Yesterday Nancy Pelosi had to balance out her strong showing on Colbert by once again attacking the “left wing” of the Democratic Party.
NEW: Speaker Pelosi warns her party’s presidential hopefuls that ideas like Medicare For All and free college may fire up the left but won’t beat Trump.
“Remember November,” she says. “You must win the Electoral College.”https://t.co/A0BVnTxsov
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 2, 2019
There’s a whole thread there. It’s the usual – don’t go for Medicaid for All or anything else that might fire up the base. Remember those folks in the Midwest diners!
There are so many things wrong with that.
I would like to hear Pelosi’s basis for this. I would like to see polling data. I would like to see a strategy for getting the votes.
That she presents none of this – just her concern that the Democrats not be too lefty for the San Francisco liberal she claims to be – makes me suspicious that she is simply enunciating the deep lack of confidence that many older Democrats feel, partly justifiably. But they need to ask whether times have changed.
Her comments occasioned lively discussions on Twitter. One of the things I observed is that people worry about other people being turned off by things like M4A, even though they themselves back social justice measures. This is where I would like to see polling data. Do those imagined people exist outside of media scolds? For example,
I fear this is poison in the key states. https://t.co/KcGdnFlRgs
— Kim Masters (@kimmasters) November 3, 2019
A confounding variable, even if there were data, would be the presence of unconscious racism or sexism. Polling can fail to uncover this. And some of the “lefty” things that Pelosi and others are worried about have to do with racism and sexism, which we are not to speak of because they make people uncomfortable.
That’s a difficult conundrum. Many voters are women and people of color. Pelosi, in that Twitter thread is quoted as saying “What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan. What works in Michigan works in San Francisco — talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”
Which workers? Ideally, all of them. But the pitch for workers that Trump has made has been to white male workers in extractive industries. The workers in San Francisco are more likely to be women of color who work in health care. Their interests are different. Workers’ rights and wages should be part of the campaign, but the specifics will touch on that unconscious racism and sexism and thus be too lefty.
Pelosi is also doubtful about a Green New Deal because it would eliminate fossil fuels. It may be the timeline that she is objecting to, or it may be displacing those Trumpian laborers; it’s not clear. But yes, we have to eliminate fossil fuels, and the faster, the better.
I keep thinking about that San Francisco-y song, “The Times, They Are A-Changing.” Yes, let’s fire up the base to get them to vote in the general election and maybe drag along those young voters who feel they and their future are being ignored. Let’s present a vision of the future that people can sign on to. Trump has trashed the government. We’ve got an opportunity to build something better than what we had before.
dr. bloor
Honestly, I just don’t get the scoldings that Pelosi is subject to because she’s not sufficiently revolutionary. Pelosi speaks for the entire caucus, many of whom will find their jobs in peril if the only message coming from Democrats is M4A and free college, which will be easily poisoned by the Republicans in the general.
Why is Pelosi subject to proving herself time and time again, when her record indicates that she is superb at her job?
West of the Rockies
Nancy (I call her Nancy//) is an incrementalist. She believes, with good reason, that even with a tiny Democratic majority in Congress–both houses–there are some plans that won’t pass.
Interestingly though, this morning on NPR was a report of how protests are expanding the world over. My take was that people are pushing back hard on rightwing, xenophobic money-pigs.
Maybe the US is reaching a point where some truly progressive ideas have a chance? Nancy is trying to read the tea leaves.
JR
Here’s the reasoning for it. Caution,Nate Silver punditry, but mixed with actual polls.
Key paragraph:
A lot of folks who have insurance (like myself, might as well be clear about it!) recognize its limitations, but they also instinctively know that a major policy change like Medicare for All will be a bruising political battle and a logistical nightmare. There’s no getting around those facts, most of us remember the difficulties with implementation of ACA, a much smaller change to the medical system. And one thing that fight taught me is that you’re in for a real war regardless of how effectively you plan.
I should add that cost savings from a universal medicare implementation comes from providers — hospitals and medical personnel — and the most likely outcome will be hospital/clinic closures. There’s no way to present that as a good thing, even if you believe as I do that physicians are generally overcompensated. And while some people get the short end of the stick under the current system, many people with insurance aren’t constrained by it, and even if they are, they have made adjustments in their lives to make the best of it.
One of the selling points of M4A is that you will take home your employer-sponsored medical costs in the form of wages. I sincerely doubt that will happen. Most employees have no idea how much their benefits are worth. What will happen instead is that employers will take the reduced expenditure as a stimulus, probably keeping it in cash reserves or whatever else.
This is setting aside the fact that the other guys are going to fight like hell to sabotage whatever you try. And that’s not even considering the tailwinds the Republicans will enjoy from the insurance industry and likely the AMA as well.
Cheryl Rofer
If you believe that the Republicans won’t have poison messages no matter what the Democrats do, I have a lovely bridge between San Francisco and Marin County that I can sell you for a reasonable price.
I would like to know the data she bases her scoldings on. I’m not scolding her, just asking questions. Surely we should base our strategies on data and facts?
scav
Personally, I’d be more interested in hearing what everyone’s dreams and aspirations are, rather than assuming immediately what would “fire up the base” as though they were inert lumps of charcoal with known properties waiting for the magic touch of an enlightened match.
Ok, yeah, idealist, but let’s actually explore a bunch of alternatives, plans and dead-ends and bang out a triaged compromise rather than insisting we know all the elements of a platform before we even have selected a candidate.
Baud
That works both ways. Have lefty proponents shown us any polling data?
And can we stop referring to disagreements and uncertainties about what will work politically as “attacks”?
schrodingers_cat
Senior Bush Republican has become more Democratic than the Democratic Speaker herself. Is this the zeal of the convert? What the Green New Dealers and the M4A people don’t understand that not all Ds are as left as they are. I don’t want to sign off on M4A its not because I am afraid of Rs its because I don’t think its the best course of action. And I don’t think I am alone.
Pelosi has nothing to prove.
ETA: M4A was BS ploy to ensnare Presidential hopefuls among Ds. Mission accomplished.
Kay
I think this would work better if both groups. liberals and centrists, admitted the other 1. is legitimate and 2. is a large group.
The center (Biden) has a large group but so does the left (although I think the Left is smaller). If we started there these conversations would be much more productive. The center doesn’t get to claim to be the “real” Democratic Party and either does the Left. It’s a coalition. It’s always been a coalition. I honestly think the “white working class in diners” trope is kind of bullshit and not what the centrists really bring to the table- what they bring to the table is suburbs. Which is an important group of voters for Democrats and completely legit, but is not “working class in diners”.
Everyone has to give up the idea that their faction brings “the important voters”. They’re all important voters, because we have to pull together a majority. So, in Biden’s case, he has this valuable thing where he draws AA support and white suburban support. That’s valuable. The Left has to admit that. OTOH the centrists have to admit that Biden’s support skews old, the age dividing line is really stark, so they’ll have to somehow attract young people.
schrodingers_cat
Elaborating on #7. Even when it was brought to a vote, I remember telling husband kitteh, that this is a ploy by the Vt senator, whose
campaign adviser helped Manafort in Russia to ensnare D presidential hopeful in signing on to an unworkable plan which is also electoral poison. I think Kamala would be doing better if she had not signed on to M4A. Twitter left does not represent all the Ds.
West of the Rockies
@Cheryl Rofer:
Stop trying to confuse us with facts!
Kathleen
@Baud: @Baud: Welcome back, Baud! I agree with what you said here but have decided to comment no further on this subject.
@schrodingers_cat: I agree with what you said also.
That is all.
Major Major Major Major
M4A polls well (data for progress does a lot) or poorly (can’t remember any specific pollster) depending on how the question is asked. Detailed funding proposals essentially only help republicans in the demagoguery front. And the media is quite adept at adopting republican spin. It’s a real concern.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: All the diehard lefties I know are retirement age or older. I want to improve the ACA. I don’t want to get rid of the stock market. I think Scandinavian style socialism will not work here, we are too diverse and too big.
ETA: True socialists want the government to allocate all resources and get rid of the stock market. BS belongs to this school. They think all corporations are evil. I have no idea if EW thinks the same but she is second to none in bashing corporations.
[Individual 1] mistermix
@Baud: Here’s the Kaiser Family Foundation’s take on M4A popularity. There’s no simple take-away. Expanding the ACA seems to be more popular, and people’s view of M4A changes depending on how the question is framed. M4A is more popular with Democrats than Republicans. So it’s not a no-brainer, but it’s also not politically stupid.
That all said, I don’t understand why Pelosi had to weigh in on this at this point in time.
Wapiti
I think Speaker Pelosi has often down-talked things – like impeachment – to allow others to drag her to the conclusion.
1) by being the grump in the room, she manages expectations of what may be possible with a slim majority in both houses.
2) while the left wing may want major structural changes, the center wing might not be ready to hop on the wagon.
3) If the candidates can inspire the majority of voters, then Pelosi will grudgingly go along.
While I think that she is an old SF liberal, I think she plays a role in almost everything she does – because there has to be a grump that is won over, and she’s willing to be the grump if it gets results.
And I’d offer that the Senate gets one reconciliation vote each year – filibuster free. What bill would you spend that vote on? I’d offer that changes to ACA are down the list of what we desperately need.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: We are a coalition but purity left believes that not just all the Ds but even Rs are hidden socialists and if they have a pure socialist alternative they will all vote for it. There is no evidence for this contention. At all.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
I love Harris and think Booker has great potential. Those polls are pretty disheartening for them. All the “listen to black women” talk… Who do the majority of black women presently favor? Did the early “Harris is an evil prosecutor and Cory is gay-ish” chatter derail them?
Humdog
I remember many here saying that black women seem to have good political instincts and we should follow their lead. I believe Biden has the higher percentage of black voter support, not sure about black women specifically. While liberals and lefties may want more change, I still think we ought to remember our earlier instincts that we should take advice from voters of color. We spend a lot of time with those who think just like we do, but we know from 2016 what excites us may not be enough to capture the electoral college.
Kay
So what Pelosi could follow this with would be the vulnerabilities of the centrists. She’s identified the vulnerabilities of Warren/Sanders (because that’s who we’re really talking about) but there are risks on Biden’s (centrist) side too- I think his most notable risk is he isn’t popular with young people. I think that’s part of where the anger comes from- that some group of our voters always feel that one or the other side is either denying their existence or saying there aren’t enough of X group of voters to matter. We should all stop doing that. It shuts down any hope of dialogue.
The whole coalition matters. In the swing states she’s talking about it’s a county by county grind putting together 8k here and 300k there and hoping it adds up to a majority. You can’t jettison any of them. That’s why it’s so hard.
schrodingers_cat
@West of the Rockies: Haven’t you seen how rikyrah has been pilloried for not buying into the EW hype? She has been called a troll and worse. Listen to black women mantra sounds good in theory, but is not followed in practice even on this blog.
guachi
Does M4A actually for up the base?
I’d count basically every commenter on BJ as part of “the base” and there are all sorts of commenters opposed to it on either practical or political grounds.
I’m opposed to it and I’m the base. It’s the one and only thing I can think of that would damage Democrats chances of taking the Presidency and Senate.
O. Felix Culpa
I work with Dems in a small-population state and no polling data, plus I read BJ at least twice daily, so I’m an expert.//
What I’m seeing so far is that the 2016 Bernies are split: many (especially women) are flocking to Elizabeth, while a smaller number remain hardcore Wilmerites. Quite a few HRC supporters are also flocking to EW. A few have become ardent Buttigieg fans or would be happy with most of the candidates on offer. However, younger people have no interest in Biden. As in zip, zero, nada. Our candidate doesn’t have to be EW or BS, but I sure as heck hope it isn’t Uncle Joe, because we will need to use extraordinary force to get young folks to the polls.
MattF
I’m a Medicare boomer, so my instinct is to step back from this argument. And, anyhow, I think the Republican War on Women is a better RW weak spot. The RW campaign against abortion strikes me as similar to the 1920s Prohibition movement— when the RW catches that truck, they’re going to be in big trouble. And Nancy is just the person to deliver that message.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Thank you.
@Kathleen:
Yeah, I’m getting exhausted. I hope the hopeful are right this time.
Before she was a “San Francisco liberal”, she was the daughter of an old school, big-city pol. She know her members, she knows their districts. She knows who flipped Republican districts and are facing tough re-election campaigns, and she knows which twitter celebrities fluked their way to safe D seats. She is not just the first woman Speaker of the House, she’s the first Dem to retake the gavel since Sam Rayburn, the guy they named all the buildings after. I know whose read of the national electorate I trust more.
Fair Economist
Pelosi’s concern is keeping a working majority in the House and with the current composition that requires peeling off some of the Problem
CreatorsSolvers “caucus” aka Blue Dogs. Keeping that kind of politician with her is the goal of her public statements.Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t follow?
@schrodingers_cat:
Leaving aside the definition of socialism… Harris Takes Apparent Shot At Warren: ‘I’ve Never Represented A Corporation’
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I love you as a commenter but IMO it’s time to drop the both the “purity Left” and the “corporate centrists” (or whatever derogatory name we’re calling the centrists). We will not win without the whole coalition. If Warren and Sanders are drawing 25% and Biden is drawing 30, both of their sets of voters are big groups and important.
I’m supporting Warren but I am perfectly willing to admit that there are a huge group of centrist Democrats. I think it would be helpful for Pelosi to acknowlege the reverse, that the Left side of the Party has a real constituency and brings something to the table. I think she’s very talented and a Party leader and I expect her to bring ALL voters in.
lumpkin
I fear that Warren’s health care plan could sink her in the general election. When there are trillions of dollars in taxes on the table, along with major changes in people’s health insurance it’s way too easy to demagogue. I know that there is already more money flowing into the system than is necessary and we could actually get better care for less money but getting that message through the hysterical screaming that will be coming from nearly every direction will be nigh impossible. And the sad thing is that it’s highly unlikely that she or anyone else will be able to come anywhere close to getting M4A through Congress. Sorry to say this but I think this is a strategic error.
For me the most important thing is undoing trump’s damage to the country and I think Warren is the best hope we have for that but I fear that her health care plan will hurt her chances to win the election. That probably makes me sound like a mushy centrist but I’m not, just looking at what I think is politically possible.
guachi
@schrodingers_cat: she gets pilloried, as you say, because she has weak arguments that basically involve linking some rando on Twitter.
bemused senior
Let’s remember who got the ACA passed…it was Nancy SMASH. And she got the house to pass it with a public option. She knows more about getting health care done than anyone else. I’ll trust her judgement.
Chetan Murthy
@Cheryl Rofer:
@schrodingers_cat:
I remember the kitchen table ads from Hillary’s try to give us universal health care. I remember “death panels”. Hell, I remember watching that bat-winged devil McCaughey on The Daily Show banging on about “death panels”, reading the text, that was obviously not supporting her argument. It was surreal. And I remember the Dems delivering the ACA on a hope and a prayer, with not one, not one vote to spare, not one chance to fix even the simplest of errors, b/c they had no margin left. I remember Fucking Holy Joe Lieberman trying to sabotage it; I remember Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh.
And I know that Medicare for All will not just gut sacred cows, it’ll put entire companies, an entire industry, to the torch. They will not like it, and they WILL fight back. It will be bloody and full of lies. Whereas, Medicare for All That Want It (a public option) is much easier to defend, easier to pass, and will get us most of what we want.
I buy my insurance on the exchange, so I WANT onto Medicare. But I’m not stupid enough to think that it’s a slam-dunk. Hell, even a Medicare public option isn’t a slam-dunk. But it’s a lot easier to sell, than M4A. I think Speaker Pelosi has a point. And again, I come back to the armies, the VAST ARMIES of well-to-do people in the insurance biz, who will come out with torches and pitchforks and tar, and wallets and lobbyists, to gut any attempt to end private insurance. If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen incrementally. Medicare as a public option.
dr. bloor
@Cheryl Rofer: If you don’t want to be seen as scolding her, try something other that Pure Snark for the title of the post.
