Democratic (Party) Direction

i'm also not convinced about some of those salary numbers -- how is he defining "household"? and is he giving salaries in cities like new york and san francisco equal weight to ones in poor rural regions? how does income tax figure in? it's kinda vague.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the salary numbers either -- plenty of households still struggle on an income of $60,000 a year. The article gets it right that those people don't receive any government assistance, but that's just where the problem lies -- they end up too well off to get assistance but still unable to afford their debt and medical bills.

or hollywood actor

the article suggested that the dividing line between affluent and poor was $50K per household, but for a married couple where both spouses work that only comes out to $25K per person, which isn't much once you figure in the high cost of living in america. plus, the article doesn't say who in these salary ranges pay for their own insurance and retirement funds.

read: "we won't send your existing jobs to india."

it could happen, provided the elected politicians don't have any vested corporate interests. and monkeys might fly etc.

hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
hohohohoHOHOHOHOHOHOOH
heheheheheHEHEHEHEEEHEHEEEHEEHAHAHAHAHAHASNORTSNORTSNORT!

sorry

Er wait, am I talking about Americans, or ILXors?

it is funny how many "affluent" "property owners" are up to their necks in mortgages and high-interest loans. it's like that commercial where the rich white suburban lawnmower dude says "i'm in debt up to my eyeballs!"

In the vast swaths of country between the megapolises there are people raising families of 5 on $57,000 a year and doing it relatively painlessly. And yeah, economic issues don't mean a goddamned thing to them.

Wow, what an incredible insight. Very novel!

"Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant."

I've long thought that if the Democratic party would focus their message on individualism (and the resulting freedom it implies) that they might get somewhere.

Today’s average American “worker” is, in short, very much on his or her own -- too prosperous to be eligible for most government assistance programs and, because of job laws that date back three quarters of a century, unable to unionize. Such isolation and atomization have not led to a new wave of social solidarity and economic populism, however. Instead, these changes have bred resentment toward those who do have outside aid, whether from government or from unions, and an escalating ethos of every man for himself. Against that ethos, voters have increasingly flocked to politicians who recognize that the combination of relative affluence and relative isolation has created an opening for cultural appeals.

"Every man for himself" has been an American credo for hundreds of years. It's the essence of competition, of capitalism, of industry. There's a bridge somewhere between individualism and community--is the Democratic party forcing people over a bridge or seeking one?

American voters have taken shelter under the various wings of conservative traditionalism because there has been no one on the Democratic side in recent years to defend traditional, sensible middle-class values against the onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows.

Maybe they're taking shelter because they don't think it's an economy that's pitting man against man, it's shelter from the resulting culture war. What are "traditional, sensible middle-class values" anyway? The only hint we get from this article is that candidates should talk about religion and that will mitigate their stance on the death penalty (in Virginia.)

I am happy to see the wasteland that is the Democratic Party looking inward. The Republicans wouldn't dare stare into their own dark abyss.

As for the "average American household" that makes $60K a year, it would have been more informative to see the median income, because the average is skewed upwards by those at the top of the scale - ie., less than 50% of Americans make the "average" income.

Lakoff's extensively written about the need for Democratic candidates and progressives in general to start explicitly talking about values. Also, for campaigns to work at creating more of an overall narrative for a candidate than just a laundry list of policies. It's only his work on the framing aspect that's received attention lately, not so much his work on defining the values systems that right/left folks tend to hold(e.g. "maintaining authority" vs "care & responsibility").

He's offered up Schwarzneggar's campaign as an example of a guy who ran entirely on narrative & perceived identity, and expressively refused to offer up any policy suggestions. Most folks don't have the time/energy/inclination to get into policy specifics, but if they trust your guy, they're trust him to take care of the details.

As he says,

"The pollsters didn’t understand it because they thought that people voted on the issues and on self-interest. Well, sometimes they do. But mostly they vote on their identity -- on persons that they trust to be like them, or to be like people they admire"

which connects to that aspirational bit that the article mentions.

Jim Wallis has talked about several of these same issues over the last year as well, especially with on the whole "onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows" bit.

