Tomorrow Kentuckians hit the polls to see whether or not Matt Bevin will kick 400,000 plus people off Medicaid.
Bevin has lied the entire campaign about wanting to get rid of Medicaid expansion. It’s right here in his “Bevin Blueprint” for Kentucky. right there at the top of page 10.
I mean, I don’t know what else you can say about it. He flat out says it “should be repealed”. There’s nothing in there about any transition, any help for the 450,000 added to Medicaid under the expansion and the thousands more getting insurance through Kynect, he just closes Kynect and puts Kentucky on the federal health insurance exchange. That’s his plan.
Nearly half a million people would lose their health insurance, point blank. It’s in Bevin’s own position paper, guys. It’s his stated policy, right there, verbatim.
Oh, and the rest of the Bevin Blueprint is a disaster: ending unions in the state, cutting thousands of state employee jobs, ending state pensions, shifting education dollars to private, charter and home schools and ending state education standards, and massive tax cuts for the rich and for businesses and expecting Laffer Curve unicorns to make up the lost revenue, just like in Kansas.
Oh, and he ends with refusing to enforce federal laws and regulations he doesn’t agree with. Nullification uber alles!
Time to vote, Kentuckians. You’ve got a choice to make: Conway, or this recipe for economic and austerity disaster that will burn the state to the ground.
But don’t take my word for it. Let John Oliver explain with the help of a pangolin.
Many Bothans Died To Bring Us These Tax Cuts
Robin G.
John Oliver being on it might actually tip the election, if it’s as close as they’re saying. It’s his world. We’re all just living in it.
Also, I’m glad someone’s passing protections for pangolins. Those little affronts to evolution look like they need all the help they can get.
Frankensteinbeck
Crossing my fingers for you, Kentucky, but having lived there, I think you’re doomed.
BGinCHI
The only benefit to Bevins’ plan is that in the future there would be less Kentuckians.
But I kid.
Citizen_X
I thought Kynect was popular in Kentucky. Was I wrong?
The Other Chuck
So Bevin is basically all for a federally run single payer system, is he?
Frankensteinbeck
@Citizen_X:
Obama is unpopular in Kentucky. More unpopular than you can imagine. I am not joking that a good 40% of Kentuckians would drown rather than let him pull them out of the water. The state is a sinkhole of both racism and generalized, fuck-the-other-guy hate. I lived there for two decades, in the more liberal areas, even.
AliceBlue
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’ve got my fingers crossed too, but I won’t be surprised if Kentuckians choose to punch themselves in the face, Kansas style.
benw
If Bevin wins there’s going to be 400k+ Kentuckians who are screaming mad at Obama and the Democrats for taking away their health care.
NorthLeft12
Are people in Kentucky [and maybe all of the US] that disconnected from each other that they don’t appreciate how those 450,000 people have been positively effected [potentially even life saving impact] by the Medicaid Expansion?
I mean, of those 450K, they must have friends, neighbours, co-workers, and family that understand that these people will have their lives extended, and most likely improved, by the ability to have health care? Or are they that small and mean that they absolutely hate the idea that these people are taking advantage of a benefit that they are not eligible for?
seaboogie
I blame Obama. He should have called it The Reagan Care Act.
Frankensteinbeck
@NorthLeft12:
They are so small and mean that they absolutely hate the idea that these people are taking advantage of any benefit.
Watchman
Doesn’t matter who wins, when you get fired from your current job (This is what, number seven in ten years for you right) you will need insurance or have to pay up the penalty.
I hope you have some money set aside. At your mass you have got to be diabetic by now and you’re going to need regular insulin soon.
If the heart attack doesn’t kill you first.
Goblue72
@NorthLeft12: Yes, the majority white people in the U.S. are that small and mean. If it wasn’t for the brown portion of the electorate, we’d be in the middle of President Romney’s re-election campaign.
Samuel Knight
Think the Cowan won’t win because he just wasn’t used to using the “L” word enough. ie Liar.
They’re happy to use it in Louisiana and it seems be killing Vitter.
Bevin is nuts but if you’re not willing to just blow the guy away, you’re going to lose.
Happened in the Senate race and could happen again.
Which will lead to an interesting dynamic if it sadly comes to pass.
Louisiana will get health coverage while Kentucky takes it away.
cynthia ackerman
Anyone else amused by the bonus West Virginia goat sex reference in Oliver’s segment?
