Joe Biden launched a new campaign ad on healthcare:
This ad wasn’t easy for me to record.
Health care is personal to me. Deeply personal. pic.twitter.com/a8UNsnkLhI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 27, 2019
Overall, I think it’s an effective ad because it drives home the personal stakes of the healthcare fight. It capitalizes on Biden’s strengths — the heart-on-the-sleeve political style and Obama-adjacent positioning.
Like every Democrat, Biden is calling out Trump for trying to yank the rug out from under people who access coverage under the ACA (and the tens of millions with employer-based coverage who are protected from insurance corporations reimposing preexisting conditions, etc.). The ad sort of implies that plans to replace the current system with single payer are just as bad as what Trump is doing, which isn’t true, but that’s where the primary battles will be fought, and Uncle Joe is drawing a line in the sand.
Bernie Sanders has an op-ed in the Columbia Journalism Review that’s worth reading, IMO. It outlines Sanders’ plan to save journalism. A snippet:
At precisely the moment when we need more reporters covering the healthcare crisis, the climate emergency, and economic inequality, we have television pundits paid tens of millions of dollars to pontificate about frivolous political gossip, as local news outlets are eviscerated…
WHEN I AM PRESIDENT, MY ADMINISTRATION will put in place policies that will reform the media industry and better protect independent journalism at both the local and national levels.
For example, we will reverse the Trump administration’s attempts to make corporate media mergers even more likely in the future. We are not going to rubber stamp proposals like the new plan to merge CBS and Viacom into a $30 billion colossus…
Sanders proposes a number of measures to counter media consolidation, empower unions, promote local media company ownership and beat back Facebook and Google’s choke-hold on digital advertising. I hope the eventual nominee adopts some of the concepts, if not the specific proposals, because it’s proving difficult to maintain a functioning democracy without an independent press.
Duane
Missouri Health Care for All is holding rallies today in Stl, KC, Springfield and other towns from 4 to 6 to protest Missouri dropping 130,000 people from the Medicaid insurance and to advocate for Medicaid expansion. Any fellow Missourians this is a cause worth supporting!
rikyrah
@Duane:
Is Missouri one of those states that refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare?
Are folks trying to put Medicaid Expansion on the ballot for 2020?
wasabi gasp
Emo Joe and the Stale Chestnuts forever strumming the same old heartstring.
trollhattan
Unironic huzzah to Bernie for his newsmedia observations. I’d like to know how he proposes to not only prevent further degradation but to expand them, but not rubber-stamping consolidation is a necessary first step.
SiubhanDuinne
Goddess knows I’m no Bernie fan, but there are some good ideas in that piece. It’s really hard to look at today’s media landscape and remain a robust First Amendment supporter. I like a candidate who addresses the media’s numerous systemic problems without doing violence to 1A. (I still wouldn’t give him a primary vote unless the only other candidate standing were Tulsi, but I feel slightly warmer about him after reading that.)
Adam L Silverman
@wasabi gasp: Proper preparation of the operational environment:
1) Appropriately assess the physical terrain, the human geography, the position of opposing forces, and their intentions.
2) Establish and/or reinforce your existing lines.
3) Develop plans, with appropriate contingencies and sequels, for massing your opponents at times and places of your own choosing to establish an asymmetric advantage that can be capitalized on.
4) Constantly assess and reassess the operational environment for openings to extend one’s objectives.
Would Medicare for All, in any of the variants being proposed be an excellent policy outcome? Yes, without a doubt. Would actually implementing the Swiss system of achieving universal health care access and coverage, which the ACA is a looser, modified to pass the US Congress variant of? Without a doubt.
But the first thing that has to be done, the priority, is holding the existing line and fortifying it. And that means protecting the gains from the ACA and expanding them whenever and wherever possible as the short to medium term objectives. The medium to long term is then developing policies, and the strategies to achieve and implement them, to move beyond even an enhanced ACA to something better.
Mandalay
@wasabi gasp:
Yep. I guess the ad may work for some folks, but I find his “Look at me! Look at how much I’ve suffered!” approach, while bathing in Obama’s glow, contemptible.
And it’s worth noting that despite his claim that it’s a personal issue for him, he is specifically opposed to medicare for all.
Mandalay
@Adam L Silverman: You should run. You sound like a politician.
Silverman/Baud 2020!
Adam L Silverman
@Mandalay: No. And that wasn’t sounding like a politician. That was being able to think strategically.
