The problem is that Democratic policies do not result in promised outcomes. For example, higher minimum wage sounds good on paper, but then you have a hard time finding a job or affording basic essentials. So people become allergic to people who seem to bring decay. I am not saying Republican policies are a picture of practicality.

For the problem of lifting as many as possible out of poverty there aren't really any good answers so I think it comes down what each person's preferred trade-offs are. No minimum wage is good because it lowers the barrier to potentially gainful employment as well as making it easier to meet the work requirement for certain government benefits. High minimum wage is good because if you can get a job you'll make enough to not need benefits and it puts a floor on how much value a job needs to actually produce to be worthwhile and orients the economy around more skilled work.

But both options kinda suck. No minimum wage when wages can be depressed below CoL creates a decay in its own way.

My preferred ideal is setting minimum wage not by rule but via a standing government work program available to anyone that pays above CoL for the area. Then private employers can compete on price or by offering easier less-stressful work.

Democrats are the party of “wouldn’t it be nice if?”

Republicans are the party of “yeah, but…”

We need both types of thinking, and it’s a shame there isn’t a party that actually merges the two instead of this crappy tug of war we have going on. Practical progressivism, or something.

Not really. If this were true, one might expect to see, say, deficit spending temper when Republicans control both houses and the presidency.

Republicans just like to put debt into different things, like tax cuts for the rich.

Plus a good deal of the “wouldn’t it be nice…” is real-world tested and proven and the “yeah, but…” is nonsense.

[edit] this notion is a hold-over from when it was sorta, kinda true, when both parties were still basically trying to make government work well and largely working toward similar goals and differed largely on approach—but that was more than 50 years ago. Reagan’s campaign is the demarcation line.

They are popular right up until the price tag gets added to the question.

It’s definitely not just that. You can ask people if they’d support a hypothetical social program and then describe a real one, warts and all (they’re usually not a tenth as bad as popularly supposed—you don’t need to shy away from the down sides to make them look good) and get very high rates of support. Name the actual program, and you get a “no” and a bunch of BS about it back. It’s a propaganda thing, it’s not the price tags. I mean, sometimes, sure, but you can go out all day long and get 20-30% swings in support for this stuff with straight descriptions (including costs) vs. the name under which a program has been vilified.

[edit] one of the funniest ones is foreign aid. It’s commonly supposed to be way higher than it actually is (you’ll get answers like 5%, 10% of the budget, wildly wrong stuff) so you can consistently get people to agree that a “cut” to double what it actually is would be a great thing for a fiscally responsible candidate to propose.

[edit edit] so point is the vast majority of voters have no clue what it is they’re opposing when they say they’re against lots of things they’re against. Describe it, and they’re on board. They don’t actually know what it is.

Individual Democratic policies might poll well but as a bundle there's deal killers in there for most Republicans. For instance: Universal health care sounds great... oh but thats bundled with changes to ATF policy to make me a felon for what's already in my closet? Pass.