And yeah, the R’s will poison anything that the D’s try to roll out. But if you believe all targets are the same size, I have a bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell you.
West of the Rockies
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t recall who R is supporting. I recall lots of anti-Pete sentiment from her. (I don’t want him to be president either because I believe he lacks national/international experience.)
Personally, I’d prefer Harris, but I do love EW, too. I’m just now not seeing how Kamala catches fire.
Kay
I don’t know but I think putting M4A and college in the same basket is wrong. The discussion about college costs is geared to young people, and they really did get screwed on paying for higher education. This is a legitimate compliant they have, and it has to be addressed. Pelosi was actually EARLY on this- she identified it as a problem well ahead of many in Congress. A CENTRAL part of her agenda that won the 2006 D wave was college affordability. She was the first person in either Party that I heard identify it and run on it.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Amen! I’m also dropping this:
Republicans fixation on obliterating the Affordable Care Act is threatening our health care & the protections of 130 million people w/ pre-existing conditions. We’ll continue fighting against the assaults & deliver on our promise to lower health care & prescription drug costs. Nancy Pelosi @TeamPelosi
Isn’t that what everyone supposedly wants? Lower health care and prescription costs and protection for people with pre existing conditions? Maybe that’s incremental M4A, or hybrid, or something else. The debate is too hung up on what we call it vs what it is we’re trying to accomplish (or the “end state vision).
LivingInExile
Thanks Cheryl for an interesting post.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jon Favreau (Obama speech-writer and podcasting O’Bro) is doing a second season of his series “The Wilderness”, talking to voters in swing states. He talked a little bit about what they’re finding in WI, FL, PA and AZ, and from the sound of it he’s walking back from the Bernie-curious, Big, Bold Ideas stance he and his partners fell into post-2016.
Amy
I liked her sit down with Colbert the other night. And I do wish she would be quiet about candidates big hopeful thoughts. They’re candidates! But I also think she has a point. Middle American wants jobs, hope for their kids, less toxic crap being done to their planet and more plans for climate crisis. We all remember the planet of our childhood when you could wake up with optimism.
debbie
@Kay:
I agree with you, Kay, and with MomSense’s posts yesterday. We can’t let insistence on “our way” cost us the White House. Instead of forcing M4A on millions of people who don’t want it, why not design a “model program” that will complete with current programs (both ACA and private). Let it prove itself to be the right way and then the country can adopt it for all.
O. Felix Culpa
Question: Let’s say none of the current frontrunners (Biden, Warren, Sanders) garner a majority prior to the convention. Who among all the contestants would be the best person to knit together the Democratic spectrum and generate a reasonable level of enthusiasm across the board?
Mr. Mack
I struggle with this issue as well. I am alive today because I had very good insurance, but still had nearly 7000 dollars in deductibles. People have told me (medical professionals) that I would have received the same level of care regardless. It is simply not true. I know I donated a ton of feeding tube supplies (including the formula) to some folks whose insurance would not cover them. I want to see everyone covered, but I sometimes feel BS dragged every candidate we have too far to the left, too fast. I want to be wrong.
My son brought home 8 kids from college this weekend, we had Austria, Ireland, England, Germany and Italy well represented here. The political discussions were fun and interesting. The kids get it. At least I hope so.
Emma
If the base — whoever that is — is not riled up enough by the actual crimes and the horrors being visited on human beings by this administration, then maybe we should move right along. Me, I will crawl over broken glass to vote for the Democrat in the next election, and I don’t care who it ends up being. Even the old Vermont former communist would be better than what squats in the White House right now.
Another Scott
@dr. bloor: +1
One of J’s cousins was visiting for a couple of days. She lives in Denver, is a lot of fun, personable and seems like a generally sensible person.
She said she voted for Donnie because she “hates, hates that corrupt Hillary”.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
We can’t underestimate the toxic, anti-Democratic, memes out there. We have to be able to counter them effectively.
Left McLeftish candidates will do great in some small percentage of the races out there. But not all. We need to tailor our messages and policies to do more than win Manhattan and San Francisco.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@West of the Rockies:
Each time I’ve looked, I haven’t been able to find those specific crosstabs, but between them Biden and Warren have 51% of the woman vote, and 63% of the black vote (Q poll). So I’d assume that the “black woman” vote goes to one of them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
meanwhile….
Ruckus
@dr. bloor:
Right out of the starting gate. And now all I can do is repeat.
I think Nancy has truth in her words. Most of us here are fairly liberal, judging by the comments and stated desires. We come from around the country and the world. We chase off people who are not quite sufficiently liberal. We want the things that candidates like HRC, EW, KH speak about and push. We think that others would like them if given a chance to experience them. And many of us know those who are the opposite. Who think there should be no government, who think that change should happen slowly. That trump is a complete aberration. But some of those other people think that our course is totally wrong that it will cause something, something to happen that will just ruin their lives. And they vote too.
Nancy Pelosi has been in congress for a long time. She is an extremely good speaker of the house, a great person, she sees how things work in real life, not just in passioned liberal’s minds.
Look at trump’s following, up until the gross law breaking started. We knew who he was, at least 66 million of us, but nearly that many voted for him and however mistakenly thought that HRC was/is the devil. Is half the country deranged? Well it looks like it to us, they certainly voted for a deranged person. But notice that they voted. They have a voice, they had a choice, they voted.
So what is Nancy saying? That these ideas, like M4A are wrong? No, she’s saying, nicely that many in our country and even in the democratic house just aren’t ready for all the change being described by a very liberal or several very liberal candidates. Many are, judging in a number of ways. Many need this change, even many of those on the other side of the aisle. They need this.
But they don’t want it. We are in a crisis of government. Half our legislative branch is really all we have right now and we have just over half of that. Why do any of us think that Joe Biden is doing well? He’s 76 yrs old, his record is not great, even if his character is. But he’s polling well. Yes he’s dropping as the days move forward, but we’ve seen this before. And paid for it. We’ve talked on here about the depth of some of the new ideas, the possibilities, the problems.
I’d bet Nancy is saying that we need to hire someone who will lead us forward, into at least basic governance, something we are sorely missing today. And one person is not going to fix that in the first week. Even trump didn’t manage to trash the place in the first week.
I think Nancy is a realist. I also think we need someone who is both a realist and a dreamer about a better country. Not just a dreamer about all the ways to change everything. Does it even work that way?
Kay
@debbie:
I’m not talking about health care. I’m fine with most of the ideas. I think the difference is “ceiling/floor”. Biden’s ceiling on health care is Warren’s floor.
I think we all have to admit that there is a legitimate Left side of the Party and a legitimate center and even a Right. Denying the other groups are “important” or “essential” is a dialogue ender. No one gets to be the most essential. If she’s talking about putting together groups of voters to make a majority in Wisconsin then say that. There’s no need to elevate one group and/or jettison another.
PJ
@guachi: I don’t know which demographic you fall into (and I dislike thinking about an individual’s opinions as representing a group or groups, but that is what we are talking about here.) However, commenters here skew old and white. While that is part of the Democratic coalition, the commentariat mostly does not seem to represent people under, say, 45, and people of color (with significant notable exceptions). Judging from comments, it also seems to be more suburban than urban, which, again, excludes a large group of people. There seem to be a large number of retirees or self-employed people (or at least people who can spend a significant chunk of their day typing comments without being fired.) As Kay notes in her comments here, the Democratic coalition is large and includes many groups. It would be a big mistake to assume that because you, or some other vocal and repetitive commenters are against Medicare for All, that “the base” is opposed to it as well (just as it would be a mistake to assume that because I am for it, so is “the base”.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: the subject of black women as the base of the party came up on Joy Reid’s show this morning, and I think the missing question is: Which black women? I’m guessing that, like every other demographic, black women voters tend to skew older and a bit more toward the moderate end of the scale than the on-line discussants
(where the hell is Joy Reid, btw? Seems like she’s been out for a long time– I hope it’s not a health issue)
West of the Rockies
@O. Felix Culpa:
Coalitions? Compromise? It’s my way or the highway!
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The ones who support my preferred candidate, obviously.
O. Felix Culpa
Once more for the cheap seats: we also need to think seriously about what (who) will get younger people to the polls. I believe this year is the first time millennials are the largest bloc of potential voters. They are not yet the largest bloc of actual voters, though. Part of my (volunteer albeit full-time) job is to get millennials and younger to the polls. How do you propose we do that?
Kay
@O. Felix Culpa:
I think Sanders is a non-starter as far as knitting together the coalition. There’s too much baggage and bad blood there. I think it was insane and dumb of his campaign to marginalize the Clinton voters who won.
I’m a Warren supporter and I think Biden is a weak candidate but I think I’d have to pick Biden as the “unity” candidate partly because there are more centrists than Lefties (IMO) and Democrats need suburbs. Need.
I just wish the centrist candidates were stronger. I would back one but I think they have real vulnerabilities as candidates. I think part of the reason the Left has become more prominent is the FAULT of the centrists. They don’t have a strong candidate, worse, I think they have weak candidates because they’re complacent and kind of arrogant. But even with that I would still say “advantage centrist”.
I wish Biden was tougher. I don’t get any sense from him that he likes to fight or is any good at it. I get this “shocked!” sense from him “like what has HAPPENED to this country!?” We don’t have time for that. He needs to adjust and get going.
patroclus
I favor expanding Medicare with a Public Option and enacting aggressive climate change legislation. Both of which seem to me to be “lefty” positions. But I don’t favor M4A or a Green New Deal, which seem to me to be slogans rather than policy. So I guess I’m a “centrist.” I think Pelosi is right here and instead of criticizing her, we should be criticizing the Republicans who favor none of this. Baiting different parts of the Dem coalition seems to me to be extraordinarily counter-productive.
A mere two weeks ago on this blog, we couldn’t even ask Senator Warren what her financing plans were for her health care proposals. Thankfully, she’s got better political ears than some commenters here.
Marcopolo
@Major Major Major Major:
One of the things that has popped up across European (not necessarily Scandinavian but also Germany, France, etc…) countries that have very robust government funded social safety nets (like Universal Health Care) is that those programs worked well & citizens generally agreed they were a good idea from the end of WW2 but in the last 20-30 years as these countries populations have become less heterogeneous (white) support for the programs has dropped a lot (if I recall correctly I think the polling even shows the drop in support has some correlation to the size of the minority population).. Generally stated it is the idea of sure let’s do things to make peoples lives better and more livable so long as they look/sound like me, but god forbid we spend any gov’t resources on those others. Whether this is just organic to human beings or divisions that have been inflamed by political opportunists (there is a lot of Russian fuckery going on in European countries), the effect is the same (I’d also add the huge shift in global wealth inequality as a driver in this too–folks who feel economically vulnerable are also more easily manipulated). So I think the point SC may be making is since the US tends to start out already at a higher level of diversity than European/Scandinavian countries its damned near impossible to get the majority of folks here to agree on large gov’t funded social safety programs.
I am typically an optimist so I look at this as a challenge to be overcome but it does make it harder for all of us to have nice things.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
thank you.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
I agree that we should base our governance on facts and not on the desires but we have a not insignificant segment of our population, that votes, that say facts be damned, they want simple, they think the rich are better, equality gave us a black man for president.
They aren’t rational, facts they don’t believe, make believe and fairy dust they believe. Sure they’ve been sold a pile of horseshit, sure they are rubes, sure they are racists.
But they still vote, they have that right.
That’s the reality. And telling them they are wrong and idiots besides won’t change that.
Kelly
@bemused senior:
Yep. The week before Pelosi green lighted the current Trump impeachment moves I’d given up hope of any substantive action other than the 2020 election. I posted a plaintive impeach the assh*** already wail here. She’s good at this and likely has several layers of contingency plans below the surface. My skills at persuasion are very limited and I am a terrible poker player.
debbie
@Kay:
I know you weren’t, but healthcare is one example where the different factions really need to stop their “my way only” and work together on something everyone can live with and support.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay: I suspect you’re right, which does not bode well, in my view. My concern in that scenario is that the most compelling argument for Biden is that he’s not Trump. A true statement and for most of us on this blog sufficient reason to vote for him. But I fear it’s a weak motivator for the less politically engaged, which is A LOT of people.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Read that from the perspective that “Kim” means Kardashian.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
politics aside, and even leaving what he “gets” and doesn’t about the changes in his beloved Senate gentlemen’s club of 1978 or so, my chief worry about Biden is that he would look weak and befuddled on the national stage.
The other side of that coin is I think Biden is the candidate I see as having coattails if he could look sharp through the campaign. I think his short-comings as a politician, once he got in office could be overcome by Nancy Pelosi and even a Schumer-led Senate, but the candidate, the Joe Biden of the debates and the primary thus far does not inspire confidence. I wish Klobuchar had even a little bit of charisma.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie:
IMO this is due almost entirely to Sanders trying to make a litmus test out of supporting his specific M4A proposal. And Warren bought into it, to her detriment, and now it’s A Thing.
ArchTeryx
I think Pelosi is completely missing the point.
M4A is aspirational. It’s a starting point meant to fire up the base. Dangling nice things out there tends to do that, and it’s perfectly okay for a candidate to be aspirational in the campaign trail. The Republicans have absolutely no problem with it – how many of their candidates said they’d ban abortion if they were elected? Trump said he’d repeal the ACA on Day One of his administration. A lot of their evil aspirations come to nothing, but they never stop trying and aren’t afraid to voice them to fire up their base. And it’s a starting point in Congressional negotiations. You don’t negotiate yourself down to the compromise position before you even present the idea to Congress.
What’s coming up is going to be a pure base election. Our base, as fickle as they are, shows up, we win. It’s that simple. If they’re discouraged into staying home, then we may as well start figuring out how to survive the next four years of Trump. And I really don’t want to have to make another post such as I made when Trump was first elected.
Kirk Spencer
@Wapiti: I’ve come to believe Nancy has internalized Roosevelt’s dictum: I agree with what you want, now make me do it.
I’ve not read this most recent, but in general what I’ve seen in things like impeachment and other big issue items is if you listen to the full statement there’s a qualifier; something along the lines of “at this time.”
As others have noted, she’s demonstrated extremely good knowledge of her numbers. Not perfectly, but better than just about any other politician. Barring solid demonstration otherwise, then, I’m going to assume the numbers she has say “not yet.”
Personally, I want Silver’s (thanks @JR:) Medicare for All who Want IT. (M4AWWI ?). But I’m amenable to any improvement to the current system.
Oh, and for the other topic running here: Warren first choice, Harris close second, and still team Broken Glass Dem.
PJ
@Major Major Major Major: @schrodingers_cat: The free hand that large corporations in this country have, particularly in the finance, tech, and energy industries, is the one of the major reasons why most people in this country live lives that are economically and/or politically precarious. They have worked assiduously to prevent or eliminate regulation of their businesses, which has created or contributed to, among other things, global warming, environmental degradation, the financial collapse of 2008, increased concentration of wealth in the top .1%, the collapse of legitimate news gathering, widespread dissemination of political misinformation and hate speech, etc. Warren is an avowed capitalist (which is one reason why Democratic Socialists can’t stand her) but she wants to regulate industry and break up businesses who size and scope damages democracy and free markets (which is why Wall St. and Zuckerberg can’t stand her.)
Kay
@debbie:
But. And. The private insurance backers should admit that health care costs are going up with insurance. “Insurance” isn’t enough of an answer. Insured people are paying thousands out of pocket as their premiums go up. They pay more, they get less. There is now insurance for health insurance. I’ve seen it. An additional insurance policy to pay the costs that health insurance that doesn’t pay. I mean, at some point this becomes ludicrous. I can imagine having health insurance PLUS an HSA PLUS a policy to add to your health insurance.
