“The Could-Be Columns”: Why The Misogynist Media Are Trying To Create A Hillary Clinton-Elizabeth Warren-Caroline Kennedy Catfight
How terrifying is it to the political establishment that a woman might actually have a clear shot to becoming the next president?
Enough that the parlor game of the moment in Washington is to start listing the Other Women – that is, the scary females (“scary” being a function of “female” in this case) who might end up challenging Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary. Or a Jell-o fight or mud wrestling match, to go by the absurd speculation in the media.
First, we have Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who for some reason is seen as Clinton’s dangerous threat from the left. Warren is a real rising star, to be sure, and arrived to the Senate with an already-elevated status, given her knowledge of financial regulation and consistent commitment to consumer rights and other liberal causes. She’s not showy; she’s smart and a solid workhorse –like the senator who pre-preceded her, Edward M. Kennedy. There’s nothing she has said or done to indicate she has her eye on the White House in 2016. Her former national finance chairman has told donors she is raising no cash for a 2016 run, which pretty much ends it there – you can’t run a presidential campaign without money. And Warren herself has told the Boston Globe “no, no, no no” in response to the question.
Ah, but even in politics, when a woman says no, some in the media think she means yes. We have The New Republic speculating about a possible Warren-Clinton showdown. And we have the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, always up for a woman-bashing column, talking about how a Warren presidency would be, in his mind, even worse than an Obama presidency. At least Cohen has the journalistic integrity to note parenthetically that Warren has expressed no interest in the job.
Then we have Caroline Kennedy, whom Post blogger Jennifer Rubin suggests might also be up for a run, noting Kennedy’s deft start to her new job as ambassador to Japan. That – plus the Kennedy name and experience watching family members in politics – seems to be the only justification for such random speculation. And it’s absurd on its face. Kennedy is indeed deeply committed to public service, but she is a somewhat shy person who does not enjoy being the center of attention. It’s one of the reasons she did not run for the Senate in New York. The idea that she could stomach the nonstop attention and scrutiny of a presidential run is nonsense. She is gracious and diplomatic, which makes her a perfect pick for an ambassadorship – not a presidential candidate.
So why the could-be columns? Part of it is the natural tendency in the media to find someone – anyone – to create a conflict or fight where there currently exists none. Clinton is the clear early front-runner for the Democratic nomination, should she decide to run. Vice President Joe Biden might give her a challenge, if he decides to run. But that’s not enough for the Clinton-wary, who want to diminish her potential candidacy by reducing it to some kind of brewing girlfight. Clinton with a clear path to the nomination is infuriating to this group, and a potential challenge from a man only gives credibility to her as a candidate. Ah, but present her future as one where she has to kick Warren or Kennedy with her kitten heels and scratch out their eyes to be the Democratic nominee – now that’s a storyline misogynist America finds appealing. Fortunately, the three women in question aren’t agreeing to those roles.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 3, 2013
“Like It Or Not, Obamacare Is Moving Forward”: For Certain People, This Isn’t As Good A Story As The Website’s Implosion Was
HealthCare.gov just tweeted that more than 375,000 had visited the refurbished federal website as of noon today. White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed the figure shortly after.
So demand still appears to be there, despite weeks of deservedly awful press about the website and the law, and weeks of Republican claims that the law is so disastrously flawed that it cannot be rescued.
Along those lines, Kevin Drum captures what matters most about the news of the moment in one half a sentence:
if you need to buy health coverage via healthcare.gov, you can do it
This really is the rub. Sure, there will be continued problems. Charles Ornstein personally had a terrible experience. Sarah Kliff found the site is still not working for everybody. And the snafus at the back end may persist, too.
But the big picture is that far more people who need health insurance — whether they were bumped from plans or whether they were previously uninsured — will now be mostly able to go online, do some shopping, and buy health insurance. Before, they couldn’t.
This isn’t as good a story as the website’s implosion was, and if the site continues to function as expected, it will mostly stop getting media coverage. The press will move on to the next Obamacare disaster story, should it materialize: The “keep your doctor” saga, coming soon via Republican press release directly to reporters’ inboxes.
But the current fix has mostly tamped down concerns among Democratic lawmakers, and barring some truly catastrophic change, they just aren’t going to abandon the law in any meaningful sense. Meanwhile, demand looks likely to continue, even as insurance companies redouble their efforts to entice people on to the exchanges, which means enrollment will continue piling up, too.
Will it be enough? It’s too soon to say. Republican lawmakers and their voters have been 100 percent certain for some time now that Obamacare has already collapsed, but for everyone else, the law’s long term prospects will turn mostly on what that enrollment looks like over time. And for that, we’ll just have to wait.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, December 2, 2013
“Another Media Black Eye”: John Boehner Inadvertently Exposes Sloppy Media Coverage Of Obamacare Costs
House Speaker John Boehner loves to tell stories about people getting a raw deal from Obamacare. This week, he decided to tell one about himself.
