(Tony Auth via GoComics.com)
From the Boston Globe:
The groundbreaking Massachusetts health insurance law may have prevented about 320 deaths a year, according to a Harvard study of the legislation that was used as a model for President Obama’s national health program.
The researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, in a study published Monday, estimated that the law, which expanded coverage to most residents, has saved about one life for every 830 people who enrolled in health insurance…
During the four years after Massachusetts implemented the 2006 law, death rates in the state dropped by nearly 3 percent among young and middle-age adults compared with similar populations in states that did not expand coverage, the researchers concluded…
The researchers compared the changes in death rates in Massachusetts with what happened in counties across the country with comparable populations — with similar ages, socioeconomic status, and health insurance rates before 2006 — that were located in states that had not expanded insurance coverage. The mortality rates in those counties remained unchanged during the time period during which they fell in Massachusetts.
Elderly adults in Massachusetts, who mostly have Medicare coverage, also experienced no significant drop in their death rates compared with other states. This finding, in contrast to the death-rate decline among younger adults who were mostly likely to gain coverage, “suggests to us that health reform was the likely explanation,” Sommers said.
Adding strength to the finding was a larger drop in deaths due to preventable causes, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and infections, compared with deaths that would not have been affected by health insurance, such as those caused by accidents, suicides, or acts of violence. The researchers found nearly a 5 percent decrease in the death rate for preventable causes…
Or, as one of the first Globe commentors tongue-in-cheeked it, “GOP spin: ACA Increases Social Security Costs by 3%!”
NotMax
(Repeated from below)
Sigh. More crackers than Uneeda.
Tennessee GOP State Senator Likens Obamacare Sign-Ups To Nazi Death Trains
Linda Featheringill
Lovely article! I was surprised by the extent of the drop in the death rate.
And yes, SS costs may have gone up. [Hooray!]
Schlemizel
And still the spineless brigade we are supposed to count on to make the country better will be running away from ACA this fall.
My brother was lucky, he was in a terrible car accident & was left with brain damage. He started listening to Rush & became a Republican nut bag. His party is at east working for the things he now believes. I wish my party worked as hard for the right things.
Baud
@Schlemizel:
Who is doing this? It’s become a media meme but I never see any names attached to it.
Schlemizel
@Baud:
Instead of me trying to prove a negative how about we make a list of D’s running for re-election that are making a visible full-throated defense of the bill similar in volume & insistence minus the howling, that the goopers are making against it.
debbie
@NotMax:
And still not a peep from the ADL?
Aimai
@Schlemizel: you should read talking points memo. This is exactly what the dems are doing. You can stop whining now.
Kay
@Baud:
I asked Sherrod Brown the last time he was here if they were going to have some plan this time to respond to attacks, if they would defend the law, and he admitted they did a bad job.
He defends it, and in a way I wouldn’t have predicted. In this county he touted the mental health/addiction provisions. It’s true, we have a lot of untreated mental health and addiction issues and that goes to arrest and incarceration- a whole sad chain of events. I wouldn’t have predicted selling it on those terms, yet that’s what he did.
He may be better at this than I am though, because after he left I realized that our mental health/disabilities/addiction agency funding levies always pass, and by wide margins. A silent majority.
I admire it, frankly, taking a risk like that. That’s not a population that is considered particularly politically profitable. You know how this goes, usually. They point to some church-going small business owner with a socially acceptable physical illness :)
Linda Featheringill
@Schlemizel:
You are really pessimistic this morning. How do you feel?
Baud
@Kay:
I expect different Dems to take different tacks depending on their constituencies. But this Dems running away meme is EVERYWHERE and there’s never any content to it. I’m sure there’s some Dem who is off the reservation (it’s who we are), but I haven’t seen enough evidence to castigate the whole party over it, or even to be discouraged.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aimai: I have yet to hear a single Dem running for re-election make a loud and full throated roar of support for the ACA. I am sure they are out there… In MA, NY, MN, RI, etc but nothing from those in competitive races. Mary Landrieu talks a lot about Medicaid expansion but utters nary a word about the ACA or Dog forbid, the dreaded “ObamaCare”. That is the standard playbook for this years election. Schlemizel’s complaint is that Dems seem to be afraid to stand for what they supposedly believe in. Something on which I concur.
jayackroyd
Confirming that we do have a meetup in NYC today starting at 830 pm at Rudy’s. Digby will be stopping by after 10, after Hillman festivities are over.
