Goodreads Bookshelf
The Health-care Debate
This morning, a couple guys finally came to clean out our gutters. The gutters have been serving as a nursery for trees and grasses for quite a while now. I mention this because, when I went to the window to hear what the ruckus outside was, I overheard these two guys discussing healthcare.
The first guy trotted out the “creeping socialism” argument, but the second guy completely trashed it. I don’t know whether he believed it or not, but the first guy totally backed off on it. They continued talking about it and the second guy was remarkably well-informed on it and seemed to gradually answer all of his colleague’s objections. It was nice to see that a lot of the right-wing obfuscation isn’t very durable. Both of them agreed that something needed to be done, and the first guy even made the point that “this has been a problem for 20-some years—” “Longer than that,” the other guy corrected him. “A long time, and the Republicans didn’t do anything about it when they were in.” “Nope.”
These are the Americans who in essence aren’t partisan. They don’t really trust either party and are just looking for policies that work. As the first guy shows, they’re vulnerable to the right-wing talkers, because they’re hitting the right buttons or seem to make sense or just because that’s what they’ve been exposed to, but they’re not simply drones for the Republicans. They can be convinced, even some of the ones who are parroting the right-wing talking points. The average American wants something that will work—that’s the bottom line. Here's hoping Congress gets it done.