Hillary Clinton has something to say to Donald Trump:
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Honestly, that’s the first speech by any Clinton that I’ve sat through in full. That’s no small thing.
I’ve never thought much of her speaking ability, but that was a great speech by Clinton. Even nailed the tones and everything.
I watch her and realize how spoiled I’ve become. I listen to Obama with enormous respect for the man. It’s not that I don’t respect Clinton exactly. She’s enormously smart and strong and talented. But I don’t admire or particularly like her.
Of course we must vote for her. I want to strangle my “let it burn, baby” friends. Way too much is at stake. And yet, as my friends rightly point out, my entire argument is to vote for Hillary because Donald’s worse. To which I plead guilty. And yet I’ll make calls and knock on doors. Everyone who understands politics and what’s at stake will do likewise.
“my entire argument is to vote for Hillary because Donald’s worse”
That’s a pretty good argument. You can stop right there. That’s really all I , or anyone else with a brain, should need to know.
A strong argument and a very sad admission.
Trump is worse by megatons of magnitude.
And magnatons of megatude as well.
AG
Trump represents the death-wish of the Republican Party. Watching Ryan squirm is worth the price of admssion, (a non-trivial number of brain cells).
With Hillary under so much legal scrutiny at such a vulnerable time, wouldn’t it be wise for the Dems to have a plan B?
No pun intended…
I’ll take the pun, if I get your drift.
My concern is 2020. Ideally, I’d like for a non-fascist to win both elections, but increasingly it’s looking like only winning 2016 or 2018 and 2020 is possible. And if that’s the case, I’d rather win 2018 and 2020. Census year and all.
Why would you say that? You’re not falling for that “no party wins four elections” BS, are you?
But… THE PROPHECY!
Because the Democratic Party standardbearer is going to be someone who:
A.) By her nature gets involved in a bunch of, if not scandals, then incidents that attract smile and dismotivates the base.
B.) Is a warhawk who has no problem ordering coups for capitalist gain. The chances that the United States won’t get into some ugly, President-discrediting conflict is quite low.
C.) Will be facing unprecedented levels of gridlock, except on things the centrists and conservatives can agree upon (like the TPP), so can’t actually excite the base with legislative weregild.
D.) And with the few levers she is able to pull, she will still be unable to get us out of the economic doldrums thanks to a combination of centrist timidity on Keynesianism, especially WRT deficit spending and gridlock. See: Obama and his Fed picks and his response to the Simpson-Bowles commission.
Notice how these things tend to feed into each other. For example, after the beginning of 2018 when the MSM declares her a lame duck HRC will be tempted to bring home the bacon by engaging in the only thing she -can- do that would excite her particular base: a shiny and new exciting war! Of course, this B-event will inevitably lead to another A-event. And when the war goes to shit, like every post-WW2 American conflict that ended up lasting more than five news cycles has, she’ll get destroyed in 2018 and/or 2020.
So we’re looking at a situation where the GOP will, no shit, have complete veto control if not actual control of a at least 70-75% of non-executive legislative chambers above the municipal level after 2018. We’ll be limping into 2020 with a badly damaged candidate who dismotivates a must-win cohort of voters, negating any demographic advantage. The GOP runs a more competent and committed fascist than Trump and sneaks by a Presidential win — thus cementing their hold on American government. Just in time for a new round of Congressional gerrymandering, tooo.
The best refutation I’ve heard for this grim prophecy is ‘well, you don’t KNOW what’s going to happen in 2018 or 2020! Maybe all of those bad things won’t happen and we’ll get a tailwind of some kind! Bill Clinton was bailed out by the Internet, right?’*.
You feel like betting the future of human civilization on that?
Yes, human civilization. Climate change and all — remember that shit? No one is going to give a rat’s ass that 18 million people were ethnically cleansed from the US after 50 years, but any successor non-human sophonts will certainly give a shit tens of thousands of years from now that the average planet temperature went up by 5’C between now and 2050.
