Interesting Biden line from today:
"There comes a time maybe every 6, 8 generations where the world changes in a very short time. We are at that time now, and I think what happens in the next 2-3 years is going to determine what the world looks like for the next 5 or 6 decades."
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) November 3, 2023
When we have late votes at the Capitol like tonight, I like to wander the empty halls. For all the chaos that takes place within this building, it has a calming grace and stillness when we actually take a step back to appreciate its presence. pic.twitter.com/wTU2BUmnOB
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) November 3, 2023
House Dem leader Jeffries says House Democrats are ready to support bill that includes military aid to Israel and Ukraine, and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. “We just need our Republican colleagues to stop playing dangerous political games and join us.”
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) November 3, 2023
Today, I met with Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres to discuss the urgent need to increase humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
I reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself and made clear that international humanitarian law must be respected. pic.twitter.com/xofdqiW2PF
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) November 3, 2023
This won't get the same reaction as Israel fighting against Hamas, but it's one that is far more important. Biden's foreign policy approach is discouraging Iran from using its proxies to launch a wider and far more destructive war. Millions of human beings are better for it. https://t.co/bI16GpcKgz
— Alex גדעון בן װעלװל (@JewishWonk) November 2, 2023
I’ve never understood the “I won’t vote unless I’m excited about the candidate” thing.
They aren’t musicians or movie stars. You’re deciding who you want to create, enforce and/or interpret the policies which will rule our lives for the next few years.
— Charles GetCovered-ba (Yeah, I'm ✡️, deal with it) (@charles_gaba) November 2, 2023
Is it a nice bonus if the candidate is also fun at parties, knows how to tell a joke, etc? Sure, but that’s a bonus, not a requirement.
— Charles GetCovered-ba (Yeah, I'm ✡️, deal with it) (@charles_gaba) November 2, 2023
rekoob
From the Meetup Planning Thread:
From Thursday, Oct 26
rekoob
This might be a good time and place to suggest a DC meetup. I was thinking shortly after the Virginia/Ohio elections at one of Jose Andres’s places:
Zaytinya — Gallery Place Metro
I was there last week and it has a lively atmosphere and specializes in small plates/mezze.
It’s quite popular, so we may need to have a critical mass to get a reservation. It’s also right across the street from the Gallery Place Metro, in the heart of DC.
Something to consider — maybe around 17-18 November 2023? Sooner? Later? Weekday? Weekend?
bbleh
I’ve never understood the “I won’t vote unless I’m excited about the candidate” thing. They aren’t musicians or movie stars. You’re deciding who you want to create, enforce and/or interpret the policies which will rule our lives for the next few years.
He may not understand the “unless I’m excited” thing, but FAR more Americans don’t understand the “policies which will rule our lives” thing. They want to be entertained, and the media want performers who will entertain them. That’s a lot of what’s behind TIFG’s success.
I don’t really see any way out of it. They’re not gonna be convinced by earnest lectures (booo-ringgg!), and fewer and fewer of them understand the connection between actions and consequences, conditioned to angry helplessness and preferring instead to believe in magic.
About the only hope I have is, things were no better in the past. It ain’t like the yeoman farmers of the nineteenth century were exactly steeped in Enlightenment thinking.
OzarkHillbilly
And Q, some of them really like believing in Q.
Alce_e _ ardillo
A lot of people need to be pissed off to vote, and Democrats are pissed off when the economy is bad. If the economy is going gangbusters, we get complacent.. Republicans are pissed off 24/7/365 so they always vote…
(only half-snark)
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Planetjanet
@rekoob: I can do the 18th.
OzarkHillbilly
This being an open thread, Medicaid ‘unwinding’ breeds chaos in states as millions lose coverage
As Gomer Pyle liked to say, Surprise surprise surprise.
Geee, I wonder why the disparity?
NorthLeft
I am finding that the entire mindset of a lot of people these days is geared towards wanting excitement and joy in everything they do. Any ordinary and repetitive activities are deemed to be unimportant and are avoided and criticized.
