GOP War On Poverty

The Republicans hate poverty so much that they are trying to kill everyone who is impoverished. They particularly want to kill the impoverished who are female and/or a racial or ethnic minority (meaning not a white Anglo-Saxon male). Those privileged, white Anglo-Saxon male, Republicans implore members of their party to deny science, refuse to get vaccinated, and refuse to take any other reasonable precautions to prevent the spread of Covid. “It's a matter of personal freedom,” the Republican demagogues howl. It is very likely that they who are foolish enough exercise their “freedom” as defined by the Republican Party will be rewarded with Darwins. And how does this fit into the GOP war on poverty?  Well, the people most likely to die from this stupidity are the ones with modest incomes who live in red states that have turned down the medicaid expansion in the ACA. A group of Senate Republicans even threatened to delay action on a spending bill needed to avert a lapse in federal funding unless that bill also bars enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine-and-testing mandate for large employers. Those Republicans will choose profits over lives anytime as long as the lives being sacrificed are not the lives of the privileged few.

And now we come to the Republican Party's war on poor women. I know, Roe v. Wade protects all women, but in regard to overturning Roe v. Wade the women who are not poor are just collateral damage as far as the Republicans are concerned. A very blunt interpretation of what the reactionary supreme court injustices said during the oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case (Dobbs v. Jackson) is that the damage to women who are well off is rarely fatal anyway! After all, women of means can afford to go to states that do not believe that the GOP's big, intrusive government should try to control a woman's body and/or her reproductive system. Those injustices are promoting a pre civil war view of the union. They are arguing that at least in this instance the primacy of federal law as established by the fourteenth amendment is no longer needed because the ability to travel means people can always opt to go to enlightened states that still protect the rights of individuals (assuming that the people who want to exercise that option have the means to do so). From the comments and questions of the reactionary injustices, it is apparent that they are about to render a decision that will overturn Roe v Wade regardless of the fact that many of those injustices told the senate confirmation committee that the right to an abortion is ”settled law.” Overturning Roe v. Wade and destroying the right to choose should be the final straw for everyone, but there is more, so much more.

Our democratic form of government is at grave risk, and that is no exaggeration. As if the attempted coup de'tat of January 6 and all the voter suppression laws were not enough, we have a plethora of other dangers arising from the Republican Party -- most of which are personified by Moscow Mitch McConnell, who has broken the senate and made it necessary to do away with the filibuster if we want to preserve the right to vote or pass any meaningful legislation. It was also Moscow Mitch who packed, politicized, and delegitimized the supreme court, making it vital to expand the court in order to restore its balance and its integrity and thereby prevent the reactionaries from taking us back to a dreadful past idealized by the privileged few. Now is the time for everyone to declare an all out election war on the misogynistic and fascist Republican party! As we used to say in the nineteen sixties, “if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!” We must defend ourselves from the Republican Party's attacks on science, on democracy, on women, on the impoverished, and on immigrants. We cannot save our democracy and restore that great engine of prosperity (the middle class) unless Democrats are given large majorities in both houses of congress.

So You Want To Be Texas

If you are running for Governor or the state legislature and want to nationalize the election, you should bear in mind that independents do not pay much attention to politics or they would not be independents. Furthermore, most voters have a difficult time understanding and connecting the dots in regard to how the federal government works and how it impacts their lives. Although Trump is a toxic bag of crap to anyone with a triple digit IQ, his connection to a local candidate has to be patently obvious before an independent will acknowledge it and/or react to it. By not kissing Trump's vertical smile in public, Mr. Youngkin was able to avoid carrying the Trump albatross into Virginia's gubernatorial election, and all of Mr. McAuliffe's efforts to make the voters aware of Youngkin's support of Trump were for naught.

I think a much better way to nationalize the race would have been for Mr. McAuliffe to simply ask his fellow Virginians whether they “want to make Virginia another Texas, where voter suppression keeps the 'right people' in power, and sanctimonious fascists use the courts to terrorize women who dare to exercise the right guaranteed to them by the constitution as affirmed by Roe v. Wade.” Democratic candidates for state offices should make all Republicans run on Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose. They should also counteract the Republican lies designed to foster fear and loathing with true statements that will make people aware of the dangers posed by fascist Republicans such as Youngkin! Democrats should draw a contrast between protecting our children from the very real threat of Republicans who want to ban books children should be allowed to read and the imagined threat of critical race theory, which is not even taught to children in our schools. Let the voters know that a politician saying he will protect the children from the critical race theory is like a politician saying he will protect the children from saber toothed tigers!

In regard to the election next year, I was really struck by something someone on MSNBC (probably Claire McCaskill) said about Moscow Mitch McConnell being the most unpopular man in America. I think senatorial candidates and congressional candidates should all run against the body politic's malignant bowel obstruction, Moscow Mitch McConnell, and Trumpism. Make it personal for the voters: here is what the obstructionists are cheating you out of – the right to vote, child tax credit refunds, affordable medications, affordable child care so women can work again, expanded Medicare coverage, etc. Not a single Republican voted for those things, so do not blame Biden or the Democratic Party for not passing that legislation. Granted, that the Koch Bros' Manchin and big pharma's Kyrsten Synema are a problem, but if the Democrats had a larger majority, Manchin, Synema, and the Republicans could not deprive you of the legislation you need and deserve.

All right, I cannot resist throwing in this caveat: Manchin and Synema are coming close to being as obstructive and destructive as Moscow Mitch, and if they cross that line, we will have absolutely nothing to lose by shedding them like a snake's dead skin! The punditry is wrong; all of the things in the build back better plan are very popular, and it is the corporate Democrats who are refusing to compromise on any bill that will deliver what the people want and need! The angst is real! The obscene disparity in wealth is real! People have not been this angry or desperate since the great depression! This is no time for half measures. It will take something like the build back better plan (AKA the reconciliation bill) to restore the faith of the people in the promise of this country and its political system!