Of Money, Politics, Hillary Clinton & Illusions [Updated Below]

Masterdebation Dept.- American presidential races are a $2+ billion, year-and-a-half-long "reality" show,  most of it as fake, scripted and full of low-grade melodrama as the worst of the lot. Theoretically, they determine who will be next to hold the single most powerful office in the history of the world. In practice, they offer up a series of carefully-crafted illusions intended to distract, bedazzle and give the impression of a functioning democracy wherein one's vote actually matters and wherein the choice between wholly-owned representatives of the same Big Money interests is real and has a meaningful impact on the direction of the nation. In this pageant of phantoms, presidential debates are one of the featured attractions. The Democratic candidates participated in one Thursday night. In the course of it, a question was begged, one that pulled a thread that, given the proper attention, would threaten to unravel not only the relatively small-fry campaign of Hillary Clinton but the baseless fabric of this entire empire of illusions. Unfortunately, there's no one to give it that attention. Rather than acting as a watchdog, the American press largely functions as an integral part of that empire.

In American politics, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is an odd duck indeed. For many years, he's come perilously close to identifying, in very blunt language, the big lie at the heart of American "democracy":

"...with a political campaign finance system that is corrupt and that is increasingly controlled by billionaires and special interests, I fear very much that, in fact, government of the people, by the people, for the people is perishing in the United States of America... Let us be frank, let us be honest: the current political campaign finance system is corrupt and amounts to legalized bribery."

Money isn't the most important issue in American politics and government; it's the only issue, the thing that overwhelms every other consideration, the thing around which everything else revolves. To mount a serious run for a major office, politicians must, in almost every case, prostitute themselves to the entrenched Big Money interests. Those who are most successful at this almost always win then spend much of their time in government servicing their clients' needs. On every matter of real importance, money determines policy. In recent years, multiple Supreme Court decisions, of which the Citizens United ruling is but the best known, have left in tatters even the utterly ineffectual campaign finance laws that existed prior to them. Among other things, these rulings have given rise to the super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in support of candidates, dark money groups that can do the same but without even publicly disclosing their donors and the use of LLCs as anonymous fronts to donate to super PACs, increasingly turning the super PACs too into super-dark-money groups. These cauldrons of corruption, brimming with the bribes of billionaires and Big Business, often outspend the candidates themselves and join with the already-obscene amounts of money those candidates raise to drown out any trace of democracy.

Liberal pols sometimes offer lip-service objections to this sorry state of affairs but when it comes to actively rejecting it, Bernie Sanders walks the walk. He refuses to prostitute himself to Big Money. No array of deep-pocketed super PACs orbit his candidacy. He's financing his presidential bid mostly via small donations from ordinary people. He's the real candidate Ted Cruz only pretends to be. He speaks frequently and forcefully against the current system of "legalized bribery" and in favor of a robust program he's offered to try to reform it.

The belief that it can be effectively reformed is perhaps an illusion of Sanders and other liberals.[1] In rejecting the money-is-speech rationale offered by the Supreme Court for dismembering campaign finance law, Sanders doesn't address the legitimate free-speech implications of that equation--something that, of course, can't just be dismissed. At the same time, the idea that the current state of affairs can be fixed by merely reforming campaign finance seems naive, a radical underestimation of the extent of the problem. Aside from being owned by Big Money interests, most members of congress are drawn from the professional classes and are, themselves, millionaires, who are not only serving their wealthy patrons but have a personal investment in perpetuating the prerogatives of the powerful. That--preserving those prerogatives--has been a focus of government in the U.S. from the birth of the republic, enshrined in a constitution written by aristocrats terrified of a public uprising and trying to protect their own interests.[2] And, of course, if reform would be effective, the Big Money interests that pull the strings of government would simply prevent it from going forward. It's possible these problems are simply too intractable to be responsive to mere reforms. But Sanders wants to have a go at it.

And as every poll on the subject reveals, the public is with him. A CBS News/New York Times poll from June is typical. 84% of respondents, including even 80% of Republicans, believe "money has too much influence" in political campaigns; 85% said politicians "promote policies that directly help the people and groups who donated money to their campaigns" most of the time (55%) or sometimes (30%); 39% said "fundamental changes" are needed in the campaign finance system, while a further 46% said "the system for funding political campaigns has so much wrong with it that we need to completely rebuild it." Americans understand the problem, even if they underestimate the extent and significance of it.

Politicians keep an eye on polls. In the presidential race, Sanders isn't alone in denouncing the current campaign finance system. Last year, Hillary Clinton, his chief Democratic rival, decried what she called a "political system hijacked by billionaires and special interests," rhetoric directly echoing Sanders, and calling for a package of reforms that was essentially a watered-down--and grossly inadequate--version of what Sanders has long proposed. To be clear, Clinton has talked about this issue for many years and it would be inaccurate to suggest, as some have, that her current push is just her aping Sanders. Her rhetoric, however, has certainly been, shall we say, influenced by his. More broadly, Clinton has been echoing and even cloning Sanders' rhetoric and proposals throughout the campaign. In the lead-up to the Iowa caucus, this trend accelerated. This isn't really surprising--Clinton has a long history of suddenly espousing selective progressive values whenever there looms an election in which such talk is politically beneficial.[3] Her commitment to those values has an unfortunate habit of disappearing as soon as the pending election is over.[4] Her commitment to campaign finance reform can be gauged by her activities shortly after endorsing the idea in the current presidential race--as reported by the New York Times, Clinton

"will begin personally courting donors for a 'super PAC' supporting her candidacy, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate has fully embraced these independent groups that can accept unlimited checks from big donors and are already playing a major role in the 2016 race.

"Her decision is another escalation in what is expected to be the most expensive presidential race in history... Mrs. Clinton’s allies hope that with her support, the top Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA Action, will raise $200 million to $300 million. That is on par with what the largest Republican organizations, such as the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads super PAC and its nonprofit affiliate, spent in 2012."

Sanders has tried, either valiantly or stupidly (depending on how one evaluates such things), not to wage a campaign of personal insults but he has been critical of Hillary Clinton's ties to Wall Street. Wall Street is one of many Big Money special interests supporting Clinton's presidential efforts but it's by far the biggest, backing her with nearly $18 million.[5] Sanders has also noted that Clinton took $675,000 in speaking fees for a trio of speeches to Goldman Sachs (which is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Clinton's lucrative business of sucking up six-figure speaking fees from regulated industries). Clinton and Sanders have clashed over this in the past. In a November debate, the subject provoked one of the most bizarre moments of the campaign; Clinton, in defending herself against the charge that she's too close to Wall Street, offered an utterly irrelevant, wrap-herself-in-the-flag invocation of the 9/11 terror attacks and said "I'm very proud that for the first time, a majority of my donors are women."[6]

Yes, that really happened.

At Thursday's debate, all of this came to a head. Clinton, who lacks any trace of Sanders' reticence to engage in personal attacks, began lobbing bombs from the opening bell. In a dig that backfired, Clinton pointed out that some prominent Democrats from Sanders' home state of Vermont have endorsed her, to which Sanders replied, "I will absolutely admit that Secretary Clinton has the support of far more governors, mayors, members of the House. She has the entire establishment or almost the entire establishment behind her. That's a fact. I don't deny it."

Bristling at association with the dreaded "e" word, that thing of which no one this campaign season wants to be a part, a clearly miffed Clinton said "honestly, Sen. Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment."

...which, of course, doesn't address the demonstrable fact that Clinton had the entire party establishment behind her. Faced with this meaningless, connected-to-nothing Grrrl Power demagoguery, Sanders again tried to bring things down to earth:

"What being part of the establishment is, is, in the last quarter, having a super PAC that raised $15 million from Wall Street, that throughout one's life raised a whole lot of money from the drug companies and other special interests. To my mind, if we do not get a handle on money in politics and the degree to which big money controls the political process in this country, nobody is going to bring about the changes that is needed in this country for the middle class and working families."

