Trump is poised to slash Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that help poor and disabled Americans. They may let Obama subsidies expire next year, which would increase the number of uninsured people.
Our best hope at stopping them? Public protests can lead to their demise, as it happened with their efforts to repeal Obamacare. My Resister Sisters and I spent many hours visiting our Congressmen, marching, making phone calls. The voices of the people stopped them, and we won a decisive victory. Many thanks to John McCain as well.
Another sliver of hope is the potential infighting of the Old Guard and MAGA Republicans. The Magas are of course more favorable to tariffs, immigration restriction and cutting off aid to Ukraine. The Old Guard includes business-friendly Republicans who are committed to free trade, more legal immigration and a foreign policy that stands up to Russia. However, we are in unchartered waters with a miscreant, purely transactional mendacious dictator at the helm. As Bette Davis said, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy time."
I agree almost entirely with you, Michael. I had a historian friend who always used to say that campaigns have almost no effect on presidential election outcomes. They're determined by larger forces, such as anti-incumbency, inflation, sexism, cosmic rays, and so on. I think if you'd put a gun to his head he'd have conceded that very close races might be affected by campaigns, but not in general. If that's true--and I think there's a lot of merit to the idea--then the Dems don't need to change anything. I don't think they did much wrong, anyway, even if campaigns did matter. Although I would like to see them spend time and energy trying to understand how to combat the right-wing disinformation machine. That seems like a very asymmetric problem to me.
First of all— excellent musical choices as always! Second, I agree with your strategy for the Democrats. My wife made a similar point earlier tonight, ie, she hopes Tr*mp keeps appointing completely incompetent loons to key positions. The bigger the mess they make from Day One, the harder they’ll fall and the better it will ultimately be for the opposition.
Trump is poised to slash Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that help poor and disabled Americans. They may let Obama subsidies expire next year, which would increase the number of uninsured people.
Our best hope at stopping them? Public protests can lead to their demise, as it happened with their efforts to repeal Obamacare. My Resister Sisters and I spent many hours visiting our Congressmen, marching, making phone calls. The voices of the people stopped them, and we won a decisive victory. Many thanks to John McCain as well.
Another sliver of hope is the potential infighting of the Old Guard and MAGA Republicans. The Magas are of course more favorable to tariffs, immigration restriction and cutting off aid to Ukraine. The Old Guard includes business-friendly Republicans who are committed to free trade, more legal immigration and a foreign policy that stands up to Russia. However, we are in unchartered waters with a miscreant, purely transactional mendacious dictator at the helm. As Bette Davis said, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy time."
I agree almost entirely with you, Michael. I had a historian friend who always used to say that campaigns have almost no effect on presidential election outcomes. They're determined by larger forces, such as anti-incumbency, inflation, sexism, cosmic rays, and so on. I think if you'd put a gun to his head he'd have conceded that very close races might be affected by campaigns, but not in general. If that's true--and I think there's a lot of merit to the idea--then the Dems don't need to change anything. I don't think they did much wrong, anyway, even if campaigns did matter. Although I would like to see them spend time and energy trying to understand how to combat the right-wing disinformation machine. That seems like a very asymmetric problem to me.
First of all— excellent musical choices as always! Second, I agree with your strategy for the Democrats. My wife made a similar point earlier tonight, ie, she hopes Tr*mp keeps appointing completely incompetent loons to key positions. The bigger the mess they make from Day One, the harder they’ll fall and the better it will ultimately be for the opposition.