My life is irrelevant to Joe Biden

I mean, seriously, I knew that already. In the immortal words long attributed (incorrectly) to one Josep Besarionis Jugashvili: "It's not the people who vote that count. It's who counts the votes." In the case of the Democratic party, it's not even vote counting that matters. It's dollar counting. Those dead presidents won the day again tonight. Despite 88% support among Democratic party membership, the platform committee voted down a public health insurance option ("Medicare4All") for the platform upon which Josep(h) Robinette Biden will be running. When the news came out, Michigan's own Abdul El-Sayed had this to say:

The DNC Platform we just wrapped falls short on many key issues that matter—but the hard work @BernieSanders & our team put in still made it the most progressive in history.

And I’ll DEFO take it over fascist, white supremacist, anti-poor, science-denying Trumpism any day.

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) July 28, 2020

I'm sorry, but "Joe Biden isn't Donald Trump!" is not what I'd refer to as a vote of confidence. That line has been the running joke in the media for months now and, in fact, is the Democratic strategy for the past quarter century in sharp focus: "Our awful person isn't as awful as that guy!" . It's a derogatory idea and al-Sayed just laid it right at his candidate's feet as a form of validation. "He's not a walking piece of narcissistic trash who's been looting the government and sacrificed at least 140,000 Americans to his ego over the past few months!" Okay, then. Apparently Biden and the party don't give a shit about the thousands more who are going to die without healthcare and/or go bankrupt and then die, either?

I've never voted for a Democrat or Republican for president. Since I've been able to vote, I've always voted for socialists or Greens for precisely the reasons that the Democratic party just highlighted: They don't care about me. It's not that I'm special. Unless you're an insurance company executive or shareholder, they likely don't care about you, either. But I was thinking this year that if the race seemed to be tight in Michigan (and plenty of gun-toting morons invading the state capitol would seem to indicate that it will be), I might abandon my lifelong principle of, y'know, actually voting for who and what I want (i.e. the purpose of voting.) The Idiot has had the upside that I predicted, in that a lot more people are paying attention to what the problems of this nation are. That phenomenon has only accelerated in these, our times of plague. But he's also done a lot of damage and four years has probably been enough of a wake-up call for enough people to start talking about genuine change. So, there I was, thinking seriously about dropping a vote for good ol' Joe. And then, word of this more limited vote got out.

In the end, it's the same as it ever was. Money still talks. The ownership class still owns the country, just like they own both major parties. That ownership class includes insurance companies, drug companies, the AMA, and many others who continue to benefit from America's bizarrely unique addiction to profiting off the sick and injured. And when it comes down to getting that sweet, sweet campaign cash, all of those institutions are happy providers, as long as the party does their bidding and continues to let profits come before people. Even Democratic-voting people who, clearly, don't count.

The details of my particular situation are simple: If I fall off the public rolls, as the state of Michigan keeps threatening that I will come next year (pandemic changes in policy yet to be revealed, of course), I won't be able to afford the ridiculous prices for the drugs that, quite literally, keep me alive. The only recourse is to find a job with health insurance. If I can't do that (and no luck so far!), then a few months after I'm turned away by the state for having been a non-productive member of society for too long...

I die.

But, hey, I wasn't producing anything of value, anyway, right? And isn't all of this kind of superfluous? After all, Biden said he'd veto Medicare4All back in March if it somehow made it through Congress and to his desk. Said it's too expensive. And, hey, he's right! That medical stuff is really expensive. Some doctors were speculating that fighting the next pandemic would cost about $22 billion a year! The annual budget for the Pentagon is 33 times that amount; just FYI. The current impact on their precious economy is significantly more than that, especially given the number of people that will be burdened with hospital bills in the tens of thousands from a hospital stay, thanks to COVID-19. Bills that they can't pay and which will be written off as losses for those hospitals (and the wealthy corporations that own them. Tax breaks! Woo hoo!) One would think that after the mounting public health crisis became a concern to his owners and ours, that attitude might have changed...?

But, no, the Democratic party has just confirmed to me that my existence, the fact that I'm breathing, is not of interest to them. This is the same message they've delivered for decades to people in more dire, long-term circumstances than I'll find myself (the homeless, the non-White, the immigrants, the poor.) This time, they're not even stooping to give lip service to the idea. You know... those planks that end up in the platform that sound so good (almost as good as the Republican platform back in the 50s!) but which are really just a nod and a wink to the campaign donors and which are immediately forgotten the moment their person is in office? Obama, to his extreme credit, actually kinda followed through on a promise that he made on the campaign trail, getting the ACA passed through a Democratic Congress and over stiff resistance from many members of his own party. It turned into the polyglot monster that it is, which basically still requires a job to afford the significant rates charged to "preexisting condition"-types like myself and often doesn't provide coverage that makes it genuinely useful. But it was a follow through on a platform plank! So, y'know, credit where it's due. Now, along comes Obama's vice president, 12 years later, with even greater public support for an actual public option and overwhelming support within the party and during the most significant public health crisis since the 1980s... and we don't even get lip service.

5 million people have lost their employer-based health insurance since February. Another 10 million may lose theirs as businesses continue to shut down or minimize operations in a slower economy. Those are the conservative estimates. Some are projecting the number of people having lost insurance to spike as high as 27 million by the end of the year; to say nothing of those who didn't have any in the first place. And COVID-19 continues to rampage through the nation. But all of those people should vote for Biden because... he isn't Donald Trump. The Democrats have just overtly told me and all of them that we don't count, because even if I vote for Biden for some reason this time, they've set it in stone that I may not live to vote for him or any of them the next time.