There are areas of the country where the president is unpopular and may well remain so for years after he leaves office. In those places, voters tend to say that they are opposed to “ObamaCare,” sometimes by large margins. But, in Kentucky at least, a plurality of the people polled say that they approve of “kynect.” But kynect is ObamaCare. Specifically, kynect is the Bluegrass State’s state-run health insurance exchange. What’s clear from this is that a huge part of the opposition to ObamaCare is really nothing more than guilt by association.
So, what happens when President Obama is no longer the president? Presumably, the exchanges and the reforms that go along with them will still be known as ObamaCare, but I assume the partisan opposition to Barack Obama will wither on the vine, much as it did with Bill Clinton.
It will turn out that there just isn’t that much substantive opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Yes, there are people on the left (including me) who would prefer to put the health insurance companies out of business, and there are people from the whole spectrum of ideological thought who don’t like the mandate. But that group is small, and the single-payer advocates are mostly supportive of doing something rather than nothing at all.
I think opposition to ObamaCare is artificially inflated and many of the people who are benefiting will become protective of the law once it no longer is associated with the president.
Wish they had a better name for it. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Those are programs folks (mostly) know what they are. Affordable Care Act? Several friends are benefitting from Cover Oregon. As long as people realize that changes to the ACA directly impact their coverage, I guess it doesn’t matter. Will R’s still be hot for the elimination of Obamacare in 2016, like Dems were for the end of Bush tax cuts (largely still in place) after W left office? Dunno.
I think opposition to ObamaCare is artificially inflated and many of the people who are benefiting will become protective of the law once it no longer is associated with the president.
Be protective of something that largely keeps the for-profit companies in place? Ehhh!! Don’t forget the problems of states, like where you live!
Clearly you are not an uninsured person with a pre-existing condition…
How would you know? You don’t know the first thing about me.
You ingrate, you. In the middle ages, they canonized martyrs.
He is both. But he’s sacrificing himself, consigning himself to an early grave, so that some day your children can have single payer.
Yeah, so many people are simply conditioned to oppose it because of the information loop in which they live. My dad is a perfect example. He gets so agitated even thinking about anything related to the President. And Obamacare is the end of the world, as far as he’s concerned. Yet two of his grandsons, who are working full time at low paying jobs have insurance because they can stay on their dad’s plan. His son (ME!!), just had a bunch of preventive care done that cost me all of $19. My brother in law, who is in his 50’s and has worked full time, without insurance, for most of his life, now is insured with a Silver Plan for around $75 per month. My wife’s mammograms are now free. My dad struggles mightily, trying to come to terms with the reality that something this nasty, black Muslim that we have has our President has done something which directly benefits the people he loves. It kills him. He can’t accept it. He just refuses to process this fact in his mind. No amount of factual information you feed him can undo this view he has.
Well I can relate to your story!
Sometimes I wonder if the sheer guts & determination it took to be a member of the older generation has aged into starting every sentence with “NO”; to finding a way to shut everything new down.
When I was taking care of my parents the Hospice nurse gave me a book written by Hospice nurses which said when you’re dealing with a loved one who says no to everything and is certain that you’re wrong, it’s a sign of fear and if you make your first reply something along the lines of ‘that’s gotta make you feel trapped’; or ‘mmm, that would make me angry’ you can finally make a connection.
After all, it’s not that our parents don’t care, but could be that they feel there’s an element of failure on their part.
Thanks for the advice. Will be tested and possibly used.
Rather than pointing to powerpoint slides, liberals and progressives need to formulate a narrative and attempt to de-escalate anxiety.
Assuming that quite a few of us are convinced that some conservatives are only conservative because they’ve been brainwashed to some sort, rather than immediately confronting them over a belief, we should at least start by offering them a buoy to grab onto. If we can show at the outset that we understand them, to some extent, they may be more likely to listen to us and to the evidence that they’ve heard but have attempted to ignore and shutout.
Why can’t he accept it? Because Obama is Black?
I’m sorry to insult your family, but that’s just stupid.