Clinton was even less pleased with this:

"Yeah, but I--I think it's fair to really ask what's behind that comment. You know, Sen. Sanders has said he wants to run a positive campaign. I've tried to keep my disagreements over issues, as it should be. But time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack that he is putting forth, which really comes down to--y'know, anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought. And I just absolutely reject that, Senator. And I really don't think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough. If you've got something to say, say it directly. But you will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation that I ever received. And I have stood up and I have represented my constituents to the best of my abilities, and I'm very proud of that. So I think it's time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks..."

At that, the key moment in the entire debate, the assembled crowd of Democrats erupted in a torrent of boos aimed at their own party's frontrunner.

Sanders, in his reply, knocked this out of the park merely by noting the obvious:

"Let's talk about issues, all right? Let's talk about why, in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street provided--spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions? Well, some people might think, yeah, that had some influence. Let's ask why it is that we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and your medicine can be doubled tomorrow, and there's nothing that the government can do to stop it. You think it has anything to do with the huge amounts of campaign contributions and lobbying from the fossil fuel industry? Let's talk about climate change. Do you think there's a reason why not one Republican has the guts to recognize that climate change is real and that we need to transform our energy system? Do you think it has anything to do with the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil pouring huge amounts of money into the political system? That is what goes on in America... Y'know, there is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system. And in my view, it is undermining American democracy and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families of this country."

Clinton's own comments go to the fundamental fraud that is Hillary Clinton, the creature who insisted "we have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our election, corrupting our political process and drowning out the voices of regular people" then immediately began soliciting donations to a super PAC, hoping to raise more dirty money than ever from special interests. At this debate, she said "we [she and Sanders] both agree with campaign finance reform" right after she'd made a forceful case that no effort at campaign finance reform is even needed. She insists she never changed a view or a vote for a buck; every other pol in government says the same thing. It's a cynical effort to narrow the scope of the critique of corruption, then respond to that narrowed version, and underlying all of it is a game of Let's Pretend. Ignore everything we know and can show and let's pretend entrenched capitalists give millions to politicians year after year, decade after decade, expecting no return on their investments. Let's pretend they get no such returns, year after year, decade after decade. Let's pretend that politicians are just selfless public servants, that they don't shape what they do in office around serving the interests that paid to get them there and that can keep them there, that their fundraising appeals aren't a direct solicitation to those interests for political courtesan services. Let's pretend those interests don't give generously for services rendered. Let's pretend that corruption is only some narrow thing that involves paying off some politician of otherwise sterling character to change his vote on something. Let's pretend it it isn't, in itself, inherently corrupt to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from financial and business interests then work on legislation and other government decisions impacting those interests. In place of any real evaluation of the effects of money in politics, Clinton, who has mouthed reformist rhetoric on this for years, perpetuated an intelligence-insulting illusion that attempted to undermine the entire argument for trying to divorce the two.[7]

On the surface, one could say Clinton's thin skin in the face of a perceived slight won out rather spectacularly over her reason in this affair but the truth is, her treating Sanders' critique of corruption as an outlandish, outrageous personal attack on her was purely calculated, a campaign-committee-approved zinger practiced in the mirror before showtime with the aim of trying to render toxic that critique--a fundamental aspect of Sanders' appeal. One could argue that a smart pol who knows her own hands aren't clean wouldn't have gone down this particular rabbit-hole but Clinton isn't a smart pol. She does, however, know some things. She knows most of the press won't scandalize--or even cover--her hypocrisy (it hasn't). She knows that news orgs will side with her over a left candidate any day. She knows her Republican rivals can't hit her on these matters because they're all just as dirty. And she knows the press won't and Sanders (for various reasons) can't give voice to that ugly truth, the one that lies at the heart of not only this matter but of the empire of illusions that is American politics and government:

She's bought and paid for; they're all bought and paid for.

--j.

---

[1] And though Sanders identifies as a social democrat, a sort of liberal/socialist hybrid, most of his program is comfortably liberal.

[2] Arguably, even calling the current state of affairs "corruption" is a misrepresentation. It may be more accurate to simply characterize it as the way the system is supposed to operate.

[3] For that matter, she'll espouse whatever she thinks will be politically beneficial at the time. She spent most of her career in public life opposed to gay marriage when support for it was a dangerous proposition at the polls; she only flipped on that one well after the public had come to support it.

[4] In chasing the Democratic nomination and trying to differentiate herself from Sanders, she's put herself in the uncomfortable position of denouncing Sanders' proposals as unrealistic even while aping many of them herself. She conflates Sanders' advocacy of single payer healthcare with Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare and characterizes it as Sanders wanting to "tear up" Obamacare and "start over again," leaving millions without healthcare, an absolutely outrageous lie which she makes worse by arguing that, because single-payer would lead to a contentious debate, it shouldn't even be tried--the ultimate conservative argument that, if accepted, would mean nothing ever got done at all. One has to believe this "No, We Can't" campaign has contributed to her recent decline in the polls. Exhibiting a shamelessness that is impressive even for an American politicians, she even invoked Harry Truman against the idea of single payer (Truman, of course, fought to establish a single payer healthcare system).

[5] Though Wall Street is her top donor by a mile, Clinton isn't the top recipient of Wall Street largesse. That distinction falls to Jeb Bush, who has received over $35 million; Clinton is the second-most-favored. Like most Big Money interests, Wall Street likes to play all sides and has bought a piece of every major candidate in the race. It's also the top donor to the campaigns of Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Chris Christie. It's Ted Cruz's second-biggest donor. It bought a (so far) small piece of Donald Trump.

[6] Clinton also offered an outlandish misrepresentation of her own fundraising; Sanders had noted that most of his campaign contributors were ordinary people donating small amounts and Clinton replied, "I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small..." But in fact, 78% of the money given to her campaign committee came from large individual contributions of over $200, while she also has a number of super PACs and Carey committees (super PAC hybrids) that have raised nearly $48 million to try to elect her. Her take from her small individual donations amount to less than $19 million. By contrast, 72% of Bernie Sanders' campaign war-chest comes from small individual contributions.

[7] In a January debate, Clinton attempted to parry Sanders' assertion that she was too close to Goldman Sachs and Wall Street by asserting, "Sen. Sanders, you’re the only one on this stage that voted to deregulate the financial markets in 2000... to make the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission no longer able to regulate swaps and derivatives, which were one of the main causes of the collapse in ’08." The reality? The legislation in question, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, couldn't pass on its own merits in 2000 so it was tacked on to an unrelated omnibus spending bill at the end of the year and legislators were given the choice of either voting for the entire package or the government would shut down. Faced with this blackmail, Sanders, like all but three legislators, did so. Years later when Gary Gensler, the CFMA's key author, was appointed to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Sanders, still fuming over this, tried to block the nomination. The punchline: The CFMA was pushed by Bill Clinton, Gensler was a former Goldman Sachs partner Clinton recruited to be a Treasury undersecretary and today, Gensler is the chief financial officer for the presidential campaign of--wait for it--Hillary Clinton.

True story. And because the press refuses to correct her, Clinton, with Gensler still managing her money, repeated her line about Sanders voting for the CFMA at the Thursday debate.


UPDATE (17 Feb.) - After that MSNBC debate, Hillary Clinton appeared on CBS News' Face the Nation and continued to try to undermine the case for campaign finance reform:

"What the Sanders campaign is trying to do is link donations to my political campaign or really donations to anyone's political campaign, with undue influence with changing people's views and votes. I've never ever done that and I really do resent the implication or as I said the other night the insinuation."

