Read Mike's Latest HuffPost Article Here:
"Medicare for All is definitely a litmus test. Stomping your feet, bemoaning so-called “purity tests” and insisting progressives are being unreasonable won’t change the fact that Medicare for All is a litmus test."
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The Humanist Report (THR) is a progressive political podcast that discusses and analyzes current news events and pressing political issues. Our analyses are guided by humanism and political progressivism. Each news story we cover is supplemented with thought-provoking, fact-based commentary that aims for the highest level of objectivity.
I don’t guarantee you will get my vote if you say you support medicare for all but I do guarantee you won’t get my vote if you say you are against medicare for all.
Also, thank you Bernie Sanders for forcing our politicians to go on the record on this important issue.
Clint Holmes Or if you don’t say it but you just don’t vote for it
Exactly! If you’re for “Medicare for All” but also in bed with fossil fuel to frack the world and completely okay with privatized slave prisons and are just dandy with endless, accelerating murder and resource theft in other countries – Spoiler Alert!! I still ain’t voting for you!!
Mike, great article in the Huffpo.
Its such a good article. I shared it to my FB 🙂
I think it’s time to distinguish between social progressive and political progressive. I don’t like antifa or feminists but do believe in universal health care.
You’re so confused with conflation, this is why nobody ever believes or trust anything conservatives lie about today. It’s time to purge regressive right worms for good.
You want to do it within capitalism and liberal democracy, which ultimately always results in the same thing. I’m sure in your hearts you want change and you have all these fluffy ideas about how it will work, but ultimately in reality, liberal ideology will not produce change, no matter what stripe of liberalism it is.
Yes! This needs to be a litmus test! No more advocating to save a neoliberal corporatist disaster of a healthcare plan! If we can pay for war, we can pay for this!
The Dems could sweep 2020 on this issue. If they don’t then they are going to lose because a truly progressive party will win and dance on their graves right alongside those of the GOP. Health for profit is immoral as slavery once a country reaches a level where equal access to healthcare becomes possible. Let those insurers and the big pharma fat cats go out and get real jobs.
Brenda Rua
Do you want a list of what you HAVE to accept in shariah law?
Rape of women – abuse
Rape of kids – abuse
Torture – abuse
Slavery and sex slavery – abuse
Enslavement of christians – abuse
Killing of jews – murder
Killing of apostates – murder
Killing of infidels – murder
Killing of homo sexuals – murder
Killing of adulterers – murder
Censorship – abuse
THIS is what you epdophile leftists want.
Heywood let’s back up a step. I’ve two questions. 1) what’s Islam got to do with my original comment? That was about universal health care. 2) What makes you think I support shariah? I don’t. And I don’t believe I said anything to suggest otherwise.
What I did do was to jump on you for that long list of bogus assertions, straw men. From there you switched to Islam as if someone threw a switch at a rail junction.
This “Is Medicare For All a Litmus Test?” BS reminds me “Is Global Warming Real?” Jesus! Of course Medicare for all is a litmus test but so is “taking huge corporate money”, “PACs”, “Endless war”, “For Profit Prisons”, “Drug Laws”, “Sustainable energy” and every policy leading to increased “Wealth Inequality.” SORRY. If you’re willing to fight for Medicare for all, but unwilling to fight for every other top notch progressive policy, I still will not vote for you! I still will work to ensure you are not elected! Period. The end!!
In other words, we are looking for leaders who understand the difference between RIGHT and WRONG!!
Heywood – That’s nice…but “having a vagina” does not ipso facto make you a decent human being (see Hillary Clinton). Everyone who thinks this should at least take the 17 minutes it takes to listen to John Pilger’s fantastic speech!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jytvgHGbbws
I refuse to vote for anyone taking corporate money – #DemExit – I did!
The green party won’t win so please send your vote to progressive democratic candidates in all elections that you could vote in.
Loved the article, but noticed a couple errors.
1) “That may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s actually strategically sound.”
Counterintuitive is one word, according to dictionary.com.
2) “This is a strategy that has lead to the Democratic Party being completely annihilated at all levels of government.”
Should be “led” rather than “lead.”
These aren’t errors, but you may want to edit them for simplicity and practicality purposes and to make it a stronger argument overall.
