About leaving the rust belt behind

[cilla4progress]

Shouldnt ACA have helped them?Wouldn't all that work of Obama's been to their benefit? It was sabotaged by Republican governors and legislators because they are just that craven and power mad. And because they had already stripped their education systems of resources, their citizens didn't have the understanding or critical thinking skills to get it and see who the true architects of their demise are.

Dems are constitutionally unable to stoop to these tactics

And so we are here.

[RKP5637]

1. IMO democrats have leaned more rightward over the years. I am not directing to any specifically,

just that I've felt democrats leaned more rightward over the years and here we are now. In my youth, democrats were for the working poor, the unions, the disadvantaged, etc. True, that is still true but not to the extent of my youth.

[guillaumeb]

2. The ACA did help them.

I attended a Tea Party meeting in my town in 2014. I heard old white seniors complaining that they did not want the government to ruin their Medicare because everyone knows that the government cannot do anything properly.

When I pointed out to the meeting that Medicare is a Federal Government program I was met with blank looks. I also mentioned that their Social Security checks come from another Federal Government program. Again, blank looks.

And this is in a suburb of Chicago, in reliably blue state Illinois.

[SHRED]

3. The stupid is thick

But we are suppose to "understand their pain"...yeah...riiight.

[realmirage]

5. Ok so don't understand it and continue to lose?

Is that the strategy?

[SHRED]

9. Does it matter now?

Does anyone realize what's coming?

[guillaumeb]

8. We do have to understand that uninformed people also vote, and that uninformed white people

vote at relatively high rates.

[oberliner]

4. Someone said with a straight face that they didn't want the government in charge of Medicare?

That is pretty amazing.

[guillaumeb]

7. Sad and amazing that a senior would not understand that Medicare is a government program.

Considering that all of the paperwork generated references the US Government.

I am a Federal retiree. I also heard at the same meeting that Federal employees pay nothing for their retirement. So I mentioned that for my 37 year career I paid 7.5% of my gross pay into Civil Service. I also said that by contrast, they only paid 3.5% into Social Security. Amazing the amount of ignorance and misinformation among supposedly educated voters.

[Travis_0004]

28. Where do you get 3.5% for Social Security?

The rate is 12.4% (6.2 employee, and 6.2 employer).

You would have to go back to the 60's to find a rate that was 3%.

[guillaumeb]

36. The rate was 3.5% until the Reagan/O'Neill "bargain" in the 1980's.

The bargain was that baby boomers had their contributions doubled to supposedly pay for the looming crisis.

[Travis_0004]

37. It was above 5% when Regan took office. Above 10% if you include employer contributions.

[guillaumeb]

38. My error. It was actually 4.95% for individuals in 1980.

And 6.7% at the end of Reagan's Presidency.

And it was much lower for the "greatest generation" of workers who comprised a lot of the Tea Party membership.

[Travis_0004]

39. Where are you getting your stats?

The rate was 5.05 in 1978. (and did not drop in between 1978 and Regan winning the election.

The rate has never been above 6.2%, unless you want to include medicare, but if that's the case, why not include medicare in the 1980 rate to be consistent.

[WhiteTara]

10. That is really a typical tea bagger statement.

They said this over and over again during their hayday. And the stupid really burns.

[guillaumeb]

23. And the benefits that they receive are considered to be "earned benefits", in contrast

to the "free stuff" that is given to non-whites.

[WhiteTara]

35. Good point!

[JI7]

34. thst was a common thing from teabag protests

[Sorceress]

13. OMG, reading this made me lightheaded.

[guillaumeb]

24. It made for an interesting meeting.

But for some reason neither I nor my friends were invited back.

They obviously felt that whatever they received in government benefits was something that they deserved. And also obviously did not even recognize the source of some of the benefits.

So much for an informed electorate.

[onecaliberal]

6. We have definitely been pulled right however, the Medicaid expansion was blocked by republican

Governors and legislatures all over the country. The Fucking maggot loving media has destroyed any semblance of truth of facts or investigating and reporting to the American people.

[WhiteTara]

11. After having forced Part D with penalties on us

and demanded that the government NOT negotiate prices with drug companies, actual help is a step to far.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

12. So you're basically saying people in the rust belt are stupid? Maybe they are just angry.

Many states never created their own exchanges and never expanded medicaid. That left people of those states with shit plans and no good options. So even if they got subsidies that still left them with outrageous deductibles. If you are living paycheck to paycheck you can't afford to pay those deductibles so you don't get care. If you are the working poor the ONLY thing that matters is keeping a roof over the heads of your family and keeping food in their bellies. Nothing else matters. These folks are going to vote for whoever LISTENS to them and who they think really CARES. To listen and care you need to actually show up.

