You screwed yourself good this time:
But that drop, it turns out, is even more pronounced among poor whites. Gallup-Healthways tells me that among whites without a college degree who have household incomes of under $36,000, the uninsured rate has dropped from 25 percent in 2013 to 15 percent now — a drop of 10 percentage points. It’s often noted that the law has disproportionately expanded coverage among African Americans and Latinos. That is correct, but it has also disproportionately expanded coverage among poor white people.
Now, it’s hard to know how many people we’re talking about here. But other evidence supports the idea that a lot of red state voters have gained coverage from the law. In some parts of rural Kentucky, the Medicaid expansion has greatly expanded coverage. And CBS News recently reported that even some Republican officials in the GOP-led states that expanded Medicaid are not prepared to see that evaporate. Gallup-Healthways numbers also show that the drop in the uninsured rate has outpaced the national average in some red states that have expanded Medicaid, like Kentucky, Arkansas, and West Virginia.
Did people benefiting from Obamacare who voted for Trump really expect repeal to happen? I think we need more reporting on this question. Yes, Trump did repeatedly say he would repeal Obamacare. But he also said he would replace it with “something terrific.” And he explicitly went out of his way to create the impression that he does not agree ideologically with Republicans who are hostile to government efforts to supply health care to those who can’t afford it.
Now, it’s always possible that many voters backed Trump in the full knowledge that their Obamacare might be repealed, for other reasons — because, for instance, he’ll supposedly bring manufacturing and coal jobs roaring back. Before long, those voters will learn whether their bet was a well-placed one. It’s also possible that Trump will surprise us all and insist on some kind of replacement that somehow preserves much of Obamacare’s coverage expansion. And a kick-the-can-down-the-road scenario which keeps deferring the harshest fallout from repeal is also a possibility.
About those jobs:
After campaigning as a champion of coal miners, Donald Trump is reportedly close to choosing for commerce secretary a New York billionaire who owned a West Virginia mine where a dozen miners were killed in 2006. Trump’s favored candidate, Wilbur Ross, also engineered buyouts that cost workers their benefits and their jobs. It’s a striking choice, considering Trump’s promises to improve the lives of coal miners and other working-class Americans.
Ross made his money collecting “distressed assets”—failing steel and textile mills in the Midwest and South, and coal mines in Appalachia. Dubbed the “the King of Bankruptcy,” Ross cut jobs, wages, pensions, and health benefits at the companies he acquired, and reaped the profits. In the early 2000s, Ross’s foray into the steel industry netted him a $267 million personal windfall, but stripped health-care benefits from more than 150,000 retired steelworkers. Then he moved on to the coal industry, at one point controlling as much as $1.2 billion in coal assets through his company, the International Coal Group.
I’m sure he has miners best interests at heart. Oh, about those miners:
Again and again, President-elect Donald Trump presented himself as the coal miners’ candidate. During the campaign, he promised to bring coal back into the economy, and jobs back into struggling Appalachian towns.
But now some in coal country are worried that instead of helping, Trump’s first actions will deprive miners — and their widows and children — of the compensation they can receive if they are disabled by respiratory problems linked to breathing coal mine dust.
That’s because buried in the Affordable Care Act are three sentences that made it much easier to access these benefits. If Trump repeals Obamacare — as he vowed to do before the election — and does not keep that section on the books, the miners will be back to where they were in 2009, when it was exceedingly difficult to be awarded compensation for “black lung” disease.
And just how many people fucked themselves? Kthug runs the numbers:
As Greg Sargent points out, the choice of Tom Price for HHS probably means the death of Obamacare. Never mind the supposed replacement; it will be a bust. So here’s the question: how many people just shot themselves in the face?
My first pass answer is, between 3.5 and 4 million. But someone who’s better at trawling through Census data can no doubt do better.Here’s my calculation: we start with the Census-measured decline in uninsurance among non-Hispanic whites, which was 6 million between 2013 and 2015. Essentially all of those gains will be lost if Price gets his way.
How many of those white insurance-losers voted for Trump? Whites in general gave him 57 percent of their votes. Whites without a college degree — much more likely to have been uninsured pre-Obama — gave him 66 percent. Apportioning the insurance-losers using these numbers gives us 3.42 million if we use the overall vote share, or 3.96 million if we use the non-college vote share.
There are various ways this calculation could be off, in either direction. Also, maybe we should add a million Latinos who, if we believe the exit polls, also voted to lose coverage. But it’s likely to be in the ballpark. And it’s pretty awesome.
Just give dad some robitussin and a Make America Great Again hat, you stupid, stupid people. I mean I feel horrible, but they voted for it. Not just for Trump. All of Appalachia is red, red, red and they’ve been voting this way for a while. There are no Democrats save Joe Manchin left to blame.
And they are still coming for you social security, you stupid bastards.
1. West Virginia
> Pct. of working age population with benefits: 9.0%
> Pct. with recurring neck and back pain: 39.0% (the highest)
> 2011 labor force participation rate: 54.1% (the lowest)
> 2011 unemployment rate: 7.8% (23rd lowest)No state had a higher percentage of working age people receiving SSDI benefits than West Virginia. In addition, the benefits received from by the federal government were more generous compared to most states. The average monthly benefit of more than $1,140 in 2011 was the 10th highest of all states. Almost 21% of recipients received monthly benefits of at least $1,600, a higher percentage than all but three states. Like most states on this list, West Virginia is among the less-educated states in the country. Just 18.5% of the adult population had a bachelor’s degree, the lowest percentage of all states. Also, few residents in the state had jobs. Just 54.1% of residents were considered part of the labor force in 2011, by far the lowest percentage of any state in the nation.
And those who aren’t on disability are just plain elderly and receiving social security benefits:
On top of all of this, some lady had some idea about revitalizing the region:
Hillary Clinton is committed to meeting the climate change challenge as President and making the United States a clean energy superpower. At the same time, she will not allow coal communities to be left behind—or left out of our economic future. That’s why Clinton announced a $30 billion plan to ensure that coal miners and their families get the benefits they’ve earned and respect they deserve, to invest in economic diversification and job creation, and to make coal communities an engine of US economic growth in the 21st century as they have been for generations.
She also had some thoughts about social security and medicare you can read about here:
We can never let Republicans cut or privatize Social Security—we should protect and expand it. Thanks, @POTUS. https://t.co/eIXIQsm8Pt
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 3, 2016
Defend Social Security against Republican attacks. Republicans are using scare tactics about the future and effectiveness of Social Security to push through policies that would jeopardize it. The real threat is Republican attempts to undermine the bedrock of the system. Hillary believes that Social Security must remain what it has always been: a rock-solid benefit that seniors can always count on—not subject to the budget whims of Congress or to the fluctuations of the stock market. She fought Republican efforts to undermine Social Security when she was a senator and throughout her career, and she will fight them as president.
As president, Hillary will:
Fight Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act made preventive care available and affordable for an estimated 39 million people with Medicare and saved more than 9 million people with Medicare thousands of dollars in prescription drug expenses. Read more here.
Fight back against Republican plans to privatize or “phase out” Medicare as we know it. Republicans have called for privatizing or even “phasing out” Medicare and shifting millions more seniors into private plans that would dramatically raise costs. Hillary will stand against these attempts to weaken the program. Read more here.
You stupid, stupid, stupid people. And there honestly is no real way to stop this. You’ve given them majority rule over EVERYTHING. All Democrats can do is scream. I don’t know if there is even any real point to calling Manchin. He won’t get in the way of any nominees https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/29/obamacare-is-probably-toast-and-a-lot-of-poor-white-trump-voters-will-get-hurt/?utm_term=.cba0274e91fe. Hell, he’ll probably vote to confirm Sessions and Price, then they will gut medicare, and the WV voters in their infinite wisdom will vote for his Republican opponent in 2018 because they will punish incumbents because they are angry and we’ll have a completely red delegation who will just give them more of the same. It’s sad and hysterical at the same time.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t keep them from pissing in it and then drowning themselves in the urine.
Major Major Major Major
Now, now. Hillbilly Elegy told us we mustn’t look askance at these noble savages even if their ways might seem baffling or even backwards from our rareified perch.
rikyrah
I don’t have sympathy for them.
I lose sleep over the ones who didn’t vote for the racist fascist and will lose coverage. They did what they were supposed to do, and some will die anyway. That’s what haunts me.
Everytime I think I can inch past November 8th, and try and get rid of the bitterness, I think of the future dead people that didn’t have to die, but will because of the evil sociopaths that are the GOP and their voters. I can’t get those people out of my head. I imagine us going back to the bad old days, and it just fills me with anger and sadness.