I’ve no problem with any of the variants of a universal health care system I’ve seen proposed. I’ve lived in places where I’ve been on that country’s universal health care system and its fine. Sure, there are some trade offs, but they’re not the medical hellscapes that are trotted out to scare people into opposing some variant of them in the US. But the priority right now is protecting what we have with the ACA, shoring up the damage done over the past three years, then extending it as much as possible while the hard work is done to establish the conditions where you can actually establish an even more universal system and transition to it.
Bill Arnold
I liked BS’s CJR piece. Even more interesting was the link-rich style; I counted 41 links and in a sampling they appeared to be quite relevant, unlike the common right wing link style of links that are not meant to be clicked on.
This is good style, useful, and search engines like it.
Biden’s pitch seems fine.
Not seeing what WG says, so +2 (very weak) troll points.
Sloane Ranger
Oh great, Farago (not a typo) has now threatened BoJo that if he somehow can pull off a deal with EU on the backstop, the Brexit Party will run a candidate in every seat, splitting the right wing vote and,almost certainly, destroying any chance the Tories have of winning the election. If, however BoJo goes hard Brexit, he will only put up candidates in seats held by other parties.
No deal, no deal, no deal ever!
Presumably this is his latest order from Moscow. This is bound to put the frighteners on some wavering Tories. The Opposition parties need to get their act together NOW.
What a total shit that man is!
Ramalama
I loved the Uncle Whatsis proposal on journalism. I also love – in general – Warren’s Zero F*cks attitude. I am having a hard time looking at Biden. I thought he was an awesome complement to Obamar. But I can’t get behind Biden at all.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Sanders alludes to something like that here:
I’m not really familiar with how other countries fund “independent public media” and how well that works. I have a vague sense that the media worked better when it was more dispersed across communities and ownership groups (though of course there were problems then too).
In a sense, authentic journalism is like healthcare — a prerequisite of a civilized democracy but a commodity that is not, as it turns out, well distributed by the marketplace. Is a “public option” the answer? I dunno, but it’s an interesting idea.
Ruckus
This looks like the work of someone else on his team, rather than him.
Biden has good reason to be concerned, we all do, because healthcare affects each and every single one of us and our families, even if you are a wealthy, selfish bastard.
This concept of I’ve got mine, fuck you hasn’t been and will not work in any kind of rational government, only in fiction.
Betty Cracker
@Sloane Ranger: Does the Bellicose Toad really have that kind of pull? He seems so clownish! (Asks a person whose country is represented by Donald Fucking Trump…)
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Important questions, since an unfettered press is as critical to a functioning democracy as lungs are to a living creature.
“But we’ll disrupt media and make it ‘free’!”
How’s that going for us?
Journalism, like governance, is important and has been so slimed young people are steering well clear of both. I don’t want all the smart kids lured to STEM. We’ll always have plenty of engineers and programmers.
Jay
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
The difference was that 50+ years ago there was no 24 hr media. An hour of news and the paper. Newspapers were/are biased but TV, being relatively new and thinking it couldn’t be biased because it had to sell to everyone. That is no longer true, there are many more channels, and 24 hours in a day to fill up and sell stuff. I sat at the VA yesterday and watched commercial after commercial about prescription drugs. That should be outlawed. Just one thing in our quest to make corps people.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Also, the Fairness Doctrine, which was discontinued under Reagan.
Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Countries that have “National Broadcasters” use a variety of methods to fund that media. Some are better than others.
The hard part is insulating the media from influence, by the Government du Jour. That’s tricky to do. The Beeb, NPR and CBC are examples of how decades of budget fights, nepotism hires and working the refs have gutteted political and economic coverage.
Sloane Ranger
@Betty Cracker: The Brexit Party won the biggest vote share and the largest number of seats in the European elections, our most recent exercise in national democracy.
At the time I assumed that lots of people who voted for them at that time would be turned off by them when they actually had to come up with policy proposals, as they were with UKIP’s, but, from what I’ve heard from acquaintances, a lot of people here are as thick as a lot of Americans and will gladly vote to have their faces chewed off providing they think the slimy French and greedy Germans will have theirs chewed off first.
Jeffro
Looking forward to President Warren or President Harris, along with Dem Majority Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi implementing quite a bit of whatever fine-grained policy stuff Biden and Sanders are talking about.
Fire at will, Liz! Give ‘em hell, Kamala! Keep the details to a minimum and fire. Up. The. Base.
sdhays
@Adam L Silverman: But that wouldn’t apply to cable, right?
trollhattan
@Sloane Ranger:
I’m guessing there’s considerable disappointment that Vivienne Rook turns out not to be a real politician.
It all seems very weird, watching this suicide cult lurch forward with no obvious second thoughts about what happens the nanosecond after that trigger gets pulled.
