In elite circles, including Capitol Hill, people often misunderstand American public opinion in a specific way. They imagine that the median voter resembles a type of political moderate who is quite common in those elite circles — somebody who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Michael Bloomberg is an archetype, as are some Republican mayors and governors in blue states. Many people in professional Washington, at think tanks and elsewhere, also fall into the category.
In the rest of the country, however, this ideological combination is not so common, polls show. If anything, more Americans can accurately be described as the opposite — socially conservative and economically liberal. That’s true across racial groups, including among Black and Hispanic voters.
Most Americans are religious, for example. Most favor restrictions on both abortion and immigration. Most oppose reductions in police funding. At the same time, most Americans favor higher taxes on the rich and a higher minimum wage, as well as government actions to reduce drug prices, expand health care and create good-paying jobs. (Source)
But it doesn't matter what most Americans think because Beltway politics is an Insider game. Sure the voters matter to your average, "moderate" politician in elections, but the donors matter more. And while the Democratic donors might be culturally liberal, they are almost always fiscally conservative. Why? Because if you are a member of the donor class, you are rich, and if you are rich, your interests do not align with the economic interests of most Americans.
So "moderate Democrat" has come to mean that you care more about donors and lobbyists than the people who elected you. That's why taxes will stay low, and Medicare will still be unable to negotiate drug prices if they ever get this reconciliation bill passed. That's what the Insiders want, and moderate Democrats, in order to retain their good standing with Insiders will give the Insiders what they want.
So because it matters little what most voters want and more what insiders want, policy opinion polls are interesting but mostly useless. And when it comes to the reconciliation bill that's being wrangled as I write this, the Insiders would just as soon it not pass if it's going to cost them a dime.
They couldn't care less about the big picture–things like the survival of American democracy. Such concerns are too abstract and sound like self-serving grandstanding by Progressives. They assume anybody who talks about such abstractions is just spewing propaganda to advance their own political agenda. Everybody is a game player, and that's just the Progressive way of playing. Progressives, in their view, are saying nothing substantive to be taken seriously, just as everything that they themselves say is substanceless and not to be taken seriously. One says what the game requires one to say.
That's politics. To behave in any other way within the Insider ethos would be political malpractice. To behave differently, for instance, with sincerity, would invite the mockery of one's peers and others in the Insider class. It would be like a professional athlete choosing to stay with a team because his family likes the city and he feels a personal bond to his teammates rather than choosing to take an extra few million offered to him by a team in another city. If he turned down the money, most of his teammates and people in sports media would think he's an idiot.
And besides, polls about policy preferences don't matter because hardly anybody votes for policy. The connection between voting behavior and policy preferences is very weak. It's one thing to answer a pollster's question; it's another to cast one's ballot for a particular candidate or to support specific legislation that would enact one's policy preference.
Why? Because people don't connect specific legislation to their policy preferences because they don't really understand the legislation. How many Tea-Party, anti-Obamacare fanatics had even a rudimentary understanding about what the ACA was designed to do? So if you're a Tea Party Republican on the Red Team, It didn't matter if you or people you care about would benefit from Obamacare. A guy on the Blue Team proposed it, and so you have to oppose it.
The polling for Biden's Build Back Better bill is extraordinarily high in support of it, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the inside game, and Sinema and Manchin have strong hands to play, and they will play them to their advantage. Manchin is living as if the political landscape is the same now as it was in the 1980s. That apparently doesn't hurt him in West Virginia. He's also deep in the pockets of the Fossil Fuel industry. In Arizona BBB is supported by all voters by a 57/37 margin, but Sinema doesn't care– she, like Manchin, doesn't have to worry about voters until '24. So until then, the insiders are more important to both.
Nevertheless, Biden is motivated to get BBB done for all the right reasons, and regardless of the disdain with which the Progressives are held by those in the Insider class, Progressives are sincere in wanting to get something substantive done. I'd be very surprised if nothing gets done. It looks like $3.5T is off the table for BBB, but $1.5-2T is still possible. I support the efforts of Jayapal's Progressive caucus to hold firm until Progressives get the best possible deal, but at the end of the day, they understand that something has to get done. The Progressives are not fanatics, and so when it becomes clear that they've got the best deal possible, they'll get on board, even if it's only 1.5T.
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