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Rachel
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14 Mar, 8 tweets, 3 min read
1. Already suffering from severe fibromyalgia (since age 20) one of the other reasons I have worked stridently to avoid getting COVID other than fear of death is this: Long COVID or COVID "Long-Haulers." Before I fell ill in my 20s I was a solid athlete & fearless. Within 5 yrs
2. had symptoms severe enough to present as severe Rheumatoid arthritis and MS. I have now lived w this mysterious, excruciating condition for as long as I got to live w/o out & many of the things "long-haulers" are dealing w are similar to my symptoms. I've never really talked
3. about my illness, or the way it derailed by life & blunted my health (esp. for the 6 yrs I spend as a fulltime worker w no health insurance when the condition 1st set in & I had to leave it undiagnosed as I couldn't see doctors), pre-Obamacare this was. Long haul symptoms
4. are leveling many of our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. It's bad enough for those that caught COVID as it rushed in, or bc they had to risk their own health to serve as doctors, nurses, 1st responders, or frontline workers. But in many red states, there
5. tens of thousands of people that will get sick of, die of, or contract long haul COVID due to the fact that they live under Rep leadership & for whatever reasons, expose themselves (many unwillingly bc once everything reopens you are forced out) to a virus from which they may
6. never fully recover. Having lived a life diminished by severe pain everyday for 24 years I can tell you- pain can be maddening. It can render you hopeless. It can suck everything good and fun out of events. It breaks my heart to think of how many people are getting sick &
7. dying due to extremism in the Rep Party & the reckless, in my opinion, intentionally negligent, decisions GOP Govs are making like Abbott. BC they are, quite intentionally & w the info right in front of them, purposely exposing their populations to this virus & its dangers.
On that note- here is a @FrankLuntz focus group w @GovChristie, who no matter what he did to help put himself in that hospital bed has been trying to keep Reps & Americans that trust Rep leaders from dying ever since

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More from @RachelBitecofer

Rachel
15 Mar
1. Partisanship is a hellava drug. I am continually shocked to hear some members of Congress, the press, just the gen public, who, even after the past 5 yrs, have not really come to terms w how tragically affected we've been by hyperpartisanship. Trump hid to take his vaccine.
2. He'll never do a PSA to tell his own voters who are only rejecting science & who are only dying this way bc Trump & his fellow GOP Govs like Desantis, Abbott, Kemp, & others LED them into endangering their health- & in many cases, dying. This is the cold hard truth that Abbott
3. Trump, et al. will one day hopfully be forced to face- in this world or the next. They intentionally led people to their deaths. And those people that they led? Those people exposed other people and led THEM to their deaths. Doctors. Nurses. Grocery store employees. People who
Read 8 tweets
Rachel
14 Mar
I've absolutely been expecting a party gap (conditioned on edu) since Trump 1st did the unthinkable & made the pandemic a culture war issue. Further, my expectations are that the last or late stages of the pandemic will be taking a disproportionate toll on Rs (who are white men)
But as others have pointed out, I think there WILL be a big diff between reported refusal & actual. And again, conditioned on edu....sadly. Less edu are more likely to actually reject it. Experiencing this in my own family, btw. My brother who has one functional lung but is
Convinced the virus is harmless.
Read 4 tweets
Rachel
12 Mar
Wow. My phone literally just saved my life by slowing me from entering the intersection to make my left & getting T- boned by a lady that blew the light going 40mph
She would have hit my body dead on
The only reason she didn't is bc I waited to turn on Sirius
Read 4 tweets
Rachel
12 Mar
1. Which brings me to @BBCWorld yesterday, radio, when they report on the Chinese gov's stripping of actual political power from Hong Kong's legislature, which the coverage notes erodes (kills) democracy there. But then closes the report w: the Chinese govn't defends the move
2. saying it will bring stability to the region.

That's it. No context. Just the Chinese propaganda line about needing to kill Hong Kong's democracy bc its more stable. BBC World reported that way to maintain a "standard of impartiality" in the "hard news" report. And it got me
3. thinking, will they be reporting about the death of OUR democracy, actually scratch that- reverse it, ARE they reporting on the death of our democracy the same way? "The Republicans argue the changes are needed to ensure election integrity."

Every time we hear a news report
Read 5 tweets
Rachel
11 Mar
1. Got a couple of exciting things in the pipeline for @The__Cycle

1 will be the results of the survey on extremism

The other will be an int w @amieparnes & her co-author @jonallendc about their book on the 2020 election, which I think will be quite distinct from other ints
2. Parnes & Allen get to do bc they cover the biographical accounts of these months-long Super Bowl, Titanic-sized events & have the access to personalize & bring us behind the scenes to so many famous moments from the cycle. This is an invaluable perspective BUT a wholly diff 1
3. than the perspective of an academic "analysis" of a cycle & voter behavior. For ex. reading their 2016 book and then mine would give you two VERY different readings on the "what happened/why" end, BUT together, a much deeper understanding. You could read them back to back &
Read 7 tweets
Rachel
7 Mar
1. Gotta love this old video sent to me by @EthanMenaker on the verge of the 2006 midterms- which is the 1st of the negative polarized era (though had it not been for the 9/11 attacks, I believe due to the way that Bush Jr. came to the presidency that

2. the 2002 midterm would have been the very 1st of them. Although it is important to note that mass polarization (polarization among regular people) was just beginning to register, while elite polarization, after being hypercharged by Gingrich's efforts and the evolution of
3. partisan media was just really firing up. The 2006 cycle was also the last cycle in which @KarlRove took part, actively in electioneering after pioneering the strategy that is now staple in every single Republican campaign- described in this video as
Read 9 tweets

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