The fact that the President is black certainly influences his opinion on anything that the President has done. But no, it is not as simple as that. Like many in his generation, he has always had a bit of prejudice. But growing up, the main thing I remember him saying over and over, with some sense of wonder, was “it doesn’t matter where you go, people are always just people”. That always seemed to amaze him, that he could travel all over to different places, and no matter how different a region might be from what he was used to, the people he ran into and got to know were, in almost every way, just like him. They might look different, talk differently, have different customs. But when you finally just sat down and talked to them one on one, “people were just people, everywhere”. I heard that all the time.
Somewhere along the line, in the last 20-25 years or so, that began to change. He became much more judgmental, critical and uncomfortable with things which were outside his white, middle class comfort zone. He became focused on racial and class stereotypes, and begun to see everything through a binary lens of US (the good, hardworking people) and THEM (those not like “US”). And I attribute this, in large part, to the rise and influence of talk radio. He started to feed on the whole right wing narrative of victim-hood, racial animus and the perpetual framing of the loss of his white culture. These were never the kinds of things I ever remember him obsessing over, but it became almost an addiction. He fed from that trough every day. And so many of those in his circle of friends did the same thing. After years and years of immersion in that swill, the world portrayed by the Rush Limbaugh types on the radio became his reality. And he began to simply ignore those things which did not fit with the daily list of talk radio grievances.
At that point, I think it had become impossible to ever pull him back out of that world. It consumed his world view. And with the introduction of the internet, that has just sealed the deal. He will live out much of the rest of his days as a scared, angry and sometimes paranoid, white man. He is just one of millions who have been consumed in the hateful fever swamp of the right wing world view. He’s not a stupid man. He loves his friends and family dearly, and would give them the shirt off his back. But at this point, his mind lives every day in the frightfully constructed world of Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, LaPierre and the whole host of right wing fearmongers who populate our country’s media landscape. It is depressingly sad, but there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
I lucked out with dirty fucking hippy parents, but I know a hell of a lot of relatives and others who are the same way.
I’ve listened to one set of conservatives say that Obamacare at least helps their kids stay on health insurance until 26, and has helped their other kid who is over 26 get insurance for a reasonable price.
But even that is just “at least”, whereas they listen to Fox News and just know that libruuls and the gub’mint is ruining their lives.
When you get told to be afraid of something you don’t see directly, but in the shadows, every single day and night, you start to believe it. Hell, I’d argue that conservatism’s victimhood and fearmongering is just a form of advertising by the oligarchs who own and operate this country, to get people to buy their bullshit. Notice, by the way, that while most social issues have been lost by conservatives, the one thing that they’ve continued to win on is low tax rates, which is the only thing that the oligarchs really care about.
Loose associations are one common type of schizophrenic thought that the right-wing encourages. Everything is a fucking slippery slope to socialism/fascism/something-ism that results in poverty and tyranny.
The right-wing is basically peddling schizophrenic loose associations and paranoia as a method of viewing the country, the people and culture who live in it, and liberals and “others” in particular.
Sad, vile, and treasonous, really.
As I said, I don’t want to insult your family. I’m an (almost) 69 year old white man, probably very close to your father’s age. I understand and sympathize with many of his concerns and viewpoints. But throwing out a program because of its proponent is foolish. Get him to expand his horizons and stop listening to those idiots on the radio. Buy him one of Thom Hartmann’s books. Point out the inconsistencies in the right wing hate machine. Rush Limbaugh! Even if I was a Conservative I’d see through that gas bag.
I’m hopeful that it’s not race based. It is for many of our generation.
Your observation is not an insult. But you must know that trying to discuss these subjects with someone like my dad, who has swallowed the right wing kool-aid for at least a couple of decades, is a lot like trying to talk about the historicity of Jesus and the Bible with a fundamentalist Christian. If you cannot agree about some basic facts right out of the gate, and agree between you that things will be considered falsifiable based only on evidence, and not opinion, speculation or faith, then attempting a discussion is completely pointless. You cannot have a rational or persuasive discussion when one party’s view is grounded in irrationality and impervious to facts or evidence. One has to at least come at this with a recognition that ones own inherent bias is possibly coloring their views. Those with inherent right-wing authoritarian views have a difficult time accepting that premise.
