It would if Democrats could get their shit together and make the fucking benefits felt before the election. Reducing prescription drug prices should be an absolute goddam no-brainer for Democrats. Yet BBB would only allow HHS to negotiate prices on 10 Medicare-covered drugs and not until 2025. Capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month – a fucking political gold mine – would only take effect in 2023. Imagine if millions of Americans saw a significant drop in their prescription drug prices beginning in, oh I don’t know, September of 2022. Republicans understand the political potency of the issue – they’re trying to find a way to covertly shiv even the delayed insulin price cap.
BBB has been like watching Obamacare play out again as a horror movie. Frontload the torturous political wrangling, backload the benefits. Republicans don’t have this problem. In 2003, they passed Medicare Part D well in advance of the election to give Dubya something to run on. Did it contravene every “small government” principle they allegedly stood for? Yes. Did they care? No.
I have wondered if there is any merit to the calling a spade a spade strategy. No more of this “disinformation” crap, or singing kumbaya about how the Republicans also want to help the American people, they just have different ideas about how to do it. Start calling them liars. Show the people exactly how the Republicans are lying. Let the American people know, in no uncertain terms, that what the Republicans want is to turn the US into a fascist country where Trump’s endorsement rather than the voters decides who wins elections. It’s not just enough to tie the people running for office to Trump. It has to be explained, in clear and simple terms, why Trumpism is evil. Don’t leave the task to some obscure host on some left leaning radio station on Sirius XM or to the token far left liberal on a CNN panel who might get 30 seconds of airtime. This should done by Democrats at the highest level. Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer at the least, but also by the individual candidates running for office.
I get the general impression that the Democrats are, in a sense, fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Here’s a few more examples.
The classic, going back to the days when Bill Clinton was running against Bob Dole based on my recollection, and possibly prior to that (before I was old enough to care about paying attention to elections). Happens all over the US, with the stories about polls still not closing at midnight because people were waiting in line for hours. I don’t blame the voters who showed up last minute. I blame the people who don’t open more polling stations. Given that this tends to be a big city issue, those folks tend to be Democratic officials.
This as well. It happened with Hillarycare and Obamacare in the lead up to the 1994 and 2010 red waves. But it seems like Democratic congress members didn’t learn those lessons and the squabbling resumed again. Come up with good legislation, even if it means compromising with fellow Democrats, and get some shit done.
This, on the other hand, I disagree with. You don’t want to literally trigger a bunch of angry deluded rednecks when you have actual guns pointed at you.
Madness. Republicans don’t run on issues??? I have seen you, personally, lamenting like 30 different concrete ideas that Republicans stand for and campaign on and do everything in their power to effect over the years. Even Donald Trump, a man without ideas, was able to harness this, so visceral and universally recognized are the issues the Republicans are all about. Often he didn’t really understand the policies, so he just said words associated with them. China, abortion. Taxes, Supreme Court. Second Amendment, crime rates, borders.
Running on some abstract idea of “democracy” while the Republicans tell voters specifically what evil policies they are going to prevent and which ones they are going to enact would be a perfect illustration of what’s been wrong with Democrats recently. They would get slaughtered and then blame voters for not understanding that voting for the right to vote, and nothing more, is the most important vote of all.
On this aspect of things, it’s more about how each side frames issues. Republicans draw clear, easy to understand, black and white stances on the major issues. Democrats are stuck squabbling about whether or not the infrastructure bill should be 2 trillion or 3 trillion, whether the COVID unemployment stimulus should last for 6 months or 9 months, whether our goal for inflation should be 1% or 2%, and minutiae of that sort that regular people don’t care about.
Abortion. Republicans say we’re against it, they’re for it. Democrats get bogged down on 15 weeks vs. 20 weeks vs. 25 weeks, who needs to be notified when someone is seeking an abortion, etc.
Guns. Republicans say we’re for the 2nd amendment and they’re against it. Democrats get bogged down on how long the waiting periods should be, loopholes on gun shows or private sails, getting stuck on the definition of an assault weapon, etc.
Taxes. Republicans say we’re in favor of low taxes, they want higher taxes. Democrats get bogged down on wealth vs. income taxes, what different thresholds various levels of taxation kick in at, whether or not capital gains should count as regular income, etc.
Polling locations are done by county, not by municipality. County govts are often a bit different make-up, and in some cases, the boards of elections are appointed by the legislature.
The problem is that we incentivize them yo go out and vote for the president, their senator, or maybe their congressman. But we do little to get them to get out to vote for their state legislature, much less for county and municipal offices.
Those are the offices that they should really be encouraged to vote for. It’s easy to stay home when you don’t really think that your vote will matter in national politics, because honestly, it doesn’t. Where your vote matters much more is on more local issues, and that is where you will also be seeing more of an impact on your life.
