Democrats Slap Donald Trump On the Wrist In the Midterms

The midterms were a mixed success for the Democrats in 2018. Most notably the Democrats took control of the House, but unfortunately this probably means Nancy Peolsi returns as Speaker. They also regained about three hundred of the near one thousand seats in state legislatures they lost over the past decade, have a majority of state attorney generals in the nation, and won some key governorship battles, especially in the midwest. On the other hand, despite a Republican president as terrible as Donald Trump, their midterm gains in the House were historically not terribly impressive for the party out of power, and they did poorly in the high profile battles in the Senate. (I’m waiting to hear Rachel Maddow explain why the Russians meddled in the Senate races but not the House races this year.)

This was far more a slap on the wrist than a shallacking for Donald Trump.

The Senate map was undoubtedly very unfavorable for Democrats, but it will be so virtually every year as long as Democrats are unable to come up with a message to win in the smaller states beyond the east coast. The system of giving two Senators to each state regardless of size makes the Senate extraordinarily unrepresentative. Still, don’t be tempted to repeat the memes showing up since the election regarding winning the popular vote. They are misleading as the entire nation did not vote for Senate, and this can be tilted by which states do vote. This was especially true in 2018 as California had two Democrats running for Senate due to a system where the two leaders in the primary get on the November ballot regardless of party. This leads to a tremendous number of Democratic votes if the mythical Senate popular vote is counted, but only one Democratic Senator.

Democrats are always far quicker to list off the problems which make it more difficult to win than to change their strategy. They showed once again that moving to the right in the hopes of attracting Republican votes does not work. Nor did recruiting veterans help them do any better than expected. I would prefer to see Democrats be more consistent in supporting a reduction in  the role of government in the private lives of individuals–an attitude which might make defense of reproductive rights part of a consistent philosophy that might be accepted in the more libertarian minded portions of the country. Taking a rational anti-war line, as opposed to acting as if they are apologizing for appearing weak on national security, might also help in those areas which are hurt by perpetual warfare–and rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016.

This does note mean that the Democrats don’t have many valid complaints, including regarding voter suppression and gerrymandering. Some of the election results will help, including increasing their strength in several state governments before the next redistricting. While the high profile races in Florida did not turn out as hoped (how badly did campaigning with Hillary Clinton hurt Andrew Gillum?), but there was a victory in passing a ballot initiative to restore voting rights to convicted felons who have served their time.

While Democrats continued to struggle in Florida and Ohio, their hopes for Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin being more blue in 2018 look favorable after Tuesday’s results, including the defeat of Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Besides possibly giving the Democrats their electoral votes again in 2020, there might be an increased number of representatives as the heavily gerrymandered system of drawing Congressional districts will be replaced by an independent redistricting commission in Michigan.

Other ballot proposals passing in Michigan will make it easier to vote and legalized marijuana for recreational use. Newly elected Governor Gretchen Whitmer is looking at legislation or issuing executive orders to free prisoners convicted for marijuana related charges which will no longer be crimes after the ballot proposal passed. I did hold my nose and vote for Whitmer, despite her reliance on dark money and financing by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Action such as this will make me happier that I did so. A judge has already put some new marijuana cases on hold.

Medicaid expansion passed in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, and is also expected in Kansas due to the victory for a Democratic governor. While there is no chance of it becoming law imminently, there are also more Democratic supporters of Medicare for All in the House.

There were victories for various groups. The media has covered extensively how there are more women and people of color in the House. In addition, seven more scientists were elected to the House–all Democrats as the Republican war on science continues.

