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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 16h

One Battle After Another wasn't my favorite PTA film, but it did a hell of a lot of things right.

People need quality media to make important points, and OBAA made a lot of points about the left and right.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 1d

Real wages rising for the exact demographics people say they want looked after, and then saying Democrats/liberals abandoned them, is one of the more disconcerting social media trends (on the left) of the last few years.

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Reposted by Chris Anderson

Nonningham @nonningham.bsky.social · 2d

What you fail to accept is that millions of Americans were not willing to risk what Trump is now doing to this country. We were not willing to use the rights and lives of millions of vulnerable American residents as leverage, AS HOSTAGES, like they were mere bargaining chips.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

I don't know what the right answer is.

If Obama sells it as healthcare expansion that could result in higher premiums, people probably don't let it get passed in the first place.

But if he does what he did and premiums rise, then trust in Democrats (already low) is further diminished.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

... conditions covered by default. But because it was always a subsidy to private insurance companies who have no interest in cost containment, it raises premiums.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

... it wouldn't contain costs. There were no mechanisms for it. People were talking about that bait and switch from the beginning.

I don't think Obama could have passed the ACA without selling it as cost containment. The ACA has saved millions of lives. It made mine and my parents' pre-existing...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

... lie to people to pass good policy, but that it can bite you in the ass (hard) later.

The ACA was sold to people as a cost containment bill more than as an expansion of health coverage to uncovered people. But even when the bill was being discussed, I remember reading news articles about how...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

I'm guessing most people haven't obsessively followed news of the ACA for almost 20 years--I wish I was as lucky as them, but I've had to care about healthcare for a long time--but it's a real case study in getting something big passed. It's also a case study in how it's sometimes necessary to...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 6d

Dreading the inevitable influx of "Trump is to the left of Biden" discourse after the potential peace deal.

Trying to think of how to argue with people who say "ceasefire happened under Trump, therefore peace president" and ignore the outside public pressure and the sheer duration of it all.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 7d

... for regularly making these guys look like the psychos they are.

He understood the assignment before a lot of other people. Elon buying Twitter was a watershed moment.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 7d

I've never thought leaving Twitter was a good idea for the left. Ceding the most popular social media platform (the one most businesses, journalists and "regular people" use) to increasing amounts of white nationalist rhetoric without pushback seems like a way to keep losing. Kudos to Will...

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 8d

it was in this moment, where the infamous white nationalist followed by the vice president of the united states shared the cartoon show that neo-Nazis had made about me, that I realized the modern world had gone mad and must end

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 8d

If anyone talks about politics and the central plank of their activism is mutual aid, they do not know how to help large groups of poor people.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 8d

Mutual aid is great, but voting for Democrats is better.

Sending someone $35 is great. Making sure someone doesn't lose access to Medicaid is even greater.

This is a post for anti-electoralists who think mutual aid > voting for the lesser of two evils.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

Being unable or unwilling to compare the economy to past economies isn't great. Calling people nerds or unfeeling for using data is pretty grim stuff.

Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

People can rightly argue that Biden didn't sell his economic vision well enough. He didn't sell anything well enough. But the information was out there re: the actual performance of the economy, especially for low wage workers. People didn't want to see it. That's also a problem. People have agency.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

... earn enough to meet a basic family budget."

This is a huge problem. Republicans have no interest in solving it. Democrats made significant headway on it. Unfortunately, Democrats lost. The *perception* of the economy was that it was bad.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

The rest of the abstract paints a picture of the people who are *still* struggling despite those wage gains, who are still underwater.

"Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

Minimum wage raises have a higher chance of passing in blue states. "Why vote Dem?" For material gains.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

... wage during this period."

"Full employment policies" mean having a lot of people employed, which forces corporations to compete for workers. Unemployment was historically low under Biden.

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

... for pandemic-era inflation.

How did people's wages rise?

"Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

"Real wages of low-wage workers grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Wage growth among low- and middle-wage workers over the pandemic business cycle has outpaced not only higher wage groups over the same period, but also its own growth compared to the prior four business cycles."

That's adjusting...

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Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 14d

This means when people say that Biden's economy was bad, you should ask them what was bad about it. Was it bad for low wage workers? Not relative to other administrations. So why was the anger so outsized for Biden's handling of the economy?

Chris Anderson @midwestdude.bsky.social · 16d

www.epi.org/publication/...