.
It’s all fun and games, until your constituents realize they’ll be losing their insurance…
Individual premiums would DOUBLE & ranks of the uninsured would jump 32 MILLION by 2026 if Obamacare repeal bill becomes law: CBO
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) January 17, 2017
CBO projects that HALF of the population will have no insurers willing to participate in the non-group insurance market under repeal bill.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) January 17, 2017
Wait till Trump really gets cracking on this idea. GOP will be at 50% by summer https://t.co/bNzaNjYJQG pic.twitter.com/fAJSRfMv4X
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 16, 2017
Of course, the GOP’s own President-Asterisk has been running his mouth without bothering to check on the Party Line — it’s HIS party now…
NEWS: Trump talks to WaPo, vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan https://t.co/DxtWtm1SkI
— Robert Costa (@costareports) January 16, 2017
President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.
Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party’s congressional majorities.
Trump’s plan is likely to face questions from the right, after years of GOP opposition to further expansion of government involvement in the health-care system, and from those on the left, who see his ideas as disruptive to changes brought by the Affordable Care Act that have extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans…
Trump's quotes in this interview are consistent with single-payer, but not with any GOP alternative ever. https://t.co/MFDwC2mgLm
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) January 16, 2017
Team Trump is basically playing healthcare madlibs, throwing out random words that add up to nothing https://t.co/cLJp183O4P
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) January 16, 2017
… Trump’s goal is “to get insurance for everybody through marketplace solutions, through bringing costs down, through negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, allowing competition over state lines,” Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, said during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show…
Asked whether Trump’s replacement plan amounts to an expansion of government health care, Spicer insisted Monday it does not, saying access would be improved and costs would be driven down through marketplace competition.
“The competition is sorely missing,” Spicer said. “We’re not negotiating with drug manufacturers to drive the cost down. We’re not instilling a sense of competition to allow them to negotiate over state lines. There’s a lot of things missing which by their very nature would drive the cost down, and the beautiful thing about someone like Donald Trump is he comes in from a very successful business perspective. He knows how to negotiate great deals, and at this point, he can now use his negotiating skills to benefit the American people and give them a much better health-care system than they have.”…
Also, probably: Unicorns that fart new, effective antibiotics! And piss addiction-free painkillers!
Think the buyer’s remorse is starting to set in, yet?
cynthia ackerman
Can we just start calling the GOP one big Death Panel?
bystander
Is it too early to market an “Obama: Miss me yet?” bumpersticker?
Yarrow
Death by GOP. Death by Trump.
Hey! He can brand that second one!
dmsilev
@bystander: They go on sale Jan 20, 12:00:01.
Calouste
The depravity and lack of interest in actual governing of the GOP is clear from the fact that they have had six years to come up with “Replace” part, and they have done fuck all.
catclub
Trump says Universal coverage, Spicer gives the GOP code phrase “Universal access” There is universal access to Rolex watches. Everybody is free to buy one.
Yarrow
@catclub: Yeah, I pointed that out the other night. Sure, I can access health insurance. Like, I can look at the policies and maybe even talk to whoever is selling them. That has no relation to whether I can actually afford it.
The same way everyone can access actual healthcare. They can walk into the doctor’s office or hospital. In the case of the doctor it doesn’t mean they’ll be treated. In the case of the hospital it’s triage and out the door.
MJS
The buyer’s remorse will never kick in. Losing health insurance will still be attributed to minorities receiving free things, not anything the Republicans did. Having your premiums increase by 25% will simply a vestige of Obamacare. When the bombs start to drop, it will be because Obama left us weak. If you haven’t noticed, those who voted for Trump are very much like Trump in that they can never, ever admit a mistake.
Betty Cracker
Klein over at Vox outlines a way the GOP can kill ObamaCare without leaving too many cleat-marks on their own dicks — by turning healthcare over to the states. Doesn’t sound like what the shitgibbon’s minions are plotting, though.
LAO
I don’t want to sound like a defeatist — but I’m not sure than any of this matters. The American electorate has the memory of a gnat, I think the Republicans believe that they will suffer no lasting damage by repealing the ACA. And nothing that has happened during the last 8-years proves them wrong.
ETA: What MJS said, above.
Lee
Here is my fear. That Trump figures this out and really puts the screws to the Republicans to expand the social safety net while pushing his racism & bigotry.
Another Scott
@LAO: Thing is, though, they’re going to be taking real money out of the system. Doctors and hospitals (and insurance companies) are going to see a big drop in income if this stuff goes through. They have powerful lobbies and are going to make noise.
At least I expect them to, but in this topsy-turvy world of Donnie and his minons, who knows…
Don’t give up just yet. There’s still a lot of factors on our side.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cermet
Donny Dump can no more get universal coverage here in the u s of amerika then Putin could; in fact, Putin, the new dear leader of the thug party, does have a better chance than the dump; dump is farting through his mouth like he does on every topic. The Kock sucker brothers will never tolerate health care for the masses – ever and they control the real money.
Villago Delenda Est
The Ohman cartoon is perfect: notice that the GOP flag is over the US flag.
Party before country, always, with the GOP, which needs to go the way of the NSDAP and the CPSU.
TriassicSands
Let me guess, Trump will bypass the CBO and let Jared Kushner appraise his “universal” and “dirt cheap” health care plan. Kushner will do that in his time off from bringing peace to the Palestinians and Israelis. Amazingly, Kushner will discover that DonnieCare is the best health care plan in the universe. By a lot.
2017 Time Magazine Person of the Year: Jared Kushner.
catclub
@Another Scott:
The same powerful lobbies of doctors and hospitals that forced all the red states to accept medicaid expansion? Not the best example of powerful.
Major Major Major Major
Trump’s comments are reminding me of the Kang and Kodos debate, with healthcare instead of abortions.
Healthcare for all!
*boooo*
Healthcare for none!
*boooo*
Healthcare for some, miniature American flags for others!
*cheers*
Betty Cracker
@LAO: Yeah, that’s mostly true because people pay so little attention to politics and have such a vague notion of how our system of government actually works. For example, it’s plain as day to folks here at BJ that the GOP has been actively sabotaging the U.S. economy for Obama’s entire tenure, but they paid no price for it because most people didn’t realize what was happening. They blame Obama or generic “gridlock” in Congress, as if both parties are equally responsible.
That dynamic doesn’t seem to work when a single party controls all branches of government and/or there’s a huge crisis (like the Great Recession) that awakens people from their torpor. If the Republicans are dumb enough to crash ObamaCare in such a way that it creates chaos, they may actually pay a price for it, though that will be cold comfort to the millions harmed…
Villago Delenda Est
This is the problem with something that has inelastic demand, you ignorant sack of lying shit. These morans think that one obtains health care as one obtains a flat screen TV…by shopping around.
/headdesk
gene108
@bystander:
No
SiubhanDuinne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nice catch. I’m usually not too bad at reading the iconography of political cartoons, but I missed that entirely. Thanks!
Another Scott
@catclub: Yeah, I (living in Virginia) was disappointed by that.
