I bet she won’t be voting for Trump again, but in the meantime let’s protect the health care of people in this situation:
After voting for the first time at the age of 55, for Donald Trump, Martha Brawley is worried that the main issue that brought her to the polls, health insurance coverage, is going to become worse.
[….]Brawley reportedly receives approximately $8,688 in health care subsidies per year to pay for insurance, but under the proposed bill, she would receive $3,500 a year in tax credits, according to the Times.
Emma
I know we have to, even if only to protect others who weren’t this dumb. But it really ticks me off to have to.
Hobbes83
Fuck her. I’m sorry if I’m a bit cold-hearted in situations like this, but these people deserve everything that they get. Her dumbass has not voted her entire adult life, and then she shits the bed and votes for the shitth business man? I have no sympathy for people like this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is what she felt needed to be changed?
Um… thanks… Obama…?
CaseyL
I’m with Hobbes. There’s people like our own ArchTeryx who need our support and help; I’ve no sympathy for idiots like Martha Brawley.
Facebones
Fuck her and every moron like her. Let every ACA recipient who voted for Trump die in a ditch or a debtor’s prison
Barbara
At least the guy for AARP gets it right — it is the combination of low income plus age that fares worst under this proposal. And notice how Price defends it: You can’t say she won’t be covered. But you can’t guarantee she will. That’s a big f’in difference.
rikyrah
I am with both of you. I can’t be concerned about someone stupid enough to vote for the people who voted to repeal Obamacare over 50 times. I don’t give a shyt what happens to her. Period. That time has passed when I would have sympathy for her.
schrodingers_cat
Please, if I don’t read another story of a clueless idiot that voted for T it would be too soon.
FlipYrWhig
The only way I can make any sense of this is if she voted for Trump thinking that Obama gave other people, especially Those People, good health care they didn’t deserve, that seemed to be better than hers, which made her mad.
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: Yes. “White like me” somehow translated into “is guaranteed to make me better off.”
Another Scott
Maybe the way to prevent these problems is for the US AG to sue the GOP under the RICO law.
:-/
Seriously, it’s clear that voters like her were lied to. We can’t expect that voters will always be able to sift truth from lies – our laws and systems must serve as a way to prevent mountains of BS from destroying the chance for voters to actually vote based on issues.
Trump said he would help people. Voters who only listened to him, heard that. He and the GOP should suffer consequences for blatantly lying to voters like her about what they were going to do.
Of course, it won’t happen, but there needs to be something other than impeachment and voting people out of office as a remedy. As long as they have the barest majority, the GOP feels that they can do whatever they like with no consequences. Since they (as opposed to the actual adult population) control who gets to be the majority in too many states, and since they’re willing to break any systems and norms that stand in their way, we need to think about other (non-violent, of course) remedies.
Cheers,
Scott.
Percysowner
If stopping the overturn of the ACA helps her, I’m glad, because it helps a lot of other people as well. However I have ZERO interest in helping HER personally and I have ZERO sympathy for her. What a maroon!
geg6
The only goddamn reason I fight to keep the ACA is to help people like ArchTeryx and so many other innocents who will die without it. As for this bitch and other like her, fuck her. I hope she does die and I don’t give a damn how callous that makes me sound. She deserves to die.
Patricia Kayden
@GrandJury: LOL!! I don’t understand how healthcare was the biggest issue for Ms. Brawley but yet she voted for the Party which was on record for voting to repeal the ACA scores of times. Doesn’t make a lick of sense. Did she really believe that Republicans were going to replace the ACA with more pro-customer legislation?
Really?
dmsilev
I forget who originally wrote this but:
The GOP has made absolutely no secret of their views towards Obamacare over the last several years. If you voted for a Republican, any Republican, you voted for this.
hovercraft
@Emma:
Why do we have to? Seriously, I’ve said this before, I’m done with these people. This is the addict you keep taking to rehab and sitting with as they go through withdrawal, and yet they keep falling off the wagon, and you’re always there to pick up the pieces. But now the addict is not just killing him or her self, they are now breaking into your home and stealing shit and threatening your family if you don’t give them money. Fuck them it’s time to call the police, to testify against them, I’m done, try kill yourself, I’ll try to talk you off the ledge, harm me and mine, I’m pushing you off that fucking ledge. I have to protect me and mine, Martha Brawley can go fuck herself.
Kryptik
@Another Scott:
Unfortunately, it seems like we’re utterly stuck far as actual movement forward until at least 2018, without any GOP defections, and we’re already seeing wagons circled and them going out of their way to ignore constituents to do shit they wanted to do anyway.
The best we can do is focus local (there are a lot of key local elections happening this year alone) and pray we make some kind of dent in the house in 2018 since the Senate is pretty much out of reach.
Mike in NC
Never voted until age 55? Liked the rallies that the Mango Moron staged? You deserve to DIAF!
Boatboy_srq
@Hobbes83: It’s really fatiguing to continue attempting to provide for people who repeatedly and forcefully demand the public sector not help people exactly like themselves.
There comes a point where one simply has to accept that they do not want assistance and allow them not to get it.
hovercraft
@Hobbes83:
Ditto.
Librarian
“I never thought the leopard would eat MY face”, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brother of Andrew, son of Mario, employee of CNN
@FlipYrWhig: she went from having no/shitty insurance, in her mid-40s when shit starts to get a little scary, to getting a $750/month subsidy, and bestirred herself to vote for the first time for the man who said “I’ll replace it with something terrific, don’t worry about it”. Just saying I can still be gobsmacked at the stupidity of the Common Clay of the New in this case South
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Yeah, seriously. If I try to help you with something once and your response is to spit in my face, I’m a tad less likely to want to help a second time.
Yarrow
She’s 55 and a first time voter. She’s not happy with what is happening. It’s unlikely she’ll become a regular voter. I doubt she’ll vote again for anyone, let alone Trump.
dr. bloor
@hovercraft: I’m interested in your draft legislation that protects the worthy poor and weeds out the self-defeating poor.
Kryptik
@hovercraft:
The argument would hold more weight if 1) the constant calls for ‘reaching out’ and ‘showing empathy’ weren’t always so goddamn one-sided, 2) if we hadn’t just come out of a presidency that bent over backwards to do just that just to get spit on, stomped on, and have the president be called a Foreign Usurper anyway.
At some point, willful ignorance is impossible to pierce, and it gets frustrating to be constantly told you have to be the adult in the room, and then reward the goddamn child for having a tantrum while pissing on you for not catering to the child’s needs enough.
Hobbes83
And yet I’m supposed to feel sorry for and reach out to these people because they cast their votes over “economic anxiety?” That shit is just a code phrase for “forgive stupid-ass entitled white people for making poor decisions that directly impact their economic stability all in an attempt to screw over brown people, gays, and women… AGAIN.”
sigaba
@FlipYrWhig: She just might think that any insurance thag requires a subsidy from the gummint is Bad Insurance, and what she really wants is a situation where she can get her healthcare for a low price AND her knawing self-destructive shame doesn’t torment her about it. Good luck with that!
Much simpler solution is she had terrible or stupid reasons and “health care” is just a rationale these people throw out. It doesn’t have to make sense.
kindness
Why is it that liberals are expected to save people from their own stupidity?
I have no sympathy for people like this poor woman. I won’t go out of my way to help her unless she is willing to help herself. People like this need to admit they were lied to, that they bought snake oil and to accept that liberals at the very least aren’t lying to them and at most that liberals are trying to help them.
I’ll accept their help in electing better representatives but I don’t trust these people to be part of the change that we need. These people hold too much anger and malice towards too many of us (be that race, religion or ideology) to consistently help. I see they might vote for our kind one election and then the very next vote for another con artist.
geg6
I am so fucking sick of hearing about these people. They voted for this shit, they got what they wanted, now live (or, better, die) with it.
I wish we had a constitutional way, if the Dems get control of government ever again, of identifying these assholes as Trump voters and then, when the ACA or whatever health care is passed post-Trumpcare, making that vote a disqualifying condition to receiving any benefits. In fact, I’d like to make that an across the board requirement for any government benefits, with the exception of VA/veteran benefits, student loans and SS. Screw them. I think I’m being quite kind in making any exceptions.
Corner Stone
That is awesome.
rikyrah
TRUMPCARE IT IS!!!
White House isn’t on board with the ‘Trumpcare’ label
03/09/17 10:08 AM—UPDATED 03/09/17 10:14 AM
By Steve Benen
Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s top White House advisers, appeared on Fox News yesterday and touted the new Republican health care plan, which, she said, enjoys the president’s full support. There was, however, some quibbling about what to call the GOP proposal.