Apparently we’re not there yet, where people are willing to go 100% public- I get that- but this isn’t working very well. Biden’s belief that people “love” it is probably misplaced and tad out of touch with actual lived experience.
cain
@JR:
Interestingly enough, for one of the jobs I’m looking at, they were using Cigna. I can’t stand Cigna as a health care provider. I’m currently on Kaiser Permanante which has some of the best customer service/human relations I have ever had. I told them that I was reluctant to move. So this is an example of how I went with an ACA plan rather than employee health plan. The company will give me money to cover my use of Kaiser. Which is great!
Ohio Mom
I suppose she can’t be seen as playing favorites but it probably would have been more effective for Pelosi to have talked to Warren privately before the big M4A rollout, instead of this public, thinly-veiled scolding.
I’ve always thought Warren was our strongest candidate and I worry she has painted herself in a corner here.
I understand her “plan” as aspirational and as a vision statement (she surely understands the challenges of enacting any sized change) but I imagine it comes off as a road map she intends on following even if the bridge on her chosen route is out. If she attempts a pivot, she’ll be accused of being a flip-flopper.
At moments like this, I remind myself that the noise on my head only effects me. Was this a good or bad move on Pelosi’s part? I can’t know.
And with that, the bathroom calls to be scrubbed.
Ella in New Mexico
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m hearing much the same thing. Something I find interesting right now in my limited poll of the 12 or so 22-35 year-olds in our immediate family(siblings, cousins and their sig O’s) is that even though ALL of them voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary, the rest (with two exceptions going for Gary Johnson, for which they continue to be teased to this day) went for Clinton with no hesitation. Bottom line is, they’re all very progressive and want the country to get back on track from the Obama era. They all really admired him, and miss him terribly.
This year, they’re split more along the lines you describe above: a couple of Biden supporters, 6 Warren Supporters, and about 4 leaning Bernie supporters, although they voice they haven’t decided yet. The Biden supporters are cynical realists, and think we just need to vote for whoever can kick Trump out. They’re not so worried about what happens after that and seem to trust it’ll be just fine. The Warren supporters just really like her and want her policies for their future. The Berner’s are just kinda lazy and haven’t paid much attention due to having a lot going on in their lives.
I think if anyone assumes any specific candidate has the young vote locked up they’re making a seriously wrong assumption.
Amir Khalid
I fnd implausible the suggestion that Nancy Pelosi is trolling her own party’s presidential candidates over healthcare policy. Why would she do that? I agree that she’s most likely giving political cover to Democratic members of the House whose seats are not the most secure, and without whom nothing the Democratic party wants to do gets done. This is what leaders of a majority in a legislature do: husbanding their majority and keeping it intact as long as they can. Absent actual evidence of such, I would not read her words as tone-deafness about what Democrats want or political ineptitude.
Quaker in a Basement
Yeah. Look at the candidates this country has elected and the ones it has passed over.
germy
@schrodingers_cat:
Just ask front-pager Imani Gandy.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Klobuchar really rubbed me the wrong way when she said something like “only real Americans are from the Midwest”. I can’t judge how strong a candidate she actually would be, but taking GOP memes like those (“coastal elites”, yadayadayada) and running with them is very annoying to this person.
It’s still early.
It’s good we’re talking about these things before the voting begins. I’m sure proposals will be modified over time. Warren’s “how I will pay for it” document already walks back a lot of what we thought we knew (“long term goal of M4A”). The candidates know that big changes will be very, very difficult. Right now, they’re trying to stay in the race through NH – if they’re not in the race, how pure their health-care proposals are really doesn’t matter – the winners will help guide the changes (with most of the proposals created by Congress, of course).
Cheers,
Scott.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ohio Mom:
Based on the comments on this here liberal top-10,000 blog, I tend to agree with you on both points. I hadn’t anticipated the dismay over her proposal, which suggests that there might not be significant support if it’s reasonable to extrapolate to the national Democratic population. I dearly wish Kamala had a stronger showing in the polls. Maybe we’ll get some upsets in Iowa and South Carolina.
Doug R
@dr. bloor:
Pelosi understands it better than we do.
Wapiti
@debbie: As a Warren supporter, I’d prefer that she find a way to throw healthcare on to the “it’s really complicated and frankly Congress will have to solve it” pile.
Marcopolo
@patroclus:
Maybe it is just the words you are throwing around here that are confusing me but I am confused by your comment. I see a slogan as he kind of thing of what you might see on a bumper sticker versus policies which I envision as a laying out of goals and paths for achieving them versus the actual concrete steps to get there–so three levels. Both the GND & M4A are far beyond the slogan phase and well into policy.
Here’s a thorough discussion of aspects of the GND (warning, very wonky stuff)
I’d say Warren’s M4A plan puts the policy framework (and actually more) on that issue.
Heck, there has even been legislation drafted (in WA state for the GND for example, it failed; BS’s M4A bill) on both these issues. Maybe you mean something else, but I don’t really understand where that statement is coming from.
zhena gogolia
@PJ:
So do people who vote.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m terrified of Trump just using him as a fucking punching bag. You know, people forget this because there’s this glow around Obama but Obama ran an absolutely vicious campaign against Romney in Ohio. It was NOT “hope and change”. It was ALSO straight-up economic populism. Obama was tough. He managed to keep distance from it and his general reputation as “decent” held – but it was vicious. Centrist REPUBLICANS here are still bitter about it. They think he took down Romney which played a role in the GOP base looking to Trump. I just don’t get any sense from Biden that he has that. He looked stricken when they went after Hunter. Like he could not imagine someone was attacking his family. I don’t know- is he familiar with Donald Trump? This shocked him?
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major:
Right. I don’t like the way she (and to an extent Harris) let him define the debate.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
Writing “hype” undercuts your framing.
Oppose her because you don’t agree with her policy positions.
Gin up some kind of consipiracy/mass hypnosis explanation is a pathetic attempt to invalidate her having run the most successful campaign to date.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes! Exactly! Worse, they are as immune to facts as Trump supporters. There is always an excuse for why their candidate didn’t win.. whether it is in national elections (DNC conspiracy!) or local elections (other candidate conspiracy!).
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Scandinavian style socialism implies a huge welfare state, with benefits for citizens from cradle to grave. Such a system won’t fly here with our deep divisions over race and national origin among other things. Scandinavian style socialism is under attack in those countries as they are accepting more immigrants and more diverse.
@PJ: Rs talk a good game but their policies have encouraged monopolies rather than competition. I do want the government to provide a floor and regulate the playing field so that everyone gets a chance but I don’t want the government to allocate all the resources and exclude or limit private capital., i.e a command and control economy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Hell, I remember Cory Booker ringing for the smelling salts over attacks on Bain Capital. Nothing I’ve seen from his has made me forget that moment.
utterly fascinating to me that Republicans look for ways to blame Obama for trump– then again, so do a lot of Democrats
One of Obama’s gurus said the auto bailout won OH and MI in 2012. “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s a pundit now so it’s all bullshit, but I laugh at Axelrod wagging his finger about “populist economics”. The 2012 Obama campaign in Ohio was just about 100% “Romney is really rich and really mean”. Axelrod did that. And it worked. Now he’s like “we must not demonize the job creators”. Okey doke.
PJ
@Amir Khalid: Yep. As with the question of whether she “wants” impeachment, she believes her first job is to provide cover for vulnerable House members.
I don’t really understand where the hand-wringing is coming from. If Warren wins the nomination while pushing for Medicare for All, are Democrats and independents who don’t want it going to stay at home, or vote for Tulsi as a protest, and let Trump win? Everyone knows that if she gets elected, whatever health care changes become law depends entirely on the make-up of the Congress (and maybe the Supreme Court), and will end up being different from what she is proposing now. Whoever is the nominee, and President, will face the same thing. Warren put forth this plan because this is what, ideally, she would like to see happen and she wants to show people how it can be done, and because she thinks it will help her win the nomination. If Democratic voters really dislike this plan, as so many commenters here do, they will flock to other candidates, and their problem is “solved.”
One thing I do know is that Warren’s plan will get young people excited, where “repairing and extending the ACA”, which seems to be the baseline Democratic position, will not.
PPCLI
@West of the Rockies: Your point can’t be emphasised enough. (As several others in the thread already note.)
I grew up and spent much of my adult life in Canada, a country with a single-payer, government administered health system. I’ve spent a bit of my adult life in countries with other sorts of national health arrangements. I’ve spent the rest of my adult life in the US. There is no question in my mind that the US system is a catastrophe and any of the other systems I’ve lived in would be immeasurably superior.
Having said that, I’ll also point to the fact that the system Canada now has came in incrementally, modified in response to circumstances, with variations from province to province, and constant federal-provincial negotiations and compromise over the course of the more than 70 years since an immense, sparsely populated agricultural province introduced a universal scheme in 1947. It is still being adjusted and modified in significant ways, as conditions change, because this is a very complicated operation. It didn’t happen all at once, and almost surely couldn’t have.
The question is not just what system to strive for. It’s to be realistic about how the world works and how you can achieve the goal. Building and fixing Obamacare, expanding Medicare incrementally to larger populations in need, figuring out what works along the way, has a chance of arriving at something acceptable and viable.. Going for an all-at-once revolution against established, powerful stakeholders, asking people to give up the health insurance they have in exchange for a leap in the dark simply isn’t going to happen.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay:
All good points. What bothers me is Pelosi’s feeling she has to scold “the left.” She’s done it before. That implicitly says that the centrists are the “true” Democratic Party.
Yes, let’s be a coalition. That means respecting those with different ideas. This argument is a variant of the “electability” argument, which, as far as I can see, is totally subjective.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
Joe is 76. Is it realistic to expect or even hope for an epiphany from him so that he suddenly gets tough and adjusts his game plan?
I like Joe. I really, truly wish I liked him as a candidate. I fear he just wants to play steward, oversee no real change, tackle no truly progressive agenda items, and pretend he “can work with his honorable colleagues across the aisle.”
There is NO honor across the aisle. Republicans have become anti-science, xenophobic money-grubbers.
But they can and will prevent anything too leftist and radical (through a campaign of fear, resentment, misinformation, and outright cheating).
Jesus, I hear the confusion in my own comment. I want progressive movement but know it must be incremental.
I think the cross I am willing to die on is the environment. As a species, we can survive while we figure out medical insurance. We can continue to muddle our way through student debt.
We MUST address climate change and punch back on xenophobia.
Doug R
@Humdog:
I saw some recent polling of Black support. Biden led of course but Warren had a very strong second with 20% with don’t know/won’t say at 12%. So there’s a LOT of room to move around and most polling shows Warren as almost everyone’s second choice.
Some more here: Can Warren win the nomination without majority black support?
Interviews with black female pols suggest there’s an opening for her and other Democrats to cut into Biden’s lead among a critical voting bloc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: that’s disappointing. A friend of a friend in Chicago claims to know Axelrod and says he’s a dick, but I suspect that “knowing him” means they were in the same room at one point, and he’s a dick because of ’08 (she never got over a bit of PUMA-ness).
If you (or anyone) watched VEEP: Did you share my hunch that Axelrod was the model for Ben Cafferty?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I was (actually) more involved in the 2012 campaign than I was in the 2008 and 2012 was a vicious battle slog :)
Obama could do it because people liked him and (rightfully) think he’s “decent” (he is) so he had this kind of “decency balance” in the bank going in. But they were vicious. Trump just has “mean” so he has to get meaner. Literally no one thinks he’s decent.
The Romney loss was profound for Republicans. They lied to their supporters and convinced them Obama was “toast” (he was not) so their supporters were crushed when he won. They had this whole debate in Ohio- should we go full-on racist and turn out white working class men or tack to the center and attract some new people? They chose A. And here we are.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan:What word would you have me use? She is polling at 23% hardly a thumping majority in D primary field. For about 77% of D voters she is not the first choice. Although in the Balloon Juice comment section EW’s standing is close to 80% it seems.
Doug R
@schrodingers_cat: Warren has the LOWEST unfavorable rating. Everyone likes her, something I thought you wanted in a candidate.
Major Major Major Major
@PJ:
I keep waiting for her to pivot to this, but she seems to keep chasing Bernie voters, which is really turning me off.
PJ
@O. Felix Culpa: This blog does not represent younger Democratic voters at all, so I would be wary of extrapolating.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: I was here and I remember. Balloon Juice has had trouble retaining black FPers.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: I like her too as my senator but I am not in 23% for whom she is the first choice.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I went to a DC strategy session for bloggers (because John was invited and didn’t want to go) and my opinion is Axelrod was not the strongest leader on their team- the woman was- I don’t recall her name- Stephanie? The second in command there. She’s really smart. He was like “blah, blah, scold, scold” – all the positive energy came from her.
It’s so perfect that I don’t know her NAME but everyone knows Axelrod. Anyway! If I knew her name I would give her credit but I only remember the FAMOUS MAN’S name :)
cain
@Kay:
He’s going to get punked. Repeatedly. His responses to attacks are slow and rather weak. He still hasn’t given a good riposte against the attacks against him and Hunter. He’s not Obama. In this, I think Mayor Pete and Harris are better. I don’t see Harris to be particularly liberal either. I think she is more on the centrist train.
Also I find attacks by the left about EW being a Republican ridiculously dumb. Yes, she was a Republican since 47. But you know there are a lot of voters who have also made that transition late in life. Our blog host also transitioned to Democrat around 40 or 41. Does that make him and others not part of the party? Stupid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wonder how many of those millennial voters we need to excite have insurance because of the ACA, and are excited about Bernie precisely because of the absolute self-righteousness with which he tells them the ACA was a “fayl-yuh”
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I call the purity left not the lefties who vote D but those who talk a good game and then vote for Jill Stein or Nader. What should I call them, do you have a better name?
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Word and thank you.
PJ
@Major Major Major Major: When it comes down to 4 or 5 candidates in a debate, this is bound to come up. I don’t know what Warren’s particular strategy is regarding this, but, right now, trying to peel off as many Bernie supporters or Bernie-curious as possible by showing that she is the better prepared, smarter, and more optimistic lefty is the right move.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: It’s true that in Europe large welfare states are often coupled with restrictive immigration and (nowadays) nativism, but there are also countries going in the opposite direction, like Japan.
@schrodingers_cat:
So we should call everything positive about every candidate nothing more than ‘hype’?
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Whoa. Condescending much? A campaign is about exciting your base – or moving voters towards becoming your base. Bernie may have poisoned some minds, but I think you’re painting with a broad brush there. A large contingent of the millennials (and younger) I know and work with are too busy working several jobs to pay the rent to align themselves with any political figure at all.
Kay
@West of the Rockies:
I’m fairly shallow so I don’t even get that far. I just hope Trump doesn’t beat the shit out of him. I’m not confident he will win. If I was I would switch over to him. As you can tell I’m HUGELY principled:)
I would suggest he stop scolding young people. He has a problem with that group and he’s not going to lecture them into coming out. They’re right when they complain about college costs. I don’t care how you look at it they pay a shit-ton more than my generation did. That’s a fact.
germy
Is Kurt fear-mongering, or is this a legitimate concern? This thread:
guachi
@PJ: I didn’t mean to imply that we here at BJ are representative of the entire base, just that we are one part. Kay is absolutely correct that the Democratic coalition is very broad.
My point was, and Kay said it better, that because of the breadth of opinions in the Dem base that being for M4A won’t “fire up the base” simply because the base is too broad on that issue, as evidenced by opposition right here in BJ. BJ is filled with people who I would say are Democrats first and foremost, and that’s why I consider us part of the base (crawl over broken glass, etc.)
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
????
frosty
I’m retiring soon and trying to figure out Medicare. So far it sucks. My employer insurance is way better than A B and D. If Med Advantage is like the ACA plans I need to get for my son we’ll have a problem. The networks are in PA and our docs are in MD. Didn’t anyone figure out that state borders don’t mean much when you’re a couple miles away.
