“Not A Bad General Election Issue”: Should Democrats Press The Public Option?
There’s no question that the Affordable Care Act’s rollout has been “rocky,” to borrow the common parlance of the Beltway. The Web site troubles and shifting health coverage for some Americans, despite over-assurances from President Obama during the 2010 political debate, have naturally turned off some people. A much-ballyhooed poll from CNN yesterday shows that support for “Obamacare” has dropped to an all-time low.
But conservatives toasting the apparent turn in public opinion ought to look a little closer at the polling data. It’s true that only 35 percent of Americans favor the law, while 43 percent oppose it. But there’s a crucial third group: 15 percent oppose the ACA because it’s “not liberal enough.” That means that 50 percent of Americans either support the law or want policy changes that shift leftward.
Looking at the polls in that light suddenly shifts the political calculus. Republicans who want to repeal and “replace” the legislation — with measures that have never been entirely clear, especially when it comes to the most popular provisions of the ACA — are suddenly facing an uphill battle with the public.
This presents a pretty clear road map for Democrats worried that the biggest legislative achievement of the Obama era might turn against them. The CNN/ORC poll didn’t press people on what, exactly, “not liberal enough” meant, but it’s not hard to imagine what those people might want. Recall that while the legislation was being crafted, the public broadly supported a “public option” in the bill that would allow people purchasing insurance on the exchanges to select a federal health insurance plan.
So what if Democrats pushed for it? A public option would save $100 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and could offer respite from the plan cancellations and rate hikes that still persist with private insurers with the ACA in place.
There’s essentially no chance President Obama will take another bite at the health-care apple, especially with so many other priorities to tackle: his professed desire to combat climate change and income inequality before he leaves office, along with getting comprehensive immigration reform passed. But strategists on 2016 presidential campaigns ought to take heed.
Imagine a candidate who comes out early, and strong, for adding a public option to the ACA exchanges. It could become a signature issue with the liberal grass roots during the primaries, and it wouldn’t be a bad general election issue either — the polls in 2010 showed support for a public option among Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. As Ezra Klein has noted, the sudden disappearance of the public option from Democratic politics has been “a bit curious,” but perhaps its day is coming.
By: George Zornick, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 24, 2013
“The Syria Babble We Don’t Need”: Reducing Complicated Issues To Campaign Style Contests
Our country is about to make the most excruciating kind of decision, the most dire: whether to commence a military campaign whose real costs and ultimate consequences are unknowable.
But let’s by all means discuss the implications for Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Iowa, New Hampshire and 2016. Yea or nay on the bombing: which is the safer roll of the dice for a Republican presidential contender? Reflexively, sadly, we journalists prattle and write about that. We miss the horse race of 2012, not to mention the readership and ratings it brought. The next election can’t come soon enough.
So we pivot to Hillary Clinton. We’re always pivoting to Hillary Clinton. Should she be weighing in on Syria more decisively and expansively? Or does the fact that she authorized the war in Iraq compel restraint and a gentler tone this time around? What’s too gentle, and what’s just right? So goes one strand of commentary, and to follow it is to behold a perverse conflation of foreign policy and the Goldilocks fable.
The media has a wearying tendency — a corrosive tic — to put everything that happens in Washington through the same cynical political grinder, subjecting it to the same cynical checklist of who’s up, who’s down, who’s threading a needle, who’s tangled up in knots, what it all means for control of Congress after the midterms, what it all means for control of the White House two years later.
And we’re doing a bit too much of this with Syria, when we owe this crossroads something more than standard operating procedure, something better than knee-jerk ruminations on the imminent vote in Congress as a test for Nancy Pelosi, as a referendum on John Boehner, as a conundrum for Mitch McConnell, as a defining moment for Barack Obama.
You know whom it’s an even more defining moment for? The Syrians whose country is unraveling beyond all hope; the Israelis, Lebanese and Jordanians next door; the American servicemen and servicewomen whose futures could be forever altered or even snuffed out by the course that the lawmakers and the president chart.
The stakes are huge. Bomb Syria and there’s no telling how many innocent civilians will be killed; if it will be the first chapter in an epic longer and bloodier than we bargained for; what price America will pay, not just on the battlefield but in terms of reprisals elsewhere; and whether we’ll be pouring accelerant on a country and a region already ablaze.