Sherparick
@Frankensteinbeck: This sort of covers the White Appalachia and counties in the U.S. that identify with Appalachian culture from Maine to Alabama and from Alabama to Eastern Washington/Oregon in the north and Arizona and Central Valley California.
Mr. Longform
It’s the apparent impossibility to overcome the “what’s the matter with Kansas” effect with the majority of a red state’s voters that makes me despair. There are still enough voters nationally who are marginally aware enough that the wingnuts won’t win the presidency, but that won’t last long. There isn’t any sign that voters are getting savvier or conservatives are getting less inclined to crash the whole system.
Sherparick
@Goblue72: 59% of whites in 2012 voted for Romney. With Trump, Cruz, etc, they hope to win by getting that to 65% of the white vote. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/26/demographics_and_the_2016_election_scenarios.html
Part of the problem is Democrats like Conway want to appear “reasonable” and moderate so they don’t lay into their opponents as the nuts that they are.
Goblue72
@Mr. Longform: It’s not Kansas. It’s white voters. The GOP is the White People’s Party. To change Kansas you gotta change the conscious and subconscious racism of the majority of white people. Or make Democrats less associated with brown people. The first is probably impossible and the second is evil. Leaving the third option which is wait for the old whites to die off.
NorthLeft12
@Goblue72: Also for Frankensteinbeck:
Surely they must realize that a lot, and I mean a lot, of the people who are in the Medicaid Expansion are white people, right?
I see some of this attitude up here in Canada too. Not that it is so much race related, but that there is this seething anger and bitterness towards people who are struggling to get a good paying job or to make ends meet and are receiving some kind of government support.
This world is getting meaner and meaner. Hopefully, some of that will change with the leadership change up here. Not holding my breath though.
rikyrah
I just don’t feel for them, Zandar. A populace that willfully doesn’t understand that KYNECT=OBAMACARE and can’t be depended upon to vote in their self-interest…..
eh.
Mr. Longform
@Goblue72: Then instead of despairing, I’ll just wait for everyone of my own ethnicity my age and older to die. OK, that sounds a lot more fun.
goblue72
@Sherparick: Exactly. GOP = White People’s Party. Its the brown vote tipping Presidential elections lately into the Democratic win column. And likewise, white voter turnout in mid-terms delivering Congress and state legislatures to the GOP. (Yes, I am aware of gerrymandering, but while significant too, it takes a backseat to the powerful race-based voting trends that deliver GOP majorities that allow gerrymandering to take place in the first place.)
I had heard about the 65% number. My first reaction was – “that crazy” – only because the GOP hasn’t seized that large a share of the white vote in many election cycles. Then I though about how bitter and openly racist white have gotten and I started to get depressed.
That election map at your link is interesting with its ability to allow you to change voter turnout rates and Rep/Dem vote percentages by race based on 2012 election data to see how states votes would change. I set the Non-white Hispanic and Asian voter turnout rate to the same as Whites. (64 percent). While the depth of Red/Blue hue changed, none of the states flipped. And changing the white turnout rate down didn’t change anything until the turnout rate was pushed way way below historical norms. Same result with changing White voter Rep/Dem splits – had to push it way down to start seeing changes.
Interestingly, the first state that could flip is Texas, if Hispanic voter turnout rates were the same as Whites, and White start being a smaller share of the electorate. I don’t see that happening anytime soon – but it might show the kinds of dividends at Congressional House level or state legislative races we might be able to see with a solid investment in building the Democratic Party in Texas.
goblue72
@Mr. Longform: I was being a bit sarcastic, but at same time, the big picture demographic/cultural/institutional challenges are quite large. Its frustrating to know that as advocates/activists, those us active in party politics can move the needle a bit, but that big trendiness are so powerful, that you have to willing to constantly paddle upstream.
Mr. Longform
@goblue72: I was being sarcastic back at you and just expressing my frustration that we have to let demographic realities perhaps gradually accomplish what good ideas (and maybe ineffective marketing) can’t seem to do in the short run.
Another Holocene Human
@Sherparick: I thought Central Valley was full of Angry White People from Oklahoma and Kansas. The accent sure sounds about right.
Zandar
@NorthLeft12:
Kentucky is 92% white, so yes.