Short answer: I’m against M4A and for a public option. Our candidates painted themselves into a corner.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
On the socialism front, as I’ve said here before I get my healthcare from the VA. And it’s run about as socialistic as can be. Doesn’t matter what your rank in the military was, at the VA we are all the same. You have a medical problem, you get treated. You want to be treated special, sorry that doesn’t work here. Some, like me, are fine with that, and some are not at all. And it’s obvious.
But the VA healthcare is about as socialist as it gets, everyone gets treated the same. Drive an expensive car there or ride the bus, inside the building you are the same as everyone else. Some like it, some are only there because it’s all they have. The healthcare is the same.
Even with M4A the healthcare won’t be the same, there will be additional insurance or payments allowed, because we won’t all have that one thing that makes everyone at the VA the same, we are vets. It’s still a restricted program. Most countries with real socialized healthcare have additional monied healthcare available.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
She’s leading quite a few polls and has passed many candidates since beginning the campaign. She leads in Iowa. Only Buttigieg has advanced similarly and Biden has lost the most.
Now would be a good time to document your 80% claim.
cain
@germy:
We have never canceled elections not even during a war. That would be a bridge too far even for right wingers. We are not at war, our economy is decent, there is absolutely no reason to stop elections. If it happens, there will be a very strong response from the voting public. That will alarm everyone. To not have elections is absolutely unconstitutional, and completely indefensible given the state of affairs in this country.
ETA – the only possible reasons is because of election hacking, but given the Senate refusing to look at any bills to tighten election security, that would be a bullshit reason.
Cheryl Rofer
Hey y’all – good discussion!
I had to go out with the kittehs so couldn’t participate much.
There are a lot of good points here. I particularly like Kay’s and O. Felix Culpa’s contributions, but there are lots of others I liked too.
I still would like to hear Pelosi’s reasoning on this from her. I think it’s largely based on her perceptions of votes, both electoral and for individual members.
But I can also make the point that she was wrong about impeachment and I was right. She wound up taking my pov that impeachment is necessary.
Or, better, I can make the point that both of us were right, given our different roles. It’s fair enough for her to take the position of “Make me,” as someone upthread mentioned. It’s also fair enough for me, as a voter, to say “GET THAT DESTROYER OUT OF OFFICE NOW!” We worked together on that, even though we were saying different things. That’s how you make a coalition.
PJ
@PJ: ETA: I don’t think Biden is a threat to Warren (or anyone, really, for reasons that Kay has discussed in comments to this post). To her right, right now, Buttigieg is getting the biggest push, and he is positioning himself as the anti-Warren, centrist, Wall St. and right-thinking Republican – friendly candidate. So he isn’t really a threat to her either, because those people are probably not going to vote for Warren in a primary. Her biggest chance to persuade people who aren’t supporting her right now and who are likely to support her is to focus on the left wing of the party, and if she can cripple Bernie, then she can pivot towards the center and start talking about how she will reinvigorate business in this country.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer:
one could also point out that between her being wrong and right, the facts on the ground, and in the House, changed dramatically
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Right, and this is the second election where he’s done that. ?
MomSense
@Kay:
Cutter. I worked very closely with her and Jim Messina on a messaging project in 2011 and early 2012.
Major Major Major Major
@Cheryl Rofer:
This is my read.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That too!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer:
Those are two completely different takes. I don’t know that you can just separate them by “or, better.”
Cheryl Rofer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And part of those facts on the ground is public opinion, shaped in part by those of us calling for impeachment.
piratedan
to be fair, it seems like there are a whole lot of bad faith suppositions here as well, one of the complaints I’ve seen floated is that if we transition to M4A or M4AWWI is that suddenly 2M jobs are gone as if we watched the Death Star destroy Alderaan, Yeah, those jobs may be gone from private insurers eventually but you can bet your bippy that someone is STILL going to be processing claims and its likely to be a state or federal government agency instead of Cigna or any of their ilk when the transition ever comes to pass. Will it be a one-for-one transition, who knows, but its disingenuous as fuck to be making statements and using GOP framing regarding that outcome. It’s like wind and solar jobs replacing coal and oil jobs…. the jobs will still need to be done, just who is doing the work for whom will likely change.
and while understanding what kind of health care change is likely, we all need to remember that the end goal is covering more people, more affordably and it seems to me that we can pick and choose from the other models that exist out there and tinker with it until we get it right but staying on message that health care is a right and not a luxury commodity. None of this is going to be passed by edict, there will be long and strident arguments from ALL interested parties to reach a compromise and all that anyone who is presenting a plan is doing is starting the conversation from THIS point on and trying to establish on what framing the discussion is taking place. I completely understand that both the GOP and the Media have no intention of honoring this framing but the point remains that they have no intention of honoring ANY Dem framing of any issue. They will not play fair, nor do they intend to, so you might as well put your marker down now and move from that point. I have a great deal of faith that most of the Dem candidates (excepting Ms. Gabbard) want to try and make the system better and arguing among ourselves about methodologies and messages essentially does the GOP’s work for them, because these fuckers could not come up with a plan to leave a phone booth with an open door, so they’ll gleefully adopt any ready made argument to use against whoever the nominee is and whatever plan is decided upon.
Be kind to each other and remember that we’re passionate about our candidates and we’re excited that we could see real change and we all are working in our own ways to make those changes happen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: wasn’t it Stephanie Cutter who was challenged by Kellyanne at some post-election discussion, “Are you really saying you think I would be involved with a racist campaign?” and responded: “Yup”.
PJ
@guachi: It will fire up young people, who we need now and in the future to win. Incrementalism doesn’t excite anyone, however much it may be the actual path that positive change generally takes. (I would have become a card-carrying member of Jaroslav Hasek’s Party of Moderate Progress Within the Law.)
MomSense
@Cheryl Rofer:
Pelosi is probably terrified we are going to lose this election if we go down the Warren Sanders path. It won’t just be the top of the ticket, either. We will lose the house.
Mike in DC
Pushing for M4A will at least put a public option on the table. Pushing for one of the “halfway” proposals like “Medicare for those who want it”(Buttigieg) or “M4A but in 10 years, not 4″(Harris) will at least put ACA tweaks on the table. Pushing for the public option (Biden) will get us fuckall. Not even ACA tweaks. If you go in pressing for ACA tweaks + public option, first your own conservative wing will demand you drop the public option, then the Republicans will stonewall even the tweaks(and you will lack public support without at least the PO). But if you come in at a higher demand level to begin with, your conservative wing will agree to the PO as a compromise, and you’ll have sufficient public support to get it through this go around.
At any rate, I have health coverage thanks to the ACA, and for me M4A isn’t in my top 5 must-haves. I understand it is for some, but I wish people wouldn’t assume that everyone on the center and/or left side of the aisle wants M4A first and foremost. Immigration reform, student loan reform, green energy, election reform and Fuck Putin are my top 5 policy must haves, for example. Continuing to push for civil rights, 15 dollar minimum wage, affordable college, reparations, criminal justice reform are next. Corporate reform is 11th, so I guess M4A would clock in around 12th on my list.
FlipYrWhig
Presuming that liberals are the Democratic “base” is the root of many grave conceptual errors in professional and amateur punditry.
Kay
@guachi:
Also, among Democrats, everyone thinks they are the base. They probably ARE too. So I just start with that. Yes, you are the base. And you. And you. Again- if Bernie/Warren have 25 and Biden has 30 they all have one or more portions of the base. If Bernie-Warren had, I don’t know, 5, then they could be ignored, but they don’t so they can’t.
And no centrist ever runs on not bringing out the base. They claim to be able to do both things- bring out the base and also appeal to sporadic, skittish voters. Biden has a burden too- he has to prove he can do both. He has not met his burden, just as Bernie/Warren haven’t met theirs.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes. She is awesome.
JR
I made what I thought was a fairly reasoned argument for the “other side” of this issue, from within the party, and no engagement. Either people want to engage with internal disagreement over major policy objectives or they (and we all) will get nothing.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sorry if I came across strong in my previous response. I work with millennials in my political role and I teach younger people at the local community college, who are mostly POC (Hispanic and Native) women, many with young children, trying to establish a basic career. They have hard lives and politics and politicians of any stripe might as well be on the moon as far as they’re concerned. Survival is paramount for them. Those are the people I want to reach (in my non-teaching capacity), because they are among the most vulnerable in our population and I want them to know they have a voice and can make a difference. Having a compelling candidate with a compelling relevant message could make a difference.
Cacti
I’ve about had it up to my eyeballs with the born again liberal, her cult followers, and the socialist toad and his cult followers telling me who the “real Democrats” are.
It didn’t take me until age 46 to figure out that Republicans suck. I also never had a schoolboy crush on the Soviet Union, and always saw it for the totalitarian hell that it was.
The leftier than thou bullshit of you and yours has cost us the presidency twice in the past 20 years. So the lesson you took away from it was “Let’s do it again”?
I trust the proven record of Democrats who have won national elections, like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, a thousand times over the likes of you.
Fuck off!
FlipYrWhig
Also, personally, I suspect Warren is less invested in saying “look I just fixed health care!” than in the larger statement “look at the many things we could accomplish if we just raised taxes on the hyper-rich.”
Cheryl Rofer
@Omnes Omnibus: When I give an explanation like those, I am seldom fully convinced of it. As a scientist, I have to consider a number of possible causal paths. I’m fine with uncertainty and not fully committing to any of them.
The “Or, better” indicates that I prefer that explanation. The first explanation is zero-sum, which is hardly ever the case in dealings with people. The second is about people working together with different roles. I like that model better.
PJ
@frosty: You wouldn’t have any of those problems with Warren’s plan. It’s called Medicare for All, but it’s not Medicare as it exists now, it’s federal single payer and you wouldn’t have to bother with networks or any of that rigamarole.
Kay
@MomSense:
Thank you. I also liked her. I just found her very not-fussy and normal where Axelrod was like this grave “senior adviser” in a way I found annoying in a political operative. Just be a political operative. It’s sales. It’s not negotiating arms reduction.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike in DC:
Is that where she landed? I hadn’t heard.
Citizen Scientist
@schrodingers_cat: And they all believe that if Bernie is the nominee he’ll beat DT easily.
Ruckus
@ArchTeryx:
I like aspirational. I like reality in a politician better.
We are hiring someone to run our government. For all of us. Not only for the rich. Not only for the poor. Not only for the middle. For all of us. That’s the reality, we have differing needs. And desires. The rich want to be richer. But so do the poor. This country is supposed to be about all of us. Not the majority, not the rich, not even the poor and downtrodden.
Going along the same way we’ve been isn’t the answer, it doesn’t work for far too many.
We need a different direction, one that doesn’t give most everything to the rich. One that actually recognizes all of us, allows all of us to vote, recognizes that we aren’t all in the same place in many ways and never will be. We can’t be, life doesn’t work that way, but it can work far better. Right now we are in a system that values money above all else, not humanity, not rights, not equality, but mostly just money. And money is not equality.
debbie
@cain:
Hell, he’s punking himself. “Segregationists never call me boy!”
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: I also wonder if, when we use the words “millennials” and “young voters,” the image in our minds is privileged, white, college-educated people. That image would be incorrect, just as we have frequently noted that “working class” is erroneously linked with white males.
Doug R
@schrodingers_cat:
You mean the Purity Pony Brigade?
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: Another assumption is that many of us who are supporting incremental progress don’t want the same results as the progs. If I were god-emperor, were would be a larger Denmark with a more diverse population and looser speech laws. But I am not god-emperor (for which we may all be thankful) and a shitload of our fellow Americans aren’t liberals.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa: no worries, sorry if I came across as condescending
my point was: Bernie Sanders misleads people. I won’t say lies because he obviously believes every word that comes out of his own mouth. And young people seem to be particularly susceptible to the idea that “the Establishment”, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and (cue dramatic squirrel music) Debbie Wasserman Schultz are the real enemy (and twenty years ago, Ralph Nader sold that same message about Al Gore, because his mother owned stock in an oil company). He tells them there is “no reason!” we can’t have X, when in fact there are millions of reasons, a lot of them being lifelong democrats who are not evil, they’re just scared of upsetting the precarious equilibrium they’ve achieved, with “private insurance” they think they don’t pay for because they don’t write a check every month. Or they hear about “debt cancellation” for people who went to college, when they didn’t go to college, and their kids didn’t go to college, and no one wants to cancel the debt they got from a medical situation, or a car accident, or their kid needing a lawyer….
I don’t think Warren is toxic in the same way, though I know she did go along with a lot of his “the system is rigged” crap in ’16. Strikes me as odd that someone who spent the last twenty-odd years working on issues of bankruptcy and debt among middle and lower-middle class families isn’t more sensitive to the reasons they might be skeptical of her plans.
JR
@cain: That is a helpful anecdote. I’m fortunate to have good employer support but I have used ACA to cover a month gap in job transition before. Bought a bottom line bronze / catastrophic plan but fortunately did not need it.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’d bet that Nancy Pelosi always agreed with you. But her job is as much timing as anything else. The set up is as important as the actual thing in politics. Actually in most jobs the set up is as important as the actual thing that is being aimed for. You want homemade cookies, the prep is as important if not more so than the baking. It’s the same if not more so in politics.
debbie
@frosty:
Let me know when you figure it out. I’m not retiring, but I want to be ready when that time comes.
O/T: Anyone else having issues with Chrome’s latest update? (Version 78.0.3904.87). This is the first time ever I’ve wanted to punch Google.
MomSense
@piratedan:
Warren answered in the affirmative about the 2 million jobs lost. She was asked about it in New Hampshire by a local NPR host based on a Kaiser study. It doesn’t even matter if it happens or not. Her answer about two million jobs lost will be used by the Republicans in the election and it’s a hit that doesn’t miss. People who keep arguing the policy are missing the point. We have to win first. You cannot win if you hand Republicans that kind of easy attack. It’s political malfeasance on Warren’s part. I already questioned her judgment but this was just absolutely inexcusable.
Chetan Murthy
@Doug R: Ahem and harrumph, I say, I say, it’s “leftier-than-thou” brigade.
Ruckus
@cain:
I have a 73 yr old friend who is fairly liberal. He votes dem 100%, hates trump with more passion than me, and that’s difficult. He’s a registered republican and has always been – and isn’t changing that. Period. I don’t get it but I’ll take the vote.
Marcopolo
@Kay: I, for one, admit
I AM NOT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BASE
So there!
Actually, based on my demo (except for the education stuff) I’m supposed to be the base voter for the other party. Even better, I am good friends w/ a half dozen other middle aged white guys and all of us are solid D voters so there you go (as are all the women).
The only folks in my social circle who voted for Trump were a 30 year old libertarian leaning white guy & a 45 year old AA guy who was the son of a woman who came here from Jamaica. What did they have in common—they were both gun humpers. Neither of them has been to any of our get togethers since late spring 2016.
MomSense
@Kay:
Plouffe was the mastermind in 2007-08. Messina in 2012. Messina ran Iowa and Indiana in 2007-08 and is the smartest and most terrifying person I’ve ever had to interact with.
Axe personally was a big help to Obama and he is also an operative. He handles the down low part of campaigns.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ditto.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense:
interesting; is Messina working with anyone this cycle?
Mike in DC
@Major Major Major Major:
Harris has staked out the (theoretically) “sweet spot” between the Lefties and Centrists on most issues. There was a poll which indicated that Harris is actually roughly in the dead center of the base, policy sentiment wise. The center of the left, rather than the dubious center of the general electorate. She could be a unifying candidate, if she can stave off an early campaign demise and rally back.
frosty
@PJ: Then call it single payer or universal coverage and not M4A then!
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: I used the poll that Kay referenced in this comment section.
Cacti
@MomSense:
It will kill us in down ticket races too.
Healthcare is the largest private employer in 8 reliably blue states: Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Minnesota, and Oregon, plus one important swing state: Pennsylvania.
It’s an electoral rout hiding in plain sight.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: Excellent.
piratedan
@MomSense: point taken…
so you’re voting for Trump then if Warren is the nominee?
