Via my local newspaper today, a sheaf of unintentionally amusing yet morose and dark reports from conservative Republican Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
1. The paper's analysis of vote results in Wisconsin shows that people living in the 59 counties won by Republican Donald Trump are enrolled in the Affordable Care Act's private health insurance exchange at a higher rate than the 13 mostly urban counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton. Those 13 urban counties contain nearly all the state's minority residents. The Trump counties are overwhelmingly white.
Derided by the GOP as "Obamacare," the ACA provides coverage for 224,000 Wisconsin residents. Oops, those 59 conservative white counties in effect just voted "Buh-bye!" to one of their biggest economic lifelines. The Journal Sentinel:
"In rural areas like Vilas County, which Trump carried by more than 26 percentage points, residents over the past year enrolled in the subsidized private exchanges at nearly 2.5 times the rate of Wisconsin as a whole."
So, those rural voters likely just screwed themselves and/or many low- and middle-income neighbors out of affordable “Obamacare” coverage, which Trump and the GOP have pledged to repeal. When those counties become sicker and health care there becomes more expensive, who will those 59 counties blame? Yeah, probably that would be … Obama. Thank you, low-info voters and scurrilous GOP memes.
2. President-elect Trump's powerful new chief of staff, former Wisconsin GOP and current RNC leader Reince Priebus, was rated on 24 of his recent statements by Politifact. Here's how he did:
True: 1 Mostly true: 2. Half true: 8 Mostly false: 2 False: 10 Pants on fire: 1In short, Priebus more often than not was lying. Meanwhile, here's a bonus chuckle from the Late Show's Stephen Colbert last night: "Well okay, 'penis rice a roni' is not really an anagram of Reince Priebus but it is easier to spell."
3. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is an African American, Trump-supporting, right-wing Republican who won his office in the state's largest blue county by pretending to be a Democrat. He's reportedly in the running for some high Trump appointment from the White House (please, Mr. Trump, please take him from Milwaukee!). Now, the Journal Sentinel reports that, according to Clarke, he was hoist with his own petard by Scott Walker, the state’s Republican governor, fellow Trumpy and former GOP presidential primary candidate.
In a forthcoming book (all tea-party officeholders with higher aspirations seem to be writing them), Clarke says that after helping Walker win re-election, he was rebuffed when he asked the Walker campaign to help him in return. A top Walker strategist allegedly told him that Walker "doesn't want there to be news articles indicating that he's not a true conservative by helping a Democrat get elected." Ha! Hey, sheriff: You should report this by getting in touch with the Wisconsin Department of Self-Unaware Irony. For its part, Team Walker denies Clarke’s account. Of course. So, what we know for sure is that one Republican or another here is lying. Not news!
4. Some Democratic and most Republican Party leaders agree: for the good of the country, we should all get behind Trump. Meanwhile, massive, nation-wide, anti-Trump protests are totally out of bounds. Those are among opinions shared in today's newspaper. Okay, but consider the situation if Clinton had won: Trump himself telegraphed he might challenge that result because the system is "rigged." Trump followers in some cases warned not just of protests but armed revolution.
And, in the GOP one-way-street department, based on the GOP's treatment of President Obama the idea that Republicans would agree the country should get behind President Clinton would be totally inoperative. Even though she will have collected (when it's all tallied up in western states, according to the New York Times and other observers) as many as 2 million more votes nationally than Trump. The GOP declares Trump has "a mandate" that the party wouldn't give Obama despite his true-majority vote margins).
Ah, yes. Definitely time to contact that Wisconsin state irony department.