Even In Oklahoma Some Voters Realize Trump Sold Them A Bill Of Goods

Cone Of Shame by Nancy Ohanian

Oklahoma is a Republican hellhole. The Governor is a crackpot Republican as are both U.S. Senators. Of the 5 members of Congress, the only Democrat is Blue Dog Kendra Horn, who is so far right that there are, from time to time, mainstream House Republicans less extreme than she is. The state Senate has 9 Democrats-- and 39 Republicans and the state House has 76 Republicans and 25 Democrats. In 2016, Trump won every one of the state's 77 counties and beat Hillary 947,934 (65.3%) to 419,788 (28.9%).





And yet, long-suffering Oklahoma Democrats actually had reasons to be cheerful last Tuesday. I first noticed that something seemed amiss when I was checking the returns from Oklahoma City, where progressive Tom Guild had challenged aforementioned Blue Dog Kendra Horn. She won but what was unexpected was that, though the 4-way Republican primary to pick a nominee to try to beat her in November was red hot, just 61,822 people voted, while 70,182 Democrats voted. How the hell did that happen?

Oklahoma has had 14,539 coronavirus cases so far, 3,674 cases per million Oklahomans, not bad for the U.S., but nearly as many per million as Italy. But what makes it worse-- much worse-- is that Oklahoma has the second-highest uninsured rate (after Texas) and is one of just 14 states where the Republicans have succeeded in not expanding Medicare. It's one of the only places in America where you can be employed and still get sick and die, untrusted, in the street-- pure Republican ideology on display.

Obviously, the legislature and governor had no intention of expanding Medicare... so citizens decided to do it with a constitutional amendment via ballot initiative. Almost 314,000 people signed to get it on the ballot, an Oklahoma record. That's what happened Tuesday-- a measure that requires Oklahoma to expand Medicare, for about a quarter million people, by July 1, 2021. The measure also thwarts the GOP from going forward with their plan to cap Medicaid. It passed narrowly-- by just 6,488 votes, less than one percent-- but it passed. Reporting for The Atlantic yesterday, David Graham called the vote "a warning sign for Trump, because it shows how he’s at odds with even many conservative voters on health care. Last week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court (again) to throw out the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, voters in a state so red that the president chose it for his big comeback rally have voted to adopt an expansion of coverage under the law-- the fifth time voters in a Republican-governed state have done so... It’s not entirely shocking that amid a pandemic and a massive unemployment crisis, voters would rather have more health coverage than less.

“Obamacare repeal” as a concept may still be popular with some core Republican voters, but it’s not as potent as it was before the pandemic-- and besides, the coverage itself is popular. Sooner State voters effectively circumvented the will of Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, who had sought a more limited expansion. That’s in keeping with a pattern: When voters in GOP-led states have gotten the chance to vote on Medicaid expansion, they’ve tended to favor it. In other cases, Republican governors and lawmakers have sensed the political wind and moved forward themselves.

Active Shooter by Nancy Ohanian

...In a sense, Trump has fallen into a trap of his own making. He grasped that entitlements were popular among Republican voters in his 2016 campaign, and while other GOP candidates trotted out the usual talking points about social spending, Trump promised to protect Social Security and Medicare. In office, however, he has waffled, proposing budgets that cut entitlements programs, though the budgets have not been enacted. Having tapped into the latent popularity of social spending among Republican voters, he now risks their anger if he reverses course.

Medicaid, which is aimed at the poor, has not always been as popular as Social Security and Medicare, both of which are aimed at older Americans. The latter two have been viewed as “earned” entitlements, while Medicaid has sometimes been viewed as a welfare program, with the same negative racial connotations that other welfare programs carry. So it’s notable that Oklahoma voters joined their fellow citizens in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah (2018) and Maine (2017) in supporting a Medicaid expansion.

Oklahoma is not the final test this year. In August, Missouri voters will also vote on Medicaid expansion. There, too, Republican Governor Mike Parson opposes the expansion. In a sign of the way that Obamacare has gone from a salubrious wedge issue for Republicans to a pain point, Parsons moved the referendum from the November ballot to an August primary.

Even if Missouri votes down the expansion, the results in Oklahoma and elsewhere make the overall trend clear. As Donald Trump recognized in 2016, and as the 2018 election reinforced, entitlements are popular with voters. By flouting that popularity and trying to sink Obamacare a few months before the election, he risks a painful reminder of the lesson he once taught.