the American people overwhelmingly back progressive solutions over those pushed by conservatives.

But the Congress has acted otherwise, which explains its 62% disapproval rate (RCP ave.).
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

Obviously, people don’t like either tax increases or cuts to programs, but when the American people are forced to choose, their preferred solution is progressive tax increases and defense cuts. In addition, they consider the absolute worst option for closing our budget deficit is cutting our country’s most successful socialist programs, free public education, public health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid), and public old age assistance (Social Security).

No sh*t, but deserves to be said. I agree that this is the viewpoint of most citizens, but they are either so dumbed-down and/or distracted and/or partakeres of Fox/Clear Channel, that they are often unresponsive to how we’re all being used.

And as we’ve seen the recent infestation of conservatives posting here at FDL, esp in re to the protests in the mid-west, there are certainly some citizens out there who want nothing more than the upper 2% to enjoy their “winner take all” status, whilst the 98% gets the “pleasure” of being ground under into third world status. Go figure.

It should be noted that only about 40% of us actually vote. Many of these closet progressives just don’t bother. Republicans, on the other hand, are very good at voting. If everyone did vote, we’d have policies that aligned more with the rest of the world – like single-payer healthcare. I’m in favor of mandatory voting for all citizens – it is our responsibility to participate in our government and everyone should have to weigh in.

I suggest reading World Socialist Website on a daily basis. They do in-depth analysis of current issues. As for obama, he runs everything he does or doesn’t do thru the prism of his being re-elected. He’s unprincipled and without integrity.

Remember, these poll results come after decades of relentless demonizing of the left by the PTB & relentless rightwing propaganda in the media. And relentless ridicule of ‘socialist Europe.’

If the media were fair, the poll results would come in much more lefty.

Only problem is … I can’t see hardly any candidates worth voting for. Fewer every day.

Many of these closet progressives just don’t bother.

Don’t blame the people. That’s always the easy default position — blame it on the “sheeple.” (not your word, but it’s used) Progressives don’t vote because no candidates represent their views.

That is so true. Obama is really useless to all but his Wall Street puppetmasters and himself.

Getting back to the Center Right Nation issue. My problem is really with supposed dems repeating this mantra. I heard Earl Ofari Hutchinson say this a few weeks back and I almost went nuts. He was saying this in defense of Obama.
We simply have to get pass some of our embedded media people who have been corrupted to some degree.

It’s not the voting that matters. It’s the $$$$ that buy the candidates long before voting even begins. O was vetted for years by the PTB before he became a candidate for anything.

It seems most religions are into social justice – the Mormon http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/51308137-82/mormon-book-poor-saints.html.csp discovery of that fact making Utah conservatism rather curious.

The corporate world demands everything from welfare payments to the right to tell lies as if they were news facts – and is not so much into social justice. There are not that many Ben and Jerry’s out there – not even in Vermont.

Agree. But Hutchison is representative of what’s happened with the Vichyrats. So-called “Democratic” politicians no longer represent the voters/constituents. There is no “two party” system anymore. It’s only a Corporate-Money-Elite party system with all federal (at least) politicians solely and only representing the interests of the upper 2%.

When Obama won the election in 2008, I got chills down my spine when Rush Limbaugh endlessly repeated (endlessly) the mantra “this IS a Center-Right nation, this IS a Center-Right nation, this IS a Center-Right nation.”

I had a foreboding of what was to come, which is what we see now: NO representation of the “will of the people.”

water electricity the police department fire department and even the concept of money , these are all social programs and in fact socialism

I can’t see hardly any candidates worth voting for.

Yup that is the problem.

We wait to find the candidate(s) that will champion progressive causes into actual legislation, but they don’t show up.

The mass-marketing says a real progressive can’t win. It’s pretty much a rule of thumb, you have to cantor toward the center (meaning take on conservative positions) to win. I mean, everyone knows being a liberal is the kiss of death, right?

