One of the reasons the reps fought Obamacare so hard was that they knew once people had it they would like it, and then how would they take it away? And lo that came to pass, but the reps were as wild men in the forests with their call of Repeal Obamacare and when they won the house and the senate and the presidency they rushed towards the precipice like so many demented lemmings. And lo they discovered that the people who elected them liked Obamacare (Well they liked the part where they got things, they just hated the part where they had to pay for it, but it has been ever thus), so they had to do some fancy stepping with some halfass program which pleased not the handful of moderate democrats nor the rabid reps of the ruby red districts. Any idiot could tell that they didn't have the votes to make this work. But of course they didn't have just any idiot leading them, they had Donald J Trump who they had once reviled as raving lunatic but have late grown accustomed to calling Sir.
And now that they are laid low like a pack of beaten hounds mewling and growling at each other, and now that the smoke is cleared it has become clear that Obamacare is not in a death spiral, that many people like it and it's better on the budget than any of the rep alternatives, oh and it helps out a lot of people.
I know a lot of people who have Obamacare and they pay for it uncomplaining, well a little, but the alternative is to have no insurance and wait in the ER for subpar care at exorbitant prices. As for the poor who get credits so that they don't pay much, the part the gummint has to cover is less this way than if they were crowding the ERs.
But here's something I don't like. A lot of my ilk has been posting loudly on fb that the reason the reps hate Obamacare is because Obama is black and the reps are racists. I don't think it's true. They hated Bill and the big girl as much as they hated Obama. My ilk tosses around the charge of racism way too much. It makes them feel morally smug. It's easier to dismiss a person with an epitaph than to try to reason with them, but that's not the way a good liberal should behave.
I don't know if I can make a case here about the middle class and democracy. Well here's something. Now that we have the return of the gilded age (on steroids) we do have all those money men pulling the strings of the reps, which my side deplores because it is so undemocratic, but I'm not that worried, well about that, because Dump bucked the big money all the way to the nomination and the big girl outspent him 2 to 1. The electorate is a dark and rolling sea and who knows what is going on in its wild heart.
How about that Cain and Abel thing? Turning the spear into the plow to grub in the dirt for a more or less steady income maybe under the lash of the overseer, but maybe if you are a little cleverer you are the overseer. Well it's been a long and bumpy road to our shiny cities, but we still dream of the hunt even if the closest we get is scratching off a lottery ticket. And maybe that dark and rolling electorate is thinking of the hunt, tossing aside logic and lore to pull the lever for Dump and take us on a wild ride just because.
The dystopia, well here we are. Makes a good movie doesn't it?
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