* I used to also get smoke up my ass about Hillary Clinton somehow really and truly learning her lesson on imperialism so we don’t have to worry about her fucking over the Democratic Party with warhawkery. But no one really makes that argument anymore after the primary debates. Wonder why.
That doesn’t even rise to the level of ill-informed speculation.
Deathtongue, I read your summary here carefully. In addition to my standard quarrels about the extraordinary amount of certainty and determinism you bring to your analysis and predictions, this post also leads me to understand that you have created a fantasy construct of who Hillary Clinton is and what she is campaigning on. I could go through it point by point, but it’s better to summarize that she is running on none of the things you claim for her here, none.
And, as a delightful addition, you claim that Simpson-Bowles carries any weight at all with the President and the nation two days after Obama announced his proposal to increase Social Security benefits:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/obama-social-security-progressives-223806
Come, join us in the real world.
Yeah, because the Supreme Court doesn’t matter.
There’s a vacancy NOW. Not 2018 or 2020.
NOW.
I am very curious why no legislation has EVER been introduced in Congress to alleviate the difficulties being imposed on women in the red states. It IS a constitutional right, just like voting, but all the infringements don’t seem to get any legislative attention, do they? Wonder why that is?
What specifically are you asking?
Why is the issue of access to safe abortions being left to the jurisdictions and courtrooms of 50 separate states? It is a constitutional right for all US women, no? Why are infringements being ignored by national legislators?
Not even being run up the flagpole and saluted for propaganda purposes to get out the vote.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Abortion cases routinely are heard in federal courts.
And the obvious reason that national legislators aren’t introducing pro-choice legislation is because the GOP controls both houses.
Roe v Wade allows states to restrict abortions during the second and third trimester. The red states are seeing how far they can push that. As far as I can tell, there’s no need to use that as propaganda, as every woman in the country is already fully aware of it, and voting accordingly.
Really? I truly am flummoxed. Would you recognize a poll tax in all its various forms?
Do you know the hoops that have been designed to delay and confuse women IN THE FIRST TRIMESTER? The excessive costs added by stipulations before allowing them to exercise their rights? Etc, etc.
I am fully aware. Every woman I know is fully aware. We don’t need the Dems to make clear to us what is at stake. If we want full reproductive rights, we vote Democrats in at every level of office. It’s as simple as that.
I see that my question is still flying over heads.
If the constitutional right to vote can be protected by the Voting Rights Act, an exercise of Congress’s prerogative to insure those rights through legislation, why has Congress left it in the laps of state courts to do the same for abortion access? There IS no federal legislation addressing reproductive agency at all. Abrogation of responsibility, imo.
Yes, I’ve found that puzzling. For example the state that recently passed a law criminalizing abortion – as if a state were to pass a law that there is no freedom of the press in that state, or people ages 50-55 cannot vote or something. Perhaps the way it’s discussed in the public realm, no one seemed to process the magnitude of the constitutional affront.
Like your point a lot.
At last! It’s like I was speaking Urdu.
BY design, both sides get to use the abortion debate to gin up their vote, and divert attention from other issues like the decimation of the middle class.
A win -win for the political class, but not for the country
Esp for red state women. Does it not even OCCUR to blue state women to lobby for relief for their trapped sisters?
Where is Planned Parenthood on THIS issue. Sitting on their thumbs?
I wonder. it’s all rear guard action. or could be ppl are used to making money off scaring ppl with what some R state legislatures are doing? perhaps a more generous angle on it is ppl narrow their sights. – but where’s the “can do” attitude of opening up the issues fully to air out and say ok how do we get there? you do that, that’s what I like about your posts and diaries.
Well, thank you. I appreciate the feedback.