It remains to be seen how some issues will play out now that the midterms are over. Are we still supposed to be terrified by the caravan? Donald Trump quickly took advantage of having control of the Senate by firing Jeff Sessions.  I never would have guessed that I would see this as a bad thing when Sessions first became Attorney General. On the one hand, Sessions might have been the worst Attorney General in history. On the other hand, Sessions was absolutely right in his dispute with Trump in recusing himself from Mueller’s investigation, and his firing could be a sign that Trump plans to take action against Mueller. I suspect that Mueller has prepared for this by being ready to turn over evidence of financial crimes committed by Trump and his cronies to state prosecutors. Congressional Democrats will also be able to take over the investigation if needed. Hopefully they concentrate on Trump’s financial crimes and obstruction of justice, as opposed to the dubious conspiracy theories popular among many Democrats blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s loss.

Nancy Pelosi Defends Party’s Intervention In Primaries As Progressives Protest

The tape released this week of a Democratic Party leader trying to get a progressive to drop out of a Congressional primary has raised far more attention to the issue. The tape was initially posted by The Intercept and I also posted it here yesterday.

Nancy Pelosi has further angered progressives by speaking out in support of this practice. The Washington Post reports:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) defended her party’s electoral operation on Thursday, after a candidate in a contested Colorado primary released audio tape of Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) urging him to quit the race.

“I don’t know that a person can tape a person without the person’s consent and then release it to the press,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. “In terms of candidates and campaigns I don’t see anything inappropriate in what Mr. Hoyer was engaged in — a conversation about the realities of life in the race as to who can make the general election.”

…The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has thrown its weight in the race behind Jason Crow, an attorney and veteran running a more center-left campaign than Tillemann, who supports universal Medicare and other planks of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) campaign platform. In the December conversation, Hoyer told Tillemann that “a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation” to back Crow, and that it would continue to do so.

“Staying out of primaries sounds small-D democratic, very intellectual and very interesting,” said Hoyer, according to the tape. “But it was clear that it was our policy and our hope that, early on, try to come to an agreement on a candidate that we thought could win the general, and to give that candidate all the help we could give them.”

While Nancy Pelosi rationalize this as “the realities of life,” as I pointed out yesterday, this long-standing strategy has been a disaster for Democrats. The claim that more conservative candidates are more electable has not held up. The Democratic leadership has a terrible record of choosing more “electable” candidates. They lost control of both houses of Congress and around 1000 state seats in state legislatures in a decade based upon this misconception. The ultimate example of how the party’s strategy conflicts with reality came when they violated the party’s by-laws to rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton, the one candidate who could not even beat a candidate as dreadful as Donald Trump.

While we have known that this has been an issue for some time, including in a Texas Congressional race this year, having the taped evidence has also led to the loudest protests I have heard so far from progressives within the Democratic Party. USA Today reports:

Progressive groups that support Tillemann are going ballistic over what they say is yet another example of establishment Democrats meddling in primary elections.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says it’s raising money for three candidates, including Tillemann, that the DCCC has pressured to drop out.

“There is a battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, and Steny Hoyer and his corporate cronies already lost,” said Stephanie Taylor, PCCC’s co-founder.

Democracy for America Executive Director Charles Chamberlain called for Hoyer to resign or “be removed” from House leadership.

“We saw what happens when Democratic Party leaders put their fingers on the scale in primaries in 2006 through 2016, when we lost nearly 1,000 elected offices up and down the ballot,” he said.

Collaborators, Not Resistance: Eighteen Senate Democrats Vote To Support Restrictions On Civil Liberties

After the House, with the support of fifty-five Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, blocked attempts to reform the FISA Act, Rand Paul and Ron Wyden attempted to filibuster FISA renewal in the Senate. They wrote this letter describing the civil liberties violations in the bill to renew and expand the FISA act for six years. The vote was close, with sixty votes required for the cloture vote. Cloture passed on a vote of 60 to 38, with  Democrat Claire McCaskill casting the deciding vote. Once again several Democrats voted to betray the Constitution and vote against civil liberties.

Eighteen Democratic Senators, along with independent Angus King of Maine, vote for cloture. The Democrats voting for cloture were: Tom Carper (Del.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Doug Jones (Ala.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Warner (Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.).

