I came across a video about this charity the other day, and I found it impressive. If you’re looking for a place to donate your hard-earned money, you might want to consider it:
Congenital cataracts are a big part of what 20/20/20 deals with. Cataracts tend to be a problem of the elderly, but the problem of congenital cataracts in children isn’t so well-known. Here’s the scoop on the surgery; it’s not as simple as you might think.
And isn’t that good?
I’m so confused.
I thought the left believed in keeping the lines of communication open.
I thought the left believed in dialogue with everyone, even dictators, even enemies.
Actually, I thought the left didn’t believe in the word “enemies,” except to refer to the right.
So why are they so critical of Trump’s willingness to dialogue with dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and the Phillipines’ Duterte?
All of these are rhetorical questions, of course. The answer is because he’s Trump and not Obama:
Asked in a 2007 Democratic debate whether he’d be willing to meet “without precondition” with “the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea,” Obama said this:
“I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them–which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration– is ridiculous.” He noted that Ronald Reagan met with Soviet leaders while calling theirs an evil empire.
I have no idea what would happen, good or bad, if Trump were to talk to these dictators. But his suggestion that it might be good idea is hardly preposterous, nor is it evil. Is it narcissistically deluded? I might have said so a year ago. But although I’m still very skeptical, at this point I wouldn’t be too critical of Trump for having confidence in his abilities to schmooze and to persuade, and to accomplish things the world at large pooh-poohs him for thinking he can manage.
I’m going to start with a bunch of questions.
Have you noticed how hard it is to figure out what to call the Republican efforts to replace (or shall we say modify) Obamacare? The natural solution is “Trumpcare,” but you could just as easily call it “Ryancare,” at least so far. However, in a little while the Senate will chime in, and then the bill won’t just represent Ryancare, although “McConnellcare” will never fall trippingly off the tongue even if the Senate manages to pass some version of it (which is somewhat in doubt at this point).
I actually prefer “GOPcare,” but I don’t think that name will ever catch on. And if the MSM has its way (see today’s coverage, for example, or the Times’ editoral “The Trumpcare Disaster”), the entire concept won’t catch on with the American people. Just compare the negativity expressed now in the MSM to the euphoria that greeted Obamacare—both of which are bills with major flaws, attempting to deal with a conundrum that is essentially insoluble—and you’ll see how much fear and loathing is already being stoked for the GOP version, even though this is the temporary first effort.
The goal on the part of the Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself): to frighten people—nay, to terrify them—and to have it result in Congress changing to Democrat hands in the next election.
Another question—have you noticed how the concept of health insurance has morphed, so that by now these bills (Obamacare or Whatevercare) are routinely referred to as providing health care? This was originally the way the left referred to them, which was a purposeful (and successful) effort to spread and solidify the idea that the federal government should be guaranteeing health care rather than regulating health insurance, and that without Obamacare people wouldn’t have health care and would be dying in the streets. Now it’s not just the left talking that way; it’s standard to refer to health care in reference to these bills.
That’s not a semantic point—it’s both a cause and a reflection of the dilemma the GOP faces. When Obamacare was passed, we heard a lot about how bills like this are impossible to repeal, because once people get used to them there’s no turning back. Now the GOP is trying to turn things back, and they probably have the power to do so, since they control both legislative houses and the presidency. But having the power to do it doesn’t mean that doing it will work. That’s because the public has gotten used to the idea that Obamacare provided health care, and that changing it is a tremendous threat to their ability to get medical treatment.
Another problem is that the private health insurance system of individual coverage that Obamacare dismantled has been—well, dismantled. Can the GOP put Humpty Dumpty together again, even if it wanted to and even if the public wanted them to? One can understand why the GOP might be reluctant to go back to the type of coverage that will provide the Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) with many sad medical anecdotes to pin the idea of heartlessness on the Republicans. As it is, there will be plenty such anecdotes availiable no matter how much the GOP tweaks and improves the bill.
Here’s a quote from J.J. Sefton at Ace’s that encapsulates the problem:
Health insurance and health care are now seen as human rights, so naturally they must be guaranteed- no, they are GRANTED to you by the government! And any attempt to take away your human rights will result in “thousands dying in the streets!” For the benefit of the mal-educated (few here, thankfully), logic dictates that as crucially important as health care and insurance are, they are goods and services just like anything else and you get what you can afford to pay for. It’s up to individuals to take responsibility for themselves and make the right choices in their lives. It is not my responsibility to pay for others dissolute lifestyles and irresponsible choices. Okay, you’ve had your laugh for the day.