Wallis has written about conversations his group has had with Frank Luntz and some other Repub pollsters who were quite open about their m.o. being to get voters so caught in such intense issues that they vote against their economic interest.

As other folks have pointed out, the Republicans have been better that bring the polls to them(gay marriage is the biggest thing you care about) vs the Democrats moving to where the polls now seem to be(well i guess we need to move rightward on gay marriage).

That's the thing, innit? If you build up an entire apparatus to both promote & reinforce certain narratives, people will believe them even if they have no basis in fact. George W. Bush is steadfast & strong, Kerry's a weak-willed flip-flopper, Republicans are all about a smaller government, supply-side economics works, etc

oh fuck yeah this is a major bit of it, too. But since when did we start promoting self-reflection and critical thought?

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

xpost

Please God, take Hilary quietly so she won't fuck up the party with a presidential campaign. WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE EVER.

Huh? He's only been going this stuff in the press for about two years. Second, there are plenty of other folks who have made the connection, but have gotten shit for coverage(not fitting in with "religious = rightwing conservative" media narrative?), even when they got arrested for it on the Capitol steps.

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

DLC-candidate-in-centrist-message shocker

very much otm. The change will come from the outside.

Re the direction of the party, past actions indicate the party will be quicker to line up behind someone with Clinton's politics as opposed to Tasini's. I'm not too hopeful when it comes to the future of the Dems.

do you think it's necessary for dems to use the religious right's language ("morals" and "values")? would a less-loaded word like "ethics" skew too liberal?

my question is, when do they not? unless a voter has completely descended into some cynical nihilism, of course.

i mean, yeah, "values" has come to signify a very specific set of values, which just goes to further show that democratic types do need to start talking about theirs.

I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 precisely because he'd reneged on how openly he supported gay marriage as a state legislator.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

great example. i'll add to that and say that when individuals decide not to vote for a candidate because we don't support their values, and they lose, those of us who follow our values get blamed for that candidate losing. this is, if i may say, pure applesauce. it's not even that i mind being blamed, at this point. it's just not _professionally competent_ to blame and shame voters for not voting for your candidate! that's not how you fucking win elections!

(I just finished the massive new Buckley bio)

Buckley occasionally knew how to use language, I'd counter; too often he tossed a gauche polysyllabic word into the salad.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

personally i agree! i don't understand why people went apeshit for "nattering nabobs of negativity". at least in his case there's a sense of justice to it - the word "sesquipedalian" has become permanently affixed to his name like a sausage to the nose. buckley.... i think as him as being the sort of Guy Gardner of the right - Guy Gardner being the superhero who's most famous for challenging Batman to a fight and getting cold-cocked with one punch. watching buckley and vidal hurl playground insults at each other on blurry timecoded VT is still a great pleasure of mine. the only way i really enjoy these fights is when i'm rooting for both sides to lose. i learned young that sometimes, the only way to win is to not play.

"nattering nabobs" was William Safire

(writing for Spiro Agnew)

Agnew definitely wasn’t smart enough to come up with that on his own

ah safire, that's what i get for trying to be clever

i think of safire as kind of the poor man's buckley, idk if that's right or wrong tho

Safire wrote a good language column for the NYT, which is more than I can say for Buckley.

imo Buckley was more successful at selling the idea of conservative intellectualism than actually performing it.

Speaking as a linguist, Safire's writing on language is worthless garbage.

All of Buckley's mannerisms on Firing Line were designed to act out a kind of arch superiority. He was constantly playing the role of the smart guy who's eager to deliver his crushing answer to your inadequate thoughts. As he listened to his guests, his face would be serious at the start, but as they spoke he'd lift his eyebrows and a slight smile would emerge, his eyes would glitter and he'd lean forward as if about to pounce. To anyone watching more than listening it was obvious he was the cat and the guest was the mouse.

For those who were listening, he used his overly ornate verbiage more to dazzle and obfuscate than to analyze or explicate. In short, he was a fraud as an intellectual, but a very successful television actor.

Speaking as a linguist, Safire's writing on language is worthless garbage.

Well he wasn't a linguist, he was a pop commentator and a pretty entertaining writer. ymmv obviously, but he was a good read.