OK, I think I understand what you mean now. Yes, I think blue state women want to help, and do so by contributing to Planned Parenthood and voting for Dem politicians. And PP and the Dems are fighting to keep these rights, but are limited by the fact that they are outnumbered by Republicans in both the House and the State Congresses. Again, it’s not like anyone doesn’t know this is the situation, or that the answer is to elect Democrats. It’s already a defining feature. For real change to occur, we need to change the opinions of the voters. Some of that will happen with time, as the younger pro-rights voters outnumber the older Conservatives. But part of that can be helped by having a strongly pro-choice, pro-women President using the bully pulpit. Fortunately, we’re about to nominate just such a person.
Say we get our majority on the SC…are we then going to WAIT for all the cases filed in the states to make their way there for over-ruling? How many more years? Where is the legislation? Why isn’t it being waved about as brightly as the SC vacancy?
no, I think you’re missing the point, the analogy with the Voting Rights Act. it’s not about bully pulpit, it’s about the Constitution. it’s being discuss all wrong –
Strange company? Maybe not.
The Clinton Anti-Trump Speech
JOHN PODHORETZ / JUNE 2, 2016
https:/www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/campaigns-elections/hillary-clinton-anti-trump-spe
ech
Yousef Munayyer
Addicts always think they can manage the stuff.
i think the best comment has been PJ O’Roarke “she’s wrong within normal parameters”.
we can predict what HRC might do. we might not like it but we can have expectations.
Trump is NOT within normal parameters and you can’t predict what he might do. He has no principles that he might not change 3 times before breakfast, except regarding the greatness of Donald Trump.
any scifi fans here who have read Foundation more recently than I have? Is Trump “the Mule” who wasn’t predicted by psychohistory?
Yeah, it’s been a while since I read through the Foundation series. Great books. And Trump as “The Mule” seems an apt enough metaphor – not predictor or predictable, malevolent. Last time I would have read those or any other Asimov book would have been a good couple decades ago.
something i wrote a few weeks ago over at the great orange satan; a different take from the same series: “with apologies to isaac asimov”
That was excellent
just read the transcript – that’s gonna leave a mark.
.
expect drumpf to go blue early & often. ugly ain’t in it.
she needs to continue this. pound pound pound against him.
Excellent speech. Gave Don the Con a BRUTAL takedown!!
I was struck by how weak and petulant Trump’s reply tweets were: Angry but pedestrian name-calling and insults a reasonably clever seventh-grader could do better.
Her speech was exactly the kind of takedown that will goad him into a self-destructive meltdown. His devotees may lap up the crap he vomits, but I think the rest of the electorate will be repulsed.
yes. really excellent speech. She should give it twice a day until the convention. And three times a day after that.
>>Her speech was exactly the kind of takedown that will goad him into a self-destructive meltdown.
this. so far his responses are totally weakass. if she keeps it up he’ll fucking blow.
100% agree.
She detailed, using almost exclusively direct quotes, how appallingly ignorant and incompetent he is, how childishly unsuitable he is for the office of President, how offensively bigoted and hateful he is, and all he can do is pathetically mock her delivery. She even mocked his tweets in real-time.
A big source of Trump’s strength has been his ability to always seem to be the bully, even when he’s whining about how mean other people are being to him. Josh Marshall has called it “bitch-slap politics”, which is an ugly phrase, but pretty accurate when it comes to Donald Trump. Trump’s response is essentially no response. This speech, and his ridiculously feeble response to it, pops the aura of his bullying invincibility.
If he can’t maintain his image as the guy who will put all those people you hate in their place, he’s got absolutely nothing. If he can’t come up with a better response than what he had today, we really just might be looking at a serious landslide in November as he takes on amazingly pathetic levels of loser stench over the next several months because Republicans who might otherwise be inclined to vote for “the Republican” will not want to support such a clear, pathetic loser.
his speech-“live-blogging” tweet-storm suddenly went to radio-silence right after she predicted during the speech that that’s what he would be doing then.
I found that hilarious.
Oh, Lordie, he must have been sitting there listening, fuming, furiously pounding the keys and slamming “Send”, and then… HA!
Gross. Neocons were giving a standing ovation, I’m sure.
remember the audience; San Diego is VERY military.
a huge chunk of the speech was just slamming Trump, which badly needs to be done and she did well.
do I like her foreign policy ideas. no.