So this poll, on top of others that show the same thing–that American’s across the board *want* progressive policies–means that there’s an underlying, strongly-held set of opinions that progressive candidates can run on; tap into.

I think the key is to address these positions with specific policies, challenge anyone throwing the “liberal” label into the discussion, tapping into this fundamental belief system of the majority of Americans, and directly and aggressively challenge any stated position that does not follow these positions.

But I think we in the progressive community will have to grow our own candidates. And if the Democratic Party infrastructure is resistant, we’ll have to kinda’ go tea-party on them.

Now what?

Many of these closet progressives just don’t bother. Republicans, on the other hand, are very good at voting.

With all due respect to you: So what?

Look at what happened in 2008: progressives turned out in droves and campaigned for and gave money to and voted for Obama and other Democratic pols running for House & Senate. And then what? Pardon my ire (not directed at the person posting), but what the FACK did we get????? A bunch of weasely lying NeoCon wolves dressed in the “clothing” being so-called “Democratic” politicians allegedly so “liberal” that it was beyond belief. Liberal my @ss. A bigger bunch of lying elite @ss-kissers could not be found if we tried.

Yeah: progressives may have stayed home in 2010. Why not? It’s completely clear that, no matter who we vote for, we’re going to be stuck with NeoCon politicians and policy rammed down our throats.

And hey: Obama only *won* bc that’s what the PTB wanted. IF the PTB hadn’t wanted their “man” Obama to win, then Diebold would’ve shifted the votes to McCain… make no mistake about that, either.

Though the politicians appear to do whatever they want to, I do think that voters are very unclear about their own views. Many people, when asked, will say that they are conservative but when asked the individual question – do you think the rich should pay more taxes, for instance – their answers are generally center left. It’s a problem when people actually think they are conservative when they’re not.

Meanwhile the mortgage mess continues – with HAMP data as of January.

“Permanent modifications” – which means they last 5 years and in 96% of the cases do not involve reduction of principal, only reducing struggling borrowers’ monthly payments by roughly $500 through reductions in the interest rate, extensions of the mortgage terms and temporary forbearance (but not forgiveness) of principal owed, are at 539,493 still in effect since HAMP’s 2009 launch – with 68,114 modifications that started but were later tossed not counted in the 539,493.

This is Obama’s gentle to the banks don’t have tough regulations approach. How is this different from having a GOPer in the office?

But I think we in the progressive community will have to grow our own candidates. And if the Democratic Party infrastructure is resistant, we’ll have to kinda’ go tea-party on them.

Now what?

Agree. Support and vote third party, unless you’re very very firmly convinced that a so-called “Democratic” pol is NOT a Vichyrat. There are still some good Dems at the state and local level, but even there, not so much as before.

Vote third party, imo, is the way to go. It certainly is not “throwing away your vote.” Frankly, I think I “throw away my vote” much more if I vote for almost any “Democratic” pol, esp at the Fed level. JMHO.

It’s a problem when people actually think they are conservative when they’re not.

Oh, indeed, you make a very great and valid point. Far too many citizens have bought into the notion that being liberal/progressive is tantamount to something odious, if not treasonous, so, ergo, they *must* be conservative. And so… on it goes….

TP has tons of $$$ behind it. Lefties don’t. So 3d party on left will not be successful. Not to mention that anything that looks like it’s succeeding on the left will be corrupted by the monied interests. Like the Green Party is kept just big enough by money to siphon votes away from Ds.

“IF the PTB hadn’t wanted their “man” Obama to win, then Diebold would’ve shifted the votes to McCain… make no mistake about that, either.”

Sadly we had only one shot at audited elections and Bev Harris did the GOP’s work of killing the bill by convincing progressives to reject the bill because it did not outlaw everything except paper ballots.

I doubt I will ever see audited elections in the US (some states do a very very limited and hard to initiate audit – and even then may only re-add the numbers from each machine to the state total).

Indeed online balloting is in a few places – I for one am having the Anonymous folks cast my ballot if that happens – so I know it will be counted and fake GOP votes will not be counted.

