Saturday, August 5, 2017

Can DFL Reconnect with Rural / Outer Burbs

This MP Post discusses one of my favorite topics. Here is the first comment I left here.
"I agree with Karen:
Matt, I keep hearing that the Democratic Party is supposed to be open to people with different views, and yet your response seems more typical. Apparently Democratic politicians need to comply with your views on social issues our they don't count. 
It seems to me that the Democratic and Republican politicians have the same problem... They are focusing on their further Left and further Right party members, and therefore losing the votes of those who live in the middle. 
The good news is that more moderate folks like myself will have greater impact in future elections. The down side though is that who ever wins always wants to take a hard left or right..." G2A

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

That piece tells us a big issue with rural voters is what we call Asian carp. I wonder how that happened.

--Hiram

John said...

Hiram,
I think it is just folks being tired of the Liberal sensitivities and how they are judgmental of people who disagree. As Matt's comment supports.

"That this allows the opponents of all the social issues that liberals rightly champion to hold any elected democrats hostage to their position, effectively winning the battle. I get that rural folks don't like our values, thats a sad statement on theirs, but allowing fear of their backlash is tantamount to admitting defeat on the issues themselves. Sadly, the only tangible solution to the problem, given the intractable nature of the opposing positions and the mechanics of our electoral politics, will need to be demographic. We have the numbers, we always have, we need to put them in places that we need to win. I haven't a clue how we go about that, it may not in fact be possible. But outside of waiting a couple decades for the rural population to decline even further, I don't see another approach. In my mind, rural folks inclined to conservatism are a lost cause, they cannot be won over, only defeated and rendered irrelevant."


My next MP comment...
"I think that word seems to describe both the far Left and far Right very well... They see citizens who think differently than themselves as bad people... Not just people who believe differently...

As for "never seen a non-white person... I think you need to spend more time in out state MN. Diversity is growing quickly there also.

As for "knee jerk anti-abortion positions", I think your comment tells a lot. I am not sure the decision to allow the stopping of a human heart should ever be labelled "knee jerk".

And my final normal strange fact note. Science has still not proven that there are "LGBT people". If you know of any new science on how one would test for it... (ie like sex, race, etc) I would appreciate you sharing it."

Anonymous said...

I think it is just folks being tired of the Liberal sensitivities and how they are judgmental of people who disagree. As Matt's comment supports.

The problem is that people are making policy choices based on attitudes they are tired of. Other folks judgmentalism suddenly take on substantive importance. How did that happen? How did people find a way of convincing themselves that that was not an incredibly stupid thing to do?

--Hiram

John said...

Hiram,
In a country where the far Left seems intensely focused on the names of lakes, names of fish, names of sports, etc all in the name of political correctness and sensitivity while other much bigger issues are out there... It is really hard to take them seriously.

Well that and their desire to keep taxing the Peters instead of telling the Pauls to step up and be more productive and responsibility citizens... (ie succeed at school, only have children you can afford and are capable of caring for personally, raise them in 2 parent households, improve skills, strive for self sufficiency, etc)

John said...

Another MP comment...

Correction:
It actually can mean many things:
- you had less coverage than you may need
- you now are forced to have more coverage than you may need
- a lot of people in your market are using the "pre-existing condition" coverage to get expensive work done and then not continuing to pay the premiums
- you live near a lot of unhealthy people and now they are in your pool
- not enough young healthy people joined your pool
- you have no 19 - 26 year old kids and now they are in the parents pool
- you are middle class or wealthy and now are paying for your insurance and that of many other citizens

I keep wonder if either the Left or Right will ever be able to discuss the good and bad aspects of ACA...

And by the way, if you doubt that ACA increased the costs middle income households pay. Please remember that reducing the amount that could be added to your tax free medical flex spending was one of the funding mechanisms. As was taxing all of our medical devices.

Anonymous said...


I keep wonder if either the Left or Right will ever be able to discuss the good and bad aspects of ACA...

The ACA gas lots of problems. It was a compromise, a horse designed by a committee. But that's the sort of ooutcome you get in our political system. Since it's a Republican approach, the alternatives to it created by Republicans don't really address the problems.

"More coverage than you need"

Poor people don't need coverage because they can shift the costs to the rest of us. No Republican plan changes that.

Preexisting coverage is something Republicans support, but one of the reasons it's paid for is by making coverage mandatory.

Everybody is dying.

Young people get older.

Parents tend to get stuck with the health care costs of their kids.

That's the way insurance works.

--Hiram





John said...

The big difference is that people usually pay their own insurance premiums... I mean that is even the case with SS, SS Disability and Medicare...

With ACA and Medicare people receive coverage with little to "no skin in the game". The vast majority of their costs or potential costs are paid for by other citizens.

Anonymous said...

The big difference is that people usually pay their own insurance premiums..

I think the big difference is that people without insurance aren't usually able to thrust their costs on the rest of us. Huckabee thinks health insurance is the same thing as car insurance. But there is no law that says if someone leaves their smashed up car outside a body shop, the body shop has to fix it.

With respect to health insurance, we don't have skin in the game. A reason for that is that the costs are so high, and the system is constructed in a way to generate high costs. The way to have skin in the game, which is a metaphor, I think for having meaningful choices, is to restructure the system in such a way where people can effectively manage costs. This is the patient centered health care, Republicans like to support. So how do we do this? Especially, when restructuring American's health care system is off the table?

I favor Trump's proposal. We should simply pass a law extending health insurance to all, while lowering premiums and reducing deductibles. I just wonder why we didn't think of that first.

--Hiram

John said...

I do agree that the restructure would be hard to implement since everyone disagrees with what would be best...

All the way from those who want government totally out of it...

to those who want government to have absolute control over it...

Anonymous said...

I don't know how you take government out of health care. How would doctors be licensed? How fees be enforced? Would taking government out of health care mean anyone could have access to any drug, assuming an ability to pay? Would medical schools at state universities be closed? Would enforcement of patents for drugs or medical devices be ended?

All of these things are possible, and many of them, I would be in favor of. Like President Trump, I support patient centered health care, I don't think doctors or hospitals should be able to set fees. But how does something like that happen?

--Hiram

John said...

Many good questions...

John said...

Here is some bad news for Democrats.

John said...

CNN DSA is Getting Serious, Should DEMs?