But there’s a big difference between starting up a new program with the promise of more money and more customers, and shutting down a program that has 20M+ people on it.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Lee
@MJS:
Careful lumping all Trump voters as one. As others have pointed out there really are at least 2 types. The racists & then there are the voters that are reflexively Republican. They really don’t pay attention & just for ‘R’. I know a lot of these and I was on them constantly before the election. Some I was able to convince others, not so much. Others saw it just as a ‘protest vote’ with no expectation of him actually winning.
The ones I didn’t convince have started freaking out over how fucking bad Trump is. Think about that for a bit. If you are a reflexive Republican the last 2 months have had to be absolutely miserable for you (not that I’m very sympathetic). Many of them are prior service and the Russia/Putin thing has them practically wetting their pants. I’ve been able to land a significant number of ‘I told you so’ and they agree.
JPL
The Healthy school lunch initiative is also going to be repealed, also. The same folks are concerned that someone might enjoy a soda while using food stamp money.
Capri
My vote is that the Congress changes one little thing in the law then screams over and over that they repealed Obamacare and replaced it with something better. Media thinks that sounds reasonable to them, and from this day forward they report that the GOP “saved” the country from ruin.
gvg
access for all doesn’t square with repealing the no pre existing conditions.
SFAW
May have been noted elsewhere in this joint, but: Josh Marshall called Shitgibbon a “punk.” First time I’ve seen him called that, and by a journalist/pundit no less.
Immanentize
@Capri: I would take that result. Na.Gon.Ha.Pen
? Martin
@Betty Cracker: I imagine that’s what they’ll do though. They have no good federal options, but they could put a federal mandate down and make the states come up with the solutions. Evidence that this is what they will come up with comes from Jerry Brown:
He sees it coming. The only positive spin I can put on this is that California has the potential to absorb that change under the right conditions. If the state chooses to collect local taxes dollar for dollar what the feds cut, we have a legislature and governor that can implement anything from single payer to a simple continuation of the ACA exchange, maintain Medical, and so on – and we have an electorate that would accept that. Mass will be okay as well, because they have their prior system to fall back on, as will be Hawaii. But everyone else is almost certainly fucked – either by having an insufficiently robust insurance market, or an insufficient regulatory approach, or a legislature not positioned to execute.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: Of course, the morans of the GOP don’t realize the roots of the healthy school lunch initiative, or the entire food stamp program: the then Department of War being alarmed at the malnutrition they encountered with draftees in the early days of WWII.
These programs were originally instituted to address National Security concerns.
hovercraft
@bystander:
From November 9 it became appropriate, knowing what was coming made me miss Obama. Now that I can see and hear the train coming down the tracks, a bumper sticker is not enough, we need something much bigger and louder, it turns out it’s not a train, it’s the death star. RUN !
kindness
We aren’t negotiating drug pricing because Republicans slipped in a rider saying they couldn’t negotiate prices.
I understand Republicans ignoring/forgetting that part. I don’t know why the MSM keeps ignoring/forgetting that part.
@Lee: If you are trying to get us to feel sorry for ‘some’ Republicans, it isn’t working.
Villago Delenda Est
@Capri: Hence my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: I fervently hope that you are correct, cold comfort that it may be.
@Lee:
Not to sound like a mean spirited Republican — but I’m ok with the “lumping.” No amount of “I told you so’s” makes what these voters have done to America, remotely forgivable.
zhena gogolia
@Lee:
That’s good to hear.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Not really, not yet. Trump’s approval rating is still at 40%, which is only slightly lower than the 46.1% of the vote he got.
We’ll know buyer’s remorse has set in once Trump’s favorables and approval ratings go below 35%, and then below 30%.
The Moar You Know
@MJS: You got it. The GOP will blame Obama for the entire catastrophe, and American voters (left and right) will believe it without question. Seen this movie before.
@Villago Delenda Est: First thing I noticed as well. Thought to myself “that guy’s good!”
stinger
@LAO: Yes, but the ACA has been phased in gradually over most of the past 6 years, so that many people haven’t had much time to experience the difference it makes in their lives. With each passing year, however, they do begin to notice. If people lose their health coverage now, under a Republican President, Senate, AND House, I think there will be electoral repercussions.
ETA: Or, what Betty says at #18.
Barbara
@Capri: I wouldn’t put serious money on that position. I really don’t know what will happen. My vote for the best scenario that has a chance of happening is that they will pass some kind of “forward looking” changes that are dramatic enough to be waved around as repeal but non-specific enough that they are not self-executing, with more specific legislation being pushed further and further out. This has actually happened in the past with a number of measures. The thing is, every year that goes by makes it harder and harder for them to do anything. Everyone in Congress knows this and that’s why Paul Ryan is desperate to act fast. But I see his “preferred outcome” being less likely every day. Unfortunately for him, lots and lots of states have already tried high risk pools and found them to be ineffective — unless serious funding is provided, but that funding turns out to be more expensive than just subsidizing people getting regular insurance. I mean, if you have to pull 20% of people out of the market in order to even try to make the market work for the other 80%, then maybe you should admit that there actually is no free market solution.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@LAO: I fully support everyone’s attempts to win these people back and all, but just between me and you here?… Fuck them all. Every single one of them. Traitors. They all damn well knew and they lined up in perfect lockstep like the good germans they all proved themselves to be on November the 8th. This is a fucking nightmare and I, for one, will never, ever forgive the perpetrators.
? Martin
I think people are missing the on-the-ground politics of this.
The House (not Senate) has been the leading pusher of repeal because they are the most vulnerable to being primaried over repeal. Because the GOP has gerrymandered their districts so badly, the most hardcore conservative constituents have an outsized voice. These guys aren’t attuned to messages that work in the general – they assume the structural advantages (voter ID, gerrymandering, etc) will cover that. They just need to not get primaried from the right, and the way to do that is to go balls out against ACA. They can’t very well reverse that, even if all evidence demands that they do, because that’s how they got to DC to begin with. That is, the GOPs in the House are true believers of repeal.
Senators don’t have as many of those structural advantages so their sensibilities are a bit better balanced. They know where they need moderates, and in some cases liberals, and they also know how the timing of their re-election phases with the effort. Someone up in 2018 is vulnerable, but someone up in 2022 isn’t campaigning against the repeal decision but against the reality of what healthcare looks like half a decade into it.
House members are short-term thinkers because only what happens in the next 20 months matters. This threatens to cause a serious schism in the GOP between House and Senate. Trump is too stupid to recognize this. So the House presses on, McConnell presses on because he understands that he has no real power if the GOP doesn’t hold the House, but there’s more than enough secure GOP senators to reject this madness. This is going to be a bloodbath within the GOP caucus.
The reason the state option is so appealing is that it allows everyone to declare victory. Senators not up until 2022 can always blame their state government for fucking it up, and those up earlier and House members can claim they repealed as promised.
philpm
@gvg: I keep seeing/hearing from various folks “Oh, they’ll put that back in with the replacement”, or even “no, they won’t do that” (even though they already did). If they ever intended to keep it, they wouldn’t have voted to take it away to begin with. Really makes me want to smack myself in the head with a sledgehammer.
Major Major Major Major
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
Pretty much where I’m at.
pamelabrown53
@bystander: #2!!!!!
