It’s On – I’m Sure Trump Voters (And Anyone Who Didn’t Vote Or Voted 3rd Party) Will Be Happy

Filed in National by on November 11, 2016

Via the Washington Post:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that Medicare has “serious problems” that would need to be addressed when Congress moves to repeal and replace President Obama’s health-care reform law — a signal that he is willing to immediately enter the treacherous politics of entitlement reform and perhaps break with President-elect Donald Trump.

“When Obamacare became Obamacare, Obamacare rewrote Medicare, rewrote Medicaid, so if you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well,” he said in a Fox News Channel interview. “What people don’t realize is that Medicare is going broke, that Medicare is going to have price controls. Because of Obamacare, Medicaid is in fiscal straits. So you have to deal with those issues if you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Medicare has got some serious problems because of Obamacare. Those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”

Oooh… basically private insurance for retirees! Which, if you had a functioning brain cell, you knew was always the Republican plan. If you voted for Trump, or voted 3rd party, or didn’t vote then you voted for this. No complaining. This was the agenda. Shame our media never discussed it, but, you know… EMAILS and Hillary is untrustworthy!

And as much as I’d like to lay the blame for all of this at the GOP’s feet, I can’t. On this very blog, for months – and even days – before the election we (WE!) were still discussing this nonsense. Hell, liberals/progressives were discussing the DNC and how rigged it is. We Gored (get it?) ourselves because *sigh* we weren’t inspired. Holy crap, aren’t we supposed to be grown ups? Obviously not.

Meanwhile, those manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back (Sorry, Rust-Belt White America, they aren’t – unless Trump and co. turn us into a 3rd world country – which is possible), millions of people will lose their health insurance (But the ACA wasn’t 100% perfect, and we loved, loved, loved pointing that out – Obama didn’t try hard enough!!!! Get ready for all the heartfelt stories about people losing their Obamacare – they’ll bring a tear to your eye.), taxes for the rich will be slashed while the middle class’ taxes will go up (Did anyone actually read Trump’s plan? No? Okay, then.), and entitlements are on the table to be cut. But hey, white people’s feelings were hurt. Honestly, maybe we just got the government we deserve.

 

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A stay-at-home mom with an obsession for National politics.

Comments (16)

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  1. nemski says:

    Pandora opening up the can of worms.

    “On this very blog, for months – and even days – before the election we (WE!) were still discussing this nonsense. Hell, liberals/progressives were discussing the DNC and how rigged it is. We Gored (get it?) ourselves because *sigh* we weren’t inspired.”

    You know who was inspired, Trump voters.

  2. bamboozer says:

    Strong chance I’ll lose my insurance post Obamacare, but there’s also a chance the American people, even those that voted for Trump, will reject Ryan’s voucher plan for the tenth time. Old people no matter how conservative know what it’s like to deal with insurance companies, mystery doctors bill and all the other games the insurance industry plays. Believe me, we don’t want it and the Republicans will proceed at their peril.

  3. pandora says:

    I’m so sorry, bamboozer.

  4. anonymous says:

    Yes, Pandora, finding fault with the electorate certainly has helped the Democrats. Republicans control 37 state houses and all of Congress. This isn’t about Trump.

    If you’re not going to lead, get the hell out of the way. “I’m so sorry” is not leadership.

    NOW is the time to challenge the legitimacy of this candidate. Did you learn nothing from the Tea Party? They might be idiots and morans, but they GOT OFF THEIR ASSES!

    Enough with the licking of the wounds. Do you enjoy the taste or something? This president CONSPIRED WITH A FOREIGN POWER! He is clearly guilty of fraud. These are HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.

    Sorry to shout, but you sad sacks are pissing me off.

    You don’t get to tell others why they should vote a certain way. You have to persuade them. We tried explaining to you that it wasn’t working on enough people. Yet you sit there and insist it wasn’t OUR fault for failing to make an economic argument, it was THEIRS for not agreeing with us that Trump’s behavior is monstrous. This after defending Bill Clinton’s monstrous behavior for years. Do you really not understand why they hate Democrats? All they see is two parties lying to them, and one at least tells them lies they want to hear.

    You can’t convince people you’re trying to help them by first calling them racists.

  5. pandora says:

    Why on earth do you believe the rules are the same for Ds and Rs? And I’ve been off my ass. I worked for campaigns, canvassed, phone banked, donated a ton of money, attended rallys – and will be attending more this weekend, etc.. Take a look around this blog. Some of us have been there doing the work.

    And my “I’m so sorry” was my personal acknowledgement to Bamboozer, not a political statement.

  6. anonymous says:

    Why on Earth do you believe they’re not? That if we produced thousands of people in the streets every night we could not achieve the same ends as the Tea Party?

    By definition, you were speaking to the converted. Her GOTV apparatus was all about pestering people who already supported her.

  7. pandora says:

    Did you watch the press this year?

    That said, I will be out there raising hell.

  8. SussexAonon says:

    Count me as one that will probably lose insurance. Pre-existing condition will either kick me off or put me into a high-risk pool.

    Privatizing medicare is idiotic for one simple reason: Insurance companies don’t make money off of sick people.

