Kai Wright, senior writer for The Root offers a take on the noisy health care town hall meetings. She discusses her ideas with Guy Raz of NPR. The world has changed quickly (such as whites no longer being in charge) and many people, especially poor whites, don't know how to adapt. This leaves people anxious and afraid. The GOP is exploiting that anxiety for their own political ends. Alas, the Dems are ignoring it, not sure how to discuss it. Wright says their fortunes might improve if they talked about anxiety in a changing world. The audio is 5 minutes.
I'm not as convinced. Dems tend to ignore these people because they are usually so racist Dems don't want to scare the blacks out of their coalition. That's even with understanding that poor whites could be allies with poor blacks. However, it could be worth a try. A Dem could talk about understanding how modern life could make one anxious and what to do about it. But not just any Dem. One from an obviously rich background couldn't connect. But someone like Jim Webb of Virginia could. And he has been doing it.
Speaking of health care…
A couple guidelines to help you through the discussion:
* If anyone says "communist fascism" you can ignore everything else they say. Both may rely on police states, but one is liberal, the other conservative. You can't have both. The person spouting the phrase is only stringing scary words together.
* It is not possible to be against "socialized medicine" and for Medicare. The two are the same. Again, the speaker is only trying to scare you.
Why are we negotiating with these guys?
* The provision in the health care plan that is being twisted into "Death Panels" was quite popular in 2003. Even Thaddeus McCotter and Chuck Grassley voted for it. Now they are trying to get some political advantage out of the distortions and being against it.
* Two days after Obama praises Senator Grassley for his efforts in working on a bipartisan bill, Grassley responds by saying if you didn't work with me the bill would have been out of committee in June and would have passed the full Senate by now.
So why do we want a bipartisan bill?
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