Summary
Progressive lawmakers view the online praise for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as a sign of deep public frustration with the U.S. healthcare system.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a “wake-up call” highlighting resentment over financial and health precarity, while Sen. Bernie Sanders emphasized that anger reflects the belief that healthcare is a human right.
Though all lawmakers condemned the murder, some progressives argue it underscores systemic issues like claim denials.
Calls for healthcare reform have intensified amid public outrage.
At risk of going off topic, it wouldn’t matter of Bernie or AOC or someone to the left of them had run for every open position.
The Democrat’s problem was campaigning on a high horse like its 1950, instead of seeding propaganda in social media. It’s the delivery, not the message, and they are going to keep losing until we get a “liberal Trump” shameless enough to break that mould.
The wake-up call for me was watching post election interviews of ostensibly educated college students from fairly liberal campuses… and now, there is no govt incentive to reign that in.
It’s both the delivery and the message. Saying it’s only the delivery implies anyone was every going to vote for the Democrats’ “everything is fine” position when everything is decidedly not fine.
The Dems would rather lose than concede to Progressive populist ideals.
What exactly are you basing this on? Harris ran a terrible campaign with the usual Democratic half-measure policy proposals and lost. That should hardly be a surprise. There is no evidence to say that a populist Democrat like Bernie or AOC couldn’t win.
What if Harris had made the whole campaign into a referendum on the broken healthcare system? It turns out that that’s where the Republican voters she was trying to woo were hiding all along.
Wouldn’t have mattered. Trump would have just countered with a similar populist angle, and by the time it was filtered down to voters, it would still be pro-Trump.
To be more specific about the college students, I saw them coo and rave about how “strong” Trump feels, or list off all these (seemingly) blatant lies about policy or what either candidate going to do, a few I recognized online, and again this is ostensibly a well connected and “smart” demographic. At that point, I realized their world is totally shaped by what their favorite feeds and influencers tell them, and this is a space being won by the GOP:
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/18/news-influencers-conservative-tiktok-youtube
I’m seeing a lot of right wing propaganda agents having their audiences turn on them over the shooting.
The Democrats would have had to do it right, and I do admit they wouldn’t, but I think it could have made a difference. Unfortunately, Republicans always have a villain to direct anger to, while Democrats are allergic to anything more than mild criticism of the oligarchs.
I actually kinda feel that someone like Bernie may have had enough youth appeal to have a somewhat organic version of that happen. During the 2016 primaries, a decent amount of memes and online talk were spawned by him/his campaign.
Definitely agree that delivery is extremely important though, campaigning on helping workers while appearing elite and out of touch just makes people consider you a liar or to be looking down at people.