We’ll be in the outdoor space in back, unless it gets too cold.
Questions? Deeply held grievances? [email protected]
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Republicans like to talk about the ACA as the end of freedom. I would like to see Dems turn that argument on it’s head and call it the end of serfdom. Don’t like your job but afraid to leave it because you need the health insurance? Fear no more.
Fred
Or, as one of the first Globe commentors tongue-in-cheeked it, “GOP spin: ACA Increases Social Security Costs by 3%!”
Maybe that is not so much a joke. As Scrooge quipped, “Let them die quickly and reduce the surplus population.” After all, once you get sick enough to be in danger of death you are a Taker not a Maker (unless you are part of the 1% in which case you are honored and valued for your wisdom and past contributions) so please go underground quickly and quietly so as not to stink the place up too much.
jayackroyd
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s worse than that. They can’t avoid owning Obamacare. If they want turnout, they’re not gonna get it by tiptoeing around the issue. It’s 2010 all over again (although it would be hard to match having the majority in both houses, a financial crisis created by consumer fraud and deciding to run on lowering the deficit almost as much as Republicans say they will.)
WereBear
I had the misfortune to encounter a local insurance professional. I’d always admired her work ethic and attention to detail. But raise her head up from her desk and it turns out she’s a Foxbot.
I whiteknuckled through tales of how “this is going to cost so much money” and we’re “going to have a doctor shortage” and “no one wants to take rates this low” and I managed to bail on the conversation because I swear she was this close to saying, “those people.”
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Charlie Crist, presumptive Dem governor nominee in Florida, is vocally defending the president in general and the ACA specifically. But then again, he doesn’t currently hold office and is a former Republican, so he needs to make a case to Democrats that he’s really one of us. That no doubt enters his calculus.
Regarding the upcoming midterms, if I were the Democratic Party’s strategist, I would try like hell to turn out Obama voters on the scale of 2008 and 2012 while also accepting the reality that it’s not going to happen in a midterm election. The sad truth is that without all the reality show drama of a national election and surrounding hoopla, people will stay home, and, unfortunately, it will mostly be OUR people.
Every state needs a strategy and a tailored narrative. And Democrats should not cede older, whiter voters to Republicans. There are issues in our wheelhouse that can appeal to them, or at least a significant enough subset of them to blunt the GOP’s overwhelming advantage.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, I think the evidence is 2010, so it’s a fair question. That’s why I asked Brown. I knew the local Democrats were worried about it because they feel the national Democrats hurt them in the governor’s race in 2010.
It was a wave year, 2010, just like 2006 was a wave year, and Democrats took credit in 2006 so the flip side of that is taking blame in a GOP wave year. I myself have some questions about that. As you probably know I think the much-ballyhooed “50 state strategy” had a lot more to do with a wave year than knocking doors.
I don’t know that Republicans could have stopped 2006 and I don’t know that Democrats could have stopped 2010, but, again, if you take credit for Democratic wave years, then you have to take blame for GOP wave years.
It’s like the economy with Presidents. If they take the upside, it only makes sense that they take responsibility for the downside, so I never think it’s persuasive when they claim outside forces ONLY when the economy sucks. Which is it? Are they running the economy or not?
I think national Democrats should follow Sherrod Brown’s approach and take more risk not just because I agree with him (although I do, mostly) but because Ohio is a 50/50 state and he wins here as a liberal. He doesn’t win by a lot, but no one ever wins by a lot here. He’s a good template, and he takes some risk. He went first. All they have to do is follow.
C.V. Danes
@Linda Featheringill:
Nice thought, but the overall mortality for this group is still probably less than the SS retirement age. What it has done is give them a few more years, which is still a good thing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Good for him (really). And yes, Dems need to tailor their message to the respective states, but the ACA is a noose around their necks whether they talk about it or not, so I feel they might as well talk about it and rephrase the message (tailored to their electorate).
On a more personal note, it gets tiresome standing up for things Democrats have done when the people responsible won’t even acknowledge it.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: The incredible stupid.
IT BURNS!
