The Public Is Often More Progressive Than Biden and What Corporate Media Labels “Mainstream” It’s been true for decades: Many majority-held positions in public polling are thought of, even by those who hold such positions, as fringe minority views.[1] Why? Because corporate media marginalizes those views and treats them as fringe. Nearly 80% of the U.S. public, for example, wants Congress members barred from trading stocks, to reduce legislators’ conflicts-of-interest.[2] Yet the Democratic-controlled Congress refused to act, and President Biden refused to lead on the issue.[3] A strong majority of the U.S. public has long wanted a significant increase in the minimum wage, and most told Pew pollsters that they support a $15 federal minimum wage.[4] With Democrats controlling Congress, President Biden was unable to achieve that goal for the 30 million workers who would have seen a pay raise; his executive order did raise the minimum wage for 67,000 federal employees -- but without setting it to keep pace with the cost of living. Many polls over the years have shown a majority of the public wants federal funding moved from militarism to human and environmental needs.[5] The 2020 Democratic Party platform promised this shift. Yet even after Trump had bloated the military budget for four years, President Biden has repeatedly proposed huge military increases – and Congress has responded by adding huge additional increases to those increases. Over the years, many polls have found that a majority of the U.S. public supports single-payer health coverage, aka “Enhanced Medicare for All.”[6][7] On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden vehemently opposed Medicare for All and instead promised partway measures like a "public option" and a slight reduction in the Medicare eligibility age – neither of which was acted upon. Meanwhile, the steady privatization of existing Medicare through so-called “Medicare Advantage” plans has actually been sped up under the Biden administration.[8][9] Click Here to Tell Democrats in Congress: We Need a Stronger Nominee Than Biden to Defeat the Republicans in 2024  | 
