The 2018 midterm elections are now history (except
for results yet to come in), and the exit polls tell quite a story.
Actually, they tell many stories, so you may want to
examine the results for yourself and pick the ones that mean the most to you. I
will tell you what resonates most with me.
Voters were asked: What is the most important issue
facing the country?
For months, the opinion polls had been telling us
that the answer would be Health Care. And it was.
41%
of voters answered: Health Care, making that the number one issue, by a wide
margin. Democratic candidates had already figured that out from hearing the
fear and rage coming from those lost in the cracks of a badly broken system.
In the United States of America, 62% of bankruptcy filings are due to
medical bills. Health Care anxiety has become a middle class disease. Quite
simply, you might have to lose your house to pay for your child’s cancer
treatment.
Meanwhile, Republicans have worked tirelessly to
repeal Obamacare, shrink Medicaid, undermine the health exchanges, and return
to insurance companies the right to discriminate against those with
pre-existing conditions.
According to the Department of Health and Human
Services, the number of non-elderly
Americans with some kind of pre-existing condition may total 130 million. That
number alone just might translate to an awful lot of high anxiety health care
voters.
As the midterms grew closer, Republican candidates
realized that they would likely pay a steep price by being on the losing side
of this issue. So they shrewdly put together a two-pronged strategy to save the
House, increase their numbers in the Senate, and save their governorships.
First, they would proudly present themselves as the
true champions of Health Care, especially when it came to protecting pre-existing
conditions. Not hard to do! It just required using alternative facts in the
context of an alternative Trump-Fox News reality.
The second prong of the midterm strategy would be
to go full-Trump and scare voters into believing that nothing would endanger
life and liberty more than lax border control, and for that, the caravan presented
them with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Without stopping the caravan at the border, MS-13,
ISIS, a loose collection of bad hombres, and of course people carrying
diseases, including smallpox, would be spreading through America, raping,
murdering, dropping babies, collecting benefits, and illegally voting
Democratic.
So, did the Republican strategy work?
On some level, did genuine Health Care
anxiety trump manufactured caravan craziness?
Well, of the 41% of voters who told exit pollsters
that Health Care was their number one issue, 75% were Democrats and 23% were Republicans.
And, would you care to guess which issue finished
second to Health Care, as the most important issue facing the country? 23% of voters answered: Immigration.
That party breakdown was the exact opposite of the
Health Care answer. 75% were Republicans
and 23% were Democrats. Of course, for some of those “Immigration”
Democrats, the threat of deporting a family member would likely outweigh even
severe Health Care anxiety.
I guess you could say that the Republican strategy
worked on Republican voters.
Republicans made a good short term bet, but a bad long
term bet when they first vowed to repeal and replace “every word of Obamacare.”
Remember when Ted Cruz was willing to shut down the government to stop
Obamacare from becoming law?
He warned his Tea Party friends that by getting
subsidized health insurance, Americans would become “addicted to the sugar.”
But that was back in 2013, when Ted had job security. He had no idea that one
day he would get battered by a guy named Beto, running around deep red Texas,
championing health care for all.
Texas will never be the same, and neither will
Ted.
Besides electing leaders and policies, elections
tell us a lot about who we are as a nation. Sometimes those answers are
perplexing, but sometimes they are loud and clear.
The 2018 midterms delivered a big blue wave, but they
also provided some answers as to what we have become in the last two years.
The
exit polls have a lot more to tell us, but I am at the end of my two minutes.
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