Unfortunately, health care and insurance are not “goods and services just like anything else.” Some goods and services are a matter of life and death and some are not, and that first type are considered different for that reason. Our society has come to the point that we don’t tolerate people going without those things (as Sefton of course understands, which is the reason for the sarcasm in the passage), and even before Obamacare there were laws (for example EMTALA, passed in 1986) that made it illegal for hospitals to turn anyone away for inability to pay. That law (and please read up on it if you’re not aware of it) was transformative, and reflected a point of view about medical care that predated Obamacare by almost 25 years.
In that Sefton quote there’s another problem, which is the idea that people get sick because of their dissolute lifestyles and irresponsible choices. Of course, sometimes they do. Smoking, for example, is one of the best examples of that, as is alcoholism, although we all know smokers and alcoholics who live to a ripe old age. But although it’s nice to have the illusion of control over whether we get sick or not, we most definitely do not, even if we make what’s considered sterling life choices that are supposed to maximize good health. Illness and injury are no invariable respecters of our efforts, and it’s folly to think they are.
Just as one small example, I became a chronic pain patient in my very early forties after a lifetime of exercise that included yoga (in fact, one of my injuries was sustained from swimming, supposed to be so very good for you). I didn’t smoke or drink, and for the most part stuck to the recommended diet and was the recommended weight. I remember, during the height of my pain decade (which lasted about twelve years), listening to some woman expound on how she never got sick because she took good care of herself. If I’d been a more aggressive person—and not been in so much pain—I might have gone over and punched her, I was so angry.
That’s a digression, but it also illustrates how emotional these issues are for everyone, and how the idea of personal responsibility can be used as a cudgel to blame the sick. If the GOP is perceived as the party doing that, it will not go well for them.
The physicist Max Born was Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather.
Well, well, well. They herded up enough GOP House cats to pass the first Obamacare replacement bill.
I say “the first” because I believe it likely that the Senate will modify it considerably before it passes there, and that it will be tough sledding in the Senate in general.
Here’s the way the vote went:
After a dramatic week of negotiations, lobbying from Trump and Republican leaders, the vote ended with 217 GOP lawmakers backing the measure. Twenty Republicans opposed it, as did all House Democrats.
It’s like a mirror image of the final passage of the original Obamacare bill in 2010, when all the House Republicans voted against, as did some House Democrats (34).
The votes on these two bills—the original 2010 Obamacare bill and now this one (Trumpcare? Ryancare?) show how evenly split the country was and is, as well as the tenuous nature of the popularity of either bill on passage, even in their own parties. The only bipartisan support for either was the “nay” vote for both.
The Democrats will capitalize on every flaw in the bill—and believe me, all health care reform bills have huge flaws because the problems are so large and the desires of the American public so contradictory (complete and sterling coverage guaranteed by the feds at low cost). The flaws of this bill will be endlessly shouted from the hills by the Democrats with the full cooperation of the MSM, with the hope of it backfiring and hurting the GOP. And the Democrats (who denied the flaws of their own bill) are not shy about saying so:
Democrats were unable to stop the GOP vote aimed at President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement. But after the final vote was cast, they chanted “nah nah nah nah hey hey hey goodbye” to their Republican colleagues, with a few members waving, as they believe the vote will lead to many GOP lawmakers losing their seats in the November 2018 midterms…
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted the bill and timing of the vote.
“Do you believe in what is in this bill?” she said Thursday. “Some of you have said … well, they’ll fix it in the Senate. But you have every provision of this bill tattoos on your forehead you will glow in the dark on this one.”
The remark was met with cheers and applause.
“You will glow in the dark,” she repeated.
Like the Democrats did after passing Obamacare.
Ah, but Nancy, Nancy—I thought health care coverage bills were like refrigerators, and you didn’t need to know the provisions, much less have them tattooed on your forehead [emphasis mine]:
[In 2010 Pelosi compared the passage of Obamacare] to the enactment of social security, medicare and the civil rights act.