After losing the New Hampshire primary in a one-sided massacre, Clinton asserted, from the other side of her mouth, "you're not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me," but David Sirota and Andrew Perez, writing in the International Business Times, note that:

"Only days later, Clinton’s campaign is launching a fundraising blitz that includes events with representatives of industries that have significant business interests before the federal government. An International Business Times review of fundraising invitations found that the Clinton campaign’s nationwide tour includes events with corporate officials from the food, investment and energy sectors--all of which have vested financial interests in the policies that the next presidential administration will decide."

The IBT article goes on to detail these fundraisers, including...

"Next Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to appear at back-to-back fundraisers co-hosted by officials from Wall Street colossus BlackRock--including Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff and a current board member of the Clinton Foundation. According to Politico, a BlackRock fundraiser for Clinton had been scheduled for last week, but Clinton's campaign postponed it until after the New Hampshire primary following criticism of her Wall Street ties by her opponent, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont."

...and it outlines plenty of pending BlackRock business before the next presidential administration.

On 11 Feb., the same day as that IBTimes article, Clinton and Sanders clashed in another debate in Milwaukee and she continued to attack the very premise of the campaign finance reform, forcefully arguing that money has no effect on government:

"[Obama] was the recipient of the largest number of Wall Street donations of anybody running on the Democratic side ever. Now, when it mattered, he stood up and took on Wall Street. He pushed through and he passed the Dodd-Frank regulation, the toughest regulations since the 1930s, so let's not in any way imply here that either President Obama or myself would in any way not take on any vested interest, whether it's Wall Street or drug companies or insurance companies or, frankly, the gun lobby to stand up to do what's best for the American people."

In the real world, Dodd-Frank is actually an excellent example of the corrupt influence of money in politics. Back in 2012, Matt Taibbi detailed how an initially-promising reform was systematically watered down to nothing by a congress and president owned by the financial sector, rendering it an essentially toothless measure that congress has continued to pick apart in the years since. Six years after Dodd-Frank, the then-too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever and continuing to grow, a ticking timebomb beneath the foundation of the U.S.--and the world--economy.

Clinton's debate comments were the latest iteration of her cheap tactic of trying to publicly set Sanders at odds with Obama but the day after that debate, the Democratic National Committee announced it was abandoning reforms Obama had put in place that banned donations from federal lobbyists and PACs. Clinton mouthpiece Josh Schwerin released a statement that day from Clinton's second mouth, saying "Hillary Clinton has fought for campaign finance reform her entire career and, as President, will make it a priority to overturn Citizens United and restore the role of everyday voters in elections."

The "Populism" of Ted Cruz & the Real Thing [Updated Below]

Populistical Dept. - Playing at being a rebel has become fashionable this political season. In the midst of an electoral process, a system of government and a society utterly dominated at every level by Big Money interests, the cry of "more anti-Establishment than thee!" is thrown by every Republican presidential candidate at his rivals in a race in which each positively stumbles over the others in trying to out-anti-insider them. The corporate press largely plays along with this silliness, the extremely dubious notion of a revolutionary conservative resulting in barely a raised eyebrow (or headline). So Americans are treated to the Orwellian farce of a bunch of pols raving against an Establishment even as they compete for its highest office, spending, in pursuit of that office, millions of dollars they raised by prostituting themselves and their would-be presidential administrations to the same Big Money interests that already dominate everything.

One such candidate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, won the Iowa caucus Monday night--only 72.4% of caucusgoers opposed him (a larger percentage opposed all the others). Cruz has long crafted an image of himself as a populist crusader, an "outsider" bravely battling an entrenched and corrupt Establishment on behalf of The People, his adoring audience expected to dutifully overlook the fact that only a few years ago, he was making his living as a high-priced corporate lawyer representing business giants in their efforts to screw over the little guy.[1] In a rambling, frequently bizarre victory speech in Iowa Monday, Cruz mated a clinically high opinion of himself with his peculiar version of "populism":

"Let me first of all say, to God be the glory. Tonight is a victory for the grassroots. Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation. Tonight, the state of Iowa has spoken. Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next President of the United States will not be chosen by the media, will not be chosen by the Washington Establishment, will not be chosen by the lobbyists but will be chosen by about the most incredible, powerful force where all sovereignty resides in our nation, by we, the people, the American people."

Presumably, the 72.4% of Republican caucusgoers (and the 100% of Democratic ones) who voted for someone other than Cruz aren't "American people"--no doubt cowardly, undocumented Lithuanians doing the bidding of the media/Washington Establishment/lobbyists. Those backing him are "courageous conservatives," as if they face potential deportation to Guantanamo for this act.

That "courageous conservatives" phrase, which appears repeatedly in Cruz's speech, is actually the name of a super PAC established to raise and spend unlimited cash from Big Money sources on behalf of Cruz's election effort. Cruz is being backed by 11 such super PACs, more than any other current presidential candidate of either party. Four of them have raised millions while four more are into six figures:

In common parlance, "grassroots" refers to bottom-up movements carried out by ordinary people. If one is feeling charitable, one could suggest Cruz seems to be employing a new and rather exotic definition of same in asserting his win was "a victory for the grassroots," or simply displaying an heretofore unglimpsed sense of humor but as it turns out, he's just bleating a bullwinder. From later in his speech:

"From day one, this campaign has been a movement for millions of Americans across this country to organize, to rally, to come together. Whatever Washington says, they cannot keep the people down. And tonight is a testament to the people's commitments to their yearnings to get back to our core commitments: free market principles, constitutional liberties and the Judeo-Christian values that built this great nation. When the Washington lobbyists settled on other candidates in this race, when the media in one voice said a conservative cannot win, nationwide, over 800,000 contributions poured in to TedCruz.org, as courageous conservatives said 'Yes, we can.' 800,000 contributions at TedCruz.org, with an average contribution of $67. That is the power of the grassroots."

But it isn't any lawnlike plebeians powering Cruz's campaign. Turning once again to the Center For Responsive Politics, we learn that the senator's campaign committee had, by the end of December, raised over $46 million and that 58% of that came from large individual contributions of more than $200, not small ones. The small ones made up less than $20 million; the pro-Cruz super PACs, which raise money from millionaires and billionaires with no legal limits on their fundraising, had doubled that--$39 million--and as the New York Times reported, "more than 95% of the total contributions to super PACs supporting Ted Cruz came from donations of $1 million or more, more than any other candidate."[2]  One wonders which "Judeo-Christian values" the financiers behind them represent. Briefly.

Populism has a mixed record in the U.S. It's a field in which, over the years, a lot of both good and very bad characters have toiled. At its heart, it's a democratic movement of ordinary people against corrupt and abusive elites. The latest right-wing variation of it projected by Cruz and his fellow Republican presidential candidates is a counterfeit, a phony, a "populism" that aims to protect and defend those same elites by directing public anger and frustration away from them and on to scapegoats--usually people with even less power than those being pitched the faux-"populist" scam. When one listens to Ted Cruz, one walks away with the impression that the biggest problem facing the U.S., by far, is illegal immigrants, followed, way down the scale, by Muslims, both groups that have absolutely no power in the U.S. The former can't participate in the political process at all; the latter constitute a micro-fraction of the population (0.9%).[3] Cruz freely mingles with even those who openly call for the execution of homosexuals and advocates an ugly, anti-gay legislative agenda. In his victory speech, Cruz thanked Tony Perkins and "my friend Steve Deace" for their support of his campaign. Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council, a reactionary, anti-gay hate-group that portrays homosexuals as mentally deranged predatory pedophiles who should be made illegal. Deace is a local Iowa radio talk-show host who offers that Democrats are waging a "war on whites," calls gays "homo-fascists," their homosexuality an "unAmerican and pagan ideology," and other such charming assertions. He thanked Bob Vander Plaats and Steve King, the national co-chairmen of his campaign. Vander Plaats' profession is preaching hatred of homosexuals[4]--he's the creator of the anti-gay "Marriage Vow" (a pledge politicians sign to oppose gay marriage)-- while King is the vile white nationalist Republican congressman from Iowa, who--directly parroting the neo-Nazi far-right, says undocumented immigrants are waging "a slow-motion Holocaust" against Americans.[5]

Cruz thanked a lot of people in that speech. He thanked slime like Perkins, Deace, Vander Plaats, King and James Dobson. He thanked his god. He thanked his parents. He thanked some of his campaign officials and some nameless volunteers. He thanked several volunteers by name and told their stories in some detail, though several of those weren't even from Iowa. He went on a rather long tangent in which he thanked New Hampshire for voting for Ronald Reagan back in 1980, a rather clueless flourish given that the Iowa caucuses voted for George Bush Sr. that year. Though he thanked Iowa for receiving him kindly, he never thanked Iowa for voting for him. Not once. That's Cruz the "populist."

