Non-Issues

Political parties love to create issues to divide the voters...so much so, that they'll turn issues that sound like they're plausible problems but are not, into major "wedge" issues.

Here's a partial list, in alphabetical order:

Abortion: Through history, there have been societies that gave the father the right of life and death over their children until puberty or marriage.   There have also been groups that regard not taking opportunity to procreate as a sin.  The point is that the mandates of one faction are the sins of another. There aren't many who follow these extremes today, but there's still a wide spectrum.  Some people regard life as beginning at conception, some at birth.  The bible says that "Life is in the blood" which would make it about 6 weeks after conception, yet that's not what "Project Rescue" wants to hear.  Prior to about 1870, quietly abandoning unwanted children to die of "exposure" was accepted practice in nearly every culture around the world, but with the invention of safe abortion, the loonier voices of the right decided to make this a big issue.  With Roe vs Wade, a middle ground was picked.   Nobody is ever going to be fully happy, but RvW is a compromise that works.

Increasing crime rates.  Crime rates have been DROPPING radically over recent years.  One study tells us that the rate of violent crime today is 1/100th what it was 150 years ago. It's certainly true that we hear about more crimes today: as recently as 50 years ago, spousal and child abuse was rarely reported at all, though it was clearly happening.  But since murder and other violent crimes, including against spouses, have dropped so dramatically, it's implausible that these haven't been on the decline too.  These need enforcement, but the idea that there's some new terror here is just wrong.  It's all about the increase in media.
 
The Deficit and Debt: These are problems, but there's no urgency.  The debt becomes a problem when, with high interest rates, debt service becomes a big part of the budget.  Interest rates are at historic lows and debt service is a trivial part of the budget.  When this changes, they will need to be dealt with, but when that happens, the economy will have improved.  For now, borrowing could be used to stimulate the economy.

Gay Marriage:  anybody who actually knows a gay couple realizes that they're pretty much like any other couple. There's a passage in the bible that speaks against homosexuality.  But there are several that speak against the handling of the flesh of a pig.  A much stronger biblical case can be made against football than against gay marriage.   

Gun Control:  Contrary to the NRA, there's no serious effort to take away the guns of law abiding Americans.  There are people who are trying to take them away from crazy people and criminals, and there are a number of groups that want guns to be registered and to mandate safety training.  There are even a few people that are trying to keep weapons specifically optimized for warfare or crime out of the hands of criminals.  There are a few people who do advocate a complete ban of handguns, but their number is minuscule, and they are not part of the platform of any major party.  The NRA has consistently advocated against all these things, including objecting to perfectly reasonable safety standards for firearms.  They have gotten basically everything they wanted.

Immigration:  A case can be made that population is too high, but that's not the problem that the anti-immigration people are fighting.   Illegal immigration in 2007 was less than 1/3rd of what it had been 10 years earlier.  After the crash of 2008, lots of those went home.  The most extreme studies put it at under 12% of the total US population and most put it at just 2 or 3%.  It never was a serious problem and it's now not a problem at all.

Everyone knows that Prayer in School is against the law.  Except it's not.  If you want to pray in school, in a manner that's not disruptive, that's perfectly legal in every school in America.  What's illegal is someone in authority in a government-funded school leading students in prayer, because that could easily be taken as endorsing a specific religion.  Those in authority in the school, and those who might be perceived to represent them, have to hold to an especially high standard, because all the rest of the educational process is so authoritarian and young children are so naive.

Social Security is not a part of any federal budget crisis.  It is not funded through the income tax.  It's funded through the payroll tax and with no changes is fully funded until the late 2030s. By simply raising the FICA payroll cap, it can be funded for much longer.  Social Security is the single most effective anti-poverty program in history.

Tax cuts for rich people don't stimulate the economy, they stimulate the stock market, which creates very few jobs.  They actually damage the rest of the economy a little, because they take the money out of the hands of people who would spend it right away.  Some tax cuts for rich people, especially on dividends, capital gains and carried interest, are strongly destimulative: they create a powerful incentive for those who can to take their income in these ways instead of things that do create jobs.

Voter Fraud.  The theory is that there are a bunch of people who either shouldn't be voting at all, or are voting twice, or some such.  Study after study has shown that this is a tiny problem, amounting to a few dozen instances a year, nationwide.  So Republicans are imposing laws that significantly raise the identification standard, in a way that would make it much harder for certain classes of  people to vote.   In an amazing coincidence, these are consistently groups which vote for Democrats by a wide margin.  In an equally amazing coincidence, what the fraud studies do show is that Election Fraud is a widespread and growing problem.   That is, elections where there is significant mis-counting, broken ballots (remember the butterfly ballot in 2000?), groups which are being wrongly disenfranchised by methods such as caging, and more.  Evidence is pretty good that in the last three presidential elections, the ultimate result was swayed by as much as a million votes toward the Republicans