An Opening for the Democrats

[mcar]

An Opening for the Democrats
On health care, this isn’t what Trump’s voters bargained for.

By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist

March 29, 2019

...Unraveling the Affordable Care Act would deal a catastrophic blow to the safety net. The health exchanges and new insurance regulations? Gone. Medicaid expansion, which even in its truncated form has reached people in 36 states? Gone. The host of protections for people who get health care through jobs and private insurers? Gone. Republican elites might cheer this destruction, but soon enough they would face millions of voters who pulled levers in 2016 believing that Trump and the Republican Party would protect them.

Remember, Trump did not run for president as an orthodox conservative Republican. He embraced social programs and so-called entitlements, rejecting the party’s boilerplate on government and the economy. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” he said during the campaign. Elaborating on health care, he told CBS News that “everybody’s got to be covered,” which he called an “un-Republican thing” to say. “I am going to take care of everybody,” he added. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not.”

This rhetoric mattered. Trump’s victory hinged on a group of voters supportive of programs like Social Security and Medicare but hostile toward Hispanic immigrants, Muslims and black Americans. These voters were cross-pressured: They were both opposed to conservative anti-government ideology and repelled by racial and cultural liberalism.

Trump relieved that pressure. He embraced the welfare state and demonized racial and religious minorities, attracting the most racially resentful whites from across the political spectrum. The substantial minority of Democrats who believed that “discrimination against whites is as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities” could back a Republican presidential candidate without sacrificing their support for signature Democratic programs. They could indulge their racial chauvinism without jeopardizing their other priorities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/opinion/sunday/trump-obamacare.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[brer cat]

1. trump is hurting many of the people

who put him in office. It is an opportunity for Democrats to seize.

[Buckeyeblue]

2. But these people have voted against their own self interest for decades

They would rather the repugs keep them poor than allow women to have reproductive freedom over their own bodies. So I'm not sure taking away their healthcare will matter. I hope it does.