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Agreed. They own ACA whether they like it or not, and it really is a GOOD thing (half or even a quarter of a loaf being better than none), so they might as well take credit for what’s working. The people who believe the death panels nonsense aren’t going to vote for them anyway.
Schlemizel
@Aimai:
I read TPM and still do not see Ds the types of aggressive defense turned attack on a position that should be a winner for them.
@Linda Featheringill:
It is my nature – kids nicknamed me ‘Eeyore’ in Jr. High and I had no idea who that was until I read Poo to my kids. I had another unique health issue that caused me to lose sight in my left eye for a few days. Despite some improvement my mouth is still too dry for me to be on anti-depressants. I see nothing on the horizon that indicates we have reached peak wingnut or have actually turned the corner. But to quote Grant “I plan to fight on this line if it takes all summer. I have been doing some work for local candidates & donating what I can to a couple (Thank Pasta for Al Franken and Kieth Ellison!) and will be looking to do the sort of long distance phone GOtV I have done the last couple of cycles. I’ll survive.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
Charlie has really made a turn hasn’t he? My first question is, does it seem sincere to you? He is one guy that gets national exposure for aggressively defending ACA. I know he was not as bad a gov as his bookends but am not sure I would count on him when the chips are down. Still is nice to hear him push back.
aimai
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually Dems in tight races are choosing careful ways to talk about the ACA that they think will appeal to their own electorate–Landrieu talks about the “Jindal Gap” which is a way of making her voters understand, in a visceral way, what the refusal to accept Medicaid has meant.
I also think you have to grasp that the roll out of a major national theme is complicated but underweigh. A lot of people, and my mother is among them, thinks that what matters for the midterm is lots of TV advertising–because that is what older people see. I believe that the Obama people and the national dems are planning a more OFA like targeted campaign–a campaign that doesn’t spend money on advertising months out, but rather spends money dragging targeted voters to the polls. Its more like the OFA argument that “lawn signs don’t vote.”
At any rate all this fucking pessimism is so tedious it just gets my goat. At this point our problem is that our voters tend not to vote–not whether or not their voters still have their hate on. We need different tactics and different venues to reach our voters than just blah blah blah from politiicans.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Crist is a Human Oil Slick.
But, he’s what could win in Florida.
Real people are dying because of the No Medicaid expansion, and Crist, like others, is doing the smart thing, by hanging that evil decision around the neck of the GOP like an albatross.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: A couple of Begich’s ads touting ACA benefits have been frontpaged on this blog.
Edited.
rikyrah
Editorial
Mr. de Blasio’s Moon Shot
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
May 5, 2014
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan is so big that it took not one but two media events, in Brooklyn and the Bronx, to unveil it on Monday, in which the mayor and local pols exulted over the plan’s breadth and ambition. Yet if Mr. de Blasio really is going to keep his campaign promise and end New York’s crisis of inequality and housing unaffordability, he is going to have to go big.
And this plan is what big looks like.
It’s a $41 billion effort to build or preserve 200,000 affordable units in all five boroughs, over 10 years, for the benefit of half a million New Yorkers — 120,000 apartments preserved and 80,000 newly built — using everything from energy retrofitting (to keep landlord’s costs and rents down) to new housing and building codes to a thorough cataloging of neighborhoods and underused spaces where development opportunities await.
Its most striking feature is its eager embrace of adding height and density to neighborhoods beyond Manhattan, through mandatory inclusionary zoning, the stick-plus-carrot that requires builders in newly rezoned areas to set aside a percentage of units as forever affordable. New York has a voluntary plan that has produced about 4,500 affordable units in the last 25 years, which is pretty good but not the scale Mr. de Blasio wants. The plan also emphasizes losing no more ground on existing affordable units. It seeks to identify neighborhoods vulnerable to gentrification, to “lock in” affordable rents before it’s too late and to prod landlords to keep rents down.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/opinion/mr-de-blasios-moon-shot.html?referrer=
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Schlemizel:
Tim Walz (D MN-1) Cook R +2 on the ACA
jaqen h'ghar
You stole 320 from the Red God. The debt must be repaid.
Pick 320.
Betty Cracker
@Schlemizel: I’m not sure Crist is capable of sincerity — he’s a weathercock — but that’s okay. If he wins as a Democrat, I believe he’ll govern as a Democrat. I’d rather see an actual progressive governor, but I don’t see that happening here. Crist could win, and right now, turning Governor Voldemort out is Job #1, so if it has to be Crist, so be it.