And while she said it may not be perfect, it’s a bold step in the right direction.
”It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest,” said Pelosi. “All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on. You open this door, you go through a whole different path, in terms of access to quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans.”
Clearly, Pelosi seems fond of those metaphors about lights going on in the dark, both good and bad—refrigerators and/or glowing tattoos like a mark of Cain. And clearly, she hopes the Republicans won’t “fix it in the Senate” and will be hoist on the petard of their own health care reform failures.
I hope they will manage to “fix it,” but I’m not particularly optimistic about that.
The CNN article I linked goes on to explain some of the provisions of the GOP bill, provisions that sound pretty good to me but which I’m pretty sure the author of the article thought readers should think are steps backward. They have the general effect of returning health coverage to a more insurance-like model (not a complete insurance model) compared with Obamacare. They also seem to provide more choices for the consumer and the states.
There are plenty of other articles describing the bill, and over the next few days there will be plenty more, if you care to check out the wires in back of that fridge. I’m not going to write that particular post today, though, because I’m waiting for all sides to check in more fully so I can evaluate as best I can what’s what. When I say “all sides,” it’s because although the bill’s provisions and their predicted effects are probably relatively straightforward, the analysis varies considerably depending on the point of view of the person performing the job.
And so, we’ll…see.
Hanson writes of how the university has become an expensive false-front of learning (that’s the “Potemkin” part) that is really devoted to fostering PC thought and behavior and monitoring itself and its denizens for any violations thereof. Well worth reading.
But it was this throwaway paragraph that caught my eye:
At the California State University system ”” the nation’s largest ”” nearly 40 percent of incoming students need remediation in math and English after failing basic competency tests. Universities are now scrambling to offer university credit for what are in truth remedial high-school courses, apparently to prevent eager (but entirely unprepared) students from hurt feelings when they butt up against the reality of college classes.
Now, that’s not really a surprise, but seeing that stark number—40%—is still depressing. Two things:
(1) It’s not just universities that are Potemkin facades, monuments to PC thought and helping students feel good about themselves no matter what, it’s high schools and grade schools, the institutions that should be preparing students for college.
(2) How will colleges react? They will continue to dumb themselves down more and more so that the “reality” against which students “butt up” when they get there perfectly meets their needs to continue to feel good about themselves.
The movie “Idiocracy” posited that this dumbing down would occur through the gene pool and reproductive habits. Unnecessary. We’ll accomplish the dumbing down purposely as a sacrifice on the altar of PC thought, with self-esteem and social justice for all.
The answer is “maybe.”
But not easily. And the results would be unpredictable. But it was the second paragraph here that especially caught my interest:
Assuming that a living passenger pigeon embryo can be “resurrected” (or perhaps, some would prefer to say, created) using such technologies, many hurdles remain. Will the passenger pigeon nuclear genes be able to work with the mitochondria and other cellular structures? And even if a few birds survive to adulthood, could they ever survive in the wild? Researchers worry that thousands””and maybe millions””of passenger pigeons would be needed. After all, the gigantic flocks observed by the American colonists famously darkened the sky for days and nested in colonies of millions.
Intriguingly, archaeological research indicates that the passenger pigeon’s story might not be that simple. The bones of passenger pigeons are rare in pre-Columbian archaeological deposits, suggesting that the birds were scarce until colonial times. Ecologists now think that the vast flocks may have emerged only after a declining Indian population left enough acorns and other seeds and nuts for the pigeon population to build up. Because passenger pigeons are so distantly related to other species, and because pigeon reproduction and genetics are not well understood, attempts at resurrecting it are likely to be difficult.
That turns the usual “colonists bad, Indians (or rather, native Americans) good” message on its head, although the final demise of the passenger pigeon was indeed due to hunting by non-native Americans (Westerners, “the white man,” whatever).
Here’s another discussion of whether the pigeons can be successfully resurrected:
Revive & Restore plans to breed the birds in captivity before returning them to the wild in the 2030s. Novak says the initial research indicates that North American forests could support a reintroduced population. He hopes animals brought back from extinction””not just birds but eventually also big creatures like woolly mammoths””will draw the public to zoos in droves, generating revenues that can be used to protect wildlife. “De-extinction [can] get the public interested in conservation in a way that the last 40 years of doom and gloom has beaten out of them,” he says.
