Learning From Republicans: Concern Trolling

 

Splendid concern trolling from old faith-based Bushist Michael Gerson in today's Washington Post, under the headline:

What might help Democrats’ prospects? A focus on workers’ dignity.

The headline alone is a near perfect example of how it works: building a series of idiotic false assumptions

• Democrats need Michael Gerson's help
• Michael Gerson in the pure goodness of his heart wants to give it to us—Christians are just like that
• Democrats don't care about the dignity of workers (in spite of the almost compulsive regularity with which it recurs, say, in the speeches of President Biden, generally with reference to the right of workers to organize, something Republicans are not known to be very hot on—if not as often as the less specific "dignity of work")
• No wonder they're in trouble!

To create out of nothing the impression that Democrats really deserve to lose, because our contempt for workers is such that we won't even consider Gerson's well-meant advice.

The column itself purports to be about an Aspen Institute conversation Gerson witnessed between two more or less Democratic eminences, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and the political philosopher Michael Sandel, which wasn't just about Democrats but about what Sandel would call the neoliberal world order, which many Democrats, notably President Bill Clinton, and most Republicans have favored, and some Democrats have thought to oppose—Sandel has repeatedly singled out President Joe Biden for praise on this score

Joe Did What? Work as Punishment

Poster by Shephard Fairey, 2017.

 

One of the executive orders in that first extraordinary rush—is it three weeks ago now?—was to commission a review of the various Trump-era programs in various states for putting work requirements on Medicaid benefits, as if they thought not having a job in the cash economy was a kind of crime, and cutting off your access to a doctor was an appropriate punishment. Good thing! It was a terrible policy idea, not merely pointlessly cruel (these programs are meant to help out people who need help, not reward them for being virtuous) but also especially stupid, in that it's harmful to public health: one of the basic reasons for providing healthcare to those who can't afford it is to reduce the amount of disease to which everybody, rich and poor, is exposed.

The work requirements, a longstanding conservative goal, were a policy priority for Seema Verma, who ran the federal Medicaid program under President Trump. This was an about-face from the position of the Obama administration, which steadfastly opposed the idea of tethering public health benefits to work — something that had never happened in Medicaid’s nearly 60-year history. Obama administration officials repeatedly rejected states’ waiver requests, stating concerns that they “could undermine access” and that they did “not support the objectives of the Medicaid program.”