I’ve got an 80 year old friend like that. He’s still mentally alert and knowledgeable on History, Technology and many other subjects. But he’s absolutely wacko in his take on post-1929 politics. We try to avoid it because neither can persuade the other. I feel we both prefer to think of our friend as a nice guy who is sadly mistaken about politics. At least he hates the 0.1% also.
My goal is to persuade the persuadable. Those who are beyond reach, I will simply try to live in harmony with them and accept that they have chosen their lot in life as far as their politics. I can always find something pleasant to converse them about, and if they insist on some sort of rancorous discussion, then a smile and a simple deferral is order, until their urge passes. I believe that arguing for the sake of an argument is just a waste of energy.
But won’t a father give due consideration to a son’s arguments? Maybe I’m an exception. I do know from observation that an older brother won’t listen to his “kid” brother. Even if the “kid” is over sixty.
Oh, I don’t hesitate to point out the errors of his thinking, even though I will never change his mind. But I do force him on a regular basis to acknowledge, even if it’s only in his own mind, that his assertions are not based on any factual information he has gleaned from anywhere. He simply parrots what he reads and hears in his information bubble. When he makes an assertion, I always ask him where he got his information. And then I always counter with a suggestion of an actual source of quantified information or I offer to send him something that will help explain or clarify the issue for him. He really doesn’t want to be confronted with facts that contradict his dearly held views. He quit sending me his right wing information a loooong time ago. Because I would always respond with a detailed rebuttal. When I was hip deep in the Presidential election activism, and was really primed to talk politics, he pretty much quit even bringing it up around me. I have even heard him warn people at family get-togethers to “be careful what you say around Mike….he likes Obama”. I thought it was kind of funny, myself.
When my friend says something like,”Hilary wanted the attack on Benghazi.” I always respond with, “Why? What could possibly be her motive?” Of course, there is none. For Vince Foster and the like there are motives, pretty far-fetched motives, but possible motives. But they can’t possibly explain why a SoS would want an embassy attacked and an ambassador killed. As a casus belli sure, but we didn’t need one, we were already militarily involved.
As I said, we usually don’t discuss politics, but Hillary makes them foam at the mouth. It’s the only thing that endears her to me.
I am in awe of the ignorance/cognitive dissonance/whatever that can hate Obamacare but approve of Kynect…
That’s some pretty potent rightwing disinformation—also, too, Your Lib’rul Media has done some great work, haha.
One interesting caveat, on that, here in KY occurs in Kentucky’s 6th district. Congress critter Andy Barr’s democratic opponent, Elisabeth Jensen understands this very fact quite well.
Here is the quote she is using against the republican obstructionism of her opponent and “yertle the turtle”;
“Thanks to Gov. Beshear, Kentucky Kynect provides health care to Kentuckians who had no insurance,” Jensen says in the ad. “But Barr, along with Mitch McConnell, voted to end Kynect and let insurance companies drop coverage, deny care and charge women more.”
Obama haters hate the law he helped bring about.
I’m SHOCKED. SHOCKED, I TELL YOU!
And as soon as the GOP appropriates the credit for it, it’ll be “Keep the Gov’mint out mah (insert name here)!”
Srew ’em.
Screw ’em, also.
I still think a lot of opposition to Obama (as well as Clinton) is based on bigots’ fears that policies might become law that might actually help PoC. I don’t think that goes away quickly when Obama leaves office. Looking at how stingy some red states are with previously existing Medicaid funds just speaks to some kind of mass sociopathy. They really don’t want people to have a helping hand unless they represent a large corporation.
But I agree the numbers are lower for artificial reasons.
Obamacare is the f2f first expansion of the American Social Safety Net that did NOT include in its design, the exclusion of swaths of the American people. Remember Social Security was allowed to begin with the exclusion of huge swaths of certain types of jobs, that ‘coincidentally’ just ‘happened’ to exclude BLACKS. ANd that design has repercussions to this day, with Black Seniors on the receiving end of far lower SS checks that they should’ve received. The reason why Medicare’s age was set at 65, was because Black folk didn’t live long enough to get it. OBAMACARE in it’s design, did not exclude anyone. It took the Roberts Court to do that. And NOBODY will convince me that the main reason for non-expansion of Medicaid isn’t wrapped up in denying access to healthcare to all those Black people.