I don’t know how to get past November 8th. I know I should. I can’t.
sigh.
piratedan
thank goodness they can still own a gun when the GOP government tells them that they need to quit mooching and get out there and find a job and bootstrap themselves up! Freedom!
PIGL
Yup.
As I commented earlier, many, many people are going to suffer over Trump’s election and the GOP route, probably for generations to come. It’s only natural justice that the ranks of the suffering include at least some of those who brought it about
Those of us living in blue states or relatively sane jurisdictions outside the USA have to focus on protecting ourselves from the march of the Trumpenvolk. There’s no more time to waste on the malicious or the stupid, or the willfully blind. It’s not as if they have not had 50 years to figure things out.
Jeffro
John to be fair, it isn’t just West Virginia that went and fucked itself here. Plenty of other states fucked themselves as well (thanks Pennsylvania! thanks Wisconsin!). To say nothing of individuals all across the country who couldn’t be bothered to vote, or went with a 3rd party.
Now comes the Era of Painful Learning…
Suzanne
But but but Jeebus. And abortion. And emails and Benghazi. And yay coal so that every uneducated mediocre white man can make $100K/year.
daves09
Fuck them. I stop short of wishing death for people who voted Trump knowing-yes, they knew-that they were voting against their own interests.
When the repubs take appallachia back to where it was before the war on poverty those crackers can scream to heaven-fuck them.
And fuck the people who want us to empathize with the craphound Trumpistas.
Mart
The GOP has 32 or 33 states under total R control. Once they get to 34, they have two thirds – and their evil minions are currently scheming for a constitutional convention. What could go wrong?
geg6
@rikyrah:
I’m right there with you. I can’t seem to move on at all. Not even a little bit.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
I’m with you. I never want to hear that we need to try and understand these psychopathic morons ever again. I do wish them early deaths from preventable illnesses, diabetes, opiod addiction, alcoholism and suicide/death by gun.
Amanda in the South Bay
Professor Loomis has a sad that you denigrated the noble white working class.
Neldob
Not mentioning the fools who voted for W. Twice! “He kept us safe.” ha ha ha ha
schrodinger's cat
They voted to burn down the house they live in. Sympathy, I have none.
debit
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: THIS.
Betty Cracker
Like @rikyrah, I mourn for the innocents who will get hurt. I don’t personally give a fuck how much the Trump voters suffer. At least they can still buy guns to put themselves out of their misery when they’re dying painfully from treatable cancer.
Lit3Bolt
I’ll go with “Racism is a stronger motivating force than Economics or Policy” for $1000, Alex.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: The intended it as a big FU, so that’s how I took it.
Lit3Bolt
@Jeffro:
But Hillary Clinton made my chubbie have a sad. Besides, Trump will send a message to the establishment that I’m stupid.
Botsplainer
As I stated earlier today, as Americans, we pretend to adore George Bailey while willfully supporting Old Man Potter, putting ourselves in his vicinity even as we cringe in anticipation of his next blow.
At Christmas, we spend time in front of the television and at the theater watching productions of a Christmas Carol so we can feel warm about the transformation of Scrooge all while we politically support each and every one of his pretransformation social statements.
We act like we support Ralphie in A Christmas Story, but in real life, guffaw along with Scott Farkus.
Calouste
Yeah, right.
rikyrah
The Barbarians are LITERALLY at the gate.
There’s so much evil, it’s hard to just grasp the totality, but in doing so, the enormity of the election just weighs heavy.
Kobach quoting Japanese-American Internment AS A POSITIVE PRECEDENT.
A RACIST like Sessions becoming the CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OF THIS COUNTRY?
A woman like DeVoss, so utterly and completely selfish, that her azz sued to get out of paying taxes for public schools – NOW HEADING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
I’m talking about Climate Change.
And clean air.
And consumer protections.
And, an FDA that actually inspects things.
What national parks will be sold off to mining and fracking companies?
NW Phil
Let’s not forget all those who couldn’t even bother to vote.
sam
But, Hillary said something that, when taken COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT…
…still just told a basic reality to people that they didn’t want to hear about the fact that the coal industry was dying.
PhoenixRising
@rikyrah: Yup. I feel like I DO understand them. This election included the Appalchia-zation (tip my sister, who coined that) of the Rust Belt and I know these people.
Mediocre, pig-ignorant and entitled, they were dissatisifed with merely all the prosperity and peace and freedom they’ve marinated in since birth–due to the efforts of more community-minded folks–they wanted their cake, in the form of stopping those Negroes from collecting free phones and abortions, too!
I’m not sorry for them. I want them to fully immerse themselves in flammables and push themselves into the river, burning, like the house that floated through WV’s flood last spring, and only then realize their own stupidity. Nothing less will make us even. They stole my child’s future and the fact that they also stole their own children’s futures is not adequate recompense.
The Truffle
I can’t feel sad for West Virginia at this point.
Here is my solution:
California, New York, and some other states can campaign for some sort of state health care plan/mandate/whatever for state residents, to replace the ACA. Heck, Massachusetts already did it. Come up with a good financial plan, and people might love the idea. (I know single payer failed in Colorado, but finances were a main consideration there.)
At the very least, these states will have healthy citizens.
I also suggest changing tax laws so that the “blue” states get to keep their federal taxes. Enough of NYS taxes going to the south. Let them pay their own way. The reverse snobs of “real America” really don’t like us blue-state city slickers. So why should we support them? These “red” states should ONLY receive federal support proportional to what they put in, and not a nickel more. If they need infrastructure spending, hold a bake sale or pray to Jesus.
I have to say: hospitals and other health care providers will be screwed–to say nothing of insurance companies who gained customers via the ACA. If i were in the medical field, I’d be nervous. Twenty million people will lose insurance coverage. This will screw over the health care system in general. Bringing back the previous system will be a bust.
All this and those rust belt jobs still aren’t coming back. I can’t wait to see the Trump voters’ looks of horror as they realize they basically voted to deny themselves and their children something that could save their lives. I should feel bad for them…but I’m not.
PIGL
@Mart: The dissolution of the union. But I think you meant: what could go right?
JPL
@The Truffle: The new improved health care for the healthy and wealthy plan, has insurance companies locating in states with no regulations. State laws will no longer matter. The plan not only rids us of ACA but Romneycare also.
In the olden days, Credit card companies were regulated by state law, until they weren’t.
schrodinger's cat
States not so United actually.
Calouste
@Suzanne:
It would probably better for the economy just to give every unemployed mineworker in West Virginia $100K/year and have them sit at home drinking and shooting dope, rather than send them down the mines and pay billions of subsidies, directly and indirectly, to the likes of Blankenberg.
PIGL
@rikyrah: You pretty much covered it. There is no sugar coating or otherwise minimising the magnitude of the disaster that is now unfolding.
Jeffro
@Lit3Bolt: fell. out of. the chair. Nice!
I’ve almost come full circle on this…(I’ve certainly been cycling through all five stages of grief about every 15 minutes for the past three weeks). Why stress? These kkklowns are going to pass the Omnibus No-Lube-For-You, America Act and then when the inevitable backlash comes, get swept out of office again. As long as Orangemandias keeps his finger off the button, we’ll probably survive.
It is an interesting contrast, though: when Democrats control the Executive and Legislative branches…America gives health insurance to an additional 20M people.
When Republicans control the Executive and Legislative branches…well, then we throw those same 20M people out in the cold, privatize everyone else’s health insurance and Social Security, and start talking about rounding up immigrants & Muslims. Economic anxiety will do that, I guess…
Betty Cracker
@PhoenixRising:
Quoted for truth.
Hoodie
@PhoenixRising:
No kidding. I was driving home from the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving with my father in law, and the stupid asshole tells me he voted for Trump “because he was the lesser of two evils.” If he wasn’t 84 and dying of end stage renal disease, I would have told him what a dumbass he is and how he fucked his grandchildren, but what do you do? This guy’s dialysis would be unaffordable without federal funding. He’s lived forty years on the DoD dole after being a glorified clerk in the Army, a lt. colonel serving coffee to generals at the Pentagon. His other grandchildren from his fucked up older son are all on medical disability. The guy doesn’t know shit about anything, but thinks he’s qualified to judge everything. As Cole says, these people are incredibly stupid, but we’re stuck with them.
Roger Moore
@Mart:
Which I doubt will go as well for them as they expect. They would still need 3/4 of the states to ratify any amendments, and there are still enough solidly blue states to do that. If they wanted to do something more radical and propose a whole new Constitution, it would give the states who want to secede a good opportunity.
