How Dems can win disabled voters

[NCDem777]

So I’m seeing a lot of new left-wing candidates run for office in 2018. Challenging conservatives in place they’ve never been challenged before. They are awesome. I hope they win, if for no other reason than to give the GOP a good reason to take control of their party back from conspiracy theorists who want to dismantle the government.

And permit me to give them, and all other Democratic candidates for 2018 some advice to get some voters in your corner: Embrace disabled people. And I don’t mean have them on stage for stump speeches or using them in ads (which are good things). I mean have actual good disability policies ready to go and campaign on said policies. In public. Not buried in a white paper on a website. Not on an online video that most people won’t see. In ads on TV. In speeches. Have some people knocking on doors saying “This is what we’ll do to make America more accessible.”

For a long time, Democrats really have been the lesser of two evils in terms of disability rights. Yes, they haven’t been openly hostile towards things like Medicaid but haven’t done nearly enough to move the ball forward either. And sometimes, they’ve been willing to sell us out in ways they’d never be willing to sell any other group out. There are about a dozen Democrats signed onto a Republican effort to dismantle the Americans with Disabilities Act going by the name “ADA Education and Reform Act” (H.R. 620). It would essentially make the ADA impossible to enforce. Could you imagine Democrats signing on an effort to gut the Civil Rights Act? No.

Yet these constant betrayals have led at least half the disability community thinking that both parties are the same and that there’s no point in considering disability issues at all in their vote. Special needs parents had all but given up on Democrats until the Trumpcare debacle. Public schools regarding IEP’s as optional is fertile territory for anti-government folks. How do you fix this? Hint: The answer is not to rely on the GOP candidate saying stupid things about disabled people. You have to actually fight for us.

https://medium.com/@mattstafford_4818/how-democrats-can-support-and-win-the-disability-community-in-2018-112d8f581b8f

I don't know why the hyperlink isn't completing. You'll have to copy paste.

[dawg day]

1. I really hate those bill titles that say the opposite of what they do--

you know, "Clean Water Preservation Act" which is meant to allow coal companies to dump their chemicals into streams.

That "ADA Education and Reform Act" sounds just like that.
When they have to lie to get something passed.... well, the only thing that helps is constantly educating voters, especially those most affected, as you say!

But also congresspeople have to be educated, not just about what their bills are, but what the actual effect is... and constantly, how many more voters are affected than they think, and are angry.

[tblue37]

2. Medium URLs have an extraneous

@ mark in them. Remove the @ and the URL works fine:
https://medium.com/mattstafford_4818/how-democrats-can-support-and-win-the-disability-community-in-2018-112d8f581b8f

[NCDem777]

3. Thanks!