They didn’t do that without a LOT of effort on the right. See 5.

Mail ballots in OR?

And can’t anyone demand a paper ballot (for write-ins) even if a state has electronic machines?

Read Rand and the Randnuts who comprise a high percentage of the MOTU and as well the Tea Party. A fixed trait of thier personality disorder is to ignore those who disagree with them, even to the point of the inevitable defeat. Unfortunately most Americans see this as a virtue, “holding to their principles.” and continue to vote them en.

It is “socialist” to attend to the wishes and needs of others, especially the community as a whole. They are anti-social.

The Right is Anti-Social = anti-human = anti-equality = anti-life. Their claim of “pro-life” is a flat out LIE.

The Left is Egalitarian = pro-humanity, pro-equality = pro-life.

Heh…get out of my head! :)

Yep. But the media and voters continue to see them as “principled.” They are fanatics.We love fanatics.

The voters are brainwashed by the media, who are anti-social in the first place.

Sorry about that. :-)

This is the time for progressives to go to work: identify progressive/socialist candidates for every electable position in the country where possible and work to get them elected. We need to start a “Bernie Sanders Project”: if Vermont can do it, it should be possible to do the same in at least few other places? Country is ready for sane (i.e., not ultra-left, pie-in-the sky type) socialists.

The most popular: placing a surtax on federal income taxes for those who make more than $1 million per year (81% said that was acceptable)

But, if you exclude non-millionaires, the percentage who find that unacceptable skyrockets…

/O’Reilly

Once upon a time we had a Socialist Party. They were effectively driven from the political arena.
Ralph Nader wasn’t allowed to participate in the debates when he ran.
I agree with most of the things said, but see no viable solutions.

Free public education? I had no idea all those teachers and staff were working for literally nothing; how do they pay their bills?

The fall of the Soviet Union has allowed all western govts to become increasingly rightwing. In order to create a true center, you need to counterbalance the far right, which will always exist bc people fear change and money matters, with some ideology and power on the far left. That doesn’t exist anymore.

This is just one more proof why the right to vote has got to be restricted to white males owning property worth at least one million dollars. As we know from Limbaugh and company, they are the only ‘true citizens’ whose voice is worth knowing and acting on. Everybody else is just along for the ride.

In at least a few states the provisional ballots are not counted if they would not affect the outcome – and I believe that all the machines have an ability to record “if you believe they record anything of the voting correctly” write-ins without separate procedures for paper.

Nope – Bev Haris got the disabled stirred up by claiming the restrictions made it to much harder for them to vote, despite carve out provisions in the bill, and got election activists who are solid progressives to oppose because “we can get a better bill”. She was a one woman “Fox News” because no one checked out her past (she was on the Internet selling Monica cigars back in the 90′s – that was the first I heard of her – then she screwed a nice progressive – Andy Stephenson – who then died – then developed a cadre of ladies that think she is really working for election clean up and maintain her web site (“BlackBoxvoting.org” – blackboxvoting.com is Andy’s old site and still operates and is a solid progressive site – I’ll never trust Bev again).

We had one shot to get national audits – and the conservatives through Bev shot it down – did not even get out of committee.

As to mail in ballots – I have no clue how well that is working, although I do not see Oregon as a suddenly strong GOP state (unlike Neb and Senator Hegel a few months after he had sold his voting countings to them and then won the election). I suspect mailin ballots works fine – although in Florida they found the GOP filling in the absentee ballot forms – with a right wing court ruling no problem based on no proof they actually filled in the vote marking area)

Rachel touched on this last night.

How does the top 2% of the USA Pop win, and keep winning?

Deception!

1st buy up all the news media, “create a media friendly to the rich”

2nd buy up politicians, “the rich buys dems and reps” make people think they have a choice. (dems trojan horses and rep trojan horses always take care of their masters)

3rd destroy the idea of a real USA president “to run for the USA president, one needs a lot of money, guess who has all the money”

4th keep the USA military happy and rich, by fighting idiotic wars

5th create phoney news cast like Fox news, that make USA citizens Stupid

with these type of tools you can make a lot of USA citizens vote against their best interest.