Don’t bomb Syria and there’s no guessing the lesson that the tyrants of the world will glean from our decision not to punish Bashar al-Assad for slaughtering his people on whatever scale he wishes and in whatever manner he sees fit. Will they conclude that a diminished America is retreating from the role it once played? Will they interpret that, dangerously, as a green light? And what will our inaction say about us? About our morality, and about our mettle?
These are the agonizing considerations before our elected leaders and before the rest of us, and in light of them we journalists ought to resist turning the Syria debate into the sort of reality television show that we turn so much of American political life into, a soap opera often dominated by the mouthiest characters rather than the most thoughtful ones.
Last week, in many places, I read what Sarah Palin was saying about Syria, because of course her geopolitical chops are so thoroughly established. A few months back, I read about Donald Trump’s thoughts on possible military intervention, because any debate over strategy in the Middle East naturally calls for his counsel.
They’re both irrelevant, but they’re eyeball bait: ready, reliable clicks. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait before a post on some Web site clues me into Beyoncé’s Syria position. Late Friday, Politico informed the world of Madonna’s. (She’s anti-intervention.)
This type of coverage hasn’t been the dominant one. But plenty of it is creeping in.
Here’s a smattering of headlines, subheads, sentences and phrases from various news organizations last week: “Votes on Syria could have huge ramifications on 2016 contenders”; “Vote puts Republicans mulling 2016 run on the spot”; “Democrats and Republicans are choosing their words carefully, lest they take a hit three years from now”; “the difficult line G.O.P. presidential contenders like Rubio must balance in trying to project a sense of American military might without turning off conservatives skeptical about following Obama’s lead”; “the risk for Paul is if Obama’s prescription for Syria turns out to be a success”; “Mitch McConnell’s muddle”; “Hillary Clinton’s Syria dilemma.”
Some of this rightly illuminates the political dynamics that will influence the final decisions about a military strike that individual members of Congress and the president reach. It’s essential in that regard.
But some merely reflects the penchant that we scribes and pundits have for reducing complicated issues to campaign-style contests and personality-based narratives, especially if those personalities have the stature and thus the marketability of celebrities.
Celebrities get clicks, while the nitty-gritty is a tougher sell. I’ll not soon forget a BuzzFeed post from last February with this headline: “The sequester is terrible for traffic.” It didn’t mean Corollas and Escalades. It meant the number of readers bothering with Web stories on a subject they deemed as dry as they apparently did the federal budget and automatic cuts to spending.
The traffic lament shared the screen with a link to an utterly different style of political feature asking readers to indicate which “presidential hotties” they’d get down and dirty with. The headline on that post? “Sexy U.S. presidents: would you hit it or quit it?” Sex, I guess, brings on rush hour. Maybe presidents do, too. They’re celebrities, even the dead ones.
It’s easy for the media and our consumers to focus on recognizable figures, how they’re faring and what they’re saying (or, better yet, shouting). I even spotted recent reports on what Chris Christie wasn’t saying. They noted that he hasn’t articulated a position on Syria, though that’s unremarkable and appropriate. He isn’t receiving the intelligence that members of Congress are, and he doesn’t get a vote.
He’s not the story, and neither is Paul or Rubio or the rest of them. What matters here are the complicated ethics and unpredictable ripple effects of the profound choice about to be made.
And if we want the men and women making it to be guided by principle, not politics, it surely doesn’t help for journalists to lavish attention on electoral calculations and thereby send our own signal: that we don’t expect, and voters shouldn’t count on, anything nobler. On a question of war and peace, we need nobler. We need the highest ground we can find.
By: Frank Bruni, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 7, 2013
“Goodbye Rick Perry”: Those Of Us Out In Fake America Will Miss You
Farewell, Rick Perry! We’ll miss you, those of us out in fake America, unless Texas is fake America, because of the whole Republic thing, in which case you will be missed in all the various Americas. Because once you are done as governor of your massive, slightly ridiculous oil-soaked state, you will pretty much be done.
Perry is not going to seek a fourth term as governor of Texas, a high-status, low-authority gig that he has worked at longer than anyone else in history. The next governor will likely be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (Stu Rothenberg is keeping the position listed as “Safe Republican”).
Perry isn’t just going to go away, or at least he doesn’t intend to. He is not going to put on a stupid hat and retire to a ranch that was until very recently named something unspeakably awful. He is going to run for president. Because once a sufficient number of people have convinced an egomaniac that he would be a very good president, it’s hard for that egomaniac to let go of that dream, even after a bunch of voters do everything they can to discourage it.