We shot first, and only pondered afterwards what the hell we were thinking re. punching Trump’s four-year ticket. Y’all have had ample time for second thoughts.
burnspbesq
Wilmer doesn’t understand or believe in the First Amendment any more than Trump. Fuck him.
Jay
sdhays
@Sloane Ranger:
The almost funny thing is that the French and Germans are, at most, looking at having their faces licked and slightly gnawed.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: My understanding is not as the rule existed at the time. But since there’s no way, shape, or form a new Fairness Doctrine could even possibly be implemented, it really doesn’t matter that it wouldn’t cover cable or Facebook or Twitter or other social and digital media.
rikyrah
@Jay:
The Demons never stop:
The Cruelty IS the point
After Receiving Denial Letters, Immigrants Fear End Of Medical Deferral Program
August 26, 2019
Elizabelle
@burnspbesq: I don’t believe in the First Amendment either, as applied, if it allows lies and brainwashing propaganda to be disseminated 24/7.
We would not have this world without Rupert Murdoch and his ilk having weaponized mass communications a la Joseph Goebbels.
Having someone call you an ass in a broadside that few may see is a lot different from repetitive 24/7 brainwashing, up is down, entertainment entertainment entertainment anger entertainment …
We need to find a way out of this. Unfortunately, you cannot outrun lies and ugly propaganda with the truth, once those who fell for it in the first place have had it hammered in and taught to completely distrust any other source of information. It’s a huge problem. Worldwide, alas.
Would be interesting to learn about countries that are handling this better than we do. Where cash is king.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
I suspect that one of the greatest bars to independent journalism today is the concentration of the ad market into two companies: Alphabet/Google and Facebook.
There isn’t enough competition between them, at least not on rates, and they don’t share enough of their advertising revenue to keep independent journalism afloat.
sdhays
@Adam L Silverman: I was under the impression that the authority that the FCC (?) had to regulate the airwaves wouldn’t even be an option for those other media (assuming you had the political ability), but I’m no expert on such things.
Duane
@rikyrah: Missouri is one of the dozen or so that haven’t expanded. Gov. Parsons recently form a health insurance commission to ” expand affordable health insurance and availability” while not mentioning the obvious solution, Obama’s Medicaid expansion. Even if they did it wouldn’t be staight expansion because stupid and evil.
I’m not aware of any ballot initiative, but hopeful. Missourians can be surprising when given single issue vote.
catclub
@Sloane Ranger:
Imagine your average stupid American (Brit) Now, remember that half the population is dumber than that.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: That is my understanding as well. But since you couldn’t get an updated, modern version of the Fairness Doctrine implemented today, it doesn’t really matter.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I think you lost most of the Sandersnistas when you mentioned “hard work”. It seems to me that about 90% of his appeal is making it sound as if all this stuff is easy, and it’s simple lack of willpower that has kept us from getting it so far.
catclub
@Sloane Ranger:
Impressively evil. Somebody understands what the real pressure points are.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
Yes, but its stuck in ours.
artem1s
This didn’t bother him one whit when he was benefiting from the endless speculations about OMG HER EMAILS. As long as it benefits St. Bernard and no one else, he’s fine with it. Guess it really hurts when he has to actually pay for his ad buys and isn’t getting a free spot every night on Maddow.
Hypocrite.
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger:
I am also hearing that Corbyn is pitching for a softer BREXIT. He would still permit a vote, but from what I’m hearing, he has effectively abandoned people who want Remain. Lib Dems, Green, SNP are all strongly Remain, but are smaller parties.
catclub
@Brachiator: Corbyn:
After they turned down his plan, flat.
I agree with the observation that all the remain parties will do anything to stop Brexit, …. except agree with anything Corbyn has to say on the matter.
Duane
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the Strategy lesson Adam.
You’re absolutely right about the ACA. Defend, implement and expand. Then we can move forward. Patience and work are essential.
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel: Agreed. Sanders identifies that problem in the linked op-ed, but I’m not sure how effective the solutions he proposes (i.e., collective bargaining for media organizations and an ad tax to fund “public option” local media) would be.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
What? This is a typical Sanders exaggeration, up their with the original “single payer, just like they have in all the major European countries.”
I’m going to try to read his op Ed piece during lunch.
Calouste
@catclub: Actually, it is not very smart. The Conservatives don’t have a majority, do they need to win some seats currently held by other parties. Having the Brexit Party PLC run in those seats and splitting the right-wing vote almost guarantees the Tories won’t get a majority.
