who are quite wealthy, and many are surprisingly liberal on social issues. But they really hate paying taxes--it seems to make them feel personally violated even though, financially, they did extremely well in the 1990's even with a 50% alternative minimum tax rate. I certainly would have had more sympathy for this feeling when marginal rates were 90% (under Eisenhower) or 70% (under Nixon).
Now however, I sometimes want to shake them to get them to see that there is such a thing as 'good enough' when it comes to personal lifestyle, and that progressive social values have a financial cost. I have pointed out that "creeping socialism" is a dead issue anymore, but that there are still real problems that need to be solved. (more...)
Where I have been encouraged is that they seem reachable on the level of fairness. They seem to react positively when shown specific examples (anecdotes) of how people can be victimized by the system. For example...when hard working professionals lose their corporate jobs, the COBRA expires, the wife gets breast cancer or the husband develops diabetes, they can't find an insurance company that will accept them because of their new, pre-existing condition, they go broke with catatrophic medical bills...
I think Mr. Kerry should have used specific, flesh-and-blood examples to build sympathy for progressive causes. People need to be able to personally relate to the unfairness that really is out there. Reagan used to do this in a negative way--the welfare queen driving her Cadillac to the food stamp office, or whatever.
We can use real-world examples much more effectively than we do, I believe...