Something I threw up on Facebook, but it’s worth preserving before it falls down the memory hole.
I linked to this, an article by Steve Benen on opposition to the minimum wage by Senate candidates in Missouri. Benen writes:
Indeed, the fact that U.S. Senate candidates would have no qualms about standing against the existence of a minimum wage is a reminder about how far the Republican mainstream has shifted. It’s no longer unusual for statewide GOP candidates to oppose the minimum wage, child-labor laws, the existing structure of Medicare and guaranteed benefits, restrictions on torture, collective bargaining, and unemployment benefits.
I posted the link to Benen’s article, and this is what I wrote:
Here’s what I want to know. Why are Republicans waging war on the American quality of life? What’s their endgame? I know they like to say that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” but no tide will lift a boat whose hull has been shot through by the cannonballs fired by the Republican Party.
I like that last part. It’s something that had never occurred to me.
Every policy that makes it harder for someone to succeed in life — from underfunding schools to making college more difficult to afford to keeping health care out of financial reach to gutting workplace protections — amounts to scuttling the “boats” of millions of Americans. When the tides of prosperity rise, those hulled boats won’t float. They won’t even move. They’ll be stuck on the sand, and the water will rush over them, leaving their owners to drown in the oncoming tide.
That’s worth keeping in mind.