Bevin will get at least 40% of the vote anyway because people here either don’t really believe he’ll do it to them personally or are absolutely okay with Bevin trashing the expansion as long as those people lose it too, cause we all know that Obamacare is just a race-based handout like everything else.
Kentucky’s white population, among the poorest in the country, well they don’t ask for no damn help from no black president.
The real issue is closing Kynect. Kynect allows these rock-ribbed boys to get insurance that’s not Obamacare, see. If that goes away, well then it’s Obama’s fault, not Bevin’s.
Another Holocene Human
@Goblue72: No, the third option is to organize the unorganized, like Latino youth, but that’s hard.
Another Holocene Human
@goblue72: No, GOP is not the white people’s party, it is the white supremacist party. Democratic Party collapse happened in certain parts of the country once the white supremacists were shown the door. There are still whites who vote D because there are whites who are not down with the white supremacist program. Now what does that say about 59% of whites? Something too incivil to say on network TV, I gather. Tweety got pilloried for blurting out the truth three years ago.
goblue72
@NorthLeft12: No they do not. They think everyone on Medicaid is black. And eating free T-bones from their food stamps. And talking on their free Obamaphones. I’m not kidding. The vastness of ignorance that is the American electorate makes outer space look small.
You poll the average voter and they think a huge chunk of the U.S. budget is spent on foreign aid (as opposed to a tiny smidge). You poll the average voter and they think the rich control a lot less wealth than they actually do. You poll the average voter and they probably think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. There’s some funny quote from the movie Men In Black where Agent K tells Will Smith – “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it!”
The average white voter has convinced themselves that lazy brown people are getting free stuff from the government – while “they”, the hard working white person, is hard at work, at a crappy job they hate, paying taxes, not getting anything from the government and not getting ahead. And outside of some measly tax credits that may or may not be of much use to them, a lot of voters in that socioeconomic demographic ARE not getting transfer of wealth payments from the government. We have a very thin social welfare safety net in this country, and the income cut-offs for eligibility are quite low – if you aren’t dirt poor, you probably aren’t eligible for a transfer of wealth payment.
Contrast this with civilized countries, like the Nordic states, Benelux, or even large European states like France, with robust and deep rates along with transfer of wealth payments that benefit a broad swath of the public – subsidized child care, maternity leave payments, free or very very low cost college tuition, high speed trains that go 200 mph, etc. Heck, there’s one Nordic country (Finland I think) where every mother in the country gets this “baby box” when their child is borne, regardless of income. Its filled, if I recall, with some diapers, formula milk, a baby blanket, a pajamas, a snowsuit, a hat & mittens, a toothbrush, a picture book, a pacifier, as well as a small mattress and sheets. The cardboard box it comes in doubles as a little crib. When the social welfare state is there for EVERYONE, then everyone supports the social welfare state.
Most popular social welfare program in the United States? Social Security. Why? Because everyone pays for it, and everyone gets to use it. Second most – Medicare. For pretty much the same reasons. The Medicare for All folks aren’t nuts. You turn Medicare into a program that everyone has access to regardless of age, and you won’t every have to worry about anyone destroying Medicare. (Instead, we’ve gotten the kludge by way of only politically feasible option which is a program that primarily provides subsidies for the working poor. Its a political Achilles heel.)
I think Hillary Clinton is going to win the nomination and better poised to defeat a GOP candidate. Makes sense – executive office races are overwhelmingly skewed towards the center. But I think Sanders is making the better statements – and the pushing the better frame for the long term for our party: The rich have screwed you over. Tax them – and I’ll give you free college for your kids, all you mothers will get affordable child care and paid maternity leave, and all you fathers won’t have to worry about losing your pensions because I’m going to make Social Security even better.
We can’t make white people love brown people. But we can give them enough of a working person’s social welfare safety that they don’t feel like the system is just one big screw job.
goblue72
@Another Holocene Human: When the majority of white voters consistently vote for one party over the other, then yes – that is the White People’s Party.
Me, I’m tired of well meaning liberals trying to convince themselves that all those GOP white voters are just crazy white supremacists, and not just regular ole white people.
