This president has some very popular ideas.
Voters in three key swing states are enthusiastic about President Obama's plan to tax rich people in order to give the middle class a break. According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio support the idea by 20-point margins.
In Florida, 58 percent of voters support "increasing taxes on higher income earners to reduce the amount of taxes paid by the middle class," while 36 percent are opposed. In Ohio, it's 61 percent supporting and 35 percent opposed, and in Pennsylvania, it's 62 percent to 33 percent. With the same poll finding Obama's favorability underwater in all three states and voters saying they want to see the next president "change direction from Barack Obama's policies," the strong support for raising taxes on the rich may owe something to the fact that Obama's name wasn't included in the question.
But that strong support points to a challenge for Republican presidential candidates. Claiming to care about poverty and inequality may be the new hotness among Republicans with national ambitions, but taxing the rich is another story entirely, one few Republicans are even willing to pretend to maybe possibly support. So the popularity of that idea, an idea that Democrats, led by the president, will have been pushing for a year by the time even the primaries are rolling around, is an advantage for Democrats at every level. And that means Democrats had better keep pushing it hard—when you have something that's good policy and good politics, you don't let it slip away.