It would have been nice had Claire McCaskill been re-elected, had that re-election led to a Democratic Senate, but as it is, good riddance. It seems Claire has the same advice for Democrats that Republicans keep giving us. We should stop suggestingthat we want to do nice things for people and express concern for white working class Trump voters and she’s especially offended that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presumes to advocate for things that everyone wants, like Medicare for All and free college tuition:
McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who’s in her final days in office after losing her bid for a third Senate term, told CNN in a wide-ranging interview that her party must begin to focus and deliver on real issues to attract independent and white working class voters– not pie-in-the-sky policy ideas, such as tuition-free college, that have little chance of becoming law. Her concern: Voters grow cynical after hearing campaign promises that never go anywhere, empowering forces like President Donald Trump to rail against Washington for failed promises, as he did in 2016.
You haves to wonder precisely which issues she’s talking about that do attract independent and white working class voters, given the fact that she couldn’t seem to come up with any.
But I find this to be a funny thing. Republicans have been making promises that they don’t even intend to keep for years. I seem to recall a positively stable genius promising a wall that Mexico was going to finance. It helped get him elected.
In the opinion of this humble blogger, if the Democrats in the House pass progressive legislation it will be hugely popular. It won’t survive in the Senate, but that’s okay for now provided we can demonstrate to the American people what they couldget if they handed the government over to the Democrats. Should that happen, by the way, the precedent has now been established that filibusters are no longer allowed when they are inconvenient to the majority party.
I got an email from Bernie Sander’s campaign to the effect that rightwing Democrats are already running attack ads against him because he is backing Medicare for All, which has widespread support among, you know, real people, including white people. The scare stories about increased costs are all bogus, because they don’t take the decreases in private insurance costs into account. From the consumer’s perspective, indeed, from any rational perspective, health insurance costs are a tax, whether levied by the government or profit seeking, claim denying private insurers. What’s important is the total bill, which is higher here that in countries that have a Medicare for All equivalent.
But I digress. Good riddance to Claire McCaskill. We’ll do much better with real Democrats.
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