Simple competency is no longer valued, which unfortunately includes good governance. Those people want politicians, at every level, to be bomb throwers, loudmouths, opinionated, rude, and reckless because that is more interesting.
Note: That attitude also is directed at scientists and the study of science in general.
Chris
Years ago I had an interesting “symbolism versus reality” moment like that when visiting West Point for the first time since childhood. I have multiple family members that went there, grew up hearing all kinds of stories and lore valorizing the U.S. military in general and West Point in particular. As a grown up, much less a grown up who grew up in the post-9/11 era, it’s very difficult not to be cynical about the whole thing, for far too many reasons to list. Like reading enough history to know just how central the U.S. Army has been to a ridiculous number of horrific things. Or knowing how much more common it is for all that military-themed patriotic symbolism to be used to justify unforgivable things than anything worthwhile. Or just having gotten old enough to realize that at least several of the relatives who grew up preaching the “duty honor country” stuff at me are themselves small-minded parochial bigots who if they’d been born in another time and place would have been just as enthusiastic about preaching Nazism or Communism. It’s especially hard not to roll your eyes when you’re reading inspirational quotes from people like, say, Douglas MacArthur, knowing the full story of what an enormous turd he was.
And yet somehow the words and all the sentiment behind them still matter and are still worth listening to. Even if the people saying them were full of shit.
randy khan
I am weirdly fascinated by the people who insist that they have to be seeing stars and sparks to vote for someone, since I don’t think that way at all. They definitely exist, but I wonder how many of them there are.
Caveatimperator
@Chris:
This is a recurring theme in justice-centric liberal politics. One of my favorite examples is MLK’s speech at the March on Washington. He references the Declaration of Independence and other foundational documents multiple times. Jefferson was a hypocrite who wrote “all men are created equal” while owning slaves. But instead of writing him and his ideas off, MLK called upon the crowd to turn those aspirations into reality.
Kay
@NorthLeft:
I think it’s part of what draws people to conspiracy theories. It’s much more exciting to believe there was a lab leak that government covered up than it is to think the ordinary messy world served up a virus.
After 9/11, when people were “how could this HAPPEN, we were supposed to be SAFE” I felt like an absolute weirdo because it doesn’t surprise me at all that there were 17 intelocking fuck ups in a complex system. I feel like I live with that every day. “people MADE MISTAKES? You are kidding me!”
It’s weirdly naive.
Kay
My middle son is working as a poll worker in Lucas County (Toledo) on Tuesday. I could not be more proud. His IBEW local encouraged members to volunteer and guaranteed no employer repercussions if they take the day off to do it.
Maybe we’d have more and younger pollworkers if everyone was in a union :)
Caveatimperator
I’m honestly not convinced that the Democrats are going to lose very many votes based on their stance on Israel.
Basically, you’re asking me to believe that there’s a critical mass of voters who meet all of the following requirements.
Foreign policy issues are not a big motivator for most voters unless we have sent troops to war. Iraq motivated voters, Libya and Syria did not. And I’m pretty convinced that anyone who meets points 2 and 3 is a leftist who does not meet point 1. I find it very difficult to believe that there’s a critical mass of Democrats who get pushed away by Israel but aren’t getting pulled back by abortion.
There’s probably a sizeable chunk of voters who meet points 1 and 2 but not 3. As in, they aren’t happy with Biden’s stance on Israel but don’t consider it a sufficient reason to sit out the election.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Possibly medical fraud is higher in red states? We do have the example of Florida’s Rick Scott.