“She needs to be hawkish because she’s a woman”; “she can’t be known as a dove or the media would savage her”; “she was pandering with her Iraq war vote”
When will people stop making excuses for this war monger?
hawk is who she is, i don’t disagree.
understanding the audience is essential to ANY politician giving a speech. Nobody smart would go to San Diego and not talk about Our Heroic Troops enough to make you or me puke. I disagree that this comment is “making excuses”.
What New Democrats of Hillary Clinton’s mold don’t realize is that the modern audience is much more permanent and won’t just exist within the narrow parameters of a rapidly-forgotten television broadcast. That YouTube video of Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight is at, what, 7 million views?
So HRC won over San Diego. Big fucking whoop. What about the rest of the Democratic Party? She seems to be totally convinced that she can still win over the moderate GOP voters and that she can get the left to stay in line with copious amounts of negging/you’re a big baby for doing anything that enables this Trump madman/surely you don’t want Jones to come back.
What Hillary did not say was noticeable, too.
South America is open for business, again.
“By now it is old news that there is a coup afoot in Brazil and that the right-wing is using extraordinary political measures to overthrow of Dilma Rousseff.
What is little discussed amid all the talk of impeachment and corruption in Brazil is the larger context: how international finance capital is working with Hillary Clinton and other U.S. political elites to reassert the Washington Consensus in Latin America; how the right wing throughout the region is collaborating in this project; and how this is manifesting in the targeted countries. Though the pieces of this puzzle may be partially concealed, it is time to put them all together to see the big picture.”
http://www.caribflame.com/2016/04/hillary-clinton-and-wall-streets-neoliberal-war-on-latin-america/
Mino, surely you can see that that article is gibberish. The whole thing is guilt-by-association, and it’s so badly written that it includes the exact same paragraph twice. Worse, that paragraph falsely asserts Jorge Paulo Lemann owns Heinz Ketchup, Burger King, and is the majority stockholder of Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser. The company is H.J. Heinz and the majority stockholder is Warren Buffet’s Bekshire Hathaway. Lemann is a backer of 3G capital, which owns a substantia amount of stock in Heinz; it is completely false to say he’s the “owner.” The claim that he “owns” Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser is also gibberish.
I agree, short on links, too. I apologize.
But I hope you are not denying the truth of the paras I excerpted. There is plenty of better sources out there if you deign to look. Start with Honduras.
And it should read Latin America is open for business, not South America.
I absolutely agree that there’s a coup in Brazil, and that international capital is one of the major causes. Tying that back to Hillary seems like a stretch, although she may have connections I don’t know about.
Only insofar as she is has been an adherent and promoter of that Washington Consensus. And her State would no doubt also act in similar manner.
“Stabilize, privatize, and liberalize” became the mantra of a generation of technocrats who cut their teeth in the developing world and of the political leaders they counseled.[18]– Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University in JEL on December 2006
While opinion varies among economists, Rodrik pointed out what he claimed was a factual paradox: while China and India increased their economies’ reliance on free market forces to a limited extent, their general economic policies remained the exact opposite to the Washington Consensus’ main recommendations. Both had high levels of protectionism, no privatization, extensive industrial policies planning, and lax fiscal and financial policies through the 1990s. Had they been dismal failures they would have presented strong evidence in support of the recommended Washington Consensus policies. However they turned out to be successes.[20] According to Rodrik: “While the lessons drawn by proponents and skeptics differ, it is fair to say that nobody really believes in the Washington Consensus anymore. The question now is not whether the Washington Consensus is dead or alive; it is what will replace it”.[18]
Well, WC appears to be a zombie, cause we are back…. Our agribusiness demands it.
So what specifically would you like the US to do about it?
Oh, maybe stop treating Latin America as our colonies???
Are you serious?