@rikyrah: Amen.
Mike E
Today I will vote in the Republican senate primary to give the 2nd place
fucktardcandidate a boost to hopefully trigger a runoff. Yay. I plan on wearing a condom, just in case.rikyrah
and here’s the thing, if Crist can run on Obamacare then ALL Dems can run on it.
Medicaid expansion is about opening healthcare to WORKING PEOPLE.
The working poor are still working.
Kay has said that we shouldn’t say working poor, and maybe we shouldn’t. But, these are people who get up and work every damn day, and they should have access to healthcare, and DEMOCRATS NEED TO BE DEFENDING THESE FOLKS.
That they too, have a RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE.
And, should get it.
Hillary Rettig
Kalamazoo has its own Second-Amendment Man:
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/05/police_considering_charges_aga.html
Also, drunk and verbally abusive, of course.
“(The officer) asked the guy if he could talk to him and the guy went into an (expletive)-laden tirade, ‘the revolution’s coming, I don’t have to talk to you, etcetera, etcetera,'” Geik said.
Schlemizel
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
One kid lives in Mankato & is already working for Tim. I will probably send him $25 when I can. I understand he is in a tough district for Dems & appreciate the efforts he has made,
Kay
@rikyrah:
I actually think some of the reluctance to addressing :”working” in general was well-intended and came from the Left. It started with Clinton’s welfare reform, because his message was actually sort of gross, he did some arbitrary beating up on poor people, IMO, and liberals objected to that, so the issue became “are we making this category of deserving poor?” which is a fine question to ask but also made Democrats wary of hitting too hard on “WORKING”, IMO.
There’s a lot of this squeamishness in the Democratic Party. I hear it in the national debate on vocational training versus college. I think liberals are reluctant to come out strongly for that, because of some (justified) fear that kids will be tracked and slotted, and also a less justified fear that it is somehow “elitist” to say some people want job training rather than a college degree. The problem is I think people who do those jobs, do jobs that don’t require a bachelors degree, HEAR that as “liberals only respect people who went to college”. It may not be true, but that’s how they hear it.
It’s hard. One can be really well-intentioned and send the wrong message :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemizel: Actually, you made the claim that Dems will be running away from the ACA. It’s sort of on you to support your claim.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure – I’ll prove people are not saying something.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemizel: Maybe it’s just a personality difference, but I find relentless pessimism and talking down of my own side to be very wearing.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I guess I no longer know why we separate “the working poor” from “the working”. I’m not sure that has benefitted them, so why do we do it? Is it just a point of honor, “we’re the people who talk about the poor“, or what?
I think I just want to look at whether this benefits them. if it doesn’t, we can drop it, and just say “working people”, right?
I’m not clear on who benefits from splitting us up into these wonky categories; “under 25k, over 40k,” etc. I get why the health care law does, but that’s a law. It has to. Why do we do it, rhetorically? We’re not writing an economic treatise. What if we just said “working people” and let people slot themselves in there if it fits? I think it’s inclusive, putting them INSIDE a circle rather than outside. It’s also less patronizing, because we often go from “the poor” to talking about them rather than talking to them.
Obviously, I don’t think it has benefitted them as much as it might have, so I’d like to try another approach. Just give it a shot. What the hell.
Cassidy
@Baud: You’re putting too much thought into it. It’s an extension of the lefty purity memes.
jayjaybear
@Kay: Shorter: Democrats are the party that actually thinks and considers what we’re saying and how it affects the people we’re talking about, which is spun by the “left-wing” media as wishy-washy spinelessness in disarray.
Kay
@Cassidy:
I think it’s complicated. After 2010, there was finger-pointing because if people are paid to win elections, and if they credit winning to their own skill, then they’re held accountable when they lose elections. So from my perspective, looking at what happened from “who blew the race” point of view, Ted Strickland lost his own governor’s race because he didn’t do anything at all until July, if we’re going with “campaign skill” (which I was not: I think it was a wave election).