Anyone who mistook as a hint of humility the brief moment when Cruz said his supporters understand that "no one personality can right the wrongs done by Washington" had that bubble burst by the rest of his remarks, in which Cruz, while not thanking Iowa, positioned himself as a sort of messianic figure, his tone--as the already quoted parts suggest--consistently leaving the impression he thought he was doing Iowans and the rest of the U.S. a favor by running for president thus granting them the privilege of voting for him. He asserted that he and his "courageous conservatives... earned the votes of 48,608 Iowans" (emphasis mine), spoke of "your incredible victory that you have won tonight" (emphasis his), said his winning was "a victory for millions of Americans who have shouldered the burden of 7 years of Washington deals run amok" and so on.

There were others conspicuously missing from Populist Cruz's "thank yous." Hedge fund CEO Robert Mercer, for example. Mercer demonstrated "the power of the grassroots" a few months ago by pouring $11 million into electing Cruz. Mercer is also a big contributor to the Club For Growth, which has, itself, spent a lot of money on Cruz over the years. Cruz didn't thank Farris and Dan Wilks, "grassroots" oil fracking billionaires who gave $15 million to Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise. He didn't thank Toby Neugebauer, "grassroots" founder of Quantum Energy Partners, who ponied up $10 million. No public appreciation for real-estate giant CapRock Partners, though they've shown Cruz $10 million in appreciation so far. No "thank you" for Goldman Sachs, one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S., even though he's one of the top recipients of Goldman Sachs political contributions.[6] Joseph Konzelmann, a GS managing director, even hosted a Cruz fundraiser in December. Konzelmann wasn't thanked either. Thanking--or even mentioning--such interests, the real power behind Cruz, would make his campaign look a great deal less like the proletarian uprising he's trying to sell and a great deal more like what it actually is, entrenched interests fielding a mouthy demagogue who, if elected, will do their bidding.

Cruz is good at that as well. Like any name-brand Texas politician, for example, Cruz is a favorite of the oil and gas industry. He may not want to say so in public but he certainly shows his appreciation for their support when he's on the job:

"The junior senator from the Lone Star State has shown his loyalty to the family biz by proposing to end the ban on offshore drilling, allow unrestricted fracking, abolish the Energy Department, slash corporate taxes, and block cap-and-trade."

Cruz faced some opposition in Iowa from advocates of the Renewable Fuel Standard, which keeps the state's corn-growers in the oil business. Like any good oil industry shill, Cruz opposes the RFS, mischaracterizing it as a "subsidy" even while supporting his Masters' pet subsidies. Challenged on the point, Cruz insisted he supported ending all subsidies, right before launching into a soliloquy about how something like the Intangible Drilling Cost deduction, a special perk enjoyed only by the oil industry that costs the public over $1 billion/year, isn't really a "subsidy."

Get it?

Genuine populism seeks to use the power of democracy to reform abuses. This new old Republican "populism," while deflecting public discontent away from powerful malefactors and on to relatively powerless groups, defends government action (or, as the case may be, inaction) on behalf of the Powers That Be, particularly those that be payin' Ted Cruz's campaign power bill, while relentlessly demonizing government action that challenges their prerogatives. Cruz always wants to use the state against immigrants, Muslims, gays, but suggest raising the minimum wage so businesses will have to cough up better than starvation pay and he'll have none of that. And to add insult to injury, he'll even explain how this refusal to assist those at the bottom of the pile--America's real grassroots,[7] who could use a hand--is for their own good. It's a cynical con and a responsible news media would have called bullshit on it a long time ago.

--j.

---

[1] David Corn covered this in Mother Jones last year:

"[Cruz] represented Pfizer when a California county accused the drug manufacturer and other pharmaceutical firms of overcharging. (In a win for Big Pharma, the Supreme Court tossed out the case.) He defended Eagle Freight Systems when drivers sued the company seeking unpaid overtime wages and expenses. (Cruz lost a bid to uphold a lower court ruling that shut down the drivers' suit. Two years later, when Cruz was no longer involved in the case, the trucking company prevailed.) In a controversial move, he represented a Pennsylvania developer who was a central player in a corruption scandal that exploited juveniles, handling a dispute this crooked developer had with his insurance company."

...and other examples.

[2] Bernie Sanders, currently seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is running the closest thing to a genuine populist campaign American presidential politics have seen in many a moon and provides a good contrast here. Sanders has raised over $72 million for his effort, 73% of which was in small individual donations. He doesn't have a single affiliated super PAC, doesn't accept funding from any and has even rejected the idea of unaffiliated super PACs working on his behalf (when one formed with that idea, Sanders had his lawyers send the org a cease-and-desist letter).

[3] Cruz wraps his anti-Muslim bigotry in the rhetoric of opposing "terrorism" but regularly manages to blur the lines between terrorists and Muslims in general. His real game can be divined from his inconsistencies on these issues. Whenever he talks about "terrorism"--which is quite often--it's always terrorism by Islamist rightists. Non-jihadist rightist terrorists, which are a much bigger threat within the U.S., are entirely absent from his commentary on the issue. When a right-wing group released doctored videos falsely alleging that Planned Parenthood officials were selling "baby parts" from aborted fetuses for profit, Cruz enthusiastically promoted this lie. "They were certainly caught on film, that there is no doubt that they were selling baby parts. That is unambiguous... The videos show senior Planned Parenthood officials selling the parts of unborn children," and Cruz promised to sic the Justice Department on the org on his first day in office as president. When this lie led a deranged rightist to shoot up a PP facility in Colorado, killing three people and wounding 9 others, Cruz's initial response was to claim the shooter was a "transgendered leftist activist," an entirely false characterization Cruz pulled straight out of his ass. He rejected the notion that the superheated--and false--anti-PP rhetoric about "selling baby parts" could have led to the shooting and even lashed out at "vicious rhetoric on the left, blaming those who are pro-life." When the rhetoric is coming from Muslims, though, Cruz sings a different tune. He all but endorsed government surveillance of mosques, saying they "have been a nexus for promoting jihad."

[4] Last year in the Des Moines Register, Matt Sinovic wrote of Vander Plaats efforts to clean up his image:

"Despite his new found support for civility, Vander Plaats has not changed one bit. He has publicly compared homosexuality to pedophilia, compared the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage to past rulings on slavery, and supported conversion therapy to ‘cure’ LGBTQ youth. His organization, the Family Leader, has long been affiliated with the Family Research Council, an anti-gay hate group (as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center). He has consistently orchestrated attacks against those providing resources and education to prevent the bullying of LGBTQ students. And earlier this month, Vander Plaats delivered a keynote address at an event with pastor Kevin Swanson, who says the Bible calls for the punishment of homosexuality by death."

One senses a pattern...

[5] Cruz said of Vander Plaats and King, "these men have become dear and trusted friends. They are warriors. They are men of principle. They stand and speak the truth. They stand to defend their values and let me tell you, these leaders, day after day, week after week, have been crawling under broken glass with knives between their teeth."

[6] Cruz's wife is a managing director for Goldman Sachs, on temporary leave of absence at the moment while the campaign plays out.