Or because of this statement you’re going to excuse treason?
bribery?
sexual assault?
corruption?
racism?
sexism?
LGBTQ rights?
was it stupid for her to say that… I’m gonna give that a perhaps, but you know what, in comparison to her opponent it matters not a goddamn, if nothing else, she’ll be excoriated for what she’s saying, but just as easily, you could state that she’s speaking the truth, perhaps that won’t be as bad as everyone here is making it out to be and we’ve had very little of it from the current administration. Maybe having a candidate who isn’t blowing smoke up asses could even be seen as a good thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Kay cited a poll showing that 80% of this blog supports Harris?
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: A rough estimate. You can count the number of comments in this thread and see how many pro EW comments you find.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: No Kay cited a poll with EW in the lead with 23%.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Scientist: If wishes were horses..
Kirk Spencer
@PJ: heh – what was the old mantra? Primary to the [left/right], Run to the middle? Might just still be a good idea.
Chetan Murthy
@Cacti:
I agree with you about the danger in advocating for the destruction of the private insurance industry.[1] But your point above, I think, is going too far. It isn’t “health care” that is affected, merely “health insurance”. Every health care provider will continue to have patients, and those patients will continue to have their health care paid for … by the government. None of that will change. Heck, i think it will actually be BETTER for rural hospitals and practices, b/c their poorer patients will be able to afford treatment.
Notwithstanding, the insurance companies, their employees, and esp. their better-compensated workers and execs? They’re gonna HATE/HATE/HATE M4A. I expect massive incoming fire.
[1] To be clear, it couldn’t happen to nicer guys. Really, it couldn’t.
Anya
@Humdog: Biden makes me nervous. He is gaffe prone and sometimes he comes across like a doddering old man who can’t even tell the city he’s in. I know Trump would smear any democratic candidate and will invent a scandal and the media will run with it so I am not going to use the Hunter Biden thing. Besides, I think he fights back and he’s very protective of his kids so he won’t shy away from dragging Trump but I am just too concerned about his other negatives.
Cacti
@Chetan Murthy:
No, it’s not merely health insurance. Administrative and clerical positions in hospitals, clinics, and private medical practices account for about half of the 2 million jobs projected to be lost across the industry.
gwangung
@Marcopolo:
Those last two words are kinda important.
If it failed in a very blue state like WA, politicians HAVE to be careful on national policy.
West of the Rockies
Our base contains multitudes, and we cannot afford to cast any of them aside.
What happens when AA people stay home (or are cancelled)?
How about all the younger voters stay on the sideline?
The LGBTQ community says, “Fuck it!” and stays home?
Suppose older white liberals sit this one out?
We have to work together, not demonize any group, and hope that collectively everyone can put aside their litmus tests and injured fee-fees and GOTV.
MomSense
@piratedan:
I’m going to vote for a Democrat. I’m not the problem. I’ve voted Democrat every election starting with Dukakis except I did vote for Weld for Governor because Bulger was horrible.
Anya
@Kay: I love Stephanie Cutter. She’s very smart and was lovely. I saw her a lot when I was with OFA.
Ohio Mom
@ArchTeryx: Haven’t seen you here in ages! Welcome back. How are you?
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: First, I think it’s an overstatement. Many but not all people here lean EW, which I take in good faith as a considered opinion. They’re (we’re) allowed to have a preference and give reasons for it. Second, many of those same people have declared openness or favorability towards other candidates – as in “I lean EW, but have Harris/Buttigieg/Castro/Klobuchar as a strong second.” Third, a significant number of commenters have voiced strong to medium support for other candidates, such as Buttigieg and Harris. Fourth, there are clearly A LOT of people here who are opposed to EW’s M4A plan. It seems inaccurate to suggest that there’s rabid overwhelming consensus on Warren’s behalf. Finally, I can’t think of anyone on this blog who isn’t Team Broken Glass.
Chetan Murthy
@Cacti:
Whoa, now that is interesting. I didn’t realize that for every insurance company employee, there’s one “on the other side”. Truly, if you get three people in a bureaucracy, they can make enough work to keep each other busy. OK, I stand corrected. I guess I wouldn’t call those workers “healthcare workers”, but hey, I can see how they are, in the standard way of classifying them.
Doesn’t really change my position, which is to agree with you, that there are too many people working in that sector of the economy, burying dollars, digging up dollars, washing dollars clean, prepping them for reburial, etc, to go fucking with them. Not when we can get a lot of the distance with “Medicare for All Who Want It”. Or even just lowering the eligibility age to 55, and setting up automatic lowering every year after that (I’d like “lower two years, every year”).
Again, it’s completely voluntary: You like your private insurance? Great! Keep. It.
Major Major Major Major
@West of the Rockies:
We tend to cluster in blue states and are much fewer in number than the 10% you see thrown around…
PJ
@frosty: you are right about this.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He runs a consultancy and a super pac I believe.
Freemark
@Cacti: I would make the argument that it is the ‘severe centrists’ who lost those elections. By hewing to the right they didn’t get the who need to be ‘pushed’ out to the polls. Both the Gore/Lieberman and the Hillary/boring white guy tickets both literally sold themselves as ‘not as bad as those Republican guys’. They created no excitement in the people who needed pushed to the polls. The Republicans pushed their people who needed it, we didn’t. Once people are ‘pushed’ and the initial inertia is overcome it is easier to push them again. But you do need that initial push.
glory b
@Cacti: I’m going to have to agree. As I think a lot of you guys know, I live in Pittsburgh. Trust me, a lot of young people, black, white and other, work for banks and health insurance companies. Talk about the rich folks connected with those industries if you want to, but LOTS of $17, $18 per hour workers WILL LOSE THEIR JOBS!!!
They have bachelor’s degrees, or associate degrees or no degrees at all, they are single parents, they have fathers snd grandfathers who lost steel jobs a generation ago, saw this city go through the rust belt contractions, and now have hope for something better.
They are buying houses (townhouses anyway) and cars and getting promoted to management positions. I have an aquaintance who went from teller with 2 years of college to a vice pres at a bank. She’d be laid off? Has Warren even mentioned them?
Ella in New Mexico
@germy:
I took it as that he is legitimately concerned.
@cain:
We’ve seen these clowns do things we never even dreamed a President and his administration would do. Barr is AG. Never underestimate how desperate they are to keep power.
John S.
@MomSense:
No doubt. But Cheryl’s point is valid that there doesn’t seem to be much data behind her fear – nor does she seem equally fearful that chasing centrists and wavering Republicans could be equally devastating.
As others have pointed out, Republicans have no problem throwing red meat to their base and could care less what the Democrats think. It would be nice if Democrats acted the same way for a change.
And even though the Democratic base is far more diverse, there are absolutely key issues that unite all of us. But the more centrist candidates seem to be even afraid to talk about those big ideas too.
Cacti
@Chetan Murthy:
And just to throw in another complicating factor, a majority of these jobs are held by women, as they fall into the traditionally “pink collar” job fields.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: If that happens, what happens to people like me? I don’t see a future for myself with Rs controlling all the 3 branches. Will Canada accept me as a refugee.
Kay
@Freemark:
I think voting against Trump will lose with Democratic voters too. I think it’s the centrist candidate’s burden to show they can bring out people FOR something, instead of against something.
I just reject this idea that The Centrists don’t have to fucking work for voters. That the entire burden of wide appeal across the coalition is the job of the Left side of the Party, but not the Center and Right. Why is the center of the party so weak going in that they only draw 30% of the D primary electorate? If we’re analyzing the faults of the Left side of the Party, let’s analyze everyone.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John S.:
What “red meat” do you suggest for the “suburban” voters who put Democrats in the House majority? what “red meat” do you think Connor Lamb and Lauren Underwood and Sharice Davids and Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger and Antonio DelGado and Lucy McBath should be throwing out?
ETA: any evidence that Elizabeth Warren consulted with Doug Jones and Mark Kelly and Sarah Gideon about his plan? How about Joe Manchin, Tom Carper and Kristen Synema, who this week said she could pledge to support the Dem nominee?
Ruckus
@Mike in DC:
I agree with this take on Harris. She’s not “I have to have it all!” Which is sort of what I see in EW. Which I also think is a plan, to grab those on the far left and then pivot towards the center a bit.
I also think that we are not going to ever get the far right, hell they like trump, they are lost to the country – and probably to humanity.
We are still pretty far out from election day, although we have an entire primary season to get through. What any candidate is going to say, be, do is still pretty much up in the air. But I’d bet that someone, sort of in the middle of the left side of the aisle, is going to be the better final candidate. The far left will, like the far right, only vote for their, and the farthest out there candidate. At this time much of the center-right side of voting public isn’t a whole lot enthused about trump and will probably vote for a more centralist candidate. The gop doesn’t have that, Weld not withstanding. We do. They might not vote with Biden for a number of reasons, would they vote for a more left candidate than him? I think given the choice some will. That leaves who on the left is that person? Someone with a political background. Someone with ideas that appeal to a lot of the left. Someone who is personable. Someone who on merit the left will vote for. Who, in our long list of candidates fits that bill?
Marcopolo
@gwangung:No, this says nothing about the point I made. I was pointing out both GND & M4A were beyond the slogan stage. Succeed, fail, whatever. That is all. Nor did I take a stand for or against either.
For the sake of adding context to your comment, however, I will add that when the GND was on the ballot in WA that fossil fuel interests spent $30 million to defeat it. That is a shit-ton of money in a statewide race in a state the size of WA.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy:
Good ideas and IMHO good politics. I don’t know why these things weren’t Big and Bold enough for her.
Chris Johnson
@West of the Rockies: All of this.
Medicare For All and Green New Deal are three-word slogans. When it comes to implementation, it’s all about what you can actually get, which is where we turn to Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders, and where we turn to Nancy Pelosi.
A little aside: remember when Nancy Pelosi absolutely would not entertain talk of impeachment? Now look. Just because Pelosi is prepared to punch a hippie yesterday, or this afternoon, doesn’t mean she won’t adapt when the underlying situation changes. And the underlying situation is changing constantly.
With impeachment. With the planet being increasingly wrecked by climate-driven chaos and formerly ‘extreme’ weather events. And with the continuing collapse of the very health care system that some people think the electorate wants to defend.
Warren is absolutely right that corporations are evil. They are evil to the exact extent they are allowed to be. That is why we regulate, otherwise market pressures and simple greed will cause them to romp over all the boundaries and ruin everything. Absent regulation, corporations and big business are HORRIBLE. We’re more or less seeing some of that now, and it can get worse. When Warren has power, she lays down really clear boundaries. Do the corporations like that? To the point that we should side with them in the belief that give them enough rope and they’ll, I dunno, knit us all booties out of the rope? NO corporations don’t like boundaries, by definition. But they will do just fine, especially if the rules are well thought out. Warren has a track record of doing this that exceeds anybody else in the race. (let’s not get into Biden’s efforts to UN-protect bankrupt people and students from those he represented at the time).
We have a certain amount of ‘fundamental change in understanding’ here, as a country, as an electorate. One of the things we are coming to understand is ‘you cannot work across the aisle with Russian stooges and corrupt oligarchs’. And so here most of us are, watching Trump’s many crimes be revealed day by day, and we’ve got the occasional Dem candidate wanting him to represent just a bad apple that you should politely brush off so as not to normalize his behavior.
That’s why Russia is trying very hard to get Biden to win, while also setting up the attack vectors to be used against him. Trump jumped the gun there and got caught trying to ‘help’ but it’s all pretty much in place. Biden is the most dangerous pick. Second most dangerous is probably Sanders. These aren’t great odds. The obvious dangerousness of Warren as a pick (they’re all dangerous because we’re kind of at war here) is no more dangerous than any other. Warren is the least likely to be stuck not knowing what to do if something like ‘Medicare For All’ proves impossible to put into practice as just three words. Between her and Pelosi they are going to figure out how to make it work.
Again, remember when Pelosi was absolutely not going to entertain talk of impeachment? Effective Democrats are able to adapt without abandoning their values. Ineffective Democrats (and not-actually-democrats) are the ones that get stuck carrying last week’s banner. You can’t be all slogan and no plan, but you can’t ignore a righteous slogan forever. We are impeaching Trump, and we are going to make something happen that’s called Medicare For All, even if it has a ‘who want it’ tacked on, and protections for whatever insurance companies are so evil that they’re able to wreck America rather than be taken down as bad actors.
We’ll need leadership who are able to handle giant evil organizations. I see several good candidates in our current lineup, and I also count Pelosi as one of those to the extent that she wants to serve her constituents rather than the evil… and that depends upon whether it is truly impossible to face the evil, and that can change from one week to the next. We’re impeaching Trump and it is Pelosi who pointed at him and said ‘with you, all roads lead to Russia’. Now that is truth to power, and she didn’t flinch from saying it.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She wants to beat the socialist Jesus from Vt. She doesn’t care for people who are hanging by their fingernails in this dsytopia of the T regime. She is behaving like the conservative caricature of a liberal college professor from Boston.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
jesus, this again?
Marcopolo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just spitballin here but sensible gun legislation (background checks/red flag stuff), sensible immigration reform, etc…
Of course the reality is anything a D proposes no matter how sensible it is will be ginned up into some kind of treasonous communist attack on our national identity/values. So its probably a fools errand to talk about it like this anyway.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m kinda with Ruckus, and another commenter (whom I couldn’t find) who argued that if you demand M4A, maybe you et MFAWWI; if you demand a public option, maybe you get “improve the ACA”, and if you demand “improve the ACA”, you get “nuthin”. And I agree that this is a primary, where you’re supposed to stake out hard positions, and then soften towards the middle in the general. That’s not hypocrisy — that’s just the way politics works. Hell, it’s the way -negotiation- works.
So I don’t hold it against her that she’s staking out this hard M4A position though I do hope she understands how to pivot towards the center and can do it when it’s needed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Marcopolo: I suspect “sensible” and “red meat” are not overlapping in a Venn diagram, and white people have been telling pollsters they care about gun safety for my whole adult lifetime, then they vote for the one who promises tax cuts
ETA: @Chetan Murthy:
You have to win, and win the Senate, to get anything. And I don’t think Warren’s proposal is good for the Seneate, even if she can win PA, MI and WI’s electoral votes with it.
as ever, I’ll be thrilled to be proved wrong when the pudding provides proof
Ruckus
@glory b:
I think those 2 million jobs are the people who fill out the insurance forms for doctors. My last private doc had 2 docs in the office, 2 nurses, and 5 people doing billing/reception. Even if that’s an overrepresentation, it wouldn’t take a lot to lose 2 million jobs even if only half of those billing/reception people lost their jobs if you look at all the doctors offices in this country and the billing in hospitals. I’d bet that 2 million number might be low. But maybe not, someone still has to do the billing, healthcare still gets paid for. The VA is socialized medicine – at least as close as it gets here and they have a billing department.
Marcopolo
@Marcopolo: I should also remind everyone, the ACA was based on the framework of a proposal out of the Heritage Foundation. Didn’t stop the Rethuglicans from saying it was a communist plot to destroy the country.
John S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Do you have Warren Derangement Syndrome or something? I wasn’t speaking about her specifically, or even generally.
My comment was about the topic of this thread – namely all the hand wringing over the big ideas coming from the left wing of the party by the more centrist Democrats. What big ideas do the centrists have? Is a return to the status quo going to get voters to the polls? Because being not-Trump probably isn’t enough to win the election.
Are you really at a loss for what issues motivate the majority of Democrats?
Major Major Major Major
@Marcopolo:
Sigh. No it wasn’t. I should really bookmark a debunking of this because I don’t have the energy to look it up all the time.
Michael Cain
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Much of the worst of the Trump administration has been accomplished through the fourth branch of government — the regulatory agencies/cabinet departments that are authorized to write rules with the same power as statute. Whoever the Dem nominee turns out to be, I am less concerned with their legislative agenda than I am with their rule-writing agenda. I want to know their day-one priorities on rules.
