On other issues, a similar story presents itself. Public Policy Polling (PPP) has found that the vast majority (88 percent) of voters in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four crucial swing states, three of which went to Trump this fall — oppose cutting Social Security benefits, while a majority (68 percent) oppose privatizing Social Security. Similarly, 67 percent of Americans support requiring high-income earners to pay the payroll tax for all of their income (the cap is currently $118,500), according to a Gallup poll. America’s two other major social programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are also widely supported by Americans, and the vast majority oppose any spending cuts to either. In fact, more Americans support cutting the national defense budget than Medicare or Medicaid. [...]
One answer that usually comes to mind is the culture war. The modern political era can be traced back to the 1960s, when various liberation movements — from Civil Rights and gay liberation to second-wave feminism and the anti-war movement — emerged to combat different injustices, including white supremacy, gender inequality, homophobia and American imperialism. These progressive movements rapidly changed America’s cultural and political landscape, and triggered a reactionary movement that author Thomas Frank called “the great backlash” in his 2004 book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”. [...]
This is only part of the story, of course. While a culturally divided populace has no doubt benefited America’s power elite, the rightward economic shift was primarily a result of corporate America and other monied interests successfully infiltrating Washington with an army of lobbyists and flooding the political system with big money (an interesting backstory to this is told in the book “Winner-Take-All Politics”).
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