I have been harshly critical of those elements in the Democratic party who are sleazy, beholden to corporate interests, and anti-progressive, and the current governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe is a prime example. But it is good to always remember that the two parties are not completely equivalent and that in some areas the differences can have significance.
McAuliffe has supported the Medicare expansion program that under Obamacare provides much needed health insurance for people who earn too little to qualify for the subsidies under the health exchanges. This expansion would be covered 100% by the federal government for the first few years and more than 90% subsequently, so it should have been a no-brainer for the states to accept it.
One of the most vicious and inexcusable acts of the Republicans is to block it is states where they control the governorships and/or the legislature. In Virginia, McAuliffe supported it and the state senate was balanced evenly. But in one of the most brazen acts of political corruption that I have seen, a Democratic state senator made a deal with the Republicans to resign and flip control of the senate to the Republicans so that they could block Medicare expansion. In return they would approve his daughter for a judgeship and also give him a top job with the state tobacco commission. The whole business is now being investigated by the FBI.
With Republican control of the senate, they were able to threaten to not pass a budget unless the governor signed one without the Medicaid expansion, which he did. The bizarre state of affairs involved Republican legislators breaking into the governor’s office in his absence to deliver their Medicaid-free budget.
McAuliffe has been criticized for signing the budget that did not have the Medicaid expansion instead of testing the Republican’s threat to shut down the government. McAuliffe has tried to push through Medicaid expansion anyway but the Republicans have used procedural maneuvers to thwart him twice. As McAuliffe said, “I am continually surprised and disappointed by the lengths to which Republicans in the House of Delegates will go to prevent their own constituents from getting access to health care.”
No surprise, really. Republicans really, really hate poor people.
True.
And oddly enough many of those poor people keep voting for them.
The Tea Party isn’t the country club wing. It’s the truck stop wing.
Working class conservatives seem to be convinced that if they lick the boots of the wealthy, someday they’ll be let into the club, too.
jws1, #2:
I’ve often wondered about that. Although I think a significant number might think that they may not become rich, but their current lives would be much better off if it weren’t for the other moochers sucking up all the good stuff and ruining the system.
I don’t even get the poor white voters who vote Republican. I think it’s mostly that many of them fear that some tiny fraction of their tax money might go to ‘blah people’ and so they’d rather live in poverty than possibly risk that. It’s self-destructive stupidity, but the type of poor white people who back the Tea Party seem to view self-destructive behavior as ideal. They do show a propensity towards playing with guns and such.
In Maine, where we have arguably the worst governor in the country (Republican, of course) he runs against welfare recipients and gets his greatest support from the poorest parts of the state. Actually “welfare” accounts for less than 1.5% of the state budget. He has cut income tax rates at the top and, by reducing state aid for education, forced localities to raise property taxes. The rural poor love him.
jw1 @2
I don’t think that’s necessarily it. We also see that racism runs rather rampant in that group. (Actually, as I’m writing this, I see smrnda @4 already raised this point.) Rick Santorum infamously talked about “blah” people here in Iowa, and that seems to be what it’s mostly about. They don’t necessarily need to be rich, they just need to be doing better off than those “blah” people. That they think this is a zero-sum game is perhaps the greater tragedy.