Marcopolo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I disagree. My interpretation of red meat is just something that folks really really want. Gun legislation is something that D’s really really want. The degree to which the legislation goes: background checks, red flag laws, size limitations on magazines, assault weapons bans, further etc… is up for debate. I’d like to believe, and maybe I am wrong, that even in fairly purple districts there are red meat issues (with sensible pieces) that those folks could run on. Women’s health care might be another one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John S.: You said “red meat”. What’s “red meat”, and how do you think it plays in Naperville and Overland Park? “red meat” is your term. Tell me what “red meat” wins us the Senate.
A public option is a pretty big idea, if a loudmouth old crank wasn’t calling it nothing. Big enough that Dems couldn’t get it passed with a fucking supermajority. Do you really think Mark Kelly and Doug Jones want to run on Warren’s plan, or Bernie’s shouty slogans?
A “majority of Democrats”, even a totality of Democrats, doesn’t win the electoral college.
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat:
I feel your sense of trepidation and dread. After the 2016 Apocalypse, for a while I was thinking about how to plan for becoming a refugee. Stuff like moving some savings to a European bank. But then I had a job for a few months that required me to take Lyft 4 times a week (too far to drive with my shitty no-aircon gas-guzzler, and no way I was buyin’ a better car for a short-term gig) and they were almost all immigrants. Here in California.
Don’t think about becoming an expat; instead, plan on joining us in California: we’re majority-minority, and they can’t kill us all! Yeah yeah, the fires, and the water, and the … and the ….. We’re majority-minority, the economy works, and they cannot, they cannot kill us all! There are too many of us!
Hell, California has more PEOPLE than Canada!
P.S. Yes, CA is expensive. But I’ll argue that becoming a refugee is even moreso.
debbie
@John S.:
Frankly, the only Big Idea that matters in this moment is righting the wrongs of Donald Trump. Work on other Big Ideas after this one has been completed.
jc
How is it that the mainstream press is all over asking how Warren would pay for Medicare for all, but the same media almost completely give Trump a pass as he works to destroy affordable health care, and proposes nothing coherent in its place?
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
Speaking only for myself, I haven’t noticed a great tendency to favour Warren over Harris. American jackals generally say they favour one or the other, with what looks like a majority for Warren, but would be fine with either as the Democratic nominee. (Come to that, if Bernie were the nominee they would vote for him because he’s still less bad than any Republican.)
My own foreigner’s assessment is that either woman looks like making an excellent chief executive of government, and they are not poles apart on policy. Warren seems to have an advantage at the moment in how well her campaign organisation org is running, and she’s getting more media coverage right now; but that can always change. You’ll have noticed that no Warren supporter here is afraid to criticise her, especially on healthcare, or to praise Harris.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy:
Well, it’s not quite that. The most difficult class of problems to solve are collective action problems, where you need to convince groups of people who may have divergent interests to coordinate on a solution. Wars are often considered a ‘solution’ to collective action problems as they focus these groups at risk of death. Honestly, Nazis and imperial Japan were about the only way you were going to get FDR and Stalin into a legitimate alliance.
Health care is sort of the mother of all collective action problems in the US. Doctors want to charge what they want, citizens want to pay what they want. You have insurers abstracting away the payment side but also complicating the charging side by establishing processes that are efficient for them – both in terms of cost (we’ll only pay x) and administration (you have to use this form). Billing is dealing with an arbitrary number of insurers each with their own (we’ll only pay x) demands and their own forms. Plus you have Medicare and Medicaid in the mix, foreigners with no insurance but national health services that will pay, but holy shit are their rules different from ours, and individuals that are uninsured.
None of them want the administrative overhead – that’s all lost profits (and a lot of them) but there’s nobody to consolidate things. Everyone has equal right to do things their way, and they all have real reasons to do it their way, even if that’s the computer system they spent $10M on ten years ago. That’s part of the reason to build on Medicare – it’s a common set of rules and forms and costs that everyone on the billing side is accustomed to (even if they hate them). Medicare is a treaty of sorts as much as it is anything else, and only the government has the authority to unwind this mess. The private insurers and care providers have had the better part of a century to fix this, and they simply can’t.
I’d caution the “You like your private insurance? Great! Keep. It.” line. Obama promised you could keep your doctor, and you could, until the insurers started cancelling policies that they weren’t willing to get into compliance with the new rules. Obama didn’t take their doctor away, the insurer did, but Obama got blamed. Any success at single payer as it is generally being described will make private insurers sufficiently unprofitable that you won’t be able to keep them. Consider that individual policies are relatively uncommon, and how many employers would be willing to pay for a group policy when they can get away with paying *nothing*. So, you’ll have some supplemental policies out there, but once the group policies start dropping, these guys will go out of business *fast*. They’ll be forced to consolidate and they’ll always be on the back foot because they’ll have to constantly adapt to the national costs and billing rules which will dominate the care providers. They’ll barely have a seat at the table.
The solution would be to segment health care the way that Medicare did, with a mandatory non-premium Part A and a flexible premium Part B. The delineation between Parts A and B haven’t aged great – stuff that was definitely Part A stuff like cancer treatment in the 60s is now usually done by Part B care providers, etc. But if the govt simply put the life and death stuff under single payer (which, btw, the insurers hate because their cost exposure is unlimited) and kept all the rest under an exchange like system, that would probably stabilize things quite a lot. Morally we can tolerate a lot more variation around broken arms and the flu than cancer treatment, and the costs for those things tend to be a lot more predictable.
Honestly its the latter category that most of us every deal with, often until we hit medicare age, and where we care most about who are doctors are. But it’s the former category that bankrupts people and throws them into despondency. Your GP, your OB/Gyn are in the latter category, not the former. That’s the kind of system a lot of nations have settled into.
Chetan Murthy
@Amir Khalid:
I think this is really perceptive, or at least, it sure describes the way I feel. The biggest reason I’m feeling a preference for SPW, is that my senator doesn’t seem to be catching fire. If my Senator caught fire, hell, I’d be preferring her. Those two are the ones I prefer above all others, but yeah, even Wilmer, I’m down to vote for. Even Ol’ Pervy Uncle Joe, I’ll vote for.
This, too. I don’t think M4A is wise (though I’d love it); I’d prefer M4AWWI, which is think is easier to sell to Americans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the timid, hand-wringing cowardly Establishment Dems are impeaching trump, knowing he won’t be removed and it’s still not clear what the long-term impact will be. But (self) selective elements of “the base” still need something called “red meat”
John S.
@Marcopolo:
That’s exactly my interpretation as well. Red meat is what motivates the Democratic base and gets people to the polls. And realistically, most Americans agree with Democrats on many of these issues.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sensible gun control is a winning issue. Protecting the environment is a clear winning issue. Fixing the tax code to ensure the wealthy and corporations pay their “fair share” is a winning issue. Preserving women’s rights and access to healthcare is a winning issue. Increasing pay for teachers and overhauling our education system is a winning issue. Creating a real path to citizenship without demonizing immigrants is a winning issue.
Trump and the Republicans have shit positions on all of these issues, and even shittier actual policies and outcomes. It’s not so hard to take a real stance on these things, and advocate for real change without worrying about losing the election because the majority of Americans agree with Democrats – not Republicans.
Democrats have to be for something, not just against something. And they have to present a clear path for progress.
There is way too much emphasis on how to fix our healthcare right now, and not nearly enough focus on the myriad of other issues that are equally important – and better for electoral victory. Hopefully we will get to that in the next 6 months.
germy
their base is acting out more and more, sometimes in little passive-aggressive ways:
Timurid
@Chetan Murthy:
I can’t speak for Schrodinger, but there’s nothing I could do in California but starve. And the competition for jobs and housing there is just going to get worse if these worst case scenarios come to pass…
John S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And now that I provided you with an honest and thoughtful response, you can go fuck yourself.
Heywood J.
This. On the one hand, people are literally dying because they’re trying to conserve their insulin, which they can’t afford. On the other, M4A might make the system more efficient, which means that the bureaucracy might lose come redundant paper-pushers — and maybe even lower costs in the process. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I guess.
The health care system is a racket. The higher education system is a racket. Any candidate promising to mitigate (or god forbid, eliminate) these dollar-sucking crime syndicates is naturally going to face resistance from entrenched interests. Maybe someday enough people will get tired of slapping band-aids on institutionalized theft. Probably not. Upton Sinclair was an optimist.
I suppose I-Call-Her-Nancy said exactly what one would expect an eighty-year-old with forty years in the belly of the beast to say. As if people in Michigan aren’t going bankrupt from medical bills, or spending decades paying interest on $200 textbooks to the usurers at Navient. Maybe we need some vision beyond What would Matlock do?
Did Klobuchar really say that about “real Americans” live in the Midwest? Don’t we already have countless Republicons to say such stupid things? Not everyone wants to spend their free time curating giant balls of twine and butter sculptures of livestock. That doesn’t make them any less or more American.
Martin
@jc: Because the people this system works for generally don’t vote based on the impact to the people it doesn’t. And a lot of the people it doesn’t work for have been convinced (wrongly) that government can’t possibly fix it.
I think the concern over Warrens plan is a bit misplaced. I think voters want this problem solved, and I think Warren is an excellent vehicle to communicate that her solution is a viable one.
Put another way, politicians generally shouldn’t be trusted to deliver wonky things in an electoral bid, but I think Warren is an exception. Bernie could be envisioning the exact same policy and he couldn’t possibly sell it. I don’t think Obama could either. We know it’s not his wheelhouse. But we know economics is Warrens wheelhouse. That matters.
Chris Johnson
@jc: Russians (and/or Republicans). There is literally nothing that can be done to get Warren a remotely fair shake in terms of ‘coverage’, so she will just have to go forward without one.
Anybody, ANYBODY believing we can pick a ‘centrist’ and because they are more rightwing they’ll be allowed to win or to get any kind of policy AT ALL enacted, are fooling themselves. We’re not even dealing with Americans on the other side anymore. The President is being impeached, Nancy Pelosi is pointing her finger at him and calling him out as a pawn of Russia, and anything resembling a nod to ‘bipartisanship’ is either doomed or actively enemy action or both. On Twitter, on Facebook, some of it is paid Russian influence and we know it because we’ve literally seen the intelligence reports that the media mysteriously aren’t talking a lot about.
Focus on ground level protection of people’s right and ability to vote, because that too is subject to full-on attack. All this ‘oh the foolish Democrats picking overreaching goals, that is what will lose them the election you mark my words’ is the cover story for a dedicated and practiced election-throwing apparatus that will be as extreme as it has to be.
If the outcome next time says ‘oh hey, literally seventy-three percent of Americans voted for Trump, guess you 27% really were just CRAZZZYYYY’ are you going to just take it at face value? They cheat, and these arguments (to the extent that they are being fed by actual Russian working-trolls rather than echoed willingly) are the cover story to make people be ‘okay’ with an outright election-steal. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Also, it’s another Warren thread. TBogg or bust!
Data
Support for M4A is not strong.
It gets about 50% right now, even among independents.
https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/
Ruckus
@Marcopolo:
I think you know that the fossil fuel industry is vital to not just the US economy but the world economy, like it or not. Everything about the world economy is based upon fuels and right now fossil fuels are still on top. This is not good of course but it is what it is. It will take time to get off of that, no matter what we do. And the industry that has made our current lifestyles possible isn’t going to give up easily, nor will it be cheap. It’s getting cheaper to do, but we have to find ways to not only make it possible but to see what life changes we will have to make. Like not just electric cars, but fewer cars, better systems to operate the things that we desire/need, like say MRI machines. It’s happening now but it isn’t/won’t be easy nor equitable. We can do more to bring solar to the masses, to make more trains available and fully electric so they don’t have to use heavy diesel engines and carry 14-15 thousand lbs of fuel, they actually already are electric. And get out of the concept that only the poor use public transit. But what about ships that carry the goods around the world? There will still need to be fossil fuels unless all the major geographic land regions start producing all the goods they need within their land bound areas.
Our world, of the last century+ will not be the same. It can not remain the same. The same can be said for world politics.
cleek
Support for M4A is not strong.
It gets about 50% right now, even among independents.
https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/
Doesn’t mean the number can’t go up. Doesn’t mean it can’t go down, either. But Republicans hate it, Dems love it and everyone else is 50/50 on it.
Quaker in a Basement
@Cacti:
In other words, the jobs that exist only to manage the administrative burden imposed by the insurance industry. In any other context, this would be called waste and inefficiency.
chopper
@Amir Khalid:
to be fair, if someone really loathes warren then it’ll feel like this blog is “80% for warren!” even if it’s far from it, because every time someone mentions their support or complements her or even just defends her from some of the more moronic talking points it sticks in their craw.
Chyron HR
Protip: If you don’t win the primary, you are not “the base”. Deal with it.
chopper
@Quaker in a Basement:
funny thing, you ask any doctor in private practice if they like paying extra staff whose job is just to deal with insurance company bullshit, the answer will be…not a surprise.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John S.:
If you do say so yourself? None of the things you mention strike me as terribly red meaty, nothing that Klobuchar or Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton wouldn’t endorse, so now I’m confused about who you were going after in your initial post.
But whatever.
Marcopolo
@Major Major Major Major: Well, actually parts of it were. And parts of it weren’t. But you are right that it is more complicated than my statement. Probably the most honest way to say it is if you are trying to craft a National Health plan there are only so many ways to do it which means there will be a lot of overlap between how approaches from the either the right or left will look (with the caveat that the Right is no longer even trying to address this issue anymore). Conflating that with saying the ACA is based on something from the Heritage Foundation is, yes, a more political than one-hundred percent factual statement but there are still a lot of places in the ACA where it is similar to Republican plans. And the Individual Mandate seems to be most explicitly connected to the Heritage Foundation. Now for some gratuitous links:
Where Did The Idea Of Obamacare Come From? A Defense Of The Heritage Foundation
Of course the writer of this piece then goes on to claim this is malarky, but after reading the entire thing I don’t think he really made that point–except to say that there was another conservative economist (outside of the Heritage Foundation) whose ideas were also very important to the framework of the ACA.
Is the ACA the GOP health care plan from 1993?
How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate
Butter Emails
I’m not going to read all 200 comments, but I am going to point out we just had heated discussions about Warren’s M4A plan on this blog. The idea that Nancy is somehow mistaken that issues like M4A and free college are potentially divisive and toxic to the several of the less engaged groups of voters who generally vote for Democrats seems unlikely given the strife these issues created on a liberal blog full of engaged voters.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve seen a lot of accusations of Warren partisanship ever since several of us raised objections to rikyrah posting some guy’s comment on Twitter saying that black people would stay home in the general if Warren was the nominee.
You toss something like that up about any candidate, and the rest of us are going to want to know primus, why would he say this, and secundus, assuming there’s not something the rest of us didn’t know about, why should we take this person seriously.
@MomSense:The appropriate answer would include “and that’s why the transition plan is so important”, but you’d never hear that part get replayed anyway.
Another Scott
@Mike in DC: I figure M4A is a 20 year project, myself.
My top 5 are probably:
1) Serious election reform (non-partisan redistricting, 30 day absentee/by-mail voting periods, regulations about numbers of machine[s], regulations about voter purging, automatic and same-day registration, etc.)
2) Increasing the minimum wage, unemployment benefits (the maximum in Virginia is something like $200 a week), Social Security benefits, mandatory baseline time off benefits (sick leave, vacation, voting, etc.).
3) Serious education funding reform (more directed federal money to states and localities, more money for universities, more money for NSF and other agencies funding basic research, more money for post-graduate training, etc.)
4) Serious patent and trademark reforms – the benefits to companies vs the benefits to society are way, way out of whack.
5) Serious tax reform. The bottom 50% of the distribution should probably not be paying any federal income tax because they have seen so few economic benefits in the last nearly 50 years. Above 50%, the system needs to be strongly progressive. When the economy in too many places relies on empty skyscrapers with $100M condos, it’s not sustainable.
