Healthcare blowback after Obama town hall

First, Sam Stein notes that President Barack Obama just doesn’t get Sarah Palin and other wingers.

Here’s the problem, Barry. Not everybody’s hymnal has “Kumbaya” in it. Second, to mash up Nazi Germany and cognitive science, to tell the Big Lie convincingly, you have to tell it to yourself enough, and convincingly enough, that you first believe it for yourself.

That said, ABC’s Kate Snow notes that, on the end-of-life consultations that Palin et al say would be “government-forced euthanasia, hospitals do them right now. Hospice does in a sense. And, if that hospital or hospice is paying that patient’s bill with Medicare, well, then we right now have the government involved with end-of-life issues and no euthanasia.

Finally, Michael Lind says that progressives/liberals need to stop bashing stereotypical Southerners as a class, whether over national heathcare, or over other issues.

Taking direct aim at Kevin Drum, Texas native Lind says his state produced LBJ (set Vietnam aside, please), Barbara Jordan, Anne Richards and Maury Maverick, among others, while Drum’s California was the home of Nixon, Reagan the John Birch Society, Prop. 13 and as late as last year, Prop. 8:

According to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." …

Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."

From there, he goes off on Prop. 8, and how stereotypes aren’t always put into place:

Blacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues.

Beyond that, there’s always the “why” behind non-stereotypical anger, which is the bottom line of what Obama doesn’t get. After all, besides “Kumbaya,” hymnbooks also contain “Onward Christian Soldiers.”