Hardest ones for the majority are probably landback and reparations. Less hard but still pretty hard for Americans writ large would be a big transition to public housing and mass transit, since for many Americans most of their wealth is in their house value and a huge part of their concept of freedom is in their car. Anything that threatens the suburbs - whether that’s making cities better and cheaper or increasing land taxes to better match the true cost of providing services to non-urban areas - is basically impossible to do in America as it currently exists.
Defund the police is a hard sell outside of the minority communities that face the worst of what the police do. Reform the police is a little easier to sell to libs, but they’ve been “reforming” the police basically my whole life and the only thing that’s happened is the budget keeps going up and they keep getting more and more military vehicles.
Less hard but still opposed by the majority is any kind of actually-effective industrial policy. For example compare how China captured 80% of the world’s solar production - by investing a trillion dollars over the past decade directly into green energy companies, some run directly by the state and some run privately in partnership with it - to our own largest green energy investments - which was smaller than our oil and gas investments in the same bill and didn’t create any kind of control over the market at all, just incentives for private businesses to possibly chase after - and it’s clear why we’re falling behind or losing our lead in basically every single sector. But propose that the US Government should take a page out of China’s book and invest directly in production and people will screech at you about how central planning doesn’t work and how the government can’t do anything right.
It’s like this for policy after policy after policy, no matter how granular you get. Bike lanes? People think those increase traffic. Giving benefits and a minimum wage to Uber drivers? Roundly rejected. Demilitarizing the border and legalizing most of our immigrants? Keep dreaming! Just about the only progressive policy that gets widespread support is Medicare for All, and even that depends on how you word your polling question.
IMO almost all of what I just laid out is due to a messaging deficit from progressives. We’re certainly in a better place than we used to be - I remember the 2000s when being anti-war or pro-lgbt got you sent to the American gulag - but we need more people and orgs with a national profile pushing for these issues and not immediately folding on them in the name of party unity.
Demilitarizing the border and legalizing most of our immigrants?
These two are in opposition to each other. Selling the public on amnesty for whoever is here already requires a credible plan to prevent more illegal entry.
There is no reason for this is to be case. We could literally just stop enforcing the border right now - fire all border patrol agents, demo every single wall - and things would be fine. The undocumented immigrant crisis is 100% man made, and the purpose it serves the ruling class is that it creates a labor pool that has no legal protections.
those poll numbers are fucking insane, I had no idea it had gotten that bad. We already have more cops and jails than any other country - what the fuck do people think increasing the budget is going to do!?
Broadly speaking, higher taxes required to responsibly fund progressive programs.
You have to convince folks they’ll get their money’s worth.
Particularly rural areas are skeptical, they think they get money taken from them to solve city problems, and even if they might be able to benefit, the program might not be able to reach them.
So you might have decent luck with medicare for all (though there’s a huge special interest influencing them against that too), but if you wanted big infrastructure and transit plans, they’ll think the government is going to toss money at the cities and do nothing for them. Or worse, they’ll be one of the folks that get eminent domained to bulldoze their home to make way for rail connecting two big cities.
What are the hard sells? List them
Hardest ones for the majority are probably landback and reparations. Less hard but still pretty hard for Americans writ large would be a big transition to public housing and mass transit, since for many Americans most of their wealth is in their house value and a huge part of their concept of freedom is in their car. Anything that threatens the suburbs - whether that’s making cities better and cheaper or increasing land taxes to better match the true cost of providing services to non-urban areas - is basically impossible to do in America as it currently exists.
Defund the police is a hard sell outside of the minority communities that face the worst of what the police do. Reform the police is a little easier to sell to libs, but they’ve been “reforming” the police basically my whole life and the only thing that’s happened is the budget keeps going up and they keep getting more and more military vehicles.
Less hard but still opposed by the majority is any kind of actually-effective industrial policy. For example compare how China captured 80% of the world’s solar production - by investing a trillion dollars over the past decade directly into green energy companies, some run directly by the state and some run privately in partnership with it - to our own largest green energy investments - which was smaller than our oil and gas investments in the same bill and didn’t create any kind of control over the market at all, just incentives for private businesses to possibly chase after - and it’s clear why we’re falling behind or losing our lead in basically every single sector. But propose that the US Government should take a page out of China’s book and invest directly in production and people will screech at you about how central planning doesn’t work and how the government can’t do anything right.
It’s like this for policy after policy after policy, no matter how granular you get. Bike lanes? People think those increase traffic. Giving benefits and a minimum wage to Uber drivers? Roundly rejected. Demilitarizing the border and legalizing most of our immigrants? Keep dreaming! Just about the only progressive policy that gets widespread support is Medicare for All, and even that depends on how you word your polling question.
IMO almost all of what I just laid out is due to a messaging deficit from progressives. We’re certainly in a better place than we used to be - I remember the 2000s when being anti-war or pro-lgbt got you sent to the American gulag - but we need more people and orgs with a national profile pushing for these issues and not immediately folding on them in the name of party unity.
These two are in opposition to each other. Selling the public on amnesty for whoever is here already requires a credible plan to prevent more illegal entry.
There is no reason for this is to be case. We could literally just stop enforcing the border right now - fire all border patrol agents, demo every single wall - and things would be fine. The undocumented immigrant crisis is 100% man made, and the purpose it serves the ruling class is that it creates a labor pool that has no legal protections.
Maybe you could explain to the administrators of Kursk how its not important to defend the border 😂
Is America at war with Mexico? No.
That’s it. That’s the whole explanation.
No, it’s a hard sell inside those minority communities too
those poll numbers are fucking insane, I had no idea it had gotten that bad. We already have more cops and jails than any other country - what the fuck do people think increasing the budget is going to do!?
Broadly speaking, higher taxes required to responsibly fund progressive programs.
You have to convince folks they’ll get their money’s worth.
Particularly rural areas are skeptical, they think they get money taken from them to solve city problems, and even if they might be able to benefit, the program might not be able to reach them.
So you might have decent luck with medicare for all (though there’s a huge special interest influencing them against that too), but if you wanted big infrastructure and transit plans, they’ll think the government is going to toss money at the cities and do nothing for them. Or worse, they’ll be one of the folks that get eminent domained to bulldoze their home to make way for rail connecting two big cities.
Tax capital gains at equal rates to wages and add additional tax brackets to the top, increasing to a 90% rate. Done.