As you may recall, Obamacare treats members of Congress and their staff differently from other working Americans. Thanks to a provision added to the law by Charles Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, certain Capitol Hill workers can’t get insurance like other federal employees—i.e., via the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. Instead, they must get coverage through one of the new Obamacare exchanges. For many, that means enrolling through the District of Columbia exchange.
This week, Boehner did just that. But, as his advisers later explained to media outlets, the Speaker had trouble. The website had technical problems, they said, and it took hours for Boehner to complete process. When he finally found a policy, he discovered it would cost a lot more. Politico got the full story, including a quote from Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. “The Boehners are fortunate enough to be able to afford higher costs. But many Americans seeing their costs go up are not. It’s because of them that this law needs to go.” Soon it was all over social media.
But this story turns out to be a lot more complicated than either Boehner or the initial press accounts suggested. In fact, it’s an almost perfect example of how media coverage of Obamacare has failed to provide scrutiny, context or a sense of scale. For one thing, the circumstances of Boehner’s effort to use the D.C. website are a bit murky. Boehner had said he couldn’t get through to anybody on the Exchange’s help line. A spokesman for the exchange challenged that account, telling local NBC reporter Scott MacFarlane that a representative called Boehner’s office, only to be put on hold while patriotic music played in the background. After 35 minutes, according to this account, the representative hung up. It’s impossible to know which account is correct. But if the D.C. Exchange version is right, then, as Steve Benen observes, “Boehner complained about how long the process took, but when he got a call to complete the enrollment process, the Speaker kept the exchange rep on hold for over half an hour.”
In any event, the real issue here is what Boehner will pay for insurance next year—and what, if anything, that says about the law as a whole. It’s true that Boehner’s 2014 premiums will be higher than his 2013 premiums have been. But that’s because of a set of relatively unique factors. They’re a bit hard to explain: Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times has the full story if you want it. The simplistic version is that Boehner is paying more because he works on Capitol Hill and, at 64, he is relatively old. Unless you, too, work on Capitol Hill and are relatively old, his experience tells you very little about what will happen to you. Among other things, most large employers aren’t dropping coverage and sending their full-time workers into the exchanges. Only the U.S. Congress is—and that’s because of Grassley’s screwy amendment, which was, by all accounts, designed to embarrass the Democrats rather than become law.
Of course, the same factors that will mean higher premiums for older Capitol Hill workers will mean lower premiums for younger ones. An example of somebody benefitting from this dynamic is Drew Hammill, spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Taking into account the employer contribution, he’ll be paying $88 a month for his insurance next year. This year he has paid $186. His story appeared in a Wall Street Journal article about the different heath insurance experiences for different workers on Capitol Hill. The article, by Louise Radofsky, was balanced and fair. It was also the exception. There have been plenty of stories focusing on the older workers paying more, but almost none about younger workers paying less. You could make a case for focusing on the former more heavily: Hardship is bigger news than unexpected good luck. But by such a lopsided margin? That’s hard to justify.
And that pattern, unfortunately, is one we’ve seen over and over in this debate. People giving up their current plans get tons of attention. People getting new coverage don’t. Those Americans paying higher premiums next year have been all over the media. Those Americans paying lower premiums haven’t. There are exceptions. In the L.A. Times, Hiltzik had a terrific article Tuesday about Californians gaining coverage and saving money through California’s exchange. But those articles are hard to find.
Obamacare is a complicated story to tell, with good news and bad news and plenty in between. The media should cover all of it. But for the last few weeks it has mostly told one side of the story—the side that Boehner and his allies want you to hear.
By: Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, November 26, 2013
“News People Can Actually Use”: The Media Needs To Do More To Help People Navigate Obamacare
Yesterday, Tim Noah made a point in an MSNBC appearance that I think deserves a lot more attention. Media outlets have been doing lots of reporting on the problems of the Affordable Care Act rollout. What they haven’t done is provided their audiences with practical information that could help them navigate the new system. Of course, most Americans don’t have to do anything, since they have employer-provided insurance. But for all the attention we’ve been paying to the individual market, media outlets haven’t done much to be of service. “The New York Times has published the URL for the New York exchange exactly twice,” Noah said, “both before October first.”
My experience in talking to journalists about the publication of this kind of thing—unsexy yet useful information, whether it’s how to navigate a new health law or understanding where candidates stand on issues—is that they often think that addressing it once is enough. When you ask them about it, they’ll say, “We did a piece on that three months ago.” The problem is that for it to be effective, they have to do it repeatedly or people won’t get it. What we have seen is that this information can be found somewhere on news outlets’ websites (here’s an example), but it isn’t on the evening-news broadcast or in the print edition of the paper.
