That's the percentage of the American public which supports higher taxes on people with incomes of $1 million or more. That is also the percentage of millionaires who support the same tax on themselves according to a new poll. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/...
That isn't a random coincidence. As I tried to point out in my last post, the "1%" that everyone is complaining about is just as politically diverse as any other. It is not a small group of plutocrats all conspiring together. The reality is that the political divide in America is not an economic one, but a cultural one. The real question is, or ought to be: Who is that other 32%?
Well, they are the same group that has fought to block social justice in this country for 30 years. They are the Moral Majority, transmuted into the Tea Party in a cunning effort to capture the libertarians who would otherwise shun them. They are the elderly remnants of the repressive, racist, Protestant patriarchy that once ruled the country. They are adherents of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They are the advocates of creationism and opponents of climate change. They are the militant pro-lifers and the people who still believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In the words of Eliza Gylkinson's brilliant song "Man of God," they are "the coalition of the fearful and the judgmental."
Some of them happen to be rich, though most of them are not, and the ones who are seem willing to pay whatever is necessary to manipulate the anxieties of the rest in a desperate effort to remain so. Because of that manipulation, they were also a majority of voters in many 2010 election contests. And for that we have no one to blame but ourselves. The "32%" does not represent the majority of Americans and never will, but because a higher percentage of them tend to vote they exercise a grossly disproportionate influence in our political debates.
That is a lesson to remember in 2012. If everyone would turn out to vote, and I do mean everyone - liberals, independents, moderates, traditional Republicans and anyone else you can think of - we won't be having these discussions in 2014. By then, with luck, the Tea Party will be merely a historical curiosity.