Leftists rightly criticize our role in coups that occurred in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, etc. It was right, in my opinion, to avoid assisting Zelaya in returning to power in Honduras. The same goes for events in Brazil. It’s not our business. We should not meddle in the affairs of foreign nations, one way or the other.
I’m going to take an educated guess that of the YouTube views of the garish Hillary attack video, Deathtongue has a couple of dozen of them. Pretty likely that other like-minded Frog Ponders have provided hundreds more of those views.
They appear to have decided it’s a good way to spend their time.
She doesn’t seem to war a flag lapel pin.
And it would have gone so well with the stage decor.
Let me know when you find a military setting anywhere, in the US or elsewhere, without martial decor. I’m not holding my breath.
The subject was flags and not “martial decor,” but once again, you just have to be a dick.
There were 18 flags on stage with Hillary Clinton …
We were just noting that if HRC wants to return to the naughts and compete on how many flags can be jammed onto a stage, that she should wear her gold and jewel encrusted flag pin on her lapel.
There goes Marie3, genderizing her attacks again.
She seems nice.
You just can’t deny she’s a woman. And woman wear jewelry. She has showed us some whoppers over the years. Or is she the only one who can bring up her gender? Calm down: as none other she has politicized gender for political gain. It’s not very liberated of her, I’d say. Especially since she dragged her husband—yes a man, her husband—out to run economic matters. Evidently she she will concentrate on the manly matters of war.
Quentin, I was just having gentle fun over Marie3’s use of “dick” in a hostile attack.
She’ll behave as she decides she must here. I’ve come to terms with it.
Let me see. I work in a scientific field and find myself giving public talks from time to time: sometimes to other researchers in my field, sometimes to groups of people who are educated but without any background in my field, and sometimes to John and Jane Q. Public. I always craft the talk to fit the audience. And you’re telling me this is wrong?
Been doing the same thing in my line of work for ages. In and of itself, taking an audience into consideration when speaking is essential if the goal is to at least have your audience hear you out. With regard to political candidates it is no different. I would expect that when either HRC or Bernie Sanders spoke to, say a primarily military audience, that they would address some very audience-specific concerns, such as their expertise in international relations, as well as their take on their opponent’s (i.e., Trump’s) lack of expertise. If addressing a group of steel workers, I’d expect a fairly different speech. It goes with the territory. I’d be worried about a candidate who were either incapable or unwilling to prepare differently for the various different audiences that they would face during a campaign.
I think that taking both direct and indirect employment the military is the largest employer in San Diego County. Military not as dominant politically as it used to be, but still damned important.
Clinton spent a large part of that speech defending the ideas of alliances and diplomacy. If those are neoconservative ideals, then your definition of neoconservatism encompasses everything but isolationism.
I didn’t say that. I said neoconservatives gave her a standing ovation, and they have. Eli Lake, John Podhoretz, David Frum, etc. National Review said Reagan would be proud.
Right. And if someone that you and I generally disagree with actually agrees with us on a particular occasion, the only acceptable explanation is that we have unwittingly gone over to the dark side.
Thank you for explaining so clearly that all rhetoric aimed at persuasion is pointless, self-defeating, immoral. After all, if we think we’ve persuaded someone, what has really happened is that they have persuaded us.
Well, if it alienates the people who have a clue what they’re talking about as well, that’s a pretty strong Bayesian indicator that this is in fact what’s happen.
For example: if, say, the Flat Earth Movement congratulates you for a speech you give or a policy you signed, that’s not necessarily a bad sign. Flat Earthers can still have intelligent opinions on monetary policy or racial justice. However, if the FEM gives you accolades while the Nobel Committee for Physicists condemns your speech or words in fiery terms, you should REALLY start reconsidering just WTF you’re doing.
Where was that speech held?
San Diego.
It’s astounding that these things need to be said.
Like when John Kerry (while debating Bush) pointed out that “Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us; Osama bin Laden attacked us” — and interviewed undecided said that was an important moment in helping them make up their minds.
I know it’s a perennial question…but why do we let this happen? Why do we, as a society, create this wall of nonsense that we’re all too polite or urbane to tear down or even mention?