Safire also gave me a small professional point of pride when I was copyediting at the NYT. I flagged an error in one of his columns that had gotten by the editorial desk. I sent it to them and got back a note saying “Safire says you’re right and thank you.” (A very different response than I got when I tried to fix an obvious error in a Tom Friedman column lol. “Friedman says to leave it.”)

I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 precisely because he'd reneged on how openly he supported gay marriage as a state legislator.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, August 23, 2025 10:51 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dan S: Grow up.

Dan S - I think the thing that bothers people particularly, apart from Newsom being a scummy guy with no principles, is the timing. If it was August 2028 there would at least be a binary, extremely shitty choice. But it's 2025, and we are getting an onslaught of messaging about how we all have to rally around this piece of shit, all coming from the people who were sure that Harris's campaign was doing all the right things. They have now decided that they made no mistakes, it was simply the voters who were wrong, and there will be no room for any moral standards in the party. We've got another California politician with no fixed principles, it worked great last time, and if you have any concerns about this you are aiding Trump.

And the thing is, this is a terrible strategy! Like, fine, it's cool if he does this redistricting thing, that's good. But maybe, just maybe, the party should avoid nominating opportunistic scumbags. They'll lose to another opportunistic scumbag who can really embrace it and promise people money and vengeance instead of mouthing some liberal platitudes to keep the base in line. It's hard to win an election when half your base is depressed or pissed off about the candidate they're being told to support!

it's 2025, and we are getting an onslaught of messaging about how we all have to rally around this piece of shit

As you point out, it is 2025, not 2028, so I find it remarkably easy to join the vast majority of voters and ignore these messages completely. Anyone who is susceptible to them at this stage is just as easy to ignore. They'll shift with the prevailing wind when 2028 arrives.

As you point out, it is 2025, not 2028, so I find it remarkably easy to join the vast majority of voters and ignore these messages completely. Anyone who is susceptible to them at this stage is just as easy to ignore. They'll shift with the prevailing wind when 2028 arrives.

Anyone proposing Newsom as a presidential nominee now will be "supporting" someone else three months from now, and someone else three months after that, and on and on for the next three years. And every time, they will bleat about how their current savior is the only choice, the ideal choice, and what a huge asshole you are for not seeing the truth.

what Newsom is doing isn't "fighting", and that's the problem here in a nutshell

if he actually redistricts CA, I'm all for it

I partially agree here. I agree it isn't fighting, but I think the appearance or optics of fighting has a lot of value. The AOC/Trump voters interviewed that said they liked both because they were both fighters struggled to articulate what it was either actually did, they just knew they were fighting in some way for something.

I think this is a clear example of the separation of politics and policy, and why there is absolutely nothing contradictory about voting for both AOC and Trump - the center that Dan S mentioned earlier being in the world of politics not the world of policy, and where the game is actually played

As you point out, it is 2025, not 2028, so I find it remarkably easy to join the vast majority of voters and ignore these messages completely. Anyone who is susceptible to them at this stage is just as easy to ignore. They'll shift with the prevailing wind when 2028 arrives.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

uh, ok. should i applaud your capacity for cognitive dissonance, or what? cuz personally that's not something i'd brag about.

the 'optics of fighting' are not what voters see in successful politicians - Hillary, Biden and Kamala all tried epic pwns and none of that shit worked (Trump lost in 2020 because everyone was exhausted and a half million people were dead in the midst of a pandemic)

AOC and Trump have nothing in common in terms of political style or 'fighting'-ness - what they project is Believing In Something.

I don't think Biden, Hillary, or Harris were ever perceived as fighters though

I'm not saying Newsome is (or isn't) perceived this way. Just that the optics of fighting matters. Biden failed largely because of a perceived inability to fight, and I think with both Hillary and Harris the perception was that they were comfortable, didn't have any mud on their clothes, and didn't want to get any mud on their clothes

I think people want to see mud on clothes. Or more accurately, imagine mud on clothes whether its actually there or not

In fact, I feel like all 3 didn't really seem to like leaving the house all that much

We are living in Network times: people on both sides are "mad as hell" and are "not going to take it anymore." Each side has different things they are mad about, but there is substantial overlap in that people on both sides feel the economic system is rigged and the elites are getting away with murder.