H.E.Wolf
@Alce_e _ ardillo:
“Rocky and Bullwinkle” fan, eh? :)
SFAW
Maybe some of them think it’ll be “exciting” to see their rights, and the rights of their friends and loved ones, taken away by a Rethuglican maladministration. “Exciting” as in “it’ll be exciting to run from the Texas/Florida/Idaho/etc. Gestapo when trying to leave the state to get an abortion, or when trying to cast a vote for a Dem*. ”
* That assumes there will still be free-and-fair elections, of course.
bbleh
@Alce_e _ ardillo: definitely agree — the two most motivating factors in politics are fear and anger, and imho anger is the more powerful — but I think in this case it’s not JUST the economy. The continuing, overt, over-the-top, arrogant (almost casual) misogyny of the Republican Party — the ENTIRE Republican Party, beginning very much with its presidential candidate and including the present Supreme Court, pretty much the entire Republican House delegation, a large number of Senators, and innumerable officials at state and local levels — has pissed off an AWFUL lot of people (and not just women) and KEPT them pissed off. Dobbs has become accepted shorthand. I think we saw the effects starting in 2018, and I don’t think we’re near seeing the end of them.
And fine — if it takes anger to overcome learned helplessness, I’ll take it.
SFAW
@Kay:
Not strictly related, but compare that with Ivanka attempting to get out of testifying during the school week, because it would create “undue hardship.”
The sooner that entire family disappears from public life, the happier I’ll be.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: Very true.
Matt McIrvin
@Caveatimperator: And MLK was consciously drawing on Frederick Douglass and Lincoln doing the same thing before him.
It was a real dilemma for Douglass. Garrison described the Constitution as a pact with the devil and Douglass knew that in a very real sense, he was right. But even while excoriating the hypocrisy that led to a nation of slavers, Douglass chose a process emphasizing that we could more fully embody the unrealized ideals. It was not at all obvious that it was even possible.
Another Scott
@Chris: Words are really important and can do very powerful things.
But I’ve gotten much more cynical about them, and cautious of soaring rhetoric over the years.
In 9th grade in suburban Atlanta, in the mid-1970s, I had a social studies teacher who was great. Very engaging, seemed to really care about getting his students involved and thinking. But he spent a really, really long time talking about things like the importance of fighting tyranny and protecting the infirm and the unborn (“if people in power take away the rights of the powerless, then they’ll come after the rest of us next…” kinda things). It really appealed to my sense of fairness and idealism and right-and-wrong. Of course, he never talked about the other side – it was important for us to see black-and-white, in his view.
My best friend at the time was a member of the John Birch Society, though he said he didn’t agree with them on everything. (He gave me a copy of “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” and even at 13-or so I could see that it was a bunch of nonsense.) Good kid. Wonder what happened to him… :-/
I remember coming across a translation of one of H****r’s pre-war speeches, when he talks in soaring terms about the poor oppressed German people and how it was essential and right and fairness demands that they have more lebensraum to be restored to their historical status… I was horrified that I could see how good he was at rhetoric, and could see that he wasn’t alone in that skill.
It’s really, really easy to be taken in by moving words. One has to be able to look deeper.
Give me a tongue-tied technocrat over a psychotic poet as leader every time! ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@Ken: Rick Scott’s fraud was on the provider side, not the consumer side. The red/blue state divide is because of the difference in philosophy between government meant to work for the people and government meant to work for the few. Simple as that for almost every policy question.
Matt McIrvin
@Caveatimperator: There’s another regionally important category, though: Arab-American voters. Democrats have just lost them and I don’t think they’re coming back. A minority could even switch to voting for Trump, more out of a desire to punish Biden than any belief that it will make things better, but I think abstention or third-party protest votes are more likely. That may have just lost us Michigan again.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: Biden has thrown the weight of the US policy toward a two state solution. Right now with war raging emotions run high, but by the election next year cooler heads and a realistic appraisal of who the candidates are will probably prevail.
BTW: all Arab Americans aren’t Palestinian. Remember that both Jordan and Egypt weren’t opening borders to allow them to flee to safety.
NorthLeft
@Kay: Agreed. In my previous life I was an engineer and I investigated incidents that resulted in safety impacts, environmental releases, equipment damage, and production losses. These incidents were almost always the result of a chain of events that a lot of times had been occurring for months if not years.
