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How To Talk to Your Progressive Niece about Obamacare This Thanksgiving
As your family gathers around the table this Thanksgiving, the conversation may get a little heated if a left-wing relative brings up President Obama’s signature health law. The Affordable Care Act remains both unpopular and misunderstood among the American public — a combination that makes it likely fodder for holiday conflicts.
In fact, the website ThinkProgress posted an article titled “How To Talk To Your Tea Party Uncle About Obamacare This Thanksgiving.” So, if your niece blogs for ThinkProgress and starts making wild assertions about the Affordable Care Act, here are some key points that will help keep your conversation on track:
Claim: Obamacare is not causing premiums to skyrocket.
You are excited to see your sister and brother-in-law for the first time in three years. As you welcome them into your home for an overdue celebration, their twenty-something daughter walks by your hug. “We need to talk about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” she says, pulling an iPad from her Netroots Nation tote bag. Her parents offer a resigned look and mention that she just got her Master’s in Gender Sustainability.
“Fantastic work,” you say, “I always knew you’d do it! You must have got your smarts from…”
“Does your TV have wi-fi?” she interrupts. “The pie charts really pop on a big screen. According to a recent Center for American Progress analysis, the premium rates for individual market in states with federally-run marketplaces will increase by an average of less than four…”
Before she continues, offer her a glass of wine and ask about her favorite classes. This provides a polite excuse to step out out of the living room while allowing your other guests to keep watching football.
Claim: Jonathan Gruber did not expose the “real truth” about the law.
To everyone’s relief, your niece’s iPad battery is too drained to show her presentation. (She spent the drive over watching a live-streamed #OccupyCapitalism protest at a Puyallup Walmart.) While your spouse plies her with appetizers, you hide all the Apple charger cords from view. But before long, the earnest progressive buttonholes septuagenarian Aunt Judy in an angry screed about “Faux News’ biased coverage of GruberGate.”
“The debate over Obamacare thoroughly addressed the aspects of the policy that the MIT economist claims lawmakers were hiding,” she shouts into Judy’s bad ear. “The Congressional Budget Office did score the individual mandate as a mechanism to increase revenue, and President Obama was open about…”
At this point, interrupt with family photos. “Did you know we still have pictures of you as a kid? Let’s go to the other room — I bet we can find that photo of Aunt Judy nursing you back to health when you had chicken pox.” As you leave, Aunt Judy turns her hearing aid back on so she can enjoy the third quarter.
Claim: Obamacare has successfully lowered the uninsured rate.
Good news! You’ve successfully refocused your niece and the other guests on funny stories, family memories and plans for 2015. But as everyone sits down to the Thanksgiving feast, Grandpa complains about the troubles he’s had scheduling that hip surgery.
Your ThinkProgress niece seizes the opportunity. “Just imagine how bad it would be if you were poor, a person of color, or a woman!” she says. “Did you know that many oppressed communities with preexisting conditions were able to attain coverage for the first time when ACA marketplaces opened? According to data compiled by Commonwealth Fund…”
Now is the time to gently remind her that before she shares research about Medicaid expansion’s effect on the low-income transgendered, the family needs to say grace and load up their plates. If she still doesn’t get the hint, encourage every guest, one by one, to say what they are most thankful for this year.
Claim: Businesses are not cutting back on workers’ hours or coverage because of Obamacare.
Wisely, you made sure your progressive niece is one of the last to share her Thanksgiving story. Everyone talking about close calls avoided, unexpected little miracles and new job opportunities will surely help her focus on the deeper meanings of family and the holidays. Not so fast.
“The fact that Ben and Jennie got new jobs proves that Obamacare is not creating a ‘part-time economy’ like teatard wingnuts keep claiming!” Your brother-in-law tries to stop her as she hands out white papers from the Urban Institute and the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation.