Conway says the Republican plan enjoys “presidential leadership,” explaining that Trump has personally taken it upon himself to push the bill through. She added that the president is “really husbanding” the legislation through the process.
But when the discussion turned to the bill’s name, TPM reported that Conway insisted this is”serious business” and “isn’t about branding according to someone’s name.” She added, “I’ll call it Trumpcare if you want to, but I didn’t hear President Trump say to any of us, ‘Hey, I want my name on that.’”
A White House spokesperson struck a more emphatic note with Politico, arguing “It’s not ‘Trumpcare.’ … We will be calling it by its official name,” the American Health Care Act.
………………………..
The Obama White House spent years pushing back against “Obamacare,” precisely because the Democratic president and his team didn’t want support for the law to hinge solely on personal attitudes about Obama.
It didn’t matter. Republicans were obsessed with the “Obamacare” label, the media soon followed, and much of the public started assuming that this was the official, or at least semi-official name. To this day, seven years after the law was signed, many Americans have no idea that the Affordable Care Act and “Obamacare” are the same thing.
With that in mind, opponents of the GOP’s American Health Care Act, of which there are many, have a built-in incentive to ignore the White House’s pushback and push the “Trumpcare” name with great vigor. After all, the Republican president is not popular; the ridiculous legislation has few allies; and calling it “Trumpcare” will likely depress public support further.
Trump may not want his name on this, but it’s not really up to him which nicknames stick.
Hobbes83
@Yarrow:
Good. She clearly cannot make informed electoral decisions, so I am more than willing to make that choice for her.
Kryptik
@Corner Stone:
“She can select the physician and treatment that she wants. How she pays for it, that’s her problem, not ours. That’s real choice and personal responsibility right there.”
Corner Stone
@Yarrow:
I’ll bet she shuts up, stays away from the polls until Democrats loudly do their damndest to dig morons like her back out of the abyss, and then when she has her feet under her again she’ll pop back up and vote for another R con man. For some fucked up and bullshit reason.
dr. bloor
@kindness:
Because it’s pretty much the history of the republic?
amk
quit trolling, doug.
Neldob
Maybe the fairness doctrine needs to be reinstated. These low info voters are killing us.
Fair Economist
@Corner Stone:
TrumpCare will make her able to choose the doctor she can’t use because she can’t afford insurance. Freedom!
Ajay
She is getting $3500 too much. She should return that as tax cuts to the billionaires.
hovercraft
@dr. bloor:
I’m not talking about legislation, I’m talking about my attitude and lack of sympathy towards her and her ilk. I’m a democrat and we tend to support things that are universal, we do shit that helps the stoopid in spite of themselves all the time, that’s who we are, this dumbass actively went out and voted to fuck herself, and this time we don’t have the legislative power to protect her from herself and her “champions”, so excuse me if I save my sympathy for people who didn’t do this to themselves. Obviously if this disaster is averted, she will be spared too, but that’s a feature of democratic (small d) governance.
Immanentize
@kindness:
Because it is the right thing to do. When I act stupidly, I always hope I have a friend (or at least an interested bystander) to stop me and keep me safe.
Then after we keep people safe, maybe we can work on better and more robust explanations for why things happen to help them?
Hobbes83
@Neldob: I don’t think that the Fairness Doctrine is going to remedy this problem. These people are willfully ignorant and intellectually lazy. There is information online about the healthcare plan, and there were stories being generated about Trump’s narsicissim and incompetency that date back to the 1970s. Hell, there was a prominent politician who ran for president last year who fucking told anyone who would listen that Trump was a fraud. She. just. did. not. care.
amk
she reminds me of this Luckovich toon.
Boatboy_srq
@kindness: Worse still, liberals are supposed to rescue people from disaster – right up to the point where they can see self-sufficiency in the hazy distance, at which point that self-same rescue instantly and irrevocably turns into the Oppressive Nanny State overburdened with regulations and tax obligations and must be eliminated immediately.
Miss Bianca
How many more stories are we going to get about “shit-ass iggerant white folks vote for shit-ass iggerant Whitenuss! in the White House! and are now shocked, SHOCKED to discover that it’s a raw deal for them?”
Are the beatings gonna continue till morale improves?
Maybe I should have more sympathy but I just.CANNOT.with these folks.
Ohio Mom
This isn’t new to me. As a Cincinnati suburbanite, I am surrounded by Republicans, and because I live in the more affordable (cheaper) end of a school district renowned for special ed, a disproportionate number of my neighbors, like me, have kids with special needs*.
For years I have wrestled with this: to the extent that THEIR kids get what they need, it is because I have voted for candidates (read
Democrats) who have worked to strengthen the social safety net.
To the extent that MY kid DOESN’T get what he needs is the result of all of my neighbor’s votes for those (Republicans) who consistently work to shred the safety net.
It’s hard to hate on people you actually know but really, if Republicare/Trumpcare/whatever you want to call it goes through, you can be sure I will reminding them of their poor judgement frequently and loudly. It’s not much but it is all I can do.
* When my kid was in elementary school and the national autism rate was said to be one in hundred, it was four in a hundred in his school. That’s disproportionate, and autism isn’t the only disability.
LAO
@Librarian: Always appropriate.
It amazing — no matter how many articles I read about low information Trump voters — I still can’t find an ounce of sympathy. Hmmm.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think the billings for the rotator cuff surgery I had last year– a pretty damn common procedure– ran to over thirty thousand dollars– the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the “surgical center”. That doesn’t includes medications, probably a few hundred dollars, follow up visits, I’m guessing would’ve been several hundred out of pocket, and physical therapy, several thousand. Ah, forgot the MRI. All totaled, out of pocket that probably would’ve cost about 40K? That’s a lot of chickens.
Cacti
She’s getting what she voted for.
Good and hard.
JPL
@FlipYrWhig: When Trump said Believe Me, she did. Tim Kaine tried to warn them.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m sure she can simply put off buying that new iPhone and afford it fine. Jason Chaffetz said show, and I know he’d never lie to me, right?
Mickee
Every time I read about Trump voters being surprised about this I think about Lucille Bluth and the banana stand episodes on Arrested Development. “It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”
Trump is the (supposed) billionaire son of a millionaire. He has zero frame of reference for what things cost or the daily financial stress people are under just trying to survive. This should have been obvious to anyone voting for him due to ‘economic anxiety.’ Congrats folks. You just progressed to ‘end-stage economic anxiety disorder’. And your coverage has been canceled.
Another Scott
@Hobbes83: An awful lot of people have the naïve view that anything on broadcast media is mostly true. They can say that “the MSM is lying to us”, but they won’t accept that it’s actually happening on the media that they listen to, or that the e-mail forwards they get aren’t true, etc. They accept things from inside their tribe as being true.
It’s not so much “willful ignorance”, it’s they’re in a bubble and don’t see the need to crawl outside it.
Nobody has the time to become an expert on everything in the public discourse. We all have to trust someone to tell us what’s going on. In the olden days, that usually meant that the messengers felt a responsibility to tell the truth and give a fairly accurate picture of reality. Now, it’s mostly about clicks and ratings and somehow finding a business model that will let the reporters/worker-bees get paid while the VC-types make their 50+% return.
It’s hard to see a return to accurate reporting and an informed populace as long as that business model holds and as long as there are no consequences for lying to people (and worse – there are incentives to lie to people because it generates more “buzz” and more clicks!).
Maybe Bezos buying the WaPo is an example of breaking that model. It’s kinda sad, though, if we have to depend on battles of billionaire-owned papers to have enough competition to actually get at the truth. But I’ll take any good news along these lines that I can get…
Cheers,
Scott.
AxelFoley
@Hobbes83:
Co-signeth 100%. Fuck her and everyone like her who voted for Trump. I hope they fucking suffer.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: Repetition is necessary to get new memes to take hold. Repeated stories like these is good for making progress in the future.
More, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
Karen S.
How do you get to be 55 years old and never vote until last year? I’ve voted in, I think, every election since I’ve been eligible to vote, even when candidates on offer didn’t perfectly align with every one of my views. Believe me, as an African American lesbian, there were many elections when the candidates on offer did not perfectly align with my views. I vote because I understand the fight women and blacks waged to fully get the franchise.
Also, I’m saving my sympathy for people who’ll be negatively affected by the Trumpian horror and didn’t vote for it.
ArchTeryx
Reposted from downstairs (bloody thread changeovers):
I’ve NEVER been good at getting the media help me go “viral”. I’ve tried the media thing once during the fight to pass the ACA and I was roundly ignored. I’m a great public speaker – I can get a crowd going quite well – but not a very good media person. I’m not handsome and look rotten on a TV camera – I’m just a weatherbeaten old dinobird.
