I don’t watch enough Fox to have heard everything the squad says, but I’m not sure when they ever said that. The squad haven’t been around during a time when the dems had any chance to pass legislation, but we can look at Sanders: He supported Clinton’s heatlhcare reform proposals, he voted for the ACA, he’s responsible for the heavily negotiated and compromised VA bill. The public option was killed from the ACA because of the moderates, not anyone on the left side of the democratic caucus.
I disagree. Those 4 to 5 % of people who “swung” Republican despite their dislike of Trump himself are likely the Lincoln project / never Trump Republicans. Democratic congressional candidates got a double dose of energized segments of the electorate to deal with. The never Trump voters likely voted for Republicans for congress. Add in the newly engaged MAGAs, who probably voted straight ticket Republican, and congressional Democrats had a bigger challenge than Biden did regardless of what positions AOC or Bernie held.
ETA. If the moderate Democrats really lost due to the positions of AOC, why have moderate Democrats been losing, especially in midterms, going back to the days of Newt Gingrich in 1994? It wasn’t because AOC scared people back then into voting Republican.
Here.
There’s some rationale behind it. If folks can obtain private insurance, then you can have higher payments for procedures for folks on private insurance, which means that doctors might put rich people at the front of the healthcare line, instead of distributing healthcare more fairly. If you love capitalism, this isn’t a good approach; but if you believe that a homeless man has the same rights to essential care as a millionaire, it makes plenty of sense.
I can totally see him feeling that way, but it doesn’t seem to be at all set up that way in the draft proposal. Same with hospitals; they have the right to opt in (or out) of the system; so if they are part of the national MFA system, I would assume they provide the same care to everyone, and those Americans that feel entitled to get treatment away from the hoi polloi can freely do so, with their own private setup.
Now, I AM reading a hundred-page legalese pdf on a phone, so if I missed it, I apologise…
This is all very true. Republican politicians are hopeless. But that’s not the only or the real issue. Getting the voters to approve is the key. If they are pushing for certain policies the Republicans can stuff themselves. If they don’t, the Democrats are helpless. And even that assumes that the left controls both houses. As long as McConnell is in the way then reality dictates that only compromise bills can be passed.
Moderate Democrats did well in 2018, the only meaningful comparison, and the reason why people are so shocked by this year’s change. The positions of AOC are utterly irrelevant to the conversation. She’s used as a boogeywoman by the right and ignored by the masses of the left. What people paid attention to were the policies offered by the presidential candidates in their endless debates. Sanders alone was sufficient to damage the party. The right quite successfully stuck his utopian plans - or caricatures of them - to all Democrats.
Extremists on either side never care what their opponents are going to say; they not only expert opposition, they crave it. But politicians have to pay attention to which strategies are self-defeating because they turn off persuadable voters.
There are always persuadable voters. These days there are seldom persuadable incumbents. Strategies always have to favor the former rather than the latter.
I do not know her or the Squad’s particular stance on this but AOC has shown herself to be quite pragmatic. She is a long way from a Tea Party zealot who flatly refuses any compromise. I’d be surprised if she was truly all or nothing on this and if she is I would like to see the details because it sounds like a lot of nuance is being lost.
In the end the point is that we (most people) agree we should all have access to healthcare and that the current system is fundamentally broken. The system is in dire need of fixing and we need some form of UHC in this country…something 99% of the rest of the world has.
Once we agree on that we can argue fiddly details till the cows come home.
I’m not a fan of “far left” scaremongering, but I’ve had some pretty disheartening interactions on Twitter these past few days with self-described leftists. They went directly from torching Trump to torching Biden in less than 24 hours after the election was called.
AFAICT, liberals need to treat online leftists with deep suspicion. They are the proverbial “perfect is the enemy of the good” sort of enemy.
This is just flatly wrong.
I have no doubt you believe it though.
Getting your news or your sense of people from Twitter is where you went wrong.
We should have a clearer picture once all the votes are counted and the postmortem complete. None the less, I think the biggest problem that moderate Democrats faced this year was all the extra voters Trump brought out. These are people who likely stayed home in 2018. The only way I see to avoid the same in the future is to hope that the Republicans nominate someone more like Mitt Romney and less like Trump in the future. I doubt ditching the far left will keep the MAGAs home. I’d also bet that the MAGAs are highly unlikely to split their tickets, regardless of how moderate the Democrat on the ballot is.
SEC. 107. PROHIBITION AGAINST DUPLICATING COVERAGE. (a) IN GENERAL.—Beginning on the effective date described in section 106(a), it shall be unlawful for— (1) a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act; or (2) an employer to provide benefits for an employee, former employee, or the dependents of an employee or former employee that duplicate the benefits provided under this Act.
This is the most controversial element of this bill. Sanders would make it illegal to sell private health insurance that covers the benefits offered by Medicare for All. This provision would certainly be subject to lawsuits. A subsequent section says additional benefits not covered by Medicare for All (cosmetic surgery, for instance) could be covered by a supplemental insurance plan.
This is the nationalization of an industry in an unprecedented way. It’s important to note here that about one-third of the American seniors who currently get Medicare get it through private Medicare Advantage plans offered by health insurance companies. Those plans would go away.
And if you ban Private insurance and any hospital for profit, you have effectively nationalized the health care industry. They can only operate thru government largesse.
Of course. Nothing whatsoever on Twitter reflects real life and definitely not the president who ran the past 4 years of his administration off Twitter. It’s all meaningless chatter.
Okay, yes, I read that part.
Didn’t say private insurance as a whole was illegal, just that private insurers couldn’t essentially sell that which was already government-provided.
I guess I am not sure what the issue there is.
Well, what isnt “already government-provided”? Cosmetic surgery.
The issues is that the Insurance industry, the drug industry and the healthcare industry will fight this tooth and nail, and thus it can not possibly pass any congress. Check someday how much those industries spend on campaign contributions and lobbying. Let’s be real.
You might as well ask for magic healing unicorns that poop calorie free soft serve frozen yogurt. Exactly the same chance of it happening.
I don’t personally give a flying fuck what the TERFs think, to be honest. Or you, for that matter.
It’s like getting your news from the weird guy on the street corner in your town with a bullhorn.
No argument from me there- the millstone that is the insurance industry is damn sure going to fight it tooth and nail, and it probably would be hard because of that provision. But “private insurance” is not illegal, it just has ZERO place when everybody is already covered.
So now what about your claim that he planned to nationalize all hospitals, clinics, etc?
He also says what I’ve been saying.
He compared the mantra to the 1960s civil rights-era rallying cry “burn, baby, burn,” telling CNN’s “State of the Union,” that “We lost that movement over that slogan.”
We’ve been through this before. We lost 50 years because of it. We have to be smarter this time.
How many politicians ran on defunding the police this year?
Hokay Mallard Fillmore. Ignore all them newfangled young’uns and their tweets and twits, there’s no substitute for good old damp newsprint. And an onion on your belt. Which was the custom of the time, as you can s