There once was a time when most Americans revered the Constitution. The charter outlined how we mortals  structured our government so that reason and fairness were two of the guiding principles. But thanks to Donald Trump and the current generation of Republicans, our governmental structure no longer has clear definition. The rules governing what we can do are suddenly whimsical and chaotic. Where there used to be rhyme and reason, now we have fragmentation and dysfunction. Republican presidents, legislatures and judges have replaced the discretion with how we interpret the Constitution with blatant self-interest.

The reason is that Trump and his followers have little respect for preserving and strengthening the institutions and procedures that for so long have protected our democracy. If the rules do not provide most Republicans with unfair advantages, they rebel against the rules and try to change them, throwing caution to the wind.

The U.S. Constitution outlines a few basic principles that control how government in America is supposed to work. Just for quick review, here are the most fundamental of these.

1. Checks and balances. Each level of government has three branches: (a) executive, (b) legislative, and (c) judicial.
2. Levels of government. We have our national government, the federal government, the fifty states, and tens of thousands of local governments. Presumably the states are the most powerful because they came first. But the federal government has certain clear rights over the states, such as control of interstate commerce or the power to print money and control banking.

Local governments are closest to we the people and that gives the localities certain inherent advantages. For instance, public schools are controlled by local communities. Yet, the states give charters to local governments including school districts and thus the states can dictate a great deal about how we live, work and play.

Historically, the constitution has helped bring order to how our legislators pass laws and executives enforce the laws. But deciding who makes which rules can be extremely complicated. For two centuries, our constitution was helped by a strong measure of common sense among the electorate. An informed electorate with belief in the Constitution helped in determining which branches of government, or which levels of government (federal, state, or local) would make which decisions, and what would be the parameters of those choices.

Now we are finding that all levels and entities of government are wildly scrambling to advance their own power, regardless of the principles of the Constitution or historical precedent. In the world of the truly absurd, we currently find that the governor of Florida (Ron DeSantis) is telling public school districts that they cannot mandate students and teachers to wear masks to school to provide more protection from COVID-19. This is the kind of problem that historically has been solved by agreements largely forged through precedent and a commitment to promoting the common good. A school board would have control over the day-to-day operations of the school, and currently almost all local boards in the United States want to provide as much safety as possible for students, teachers, administrators and other staff.

But Republicans like DeSantis want to maximize the power of their offices and positions, showing little regard for America’s historical relationships branches and levels of government. Our system is now confusing, unpredictable, arbitrary, and capricious.

The answers to the “Who Decides” questions are not easy. The Trump era can show us how far off any beaten path we can go with these questions. It is enough to make your head spin. But that sort of dizziness has been avoided for most of the lifespan of our country because there were sound rules in our Constitution, and behavioral norms kept anyone from pulling DeSantis tricks.

Federalism was a brilliant idea conceived by our founders. It helps us determine publicly beneficial answers to a myriad of questions about “Who Decides.” But it is based on good will among citizens of different political persuasions. We will never recover from the damage of Donald Trump and his legions until they recognize the importance of governing by the rules that have provided us with a large measure of stability for most of the past two and a half centuries. Regrettably, the record of politicians gone wild in acknowledging their mistakes and reinstating the basic principles of governance is not good.

Progressives will need to reach out to others to try to forge relations built on reason and concern for the common good.

The post Republicans are destroying our founders’ Federalism appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The interviews in this post emanate from a Facebook page set up for the Kirksville, MO community to share events and news for Northeast Missouri. The author is a moderator for the group which has something near 5,000 people. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States with 306 electoral votes from 25 states and 2 congressional districts. Uncounted in that 306 is Missouri, where the President-Elect was soundly defeated by 57% to 41% carrying only 3 (and the independent city of St. Louis) of the state’s 114 counties. This week, Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined a lawsuit headed for the United States Supreme Court with the intent of overturning the results of this election and he was met with enthusiasm by many Missouri Trump voters. I decided to try to find out why the Trump supporters in my rural community in Northeast Missouri believe what they do, here was that conversation.

Trump Supporter 1 (Woman in her 40s, Trucker): There’s more lawsuits than I can keep up with; some by citizens having nothing to do with Trump or his campaign. Many cases have been thrown out for procedure/technicalities and/or because the lower judges don’t want the case on their hands; they didn’t even hear any evidence.