Because civility is the weapon that conservatives and liberals love to use to browbeat and cut off anyone who doesn’t agree to conform to their rigged rules.
Donald: “My penis… is huge.”
MSM: “HOW CAN THIS VULGAR MAN BE IN CHARGE OF A GREAT PARTY? (Keep the cameras rolling)”
HRC: “I will show the full force of America’s strength to Iran, my greatest enemy, and institute a no-fly zone over Syria.”
MSM: “Finally, an articulate adult!”
Funny how that “PC thing” swings THEIR way when uncomfortable truths are being mentioned.
Because civility is the weapon that conservatives and liberals love to use to browbeat and cut off anyone who doesn’t agree to conform to their rigged rules.
So if I write that I disagree with you and suggest some alternatives, you say I’m browbeating you…
But if I call you a stupid fucking moron who loves to smoke crack and then drop napalm on Iraqi babies, you’d say that I’m just being straight.
Right?
Nah. It’s more like this:
BLM Activists: “Our people are being brutally murdered by police officers and the government overlooks it!”
Liberals: “Here’s a new dance Hillary Clinton learned on the Ellen Show.”
BLM Activists: “You complain about the threat of fascism when we have literal examples of it. Are you going to do anything about it?”
Liberals: “We’re getting a committee together. Anyway, here’s a listicle on how Hillary is like your abuela.”
BLM: “That’s it.”
[BLM embarks on a speech and event-disrupting protest spree. Liberals are aghast.]
Liberals: “I agree with your aims in a vague and uncommitted way, but I can’t support your methods. Therefore, we will ignore and neg you until you talk like a civil adult. It’s for the good of democracy.”
BLM: “Okay, fine. No more protests. But please listen to us when –“
Liberals: “And here’s a thinkpiece on how Donald Drumpf doesn’t think America isn’t already great.”
Rinse and repeat.
Reality check time: Hillary, responding the the original Ferguson event, had probably the strongest anti-racist and anti-brutality stances of any top politician in the country. This was before the proto-BLM movement was even being called BLM.
Pointing out what Presidential candidate are actually proposing, instead of what people create in their heads, gives us greater opportunities for reasonable discourse.
Makes for a healthier democracy, too, and makes it more likely that we can turn good proposals into good policies.
Trump could hurt her on the marijuana issue, which also bleeds into the incarceration issue.
Not if Trump wants money from his sugar daddy. And surprisingly given his supposed vast wealth, it seems Trump’s campaign is broke and needs money from the RNC.
It’s going to be a train wreck of epic proportions.
.
Well, there go the libertarian young men…
In rather shameful fashion, I’m inclined to add.
I’m a (proud) Liberal.
I disagree with every single position you (mis-)attributed to us.
I’m getting the sense that you completely misunderstood me (and, if I’m wrong, I apologize).
I’m saying that Hillary calling out Trump’s ignorance in stark terms 1) is a very good thing; 2) conspicuously should not be necessary because everyone should be pointing it out, but 3) “civility” prevents it, just like it prevented the entire fucking press corps from immediately correcting the Bush Admin when it tacitly (actually not so tacitly) blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11.
Remember when McCain corrected that woman in the town hall who said Obama was a Muslim? I dislike McCain but it was a heroic moment and I really sympathized with him — he was clearly thinking, What the hell is this bullshit she’s saying? Why is it my job to set her straight?
Remember when McCain corrected that woman in the town hall who said Obama was a Muslim?
And then he went and picked The Quittah from Wasilla as his VP pick.
That has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re discussing.
I went out of my way to say that I dislike McCain and that this moment of political heroism was an anachronism for him.
Jordan Orlando, The behavior of the media after September 11, 2001 was pure toadyism, nationalistic obedience to their overlords. It had nothing to do with civility. They took on the role of accessories and basked in their resplendence.
the civility argument is, imo, the battering husband argument
I posted a reply to one of Marie3’s comments this morning on das monde’s interesting post Peculiar US presidential elections. I am going to repost it here because it pertains. Y’all are OH SO ENTHUSED!!! about how logical and on point this speech is by HRC.