Which is a shame, because as a white guy with a STEM PhD, I completely shatter the stereotypes of po’ folks receiving government “welfare”. I’ve turned the heads of more then a few of my doctors, that were expecting just another “welfare bum”, instead of someone who could talk to them in their own lingo, not to mention the latest epigenetics research. I just happen to be ill and poor, but that’s enough for the media to Not Care. If anyone has a suggestion as to how to get around that, I’m all ear coverts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Per MSNBC, Trump is willing to agree with the far right to start paring down MedicAid in 2018 instead of 2020, so that they would have to go into the mid-terms with people losing care, including the handicapped and people in nursing homes. I really don’t think the non “Freedom Caucus” people will want that.
SenyorDave
OT, but this is a Yahoo headline:
Dimon Says Trump Has Reawakened ‘Animal Spirits’ in the U.S.
Is there a bigger piece of shit in the world than Jamie Dimon? If there is karma in this world, Jamie Dimon will be reincarnated as a poor person with a disability and no health insurance.
On second thought, if there is karma he will somehow lose all his money and become disabled. He really is a disgusting human being. Not only would I not piss on him if he were on fire, I’d buy some gasoline and toss it on him.
Cacti
@Karen S.:
The only vote of her life and she turns out for the least qualified man to hold the office since Warren Gamaliel Harding.
Probably thought it would be “good to have a President who kicks ass” (read: is ignorant, coarse, and vulgar).
ArchTeryx
@SenyorDave: Yahoo has been a right wing cesspit since Yahoo News first went live. It’s Breitbart with a shiny legacy veneer.
gene108
Donald Trump promised the moon, stars and sun with regards to healthcare during the campaign. He promised everyone would have health insurance, it would be cheaper for everyone than what they currently have and you’d have more choices in the doctors you want to see.
This was his campaign promise on healthcare.
Why is no one holding him accountable for breaking his campaign promise?
He’s not even trying to live up to this promise. He’ll sign off on whatever Congress gives him, even though it breaks his campaign promise.
How much lower can we lower the bar to accommodate how awful Trump is?
Seriously, as long as the man doesn’t crap himself in public, people will give him a pass.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Hobbes83:
Last time around, to get the House switched in 2006, it took one unprecedented and unwarranted Federal intervention into the life of one family, one failed occupation and the loss of one American city. Even after all that, John McCain and Bible Spice ran neck and neck with Obama until the economy blew up in a way which was unmistakable even to the credulous in September 2008.
Of course, by February 2009, efforts to repair the damage were deemed oppressive and socialistical, so gains had to be undone and the reins of power delivered to the same people who fucked it up in the first place.
I’m afraid it will take similar circumstances this time, maybe even worse. There will be privation, economic dislocation, environmental degradation and death before the sainted WWC temporarily abandon their cruelty for a season yet again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: Yeah, I’m guessing it wasn’t just health care that got this woman off the couch to vote for the first tie
FlipYrWhig
@Karen S.:
“I don’t really follow the news and as far as what I hear politicians are all a bunch of liars so what’s the point?”
Boatboy_srq
@Immanentize: How often, when your friend stops you from repeatedly doing a single specific stupid thing, do you beat your friend so badly you send him to the hospital, then call the police and file harassment charges against him for stopping you from that stupid thing?
This is the point at which we stand.
We are past the point of the concerned friend looking out – unthanked – for the welfare of the inattentive. We are nearing, if not already past, the point of the abused spouse. None of us would counsel another to remain in an abusive relationship just because the abuser needs help.
Karen S.
@Cacti:
“He tells it like it is!” etc. Shit. People like this woman infuriate me. Maybe she just didn’t like the ACA because it was a signature achievement of a black man. Somehow, accepting government help would be more palatable to some (white) people when it comes from a Great White Savior like gaudy con man Trump.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: Oh yes she will. Someone will send her an email about how some black guy got something for free, and she’ll be yanking that lever so hard for the GOP she’ll break the fucking polling machine.
That being said, she deserves decent health care just like everyone else does, but damn if I’m not sick and furious over once again having to bust my balls to get Dems, any Dems, into office to fix GOP fuckups when people like her keep voting to send us back to pre-electricity days. And the worst part is that we’re in a holding pattern right now. The current political stalemate will break in the next twenty years, probably far less, and I’ll guarantee you it will break in a way that’s not to the liking of anyone with liberal sensibilities. BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE HER.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cacti:
My operating theory is this – in my lifetime, the WWC is what always delivers cruelty.
My Lai, Kent State, the defense of the Nixon Administration on Watergate, the pressure on Carter to attempt the Iran hostage rescue, the obscene expense of the Reagan nuclear buildup, the S&L crisis and 1987 Black Swan, the feckless Iraq occupation, waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Mahmoudiya, Katrina, the mortgage crisis, the tea party, blue lives matter, Trump
All of those items are rooted in WWC coddling, pandering, manipulation and hires. THAT is our national curse.
gene108
This is what Trump was promising in mid-January 2017.
He lied.
He flat out lied to his supporters, and no one in the media seems to care.
Link
Obama said “you can keep your doctor”, when Obamacare was fully implemented, but then insurance companies started cancelling plans of their own accord and he was called the biggest liar ever.
The bar really is low for Trump and he keeps tripping over it.
Mnemosyne
@ArchTeryx:
Hello, that was me. That’s why I was wondering if a good start would be to contact a Crohn’s organization.
It’s tough because the woman I was talking about was young and attractive. Here’s a weird thought: do you have a friend or family member to be your “spokesmodel,” so to speak? Or someone willing to be your new BFF?
TriassicSands
@Emma:
I may feel sorrier for this woman for how stupid she is than for the fact that she’s on her way to the ER for her gold-plated very, very excellent Republican health care. There’s no way to make her smarter, but maybe this will get her to pay closer attention. Then again, probably not.
PaulW
We spent two years warning people that trump would be a disaster for them.
We spent eight years warning people that Republicans don’t give a rat’s ass for people’s health care.
We spend twenty-five years warning people that the Far Right only want their tax cuts and to hell with good government.
How louder did we have to shout?
Aleta
Republicans and radical libertarians spent years setting up this con, targeting their marks with advertising and phone calls and TV. They had scammers working every state who were in positions of authority and trust. But there are no laws that jail or fine elected officials who promise a product they don’t deliver; they don’t have to sign a binding contract and they get away with millions.
TriassicSands
I should have read further before commenting. Obviously, there is zero hope for this woman.
Enjoy the ER, ma’am.
Cacti
I’m sure this mouth breather will console herself with thoughts of “at least we didn’t get that bitch Hillary, because her e-mails.”
ArchTeryx
@PaulW: Loud enough to outshout thousands of right wing radio stations, Fox News, the evangelicals, and a fair number of folks at mainstream outlets like MSNBC, CNN and NPR. I am not confident.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT – I’m in a coffee shop across from my office, and watching a couple of people who appear to be coworkers at some downtown office, judging by matching lanyards. Guy looked to be about 25, girl early to mid 30s, both fairly attractive and obviously picking up an office order. She was wearing a wedding set, but he isn’t. Guy is prattling on, oblivious to the fact that she was eye fucking him so intently that it was damn near pornographic, so much so that I was tempted to shout at him to go for it.
Made my morning.
TriassicSands
@gene108:
This is one of those cases where Professor Frankfurt’s “bullshitter” model works better than calling it a lie. Trump was just bullshitting without regard for what is or was true. He just doesn’t care and he can’t control his mouth. It runs constantly while his brain sits in idle or off. It’s amazing to watch, but horrible to experience.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: a common thread in most of these stories about Trump voters, when it’s explained to them that their lives are actually much better because of Dem policies, from the ACA to the Stimulus, they say they would’ve voted R because of abortion or immigration, and that’s without getting them to explain what they mean by “political correctness”
ArchTeryx
Heh. On topic, I’ve had to dump one of my oldest friends over this mess. This is a guy that’s always been a right wing troll, but I maintained my friendship with him because he’s always treated me personally well, be I poor or be I prosperous (not that that’s ever happened). But he voted unapologetically for Trump and has been trumpeting that vote ever since.
I told him he voted for my death, and that was the one sin I could not forgive. I cut him off completely, Facebook and all. I hope he regrets his vote. It cost him one of his oldest friends, and it might cost said friend his life.
clay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Criminy, what an asshole. Hey asshole, the “better ideas” that the Democrats have is called “not repealing Obamacare”. Dipshit.
Yarrow
@The Moar You Know: I doubt it. She’s in North Carolina. People in that state, all across the south, and all across the country have been shrieking about the scary black man forever. But 2016 was her first vote and she’s 55 years old. Unless she feels her vote brought her good things she won’t be bothered in the future.
