New Orleans On ACORN International’s research projects over the last six months, I have often credited our “intern army” of young interns and older researchers.  I’m now “crowdsourcing” more research.  Today thanks go to Jesse Ginsburg, a hard luck Baltimore Orioles diehard fan (congrats on their hot opening this season!) who sent me a couple of Facebook links on recent reports by Cenk Uygur on MSNBC rapping out the facts on where Americans really stand on the issues and it turns out that real red-blooded Americans are pinker than a Little Kitty knapsack!   Oh, yeah, ask them if they are liberals or conservatives and only 25% will say liberal and the majority claim they drink nothing but tea, but ask them about the issues and they are sign waving, street stomping radicals compared to their Republican wannabe leaders.

Here is what the polls from Pew Research, Gallup, and several universities are revealing:

• 69%           believe government should help the helpless
• 42%           more than 2x the number (23%) believe that government should increase services.
• 77%           believe Congress should increase the minimum wage!
• 62%           believe that Roe vs. Wade, the abortion decision protecting women, should be sustained.
• 60%           believe that guns should be controlled.
• 75%           are willing to pay more for power from renewable sources
• 52%           believe government should invest in renewable energy
• 68%           demand more conservation of energy rather than production
• 69%           want government to increase access to health care
• 62%           want to increase taxes for health care
• 77%           don’t want to cut social security
• 81%           want to raise taxes on the rich

You get the drift.  We’re a bunch of raging revolutionaries!  Unfortunately the “branding” for progressive issues has become so  bad in the dominant political culture, that the same majority of Americans who want change also don’t want to be called liberals for god sake.

As a people most of us want the same things and the right things for each other, but we simply don’t have the institutions anymore or the leadership that are willing and able to fight to get us what we want.    The polls didn’t say that.  I said that.  Turns out we probably all believe that too.