pro∙gres∙sive (prə-grĕs´ĭv)
adj. 1. moving forward 2. continuing by successive steps 3. favoring better conditions, new policies, ideas, or methods
n. one who is progressive
Yes. At least that’s what an analysis of decades of public opinion polling by the Campaign for America’s Future and Media Matters for America claims.
The façade of conservative political dominance is crumbling. The disintegration runs deeper than public disaffection with the Bush administration’s catastrophic failures and is more fundamental than the political realignment of the 2006 election. The notion of America as a “conservative nation” was always more fiction than fact, but the nation’s rejection of President Bush’s brand of “you’re-on-your-own” conservatism and wedge-issue divisiveness is so broad that today the façade is simply unsustainable.
When it comes to the economy the report, The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth, says that
- 84 percent of American support to increase the minimum wage;
- more Americans sympathize with unions than with companies in labor disputes (52 to 34 percent);
- nearly twice as many people think the U.S. is more hurt than helped by the global economy (48 to 25 percent);
- 69 percent of Americans believe government should care for those who can’t care for themselves;
- twice as many people want “government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending” (43 percent) as want government to provide fewer services “in order to reduce spending” (20 percent);
- majorities say the U.S. needs a bigger government “because the country’s problems are bigger” (59 percent) and a “strong government to handle complex problems” (67 percent).
On social issues too, Americans are more progressive than they are typically credited:
- the percentage who consider abortion the “most important” issue ranks in the single digits;
- a 56 percent majority oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, a proportion that has hardly changed in the past 20 years;
- only 29 percent want to see Roe v. Wade overturned;
- 67 percent want sex education in schools to include information about contraception, not just abstinence;
- 64 percent are willing to pay higher fuel taxes if the money were used for research into renewable energy sources;
- 75 percent would be willing to pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources like wind or energy;
- Only oil companies, conservative politicians and a minority of Americans (41 percent) want to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.
As for the war:
- 63 percent of Americans want to set deadlines for withdrawal;
- four times as many Americans (48 percent to 12 percent) think the war in Iraq has made the threat of terrorism against the United States worse rather than better.
This is heartening news for progressives, but it begs the question about why Americans continued to vote in politicians (Democrat and Republican) that have not a progressive bone on in their bodies and who remain beholden in capitalist interests and the profit line.
Perhaps a combination of the following accounts provides at least a partial explanation: the folks responding to the polls have checked out of the political process and Americans are subjected to such a high level of right-wing, pro-corporate, TINA propaganda their independence of thought collapses.
Certainly schools and the mass media are culpable in significant ways for the disconnect between the “progressive majority” and the political realities of the U.S.
Follow