I came away from most of them thinking that we were generally lucky that the incidents had not happened more frequently/earlier, or the consequences were not more serious.
Honestly, that was by far the most interesting part of my job.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think we will know what impact this war will have on voting patterns until it has been over for a few months. My guess is that the war is about halfway through, but that is just a guess.
Caveatimperator
@satby: Also, Arabs didn’t become a Democratic voting bloc until after 9/11, after racism ramped up against them here. The first Gulf War didn’t push them away from Republicans, but 9/11 did because it affected more of them.
Geminid
@satby: One reason that Jordan and Egypt will not accept refugees is that they do not want to see the population of Gaza leave and not be able to return home when the fighting is over.
VeniceRiley
SBF guilty on all 7 counts!
BellyCat
True of (most of) the judicial and police systems as well.
BellyCat
@Geminid: While this makes some sense, if one is dead as a result, the concept of returning is moot.
NorthLeft
@Matt McIrvin: This is a ridiculous take. Yes, there are no doubt some Arab American voters that are upset that the US is backing Israel, but that is pretty much the same as it ever was.
Also, I think you are overestimating how ignorant those voters are. I think it is pretty well understood that Biden and Dems in general are working to help the people of Gaza and moderate Israel’s attacks on the people of Gaza. Those people will get absolutely nothing from the Republicans and especially Trump.
Ben Cisco
@randy khan: I had a family member, a generation behind me, that tossed out the “don’t blackmail me for my vote talking about the Supreme Court” line. This coming from a politically engaged university professor. I wasn’t impressed and let them know it.
Epilog – they voted for Hillary and Biden; haven’t heard any more jackassery re Supreme Court.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
We are a year from the 2024 elections. The American attention span is brief, and as screamingly, blood-boiling passionate as some people are about the Israel-Hamas War, they are a tiny, tiny minority and even most of them won’t be thinking about it by then. The people still passionately upset, in either direction, are people who never voted Democrat.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Bullshit. Please stop with the doom mongering. Do you even remember the Trump Muslim ban??
Please stop inhaling online left social media and repeating it here.
Sherparick
@rekoob: weekend would be best since we live far outside of town.
Geminid
@BellyCat: The permanent displacement of Gaza’s population is a real concern for Jordan and Egypt. And they expect the vast majority of Gazans to survive this war, in Gaza.
The US and the EU, which is Israel’s biggest trading partner, are also leaning heavily on the Israeli government to not drive Gazans from their territory, and muzzle the few government members who are advocatiing the removal of Gazans from their territory.
Elizabelle
@rekoob: That would be great. I have family in town some of those dates, but I would be interested in driving up from RVA if a meetup comes to pass. Thank you for organzing one.
I love the idea of showing Jose Andres’s restaurants some love. Plus: good food and drink!
narya
Here’s another defense of boring. The part that gets missed about “boring,” in whatever context, is that it’s often based on a kind of mastery. For example, when I was first at the bakery, I was soooo slow in making croissants–every step required a kind of thought and attention, because I simply hadn’t done it much. By the time I left, two years later, I cranked out hundreds, maybe up to a thousand, a week. I had a large mixer and a two-way dough sheeter to help with rolling things out (though even THAT required a lot of practice to use well; in the beginning even that part was sooooo slow), but otherwise it was all by hand. The same is true for “mental” pursuits: by the time I left my last job, I knew a ton about several large federal programs. That knowledge turns out to have led to consulting work.
And I’m not special–but “mastery” is boring. It requires work and attention, but it’s not flashy. That’s why people like Marge and Matt and the like are so annoying to me: they don’t have mastery of any damn thing, they just make noise. They don’t know shit about anything.
satby
@Geminid: Understandable. Both countries are also concerned about their own stability and allowing huge refugee camps to be established potentially jepordizes that.
