this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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For a while, there were a surprising amount of people who wanted to repeal Obamacare, but keep the Affordable Care Act.
Letting it be called Obamacare was probably a misstep for his administration. It'd likely be less disliked if it wasn't tied to his name, and they went with something like "Americare: Because America Cares for you".
I hear you, but their messaging was going to be their messaging, and it was going to be effective and adopted by their base. No one "let it be called Obamacare", that was strictly Republican, and very deliberate. There was never a point when the GOP was gonna just allow a massive popular win by the other side, they were always gonna ratfuck it every way possible, do everything they could to make it unpopular.
Associating it with scary brown guy was pretty much inevitable, I can't put even a piece of the blame on the folks who fought for that legislation to be passed.
Republicans are the ones that nicknamed it that, to try to make their supporters hate it as much as a Black man, even if it hurts them.
Worked pretty great. Of course part of the ratfucking they did was to cripple the actual legislation, too, not just the image of it, so it doesn't work nearly as well as it should.
So now they have to vote in Congress to keep a thing people need but which they themselves made much crappier, while also being expected to scream about wanting to get rid of it altogether, while also being unable to make any useful changes to the legislation at all. And this is on healthcare, probably the most directly impactful issue faced by their actual voter base.
Messaging and propaganda are seriously like game-breaking IRL exploits.