  9. Frankp says:

    I for one could not bear her goddamned ad campaign!!!!! It did not motivate me to vote for her at all. Sure I hated trump, but I needed to love my candidate and I never did. And neither did a lot of other folks. Especially the ones who really needed her. It felt like Clinton 2.0, not that she’d be more dishonest or corrupt, but that she’d bring all that shitty baggage along with her and all the same old half assed policies that get half assed results. Trump’s folks had energy. Hate does that for you. So does love and Hillary didn’t have it. She had a machine.

  10. Steve Newton says:

    There is much here I agree with. However, the persistent attack on people who voted third party, as if they bear responsibility for Trump’s election, is–while understandable–arguably incorrect.

    We’re not talking Jill Stein here; her 1 million votes could not have covered the spread or tilted the result in a single state. Gary Johnson’s 4 million votes are apparently another story.

    I am sure we will be treated to the argument that Johnson cost Secretary Clinton the victory in Florida, since his 206,000 votes covered the spread. But this would require all of his votes to have gone to Clinton–something that polling data has strongly suggested did not happen. In fact, Clinton racked up 200,000 MORE votes in FL this year than Obama did in 2012–but Trump outperformed Romney by about 450,000 votes. More people voted in FL in 2016 than 2012–a rarity since voting numbers were down nationwide.

    Besides, if you’re going to make that argument, consider Colorado. Both Clinton and Trump underperformed 2012 showings, but in this case a “cover the spread” argument would have to conclude that Gary Johnson cost Trump Colorado. Likewise, by that token Johnson was also responsible for denying Trump a win in New Mexico, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Hampshire. So in six states, if you want to play that game, voting Libertarian handed those electoral votes to the Democrats.

    On the opposite side, after Florida, Johnson only covered the spread in Trump’s favor in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. That’s four states.

    So the Libertarians covered the spread in only ten states, with an absolute worst case of handing four to Trump and six to Clinton. The meme that third party voters are somehow responsible for Clinton’s loss simply does not stand up to scrutiny, particularly if you add in the case of Utah wherein the McMullin/Johnson 24% of the total obviously secured the state’s electoral votes for Clinton.

    Had Johnson’s vote not shrunk from the 11% he was polling in the summer to the 3% he actually took in the election, there would be a case to be made here, because he would have ended up nationally with something on the order of 14 million votes. He didn’t. In fact, based on that, it’s reasonable to argue that 10 of the 14 million considering a Libertarian vote in July ended up voting for Trump or Clinton, breaking about 6-5 in favor of Clinton rather than Trump.

    The real story is that Trump managed to rack up 98.6% of the vote total that Romney received in 2012, while Clinton only managed 91.7% of Obama’s larger total–she came down to about 500,000 fewer votes than Romney managed. If the statistical models for Johnson’s pull that Nate Silver used are accurate, Johnson probably cost Clinton 2.25 million votes and cost Trump 1.88 million votes–a net loss to Clinton of 380,000 votes, but distributed in such fashion as they arguably did not affect the outcome of even a single state race with the possible exception of delivering Utah to Clinton (and that was actually McMullin’s doing).

    If you believe that it is important to understand why Clinton lost and how Trump won, looking at those third party votes is a waste of time.

  11. cassandra m says:

    Her GOTV apparatus was all about pestering people who already supported her.

    This *is* what GOTV is. You spend a good deal of effort during the campaign IDing your voters and increasing that number (canvass) and then you get to GOTV to make sure your voters get to the polls. That’s the way it has always worked.

  12. anonymous says:

    @Cassandra: Yes, I know. And yet it didn’t work.

    My point was that a volunteer in such a circumstance is not getting a very wide spectrum of viewpoints. I spent the past 16 months talking to a wider variety of people, and I have a pretty clear view of how widespread dissatisfaction with the Clinton campaign was. I listened to dozens of Republicans go on at length at how Trump was awful for the country — but that they couldn’t vote for her.

    It wasn’t just the Clintons who were rejected this week. If there was one Senate candidate I thought was a shoo-in it was Feingold, yet even he lost, and it wasn’t just poor turnout (voter suppression, actually) in Wisconsin that did it; even in the polls he lost his lead before Election Day. All the other ’90s -’00s Democratic Party retreads lost too.

    The Third Way, or whatever we call it these days instead of neo-liberalism, is not what enough voters want. How Democrats allowed Republicans to claim the mantle of populism is mind-boggling.

  13. anonymous says:

    @Steve: Liberals are still working through the process of blaming everyone except ourselves, thank you very much.

  14. Steve Newton says:

    @anonymous: How Democrats allowed Republicans to claim the mantle of populism is mind-boggling.

    There has always been both right- and left- populism. And, in the end, neither of the two (at least in their extreme forms) has been compatible with either democracy or a republican form of government.

  15. anonymous says:

    I understand that. It’s just that these Republicans are blatantly NOT populist but people just elected one of them because he merely pretended to be one. That’s how much people want to stick it to the rich — and for whatever reason they see backing Trump as sticking it to the rich elite, epitomized by Clinton.

    Interesting piece here from History News Network explaining the Trump voter’s mindset. Offered as part of a continuing series, “Middle Americans — What’s Up With Them? Why Are They So Dumb and Weird?”

    http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/this-is-what-liberals-missed-about-trumps-appeal/

  16. anonymous says:

    Also this, from Masha Gessen in the NYReview of Books, who calls for “resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged.”

    http://www2.nybooks.com/daily/s3/nov/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival.html

    “in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.”

    So thanks, Pandora. I can already check off that box.