First, a pep talk aimed at new and veteran visitors: we lost the election and I lost my father in the same month. Not to compare the two, but I don’t just sympathize with low spirits—I empathize. But this is not unfamiliar territory.
Daily Kos and other sites like it were born in the wake of a controversial election, the 9/11 attacks, and a run-up to the disastrous war in Iraq. Back then, during the darkest days of the Bush administration, we knew we were the underdogs, and we knew we were forged almost as an afterthought by the serial failings of traditional media cowed by right-wing hysteria, by its truthiness and its duplicity and sheer pop culture stupidity. It seemed then that the entire nation had gone off the rails, even our greatest institutions had let us down.
There are veterans here who will attest to that and more, and you’ll find some of them are very, very good at identifying and promoting a winning idea. Saving existing and future retirees from the reptilian denizens of the DC swamp lining up to devour them is just such an issue:
Price, who is being floated as a possible Health and Human Services Secretary in the next administration, said that he expects Republican in the House to move on Medicare reforms "six to eight months" into the Trump administration.
If you think this doesn’t affect you, you’d better think again. Even the youngest readers have parents or grandparents, or some other special middle-aged or elderly person in their lives. And if you don’t age, if you stay young and healthy forever, you’ll the be the first in history to do so.
Medicare was formally created in 1965 under title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide medical care to retirees and others who would not otherwise be able to afford it. But years before conservatives fell in love with the religious right, Republicans were already sworn enemies of the new program. Before it was even voted on, they engaged in hysterical warnings of impending doom that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud:
Write those letters now; call your friends and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day, as Normal Thomas said we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free. — Ronald Reagan 1961.
Republicans have been trying to destroy Medicare for 50 years
Despite those infantile attempts, Medicare was enacted and quickly proved popular for good reason: millions of seniors have lived longer, healthier lives—and millions are alive and healthy today—because of Medicare. That’s turned into a huge political problem for the GOP. Seniors vote, reliably, in large numbers. Time and time again they have voted for Medicare and Social Security, and against efforts to wound either one. Now they’ll have to do it again.
Medicare is hugely popular with people who vote in every election.
Even when Bush was re-elected in 2004, pronounced it a mandate, and turned his sights to “privatizing” Social Security (Medicare’s sibling), grass-roots conservatives and progressives alike rebelled so strongly and loudly that the WH and Congress ran away as fast as they could. Both programs are such a hot button for seniors that the GOP got some mileage out of pretending they were protecting Medicare by opposing Obamacare. This is one place we can start fighting now:
I would just add that the time to start this campaign is immediately. Sometime "in the next couple of weeks" Trump is going to do his victory tour. So let's say we buy a whole bunch of ad time in the areas he plans to visit. It's a simple pitch. Medicare. You earned it. You paid into it all your life. And now Paul Ryan wants to take it away from you. Tell your congressman to keep Paul Ryan's hands off our Medicare.
Now it’s 2016, and pretty much every retiree in the nation has one pre-existing condition or another that puts the cost of private health insurance completely out of their reach—not to mention utterly inadequate to cover the myriad routine medical issues they face. Medicare is more important and popular than ever and will remain so for decades to come.
Paul Ryan is only the latest in a long line of wealthy, privileged conservatives who dreams of ending Medicare. He has many rich, cranky allies—including hordes of GOP trust funders and lucky heirs who haven’t done a lick of honest work in their entire pampered lives. Check lists regularly to see who sides with them and who sides with you, and see where your elected representatives stand.
Republicans and all other voters want to keep Medicare by huge margins.
Our role is to fight any effort by any and all politicians to “privatize” Medicare, or whatever euphemisms the party of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump uses this time to mass market their dream of stealing hundreds of billions of tax dollars from working Americans and leaving today’s fully vested seniors to rot and die. Republicans need democratic cover on this:
But in order to do something like that, in order to do a change, you're going to need presidential leadership. You're going to need the House and Senate working together, Democrats and Republicans.
So, let’s be sure and let Democrats know they will pay a steep price if they enable this in any way. Remind them what happened to Democrats who compromised with Bush’s clusterfuck in Iraq. Let them know this is not an issue for compromise, that it’s radioactive political poison: Medicare and Social Security are not something lawmakers can triangulate with.
A Democrat who rolls over on Medicare will roll over on anything
Like millions of seniors, my father won an odd bet of sorts, one he did not place but still collected on. Medical research provided new treatments with the potential to keep him alive and relatively healthy as he aged and developed new problems. He was able to stay ahead of that morbid curve way past his natural due date. But it was Social Security and Medicare that made those innovations available and affordable for millions like him. As a result he almost lived to 90. I wish he had lived longer. But my generation, and those behind it, won’t be even be that lucky if assholes like Ryan and his pals are able to mortally wound the most popular, life-saving program in American history.
The fight ahead over Medicare is a struggle between the haves and have-nots. It’s dems vs. cons. It’s a battle for the political survival of the left and center and much of the right. And for millions of people, including your friends and family, the fight to preserve Medicare is quite literally a battle of life and death.