Bernie Sanders vs. the 1 percent’s propaganda machine
"Bernie Sanders vs. the 1 percent’s propaganda machine: Can he convince Americans to stop voting against their self-interest?
For a generation, working class Republicans have been undermining themselves. This is Bernie's biggest challenge"
by CONOR LYNCH
In “America’s Bitter Pill,” Steven Brill’s masterful work on the passage and implementation of Obamacare, there is an interesting anecdote about an elderly couple from Kentucky, the Browns, who had gone through the ringer of America’s broken healthcare system before the Affordable Care Act was introduced. Unable to get insurance because of a pre-existing condition, they could not afford medication for their many afflictions, from heart disease to diabetes to pain sprouting from a crushed vertebrae. When Obamacare finally came around in Kentucky, with its state healthcare exchange (Kentucky was one of the few red states that complied), the Browns couldn’t believe their luck:
“The Browns had heard about Kynect from television ads [Carrie] Banahan (the Executive Director of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange) had purchased. “We thought it was too good to be true,” Viola Brown told me. “It seemed like the answer to our prayers.”… Shelbyville is in Shelby County, which had voted 67-33 percent for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. The Browns are white as is 90 percent of Shelby County. Of the four people among those who were enrolling that afternoon who said they had voted and were willing to share their choice with me, all four had voted for Romney. Yet [Kentucky Governor Steve] Beshear’s message — or perhaps simply the lure of “answered prayers” that Viola Brown had expressed — seemed to have gotten through. What they were doing at those card tables with the kynectors was not about Barack Obama. In fact, none mentioned Obamacare, except for the one enrollee who said that Kynect was “a lot better than Obamacare.”
This short anecdote says a lot about American politics. It is an example of how political ignorance can be harmful, and how working class people, particularly the white working class, seemingly vote against their interests without even realizing it. The right wing propaganda machine — largely funded by the beloved Koch brothers (recall that creepy commercial with the Uncle Sam Gynecologist) and other special interests — created a panic that the government was “taking over” the healthcare system (if only) and that “death panels” (a Sarah Palin myth that remains in the minds of many to this day), made up of Orwellian bureaucrats deciding who is worthy of healthcare, would be introduced. (Because the private industry was so good at deciding who deserved coverage, after all.)"
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/16/bernie_sanders_vs_the_1_percents_propaganda_machine_can_he_convince_americans_to_stop_voting_against_their_self_interest/
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