The plan appears to be to have the SCOTUS be the end player all along. There has been witness testimony at legislative hearings in most, if not all swing states. Even the Thomas Moore Project had a hearing of some sort in Virginia.

A couple of facts, 1.) Most lawsuits take weeks to months to gather evidence; these have been done in mere days. 2.) There’s a long history of voter fraud, but it’s usually not of the election overturning magnitude. 3). If the mathematicians and IT experts in this are correct, this year was exponentially different.

Who honestly wants to believe that in the greatest country on earth we had enough fraud to actually change everything? Instead of, “OK, let’s have a look,” we’re hearing, “There’s nothing to see here; move along.” This has invited even more suspicion. If “they” are sure there was no fraud, then why all the resistance to an investigation?

Texas filed their initial suit on November 10. A month ago. I didn’t hear about this suit until yesterday. Did any of you? Suppression of information by the big media groups only lends to more suspicion and I have seen them (CNN, et al) completely twist something (i.e. testimony) that I watched live. Those sources are now completely illegitimate to me, especially after the phone calls the Veritas Project recorded of the CNN exec.

Matt Braynard conducted the Voter Integrity Project; a call center that called those listed as having requested a mail-in ballot. The former director of the DNI has been investigating in Nevada. The current director of the DNI is investigating. The DOD is investigating.

Will any of this be enough to overturn the election? I haven’t a clue. All I can do is follow along as best as possible and continue to aggravate my diverticulitis with popcorn as I watch it all unfold. There WAS election fraud. The magnitude of it is still being uncovered.

Me: Can I ask you a serious question? If there was fraud to benefit Joe Biden, why did Democrats lose seats in the House and not win the Senate outright? These allegedly fake results to benefit Democrats, would’ve had to have been Biden up top and GOP down ballot. Does that make sense to you?

I don’t know what IT experts you’re referring to, but the election officials from both parties and Trump’s attorney general and The Supreme Court unanimously in a Pennsylvania decision are convinced that this election was as at least as secure as the last one.

If there’s fraud, why wouldn’t we want it exposed? While there are die-hard Trump supporters, I don’t know too many people who are worked up and excited about Joe Biden in the same way. I’ve followed the cases; most weren’t thrown out on a technicality. Many were thrown out for making up precedent or claiming hearsay as evidence or in some cases declaring fraud in places that literally don’t exist in the state (Sidney Powell was looking for Detroit votes in Wisconsin).

As for these challenges, Matthew Braynard was a Trump campaign adviser and RNC political analyst who formed a non-profit to mobilize GOP voters. I don’t think he has any conflict of interest.

I don’t trust CNN either, but it’s not just CNN. It’s every media outlet save for Newsmax and OAN, and to be honest it’s odd for the government to tell me where to consume my news. I understand not every story is covered enough everywhere, but I don’t want news that is uncritical of the government because is that really news?

I think our elections are about as secure as they’ve been for a while. We can do better, it’s why the House has been pushing H.R. 1 but it was blocked by Mitch McConnell. I want free and fair elections everyone can believe in. But I honestly don’t think that these lawsuits are in good faith. I know many conservative voters believe them, but I don’t think GOP politicians do. I think it’s an attempt to placate and make excuses for failing their voters by blaming something else. Otherwise I can’t explain why Trump raised $200 million but has only spent $9 million on these efforts. I hope we get the truth, but I think we have it because if Trump appointed judges won’t even accept the suits; what does that say?

Trump Supporter 2 (Man in his 50s, Pastor): You need to google ballot fraud. Open your eyes to both sides. You at this point are definitely one-sided but I wouldn’t expect less.

Me: Are you open to both sides? Because I’m not saying fraud is impossible I’m just asking anyone to provide the evidence they’re confident in, because why shouldn’t we see it? I’m also asking…why would Democrats produce ballots where it’s Biden up top and GOP down ballot, essentially swinging elections for Republicans? What is the logic in a cheat where you help the other party win seats?

Trump Supporter 2: You need to look for the evidence. It is so blatant in front of everyone’s face and you choose to ignore it.