Of course, conservatives would allege that if a newspaper writes a guide to getting insurance through the new exchange, it has demonstrated its liberal bias and become an arm of the Obama administration. But it’s the law. As of next year, if you don’t get insurance through your employer, you need to go to an exchange. Media outlets would just be helping people do what they have to do. I suppose conservatives could also argue that if the local paper puts up a tool on its website that helps people find their polling places and tells them what the voting hours are, it’s just trying to boost turnout, and everybody knows that helps Democrats. Or that if it reminds you to file your tax returns on April 15th, then it’s just helping fund big government. Or that if it tells you to set your clocks back for daylight savings, it’s just feeding the Illuminati/Bilderberg time-theft conspiracy.
People sometimes mock “news you can use” because it’s often delivered in forms that aren’t particularly useful (“There’s a silent killer in your refrigerator right now!”). But helping citizens understand and respond to changes in the law is part of any major media outlet’s mission. The fact that a law is controversial doesn’t absolve them of the responsibility.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 27, 2013
“Turning The Health Care Corner”: The Health Care Talking Points That “Everyone Knows” To Be True Are Due For An Update
Political journalism is sometimes criticized, fairly, for its “pack” mentality. Major news organizations wait for the conventional wisdom to organically take shape, and then the players stick to their scripts, reinforcing an agreed upon consensus. In practically no time at all, there are certain political facts that “everyone knows” to be true.
But soon after, that gets dull, the conventional wisdom invites skeptics, and contrarian instincts kick in. Maybe, the political world starts to wonder, those truths that “everyone knows” aren’t so true after all.
For the last several weeks, the consensus in establishment circles was that the Affordable Care Act’s open-enrollment period was not only a disaster, but a catastrophe that would destroy Obama’s presidency, the Democratic Party, the American health care system, and the very idea of progressive governance. Pundits could hardly contain their analogies – this was Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s Iraq, Obama’s Watergate, Obama’s Iran-Contra, and even Obama’s Bay of Pigs.
But the funny thing about narratives is that they’re sometimes fleeting. Ezra Klein suggests today that “Obamacare” may finally be “turning the corner.”
There are increasing reports that HealthCare.Gov is working better – perhaps much better – for consumers than it was a few short weeks ago. “Consumer advocates say it is becoming easier for people to sign up for coverage,” report Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Goldstein in the Washington Post. “The truth is, the system is getting stronger as it recovers from its disastrous launch,” writes Sam Baker in the National Journal. Applying “was no problem at all, with no delays,” says Paul Krugman.
Reports from inside the health care bureaucracy are also turning towards optimism. People who knew the Web site was going to be a mess on Oct. 1st are, for the first time, beginning to think HealthCare.Gov might work. Data backs them up: By mid-November, the pace of enrollment in the federal exchanges had doubled from what it was in October.
The Obama administration is certainly acting like they believe the site has turned the corner. Somashekhar and Goldstein report that they’re “moving on to the outreach phase, which had taken a back seat as they grappled with the faulty Web site. Next week, the White House will host an insurance-oriented ‘youth summit’ aimed at people ages 18 to 35, an age group whose participation in the health-care law will be critical to its success.”
Why didn’t the White House do this sooner? Because officials didn’t much see the point in directing people to a website that didn’t work. If they’re increasing the website, it’s the result of greater optimism.
Perusing the news this morning, there are more than a few compelling pieces along these lines. The L.A. Times has a terrific article, for example, on “the Obamacare success stories you haven’t been hearing about.” NPR today highlighted some Californians who received cancelation notices – and are thrilled with the results. National Journal made the case yesterday that Obama not only can recover from the troubled rollout; he already has.
Moreover, Greg Sargent has a great piece noting that for all the talk about health care crushing Democrats, there’s a credible argument that the Republican position “is actually a political liability of its own.”
Yes, some of these pieces were written by center-left observers who may be predisposed to hope “Obamacare” succeeds, but note that we weren’t seeing any of these kinds of reports a few weeks ago when the feeding frenzy got underway. On the contrary, Ezra, Greg, and others were openly critical of the administration’s obvious mistakes and missteps as they unfolded.
The conventional wisdom won’t change quickly or easily, but you can almost see the consensus shifting in real time. There are some important issues the administration still needs to address, and failure very much remains an option. For that matter, if it’s a mistake to exaggerate the importance of every piece of bad ACA news, the law’s defenders must be equally cautious about exaggerating the importance of every positive development, too.
But for those stuck in the “Obamacare is and will remain a disaster” story, it’s time for a reality check. The system is improving, enrollment is increasing, more consumers are smiling, horror stories are failing, and health costs are shrinking.
The health care talking points that “everyone knows” to be true are due for an update.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 26, 2013
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