Pick your pony

Polls are correlated with popular support and chance of passing, I hear. Assuming the original poster was talking about national, there’s very little chance for marijuana legal or gay marriage to happen at the federal level for the foreseeable future; no way in hell you can get 60 votes to pass it in the Senate. By contrast, Obama explicitly ran on a platform of quasi-nationalized health care and has a pretty big margin to pass it, so it might actually happen.

But let’s say you ask these questions…

You’re right, if you ask leading questions you can get certain results.

Actually that was your point. You just used it in reference to health care polls.

I think it’s damn disappointing that people here are disappointed more about not having marijuana to smoke legally for themselves than to have universal healthcare for all Americans.

Then again, this is the USA: I want my multi-million dollar bonus; taxpayer funded government bailout be damned!

Yeah, I totally cherry picked out of the multiple polls on there. You sure caught me. What, is it controversial that health care reform is way more popular with the public than the other two?

Did you just pull a cliffski? You know that’s not at all what I said.

Edit: Rather than drag this out, I’ll just clarify and then get the hell out of this accursed subforum.

You flat-out stated that the approval rating of universal healthcare varied depending on how the question was worded, and then cried foul when wildpokerman said the same about the other options.

Do you actually read and think through your posts or do you just have a link bot post them for you?

Read his post, go back and read yours and then reply please. His point is completely valid and correct.

You are taking ‘marriage’ too literally. I voted for this choice because of what you just said, actually. At some point, a legal union concept will be there and will allow gay couples the same political rights as married couples have now. That doesn’t mean it will be church sanctioned or anything like that. I think this will be the first thing to happen, of the choices given.

I think the vested interests opposing the other options are greater. That’s not about popular opinion, but rather money and lobbying and such. There is too much political clout opposing health care and legalizing marijuana.

There are plenty of people in your former fair state that support all three.

Personally I’d hope gay marriage was the first to pass, though maybe it’s because the Iowa thing has my hopes up. Nate Silver had a post recently that said by 2024 the majority of people in every state will support gay marriage, including more than half the states having a majority by 2013.

The other two would be nice, but the marijuana thing probably has the smallest chance of happening in my opinion.

Statistically, which issue would affect the most people? The obvious answer is healthcare, but I’m not sure that’s true. Lots of people have healthcare right now. So while universal healthcare would technically affect everyone, I’m really asking about which would have the greater net effect. How would we determine that in this case?

(Comically leading questions that aren’t representative of the public debate follow)

Pollingreport.com collects various questions asked by professional pollsters, who unlike you consciously try to design questions to be as neutral as possible to get an accurate gauge on public opinion. Stating a friendly or unfriendly-biased process description of subcomponents of a given proposal and declaring that to be people’s overall opinion is bad polling.

Right, but the point was that there are compromises that aren’t captured by the simple question : “Do you support gay marriage?” As you note, civil unions are more popular. Maybe there are other things people would support too, with each of those issues. Wildpokerman showed some questions that might be a BETTER way to approach the public debate than the methods currently used. His whole point was that we should quit asking the questions in the most neutral way and start seeing what people would support and where we can get laws changed that move toward certain compromises.

Lots of people have healthcare, but are really pissed with how it seems to be 20% more expensive every few years. That will be the impetus for big health care reform of some sort in this country.

The poll refers to national gay marriage, decriminalized marijuana, and healthcare; I was evaluating the question actually asked. If you ask different questions you get different answers.

I hope you are right. But so many people seem to still think that the alternative (govt. run healthcare) would be even worse.

We won’t ever have nationalized healthcare, for good or ill. There’s too much invested power in the health industry to sweep it away so easily. We’ll probably have universal healthcare before anything else, but the method of that almost certainly won’t be nationalization.

Legalized marijuana, nationally, is a joke. No, literally, Obama laughed at the very idea before dismissing it completely.

Gay marriage will be first, unless the federal government gets out of the marriage business entirely (a result I’m hoping for) - either way, it will be equal union rights for all before the other two come to pass.

Why would you hope for the govt. to stay out of it? Having the law default to favoring the spouse seems perfectly legitimate. It’s the relationship you actually choose. Of course, you could do some of the same things through wills/trusts, but not all of them.

Why would you hope for the govt. to stay out of it? Having the law default to favoring the spouse seems perfectly legitimate. It’s the relationship you actually choose. Of course, you could do some of the same things through wills/trusts, but not all of them.

I think he means the staying out of the ‘Marriage’ part of the equation. Simple Civil Union vs Marriage argument ( one that I agree with ). The Government legislates legal civil unions, and it gets out of the ‘defining the meaning of a word’ business and leaves that to private churches/religions.
Edit, and just to make my argument more clear, there’s no argument amongst the left or liberal that ‘gay marriage’ should be legal. The main point I’m trying to make is that if we keep framing the gay marriage argument as it is, the right and religious ( in which Christians are still a Vast majority in America) will still make the argument of keeping marriage ‘sacred’. As long as the argument is framed as ‘marriage’, it will lose on a national scale. For a long time. Modern day America ( again IMHO) will Not redefine marriage to include gays. If the argument changes to legal unions, the religious argument will Have to change to make homosexual relationships illegal, which I think America Has moved beyond nationally.

And I still think Health Care needs to be first, and nationalized. We need regulations, price controls, and non-profit organizations controlling Health Insurance. It’s a basic right and should be taken away from the for-profit private sector and be an industry run simply for the providing of health insurance. Just IMHO.
Otherwise, you get some quasi-government run healthcare, trying to compete with the prices of for-profit insurance agencies and you get… well this

              Percentage of Gross Domestic Product

Federal Spending

Source

Fair enough, but I could care less about the word ‘marriage’. The problem is that society as a whole no longer sees it as a religious institution per se. It’s a term that denotes a certain union, and Christianity no longer owns it. Still, if the govt. wants to use a different word, that’s fine by me, as long as it applies to everyone equally.

Price controls? Yeah, that always goes well.

Basic right? Nationalization? Regulation? The other buzzwords in your post aren’t exactly happy ones either.

I’m a big fan of healthcare reform, like Obama’s, that works to create a government owned “competitive fringe” designed to force bigger, for-profit “dominant” firms to either expand benefits or cut costs (on their own terms). Asking bureaucrats to run the whole system is a bad idea, just like it would be for cars, banks, or any other business you want to name.

Yeah, those government controlled roads aren’t working out so well. Ditto for government run prisons. Also, the military.

Oh wait, the government can run big enterprises with some success. Maybe not great efficiency, but they can do it. I’d rather the excess money was going to bureaucratic waste rather than to line the pockets of some company that is probably trying its best to come up with ways to dodge regulations in order to get juiced gains. Oh wait, insurance companies would never do that right? I’m sure AIG was an anomaly.