Re: “Obama, Miss Me Yet” bumperstickers. I read earlier today about a possible bumper sticker: “Make America Great Again (MAGA): Call Back Obama”. I’d buy and stick one on my car in a heart beat.
While I’m aware of how expert the republicans are at obfuscating and misdirecting, I do believe that they, + their added Trump anvil can prevail for a limited time. Too many republicans and their extended families will be personally devastated by family members dying early and $$$ medical bills beyond their wildest dreams.
Reality Bites.
.
LAO
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
I’m with you. I have no sympathy, no empathy — no nothing but disgust for Trump supporters and voters. I will never forgive them. And I quite frankly, don’t care to “try to understand them.” I’m happy to let others worry about that.
Corner Stone
@hovercraft:
“That’s no moon!”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MJS:
Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed.
schrodingers_cat
@? Martin: The 2 year congressional terms is another brilliant idea from the framers of the best constitution in the Universe. The other being the electoral college.
? Martin
@stinger:
I think so too. So much of what government influences is fairly abstract. The effect of taxes are generally psychological rather than directly meaningful. Most middle class won’t notice 2% more or less in their paycheck – these workers have enough slack to absorb it, even more true for upper income earners. But when those influences are direct – that changes things. Minimum wage increases are noticed because these workers tend to have so little slack to start with, that’s why that fight is so strong and so effective. Same holds true for insurance. Health is direct, and when its influenced negatively, people respond strongly – a lot more strongly than when its influenced positively. If I got sick today, I might complain about the system, but I have no real knowledge of what it was like before ACA, so I can’t really gauge how much better/worse things are. I might interpret things as actually being worse when it’s really better, or no different. But when things I counted on go away, you notice that immediately. The contrast is direct and immediate. People feel directly threatened. So the ramp down from ACA will likely be MUCH more vocal and angry than the ramp up to it.
I get the sense the GOP didn’t consider that dynamic.
hovercraft
@pamelabrown53:
Love it, where do I sign up to buy ;-)
ArchTeryx
@cynthia ackerman: I’m fine with ‘mass murderers’ myself. Since I have nothing left to lose and since political correctness is on the outs, hey, I’m borrowing a page from the Trumpkins and calling a spade a spade.
Jeffro
@Lee: they haven’t been THAT miserable, from what I can hear & see. Still rallying around their guy no matter how much he has betrayed the country.
I get – barely – that possibly, maybe, the most low-info American voter ever might think of Trump as a successful businessman and a nice slap at the status quo. But his behavior/words/tweets/etc + the info about Russia just. since. the election. mean that there are no more excuses. If anyone is defending Trump at this point, they must definitely are putting their party ahead of their country, at significant risk to their country
hovercraft
@kindness:
They didn’t forget a damn thing, they just want us to forget that they did it and why.
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: The Kang and Kodos debate is WHAT WE JUST HAD, and it gave us Trump. The whole schtick isn’t nearly as funny as it was before Bush was elected, and it’s even less funny now.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: @Jeffro: What about, we are more pure than driven snow, JS voters?
ETA: I was finding the smug stupidity of my Bernie-sis, I listen to Limbaugh for balance, JS voting, ex-friend increasingly hard to stomach.
Booger
@SFAW: Can you provide a link? Couldn’t find. Thanks!
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
In some ways you do. The problem is that you have to go shopping around in advance by looking at insurance companies, rather than trying to do when you actually need it. That’s the main function of insurance companies; you shop insurance companies and then they shop for providers for you. The bigger problem is that the medical providers are structured to conceal the real cost of everything so that nobody, even the providers and insurance companies, has a rational basis for negotiations.
ArchTeryx
@SFAW: Wow. Provide a link to that one, because for a Villager Pundit (and make no mistake, Josh Marshall went native a long time ago) to call Trump a punk is a serious milestone. And that shitheaded ferretface hasn’t even been sworn in yet!
Immanentize
What did Bush in? I mean really sent him down the tubes? It was a building pile of mis- and mal-feasance that really got Unavoidably and visibly summed up during Katrina. It was incompetence that ended up hurting real people that did him in. Trump ran as the can-do business genius. Incompetence and people being hurt will do him in (over time). And the Republicans will, hopefully, join him now that they are completely responsible for the competence of government. Sure, they will try to blame the Dems. But when the President is a _____________ (name your preferred party here) that is the party that will be blamed for pain.
hovercraft
@Booger: Here you go.
The Case for Not Being Crybabies
Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don’t surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.
Humboldtblue
@Lee:
They voted for this they are fucking responsible and there is no separation between those who voted for the single most unqualified candidate for office this nation has seen because they are “reflexively Republican” and those who are “racist.” At this fucking point in history they are interchangeable. Fuck this “play nice” and “not all Trump voters” as if any of the chucklefucks will ever take responsibility for their hateful, selfish views. They have fucked this country in ways that will do lasting harm and there is no room for this “only some of them are racists” bullshit.
ArchTeryx
@Immanentize: Yeah, Katrina cost thousands of needless deaths and countless amounts of suffering because of Bush’s malign neglect. It also served its specific purpose: Turn Louisiana into a permanent red state through ethnic cleansing.
This has the potential to cost millions of needless deaths, and some of us don’t intend to just crawl off in a corner and die. I intend to go before the kleig lights and call Republicans out for being mass murderers before I go.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
I expect a lot of that buyer’s remorse to take the form of selective rewriting of the past. The people who regret voting for Trump will retroactively have voted for Johnson or McMullin so that Trump isn’t their fault. Also, too, Trump will be discarded as evidence of any problem with the Republican party because he isn’t a True Conservative®.
Calouste
@schrodingers_cat: Making the candidate with the second most electoral college votes Vice-President was another brilliant idea.
Immanentize
I have a really serious question — Will Trump veto a bunch of Republican bills just because he can and to show he is boss? Or will he just sign everything? I can imagine either, but the veto one sounds like his “FIRED!” style. Say “No” first, look tough, then see what happens — if you can get a better (publicity-wise) deal. I imagine a number of pocket vetos too because he just can’t be bothered to do the signing on another person’s schedule.
But like everything these days, Who the fuck knows?
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
Anyone who listens to Limbaugh for balance is beyond reach, I’m sorry. I used to listen to him, for laughs, he’s is so over the top, that the fact that it’s all for show is obvious except to the “Dittoheads”. If it’s not family, just cut them off, we have too much to do to waste on people that dumb, family is family so I guess you have to try, but at this point even they might need to be cut off.
darrel wright
@Lee:
Thank you, and I’m going to start harping on this, Kassandra style. There are essentially as many “types” of trump voters as there are trump voters.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
It’s the free market at its best.
You are free to look at health insurance policies you cannot afford.
JGabriel
Calouste:
Oh, c’mon, that’s not fair. It’s not that the Republicans never came up with a replacement health care plan – it’s that the Republicans replacement health care plan was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama as the Affordable Health Care Act.
The reason they don’t have an alternative is that the ACA is their alternative plan – it’s the same plan Nixon pushed as an alternative to Ted Kennedy’s proposal of Medicare for All; it’s the same plan the Heritage Foundation and the GOP pushed in the 90’s as an alternative to Clinton’s proposals; and, it’s the same alternative plan Republican Governor Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts.