There’s a lot more that needs to be done (Federal court changes, SCOTUS changes, massive infrastructure projects and an infrastructure bank to keep things up and running when they’re done, immigration, childcare, drug reforms, incarceration reform, etc., etc.). But those are probably my 5.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: I am not leaving nor do I want to. But Warren and her supporters just don’t inhabit the reality I and many others do. T has shaken the foundations of what I thought was possible in this country. His election was a slap in the face to all immigrants. His relentless war against the foreign born has not abated a single iota. It will get worse if he is reelected and we lose the House.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
I have in my lifetime visited several socialist wastelands. New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Belgium. I wanted to move there, life was more the big important parts are taken care of, let’s get on with living. Cost per dollar of income wasn’t much different except that there is less poor whose cost per dollar of income is negative. But going there is either impossible or out of my financial means. They are nice because they work closer to the stated goal of the US than we do. We talk about equality but we make the dollar the goal, not the equality. I don’t think that was the original goal, or at least not the only goal, but that is where I see us now. We will never become a totally socialist country and neither will anywhere else, we will never be all exactly the same. But we can have far better/more equality, as our country was supposedly based upon, but that requires a basis of regulation of many things that we currently don’t do, or don’t do effectively. And all of that is about money. That old hippy fart from Vermont is right about that, he just has no idea how to get there and his own greed is far stronger than he will admit, even to himself.
Chris Johnson
@Butter Emails:
Nancy felt the same way about impeachment, and now look at her! The ‘possible’ is not set in stone. I like that she’s able to face reality even when it hasn’t always seemed ‘possible’. My appreciation of Nancy Pelosi has gone way up.
Amir Khalid
@chopper:
I don’t feel comfortable speculating about that. YMMV.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: so what does she say about Trump now?
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
I just checked. CA is more populated than Canada, by around 2 1/2 million people. Also Australia. If it were a country it would have the 34th largest population in the world. It’s population is 1/3 larger than the next state, Texas.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: AOC said she was able to see a doctor when she was a child because of CHIP thanks to Bernie’s dedication to health care for all (paraphrasing)
Marcopolo
@Omnes Omnibus: About to go off to a concert but if I recall you are in WI. From what I saw yesterday there was a big statewide canvassing effort pushed by the state D party. I would love to hear some thoughts about it & how Wikler is doing running the D party up there from someone on the ground. It all seems pretty good from what I can garner from social media but you know how that goes.
taumaturgo
@Another Scott: All wonderful planks but nothing of the sort can happen unless the current legalize bribery is done away with. Our bought politicians are beholden to the corporate donors, not the workers of the midwest or liberal SF. Ms. Pelosi knows this very well and like Biden she is signaling to the donoprs class not to worry, nothing much will change.
Chetan Murthy
@Timurid:
I’m not saying it’s great; rather, I’m saying that it’s better than becoming an expat/refugee. I could be wrong about that. And for sure, I don’t want us to have to test that thesis.
Cacti
@Kathleen:
So she gave Bernie credit for an accomplishment of Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy?
It really is a cult.
Ruckus
@Chris Johnson:
I would ask the question.
Was Nancy Pelosi ever actually against impeachment?
Or was she against it at the time because she didn’t have the votes needed to come close to succeeding?
I’m going with B. Nancy is smart, she is eminently qualified to be speaker and she understands politics about as well as anyone. It’s her job to herd a group of people with differing skills/strengths/ideas/personalities into a cohesive group that gets the business at hand done. That is in no way a like a Bruce Willis movie.
jonas
Warren doesn’t need to turn out the Dem base in San Francisco to beat Trump. She needs to turn out the Dem base in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Telling a bunch of union guys with good insurance that she’s going to take it away and put them all on Medicare isn’t going over well. Improving middle-class Obamacare subsidies and building out a public option polls far, far better.
Kathleen
@Cheryl Rofer: How about she knew the Ukraine call would become public and was waiting for that?
Cacti
@Quaker in a Basement:
If we just act sufficiently snide and dismissive about the real concerns of the people on the chopping block, they’ll surely accept the wisdom of their liberal superiors, for whom this is a philosophical exercise.
And liberals wonder why they lose all the time.
Chetan Murthy
@Cacti:
Two things:
(1) I -am- snide and dismissive of those people. Nobody was there for steelworkers, for bank tellers, for call-center operators, etc, etc, etc, when imports and technology destroyed their jobs. And so I expect and WANT for their jobs to go away over time.
BUT (2) [to your POINT!] it would be insane and foolish to not recognize that they can form a substantial obstacle to universal health care, and that we ought to take that into account in our plans.
zzyzx
Pelosi said that impeaching Trump over the Mueller Report was a mistake. Then it came out that Trump did something even worse that’s easier to explain.
Kelly
@Martin:
Yeah, I think a government backstop along the lines of private insurers are only on the hook for a few $100,000 lifetime per customer makes sense from where we are now. The Obamacare risk corridor assessment/payment system was a step in the direction which the Republicans gleefully killed.
Miss Bianca
@John S.: And as other others have pointed out, Democrats have a MUCH MORE DIVERSE BASE to appeal to than the Republicans. Seriously – what counts as “red meat” for a Democratic base?
dogwood
@Ruckus:
She didn’t have the votes. In fact she wasn’t even close to having the votes until the whistleblower emerged. So it’s pretty sad to see people celebrating that they were right and Nancy was wrong.
Chetan Murthy
@Kelly:
As a short-term thing, sure. But this is a new “rent”, and I would hate for this sort of thing to be entrenched, unless it was a tide-us-over thing to getting rid of insurers completely. This feels too much like those fuckers keeping their hands in my pocket forever, with governmental backup, and doing literally nothing in return.
taumaturgo
@Ruckus: @jonas: These workers – if they truly lack the wisdom to evaluate and understand which party, and within that party which candidates are proposing radical changes like a decent living wage, restoration of workers rights to unionize, healthcare as a right not an unaffordable option, do away with mass incarceration, proactive policies to mitigate climate change, stop perpetual wars, rescue the young generation from debt indenture then the country will reelect Trump and yet blame the “demorats” for all of the above. The old playbook is antediluvian and most likely will lead to a worse result than 2016.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca: I think he gave some good examples in #212. I don’t know if they qualify as red meat, but they are important issues that many Dems care about.
Kathleen
@Cacti: She didn’t mention Hillary in the clip I saw on Twitter. I thought it was weird that she made a point to present CHIP that way
Omnes Omnibus
@jonas:
Does not compute.
smintheus
Pelosi was basically just attacking Warren and Sanders and their base of supporters, taking a stand on the same timid centrist change-but-not-much-and-not-now-sometime-later-don’t-know-when-mk that Democratic leaders have been advocating since the ’80s. They refuse to accept that voters are not the arch-conservatives that the leadership always imagines they are (who cares what the polls say people want).
In Pelosi’s case, this involved declaring that all proposals after 2020 will have to continue to be PAYGO because “we” can’t continue to pile up debt. IOW, the Democratics are America’s janitors working in the GOP frat house.
Pelosi also bizarrely insisted that Democrats needed to work with Republicans on a bipartisan deal to reverse the GOP’s tax cuts. That’s just idiotic in 11 different ways.
Chetan Murthy
@taumaturgo:
I think it was Gibbon (in _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_) who wrote about Romans forgetting what it meant to be Roman, and about their responsibilities to their nation and to each other. Something like that.
I’d like to believe that these workers would understand what each of them owes to other Americans, to their descendants, to our allies, etc, etc, etc. But I don’t believe it. I think that for too many Americans, it’s all about “what can my country do for me”. And I think we have to face this fact and deal with it. We can’t run away from it. Those union workers, they aren’t going to take kindly to their health care being -changed-, and no amount of telling them that they can go to the same doctors, the same hospitals, etc (even if it will be TRUE under M4A! I mean, where are those hospitals going to go? Fly off to Sweden?) will convince them.
Lotta stupid, selfish people in America. The kind who blamed Obama, b/c their insurance companies stopped offering certain insurance plans, or changed the networks. Blamed Obama for that. Yeah, right.
Steve in the ATL
@Miss Bianca: I don’t eat red meat. Is there a white meat or vegetarian option?
At any rate, for me it could be taxing the ever loving f$&@ out of the 0.1%
Humdog
@Anya: I actually agree with you about Biden. He is out of touch with reality when he says Rs will work with him. We do not need more of that. But I have no faith that what appeals to or repulses me will have the same effect on other voters. I think both he and Buttigieg will govern more in the old DLC vein.
I hate to think we can only hope to “stop the bleeding” by going with a centrist Dem president. Realistically, the senate will be a hurdle even in passing first aid type policies, much less anything transformative.
O. Felix Culpa
@Steve in the ATL: Would the 0.1% be white meat if we were to cook them?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Not the 1%? Hmmmm….
smintheus
@jc: Good point. I also don’t understand why we haven’t had a serious discussion of what kind of solution Medicare For All Who Want It would be. To me it seems almost indistinguishable from the ACA, the public option part of the bill that went nowhere. Both are kludgy patches onto our Rube Goldberg system of healthcare, both would require government subsidies to make health insurance affordable – so the plan is basically to take another bite at legislating the ACA idea, only this time try to funnel enough people into a public option to make it viable.
And it, like the ACA, will endure only until the GOP gets a majority in Congress again or until Kavanaugh and Co. decide to drive a dagger through the Democratic law(s)…that is to say, maybe just a few more years.
So even if theoretically Medicare For All Who Want It were more palatable to more people and would in fact help more people get affordable health care (rather than just siphoning off people already covered via private insurance on the ACA exchanges), why would that make it a better option? If it’s likely to be killed off by Republicans in a few years, isn’t it just a waste of time? In fact, isn’t it a lost opportunity to beat the GOP to the punch if we don’t put universal single payer into place *if* we have that opportunity after 2020? It’s hard to see how the GOP could kill off a single payer system that is in place, one that has replaced the entire Rube Goldberg system we have now.
Chris Johnson
@dogwood:
What do you mean, wrong? In important ways she’s taking point, now. She is confronting Trump. I don’t care what she did before or why, this is good.
If conditions change to where she can put forward real and genuine governance that works for the people (and not the 0.001%)… put it this way. She is shaping up to be like a David Boies. He successfully prosecuted Microsoft on antitrust grounds. He was also on our side in Bush vs. Gore, and Proposition 8. But he also defended Harvey Weinstein, Theranos, and tobacco companies. You have to respect Boies but you can be mad at him when he is taking a side that’s not yours. I’ll restrain my criticism of Nancy for what she chooses to do, but I’m extremely pumped whenever her interests and mine align, because she is a bad mother (er, grandmother).
Chetan Murthy
@smintheus:
I agree with you, that once M4A/M4AWWI/some-other-public-option is enacted, it’ll be pretty much as easy to kill as the ACA is today. And that true single-payer universal health insurance would be much, much harder to kill. But the issue isn’t what’s harder to kill, but what’s harder to enact. The ACA, I think, was a good object lesson: Obama purposely got buy-in from insurers, hospitals, and doctors, in the rollout, and this went a long way to helping get the thing enacted.
I can see massive, massive resistance to even M4AWWI, but geez, it’s nothing compared to the scorched-earth campaign they’ll wage against M4A.
Kelly
@Chetan Murthy:
Agree. But preserving medical and insurance company rents was important in getting Obamacare passed.
And with that I’m heading outside to do some maintenance in the unseasonably warm November sunshine.
Chris Johnson
We already have literally scorched earth in so many ways. Including, in California, literally literal scorched earth.
At some point it has to be acknowledged that this is open war, it’s class war but the classes are like ‘humans’ and ‘giant collective entities and their occasional masters’, and it doesn’t have to make human sense. It’s a lot like that cartoon we’ve all seen, “Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”
That’s the logic. And that’s who is controlling things. And political campaigns barely scratch the surface. At some point someone is going to need to decide what life form is to survive this planet: humans, or ‘value’. (pro tip: that latter is contextual, and until we have AI it’s represented by other humans)
Chetan Murthy
@Kelly:
Indeed, and that’s part of why I think M4AWWI has a better chance than M4A. But I wouldn’t wan to build a -new- rent, unless it came with its own sunset provision.
Steve in the ATL
@O. Felix Culpa: “it’s a cookbook!”
@Omnes Omnibus: don’t judge me! And we are totally not having Brie and goat cheese with a nice Lail Vineyards wine made from a variety of cab grapes. Nor did I kayak or play golf earlier today.
ETA: seriously though, while I can’t complain about my circumstances I am no Wall Street banker.
Ruckus
@taumaturgo:
Yes.
But.
Isn’t it our job to convince not democrats that ours is a better way?
Not all of them are going to ever wake up to the issues if other issues are constantly put in front of them as distractions. Guns is an issue that comes to mind. Republican politicians have sold the idea that the only freedom is at the exit end of a gun. What with the 2nd it’s a perfect ploy for votes. That and the structure of our national elections gives them the opportunity. It’s bullshit of course, they were in it for the money and the Russians/vlad are in it for the power and the big money and using the gullible as pawns. As it ever is.
A lot of people are not rational. Never will be. They think with their gut. Sometimes it works, often it’s wrong, because the gut doesn’t know logic. Of course if they are doing this they don’t do logic so their guts are about as good as their brains.
Brachiator
@Humdog:
True, but Biden was simply saying what a lot of average people want to hear. People see gridlock, infighting, threats to shut down the government, arguments about everything except what they want. And they blame both sides for being stubborn and not working together.
Obviously, things are more complicated. Since Newt Gingrich, more or less, the GOP insists that they are the only legitimate political party in the US. Since the rise of the phony Tea Party and the Age of Trump, moderates have been driven out of the Republican Party. Trump is a disaster, but has the GOP on a leash.
But the bottom line is that the GOP is not going away. We can work for a new Democratic majority in Congress to go along with a Democrat in the White House, but you are still going to have to work with Republicans to get things done.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
This notion that M4A will fire up the base and increase turnout is false. The proof is Wilmer ran on it 3 years ago and lost by 4 million votes.
Other candidates who have run on M4A, like the very charismatic Cynthia Nixon and the very likeable Tom Perriello, have also lost in a landslide.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Lots of selfish people everywhere. Our country has fallen into the spell of only money knows anything. Money knows nothing, it’s only a way of counting a perception. Right now we use that perception to tell us that more means you are better/more equal/privileged/useful/deserving. It’s not right of course but that’s the way it is. And the technology of the last 100 yrs meant that concept could be easily exploited for, wait for it, more money. Money has had, since it’s inception, the concept that more is always better. Yet we see this to not be true, vastly more often that not, given human’s concept of survival of the fittest.
Martin
Lews Hamilton #6.
That is all.
smintheus
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: That’s not “proof”. One could just as credibly point to polls that have Warren, exponent of M4A, beating Trump in theoretical polling matchups by the same margins as Biden beats Trump. The people who claim that her support of M4A will doom her don’t seem to be talking about the voters who respond to pollsters’ questions.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@schrodingers_cat:
She’s been “pilloried” because she quotes tweets by random people on Twitter, who for all we know could be bots or Russian trolls. It’s not, for me, that’s she’s a troll. She tends to not link to credible sources is my issue with her
Ruckus
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch:
Some of it might just be the name.
Medicare. The program has been around for a good while a lot of us still alive have or had parents or grandparents who used it, I’m 70 and I had both. And yet it is a stopgap, a better than the nothing that we had. If you don’t have something else you will most likely lose everything before you die. It’s not really health insurance, it’s death insurance. Life is far better than without it, yes. But it’s the last resort. People don’t want the last resort when they are 30 or 40 yrs old.
