And now that officially sucks.
Tue Nov 03, 2015 at 5:22 PM PT (David Jarman): To recap, Republican Matt Bevin (whom you might remember from losing his tea-flavored primary challenge to Mitch McConnell in 2014) has won a surprising (to the extent that no poll had given him the lead) victory in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race.
Bevin (R-Sociopath) had run on a promise to repeal as much of PPACA as he could. That means shutting down Kynect, the Kentucky exchange and turning down the very successful Medicaid expansion. As Charles Gaba noted, he was promising to take away health insurance from 9% of the state. And he looks like he won going away and with coattails.
#ACASignups Looks like Conway might have lost #kygov. If so, 400K people just lost thei healthcare in one shot. That’s 9% of the state.
— Charles Ghooooulba (@charles_gaba) November 4, 2015
There are two major health policy implications of a Bevins win. The first is the switch from Kynect to Healthcare.gov. This is not that big of a deal in and of itself. It is a different portal and a different set of branding but subsidies flow to people who buy insurance from healthcare.gov after the King case. The biggest downside is if Kentucky wanted to go the Wyden Waiver route, having their own exchange makes plumbing a Wyden Waiver, even a very conservative Wyden Waiver a whole lot easier.
The big policy change is Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion covered approximately 420,000 Kentuckians as of this morning or 9% of the state. Bevin ran against expansion. The best case scenario is the hospital groups march into Bevin’s chief of staff office tomorrow and tell him flat out that their books don’t balance without expansion of some sort and they’ll lay covering fire for an extremely punitive waiver application. That is the best case scenario and I’ll give it a 10% chance of happening. The probable case scenario is 420,000 people are fucked as of February 1, 2016 and most of Appalachian Kentucky has medical care and medical financing resembling Third Wold nations again.
Kentucky, a red state, is highly likely to return to being a purple state on the New York Times Upshot map of uninsurance rates:
It was a good two years of actually connecting people to health insurance without the death defying worry that a toothache could either be immediately fatal or financially destroying.
Elizabelle
What’s the matter with
KansasKentucky?Very disappointed with them.
Richard Mayhew
@Elizabelle: As Zandar pointed out on Twitter, the regions that went heaviest for Bevin were the areas that gained the most from Medicaid expansion… so a lot of noses will have been cut off tonight.
Anya
This sucks! People voted against their interest because of their prejudice. They voted because of what they hate (gays and the black POTUS) instead of voting for what’s good for them.
Mr Stagger Lee
When the day reckoning comes to all those Dewey Crowes and Dicky Bennetts, I am reminded of a song
So we state now
For the record
You brought this upon you
-Les Claypool Highball With The Devil
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Richard Mayhew: Given the low turnout and the demographics of who does turnout for off-year elections, I suspect that there weren’t very many of the people who are going to lose coverage who voted for Bevin. Our problem isn’t that people vote against their own interests; it’s that they don’t vote at all. That’s still a huge problem, but it’s a different problem.
Felanius Kootea
This is what happens when roughly 25% of the voting population heads to the polls and 75% stays away. This is what happens when politicians don’t explain over and over, in graphic detail, the policy consequences of their rivals’ statements. This is what happens when the news media abdicates its responsibility to educate and inform. This is what happens when an “enlightened citizenry” means that Fox News propaganda passes for truth among likely voters. In the long run, with no one pushing back, this is how democracy dies. Slowly, from within. Hopefully it won’t come to that. I am angry and probably have exaggerated fears right now.
kc
I’m speechless.
dr. luba
Front page is all messed up for me, and I checked with two different browsers. This post has been added to every other post I checked, some 5 or 6 back. Not sure if it’s turtles all the way down…….
And bits and bobs of other posts have been mixed in, including Chalabi and Ben Carson. It’s very weird.
Individual pages are OK, it’s just the main page.
NotMax
A stellar example of why tags need to be placed after a post as they were previously.
Arm The Homeless
With a bit of good news, the Koch’s toadies in Front Range school boards have been given their pink slips.
They will be back, without a doubt, unfortunately.
pseudonymous in nc
30% turnout in KY. At some point you have to ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and say elections have consequences.
And Tissue-Thin makes the important point here: even if the Medicaid counties voted for Bevin, on that kind of shitty turnout it doesn’t mean that people voted to spite themselves. It could equally mean that people who saw friends and colleagues getting Medicaid voted to fuck them over.