The following Republican Senators voted to support the filibuster, which would have provided an opportunity to debate and offer amendments to reform the law: Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, Dean Heller, Jerry Moran, and Lisa Murkowski. Yes, Ted Cruz was on the right side of this while eighteen Democrats were not.

The American Civil Liberties Union Tweeted this response: “Members of both parties who voted in favor of this legislation should be sharply rebuked for supporting a bill that is in flagrant violation of the rights enshrined in the Constitution.”

The final bill is expected to pass the Senate this week.

Reason described how the bill expands violations of civil liberties in the FISA Act:

This bill doesn’t just renew Section 702 for six years; it also codifies permission for the FBI to access and use data secretly collected from Americans for a host of domestic federal crimes that have nothing to do with protecting America from foreign threats. It has added some unusually worded warrant requirements that will protect some people—but only when they’re actually suspected and are being investigated for criminal activities.

Furthermore the bill will give the NSA permission to attempt to restart what are known as “about” searches, access to communications that merely reference a foreign target, not just communications to and from that target. The NSA voluntarily ended these types of searches once it became clear they were gaining access communications that they had no authority to be viewing. This bill will allow them to attempt to restart it unless Congress acts separately to stop it.

Once again many Democrats have acted as collaborators rather than as the resistance. Democrats who claim that Trump is a tyrant in cahoots with Putin have not been able to unite to oppose giving him increased powers to spy on Americans. Although they are a minority in both Houses of Congress, the presence of some Republicans supporting privacy rights, along with the requirement for sixty votes in the Senate, provided Democrats with the power to force changes.  A swing of one vote in the Senate or twenty-six Democrats in the House could have forced reforms to the law which allows warrantless surveillance of Americans as well as foreigners.

Democrats, Including Nancy Pelosi, Help Republicans Block Civil Liberties Protections

The House has voted to renew the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program after previously failing to pass an amendment to place limitations on the program to help protect the rights of Americans. The New York Times reports:

The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to extend the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, rejecting a yearslong effort by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant new privacy limits when it sweeps up Americans’ emails and other personal communications.

The vote, 256 to 164, centered on an expiring law that permits the government, without a warrant, to collect communications of foreigners abroad from United States firms like Google and AT&T — even when those targets are talking to Americans. Congress had enacted the law in 2008 to legalize a form of a once-secret warrantless surveillance program created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The legislation approved on Thursday still has to go through the Senate. But fewer lawmakers there appear to favor major changes to spying laws, so the House vote is likely the effective end of a debate over 21st-century surveillance technology and privacy rights that broke out in 2013 following the leaks by the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden…

Before approving the extension of the law, known as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, the House voted 233 to 183 to reject an amendment that proposed a series of overhauls. Among them was a requirement that officials get warrants in most cases before hunting for and reading emails and other messages of Americans swept up under the program.

Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress tweeted a list of the fifty-five Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Democratic Ranking Member Adam Schiff, who voted against the amendment introduced by Republican Justin Amash.

Schuman noted that the USA Rights amendment could have passed if twenty-six of these Democrats had supported it.

The Intercept described the effects of the bill which was passed:

The law serves as the legal backing for two mammoth NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden: Upstream, which collects information from the internet junctions where data passes into and out of the country, and PRISM, which collects communications from U.S.-based internet companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo.

The programs rest on the notion that they are “targeting” foreigners, but they collect massive amounts of data on Americans as well, including wholly domestic communications. Amazingly, the intelligence community has never disclosed how much. Numerous members of Congress have requested an estimate since 2011, but both the Obama and Trump administrations have refused to provide one.

The bill also consolidates the FBI’s legal authority to search those communications without a warrant. Under current rules, the NSA shares certain kinds of information it collects under Section 702 with the FBI, whose agents can then search it in the course of investigating crimes unrelated to national security. In a secret court hearing in 2015, a lawyer for the Justice Department compared the frequency of those searches to the use of Google.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued this statement:

The House voted today to give President Trump and his administration more spying powers. The government will use this bill to continue warrantless intrusions into Americans’ private emails, text messages, and other communications.