And honestly, the Constitution needs some serious revision. I don’t think we’re going to get the revisions we need from a Republican-dominated convention, but the basic idea of doing a ground-up redesign is probably a good one.
Fester Addams
I keep thinking of the H. L. Mencken quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Darkrose
So can Democrats maybe stop worrying about how to appeal to the fuckwits who voted for the shitgibbon and handwringing about their economic anxiety and work on mitigating the worst of this for everyone, espesially the majority of voters who did not want this bullshit?
gratuitous
All right, they screwed themselves but good. We’re in for at the very least two years of needless cruelty and misery visited on the most vulnerable citizens in our society. There will be thousands of avoidable deaths, and millions more will suffer. The major issues for the people who have inflicted this on themselves – abortion, gay marriage, radical Islamic terrorism – will prove intractable and the governing Republican majorities will do nothing about them.
That’s just in the next two years.
So, the question is, “What are we going to do about it in 2018?” What’s our game plan? What adjustments are we going to make? What opportunities to reach these people are likely to open up, and how do we take advantage of them? Do we have a strategy for getting the liberal message to people both in the cities and in rural areas, telling them what Democrats can do for them?
Whining is fun; I do it myself quite often. But we need to build a coherent strategy and message that will address the problems people are going to be grappling with.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore:
They are, however, still uncomfortably close.
The Truffle
@JPL: My thought is: what’s stopping individual states like New York from rolling out their own health care plans if/when the ACA goes? There’s no law saying they can’t do that. Let states phase in their own plans so they don’t suffer along with Goober and Goobette in Appalachia.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am finding few arguements against a Cal Exit when the rest of the US is determined to live in the Age of Derp. Serios, cause us smart folks live in cities we have to put with this rubbish?
The Truffle
@gratuitous: Governor races in 2018.
See here.
Most gubernatorial seats are GOP seats. This is a perfect opportunity. Ditto state legislatures.
Botsplainer
@JPL:
Wait until the hat trick, when they eliminate the federal deduction for state taxes (all to fuck blue states and blue cities).
This cause has been in the works quite some time – California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, NJ and the like haven’t been coughing up quite enough to the bootstrappiest bootstrappers that Eder bootstrapped in the South, Appalachia, or Midwest.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m never leaving Massachusetts. I’m not sure what the replacement for Medicare will be here though – I don’t think Romneycare ever contemplated having exchanges replace Medicare.
Weaselone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Umm…because they’ll roll over you with the US military, provided they don’t just take out southern California’s water supply and let you die of thirst?
donnah
For me, the scariest idea during all of this upheaval is that there is no limit now to how absolutely terrible things can get. Honestly, didn’t we say, “Oh, Trump can’t win” or “There will still be restrictions in place to keep him in check”. Only there aren’t any. The rampant GOP is going to railroad the country into complete ruin.
And the worst things we thought could never happen might very well be happening. Medicare, Social Security, national parks, Planned Parenthood, all of the civil and human services, just about anything good that the government can do…gone in one election cycle.
Anything is possible. And not in a good way. I’m frightened that we can’t do enough to save ourselves.
Raven Onthill
We don’t need to understand them; we need to send them missionaries. We can start by preaching on Job, downplaying the happy ending.
Yutsano
@JPL: I have a REALLY hard time imagining state insurance commissioners giving up their fiefdoms like that. They complained enough when ACA came online about how much regulation they could do on top of that. I can’t imagine a state like California adopting the standards of South Dakota.
Botsplainer
@donnah:
Gone within 6 months of the election cycle, because it is literally about all the time they have.
Botsplainer
@Yutsano:
Federal preemption will take care of that, QED.
SatanicPanic
@PIGL: Yup. This is an emergency. A true emergency most of us have never lived through. There is no bright side, there is no “we’ll get through this”. We act now and with purpose or we are all going to drown, with the most vulnerable people first.
kindness
Cut us some slack John. Many of us are going to be blaming Joe Manchin for a very long time for many, many things.
gogol's wife
@rikyrah:
I can’t either.
I was talking to someone today and came up with the formulation that the government is now in the hands of people with four major evil goals: (1) piling as much money as they can for themselves (mainly Trump family); (2) promoting racism and xenophobia (Trump in order to keep his “base”); (3) promoting a ChristianIST (not Christian) agenda of destroying reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights; and (4) destroying the social safety net created since the Depression. Along the way they will cause terrible damage in foreign policy, and of course to the environment.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
But Trump will help make abortion illegal, and that’s all his voters care about. They will sacrifice anything — including their own health and the health of their born children — to
control the wombs of total strangersprotect the unborn.They’ve been told that this is a sacrifice they have to make, and they’re happy to be martyrs on behalf of the unborn. It’s sick, but it’s true.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Botsplainer: Who is this “we” of which you speak. No one here is part of it as far as I can tell. Yeah, they may be voting for Pottersvilles writ large, but they ain’t we.
PIGL
@Botsplainer: that will certainly put a strain on the union. I doubt they have the balls or battalions to enforce it.
SatanicPanic
@Weaselone: So our choice is be ruled by morons, basically forever, or take a chance that our military will fire on us? I dunno, the latter at least might work out.
TriassicSands
John, maybe you should write a book:
“What the Fu*k Is the Matter with West Virginia”
Meanwhile, Trump is demonstrating once again his complete lack of knowledge about the Constitution. It seems he thinks that people who burn the flag should be jailed or stripped of their citizenship. Never mind the SCOTUS decisions making those things unconstitutional.
Americans just handed a loaded gun (with the safety off) to an intellectually challenged toddler.
gene108
@Jeffro:
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
“Learning”…my eyes are tearing up from laughing so hard…
Ain’t no one, no where going to learn nothin’ that needs to learn…
If Bush, Jr. and company didn’t teach them, nothing will…
Actually, let me take this back. The Germans learned, by April 1945, that in fact, their shit does stink. But the level of Painful they had to endure might be what we’ll have to endure for the “Learning” to kick in.
PIGL
@Weaselone: Well, that would happen *now*. Things will have to deteriorate somewhat further, but the day will come when the writ of the freeloaders doesn’t extend far enough to send those soldiers rolling through LA. It’ll be a question of who’s paying them at some point.
Empires fall, but not all at once. What we can see are the fault lines developing.
The Moar You Know
Don’t forget to leave the revolver on the coffee table so he can “Make America Even Better” when he’s done watching his last TV show. It’s not patriotic to cost the nation money, you know.
A lot of Americans are going to be getting their final “healthcare” from the end of a gun, because there will simply be nothing else that will be done for them. I wonder if any of them thought about that before casting a ballot. Probably not.
gogol's wife
The friend I was talking to today confirmed my impression that the Trump voters have just gone back to their normal thoughtless lives of paying no attention to anything. She says they aren’t posting on Facebook as they were before the election. They defeated Hillary and now they’re content, and they’re PAYING NO ATTENTION to the disaster that’s unfolding. This makes me more angry even than if they were gloating — it just confirms that their votes were cast with absolutely no thinking involved.
Yoda Dog
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I have to agree, unfortunately, that if it got bad enough to secede, you would be dealing with a government that wouldn’t hesitate to invade the day after.
The Truffle
I still wonder how the AARP/healthcare industry will react to eliminating systems that keep these organizations afloat. I mean, the folks Goober and Goobette voted for don’t count on all the industries that rely on the gub-mint programs. Like NASA and global warming? The Pentagon is all over that. Medicare? The healthcare industrial complex? This is not a game of Jenga, folks.
I’m reminded of GWB’s attempt to destroy Social Security. That went bust–even with a Dem minority. Turns out a lot of seniors vote in red states. OOOOOOOPS!
Time for the scare tactics and playing dirty, people. Maybe even some “they wanna starve Granny” commercials.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: The election was a reality TV show. It is over now they will pay attention when the next season starts.
The Moar You Know
@The Truffle: The technical term is “transfer payments”. I don’t know about New York but I do know that 40% of CA’s Federal taxes go to other states, states that refuse to tax their citizens adequately for the services they use and consume. I’m over that shit. My preferred solution would be #calexit. My next one would be an immediate end to transfer payments.
gluon1
@Mart: If it gives you any more confidence, they need 3/4 of state legislatures to effect a constitutional amendment. Article V says: “…Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof….”
ETA: As, I find, @Roger Moore said before I got here.
rp
Has anyone read this piece by FDB?
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/11/28/theres-no-conflict-here/
Seems like a ridiculous strawman.
schrodinger's cat
@The Truffle: Sssh don’t interrupt the Balloon Juice dirge.
schrodinger's cat
@rp: Not going to read boring Freddie, sorry.
