“Women Are From Earth, Republicans Are From Mars”: Demonstrating Once Again How Not To Message To Women
We’re well into the 21st century, and both the leaders and candidates in the Republican Party are well into their respective adulthoods. How is it that they are still reaching for some Dobie Gillis-style handbook on How to Talk to Girls?
The GOP did not do well with female voters in 2012, and lost a theirs-for-the-taking Senate race in Missouri because of some truly remarkably stupid comments the party’s Senate candidate made about “legitimate rape.” Since then, we have had a sitting Republican U.S. senator talk about the “hormones” that lead men in the military to sexually assault their female comrades, and we have seen the party’s last presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, discuss how he’s learned that when one employs women, one must be flexible to make sure they can be home at 5 to cook dinner for their families. Perhaps he found those job candidates in one of his binders full of women. And maybe he should ask Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a member of the House Republican leadership who just gave birth to her third child while serving as a congresswoman.
There’s no better example of how women can be parents, spouses and lawmakers, but others in the GOP are still not getting it, and it’s baffling why. Speaker John Boehner recognizes the problem, and spoke to Politico for a story about how the GOP was in training to learn how to win over females’ votes. The party, Boehner said, is:
trying to get them to be a little more sensitive. You know, you look around the Congress, there are a lot more females in the Democratic caucus than there are in the Republican conference. And some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.
You think?
The problem here is that the mostly-male members of the GOP establishment sit around and try to deal with women as though females are some kind of bizarre and baffling other species, as though they couldn’t possibly care about the same things men do or have informed opinions about them. Instead we continue to see evidence that GOP candidates are unable to stop patronizing women and treating them as though females have some extra, irrational gene that must be handled. Iowa Senate candidate Mark Jacobs, asked on a radio show how he would reach out to female voters in a way that differs from talking to male voters, said:
I think you have to connect with women on an emotional level. And with a wife of 25 years and an 18-year-old daughter, I’ve had a lot of coaching on that.
Jacobs makes himself sound like the hapless male victim of a home full of surging estrogen. And worse, he implicitly buys into the fallacy that kept women out of positions of power for years – the idea that men think but women feel, ergo we need to put the thinkers in charge of the governments and economies of the world. They’ll need to think a little harder if they want to get electoral support from women, who make up the strong majority of voters. Because if Republican men lose women voters again, how will that make them feel?
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 10, 2013
“Unless You’re One Of The Unlucky Ones”: Americans Suddenly Discovering How Insurance Works
It’s been said to the point of becoming cliche that once Democrats passed significant health-care reform, they’d “own” everything about the American health-care system for good or ill. For some time to come, people will blame Barack Obama for health-care problems he had absolutely nothing to do with. But there’s a corollary to that truism we’re seeing play out now, which is that what used to be just “a sucky thing that happened to me” or “something about the way insurance works that I don’t particularly like”—things that have existed forever—are now changing into issues, matters that become worthy of media attention and are attributed to policy choices, accurately or not. Before now, millions of Americans had health insurance horror stories. But they didn’t have an organizing narrative around them, particularly one the news media would use as a reason to tell them.
The latest has to do with the provider networks that insurance companies put together. This is something insurance companies have done for a long time, because it enables them to limit costs. If an insurer has a lot of customers in an area, it can say to doctors, “We’ll put you in our provider network, giving you access to all our customers. But we only pay $50 for an office visit. Take it or leave it.” An individual doctor might think that it’s less than she’d like to be paid, but she needs those patients, so she’ll say yes. Or she might decide that she has enough loyal patients to keep her business running, and she wants to charge $100 for an office visit, so she’ll say no.
So every year, doctors move in and out of those private-provider networks, and the insurers adjust what they pay for various visits and procedures, and inevitably some people find that their old doctor is no longer in their network. Or they change jobs and find the same thing when they get new insurance. And that can be a hassle.
But now they have someone new to blame: not the insurance company that established the network, and not the doctor that chose not to be a part of it, but Barack Obama. It’s not just my hassle, it’s a national issue. As Politico reported, “Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said to reporters on Tuesday that the ‘fundamentally flawed’ health care law is ‘causing people to lose the doctor of their choice.’ Chief GOP investigator Darrell Issa has launched a House probe into the doctor claim. And House Republicans have highlighted the physician predicament in their weekly GOP addresses.” So to reiterate: Your insurance company set terms for its network that your doctor didn’t like. Your doctor decided not to be in that network. And that, of course, is Barack Obama’s fault.
Before we move on, there’s something we should note. You know who never loses their doctor? People who have single-payer insurance, that’s who. If you live in pretty much any other industrialized country in the world, you don’t have to worry whether your doctor accepts the national health plan that insures you and everyone else, because every doctor accepts it. Even here in America, there are people who almost never have to worry about losing their doctor: the elderly people who benefit from America’s single-payer plan, Medicare. Despite their constant gripes about payment levels, 90 percent of doctors accept Medicare, because there are just too many Medicare patients and doctors don’t want to be shut out of that business.
