Last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post released a survey they had conducted of the resistance—the mass of Americans who have taken to the streets to protest Donald Trump and all things Trump.
According to the findings, 10 percent of all adults said they joined a rally or protest since the beginning of 2016 as a reaction to Trump. Six percent turned out to oppose Trump, and 4 percent did so to support him.
That's the broad stroke—millions of people have decided they need to be heard and counted, and have taken to the streets. But what's motivating them is important, and like all of the polling and all of the special elections in the past months have demonstrated, what's motivating huge numbers is health care. Kaiser's Drew Altman wrote about it at Axios.
In our survey, we found that about 50 million adults said they had gone to a rally or protest to express their views in the past two years, with about 14 million saying the ACA was a reason they were rallying. That's about 28%, similar to the shares who said the same about the environment and energy issues (32%) and immigration (30%), but behind women’s rights (46%). […]
People who name the ACA as a reason for their activism were more likely to say they will vote in the midterms than people who didn't go to rallies (90% vs. 57%), but it’s not so much their voting power that may matter as their personal participation in the political process. They skew older, higher income, and Democratic, and most would likely have voted anyway. […]
Those turning out about the ACA were about twice as likely as those who turned out on other issues to say they plan to volunteer or work in a 2018 election campaign. [emphasis added]
Oh, and "[a]ctivism on behalf of the ACA was not a rejection of single payer. Most demonstrators support both." That's one of the most important things the ACA has done—prepared the ground for further healthcare reform. It's not as scary or as complex or as impossible as it used to be and we've all become used to the idea that big change can happen. But most important of all, health care has become fundamental.
It has been accepted as a basic right of all Americans, enough so that it's not just driving millions of people out into the streets to protect it, and it’s not just driving people to the voting booth. It's activating them politically—it's getting them to work in 2018 on campaigns in a way that no other issue is. The ACA (and of course Trump, who has been working so hard to destroy it) is what could put Democrats back in control in Congress.
Let's make it happen. Please give $1 to our Senate and House funds so that Republicans pay the price for sabotaging our care.