D58826
@Hoodie: I have a cousin who is a Trump supporter. Her hubby spent 34 years as a Marine mostly at Lajune as a golfer for the generals. Somehow manager to miss out on being deployed to Vietnam. Has been retired and living on his pension for years.
Botsplainer
@The Moar You Know:
I’m should keep a list of puffy, pasty, Jesus humping “soft targets” so that if I decide to chuck it all for whatever reason, I take some out with me and Make America Great Again my own way.
Major Major Major Major
@rp: Haven’t read it, won’t read it, but I must say finding a ridiculous strawman in a piece by de Boer would surprise me about as much as finding coffee in this mug I’m drinking coffee from.
JPL
@The Truffle: That would work only if there are localized insurance companies, or single payer to cover them. Blue Cross can relocate to Alabama where there are no regulations, so that wouldn’t be an option.
John Revolta
@TriassicSands:
Um…………..I don’t know how to tell you this………………………………..
Iowa Old Lady
@gogol’s wife: The Medicare repeal is going to catch them by surprise, which I assume is why Ryan is moving as fast as he can.
ArchTeryx
They voted for my death.
I’m a white male, but I have a PhD, am unemployed and poor, and have a chronic illness that needs constant maintenance. That makes me a pointy headed intellectual.
And they VOTED FOR MY DEATH.
That makes them my mortal enemies AFAIAC. They wouldnt look at me and realize it right away, but that is how I am treating them from this point forward. Already kicked two friends off my Facebook for this, and that is just the fine shades of the beginning.
No mercy.
Macbethchick
Just about the best phrase I’ve read since this nightmare started. Appalachia knelt at the altar of the NRA, took their damn guns and shot themselves in the ass. For months I listened to my students talk about how great Trump is and that he’s going to make people work for their money and stop all the handouts. The same kids who are on free-lunch. The same kids who have a parent or parents who haven’t worked in years because they’re “on the disability” for one reason or another. The same kids whose parents make certain the kid stays on an IEP (Special Ed) as long as possible so mom and dad get that check every month. So fucking frustrating there are days I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. Do you think we’ll have a “Hee-Haw” redux? “Gloom…despair…and agony on me. Deep dark depression, excessive misery…”
And don’t hold your breath for Manchin. He’s a Republican in a Democrats’ clothing. By the way, did his daughter’s Mylan Epipen scandal cause him any political grief?
rp
@Major Major Major Major: Touche
goblue72
Yeah, let’s primary Manchin! Let’s primary all those DINOs! And the sorta centrist ones too! Primary the whole lot of ’em! That’ll show them who’s boss when Dems don’t have any seats at all!
And screw all those red state voters! And the swing state voters! They deserve what they are going to get! We’ll just secede or something something! Or ride off on our high horses!
JHC. Some of you are more in love with your own melodrama than a 3rd string actress on Days of Our Lives.
The United States is NOT a “liberal” country, no matter how many single issue polls you issue. It is a populist conservative one. Swing leaning voters are as much likely to be “socially conservative, economically liberal” as they are to be “socially liberal, economically conservative”. At some point, you have to talk to people with whom half the stuff out of their mouths you might find completely distasteful or even odious. I’d rather have a country where its possible to maybe expand Social Security but transgender bathroom rights might take an extra 10 years, than a country where neither possible, and we might even go backwards.
Even during the heyday of the New Deal that liberals love to wax poetically about, the liberal bloc did not control Congress for very long. FDR ran most of his big New Deal bills through between the elections of 1932 and 1936. Following the ’36 election – which was pretty much a landslide for FDR and the Democrats, mod/conservative Republicans (the majority of the minority party) formed a bloc with conservative, mostly Southern, Democrats called the Conservative Coalition. It mostly ran the show in Congress from 1937 until around the early 1960s. Only major domestic legislation FDR was able to get passed post-1936 was a Federal minimum wage. No major New Deal labor legislation made it out of Congress after that. Truman got mostly bottled up. Big dollar stuff at the time was most defense related for the Cold War and highway spending. (Eisenhower did manage to get some public housing money out the door.) Internationally, Southern Dems were mostly internationalist (but anti-Communist) in outlook, so the bloc didn’t hold as much on international issues. But it was mostly moot since the majority of the country agreed that it hated the Commies.
Wasn’t until LBJ with his deep power base and skills that a bloc was forged between Northern Dems and liberal Western/Northern Republicans that liberal legislation was able to be passed. And the door started to get shut before too long with some bleeding in the 1980s culminating in the full-blown return of the old Conservative Coalition in the 1990s. Except now, instead of a coalition, the conservative Democratic South became the conservative Republican South – and as the Democratic power base in Rust Belt cities has bled off over last 20 years as those Rust Belt cities shrink and die off, the long-standing American political status quo continues.
So you either accept the electorate you have and win elections with THAT electorate but figuring out how to appeal to a majority of the electorate. Or you can keep blaming the voters and find yourself on an ever shrinking island. Parties are not a substitution for church. They are not instruments of moral change. They are machines for winning elections (power) in a democratic system that only get to advance the issues of the party members if they win.
Or clap louder more of the same and watch Dems get hosed in 2020 and the GOP lock in gerrymandering for another decade.
? Martin
All that is why I’m focused on state politics for the next 2 years. Y’all are going to get it good and hard. CA went from being a D+23 state to a D+30 state. We’ll do this shit ourselves.
Schlemazel
@piratedan:
There is always a strong market for meth in rural America
piratedan
the part for me where the disconnect is, how in the fuck are these people going to learn? We’re set up here in a capitalistic nirvana, where the needs of the citizenry are subjugated for what is good for business. There is no more common good, we’re only tools to be exploited with the illusion of freedom. The media isn’t going to give a shit as long as they continue to follow the outrage model. I expect a steady diet of CNN informing me of the next plane wreck, weather disaster and missing white girl to be the interchangeable topics that drive the headlines. Our schools are about to be gutted in favor of more people who want to make a buck, and health care will return to being a privilege instead of a right, the way that Jeebus intended it, where your godly pastor will extol the sins of the immigrant and the girls that choose to believe that they are people.
sherparick
There is a sociology to this factor and how in hard times people become more tribal and conservative and resentful. The Democratic Party, and unfortunately the Clintons and Obama were part of this, became infatuated with coastal cities and the new economy starting in 1988 (Dukakis slaughtered Richard Gepthard in part because of Gepthard’s pro-life record, but als Gepthard’s protectionism and identification with the “Old Economy” where Dukakis promised “efficiency, free trade, and good management.”) Bill Clinton took Dukakis argument and gave it a populist twang. Even then he only got 43% of the vote 1992 and 48% in 1996. Clinton and the Democrats did not make protecting union and good union jobs a rallying cry in the 1990s. The death of the unions left a vacuum into which some people left WVa, some people dropped off, and some people dropped into the arms of the politicized, fundamentalist churches who pointed them at their enemies as gays, abortion, and the “secular elites” in the cities that were imposing their ways on them. People are tribal, and JC is an outsider now, not part of the tribe. Their tribe was once the union, now it is just the extended family and the church. We are going to have build unions or union-like organizations if we want to get some of these people back.
Yoda Dog
@goblue72: tl;dr
But then, I never read your comments, come to think of it. Have a great night.
Kay
I don’t care what happens to them anymore. They were so opposed to Obama and so vicious to Clinton that I think this almost had to happen. Even if Obama wasn’t solely focused on “coal country”, so what? They all benefited from what he tried to do. I just don’t care if they have health care anymore.
It was such a long fight and Democrats took such huge political hit over it and the minute they got it the main beneficiaries worked as hard as they could to elect people who will take it away. So they can all go back to the emergency room and then get their wages garnished when they can’t pay. It’s not my job to defend these benefits.
The Truffle
@Macbethchick: Suppose Trump introduces “welfare reform” for Goober and Goobette? That would send them into a rage.
Meanwhile, their numbers continue to shrink. They won one battle but will lose the war in the long run–even if they are so gung ho on gun ownership. As someone mentioned upthread, those guns will, unfortunately, be put to good use by people who realize they can’t afford healthcare anymore.
Just push for individual states to develop health care plans to protect their residents. In some states, I think it can be done.
Major Major Major Major
@Yoda Dog: “too by you, didn’t read”
SFAW
@goblue72:
I keep forgetting: before we were blessed with Reggie Mantle, we had you to grace us with the daily Two-Minute Hate.
ETA: I also am particularly enamored of your “the U-S-A is conservative, you libtards!” schtick. Especially when you say that the abundance of “single-issue” polls show otherwise, but they don’t really count.