Sherparick
@Matt McIrvin: Since Trump is suggesting locking up all Arab Americans, that would mean voting for the Face Eating Leopards Party after the Leopards told you you will be the first face they eat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Assuming that there is a significant drop off in the Arab-American vote, how do you know that it won’t be overridden an increase from UAW voters or suburban women upset about Dobbs or some other factor we haven’t even thought of yet?
Geminid
Secretary Blinken arrived in Israel this morning to confer with Israeli officials. He’ll go on the Amman, Jordan where a number of Arab states are participating in a conference on the war. On Sunday Blinken will visit Ankara where he will meet with his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
frosty
@rekoob: Turns out I’m going to be in Baltimore on the 18th and could probably head down to DC in the late afternoon. That’s the only day that works for me.
Old Man Shadow
Apathy, stupidity, greed, and hate are killing us and the environment.
MisterDancer
@Sherparick: True as far as it goes. But you can’t campaign on “the other guy would be worse,” esp. when it’s a community that’s under attack as well, including here in the US.
Hell, just yesterday, Jesse Watters over at Fox News spit out some utter Islamphobic horseshit that the White House felt compelled to respond to. Andin doing so, they reminded that Biden just mentioned, in his prime time address,the 6 year old Palestinian-American killed here, by a hate monger. It’s also no coincidence Harris is working the humanitarian situation, as well.
People from the diaspora are angry, and scared, just as Jews across the world are. Under stress, stress none of these people created or promulgated, yes I’d expect they’d lash out. Excoriating them for not doing so, under immense stress, to our standards — is not a great way to retain a coalition.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: of course you believe in mistakes, isn’t that the work of attorneys, undoing people’s mistakes or at least lessening the severity of the repercussions? You are knee deep in mistakes every day you are at work.
Wapiti
If you want less evil in the world, vote for the lesser of two evils.
Hoppie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Thus the infamous “October surprise”.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Geminid
@MisterDancer: I want to look at Arab Americans as people first and electoral counters second. Right now as people they are in a lot of distress and outright anguish. Some of them have family over there with bombs falling all around them. Right now, if I were a Palestinian-American Democrat and I heard some other Democrat smuggly say, “they will vote with us no matter what happens over there” I might vow never to vote for a Democrat again.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Ohio Mom:
Let me echo Kay’s point about mistakes. I was fortunate to learn about computers at an early stage of their development and it has been my career to work on them.
We now carry around billions of transistors in our pockets. It’s not easy to comprehend that number and I won’t belabor it. It is only one small aspect of the complexity of these systems we take for granted. In software (my area of expertise) mistakes are legion. Most of the job of software engineering is finding and correcting these mistakes. It is a miracle these things work at all.
taumaturgo
@OzarkHillbilly: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/infant-mortality-rate-increases-3-2022-rising-1st/story?id=104505952
For those who honestly care for the wellbeing of ALL children, read this and weep.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I think I’m less pessimistic about that than you. When it comes to Israel/Palestine, the unpleasant truth is that both parties have been awful for a long time, and Arab-Americans know it all too well – whatever good impulses some Democrats might have are usually sabotaged by the overwhelming “it is never acceptable to do anything other than Support Israel, ever” consensus of U.S. politics. Even something as in your face as Biden hugging Netanyahu is, sadly, pretty much all they’ve come to expect. Meanwhile, they have more pressing issues closer to home than Israel/Palestine (not least because most Arab-Americans aren’t even Palestinian), and in an age of rising fascism, they know better than almost anyone else in America how dangerous the Republican Party’s gotten.
I’m not taking them for granted, but I don’t think another round of Israel/Palestine is going to be enough to shake them loose from the Democratic coalition.
Chris
@Geminid:
That’s also true.
lowtechcyclist
I’d love to join a DC meetup, and my calendar says I’m free anytime that weekend.
MisterDancer
Oh, yes. I was just reading this AM an article about multiple vulnerabilities found in, of all this, ANSI Terminal emulation.
(For those going, rightly, “hunh?” — this is very well known/studied foundational software that’s been around for decades. The vast majority of computer users will never encounter this stuff directly, but it’s still critical in a number of areas, esp. if you use Linux or the command line in MacOS.)