Call it something else, anything else, Insurance for All, Healthcare for You, Free Money, USA Healthcare, anything else.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I dont want to sound to Fan Boish of Nacy but her and her team seemed to have a really good measure of the Republicans thinking and it’s not impossible this is a “don’t throw us in brair patch” gambit. Partly to sooth the feeling of the Dem Reps in Purple districts, partly to sooth independents that the Democrats are not about to take off their mask and reveal they are hippies and most importantly to goad the Republicans to getting their freak on about hating on Medicaid. After all Medicaid is beloved the by Boomers that’s the Republicans base. It really would be prefect if they could Trump to promise to end Medicaid if re-elected.
Consider how this of how this looks to say those Republicans who are having a crises of faith; the Republicans are acting bat shit nuts. calling for a civil war for the hell of it, Trump is literately demanding the deaths of doubting Republicans and the Democrats are saying “yes, we hear your concerns”.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: Ruckus, I’m not old enough (but allllllmost!) to need to know the details. My understanding was that the main “bad thing” about Medicare was that it paid only 80%? And that the various (private, paid) top-up plans to cover the rest might be better or worse? Is there something else about Medicare, that you think qualifies as part of why it’s not great?
Just curious, since it seems like you’re actually thinking of particular things ….
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL: OK, yeah, that appeals to me as well. Maybe we just put the “base” into “Democratic base”. : )
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
People who say M4A is sure fire political winner have to explain why it failed in very liberal Vermont in 2014. Voters did not want their taxes to go up and were apprehensive about being forced into new system.
If it didn’t appeal in a deep blue state, how is it gonna appeal in marginal swing states.
The view of Nancy Pelosi, one the most savvy and shrewd politicians in history, shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
Chetan Murthy
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch:
While I agree with you, the particular case you cite has a simpler explanation. At the time, it was noted that Vermont’s market is pretty small, and so it would be difficult to reliably contain costs. David Anderson has written about similar issues in Iowa (like: one patient with incredibly high costs making the market in a particular county basically unsustainable for any insurer, or something to that effect). These objections go away when you get to large states, or to the entire country.
Fair Economist
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: California could have passed single-payer if it had been Warren’s plan rather than the unicorn and pony plan the Bernie Bro types demanded. It was so expensive it would have cost more overall than the current system, including all private insurance payments.
Steve in the ATL
@Miss Bianca: ha! And we’re proud of it!
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
@smintheus: I’m not claiming “M4A will doom her”. There isn’t evidence to support that. What I reject is the view that it will “fire up the base” and increase turnout. There is no evidence that either.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: I only heard snippets of the conversation – that stuck out. It seemed like she didn’t exactly support him, but didn’t seem to regret voting for hm either.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Dev Null
@Chetan Murthy: Bingo! (on both points)
Miss Bianca
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Single-payer, public option health care was on the ballot in Colorado a few years back. It failed by a margin of 80% to 20%. Now Governor Polis is rolling out another public option plan. Only for individuals, at this point. I am nervous about this plan too, personally. First of all, we actually have decent individual plans under the ACA here. I am such a prole that I qualify for a Silver plan that offers quite decent coverage for $80 per month. That’s pretty damn good. Yeah, the ACA has worked for me the way it was supposed to. Anyone whose insurance is working for them even just “OK” is probably even more risk-averse than I am.
And part of my problem is that I don’t see, right now, how a single-state public option plan could actually work. Probably the only expenses that would actually be under state control are the reimbursement amounts to hospitals and doctors. The state of Colorado has no control over the national insurers, and how much the national insurers want to charge. The state of Colorado has no control over the pharmaceutical companies, and what *they* charge. So, they will set a reimbursement rate probably similar to Medicare or Medicaid for medical services.
Then that means that any insurance company that sticks around in CO will probably *also* start to reimburse at only that rate. While I know everyone loves to pile on doctors and hospitals for overcharging, you can’t just say “we’re going to control medical expenses” by *only* controlling for *some* medical expenses. You do that, and you will find even more clinics and hospitals in rural areas closing down or curtailing services. That’s what the ACA was meant to prevent! And it actually worked in our state! It got us close enough to universal health care that people can actually see what it’s like.
So really, why *not* make “universal health care” the theme? Rather than immediately tying ourselves to a way to do it that *has* to pass nationally, if it’s going to pass at all, and which will prompt a federal legislative battle that will make the ACA pass look like a Sunday school picnic?
Steve in the ATL
@Dev Null: in a related matter, I have a friend who let his kids name their dog. The dog’s name was not “Bingo”, it was “Bingo Was His Name-O”.
Freaking kids.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Capitalism only works if truly rigorous rules to keep the playing table level are in place. We have had more strict rules for economic competitors at times, but more recently giant business has assumed control of most all the economic levers.
I think we need some real trust busting going on, and whatever we need to do for that to happen, like a reformed justice system, and universal health care disconnected from employment to free people to quit a nasty job to search for another way.
ETA: Senator Warren has made it explicitly clear that she believes in capitalism, but also knows that strict regulation is absolutely necessary for everyone to have a fair shot. IIRC she said “I will always be a capitalist!” at one point, and I see no reason to disbelieve that.
smintheus
@Chetan Murthy: Also, an individual state that creates its own single payer system and subsidizes its own poor via that system is foregoing the federal subsidies that go with the ACA’s private plans…so your taxes are also subsidizing the rest of the country in ways you’re not benefiting from.
smintheus
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: The status quo ante politics of Biden definitely don’t fire up the base, as you can tell by his underwhelming crowds. A lot of his support comes not from his policies but from the idea that he’s the electable one.
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat: You make three points. First:
Second:
Third:
I dare say that almost all of us here agree with your third point.
I dare say that most of us are in sympathy with your first point as well.
Your second point is incomplete as it stands, but in view of your earlier comments, and for the sake of argument, may I assume that you are saying that “if Liz Warren is the Dem nominee we will lose both the presidential race and the House into the bargain, for reasons”?
If indeed that’s what you mean, your second point is, hmm, a forecast the evidence for which is incomplete, as witness jackal pushback. (Possibly even “facts not in evidence”, but perhaps the facts are in evidence but difficult to see.)
You seem to feel that your first and third points support your second point. They don’t… your second point is independent of #1 & #3.
For what little my opinion is worth, I don’t think that wrapping a controversial claim with two non-objectionable statements makes the controversial claim any more persuasive.
My two Euros.
Another Scott
@Heywood J.: Amy at the Houston debate – not a direct quote, but it was my thoughts at the time.
A transcript:
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dev Null
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: TBF she frequently links to Rachel Maddow, who I tend to find credible
JR
@John S.: Being non-Trump is certainly good enough to win the election. Voters are generally not that motivated by ideology, except when they perceive it as a threat. I mean, you don’t have to look far for evidence.
Dev Null
@Steve in the ATL:
:-)
Dev Null
@JR:
While I tend to agree, “certainly” is carrying a lot of freight. Most of 2016, HRC was “certainly” going to win the election.
(Thanks, Comey!)
MomSense
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
She is not linking to bots and trolls. She is linking to very well known twitter accounts. She is not linking to the usual white twitter accounts and because of that the mostly white commentariat here insult Rikyrah. The only voters who never got sucked into Russian disinformation in 2016 were black women.
schrodingers_cat
@Dev Null: I am not making predictions. We could still win the match but M4A is an own goal. For reasons of both politics and policy.
For me this next election is a matter of survival not Christmas morning where Santa brings my heart’s desire. YMMV.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: Yes we need more trust busting and SEC with teeth.
Kathleen
@Miss Bianca: Thank you! I made the same point earlier but you did a much better job of presenting it. Plus, to Chetan Murthy’s point, stakeholders were engaged in ACA. The data from that exist along with the follow up studies/documentation. If you don’t have buy in from stakeholders your plan won’t work. Why oh why should we start from scratch? If Rethuglicans were willing to work with Democrats to consistently tweak ACA it would be better than it was in 2010 and more people would have realized its benefits.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@MomSense:
The tweets she shared that really pissed me off were the “Warren was a Republican for x years and therefore not a real Democrat” smears.That shit is what I criticized her for
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Yes when I was not on the Pete B gushing train that’s what I was told too, that Russians/Twitterbots were influencing me. As if I am incapable of forming opinions after watching him speak.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@schrodingers_cat: “Elizabeth Warren was a Republican and isn’t a real Democrat” is a trollish smear, full stop. Rikyah shared tweets that said that. And she would never respond when called out on it if memory serves. How is that any different than calling Clinton a “Goldwater Girl”?
People can make their own decisions, but nobody is completely immune to disinformation and propaganda. Nobody. I’m the first to admit that I’m not
MomSense
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You may not agree but that sentiment is widely expressed by people are concerned about Warren because she doesn’t have a history of allyship and advocacy for their communities. Expressing that opinion does not make one a troll, influenced by bots or hacked as someone here wondered. It’s a legitimate concern that you don’t happen to share. Doesn’t mean it should be dismissed.
MomSense
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
It’s different because Clinton was a teenager when she was a Goldwater Girl- not in her 30s and 40s. And again, the Clintons have a long history of advocacy and allyship. They know and trust the Clintons. You are viewing these issues through the lens of being a white person.
schrodingers_cat
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: The Republican dysfunction did not start with the current occupant of the WH. The race-baiting and running the economy for the benefit of the 1% started with Reagan. EW was a Republican in good standing then. If black people remember that and are not comfortable with EW I don’t blame them. Hillary has been D all her adult life. EW was an R until her mid forties not the same thing at all.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: GMTA.
Miss Bianca
@smintheus:
Is that right?
Kathleen
@MomSense: QFT
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@MomSense:
That’s fine and fair. That’s legitimate criticism that I don’t have a problem with and it would be a concern I’d share if true. I admit I haven’t been paying as close attention to the primaries lately since I’m so busy with school. Still, the “EW was a Republican!” that Rikyah did share isn’t compelling to me and it’s a trollish smear. That’s what I criticized her for in particular. It’s no different than “Goldwater girl” imo
I’ll retract what I said about the other Twitter accounts in light of what you’ve said
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
?
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
@smintheus: I don’t care about Biden. And you’re right there is no link btwn perceived electability and actual electability. But there also is no link btwn crowd size and votes. Howard Dean, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Bernie, even Dump all had huge crowds which failed to translate at the ballot box. Dump lost by 3 million votes and got smaller share of the vote than Romney. He only scratched out an electoral college win because Comey and the NY FBI office intervened into the election, repeatedly.
Dev Null
@MomSense:
Link? I’ve tried to keep track of 2016 voter participation by demographic, and there’s some evidence that AA voters were affected by Russian social media disinformation, but I missed breakdown of 2016 AA participation by sex. (ie not disputing the statement, just not aware of evidence for it.)
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat:
That wasn’t my point.
apocalipstick
@Ruckus: Not only that, the VA is truly socialist, in that the doctors work for the state. That is the definition of socialized medicine, much like the NHS in Britain.
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat:
Rather earlier than that, actually.
Wait, wut?
If “how long” is the motivating factor for AA voters, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have been D forever. Why Biden rather than Harris or Booker?
And why are AA voters comfortable with Biden playing footsie with segregationists back in the day? Why isn’t Biden’s dismissal of Anita Hill’s testimony in Clarence Thomas’ 1991 SCOTUS confirmation hearings an issue?
I have no idea why AA voters are comfortable with Biden and “not comfortable with EW” …
… if indeed that’s the case:
and:
Who knows? Perhaps the AA organizers the Politico writers quote aren’t representative … I wouldn’t know. (At least the writers aren’t interviewing rural fly-over country Trumpalos at diners.)
But it’s also possible that AA voters are pragmatic, which is what I take away from the Politico report.
schrodingers_cat
@Dev Null: The lived reality that I inhabit as a naturalized citizen in the era of an R president that has put me others like me in the cross-hairs is different than the reality of most people in this comment section. What is the controversial point here?
Dev Null
@smintheus:
The Politico report I linked to above suggests that pragmatism and the perception of “electability” might account for Biden’s AA support.
From the same report:
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
If you get actually really sick it doesn’t pay anywhere near enough and most people have to sell property, if they have it and then use Medicaid, which is worse. IOW you get sick as an old, you will get care, maybe, and possibly enough. And it doesn’t pay enough for many people to use to keep from getting far worse in the first place, if you have something chronic.
Not that it’s all Medicare’s fault, some of this is the medical system we have that focuses mostly on profit, like every other segment of our society.
If you can afford it get a Medicare Advantage program. If you are in CA I recommend Kaiser. People I know use and like it. It’s similar to the VA process, you are just a part of the entire place but an equal part. Kaiser is building it’s own medical school in Pasadena. It really is trying to be a medical system. It’s different than having a doc and being referred around for services, dealing with insurance payments. You are in the system, the system works for you. The only real way it could be better is if you have enough money and own your own hospital.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Only thing I have to say is that it started before RR. Conservatives have been figuring out how to profit from the government and not pay for or be bound by the laws since day one. RR was not the first conservative president nor has he been the worst. And no I don’t think he was good at all. But then the same party elected shit for brains and look how that’s going……
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat:
The statement that “my reality is different from your reality” is universally true. You were, I believe, intending to make an argument, no? But you chose not to state specifics in that comment, perhaps because you have laid out your argument in a series of prior comments.
As I wrote in response to that point:
You’re welcome to tell me that that isn’t what you were saying … but you have yet to do so, so I am still working on the assumption that you think Liz Warren, should she be the nominee, will lose her race and cost the Dems the House as well.
You can (and did!) say “I’m not making predictions”, but what is “M4A is an own goal” if not a prediction?
That Liz Warren will lose a presidential race and cost Dems the House.
Again: your prediction might be right. Or you might be wrong.
But your “lived reality”, valid though it is for you, isn’t evidence in support of your prediction. It’s why you feel so strongly about your prediction, or so I am guessing.E2A: my last para misstates my earlier conclusion, which was that few of us want to leave, almost all of us abhor the actions of this Admin, but that doesn’t support the contention that Liz Warren will lose and cost Dems the House into the bargain.
schrodingers_cat
@Dev Null: I did not predict a loss with her as our nominee.
M4A is going to be a heavy lift for Ds. They may still win but it is going to be harder to win because of it. Feel free to disagree. And I am done with this thread.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: They have been terrible for a long time, see Smoot-Hawley and Reed-Johnson acts (tariffs and immigration restrictions)
But Reagan was the one who began to roll back the Keynesian consensus on the economy.
Dev Null
@Ruckus:
Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater, among others. Neither became president, needless to say, but both were extremely influential. Nor were they civil-rights-friendly.
Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Bill Buckley, well, there’s this (in)famous quote circa 1960:
(Apologies for covering already well-covered terrain.)
Fun fact: Brent Bozell (jr, I think) was Buckley’s bro-in-law.
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat: As late as the 1950s, Republicans were regarded as being as forward-looking as Dems on race, perhaps more so. e.g. Little Rock integration and the 1957 Civil Rights Act during Eisenhower’s Admin, vs. racist Southern Dems.
Dev Null
Eric Levitz: Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All Plan Is a Smart Storytelling Device.
I haven’t paid much attention to the M4A vs. M4A.* vs ACA++ vs. ACA discussion, so don’t feel that I have a dog in this fight. I’ll vote for whoever wins the Dem nomination, unless it’s Tulsi, but absent an act of God, she won’t.
Goblue72
@schrodingers_cat: How do get through the day being such a massive pussy?
SWMBO
Nancy SMASH wants to hold on to the House and expand control in the Senate. Is it possible that Nancy has looked at the Dem caucus and read enough tea leaves to know that M4A is DOA? Is it possible that the Russian asset Wilmer has pushed hard for M4A to divide us and help Trump? I’m all for universal coverage but I’m not chained to M4A as the one true pure answer. Nancy knows what she can and can’t get through the House. Especially if she’s trying to help her folks get reelected. She’s a bigger picture thinker than most. I say we thrash out the “best way forward” in the primaries, then back whatever the consensus is.
Wilmer is fulfilling his role as divider and spoiler. Tulsi is the handmaiden.
Psych1
@JR: Cheryl, based on all the “centerist” push-back you are getting, you may want to consider that you are writing for the wrong blog.