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It’s been a rough week for healthcare reform, but Ezra Klein points to a recent Wall Street Journal poll that has a smidgen of good news:

Luckily, there are some elements of health reform that meet with overwhelming public approval. Among them is the public plan. According to the poll, 76 percent of Americans believe it’s either “extremely important” or “quite important” to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.”

Hmmm.  A crisp new twenty dollar bill says this poll result is meaningless.  My guess is that (a) the vast majority of these respondents have no real idea what this even means and (b) would change their mind in an eyeblink if they saw even a single 30-second attack ad on the subject.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just cranky this morning.  In fact, I am cranky this morning.  But twenty bucks still says I’m right about this.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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