“So Far, Just Ripples”: The Wave Has Failed To Materialize
Meanwhile, back at the ranch — as foreign events hog the spotlight — why haven’t Republicans sealed the deal on the coming election?
When summer began, the conventional wisdom was that the GOP sorta kinda probably maybe would take control of the Senate in November. As summer ends — and it hasn’t been great for President Obama, which means it also hasn’t been anything for the Democratic Party to write home about — that same equivocal assessment still holds.
The Real Clear Politics Web site, which aggregates polls, rates nine Senate races as tossups. If incumbents Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas manage to scrape out wins, the Web site calculates, Democrats will retain a 51 to 49 edge and Harry Reid gets to keep his job as majority leader.
Let’s say that one of those Democrats falters — or even two. It seems entirely possible that Bruce Braley could defeat Republican Joni Ernst in an Iowa race that polls show as a dead heat. Democrat Michelle Nunn may be gaining ground on David Perdue in Georgia, although a recent poll showing Nunn in the lead is probably an outlier. And the man who wants Reid’s job, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is in a surprisingly tough race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.
All in all, you still have to give the edge to the GOP. But it is a surprisingly narrow and tenuous advantage in a year when some analysts were predicting a wave election in favor of Republicans.
So far, just ripples. Why could that be?
This time, the GOP managed not to nominate candidates whose views are so extreme — or so wacky — that they might effectively concede what ought to be safe seats. The party establishment made ideological concessions to the tea party wing, but managed to insist on nominees who have a chance of being elected. No Republican candidate has spoken of solving problems with “Second Amendment remedies,” as Sharron Angle did in 2010, or run a television ad to declare “I’m not a witch” a la Christine O’Donnell that same year.
The candidates may be plausible, but they’re running on the wrong issues. Rather, the wrong issue: the Affordable Care Act.
“Repeal Obamacare” remains a rallying cry for the GOP’s activist base — perhaps less for the law itself than the president for whom it is named. But for independent voters, undoing health-care reform is not the sure-fire issue Republicans hoped it would be.
The program is in effect. Some people who previously could not obtain health insurance now have it. Most people are unaffected. Despite all the dire GOP predictions, the sky has not fallen.
Yet Republican candidates say otherwise, describing a dystopian breakdown of the nation’s health-care system that simply has not occurred. And they go all tongue-tied when asked how they could manage to repeal Obamacare in the face of a certain veto by Obama — or, more tellingly, just what they would put in place if they somehow succeeded.
Much of the news dominating the headlines this summer has been taking place overseas — Russia’s slow-motion invasion of Ukraine, the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, whatever it is that seems to be happening in Libya. Blasting Obama for failed leadership is a guaranteed applause line, but GOP candidates are not even trying to articulate what the president should be doing differently. Airstrikes in Syria? Ground troops back to Iraq? Anybody want to speak up?
Nor has the party developed an economic message that goes beyond the familiar standbys: tax cuts, spending cuts, deregulation. The public is clearly not thrilled with the state of the economy — as reflected in Obama’s low approval ratings — but growth is up and unemployment is down. The claim that Democratic policies inevitably lead to ruin rings hollow.
Still, Democrats have an uphill fight, even if it’s not nearly as steep as the GOP hoped. To hold the Senate, segments of the Democratic coalition who often skip midterm elections — African Americans, Latinos, younger voters — will have to turn out. And polls show that Republicans maintain an edge in enthusiasm.
Which brings me to the wild card: immigration.
Obama is considering executive action that could give legal status to thousands or even millions of undocumented immigrants. Would that inflame conservatives and drive Republican turnout through the roof? Would it excite the Democratic faithful, especially Latinos, giving them a reason to vote?
This thing is unpredictable. And that’s a surprise.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post,September 1, 2014
“The Medicare Miracle”: Everything The Usual Suspects Have Been Saying About Fiscal Responsibility Is Wrong
So, what do you think about those Medicare numbers? What, you haven’t heard about them? Well, they haven’t been front-page news. But something remarkable has been happening on the health-spending front, and it should (but probably won’t) transform a lot of our political debate.
