{"id":5591,"date":"2005-10-20T13:38:21","date_gmt":"2005-10-20T17:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5591"},"modified":"2005-10-20T13:38:21","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T17:38:21","slug":"a-hint-for-political-candidates-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-hint-for-political-candidates-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"A hint for political candidates everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decade ago, things didn’t quite work out for the Clinton White House when it launched an initiative to reform the nation’s health care system. The public, Republicans said, just won’t accept a liberal approach to health care. (Whether the Clinton plan was really liberal or not was largely irrelevant.)<\/p>\n

More than 10 years later, evidence still shows how wrong the right is on this issue. A new poll<\/a> published by the Wall Street Journal shows remarkable support for a progressive health care agenda.<\/p>\n

The results of the poll (which are available to non-subscribers<\/a>) should be a big hint to policy makers and candidates about where the public is when it comes to these issues.<\/p>\n

* Universal health insurance<\/i> — Support is overwhelming for universal insurance, with 75% supporting it and only 7% opposed.<\/p>\n

* Medicare<\/i> — 96% support it. When one compares “strongly support” vs. “strongly oppose,” it’s 80% to 1%. The numbers were nearly identical for Medicaid.<\/p>\n

* Embryonic stem cell research<\/i> — 70% support it, 19% oppose it.<\/p>\n

* Sexual health<\/i> — Americans strongly approve of the use of contraception (93% to 4%), sex education in high school (87% to 10%), funding of international HIV prevention and treatment programs (87% to 10%), funding of international birth control programs (70% to 21%), and even abortion centers (63% to 32%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would have guessed pretty strong support for these policies, but these results are really<\/i> one sided.<\/p>\n

Granted, the questions seemed to approach the issues in a very general way. “Universal health care” wasn’t defined (single payer? vouchers?), and the results may differ once details such as cost enter the picture. The poll also doesn’t tell us where health care falls among voters’ list of priorities.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, when it comes to politics, Dems in particular should take note of these poll results and embrace a progressive vision — with both arms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decade ago, things didn’t quite work out for the Clinton White House when it launched an initiative to reform the nation’s health care system. The public, Republicans said, just won’t accept a liberal approach to health care. (Whether the Clinton plan was really liberal or not was largely irrelevant.) More than 10 years later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}