So the Republicans have – or at least had – an alternative health care plan. And once it got enacted by Democrats and signed by President Obama, Republicans could have declared victory and thanked the Dems and President Obama for finally acceding to the conservative vision for health care and passing the GOP’s health care plan.
But noooo, instead they had to demonize Dems, the black President, and the same health care plan they’d been pushing 40 years, all because … who the fuck knows? Probably because that’s what was best for the Koch Brothers, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News’s ratings, and because it raised taxes on the top 1% and the investor class.
And now the GOP doesn’t have an alternative plan because they spent the past 8 years lying about and vilifying their own alternative.
So the reason Republicans couldn’t come up with an alternative plan is because they threw the one they had under the bus, then backed up over it, then ran over it again, then threw kerosene on it, lit it on fire, and jumped up and down waving their arms shouting “Look! Look at me and my flaming rhetoric!”
Calouste
@Immanentize: I’d take that result as well. Normalizing the idea that everyone should be able to afford healthcare and that government has a major role to play in that is a good thing. Even if we have to call it T-care for a while.
hovercraft
@Immanentize:
Depends on what Jared and Bannon think about said bills. Remember Bannon hates Ryan, he want’s to blow up the congressional GOP, or at the very least their leadership, so don’t count on the Shitgibbon being a rubber stamp. Bannon will be working towards his own goal of remaking the party, Jared will be working to make the families as much money as possible, he is also going to try to make them appear as respectable as possible, good luck with that.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: I have. Check out my addendum. I say ex-friend. Frankly, I think its her husband who is the RWNJ. My friend is apolitical and ultra-emotional. She is pretty isolated and alone since she moved a few years ago to care for her mother, that’s why I cut her the slack that I did.
Immanentize
@ArchTeryx: I hear your anger, and I share it, but hyperbole is not a useful weapon against oppression.
“Thousands” did not die in Katrina (around 1500 all told? which is a huge sad horrible toll, but still not thousands)
and the current Governor in Louisiana, your “permanent red state,” is a Democrat.
I am not staying quiet, nor am I suggesting anyone stay quiet. I am just suggesting we look for and exploit valid pressure points for change. And not make ourselves easily ignored in the process.
Betty Cracker
@Yoda Dog Democrat, @Major Major Major Major & @LAO: I’m with y’all — fuck all 62,979,636 of those morons with every rusty implement in the tool shed. They are either racist, sexist, xenophobic shitheads or shitheads for whom blatant racism, sexism and xenophobia were not deal-breakers. And for anyone who wants to come bleating “get used to losing, then!” at me, I am not in charge of swing voter outreach nor will I ever be, so fuck off with that nonsense too.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
I think it was actually the journalists who were in NOLA who had witnessed so much death and neglect they finally held Bush accountable for it. That seemed to be the event that finally triggered some actual journalism from them. One of the things that happened was that Brownie was on live tv denying people were at the convention center. Meanwhile the split screen was showing a woman who died in her wheelchair outside the convention center.
I think that was the turning point when the media finally decided they needed to speak up and investigate other areas of his failed presidency.
eclare
@ArchTeryx: A fucking men. Stay strong!
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
They don’t just have to worry about it being too popular next year or the year after; they’re worried it’s already too popular to repeal easily. Every day they delay is another day the Democrats can use to rally public opinion in favor and scare skittish Republican legislators away from repeal.
FlipYrWhig
@Immanentize:
I think he will, because he would get hosannas from the press for it, and because it would demonstrate how he’s willing to “shake things up” and so forth, which is what I hear _all the time_ in conversations between strangers about Trump. And because I think he really does think that he’s a master negotiator who can always strike a better deal than anyone else has ever tried to strike. It’s very TV-CEO, Apprentice, Shark Tank, etc.: initially-confident guy comes in with a pitch, investor/boss/superior tells him it sucks and to come back with something better before he embarrasses himself again, he buckles down and makes it better, superior pats him on the head. Deal successfully struck, the greatest, the best, yooge. Handshakes and backslaps and thumbs-up all around. How the deal turns out is immaterial because by then there’s some new deal to worry about.
catclub
@hovercraft:
There has been no demand that Kushner sell all his holdings to satisfy conflict of interest problems. There should be.
Jeffro
@LAO: has anyone commented or posted yet on the Trump inaugural poem ?
It
Is
Fucking
Hysterical
hovercraft
@Immanentize:
He lives in NY, where yes there is a “Democratic” Governor and lower house, but that same “democratic” Governor conspired with the republicans control the senate, to make sure that he isn’t forced to govern as a democrat.
ETA: I don’t think that thousands is an exaggeration, if they stopped the Medicaid expansion on Monday, stopped covering pre-existing and all the rest of Obamacare, at the very least thousands would die.
Immanentize
@MomSense: Good point indeed. Today the NYTimes had an article which had a picture of Trump at the Miss Universe contest in Moscow with nary a mention of his recent claim that he had never been in Russia. It was upsetting to see that opportunity missed. So will the press actually investigate and report his problems? (I know, rhetorical Q).
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
I don’t think Republicans ever proposed a dramatic expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
JPL
@FlipYrWhig: Unless someone takes him aside, and informs him, that they have the info to indict him. In his mind, he’d love to say you’re fired.
Pogonip
@dmsilev: Why exactly one second after noon?
John Revolta
Nice cartoon but who’s “McCarthy?”
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
It calls Barack Obama a “tyrant.”
And he has to sit on the stage and listen to that?
I thought I was over being shocked and appalled, but I guess I’m not.
LAO
@Jeffro: Holy shit — I just looked it up:
ETA — cutting and pasting did this poem no favors.
SiubhanDuinne
@John Revolta:
Kevin McCarthy, House Majority Leader.
Immanentize
@hovercraft: Who lives in NY? John Bel Edwards?
I grew up in NY and Cuomo is a disaster (ask LAO about the legal services bill). But Louisiana Democrats fought hard to get a Democrat elected Governor and that is an important win for us in the deep south that we should celebrate.
hovercraft
@catclub:
There may not be a demand, but don’t worry if there is, he’s already dealt/dealing with it, he’s taking a page out of his FIL’s playbook, I saw somewhere last week that he is going to hand over his holdings to his brother and sister. See no more conflicts, he has no way of influencing what happens with them anymore.
HeleninEire
You know what would be great? If Balloon Juice posted commenters pics of the woman’s march from all over the country. Well, in my and others’ experience, the world. I’m going to the one in Dublin. Hell, its right down the street from my apt. Whaddya say? Can we have a designated front poster to send pics to?
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: Where does it say they’re going to read that at the inauguration?
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Elected Democrats need to borrow a page from John Lewis and boycott the shit show.
NotMax
For “across state lines” read “race to the bottom.”
LAO
@Immanentize: Please don’t — I’m still fuming at Cuomo’s display of craven cowardice with his midnight veto.
ArchTeryx
@Immanentize: That’s a very good point: LA just elected a Democratic governor. At the federal level, though, our D Senators (and candidates) went down in flames, so in that it seems to be working just fine. The D gov isn’t anything to sneeze at, though: He ushered in Medicaid Expansion against the extreme legislature.