Jeffro
I know we’d love to see every Trump voter well and truly (and only metaphorically!) screwed here, but if we’re going to defeat the “World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan”, we’re going to have to quit wasting time and energy wishing them ill, so that we can calmly remind them they have an easy way to stop this: support Democrats. It’s that simple.
Want to keep your health insurance? Vote D.
Want to not explode the deficit so that rich people can get even more tax cuts? Vote D.
Want to keep your water clean and Coast Guard intact? Vote D.
Nick
@Another Scott:
I would rephrase that as ‘voters who WANTED to listen to him, only heard that’
JPL
Ali Velshi had Jim Jordan stammering. I streamed his program for a few minutes, and hopefully the entire interview will be up soon. Poor Jim couldn’t name one country where free markets work in health care.
gbear
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She thought that health care would be better if it didn’t have a black man’s name attached to it. No sympathy for her at all.
ArchTeryx
@Jeffro: The trouble is most of them are constitutionally unable to. Take a good look at Kansas and it’s re-election of Brownback. Even when the state completely imploded, people just could. not. get. themselves. to. change. The one thing they DID do is throw out a bunch of Tea Partiers in favor of moderate Rs. That’s the most likely scenario when things hit bottom for these folks.
bemused
@ArchTeryx:
I can’t even imagine how your ex-friend replied to that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: EvenTheLiberalMSNBC on mute– in the last half hour I have seen interviewed: Bill Kristol, Tea Partier Jim Jordan and now racist nutcase Steve King
bemused
@JPL:
Now that I have to see.
Barbara
@Jeffro: “Republicans will tell you anything but the only thing they want to actually do is give more tax breaks to wealthy people. If you thought Trump was different, now you know he isn’t.”
clay
@TriassicSands:
His entire business model seems to be to make whatever inflated promises (or outright lies) are necessary to “close the deal” and then to skate off leaving investors holding the bag. I doubt he knows any other way to behave. (Why would he? Look where it’s gotten him!) His entire campaign was built around this.
ArchTeryx
@bemused: I didn’t allow him to hang around to find out. I just banhammered him. One of the few things about this election that warms the cockles of my heart. He can do his Peter Pan act somewhere else.
Xboxershorts
Id this a one time per year thing only available by April 15th?
Yarrow
@ArchTeryx: Have you reached out to Soonergrunt? I think his daughter was diagnosed with Crohn’s. Maybe he has some suggestions or ideas?
I agree with Mnem that getting in with a Chron’s organization might be a good idea. Someone with your level of education and knowledge might be a great spokesperson for them.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The part of the Jim Jordan interview that I saw was great. Ali pressed him to name a country where free market works in health care.
Kryptik
@PaulW:
Our problem wasn’t that we weren’t shouting loud enough. Our problem was, apparently, we weren’t shouting at the right people. We should have been shouting at “White Working Class” folks, and only those folks, fuck the rest of the base.
Oh, and the fact that our megaphones so often are restricted to about 75% volume max of what GOP gets, on a good day.
Patricia Kayden
@kindness:
Great question because it’s impossible for progressives/liberals to save anyone from anything. Elections have consequences, moreso for idiots who vote for monsters and then act all surprised and shocked when monsters act like monsters. Such idiots deserve no sympathy.
Barbara
@bemused: They tell themselves it isn’t true, that somehow, a magic steed will appear out of nowhere and transport good people like their friends to noble doctors and nurses who will treat him just like anyone else, out of the goodness of their heart without charging a thing. They soothe themselves with lies and fairy tales, in other words.
Boatboy_srq
@Jeffro: There’s a distinction between “wishing them ill” and developing indifference to tribulation of their own making.
Kryptik
@ArchTeryx:
More and more, I’m falling back into the feeling that this country, on both a personal and institutional level, simply cannot suffer a Dem/Liberal to live. If someone is to the left of fucking Joe Lieberman, they’re Satan incarnate and can’t be trusted even if they provide bulletproof evidence in triplicate, of something. While the GOP can say something they pull out of their rectum’s rectum and get it treated like the one sole gospel truth until it’s disproven about 15 times over, and even then it becomes an article of faith among half the population anyways because ‘Lying Press’.
bemused
@ArchTeryx:
I’d probably do the same. How long ago did this happen? Just wondering if he has tried to contact you. If not, that would definitely be the tell & good riddance.
MCA1
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is indeed a lot of chickens. About 70 iPhones worth of them, if my math is correct.
Obama’s greatest miscalculation was assuming the American public was capable of, and responsible enough to be interested in, learning enough about the world to see the obvious logic behind his policy ideas and rejecting the nonsense spewed about them from the mouths of people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
We’re not. We’re literally too stupid and willfully ignorant and stubbornly anti-expert and tribally bound to do so. And so the simple, indisputable fact that the American healthcare system is a massive fuckup, that we pay 2x what every other industrialized country does on keeping people healthy, for lesser results, is rejected by about half the country as lies. And we reject what our own lying eyes tell us, that it’s patently absurd that fixing a simple rotator cuff injury should carry a price tag of well over HALF THE MEDIAN AMERICAN INCOME. Half the country is so blinded by tribalism that they cannot process the cognitive dissonance of the moaning they emit every time they see their own actual medical bills and the moaning they regurgitate about creeping socialism whenever a Democrat mentions maybe we should do something about it. Because addressing the problem through the only means available (governmental intervention) is unpatriotic and upends their freedumb.
The polity is broken. Ms. Brawley is simply Example 147,863,291.
And co-sign with others here on the lack of sympathy for her. I empathize, but I will not sympathize.
ArchTeryx
@bemused: He hasn’t. All he’s done is whine about how liberals are the intolerant ones, after 20 years of helping his local Moonie church chapter poison the waters with right-wing trollery. For fucking once, he’s finally finding out about the consequences of that. They want us fucking DEAD.
Bill Arnold
Perhaps off-topic except in a know-thy-enemy way, but funny:
Rodent Clearly Making Its Way Through Steve Bannon’s Body Throughout National Security Meeting
(The Onion).
The Moar You Know
@MCA1: Thanks for mentioning this. Particular pet peeve of mine.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: The only way these stories are any use at all, imho, is if they are framed as “this is what white resentment politics gets you, folks – a whole lot of nothing good, good and hard.”
Just like that “oh, I didn’t think they meant MY Mexicans!” story in the FNYT a few weeks back – Jesus, people, what did you THINK was going to happen? As Charlie Pierce is so fond of saying,,,”this is your America, folks. Cherish it.”
Applejinx
Trump did also say that all the other Republicans were lying sacks of shit completely beholden to corporate donors or any rich fucker who came along to write them a check. In that he happened to be 100% completely right. He said getting into Iraq was a stupid disaster (not at the time, but when he was campaigning) and in that he was right as well. And he said he’d bring all wonderfulness and the best health care etc etc and was lying his own ass off at the time.
I’m not quite so quick to call out the idiocy of all the people who backed him, in that he won by dumping all over our totally corrupt bought-and-paid-for political system from the position of an insider, and easy for him to say that because it happened to be TRUE. You have to at least believe that w.r.t the Republicans: I think he described more than just the Republicans though he did not get my vote just for being right about the blindingly obvious.
Some of those ugly truths covered a multitude of lies and we ain’t gonna get people politically involved by trying to pretend it’s, I don’t know, the seventies? The forties? We’re asking for people to get involved in a stupid corrupt trainwreck because our side of the train is better, but it’s the same train. Calling out the trainwreck, and a bunch of Russian meddling, got Trump the Presidency (which is astonishing on its face). A lot of people were surprisingly responsive to him shitting all over his rival Republicans as corrupt hacks, which they so very much are.
tobie
I don’t know what to predict on Trumpcare. Will it pass the House and the Senate? Will Medicaid be phased out by 2018? Will we be able to put a halt to this madness in the next few weeks and months? I don’t know. But the evisceration of government will eventually take effects and the consequences will not be pretty. tRump will get a boost from the Friday’s job reports–which he will crow about for weeks on end–and he may even get to claim victories in Syria since there’s no opposition to speak of there any longer. But the lack of policy and gov’t infrastructure to administer policy will catch up with him and unfortunately us. America will only wake up when it has to. That’s the sorry truth. This is not resignation. I will resist with marches, letters, town halls, and any other way I can. It’s recognition that we’re in for a long struggle. We need to steel ourselves for this.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Um Andrew, the democrats have an alternative, it’s called Obamacare, or if you want to be precise, the Affordable Care Act, it’s been the law of the land for several years now.
