ttystikk
Well-Known Member
Politics
Health Care
“So, do Hill Republicans betray all of those promises to their base to repeal and replace Obamacare, or do they pass something that people will hate even more? That’s what you call a dilemma” [Charles Cook, Cook Political Report]. That’s the dilemma. It has always been the dilemma: Whether to replace a bad Republican plan (ObamaCare) with a worse one (AHCA; BCRA). There’s a lot on Cook’s narrative of 2009-2010 that I disagree with, but this: “Simply put, on health care, congressional Republicans are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The fact that the initial plan from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (a pretty smart guy) had at least four Republicans (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ron Johnson) who thought it didn’t go far enough in eliminating Obamacare, and at least five (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Shelley Moore Capito, Dean Heller, and Rob Portman) that worried it went too far showed that this was a matter of splitting the baby. If I were a Senate Republican, I would support the bill, knowing that it would probably fail anyway, then tell my base that ‘I tried,’ then move quickly on to other issues. …This is legislation that would be better handled next year, in a back room, with pragmatic House and Senate members from both parties trying to figure out what is working, what isn’t working, and how to make it work better.” But “knowing that it would probably fail” is handwaving. The BCRA is poised on a knife-edge; but which Republican is going to be the one to tip it either way? That Republican is going to have to decide between party loyalty in their district and perceived public benefit to voters in their district. And the Republicans, feral, ruthless, and effective as they are, haven’t ended up controlling all three branches of government and taking 1000 seats away from Democrats by being squishy on party loyalty. (Oh, and Cook agrees with The Donald, who originally said to kick the can down the road, presumably so the Republicans could get on with what they see as the real business of government: Handing out tax breaks to cronies. And so it goes.)
Sanders on #MedicareForAll:
OK. That was followed by this tweet, which I read and nearly stroked out:
Prompting this reaction from Yglesias:
“And she was right.” Ouch.
Lambert here: What Yglesias ignores, conveniently, is that Clinton used the so-called public option as a way to preventsingle payer and silence single payer advocates, exactly as career “progressives” did in 2009. Sanders urges that the so-called public option be the path toward#MedicareForAll. That said, “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” Yglesias being one such flea, as are public option advocates generally. And I’ll need to see actual legislation from Sanders to see how direct and forceful his path toward #MedicareForAll is, because you can be sure liberals and conservatives will fight it every step of the way, turning the public option, yet gain, into a bait and switch operation. (Charitably, Sanders could be doing what it takes to get a Senator to co-sponsor his bill. Somebody’s got to make the sausage, and I’d rather, at this point, it was Sanders than anyone else. Still, since the bill won’t pass, why compromise now?)
This feeds into my general sense that single payer advocates — perhaps the left generally — don’t have such an easy time with success, not having experienced it. After years, decades of organizing, Medicare for All is now on the national agenda. We’re talking about implementation details at this point, and naturally the waonkosphere is doing everything it can to divert the discussion into the weeds, delay matters, and save the health insurance “industry” because markets. Then again, (1) where is the full-throated statement from single payer advocates, Sanders among them, that #MedicareForAll will nuke the most hated industry in the country? It’s gonna happen, so why not embrace it? And (2) where is the sound-byte on how those jobs will be replaced? Yes, I know this argument is almost always made in bad faith by people (like Obama) who otherwise show no concern for the working class whatever, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be answered. And yes, I know denying people health care for a salary deserves moral opprobium; but a party that seeks — or, if reconfigured, would seek — to put direct universal material benefits, especially for the working class, at the heart of its appeal, shouldn’t be just throwing workers out of work. And yes, I know that HR676 provides for retraining, but in other circumstances the left would be the first to say that retraining is problematic, as indeed it is.
And while we’re at it, the fight on SB562 isn’t going all that well either. (Perhaps there’s a reason the odious Nancy Pelosi said it was best to try at the state level. Eh?) Leaving aside the ins and outs of California fiscal policy, the bill is stalled. Whatever temporary political advantage there may be to firing up the base by epater-ing the California Democrat establishment, that pales before the loss of not having a serious policy proposal in place. One of the reasons that Corbyn won (at least the Labour leadership) was that voters read the Labour Manifesto and said, “Yeah, I can vote for that!” And that is when the polls began to turn. Would voters have done that if the Manifesto was full of blank spaces and handwaving? No. Well, that’s how SB562 was. And it doesn’t matter if “It’s not f-a-a-i-r!” that the Democrat Establishment didn’t work to improve the bill; that’s just whining. Liberals do that. The left should not. And this is before we get to the question of whether a state that is not a currency issuer should even be passing such a bill. We need full-throated advocacy for MMT as well, something that Sanders, sadly, did not provide. Again, this is a matter of the shift from policy advocacy to implementation proposals. You can win the battle on the first, and lose the battle on the second. McClellan, in the Peninsular Campaign, had the church towers of Richmond in sight, and his troops could hear the bells ringing. Where, oh where, is the U.S. Grant of the left?
New Cold War
“Podesta: ‘It’s on the FBI’ That DNC Servers Weren’t Turned Over” [FOX]. “The head of the failed campaign called the FBI’s approach to the DNC Russia hack ‘fairly casual’ and ‘lackadaisical.’ ‘If anything, it’s on the FBI that didn’t come forward and really inform the DNC about what was going on until long after,’ Podesta stated.” So, the matter was of vital national importance to prevent a Russian “puppet” from becoming President, but not vital enough for the DNC to have some intern put the servers into the truck of an Uber, drive them over to the FBI building, and drop them off (after backing them up, of course). Alrighty, then. A little exaggerated for vividness, but you see what I mean.
“Investigators explore if Russia colluded with pro-Trump sites during US election” [Guardian]. If a few websites propagating Russia Today clips on Facebook could take down the Clinton juggernaut, then Democratic strategists and consultants who jammed $1.4 billion down the toilet of the Clinton campaign and then flushed have a lot to answer for.