1) I noticed different words in “Medicare For All” are capitalized at different times. For instance, in one sentence it’ll be “Medicare for All” and in the next sentence, it’ll be “Medicare for all.” I’d recommend making it “Medicare For All” across the board. I think capitalizing all the words makes it more noticeable.
2) In some sentences, it’s “Sanders’s” and “Conyers’s'” and it other sentences, it’s “Sanders'” and “Conyers'”. I’d go with “Sanders'” and “Conyers'” across the board for simplification.
3) You may want to add a paragraph or two explaining how Medicare For All would cover everyone and cost the country less money in total healthcare costs. I’d recommend citing a couple studies to back those claims. You could make the argument that like comprehensive immigration reform, Medicare For All is the right move from both a moral and economic perspective.
4) You may want to add another paragraph or two suggesting Democrats run on a populist platform in 2018 and 2020 where they support a “Green New Deal” that’d include Medicare For All, tuition-free college, a $15/hour national minimum wage, and investments in green energy jobs and fixing crumbling infrastructure. You could say this bold idea of a “Green New Deal” and the value it’d add to the economy and to people’s lives would rally voters to the polls and increase the Democratic Party’s chances of winning in the next few elections.
Unfortunately Chrome (and Firefox too, from what I remember) marks some correctly-spelled words as misspelled, “counterintuitive” being one of them, and when you right-click the word, “counter-intuitive” is the second option, after “counter intuitive”. Also, according to Chrome, “commenter” isn’t a word, and “advisor” is a misspelling of “adviser”. It drives me nuts.
Anyway, sorry about that tangent. You have good suggestions, and I hope Mike sees your comment. Everyone can benefit from a good editor.
Nice constructive criticism.
Thank you so much for the outstanding constructive criticism. I made the grammatical changes that you recommended. I haven’t written anything in over a year, so I was a bit rusty and read over it multiple times… but it’s very difficult to find flaws in your own work. I noticed that some of the inconsistencies (e.g. “all” in Medicare for All being capitalized once in a while, and Sanders’/Sanders’s) were changed by HuffPost. They went in and changed the picture I was using, and also changed the the Medicare for All and Sanders’ to Sanders’s only for the first couple of paragraphs. It’s like they started to edit it, but then stopped lol. They didn’t change anything else, but thanks for noticing these things nonetheless!
I’m not on twitter and refuse to join facebook but read your article and agree with it 100%.
Great job buddy. You’re damn right it’s a litmus test! I informed BOTH my California senator of it and, of course, graciously credited Kamala Harris for sponsoring it.
The 2016 election was more or less decided on which candidate stunk the least (typical in our National elections). The mid-terms and definitely 2020 will be decided on Healthcare…assuming we’re still here and haven’t lost 10 or 15 cities in a nuclear war with N. Korea. Americans are pretty much fed-up with Congress fucking off on this issue.
some are calling for new elections
https://www.change.org/p/we-the-people-of-the-united-states-hold-an-emergency-special-election
NICE SELF PROMOTION THERE, U SELLOUT SHILL!
mostliberal… Uh…There is no “selling out” because there’s no conflict of intetest where he is choosing himself over his cause. Don’t be stupid.
It is. No apologies.
Just now read your HuffPost article, and couldn’t agree more with all your points. We definitely need new progressive blood in all levels of government, and thus in the Democratic party, to actually represent us. The fact that politicians no longer feel that they can occupy a seat with no responsibility to their constituents is more unacceptable than it is wrong, and it is very *very wrong.* Well voiced Mike.
Am I complete blind or I can’t see the link of the HPost in the link. I don’t read MSM publication and their adds without a course.
We just had the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. Now, imagine two of those occurring every single day for a year. That’s how many people die annually – over 45,000 – because they don’t have or cannot afford healthcare. Think about this next time a Democrat is not on board with Medicare For All.
It was fucking ridiculous for that corporate Democrat to whine and ask Bernie to ‘condemn’ anyone who intended to make this a litmus test. If the issue is genuinely important to someone, THEY get to decide how they vote and for what reasons. I truly respect and admire Bernie, but he does *not* dictate how I vote.
Unlike the neo-liberal corporate shills, I have a mind (& some Goddamn morals) of my own, thank you very much.
Medicare for All, Call your Reps and Senators!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jytvgHGbbws
A “MUST LISTEN” for all progressives.