As well, from what I was recalling, about 2500 people all-told died, but my memory for numbers is lousy. Still, remember this: From what I read, only a couple dozen died from the hurricane itself. The rest of them died from a combination of flooding and the malign neglect.
As for calling the GOP mass murderers and exclaiming that they will cause millions of deaths, I’m sticking to it. Those millions wouldn’t drop dead the first day after the ACA repeal, but get back to me in five years: The premature death count will be at least in the high six figures, and quite possibly seven figures, by then. On average, before the ACA, the most conservative estimate was that 25,000 people a year died due to lack of health insurance – in Texas alone.
Besides, the other side uses this sort of hyperbole *all the time* and used it, quite successfully, to get Trump elected. I’m through bringing a can of mace to a gunfight. I’ve nothing left to lose.
Mary G
CNN has signed Rick Santorum. Fucking collaborators.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: And I thought having to listen to Franklin “idiot son” Graham pray about “one nation under Jesus” at a W inaugural was bad.
Class. These people does not have.
LAO
@LAO: It’s tough to pick a favorite line — but I think this is mine.
SFAW
@Booger:
It was a comment in his daily mail (which I have since deleted). I’ll see if I can find it.
[Goes off hunting, sound of “Final Jeopardy” music in the background]
OK here it is.
ArchTeryx
@Immanentize: He’s talking about me.
Jeffro
So I see today that the drive-by truckers are going to be coming to Washington DC later this spring Fri April 21 and Sat 22nd I believe the dates were. For the first time in for albums RW NJ brother doesn’t want to go see them – hmm, I wonder what could be at issue?
Anyway I have GOT to see the outstanding songs from “American band” performed live so I’m definitely going brother or no brother. Which gave me a thought: if there are any other NoVA or DC area juicers who are planning to attend, let’s try to coordinate which show we’ll be at and have a little bit of a meet up!
Please feel free to jump in here and I will be sure to repost this thought in another thread later this evening ( or maybe a front pager can put it up if appropriate?) hard to top an evening with the DBTs at the 930 club on a Friday or Saturday night!
NotMax
@Mary G
Didn’t even realize the position of rest room attendant was open.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
This isn’t really true. There are some similarities at the macro level, which makes sense because there has to be some kind of community rating/mandate/subsidy structure for a non-single payer plan to work. But Obamacare is different in almost all the essential details. For example, the Heritage plan didn’t require that health insurance cover anything beyond catastrophic care, while Obamacare requires it to cover all care with deductibles and preventive care without any kind of payment. The Heritage plan would have scrapped Medicare and radically shrunk the federal role in Medicaid, rather than preserving Medicare and expanding Medicaid. And so on and so on.
JPL
@Jeffro: I know the poem exists, and it fits with Trump’s misogynistic campaign, but it’s just wrong. I will unite all including the sluts. It’s implied.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
An assumption on my part, and possibly a bad one. Many presidential inaugurals since JFK have had poems written for the occasion and read by their creators.
But the whole thing is so awful, it might as well have been written by William McGonagall.
Anne Laurie
@HeleninEire:
Send me jpgs, and I’ll front-page them!
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: maybe he (Obama) could really subtlyscratch his forehead with his middle finger while the poem is being read …
… alternatively he could resign on the 19th, swear in Biden as the 45th president, and skip the fucking inauguration along with John Lewis and about 50 congressman
Calouste
@schrodingers_cat: 48 Democratic Congress people are boycotting the inauguration so far already according to Daily Kos, which is 25% of them.
Jeffro
@Mary G: can’t wait to throw that news at my RWNJ dad who thinks that CNN is a neutral site
Patricia Kayden
@catclub:
That’s exactly how Republicans think about healthcare, a good education, housing, etc. You hit the nail on the head.
Jeffro
@Calouste: I think over 80 of them skipped Nixon’s second inauguration … I won’t be happy unless we top that number
O. Felix Culpa
@LAO: Nothing could do that dreadful doggerel any favors. I like this response in the comments:
Donald you are a first class putz.
The whole world hates your gutz
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
My Representative (Judy Chu, CA-27) has already announced she is.
MJS
@Lee: Then in addition to being reflexively Republican, they are incurably stupid. There were warning signs re: Trump and the Russians well before the election for anyone who actually wanted to see. For someone to claim to be surprised is actually a demonstration of what I said – they will never admit a mistake. Fault will lie with the Democrats for not making more of it, or the media for not covering it more extensively. It will not be that your reflexively Republican friends didn’t do their homework. Again, Republicans in general, and Trump voters more specifically do not admit their mistakes.
hovercraft
@Immanentize:
ArchTeryx lives in NY. I agree with your assessment of Cuomo, he is all that is evil, which is why when he tries to run for president, I hope and pray that he is beaten back the way JEB! was. John Bel Edwards did a great job beating back Vitter. And I saw Cuomo’s veto in the dark of night, caving into the special interests, while throwing poor defendants to the wolves.
Calouste
@LAO: I find it funny that the poem makes all the references to Scotland, considering the first search result for “most unpopular person in Scotland” is about the shitgibbon. From April 2013.
eclare
@LAO: OMFG. No Democrat should attend.
HeleninEire
@Anne Laurie: Thanks
ArchTeryx
@hovercraft: I have absolutely zero doubt he’ll do exactly the same to the Medicaid recipients – me included – once ACA repeal passes. The only real bump in the road is the Assembly but threatened with an instant $4 billion deficit, they’ll cave quickly enough.
Mike in DC
@LAO:
This is where I am at. The nomination of Trump was an unforgivable offence against democracy and civil society, as far as I am concerned. Those who supported this atrocity have much to answer for.
JPL
@LAO: The republicans have to disavow that now, before Trump tweets about it.
danielx
@Calouste:
Quite true, but –
1) They didn’t really feel they needed to, since they are philosophically opposed to any government involvement in health care in any way.
2) Coming up with a “replacement” would mean actually proposing policies, which they don’t like to do because people generally think Republican policies suck once they’re out in the open. (People are completely correct in this.)
3) They have no real interest in governing, which involves, you know, actual work.
4) It’s been ever so much more fun to hold symbolic votes and scream “Obamacare sucks! Also too, Obama is an imposter and the devil! And a soshulist!”
Now, now they actually have to govern, and they don’t know how. Not that they were any good at it anyway.
Oh yeah – what is worse than a root canal? Finding out a root canal won’t work and your best option is extraction followed by bridge or implant.
Embrace the suck…
Another Scott
It looks like Donnie is going to try to claim that the Women’s March on Saturday is full of his supporters…
Shameless.
Cheers,
Scott.
pamelabrown53
@Mary G: #97.
“CNN has just signed Rick Santorum”..Sounds like s far our “free press” is being cowed. Where’s Anthony Weiner’s “analysis”? Still, I’m not thatworried when taking the long view: Trump is beoming more and more toxic by the measure of his historicallly lo polling numbers. When he reahes the magical threshold (27%)? the damn may just break.
John Revolta
@SiubhanDuinne: Gotcha. I was thinking “McConnell”.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
If hiring Lewandowski wasn’t enough to convince him otherwise, I doubt hiring Santorum will.
