Three tweets from yesterday- one from the POTUS:
Another quoting Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House
Here's an expert weighing in
So the President of the USA and the Speaker of the House are lying about health care. The President and the Speaker are liars. This is shocking to realize.
There are many reasons why the President and Speaker are lying about healthcare. One reason is that the GOP would sell their mothers for an entitlement cut.
There are many reasons why the President and the Speaker will lose nothing by lying. One is the GOP would sell their mothers a second time for a tax cut.
But there is one other reason that many people will give the President and Speaker's lies a pass-the deafening silence of Democrats on the contentious issues of immigration and trade. These issues are unconnected to health care but as important to voters. (In my opinion, Democrats are doing fine on healthcare — that is not what this diary is about).
On immigration, Democrats generally go with amorphous pluralism arguments and do not take on the contentious aspects of economics or security.
On trade, many Democrats go with standard bromides about how trade is good and other Democrats go with other standard bromides about how all trade policy is made by the rich corporate class.
But both immigration and trade are not black and white issues — there is a huge area of contentious grey and there is deafening Democrat silence on this contentious grey for various reasons. Such silence from Democrats on contentious economic or security aspects of immigration and trade breeds mistrust of their intentions and amounts to lies by omission by Democrats.
People exercised on trade and immigration might think that Trump's and GOP’s lies on any subject under the sun are less egregious than Democrats' (calculated?) avoidance of contentious issues they (the people) care about.
Given that these issues affect people’s lives, it is not enough for Democrats to have actual policies on immigration and trade if they are silent about them. For example, it was not enough for President Obama to deport undocumented immigrants at a high rate- when he was, for practical purposes, silent about doing so.
It was not enough for Hillary Clinton have plans in her Presidential platform which dealt with immigration policy - apart from generalities, she was silent about it. The same with trade - Hillary was absolutely silent about specific details of benefits or negative repercussions of trade and various trade pacts during her campaign, even during debates when Trump brought it up.
And during these dog days of Trump, it is not enough for Bernie Sanders to go on about Wall Street billionaires and corporations making the nation's financial policies in their favor if he is absolutely silent on how trade pacts and immigration really affect jobs and the economy, or about how jobs are intertwined with international supply chains and labor. It is not enough for individual Democrats to put their immigration and trade platforms on their websites, they need to speak up about, and advocate for those policies too.
Democratic arguments on contentious issues should be heard and Democratic arguments on contentious issues should be reality and fact-based. In the absence of these, Democratic silence is the same as lying by omission — and Republicans get to hold the floor with their articulated lies.