No president should have this power. Yet, members of Congress just voted to hand it to an administration that has labeled individuals as threats based merely on their religion, nationality, or viewpoints. The Senate should reject this bill and rein in government surveillance powers to bring Section 702 in line with the Constitution.

Of course there is little chance of stopping this in the Senate either.  Rand Paul and Ron Wyden have sponsored a Senate version of the USA Rights Act.

There was one amusing aspect of this with Donald Trump again showing he has no understanding of the legislation before Congress. Trump initially put out a tweet opposing the bill after someone on Fox and Friends had said that the FISA Act had been used to justify surveillance of him based upon the Steele Dossier. He later reversed this after someone explained the position of his administration to him regarding the legislation.

This turned out to be only the second most stupid thing said by Donald Trump today. Later in the day this president with a shithole for a brain referred to Haiti and African countries as shithole countries.

Andrew Sullivan: Democrats In A Political Coma, Failing The Resistance

If you only look at the headlines, one would think that the Democrats should be having some success. The Trump administration is engaged in rampant kleptocracy. Republicans are pushing a tax plan which many are calling political suicide. Republicans appear to be terrified by Mueller’s investigation, especially following the recent indictments.

Despite all of these apparent advantages, Andrew Sullivan points out that the Democrats are “failing the resistance.” He concentrated on how close the Virginia Governor’s race is, noting that the Republicans have a real shot of winning. Sullivan wrote, “That it could win in the state where actual white supremacists marched this past summer and when the president is 20 points underwater is a sobering reminder of the actual state of play in our politics.” He continued:

I can only hope it’s a wake-up call to the Dems. In 2017, they are either useless or actively counterproductive in the struggle to resist right-authoritarianism. They have learned nothing from 2016. Their intelligentsia seems determined to ensure that no midwestern whites ever vote for the party again. Their public faces are still Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. They still believe that something other than electoral politics — the courts, the press, the special counsel — will propel them back to power. They can’t seem to grasp the nettle of left-populism. And they remain obsessed with a Russia scandal that most swing voters don’t give a damn about.They think they are “woke.”

They are, in fact, in a political coma.

What Sullivan left out is that the Democrats’ “political coma” includes failure to realize that they cannot be a meaningful resistance when their last presidential candidate represents what we are resisting, including her support for perpetual warfare, the surveillance state, and influence peddling. They cannot beat right-authoritarianism when the Democrats are embracing right-authoritarianism themselves, including rigging their nomination for one.

Democratic Party Having Serious Problems Raising Money After 2016 Loss

The Democratic Party continues to struggle to raise money after its string of losses, as they continue to alienate liberals and progressives, including  the DNC’s recent purge. Politico reports:

The Democratic National Committee is reeling, facing a turnaround that’s proving a much bigger lift than anyone expected as it struggles to raise enough money to cover its basic promises.

Many donors are refusing to write checks. And on-the-ground operatives worry they won’t have the resources to build the infrastructure they need to compete effectively in next year’s midterms and in the run-up to 2020…

“Donors, small and large, are so over the party,” said Nebraska party chair Jane Kleeb, summing up the problem facing DNC chairman Tom Perez and his counterparts in the states. Kleeb, who is working on grass-roots fundraising efforts for the committee, said she believes the money will come eventually.

“Everybody thinks that some magic three-page document and some magic tagline is going to turn everything around for us,” she added. “But this is very typical work.”

…So with 2018’s midterms presenting a clear opportunity for Democrats to leap forward, the worry is that they simply may not be prepared in time. While the House and Senate Democratic campaign arms — and individual candidates — are having no problem raising funds, the comparatively anemic cash flow at the central committee and state branches could affect organizing efforts on the ground across the country.

The Hill described how bleak the picture is:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) outraised the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by more than $6 million last month, according to federal filings.

Recently released numbers show the DNC raised around $4 million during the month of September, while the RNC raised about $10 million.

