SNAP benefits are set to expire on Saturday. Medicaid and Medicare are on the budgetary chopping block, with over $1.4 trillion in funding set to be slashed over the next ten years. And austerity rhetoric continues to dominate elite Republican discourse, with figures like Mike Davis expressing the typical tone:
We should only help people who can’t help themselves. It’s outrageous 40mm people get food stamps. Get off your fat, ghetto asses. Get a job. Stop reproducing. Change your shitty culture. Stop giving food stamps to immigrants. We don’t want you here, if you don’t work.
Watching this play out, you would think we are in the midst of a great national movement for austerity, or at least a passionate debate between its advocates and its critics. But as new polling by YouGov / The Economist has demonstrated once again, Americans overwhelmingly support expanding welfare:
These are crazy numbers that you basically never see on any other issue. Even among Trump voters support for austerity doesn’t reach a majority; when it comes to food stamps, for example, 42% of Trump’s base supports cuts, while 52% support either increasing SNAP spending or keeping it the same.
This overwhelmingly widespread opposition to austerity is not, moreover, just a matter of aligned opinion; it’s also a matter of aligned priorities. In its “most important issue” numbers, this survey makes it clear what’s on voters’ minds:
The top three issues here — accounting for 48% of the responses — relate to voter anxiety about the economy. This is how it’s been for nearly a decade; the last time a non-economic issue topped voter concerns was all of the way back in late 2015 when terrorism dominated the headlines after the Paris attacks that November.
This is why, despite very real and legitimate concerns about issues like civil rights and foreign policy under Trump, any political movement that wants to take and maintain power in the contemporary United States needs to prioritize the economy. Win power, and then you can use it to make progress on the issues that voters aren’t as worried about or that are more controversial. But those issues can’t be your central pitch. If the left wants to win, we should focus on welfare.
Refer enough friends to this site and you can read paywalled content for free!
And if you liked this post, why not share it?