But I have to admit he is cooking with this attack on the GOP’s bill. Enough so that I feel a journalistic requirement to give him some credit given my past critiques of his and the party’s inability to talk like normal people. This is very good, Chuck. Do more stuff like this.
It should be noted that this line was not written by Chuck Schumer or the Democrats—which is instructive—but one of his good friends in the Republican caucus, Joni Ernst. The Iowa Senator up for reelection next year has found herself in a kerfuffle of her own making, flippantly saying “well, we are all going to die” in response to a constituent objecting to her support for Medicaid cuts in a bill that the Yale School of Public Health estimated will kill 51,000 Americans each year. After the initial uproar, Earnst smugly posted a non-apology. It is not hyperbolic whatsoever to call this the “We Are All Going to Die Act” and in fact, it is probably the most honest description of this bill yet given how it quotes a primary source helping to enact it.
You know that this stunt wasn’t primarily driven by the typical braindead Democratic strategists mainly because Schumer is still calling it the “Big Ugly Bill” in his online messaging (also because those strategists are all rhetorically flagellating each other right now at WelcomePAC). Someone under the age of the Pharaohs must have pushed him to do this, and we can only hope that this person(s) can gain more power in the gerontocracy going forward. Branding not just Ernst, but the entire GOP with her own callous and telling words can help the Democrats in their bid to retake the Senate next year.
The ”Well, We’re All Going to Die Act” is a perfect political attack, which means it would be no surprise to see Senate Democrats never say this phrase again after today. It stakes out a striking claim that gets people’s attention in this bleak information environment, and unlike many things that succeed in it, this attack also has the benefit of being true.
This bill that passed the House but not the Senate yet is serious stuff for a lot of different reasons, and given the organic opposition to it rising in town halls that is making Josh Hawley sweat, there is plenty of room for the Democratic Party to build a real movement to pressure Republicans to stop at least some of this attempted crime against America from happening. This GOP bill is a heist by the elite that will kill people by taking health care away from them, raise all of America’s borrowing costs, slow economic growth, and burden future generations with a debt that very much does matter now. All so ICE can become Trump’s Praetorian Guard, and the top five percent can get a gargantuan tax cut. The GOP’s entire agenda is the Well, We’re All Going to Die Act. Say it louder, Chuck.
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