Gov. Walker proves this point, a few people in the broke state of Wisconsin, agree with Walker, let tax payer money pay for rich kids private school education.

I think the USA has 300K super rich people that make all the money.

There’s a reason why so many working people don’t vote. One of them is that the election is held on a working day; the second is that there aren’t enough polls in the places where they would vote if they did, with the result that they have to stand in long lines without a toilet. There are a host of other reasons why the working class vote is depressed, all of them ultimately due to a desire to keep it that way on the part of those who benefit from their not voting.

great point!

why is election day tuesday? and not Saturday

if voting is so serious in the USA, why is there no paper trail. Diebold machines break and can be tampered with.

sounds like you have it all figured out

I agree

If everyone did vote, we’d have policies that aligned more with the rest of the world – like single-payer healthcare.

Childishly naive.

Free public education? I had no idea all those teachers and staff were working for literally nothing; how do they pay their bills?

And childishly stupid.

When you want to find the hole in someone’s argument, a good place to look are for signpost words like “Clearly” or “Obviously”. What follows is usually some form of hand-waving or rationalization – even when a much clearer assessment is readily available.

Case in point:
“Obviously, people don’t like either tax increases or cuts to programs, but when the American people are forced to choose, their preferred solution is progressive tax increases and defense cuts.”

Had the author read the actual poll (which is available as a link from the site he linked to), he should’ve seen question C23:

“If the deficit cannot be eliminated solely by cutting wasteful federal spending, which one of these steps would you most favor — (ROTATE) cutting important programs, raising taxes, or postponing elimination of the deficit?”

Cutting Important Progams: 35% (up from 32% a month ago)
Raising Taxes: 33% (up from 29% a month ago)
Postponing: 26% (down from 30% a month ago)
Combination (VOL): 1% (down from 2% a month ago)
Not Sure: 5% (down from 7% a month ago)

If there is anything “Obvious” about what the poll suggests Americans want to do, it is that you don’t need to “interpret” anything from the other answers! NBC/WSJ asked the right question this time and the answer is:

Americans are pretty split on how to address the deficit.

I’m not sure the day of the week matters much. Lots of people shop on Saturday. Do you think they would give up a trip to WalMart to go vote? We have shitty candidates and lots of people just don’t give a shit.
Agree we need a paper trail.

So what you are saying is we are pretty much f***ed.

In a word: YES. But even so, I will not give up without a fight, and that’s for sure.

Remember that a paper trail is worthless unless individual voters get to validate their own vote. The only way I’ve seen that suggested is to give the voter a code number, then to publish the vote on the internet & in the newspaper by the code number the voter receives. Haven’t thought about that much so I don’t know how that system could be gamed, but it seems like a good idea on first blush. Also could be used with evoting.

why not do it on-line, it would be real easy to do

when you vote, your code number would pop up on a web site.

The leaves the poor out.

‘That isn’t “center-right,” that is a progressive majority.’

I really like the way you write but this statement is downright delusional.
By sheer numbers this is a center/stupid country.
The people who don’t waste braincells on ‘Real Housewives’, Dancing with whatever, or Jersey Shore are in a minority.
The RATS on the Supreme Court saw to it the real minority prevailed and the idiots who ruined this country are reconstituting themselves are nourished by a President who totally sold out anyone who dared to hope for a recovery from the last 8 years of bushco.
That duplicity will be his undoing if the republicans can find someone who isn’t some dumb cracker like huck or barbour or an empty suit like pawlenty or mittens, that said, we are totally fucked.

Yeah, after I submitted that I got to thinking about it a little more. How would it be implemented and who the hell could be trusted to do the implementing.

“center stupid”

I like that. Very well said.

Public Libraries or University computer labs would be alternatives for the poor.

