Image 01 Image 03

The Tone-Deaf Left Stages Mock Funerals To Protest GOP Health Care Bill

The Tone-Deaf Left Stages Mock Funerals To Protest GOP Health Care Bill

More, please.

https://twitter.com/michaelkruse/status/861924097676259328

One of the things I most enjoyed about watching the Occupy movement implode was their profound lack of understanding of average Americans.  They seemed to really believe that they could sway American opinion by screeching about the glories of communism, pooping on cop cars, setting up ’60’s-style communal “democracies,” using their hand twinkles and “human microphones,” and living in squalor in crimeriddled encampments.

At times, I simply couldn’t understand what in the world they—and their organizers—were thinking.  Was this depraved display supposed to appeal to the typical American with a mortgage, a job, a family, a life?  It was, of course, but it was so far off the mark that they ended up reviled and ridiculed.

Having apparently learned nothing from this—nor from other such attempts like Black Lives Matter and the “resistance”—the regressive left is again flipping back through the history books and landing on gimmicky tactics that seem more in-line with the mindset of radicals from the ’60’s than with that of any thinking person in the twenty-first century.

This time, they are dressing up as corpses replete with body bags, carrying around cardboard headstones (for the making of which they probably earned college credit), and engaging in “die-ins.”  The overly-dramatic and laughable tactic is apparently supposed to enlighten Americans about the Republican Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA).

Politico reports:

One newly formed progressive super PAC is planning to cart caskets to Republican lawmakers’ districts and hold mock funerals for their constituents. Another activist is encouraging protesters to ship their own ashes — should they die without health care —to GOP lawmakers. And other progressive groups are planning graphic “die-in” protests as they work to derail GOP plans to repeal Obamacare.

Democrats, already frothing with anger over losing the White House to Donald Trump, are seething anew over the advancing Republican plan to gut Obamacare. Now, many on the left want to translate that fury into political tactics meant to exact maximum pain on Republicans.

Now, some liberal groups and activists are hoping to use macabre theatrics to gin up voter frustration toward Republicans over what Democrats view as a disastrous change in health care policy.

It’s a far more in-your-face tack than that being taken by more establishment organs of the Democratic Party, and the liberals behind it say that’s exactly the point.

Such tactics may indeed “exact maximum pain on Republicans” in Congress, who tend to twitch in fear and cave at the slightest pressure, but these ludicrous faux funerals, intended to “gin up voter frustration,” will have the exact opposite impact on those American voters who are not already in their camp.

American voters are going about their lives, enjoying their families, going to work, paying their bills, and focusing on things that actually matter to them.  They are not focused on the health care debate, and if this is what they see of it, they are not going to be amused by, much less “ginned up” by, a bunch of radicals in body bags holding up cardboard headstones.  They are going to roll their eyes, shrug, maybe shout insults at their televisions, and then they are going to move on with the left’s hyperbolic lunacy filed away as the left’s hyperbolic lunacy.

That the regressive left fails to see this, and indeed, thinks it needs to be “more visceral” is puzzling given that such spectacles are seen as embarrassing and disgraceful.  Yet being “more visceral” is exactly their goal.

Politico continues:

“We must be far more visceral,” said Jason Haber, a Manhattan real estate investor who started a super PAC that he said will host mock funerals — including “tombstones, coffins, even eulogies” — later this month for “the constituents that will be killed as a result of losing access to health care.”

Haber, who has worked in New York Democratic politics, said “in the age of Trump, nothing short of blunt and brute force will work as a counterweight,” adding, “We can’t win based on the merit of our ideas but rather on the way in which we deliver that message.”

To this, I say, excellent!  Keep up the good work.  Be more in-your-face, visceral, and by all means, let it be known far and wide that you are demonstrably devoid of any argument to support your ideas.  Who needs ideas when you can play dress-up and play-act for shock value?

Sadly, though, it seems that not everyone on the left is on board with this approach.

Politico notes that a couple of Democrats do understand how this sort of thing plays outside the regressive bubble.

But the party is divided over the tactics its allies are using. Veteran operatives say the over-the-top theater could backfire just as political momentum on health care has shifted toward Democrats.

“Staging a funeral has a lot of shock value, but runs the risk of overplaying the hand and turning off swing, moderate or independent voters who would otherwise agree with us on this issue,” said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist who worked on the 2012 campaign of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

T.J. Rooney, former chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said mock funerals will have the same impact on the right as “the ghouls who carry pictures of aborted fetuses” have on the left.