This is indeed a very…intelligent…speech. She is a very intelligent person. But she doesn’t have the voice for it. It breaks and crackles and…dare I say “hectors?”…and the overall thrust of the speech is cold as ice. The only real “emotional” content is a sort of cold anger at how stupid Trump is. Like she’s insulted that such a dork could be being put up against her undoubtedly superior mind. She is sarcastic; she is angry and…she is cold as ice.
Sorry, but there it is.
Read my take on the results of a clash between HRC and Trump below. And always remember H. L. Mencken’s take on politics and the American mind:
Read on.
I want to add a little something to this post.
I think a Trump/HRC election may well hinge on whose hubris wins out.
The Hubris Sweepstakes.
Two giant egos in a hubris match. The fiercer the hubris, the greater the failure. In that competition i think that Trump wins…and thus loses…by a mile.
The question remains…who will achieve nemesis first?
Grand entertainment for the thoughtful…
AG
Please post your forecast, state by state, with a percentage breakdown of the vote.
Why? There are too many variables between then and now. I will post one non-variable, though.
Trump will come off about 20 times stronger on video than will HRC.
Every time.
Factually?
Naaaaahhhh…
They lie from different sides of their brains. Hers are harder to perceive.
But the whole beauty contest/popularity contest package…the package that it seems to me about 60+% of American so-called “undecided” voters end up buying every goddamned time?
No contest.
AG
Your increasingly noticeable sexism is getting in the way of your analysis here.
Glad to see that you’ve picked sides, and that you’ll be actively working against the Democratic nominee and for Donald Trump. That’s what you’re doing, despite your feeble and hostile denials.
See you after Election Day, bucko. That’ll be a fun day. If you’re sincere in your claimed horror of the spectre of Trump, you’ll be reassured by the American people’s rejection of him.
I don’t like Hillary’s husband either. Is that “sexist?”
I have said many times here that the current best presidential candidate would be Elizabeth Warren. Is that “sexist?”
I think that Barack Obama has been a terrible president and his terms in office have established precedents that will enable someone like Trump…or HRC…to trample what remains of our constitution. I guess that means to you that I am racist.
I do not like anything that Israel has done in the Middle East since its inception. Does that mean that I am an anti-semite?
It is this kind of completely brain dead, kneejerk leftiness PC bullshit that has provided Trump a nice, broad road to the presidency.
Dumb off.
AG
P.S. You write:
From your mouth to God’s ears.
If of course you haven’t already bored Him/Her/It into totally ignoring you.
Dumb off.
Twice.
I dunno, Arthur. Re-read your 9:25 am post on this thread. Obsessing about the tone of her voice, her looks, her disapproval of a man, laying claims about her emotional state…there’s lots of fear and anger with women you’re expressing there. We’ve seen more and more of this from you.
Think about your frequent use of photographs which catch Hillary at moments which make her look maximally unattractive or garish. What’s that all about?
It would be interesting to see your reaction to people posting photos of you at moments you looked least pleasant, and laying claims about your character in association with those photos. It’s a ridiculous way to conduct public discussions.
And then you top it off here by claiming that the preposterous look and behavior that Trump favors is seen by the broad swath of American people as “emotionally and physically very powerful.”
Another person would choose to avoid projecting on us so hard in public.
I’m watching, Arthur, I’m watching. And believe me, it hasn’t escaped my attention that you’ve got an even worse prediction rate than William Kristol.
As far as Speaker Ryan coming out in support of Trump:
I will continue to say this. They don’t have POLICY disagreements with Trump. They are mad that he doesn’t use dogwhistles to hide what they want to do.
THAT IS IT.
NO POLICY PROBLEMS AT ALL WITH TRUMP.
Exactly.
