Minimum wage is a ballot ammendment that gets a lot of people to the polls, and it always passes. There’s overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage.

That is so, so true, and it’s both fascinating and disheartening to compare the (exhausting) length of media debate on the topic with the overwhelming public support for a minimum wage increase. (Ditto stem cell research, actually.) You could skeptically say it’s just basic self-interest at work, but in my less gloomy moments I like to think of it as a universal recognition of an obvious truth: It is one hundred percent impossible to live on our current minimum wage.

Unfortunately it’ll continue to be impossible to live on the minimum wage until they bump it up to at least 10 bucks an hour, and the most we can expect is about $7.50. I know it’s a tired sentiment, but seriously, the Congressional sonsawhores (of both parties) who set the minimum wage need to be required to live on the sub-poverty income it provides for at least three months so they can experience the standard of living they’re subjecting people to by putting business interests first, second and third, as they have for … let’s see, ever, is how long they’ve been doing that now, I think. Forever.

I was thinking the other day that Democrats could really use a wedge issue or two to get onto local ballots as a way of motivating base voters to get to the polls, but then it struck me : this trick probably won’t work for Democrats.

I disagree. There aren’t as many things states can work on that really get the Dems bile up, it’s true. We don’t anything equivalent to the terrifying image of gay people getting married. But there are wedge issues and ammendments that the Dems can utilize. Minimum wage is a ballot ammendment that gets a lot of people to the polls, and it always passes. There’s overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage.

An even better wedge issue, though, is stem cell research. People can be iffy on abortion because they think women should like being pregnant, because we have a puritanical society, and because thinking about abortion makes them kind of uncomfortable and they don’t think they’d do it. But stem cell research doesn’t have that same vibe at all. It’s a lot harder to convince people that a few cells is a baby, and you can’t show any disgusting pictures of bloody fetuses. A test tube or petri dish really doesn’t resonate the same way.

And while the issues on one side are muddy, the issues on the other are clear. Is it right to work to heal Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, etc.? And making the extremists repeatedly argue that the cells in the test tube are worth at least as much, if not more, than your grandmother or grandfather, hammers in how extreme they are. I think the democrats could really take that issue and run with it.

Oh, I don’t think Vermont wants to claim him.