I was off to go rent a few movies tonight and had NPR on for convention coverage. I caught a speech (somebody from Wisconsin, didn't catch the name) talking about healthcare. It was a solid Democrat speech, nothing astounding, nothing off-key. One of the promises on healthcare caught my attention, that John Kerry would insure that domestic partners were given full healthcare benefits under his new plan.
In the real world, that would benefit an awful lot of heterosexual unmarried couples and would be a lot of money. The NPR analysis was what convinced me to write about this standard buy votes with programs promise. They completely missed the heterosexual angle and simply viewed it as a code talk for reaching out to homosexuals.
Homosexuals are somewhere between 1%-3% of the population and only half that can even theoretically take advantage of a domestic partnership healthcare law. Unmarried cohabiting heterosexual couples are far more than that and will be the big gorilla in getting this past the Congress. The sexual fidelity effects will predominate negative as well as heterosexuals have one reason less to marry even as it might make the numerically smaller number of homosexual couples bed hop a bit less.
But homosexuals punch far above their weight in Democrat party politics so the tail wags the dog and the majority effects aren't even considered.
Blech, the Democrats haven't changed a bit.
I'm glad I rented a few films.
Posted by TMLutas at July 26, 2004 08:56 PM