The Republicans Really Think They Can Get Away With Cutting SNAP To Further Engorge The Rich

Learn From Mamdani Or Lose... Unlike The Dems, The GOP Knows What It Wants

The Dems Want You To Pick Yer Poison

Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is? Basically, it’s a win that inflicts such a devastating toll on the “victor” that it’s as much a defeat as it is a victory. It negates any true sense of achievement and can actually damage any long-term goals. That’s what the GOP got from the parliamentarian yesterday in their mania to steal from SNAP to pay for tax breaks for the rich. After she shit-canned their original proposal, she agreed to their tweaked plan, which pushes “some costs of the nation’s anti-hunger program onto states, allowing them to maintain a crucial $41 billion spending cut that will help pay for their policy megabill. The new version of the bill will give states more time between finding out how much of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program they’ll need to pay for, and when they actually need to start paying… The updated plan would cut around $186 billion from federal spending on agriculture, with the majority from coming from SNAP, down from the original plan of trimming $211 billion. The number of cuts still surpasses the Senate Agriculture Committee’s original instruction to slash $1 billion, but there is a wide gap between the Senate’s projected savings and the $295 billion in cuts that the House Agriculture Committee landed on.”

So what’s Pyrrhic about it? Polling shows that most voters oppose the cuts, including even Republicans and MAGAts.

Trump is counting on his base— even the ones who depend of the parts of the social safety net the Republicans are slashing to ribbons— to just suck it up and take it. “From the start of his second term, Trump has bet that he can appeal to low-income voters while slashing safety net programs on which many of those voters depend… a gamble that Trump can retain the loyalty of his blue-collar supporters despite moves that could harm their immediate economic self-interest. As approved by the House, the legislation cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in food benefits and removes nearly 11 million people from the health care rolls, while offering large tax cuts skewed to the rich and adding trillions to the national debt. Senate Republicans are considering a similar measure, with bigger Medicaid cuts and smaller reductions in nutritional aid. Whether Republicans succeed in passing the bill— and whether voters punish them for lost assistance— could affect next year’s congressional elections and determine the long-term size and strength of the social welfare system.”

Once mostly aimed at the indigent, aid programs were often derided by conservative critics as Democratic handouts for minority groups in urban areas. But some benefits now reach up the income ladder to working-class households, which Republicans increasingly court.

Enrollment has roughly doubled in two decades in Medicaid and food stamps (formally, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). The Affordable Care Act, signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama, subsidized households up to 400 percent of the poverty line, and pandemic-era subsidies, which expire this year, went higher.

Some corners of the Republican Party are expressing concern that the cuts could prompt a blue-collar backlash. Tony Fabrizio, a pollster for Trump, warned that voters have “no appetite” for cutting Medicaid.

Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, called the proposed Medicaid cuts, which total about $800 billion, “morally wrong and politically suicidal.” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has warned that voters could punish Republicans.

Democrats are hoping the blowback will help them recapture Congress and check Trump’s power. But political scientists say it is unclear whether the cuts will upset voters, or whether upset voters will blame Republicans, especially in a polarized age when few votes are truly up for grabs.

…“I think it’s genuinely unclear whether voters who lose Medicaid or SNAP would blame Republicans,” said Hunter Rendleman, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Many in the MAGA base have such a strong relationship with President Trump, it may be politically safe to take away their benefits. I’d call the political risk for Republicans medium.”

The GOP’s courtship of low-income voters often lives in tension with traditional Republican economic policy. Certainly, some working-class households share the conservative desire for small government and low taxes or the concern that welfare discourages work.

But in courting voters of modest means, the GOP has often emphasized cultural issues instead. Support for gun rights and school prayer, opposition to abortion and affirmative action, and vows to deport undocumented immigrants are among the social issues Trump has embraced.

But will their bet that their culture war theatrics continue to distract from the raw material reality of people’s lives? It’s not impossible, not because voters don’t care about economic survival, but because Democrats keep putting up candidates who talk like think tank interns and corporate lobbyists. That’s what makes the establishment drumbeat of hatred towards Mamdani so galling and so dysfunctional. He spoke the language of working-class struggle and economic dignity— clearly, directly, without the euphemisms or triangulation. And he kicked the asses of the billionaires funding Cuomo. He made the case for democratic socialism not as an abstract ideology but as a pragmatic response to human need. He met people where they were and offered more than symbolic resistance. He offered real hope and the voters took him up on it.

If midterm Democrats can’t figure out how to do that— how to beat the right on the terrain of class while defending civil rights and democracy— then they don’t deserve to win. A party that can’t harness the fury over Medicaid and SNAP cuts, that can’t channel the rising anger of working-class communities into a coherent movement for justice, is just managing decline. Mamdani showed a way forward. The party establishment turned away. And unless that changes, all they’ll have left is blaming voters for not turning out—  instead of blaming themselves for refusing to give those voters anything worth turning out for. If the Democrats nominate shitbag candidates like Angie Craig instead of Peggie Flanagan in Minnesota; Haley Stevens instead of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan; Rahm Emanuel instead of Juliana Stratton in Illinois… they’re just asking for trouble.