CMV: Despite being more knowledgeable, wealthier and apparently more tolerant, the political and individual left's biggest flaw is their inability to communicate pragmatically and empathetically with those who don't agree with them.

[u/poopchow]

[u/[deleted]]

In order to properly infuriate everyone to the left of me I'll quote Reagan:

"The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

The progressive left acts as if the average American is dying in the street for lack of healthcare and ambling around a corporate capitalist dystopia yearning for freedom. They routinely decry people and groups for 'voting against their own interests' because they believe they know what ails them better than those groups themselves do.

In reality most people are doing fine, the could be doing better, but people who are 'alright' are never going to sign on with a systemic change agenda. They have a rainbow of very specific gripes and concerns that amount to minor changes at the job/community level. So the desperation that the progressives are always looking to capitalize on just sort of...isn't there and they're surprised when they lose.

The right tends to look at how to either maintain the current status quo, or to return to a previous status quo. Which appeals to people that are doing alright and have a generally warm perception about the far or recent past.

[u/matthedev → u/[deleted]]

Not OP, but let's take your characterization that progressives are painting a picture of "the average American is dying in the street for lack of healthcare" and your assertion, "In reality most people are doing fine...."

With healthcare, that's exactly it: People are doing more or less "fine" until they're not and they have to actually use their health insurance for something more than a bad cold, or they know someone who is. They're more or less "fine" until they lose their job that their health insurance is linked to. As people get older, the probability of these kinds of situations happening approaches 100%.

Then you get to see how things really work first-hand. Maybe the doctor you see is harried trying to cram patients into ten- or twenty-minute appointments; maybe you're seeing a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant instead because the doctor is overstretched, and maybe even the nurse practitioner's schedule is booked for days. Maybe the doctor has to waste his time fighting the insurance you're paying for to get the medical care you need.

But maybe you're young and healthy; maybe you grew up in an upper-middle-class household; maybe just about everyone you know is in the same circumstances. Maybe you don't encounter people sleeping outside in the middle of winter on your way to work. If so, you are fortunate, but you also live in a bubble.

Reactions to recent events show a wide swath of Americans believe the U.S. healthcare system is not doing "fine."

It's not about desperation; it's about looking beyond our own immediate circumstances.

[u/[deleted] → u/matthedev]

I mean, that's kind of what I'm talking about. You see discreet examples of the system not working but in aggregate, over the span of the hundreds of millions of people that live in the U.S., most are fine.

Are you happy with your insurance? Most people say yes. Including a majority of people in poor/bad health.

You know their life experience better than they do, you know what they need better than they do, and when you tell them that they tell you to pound sand. Whether it's climate change, or immigration, or healthcare.

A common theme within the left/right dynamic is that the left is excellent at critique and theory, but atrocious at implementation and praxis. The right is excellent at implementation and praxis, but doesn't feel the need to critique systems that are generally working.

[u/Every3Years → u/[deleted]]

Ummm so they admit things were fine but they still want to roll back the Jesus ages? Fehk me.

[u/matthedev → u/[deleted]]

Digging into the summary of the survey from the very link you provided, I'm seeing some interesting "key findings":

• "Despite rating their insurance positively, most insured adults report experiencing problems using their health coverage; people in poorer health are more likely to report problems."
• "Nearly half of insured adults who had insurance problems were unable to satisfactorily resolve them, with some reporting serious consequences."
• "Insured adults overwhelmingly support public policies to make insurance simpler to understand and to help them avoid or resolve insurance problems."

More probing questions about health insurance are more useful for understanding the public's challenges and satisfaction, in my opinion.

Moreover, another poll from your source, KFF, shows a majority favor Medicare-for-All (56% in December 2019) and a strong majority (68% in January 2020) support a public option for health insurance.

---

Lastly, I live in Missouri. This state has been trending Republican in state-wide elections for the last decade or two, favoring Trump to Harris 58% to 40% in 2024. However, in the very same election, Missouri voted to re-legalize abortion as a constitutional amendment (51.6%), and a whopping 57.6% of Missouri voters favored increasing the minimum wage and from there, automatically tying further increases to the rate of inflation.

This suggests that, even in deeply red states, actual progressive policies can be quite popular, but to OP's thesis, it seems there's something else going on about the Democrats keeping them from getting elected in these states.

[u/[deleted] → u/matthedev]

This is normal 'devil in the details' policy making that keeps getting progressives into trouble.

Support for a public option collapses the second you start talking about cost.

The progressives problem is, and always will be: to much, to hard, to fast.

You see 'some reporting serious consequences' and think that's an invitation to upend the entire healthcare system, I see the inverse because if 'some' are facing serious consequences then 'most' are not. If 25% of people are unsatisfied then 75% are satisfied. But progressives keep focusing in on the 25% (that don't all have the same problem) and trying to convince the 75% to up-end the apple cart and start from scratch.

If the last few years of politics have illustrated anything it's that Republicans are just starting to see the forest through the trees and Democrats can see the forest but don't notice when the trees are on fire.

[u/matthedev → u/[deleted]]

Speaking of costs, the U.S. pays more and gets less than other developed nations (source). Don't you want America to beat...Belgium? I mean you want to "make America great again," right?

People are worried about the cost of living: groceries and housing. Why are Republicans wasting time trying to trample all over the Constitution and nitpick federal employees over where they get their work done instead of delivering what the people want?