If his question is how democrats would make adjustment to improve it, apparently his job precludes him from paying attention to the news, because the democrats have been trying to fine tune the law for several years now, but have been stopped by republicans, it’s even been reported on in the news.
02/12/2016 03:16 pm ET | Updated Dec 19, 2016
How Obama Would Fix Obamacare If Congress Would Let Him
Even the guy who signed it knows the Affordable Care Act has problems. But it doesn’t look like they’ll get solved any time soon.
By Jeffrey Young
I wish someone would put Andrew in a position where he was able to be aware of what is going on in the world, it would be helpful if he could be informed before he went on TV to um inform people. Mario produced a real pair of winners in Andrew and this asshole.
Yarrow
@tobie: More shoes will drop re: his Russian connections. It’s going to get a lot uglier for him.
Applejinx
@Jeffro:
What? Now we have to be deficit hawks? Please. Tax the fuckers AND fire up deficit spending AND put people to work AND straight up give people money. Austerity has no place here. It’s a failed philosophy in global macroeconomic terms.
JMG
That woman will vote for Trump in 2020. Lead pipe cinch. They may have to wheel her into the polling place on a gurney, but she’ll do it. It’s one way she can say, “my life sucks, but at least I’m white.”
Brachiator
@Hobbes83:
I want her vote. Hers and everyone else who voted for Trump and who now realize that they are getting a raw deal.
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1:
That’s the “intellectual” conservative answer. The rest of them don’t give a shit about the ideology of freedom. What they care about is the perceived unfairness of a black person or a Spanish speaker getting a free ride. That’s entirely why they vote. That’s entirely why they’re Republicans. There is no hope for conversion. Just write them off to any sort of reasoned appeal, then outvote them, while hoping their children are less dipshitty than the past 200 years of their kind have been.
cokane
not sure i agree, doug. people need to see what the alternative to Democratic control is like.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
I noticed. It probably has something to do with the way you habitually project utopian leftist principles onto a bunch of hateful morons.
Aleta
The voters in these articles are doing one thing right. They’re speaking out and they’re brave enough to give their names in public. Probably being harassed by right wing trolls for that, because publicly disgruntled Trump voters are not good press.
Right now all opposition to the replacement is what’s important, because millions of Clinton voters are losing coverage too. I wish upset Trump voters would be calling and writing their Republican reps and speaking out even more.
ruemara
@Brachiator: Tough titties. You won’t get it. They will NEVER blame a republican and switch to the Dems. They will never align with you race traitors. They will never believe that democratic policies that benefit everyone are fair since they don’t exclude the people they hate and the sooner you and all who believe as you do stop chasing dangerous ignoramuses like this woman and start working to help the disenfranchised have equal access to the ballot box, the sooner you’ll rescue the country.
Edited to add: No. No, I will not help this woman. I’d take everything away from every Trump voter that was provided by a Democrat. I’d trap them in with each other. The only reason why they should benefit from my actions is if I’m helping some innocent person. They voted for it. Fuck them with all might of the universe,
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
In this, the Age of Trump, I just had a brilliant idea for a new financial services product – the Health Bond, based on purchased life insurance policies on people who have been denied coverage for chronic conditions or have reached lifetime caps. We can slice them into tranches – some for short sales, some for growth and some for long term security. Plus, we can do derivative trades on them as well!
Barbara
@tobie:
I agree. The only question is how much water will have spilled over the dam. The end of the western Roman Empire happened because Rome stayed the same — the same internal conflicts, the same ineffective bargains to settle interminable power struggles, the same inattention to the struggles of average non-wealthy Romans — while it faced a series of escalating external threats that required greater coherence and unity that Rome could not muster. These threats might have seemed like the same kind of threats Rome had always withstood, until they weren’t. Republicans are still fighting the New Deal. Voters should punish them for even trying.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Because he thinks it was fought in a wussy, politically-correct way that worried too much about Muslims’ feelings and lives. He’s not right about anything. He’s a scam artist who scammed leftish idiots along with everyone else.
hovercraft
@Kryptik: We should have been shouting at “White Working Class” folks, and only those folks,
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@FlipYrWhig:
So how long ago did you meet my mom?
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: You won’t get it. You won’t get a white person who’s only voted once in 55 years of life on this planet and, when she did, pulled the lever for a huckster so grotesque, he might as well have been invented by PT Barnum. She’s going to slither back into the swamp and excuse herself by saying, “oh well, all politicians lie, so I just won’t vote again, ever”.
ETA: Or, what ruemara said.
Just One More Canuck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: if you hadn’t bought all those iphones, it wouldn’t have been a problem, ya whiner
ETA – Kryptik beat me to it
Corner Stone
Lyin’ Ryan is doing a hell of a number not selling his AHCA TrumpCare bill.
Applejinx
This place is the mirror Breitbart. Manichean as fuck. A whole lot of you just want to let conned people die because you insist you know their motives better than they do, and you swear they’ll never change and should just die.
That ain’t the big tent I signed up for. You’re dumb, some of you. I, with Brachiator, want their vote. More than that, I want them to not trust the Republicans, because AMAZINGLY it seems like they voted for a ‘plain talking alpha male truth teller’ guy who has proved to be a complete con artist.
It really should be possible to make that point stick. How much more obvious could it be? Those voters will be seeing the results very personally, and that’s always the inflection point.
Corner Stone
A “consumer dynamic” in healthcare?? WTF!?
Corner Stone
PEOPLE DO NOT SHOP FOR LIFE SAVING HEALTH PROCEDURES!!
Earl
See also this: the public wastes a million dollars keeping a republican with cancer alive, who spent her years pre-cancer advocating for the end of Obamacare.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/health/obamacare-cancer-survivor
There’s so very much going on here:
1 – Republicans discovering empathy, but only after it happens to them or someone close to them (see also Republicans with a newfound tolerance for the gays after one of their kids comes out of the closet);
2 – The perennial favorite here, health insurance for all is wasted money. Oops, *I* need a million dollars of health care? Now it’s my right as an American!
I’d just like to reiterate how we destroyed our legislative majority to provide health care for 20 million more people, and we’re now expected to do our best to save Obamacare (and Medicare) to help many beneficiaries who will go right back to never voting for us because we don’t hate gays/blacks/browns/women/whomever.
cokane
@Applejinx: only way they won’t trust Republicans is if they see actual bad outcomes. Reason has been tried. Propaganda has been tried. People who voted for this deserve to see what it really is.
TriassicSands
@Applejinx:
There’s the message and then there’s the messenger.
You’ve got to be incredibly stupid to buy this messenger and if the messenger is no good, then neither is the message.
Corner Stone
If any media outlet gives any of the fucking slightest bit of praise for this sham job ZEGS is going through they should be mailed their against the wall number.
sylvainsylvain
No time to read all the comments, but I just wanted to say, real quick…
It’s easy to blame the idiots who voted for Trump, who voted against their self interest, and cast aspersions on them. But that doesn’t help us, it doesn’t help them, it doesn’t help anyone.
Low information voters will always be with us, they’ll vote to fvck themselves over next time too. And by extension, they’ll fvck us over too. But hating on them is fvcking us over too.
This is a prime example of how collective action isn’t the whole story. I personally have to get out of my bubble & engage these people, & find a way to explain to them how they can make their lives better, one on one.
People in blue states can feel high & mighty, but for those of us in red states, dealing w stupidity, racism, and self defeating behavior, it’s just not productive.
Sorry, I’ve just reached my limit on this kind of talk.
Earl
@Applejinx: If only we weren’t going on 40 years of data to inform our opinions that we’re expected to bust ass to help various people who will go right back to never ever voting for us. See also: auto manufacturer bailout (who did all those white union workers in the upper midwest vote for again? President* Trump), saving social security during Bush 2 (who did the olds vote for?), etc etc etc.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Remember how Kansas elected a Republican who fucked up everything in sight and then the Republicans who voted for him learned their lesson and elected Democrats? What’s that, they elected the Republican again anyway, because the vast majority of Republican voters are hideous excuses for human beings who never learn and don’t want to? Well, I’m sure that’s all about to change, by virtue of random blog commenters wanting things really hard.
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: Is Ryan talking right now?
Applejinx
@TriassicSands: That or you have to be easily persuaded that all his rivals (not just Dems, but the other Republicans) are pretty shit. Look at the other Republicans in that primary. Weren’t they shit? Him calling them out as being shit was a breath of fresh air even for US. We wanted him to win because we thought he’d be beatable by Clinton strategies. Who is the stupid one then?