“Obamacare will make you lose your doctor!” may be the attack of this week, but conservatives are even trying to blame Barack Obama for the basic way insurance itself works. There’s a lot of talk about what a raw deal Obamacare is, a message that’s being aimed at young people in particular to try to convince them to stay uninsured. As Jonathan Cohn says, “The simplest way to describe Obamacare is as a transfer from the lucky to the unlucky.” That’s not just true of Obamacare, it’s true of insurance generally. All insurance.
The way insurance works is that unless you’re one of the unlucky ones, in purely financial terms, your insurance costs more than you gain from it. Have you ever sat down with all the bills you’ve paid for car insurance and homeowner’s insurance and totalled up all your premiums and all the payouts you’ve received over your lifetime? If you did, it would probably look like you paid a lot but didn’t get much in return. Some people who have had major catastrophes—an accident that totalled their car, a tree falling on their house—come out ahead, but people who haven’t had those things happen to them come out behind. If it wasn’t that way, every insurance company would lose money. But they don’t. They work very hard to set premiums to exceed the amount they spend in payouts (not to mention working hard not to pay out for things they ought to). But as Jonathan Chait says, “Insurance isn’t a kind of gamble where you bet you can beat the house by consuming more in medical care than you pay in premiums and deductibles. It’s protection from risk. People like that protection. They will pay to acquire it.” That applies not just to health insurance but to every kind of insurance. That’s why it’s called “insurance.” (The only exception is life insurance, which works more like an investment.)
The only people who come out ahead in dollars and cents on insurance are those people who have had terrible things happen to them. What the rest of us are buying, as any insurance salesman will tell you, is peace of mind.
To get back to the place we started, it can seem now that people are saying for the first time, “Wait a minute! Insurance is a raw deal! I mean, Obamacare is a raw deal!” And the media are doing their part by running stories that characterize the side effects of the private insurance market, like limited networks of doctors or the fact that less expensive plans have higher deductibles, as something new that’s occurring only because of the Affordable Care Act. But they aren’t. If you want to have a system of private health insurers, that’s how it has worked in the past, and that’s how it will continue to work. If you really want to be free of those problems, you’ll have to wait until you’re 65 and can join the big-government, socialist plan called Medicare.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 10, 2013
“Giving Republicans A Pass”: Media Mantra, It’s Congress That’s Historically Unproductive, Not The GOP
As the calendar races towards 2014, and Congressional members log their final few days in session while facing daunting deadlines for a long list of pressing and unfinished initiatives, the press has been busy chronicling the futility, assigning collective blame, and giving the president permanent failing marks.
According to historians, 2013 is on track to become the least productive single legislative year in modern American history. And it’s not even close. In 1995, 88 laws were passed, setting the previous low-water mark. This year, it’s doubtful 70 will make it to the president’s desk. (And lots of the bills that have passed are ceremonial or rather trivial in nature.) The press is not happy about the trend.
“The paltry number of bills Congress has passed into law this year paints a vivid picture of just how bad the gridlock has been for lawmakers,” announced NBC. The Wall Street Journal noted this year’s session has been “long on partisanship, indecision and brinkmanship.” USA Today bemoaned the inability “to find common ground.” And the Los Angeles Times pointed to “partisan dysfunction” as the main Congressional culprit.
See? “Congress” remains in the grips of “gridlock” and “brinkmanship.” Congress just can’t find “common ground” and suffers from serious “dysfunction.”
So that’s why immigration reform, the farm bill, a budget deal, unemployment benefit extensions, workplace discrimination legislation, and the defense spending bill haven’t been passed or dealt with yet? And that’s why the government was shutdown for 16 days in October?
Bipartisan gridlock!
Wrong. The current Congress obliterated all previous records for diminished output because the Republican Party, and especially those in the Republican-run House, purposefully bottled up as many initiatives as possible and unleashed “procedural sabotage.” (They even obstructed disaster relief aid for victim of Hurricane Sandy.)
Yet eager to maintain a political symmetry in which both sides are equally responsible for so little getting accomplished, the press gives Republicans a pass for their purposeful dysfunction.
By the way, are you also experiencing media flashbacks to the government shutdown, which the Republican Party proudly engineered by reneging on a budget deal they had agreed to with the last-minute demand that Obama essentially repeal his signature legislative accomplishment of his first term, the Affordable Care Act? Back then, the one-sided shutdown maneuver was nearly universally portrayed as bipartisan “Washington dysfunction at its absolute worst” (ABC News), a “partisan logjam” (Wall Street Journal), and a “fiscal stalemate” (The Hill).
