I’ve recently come to the conclusion that what separates Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans simply don’t have empathy outside their immediate circle. As long as something bad isn’t happening to their immediate family or circle of friends, they don’t give a damn!
I think the results of GA06 somewhat confirmed this theory. I have no doubt that every Republican voter understands the harm and suffering that repealing Obamacare will cause to millions of people. The thing is, they don’t see that harm and suffering happening to them, their family, or their immediate circle of friends. They don’t care if it happens to other people. So ignorance is no longer an excuse for these die hard Republican voters. They fully understood what a Republican regime will do to other people. There was NO magic message that Ossoff or any other Democrat could have given them that would have informed them so they would change their mind.
These deplorable Republicans can not be persuaded. If the knowledge that their choice will result in the suffering of millions doesn’t persuade them, then they are operating on a level that most of us Democrats can’t understand. This doesn’t mean that some of them will never vote for a Democrat, in fact I think some will, but it won’t be because of any rational argument we can make, it’ll be because that local empathy finally gets touched and something bad happens to their immediate circle.
We all know what it is that will touch the immediate circle of these deplorable Republicans, health care. If just 5% of the deplorable Republicans had felt the pain of the Republican replacement for the ACA and switched their votes, Ossoff would have won.
We lost last night and it really hurts, but from a pure statistical point of view, the results bode well for gains next year. But next year will be very close and we may very well not take over either the house or the Senate. Thousands if not millions of people are already suffering from the Republican regime and it can and will get a LOT worse the longer the fascist Republicans hold power. In fact, with stealing a SCOTUS seat, and the coming increase in voter suppression, things could turn horribly bad for most of us.
So that brings us to a big dilemma for Democrats. As things stand now, we have no better than a 50-50 chance of taking the house next year. But if they repeal the ACA and replace it with that piece of crap that they are secretly building, our chances of taking the house in 2018 and both the WH and Senate in 2020, increases substantially. So do we accept a temporary (it will be fixed and probably vastly improved when the Dems take control) increase in suffering now by hoping they pass their crappy AHCA, or do we risk decades long and much more suffering for many millions more by hoping they don’t pass it?
RESIST!