The story so far: We’ve all seen projections of giant federal deficits over the next few decades, and there’s a whole industry devoted to issuing dire warnings about the budget and demanding cuts in Socialsecuritymedicareandmedicaid. Policy wonks have long known, however, that there’s no such program, and that health care, rather than retirement, was driving those scary projections. Why? Because, historically, health spending has grown much faster than G.D.P., and it was assumed that this trend would continue.
But a funny thing has happened: Health spending has slowed sharply, and it’s already well below projections made just a few years ago. The falloff has been especially pronounced in Medicare, which is spending $1,000 less per beneficiary than the Congressional Budget Office projected just four years ago.
This is a really big deal, in at least three ways.
First, our supposed fiscal crisis has been postponed, perhaps indefinitely. The federal government is still running deficits, but they’re way down. True, the red ink is still likely to swell again in a few years, if only because more baby boomers will retire and start collecting benefits; but, these days, projections of federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. show it creeping up rather than soaring. We’ll probably have to raise more revenue eventually, but the long-term fiscal gap now looks much more manageable than the deficit scolds would have you believe.
Second, the slowdown in Medicare helps refute one common explanation of the health-cost slowdown: that it’s mainly the product of a depressed economy, and that spending will surge again once the economy recovers. That could explain low private spending, but Medicare is a government program, and shouldn’t be affected by the recession. In other words, the good news on health costs is for real.
But what accounts for this good news? The third big implication of the Medicare cost miracle is that everything the usual suspects have been saying about fiscal responsibility is wrong.
For years, pundits have accused President Obama of failing to take on entitlement spending. These accusations always involved magical thinking on the politics, assuming that Mr. Obama could somehow get Republicans to negotiate in good faith if only he really wanted to. But they also implicitly dismissed as worthless all the cost-control measures included in the Affordable Care Act. Inside the Beltway, cost control apparently isn’t considered real unless it involves slashing benefits. One pundit went so far as to say, after the Obama administration rejected proposals to raise the eligibility age for Medicare, “America gets the shaft.”
It turns out, however, that raising the Medicare age would hardly save any money. Meanwhile, Medicare is spending much less than expected, and those Obamacare cost-saving measures are at least part of the story. The conventional wisdom on what is and isn’t serious is completely wrong.
While we’re on the subject of health costs, there are two other stories you should know about.
One involves the supposed savings from running Medicare through for-profit insurance companies. That’s the way the drug benefit works, and conservatives love to point out that this benefit has ended up costing much less than projected, which they claim proves that privatization is the way to go. But the budget office has a new report on this issue, and it finds that privatization had nothing to do with it. Instead, Medicare Part D is costing less than expected partly because enrollment has been low and partly because an absence of new blockbuster drugs has led to an overall slowdown in pharmaceutical spending.
The other involves the “sticker shock” that opponents of health reform have been predicting for years. Bulletin: It’s still not happening. Over all, health insurance premiums seem likely to rise only modestly next year, and they are on track to be flat or even falling in several states, including Connecticut and Arkansas.
What’s the moral here? For years, pundits and politicians have insisted that guaranteed health care is an impossible dream, even though every other advanced country has it. Covering the uninsured was supposed to be unaffordable; Medicare as we know it was supposed to be unsustainable. But it turns out that incremental steps to improve incentives and reduce costs can achieve a lot, and covering the uninsured isn’t hard at all.
When it comes to ensuring that Americans have access to health care, the message of the data is simple: Yes, we can.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, August 31, 2014
“The Magical President Doesn’t Exist”: What The Left Must Really Do To Defeat The Wingnuts
Labor Day marks the traditional kickoff to election season, and all Democrats can say for themselves about the coming midterms is: Things look bad, but they could be worse. Republicans will almost certainly gain Senate seats, and could very well take it over, though their chances diminish every time we hear new audio of Mitch McConnell and his GOP cronies sucking up to the Koch brothers at their last retreat. But traditional low midterm Democratic turnout could make McConnell the Senate majority leader in January nonetheless.
This political season opens against a backdrop of profound pessimism, captured in an August Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that found that 71 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The president’s approval rating is at an all-time low, but so is that of congressional Republicans. Even worse, the two big stories dominating the end-of-summer headlines – the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. and the rise of ISIL – only deepen the political gloom, because they reflect two enormous American problems that are coming to seem almost unsolvable: profound and persistent racial injustice, and the shape-shifting chaos that is Iraq.
