Comment by keybored
6 months ago
> No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray than talking this way.
How popular is universal healthcare in America?
According to the latest poll data I was able to find on Google (from 2024), about 2/3rds of Americans support universal healthcare[0]. At the very least, one can confidently say a majority of Americans per capita support it.
That said, the American political apparatus is designed such that the votes of rural conservatives (who tend to oppose it) count more than elsewhere, so that doesn't actually matter.
[0]https://news.gallup.com/poll/654101/health-coverage-governme...
Makes zero sense. There’s already a “liberal” and a “conservative” party. The liberal Democrats tend to lean more towards liberal standpoints. They haven’t become like rural conservatives simply because of the archaic political system favoring smaller states.
Every Democrat policy standpoint would have to filter through the rural conservative polling in order to be vetted.
But I don’t see that. Democratic policy positions can be quite liberal and urban coded. The obfuscation comes in on issues which hurt their donors. Then the idealized rural voter is moved from being a backwards hick to a precious Bipartisanship partner.
The Democrats moving towards a universal healthcare standpoint when 90% of Democrats and 65% of independents say “Yes, is the government's responsibility” would be a no-brainer for galvanizing their existing voters and gaining new ones if they cared about winning elections. dot dot dot
The Democrats have to appeal to the right to hold and maintain power, especially for Presidential elections. Hillary Clinton got millions more votes than Donald Trump in 2016 - but lost because (among other reasons) Trump was more successful campaigning in rural states and appealing to those voters. Democrats have to be seen in church and profess faith in Christ, they need the support of police unions and the military, they have to have homestyle meals in small town diners and prove to the South they aren't too "Northern." Republicans don't need to do any of that, as the de facto party of "Christian values" their bona fides are presumed by default, and they can be as intransigent and radical as they like.
It doesn't make sense if you assume the system is intended to be fair and equitable, and represent the will of the people. If you realize the system was designed to keep slaveholding states in the union by biasing rural votes (more likely to be white and conservative) over urban votes (more likely to be non-white and progressive) despite city-dwellers being the majority per capita, it makes perfect sense.
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