Other experts aren’t so sanguine. They question whether the hybrid animal could really be called a passenger pigeon. They doubt the birds could survive without the enormous flocks of the 19th century. And they question Novak’s belief that the forests could safely absorb the reintroduction. “The ecosystem has moved on,” says Temple. “If you put the organism back in, it could be disruptive to a new dynamic equilibrium. It’s not altogether clear that putting one of these extinct species from the distant past back into an ecosystem today would be much more than introducing an exotic species. It would have repercussions that we’re probably not fully capable of predicting.”
That last statement absolutely seems like common sense. What’s more, the article’s description of the way it used to be when the pigeons were numerous makes them sound like—well, like hazardous pests:
In forest and city alike, an arriving flock was a spectacle””“a feathered tempest,” in the words of conservationist Aldo Leopold. One 1855 account from Columbus, Ohio, described a “growing cloud” that blotted out the sun as it advanced toward the city. “Children screamed and ran for home,” it said. “Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed.” When the flock had passed over, two hours later, “the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta.”
Nesting birds took over whole forests, forming what John James Audubon in 1831 called “solid masses as large as hogs-heads.” Observers reported trees crammed with dozens of nests apiece, collectively weighing so much that branches would snap off and trunks would topple. In 1871 some hunters coming upon the morning exodus of adult males were so overwhelmed by the sound and spectacle that some of them dropped their guns. “Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam, with an equal quota of R.R. trains passing through covered bridges””imagine these massed into a single flock, and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar,” the Commonwealth, a newspaper in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, reported of that encounter.
The pigeon flocks were awesome in every sense of the word. But is it any surprise they were hunted to extinction? Not only were they as intrusive as described, but they were tasty, and were thought to be inexhaustible in number.
Being a blogger is a funny thing.
Every day a blogger like me has to decide what to write about. Will it be some long-winded technical and/or reflective piece that attempts to tackle big and complex issues? Do I want to spend that time? How many people will read it? Wouldn’t I do better in terms of traffic if I specialized in short nasty jabs (it’s not really my style or my interest, but it apparently draws the crowds)?
Each day there’s a meme that seems to be the one that everyone’s dealing with, and many of those memes have become more and more tedious and repetitive over time even though each incident within the meme is slightly different. For example, for a while all you heard about was some tip a big spender left for a waitperson, or some insult (mostly fake) towards a waitperson. Now we are hearing about fights on airplanes, some of which have been videotaped.
It’s all become a big yawn, as far as I’m concerned.
Then there’s the celebrity who said some shocking thing, usually an insult towards someone (often Trump these days). The latest in the grouping is from Stephen Colbert, who said (and I quote): “the only thing [Trump’s] mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”
And the only thing interesting about that statement is that Colbert is still on TV. There’s a “fire Colbert” campaign from the right, but I doubt it will go anywhere.
What has happened to public discourse? I know the answer: it’s sunk to an abysmally low level. It happened slowly but surely, beginning in the 60s, and during the last decade it’s gone so deep into the gutter that someone like Colbert, fired up by his own self-righteous Trump-hatred, can say something like that on national TV and think it’s going to be perfectly okay. And maybe it will be perfectly okay.
And someone like me has to decide whether or not to write about it.
The present health care bill is caught up in Congress in an argument over insuring pre-existing conditions. That’s a requirement Americans seem to desire, but that few understand, as Josh Blackman wrote in 2009:
. A September 2009 Kaiser survey found that 80% of respondents supported this ban [on failing to cover pre-existing conditions] ”“ that included 88% of Democrats and 67% of Republicans. Among those supporters, however, only 56% still favored the provision if it resulted in higher premiums; 36% would oppose it. Supporters almost certainly did not realize that requiring insurers to cover sick people would necessarily shift the cost onto everyone else.
Recent surveys are similar in that they uncover, not just the opinions of respondents on the question of coverage of pre-existing conditions, but ignorance about how the entire health insurance system works. Way too many people seem to think that insurance companies set prices and rules arbitrarily and that their reluctance to cover pre-existing conditions has no economic cause (except greed) and no economic results (except joy).
