went to the polls and voted not for a preferred candidate, but for
policy specifics? That is, what if we voted in blind elections? For instance,
you enter the booth on November 8 and, instead of choosing a candidate, you
fill out a questionnaire with regard to spending on X, spending on Y, how you
feel about the minimum wage, income inequality, healthcare, the environment,
and so on. Then, after voting, your ballot is compared to the different
candidates and where they stand. The candidate awarded your vote is simply the
one who best approximates your views. Under these circumstances, given the 2016
list of Democratic and Republican hopefuls, Bernie Sanders would win by a
landslide.
This of course leaves to the
side the likelihood of his success in getting laws passed through Congress.
Likewise, it should be noted that Hillary Clinton’s positions are commonly not
so far from Sanders’s, due in part to Sanders’s successful campaign. (And given
Clinton’s track record of being the consummate politician, one can speculate as
to how much she would walk her talk once in the White House.) The issue here
isn’t the mechanics of being president; the issue here is who the American
people actually want as president. The body of data allows little room for
debate.
The Republican party of
Eisenhower and Nixon is no more, and has degenerated into disunity,
ultra-nationalism, and destructive economics. Its future is unknown and
unassured. The party’s voting base is shrinking, the country is quickly
becoming a majority of minorities (who are better at voting their interests),
and the millennial voters coming up show similar inclinations. An unpleasant
odor accompanies the death of many organisms, and the Republican field standing
on the debate stage represents the smell of decomposition.
This leaves the Democratic
party, where there seems to be a similar breach occurring. As is well known,
within the GOP tensions exist between “establishment” Republicans and the
far-right Tea Party-style politicians. Though perhaps to a lesser degree, a
similar rift is forming among Democrats, one embodied by Clinton and Sanders.
The Clinton-Sanders competition essentially amounts to a Republican and a
Democrat vying for nomination. Eisenhower and Nixon, back from the dead, would
likely guess Hillary Clinton to be a fellow Republican (along with Barack
Obama). And Sanders, despite the rhetoric, is simply an FDR Democrat.
Put another way, within the
Democratic party is where most Americans would prefer American politics to be
situated.
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