Monday, October 28, 2019

Move on to Something Real

If you've been wondering what I think about the Elizabeth Warren Medicare-for-All, how-will-you-pay-for-it question, Dave Roberts from Vox summed up my thoughts today in a few tweets. He started out responding to a New York Times op-ed that was headlined "Medicare Mania: Enough Already":

Agreed with this [article], but I think it overstates how much candidates *want* and have *chosen* to talk about healthcare. In fact, it's been moderators and journalists, who sniff a chance to force a candidate to say they'll raise taxes. That's what this is about.

After all, it's not like the candidates have gotten a wide *range* of questions about healthcare. It's all "how do you pay for it?" again and again. It's journalists who know they'll have a clicky story if they can get a Democrat to say, "yes, I'll raise taxes." Blame them.

It's the same reason climate change questions have taken the form of "will you take our cheezburgers?" Political journalists by and large don't give a F about elucidating policy -- they want to box Democrats into saying something unpopular, something that fits their moldy 80s stereotypes.

And it makes me so tired. This kind of repetitive stupidity is not journalism, especially when carbon is 418ppm and a narcissistic, grifting, wannabe fascist is in the White House.


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