Question....If the majority of people kept themselves informed what then would be the use of polls?.
Same use as now, only the people would be even further to the left.
You have an opinion that you crafted based on this poll. Essentially the poll results told you what to think.
Wrong. I do happen to agree with the majority of the people on all of those issues, but that's not WHY I agree with them. I support a single-payer plan because I know that it will lower health care costs across the board and provide universal coverage in a way that Obamacare will not. I know this because most advanced nations other than the U.S. already have a single payer plan and they work beautifully.
I believe we need to narrow income gaps not only because people are suffering and it would be fair, but also because doing so would cause the economy itself to perform better by increasing consumer demand. Most people aren't aware of how that works, but I am.
So no, my opinions don't come from polls, except my opinions as to what the people think, where polls are a good source of data.
May as well stop there. First of all, you have the timing way wrong. Those polls on self-identification by ideology are much older than that and significantly predate the 2010 election. I know because I have had discussions with them on other forums that took place long before that election.
The problem here is that asking people to label themselves is usually not a good way to know where they really stand. If you ask people issue questions, what you find is that many people who don't call themselves liberals actually are liberal. Or, as I put it in that other discussion, liberals outnumber self-identified liberals by more than two to one.
It really doesn't matter what a person chooses to call himself. What matters is what policies he would support. Judged that way, the country at present is in a progressive mood on the economy. Not too surprising, considering the shape things are in. When the economy's in a shambles, when the rich are flying high and corporate profits are soaring while ordinary people are hurting, economic conservatism is not a winning brand.
Here's a 20% figure that has more significance. Just slightly more than that is the percentage of the electorate who voted Republican in 2010. That's because that election had a 41% voter turnout.
I've partly proven the claim above, and provided other evidence elsewhere; I'm not going to go look it up again just for you. I will explain the fallacy in your argument by election, though. The problem here is that the Democrats, like the Republicans, are corrupt and on the take from corporate campaign cash. As a result, truly progressive positions on the issues are seldom offered at the polls. We do not have a real democracy anymore. We have a plutocracy that offers artificial choices between the Democrats, who are economically right of center and socially moderate to liberal, and the Republicans who are far to the right across the board. Given that choice, progressive voters tend to stay home. That's how conservative candidates can be elected and indeed it's how they WERE elected last year.
Of course, there's also the fact that House elections are local, and there are conservative Congressional districts, so even if that problem is fixed there will still be SOME conservatives elected.
When it seems like the voters are being offered a genuinely progressive choice, though, as happened in 2008, the Democrats can win big. Unfortunately, that offering was an illusion; Obama was a huge disappointment and the Democrats even with big majorities in Congress failed to deliver.
BTW, WHAT is father to the left of the democrats?
The policies that the American people want on the economy are not being advocated or campaigned on by most Democrats, definitely not by the president. I didn't mean there was a third party or something, although of course there is (the Greens for example).
Here's another newsflash....Both parties need funding to run n and win elections. Based on that, as long as there are laws which protect the rights of the well monied to participate in the political process, there will not be any change.
That doesn't follow. There are three ways those laws could be undone. One is by pressuring the Democrats to move against the corporate donors. That's being tried now. The second is through a Constitutional convention to amend the Constitution so those laws no longer apply in the way they do. That will be the second attempt, I predict, if this fails.
The third is revolution.
One way or another, the plutocracy will not endure. But I don't know if it will fall in next year's election.