Those other Republicans are STILL shit, even if Trump said they were. That message just happened to be accurate. Best way to lie is to tell some, but not enough, of the truth…
@cokane: That is going to happen. Hell, even in Kansas it happened enough, now it is happening on a national scale.
bemused
@Barbara:
I think they live in a world of deep fear and denial. They act as if other’s misfortunes, health issues, finances, job losses and so on are somehow contagious. They are so terrified it could happen to them, they are willing to believe in fantasies and shut out reality.
We can see they are just as vulnerable as anyone else not one of the wealthy lucky duckies and I know I want everyone, even the idiots, to get affordable health care even if they don’t seem to. I like the old saying, everybody does better when everyone does better.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: Yes. At length. He is thoroughly going over the most disastrous possible plan for health care I have ever seen.
It’s pure fantasy. Fantasy! I…am…slipping into….fantasy..laaaannnnn…
.
.
“Oh, hi there Salma Hayek! So good to see you again. A dip in the pool? Don’t mind if I do!”
FlipYrWhig
@sylvainsylvain: Alternatively, you could try engaging people who aren’t already terrible, and let the ones who are, which is roughly 90% of Republicans, twist in the fucking wind.
hovercraft
I’ll just leave this right here.
Kansas’ Brownback poised to jump to Team Trump
By Steve Benen
03/09/17 09:20AM
Kansans hoping to see their beleaguered governor, Republican Sam Brownback, clean up the mess he’s made may soon be disappointed. The Kansas City Star reported:
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is in talks with President Donald Trump’s administration about taking an ambassadorship position, according to sources close to the governor.
No offer has been extended yet, according to The Star’s sources, but the governor has discussed the possibility of taking a position as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for food and agriculture, a position that would move the Midwestern governor to Rome…. The ambassador serves as the U.S. government’s conduit to three Rome-based international organizations dedicated to combating global hunger — the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: He literally used tonsillectomies for his kids and lasic surgery for himself as examples of free market healthcare. And a “consumer dynamic”.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: I must have missed that news item where Kansas was repentantly electing liberals now.
bemused
@ArchTeryx:
I think they are wingnut moonies after decades of rightwing media indoctrination.
Yarrow
@Earl: Lack of empathy–defining characteristic of Republicans. Also key characteristic of sociopaths.
Applejinx
@sylvainsylvain: Me too. If you ‘vengeance oriented’ folks are actually serious about basically going to war on red states and compelling them to live with what they seem to want for us all, I’ll actively work against you. That is not only dumb but it’s literally the most effective way to never get back House, Senate or Presidency.
For fuck’s sake part of their lies has been that Democrats just want to hurt the Real Amurkins all this time. Now is the time you pick to unironically try to validate that belief? Um, they have more guns per capita. And NONE of our vaunted blue-state economic powerfulness is going to survive very well under this shitshow, even if Putin isn’t actively trying to devolve us into a bickering, lawless mob. Which he is, that’s the game plan.
Corner Stone
ZEGS also went to great pains to point out that the health insurance market works by having the healthy pay for the sick. His answer? Remove/Move the sick to a high risk pool and then re-insure them to lower the cost to insurance companies. And then give the states back the authority on how they use their money to solve problems.
Corner Stone
It’s fucking madness!
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: I’m not going to watch him. He’s a horrorshow. Thanks for taking one for the team.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: In looking up data yesterday on the generation gap in voting preferences, one thing jumped out at me (something I had actually read about previously) and that was how Democratic leaning the generation that lived through the depression was — how committed they were to the notion of collective responsibility for the common good. People born before 1928 were among the demographic groups MOST likely to have voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. The downside of that statistic is the realization of how bad things have to get before voters like Ms. Brawley stop responding to what are essentially aesthetic appeals. Prior to the Depression, America was full of the same kind of anti-immigrant sentiment — probably even worse — than we are seeing now. Somehow, the polity arrived at a place where hurting hyphenated Americans became a lesser consideration in their voting calculus. African-Americans were excluded from this bargain in many ways, so in no way am I saying these voters were perfect, but we have seen historical changes, the world is not hopeless.
Miss Bianca
@bemused:
The thing is, it really COULD “happen to them”. Misfortunes, health issues, and job losses might as WELL be contagious – they can, and do, happen to anyone, out of the blue. The problem is, that it seems to require more imagination and empathy than most white people/Republican voters appear to be capable of, to say, “wow…the best insurance against the bad effects of such things happening is to make sure that we all have access to things like health insurance, unemployment insuance, education, and job training.”
But no – it’s “good things are only good if they’re good for me and my tribe, and if that means sparrows and curtain rods for thee, so be it and FUCK YEAH!!”
hovercraft
@Earl:
That is NOT empathy, it’s self interest, you opposed it till it affected you, empathy is me giving a shit about the rivers and streams the Twitler crowd just chose to pollute and poison people in West Virginia and Kentucky, people I’ll never meet or probably have contact with. Changing your tune when suddenly you are the subject of a policy you supported is hypocrisy.
Ruviana
Couple of things in this bugged me but mostly it was marvelously refreshing!
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: Aaarrrgghhh! My melting! It’s brain!
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: “Republicans just went out of their way to hurt me but Democrats on the Internet didn’t say they were sad about it so really it’s THEIR fault,” then?
Hobbes83
@Brachiator: Respectfully, she was never going to vote for a democrat. It’s clear from the profile. We on the lefty lose when we chase voters like this. Her first time voting was at the age of 55, and she picked an idiot. That should have been the tell.
Betty Cracker
When these folks see that Trump’s promises amount to nothing, it won’t change a thing. They’ve been seeing bad outcomes from the GOP since Reagan, at least, if we’re talking about white working class folks. Yet they keep voting the Republican pricks in — in many cases, because they believe the Limbaugh-Fox propaganda about Democrats giving freebies to shiftless blacks, lazy Mexicans or their malingering brother-in-law who lays around in a squalid trailer all day while they work shitty jobs for ever-decreasing benefits.
I want their vote — I want everyone’s vote. But I’m not deluded enough to believe these people can be reached by reason or appeals to common humanity. I don’t believe this because I’m a snob but because I know these folks IRL. When Trump disappoints Brawley, she’ll probably go back to not voting, which is a damn sight better than voting for Trump again. The WWC voters who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump will continue to zig and zag like the brainless, disconnected dipshits they are.
As a Democrat, I want their votes, but IMO, we’d be better served by turning out our own voters for every election and getting more people off the sidelines than chasing Trump voters.
Nick
@Applejinx:
No one here is hurting real Americans — that’s coming from the guy they elected.
I agree with everyone else — why should a politically disengaged idiot who can’t distinguish between fantasy and her own interests be our target voter?
How about her kids, instead? “Jeez, remember what happened to Mom? Don’t vote GOP.”
The rule of writing is ‘show, don’t tell’. Democrats have been telling Americans what will happen if they elect Republicans. Now, it’s time to show.
Barbara
@Corner Stone: My response to the man who provides daily evidence that he has no real world private market participation: We KNOW it doesn’t cost a lot to provide health insurance to really healthy people. Duh! What kind of moron are you anyway? The goal is to provide insurance so that people who actually NEED health care services can get them. If you have to remove 25% of intended consumers from the pool in order to have even a prayer of making the market work YOU DON’T HAVE A FREE MARKET and you certainly aren’t providing a FREE MARKET SOLUTION.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: We don’t want the the ACA to be repealed. We didn’t vote for the people who want to repeal it. We aren’t trying to hurt anyone. Get a grip.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara:
That’s basically the ethos of Frank Capra films. It was sustained by WWII, the Cold War, and the idea that the Free World could be home to all sorts of people while the totalitarians and commies forced everyone to be the same. I think it started dying at a more rapid pace when the Cold War ended, and conservative talk radio and Fox News have pounded more nails into its coffin.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Agree. 100%. And there are a bunch of voters on the sidelines in a lot of red states, as this article about the successes the Texas Organizing Project discusses.
bemused
@Earl:
It has to hit so close to home that their closet loved ones are dying or dead before they have some empathy for others in the same situations. A Republican legislator will then introduce bills funding helping the mentally ill, the disabled, the addicted or a disease or whatever it was that affected their loved ones. I’m not so sure that specific empathy then expands to include other so-called social issues or at least, I haven’t seen Republican legislators feel moved to sponsor bills beyond their own personal experiences.
