Posts Tagged ‘Medicare’
Let’s talk about ACA repeal
So I want to talk about the ACA repeal effort for a minute.
When the House tried this at first, there was a really serious popular mobilization, and it was blocked. People called. They mobbed their representatives’ town halls. They chased down those who refused to hold them. People were angry. When the first attempt at repeal went down, this was treated by a lot of people as a final result, and a lot of people (not everyone!) stood down.
The Most Basic Fact About Politics is Slack
What’s the most important thing you should understand if you want to make sense of American politics? Ask most well-informed people, and then answer will be Polarization. The parties–both party-in-government and party-in-the-electorate–have gotten more ideological, less willing to compromise, leading to gridlock. Some will rightly note that this has been largely asymmetrical, a product of changes in the Republican Party not the Democrats. But the rest of the story remains the same. Less often it is noted that polarization isn’t really an issue among the public, only among the elites–especially members of Congress.
The polarization story often treats this as some sort of natural phenomena, or a tendency that was always there with fragile efforts to stop it failing to do so. Or it is chalked up to the power of money, or even of the Koch brothers themselves. Rarely is it treated as something about which something can be done.
Top Five Posts That You Did Read: 2012
Here are your top five posts from the last year, based solely on page views. The biggest thing driving traffic – one or two people who have a bigger megaphone than me passing it along. (My thanks to those people). Was there anything else they shared in common? Let’s take a look.
Also, don’t miss Top Five Posts that No One Read: 2012.