[cilla4progress]

14. I am saying they are uninformed, for sure.

Which states didn't expand Medicaid? Any blue states? This is my point! It's the red state governors and legislatures that screwed them - not Dems!

Not saying that it's good - or that ACA was all that it should have been, but a high deductible is better than medical bankruptcy. Maybe they should have studied that. Also, penalties were like $100 a year. I know, also a struggle for these poor white people. Lots of pain to go around, with outsourcing, etc. But I am saying: who fought them every inch of the way? Who fought Obama's agenda, minimum wage increase, yadda yadda?

And I hear their pain. I have worked in poverty law most of my career. Most have NO IDEA how poor these people are. Pretty much every parent I help now has their kids on some sort of government-paid health insurance. I live in a blue state and that's how we do it here.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

31. The majority of people don't follow politics as closely as those of us here do...

I live in one of the states that did not expand medicaid or create it's own marketplace. Even with a subsidy there is no way in hell I could afford those deductibles. I would not get care. I'm a single mother of a disabled child. I don't even have a car because I had to sell it so I could pay the rent one month. It was an old 1994, so it wasn't a great car anyhow. But hey, whatever I have to do to keep a roof over my kids' head.

Who came out and talked about trying to help struggling families over the rising costs of Obamacare when the news about rates going up came out? It sure as hell wasn't the Dems. I kept saying on here that Hillary needed to come out fast and say she knew it was an issue and was prepared to work hard to fix it. She didn't do that and some here scoffed at the suggestion I made that she needed to address it. That is an example of the snobbery that can be found with some liberals that really, really turn people off. That same happy horseshit is EXACTLY why I will never register as a Democrat. I can't stand that holier than thou sanctimonious BS.

[cilla4progress]

33. Great points.

Thanks.

But you knew enough not to vote for Trump, right?

[DanTex]

15. The ones who didn't figure out it was the GOP state government that didn't create

the exchanges and didn't expand medicaid, and instead blamed it on the Dems? Yes, they are stupid.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

32. Which presidential candidate spoke to voters about relieving the burden of the rate hikes for ACA?

The one who got elected.

It doesn't matter who did what...Dems NEVER reassured voters they would do something about rising premiums and costs. They ignored it.

[DanTex]

40. Hillary, the only one in favor of a public option.

Trump lied and blamed ACA for premium hikes, that overall occurred at lower rates than before ACA. Not to mention the fact that many of the people who's rates went up wouldn't have had insurance at all except for ACA.

But, yeah, blame it all on Hillary.

Like I said, Trump voters are idiots.

[Garrett78]

41. If by ignore, you mean a detailed plan on Clinton's website and numerous mentions in speeches.

As opposed to Trump, who pretty much just talked about getting rid of the ACA. Now there's word he may keep certain portions but do away with the mandate. Guess what happens when you do away with the mandate? Only sick people will buy the insurance. Guess what happens to premiums when only sick people buy the insurance?

It's not the fault of Dems that tens of millions of people can't think critically, that the media did a piss-poor job of covering Clinton's message (so much so that you seem to think she ignored the issue of health care costs), and that tens of millions of people subscribe to the most patently false beliefs imaginable.

Irrational hatred for Clinton, racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, anti-political correctness (or what some of us call human decency), FBI interference, a pathetic mainstream media (that promotes false equivalencies, only cares about ratings and doesn't think fact checking is its job) and voter suppression (Shelby County v. Holder 5-4 decision of 2013) were all much bigger factors than the economic issue messaging. People sold by "We're looking at jobs--big league jobs" were never going to vote for Clinton.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2016/07/09/hillary-clintons-commitment-universal-quality-affordable-health-care-for-everyone-in-america/

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/

[JimBeard]

43. Trump was just the loudest.

[Dems to Win]

16. "America is greater than it's ever been!"

People in the Rust Belt are living among empty factories, where they or their parents used to be able to make a living wage.

Half of Americans can't meet an unexpected $400 expense.

And Democrats tell struggling people that America is greater than it's ever been, and is surprised when a lot of people vote for the other guy.