MCA1
@sylvainsylvain: Go for it, and best of luck. I’ll be needling every R voter I know in my red part of a blue state, too, and resisting wherever I can, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that I can have no feelings other than being extremely pissed off combined with a sense of resignation. Forever and ever, it will be in the public record that 43% of the adult population of this country was either willingly conned by the most obviously unqualified, narcissistic, bigoted, proudly ignorant, bullying, tacky charlatan in the history of the republic, or is so blindly tribal that they rationalized voting for him because of made up bullshit. As a nation, we just failed, spectacularly, the easiest exam that could possibly have been devised for us. The low information voter phenomenon has metastatized. These people are gone. They’re not reachable, they’re not turnable. They will not reverse course through chiding or reasoning, because they cannot admit what they’ve done, they react to anyone trying to influence them in any direction other than letting their fears and hatreds rule as though we’re condescending know-it-alls chastising them for their stupidity. They willfully live in an alternate, fact-free reality.
This shit a’int gonna get fixed by simple outreach efforts and getting out of our own bubble. The damage done to this nation over the course of the last 30 years of rightwing propaganda, the collapse of objective media, the willing destruction of our educational system, the complete decay of our polity’s understanding of basic civics, the collapse of the social contract and elevation of unbridled individualism as the highest and sole virtue (and relegation of communal responsibility to an epithet), and any other of a number of factors in how we got to where we are, not to mention the damage Hair Furor and his minions are actively undertaking on the functions of every institution we have, will take until long after everyone on this board is dead to fix. And the odds are long against that ever happening, anyway – much more likely we’re in the unstoppable decline of empire stage. That I was alive to witness the catalyzation moment of that is depressing and angering, so my sympathy for those who put us here is at an end.
ruemara
@Applejinx: Bullshit. You go make nice with these evil people. They’re only sad now because they’re actually getting what they hoped would hit those unworthy types, like me. Fuck out of here with your delusion that we’re attacking red staters. They. Shot. First. They voted in a fucking American Nazi government, are perfectly ok with us being a client state of Russia and would happily repeal equal rights legislation, intern everyone who couldn’t pass a brown paper bag test and bring back slavery. So fuck them. You want to go proselytize to them, have at it. I won’t. They have blood on their hands already. We’ve already seen death and abuse thanks to them. They want my aid? Then they better learn to beg & crawl. I’ve put myself out there working for democratic progressive policies to benefit all since I was in my 20’s. Over 25 years of supporting red state Dems & candidates, education efforts, manning tables, registering voters and phonebanking. The first minute a goddamn neoNazi candidate showed up, America’s WWC didn’t shudder and reject him from the primary stage. They didn’t turn away from him as a rejection of all things America stood for. They ran to him and loved him. They’ve praised him. Some have said they are ready to die for Trump. They spat on every American principle to do so. They spurned every moral, Christian virtue to do so. They have retained the worst, most ignorant, most unbelievable bullshit for 40 years, refining it to be an incredible toxin in the country’s system. And they’ve reached out around to world to partner with white nativism, deadly homophobia and transphobia as they also destroy the planet for the most worldly reason – wealth. Fuck them.
FlipYrWhig
@Yarrow: This. There is WAY too much investment in this notion that Democrats and liberals need to woo the part of the “white working class” THAT’S ALREADY VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS. They’re not swing voters looking for a reason to change their minds if you ask nicely. Reach out to other people instead.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. What you said.
@Barbara: I shudder to think how bad things are going to have to get for a swing of an entire generation of white voters to be majority Democrat, to be honest.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am sorry Martha Brawley, but I do recall hearing you say “fuck your’ feelings” during the election. Well, I suppose my reply to your distress is clear enough.
On the other hand, another sign Trump’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Ohio Mom
@ArchTeryx: I did something like that once. The one drawback is, I keep experiencing moments when I wish I could dump her all over again.
Weaselone
@Applejinx:
I think you’re misdiagnosing the people here. I think they care a great deal, even about the morons who voted for Trump. There is going to be a lot of suffering and death as the result of Trump and the Republican’s policies. Dismissing these people is partially a protective mechanism. It’s more than painful enough to contemplate the suffering of people who didn’t vote for Trump. Mental and emotional exhaustion is a real issue here. Helping people who want to escape the fire is a better use of our time than chasing after the people who doused themselves in gasoline and ran naked into the flames.
Yarrow
@FlipYrWhig: From the article I linked, about the Texas Organizing Project:
And this is what those voters want:
The TOP focused on local change that people wanted. They are very high tech, talking to voters to find out what they want and having their people enter it right away on iPads they carry around with them. Every day they examine the data to look for trends. They’ve been adding up successes every year, from small local issues to larger city and state wide issues. It’s working. This is the model we need to look at to get voters.
TenguPhule
@Applejinx:
Who’s dumb, those of us sick and tired of idiots getting us all in trouble or those ever hopeful Polly Annas like you who think you can change them with “just one more chance” after they’ve repeatedly thrown away every chance ever given to them?
At some point you have to stop throwing good sympathy after bad.
Betty Cracker
@Weaselone:
Excellent metaphor — consider it stolen!
Lizzy L
@Jeffro: Agree.
@tobie: Agree.
@Applejinx: Agree.
@Aleta: Agree.
@Applejinx: Agree.
I’ve spent probably 15 hours this week trying to find out how to safeguard medical care and housing for a severely disabled friend who is about to run out of all funds except Social Security. To give you an idea of her situation, her income last year was under $7000. Her current housing is being paid for by family money, which will be exhausted in 5-6 months. Oh yeah, she was diagnosed this month with a malignant brain tumor. I don’t have the energy to hate Trump voters, also I’m not willing to accrue the karmic debt, plus I’d have to go to confession, and I don’t have the time.
This afternoon I’m going to a meeting about SB 810, a bill to set up single payer health coverage in CA. It’s been killed before, but they’re bringing it up again. There are a lot of issues with it, the big one being budgetary — how the fuck can it be financed? — but still, I’m interested.
FlipYrWhig
@Yarrow: I strongly suspect that Big Data approaches to _voters_ have a lot of trouble when it comes to people _who aren’t voting_. We and the media tend to get confused when it comes to how to understand, say, people who disapprove of Trump, or of any particular policy, when asked about it… but don’t see oppositional vote-casting as a way to do anything about it.
bemused
@Miss Bianca:
They are very resistant to doing some critical thinking. Too much work. They want simple answers and they want someone to give simple answers to them so they don’t have to strain their poor heads.
Vhh
@Yarrow: especially if lavk of decent insurance kills her.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Ditto.
“I don’t need facts or experts. I know what I know.”
Brachiator
@ruemara:
People keep saying this as though there is a basket of Democrats and a basket of Republicans, and the only thing you can do is get more Democrats to the polls.
Just not true.
You can’t separate the worthy from the unworthy. That’s what the Republicans try to do. All the damn time.
TenguPhule
@Applejinx:
Guns are no defense against IEDs. Or poisoned water supplies.
TenguPhule
@ruemara: Beautiful. I can’t improve on this.
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule: I have to admit….sometimes I find myself wondering if you have a newsletter to which one might subscribe.
J R in WV
@ArchTeryx:
If he had cared a single rat’s ass for your life, he wouldn’t have voted the way he did. Sorry to say it, but you are better off without the piece of fascist shit in your life.
I posted this on an other thread that looks dead:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1774348/
National Institutes of Health article about Crohn’s disease. May be helpful.
Aleta
No one ever said Americans are smart. We’re not. Fear and poverty, survival threats, can be used to control us, because if our nervous system gets overactivated by adrenaline and fatigue it can override our cognition and decision making.
Even if the voting habits/beliefs of most people over 35 can’t be changed, their kids’ brains need food and health care and independent teachers. My parents were committed democrats but half their kids turned out to be crazed rightwing voters; I think big influences were the people they met (after violent abuse) who (they thought; again, impaired thinking) would accept them and protect them.
Cacti
The Bernie bro strongly empathizes with the Trump toads, because he was also snookered by a shouty white guy who promised all sorts of things he couldn’t possibly deliver.
Mnemosyne
@Nick:
This. Elections have consequences.
IIRC, Applejinx is involved in recovery, so I’ll put it this way: he wants to enable these voters by protecting them from the consequences of their actions, but they are never going to hit bottom if Democrats keep rushing in to protect them from the consequences of their actions.
He’s asking us to be the wife who gets yet another 3 am call from our alcoholic husband demanding that we pick him up at the bar, and saying that if we don’t do it, it will be our fault if he drives drunk, not his.
Brachiator
@Weaselone:
Here’s the thing. Look around. Right now, we are the ones who need help. Everything that Democrats, progressives, rational thinking people, believe that government should do, is getting stripped away far more completely than was the case during the Bush Administration.
I admire the arrogance and complacency, especially among those of us who believe that they won’t be affected by the worst of what the Republicans may do.
But the bottom line is that we will need allies. We will need to change minds. We will need to get votes.
