67% favor public works projects to create jobs.
55% favor expanding unemployment benefits.
76% support tax cuts for lower- and middle-income people.
71% say unions help their members; 53% say unions help the economy in general.
80% support increasing the federal minimum wage.
59% favor guaranteeing two weeks or more of paid vacation.
75% want to limit rate increases on adjustable-rate mortgages.
58% believe a court warrant should be required to listen to the telephone calls of people in the U.S.
59% would like the next president to do more to protect civil liberties.
79% favor mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
90% favor higher auto fuel efficiency standards.
75% favor clean electricity, even with higher rates.
72% support more funding for mass transit.
64% believe the government should provide national health insurance coverage for all Americans, even if it would raise taxes.
55% favor one health insurance program covering all Americans, administered by the government, and paid for by taxpayers.
81% oppose torture and support following the Geneva Conventions.
76% say the U.S. should not play the role of global police.
79% say the U.N. should be strengthened.
85% say that the U.S. should not initiate military action without support from allies.
63% want U.S. forces home from Iraq within a year.
47% favor using diplomacy with Iran. 7% favor military action.
67% believe we should use diplomatic and economic means to fight terrorism, rather than the military.
86% say big companies have too much power in politics
65% believe attacking social problems is a better cure for crime than more law enforcement.
87% support rehabilitation rather than a “punishment-only” system.
81% say job training is very important for reintegrating people leaving prison.
79% say drug treatment is very important.
56% believe NAFTA should be renegotiated.
64% believe that on the whole, immigration is good for the country.
Sam Smith, who edits the political blog Progressive Review, is one of the voices on the left not caught up in the dazzle of Obama-mania. He has been documenting Obama’s many ties to the financial industry, to corporations, to special interests who have dominated the Washington landscape for half a century, and he has also been blunt about the drawbacks and shortcomings of the people Obama has been choosing to fill his Cabinet. Now that some of the stars are beginning to fall out of the eyes of others in the “progressive” camp, Smith writes to say that rather than wait to be disappointed by Obama and the Democrats (because we undoubtedly will be), the agenda supported by a majority of Americans is eminently clear, and it is not about “ruling from the middle”. Smith says that he sees signs that we are on the verge of a new social movement that, like the social movements of the 1960s, will not be driven by the White House or Congress but by the public, motivated by the sheer magnitude of failure and false ideals of government, business, and religion.
Now compare that long list of public opinion positions to this recent post at FiveThirtyEight.com that has broken out all of Obama’s stated positions on issues raised throughout the presidential campaign and has mapped them along a conservative-liberal axis. The two lists don’t correspond point for point, but they should give you a decent comparison of where the similarities and differences are between the geneal public and Obama. Obama’s a smart guy and gets a lot of credit for being “pragmatic” rather than “ideological”, but this article in The Nation by editor Christopher Hayes looks a little more closely at the Washington definition of “pragmatic” as the word has been applied to Barack Obama and finds that it leaves him lacking in the willingness to take big chances, to innovate, to address fundamental problems in favor of driving policies of “reconciliation” and of mistaking tactical victories for strategic ones. Many of the issues in that list cited by Smith are exactly those fundamental issues where a dose of ideology might be better than a whole program of pragmatism. Michael Blim, writing at 3QuarksDaily, strikes a similar note as he thinks about one specific issue — the economy and the need for a “New New Deal” — and how Obama might already have set himself up for failure by giving too much influence to many of the same people who got us into this mess.
The nexus of all this is whether or not Barack Obama is able to keep his agenda closer to the public’s wishes or will be pulled in by the influencers who have controlled the national agenda for half a century, and whether or not he can take a stand on principle or will triangulate at every turn like the Clintons. The jury is still out on that in my opinion, and so I side a bit more with Smith and his hope for a bottom-up movement, but I would be very encouraged to see Obama take the cues that he so far seems to be missing.
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