A year ago at this time, Ufi had been injected with the sedative that was preparing him to be relaxed when the lethal injection forced him to take his last breath.
Now, I still can’t believe he’s gone. I still can’t believe all he’s still doing for me. Most of all, I know Ufi would be glad that thanks to a miracle that didn’t seem possible one year ago today, I’m truly looking forward to a great future.
It won’t be the future I would have had with Ufi by my side. But it will be an even better, brighter future because of all I learned from Ufi.
There are times in every life when you know something momentous is happening to you. In those moments, you realize life will never be the same. Sometimes, they are tragedies. Sometimes, they are advancements. If you are truly lucky, they are dreams coming true.
As I write this, I’m not vaccinated against coronavirus. Nor do I have a plan to get vaccinated against coronavirus. But I’m not against the vaccines. I could imagine scenarios where I get a vaccine. Since I weigh in on most things, I thought I should share the reasons why I’m not vaccinated and those that could compel me to get vaccinated.
The verdict for this episode is: if the left doesn’t have better messaging, the left will never win.
Transcript
Below is my latest effort to produce a textual representation of my podcast episodes. It’s not where I want it to get, but it’s better than my previous effort.
Hello, and welcome to Jonathan’s Verdicts. I’m Jonathan Simeone.
The title of this episode: is The Left is Losing. The verdict for this episode is: If the left doesn’t have better messaging, the left will never win.
As always, I don’t edit these podcast episodes, and I do not have a script. They are just a chance for me to talk about whatever is on my mind
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Before getting into the substance of this episode, I want to discuss my attempts to create a transcript. So folks who are deaf or hard of hearing can follow along. I would give last week’s effort, a solid b minus. Recording without a script, and then turning that into a transcript,
even with the captions from Zoom, is not particularly easy. I think I have to have a more realistic goal, at least for now. I hope to find a better solution to this than I’m doing now, but for now, my goal is simply going to be to take the captions and turn them into a usable piece of text.
With that being said, let’s get into the substance of the podcast.
The left is losing.
As a leftist, it hurts me to say that. But we have to be honest. And the reality of it is Joe Biden’s approval ratings are around 60% in most, if not all of the major polls. In some of them he’s over 60%.
About a third of the country would still vote for Donald Trump.
Maybe one or 2%, if that, would vote for a Green Party candidate or some other real leftist candidate.
So, the left is taking a beating.
The reason we are taking a beating is the messaging. And I’m going to be really blunt here. The vast majority of Americans have health insurance. Maybe they don’t like it. Maybe it doesn’t meet all their needs. Maybe they know it’s too expensive. But they have health insurance.
They don’t care about Medicare for All in the way it is being sold to them by the left. They have insurance. They’re afraid of higher taxes. They’re afraid of losing what they have.
If the messaging doesn’t encompass what they get from Medicare for All, and that is insurance not being tied to their jobs, cheaper, insurance, potentially more money in their pocket, if their employer chooses to reinvest some of that money in the workforce. There are many other benefits. No deductibles, not really very many copays, and more services and benefits.
But that is the message that has to be sold in a country where 30 or 40 million people are uninsured and roughly 300 million people are insured.
Even if most of it is crappy.
You have to speak to the insured population to sell the idea of completely overhauling the health care that people have come to know.
It’s that simple.
The same thing is true with things like student loan forgiveness. You know even Biden is out there talking about forgiving Ivy League debt. Just total nonsense. So many of us, including me, did not go to an Ivy League school. We racked up 10s of thousands in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt to better ourselves. The messaging has to change on that.
We have to figure out how to sell these ideas to a much cross section of society. The left has to imagine the leftist coalition, as being broader and more inclusive than it does today. What that means is we have to look at not just including people who want to do things because the changes we are talking about benefit them directly or because the changes we want to see make society a better place. The left has to understand that most people are motivated by fear and by selfishness, way more than they are motivated by altruism and doing the right thing. The messaging from us has to acknowledge and address that reality.
The Democrats and the Republicans are spectacular at this. The republicans sell irrational fear better than anyone could. That’s their whole thing. They get people to believe truly lunatic stuff.
Democrats scare to a lesser extent, But the Democrats also buy into the w’ere protecting you from them. You know, we’re not going to ask you to sacrifice for them.
Why, because they know that sells more then help your neighbor.
That sucks. It truly does, but it’s true.
The left is losing by a lot. If the left does not change its messaging, the left will never win.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Jonathan’s Verdicts. I appreciate your support.
If you are interested in achieving systemic change, you can’t be popular. Most people resist change. Some appreciate the privilege they get from current systems. Some think change is too hard and it should be incremental. Some think the change you want should come after the change they want. No matter what the reason, a desire to implement change means a change agent must choose between popularity and effectiveness.
Jim Bouton’s Ball Four is one of the most famous books about baseball. Given my love of baseball and reading, it’s hard for me to believe I didn’t read it until now. Now that I have read Ball Four, I can see why it has been so popular for so long.
It has been months since I have given an update on Shadow. For those who don’t remember, Shadow is a dog we rescued from an abusive, neglectful situation. The plan was to find a rescue group that would get him the help he needed adjusting and learning to socialize before finding him a new home. When that didn’t work, we decided to try to keep him. Mom and I wouldn’t let an animal die if we could help it. As the title indicates, Shadow has come so far!