Trump Supporter 3 (Woman in her 50s, University Administration): Biden claimed at one point that he finished at the top of his class in law school.  He was lying and was near the bottom.  He was knocked out of the 1988 presidential election for plagiarism.  He has been a politician for 45 + years and has only the crime bill for tougher sentences as his signature accomplishment.  He has shown he is racist “You ain’t black,” Obama was a “clean black” and he gave the eulogy for Robert Byrd, a strong member of the KKK.  He fought against segregation and didn’t want his kids growing up in a “racial jungle.”  As VP, his brother and his son have been getting millions from places like China, Russia, and the Ukraine (“with a cut for the big guy”) to gain access to him.  He is on tape threatening to withhold loan guarantees from the US to the Ukraine unless they fire the investigator looking into corruption in the company paying his druggie son thousands of dollars a month.  His whole family has gotten rich from his public service. Meanwhile, thousands of good American jobs go overseas. At this point, he looks to his handlers to tell him what to do and they are listening to the radical side of the Democrat Party. Watch some videos and his wife has had to show him how to leave the stage. I could go on…why do you think he would be a good president?  The only answers I ever get are “he’s not a meanie like Trump” and “he is calm.”

Me: To be fair, I don’t think he will be a good president and have never said as much. I don’t think we’ve had a President who did more good than harm in over 70 years.

Trump Supporter 3: So how did Biden get a record number of votes? How did he get more than Obama?  No one thinks he will be a good president.

Me: 1. More people are of voting age than 8 or 12 years ago. Bush got more votes than Reagan. Obama got more votes than FDR.

2. Some people do think he’ll be a good president! Their politics just aren’t my politics.
3. You don’t have to vote for someone you like. Sometimes people vote for the lesser of two evils. How many Republicans even halfway like Roy Blunt? Fewer and fewer, yet he wins because people are smart and know that if they can’t get what they want they can at least avoid what they don’t.

Trump Supporter 3: I have faith in the American people, so I have to believe that the Dominion voting machines were designed to allow Biden to keep up with and surpass Trump, who also received a record number of votes.  I know that a lot of people have Trump derangement syndrome, but there are a whole lot of people who passionately support him.  There were events at which 50k+ people showed up on a few days’ notice.  There was the huge line of supporters in Arizona.  There is nothing like that for Biden and he had trouble getting many people to watch him online.  If you have seen the Ruby video, you see boxes and boxes of ballots that are being filled out. This corruption was highly organized. I am praying that the truth comes out.

Me: President Trump did have amazing enthusiasm among his voters, and I think he would’ve won if he did things differently the last few weeks of the campaign given how close things were in some states. But Republicans have only won more votes than Democrats once in the last 28 years of Presidential elections. So, I’m just asking, is it not plausible to you that Trump was just a continuation of a trend of a divided electorate where there are slightly more Democrats nationwide? How do you rationalize the great Republican performance down-ballot but Trump’s apparent loss? That would have to mean millions of Illegal votes that had Biden for President, Republican for Governor, Senator, and Congressperson. Why would a cheat look like that? I think we live in a bubble because Missouri is Trump country. While Biden didn’t have crowds, he did raise more money from individual donations than any general election candidate ever which also shows support. We’ve caught election fraud and invalidated elections before, like in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race. I understand why you believe what you do, but I really do think that if Trump won this election you’d have seen more Republicans in the federal government making that case as they did in 2000.

Trump Supporter 3: I am not in a position to know for sure, but if down ballot, there were a lot of Republicans who won… maybe those were the valid ballots?  Where people actually voted?   If there were a whole lot of ballots with only Biden checked at the top (because the people filling them out didn’t have time to fill them out completely), that would explain it, wouldn’t it?  Like I said, I am not in a position to know.  I just pray that we as a country can get through this without another civil war.

Me: That’s unlikely. Here’s results from Pennsylvania, whose results are being challenged. The vote totals are about the same in this congressional district with about 440,000 votes cast in total for President and Congress. Biden won and so did the Republican. This was true in a lot of places, not much undervote with Biden doing well and the Republican doing better (sometimes Congressional races having more votes than the Presidential). It also happened in the reverse with Biden doing worse than the down ballot Democrat, like in Iowa and Arizona. So, I’m just saying, I don’t know why Democrats if they were trying to steal an election would produce ballots stealing elections for Republicans. I hope America can get through this too, because Biden and Trump are no Abe Lincoln and aren’t worth fighting over.