The Democrats run candidates and talk about policies that tell voters they shouldn't feel this way, while Republicans run candidates that tell people their feelings are correct and they will fix the problem.

Running on protecting democracy and returning to normalcy is a losing strategy, imo. No one gaf. People want change.

Yeah “returning to normalcy” is both a desire and assumption of the institutional center left — there are a whole lot of people who both assume that we will “return to normal” and also believe that that is the best possible outcome. Because they liked the “normal.”

They’re wrong both about a return to normal being likely and desirable. What’s required is a vision of something new. It can’t be just “we’ll put grownups back in charge.”

https://i.imgur.com/PKqXmPs.gif

yeah not to assume too much deep thinking on the electorate's part, but "protecting democracy" and "putting the grown-ups back in charge" are contradictory. On a gut level I think the Ds' commitment to genuine democracy rings hollow since they never put forward any proposals to make the country more democratic. With the wide spectrum of political opinion forced to pass through a two-party filter, the constitutional legacy of a bunch of 18th c. landowners wary of radicalism, and a right wing gone full fash, ~democracy~ feels pretty thin.

I'm not stupid, I know your average voter isn't crying out for ranked choice voting, abolishing the EC, reforming the Senate, term limits for the Supreme Court, DC statehood, decolonizing PR, Guam, Samoa, VI, restrictions on campaign financing, changing the primary system, etc. But I can't remember the Dems ever putting anything significant on the table to make the country more democratic. Instead you constantly hear about the sanctity of the filibuster and blue slips and Congress seems mostly to be about looming govt shutdowns and debt defaults and so on.

A DC statehood bill is introduced every year but I guess it’s not a high priority push for the party at large.

And Puerto Rico actually skews Republican, if you can believe it, so giving them full statehood may not be a great idea. granting them independence is in theory a great idea but right now PR citizens are also full citizens of the US with the full right to move to the mainland like it’s just another state. It would just give future xenophobes a whole new people to persecute.

Maybe I'm misreading you but denying PR statehood or independence because white Americans are racist is insane, no?

But more to the point, I wasn't making suggestions for how the Democratic party can beat the GOP at elections. My point is they don't actually care about democracy as a principle or they would be opposed, regardless of polling, to the US having colonies (and maybe PR isn't "as bad" rights-wise but what about the others?). Perhaps caring about democracy would be tactically unwise in terms of keeping the GOP out of power, I don't know, but they should stfu about "restoring democracy" unless they have something grander to offer than "vote for us"

Yes, I agree with your larger point, there’s a lot of stuff they could be doing but they won’t because they don’t care/don’t wanna/are owned by a billionaire donor class. But Democrat-run states do tend to have more generous early voting times, mail-in voting, allow voter registration at the DMV when you’re registering your car, don’t have photo ID requirements, some places allow noncitizens to vote for local and/or state elections. The Dems could do a lot more and suck a lot less but the above stuff isn’t nothing.

Those initiatives are definitely important, especially right now, but I think it's notable that they're focused on making it easier to vote (for Democrats) rather than fostering any other kind of democratic participation in civic life. Again, I'm not going to claim there's a large number of people clamoring for that, just that the Ds' vision of "democracy" is impoverished. I think that's mostly due to their broad commitment to a neoliberal capitalism (yes, there are some D exceptions) that strives to make work & family the only two modes of living, but that's a whole other discussion

Agree

And Puerto Rico actually skews Republican, if you can believe it, so giving them full statehood may not be a great idea

I don't think this is quite true. Puerto Rico now votes for president in a non-binding straw poll, and Harris won easily last year (63%-23%).

Now, if you'll recall, Puerto Rico was in the news shortly before the election because of jokes made at its expense by a comedian at a Trump rally. So I have to imagine that played a role in the wide margin. But Harris also had a (more modest) lead in polls since she became nominee.

That said, the current governor of Puerto Rico is a Republican (in addition to being a member of a local political party) and there have been a couple of other Republican governors this century.

What frustrates me is the assumption by U.S. Republicans that Puerto Rico would *automatically* vote Democrat in every future election. There is already a Republican constituency on the island. Persuade them!

