Anyone watching the cable news channels would believe that Democrats will face a complete wipeout in 2022. That’s lazy thinking.
Democrats have the facts and narrative to win 2022.
Democrats are some of the worse marketers on the planet. And Republicans do what our marketing society does best, sell defective products. Factually, Republicans continue to sell lies as Democrats are unable to impress Americans with the solid policies that make their lives much better.
Recently my friend, Thom Hartman wrote a piece that everyone must read titled “Why Blue State Living Makes You Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise” where he points out several Republican projections, some of which have proven fatal to many Americans.
Blue state taxes heavily subsidize Red states, a fact that’s been well known for decades. As an “AP Fact Check” laid out:
“Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar the state sent to Washington in 2015, according to the Rockefeller study. West Virginia received $2.07, Kentucky got $1.90 and South Carolina got $1.71.
“Meanwhile, New Jersey received 74 cents in federal spending for tax every dollar the state sent to Washington. New York received 81 cents, Connecticut received 82 cents and Massachusetts received 83 cents.”
People in Blue states also live longer, in part because Blue states have expanded Medicaid to cover all their citizens while most Red states still refuse to do so.
“To date, 39 states (including DC) have adopted the Medicaid expansion,” notes KFF, “and 12 states have not adopted the expansion.”
All 12 of them are Red states.
If you’re concerned about being murdered, it’s also a good idea to avoid Red states. As the centrist Third Way think tank noted last month:
“In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
“8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.”
It’s true of Red cities as well. Again, from Third Way:
“For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat [sic] mayor, despite their comparable populations.
“In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.”
Red states generally lead America in sexually transmitted diseases, presumably because most have outlawed teaching sex education in their schools.
The five states with the highest ratest of Chlamydia infections are: Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and New Mexico. The highest rates of Gonorrhea are in Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana.
Speaking of schools, the states with the lowest educational attainment in the nation are entirely Red states. Ranked from terrible to absolutely worst, they are: Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nevada, Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.
Red states also have a serious disinformation problem, as Covid statistics show, with anti-science rants and rhetoric coming from both their own local rightwing radio and TV talk shows, newspapers, and politicians.
Stephen H. Woolf, MD, MPH, wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association that the partisan divide is the biggest factor:
“Some elected officials made a political issue out of challenging scientific evidence, embracing dubious theories, and labeling public health safeguards as infringements on personal freedom.”
He notes that last year “excess death rates in” Red states like “Florida and Georgia” ran over 200 deaths per 100,000 people, while well-educated, successful Blue state Massachusetts ran at a mere 50 per 100,000:
“[Red] States that resisted public health protections experienced higher numbers of excess deaths during the Delta variant surge in the fall of 2021.
“Between August and December 2021, Florida experienced more than triple the number of excess deaths (29,252) as New York (8,786), despite both states having similar population counts (21.7 million and 19.3 million, respectively).10”
The above is the reality of what Republicans are doing to their states and the country. It should be hard to tell how each of these items affects individuals and their families in a manner where they see that Republican governance presents a clear and present danger to their economies, health, and social well-being. But Democrats must be aggressive in telling the story.
More importantly, Democrats must have no fear in going after the Republicans’ and neoliberals’ benefactors, the major corporations who are behavioral parasites. All our ills can be directly attributed to them and with that Republicans and neoliberals.
- A large percentage of today’s inflation is just corporations gouging Americans because they have pricing power.
- The high price of healthcare for most and the lack of healthcare for many can be attributed to corporate-induced Republican policies.
- The supply-chain problem is a direct result of offshoring, just-in-time inventory, and corporate incompetence in planning for the unknown but the possible. In other words, Republicans, neoliberals, and corporations want us to clean up a mess they created.
- Liberal Republican gun policies have made the Red States the Wild-WIld West. They must be pinned as the ones generating policies that have increased murders.
I could go on and on but the enclosed video makes the complete case. Democrats have a winning story to tell. It would do them well to get aggressive. Go on the attack and win the 2022 election.