PIGL
@Betty Cracker: and that’s the worst thing. You’re right to feel the way you do. The consequence of this election is that people are drawing lines like that. I think those lines are going to stay put. But in fact it’s more than drawing lines those lines are cutting ties, the ties that found your nation together .
schrodinger's cat
@sherparick: I have to agree with you about labor unions.
rp
@efgoldman: Friend who I respect posted a link and a recommendation on FB. I figured I’d give it a chance, but thought it was terrible. So now I’m wondering if my friend sees something I don’t.
Pogonip
@TriassicSands: That doesn’t really sound like Cole.
Maybe “What the Fucking Fuckity Fuck is the Matter with West Virginia, and Where is my Mustard”?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Kay: Yep, done.
Jim Parene
I just enjoyed a little slap down of a trumpHumper on FB. I was reading a back and forth between him and some other friends from my past career. I didn’t comment on his priveledged, uninformed view. I commented that I am working, in my own miniscule way, to make a difference, for the better, in these troubled times.
He answered me by asking if I was ging to move out of the country.
I answered him with an unambiguous F-U. I informed him that his vote for Lord Smallgloves was a direct F-U to those of us who rely on Medicare and S.S. I further informed him that I regret wasting my time and effort during our Union Organization efforts on people like him, who voted for a loud, proud con man who regularly shows contempt for working people and small business people. I stopped short of calling him a racisist, but there will be time for that later.
I know it won’t do any good, but, after all this time of being polite to these folks, Dammmmmmn!!! it feels good to say what I really feel to these jerks.
eclare
@rikyrah: That would be me, been a loyal Democrat for decades, now 48. I have insurance through the ACA and I’m pissed as hell at around the half the population of this country, and I honestly don’t know if I will ever get over it. Hard not to take it personally when the country collectively says, fuck off and die.
SFAW
@rp:
Probably pixies, unicorns, pink elephants, and so on.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@PIGL: They’ve already drawn the lines and cut the ties. The only reason any of them still have ties to any of us is because we’re useful in some way. Some of us are finally facing up to that fact.
Kay
When Social Security used to send this “estimated benefits” mailers out we would get people who would come into the law office to have me sort of “authenticate” the number. That’s how nervous they were. This is the only income they could count on when they could no longer work and they wanted reassurance that it was “guaranteed” , real, reliable. I would say “yeah, that’s real, it’s what you’re estimated to get” and they would be really relieved.
Then they vote for people who want to take it away. I just can’t deal with both of those things at once anymore. They have a duty to start making these connections because they’re NOT stupid. They have the same responsibility as everyone else does to make solid decisions. It’s like we’ve said to this whole group of people “oh, YOU don’t have to pay attention or make the most basic connections- someone else will be sure and protect this safety net you rely on”
Well, no more. They thought those Trump rallies were great and they wanted to “Trump that Bitch” and pretty soon they’ll be too old to work and their Social Security will have been gambled away in the stock market, because it wasn’t magic, it didn’t just drop from the sky, people had to fight for it. They didn’t want to fight for it and I’m not doing it for them.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I know we have stop being so ‘smug’ all the time, but seriously at this point if it wasn’t for the collateral damage, I’d say natural selection was doing it’s job. Stupid fucks.
The Truffle
@schrodinger’s cat: You are a DS9 fan! Awesome!
Yoda Dog
@Major Major Major Major:
Hal
Every time I think I’m over it and ready to move on some new Trump news pulls me right back to wow! That really happened. I’m stuck between being hopeful that this country will ultimately fight back against Trump and his terrible, horrible, no good presidency to one of my favorite quotes from Angels in America, one that seems so appropriate to this election. I hope my enthusiasm wins out but right now, I’m pretty much here:
debit
@Pogonip:
Fixed it.
goblue72
@SFAW: Liberal Oregon economist Tim Duy taking Krugman to the woodshed for exactly the same thing I have been harping on. The ego of smug liberals and their inability to connect with white workers and the middle class – Tim Duy’s Fed Watch.
If you aren’t willing to win, then you aren’t serious about politics. You’re just “fans”.
jenn
@The Truffle: Yes. Plus any appointments that Trump makes from Congress or other governmental roles will have to have an election to fill that seat. When that happens, we bust our asses for the Democrats, and see if we can get some extra Blue Power into wherever in local/state/federal government we can.
goblue72
@SFAW: Political identity and voting is not forged around a menu of “issues” for a large number of voters. That doesn’t mean liberals can’t win. But it means they aren’t going to win by waving around a list of “issues” and then thinking that if they just explain it enough times to those “rubes”, those rubes will vote for them.
SFAW
@goblue72:
Oooh, we’re into extra time, or whatever they call it in soccer. Two Minutes wasn’t enough, I guess.
Kay
So a huge group of Americans get to go out and vote without bothering about any of those details and this other group of Americans is then supposed to protect them from the consequences of their actions?
That’s pretty “elitist”, actually. Surely they could have paid attention long enough to notice that Donald Trump LIED much more than Hillary Clinton.They’re capable of recognizing A LIAR. They have that skill. You don’t need college for that. Maybe this on them and NOT the fault of liberals?
Jim Parene
I have a serious question for Richard Mayhew: Could California, NY, and all the other Blue States form their own, collective health plans?
I know it is a monstrous project, but is it even remotely feasable?
SFAW
@goblue72:
You and Shrummy must have fascinating conversations.
SatanicPanic
@? Martin: This. Time to wave the CA flag. We tried, but we can’t go on paying taxes to subsidize people who hate us.
Matt McIrvin
@gratuitous: I don’t know what the strategy is, but it was the first thing I said on the day after Election Day. Told people to watch closely, see if they liked how Trumpworld turned out, and turn out themselves… not just in four years, but in TWO years. Sooner than that, if there’s a local, state or special election then.
les
@The Truffle:
AARP will continue to sell insurance and rent its name to insurance companies, just like they do now.
jacy
You want a microcosm? Look at Louisiana. Bobby Jindal had eight years of kleptocratic reign, where he enriched his friends, dismantled public education and healthcare, and shit all over the environment. Eventually it did dawn on the residents of Louisiana that Jindal was a crook and an idiot. You couldn’t say his name without someone spitting. He ended up with a 27% approval rating in a very red state. So we got a Democratic governor who is trying to clean up that absolute disaster Jindal left behind. People can come to a realization. Not all of them will, but some of them will.
I think we never would have had Obama without the total incompetence of George Bush. We have to figure out how to stay alive through the next several years and be prepared to clean up an even bigger mess. And that’s the best case scenario. I think we all know what the worst case scenario is.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim Parene: Massachusetts had a pretty good one going, which was a model for the ACA. We could pass it again, probably will–though of course it could never entirely replace the ACA.
mai naem mobile
Kurt Eichenwald has said that we shouldn’t make fun of the people who voted for El Douche when they figure out they were duped. Why? I say rub it in. Rub their stupid dumb faces in Cheeto Dust. Open their stupid mouths and shove a mugful of dry cheeto dust down their throat so they choke on it. Idiots. Rubes. This shows you why the Nigerian prince scam works.
sherparick
@goblue72: I mostly agree, although bitching and moaning at least is understandable. However, if West Virginia still had the strong unions with good jobs that filled the Ohio and Kanawha river valleys in the 1970s and 80s and even the early nineties would it not still be voting Democratic? I don’t think people are more racist now then they were in 1984 and 1988 when West Virginia voted Democratic against a Republican tide. http://www.statejournal.com/story/30003216/closing-up-shopseveral-wv-industries-are-becoming-extinct-and-some-say-the-rippleeffects-will-go-much-further-than-anyone-realizes
Feathers
@Roger Moore: The most dangerous thought anyone ever had was “things can’t get any worse.” There was a great series over at Orcinus where the main point was that anyone ever declaring that what we need is a blank slate is someone very dangerous and to fight against as hard as you can. Blank slatism is messianic thinking – never a good thing.
Saw somewhere on twitter after the election – The dark ages didn’t come because people wanted dark, they came because people saw the light.
Blueskies
@Jeffro:
You are way, way too optimistic. The rethugs will kill Obamacare and Medicare and will blame Obama and the Dems and these same stupid, stupid, stupid, fucking moronic dipshits will lap it up and ask for more.
They are that fucking stupid.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@goblue72:
Fuck off you stupid jackass. This election was a referendum on white supremacist patriarchy and white cultural resentment. Please explain which part of the Democratic coalition you are willing to throw under the populist bus. Show your work or gtfo.
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
ignore him & maybe he will go away
Pogonip
@debit: I approve your message!
gogol's wife
@Major Major Major Major:
An important mantra here at BJ.
