So one of the biggest, um, dividing lines we could call it
the American left and right, is about what role should government have in our lives.
How big should government be, what are the things that government should and shouldn't
be doing? And the public policy mood estimate is a measure of exactly that. And it is at
the most liberal point in the 68 year history of the measure. And it's really important
to understand that this measure doesn't address the public's view on a lot of the issues that
have been big parts of the Donald Trump administration. So immigration is not addressed by the public
policy mood report. Um, trade is not in any way addressed by this. It's specifically related
to the role and scope of government in society. And I have to tell you the results are not
actually very surprising because when we look at individual issue polls where people are
asked, should the government provide a basic level of healthcare to everybody, regardless
of whether they can pay for it, the country is the most to the left that it has been on
that issue.
People, by and large thinking, the answer is yes. The government should provide some
basic level of care to everybody even if they can't pay for it. And part of the reason why
is that whether your sim sympathies to that idea are ideological or moral or economic,
we now realize that hey, we're a well rich enough country that we can be making sure
everybody has a basic level of care and it's also good economically because when people
have access to health care, all sorts of other negative externalities are mitigated like
work, absenteeism and productivity. If that is what you care about or criminality related
to needing money to pay for medical treatments, medical bankruptcies, all of that stuff. Whatever
your sympathies are with regards to healthcare, more and more of the country now recognizes
everybody's better off. If the government does something that we can very easily afford
to do, which is make sure everybody has some basic level of care on the issue of taxation.
Should the government be using taxation to reduce income inequality? By taxing the very,
very rich, the country has moved to the left on that. It has been a significant and steady
move to the left. Now I know that there are still people who don't want, uh, the rich
to be taxed. I know there are still people who believe that it's not good economically
to tax the very, very rich to lift the bottom end and make sure nobody gets left behind.
You can find those people. Many of them voted for Trump, but in total the country has moved
to the left in terms of believing that that is a role that government should be playing.
This is why Republicans don't want people to vote. When you understand and recognize
that on the issues, the country is well to the left of our elected officials. You don't
want people to vote.
The ideas that people have come around to, and this is bigger than Trump, are more or
less the ideas of Franklin d Roosevelt. Second Bill of rights. FDR proposed this during his
1944 state of the Union address, the con, the elements of it were employment of bill
of rights that contains employment, meaning the right to work, food, clothing and leisure
with enough income to support those activities. Uh, farmers, right to a fair income. This
was very important in the u s at the time, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies.
Elizabeth Warren is talking about this housing, medical care, social security and education.
This is from 1944 I would add to the second bill of rights, um, now protecting the environment
in the context of the climate crisis that we're facing. But this is all about government's
role and on government's role in total. The country is as le left as it has ever been.
So if we fix our election system, we might actually have a shot at making more of these
things a reality because the most liberal public mood ever is not going to get progressive
politicians elected if we don't fix campaign finance, if we don't fix the election systems,
if we don't stop voter suppression. This does also relate, by the way to my story yesterday,
pointing out that Donald Trump is mostly the result of decades of right wing anti intellectual
Elysium and demonization of progressive ideas. But Donald Trump's rise to power is also partially
a result of milk, toast, centrist, status quo ideas from corporate democrats for much
of that same multi-decade periods. So all these issues with campaign finance and voting
systems do need to be fixed. But Democrats also need to get with it and move to the left.
As some Democratic candidates for 2020 are finally starting to do as some members of
the Progressive House caucus are finally starting to do.
There's plenty of blame to go around. It's not everybody is equally to blame, but when
you understand that on the issues, the American public has moved to the left, it immediately
becomes obvious why Republicans have been behaving the way they've been behaving when
it comes to who is allowed to vote, what is required to vote, what are the number of places
that people are allowed to vote and why do they want to reduce that? And they have, uh,
sporadically gone public and made it clear. Remember that guy, I think his name was Mike
Turzai who said, uh, voter ID will deliver Pennsylvania to Mitt Romney. They understand
this. Okay. They're willing to play dirty and to a great extent, they have secured numerous,
endless election victories as a result of their willingness to do it. You Democrats
need to stoop to the same level. Well, it's not stooping when you try to get more people
to vote.
Okay. That's called the spirit of democracy and we need to understand all of these elements.
It's fantastic that the country is moving left. We just need to make it possible for
that leftward move to be reflected in the elected officials that we put into power and
voter suppression, voter Id, reducing voting hours, reducing polling places, all of that
is going to make it harder for the will of the people, which is more left than ever to
actually be made a reality.