Here is the existential crisis in the U.S. that hinges on the 2024 elections. We have about 15 months to determine our preference.

In red-governed states versus blue-governed states:

In red states, working class people do not have access to Medicaid. Public education is under attack with voucher programs. Women can’t get an abortion. There are fewer scholarship programs for higher education so everybody goes into debt if they want to go to college. Districts are so gerrymandered that voting is largely symbolic. Union rights are nonexistent. Guns have more protections than children.

Meanwhile in blue states, and that red-state model is what the Republican party wants for all of America … meanwhile in the blue states women live as much as two years longer. So do men, by the way. About that. Overall live expectancy is about as high as Denmark, whereas in the rates its as low as Serbia. Cancer rates are lower. The cancer rate in California is 358 per 100,000 people. In Kentucky it’s 504 per 100,000. heart disease can be as much as five times lower in blue states than in red states. Children are less likely to die in blue states than in red states. A child in Massachusetts is one-tenth as likely to die by gunfire than in Mississippi. People have measurably higher primary school graduation and achievement. The vast majority of people are ensured for healthcare. Babies and new mothers are less likely to die than in red states. Food insecurity is rare compared to red states. Obesity and chronic disease rates are much lower than in red states, and rates of hypertension are lower in blue states than in red states. I mean the list goes on and on. You can Google just about any measurable index of quality of life and you’ll find that blue states are beating red states.

The one exception is taxation and cost of living, where red states beat blue states. But, you know. Hey, if you want to live on the cheap, then you end up with all these consequences I just laid out.

Thom Hartmann

In other words, if you are not in the ruling-class billionaire 1% or in the ruling-class-adjacent 3%, conservative policy is to keep women barefoot and pregnant (e.g., kitchen and the bedroom) and keep the Jews, people of color, LGBTQA+, et al, Auschwitz-ed. Even if you are a white Christian heterosexual male, you are oppressed, segregated, chained, and learning new job skills under the firm hand of the economic wealth gap forcing you into the “A Christmas Carol’ role of Bob Cratchit at the hands of Ebenezer Scrooge.

And bad news, your orange Jesus and his MAGA apostles ain’t the holy trinity coming to transform Old Ebenezer and bring Tiny Tim Christmas joy. Just more coal in our stockings!

Republicans do not wish to govern. Cannot govern. They wish to destroy democracy and all its institutions so they can rule with an iron fist to curry favor and live off the largess of the 1% by denying access to us.

We get to decide over the next 15 months – in the choices we make and, ultimately, at at the ballot box – whether a red state or a blue state is the American state in which to live, work, and raise our children.