[bsder]

> Does it occur o anyone they may have actually had real grievances against globalization?

Your assessment might hold water except that they also sent back the congressmen responsible for the situation in record numbers.

So, even if I give them that they believed Trump was their champion, what are we to make of the fact that they sent everybody else responsible for the situation back?

> Maybe they were tired of being belittled by metropolitan and coastal elites ignoring those grievances and dismissing them as racists to be ignored.

Yet they bitch, complain and fight when said coastal elites attempt to help things: see Obamacare. Even a SINGLE moderate Republican senator driven by moderate constituents would have made the ACA a lauded national accomplishment and enabled compromise instead of a partisan war.

There wasn't a SINGLE moderate Republican senator in the entire batch. Not ... one ...

You can't fight people when they attempt to help and then complain when they give up and tell you to get stuffed and go die in a fire. And, from what I can tell, the ACA was the breaking point where the left finally threw in the towel that there was any working with the right and that they should simply be left to rot.

> Ok, so people living outside major cities in UK voting against centralization of unaccountable power in the EU and unemployed, politically abandoned industrial workers in the US Rust Belt were just a bunch of idiot rubes tricked by click bait headlines.

Pretty much. Whenever I sit down an talk to people to explain the ACA stuff, I invariably get "Well, nobody ever told me that." Of course they didn't. Most things in the ACA are driven by the fundamental choices that most people agree with. If you agree with no exclusions for preexisting conditions, then you need to amortize the sick over the well. That implies sign up periods and getting the healthy to sign on when they really don't want to. etc.

Unfortunately, that's too subtle an argument to get through a wall of interference of "Obama's a muslim and wants to oppress Christians! They wanna take arrr gunzzzz! Mexicans took all arrr jerbs!"

[stillsut]

First off, this comment should be flagged for its last paragraph

Second of all, Massachusetts, yes Massachusetts, elected a Republican senator a month before the ACA went to vote, in effect cutting out the filibuster-proof 60-senate seats held by the D's at the time. If a state the last elected an R in the 1940s decided to sabotage this bill, maybe its opposition was more widespread than simply those who "cling to their guns and religion".

[bsder]

> First off, this comment should be flagged for its last paragraph

Perhaps, but that is a fairly accurate description of the wall of noise that drowns out substantive discussion.

Huxley has been more accurate than Orwell in predicting the future of control so far.

I wish I could send everyone to the Heritage Discovery Center in Johnstown, PA before they were allowed to discuss politics: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g52908-d585662...

They have radio programs, letters, etc. from roughly 100 years ago that are EXACTLY THE SAME RHETORIC as today.

The only difference is that the ethnic slurs have changed. And a Mexican Wall replaces closing Ellis Island.

> If a state the last elected an R in the 1940s decided to sabotage this bill, maybe its opposition was more widespread than simply those who "cling to their guns and religion".

As for Massachusetts sending an R being a rebuttal of Obamacare, I note that Massachusetts didn't repeal Romneycare. And I note that Brown didn't last more than one term even after fighting the single most expensive senatorial election race in history.

[AnimalMuppet]

Maybe there were no, absolutely none, moderate Republican Senators. That's possible. It seems more likely, however, that you are defining "moderate" to mean "voted for ACA". That might not be a valid definition.

I get that you think that the ACA was a good answer, but it is in fact possible to view it as a horrible mess without being deliberately stupid.

A 2000-page bill. "You have to pass it to find out what's in it." People voting on a bill that they never read. Does any of that sound like it might be a bad idea (or at least a bad implementation)?

[bsder]

Thank you for proving the point of the original post.

You fell for a propaganda talking point:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/the-context-behind-nancy-pelosis-...

People knew quite well what was in the bill and it was on record. The issue was whether there might be unintended consequences and what they would be after the bill was enacted.

Now, will you admit you are wrong and change your stance? Or will you double down to a different talking point?

If someone on HN can fall for this kind of disinformation campaign, what chance does someone with far less access have?

[AnimalMuppet]

And thank you for completely ignoring my point, and continuing to trumpet your own. Now, will you admit that you are a propagandist who's here just to argue? Or will you actually start to have a real conversation with us?

That is: Do you see how your style closes off conversation? Do you see how it results in closed-minded people just yelling at each other? And, seeing that, will you drop that style and have a reasonable conversation with us? Or will you continue to dismiss what others say as "talking points" whenever we disagree with you?

As to your actual criticism of my post: I was in fact unaware of the larger context of Pelosi's quote. That fact does not make ACA any better.