Anyway — as someone who started learning coding with BASIC and assembly, it’s kind of staggering how much code we’ve built as humans.
I’m rarely shocked, these days, when security issues pop up; in order to just do what we do here takes a ton of coding! For example: “guessing” about your browser’s capabilities and code specific to provide functions that some browsers don’t support, but others do.
Or how we’ve now written so much code to allow one system to emulate multiple different systems, down to the software-pretending-to-be-hardware level in many cases.
We’ve done a lot to make this modern world work, and rarely is any of it looked at once done, save when someone finds problems.
RevRick
@Wapiti: According to Karl Barth, one of the theological giants of the 20th century, the lesser of two evils is, in fact, the good. We live in a broken world, and the demand for perfection leads to even worse outcomes.
Tim Ellis
I think President Biden is right – we are living through critical times that will determine the shape of the rest of my life, and my son’s as well. This has been clear to most of us here since 2016, I suspect, but it’s important and powerful for the President to say it boldly and openly from his position.
As far as the classic “it’s Democrats faults for not making their voters enthusiastic”, I think the sentiment misses the mark – not least because Democrats DO make their voters enthusiastic (Biden got more votes than any candidate in history, by MILLIONS) – but only because it’s usually weaponized in bad faith in the service of accelerationism (intentionally or not). The people who say that are the people who don’t want to be convinced and will never be satisfied, they can safely be disregarded by most activists and should be tended to over time by people like me who are on the left wing of the party.
But it IS true that while I personally believe it’s my duty to vote (at minimum), there’s plenty of people who don’t feel that way, and it’s important that candidates and their campaign managers never lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, it is our job to win elections and that means it is our job to inspire voters to turn out. That usually doesn’t mean “exciting” them, but it does mean not only the hard work of organizing and building logistical infrastructure but also the softer stuff – having policy that speaks to different audiences, have good communications that reaches people and motivates them to turn out, etc. It’s an unfortunate irony, but the people like this blog’s readers who feel the duty and honour of voting are basically irrelevant to a campaign manager, because we will turn out to vote regardless of what the campaign does, so we’re not worth spending resources on. Which is good! More resources for those other voters. But those are the ones who need to see themselves in the campaign and the candidate, in some way. Doesn’t have to be “exciting”, but does have to be motivating enough to get them in that booth on election day. Shifting that burden back on the voter and blaming them if they don’t turn out would be an abdication of the role of a campaign manager or GOTV organizer and only makes our job harder (even if it is, in my moral calculus as someone who cares deeply about democracy, quite correct).
OzarkHillbilly
@taumaturgo: Thanx. Commentor Scott posted this up at OTB this morn: “It’s hell”: Surge of Texas kids dying from gun violence carves canyons of grief through families
RevRick
George Orwell wrote 1984 , because he feared a tyrannical government would squash our humanity with the fear of pain. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, because he feared we’d surrender our humanity to endless amusement and pleasure.
It turns out fascist regimes often work both angles. The Nazis, after all, raised Son et Luminere to a high art. They provided both menace and spectacle.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@MisterDancer: thanks for the link! Computer security is abysmally poor. Yet I use online banking. We’re lucky the universe is so forgiving, we’d be in real trouble if we had to account for all our failings.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@OzarkHillbilly: A media campaign hammering home how the GOP is taking healthcare from American children should be playing on repeat 24-7. Sadly, we aren’t doing that.
Soprano2
@Chris: When we went to England in 2006 we visited Coventry Cathedral, which was left in ruins from being bombed in WWII. Being there and seeing the destruction brought out how devastating WWII was in Europe in a way no museum ever could. I wrote something about it a long time ago, maybe I’ll see if I still have it and post it.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
60% of 200,000 is 120,000 so that’s D share of Arab American vote in MI. That’s if they all vote and they don’t all vote so really it’s closer to 60% of 100,000 if their voting rate is 50%. Say, realistically, they put out a call to NOT vote for Biden and 10% of that 60,000 follow thru – that’s only 6k.