Regular ole white people are racist – to varying degrees. Its the minority of white people who have moved past that – and an even smaller minority of whites who could legitimately be described as not oblivious and constructive allies in the cause.
goblue72
@Mr. Longform: Agreed. And do whatever we can to “leverage” those demographic changes. But yeah, can certainly drive a person to drink. Thank god we have such excellent options in whiskey these days.
goblue72
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, I don’t think of that part of California or Arizona to be Appalachian refugees. More like a mix between old Dust Bowl Okies along with frankly a fair number of just plain old white retirees from the rest of America (Arizona) or old Republicans from when California voted GOP who have moved further and further inland to get away from all those liberals, taxes, regulations, queers and Mexicans. Or, just as likely when I’m feeling more rational, moving there in pursuit of lower cost housing.
Lee
Vote for Drew!!!
Archon
@goblue72:
I do think we should differentiate from white people in the south/Appalachia and white people in the rest of the country. Whites are a swing vote outside the south. To white people in the south the Democratic Party is the party of urban blacks, plain and simple. It would take a MAJOR realignment to get southern whites to vote Democrat again, after all it’s in the living memory of a whole bunch of white southerners that a guy like Barack Obama had to treat every white person that passed him as if they were the King of England.
So I do think Democrats should treat whites in the south (especially the deep south, and yes even the millienials) as a lost cause but we definitely should not give up on coastal and Midwestern whites who might feel alienated from the Democratic Party but who have not completely brought into the Democrats = lazy blacks politics that the GOP is pitching.
Anoniminous
Conway is up 2 to 5 percentage points in the last 7 polls. Given the history of Democratic voters to sit on their asses come election time makes it a toss-up.
NorthLeft12
@goblue72: Thanks for the passionate reply, it is much appreciated.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favourite LOTR movie quotes from The Two Towers;
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@goblue72:
Even those numbers are quite regional, though. There are states on the East Coast where a majority of whites voted for Obama in 2012. The number of white voters in the South who voted against Obama tends to skew the nationwide numbers.
I’m not going to argue that racism doesn’t exist outside of the South, because that’s clearly insane, but I don’t think racism has the same deep institutional support in the North as it does in the South. There are schools in Mississippi that STILL have segregated proms, FFS.
I think we need to fight both Northern and Southern racism, but I think they’re two different species and need to be fought a little differently.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Zandar:
I don’t know who it was, but I distinctly remember seeing a comment or essay by someone who said that her mother who had been raised in the South absolutely refused to sign up for Obamacare because she had been taught that it was shameful for a white person to accept charity from a black person. That sounded crazypants to me, but I was raised in the Midwest (Chicago suburbs) and apparently there aren’t nearly as many folk beliefs like that built up around racism. People are just straight-up racist assholes where I come from and don’t build up some kind of weird shame around normal social interactions.
Zandar
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
–LBJ
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Zandar:
Right, but what surprised me was the shame aspect of it. Not that you shouldn’t do it because white people are better than black people, but that it was morally *better* to starve to death than accept a crust of bread from a black person. It was the weird moralizing tone that struck me. A fate worse than death.
I think that moral shame is what’s not present in most Northern racism. Nobody in the North thinks that Jesus is going to smite you and send you to Hell if you’re a white person who accepts charity from a black person, but it seems to be the case in the South.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck: Since they’re so racist, when they suffer after voting for a Republican governor who gets rid of Obamacare, whatever consequences they suffer will be well deserved. Gov Beshear did his best to implement Obamacare and it’s dumb to vote for someone who will destroy it. As much as Kentuckians hate the Black man in the White House, they should remember that he and his family have healthcare. You would think they’d want the same for themselves and their fellow citizens.
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: You are absolutely correct in your assessment. Northern Kentuckians are the absolute worst.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Patricia Kayden:
Fred Clark at Slacktivist has written a bajillion essays about how the Southern Baptist Convention was basically founded to reinforce slavery — here’s a representative example:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/04/23/inerrancy-white-evangelicals-and-the-sin-of-racism/
I suspect that this is where the root of a lot of Southern racism is — buried in their religion. In the North, you get racists like Charles Murray, who try to cloak their racism in “science.” The language of religion doesn’t work as well in the North because there’s a lot more religious diversity IMO.
Prescott Cactus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Holding my thumbs for you !
Knitty Gal
We do normally punch ourselves in the face when it come to Senators and Representatives, but usually we manage to not knock ourselves out by going with a Dem for governor. I am hoping that tradition continues. @AliceBlue: