President Donald Trump’s budget is avoiding Medicaid and Rural America is on the front line damage. And Big Shocker: Most Trump’s fervent supporters refuse to accept reality.
A health clinic in McCook, Nebraska, which recently has a population of 7,446 makes the headlines After announcing that he was closing, unable to survive the Massive Medicaid Cups.
“Whoever says that Medicaid Cup is the reason why they close is a liar,” said a nearby Curtis resident, who has a population of 806 inhabitants, at Washington Post.
Another resident pushed him back as people “try to blame everything on Trump”, the appellant “horse feathers”. Must be something from Nebraska.
And the mayor of the city, which proudly displays a bag of Obama punch labeled “replacement of Obama stress” on his desk, insisted: “I do not think that the signature of” Big Beautiful Bill “has something to do with the closure of this clinic.”
Okay then.
For years, Trump and the Republican Party have sold a history of rural white voters: that the real problem with the government is not that he fails people like them – is that it helps the fake people. The advantages will not “deserve” Americans like them, but for immigrants, big cities, blacks and brown and coastal elites. It is a lie, but powerful. And it always works.
The right -wing electronic babibllards are full of people saying that only health care is cut for “illegal” or freeeloaders. Thus, when the cuts strike them in place – the “patriots who work hard and fearing God” – they short -circuit. The media must lie. There must be another explanation. He can’t Be Trump.
And, yes, most of these voters have left. We do not collect them. Their political identity is built around the idea that Trump is their champion, even when it is clear that he is the one who turns the knife.
But not all of them are inaccessible.
Take Brenda Wheeler, a 61 -year -old republican of Curtis. She voted for Trump in 2016, but then embedded on him and sat in the 2024 elections. When the closure of the clinic struck at home, she told the post: “I do not agree with this bill.”
“When we talked about making America again large, I don’t think that is what we all had in mind,” said Wheeler, who even plans to change his registration of voters to independent.
People like they are opening.
Not all will be lacking. In fact, most will not. But we don’t need the most. If only 5 to 10% of the Republicans take off – or if a few million non -voters finally appear – mathematics turn to Democrats. Our fragile 49-48 Edge National Democratic becomes a robust majority from 55 to 45 years old. It is not only a victory; It’s a stamp. This is how we build a durable progressive coalition that can withstand any right wave.
We are not going to deprogram the cult, but we don’t have to do so. What we can To do is to reach the people who wondered why their mother’s Medicaid was reduced, why their insulin suddenly costs more, or why the only clinic in their city has just closed its doors.
It is the silver lining of our current dystopian nightmare: there is no one else to blame. Republicans control everything. They have them.
The first step is to make this reality stick. The second turns at least one room in the congress in 2026 to stop the Trump agenda and launch real surveys on the course of corruption. And the third offers something better – visible, tangible and immediate help that voters can really feel. Or, as I argued, Cut out the fashionable words And promise and immediately Improve the life of voters.
This is how we win not only in 2026, but for the long term.