The Fat Kate Middleton
Isn’t this the state that, when they asked respondents if they supported Obamacare, they overwhelmingly replied no – but when asked about their approval of ACA, they loved it? I know that’s not quite right – but wasn’t it something like that?
The Fat Kate Middleton
I forgot to add …. this makes me sick,
ArchTeryx
@Felanius Kootea: They really aren’t exaggerated. Come 2016, 400,000 people in Kentucky are going to face a stark choice: Move or die. I had to face that choice too, and if a friend hadn’t taken me in in a non-refusenik state, die I indeed would have done.
The trouble is a large fraction of that 400,000 don’t vote as if their life depended on it, or actively cut off their noses to spite their faces. They’re happily to be martyrs for the cause of spiting the black man in their White House. My sympathies lie solely with those that knew the stakes, voted, and were outnumbered by the morons. They’re the real victims here, and are being lined up to be *involuntary* martyrs.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Felanius Kootea: Yes. Oh yes. This. I’m not just sick about this – I’m in tears.
amk
How hard it is to put up the author’s byline next to the title? Why bury it amidst the tags weed?
@Richard Mayhew:
Indeed. At some point, survival instincts would kick in, you would think.
bmoak
I was agog that all polls close in Kentucky at 6pm. My podunk town had an election for the following today: Replacement for resigned state senator, mayor, district attorney, board of supervisors, and ward alderman. Polls were open until 9pm.
MazeDancer
Repeating from thread below, some KY reporters on Chris Hayes’ show said that Bevins took deleting KY Connect “off the table” in late days. He said he would do some Indiana style thing – Richard might know what that means – with slight fees or something that would make KY Connect even more Not Obamacare than the Absolutely Not Obamacare it already is.
With fear of no KY Connect “off the table” the few voters who showed up were free to vote their racist feeling. KY reporters said tying Conway to Mr. Obama is how Bevins won. (Well, and low Dem turnout, of course.)
rikyrah
BUT…I have been told, over and over, that these are the White folks that Hillary Clinton can reach.
Now, I’ve been saying this is a sucker’s bet…but, I’ve been told otherwise.
Same stupid muthaphuckas voting against their best interests.
I have not one damn ounce of sympathy for him.
pat
@Richard Mayhew:
So the poor sods are not only poor, but stupid as well. Who could have guessed.
But one does have to wonder if the people affected adversely were actually motivated to go to the polls.
Geeno
I believe that Prohibition and the War on Drugs have proved conclusively that you can’t protect people from themselves. That includes people from KY, if they want to fuck themselves and each other over, we can’t stop them. All we can do is prevent the sickness from spreading if possible.
I don’t want to hear whining from KY liberals, either. LEAVE. That’s what they want you to do. They want to wallow in their own filth. Leave them to it, and get on with your life.
GregB
If they have any dying to do, let them do it now and decrease the surplus population.
The Scrooging of America continues.
Zandar
This.
It’ll get worse when the Dems lose the KY House this time next year and by the time January 2017 rolls around, the plan will be to turn Medicaid into a bastard hybrid block grant program, and income eligibility will be lowered to the point where the 7- 8% left on Medicaid will become 1-2%.
You guys have no idea how upset I am right now, because this state is headed for The Full Brownback in less than 18 months.
Bevin will make Rick Scott look like Pope Francis.
And the best part is when the state’s schools, health care system, and roads all collapse, it’ll be Obama’s fault, because screw that ni-CLANG president for taking away our Medicaid with his goddamn Obamacare!
SiubhanDuinne
@Felanius Kootea:
This. Every word.
Cacti
One of the reasons I chose to move to a blue state…
I just don’t care to convince anyone not to slit their own throat anymore.
Wanna screw yourself over? Have a ball!
John Cole
@amk: That is being fixed and is on the list.
Elizabelle
@Zandar: Can you move?
The Raven on the Hill
@ArchTeryx: “400,000 people in Kentucky are going to face a stark choice: Move or die.”
Well, no, many of the 400,000 probably don’t have life-threatening conditions. It’s still disgusting.
BTW, I remember an Archteryx from a previous internet life, on alt.callahans. Is that you?
amk
@John Cole: Thanks John.
Smiling Mortician
I’m really, really sorry, Zandar — and everyone else who lives in Kentucky. This just totally sucks.
And: Everything Felanius Kootea said. Sometimes I feel up to the fight . . . but that’s a whole lotta fronts on which to launch a revolution.
