by davitydave

One of Mr. McBobo’s favorite techniques is to take a position held by conservatives, and without any empirical evidence, declare that this is how All Americans Think.

Today, McBobo looks at the financial reform bill, and the health care bill and concludes:

When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.

This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.

Already this effort is generating a fierce, almost culture-war-style backlash.

Uh, really?

6/30 Kaiser poll on health care reform bill: Favorable 48, Unfavorable 41
6/17 Gallup poll on expanding government regulation of Wall Street: Favor 55, Oppose 41

And the reason the health care bill is less popular than it should be because the most popular aspect of it – the public option – was gutted. If people are skeptical of the financial reform bill, it’s not because they’re worried about McBobo’s technocratic meddlers mucking up the system–66% of Americans think there should be stricter regulations of Wall Street.

The bottom line? There is plenty of popular support for more government — except in the make-believe America of McBobo’s mind and Teabagger rallies.