LAO
@Mary G: This is real, “Alice through the looking glass,” shit.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Kushner is doing the same thing Trump is — turning his holdings over to family members (brother and mother, IIRC) so he can loot the Treasury at will while pretending to have “separation.”
hovercraft
@LAO:
Did you read the comments?
3:00 PM on 16/01/2017
DonaldLand
Donald’s wee hands – were typing a tweet.
Some wall he was planning would be eighteen feet.
He’ll move the bad hombres back to Cancun.
An’ grab a few pu s s ies – to make the girls swoon.
He’ll show us his taxes sometime in the future.
His skill doing deals are bigly and super.
He knows marvelous words – like lawsuit – and crass.
And he thinks that Ivanka’s a nice piece of ass.
He likes Breitbart news – but not girls called Megyn.
His locker room banter – has women all begging.
He thinks that Obama’s a real piece of work.
And McKinnon an’ Baldwin can’t act worth a fxxx
He’s checking how Muslims spell words like Koran.
And promised he’ll rip up the deal with Iran.
And the NATO agreement should have dues and fees.
But first he must drain out the swamp in Dee Cee.
He thinks that Farage and the Brexit are great.
And Vladimir Putin could be a good mate.
He doesn’t know wizards or clansmen called Kleagle.
But the Mexican dudes …. they’re all rapists and evil.
His wee fingers are aching ….. it’s now four am.
But still he goes on and he retweets again.
He “likes” – “lock her up” and “put her in jail”.
And posts that are “shared” about birth place details.
eclare
@LAO: Seconded. Loved how the author worked in the word harridan.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Or maybe I was justified in making that assumption. The Telegraph says:
So I don’t know.
danielx
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
Pretty much. They knew who and what they were getting and voted for him anyway. So yeah, fuck them and all their feels.
Humboldtblue
Here is Washington Rep Cathy McMorris-Rogers getting shouted down at an MLK event yesterday, Whoda thunk? even rural white folks like being able to afford to go to the doctor. She’s the same clown who campaigned on the evils of Obamacare and has repeatedly said she supports every effort to repeal it.
LAO
@hovercraft: Clearly I must read them, now.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I am pretty sure he’s going to be layin’ on the prayin’ again for T. Think I saw that in an article about the order of service.
LM Alcott
Here’s what I’ve learned and begun to understand as the shock has worn off:
1. Trump is going to be a warlord not a President. Look at how members of the family get positions of power while continuing financial dealings, look at his determination to punish enemies, not make alliances with political rivals, etc. His goal is to profit off the Presidency. He has made this clear with his refusal to provide information about his finances or about a “blind trust” for his businesses.
2. What we and the media are dealing with is Gish Gallop with Twitter. Not done as a targeted activity (because he is not capable of restraining himself) but it has the advantage of putting the focus on outrage and disruption instead of on actual actions and how they affect us.
3. Don’t go down the rabbit hole with all of the distractions: We need to watch what he and his “administration” do, not what (or just what) they say. Remember Berlusconi in Italy was ultimately brought down by his policies. At present we don’t really know what “his” policies are going to be.
4. Most important: Don’t lose potential allies, both on the left and the right. I know it is very difficult especially for those of us with experience in this stuff (I was a young adult during Watergate) to get beyond our rage at the 60 million plus who actually voted for this man or threw away their vote to “send a message.” I did something similar when I was young and the result was that NYS wound up with William Buckley’s brother as our US Senator for six years (!) I learned the hard way about strategic voting but my vote then didn’t affect the whole country, the whole world, the way this vote did. Remember we only need to get a small fraction of voters to realize what they did by voting for him, and to get them to switch their support. That is a function of just how close this election was. Let’s not waste all the votes Hillary DID get by throwing away the ones of people who CAN learn, even the ones who didn’t even vote. What I learned from Watergate: I expect a LOT of Americans are going to be horrified eventually.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I usually don’t read USA Today, but this popped across my twitter feed, and this woman is OhMyFuckingGod level stupid:
I voted for Trump, not against Planned Parenthood
It goes on and on and on. I’m surprised that she manages to summon the cognition required to work her lungs and breathe.
Calouste
@Jeffro: I was looking at Nixon’s second inauguration to check, but couldn’t find that specific fact or anything to the contrary.
What I did notice though was that LBJ died two days after the inauguration and a lot of events had to be cancelled. Made me think about the effect it would have on the shitgibbon if say GHW Bush would pass away a day before the inauguration.
Anne Laurie
@Jeffro: I *hope* the “poet” intended that as parody, because otherwise the estate of Sir Walter Scott is gonna come for her!
(Although the ‘tribute’ is fitting in some sense; my first exposure to mocking the idiocy of the True Southrun Aristocracytm came at the age of 9 or 10, when I read Life on the Mississippi. SPOILER: Mr. Twain did not have a high opinion of Sir Walter — or of his deluded fans.)
LAO
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: FUCK HER FEELINGS. or see my prior comment #45
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
Applause, applause!
Ksmiami
@LAO: the only understanding they deserve is a sledgehammer to their brains. I really don’t see America surviving Trump
Mary G
@Humboldtblue: I was afraid that Democrats wouldn’t fight back, but they seem to have learned from the tea party. Payback is a bitch.
p.a.
tRump is Scut Farkus. Who is Grover Dill? Is that still up in the air? As a Rhode Islander, may I nominate Spicer? Or is he not of high-enough status in the incoming misadministration?
Frank Wilhoit
“…until your constituents realize they’ll be losing their insurance…”
The same old mistake. Trump’s people do not want anything for themselves. They only want to harm others. Once you grasp that, everything will become clear.
hovercraft
@Another Scott:
Try as he might, they’ve been interviewing the organizers allover the news, with the Grandmother who started it all saying why they are marching. It will be televised, so people will be able to see that it’s anti-Shitgibbon.
Ksmiami
@ArchTeryx: agreed GOP=death should be our mantra. Repeat often as it is the truth.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
NPR top-of-hour headlines just said the count is up to “more than three dozen.”
I was also cheered to hear them report that T tweeted “People are pouring into Washington in record numbers” and then add that NPR had phoned around and found there are still plenty of hotel rooms available.
(Edited for editing stuff.)
? Martin
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
My attitude is a bit different, and I suspect a bit unique here. The result of this election is that we don’t really want to be a unified nation – we want to be a collection of states. That the national vote winner isn’t president only reinforces that point. It’s obvious that California cannot convince Alabama to accept California policies, so perhaps we stop trying. Perhaps instead we in California should concentrate those policies within the state and let the results speak for themselves. If Trump states don’t want healthcare, fine, so be it.
I don’t need to dismiss those voters, though. If that’s what they want, then they can have it, just don’t take us down with you. If Alabama is too economically weak to support a state-level system, then maybe some states ought to merge to make it work. California is okay with that – our Senators get immediately more powerful. Focusing more on local politics will help Democrats downticket, where they desperately need the help. Winning back state legislatures needs to happen anyway. So, that’s where I focus.
