We're almost a full week into the Trump Presidency and so far, it's looking like it's going to be as bad as most expected. Some of it was funny, like how Trump used an image from Obama's inauguration to make his Twitter profile look more impressive, or how he even stole the fucking cake design, because, if you're going to be petty and unoriginal, might as well fully commit to it. The best part, though, was sending his press secretary out to lie about everything as if the whole, sad spectacle wasn't recorded for posterity on every news network and social media platform available. Sadly, these are but unimportant distractions, and Trump is doing actual work to ruin pretty much anything he can get his baby hands on.
For starters, Congress is making serious in-roads at repealing the ACA. Now, the ACA was always one of those things the Obama administration did that I didn't particularity care for but, when considering the alternative, was better than nothing. The CBO estimated that if the repeal goes through, 32 million people will lose their insurance over ten years, with 18 million losing it in the first year alone. Naturally, Republicans started whinging that the estimate didn't include all the people who would be covered by their totally awesome, super-duper replacement. Thing is though, the CBO can't really take into account a policy that doesn't actually exist. It's weird that a party that has spent almost seven years lambasting something doesn't have something in the wings to replace said policy, but, there you go. The only real alternative that the Republicans have ever put out there is allowing insurance companies to sell their products across state lines.
The idea is that the increased competition will drive prices lower, but for that to work, you would need companies to actually show up and ply their trade. So far, Maine, Georgia, and Wyoming are the only states who allow out-of-state companies to sell insurance to their residents. Problem is, literally no one has showed up to take advantage of this. Low population densities and the cost of establishing a network were the main reasons Maine and Wyoming health officials gave for the failure of the policy to take off, and there's no reason to believe that those same problems will play out across the country. Granted, it must be hard for Republicans to come up with a "free-market" alternative to the ACA given that the ACA, when it was conceived by the Heritage Foundation, is the free-market alternative.
The whole system of state level exchanges was created to push the companies best situated to provide insurance coverage against each other and the individual mandate was created to make sure enough healthy people where forced into the system as a counterweight to all the sick people the insurance companies would suddenly be required to cover. But as we've seen, this still leaves a lot of holes to fall through and an almost hilarious inconsistency in the level of coverage provided. Universal coverage just isn't something private insurers have any actual means or incentive to provide and maybe, after all those millions of people lose their coverage and the ones who still have coverage get reminded that gigantic premium hikes weren't an Obamacare invention (and they were actually bigger), maybe, finally, there will enough of an outcry for us to get a universal-health program like the rest of the world and we can finally done with this bullshit.
Up next is that idiot fucking wall. Trump signed an executive order to began construction on it, but there's still that pesky "making Mexico pay for it" thing to deal with. Today, Trump proposed a 20% tariff on all Mexican imports to pay for the thing, but, how well that is going to work is, shall we say, controversial. Mexico is our third-largest trading partner, and any tariff imposed on their goods is guaranteed to be matched by Enrique Pena Nieto's government to counter-act it. There's also the issue of assuming that Mexico will maintain it's current level of trade with us with the full knowledge that said trade is financing something that's supposed to be a direct punishment to its citizens. If trade where to suddenly drop off, then, well, Trump would have to find another way to finance his little vanity project. There's also the issue of getting such a tariff passed in the first place; I seriously doubt that a free-trade loving Republican Congress will rush into a trade war, but if they don't, there are legal ways for Trump to impose the tariff directly. How well that will go over though, is, again, seriously in question.
I admit, it's depressing to see a party who used to tout the fall of the Berlin Wall-that international symbol of fear and oppression- as one of its main political accomplishments be reduced to such a fearful and pathetic state that they are basically clamoring for their own version on a grander scale. Then again, given the rash of proposed bills in Republican state houses that effectively criminalize mass protests Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and the Women's March all make use of, maybe the Republican Party realized that maybe all those Communist dictators they used to lambaste where really on to something when they made any mass expression of dissent a crime. Who really cares about Freedom of Speech or Assembly if all people use it for is to show how much they hate you?
Thee's been a steady, global trend of fascism in right wing parties around the world, and the Republican Party is showing that it isn't immune to this. So the real question becomes, what are the Democrats going to do about it? The Democratic Party is in a really, really bad way. Under the Obama administration, the Party lost almost every State legislature and Governor's house in the country, so their ability to make changes on a state level against any Trump's agenda is basically null. It'll be two years until they can even hope to take a majority in either house of Congress, so they won't be of much good on a Federal level, either. So, now would be a really good time to re-evaluate how they do things.
My suggestion is that they become a Party that actually does something for people again. For decades, the Democratic platform has been "We aren't as bad as Republicans." Sure, whispering sweet nothings into people's ears while you fuck them over is considerate on some level, it isn't actually all that helpful. And, honestly, if you run a candidate who's only real claim to the Presidency is "She's not as bad as Trump" and that candidate loses, that whole strategy has proven itself worthless. Because, really, if it can't beat him, what good is it?
If Democrats ever want to regain their prestige, they have to champion things that give tangible, concrete benefits to their citizens. things like universal healthcare, union jobs, a better public education system including tuition-free college and trade schools, all of these things will build better lives for anyone living under them. Democrats will not survive if they continue to be the party of social tolerance and elite financial interests, the unavoidable compromises of that position are what drove so many people into the arms of third-party candidates in the first place and if Democrats keep doing what they've been doing, that trend will only increase. The worst part of it all, though, is that those seemingly radical proposals are stupidly popular, so if Democrats actually found the integrity to run on a platform based of those policies, they'd have no problem winning back the country. But, those campaign checks cash really well, and they do have lots of zeroes, so, you know, maybe all they need to do is keep calling Republicans racists and rude, right? Right?
So that's where we are, a country lead by increasingly tyrannical conservatives with a petulant child as their leader, and an opposition so hampered by their own contradictions they can't actually muster a valid alternative. It's nice to be great again.
