2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I feel the need to say something. [View all]Kall
(615 posts)One response, which I would have disagreed with but would have been defensible, would have been for the Clinton campaign to say that "I don't agree that single-payer, despite the merits of it that I have voiced in the past, is the way to achieve universal health care. I believe we can get there by doing X, Y and Z and that is what I will push for in office." Which the Republicans won't cooperate with her on either, no matter how much "care and feeding" she does. It would be harder in many ways to build public support for that because unlike single-payer Medicare which the Republicans have never tried to repeal due to public popularity, the ACA has been underwater in public opinion since the day it was passed and the Republicans have paid no political price for trying to repeal it 60 times due to its lack of public support.
But that's not what happened. Instead, we got Hillary and Chelsea going out and saying that Bernie Sanders would dismantle Medicare, take peoples' health care away, levelling Republican attacks that he would raise taxes (omitting the minor detail that they would save far more by not paying private health insurance costs), and pretending he would repeal the ACA like the Republicans want to do (omitting the detail that the ACA would only ever be replaced if the more inclusive, cheaper plan had already been passed.) And her health care plan consists entirely of 6 or 7 bullet points of vague generalities on her website. And one of them is "As Senator, I got funding for responders after 9/11."