Progressive Politics

It's true, and not really a mystery. Having spent a few decades living through frozen winters in the upper midwest, it's like this: Sometimes you'll unexpectedly really, really need a neighbor. And the same is true for your neighbors, so folks tend to become neighborly.

Which fosters empathy. Which fosters votes against the Republicans. Probably the same empathy that leads to the kind of resistance we're seeing.

Probably because abandonment in the winter is just a death sentence.

If someone is homeless in Minnesota and you don't let them in, especially when it's 12 below like today, they're dead. You killed them. You could've just let them crash on your couch for at least the night.

It kinda kills a lot of usual republican talking points.

"let's close down this homeless shelter it's a waste of tax money"

"so we just kill them instead?"

"what? no, I'm sure someone will take them"

"So just kill the shifty and scary looking ones?"

"no one is killing anyone!"

"you are, right now, if you kick them out in the cold."

It's very explicitly a maneuver that kills, there's no real wiggle room there. If it was only 60 at night you can kick them out and then say "well now their fate is in their hands" and explain away all their pains and problems and if they die it was several layers removed from you and it's not that big a deal. The harshness simplifies things. Then that sympathetic decision gets applied to the more complicated things because it's kinda the default now...