Daily Clips: November 24th, 2015
51% say government should ensure health care: It looks like our nation is a bunch of socialists again. For the first time since 2008, the majority of the nation believes that the government is responsible for providing health care to its people. In 2014, that number was at 45%. This change in public attitude most certainly helps the Democratic party and should remind all serious candidates (locally and federally) that they should not run away from Obamacare. Rather, they should defend its advancement of health care, but point out there is still much that can be improved.
Rubio is the dark money candidate: Marco Rubio is the scariest candidate I’ve seen from the Republican party in over eight years. He’s young, he’s passionate, and he has a quintessential “American Dream” upbringing. (Check out Rubio’s ad which highlights his father’s working-class credentials.)
Anyways, I digress. A recent piece at Vox highlights that, “Rubio has benefited from anonymous, undisclosed cash to a degree that’s unprecedented for a modern presidential primary contender. Indeed, the vast majority of ads aired to promote Rubio so far this year have been funded by a single group — one that won’t reveal its funders.”
In short, he’s a bought candidate. Will that juxtapose well against Donald Trump? Time will tell. One thing we can know for certain: Rubio is the dark money candidate of this election cycle. (Sorry David Brooks, it looks like he’s not “uncorrupted” after all.)
5 Black Lives Matter protestors shot in Minneapolis: Three white men are considered suspects for this horrific shooting. Thankfully, none of the protestors suffered life-threatening injuries. America has some serious race issues.
Quiet desperation and American fascism:
Alec MacGillis of ProPublica, writing in The New York Times Sunday Review, observes that for the most part, the poor aren’t defecting to Republicans—they are not voting at all. His exhibit A is eastern Kentucky, one of America’s poorest and most government-dependent regions. But the poor are so marginalized and disaffected that they are disconnected from civic life entirely. Looking more broadly, MacGillis reports that non-voters are far more likely than voters to have incomes under $30,000, not to have health insurance, not to have bank accounts, to have received government aid such as food stamps, and to have borrowed money from relatives.
