On a whole host of political issues, Americans overwhelmingly hold to liberal, rather than conservative, views. Consider the findings published in this report (and follow the links therein).
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America's most amazing blog, in that almost no one is even aware of its existence while almost everyone is touched by its subtle influence.
On a whole host of political issues, Americans overwhelmingly hold to liberal, rather than conservative, views. Consider the findings published in this report (and follow the links therein).
2 comments:
One of the few articles that you've posted that I completely disagree with, Rascal.
That link you showed was crap. Most Americans support strong unions? Where are these "most Americans" located? In places that don't have Wal-Mart? In places where foreign cars are never sold? Americans overwhelmingly want a higher minimum wage? I'm betting there weren't a lot of small business owners participating in constructing this article. Or libertarians. Or anyone who actually understands anything about economics.
Americans support energy conservation and alternative fuels? That's why SUVs with low MPG ratings have remained so popular? Or why gas prices have remained high with little drop off in consumption? Or why no one's seriously pushing to build nuclear power plants? And people want more gun control? Obviously the authors didn't bother to talk to many people in the Midwest, or to anyone holding an NRA membership. Here’s a more recent Gallup poll, by the way that disputes many of MediaMatters’ generalized assumptions.
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/
?ci=27229
As for the other polls they’ve cited, the data from at least one (the L.A. Times poll from January 2005) was misrepresented in this article. While Americans did say that they’d be willing to forego tax cuts in exchange for a specifically targeted economic agenda to improve infrastructure and schools (policies from which all benefit) the same survey noted that 52% of Americans said they wanted a smaller government with fewer services…which is a distinctly non-“progressive” position, which also happened to disagree with the premise of MediaMatters’ article. Nice job of the authors, only picking out the relevant data from the polls that supports their pre-held position while rejecting that which disputes it or pretending it doesn’t exist…pretty much the same thing Bush does I’ve noticed. Here’s the link for that Time survey if you’d like to see for yourself
(http://www.latimesinteractive.
com/pdfarchive/nationworld/
la-011905poll1_pdf.pdf).
I suspect that if you dig into their other sources you’ll find similar distortions or omissions from the other polls they’ve cited.
It would be a lot easier to respect articles like the link you gave if their positions weren’t predicated on half-truths.
UC: Good rebuttal. Thanks.
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