Richard Mayhew
@MazeDancer: that is the punitive waiver option I mentioned
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Were you told that on this blog? If so, by whom?
goblue72
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I think that’s right. Really would be useful to have access to race by income cross-tabs exit polling data on these kinds of races. I agree, if the off-year electorate tends to be higher socioeconomic status (which SES status, generally, is highly correlated with voting turnout rate), then the voters in these off-year (and mid-term) elections if skewing higher SES, would not be affected by elimination of Medicaid expansion. They by and large could easily be voters who either get healthcare through work or are older voters who are on Medicare. Cutting “Obamacare” doesn’t affect them. They already had healthcare. Which is why the GOP when pushed at to what they might “keep” from the ACA, only support those provisions which benefit those who already had healthcare – things like guaranteed issue for folks with pre-existing conditions or letting people keep their 18-25 year olds on their healthcare plans.
That’s who a big chunk of their voters are – old people and middle – to – upper-class households. Two groups who benefitted least from the ACA.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
So, what happens when half a million people all of a sudden find out they can’t get medical help when they need it? I mean that as a political question. How likely is it that Kentucky might dump a bunch of Republican assholes next year, once they see how badly this has fucked them? Paul’s seat is up next year, as are all their House seats, however many there are.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Zandar: No words. I wish it could have been different. I will never understand how people can purposely vote to screw themselves and the people around them.
Arm The Homeless
@rikyrah:
Well, she is quite a few shades lighter than POTUS, so there is the possibility that they might take a hint that the GOP wants their votes, not their problems.
OTOH, it’s fucking Kentucky, so who knows what those whiskey-tango psychos are willing to ensure to let the world know that nobody is the boss of them.
Yatsuno
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): They blame the ni-CLANG! who took it away from them. This play has already been written.
Richard Mayhew
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): they will blame or be told to blame Obama
Fedkanaut
Republicans hold VA Senate too, so definitely no expansion there.
Yet another awful and depressing election.
FDRLincoln
I’m not in Kentucky but I am in Kansas. People who say liberals should “just move”….really? I’ve been here for 25 years. My friends and family are here. My business is here. Where would I move? You want to fund a cross-country move for me and my family? I don’t have the money to move.
Renie
OT: is it just my old eyes but when on the home page do every post show the same text about KY?
Corner Stone
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
It’s always going to be the black guy’s fault. This isn’t hard, and they aren’t going to blame Bevin.
ArchTeryx
@The Raven on the Hill: Yep, it’s indeed me. ArchTeryx got started on IRC and alt.callahans back in 1989-1990 (though I originally posted as Kehaar back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Gopher was the only “web search” engine, and the internet was an academic novelty).
different-church-lady
@dr. luba: This is taking bigfooting to a whole new level.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Given that Walker’s in his second term in Wisconsin, Voldemort is still Governor in Florida, and Brownback got another term to salt the earth that once was Kansas after spending his first term burning the state to the ground, I’m not holding out a lot of hope for Kentucky.
The Raven on the Hill
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): It is often the case that voters do not connect policy with their votes. I expect many of them will blame the Democrats, perhaps even some people whose relatives die. Also, I wonder how many people will refuse to go to healthcare.gov because it is Obamacare.
SIA
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Yep. They are cool with Kynect, just hate anything to do with Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Dumbasses.
http://wonkwire.com/2014/10/10/kentuckians-love-kynect-hate-obamacare/ (Not even gonna pretend to know how to do the links now)
Tripod
I knew for sure Conway was fucked when CSX closed the rail shops in Erwin Tn and Corbin Ky last month. King Coal is dead, and that’s that. Nobody voted healthcare, they voted the gut appeal of Obama’s War on Coal. To be fair, those mines are never reopening, and Central Appalachia is facing some hard times to come.
Fedkanaut
@FDRLincoln: Not to mention that the number of sane states (i.e., those which don’t have a Republican trifecta) is depressingly small these days.
The Raven on the Hill
@ArchTeryx: Oh, cool. If you’d like to catch up, e-mail me via my blogger profile.
bluehill
Crazy and I think surveys showed that Kentuckians liked Kynect. It will be interesting to see who voted, but until then I’m going with the fear(or hate)-of-a-black-man-is-greater-than-concern-about-me explanation.
Omnes Omnibus
The site is taking a long time to load. It seems to be hanging on the twitter platform load.
Redshift
@rikyrah:
You really need to stop listening to Jim Webb.
goblue72
Voter turnout rates by income, Presidential election – http://www.demos.org/data-byte/voter-turnout-income-2008-us-presidential-election
The higher the income, the higher the voter turnout. Voter turnout rate for poor folks – under 45 percent. For folks making $100k a year or more- 75 percent and more.