But I can't remember the Dems ever putting anything significant on the table to make the country more democratic.

Well, there was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which failed to pass the Senate because Manchin and Sinema refused to change the filibuster rules. I found this pretty deflating at the time because it signaled that any of the large-scale democratic reforms we talked about in Trump's first term were basically non-starters.

All of Buckley's mannerisms on Firing Line were designed to act out a kind of arch superiority. He was constantly playing the role of the smart guy who's eager to deliver his crushing answer to your inadequate thoughts. As he listened to his guests, his face would be serious at the start, but as they spoke he'd lift his eyebrows and a slight smile would emerge, his eyes would glitter and he'd lean forward as if about to pounce. To anyone watching more than listening it was obvious he was the cat and the guest was the mouse.

For those who were listening, he used his overly ornate verbiage more to dazzle and obfuscate than to analyze or explicate. In short, he was a fraud as an intellectual, but a very successful television actor.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

right, it's the same as all punditry - it's performative. performativity is part of the rhetorical tradition. cicero wasn't interested in _truth_. he was interested in getting people to agree with him. right-wing populism _is_ part of the classical Western tradition. it goes back at least as far as cicero's pushing of the "catiline conspiracy". we have _no idea_ whether or not such a conspiracy existed or not. it doesn't actually _matter_ whether there was ever such a conspiracy. what mattered is that cicero and sallust were able to make people _believe_ there was. it's a Big Lie. it's what "strange fruit" is about. i'm not sure richard russell was any better for Black Americans than bull connor. russell is just the one with a Senate Office Building named for him.

It should be the Mark Russell Senate Office Building

Also, come back Capitol Steps we need you more than ever.

let's not get carried away here lol

People want change.

Obama won using the slogan Change You Can Believe In. Then he governed from the 'center'. People still want change, more than ever, and they're increasingly willing to tear down anything that looks like an obstacle to change, including the US constitution and democracy itself.

The Democrats should be going full bore on this and selling the public on an agenda that radically addresses the economic insecurity and fragility that permeates the bottom 75% of the public. They should think and act fiercely and throw caution to the wind.

"They say tens of millions of Americans are one catastrophic health event away from financial ruin. That catastrophic health event has happened — it was called the Big Beautiful Bill. It's going to hit those tens of millions all at the same time, on January 1st, 2026." There's your Democratic (Party) direction, or the direction for anyone smart enough to use it.

Whose quote

That's just me writing what should be coming out of anti-Trump mouths. But there were more than 21 million people signed up for the ACA in 2024 so I think there would be plenty of data to back "tens of millions are about to get fucked."

i ask because my understanding is that it's a timebomb like articles like this say
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/07/medicaid-impacts-tax-bill-delayed

it says the aca effects are around the start of 26 tho.

I assume that when it hits, it will be sold as Biden's rate hike.

From what I've seen so far (in the marketing materials being prepared at my day job for release on October 1), the health insurance industry is planning to try and bull their way through with language like "your subsidies may change, and your premiums increase, in 2026" without laying it in anyone's lap.

look

it's frustrating when you tell someone the truth and they don't believe you, and instead they believe the lies somebody else tells about you

and it's natural to want to be mad at someone for believing lies. it's natural to want to say "what the hell is wrong with you? what are you, stupid? why are you voting for the leopards eating faces party?"

and i guess i'm also justified if i want to call them "flying monkeys", cuz whether they are doing it deliberately or not, whether they know it or not, they are serving an agenda that is really harmful to me and a lot of other people who don't deserve to be hurt

and i guess it's just as tempting for me to call america "omelas" and say "just walk away, you can't help these people", and i'm not sure i'm any more right to do so

what i like about talking about gerrymandering or whatever is that you're doing something other than playing the game according to whatever the rules have decided are the rules this week

what i don't like about gerrymandering is that you're playing the same game as the republicans

i guess lex talionis (whatever happened to that dude, he used to post here all the time) is better than going along to get along, and, i mean, for me it's still not _right_

it's the same bullshit they pull with superdelegates. a rigged game is a rigged game.