These problems are particularly vexing for people who subscribe to the Magical President theory of politics — which includes too many of us, including me sometimes – because those are two issues Americans thought we’d “solved,” or at least responsibly addressed, by electing our first black president, who’d famously opposed the “dumb” Iraq war and promised to end it. Now race relations are arguably worse than when Obama took office, and so is Iraq, and this is a rare case where you can fairly say people on “both sides” blame the president — mostly wrongly.
Cornel West is now slipping deep into Maureen Dowd territory: a formerly incisive, moderately influential social critic (a genuinely important one, in West’s case) driven to cruelty and irrelevance by Obama hatred. The National Journal’s Ron Fournier is a consistent proponent of what some deride as the “Green Lantern” approach to the presidency: If only Obama would just lead, our problems would solve themselves, though Fournier doesn’t stoop to channeling Abraham Lincoln or Aaron Sorkin when he criticizes Obama. But even fair and sober observers are frustrated with some of Obama’s moves.
You can certainly criticize the president on the margins – I have, and I’m sure I will again. Personally, if I worked for him, I’d probably have suggested not golfing after his moving statement on journalist James Foley’s execution, and not equivocating as much in his Ferguson remarks, which Michael Eric Dyson fairly laments. But those are issues more of stage management than statecraft.
Still, even for people who respect Obama, it’s hard to see us mired in what feels like ancient, intractable conflict in both Ferguson and Iraq. It hurts. Yet I would argue (after having been demoralized about both issues) that the unrest in Ferguson is in fact a kind of social progress: Within hours of Mike Brown’s awful shooting a network of new and seasoned activists came together to demand justice, pushing both Gov. Jay Nixon and the president to take action to rein in abusive local cops and drive the investigation into what happened.
Even the ugly situation in Iraq represents political progress, because as painful and outrageous as Foley’s execution was, and as disturbing as it is to see ISIL gain power in Iraq and Syria, the vital debate over what the U.S. can and should do there has actually been strengthened by the existence of intervention skeptics on the left and the right. Obama has repudiated the neocon approach, but he’s still wrestling with Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn doctrine: If you break it, have you really bought it? Certainly, we’ve already paid for it, many times over.
Let’s be clear: There is neither a Democratic nor a progressive consensus on what is to be done there. All we have is a profound skepticism, and I’ll take that over a cynical Cheneyesque certainty, built on lies to the American people. Disagreement, even deadlock, is preferable.
The belief that somehow Obama can lead us out of our summer of misery reflects Magical President thinking. Which leads me back to the rapidly approaching and dispiriting midterms. When I reviewed Rick Perlstein’s “Invisible Bridge,” I noted that the major political difference between the right and left seems to be that when defeated and disillusioned, the right gets back to the nuts and bolts work of electoral politics. The left, or some of it, disintegrates, a flank here promoting direct action over electoral politics (a debate that’s understandably renewed by events in Ferguson); a flank there preaching about a third party; and one over there fantasizing about the perfect left-wing challenge to the mainstream Democratic candidate, like that dreamy African-American senator who opposed the war in Iraq who looked so magical eight years ago. Meanwhile, Republicans count on division on the left, and low turnout by the Democratic base of younger, poorer non-white voters, to help them take back the Senate.
And when they do, Mitch McConnell has promised only more obstruction and gridlock. I should point out, this isn’t just a byproduct of Republican victories, but one of the goals. It’s become obvious in the GOP’s approach to Obama that obstruction is at least partly intended to demoralize the reluctant, occasional voters in the Democratic base. For if there’s no action on those “gosh darn” issues, in McConnell’s words, like a minimum wage hike, student loan relief or extended unemployment insurance, let alone immigration reform or climate change, even after Obama became the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win more than 50 percent of the vote twice, those of us who say that voting is the most reliable path to social change sound either foolish or dishonest. People say, why bother?
The cause isn’t helped by spineless Democrats who try to blur their differences with Republicans instead of heighten them. Right now Karl Rove is attacking Democratic senators like North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Arkansas’s Mark Pryor for endorsing Obama’s Simpson-Bowles commission report, which recommended cuts to Medicare and Social Security. But nobody could have predicted anyone would use entitlement cuts as weapons, right? Except many of us did. Again and again.