Calouste
This post should be called “Dispatches from the retirement home” Are we going to get the Bingo results as well?
dr. bloor
I am eternally and unashamedly suspicious of a politician who pledges “media reform.” If he wants to do antitrust in general, fine, but using “rumor mongering” and shitty content as a rationale for going after media companies specifically is a dangerous game. If he wants to protect 1A and diversity of opinion, let him step up to restore the Fairness Doctrine.
Yutsano
@Calouste: E-mail JC requesting reimbursement of your blog fees. Make sure you use all caps. He LIVES for dat shit.
zhena gogolia
@Jay:
Obama did it! Putin outsmarted him! //
Jay
Sloane Ranger
@Brachiator: Corbyn has always supported Brexit. His brand of socialism has always believed that the EU is a neo-liberal capitalist front for the benefit of multi nationals and that True Socialism can only be built in a UK free from its rules and influence. It’s just that the internal politics of the Labour party has made it important for him to pretend to be in favour of Remain.
kindness
I’m not sure how Bernie’s media pipe dream could work. Yea, Corporations have pretty much sucked but Bernie’s suggestion leaves me stumped as to how such a law could work. Bernie is not my first choice for the job.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
Corbyn ain’t shyt.
rikyrah
@Sloane Ranger:
Thank you. Delusional from the left. He’s a British Bernie.
rikyrah
@Jay:
The entire thread is devastating.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Apart from the Fairness Doctrine, which basically had radio and teevee stations broadcasting “alternative viewpoints” at 2:00 a.m., were fairly strict limitations on 1) how many total teevee and radio licences could be held by a single company and 2) how much media–radio, teevee and newspapers–one company could own in a single market.
Sinclair was not possible under the old rules, and IIRC we have Clinton and Newt to thank for ripping them up.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
Are the identities of these immigration “judges” kept secret? Should be named and shamed
rikyrah
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
ICAM
Jay
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
America has no shame left.
An Asylum Lawyer put it pretty simply,
“These are Death Penalty Cases being heard in the equivalent of Traffic Court”.
Toddlers who can’t arrange for an Asylum Lawyer, are expected to know Immigration and Refugee laws, and argue their cases in English.
Kay
@dr. bloor:
My complaint about Bernie is broader. There are a lot of prerequisites to Bernie and he keeps adding them. We seem to be getting further and further away from the point of “change”- the actual thing we’re seeking. To me it sounds like this “we reform media, reform government, start and maintain a ‘movement’ for M4A and then and only then do we get to health care”
He keeps identifying problems, that’s true, but this list is getting really long. We’re getting further and further away from the thing itself with all this preparing of the ground. I don’t know- a President has about 2-3 years to get some shit done and then inertia and opposition take hold and it’s inches. He needs an FDR length tenure.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
Fine. Then they could be relentlessly harassed and have their lives disrupted until they can no longer function
Sloane Ranger
@Calouste: More cunning than that. Brexit runs in Tory held seats, splits the Tory vote and there’s a chance another Party will slip through to win the seat and perhaps gain enough seats overall to form a government.
On the other hand, run in Labour held seats, pick up some disaffected pro-Brexit Labour voters plus the foaming at the mouth Tories, win the seat and perhaps hold the balance of power.
Brachiator
I got problems with Bernie’s take on journalism
Craigslist and other free ad services killed journalism’s business model. It’s absurd to suggest that advertising “belongs to” old media.
In the EU, old media companies want Google to pay for snippets and links to news sites. This would kill one of the primary benefits of the Internet.
Google provided an experiment to show how dumb a proposed EU solution was. This proposal would limit what Google would show of a news story.
One of Bernie’s solutions is staggeringly stupid
Many newspapers are like old shopping malls. Their assets have no value. Newspapers and magazines are dying and even digital sites are having problems. It’s not that they don’t have a good revenue stream. People don’t care anymore. The Internet favors a few sites with national cachet. In 2002, the Houston Chronicle had a print circulation of 552,000. In 2019, they had 37,000 digital subscribers. The NY Times and WaPo are doing well, with over a million digital subscribers each, but even they show weakness in being able to sustain these numbers.
Elsewhere, he talks about saving broadcasting. Is broadcasting even a thing anymore in the digital age?
Anyway, my take so far. I’ll have to read more of Bernie later.
A related links
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/07/the-l-a-times-disappointing-digital-numbers-show-the-games-not-just-about-drawing-in-subscribers-its-about-keeping-them/
Jay
Calouste
@Brachiator: I wouldn’t trust Google to run an experiment like that. Simplest criticism of course is that it doesn’t seem to measure if people move away from Google and go straight to the source.
catclub
@rikyrah: Corbyn has always supported some fantasy Brexit that improves the lot of Labour. He has clearly NOT favored the present Brexit deal on offer. Nor voted for it when given a chance to. Neither have any substantial number of Labour members.
catclub
@rikyrah:
But he is still the best chance on offer to stop Brexit, and all the other remain parties are not taking the offer.
