So, Bernie Sanders just introduced his latest single-payer healthcare bill, and most of the serious Presidential candidates for 2020 have signed on. My kick-ass Senator, Kamala Harris, has signed on. Elizabeth Warren, another kick-ass Senator, has signed on. Kirsten Gillibrand, *another* kick-ass Senator often mentioned as a possible Democratic Presidential candidate, has also signed on.
And the reaction of Clintonistas?
“You liberals are doing it wrong!”
We’re not telling people how we’re going to pay for all of this, they whine. We must have a detailed policy proposals with 1,000 page policy papers describing every detail, they whine. At which point, I gotta say: Wha?
Look, Clintonistas: You fucking lost. You lost to an orange-hued baboon that proposed building a 2,000 mile wall and proposed a funding mechanism (“Mexico will pay for it!”) that was so stupid that only an idiot (or 48% of Americans, but I repeat myself) could believe it. You lost to an orange-hued baboon that proposed deporting 15 million workers without any hint as to how to replace them in the workforce given that we don’t have 15 million unemployed Americans. You had your fucking chance, people. You had your 1,000 page papers out the fucking wazoo on your candidate’s web site. And she fucking lost, okay?
Have Democrats learned something? Yeah, they’ve learned that embracing mediocre incrementalist “third way” proposals like Hillary Clinton did is how you lose elections. This was an election that shouldn’t have even been close, you had a political pro against a complete amateur, you had a candidate with experience and poise against a reality show host most noted for being an ass on the public airwaves, you had a candidate with detailed policy proposals against a candidate who fucking handwaved everything, and your candidate fucking lost. Trump went big with “build that wall!” and “drain the swamp!”, and he beat Hillary everywhere that it counted. Unless you go big, you go home. Figuring out the details is something that happens after you get elected, first you have to get elected.
So yeah, Democrats learned something. Well, some Democrats learned something. Mainstream Clintonian “Third Way” Democrats with their thousand-page position papers and detailed cautious and incrementalist policy proposals… not so much.
So these Clintonistas say that “Free College for All” and “Universal Health Care” without attempting to determine how to pay for those things or even how much they might cost are false promises which usually means not following through on those promises because they’re unrealistic. Here’s the thing. First of all, if you don’t get fucking elected, you can’t do a goddamn thing anyhow. People like free shit, so just handwave paying for it, already. Don’t scare people with details they really don’t give a shit about. Second, we know the money is there to pay for universal health care, because we’re already paying for it, just in the most inefficient way possible, thanks to emergency room visits and other such things caused by lack of access to primary care. And we already know that the money is there to pay for college for everybody who qualifies for college, because we’re already paying for it, just in the most inefficient way possible (and in a way that basically lands a lot of young people into what’s little more than slavery, forever giving virtually all of their money to debt collectors). If there’s one thing that government is efficient at doing, it’s collecting taxes — there’s a *reason* why we fund roads through taxes rather than tolls. Setting up the street in front of my house as a private toll road would be horrifically expensive given that it has maybe ten cars per hour go down it. Collecting the taxes at a far smaller number of gas stations and via my registration fees for my car is far cheaper than that.
So in my opinion it’s fair to say “we’re already paying for that, we’re just going to do it in a fair and efficient way” and leave sweating the details until after being elected. And they’re unrealistic promises only because rich fucks don’t want to give up any of their billions that were earned by the labor of their 180 million peasants in order to provide basic services for those peasants. Hey, just serfin’ USA, yo. (In case you wonder what I’m talking about — the Walton family would make $0 if it wasn’t for all the checkout tellers and store stockers and truck drivers who make it possible for their store to sell stuff, yet, the Waltons get all the money and the people who make it possible for the stores to operate get to go on the government dole to make ends meet).
– Badtux the Serfing Penguin
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