In 2011, we in the rest of America were told to look out for Perry, that he was savvy, a brilliant politician, and that he’d be totally irresistible to the electorate once he made his inevitable decision to run for president. He turned out to be a dunce, completely incompetent at basic tasks like “debating” and “public speaking.” Maybe it was pain meds (but then, who decides it’s a good idea to jump into a national race while you’re on pain meds?), but either way the last presidential campaign was a disaster for the Perry brand. No one in 2016 will be particularly frightened of him, and he also probably won’t have the luxury of running against a field made up entirely of clowns and a front-runner no one in the party actually liked.
He’s amiable, decent-looking, and right-wing enough to suit the modern Republican Party, but he is also a bit of an idiot and nothing about him appeals to anyone outside his state. Republicans aren’t interested in him anymore, even in Texas. Public Policy Polling (a liberal shop, but still) has Hillary Clinton beating Perry 50 to 42 in a potential presidential contest. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showed Texas Republicans preferring Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul over their finally outgoing governor. And if they don’t want him there’s no reason to suggest Republicans anywhere else will want him. “Vote for your dumb right-wing dad” won’t work any better in 2016 than it did in 2012.
Still, Perry’s decision to join Texas Republicans in provoking a big fight over abortion access does make a bit of sense in this light: He I guess wants to be 2016′s Rick Santorum, the choice of the fundamentalist set who don’t necessarily like the recent rhetorical ascendency of pseudo-moderation and pseudo-libertarianism in the GOP. Rick Santorum still might want to be the Rick Santorum of 2016, of course, but he also might be too busy making Christian movies. (Though none of the major 2016 Republican front-runners, with the possible exception of Jeb Bush, are remotely “moderate” on abortion access, it should be pointed out.)
It is always a happy day when the political careers of mediocre right-wing hacks like Rick Perry come to an end, even if it is by choice and not a forced resignation following a humiliating scandal or exposure of criminal activity. Texas will probably be better off without Rick Perry, even if the next guy is an asshole (and he is probably going to be an asshole), and Rick Perry will get to see his dream end in tears once more in 2016, at which point his only hope to remain in elected office will be a Congressional seat or something. Though obviously he will also make a great deal of money “consulting” for some awful rich person or another, so it’s not all good news.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, July 9, 2013
“To Dude Or Not To Dude?”: Rick Perry Wants YOU To Want Him To Run For President
In San Antonio on Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will share his “exciting future plans.” Not to be confused with his past plans, I guess, or his not-so-hot ones. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure these don’t involve accepting the $90 billion or so in federal money to expand Medicaid that would insure a million more Texans in a state that’s first in job creation but second in the number of children without health insurance.
When I asked a few Texans what they figured their governor would announce, though, I did get some exciting replies: Secede from the union? Change the part in his hair? Break in some new boots? And those were the Republicans, who have nothing but praise for their longest-serving governor — just as long as they’re speaking for attribution.
Perry did succeed in turning his state’s governorship from one of the weakest in the country to one of the strongest by applying a strict personal loyalty test to those he appointed to every seat on every board.
As a result, he’s always been more feared than loved. But after his bellyflop of a presidential run, some of his power to intimidate seems to have worn off. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus — a Republican, of course — publicly criticized Perry’s remarks about Wendy Davis, the state senator who successfully filibustered an anti-abortion bill, as damaging to their party.
I think Perry was actually trying to pay Davis a compliment. ““Who are we to say,” he asked, “that children born in the worst of circumstances can’t lead successful lives? Even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She’s the daughter of as single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate. It’s just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential, and that every life matters.” Which I took to mean that had her single mom chosen not to have her, the world would have been deprived of her intelligence and fortitude.
I’m not surprised, however, that Texas Republicans are telling pollsters they don’t want Perry to run for president again in ’16: Just 18 percent of Republican primary voters want him to go for it, while 69 percent say they hope he doesn’t.
Even among Texans, he’s the sixth-choice Republican presidential candidate right now, after Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan. And though his job approval rating in the state has improved substantially lately, more still disapprove than give him a thumbs up, and 60 percent of respondents in a recent PPP poll said they do not think he should run for a fourth term as governor, either, compared to the 30 percent who say he should.
That doesn’t mean Texas is likely to turn blue any time soon, however, because it’s still an awfully conservative state — and one that’s gotten more so in recent years, with Obama taking 44 percent of the vote in ’08 and 41 percent in ’12.
