Reuters
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks a Green New Deal is radical.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is so fascinated with the Green New Deal that he’s moving it to the top of his to-do list.
“We’re going to be voting on that in the Senate to give everybody an opportunity to go on record,” he told reporters earlier this month.
Why? Is it because McConnell’s turned into a tree-hugging, save the whales liberal? Of course not. McConnell, about as savvy a politician as you’ll find, thinks the Democratic plan — which calls for generating 100% of the nation’s power from renewable sources within a decade — is such a loser of an idea that he wants to force all six Senate Democrats running for president to vote on it, and give voters in fossil-fuel states (like his beloved Kentucky) another reason to hate them.
In fact, Republicans have a word for the plan, which has been championed by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.: ”radical.”
“This radical proposal would take our growing economy off the cliff and our nation into bankruptcy,” warns Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY). “It’s the first step down a dark path to socialism.”
We don’t need “radical policies like the Green New Deal,” echoes House Republican John Shimkus of Illinois.
But what’s radical to some is mainstream to others.
Millennials (born between 1981 and 1997) will pass baby boomers (1946 to 1964) as the biggest segment of the U.S. population this year. And a recent poll says that most of them support the Green New Deal.
Clearly this is an issue that resonates with young voters, probably because they’ll have to bear the brunt of damage being done to the Earth by growing carbon emissions, which won’t be the case for the 77-year old McConnell, 72-year old Donald Trump and most viewers of Fox News — half of whom are older than 65, Nielsen audience data reveals.
“Radical” is also in the eye of the beholder when it comes to health care.
“Dems Won’t Tell Voters How Radical ‘Medicare For All’ Is”: shouts a recent editorial in Investors Business Daily. But President Trump will. “The new Democrats,” he wrote in USA Today last year, “are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela,” and that “Democrats’ commitment to government-run health care is all the more menacing to our seniors.”
Yet 70% of Americans—and 52% of Republicans—support Medicare for All, also known as a single-payer health-care system.
Question: If seven out of 10 people like an idea, doesn’t that make it a mainstream idea? Thus, since critics appear to be in the minority on this one, perhaps they’re the true radicals?
In fairness, this support may be misleading to some degree, because various studies for a single-payer system show relevant parties—individuals, employers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies and such—all impacted in various ways.
This includes whether private insurance plans would still be allowed. One major Democrat seeking the presidency — California Sen. Kamala Harris—had to walk back recent comments saying the private health-insurance market should be done away with.
So perhaps having Medicare for All is a mainstream idea, but if it means taking away the option of having private health insurance, it’s radical.
The absence of clarity makes it hard for anyone to truly determine whether single payer is best for them, or plodding along with what we have now—a labyrinthine, screwed-up, expensive system—somehow is.
And guns, that’s another good one.
Depending on the survey, 84% to 94% of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun sales. What about gun owners? Nearly 74% of them agree, according to—wait for it—the National Rifle Association.
In a divided country like this, when you can get the vast majority of Americans to agree on anything, that’s mind-blowing—and about as mainstream as it gets. But this hasn’t stopped the small minority on the other side of this issue from saying universal background checks? That’s radical.
So beware semantics. What you’re absolutely sure is radical is really just mainstream common sense to others.
And if you’re in the majority on something—green energy, Medicare for All, universal background checks—don’t dismiss the minority that disagrees with you as “nuts” or “crazies.” They’re just citizens who have a different opinion than yours. Respect them. Because you never know: you just might find yourself in the minority on something someday.