[7] The extraordinary popularity of raising the minimum wage--a proposition that consistently garners over 70% support in polls--sways "populist" Cruz not an inch.

---

UPDATE (3 Feb.) - It seems I'm not the only one objecting to Cruz's phony "populist" line. On Tuesday, Cruz got so lost in his "grassroots campaign" fantasy that he sent out a fundraising letter in which he flat-out denied the existence of his Big Money benefactors. He wrote:

"I will never get--nor do I want--money from the D.C. lobbyists or the special interest billionaires... Last night, we showed America that only the power of the grassroots will ultimately defeat the Washington Cartel."

This was too much for Russ Choma at Mother Jones. Today, he writes:

"Fresh off his victory in Iowa, Ted Cruz is intensifying his anti-Washington rhetoric, even as his campaign barrels forward fueled by large amounts of cash from the people he claims to stand against. In an email to grassroots supporters sent Tuesday afternoon, Cruz begged recipients to hurry up and send cash to help him fight 'the Washington cartel,' and he claimed falsely that 'I will never get--nor do I want--money from the D.C. lobbyists or the special interest billionaires.'

"Not only is this not true; it's easy to prove, since Cruz has a well-documented history of bagging money from lobbyists and special-interest billionaires."

Choma cites information from the Center For Responsive Politics, which documents nearly a hundred lobbyists who have given money to Cruz. He cites some of the "special-interest billionaires" who have as well (and, of course, I cited several of them in my article above). "The Cruz campaign," Choma reports, "did not respond to requests for comments."

---

UPDATE 2 (4 Feb.) - Cruz plunges deeper into his "populist" fantasy--now he's comparing himself with Bernie Sanders. Sam Frizell of Time reports, that at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Cruz said "you know what? In many ways I agree with Bernie in diagnosing the problem":

"Cruz went on to say that lobbyists and special interests have an outsize influence on government, stymieing competition and businesses. 'And what we see in Washington is the Washington cartel, these career politicians getting in bed with the lobbyists and special interests, growing big business, growing the moneyed and powerful influences the influence and power of the administration,' Cruz said."

Frizell notes that the two candidates "have fundamentally different philosophies and there is hardly a policy opinion they would share," and notes that Cruz "recognizes these differences too":

"'Now where Bernie and I differ is the solution,' Cruz said. 'Bernie thinks the solution to government being fundamentally corrupt is to have a whole lot more government. I think that's nuts. But I agree with the problem.'"

Here, Frizell falls down on the job rather badly. While reporting that Cruz makes such a show of raging against "politicians getting in bed with the lobbyists and special interests," Frizell entirely fails to note Cruz's own quite comfy relationship with those same interests. As this author noted in the above article, the actual contrast with Sanders on this matter is quite sharp but though the comparison is the subject of the article he's writing, Frizell declines to explore it.

Bernie Sanders: Unelectable Bolshevik! Or Is He?

On the rare occasions when he's mentioned at all in the corporate press, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is ubiquitously marginalized, treated as a crank, someone whose views mean he couldn't possibly draw enough support to win. Overtly right-wing sources call him an "extremist," a "radical," of the "far left" and relentlessly redbait him. As Sanders' Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton loses ground to the Vermont Senator, she and her surrogates have taken to echoing these attacks, raising the specter of Sanders as an unelectable Bolshevik, a fringe nut advocating "a lot of wackadoodle ideas."

But while political attacks are par for the course in a presidential campaign, these in particular manage to beg some questions already frequently begged by that press coverage, not only of Sanders but of American politics in general. While no one would deny Bernie Sanders is a man of the left, are his views particularly radical? A radical, by definition, significantly departs from the broad political center. So what--or, more particularly, where--is the broad political center in the U.S.? As the good people over at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting have documented for decades, the corporate press persistently defines "the center" as way, way to the right of the public. "The center" isn't some political party or movement with some manifesto one can consult but neither is it some amorphous concept. America is subjected to a great deal of opinion polling. Discovering the extent of Sanders' deviation from the political center is simply a matter of some research.

This seemed to us a worthy project, to take Sanders' views on his major issues and compare them to the views of the larger public. Are the positions he takes so out-of-the-mainstream as to justify all this hair-pulling and jumping about? Are they so unpalatable to the public as to render him unelectable?

We weren't the first to contemplate an article of this sort. As noted on this blog, Josh Harkinson, writing in Mother Jones last May, put together a presentation on the theme but it was fairly brief and superficial. In June, Philip Bump, writing in the Washington Post, followed suit but while he concluded "Americans broadly support the things that are on Sanders's agenda, with a number of particular footnotes," his survey too was rather superficial (and the web version feature some of the least accurate graphics you'll see anywhere outside Fox News).

For our own presentation, we've undertaken a much broader canvas of the available polling data, probably the broadest by anyone to date. For Sanders' views, we've used the text of his announcement that he was entering the presidential contest, supplemented at various points by related items from Sanders' official site and FeelTheBern.org. Unless we overlooked any, we've checked every view Sanders offered in that speech for which usable polling exists.

That's also the first caveat to what we've done. Because Sanders is a lefty and so often addresses issues left behind by the mainstream corporate press, there's often a dearth of polling on those matters. On others, the existing polling is hopelessly inadequate, corrupted by poorly-formed questions, questions built around temporary political events long since passed and so on. The pollsters cited have earned varied reputations--it's doubtful all the polling work is as good as the best of the batch. The pollsters use different samples--adults, registered voters, likely voters, etc.--and this yields varied results (though usually not widely varied). They use different wording, which will also produced varied results.[1] All of the polling is from the last few years; we've tried to get the most recent data possible but on some issues, we had to take what we could get.[2] Sometimes a single poll will appear more than once, as it featured questions relevant to more than one issue we were examining. We weeded out a lot of redundant polling--if it showed essentially the same result as a poll we'd already found but was taken two months earlier, we didn't bother with it (with one exception, which is explained where it occurs). Being political junkies, we knew beforehand how a lot of the polling would fall but we haven't in any way cherry-picked the polling data to produce predetermined results. The data we haven't used--or at least the data we found but didn't use--looks pretty much like what we did use. There will probably be some exceptions we didn't uncover. There probably won't be many though.

We anticipate a charge of cherry-picking because, though those earlier articles in Mother Jones and the Washington Post were imperfect,[3] we found their overall conclusions were essentially correct; there is widespread public support for Sanders' proposals. Sometimes overwhelming support, sometimes thinner majority support, sometimes a mixed bag wherein Sanders' view is that of a substantial minority. In many cases, even a majority of Republicans support Sanders' position. In no case was Sanders' view radically out of the mainstream of public opinion.[4] These conclusions not only bear on the immediate matter of the political attacks on Sanders for his allegedly "radical" views and how those attacks should be covered, they also present a roadmap of the genuine political center in the U.S. and suggest a, yes, radical reevaluation by much of the corporate press of how it tends to define that center is not only appropriate but long overdue.


Some notes: Sanders quotes are in italicized bold print and, except where otherwise noted, are from his speech. With a few exceptions in which we reorganized some things in the name of simplification, they occur in the same order as they do in the speech.


"The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time and it is the great political issue of our time. And we will address it... This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable. This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about. This has got to change and, as your president, together we will change it... We need a tax system which is fair and progressive, which makes wealthy individuals and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes."