Trump voters, Trump supporters are not the majority, except where it currently matters in electoral college vote distribution. But it’s funny. Trump got people to vote who had never voted before. And the best some can do here is to dismiss her and the malignant persuasive power that got her off her butt and to the polls.
There is a hell of a lot of work to be done before anyone can start dictating the terms of Republican surrender.
JaneE
She obviously didn’t know anything about health care or health insurance or the GOP proposals or Trump’s credibility. Too bad for her, but life isn’t fair.
The real problem is the cost of health care, period. The ACA started making a small change for the better. No doubt that will be reversed pronto.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’m not going to tell a Black woman with health issues that she’s supposed to feel sorry for an idiotic white woman who just voted to take health care away from both of them. Sorry, but no one on earth is that saintly. Even the Dalai Lama would tell this woman that she brought her troubles on herself.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone: Sadly, I have the mind of a sociopath. I can emulate good because of family, logic and personal integrity.
But given the chance, I would serve as public executioner of the entire Trump family, friends and supporters without a qualm and sleep soundly afterwards.
And it means I can think like the enemy. And think on even a worse scale then the enemy by a factor of 10.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
It wasn’t just the malignant persuasive power. It was the deliberate, systematic suppression of voters based on their race.
Jim Crow has been creeping back, and we have not done nearly enough to stop it.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
They won’t be our allies. They won’t change their minds. Their votes will always be against us.
Far better for them to serve as object lessons then obstacles.
Hobbes83
@Corner Stone:
And yet he’s going to do fuckall to properly fund the insurance companies who will no doubtedly incur massive losses trying to cover those pools. And as the exchanges implode, he will act as if nothing happened.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
No, we just want stupid people like this to do their Darwin Duty and die from their own stupidity.
Aleta
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know Aj or his beliefs, but I think that comparing what he wants to enabling and blaming the victim is an unfair hit for someone involved in recovery.
gex
“I might as well have not voted.”
Sure, one party gave me better coverage than I ever had, then I voted for the other party and they are taking the thing I liked having away. So clearly both sides are terrible.
????? Her brain doesn’t work properly. And Trumpcare isn’t going to cover it because Trumpcare likes it like that.
gex
@Brachiator: One party gave her the coverage she is sad about losing. She voted for the party that is taking it away. She concludes that she may as well not have voted.
Voting Democratic is not a choice for her. She couldn’t be more plain about it.
SandraNoy
I’m really, really, REALLY looking forward to my idiot 52 yo sister-in-law, Trump voter, who makes about $15k a year working odd jobs, finding out how much insurance is going to cost her once This Thing kicks in. We’ll see how much her disdain for The Mexicans costs her here in California.
The Truffle
@gex: She could do her fellow Americans a favor and never vote again. In fact, maybe some of these Trumperdinks will decide, as she did, that voting isn’t worth it. They voted for what they thought would be their dream candidate, and now the comedown could not be more brutal.
The media should stop reporting on these sad, regretful Trump voters. At this point, I am beyond caring about them. Let’s work to support the people who are being immediately hurt by Trump’s policies. Let the Trumperdinks go by the wayside.
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Brilliant!! A little bit despicable, but really brilliant. One flaw, though. You have to pass a physical to get a life insurance policy. Oh, wait. Now I recall hearing commercials for no-physical term life policies on the radio.
So, Brilliant!!
We’re all gonna be rich!
Kenneth Kohl
@Corner Stone: whether she can afford it is a way different issue, Mr. Price
Hobbes83
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I think the comment thread should have ended after this comment. Not only because it’s clever, but also because I could see the weasels doing something like this IRL.
J R in WV
@Earl:
I don’t care for CNN’s web site so very much, but it was worth the click to see this story, of which I quote just the lead:
That last paragraph is really revealing. She seems quite level-headed and well spoken. But she obviously doesn’t understand how insurance works. We all have to buy auto insurance, and those of us who don’t have accidents this year pay for those few of us who do, no matter how terrible their accidents are. We all have to buy homeowner’s insurance, especially if we have a mortgage, so the bank gets paid if the house burns down. The lucky people who don’t have an accident, or a fire, or cancer, we pay for the people who do have the bad luck.
Ms Koehler incurred $1,000,000 (approximately) in medical bills to treat her cancer. And we all of us, everyone, paid a few cents of her bill. Especially the young people who were healthy but STILL HAD TO BUY INSURANCE!!! That is how insurance works, all insurance, home insurance, auto, travel insurance, which will pay your medical costs if you go to France* and fall ill there. The healthy people, who don’t have house fires, nor auto accidents, those people are who support those of us who are unlucky.
The fact that Ms Koehler has plumbed the depths of the insurance system to the tune of a million bucks and STILL DOESN’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS is pretty disappointing, and more than a little astonishing. That’s the part of the ACA she doesn’t like, the part that makes it work.
Screw her ignorance, which seems to me to be mostly stupidity. And shame on her for not figuring out how the system that saved her life even works at all. You would think she would have just a little bit of curiosity about how we saved her life, wouldn’t you?
*France, I picked them because they have the best health care in the world. The USA is down in the upper 30s, according to the World Health Organization!! With Costa Rico!
J R in WV
@hovercraft:
Hover, dear, you contact people from Kentucky and West Virginia every day you visit Balloon-Juice the blog. John is up north in Bethany, and I am just south of Charleston.
And there’s several folks from The People’s Socialist City of Lousiville, KY who comment regularly, and wisely. And that poisoned WV water is going to flow downstream and people in Cincinnati are going to drink it. People in Memphis and Natchez and New Orleans are going to drink it.
MCA1
@J R in WV: Word. Part of it is just human nature, I guess. The same impulse that causes a lot of people to be completely ignorant of how much their world is shaped by public investment through taxes, yet hyperaware of how much everyone else is mooching off the teat of gubmint, allows them to see insurance coverage as a right they’re owed but a privilege for everybody else. Which is partly why they have no idea how it actually works beyond “I have it (because I’m hardworking and special) and it pays my medical bills.”
What really amazes me, though, is the depth of willful ignorance of, and/or cognitive dissonance around, the base problem; even amongst those people toward the high end of the income scale, like congresscritters. I’m incredibly fortunate – on the cusp of the 1%, have employer provided health and dental insurance for which I pay about half the premiums, with a giant insurer. But it is patently obvious that IT STILL SUCKS and it’s OUTRAGEOUSLY INEFFICIENT AND EXPENSIVE. I still pay several thousands of dollars annually on premiums, have deductibles that creep higher every year, and still come out of pocket at 20% in-network up to a family cap of another 5 grand. I can’t count the number of hours my poor wife spends on the phone with Cigna every year asking for explanations on their partial coverage, their denials of coverage, their duplicate bills, and everything else, or searching around for doctors in our network, or talking to doctors’ offices dedicated billing and insurance people because they’ve f’ed something up. And the costs, my god. We had a quick stop at the ER for a mild asthma attack last fall, with no overnight stay and no medication prescribed and it came to close to $2,500. Our son had an appendectomy last year and the sticker was in excess of fifty grand after the hospital stay, anesthesiology, surgery, etc.
Everyone I know bitches about this sort of thing, constantly. We all recognize what a shitshow our medical system is, and yet when someone comes along and attempts to enact some modest ideas trying to bend the cost curve by expanding risk pools and getting people preventative care instead of waiting until everything’s an ER visit (paid for by our taxes, anyway), it’s like we forget there’s any problem to be fixed. My savings in premium increases the last several years vs. historical trends have been just about a wash with the additional taxes I pay the latter part of the year after triggering the ACA surtax, but I bet most people situated similarly have no idea that’s the case. It’s just “my taxes went up so I hate Obama.”
ruckus
@Percysowner:
Maroon is the color of abject stupidity?
Well it is a shade of red.
Skepticat
@rikyrah: I think we need to call this DON’tCare.
satby
@Another Scott: As usual, you said what I was trying to say this morning better.
Nora
@Mike in NC: That was the thing that struck me, too. Never voted till the age of 55? What the hell have you been doing all your life?
Moron.
No One You Know
@Applejinx: No. They want them to die because stupid people in large groups are dangerous to the whole group. There is,I contend, no better measure of stupidity than insisting on the logical fallacy of genetics: always agree with your own kind, and define your own kind as narrowly as possible.
If you can’t learn to stop choosing badly, you should bear the consequences yourself. Not drag the rest of us learning, painfully sometimes, how to cooperate in recognizing each other as humans and equals. IMHO.
Mike G
It looks like the quality and/or quantity of her life is about to decline.
While that’s sad for her and her loved ones, I’m saving my sympathy for people who DIDN’T vote for the immiseration of themselves and the rest of us.