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The second thing I really, really want, Santa, is a Democratic party
that's
not afraid of its own grassroots. The Washington cognoscenti the
pundits and
the politicos -- have decreed that America is a center-right country.
Thus,
they intone sonorously and ceaselessly, it is sheer folly for Democrats
to
base their appeal on anyone more progressive than middle- of-the-road,
party-switching, SUVdriving, suburbanites whose chief concern is
traffic
gridlocks.
Astonishingly, party elders have bought this load of bunkum, in large
part
because they mostly huddle with their consultants, big campaign donors,
and
others who peddle the bunkum. If they were instead to venture outside
the
Beltway, outside the safe pods of the national fund-raising circuit,
and
outside the echo chambers of their orchestrated "town meetings" -- if
they
were to talk with and listen to regular workaday people -- they would
be
astonished to find a different America than they think they're in.
Contrary to
the contrived wisdom of the cognoscenti, the American majority is
amazingly
progressive ... and pissed off.
How progressive? It doesn't get covered by the corporate media (imagine
that),
but mainstream polls consistently find that big majorities of Americans
are
not meek centrists, but overt, tub-thumping, FDR progressives who are
seeking
far more populist gumption and governmental action than any Democratic
congressional leader or presidential contender has dared to imagine. In
recent
polls by the Pew Research Group, the Opinion Research Corporation, the
Wall
Street Journal, and CBS News, the American majority has made clear how
it
feels. Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that
you'd
think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:
65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for
everyone
-- even if it means raising taxes.
86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of
selfdescribed "social conservatives").
60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least
those
cuts that went to the rich.
66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending
but by
reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect
the
environment.
87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80
percent
(including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits
tax on
the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative
fuels.
69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S.
economy
(78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe
offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."
69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent
saying
it's headed in the right direction
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