I’m trying to find how it looks in mid-terms and off-years, but most of the studies focus on the Presidential election cycle.
SIA
@bluehill: Saw on Twitter turnout was under 30%.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Careful now.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: Yeah, you and amk both have really valid election analysis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I know, “fuck me, I hate new things.”
Nate Dawg
Just ran a PINGDOM speedtest, and it Congrats! Balloon Juice broke the test. It failed to load completely after 60s. (I put it out of its misery after that.)
Lots of errors to erroneous links and 0 KB data pulls (long list of them). Looks like there is a process running loading pngs over and over again. Also, the tag process is extremely slow, and the webpage is enormously large (over 5 MB) for a blog.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s just hanging forever for me. Something called transfertools.info.
Nate Dawg
And I can no longer edit comments.
Emma
Tomorrow I’ll rethink this. Tonight… screw them. They made their bed.
PaulW
What is sickening is that we’re expected to accept a 30 percent voter turnout as a “Will of the People” thing.
Problem is, 70 percent of the People basically voted “None of the Above” or “Didn’t Care.”
When a minority of voters show up, we get only the extremists voting, the ones who care no matter what, and they tend to care about absolutist positions on issues most people don’t even think about. As a result, most people end up screwed, and then wonder why that happened (and sadly listen to the wrong people blame others).
There ought to be a rule: no election closes until they can confirm a solid majority (over 55 percent) of registered voters have cast a ballot. If that means keeping the polls open for three-five more days and for hours on end, so be it. If that means putting a “None of the Above” option on the ballot to entice people who can’t choose between bad options, so be it. If that requires the major parties to foot the bill for any costly extensions – which ought to encourage them to get the damn votes out – so be it.
Voter fraud is a damn lie. The real scandal is the lack of turnout. That must get fixed. Now.
Nate Dawg
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Yeah, it just moved from the twitter hang to that one for me.
pseudonymous in nc
Well, at least they have guns, liquor and heroin out east, the GOP-approved way for poor white middle-aged people to treat their health conditions.
goblue72
Still digging for midterm SES data, but this study done just before the 2014 midterms on voter turnout rates amongst black voters between Presidential election cycles and how it affect prospects of Democrats in midterms – http://jointcenter.org/sites/default/files/Joint%20Center%202014%20Black%20Turnout%2010-29-14_0.pdf
The predictions were borne out, with white voters at total percentage of voter share in 2014 (just like in 2010) were a much larger share than in 2008 or 2012.
Still would like to see SES cross-tabulation. Would be interesting to see how turnout rates (and Dem/GOP splits) tied to SES by race.
The Raven on the Hill
@PaulW: Mandatory voting, with penalties for states that fail to register 90% of eligible voters.
Hah!
Nellie
Just curious. How many times do Republicans pull off a victory when they’ve never led in the polls? It reminds me of Brownback and Kobach winning in Kansas. Of Netanyahu winning in Israel. I’m stumped to think of it ever going the other way – a Democrat pulling off a surprise victory without leading in the polls.
pseudonymous in nc
@The Raven on the Hill:
It is also often the case that they don’t think voting makes a difference, don’t vote, and so don’t see a difference which confirms what they thought to begin with.
Learned helplessness is a hell of a thing.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Zandar: I hope you’re wrong about Kentucky’s future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right.
Here in VA, it was a pretty good night for Team D, but not good enough to flip the state Senate (and the House of Delegates changing was never in the cards today).
We can see a brighter future. We know how to get there. It’s just going to take longer than we hope, and longer than it should.
Keep working for that brighter future.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gian
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not me, but given the obvious racism in the polling for places like West Virginia in 2008, I can see where some might make the argument.
Since she was working for President Obama, I expect that the argument will not be borne out as she only has one degree of distance from the guy with the too dark of a skin tone.
amk
@Corner Stone: yeah, your fuck bombs are the true analysis we oughta admire.
benw
@Zandar: So sorry, Zandar. I know a little how you feel, because I was there for the 2004 Bush/Cheney victory-fest and hated every second of it.
gene108
Dems are basically fucked.
The whole Dem platform is “hey, vote for us and we’ll make your life better, especially if you are poor” and Kentucky Dems did that and still lost.
No clue what Democrats can do now to reverse the losses of the last five years.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: We can always curl up in a ball and give up. or we can work to support our chosen candidates for the 2016 elections. A couple of negative results in an odd year (not even off year) election are no reason for despair. There were some good results too.