Now, granted, part of the reason for this ignorance is that “health insurance” isn’t really insurance in the usual sense of the word. But because it can be, and sometimes is, a matter of life and death to have it or not to have it, and because in most of the Western world it has become thought of as a right to be guaranteed by the government, a great many people not only no longer understand the way the insurance model would work for health care coverage, but they no longer accept that model even if they do understand.
Health care has become remarkably expensive, and specialized care is now priced out of the reach of most people. That’s not a coincidence; it’s partly a result of insurance reimbursement rather than out-of-pocket payments, and partly a result of laws requiring hospitals to treat even the indigent. But it’s also a reflection of the fact that health care equipment and treatment has become far more elaborate. Think just about a disease such as leukemia, which when I was a child was an invariable death sentence with no treatment at all, and then reflect on what can be done for it now.
The current debate on pre-existing conditions lumps together a host of different but related things. For example, we have the fiction that before Obamacare, health insurance companies regularly used to “drop” people who had been properly insured and then got sick. This was propaganda in the sense that it didn’t happen in the way that people were led to believe it did. There were laws to forbid it, and when you heard anecdotal instances of its happening anyway it was virtually always because the insurance company alleged that the patient had committed insurance fraud by not disclosing the pre-existing condition at the outset. In other word, the patient lied.
Now, sometimes the insurance company would use this as a ploy when it wasn’t true. In those cases people could sue, because the law was supposed to protect them from this. I am pretty sure that, as with most things, sometimes there was a miscarriage of justice. But there were laws that prevented this supposedly-widespread dropping of sick people just because they got sick.
Then there were the high-risk pools that used to cover people with pre-existing conditions prior to Obamacare. I’ve written about the subject several times before, for example here:
If you look at the chart in the middle of this page you’ll see that 35 states ran high-risk pools prior to Obamacare, and most had been in operation for many many years (Kansas had started its high-risk pool in 1993). The 15 states that didn’t have them didn’t necessarily leave their high-risk individual health insurance customers in the lurch, either. Some were guaranteed issue states, which meant pre-existing conditions could not be excluded at all: New Jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont had straight guaranteed issue, with Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Idaho having guaranteed issue with some restrictions involving previous continuous coverage…
How do I know this sort of thing? I was in a high-risk pool for quite a few years. It was far from perfect””I paid about the same as I would have if I hadn’t had a pre-existing condition, and my deductibles were significantly higher””but I could certainly get insurance.
It was a problematic situation, to be sure. But the idea that there was no recourse for people with pre-existing conditions who were not insured through their jobs is simply wrong.
There’s a lot more that is poorly understood about the way pre-existing condition coverage used to work, but I’ll stop there. I’ll just add that the confusion about what went on then—and the purposeful propaganda to make it sound even worse than it was (see this, for example)—continues in today’s confusion about what’s happening now:
[An amendment to the bill offered by Rep. Fred Upton, Republican holdout from Michigan] would provide $8 billion over five years to reduce premiums and other costs for those with pre-existing conditions who have a gap in coverage and reside in states that received waivers from some of Obamacare’s requirements under another provision in the bill…
Upton on Tuesday cited the bill’s provision on pre-existing conditions as a reason for his defection. Under the bill — prior to the amendment he is now working on — states could allow insurers to charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions who have had a gap in coverage of at least 63 days in the prior year. States could also let insurers charge older customers more than the original bill allowed — at least five times more than younger ones, beginning in 2018.
“I told the leadership I cannot support the bill with this provision in it,” Upton said Tuesday. “It’s not going to get my ”˜yes’ vote the way it is.”
The previous GOP bill reflected something like the situation that existed prior to Obamacare: states making decisions, and some variability in the price of health coverage depending on whether a person has a pre-existing condition or not. That’s standard insurance practice, and it lowers the costs for others. But Americans have come to be dissatistifed with both that practice and with the high costs of health care and health care insurance, without acknowledging that they are asking for contradictory things.
The Bloomberg article I just linked also gives a statistic commonly offered:
About 27 percent of adults have a pre-existing condition like cancer or heart disease that insurers refused to cover before Obamacare, said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“There are millions with pre-existing conditions,” he said.
That makes it sound like this would affect 27 percent of people. Of course it would not. Many many of these people are on Medicare, which does not exclude them. Many others are covered at work. This problem only affects the rather small individual insurance market. And of course, under the more Draconian Republican bill, they would be covered, just not as easily or as cheaply as those without pre-existing conditions.
