A Question On Healthcare And “The Resistance”
Whatever your specific criticisms of particular actors, I think this is obvious: holding rallies across the country to demand that people not be stripped of healthcare is a lot more constructive than other recent “Resistance” tactics, such as running around screaming about Russia or agitating for harebrained Electoral College coup schemes. It’s targeted and tangible. It has a specific goal in mind: make sure that people are not summarily deprived of healthcare. It’s not based on exaggerated premises or overblown grievances: there really is a possibility that people will lose their coverage. So, I think it’s a sound way to expend energy.
What I don’t understand is how his strategy comports with other modes of “Resistance” being proposed. For instance, there’s a lot of hoopla around who’s going to “boycott” Trump’s Inauguration. John Lewis, for instance, says he going to boycott on the ground of Trump’s alleged complicity with “Russian Hacking.” Other various Congressmen have pledged to follow suit. Can I ask what this accomplishes? If you simply want some fleeting symbolic gratification, then sure, boycott the Inauguration. But if your goal is to, say, preserve healthcare coverage for your constituents, then wouldn’t it be better to not make ultimately hollow symbolic gestures, and instead work through whatever means are available to push Trump in a healthcare-preserving direction?
Offering to work with him on discrete initiatives, as Sanders did just after the election, always seemed like the most rational possible approach. But that possibility could well become foreclosed if “the Resistance” chooses grandstanding over policy. That is to say: adopting a posture of unthinking, generalized “Resistance” over targeted, discerning opposition/cooperation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless the aim is to prove how performatively emotive you are.
Question. Shouldn’t pro-Obamacare people be cheering the following development?
Trump is quoted as saying,
Maybe that’s just him blowing smoke. Maybe he’ll just adopt the standard GOP plan being cooked up and try to portray that as “insurance for everybody.” But who knows? Trump isn’t particularly ideological, and as everyone should know by now, he’s far from a died-in-the-wool philosophical conservative. Paul Ryan would never have uttered the above quote, nor would Marco Rubio or basically any generic Reagan-worshipping Republican. Trump is saying (apparently) that the government must ensure that everyone has great healthcare even if “you can’t pay for it.” Wouldn’t the ideal thing for the “Resistance” be to work with Trump to whatever extent possible to implement that goal? Again, it could just be fluff on Trump’s part, but it’s consistent with the heterodox views he’s expressed in the past on healthcare, arguing on occasion for some kind of government-mandated universal insurance even as he wants to repeal Obamacare. Trump was repeatedly attacked during the GOP Primary campaign by his rivals for expressing support for a single-payer system at one point.
It’s not giving Trump any kind of “credit” to say that you’d be willing to further his stated goal of providing everyone healthcare. It’s just rational. This “resistance at all costs” posturing doesn’t seem conducive to rational political action.
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