But if there are state Party people meeting with Sherrod Brown, who is a national politician, they are going to blame the 2010 state losses on national Democrats, which they did. The funniest thing about Ted Strickland is he wasn’t very liberal or bold at all. His whole thing was “I’m a red county Democrat endorsed by the NRA”. He wasn’t a bold governor at all. Yet when he lost, it was all because “Democrats don’t fight”. He did this scathing op ed in the Huffington Post all about how national Democrats are useless. It just turns into which story sticks, and boy, he was putting that one out there.
Xantar
@Linda Featheringill:
Hold on a second, though. If people live longer, doesn’t that mean they also pay more into Social Security? Can we actually know that this increases the cost of Social Security?
I know the whole conversation is tongue-in-cheek, but I really am curious to know if there’s a way to figure this out.
Cassidy
@Kay: I think the “blame Democrats” meme is lazy. It’s expected out of the media, but I would think that politics junkies would be able to develop a slightly more nuanced position (not directed at you by any means). The reality is that some Dems/ pols are wishy washy wimps who wknt stake out a position on their mother’s gender if it may cost them that sweet paycheck. Others are not. And sometimes, people just lose because not enough people voted for them. We’ve always had a wide spectrum of beliefs and interests in this party, so this whole notion that one person doing one thing somehow reflects the party as a whole is lazy. If Schlemizel, or anyone, has a Dem candidate whonis not defending the ACA, then they need to contact their candidate, in their district, serving their interests and say something, not go “stoopid Democrats”. It’s just lazy.
Paul in KY
@Kay: If the Republicans have their way, all of us will be ‘working poor’.
There’s a line someone can use.
Betty Cracker
Greg Sargent has some insightful comments on the “Are Democrats running away from Obamacare” question here. Shorter: not really.
Citizen_X
@Hillary Rettig:
Awesome. This is going to become my standard answer for everything.
Kay
@Cassidy:
I never had faith in the health care law as a campaign issue, because most people who vote had health insurance so to many of them it was all something to lose rather than something to gain. If health care were a magic bullet there never should have been a GOP majority after Medicare and Medicaid. Christ, Paul Ryan’s plan was to get rid of Medicare and half the country voted for him. If there’s any political advantage to Obamacare at all I’ll be surprised. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but rewards don’t necessarily follow good work.
Betty Cracker
@Paul in KY: That’s a good line. Another that might be effective in some situations: Obamacare represents one of the largest top-down transfers of wealth in US history (mostly via the expansion of Medicaid). I used this to great effect on my hubby, who is something of a firebagger.
raven
This is an article from my expat friend Katherine. She and her partner are in Australia but hope to be able to come home soon.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Schlemizel:
You’re being asked to prove that people are saying something.
Betty Cracker
@raven: That’s so awesome! Thanks for sharing the link! I hope they are able to come to the US soon, if that is what they want.
jayackroyd
@Betty Cracker: Yes, what we may be reading is the Village filtering out Dems standing up behind the PPACA.
But OFA could definitely be doing more, especially on pushing the turnout buttons they pushed in 2012
raven
@Betty Cracker: yea, Katherine is a Duke grad and a wonderful person. They were legally married in New York but it still didn’t matter as far as a green card for Jodi.
Betty Cracker
@jayackroyd: I’m sure OFA will when the time draws closer, but I’ve come to believe that the electorate for midterms and presidential years is fundamentally different. That’s not to say every effort shouldn’t be made to turn out Obama voters; it should. But midterms call for a different strategy, IMO.
Robert Sneddon
@raven: Heterosexual married couples aren’t guaranteed green cards and indefinite-stay in the US, it seems to be permitted or denied on a case-by-case basis. A couple of friends got married about fifteen years ago, he’s British and she’s American and he couldn’t get leave to stay and/or a green card to get work in the US. They moved to Britain and lived here for several years before, after multiple applications, he got a green card and they moved to Tennessee.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Need to shorten yours up a bit. Like the idea. How about: ‘Obamacare: Gettin Back the Money They Stole!!’
Kay
@Cassidy:
And there’s another part to this, and it’s advocacy rather than “reporting”. There’s nothing wrong with advocacy, but it’s sometimes presented as reporting. So, if one wants to move Democrats Left on something, one points to a poll or a race and says “Democrats could push this” or “Democrats should have won this if they had just pushed my issue” and that gets confused with a recitation of events. It’s two different things.