First let me say that this post will be much, much quicker and briefer than my usual. I have a very busy day today and I’m behind in my schedule. So I’ll just say that I’ve noticed, with the debates over how (and if) the GOP should (or will) repeal/replace Obamacare, the subject of high-risk pools has come up again.
Of course. That’s because it’s a knotty problem that’s built into the whole concept of health insurance for all: how to insure the sick, who will incur higher costs?
I’ve discussed it several times in the past, and plan another looong post or two on the subject. This is not that long post, but now I’ll just say that I’ve seen an enormous amount of misrepresentation about how the pre-existing condition coverage used to operate before Obamacare. This was especially true when Obamacare was first being discussed and passed, and it’s still true today.
A very quick summary version is that, prior to Obamacare, most states either had mandatory coverage (including those at high risk) or, much more commonly, a high risk pool for those with pre-existing conditions, and that the high-risk pools were usually partially subsidized by the state to help defray the cost to the consumer who was strapped for funds.
That doesn’t mean high-risk pools were cheap to most people. They were not. But they were a lot cheaper than individual underwriting (which was the other option commonly open to people with pre-existing conditions). I know, because I was in a high risk pool for many years, and I did research on how it worked on a state-by-state basis.
Here’s an interesting take on the furor surrounding Le Pen’s candidacy, from someone who refuses to think she’s evil incarnate.
I’ve read a lot about her, mostly con. But I don’t think I know enough to opine yet, except to say that her appeal is understandable, given the state of France and Europe (and the EU) today.
As a little introduction, I’d like to offer this passage from Through the Looking-Glass:
“I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
* * * * *
I’m a bit puzzled by this report—mostly by what’s left out of it:
…[The] Democratic Party [is] at a historic low point…trying to figure out how it can win back power. Much of the debate over how to move forward has centered on whether the party should try to win back working-class white voters ”“ who make up the bulk of Obama-Trump voters ”“ or focus instead on mobilizing its base.
Turning out the base, the data suggests, is simply not good enough.
“This idea that Democrats can somehow ignore this constituency and just turn out more of our voters, the math doesn’t work,” Canter said. “We have to do both.”
…Priorities USA released a poll last week, conducted in part by Canter’s firm, that found the Democratic base ”“ including voters who usually sit out midterm elections ”“ was unusually motivated to participate in the next election. Officials with the group have preached in recent months that Democrats can both reach out to white working-class voters and their base with a strong message rooted in economic populism.
This ignores one of the elephants (donkeys?) in the room, something I touched on in a previous post today: the fact that Hillary Clinton was an unusually poor candidate. But a more important—and less personality-driven—problem for the Democrats is that “reaching out to white working-class voters and the Democratic base” posits an approach that is contradictory and/or extraordinarily difficult. Although Clinton didn’t even try—and that’s part of why she lost—how would Democrats go about doing that?
What would such an approach actually look like, while still maintaining a recognizably Democratic identity? The needs of those two groups used to be united—or at least appeared to be united—back in New Deal days. President Bill Clinton was able to do it, too, but he did it by tacking to the middle. These days the bulk of the Democratic Party, and its base, has traveled much further to the left than that. Yes, there were leftists in the 1930s (including some of my own relatives) and in the 1990s, but there are a lot more of them now in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
What’s more, at some point the party made white men the enemy, in both its rhetoric and its policies. That rhetoric and those policies were a conscious effort, not an accident—the result of a calculation to go for the base and ignore that other demographic, a bet that such an approach would lead the way not just to victory but to permanent victory. The Democrats’ base hates Trump for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that he has thrown a wrench into that theory and those efforts. By appealing to the “forgotten” group—a group that had not so much been forgotten as taken for granted or, more probably, purposely written off as irrelevant—he siphoned off just enough of that group, in the right geographic areas, to win.
If Democrats believe they can appeal to both their base and that group without changing something very fundamental about their message and more importantly their policies, then I think they’re up there with the Red Queen in believing impossible things.
Of course, they might not actually have to appeal to this group in order to win. Maybe all they have to do is to nominate a more appealing candidate than Hillary Clinton. Obama certainly was. But where shall they find another?
Which for some reason reminds me of this (note particularly 1:13 to 1:25):