- 66% agreed that "the government should do more to reduce the gap between rich and poor," including 65% of independents and 42% of Republicans (Sept., 2014)
 http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PRRI-AVS-with-Transparancy-Edits.pdf

- 83% think the income gap between the wealthy and everyone else is either a major problem (51%) or a problem (32%). This includes 84% of independents and 75% of Republicans (Jan. 2015)
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/americans-thinking-wealthy-problem/2015/01/22/5838c72e-a0fc-11e4-91fc-7dff95a14458_page.html#

- 65% agree large businesses pay too little in taxes (Jan. 2015, from the same poll as above)
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/overall-corporations-business-little/2015/01/22/0852922e-9fd2-11e4-91fc-7dff95a14458_page.html

- 68% say wealthy households pay too little in taxes (Feb. 2015)
 http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a4c12478a5bb480e9b6d773c08e96271/ap-gfk-poll-most-back-obama-plan-raise-investment-taxes

- 62% believe upper-income Americans are paying too little federal taxes and 69% believe corporations pay too little. Huge majorities have told Gallup the same thing on both questions for over 20 years (April 2015).
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/1714/taxes.aspx

- 68% support "raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million per year" (Jun. 2015).
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/03/business/income-inequality-workers-rights-international-trade-poll.html



"American democracy is not about billionaires being able to buy candidates and elections. It is not about the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other incredibly wealthy individuals spending billions of dollars to elect candidates who will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer... This is not democracy. This is oligarchy... [W]e know what American democracy is supposed to be about. It is one person, one vote--with every citizen having an equal say--and no voter suppression. And that’s the kind of American political system we have to fight for and will fight for in this campaign."

- 88% say big companies have too much power and influence in the nation's capitol, including 93% of independents and 84% of Republicans; 87% agree that PACs have too much power and influence, including 94% of independents and 89% of Republicans; 85% think banks and other financial institutions have too much power and influence, including 89% of independents and 86% of Republicans (Jun. 2011)
 http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2011/06/01/NY11681

- 78% of voters believe "reducing the role of money in politics" is important, including 81% of independents and 71% of Republicans (Aug. 2014)
 https://www.citizen.org/documents/Memo.CitizensUnited.frev.pdf

- 84% think "money has too much influence" in American political campaigns, including 84% of independents and 80% of Republicans. In the same poll, 55% said candidates "promote policies that directly help" their contributors "most of the time," including 59% of independents and 54% of Republicans (Jun 2015)
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/02/us/politics/money-in-politics-poll.html?_r=0



"[W]e must be deadly serious about campaign finance reform and the need for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.... I will not nominate any justice to the Supreme Court who has not made it clear that he or she will move to overturn that disastrous decision which is undermining our democracy. Long term, we need to go further and establish public funding of elections."

- 80% are opposed to the Citizens United ruling, 65% "strongly"; the total includes 81% of independents and 75% of Republicans; 72% support congressional action to void the ruling (Feb. 2010)
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html?sid=ST2010021702073

- 62% of voters oppose the ruling (Jan. 2012)
 http://campaignmoney.org/files/DemCorpPCAFmemoFINAL.pdf

- 50% support for banning all private contributions and establishing a system of public funding for political campaigns, including 48% of independents and 41% of Republicans. A whopping 79% said they would vote for a law that would put a limit on the amount of money congressional candidates could raise and spend for their political campaigns; this included 78% of independents and 78% of Republicans (Jun. 2013).
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/163208/half-support-publicly-financed-federal-campaigns.aspx

- 61% are opposed to the Citizens United ruling, 51% "strongly"; total includes 62% of independents and 58% of Republicans; 55% of voters favor a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling, including 50% of independents and 54% of Republicans (Aug. 2014).
 https://www.citizen.org/documents/Memo.CitizensUnited.frev.pdf

- 54% reject the notion that money given to political candidates is "a form of free speech"; 75% agreed that outside groups who spend money on campaigns should be required to publicly disclose their contributors; 78% said spending on political ads by outside groups "should be limited by law"; 77% favored "limiting the amount of money individuals can contribute to political campaigns" over unlimited contributions (Jun. 2015).
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/01/us/politics/document-poll-may-28-31.html

- 78% said the Citizens United ruling "should be overturned," including 71% of independents and 80% of Republicans (Sept. 2015)
 http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-28/bloomberg-poll-americans-want-supreme-court-to-turn-off-political-spending-spigot



"At a time when our roads, bridges, water systems, rail and airports are decaying, the most effective way to rapidly create meaningful jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. That’s why I’ve introduced legislation which would invest $1 trillion over 5 years to modernize our country’s physical infrastructure."

- 93% of voters ranked improving the nation's transportation infrastructure as extremely important (27%), very important (39%) or somewhat important (27%). (Feb. 2011)
 http://www.swmpc.org/downloads/rockefeller_foundation_infrastructure_survey.pdf

- 77% support a federal program to put people to work on "urgent infrastructure repairs," including 71% of independents and 53% of Republicans (Mar. 2013)
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/161438/americans-widely-back-government-job-creation-proposals.aspx

- 45% said the government should spend more on infrastructure, 31% said it should spend the same and 15% wanted to spend less; asked how important it was for the government to fund infrastructure projects, 79% chose "one of the most important issues" (8%), very important (37%) or somewhat important (34%) (Jul. 2014)
 https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/17/poll-results-infrastructure/

- 60% of registered voters say more needs to be spent on infrastructure and 63% believe roads and bridges aren't being properly maintained (Oct. 2015)
 http://www.trucking.org/article.aspx?uid=8c5213ff-063a-42df-8593-87a5f9dcdf56

[Infrastructure was one of the issues on which there simply isn't a great deal of good polling. When Philip Bump considered the matter of infrastructure in his Washington Post piece, he cited a Feb. 2011 poll by Fox News which had concluded that, as he described it, "a large majority oppose spending on infrastructure ... if their taxes go up." But that poll has several series problems, both in itself and in the use Bump made of it. The full poll question was, "President Obama’s new federal budget proposal includes increases in government spending on infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and on domestic programs like helping pay for community college as well as a pay raise for federal workers. Would you support this proposal if it were funded by an increase in taxes for people like you?" Problem 1: It invokes Obama. Any competent pollster is well-aware that's potentially very prejudicial, as it's blatantly inviting an emotional partisan response, rather than a thoughtful, substantive one. People tend to become very weary of a president in his second term in general. It all rubs off.  Problem 2: Though Bump used this question to make the case that people disagree with infrastructure spending, it doesn't just cover that issue; it covers spending on two other big items, all totally different. If a respondent doesn't like any one of the three, this can result in a negative response to all (a dynamic that also works in the reverse). The question doesn't allow people to approve or disapprove of each individually. Problem 3: The big one is that wording telling people their taxes are going to go up is ridiculously prejudicial, an utter violation of competent pollcraft. It tends to result in low marks for any issue on which respondents don't have very strong feelings. This is the cartoon version of polling and useless in this evaluation.]



"I will also continue to oppose our current trade policies. For decades, presidents from both parties have supported trade agreements which have cost us millions of decent paying jobs as corporate America shuts down plants here and moves to low-wage countries. As president, my trade policies will break that cycle of agreements which enrich at the expense of the working people of this country."

- 63% chose "trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries" over "free trade must be allowed, even if domestic industries are hurt by foreign competition"; asked if they favor or oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement, 63% said they didn't know enough about it to have an opinion. Asked how much they head "heard or read" about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 78% said nothing at all (48%) or not much (30%) (Jun. 2015).
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/03/business/income-inequality-workers-rights-international-trade-poll.html?_r=0

- 34%, a plurality, says free trade agreements slow the economy vs. 31% who assert it makes the economy grow and 25% who say it makes no difference; 46%, another plurality, say free trade agreements lower wages vs. 11% who say they make wages higher and 33% who say it doesn't make any difference; 46%, another plurality, say such agreements lead to job losses, as opposed to 17% who think they create jobs and 28% who don't think they make any difference. At the same time, 58% say free trade agreements are, in general, "a good thing for the United States" vs. 33% who say they're a bad thing (May 2015)
 http://www.people-press.org/2015/05/27/free-trade-agreements-seen-as-good-for-u-s-but-concerns-persist/

- 34%, a plurality, said free trade deals have hurt the U.S., as opposed to 29% who said it hurt and 28% who said it made no difference (Jun. 2015).
 http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/nerdscreen-rural-america-divide-n383161

