The Public Is Often More Progressive Than Biden And What The Media Calls “Mainstream”

Democrats will need a stronger nominee than Biden to defeat the Republicans in 2024

By RootsAction.org

It’s been true for decades: Many majority-held positions in public polling are thought of, even by those who hold such positions, as fringe minority views.[1] Why? Because corporate media marginalizes those views and treats them as fringe.

Nearly 80% of the U.S. public, for example, wants Congress members barred from trading stocks, to reduce legislators’ conflicts-of-interest. Yet the Democratic-controlled Congress refused to act, and President Biden refused to lead on the issue.

A strong majority of the U.S. public has long wanted a significant increase in the minimum wage, and most told Pew pollsters that they support a $15 federal minimum wage. With Democrats controlling Congress, President Biden was unable to achieve that goal for the 30 million workers who would have seen a pay raise; his executive order did raise the minimum wage for 67,000 federal employees — but without setting it to keep pace with the cost of living.

Many polls over the years have shown a majority of the public wants federal funding moved from militarism to human and environmental needs. The 2020 Democratic Party platform promised this shift. Yet even after Trump had bloated the military budget for four years, President Biden has repeatedly proposed huge military increases – and Congress has responded by adding huge additional increases to those increases.

Over the years, many polls have found that a majority of the U.S. public supports single-payer health coverage, aka “Enhanced Medicare for All.” On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden vehemently opposed Medicare for All and instead promised partway measures like a “public option” and a slight reduction in the Medicare eligibility age – neither of which was acted upon. Meanwhile, the steady privatization of existing Medicare through so-called “Medicare Advantage” plans has actually been sped up under the Biden administration.