Trump Supporter 3: PA-1 seems to be the north suburbs of Philadelphia with Republican representation. Median income $97k.  Corruption is suspected in highly Democrat areas like PA-2, not everywhere.

Me: President Trump did better in “Democrat Areas” than he did in 2016. In Detroit for example he won more votes than any Republican in 28 years. I don’t think you’re meaning to imply that those votes are fraudulent, because that’s actually where he did better. Because I don’t think we can square “Donald Trump did historically well in the city” with “Votes in the city are fraudulent”.

Trump Supporter 3: I think the essential issue is that we have different sources of news.  Our realities are different. I see videos of Ruby, proudly working hard to create fraudulent ballots in Georgia with boxes and boxes of ballots that were never mailed. I read that it is a mathematical impossibility for some of the returns that happened in swing states in Democrat areas. I hear that an exec at Dominion said he’d made sure Biden would win on an Antifa call. I read about the laptop from hell and the corruption of the Biden family with pedophilia and child trafficking and bribery. You see the mainstream media and aren’t seeing the news they hide. They decide what you see. Mark Zuckerberg gave $230 million to Georgia to help fix the election. Facebook put disclaimers after every post that CNN has declared a winner. “Fact checkers” countering truths with their “mostly false” and “unproven” claims.  Google hiding YouTube videos that don’t fit their narrative.  I’d think that would scare anyone. The media is working overtime protecting Joe Biden from himself.  Let’s hear more about his pets!  The Mueller investigation and report revealed that the Trump campaign was not colluding with Russia, but that was breathlessly reported for three years. And how about the FBI trapping and threatening Michael Flynn’s son and the way Judge Kavanaugh was treated with no proof that he’d ever even met Christine Ford?  I harbor no ill-will, we’re all neighbors.  I just believe we have different realities and we won’t change each other’s minds.

*End of Dialogue*

So, what did I gather from all of this? First, the mainstream media has clearly poisoned the well with tens of millions of people and there is no longer any objective reality or truth in America. As local news outlets have slowly died out and been replaced by an increasingly coastal educated and liberal establishment at the national level, people have become more alienated and detached. This will have consequences for generations. Second, this election controversy is about more than Trump. It’s about the growing pains of entering a new political system where the dominant constituency, white conservatives, have lost their king-making status. The rural-urban divide is more pronounced now than any time in living memory and Americans are beginning to see themselves as strangers in a strange land. Finally, we are on the brink of crisis and it’s unclear whether many of us are truly aware of how fragile our democracy is. In so few words, America has gone off the deep end.

The post A Conversation with Trump Supporters on Election Fraud appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Last night, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was the latest Democrat to have a solo town hall meeting sponsored by CNN. The questions were good, and Klobuchar seemed to handle them quite well, with one possible exception. But what stands out to me from this forum as well, as the one several weeks ago with Senator Kamala Harris, are two key questions that were not asked.

1. If you win the presidency, how are you going to handle the Republican Congressional backlash that repeatedly stymied Barack Obama?

This is not your father’s Democratic victory. In reality, it has been since Lyndon Johnson, more than fifty years ago, that we have had a Democrat elected president with a Democratic Congress and the two were able to successfully work collaboratively. Some may forget that when Obama was first elected, he had a solid majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate (although that became short-lived when Ted Kennedy died, and the Democrats could not hold on to that seat in progressive Massachusetts). Then, had had “nothing.”

In the 1960s, Johnson was able to put together the Great Society with a Congress that he could cajole, and which was guilt-ridden because they wanted to honor the legacy of John F. Kennedy.

The three Democratic presidents since then have fired far more blanks than bulls-eyes when it comes to getting Congress to agree to progressive and meaningful legislation. Jimmy Carter did not particularly care for hobnobbing with members of Congress and Republicans wanted another chance to govern and put the memory of Richard Nixon behind them. Bill Clinton was despised by many Republicans and so was Barack Obama.

The Mitch McConnell-style venom that so many Republicans hold against Democrats is not something that will disappear with the election of the next Democratic president. Carter, Clinton and Obama could not find the key to suppressing it. It may be hard to believe, but in the history of the United States, we have never had consecutive Democrats elected to the presidency. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both became presidents because of the deaths of their predecessors.