The data also showed that the RNC has roughly $44 million in cash on hand, while the DNC has roughly $7 million.

The Democrats have been failing for the past decade with their strategy of moving right to be just slightly less crazy than the Republicans. This has alienated voters on the left while failing to attract voters on the right, who will vote for the true Republican Party rather than the Republican-lite Democratic Party.

Even when Bernie Sanders did show the Democrats that he could both bring in new voters and raise money the DNC chose to essentially hand the nomination to someone as unfit to be president as Hillary Clinton. This cost the Democrats both the White House and an excellent chance at winning the Senate, as many people voted for Republicans down ticket in response to the conventional wisdom that Clinton would be the next president.

The Democratic Party needs to open themselves up to liberal and progressive principles and bring in new leadership. It does not help matters when they make Donna Brazile a member of the rules committee after she cheated in the 2016 primary battle by slipping debate questions to Hillary Clinton, or when Nancy Pelosi says she should remain Speaker of the House because of her gender.

Update: While the party is having fund raising problems, Politico subsequently reported that some Democratic candidates are raising large amounts of money, fueled by opposition to Donald Trump.

Nancy Pelosi Says She Should Remain Minority Leader Because She Is A Woman

With all of its losses over the last decade it should be clear that the Democratic Party is in need of new leadership at all levels. Nancy Pelosi has a rather weak argument for remaining House minority leader–her gender. AP reports:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday she must retain her leadership position in Congress so there is a woman at the table when key decisions are made.

After more than a decade leading House Democrats, Pelosi has faced demands from some lawmakers for leadership changes, particularly after Democrats failed to win back House control last year. A fellow Californian and member of Pelosi’s leadership team, Rep. Linda Sanchez, said earlier this month that it was time for Pelosi and other veteran leaders to step aside and make way for a new generation of party leaders

Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s “The View” that she was ready to leave had Hillary Clinton become president, putting a woman at the top. But Clinton lost, and so she must remain, Pelosi said, as she recounted a White House dinner last month where she was the only woman at the table.

“And that’s why I have to stay there, to be one of the top women, top people at the table,” said Pelosi, 77, adding that she views one of her mandates as protecting former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which she was instrumental in passing as House speaker at the time.

“I was ready to go if Hillary won, have a woman at the top of the table, protecting the Affordable Care Act, which is to me similar to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” Pelosi said.

Keeping Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader because she is a woman is fallacious as was nominating Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. People must be judged for their qualifications and record beyond their gender. Would a party leader in any parliamentary system in other countries maintain her position after so many losses?

If female leadership is needed, I can think of another female member of the House to consider–Tulsi Gabbard (although there might be better positions for her than House Minority Leader).

House Democratic Vice Chair Says It Is Time For Democratic Leadership To Go

The Washington Post reports:

A senior House Democrat said Thursday that it’s time for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and two top lieutenants to prepare to step down and make way for the next generation of lawmakers in her caucus.

The comments by Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (Calif.), who as vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus ranks fifth in the 194-member body, are the most explicit to date by a senior congressional Democrat and a member of the California congressional delegation about Pelosi’s political future.

The remarkable thing is not this being said, but that there is any possibility of the senior leadership remaining considering how miserably they have failed. Since the election of Barack Obama, when the Republicans looked like they were destroyed as a national party, the Democrats have lost the White House to a candidate as terrible as Donald Trump. have lost both houses of Congress, and have lost over one thousand seats at the state level.

The Democrats have ceased to stand for anything other than trying to win elections, and their main strategy has to move right and be slightly less conservative than the Republicans. This has repeatedly failed.

There were moments when some in the Democratic leadership questioned the wisdom of nominating Hillary Clinton. This was not because she was a warmonger who spent her career undermining liberal values and used her government positions to enrich herself while violating basic principles of government ethics. They only questioned the nomination of a candidate as unfit for government office as Hillary Clinton when they thought she was vulnerable. When she did well in the first Democratic debate, and briefly looked like a stronger candidate, they had no qualms about breaking the party’s own rules to rig the nomination for her.