i like george mcgovern politically as much as anyone, i guess. and i also look at, like... '68 was a fucking disaster. a complete disaster. lbj's dishonesty and double-dealing fucked things up pretty badly. so they said ok, we need to change the rules to make it more fair, and the guy they got to lead the committee to change the rules was, uh, george mcgovern.

nixon was cheating like hell, of course, and he didn't lose because nixon was cheating like hell

you're a legislator and you worry about rules, of course you worry about rules. i used to believe, i was taught to believe that american isn't a nation of people, it's a nation of laws. that people are flawed, fallible, _emotional_, and rules make things fair for everyone.

these days i don't believe in rules as much as i believe in _evidence_

i don't believe people vote for trump just because they're stupid or evil. a lot of them probably are stupid, and a lot of them probably are evil, and honestly there's... there's only so much i can do about that.

i think it's good to be taught critical thinking skills, and a lot of people aren't any better at critical thinking than i am at making phone calls. making phone calls is hard for me and some people think there's something wrong with me for that, and that doesn't help.

when i think of the early days of fox news, i mean, they were always fucking liars, but the thing they started out saying was "we report, you decide." i feel powerless. a lot of people these days feel powerless. i don't think we're powerless. the democrats don't make me feel like i have power. they make me feel like they're the adults in the room and i'm the kid. "we're the experts, we know more than you". and maybe that's true! i'm not a little kid, though. i'm a grown woman.

i don't need well-thought-out policy proposals. i don't care about well-thought-out policy proposals. they _should_ know more than me when it comes to policy. i don't need to understand their policies to support them any more than i need to understand organic chemistry to support trans people. because i _am_ a values voter. i _do_ vote based on trust. and what candidates say before the election doesn't mean shit to me anymore.

and yeah, what you're doing is complex and anything you do can be twisted around to be used against you, and your enemies _will always do that_. whether it's "alternative facts" or alternative _interpretations_ of the facts... even if the facts themselves are stubborn things, i'm stubborn in a different way. my _emotions_ are stubborn. my _beliefs_ are stubborn. they can't be logicked out of existence.

if i look at bill clinton and barack obama, if i look at their failures, i think it's that they got elected based on emotion - i'm not sure they realized it, but they did - and then they tried to govern based on creating rhetorical consensus.

all pundits are grifters. rhetoric - emotion disguised as reason - is great if you're a lawyer trying to get your client acquitted, it's great if you're trying to get elected, but i _don't_ think it's actually a great basis for governance.

i remember the punditsphere at one time talked about "political capital", like it was something that can be gained and lost by policy. and it's not just... it's not a fucking zero sum game, just like capitalism isn't _supposed_ to be a zero-sum game. you can get elected if people hate you less than they hate the other guy, but it's hard to govern when most people hate and distrust you from day one. when people's only hope is that you'll be somehow better than they thought you'd be, when they vote for you on a basis of "I CAN FIX HIM".

charisma plays into it. i'm more charismatic than i've given myself credit for, and, i mean, i'm too weird to win that game. i'm not inclined to play that game. people don't like me just because i'm "smart" and charismatic, people like me because i fucking live my values. and i guess that is hard, i guess it's been hard for me, but god dammit if the party can't reward people like bernie sanders for doing that, yeah, i'm gonna fucking hate them. whether that's supported by the evidence or not. i'm motivated by _justice_, and gerrymandering isn't justice. superdelegates aren't justice. i'm ignorant sometimes, but i'm not stupid. i do the wrong thing sometimes, but i'm not evil. and i just don't see the harm in treating everyone that way.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

From what I've seen so far (in the marketing materials being prepared at my day job for release on October 1), the health insurance industry is planning to try and bull their way through with language like "your subsidies may change, and your premiums increase, in 2026" without laying it in anyone's lap.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson)

here in oregon, as of october 1, medicaid going to require people covered by medicaid to pay in full for visits with providers who aren't enrolled in medicaid

what this means is that a lot of people are having to find new doctors

the medical system is already broken and understaffed

particularly when it comes to behavioral health

my friends are fucked, they're upset about it, and they're not blaming _trump_ for it. they're blaming oregon medicaid.

https://i.imgur.com/MbWWR02.jpeg