So, if Amy Klobuchar or any other Democrat wins, how can there be a sustained progressive movement? I certainly do not have a definitive answer, but my hunch is that it might involve weaving Trump voters into the mosaic of the Democratic coalition of identity groups. Or, perhaps it means working to help all groups shed some of their independent identities and instead see themselves more as members of larger groups such as Americans, or even human beings (this is laughter fodder for Republicans).

2. The second question relates to the first. How would Amy Klobuchar, or any other Democrat, make electoral inroads with elder less-educated white voters and other Trumpsters?

As we previously wrote, Kamala Harris was neither asked that question nor did she try to independently answer it. I have an uncomfortable déjà vu of Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee. The blue collars in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and a host of other states want to feel that the Democratic nominee cares about them and makes them as high a priority as any other identity group. Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden and perhaps a few others may be able to do that. But before a nominee is selected, each candidate must be asked how he or she will make Trump voters equal partners in their victory.

Back to the one question Klobuchar may have fumbled. It has to do with the accusation that she can be a very nasty boss; manager of staff. The Huffington Post reports, “Several former Klobuchar staffers described her as habitually demeaning and prone to outbursts of cruelty. Her office consistently has one of the highest rates of staff turnover in the Senate.”

During her 2006 campaign, Klobuchar was serving as the Hennepin County attorney, and the president of the union representing many of her employees claimed she had “created a hostile work environment” and “severely damaged the morale of the office.”

Klobuchar was asked about that in the forum and she punted. She cited all the positive relations she has had with staff and enumerated a few who had stayed with her for some time. Give her points for that. But she loses big points for what she failed to say in response to the question. First, she did not apologize to those to whom she had been willfully and unnecessarily mean (such as repeatedly saying that their work was ‘the worst.’). Second, she did not say anything about learning from her mistakes. We must remember that there is a very long and disturbing list of presidents who could not learn from their mistakes.

Senator Klobuchar, it’s not too late. You will look better and be better for eating a little humble pie and acknowledging that you, like all the rest of us, can do better.

If she does not willingly take this road, the press should push her on it.

The post Questions that Amy Klobuchar and all Democrats should be asked appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Kudos to Senator Kamala Harris for regenerating the Obama spirit and his base in her Town Hall meeting at Drake University in Iowa on January 28. However, as time passed, it struck me that there was something missing in her words. There was a key base that she failed to touch.

Harris was speaking to an audience stacked in her favor. What was missing was representation of the voters that Hillary Clinton seemed to forget in the 2016 presidential election. The white blue-collar Reagan Democrats who were Donald Trump’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Harris talked a great deal about the aspirations of those in the traditional Democratic coalition – racial minorities, women, young people, college graduates, recent immigrants, etc. She demonstrated that she is indeed an inspirational candidate, much as Barack Obama was in 2008.

But things are different now than they were in 2008 when Obama ran his first presidential campaign. At that time, the country was going through a major recession. Obama’s semi-progressive message resonated with many white blue-collar workers who were suffering the pains of unemployment and under-employment. These disenfranchised people were willing to give him a chance, as generations of union members and other workers had given to Democrats in recent decades because the party of FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ had consistently advocated their economic interests.

Eight years after Obama’s election, he had the economy booming. Ironically, his success became a bit of a disincentive for people to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. By that time, many were more economically secure. The social issues that Trump referenced (while not personally practicing) resonated with many of them.

The conventional wisdom was that Clinton assumed that white voters in these traditional Democratic states would provide her with the margin of victory as they had for Obama. But as we all know, that didn’t happen.

Even if Russian interference in the election played a significant role in turning these three states from blue to red in 2016, Clinton’s decision to not make special efforts to campaign in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in late October and early November made a difference. More important than where she campaigned was her omission of frequent references to these white voters who saw themselves as left out of the Democratic tent.

The same omission was apparent in Kamala Harris’ town hall meeting.  She effectively rallied her base but did little to build a bridge to the voters who will make a difference in whether or not she could be (a) a viable presidential nominee for the Democrats, and (b) able to defeat Donald Trump or some other Republican nominee in the 2020 presidential election.

Hopefully she will learn from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Perhaps this will happen in different Q&A settings for her where she is directly asked about how she will address the needs of the so-called “forgotten voters;” the white middle- and lower-income citizens who carry a great deal of bitterness in them, particularly about what they consider to be preferential treatment for “other people,” i.e. the people not like them.