When Republicans lost in a landslide in 1964 they did not abandon conservatism. They continued to promote their beliefs, understanding that it could take more than one election cycle to build an electoral majority. They have gone on to win the majority of presidential elections despite Watergate and the fiasco of George W. Bush’s administration.

Democrats, in contrast, have refused to stand for anything, giving many people no reason to vote for them. They have repeatedly ran as a Republican-lite party, failing to try to build their party around principles as the Republicans have done (even if the wrong principles). When a strong candidate surprisingly did come along in 2016 who could bring in the votes of both independents and even many Republicans, the party rejected Sanders. By sticking with Clinton, the Democrats not only lost the White House, they also lost a strong chance at control of the Senate due to losses by Democrats dragged down by Clinton heading the ticket.

Party leaders responsible for the fiasco of nominating Clinton, along with the other mistakes in recent elections, deserve to be replaced.

The Democrats Are Hopelessly Lost

After terrible showings in the 2010, 2014, and 2016 elections, the Democratic establishment is looking for a solution. The Washington Post reports that they are going to announce a new slogan:

Completely sapped of power in Washington, top leaders of the Democratic Party now believe that the best way to fight a president who penned “The Art of the Deal” is with an economic agenda that they plan to call “A Better Deal.”

The campaign-style motto, panned by some liberal activists as details began to trickle out ahead of the Monday rollout, is designed to revive a party desperate to win back at least some control next year. The push comes months earlier than most campaign-year sales pitches begin — an acknowledgment of the need to shore up public opinion of the Democratic Party in the faster pace of modern politics.

Nancy Pelosi remains one of the captains of the sinking ship, saying this “is not a course correction, but it’s a presentation correction.” No, the Democrats need a full fledged course correction. The Democratic Party’s answer for the Titanic would be to find a better way to talk about the iceberg before hitting it.

At least there was one bit of sense in the article:

“When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia — you blame yourself,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview previewing the new plan. “So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”

Unfortunately the new slogan still sounds like they are against Trump but otherwise stand for nothing. As Mahablog says, “The Democratic Party is like your unhip parents trying to be cool, and failing.”

The Democrats took the wrong lesson out of their loss. The conventional wisdom is that they lost because they concentrated on social issues as opposed to economics, but that is a misreading of their problem. They compromised so much on social issues with a socially conservative candidate such as Hillary Clinton that they had no chance to build a winning coalition on social issues. That does not mean that they should abandon liberal social issues entirely.

Just as they now look to abandoning social issues, they gave up on opposing neocon interventionism and support for civil liberties in 2016 with a candidate who was far right wing on both, throwing out their previous advantages over the agenda of George W. Bush. Democrats need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead they focus on one voter group while giving others no reason to support them, and don’t even do a good job with the group they are focusing on.

The new slogan sounds like a watered-down copy of Bernie Sanders’ agenda. The Hill points out that Bernie Sanders is keeping the door open for 2020. Unfortunately the article points out that establishment Democrats oppose him, both because of Sanders being an independent, and as he is on their long list of people to blame for Hillary Clinton losing an election she should have been able to win. Establishment Democrats complain that Bernie Sanders is an independent and not a Democrat. In contrast, Sanders supporters complain about far more consequential matters, such as the Democratic establishment picking their nominees with an undemocratic process, the Democratic establishment choosing a neocon warmonger as their last nominee, and the Democratic establishment being in the pocket of corporate money.

Update:  The Democratic Leadership Has Failed To Give A Good Reason Why Their Party Should Continue To Exist

Republicans Vote To Deny Health Care Coverage To Millions But It Is Far From Certain That Democrats Can Take Advantage Of This

The lie of the week is that the Republican-controlled Congress voted to repeal and replace Obamacare. Repeal yes, but the law they passed is too worthless to seriously be called a replacement. Republicans voted to deny health care coverage to millions, and to open the door for insurance companies to deny coverage for preexisting conditions. Doctors, insurance companies, hospitals, AARP, and many consumers groups are unified in opposing this legislation. Fortunately even some Senate Republicans realize that this is a terrible plan and want to start from scratch.