I think political media have trouble distinguishing between people lobbying government – advocacy- pushing for a change in policy – and people actually following thru with threats not to vote. They are two different things. They’re lobbying- pushing. They want him to change course. That’s perfectly acceptable but it’s not fact.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I really, really want to ask them what they think our government’s reaction to Hamas slaughtering people should have been. What exactly did they expect Biden to do under these circumstances? We all know what TFG would have done – would they prefer that?
Eolirin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: They’re taking Healthcare away from poor and disabled people. Even the median Democratic voter doesn’t care about that.
Red states have been systematically denying qualified people access to Medicaid and other federal assistance programs and creating barriers to maintaining coverage for ages, the scale of the back log is just letting them go really crazy with it.
Hell, even blue states do this to varying degrees, though at least that’s been improving in places.
Policy folk aside, no one has ever seemed to give a shit. Just like no one really cared when abortion restrictions were making it really hard for poor black women to get adequate care but weren’t yet fucking things up for broader OBGYN care and emergency situations. It’ll only cross over into being something that matters when it hits middle class white people, which Medicaid can’t do as currently configured.
Disability rights and protections for poor people are nearly impossible to get broad public support for in this country. You can’t get people to believe the system works the way it does, and especially with white people, often even when they’re the ones navigating it.
This shit has been broken for a very very long time.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
They’re just not that big a group. Now, Biden will certainly try to get or retain their vote and they’re important as far as any D voter is important but you’re essentially talking about some percentage change among 80,000 people, so 60 to 50% or something. It’s not do or die.
Tim Ellis
@Eolirin: It can be done though – that’s how those systems got built in the first place. It’s clearly possible. We just need to figure out how.
I was born under Reagan, in a Rust Belt city; my primary experience of public investment is of constant, steady erosion and decline. But the stuff got there somehow.
A few years back I moved to Canada. In just the past few years, Canada has added public $10/day daycare, full dental coverage for families making under 90k, and has committed to implementing a pharmacare program to cover prescription meds before 2025. These are big, meaningful expansions of the social safety net. Canada is culturally different to the US, sure, but not THAT different – it’s still a country dominated by a middle class set of people. If it can work here, it can work back home in the States.
Which isn’t to say it will be easy, or that there aren’t powerful forces arrayed against it, but it has been done before, and it can be done again.
Eolirin
@Tim Ellis: Policy folk care and they can get elected without running on it explicitly, and it doesn’t hurt them to be for it. It’s just not something you’re going to get people to vote over. Running those ads would be a waste in this context.
People will turn out over abortion rights and over book banning and if they legitimately think Democracy is under threat, though convincing them of that is hard.
Poor and disabled people getting Healthcare isn’t something like that. You’d have to lie about what they’re currently doing and make it seem like they’re going to go after the average person’s Healthcare too, even though they’ve stopped, for now, trying to repeal the ACA.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: And I should note, Canada doesn’t need to deal with navigating the issues that make no one care about Medicaid. Medicaid is only for poor and disabled people. If Medicaid was something everyone could have, it would be defended broadly and there’d be all sorts of people pushing to expand and improve it.
Redshift
@rekoob: I’m interested in a DC meetup, but the 18th is one day I definitely can’t do. (You know how nothing much happens for weeks and then everything gets scheduled on the same day? It’s one of those.) But if it works for everyone else, I’ll catch the next one.
TEL
@Tim Ellis: Way late to this thread, but I just wanted to compliment you on an excellent comment.
Uncle Cosmo
@Elizabelle: I’d like to travel down from Bawlmer with the MARC train and Metro if possible – that would mean either lunch or an early supper on 11/18 (last train home leaves 21:15) or lunch on 11/17 (things to do that evening). Might be able to drive down to DC burbs & Metro in if consensus is to go later. Just my dos centavos.