On the other hand, Hagan, Pryor and also-vulnerable Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are doing better than expected, either leading their GOP opponents or tied, at least partly because during this election year, they’ve been feistier and more progressive, particularly when it comes to defending the Affordable Care Act. And Kentucky voters may yet make Mitch McConnell pay for sucking up to the Kochs. He shouldn’t be redecorating the Senate majority leader’s office, at any rate.
Democrats have two months to make sure this election doesn’t turn out like 2010 did. It’s not about the president right now, and we shouldn’t wait until 2016 for a new magical president. The kind of thoroughgoing change we need won’t happen in eight years, or even 80. It’s an eternal battle, the constant effort to expand the realm of human freedom to everyone, against the constant crusade by the wealthy to ensure that the trappings of human dignity – education, leisure, family life, childhood itself – are reserved for those who can afford to pay for them. The Kochs and their allies are trying to repeal the 20th century. Progressives can’t just suit up for that battle every four years.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, September 1, 2014
“The Promise Of So Much Money”: For 2016 GOP Candidates, Does Courting The Kochs Bring More Risk Than Reward?
While most Americans were settling in for a long weekend, many of the potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates — Rick Perry, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Pence — went to Dallas for a convention of Americans for Prosperity, the group through which Charles and David Koch channel much of their political money. If any of the politicians were wary about how it looks to have so many people who want to be the leader of the free world kissing the Kochs’ rings, you couldn’t tell. They’re making a strategic calculation that whatever PR risks are inherent in getting too close to the Kochs, they’re outweighed by the money the brothers bring to the GOP’s table. And if the Kochs plan to intervene in the 2016 primaries — something no one seems sure they’ll do — then every Republican candidate wants to be the one on the receiving end of that fire hose of cash.
At the moment, Republicans couldn’t be happier about the Kochs’ support, because the sums they mobilize are staggering. The Koch network (which includes other like-minded benefactors) spent at least $400 million in 2012 and are expect to drop another $300 million in this year’s midterms. The law of ever-increasing campaign spending suggests that in 2016 they’ll spend even more. It would be a surprise if the total didn’t top a half billion dollars.
So far, the Democrats’ efforts to make voters see the Kochs as a pair of villains have met with only limited success. One poll taken in March found 37 percent of people with an opinion about the Kochs (25 percent negative, 12 percent positive). On the other hand, it might be enough if many voters had only the vaguest sense of who the Kochs are and what they stand for. If people hear the name and say, “Aren’t they those billionaire Republican guys? I don’t quite remember,” then that would make Democrats happy. As Greg has explained before, while Democrats certainly want voters to think of their opponents as heartless robber barons, the strategy is more complex than that; it’s also about establishing a context for attacks on Republican positions on economic issues. When you go after Republicans for not supporting an increase in the minimum wage, an association with billionaire oil magnates tells voters why Republicans believe what they do and why their interests are opposed to those of ordinary people.
Republicans will tell you that it’s foolhardy of Democrats to try to make an issue out of the Kochs’ sway over the GOP, mostly because voters don’t particularly care about the influence of money in politics. But even if the attacks had some effect, it would have to be clear and unambiguous before Republican contenders started shying away from the Kochs and all that money.
I’d be extremely surprised if the Kochs actually chose to back a single candidate in the 2016 primary; not only does that risk alienating whoever wins if it’s not the one they picked, it could also turn them into just one faction in a factional conflict. Even if the brothers aren’t toeing the GOP line on some issues (such as immigration or foreign interventionism), they benefit from having everyone on the right view them as a friend to all Republicans. At the same time, it’s in the Kochs’ interest to have all the candidates believe they might back a primary candidate. That way, those candidates will continue to cater to their concerns and maybe even make some promises about actions that could be taken once a Republican is in the White House.
But the closer we get to the 2016 general election, the more problematic it will be for the eventual nominee to be seen as too close to the Kochs. Democrats aren’t going to stop going after them, and if the Republican candidate himself isn’t a plutocrat (none of the contenders this time around approach Mitt Romney’s level of wealth), the next best thing is to say that he’s in a plutocrat’s pocket. So there will be many more Democratic ads with the brothers’ pictures, and many more Democratic speeches tying that eventual nominee to the oil barons from Kansas.