Baud
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
All of them, Katie.
John Cole
@goblue72: @les:
I didn’t say that.
I didn’t say that either.
Physician, heal thyself.
This is wrong, too. Individuals may label themselves as conservative or identify with the conservative label, but on the issues they are by and large rather liberal. And even so, liberals have been gaining on identity in recent years and hit a high last year. Not to mention, of those who voted, a decided majority chose the liberal candidate.
I’m not sure what the point of your rant here is. It’s basically “suck it up and do what the uninformed want because maybe some good things will happen by accident.” Either that or you are suggesting we lie to them like Republicans.
So, um, no. But at least you didn’t call us all smug.
HILFY
John Cole, is your town safe from the forest fires ?
SatanicPanic
@mai naem mobile: These people live in an information/entertainment bubble. They’ll have their preacher, their radio hosts, their TV pundits Jason Aldean telling them how much city folk are laughing at them no matter what we do.
Davebo
@goblue72:
I question an economist who considers roughly 10% or less to be “nearly half”.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: Yeah, this “learning” thing evades these cretins.
They are idiots. They cut off their nose to spite their face and wonder why people stare at them.
Major Major Major Major
To a degree I do believe it’s important not to be an asshole when people come around to realize that your way of thinking is right. It’s hard, but it’s important. You can’t shit all over them for being wrong and then shit all over them for it taking them too long to realize they’re wrong, becoming enlightened, and wanting to join your side. Dan Savage writes about this as the importance of, essentially, having grace when somebody comes around on gay rights. You shouldn’t say, oh, you’re wrong, gay people are people too, you’re an idiot and a hick for not realizing that and then when they come around say oh, took you too long, only idiot hicks don’t realize this from the start, and now you’re only coming around because your son is gay and there’s something in it for you, you selfish idiot hick.
Archon
@jacy: Louisiana is an interesting test case. I suspect Edwards will govern fairly well, get the state’s house back in order and then get rewarded by being booted out of office by a Republican saying Edwards is in cahoots with lefty, left, left liberals and promising that, this time their ideas will work.
That’s the problem in my eyes, in large swaths of the country voters aren’t making rational decisions, at least rational in ways the left wants to define a “rational voter”. So if voters aren’t going to be rational then it’s hard to come up with policies that you know will redound to your political benefit come election time. Obama give hundreds of thousands of people health care in Appalachia paid for by blue state tax dollars and his name is mud in those regions and the right wing is in full control. That’s not rational but that’s they way it is. The Obama era has made that clear as day.
notoriousJRT
@The Truffle:
What’s stopping them? No fed money for Medicaid, would be my guess.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I agree. If they come to you, that’s a different matter than you going to them to beg them to be moral and reasonable.
trollhattan
@Davebo: Oregon, maaaaaaan….
jenn
@gratuitous: Yep. We all need to push up our sleeves and get to work. And talk about the work we’re doing, and encourage others to get to work.
I was reading something about workplaces earlier today, the intertwined network of people, and how positive and negative interactions all cause ripples throughout the network – the only problem is that negative interactions are 4-7 times stronger than positive ones. I haven’t read the original research, but it more or less passes the gut test for me. So, thinking about that, it seems to me that for positivity to win, it has to be relentless. I don’t mean pie-in-the-sky baseless optimism, I mean focus on and work towards things we can do, and dish out a lot of smiles and a lot of hugs along the way.
Anyway, that’s the challenge I’m taking up. If the GOP is going to blow up our country, I’m going to work to protect what I can, and rebuild what I can’t, and I’m going to gather with as many like-minded folks as I can find to do so! :*)
notoriousJRT
@Major Major Major Major:
I guess you are expecting them to come around? Perhaps I have gone around the cynical twist, but I don’t expect them to come around.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Baud:
Exactly, just like Bernie said. Stop with any identity politics except white/male identity politics.
Davebo
@trollhattan:
I see what you did there…
gogol's wife
@notoriousJRT:
I think perhaps the low-info, soft support, “I just don’t like her” voters might come around — when we’re living in a dysfunctional hellhole.
Major Major Major Major
@notoriousJRT: I am responding to as written at e.g. #120 here:
Yoda Dog
@Major Major Major Major: We will have to be trapped in Stalingrad before they will come around though. If you voted for that? Then you are lost.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The identity group I’m a member of, which I vehemently reject.
PhoenixRising
@Major Major Major Major:
Except if you’re talking to Rob Portman, R-OH. Because that mofo…seriously, do you not grasp what ’empathy’ even means? Your son comes out and all of a sudden you do a 180 on how the government you’ve collected a paycheck from since law school should treat gay people…that’s sociopath-level right there.
ruckus
This is why I’m fucked.
If you get your retirement and/or your healthcare from the government kiss your ass goodbye.
They want and are willing to fuck everyone over 65. Because the people who pay them will never have anything less than a full and wonderful retirement. The selfish bastards will jump for joy every time anyone over 65 dies and there is another $1.96 in their bank account.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
The long-standing American political status quo is straight white men on top, everyone else underneath. Again, I’m currently reading a book that was written in 1835 and it’s the same now as it was then.
We’re still waiting to hear how you expect us to “win back” white/male supremacist voters without going backwards on civil rights. FDR got the New Deal by promising that white men would get more and better benefits than everyone else. LBJ tried to extend that promise out to the rest of the country, and the polarized country we have right now is the result.
As I’ve said many times, you and I are on the same side as far as strategy — re-winning local and state races from the bottom up — but I find your proposed tactic of discarding civil rights and catering to white supremacy to be morally repugnant.
Botsplainer
@goblue72:
Give it a fucking rest. They’re unreachable by anything other than a baseball bat to the head. They’re my entire fucking maternal extended family (and various acquaintances growing up), angry that nobody laughs at polack jokes anymore and angry that that people get upset when you call people sp*cs or n*ggers in public. They were dispirited in 06, 08 and 12, thinking that their time had passed, but their boy Trump can make things fun for them again by restoring those attitudes.
You want to hear a funny, funny joke from a family reunion I heard one year as a kid?
Isn’t hat funny? Hahaha, how subversive.
THAT is the attitude of the sainted WWC, what they say when cameras aren’t on them. It’s what they say and feel in the workplace, at church, at home. You think you can reach that by “not being smug”?
Fuck you.
PhoenixRising
@Mnemosyne:
It’s also impracticable and failed, but just because it’s wrong in the sense of Can’t Possibly Work Worth a Damn to Move Those 120,000 Votes doesn’t make it less wrong morally. It’s BOTH a floor wax and a dessert topping!
PSA: I’ve spent my life around white people, many from and in Appalachia. Laying the trail so they can figure out they hosed themselves when votin’ time comes, is worthwhile. Being less rude, cruel and unforgiving to them than they are to ‘elite’ ‘liberals’ in the meantime is what fucks it up, because they associate compassion and empathy with weakness.
Mock away, my fellow literate Americans! It’s our only hope of ever winning the Electoral College!
Mnemosyne
@jenn:
I still say that we need a professional propaganda outlet to rival Breitbart, but one that’s relentlessly focused on the positive: What Democrats Have Done For You Today. We already know that Democratic-leaning voters hate negativity and will stay home if campaigning is too negative — even if the Democrat is the victim of the negative campaign — so let’s give them nothing but positive messages.
Major Major Major Major
@PhoenixRising: I believe the reaction to Portman is actually what inspired Savage to write what I was referring to.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Seems like the country’s only hope is a gene mutation or a virus that wipes all you lightly pigmented Y chromosome bearers out. Sorry, not sorry.
ETA: white women aren’t all that smart either, as it turns out.
Botsplainer
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Yep.
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne: Your comment wasn’t directed to me, but I’ll put my two cents in anyway. I’m not in favor of discarding civil rights, and I don’t think goblue72 is, either. I just want to see the same amount of energy directed towards economic issues as social issues. Here’s one example: we’ve heard a great deal about the “bathroom” part of the North Carolina “Bathroom Bill”, but next to nothing about the sections of that very same bill that prevent cities in NC from passing “living wage” laws, as well as nullifying any such laws that were already in existence. I support trans rights as much as you do, but far more people are going to be hurt by killing off living wage laws. Why are we not talking to those people?
Major Major Major Major
@Ridnik Chrome: just yesterday, during a discussion on this same topic, goblue72 said, and I quote,
ETA: Anyway, the reason we aren’t talking about those things is because Republicans made it all about bathrooms. They did that. It was all they wanted to talk about. The issue was made up out of whole cloth by Republicans. Democrats made some minor policy tweaks to accommodate trans folks, Republicans came in and sucked up all the oxygen in the room on any number of issues by talking constant bullshit about bathrooms. The Democrats did not create bathroom laws.