Advocates do this, because it’s effective, but it’s the job of the reader or listener to not get all bent out of shape about what is advocacy, or “pushing” politicians, because if we do that, if we get all bent out shape, then we’re not allowing people to push.
Kos is a good example, because I think he’s more straight- forward about it than most advocates. He’s pushing immigration reform. He marshals all kinds of polls and such to make his point, but he’s an advocate for immigration reform so as long as we all know that we can put it into perspective and see it for what it is. He’s pushing them. He’s not reciting a factual narrative of Democrats and immigration reform, history of, with citations. This is allowed. It’s what advocates do. To say they can’t do it leaves them no room to move.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
But everyone fears losing their job, and health insurance with it. And a lot of people out there probably have the experience of getting laid off and getting sticker shock over COBRA.
To me, now, that’s the main thing about the ACA (and the Massachusetts exchange that preceded it): that if my wife and I both end up unemployed or underemployed for a while, there’s a very-likely-cheaper alternative to COBRA that is real insurance rather than some kind of in-name-only con job. That’s a benefit even to currently well-off, salaried professionals, and it’s a realistic situation that they all know they could encounter.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I had a nice experience with a conservative lawyer here last Friday, where he told me he sees the benefit now because he (quite simply) has something to say to people who are in a bad situation and need health insurance.
I mean, normal people who run around calling themselves “counsel” or “advisors” like to be able to offer something when one hears these heartbreaking stories, and the ability to offer PPACA to his clients has been personally gratifying to him.
Anyway, it was a magical moment of bipartisan unity! It’s always generous to admit a mistaken (and really irrational) position, I think.
Cassidy
@Kay: I get that. Advocating is essential. Waiting for the one true messiah, though…
In the end, it’s very popular amongst the purity crowd to constantly talk about how the Dems aren’t doing this or enough of that or this wasn’t good enough. I may not have the sunniest disposition in Florida, but I’m pretty good at being an optimist. We have done good things. Our side has significant accomplishments. And, we have some good pols who will do the right thing. If I may be an advocate, we should be going into this next election cycle with energy and optimism and not some emoprog memes. That does go back to what I said earlier. It’s ine thing to complain “stoopid Dems”, but another entirely to call your rep or candidate and say ” hey dickbag, you did a good thing. Let people know about it and how can I help?”.
Kay
@Cassidy:
No, and your complaint is valid because it does get misunderstood. To me, it’s like how people quote the defense attorney in a high-profile “media” case. “I have damning evidence that came from the defense attorney’s press conference”. Really? I mean, come on. His or her JOB is to present this from one position. They’re not up there reading from the police report and that’s FINE. The same is true of the other side.
It doesn’t bug me from rank and file Democrats, advocacy disguised as a recitation of facts, but it does bug me from pundits, because sometimes they blur and conflate in a way that annoys me. Just be clear on what you’re doing. If you seek to light people’s hair on fire, know that’s what you’re doing and that’s the goal and maybe let them in on it. That would be how I distinguish between what I consider good and helpful advocacy and that which is not so helpful.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Florida AFL-CIO uses “working families” and progressive groups have pretty much jumped on that language.
There are places where talking about the poor might be politically effective but Florida ain’t one of them.
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
I think Democrats have suffered more from the decline of union membership than unions have, because labor gave them a vocabulary, a way of speaking.
I can’t get away from this idea that Democrats are offering ADVICE and that’s just not what people are interested in hearing and that doesn’t sound like “on your side”, because it’s APART and ABOVE you know?
I was listening to Sec of Labor at an event where they’re pushing vocational training and it was earnest (probably good) “advice” but it’s distancing. It’s not inclusive. It’s all very managerial, to me. Do 40 year old unemployed people really want to hear about how they don’t have the proper skill set and if they would just put together some policy package they could move up? I think they hear that as “get your shit together and make progress!’ and they’re exhausted and sort of scared, so probably not well-received on an emotional level. It sounds technical and tone deaf to me.
Paul in KY
@Kay: That’s what I always talk about when I long for more ‘red meat’ language from persons in our current Democratic administration (from anyone not named ‘Biden’). They need to lay it out in the starkest terms possible & if the Repubs don’t like it…fuck em.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Kind of reminds me of the old Onion article whose title was something like “Millions of Americans Totally Blowing Their Job Interview.”