Soda Is the New Right-Wing Issue--and Fatsos the New Base

The new thing we are going to hear about, constantly, repetitively, like a nail driving into our heads, is the soda tax.

We'll wake up from our dreams with those words in our head: the soda tax.

The proposal is to put a tax on carbonated sugar drinks because, well, they are valueless and probably pernicious and do nothin' for nobody, and no one loses if they drink less of them, and if they must have them, let's get some benefit for the rest of us. Which, from a tax perspective, is pretty reasonable and benign. Nobody loses, everybody wins.

Except now it is being tried out as a potential wedge issue, a populist theme. Super groovy cool self-satisfied yuppie people, like the president and his health-conscious family, don't drink soda. But gross fat compulsive lacking-all-self-control normal Americans do.

It is an attempt to rally what could be one of the most significant constituencies in America: the fat.

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