Brachiator
@Calouste:
Spain wanted a link tax in 2015. Instead, Google shut down the Spanish version of Google News. Results of an independent analysis.
Link:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-reveals-the-winners-and-losers-from-a-link-tax/
trollhattan
Major Major Major Major
Funny how, after two weeks of official surrogate attacks against warren for “stealing” his ideas, he turns right around and suggests a vague version of her tech antitrust reform.
Most of what he says about digital ads is wrong, but that’s far from unique to him. Some good proposals in there. Really just waiting for somebody like the CJR’s actual analysts to weigh in on the plan.
A targeted ad tax, though, that sure is a series of words he wrote down on a page.
I also don’t think he wrote this other than the parts complaining about Jeff Bezos.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Well sure, site visits will drop if you choke off the main access point. That doesn’t necessarily support the original assertion, which was that limiting the picked up content and providing a link or thumbnail to the whole story results in a net drop in traffic for the linked site. Maybe it does! But are we supposed to trust the Google SVP of Global Affairs to give us the straight dope?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
OT, how was Montreal?
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker:
The EU passed their much-debated new copyright rules because some idiots pushed the wrong button, so we’ll find out in a year or two.
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I’m still in self-imposed exile up here, getting lots of writing done. Lovely city, though it’s getting a little chilly! I head back on Saturday.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, it’s getting chilly a little further south too. I always hate this time of year when it starts getting dark earlier. I like it being light out until 10 at night damn it : )
Anyway, glad to hear you’re having a good time and getting some writing done
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: Fascinating — thank you!
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major: Do you know when leaf-peeping season in Montreal begins?
Have never been up there, and so want to visit. When do they get their first snow?? How chilly is it? Sweater during the day already in late August?? (Yeah, I could google it, but maybe you know …)
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Amazing. In all the bad ways possible.
jl
@Brachiator: Some of Sanders’ ideas are good. Going back to prohibition of cross ownership of different media platforms is a very good idea.
Giving more power to different stakeholders in fate of local media companies might be a good idea. Anything that keeps hedge funds out, given current tax rules that allow them to to bust out joints is a good idea. But, the problem is, how to finance it?
As for Biden, his ad pulls heartstrings, but no real policy that I can see. Just posturing.
As a Warren supporter, I’ll wait to see if she has ‘a plan for that’ (in this case, finding a way to revive independent journalism)
MuckJagger
IMODO, the country basically went up the creek when they got rid of the 7-7-7 rule.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
This is not true. The Lib Dems are being stupid assholes and Corbyn is having to coddle the feefees of a bunch of assholes more interested in stopping him from getting any credit for stopping Brexit then in actually stopping it.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
You are wrong here. He’s not Bernie, he’s true to his principles and you’ve been deceived by Hillary level trash reporting on him. Stop falling for it.
Miss Bianca
Well, speaking of “frivolous political gossip”, I got quoted AT LENGTH in the Denver Post today by their fuckwitted “federal government reporter”/political gossip columnist without my consent and without my verification of the quotes. This from the email exchange I shared with you. Yesterday the Democratic Party, and Balloon Juice, today THE WORLD. At least I wasn’t quoted trashing Governor Hickenlooper, which another county official was.
I didn’t exactly tear the State Dem chair a new one as a result of this debacle, but I did tell her that in her “county officers call” this evening, she had better be prepared to discuss security and ethics, and a rousing discussion of “AND THIS IS EXHIBIT A FOR WHY WE DON’T TRASH OUR DEMOCRATIC OFFICIALS, KIDDIES”
So I find myself more oddly in sympathy with Senator Sanders’s journalism reform impulses than I might have expected.
J R in WV
@sdhays:
Does “cable” use orbital devices to forward its signal to local cable downlinks? Does “cable” use public rights-of-way?
Then YES it would apply to “Cable” just like any other media making use of publically controlled means of propagation. If a signal is propagated from an uplink center through the atmosphere to an orbital facility, and then sent back to a downlink center for distribution to the public, then, yes, that facility is using the public airwaves!
J R in WV
@MuckJagger:
Educate me, I’m dumb. What the hell is the 7-7-7 rule ?? I think of myself as well read and I’ve never heard of it that I can recall.
Thanks, person I’ve never heard of before!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@J R in WV: Years ago, the most that could be owned by a single entity was 7 television stations, 7 AM stations, 7 FM stations.