Sidebar: Poll Watch: The Not-So-Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Yesterday's Poll Watch looked at how registered voters responded to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, focusing on their perceptions of the president and some of those who want to be president.   Today, I wanted to share some of the opinions these voters have on the issues that are currently bubbling to the top, with the caveat that the survey was done before all the news about impeachment took over the media cycles.

A majority of all voters favor DREAMers being allowed to stay legally; an opt-in to Medicare; student loan debt forgiveness after a history of payments; tuition-free public colleges and universities; 100% renewable energy use by 2030; and, somewhat ironically, oil drilling off the US coast.

Smaller percentages of us favor ending fracking, building a wall on the border, getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, implementing Medicare for All (M4A) and getting rid of private insurance, and giving illegal immigrants government health care - which has the lowest level of both overall and strong support.

None of the issues reaches even 45% strong support.

Things look a little different if you look at the opinions of Democratic voters in the survey. Again, there's majority support for DREAMers, for the Medicare opt-in, for repayment and then forgiveness of student loans, tuition-free college, and renewable energy, but then things change.

Health care for illegal immigrants, Medicare for All (M4A), immediate forgiveness of student loans, and ending fracking also have majority support from Dems. 

Only a handful of the issues - DREAMers, the Medicare opt-in, student loan forgiveness tied to a repayment plan, and tuition-free college - have strong support from a majority of Dems; all the rest of the issues fall below 50% on the strength of support.

The key takeaway from this data? Moderate positions have greater overall support among all voters, and among Democratic voters, than do the more 'progressive' positions.

So if you're a fan of the more moderate Dems, including Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, this may be good news. On the other hand, if you're a fan of the 'burn the house down' theories promoted by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (to a slightly lesser degree), this might not be good news for you.

I know there's a school of thought out there that everyone will be more extreme during the primaries and then they'll move to the center for the general election, but we saw how that worked in 2016, particularly for the Dems. As I recall, among the reasons why people didn't like Hillary Clinton is because they didn't trust her to keep her word, and they couldn't tell where she stood on the issues because it seemed she changed her positions so frequently.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have a candidate that has convictions and the courage of them, one I can count on to say the same thing to me in October 2019 as they'll say to me in October 2020.