Obamacare Must Die on the Cross

Forgive the metaphor; it was the most trenchant I could find. Tell me, after the Georgia election, how else can Democrats overcome?

If nothing bad happens to Trump supporters, why should they change their vote?

There’s the nub: Trumpcare will be very, very bad for Trump voters in rural, red counties—the people who took Trump over the top in the Electoral College.  So be it.

Why else would these voters change—because there is some incomprehensible noise about obstruction of justice, which no one can explain to a person with a high school education residing outside of Washington DC?  How is that noise about obstruction not just the elitist deep state coils, dragging our man down?

No, and alas, Trump voters must bear the pain of their mistaken vote. And there is no simpler, more straightforward way to bring that pain to bear, on those most vulnerable to change their vote, than to have them lose their healthcare under a Republican bill.

Of all the hypothetical catastrophes that might change voters’ mind about Trump, there is none more pointed, more localized in its havoc, more tightly focused in its blast range, than for poor, white, rural voters in red states to see their loved ones die because their healthcare was taken away or made impossibly expensive.  Death to Obamacare! Alright. So be it.

All of the other modes of Trump failure carry too high a cost in terms of collateral damage.

• I don’t want North Korea to sneak in the big one because Trump is a blithering idiot.
• I don’t want to see American soldiers coming home in body bags because Trump sent an ignorant tweet to a Middle Eastern rogue regime.
• I don’t want to see the stock market crash or the economy turn belly up because some Trump stooge tweeted foolishly about a government shutdown.

All those Trump-ejecting events would cause too much grief to me and to innocent people in my circle.

But a horrible Republican health care bill (forgive the redundancy) that causes 50-something, white male, Archie Bunker types in rural Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin, to see their aged mother thrown out on the street (what did you think Medicaid covered?), their spouse die a premature death because of unaffordable deductibles, and their daughter succumb to untreated opioid addiction (read the House bill), well, call me hard-hearted, but I don’t see that as collateral damage.

I call it the consequence of voting Republican while not rich.

What do you call it?