And that’s the greatest motherfucking cosmic joke here: “there is little evidence that the expansion of health coverage will help Kentucky Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections” because obviously Kentuckians are ungrateful fucks who you just want to let loose on and say, “Go fuck yourself. We’re taking the diabetes treatment and the lung disease medicine and heading somewhere more hospitable.”
But here’s the thing. This video was going around, and yeah, okay, toothless hicks.
You know what I see in here?
PEOPLE WITHOUT FUCKING TEETH.
In the year 2014.
In America.
Which is not a thing that should be happening.
It is too goddamn easy to say fuck you, we’re taking our Magic Muslim Negro Health Care and leaving you alone with your one tooth and your pile of weird stuff and your … dogs, or whatever those are. On your floor in your … hut.
It is too easy to say fine, you don’t want a black president and everything else the 21st century has to offer? WE’LL JUST TAKE IT BACK THEN.
But we didn’t give people health insurance so that they’d vote Democratic. We gave them health insurance so they’d have health insurance. We gave them health insurance so maybe they would be able to keep some of their teeth. Or their lungs. Or their livers or their hearts.
It is hard enough, keeping your body together, when you are rich and have it easy.
It is not easy when you have it hard.
But the Rude Pundit can’t help but think that Democrats have no one to blame but themselves here. For months, they bought into the Republican lies that the ACA was going to be a huge failure and didn’t defend it when it needed defending the most. So even though Gov. Steven Beshear was a huge advocate, many Democrats allowed the narrative to be set by Fox “news” and by the goddamned cowards in our own party.
Which is true, but I’m not sure it would have mattered. Look at the story Rude’s talking about:
Kentucky is arguably one of the health law’s biggest early successes, with about 10 percent of the population getting coverage through the state’s online insurance marketplace — albeit mostly through Medicaid, not private plans — and none of the technology failures that plagued other enrollment websites. The uninsured rate here has fallen to 11.9 percent from 20.4 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll that found only Arkansas had experienced a steeper decline.
But there is little evidence that the expansion of health coverage will help Kentucky Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections.
At a certain point as a human being I have to say WHO GIVES A FUCK? From a sociological standpoint, this is interesting, but it’s also … beside the point?This is the kind of thinking that makes me want to glug Charlie’s anti-freeze, this “but how will it play in the midterms” Politico-spin on everything.
I would love it if suddenly everyone who benefitted from Obamacare turned into a bleeding heart liberal. I would love it if they started demanding single-payer, too, and stopped hating anybody who liked to hold hands with members of the same sex, and stopped talking about God like He was their cosmic concierge, and embraced science and media literacy. I would love all of that.
But that’s a bonus. That’s not the prize. The prize is keeping them alive.
A.