[Confused yet? Sanders is opposed to big "free trade" agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which really has very little to do with trade anyway). There's very little polling on those agreements and polluting the results of the existing polling is the fact that there's very little public knowledge of them, the fact that Americans have a positive view of trade in the abstract and the fact that the only thing most ever hear of such deals is from advocates of them promising rainbows and unicorns. The polls above all occur in a relatively short span of time but yield results that are all over the board. In his Mother Jones piece, Josh Harkinson noted that "sixty-two percent of voters oppose fast-track authority for the TPP trade deal" but quoted an absolutely hopeless 2014 Pew poll which "put support for the TPP at 55%." But that Pew poll made no effort to learn if respondents actually even knew anything about the TPP, something most wouldn't because the deal had been negotiated in secret and, as covered by this blog, had been subject to one of the most remarkable news blackouts of any issue of comparable importance. Pew's results were derived from Americans' positive opinion of trade in general. The CBS News/New York Times poll cited above documents the profound lack of knowledge of the TPP. In his Washington Post piece, Philip Bump cited that poll and gave the win to Sanders. That's probably justifiable in a short, not-very-detailed piece--most Americans aren't going to back something they think hurts the country--but these nuances we've described here deserve to be at least aired.]



"Let us be honest and acknowledge that millions of Americans are now working for totally inadequate wages. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and must be raised."

- 73% of registered voters favored raising the minimum wage to $10/hr. and indexing it to inflation, including 74% of independents and 50% of Republicans (Feb. 2012)
 http://nelp.3cdn.net/0be1c6315f2430afa6_arm6bq9wu.pdf

- 71% favored raising the minimum wage to $9/hr., including 68% of independents and 50% of Republicans (Feb. 2013)
 http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/02-21-13%20Political%20Release.pdf

- 73% support raising the minimum wage to $12.50/hr., including 73% of independents and 53% of Republicans. In the same poll, 63% of respondents favor raising it to $15/hr. (Jan. 2015)
 http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03/Minimum-Wage-Poll-Memo-Jan-2015.pdf

- 71% supported raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hr. (Jun. 2015)
 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/03/business/income-inequality-workers-rights-international-trade-poll.html



"[W]e need paid sick leave and guaranteed vacation time for all."

...and...

"There should be no question that new parents should be allowed to stay home with their newborn children. Sick workers should have the ability to stay home when they are unwell. Moreover, employers must provide their employees a reasonable amount of vacation time, so people can come together to relax and recharge."
http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-workers-rights/

- 69% support a law mandating paid vacation time (Jul. 2008)
 http://www.adventuretravelnews.com/new-poll-shows-strong-american-support-for-a-paid-vacation-law

- 86% favored a proposal that would mandate 7 paid sick-days a year (Jun. 2010)
 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/most-americans-support-paid-sick-leave-poll-finds/?_r=0

 - 71% say they favor mandatory sick-leave days, with only 10% opposed (Mar. 2014)
 http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-mandatory-sick-leave-laws-have-overwhelming-support-says-findlawcom-survey-250034011.html

- 75% support a paid vacation-time law, including 65% of Republicans (Aug 2014)
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/29/paid-vacation-poll_n_5736912.html

- 81% favored legislation mandating paid sick-leave, while 78% favor mandatory paid leave for the birth of a child (Sept. 2014)
 http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PRRI-AVS-with-Transparancy-Edits.pdf

- 70% favored paid sick leave, including 70% of independents and 51% of Republicans; 67% favored paid maternity leave, including 67% of independents and 50% of Republicans; 55% support paid paternity leave, including 55% of independents and 36% of Republicans (Feb. 2015)
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/04/sick-leave-poll_n_6616566.html



"It is time to break up the largest financial institutions in the country. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments while expecting the public to bail it out. If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist."

- 50% favor a plan to break up the megabanks (Mar. 2013)
 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/march_2013/50_favor_breaking_up_nation_s_largest_banks

- 58% of likely voters, including 50% of independents and 51% of Republicans; the same poll asked about breaking up "financial institutions that are deemed 'too big to fail' and found 55% support, including 60% of independents and 47% of Republicans (Jan. 2015)
 http://thehill.com/policy/finance/230058-poll-bipartisan-backing-for-breaking-up-big-banks

[In his piece in the Washington Post, Philip Bump asserts "there's not good, recent polling data on this rather esoteric question." We don't exactly understand how this rather concrete policy proposal is an "esoteric question" but Bump is certainly correct about there being a sparsity of polling on it--this is the sort of subject that, for the most part, the corporate press simply doesn't touch and that includes commissioning polls on it. One group that isn't shy about asking such questions is the liberal Progressive Change Institute, which conducted the second poll we've cited. If that source seems a bit too suspect, the other poll, though a couple years older, was conducted by the conservative Rasmussen Reports, a pollster notorious for generating absurdly skewed polls via absurdly skewed questions and methodology, "polls" that are of little real use except as right-wing propaganda. Both reach similar conclusions. Here, that's the best we've got.]



"[W]e need a tax on carbon to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuel."

- 61% support such a tax; if the revenue from the tax was returned to Americans through a reduction in income taxes, support rose to 67% (Apr. 2015)
 http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2015/04/15/carbon-tax-polling-milestone-23-support-if-revenue-neutral/

[The polling on this issue is both thin and terrible. This is the only good one we've found.]



"The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right by moving toward a Medicare-for-All single-payer system."

- 58% support for an expanded Medicare-for-all, 50% support for a plan "in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan" (Jul. 2009)
 https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7943.pdf

- 37% of likely voters say they "support a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone" (Apr. 2014)
 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/april_2014/questions_health_care_iv_april_25_26_2014

- 51% of likely voters support "a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare" (Jan. 2015)
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf

- 51% agree "it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage," an imprecise but not entirely useless question--it comes close enough to Sanders' notion of guaranteeing healthcare. The same poll asked, much less helpfully, "Which of the following approaches for providing healthcare in the United States would you prefer, a government-run healthcare system or a system based mostly on private health insurance?" But, of course, there's no advocacy anywhere in the U.S. for a full-blown British-style "government-run healthcare system"--the question is stupid and pointless and, as the pros at Gallup are well-aware, grossly prejudicial. Still, even with wording that lopsided, 44% still chose the "government-run healthcare system." (Nov. 2015)
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx

- 58% favored Medicare-for-all, 34% of them "strongly." Those supporting it include 60% of independents and 30% of Republicans (Dec. 2015)
 http://kff.org/uninsured/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-december-2015/

[The 2014 Rasmussen poll is obviously an outlier here; Rasmussen has a long history of manipulating methodology and often even the wording of polls in order to generate conservative-friendly responses. This particular one, which still showed a solid 37% support for single payer, has multiple problems and it probably would have been best to leave it out but it's out there, so it's here.]