Franklin Roosevelt was able to cobble together a program and strategy that appealed to virtually all Americans who struggled economically. In a sense, it was easier then because race was not an issue at the forefront of political conversation. Kamala Harris needs to find a way in a climate of racial and ethnic tension to convince all Americans who face economic challenges that as president she would be thinking about them. The flawed Bill Clinton was able to do that and so was Barack Obama. Both Clinton and Obama were undercut by what Hillary Clinton accurately called the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Kamala Harris has to work to build enough base that she can minimize the damage of extreme conservatives. That will not be easy, but the first step will be to be more inclusive to Reagan Democrats and Trump voters than she was in Monday night’s town hall in Iowa.

Full video of Town Hall Meeting

The post Kamala, don’t forget why Hillary lost appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You have to name it before you can deal with it. That is sound advice often given by psychologists, sociologists, medical doctors, in fact virtually everyone who engages in try to solve problems. Auto mechanics do it and so do baseball pitching coaches.

One interpretation of what happened electorally in America in 2016 as that too many of us just became sick of “identity politics.” That means that they turned away from the Democratic Party. For generations, Democrats have been the party of “the colored, Negros, Blacks, Afro-Americans, African-Americans” as well as “Hispanics, Latinos” and other ethnic minorities. Democrats have also been the party of the young and the old, as well as of women.

But none of these categories describe a large portion of those who voted for Donald Trump for president. Hillary Clinton attached a moniker to some of them, “deplorables,” but that is neither accurate nor helpful.

Maybe blue collar workers is a more appropriate term. Others prefer “working class” because it seems to describe a lot of people who have daily jobs. But there are a lot of people who are salaried rather than working for wages or are also “working.”

In order to correctly identify this group, we need one or several terms that meet two criteria: (1) the people being described are comfortable with it, and (2) the people outside of that group know who is being described.

There never has been a politically correct term for white people. Perhaps one reason for that is that whites still make up a majority of the American people. This seems to entitle whites to be the “we” and any or all of the others to be “them.”

The difficulty in coming up with a clear name for Trump voters (and that certainly is not a homogeneous group) is what makes it so difficult for Democrats to incorporate them into their plans, their strategies, their way of thinking of creating coalitions from identity groups.

So we are going to suggest two things that Democrats can do now to address the problem:

1. Begin a process of trying to come up with a name (or names) for the people who felt disenfranchised enough from the Democratic Party to vote for Trump, and
2. Named or unnamed for now, help Democrats include them in their basket of constituent groups. These voters need to be seen as people in need of the services and policies that Democrats bring; not as “other people” who we only view as scapegoats.

So below is a quick survey of possible names for the “Trump people” who have not been included in the recent panoply of “identity groups” who are part of the Democratic coalition. By the way, if Democrats can include the Trump voters in their constituencies, then maybe we can reach the ultimate goal of moving beyond identity politics and including all of us as part of “we.”

Acceptable “identity” names for Trump voters:

We will report results of this survey to you no later than Wednesday, December 15, 2016.

The post The party of identity politics needs to identify Trump voters appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I know people who have blasted Obamacare from the beginning, and refused to even acknowledge that there is anything good about it.

When I would mention all the positive things, like a ban on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limits, no more being kicked off your plan because you get sick, children staying on the plan until 26, an expansion of Medicaid, a prohibition on charging women more than men, free preventive healthcare, and millions of people getting insurance for the first time with the uninsured rate dropping to the lowest ever, they would brush off the importance of those and complain about increased deductibles and rising costs– which in most (not all) cases have been less than before Obamacare went in to effect.

To those of you who kept complaining about wanting the “free market” to rule, you are getting your wish. Here’s the rundown, via the Washington Post:  “Obamacare is probably toast. And a lot of poor, white Trump voters will get hurt by it.”

..the likely end result (again, at best) is that a lot of the 20 million people who would lose coverage due to repeal will remain without coverage, and protections for those with bad medical conditions will be eroded.

And if you are lucky enough to have insurance through work or can afford it on your own, enjoy watching others lose theirs. If you have any decency, I assume you will strongly support increasing taxes to pay for the rising cost of health care for poor and working class people.

The post Obamacare is probably toast: Trump voters will get hurt appeared first on Occasional Planet.