“To those affected and their loved ones, they live the uncertainty every day and the hyperbole is offensive,” he said.

Hopefully, Congressional Republicans, rather than feeling “maximum pain,” will instead seek President Trump’s advice on how to deal with these off-putting displays of foot-stomping high drama.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

They look silly. They also look like people who have no critical thinking skills of their own.

I think there is an employer looking for extremely malleable people, for future use. Remember, the Democrats were caught on video explaining that they used the mentally ill and homeless during the last campaign for the purpose of committing acts of violence against random voters.

**Hopefully, Congressional Republicans, rather than feeling “maximum pain,” will instead seek President Trump’s advice on how to deal with these off-putting displays of foot-stomping high drama.**

Hopefully, they’ll be a LOT smarter than that.

    Personally, I hope Congressional Republicans realize that the best way to “deal with these off-putting displays of foot-stomping high drama” is to let them continue unabated until they fizzle themselves out.

    As Napoleon said, “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.” Leftists are only hurting their own collective(ist) image by acting like immature children en masse. (Ditto for the universities who hand out college credits like Smarties, for “participating” in “the resistance”.)

    Congressional Republicans will only weaken their own reputations by kow-towing to the snowflakes at every little tantrum.

    (OTOH, as the cynic in me is quick to point out, the GOP is presently more concerned with being liked than with being good leaders, so of course they’ll cave under all that “pressure”!)

      Ragspierre in reply to Archer. | May 10, 2017 at 1:15 pm

      Going back to first principles, I was told by every right-leaning candidate I supported in any way that they would REPEAL ObamaDoggle.

      That is what I want.

        Yea, me, too. Repeal the whole thing, take it back to where it was before, with a few minor tweaks (for example, I’m OK with covering “pre-existing conditions”, and being able to buy insurance from out-of-state is a plus).

        I hear the criers wailing, “Oh, you can’t do that! It’ll disrupt the whole industry!”

        Ummm… not really. Look, the insurance providers had a pretty good system set up before. If I were in Congress, my repeal bill would let the ACA exchanges continue for one calendar year after being enacted, after which the exchanges are gone. That gives insurance companies a full 12 months to roll-back their processes to a system they should already have and convert the ACA-compliant plans to pre-ACA equivalents.

        I’m a tech guy by trade, so I know it’s not quite as simple as digging the old server out of the closet and plugging it back in. There will be some reconfigurations, some modernization and compliance updates, and some conversions that need to be done to allow the ACA plans to continue until open enrollment comes around again. That’s why they get the year.

        But if they didn’t bother to keep their archived records (which IIRC they’re required to by law anyway) or previous versions (in case deployment roll-backs are necessary — it happens) backed up somewhere, then every single one of their IT department heads deserves to be fired for incompetence.

I’m curious how many of those protesters actually have health insurance?

If under 26, they may still be under their parents’ insurance policy, though probably not contributing to the monthly bill.

If they are insured under a ACA marketplace policy, then they are accepting subsidies for the insurance and they are probably quite pleased with sticking it to the rich people while still complaining about the expense.

If they are insured under an individual plan or an employer plan, they are not there since they are working to pay the insurance bill.

If they are not insured, it is probably because they feel like they will not get sick or the expense of healthcare will be paid by someone else.

The classic format for protests—people following lines all walking in circles which go nowhere, holding big signs and chanting something repetitive—is intended to be a bright moving target which would attract TV news cameras.

A theatrical “die-in” is the opposite of that. I suspect these shenanigans won’t get the air time these rather inactive and sessile activists wish.

“We can’t win based on the merit of our ideas…”

I think I see their problem.

“To those affected and their loved ones, they live the uncertainty every day and the hyperbole is offensive,”

Live the uncertainty every day? What does that even mean?

    Good point. I had to reread several paragraphs of the Politico article to figure it out.

    The speaker failed on the “elevator speech” concept.

It’s amazing how quickly these well funded PACs and their swarms of protestors just spontaneously appear…

Are they protesting social justice adventurism along the axis from Libya to Ukraine?

It’s a veritable abortion field.

Michael Settle | May 10, 2017 at 12:46 pm

The work of the new party, the Condem o crates, is showing their creative inability.

It must be a lot of fun to be 25/12 years old

Unknown3rdParty | May 11, 2017 at 11:21 am

How ’bout a mock burial, complete with body bags, coffins and a backhoe? They’ll start to stink soon …