"Sanders plan will require Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate with the prescription drug companies for better prices – a practice that is currently banned by law."
https://berniesanders.com/issues/fighting-to-lower-prescription-drug-prices/

- 79% of likely voters support allowing the government to do so (Jan. 2015)
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf

- 84% support allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on all drugs (69%), just high-cost prescription drugs (13%), plus 2% who favor negotiation but were unsure about whether it should be for all drugs or just for the expensive ones. This includes 81% of Republicans. (Nov. 2015)
 https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2015/11/STAT-Harvard-Poll-Nov-2015-Controversy-Over-Rising-Drug-Prices.pdf



"Bernie supports the medical use of marijuana and the rights of states to determine its legality... Bernie has said he would vote yes as a resident of a state considering legalization [of marijuana]. For federal legalization, he has said that he supports ending the federal prohibition on marijuana, allowing states to opt for legalization if they so choose."
http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-drug-policy/

- 55% favor allowing regulated businesses to sell marijuana, including 38% of Republicans (Jan. 2014)
 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/01/28/wsjnbc-poll-broad-support-for-legal-marijuana/

- 53% said "marijuana should be legal," including 45% of Republicans; 84% said doctors should be allowed to prescribe marijuana for patients with serious illnesses; 58% said states should be allowed to decide if marijuana is legal within their borders (Apr. 2015)
 http://www.scribd.com/doc/262460365/Pot-Topline-CBS-News-Poll-4-20-15

- 49% favor legalization of marijuana "for recreational use," unfortunate wording that seems to have been introduced merely to queer the results but still draws plurality supporting, including that of 27% of Republicans. In the same poll, 81% favor legalization for medical use, including 69% of Republicans (Feb. 2015)
 http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans-Ready-for-Legal-Marijuana.html

- 58% said marijuana should be "made legal" - Oct. 2015
http://www.gallup.com/poll/186260/back-legal-marijuana.aspx

- With one exception that fell within the margin of error, Gallup has found this to be the majority view since its Oct. 2011 poll on the subject:
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx

[The polling on the larger matter of marijuana legalization is, strictly speaking, outside the proper scope of this survey but the medical marijuana polling--the item we were chasing--is tied up with it, so we just figured "What the hell?" Threw it in too.]



"Instead of cutting Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security benefits."

- 79% of likely voters favor "increasing Social Security benefits and paying for that increase by having wealthy Americans pay the same rate into Social Security as everyone else" (Sep. 2014).
 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/05/1327455/-New-polling-suggests-a-vote-on-Social-Security-expansion-could-help-Democrats-hold-the-Senate

- 70% of likely voters support expanding Social Security benefits. This poll uses almost identical wording to the one above (Jan. 2015)
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf



"[W]e are going to move to a universal pre-K system for all the children of this country."

- 70% supported universal access to preschool, including 60% of Republicans (Jul. 2013)
 http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/31/2388261/70-percent-of-americans-support-universal-preschool-access/

- 60% support for a measure to give children from low- and moderate income households "the opportunity to attend a preschool program, with the government paying the tuition" (Aug. 2013).
 http://educationnext.org/the-2013-education-next-survey/

- 84% support universal pre-k - (Jan. 2014)
 https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/WOP-PollReport2.pdf

- 70% support, including 53% of Republicans and 70% of independents (Aug. 2014)
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/175646/favor-federal-funds-expand-pre-education.aspx



"It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That must end. That is why, as president, I will fight to make tuition in public colleges and universities free, as well as substantially lower interest rates on student loans."

- 82% (Nov. 2014)
 http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259351/82-of-americans-want-congress-to-make-student-loans-cheaper-but-its-a

- 63% of likely voters support offering students two tuition-free years of community college, including 53% of independents and 47% of Republicans. The same poll showed even bigger support--71%--for providing "federal financial assistance to states to make public colleges and universities more affordable," but tacked on wording about this being done "so that all students have access to debt-free college education in America," which can queer the results. Support for this included 61% of independents and 56% of Republicans. Still another crack at it in the same poll showed that 62% favored providing "financial incentives to state colleges and universities, but also included language that said this was being done "to ensure all students have access to debt-free college education in America." That total included 51% of independents and 46% of Republicans (Jan. 2015).
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf

- 68% supported President Obama's plan to "offer two years of community college free for students who maintain a C+ average and are making progress toward a degree"; support included 64% of independents and 42% of Republicans and that's with the invocation of "President Obama" in the question (Jan. 2015)
 https://today.yougov.com/news/2015/01/13/free-community-college/

- 53% of registered voters supported the same plan but it's polled here with much stronger wording; this poll not only invoked Obama but said the plan comes "at a cost to the federal government of $60 billion over ten years." Support for this included 76% of Democrats, 54% of independents but only 23% of Republicans (Jan. 2015)
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/obama-government-providing-community/2015/01/22/01ad99b4-9fd2-11e4-91fc-7dff95a14458_page.html

- 55% support free college tuition. As an alternative, the same poll asked, "Do you favor or oppose the government using taxes to pay tuition at public colleges and universities in order to make college free for students?" 46% supported vs. 41% opposed (Aug. 2015)
 https://today.yougov.com/news/2015/08/20/three-fifths-want-debt-free-college/

- 60% supported Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposal to lower student interest rates to 0.75%, including 56% of independents and 56% of Republicans (Jun. 2013)
 http://s3.moveon.org/pdfs/studentloanspollingmemo_moveon.pdf

- 78% support for the same idea among likely voters (Jan. 2015)
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf



"As president, I will defend this nation – but I will do it responsibly. As a member of Congress I voted against the war in Iraq, and that was the right vote."

- 57% say "the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq," a fairly strongly-worded question (Jun. 2014)
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/171923/fewer-support-iraq-withdrawal-decision-2011.aspx

- 66% of registered voters say the Iraq war was "not worth it" (Oct. 2014)
 http://newscms.nbcnews.com/sites/newscms/files/141290_early_oct_nbcwsj_poll_0.pdf

- 59% of voters say going to war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do (May 2015)
 http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2228



"We must be vigorous in combating terrorism and defeating ISIS, but we should not have to bear that burden alone. We must be part of an international coalition, led by Muslim nations, that can not only defeat ISIS but begin the process of creating conditions for a lasting peace."

...and...

"I have supported U.S. airstrikes against ISIS and believe they are authorized under current law, and I support targeted U.S. military efforts to protect U.S. citizens."
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-war-powers-resolution

- 75% favor U.S. airstrikes against ISIS (Nov. 2015)
 https://lintvwpri.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/cbs-poll-americans-on-terrorism.pdf

- 66% of registered voters chose "the U.S. should be part of a coalition to fight ISIS," over "the U.S. should be leading the fight" and "the U.S. should not be fighting ISIS," including 67% of independents and 49% of Republicans (Dec. 2015)
 http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2312

In his Mother Jones piece, Josh Harkinson tested the question of Sanders being a "socialist." He cited a Dec. 2011 Pew poll wherein 60% of respondents had a negative reaction to the word "socialism" and ruled against Sanders. There are other polls one could cite on this matter. In June 2015, for example, 50% of respondents told Gallup they wouldn't vote for a generic "socialist" vs. 47% who said they would. But numbers like that aren't really instructive as to Sanders' prospects. "Socialism" in the abstract has a negative connotation to many because Americans have been conditioned to think of it as brutal Bolshevism. Sanders is a flesh-and-blood candidate though, not an abstraction, and he's a social democrat, a hybrid of socialism and liberalism that is mostly liberalism, not some would-be Stalin figure. He refutes the caricature simply by going about his business as he has for decades. Our work here has demonstrated that not only do his politics fail to put him outside the broad mainstream, he probably more closely resembles that mainstream than any other candidate in the current presidential race and he's certainly much more representative of the political center than what the corporate press chooses to characterize as the political center.

--Mitch Clark and j.

---

[1] Doing that isn't, as so many seem to think, some sort of trick. It is a fact that, in the polling world, there are unscrupulous clowns who use ridiculously stacked questions for the sole purpose of ferreting out a predetermined result. Rasmussen is notorious for this sort of nonsense. But a poll produces a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional world. Polling that hits the same issue from multiple angles can produce a more complete portrait and as long as its methodology is otherwise sound, even these bad polls can usually contribute to this.

[2] And, of course, older data can, when paired with the newer, be useful in illustrating a longer-term tend in opinion.

[3] Ours won't be perfect either but we think we've generated a substantial upgrade over those previous efforts.

[4] Sanders does hold other views that may not poll as well--his proposed agenda is rather vast--and we contemplated testing and including some of the others here but ultimately rejected the notion. This was a fairly substantial project as is and "mission creep" loomed over taking it very far beyond the parameters of the checkable items in Sanders' announcement speech. The Sanders material we used to supplement the speech was, with only one exception (general marijuana decriminalization), intended to provide more details about proposals mentioned in the speech.