Humboldtblue
@Mary G:
I don’t know the makeup of that crowd (MLK rally in college town good chance it was dem-heavy but maybe not) but at least she’s getting direct feedback.
Chip Daniels
A Facebook post i am going to be making a lot starting Jan 20-
“Hows that Trumpey- Changey thing workin’ out for ya?”
hovercraft
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
All I have to say to her is, YOU’RE A FUCKING MORON. He told Tweety that the woman should be punished, if thinks that, then why the fuck do you think he wouldn’t shut it down?
Это курам на смех
About most Trump voters…
People whose cognition contains more dissonance than a symphony by Schoenberg will never face reality.
Shunning is my only communication with these fools. They are banned from my life.
Booger
@hovercraft: Thanks!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@p.a.:
Putin is Farkus, Trump is Grover Dill.
Humboldtblue
@? Martin:
The problem with your idea about state-level care is that even here with the world’s 5th largest economy we will lose billions of dollars in Federal funding and we don’t have the infrastructure in place to keep those who have gotten covered under the ACA covered under a California system. Add to the loss of billions (it’s directly impacting ongoing budget talks and five-year projections are starting to look like 2008 again) the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and even we don’t have a fix that will work quickly.
p.a.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: good one! how did I miss? I’ve only had one beer so far today…
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: Yep. No Democratic Rep or Senator should attend Trump’s inauguration. That would send a very strong message that they’re not playing with him.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: But this:
Gawd. Bleccch.
Immanentize
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): That was the line that got me wretching….
But seriously, about Melania, wazzup with that woman? Is she banned from public appearances? A Fembot? Threatened with Baron’s kidnapping if she yaps? Some weird thing is going down in Trump tower.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@? Martin:
I’m sorry, what? There are no ” trump states”, only states full of future victims that were slightly outnumbered at the ballot box. We are the United States of America, last time I checked. “Fuck Alabama” is not a satisfactory answer to our problem from where I’m looking from a voter supressed NC where dems have almost 50% of the vote but somehow the dirty fuckers on the right have a bulletproof supermajority thanks to our old friend, 2010. They fucking hate us. And I need your help, don’t just write us off like that.
Must be alot easier to see things your way from out in California. The one Californian I know is just as blithe about this impending disaster as you are.
SFAW
@ArchTeryx:
I disagree re: Josh “went native,” but he has moved a little to the right from where he was when I started following him.
Anyway, I put the link in my reply at #101.
stinger
@Patricia Kayden: Sure, just like “Gays are free to marry … as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex.”
Major Major Major Major
@stinger: “You’re free to do whatever I want you to, because you get to pick between the things I want you to do!”
stinger
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought language like “harridan” and “true friend of the migrant” and such was so over the top, and “long flowing hair” so banal, that it had to be satire, but really, calling him “MacLeod” was the tell.
rikyrah
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
AMEN
stinger
@Major Major Major Major: Exactly.
Gravenstone
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Is the poet truly that much of a talentless hack? I mean by gods, I’ve read limericks that were less repellent than that. Apparently said poet won some sort of Scottish poetry award, but damn man.
? Martin
@Humboldtblue: Well, we do have the infrastructure, so I’ll counter that point. Yes, we would lose billions in federal funding, but being a large donor state we currently send $100B per year more to Washington than we get back. That’s more than enough to pay for what we lose in health care funding support, so we have a fair bit of room to operate without adding to individual burdens in the state.
That’s why I said ‘under the right circumstances’. If we were in a position where we could replace federal dollars flowing to DC with state-level taxation dollar for dollar, we’d come out pretty far ahead. And we could easily take the policies that apply to Covered California and replace them with state-level policies. We have one of the strongest exchanges in the country as it is, and it’s actively managed at the state level, so we’re pretty well positioned now. Furthermore, the state legislature has twice voted for single payer, so even if that weren’t in the cards, we know the legislature is willing to work within a pretty large policy envelope. With a supermajority, even the taxation issue isn’t a procedural barrier.
CA can take more direct control of its economy. Frankly, we have no choice. How much like 2008 things turn out to be we have at least a bit of control over and being such an economically diverse state gives us a lot of levers to play with. Just the drought relief, short term as it may be, will help on that front.
sunny raines
spoken like someone with no clue of how markets work.
ThresherK
@LAO:Oof!
I can’t wait for it to break down from “Njorl’s Saga” to the “Invest in Malden” plugs.
The Moar You Know
@Yoda Dog Democrat: You’ll find a LOT of us California residents are seeing no upside to that arrangement at all. We’ve been taken advantage of financially for decades now; we can no longer run our affairs as the overwhelming majority of voters here choose. Our citizenry are denied basic human rights we are willing and able to give them. I am truly sorry that folks like you in other states are suffering (I have family in NC too and I know just how badly you’re fucked there) but I see no reason to tie our fortunes and lives to a failed experiment.
Because that’s what the US has become as of November 2016, a failed experiment. Every institution has failed. The proof is getting sworn into office on the 21st. Time to go our separate ways.
gvg
@sunny raines: Well it could be his goal. Doesn’t mean he has any realistic idea how to achieve it. I personally don’t think he has an attention span to get anything done. Let things happen yes, decide the direction and make it stick, no. this is not a good time for an international emergency.
? Martin
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
We’re not blithe, but considering that all of Clinton’s popular vote advantage came out of California, and the political disadvantage we’re at (15% of the population, 15% of the national economy, 2% of the Senators) we’re not feeling a lot of appreciation from the other 49. We’ve literally carried this country on a host of issues – CA has done more for clean energy and reproductive rights than every other state combined, and not only do we not get much recognition of that, we don’t get any support either. We have a cap and trade program here in CA. Who are our partners on this? Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia. Where’s NY or MA or any other liberal state?
I’m not writing off other states, but from what ashes are we going to rebuild national policy? If the states are the laboratories of democracy, which laboratories are going to be shaping national policy when the Dems win control back? From my perspective, we’re all better off if CA can move forward from this point than protecting NC from moving backward. That’s small comfort for people in NC, I fully concede, but understand that in 2010, when the GOP swept the country, CA was the only state to go blue and that happened again in 2016. Clinton won 4.3M more votes in CA than Trump did. She won by more than 30 points. We went from D+23 to D+30. Hawaii and DC were the only places that were bluer. Even Mass went for Trump more than we did. And we gave Dems supermajorities in both houses once again.
Making progressive advances (as opposed to recovering lost ground) in this country is only going to happen in one place – in CA. Hawaii and Mass are too small to fight the feds on anything substantial and win. Democrats have exactly one functioning laboratory at the moment and it’s important that it move forward regardless of what happens at the national level. When this nightmare is over with, we can either choose to relitigate ACA and hope to get back to 2010, or we can have CA as a model for a large, complex economy running something even better, possibly single payer, and instead fight for that. CA is big enough and unified enough to win a fight with the feds.
JGabriel
@Roger Moore:
All fair points. Thank you for the correction.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@The Moar You Know: Wow. Noone is further down the well of despair than I (I thought), but that is pretty fucking bleak. That’s it for you too then? Our shared history? The Constitution? The Bill of Rights? WWII? You’re, of course, able to make all that beautiful profit under the protection of our US military. We’re just gonna throw our hands up in the air and say “fuck it” now? Well, I disagree. Walking away is not your answer, IMO.