Yet today, even as some Republican members brag about how little they’ve allowed Congress to accomplish, even as a plurality of voters says the GOP’s top priority is to cause trouble for the president, while a majority blame Republicans for the lack of productivity in Washington, the press still prefers to portray the Capitol Hill standstill as bipartisan “gridlock.”
Because, of course, both sides are always to blame.
But they’re not. Look at the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In a rare example of fleeting bipartisanship, the bill to prohibit most employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation was approved by the Senate 64-32 last month. In the House, there are more than enough votes from both parties to pass ENDA into law, but Speaker of the House John Boehner will not allow a vote.
The same goes for immigration reform. It passed by an even larger margin in the Senate (68-32), and likely enjoys even more bipartisan support in the House. But again, Boehner won’t allow members to vote on the bill. He won’t even allow the House to enter into negotiations with the Senate to try to hammer out a final bill.
So how is it “gridlock” when a bipartisan, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a clear bipartisan majority in the House support a bill but aren’t allowed to vote on its final passage?
Politically, the sabotage strategy works for Republicans. At least in the short term. Note that Obama’s standing among Hispanic voters has dropped precipitously this year. Analysts assume that’s because Obama hasn’t delivered on his promise to pass immigration reform. That may also be because so little of the news coverage stresses the poignant fact that the bipartisan votes are there to pass immigration reform, it’s just that Republican leaders in the House won’t allow the “yes” vote to take place. They won’t allow Obama to take credit for passing a popular law.
And yes, it really did become a scorched-earth situation this year; a nearly across-the-board effort to sabotage Obama’s every move. Republicans aren’t just denying the president the ability to sign meaningful bills into law. The unprecedented minority strategy includes hardcore attempts to block his cabinet picks, executive branch appointments, and judicial nominees. And specifically, blocking judicial nominees who Republicans agree are completely qualified to sit on the federal bench.
But still unsure what to call the Republican brand of anarchy, the press continues to play dumb about the magnitude of the planned interference. For instance, amidst the sabotage, the New York Times reported that while judicial nominations remain an issue of deep contention, “Among senators of both parties, there is agreement that a president should be granted deference in picking members of his cabinet and top executive branch positions.”
False.
Last November, Republicans launched an unprecedented, preemptive campaign to make sure Susan Rice was not picked as Obama’s next Secretary of State. Then they engineered an unprecedented campaign to try to stop Republican Chuck Hagel from becoming Secretary of Defense. And as late as July, two of Obama’s nominated cabinet picks still hadn’t received votes in the Senate, thanks to determined obstruction.
So no, contrary to the Times reporting there is no widespread agreement that presidents should be able to pick their cabinet members and top executive branch positions. There used to be. Then Republicans ripped up that pact. The Times and others just won’t say so as they blame both sides for a do-nothing Congress.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, December 9, 2013
“Lipstick On A Pig”: You Can Teach Republicans What They Shouldn’t Say, But That Won’t Change What They Believe
When someone asks you if a victim of rape should be compelled by the state to carry a resulting pregnancy to term, it is not a gaffe if you reply that this hypothetical almost never happens because women’s bodies have a way of preventing conception when they are under stress. It’s also not a gaffe to reply that, while it is certainly unfortunate that rape babies are occasionally produced, it’s all part of God’s plan and clearly God wants that baby to come into the world. These responses are not gaffes because they are actually honest responses that reflect what Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, actually believe.
A gaffe should be understood as an event where you actually say something that you didn’t mean to say or where you are caught being misinformed about some issue. While Todd Akin was misinformed about how human reproduction actually works, it was still how he thought human reproduction works. Call that one a half-gaffe. You can teach politicians what they shouldn’t say, but that won’t change what they believe. That’s why the following will not work very well:
The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it’s meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say — or not to say — on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman.
Speaker John Boehner is serious, too. His own top aides met recently with Republican staff to discuss how lawmakers should talk to female constituents.
“Let me put it this way, some of these guys have a lot to learn,” said a Republican staffer who attended the session in Boehner’s office.
There have been “multiple sessions” with the NRCC where aides to incumbents were schooled in “messaging against women opponents,” one GOP aide said.
When Todd Akin said that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape,” he was suggesting that any woman who does get pregnant must have consented to have sex in some way. That’s what he believes. When Richard Mourdock said that pregnancies that result from rape are a “gift from God” and “something that God intended to happen,” he was suggesting that women should be grateful for their very unwanted pregnancies. That is what he believes.
Perhaps both men could have been elected to the U.S. Senate if they had just been counseled to keep their mouths shut or to repeat some GOP-approved talking point instead of saying what they actually believe. Personally, I think the electorate was better able to make a choice in those elections because the candidates were honest.
Wouldn’t it be better to nominate people who don’t believe things that make women want to flee rather than “guys [that] have a lot to learn”?