Longtime Democratic consultant Marc Campos, of Houston, who calls Perry “Governor Dude,” is less sure than some others in the state about how the governor will come down on the question of “to dude or not to dude” for a fourth term. “Oops means oops,” Campos jokes, referring not only to Perry’s inability to remember the name of the third federal agency he’d vowed to cut, but also to Perry’s presidential chances if he does run again in ’16.
Yet Campos assesses his own party’s chances of taking the governorship next year no less realistically, quoting Rocco Lampone’s line in “The Godfather Part II” that shooting Hyman Roth would be “difficult, not impossible. It would have to be a hardly-any-room-for-error type of campaign,” he says, and darn well funded.
As the Dallas Morning News’s Wayne Slater points out, Davis has doubled her name ID lately, yet is still unlikely to prevail over Perry, who won by 13 points in ’10 as the least popular Republican on the ballot. Though 38 percent of Texans are Latino, turnout continues to be a problem, with Hispanics accounting for more than a third of the population, yet only about a fifth of the vote. And the recent Supreme Court decision undermining the Voting Rights Act clears the way for a Texas voter ID law that Democrats fear will further suppress turnout.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, whose twin, Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, would have the best chance of besting Perry if he does run again, according to a recent poll, told me that “realistically, our window” for turning Texas blue “is eight to 12 years.”
Perry might actually speed that process along if he does decide to run for re-election, and the state’s Republican attorney general, Greg Abbott, opposes him in a primary. If that happens, Castro says, it will be expensive, brutal, and “a replay of what happened to the once-dominant Democratic Party” in Texas in the ’80s, with more infighting than punches thrown at the other party.
No one can say that Perry suffers from a lack of confidence, though, and it wouldn’t be like him to worry about that. Just before he was elected to his third term, Perry told me that walking away after only two would have been “like Van Gogh walking away when he’s two-thirds finished with a masterpiece.” On Monday, we’ll learn if he feels any brush work remains undone.
By: Melinda Henneberger, She The People, The Washington Post, July 3, 2013
“Don’t Believe The Hype”: The Rubio Phenomenon Is An Advertisement For Republican Denial
Let’s just say it: Marco Rubio is the Wes Clark of 2013. Only with many fewer accomplishments.
It pains me to say this because I’m an admirer of Gen. Wesley Clark. I think he would have made a good president. He was an extremely accomplished career military officer. He was also a West Point valedictorian and Rhodes Scholar, so you might say a Democrat’s vision of what a warrior-scholar should be.
But there’s a difference between a person’s innate qualities and accomplishments and the reason they become the person of the moment or get seized upon for some special role by a political party. And there’s no question Democrats seized on Clark in 2003/2004 because his credentials as a retired 4 star general and a combat vet promised to serve as a heat shield to protect them from charges of weakness in an era in which an aggressive national security posture was the sine qua non of national elections.
Nor was Clark the only example. Finding the retired General or combat vet to carry the Democratic banner was a thing for a couple decades — and for obvious reasons: the public consistently rated Republicans better on national security issues.
But nominating a general doesn’t solve the political problem. Ask President Kerry. And neither will nominating Marco Rubio or putting him at the party’s helm.
We hear today that not only is he young and ‘on social media’, he also “knows who Tupac is.” And of course this week he will deliver the Republican response to the President’s State of the Union address.
Supporters can note that if Rubio ran for president in 2016 his time on the national stage would be precisely the same as Barack Obama’s was in 2008. And they’d be right. But Rubio isn’t a rising political star. The mechanics are different. It’s more like the party’s lack of traction with youth and minority voters is creating a vast zone of negative pressure, sucking him up to the heights of the party structure in Washington.
The Rubio phenomenon is more than anything an advertisement for Republican denial. Saying he’s happening because he can identify a rapper who’s been dead for going on 20 years just brings it to the level of self-parody.
So is Rubio the new face of the GOP? Doubtful. He’s for immigration reform. But the only Republicans currently holding power in Washington say they’re against it. So his big sell immediately puts him at odds with the heart of his party.
This doesn’t mean Rubio will crash and burn or fall short of his party’s high hopes for him. As I noted a few days ago, sometimes a politician can be hoisted to the heights for reasons that have little to do with who they really are but end up having a level of innate political skill that they can grab that opportunity and ride it to the top. So it’s possible. But very doubtful. The Wes Clark boomlet is a much better predictor.
By: Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, February 10, 2013
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