It's my theory that lots of whites who had voted for Obama voted for Trump this time because they have higher expectations than POC. If America is greater than it's ever been, then I should be doing better than my parents. If I can't expect to do as well as my parents did, then America is not greater than it's ever been.

[cilla4progress]

17. Some of the very informative discussion I have heard on this includes:

a teacher at a community college of mostly inner-city recent immigrants. She remarked on how committed they are to improving their lot, going with the economic flow / trends, aggressively educating themselves to remain competitive, their savvy, in this regard.

I wonder how many of these poor whites are waiting for blacksmithing to return so they can stay with the skill set that got them their middle class lifestyle.

This was on Tom Ashbrook. The commentary (IIRC it was Tom Friedman) was that people have to take SOME responsibility to keep up with the dynamism, the wharp-speed changes coming our way in a global economy. No luddite US president is going to stop that. And it wouldn't be good for us as a whole, in any case.

[Dems to Win]

18. HALF of Americans can't meet an unexpected 400 expense, in the richest country on Earth

Our system is screwed up and people are rightfully angry about it, even if they are not clear about who to be angry at.

You might want to do a wholesale population transfer and replace rural Americans with new immigrants who move at warp speed, but rural Americans will fight you with their votes.

[cilla4progress]

19. I'm a rural American

as are many of my liberal friends, by the way (eastern Washington).

I understand the anger. People just need to take some responsibility for becoming informed.

Sorry if I'm not feeling very magnanimous right now. You might be interested in listening to Tom Ashbrook's interview of Thomas Friedman. Much better at articulating this argument, which I found compelling.

[Dems to Win]

20. Smug Democrats will continue to LOSE.

I've no need to listen to smug, arrogant Tom Friedman

[cilla4progress]

22. Well, some beg to differ

Personally, I like to listen to a range of opinions and decide for myself based on diverse input.

[JimBeard]

21. Go southwest young people.

We don't have enough time to to re-invigorate the crusty old white people in Ohio and Wisconsin and the damn Cubans in Florida. Just concentrate on the current state and Texas and Arizona. Just say oil and it is done. We will keep all our personal freedoms at the expense of oil which we have already extracted huge concessions. I am as sick of Union people saying the Democrats left them as the oil people. The bitching from Union MEMBERS has been around since the late 1980's when I would visit a bar and listen to SantaFe switchmen bitch and moan about the union. They all voted republican. Tired of it.

[Exilednight]

25. The ACA should have helped them. The question is: DID the ACA help them?

The ACA failed in its objective to reduce medical costs.

A law is only as good as what it delivers.

[raging moderate]

26. I think I read on DU that Marco Rubio had engineered that failure.

Reportedly, Rubio had slipped tiny inserts into bills just before they went to a vote, which removed the funding that would have prevented these increases through small infusions of cash from the government.

[CincyDem]

27. Voting Republican hasn't worked for you. "yeah...but it could".

2012 short video made by Pelosi's daughter (a film maker). This is from Mississippi but I think it captures a lot of what we saw in rural rust belt. We can argue about it his is typical but it's at least prevalent.

[Garrett78]

30. I'd say 20% or more of eligible voters in the US feel more or less the same as those in that video.

And the Democratic Party will never win them over. No messaging strategy will pull people out of an alternate reality in which they reside. Surveys make it abundantly clear that tens of millions of people subscribe wholeheartedly to some of the most ludicrous beliefs imaginable.

The good news, I guess, is that 40% don't vote in presidential elections (while 60% don't vote in mid-term elections) and a fair number of those folks *can* probably be reached.

[Garrett78]

29. Of course the Rust Belt is better off thanks to Obama and would be better off with Clinton.

But people believe what they want to believe.

[duffyduff]

42. Yeah, it is all the public education system and teachers' fault they can't think.

I am so tired of this cliche, I can scream. Schools teach what you call "critical thinking," though not esoteric stuff found in university philosophy classes. What is taught is developmentally appropriate.

They are NOT indoctrination centers for either the left or the right.

THE SCHOOLS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for this mentality of people, mainly white males, voting for Trump.

It is very hard to shake off upbringing by PARENTS, and reinforced by authoritarian institutions like churches and the military, and further reinforced by hate radio and outfits like Fox, which never happened before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine.

But the schools are not responsible for this.

I can always tell when somebody is not an educator when I read views that say schools "do not teach 'critical thinking.'" It simply isn't true and never has been. The schools are not in the business of teaching people WHAT to think.