[lbo-talk] Tea Party Numbers (and Chomsky's citation of polls)

CGreen7223 at aol.com CGreen7223 at aol.com
Wed Sep 1 20:28:18 PDT 2010


Doug Henwood wrote "You'd think, from reading this sort of thing (which I have about 1,000 times), that there's a great untapped vein of radicalism in the U.S. population that's frustrated by the constant sellouts of the Dem Party. There isn't, as far as I know." What do you or anybody else think about Chomsky's frequent citation of polling data which purports to show that a significant majority of Americans have views significantly to the left of the Democratic Party? Chomsky is always citing these polls particularly during election time. These polls show that significant majorities support socialized medicine, think higher taxes to protect their environment are all-right, think the UN should handle Iraqi and Afghan reconstruction and that we should get militarily get out of countries where populations don't want us, 46 percent of Bush voters supported the Kyoto protocol and think Bush did too, etc. I think Chomsky sometimes reads a little too much into these polls. For one, as Chomsky said recently, the support of Americans for any welfare state measure goes way down if they think such measures will disproportionately benefit blacks or illegal immigrants. Chris Green (_http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=44901401_ (http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=44901401) )



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