> Which is single-payer healthcare and has 77% favor-ability [1].

Medicare has broad public support (and has for decades) and there are no serious proposals for getting rid of it, notwithstanding the elites. That is why, when we talk about "single-payer" as a policy proposal, or as a point of comparison with other countries, we are talking about extending single-payer to everyone. And that does not have the same broad support that Medicare does.

At the time the ACA was enacted, a slight majority of those polled opposed single-payer healthcare for everyone: https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer.... That has flipped in the last 10 years, with a significant majority now supporting single-payer (59-39).

Again, let's circle back to the question at hand: why does the U.S. lack single payer healthcare when many other developed countries have it? Is it because of "elites" overriding the public will? Or is it because the public itself only came to support it by a significant margin in the last few years, after the last major change in healthcare law?

> This is complete editorializing. You could just as easily say that more Americans prefer labor unions to have the same or more influence than they do now.

That would be answering the wrong question. We are comparing the U.S. to "other representative democracies" like "France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, [and] Australia" (these are your words). Why does the U.S. have weak labor unions, when many developed countries have stronger ones? Is it because of "elites" overriding the majority? Or is it because a large majority prefer the current, weak labor unions, or would weaken labor unions even further?

> The Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest pro-business lobby, has vowed to fight an single-payer initiatives [2]. This is what people typically mean by "elites", the owners of capital. They are typically the one's influencing policy, not high wage earners.

The Northwestern study we are talking about here--which is what people are citing for the premise that "elites" influence policy--didn't define "elites" as "capital owners." It defined them as the top 10% of income earners.

> Here, you rely on the question asking specifically about $15/hr minimum wage. In reality, the minimum wage is $7.25 and there is a lot of daylight between that and $15/hr. If you ask about a different number, like $10/hr, you get a different result.

Again, what are we trying to prove? Why are U.S. minimum wages lower than in say Canada (scheduled to rise to $15 in the next couple of years) or Australia ($18) or France (about $12, but in a country where wages overall are much less than the U.S.)? Is it "elites" or because public support for a minimum wage that high is borderline?

Yes, there is public support for a $10+ minimum wage, which is why states across the country are in the process of raising their minimum wages to $10+. That is so, notwithstanding the presence of "elites" in New York, California, Maryland, etc.

> Only 35 of the 100 seats were up for election in 2018, so it doesn't stand to reason that the results would match public perception directly.

Various statistics I've seen show that a Republican majority vote in the Senate (51 votes) can represent as little as 42-43% of the total population. That's really a huge margin when you think about it. Say polls show that a policy is supported by 58% of the population, and opposed by 42% of the population. If you adjust for the fact that voters are more conservative than the overall public, that might turn into say 54-46%. And those 46% of voters, in turn, might be represented by 51 Senators, who can kill any bill implementing that policy. You don't need "elites" to explain how that works, and the Northwestern study (astoundingly) doesn't account for that phenomenon at all.