To summarize the effects of the House plan:

  • Tax cuts for the wealthy–always a Republican priority
  • Defunds Planned Parenthood for one year
  • Allows older Americans to be charged more
  • Cuts benefits to Medicaid recipients
  • Cuts school services for disabled children
  • Could weaken employer sponsored health care along with plans sold on the exchanges, including removing coverage for the essential health benefits now in Obamacare, and removing prohibition on annual limits of coverage

The House plan could return us to the days when insurance companies made their profits by taking in premiums but finding ways to avoid paying out money on claims. Only selling insurance to the healthy very well could result in lower premiums, but this defeats the purpose of having health insurance. Republicans claim to be funding high risk pools to care for those with preexisting conditions, but they are only providing funding to cover five percent of those with preexisting conditions.

Of course, this will depend upon what happens in the states, and how many red states actually do opt out of the current requirements. Scott Walker has already stated he might apply for a waiver for coverage of preexisting conditions in Wisconsin.

Democrats are excited that this will help them politically, with some saying that the GOP just doomed itself. Even those who support many of the GOP goals see this plan as being politically damaging for Republicans.

Health care should dominate politics in upcoming cycles, but Democrats cannot count on this by itself being the key to retaking control of the House. Democrats need to keep up the pressure and do a far better job of making their arguments than they did when the Affordable Care Act was initially passed. It is questionable if anything resembling the House plan will ever pass the Senate and become law. (Presumably Donald Trump will sign whatever the Republicans pass, regardless of how much it violates his campaign promises).

Democrats could have the same problem in capitalizing on this as they did in promoting Obamacare. While some might lose insurance coverage immediately, many others might feel safe, not realizing that developing a medical problem could put them at risk of losing coverage in the future. Some will even be happy as young, healthy people very likely could wind up paying less–as long as they remain young and healthy. The adverse effects of this law won’t be fully apparent in 2018.

The Democrats could also lose due to their political cowardice. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton opposed Bernie Sanders’ proposal for Medicare for All. Truthout debunked Clinton’s arguments. Now Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic establishment are refusing to take this opportunity to push for a single payer plan. The Observer’s view of Pelosi and mainstream Democrats is quite close to that expressed previously by Truthout:

Their failure to support a proposal that the majority of their base wants illuminates the growing disconnect between elected officials and their constituents and the massive influence of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Americans want single payer health care, and the obstacles blocking them from the system they want are special interests, which are bought and paid for Democrats in office who avoid taking principled stances on issues. Democrats like Pelosi don’t stand for anything because fighting for something like single payer health care would upset the party’s wealthy donors.

Pelosi’s and other Democrats’ arguments excuse themselves from supporting progressive policies and reaffirm the Democratic Party as a corrupt entity tied to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. On May 1, the Washington Post reported a poll conducted in January among Trump voters who had previously voted for Obama. When those polled were asked what the Democratic Party stands for they gave responses like, “The 1 percent,” “The status quo” and “They’re for the party. Themselves and the party.” One woman, asked whether the Democratic Party is for people like her, flatly declared, “Nope.”

As Donald Trump has learned, health care is complicated. You cannot reduce costs without reducing coverage, unless you make fundamental changes in the system. The most obvious way would be a single payer plan which both removes the huge profits of the insurance industry and places everyone in the same risk pool. In hiding from this reality, Democrats show why they tend to lose and Republicans have been winning. Republicans did not care that their ideas have been far out of the mainstream. They pushed their ideas until they won over enough people to win, even if it has been on fallacious arguments. The party which stands for something, regardless of what it stands for, has an advantage over a party which stands for nothing. Thus we have seen the Democratic losses in 2010, 2014, and now 2016.