Who will run in 2020?

Dude you are so out of touch it hurts. Medicaid expansion and no preexisting conditions were the good parts of the ACA. Millions of self employed people ended up uninsured though, myself included.

Other than the Women’s March and (maybe) the Muslim Ban, what else has generated mass mobilization as big as the ACA repeal vote? People were holding sit-ins in Congress, Senator Collins was getting heat in her district and lots of Republican Congresspeople stopped holding town halls because their constituents were so mad.

People might not think the ACA is perfect, but it seems like they fought pretty hard to keep it from being taken away.

2 Likes

You guys have a short memory. Obama ran on Obamacare as his signature issue and he crushed it back to back, even in a recession. Dems ran heavily on defending the ACA in 2018 and it led to the Blue Wave.

Am I the only one who remembers town halls filled with screaming constituents? Congressdudes too scared to even show up?

People care a lot about keeping insurance for their pre-existing conditions.

Edit: maybe there are two people here who remember 2018. :)

3 Likes

Sure. There are vocal people who care a lot about keeping the preexisting conditions part… the people who would go bankrupt without it. None of them are going to vote for Trump though.

The solution imo is to get them to prioritise their exonomic/class interest over their fear. Its not easy, fear is an easy button to push (and it aways pushes voters in the conservative direction) and we’ve had generations of culture working against class identification in America. It’ll take years or decades of organizing just like it did last time. Personal relationships are stronger than propaganda, it takes lots of people talking to lots of people, building trust, doing things together, building solidarity. The right has been doing this in churches for 40 years, the left is way behind.

2 Likes

Where do you stand on billionaires and large corporations buying elections to game the system, which leads to the level of corruption we currently have in our government and politics? Because that’s noticeably absent from your list

Maybe I’m just completely out of touch. I absolutely think health care is a winning issue for Democrats, I just don’t get the sense they get much political credit for it, or benefit electorally from ACA. Maybe I’m just flat out wrong about that.

Yeah Pete I’m sure the tshirts that say “breathe easy - don’t break the law” were about police safety and not a thinly veiled threat that minorities face literal death penalties for minor criminal infractions.

6 Likes

Healthcare is a huge winning issue for the left. But the reason why the ACA was a winning issue is because the GOP was dumb enough to attack the popoular parts of it (including preexisting conditions which put a bunch of middle class people squarely in the cross hairs and threatened their very position in society… unsurprisingly they don’t like that).

We need to do a full bore healthcare overhaul the next chance we get so that we can point to the improvement we made in people’s lives the next cycle.

Yeah this. We won’t win majorities of poor whites for several cycles (really until the Boomers die)… but we can greatly mitigate how badly we lose with them just like Obama did. The first step is definitely not calling them racists. They don’t like that, and you don’t get any points for it. It’s pandering to the black vote in the dumbest possible way.

Yes it’s true. That doesn’t fucking matter. Calling them deplorables was a huge mistake for HRC and it very likely cost her the election (among about 20 other things that had similar impact… it took a lot of fucking up to put Donald in the White House).

1 Like

That’s because they suck donkey nuts at framing the issue. Instead of “Biden will defend your grandma’s healthcare” it’s “European leaders will laugh at Trump.” Millions of ad dollars wasted on this dumb shit.

Yeah, that’s a no from me, dog.

… because you’re exactly who GOPPete is pandering to right now by calling them racists.

I’m sick of tiptoeing around the racism issue because of the fragile, pearl-clutching snowflakes who somehow see it as worse to call someone racist rather than to actually be racist. The more people out there calling a spade a spade, the better.

5 Likes

I’d much rather that than to pander to the racists by downplaying their racism because it might hurt their fee-fees.

It’s just like other appeals to “moderates” or “undecideds” or “centrists” or whatever the flavor of the day is. The ones who truly believe that shit are never voting for Dems anyways, so Dems need to stop pandering to them.

1 Like

Cool back to back posts from an obviously intellectually consistent poster :+1:

You go ahead and try to win the ChiefsPlanet vote. Good luck.

1 Like

Sorry, not the Patriot act, the 2001 AUMF for the endless war on terror. Barbara Lee was the only vote against and it’s why I love her.

1 Like

I agree the progressive left has been terrible on messaging. While it’s fun (and often necessary) to slam dunk on racists, the truth of the matter is, white, black, brown, Democrat, or Republican, all have more in common with each other than they ever will with any politician, billionaire, or Wall Street exec earning a 7-9 figure salary

Many are simply ignorant and believe the stereotypes - African Americans are more violent and prone to crime, so that’s why they represent such a high percentage of our prison populations. They don’t like immigrants, because they steal jobs, etc. - It’s hard to get poor racist white people to realize their privilege when they can’t get by themselves working two jobs to support their families

The progressive left absolutely has to make these elections less about race and more about the class warfare that’s being waged. Poor white people need to be educated on the fact that it’s not black or brown people that are their problem, but those of their OWN skin color who are draining all the wealth from the system and won’t stop until they bring ALL poor people to their knees at the feet of their oligarchy project

2 Likes

I agree with the sentiment here, but disagree that it has to mean the left shouldn’t call out racism (at least I think that’s what you’re saying in your first paragraph, but maybe you’re in agreement with what I’m about to say). If anything, I think being open and honest about when people are being (sometimes subtly) racist can strengthen the class solidarity in the long run–we need people to realize when hidden biases are factoring into their decision-making before we can tear those biases down and unite people around what they have in common (being stepped on by the rich).