Mart
@gluon1: Sorry – need 2/3rds to call the convention; 3/4 to ratify.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I can’t either. For those of us with our eyes open, it’s a disaster we cannot begin to reconcile.
Ridnik Chrome
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, and the reason they did that was so they could sneak through the parts of the bill that ban living wage laws. So why not use that tactic against them? Get people angry about the bill’s economic effects, and then repeal the whole damned thing, including the parts that hurt trans people.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Ridnik Chrome:
Who might those people be? Where are they? The larger question is how to appeal to people’s reason and not the lizard brain that automatically resorts to thinking trans people are icky and perverted and need to be stopped at the bathroom door – I won’t wait while you try to explain it to me.
Starfish
@goblue72: Are you from Oregon? That explains SO SO MUCH.
SFAW
@Ridnik Chrome:
Maybe because they don’t listen when we do, and they then pull the lever for the R candidate anyway.
Because of economic anxiety, of course.
ETA: Forgot to add: so glad you’re “not in favor of discarding civil rights.”
Mnemosyne
@Ridnik Chrome:
As Major^4 pointed out, the “bathroom bill” in North Carolina was designed as a stalking horse — we’re going to take away your wage protections, but you’re going to be able to demonize transgender people in return. And what we’re dealing with is that there’s a certain segment of the population that thinks that’s a good bargain. Taking away the rights of minority groups is more important to them than their own rights.
It’s a weird sacrificial mindset that I’m not sure how to break through. Telling them that the bill hurts them, too, is not a dealbreaker, because it’s already an implicit bargain — they lose economic rights but gain social status, and the gain in social status is worth the economic hit.
I know it seems crazy to us, but this is genuinely how a lot of these people think. My cousin in Wisconsin was willing to forego health insurance for her own born children as long as Republicans promised to outlaw abortion. That seemed like a totally reasonable and moral trade to her. How do we fight that?
Ridnik Chrome
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: “Those people” are anyone trying to survive while working two or three minimum wage jobs with no benefits, and there are a lot more of them than you think.
PhoenixRising
@Ridnik Chrome:
Please read up on the Moral Mondays movement and return your work with a 200 word biography of Rev. William Barber.
Your assumptions about who “we” are and who “they” are…are showing.
bemused
@Mnemosyne:
And those happy martyrs busy praying and sacrificing won’t lift a finger to help any of their good but not evangelical neighbors out if it is needed and maybe not even their own tribe either.
Major Major Major Major
@Ridnik Chrome: We actually do this all the time, though sort of the opposite, when we do things like putting LGBT protections into other must-pass bills.
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne: I honestly don’t know. But I do think there are at least some people out there who would be more willing to back us on civil rights issues if they could be 100% sure we had their backs on economic issues.
Turgidson
@rp: deBoer, arguing against strawmen? Preposterous. Next you’ll tell me that water can put out fires and that bananas are an excellent source of potassium.
I thought this passage was particularly hilarious in its obliviousness, given the declarant:
Good ol’ Freddie.
Ksmiami
@Mnemosyne: We stop funding the red states. Let them wither.
PhoenixRising
@Ridnik Chrome: NC was the last state to pass a DOMA by 20 points. Many of those YES votes were made by people who are now participating in Democratic Party led resistance to the so-called Bathroom Bill…because they weren’t fooled into thinking this was about bathrooms, I’d suggest.
Welcome to the future, in which well-intended lefties suggest that ‘we’ should ‘just’…do things that the longstanding stakeholders in the Democratic Party have been doing for quite some time, with varying levels of success. Whee! This is fun!
Mnemosyne
@Ridnik Chrome:
There probably are some, but how do you identify those people and what are they looking for to prove we’re “100 percent on their side” when it comes to economics?
And please don’t tell me we should have nominated Joe Biden, the senator from MBNA, to prove our economic bona fides. His connections to Wall Street are much deeper and much more problematic than Hillary’s. The only reason he might have won against Trump is that he’s white and has a peni$, so he might have been able to sway some of Trump’s soft racists and misogynists.
Ridnik Chrome
@PhoenixRising: Moral Mondays is exactly the kind of movement I would like to see on a national level.
Vhh
I have no f**ks left to give for these morons. It is going to be a race between the GOP killing off their base (raising the average income of the white population and perhaps their average IQ, esp. after they become a minority in many states) and the blue states deciding to take their 70% of the US wealth into a new republic of successful coastal elites. California is already the world’s sixth biggest economy, surpassing France, and could draw Washington, Oregon, Nevada, NM,and Colorado into a formidable economic entity. Meanwhile, back east we have Mass., NY, NJ, NH, Delaware,RI, Maryland, Virginia, and maybe Maine (if they can get their act together and dump Lepage). The rest of the states can bid to join the successful or go their own way and rejoin the third world that FDR rescued them from. MN might go with Canada. Texas will then ultimately be overrun by Mexico, which serves them right. Trump’s pal Putin will be pleased.
SFAW
@Ridnik Chrome:
Don’t get out much, do you?
No matter how many times the argument is made that the Rethugs are trying to make things more difficult for the WWC (and pretty much anyone else not making high-six-figures or more per year), as well as pointing out that the Rethugs (when in power) damage the economy far more than Dems do, there seems to be something — for the life of me, I can’t imagine what ever it might be — that supersedes their “economic anxiety” being assuaged, and they end up pulling the R lever.
I mean, they’re the Party of Personal Responsibility and all that, and “Country Before Party” is something the Rethugs say a lot, so it must be true, but for some reason I get the feeling that something else is a driver.
Probably just my imagination, runnin’ away with me.
Shorter me: It ain’t a trade: “you cure my economic anxiety, and I won’t kick down on the darkies” is hardly a winning strategy. If their “economic anxiety” is what (allegedly) causes them to hate on the blacks/browns/Jews/others, then “economic anxiety” is just a convenient excuse.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@SFAW:
Seriously. How many ways does this need to be said?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Vhh:
My approach on social media is to point out and cheer on Trump voters’ imminent demise due to lack of insurance because that’s what they voted for, and that I truly do hope they get what they want.
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne: I definitely don’t think Biden would have been a good candidate. I voted for Hillary in both the primaries and the general election. I thought Sanders had a good message, but was the wrong candidate. And in retrospect, I think Hillary had too much DLC baggage to successfully co-opt Sanders’ message. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who couldn’t do it. I have faith in the younger generation. We found one Obama, we’ll find others.
SFAW
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
As many as needed until the rest of the class catches up? Of course, some of our esteemed commenters here are fine examples of Sinclair Lewis’s comment about getting a man to understand something.
ellie
@Roger Moore: Thank you for this measured response. I read the 34 states needed for a new convention on Twitter right after the election and have been sick about it ever since.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You know something – Why is Granny Starver Ryan gloating about his SS plan now? They showed the kotch way in Wisconsin -midnight Republican only votes so the opposition can’t get organized. Two months even gives the idiot red neck hicks a chance to get the clue that that REAL American Social Security is going away if Ryan gets his way.
So is Ryan truly a comic book villain who has to tell everyone his plans, or he does figure he’s getting the plastic spork too next year and looking to screw Trump over in some pre-revenge by giving Trump in a Social Security defeat with his own base before Trump even gets into office?
NW Phil
Even with Obamacare, semi-rural areas are losing healthcare because the can’t attract the care providers they need. Medicaid doesn’t pay and Medicare is not much better. It’s happening already in my very liberal county, which is not that far away from the city.
Sad to say, but with baby boomers retiring, many areas are greying out and are going to be a long term expense for the urban areas until they can attract businesses & young workers to pay help pay the bills.
Emma
@Ridnik Chrome: You know, maybe if you had paid attention you would have heard Hillary try to do exactly that. She laid out a 30 BILLION plan to bail out the coal miners and their families. Told them so, right to their faces. Maybe if she had said “and we’re going to give electroshock therapy to all those gay folk” they would have listened but even then I doubt it.
EBT
@Ridnik Chrome: Sander’s message was “Make Bernie Rich”.
@NW Phil: Dying rural towns are going to continue to die until everyone is gone from them. Nothing will make young people want to come back to nowhere.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Emma:
Remember when Obama went to Elkhart and connected the dots as to why they were in a much better economic place in as simple a way as it’s possible to do without being insulting – Obama is great at that – and then they voted for Trump, because…. change. They’re just a bunch of mean racist dumbfucks.
