It feels weird to find myself agreeing with President Trump

I’ve spent the week composing alternate posts in my head to avoid saying what I am about to say. I’ve got one about being glad Senator Collins recently received a standing ovation at the airport in Bangor after her courageous stance against the Senate’s attempt to repeal parts of the ACA. 

She deserved the accolades. In my last post acknowledging her heroism, I apologized to Collins literarily for ever thinking she was a political meh. I also owe her an apology for the post having so many typos and syntax errors, but it had been a long week following a bunch of long weeks.

That led to a correlating post about Governor LePage bashing Collins and saying she’d never make it in a gubernatorial primary. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better live-action argument in favor of open primaries in my life.

Un-enrolled voters make up Maine’s largest voting block, and Democrats are second. Republicans are way back in third, and the number of Republicans who vote in gubernatorial primaries represents an even tinier voting block. Talk about wielding disproportionate power.

Democrats would do well to reduce the power of that tiny voting block by supporting open primaries.

I’ve got yet another post about why I think a 20 percent tax on recreational marijuana will only incentivize a small, but healthy black market and why giving only 2 percent to localities is a total rip off. This market could be a boon to municipalities struggling to maintain schools and adequate law enforcement/first responders to handle the rampant addiction epidemic.

And yes, it would be easier to acknowledge my three decades of experience with the Maine marijuana black market than it is to admit …

I think President Trump might be onto something. 

Worse yet, I procrastinated so long, I have to admit that he might be onto two separate somethings.

No, I didn’t vote for him. Yes, I thought he would win, especially after Democrats nominated Clinton. Yes, I greatly empathized with voters who, as Michael Moore characterized, were voting for Trump as a means to drop a Molotov Cocktail on Washington DC.

But no, I wasn’t quite nihilistic enough to go there myself. I just couldn’t imagine the explosion that would be Trump’s presidential presence prompting any kind of helpful outcomes. Plus, even back in his candidacy days, the coziness between Trump, his circle, and power players in Russia smelled kind of funny.

So it sucks to find myself admitting that I like a couple things President Trump’s pulled out of the endless font of craziness he seems to tap into. But, hey, I’ve had to admit Governor LePage has been right more than once. 

First, I love Trump’s threat to pull the health insurance subsidies for people unable to afford premiums on their own. I love that Trump calls the payments “bailouts.”

When it comes to our elected officials’ inability to get a grip when it comes to the health care debate, I am nihilistic enough to support the president acting on his threat. Among the possible outcomes of such an action would be a total collapse of our health care system.

It could be the shortest distance to the inevitable outcome of a single-payer health care system. At least I see a single-payer system as an inevitability since policymakers don’t seem to want to take a look at the ridiculous cost of health care in America. Or at the income inequality that keeps people from being able to afford to take care of themselves in a market-driven system.

Market-driven mechanisms are also responsible for decades of depressed wages, which brings me to the second “onto something” I have to acknowledge. I kind of think President Trump is kind of right to support a Republican proposal to limit and alter access to green cards.

Maybe some of the details about the merit system could be softened a bit, but I found the arguments behind the proposal pretty tight. I went so far as to watch all of Trump staffer Stephen Miller’s press conference hoping to debunk garbage, but found little in his presentation.

I really hate admitting that.

Patricia Callahan

About Patricia Callahan

Trish is a writer who lives in Augusta. She has worked professionally in education and social services.