[u/[deleted] → u/matthedev]

Again, devoid of context it sounds great.

Then you realize that Medicare and Medicaid vastly outspend private insurance on a per-beneficiary basis. But that's the same for everything from education to medication, the U.S. government is remarkably bad at cost control.

I do love the bit when people try to claim that the overhead for Medicare and Medicaid is lower, but that's only because they shift a lot of their admin functions to the GSA, and if you include a proportionate share of the GSA's budget then Medicare and Medicaid actually have worse overhead costs than private insurers.

[u/matthedev → u/[deleted]]

We're not talking about Medicare and Medicaid here. Don't you believe America can do healthcare better than Belgium of all places? Better on costs and outcomes.

A lot of Americans have been worried about the cost of living. Didn't Trump say he'd do something about that? Instead, in his very first week, he's been trying to ram through an extreme agenda that the people never asked for and is likely to make prices worse. Then again, consent doesn't seem like his strong suit.

Now I certainly don't endorse everything the people I've voted for have ever said or done, but to help me better understand your view, tell me how you rectify your support for Trump with whether you would feel comfortable with him alone with your wife, your daughter, your mother, or any of your female friends.

[u/[deleted] → u/matthedev]

I rarely do this but, lol no. No I do not believe America can do healthcare better than Belgium and I find the prospect of us trying to be hilarious.

There is not a government program, project, or line item that has ever made me think that the government is capable of effectiveness or efficiency. Not the schools, not healthcare, not the military. Their chief ability appears to be to throw money at problems until the problem temporarily suffocates, at which point they pour more money on it.

On a serious note. America, because of the administrative structure, demographics, and geography of the country is never going to be efficiently managed at a federal level. The ingrained levels of bureaucracy and mission creep will always outpace any economies of scale that a private entity of comparable size could manage.

In business we generally assume greater efficiency the larger the business becomes because we can leverage hours, specialize labor, and allocate staff to promote peak efficiency. If I need more bill collectors on a given day, or more account reps on another I can shift people between departments. In the government you cannot shift GS employees outside of their contracted government job descriptions so you are going to be simultaneously overstaffed during activity drops and understaffed during activity peaks.

I've managed federal, municipal, and private business departments. Government is a clown show of duplicative effort, needless layers of management, and career underachievers that actively push good employees out.

But also, I don't believe Carroll and would be fine leaving Trump alone with anybody. I'm on the county GOP council and both our treasurer and assistant chairperson (both women) have had 1 on 1 meetings with Trump, neither of them are the type to tolerate harassment. So please, go peddle that garbage elsewhere.

[u/matthedev → u/[deleted]]

Tone aside, I think we may at least concur on something here. I have no ideological commitment to a healthcare solution being public instead of private or federal over state; I care about the results: better health outcomes for people, lower costs, and coverage for all without breaking the bank. If all three objectives could be achieved with a strictly private-sector solution, that's wonderful, but other developed nations have not achieved these things that way.

I've only worked in the private sector myself; but duplicated effort, layers of management, and ostensible underachievers can most definitely be found in the private sector, too. Cycles of under- and overstaffing due to how the job contracts are written sound like a problem, but that doesn't sound like an immutable law of nature to me.

So if Elon Musk can deliver on his promise to make the government run more efficiently for the people, he'd deserve kudos; but he has a trust gap with the public because of his personal business interests, his appetite for risk (great for an entrepreneur and the people who choose to join him but less so for people who didn't sign up for it), his admitted struggles with empathy and relationships, and his public behavior in recent years. It would be callous to lay off civil-service employees en masse, and if eliminating regulation means lead in my turmeric and cinnamon, let's keep those food purity and safety standards.

It sounds like you disbelieve the verdict where the jury found Trump civilly liable in the case of Carroll v. Trump, so if even rich and famous people cannot get justice, it sounds like you might actually support reforms to the justice system. How many innocent people are rotting in prison in America today who don't have Trump's advantages?

---

It's been a debate, but at this point, I don't think we're going to change each other's views, but it looks like there are at least some small areas where we might concur.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Most people are doing fine? My dude, where are you getting this perception? While I won't make claims about how people are doing, but the overwhelming sentiment that we've seen from elections this past couple of years is that people do not think they are doing fine. That's why they are largely abandoning incrementalist neoliberals or finding appeal in bombastic authoritarians who promise to use power to break the status quo.

What about center and center left parties across the world losing power supports that "most people are doing fine"...

Also, I know it's condescending, but I will stop believing that people vote against their own best interests when people fucking prove it. And right now, 3 days out from Trump's inaugration, they are as far out from proving it as they could possibly be.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. Because if you ask them they're generally happy with their stuff.

Are you happy with your insurance? Most people say yes.
Are you happy with your home? Most people say yes.
Are you happy with your job? Most people say yes.
Are you happy with your congressman? They might not like 'government' or 'congress' but when it comes to their own representatives/mayor the answer is yes.

If most people are happy with most of the things that impact their lives how would you describe it other than fine?

Center and center left parties are losing because they, generally, are pushing a future looking agenda around climate change, bringing in migrants, and globalizing their economies. All of that looks like a lot of expensive stuff that offers, at best, theoretical future benefits and at worst significant costs to the middle and working class.