Turgidson
@jacy:
And I’m going to predict that Governor Edwards will be soundly defeated assuming he runs for reelection, no matter how good a job he does given the mess he inherited. In large swathes of this country (and indeed the country as a whole, since those swathes have outsized influence via the EC and Senate representation), Democrats are always “even worse” right up until the moment the Republicans in power create such a colossal fuckup that they can no longer pin on the poors and the browns or BS their way out of. Then a Democrat might win an election and get two years to clean it up, at which time they are sent packing if they haven’t delivered unicorns that fart money.
Obama’s personal brand was strong enough to withstand this usual cycle in 2012, but when his name wasn’t on the ballot and the party ran from him and their own records in the midterms, they got buried. And now Trumpocalypse. Democrats might win in 2020 assuming the GOP hasn’t yet completed their project of limiting the franchise to white men who own land, or just called off the election because terrorists. Then they’ll get two years to fix everything and deliver a pony to the front door of every American. Then they’ll get the boot again. I’d love to be wrong, but if this country can elect Donald fucking Trump, I don’t see any reason to be optimistic.
frosty
@Mart:
With any luck the US breaks apart and some rump states (Hi California!) keep the US Constitution while the rest of the country spirals into the batshit darkness. OTOH, it could make the Partition look like a walk in the park, with ~300,000,000 guns out there.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I can’t blame you for thinking that. If the virus could look into hearts and determine if the host really does believe in “liberty and justice for all” it would be helpful, but that’s stretching the suspension of disbelief a bit far.
Theodore Wirth
Angry enough John Cole? I suspect that you are not old enough to be grandfathered under existing conditions. I will be 65 in July 2017 and more than willing to give one last middle-finger salute to the plutocrats that have brought us to this point. I give up and will die quickly–my younger wife and clueless children–not so much.
PIGL
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: That is the other side of the coin, yes indeed. I don’t disagree, Sister. This election was a decisive turning point; there’s no coming back.
Gemina13
@PIGL:
Good.
When you’re entangled in the anchor rope, cut it loose so you won’t drown.
Mnemosyne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I think he watched the antics of the media during the election and realized that there is absolutely nothing he can say that they will report on honestly. They will cover for him 100 percent no matter what he says, so why not monologue about his villainous plans?
ETA: Yes, I am specifically referencing this movie character.
Karen
You know why this happens?
Because the Trumpistas would rather die than allow minorities to get health care.
Because they’d sell their children if it meant that minorities would not be allowed to live in their vanilla neighborhood.
Because their hatred is stronger than their self-preservation.
And that includes the Dems who didn’t vote.
Miss Bianca
@Mart: Oh, crap. You’re scaring me.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
With any luck, he’ll get sucked into a jet engine over Madison.
Or over Lambeau Field, so Omnes can tell us about it.
ETA: For what it’s worth, when you wrote about monologuing, my first thought was the conversation between Frozone and Mr. Incredible, even before I clicked on the link.
Richard Mayhew
@Jim Parene: tomorrow’s post is starting to noodle around with that question… probably not a national compact but states could do something if the money works?
Seth Owen
@efgoldman: A brand new Constitution would still need ratification by 3/4 of the states. If it’s obviously full of your feared bad features it won’t pass. And if it does, well, we are so fucked the old Constitution wouldn’t save us anyway.
240 years is an awful long time under the same basic law. There is little precedent for it. Even the unwritten British Constitution has changed enormously in that time frame. France has had FIVE republics, a restored monarchy and two empires in less time.
Anonymous patient
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
A good point.
I’m pretty angry. I’ve felt secure and well off all my life, educated and working in a good field with high skills and good recommendations. Often one of the smarter people in the room, though now I know that wasn’t as frequent as I thought long ago. Then we retired, with somewhat intact 401/457 saving plans, two not large pensions, and Social Security and Medicare with good supplemental coverage.
Things were looking OK. We traveled some, saw the Grand Canyon, spent time in Arizona, toured once in Spain and France. Exciting. Then some health problems, surgery, OK because Medicare.
But Social Security is a major part of our income. Medicare is all there is between us and being really sick.
If the Republican party takes everything we Americans have worked for for our whole lives, they will make enemies of us, all of us once successful workers with plans for a happy retirement. I already know they think we’re their enemies, all of us open-minded thinkers. Thought is their enemy. That’s why theocratic patriarchy is their preferred form of social construct.
They seem to think once they have temporary (or even permanent) control of the levers of national power they can do as they wish. I don’t think that’s a wise path, or correct strategic planning. But anger and desperation is perhaps stronger than they seem to expect. Once their “base” is suffering, that base is also well armed and not well controlled, as we see from watching Trump rallies. They will turn on their masters, as they are not broken to the rope.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed.
They voted for it good and hard, let them have it their way. They were warned, they were given ample time to figure it out, they failed miserably at both. Fuck them.
Of course most of us are going to get it good and hard right along with them.
And one thing makes me even angrier than losing an election to the shit heads. They haven’t yet learned a fucking damn thing from getting it good and hard or that they could have it even just a little bit better up till now, why should we expect them to learn a fucking damn thing after the republicans fuck all of us up completely?
I said it before on here and I’ll say it again, I think this will be the end of this experiment in governing that we have been conducting for the last 240 or so years. We’ve always had some what of a balance, enough so that one side could not either ruin everything or fix enough stuff, and that led to incremental improvement. We just lost that and to a bunch of 12th century assholes. I don’t see how the country can continue to function, given the election results and so I see anarchy on the near horizon because of it. I also see a world wide depression caused by this, we aren’t the entire engine of the world economy that many think we are any more, but we aren’t chopped liver either. I have no idea what will emerge from the ashes but I don’t suspect it will look anything like what this experiment was supposed to look like.
SFAW
@Anonymous patient:
I was more-or-less following you up to that point. But the idea that they’ll turn on the Rethugs seems to be wishful thinking — they’ve been told for 35-plus years that Dems and Llllllliberals are the source(s) of all their woes, and they are more than happy to believe it.
Well, darkies too — who apparently are not generally covered by the Second Amendment, because they’re not “real” Americans.
toocanAnj
@The Truffle: Well, that is the first thing since the elction that stirred a bit of hope in me! Thanks.
kylefresh
@ArchTeryx: amen
dianne
I hope to see the scooters fully charged up and the tri-corner hats out in force for Trump’s victory tour. He so loves positive reinforcement and when he doesn’t get it, maybe he’ll have a complete breakdown. Time for the morans to take to the streets.
By the way, as a child of the south, I can tell you from experience that the Dems represent the blacks, the R’s represent the whites. We’ve been gone for 30 years, but nothing has changed nor will it ever. They will blindly vote for
their own tribe with nary a thought no matter how much damage to themselves. Because it’s what they do.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Mnemosyne:
There’s definitely one person in my FB list who appears to have voted for him just for that. Retired 70-something white guy who clearly will be affected by it…SMH
SteveKnNKY
@Botsplainer: Absolutely agree. I’ve stated I read this blog bc Cole is in WV and Xander is/was near me in Northern Kentucky.
That attitude is pervasive throughout my family and friends. My aunts and uncles weren’t raised like this. They morphed into bigots though and taught that to their children (my cousins). Thanksgiving I told my mother (who hosts her family’s side) it is them or my family. I will not have my son around these people. They have called PBO a N***** since the day after his win in 2008. They know it is impolite to use the word until they get into a group. Then everyone they are against is a towel-head N*****, a sand N*****, and a Guatemalan N***** and so on.
I was taught two lesson by both sets of my grandparents.
1. If it isn’t you today, it may be you tomorrow. Be compassionate, emphatic and do what you can to help other people.
2. You only learn your lessons the hard way. You learn nothing on the easy path.
Lesson 2 has to be taught now.
If you did not vote, there are serious consequences.
If you are an auto/part supply worker who voted trump, there is no PBO coming to say your job.
If you are construction, there is no PBO spending political capital on a stimulus.
If you are a teacher who voted trump, you get nothing but your public school becoming a charter school.
If you are a vet, you face a privatized VA or the open market for your care.
If you are a WV, KY, PA or VA coal miner getting a benefit for black lung, three little lines will be wiped with ACA repeal and your $1290 a month goes.
If you are a parent with a disabled child, their Medicare/Medicaid certificate evaporates with block grants or wholesale privatization.
If you are not a white male, there will be no justice for four years. Or longer.
If you are not a white male you are meant to be subjugated to the conservative white male ethos. Not acquiescence or capitulation. Subjugation.
My one serious prediction besides the economy tanking, is my lovely senator mitch mcconnell and paul ryan teaming up to eliminate the Federal Minimum Wage.