Change our Message: a Guest Post

Trump did not win because he was so good. He won because the Democratic message seemed so annoyingly smug to a great many people. 

By attending multiple campaign events in 2015 and 2016 I became aware that the Democratic message was flawed. It helped to be in the room and watch the lack of passion created by Hillary Clinton. It helped to be in the room at rallies when Republican candidates--Trump, yes, but it includes Cruz and Rubio and Christie who also won significant votes--as they quoted Democrats to elicit Republican resentment. Democrats may not have thought they were sneering, but Republican audiences heard the sneers, and so, apparently, did many others in states that were expected to vote blue.

The message guided the policies, and it became apparent that even Democrats did not really believe their own messages and their own messages were pulling them from their true selves. Democrats found themselves unable to condemn urban rioting, found themselves defending immigration scofflaws, found themselves positioned as the party that was less patriotic, less respectful of religion, and the one that in its effort to define and empower minority rights became the party that created a race-conscious backlash of whites who felt under siege by racists. Democrats were loyal to their teammates but not to their own values.  

So a lot of Democrats jumped ship. A majority of white women voted for Trump, notwithstanding indefensible behavior toward women. Fully a third of Hispanics voted for Trump, notwithstanding his saying that Mexico had sent its thieves and rapists here. Many Democrats were never-Hillary and saw her no better than Trump.

This blog argues "no, it will not."

I have not urged that Democrats become "more conservative". Instead, I have argued that Democrats and liberals become more realistic, more honest, and more like their own true selves. Democrats can be the party that is non-racist and dedicated to opportunity for all and justice for all. Democrats can represent the interests of working people and oppose aristocracies of wealth and power. It can be the party that protects the environment, and do so without hypocrisy, but to do so it needs to be a party that recognizes the externalities of both consumption and production. It can be the party of good, honest government, but then it needs to walk that talk. And it can communicate those values.

There are other people in America who understand that the 2016 election was a wake up call. One of them is Peter Rice.

Peter Rice is an journalist and writer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has been observing many of the same things I have articulated in this blog, and has compiled them into a book, Liberal for Conservative Reasons. He stumbled upon this blog and thought we were birds of a feather. I asked him to send me a guest post comment on health care.

 

Guest Post, by Peter Rice:

"The health reform bill is stupid, but liberal arguments aren’t helping."

Peter Rice

We can perhaps relax for a few days, as the Senate’s efforts to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act are mercifully on hold. But be warned: This is probably just the eye of the storm, and soon enough, our fellow lefties will resume the same inward-looking arguments that helped us to get to this precarious point in the first place.

It will go something like this: Healthcare access is a human right. Any decent society takes care of sick people without worrying about the money. It’s the honorable and decent thing to do. Throwing people off insurance is cruel and will kill people.

Convinced? I sure am, but here’s the problem: I’m the choir you’re preaching to. Liberals don’t need to convince liberals. They need to convince conservatives, and using liberal arguments is a terrible way to do that.

Conservatives listen to these same talking points and come away with the distinct impression that it’s all a big plot to transfer money from successful people to a bunch of poor losers. This makes them angry, but also a bit gleeful, because they positively love talking about people they don’t like getting welfare they don’t want to help pay for.

So to review, our sanctimony and hand-wringing has only served to push the debate toward their home turf. That’s unfortunate and crazy, since there are perfectly good conservative arguments in favor of universal healthcare. It’s time to start actually using them.

The talking points go something like this: Passing a law that raises the uninsured rate may be cruel, but above all else, it’s a blow to fiscal responsibility and efficiency. It puts people in a position where the most logical and reasonable course of action is to pay nothing into the system and avoid relatively cheap primary care. If some catastrophe hits, they then fling themselves on the nearest emergency room, a place where single aspirin pills always seem to cost $53. The considerable bills for those services rendered might be put on a payment plan, but odds are good they’ll end up getting dismissed by a bankruptcy judge, so the hospital eats the cost by passing it along to everyone else. (This has always struck me as the perfect definition of socialized medicine.)

If that doesn’t sound expensive enough, consider the poor, the addicted, and the mentally ill in your town. Not out of empathy, of course (God forbid). Think about what it’s like to be you, a comfortable, well-insured member of the middle class, living in the same city with those people. And think about everything you have to lose if they don’t have access to healthcare.

If poor people avoid preventative medicine, they are more likely carry communicable diseases, which you are then more likely to get, so you lose. If they become too sick to work, their contributions to Medicare and Social Security go down just as their dependency on welfare goes up. And it makes it harder for any kids in the picture to move on to bigger and better things, which you will pay for later. You lose again, again, and again.

And what of the addicts? You’re welcome to dismiss them as a bunch of hopeless losers, but that doesn’t make them go away. Less money for treatment means more theft, more vagrancy, more trips to the ER to treat overdoses, more cops, and more jail cells. You get to pay for it all, and lose again. And the mentally ill? A few therapy visits may make the difference between graduating from high school or not, and that’s a difference of tens of thousands of dollars into the federal treasury through various payroll taxes. Fail to push that situation toward the right direction, and you lose again.

Cutting subsidies to poor people’s health insurance only saves money if they are all suddenly raptured the second they get booted off their plan. Back in the real world, it just means they pay for nothing until things get so bad that the rest of us swoop in and pay for everything. That’s a living conservative nightmare, and all the more reason we should refocus our healthcare finance debate. It’s true that this repeal bill is cruel, but conservatives won’t listen to that argument. Luckily, it’s also true that this bill goes against everything conservatives stand for, and I like our chances with that.

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Peter Rice is the author of Liberal for Conservative Reasons: How to stop being obnoxious and start winning elections, which is available on Amazon. Contact him through peterbrice.com.