The problem isn’t the messaging. The problem is “these guys.”
By: Martin Longman, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 7, 2013
“A Nightmare For John Boehner”: Why Obamacare Could Help The Democrats In 2014
If some Republicans are sounding just a little bit desperate right now, I think I know why. “Obamacare is not just a broken website,” House Speaker John Boehner sputtered the other day in retreat as it emerged that the website is now working well. “This bill is fundamentally flawed.” He sure hopes he’s right about that—and by the way, Mister, it’s a law, not a bill. But I bet late at night, when he’s having that last smoke and thinking back over his day, he fears that he’s wrong and that the central Republican…“idea,” if you want to call it that, of the last three years—get rid of Obamacare—is going to look awfully stupid to a majority of Americans eight or 10 months from now.
If you haven’t gone to HealthCare.gov just for kicks, I certainly recommend now that you do. Pretend that you’re from a state that didn’t create an exchange, if you aren’t, because if you’re from a state with its own exchange, you’ll just be kicked to the state website, and what you want to test here is the federal one. So just choose a yahoo state that didn’t play ball, where the law was mocked as just so much socialism.
I just did, for the first time in weeks, an hour before scribbling these sentences. I was amazed. It was lightning fast. Explanations were clear and straightforward. Instead of bureaucratese, I encountered something I didn’t expect at all: plain English!
And here’s the key thing. It gave me loads of choices. I pretended to be a 35-year-old man from Kansas with a spouse and child. Without even having to enter my fake income, the site delivered me in a split second to a page with loads of plan options.
Choice. That’s what America’s about. As I heard Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) say on Alex Wagner’s show a couple of weeks ago, we’re a nation of shoppers. It’s what we do best. Alas, he is correct. That’s what we want. From TVs to smartphones to flavors of potato chip that have been stretched to include ketchup and dill pickle (who eats those?), we believe that endless options are our right.
How many options? An amazing 42, to be precise. Forty-two plans! That might be more than the number of available potato-chip flavors in America. I would have to think it will shock people, in a highly positive way, to see they have so many choices. And most of all, it will feel…American. Something that offers a person 42 options ain’t socialism, as Americans know in their bones.
The plans ranged from $70 a month, which would have covered only me, to $742 a month for the Rolls-Royce family version, with $0 deductible and $6,500 out-of-pocket. It was an astonishing menu. And take it from a guy who just moved house and has been on the phone and online interminably with private-sector service-providers, mostly but hardly limited to the cable/Internet/phone company: This looked easy. The interface was great, really user-friendly, really clear.
Now, most of these plans weren’t cheap. Health insurance isn’t cheap. For example, a middle-of-the-pack silver plan looked like this: $472 a month; a $7,500 family deductible; a $12,700 out-of-pocket maximum. Those aren’t cheap. But a $10 copay for a doctor’s visit, $75 to see a specialist, and just $15 for a generic prescription. That’s not bad at all.
So yes, Mr. Speaker, it’s more than a website. It’s a chance for people who’ve eschewed insurance for years to buy it and take their kids to a doctor and even to a specialist when needed. Individuals will have to decide for themselves whether that buys them $5,664 in peace of mind (that’s $472 times 12), but I suspect a lot of people will decide that it sure does.
And this is where Republicans, if they’re looking around the corner, might be freaking out. They are going to emphasize the horror stories going forward, and those stories will exist. The Democrats will emphasize the violin stories, and they will exist, too.
But in between the decontextualized disasters and the stories with Hollywood endings will be millions of people to whom nothing particularly dramatic, but something very positive indeed, will have happened. They got insurance, or decent insurance, for the first time in their lives. They went and got their first physical in years. They had that bad back checked out finally. They took their child to an eye doctor and got her glasses. That’s not dramatic enough for a television ad, but any parent will understand that a child going from struggling with reading to being able to read easily at school is plenty dramatic.
I’ve known for a long time the Republicans were on the wrong side of history here. Forty-something million uninsured in this impossibly rich country, and they don’t want to do a thing about it. And don’t fall for their “plans.” They’re unworkable. They’re unworkable because the Republicans aren’t willing to spend the money that experts all say is required to make plans workable. And they aren’t willing to spend the money because spending money acknowledges the existence of a common purpose in this nation, and they certainly can’t acknowledge a common purpose, unless it’s war.
So while I’ve known they were on the wrong side of history, I have feared they were on the right side of the politics. Well, I’m starting to think otherwise. No American who has 42 choices is going to feel like the jackboot of the state is stomping on his neck. And sometime next year, the people in the states that didn’t take Medicaid money are going to start noticing something else: that in a lot of cases, they’re going to be paying more for the same plan that a person in a participating state is paying. How’s that going to go down, Rick Perry?
Mr. Speaker, light up another one. It’s going to be a long night.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, December 5, 2013
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