Handel To Workers: Drop Dead

OK, not a particularly original headline.  If you don't know already, I stole it from the New York Daily News, who its original version of it to savage then-President Ford for promising to veto any legislation that would bail out then-cash-strapped New York City.  Still it's hard to know how else to react to the moment in the recent debate between the candidates in the special election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District when Karen Handel, the Republican candidate, decided to put her foot in her mouth in a major and irreparable way.

How?  In response to a moderator's question about whether the candidates supported an increase in the minimum wage, Ossoff offered a measure of qualified support for it, but Handel offered something else:  "I do not support a livable wage."  As if that weren't bad enough, she made it clear that she felt it was more important for government to enable businesses to maximize their incomes than it was for government to require that they share a certain amount of that income with their employees, who are the real maximizers of the incomes of their business and (in their roles as consumers) the incomes of other businesses.

Wow.

I'm not surprised that she feels this way.  I know for a fact that most, if not all, Republicans feel that way.  I'm surprised by her candor, although I think that it's such an inherently un-politic thing to say that I don't think the statement was birthed by a desire to be candid.  Rather, I think it's a reflection of her inexperience in politics.  Seriously, who comes out and says that they are not going to support a level of wages that would allow people to live?  Who believes anymore that business people have any reason to avoid paying the lowest possible wages they can get away with, absence some form of government coercion?

Not the majority of the American people, that's for damn sure.  And not the Democratic Party. Which is something to remember, the next time someone tries to tell you that there's no difference between the two major political parties.  There is a difference.  An enormous difference.  It is, quite literally, the difference between life and death.

So get off your you-know-whats and VOTE NEXT TIME for the party that cares about whether your wages keep you alive or not!  Especially if you're in the 6th Congressional District in Georgia on June 20.  Go Ossoff!  May the voters tell Handel to "drop dead."