Linda
Your best case scenario may come true: the new gov has signaled that he will ask for a waiver, saying” nobody will lose anything.”
pseudonymous in nc
@Omnes Omnibus:
At some point you have to treat it as a structural problem. The GOP has worked out that it can gum up the federal legislature and do its shitwork in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, with the aid of ALEC and the Hair Club for Growth. People don’t fucking show up to vote on the Dem side outside of a presidential year, while the wingnuts show up for the opening of an envelope. States that elect their governors in off or odd years are going to continue doing so.
Fake Irishman
The Kentucky election is a disaster, but don’t give up hope quite yet. Bevin was backtracking a bit in the last days. Also, Arkansas ended up keeping its expansion despite the good guys losing the governor’s chair. Arizona too kept the expansion despite replacing a pro-Medicaid GOP governor with an absolute wing nut. I think it is very possible that Bevin will end Medicaid expansion, but it has thus far proven more difficult to take away benefits when they are in place than blocking them in the first place.
(Of course on labor rights and everything else, Bevin is going to be a complete disaster)
Poptartacus
Yawn, who cares about Kentucky
Kim Davis country
Dumb fucking hillbillies
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just do not see a way forward for Dems. At some point either improved access to healthcare or the improving economy or some sort of logical cause and effect relationship between results and voters response to those results should manifest, but over the last five years there’s no correlation between results and candidates getting elected.
And low turn out in off year elections is way of life in the USA and has been for decades, so Dems need to find a way to reach people who are committed to voting.
AxelFoley
@John Cole:
Just curious, Cole–were you one of the ones complaining about the Obamacare rollout?
If so–IF SO–this is delicious irony. LOL
Citizen Alan
@FDRLincoln:
I’m 46. My mother is 81. I promised her that I wouldn’t leave north Mississippi while she was still alive, but I’ve made it clear to my sister that the day after our mother’s funeral, I will liquidate everything I have and move to Canada with nothing but the clothes on my back if necessary. I will not grow old and die in a state where, based on election returns, 2 out of every 3 people I meet are some combination pig ignorant and evil.
Citizen Alan
@pseudonymous in nc:
I talked a doctor into letting me check out of a hospital a day early so I could go vote. I’d been in for most of two days due to food poisoning. My blood sugar was still over 200, but dammit, I was going to vote.
Ripley
New design issue: the loading of the ‘Punch Down’ script still loads REALLY fast, within six or seven comments, like the old site. The ‘Your Life-Long Home Is Full Of Morons, You Should Move’ script is still on too; can you replace that with comment numbering? Thanks.
Radio One
why has public polling been so bad? I never thought that Conway was going to win, but he lost by 8 points, when most polls had him up by 2 or more.
The Raven on the Hill
@Fake Irishman: Don’t forget that all of the hard right states are bankrupt.
Frances
I seem to remember that when Kentuckians were interviewed during the first year of the ACA, they said that Kentucky Kynect was much better than that Obamacare.
Is it possible that they still think they don’t actually have Obamacare?
Frances
@MazeDancer:
They absolutely hate the idea of giving people insurance for free. If it’s like some other Medicaid alternatives being used in other states, it will funnel money to private insurance companies and cost more than putting people on the state Medicaid program.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@The Raven on the Hill: Or approach it from the other direction: the number of representatives your states gets in Congress is based upon the number of people that voted in the last few elections. If you work to tank turnout, you also tank your seats.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@The Raven on the Hill: We moved from California to Washington 5 years ago and the few RWers we have bumped into seem to think that California is bankrupt.
5 years ago it was in some trouble but that has been resolved since Brown was elected Governor and the state was un-gerrymandered. The last I heard they had a nice surplus.
If only some of it were water.
Elizabelle
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): I am going to move back to California one day. Or some blue state. Like NC a lot, but will never move to a red state. Never. Life is short, and it’s shorter in stupid states.
Kentucky goddamn. They shat their bed. Getting zero tourist dollars from me. Just became flyover and drive past territory, beautiful as it is.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Elizabelle: California is still Home in my head. I like it here, but I miss so many things about California. Sometimes I feel like we will move back some day but it probably won’t ever happen.
The Raven on the Hill
@Frances: “Is it possible that they still think they don’t actually have Obamacare?”
Very likely.
A guy
Democrat candidates and causes got rolled yesterday. God I love global warming. Just had a nice November 4 77 degree run