And while they are there, since they waited in line and all, they may as well vote for the federal offices as well.
This is one of the places that the Republicans do a much better job. Republican voters come out to vote for their mayors and council members, and even more these days, their school boards.
Democrats have to be reminded that this is, once again, the most important election of their lives, and that they need to go out and vote. If they were just used to voting, like Republican voters are, then that wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
The Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters wouldn’t be as effective if many hadn’t already effectively disenfranchised themselves.
Yes, that’s correct. But Democrats have more trouble in relating to the public on the differences between running for office vs. governing. They tend to focus on the specifics of governing in situations where the rhetoric of running for office is more appropriate.
They’re also subject to state laws, which in many Republican-run states deliberately limit the number of polling stations in a county, limit the hours they can be open, etc. Last year in Texas, the state decreed that each county may have only ONE drop-off ballot location. That meant that Harris County (population 4.7 million) had the same number of drop-off locations as Loving County (population 64).
Would universal voting by mail help with this? A number of states already send ballots to every registered voter. I know the Republicans are all worried over non-existent vote-by-mail fraud issues, but perhaps at a minimum a standard can be set at the federal level that states must mail a ballot to every registered voter (postage-paid), without voters having to request it (and then making people jump thru hoops to get a ballot)?
Something like this should affect all voters. It’s not like there’s one dropoff for D ballots and a bunch of dropoffs for R ballots. But it does seem to dis-incentivize D voters more. Perhaps they are not willing to put up with the inconvenience of driving to the site but R voters will make the effort.
No. It’s that the blue counties have a ton more people than the red counties. There is a reason that you only hear about people waiting up to 12 hours in line to vote in blue precincts in urban areas. You never, ever hear about that happening in a conservative, rural precinct. It is completely intentional.
Then all the D’s just need to come out and vote in overwhelming numbers to get D’s into power. Many of these places also have multi-week early voting periods. If going to the dropoff location is too inconvenient, they can likely find a convenient early voting location.
The people who are less likely to even have cars, much less have disposable time to take off work to drop off a ballot, are going to skew towards likelier Republican voters (generally wealthier, whiter, etc).
And Harris County is large in more than just population. Getting to the site (which was at Reliant Park) can be upwards of an hour an a half to two hours one way even with your own car from the outer parts of the county.
There’s no reason to make it a single site except to make it harder to vote. No other public services are done that way. Traffic courts, DPS stations (where you can get IDs), County Clerk’s offices, etc all have multiple locations in Harris County.
Ditto early voting locations. The state starting doing things like shortening hours - especially evening and weekend hours - and limiting the number of machines at certain early voting sites. There’s all kinds of shenanigans you can play to limit voting if you really want. There were long lines at some of the early voting locations.
Sure, it’s what needs to happen but the recognition needs to be there that it’s not just one hurdle, not just “an inconvenience” but a veritable minefield designed to steer certain groups away from voting. All done with legal methods, of course.
I’m talking about day of voting too, not just the drop off thing. Remember the whole “giving water to people in line is now illegal” thing in Georgia? Why does nobody ever ask how come people have to wait in line so long that they need water to make it to the front? That only happens in blue areas.
This sounds a lot like victim-blaming – “if they can’t overcome the completely needless hurdles to voting we’ve created that disproportionately impact urban, minority, working-class voters, then it’s their own damn fault!”
Many affected voters WILL overcome these hurdles, at the expense of taking time off work, arranging childcare, spending hours on public transportation and being harassed by partisan “poll watchers.” But you don’t get to judge someone who wasn’t able to clear every single artificial hurdle imposed by Republicans in order to exercise what should be a readily accessible fundamental right.
If those groups want things to change, they need to make the effort to vote even if it’s inconvenient. I just looked up Texas early voting and it looks like it’s typically over a couple of weeks and includes a weekend. If someone can’t find the time to vote over a couple of weeks, then the issue is more of their lack of motivation rather than evil Republicans blocking them from voting. Certainly more people would vote if it was more convenient, but it’s not like the impediments to voting are all that difficult to overcome.
Making voting harder also disproportionately affects the more marginalized populations.
And the more marginalized populations tend to vote for Democrats.
If you are one of the people that can just call off work on a whim, then taking a day off, or a part of a day off, to go to vote is easy. If you own your own car, then traveling to the polling places is easy.
If you work in a job where calling off is frowned upon, whether it’s because of asshole bosses or legitimate work that needs to be done and can’t be postponed, then getting out of work to go vote may be difficult. If you also rely on public transportation, that can make it even more so.
Then you are going to wait in line for hours before you can vote.
Compare that to a less marginalized area, where people have cars, they have jobs they can call off on a whim, and they never wait in a line.
In short, no it does not affect all voters equally, not at all.