I posted a question on a thread a few days ago and asked so what do we do? Nobody responded to my question. I agree that we need to fight to the bitter end, but again I ask what do we do? I am really sincere about the question and I want to be where it helps the cause. I am new to a lot of this, I was a fundamentalist Christian who voted Republican till 2004. Now I am a progressive atheist. Go figure. I am trying to learn and want to help stop the insanity that is going on in this country.

Oh sure, keep upping the hoops the poor have to jump through.

Really, it could be all of the above. It doesn’t have to be just paper or just evote or just internet.

I think that instantaneous confirmation of your vote would not assure that it was really recorded correctly. I believe that the whole vote must get published, so that you may personally check your vote, and interested parties could check the totals.

All of this is pie in the sky, of course, bc none of it will get done.

I couldn’t agree more. Lots of new voters came out to vote for Obama thinking he was ‘the one’. We lost those voters because he didn’t even attempt to do what the people who elected him wanted. They get into office and all we hear is how things just can’t get done and that’s why people don’t show up, it’s why we lost the House in ’10 and how Obama is likely to lose in ’12. They think they can have it both ways because we have no where else to go but they forget we can and do stay home.

Now Jon you know your not acting like an adult on this topic , don’t you? Adults according to the MSM always favor cutting these awful “entitlements” for “greedy geezers.” You left wing fringe elements have to stop trying to confuse the American people with the facts. As our hero Ronald Raygun has told us facts are stupid things.

Link to article about another Republican tax myth – cutting taxes leads to increased tax revenues.

http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8EL2Y8?OpenDocument

I think a lot of us here are grappling with that. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe there is nothing to do other than wait til this cesspool drowns in its own corruption and something better rises from the filth.

Angry yet?

First, it was not my suggestion to use online voting – that was jedimsnbcko19.

Second, the “hoop” that the poor have to jump through (going to a public library) is not much different than what currently exists (going to a polling place). In any case, having multiple options is probably the best alternative.

The checks that would be both necessary and sufficient for online voting to work:

1. No under counts – easily and perfectly resolved by giving each person a unique voter ID and having all results published.

2. No over counts – tougher. It is a much more difficult thing to ensure that all of the names on the master list are legitimate. The FEC could handle this and would probably be no worse than other existing systems.

3. No false counts – very difficult. How do you prevent someone from stealing the votes of those who did not participate?

Thanks for your response. That is why I have made FDL my home page. Most of the regular posters here are so much farther ahead of the game than me but I have learned so much from you all. I appreciate your wisdom and knowledge.

Yes, I was responding to several points made by several people earlier under my response to you.

Going to library or university is more onerous than current system, which occurs in your neighborhood. Fewer libraries & universities than voting sites. (That’s for now, but when the rich get REAL control, that will change. We’ll all have to show up at the summit of Mt. McKinley to vote then.)

Your 2 & 3 are good ones. As I said earlier, I haven’t thought about this very much, so I haven’t figured out how the suggested ‘fix’ could be gamed.

Just knowing who is eligile to vote (i.e. lives in the district or state, or whatever the voting unit is) is nontrivial bc people move so much.

Congratulations on your awakening, and welcome.

There are other ways to make paper trails work – Chavez has an inexpensive but solid system in place to guarantee the rich/CIA do not steal elections – Carter reviewed with his staff and found no holes in it – and indeed validated the results.

But the key is the audit – without a mandatory audit it all falls apart.

But the Congress has acted otherwise, which explains its 62% disapproval rate (RCP ave.)

I’m willing to be 62% of congress’ paymasters don’t support a tax increase.

Let us not confuse voters with paymasters. Voters are of some importance every two years in the house, 6 years in the senate and 8 years for the POYUS.

Paymasters? They require that lips are permanently attached to their nether ends.

People want progressive policies and get reactionary crap. Because Progressives keep losing the frame wars. (Well there’s also the brute force exerted by truck loads of corporate dough. That helps, too.)