Since none of your gentle rebukes have worked, it’s time to level with your ThinkProgress blogger niece. “Honey, everyone at this table loves you very much. But today isn’t about arguing. Thanksgiving is about counting our blessings and sharing just one day with family from around the country. All of us have different views on politics, religion, football and everything else. But today is about setting all that aside and remembering what we have in common: Family. Now, who wants seconds?”
Published in General
How did you know about my progressive relatives?! Let’s see…niece, check; progressive, check; homosexual, check; no car, so everyone has to drive her around, check. My niece has one of the world’s coolest jobs-she is receiving inspection for Blue Nile, and gets to inspect diamonds and other precious stones all day. I’m the chicken, since I haven’t gotten up the courage to ask my sister and brother-in-law whether they lost their insurance plan to Obamacare. I know they were on the individual market. And we KNOW where the Puyallup Walmart is!!
Best Thanksgiving wishes to everyone. Ricochet is at the top of my list of things to be thankful for this year.
Well, there’s always this:
That Norman Rockwell painting, in my opinion, has ruined thousands of Thanksgiving meals by encouraging people to buy those enormous 25 pound turkeys. Have you ever tried to cook one of those things? It can’t be done without cooking the meat to the consistency of shoe leather. Or leaving part of it so undercooked as to risk you entire family spending Black Friday suffering from salmonella. I think I’d rather have the chicken.
Your advice is excellent. It wasn’t Thanksgiving, but I did feel it was important to offer my niece a different point of view when she offered up her political opinion. I didn’t disagree with her, I just offered another perspective, and intentionally tried to phrase my response in a loving way. It didn’t go well. We are not having Thanksgiving together this year, and I seriously doubt we ever will again.
I thought the exact same thing.
sharp knives are prohibited, just use your teeth.
Thankfully I don’t have this problem in my family. We are all on the same side of the issues. My mother does ask that we not dicuss politics while at the dinner table. It causes too much indigestion.
I just noticed: The the photo, it looks like grandma has already started eating, and before saying grace! BAD GRANDMA!!!
It’s looks like that’s the only option for the little girl. She doesn’t have any cutlery.
Maybe she thinks she’s at a Medieval Times show?
Oh Lord, I hope the family food is better than the fare served at MT! I went to MT in Toronto…fun, but the food was, Meh.
Well, then they’ve accomplished their goal of serving authentic medieval food, minus the parasites.
I encourage the wife to carve the turkey with a 3 iron.
Is it true that Tiger Woods has not won a major since Obama has been president?
Now Bill Cosby crashes, I guess Al Sharpton will be the next AG.
This here is a Thanksgiving Tradition in my family that even my crypto-maoist sister can agree on:
Methinks someone at The Federalist reads Ricochet:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/26/everything-you-need-to-know-about-winning-a-thanksgiving-argument/
That is what is known as a sustainable turkey.
Ha! AEI used the same silly stock photo in their “how to talk politics at thanksgiving article”!
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-thanksgiving-guide-to-making-conservative-arguments-liberals-can-understand/
The food stylist made an interesting choice. Fancy baked or poached fruit and garnished tomatoes around the…uh…bird. Baked elephant garlic as a side. But then some store-bought shoestring potatoes tossed in, and due to their light color, possibly not even cooked for the shot. I think carving with the dinner knife was “Crap! I remembered the [……..] cranberry boat but forgot the [……..] carving knife?!”
But my favorite is the little story I conjured:
Gramps: Not gonna get much meat carving across the breastbone like that. Never were much good with the guy stuff, were you, you and your pink silk shirt…
Gramma: Harold, don’t start….
The Carver, frozen in the moment: [I didn’t want to do this, but Noooo, she says, ‘They promised! They’re changing”…]
The Carver’s Wife, in stunned silence: [OhNo!OhNo!OhNo!OhNo!]
The Daughter: [HeeHee, it’s just like Daddy said it would be!]
Oh, and the knife? It should do okay (if not cut across the breastbone). It looks like Windsor pattern flatware, the kind you get from restaurant supply houses. The front half of the knife has little mini-serrations.
Heck, as you know, Mollie and DC used to write at Ricochet.