The longer that goes on, the higher the chances that being seen as too close to the Kochs poses a political risk for Republican presidential candidates. But for the moment, they don’t seem too concerned, especially when gaining the Kochs’ favor comes with the promise of so much money.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, September 1, 2014
“Boehner’s Constitution Of Convenience”: Sermonizing Politicians Cannot Meet Even Their Most Rudimentary Responsibilities
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Especially when your glass house is the House of Representatives. Speaker of the House John Boehner made headlines last month, when he launched a misguided lawsuit against President Obama for ostensibly violating “his constitutional authority.” Yet if anybody is treading on the Constitution, it is Boehner himself. Speaker Boehner and his conservative caucus have shown a blatant disregard for the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which guarantees criminal defendants “the assistance of counsel.” In the process, they have failed to meet their basic constitutional responsibilities.
Boehner is cynically using the very process he refuses to fund for others less fortunate. In announcing his decision to sue the President, Boehner made the anodyne observation that “the legislative branch has an obligation to defend the rights and responsibilities of the American people.” These rights include those contained in the Sixth Amendment, which specifies the procedures of criminal prosecution. Notably, the Amendment protects the fundamental rights of criminal defendants to a speedy trial and to be represented by legal counsel.
Congressional Republicans’ extreme budget cuts threaten the core of the Sixth Amendment. Since 2010, Congress slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal judiciary and federal public defense programs. Simultaneously, Congressional Republicans allowed states to enact draconian cuts to public defense. From Michigan to Mississippi, state legislators balanced their budgets on the backs of poor Americans who rely on public defenders. States rights are all well and good, but states do not have the right to violate the Constitution. Despite efforts by Democrats in Congress to stop the damage, Congressional Republicans refused to increase appropriations and provide reasonable levels of funding.
The results have been catastrophic. And the victims are some of the most vulnerable people in our society: low-income Americans trapped in a biased justice system. As noted by the ACLU and other advocacy organizations, the “deep cuts to the federal public defenders’ budget” resulted in “significant layoffs, 15-20 day furloughs, and the complete elimination of defender training.” Continuing on this dangerous path, according to the advocacy coalition, would “decimate the federal defender system.” On the state level, the consequences have been equally devastating. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, many state public defenders spend as little as six minutes per case because of paltry funding. The Brennan Center also found that public defenders often juggle “more than 300 cases at one time.”
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) are unequivocal: the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution entitles criminal defendants to effective legal representation. Congress has the responsibility to secure this right with appropriate funding. And it is not doing so. Low-income Americans are paying a very real price for this constitutional abdication.
Tea Party Republicans frequently pontificate about the Constitution. The 112th Congress, in which John Boehner was elevated to Speaker, began with a ceremonial reading of the document “for the first time ever.” The House Republican Caucus introduced a rule in 2011 that requires all legislation to “cite its specific constitutional authority.” Republicans routinely allege that President Obama’s actions menace the Constitution. To quote Republicans in Congress, America faces a “constitutional crisis” because “King Obama” has “rewritten the Constitution for himself.” But when it is time to actually stand up for the Constitution, these sermonizing politicians cannot meet even their most rudimentary responsibilities. America doesn’t need politicians who lecture about the Constitution; we need politicians who follow it.
Conservative Republicans don’t stop at undermining public defense. They also embrace extreme cuts to civil legal assistance. While not protected by the Sixth Amendment, civil legal aid is a vital component of the safety net. Every year, it helps 1.8 million low income Americans facing everything from domestic violence to foreclosure. Like criminal legal aid, it is also egregiously underfunded. Almost every House Republican supported a 2011 plan to chop nearly 20% from the annual appropriation of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the nation’s primary provider of civil legal aid. For some Republicans, these severe cut to LSC did not go far enough. 170 Republicans, or 70% of the Congressional Republican Caucus, subsequently voted to eliminate all funding for the LSC.
Fortunately, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have successfully blocked the most radical reductions in public defense. Attorney General Holder and Solicitor General Verrilli have been tireless advocate for reversing the cuts and establishing an equitable judicial system.
Ironically, Speaker Boehner resorted to the American justice system to sue President Obama, the very system he has worked relentlessly to underfund for indigents. Instead of suing Obama, he should start fixing the system he and his colleagues broke.
By: Duncan Hosie, The Huffington Post Blog, August 26, 2014
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