Plus I hate to shit into you guys golden parachute out of here, but good luck just walking away from the orangutang in the oval office like you say. I would bet it wouldn’t be so easy at all. And god help us all, let us never see it come to that.
Yoda Dog Democrat
I don’t disagree that CA is getting screwed and would hypothetically be better off as an independent country, short term. But it’s a myopic solution for so many other reasons.
We are not a failed experiment, yet. FFS..
Barbara
@Yoda Dog Democrat: You are mischaracterizing what Martin said. As a former denizen of North Carolina, I am dismayed by the state’s trajectory. I think the reality is that all of us need to be more focused at the state level — starting with our home state. For states like California, it means showing that there really are better ways of doing things, to serve as examples. For states like North Carolina, that means starting at the ground level and making sure that people have necessary identification to vote and basically supporting Willie Barber’s agenda. It’s going to be a while before any Democratic agenda rises to the top of federal priorities. It’s time to do what we can at the state level for now. To a certain extent that does mean not focusing too much on what is happening in other states.
ETA — I don’t know that you are mischaracterizing Martin, and I think Martin makes some fair points, but I do agree that we are not yet a failed experiment.
cmorenc
@bystander:
I definitely want one – to put on the left side of my rear bumper, to go with a #noTrump sticker on the right side thereof.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: I’ll temper this a bit. I don’t see the US as a failed experiment, not until we see what comes of this. Creative destruction often achieves positive ends, and we’re now in a cycle of creative destruction at the federal level.
Healthcare is a good example. Europe likely could not have gotten to single payer as easily without the horror of WWII which made it unavoidable. The US has not had such an event to force our hand, so our health care advances have been agonizingly painful and drawn out, because something like single payer at its core is the destruction of the US health insurance market. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs eliminated and that needs to be acknowledged head-on. But the benefits of eliminating those jobs are (arguably) worth it in the long run (unless you happen to be one of those workers).
CA had passed single payer before ACA (2006, 2008), but once ACA became a ‘good enough’ solution, the urgency to do single payer waned, and it didn’t pass in 2011. In some ways ACA blocked the potential advance of single payer, but provided sufficient benefits to make that trade-off worth it. We have a new opportunity now. If ACA is repealed, CA will go back to the state of things in 2006 and 2008 and I suspect our openness to single payer will be renewed. What’s bad for people around the country might be good for California, and California being distinguished by being nation-like in our size and diversity means that solutions that work here can almost always be readily exported to the nation as a whole.
The test of this experiment is therefore to see where we go from Trump. To our credit, we’re rejecting him based on his falling approval, not that we’ve been able to construct the political toolset to protect ourselves from him. If the consequence is that Dems can win in 2018, then the question becomes – what do they run with? Do they run with reinstating Obamacare, or something better? The only way something better is even floated as an option is if that is implemented in one of the states, and only CA is positioned to do that.
PST
@Betty Cracker: Also over at Vox, which I have come to admire and rely on, is a post by Matt Yglesias on The hidden reason Republicans are so eager to repeal Obamacare. The reason, of course, is hiding in plain sight. As James Carville would say, “It’s the taxes, stupid.” But disregarding the silly headline, this makes it as clear as it could possibly be that the price of the ACA rests almost entirely on those with major investment income and no one else. The working class (white and otherwise) and even the prosperous upper middle classes see far more benefit than cost. The arguments that have always been used to rev up the Tea Party and Trump’s cheering minions are sleazy propaganda, while the legitimate gripes are about shortcomings that can only get worse when funding disappears. It is all about a tax cut for the very wealthy, nothing more. Somehow this has to be used effectively to drive a wedge into the Republican coalition both to save the ACA and to undercut other items on the Republican agenda.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Barbara: I’m sorry, Im tense and upset like everyone else. The last thing I want to do is antagonize anyone here. I certainly can’t blame anyone for wanting to just wash their hands of this mess and I don’t disagree with anything in your comment.
I do think its important to stick together coast-to-coast, all hands on deck. We can do that and still keep our focus at the local level.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
UH UH.
We are going to superglue that muthaphucka to them.
? Martin
@Yoda Dog Democrat: You didn’t antagonize me. I appreciate where you’re coming from. My original comment was really intended to deflect off of the ‘fuck the Trump voters’ vibe. I don’t wish them harm and I don’t want them to suffer. That’s not going to help us, either. But at the same time, Dems have basically zero hope of making national-level progress in the next 2 years. We can try and stop some bad shit, but that’s about it. The only place to move forward will be at the state level. I’m not one to work for minimizing losses, and I appreciate those that are willing to work for that (because it’s needed), but a lot of that work will also need to be at the state level and there’s little I can offer to those outside of CA. But within CA, we can move forward. I’m guessing we’ll lose USSC for quite a while, so the work being done in the states needs to be durable because even if we do win back at least one chamber of Congress, we’ll have the courts working against us as well.
We can’t rely on theoretical arguments to carry policy forward. We need to show results. We need to implement it.
john fremont
@? Martin: The ACA also included reforms to Medicare. I waiting to hear some of these people start griping about the “donut hole ” reopening, or their elderly parents calling them because they’re getting higher charges from routine doctor’s visits.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@? Martin:
But is this not itself a theoretical argument? FFS, we insured 20 million people and saved the car industry. The results speak for themselves and we, also ran on those successes. The theoretical argument that “Hillary was crooked” seemed pretty fucking effective, on the other hand.
Wholly agree about working locally first and foremost. I was off-base for arguing otherwise.
The Lodger
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It bears the same relationship to poetry as bagpipes do to music.
SiubhanDuinne
@stinger:
That, and “scion of Torquil” — Torquil having been the real-life founder of Clan MacLeod in the 14th century. I also really did think it was satire, and HuffPo is pretty certain it’s a spoof, but it’s not the first time this guy has waxed poetic over Trump: he penned this sonnet on November 9, 2016:
LAC
@? Martin: good for you. I could give two shits about the trump voter. That they will sit wheezing in a clinic unable to afford the care they shit on earlier is fine by me. I got real concerns: like the safety of my black nephews doing , well, anything black. My fellow federal workers busting their asses while idiots lump them with this do nothing Congress, Real life – not some fantasy world. They come around…Fine. Otherwise here is a spoon. Scoop up your own guts and sew them back in muthafuka
RAM
Trying to read Trump’s tea leaves are a fool’s errand. You can’t believe a word of what he or any of his people say.
jefft452
@LAO: “No amount of “I told you so’s” makes what these voters have done to America, remotely forgivable”
I agree, but I also agree that not all of hair furor’s voters are in the basket of deplorables, as evidenced by short finger’s falling approval numbers
Here’s the thing, while I cannot forgive what they did, I cannot forget what they did, I can treat them as fellow citizens if they do one thing
I don’t want them to admit they were wrong, I don’t want an apology, /I don’t even want them to start voting D
It’s this …
Don’t vote
For anything,
Ever again
If their best friend is running for Surveyor of Fences and asks for their vote they say “Sorry, I might break the Republic again, I have to abstain for the good of the nation”