Political Animal Blog
June 03, 2016 1:00 PM
Obama’s Anti-Trump Secret Weapon
By Steven Waldman
President Obama just put Trump In a very-classy-and-beauitful-gold-plated box with his announcement that he now supports an increase in Social Security benefits.
If Trump supports the idea he pisses off mainstream Republicans at a time he’s trying to court them. If he opposes it, he annoys his own base of crotchety white seniors.
Most of the time when Democrats ruminate on how to appeal to potential Trump voters they think about income inequality, raising the minimum wage or maybe tweaking trade laws.
But that forgets one fact: Trump’s base is old. The latest Quinnepiac poll had Trump beating Hillary among those over 50 and losing among those who are younger.
It was considered a sign of his daring heterodoxy when Trump earlier this year came out against cutting Social Security. But Obama upped the ante, and Hillary has already come out for an increase. Trump already had some vulnerabilities because he had suggested privatizing the program in one of his books.
In this year of surprises, the newest wedge issue might be a golden oldie.
Yes, well, that is a horse whose teeth need a good inspection.
From what I have seen, Hillary’s ideas are what one would fear from her….
JaaaaaCeeeee (WaMo post on the same subject)
If only.
After taking the neoliberal approach to welfare, Clinton is doing it again for SS, saying she doesn’t want to raise the cap, wants to means test, and use vague promises of money from higher taxes on the richest to top up SS benefits for the poorest women.
[…]
This will back fire on Clinton, like Obama’s fast tracking TPP, ISDN, TTIP and TISA will on him, and Clinton’s refusal to acknowledge we must reform how we develop and price medicine.
Explicitly choosing what increases inequality, extreme poverty, and harms the productive economy, again and again is only becoming more suicidal for any Democratic president, although completely consistent with the fantasies of self correcting markets when we are stuck in a deflationary trap and the Fed has no ammo, yet the fantasies underlying presidential donor demands are sacrosant.
So saying the wealthy should pay more to fund social security is “neoliberal?” Refusing to privatize SS is “neoliberal?”
This is why I hate that term: too many people use it ways that are absolutely meaningless or nonsensical.
Designing a program for “deserving” segments of the public is the neoliberal slant here.
It totally changes the egalitarian nature of the original program that has helped in keeping it a generally popular program for all Americans and not an attacked and vilified poverty program.
There already IS a SSI program for dire poverty.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n1/v69n1p45.html
Why are so many of my cohort so clueless?
Gets depressing!
The key part of any strategy to beat Donald Trump is to keep him so publicly unhinged and incoherent that even his hardcore followers begin to doubt his sanity by November. Trump, of course, will try his best to be sweetness, light, and probity for the next five months. There were a bunch of zingers attacking Trump in this speech. Seeing which ones struck their mark and which fell flat might be a helpful exercise for the Clinton communications staff. Because the rhetoric in this speech, although better than most Clinton speeches, needs quite a bit of toning up. For example, it glides from Presidential loftiness to folksiness with no apparent rhetorical reason. There are throat-clearers left in, such as “And another thing…”
The delivery of her resume qualifications was weak because it was vague, somewhat defensive in tone, and sought to make the Secretary of State’s job (and by implication, the President’s job) the grandiose, awesome responsibility that causes the public to ignore the role of the Congress and focus only on Presidential elections. Proper rhetorical work here could frame the 2018 election to turn out voters.
Now to some of the specific non-Trump-related points about national security:
The continued insistence on exceptionalism in this speech (while politically necessary on its face) is a defensive reaction to Trump’s slogan that does not begin to undercut that public sentiment, which is rooted outside national security issues. And it ignores the opportunity to attack the Republican record of the past 36 years and especially W’s that committed troops to wars that overextended the US and showed the US to be a “paper tiger” and not the hyperpuissance it peddled itself as after the fall of the Soviet Union–in fact, on almost every point, the notion that the US was exceptional was betrayed by Republican policy and actions.
Why can’t a Democrat say that?
In 2016, this quite frankly is whistling in the dark triumphalism. It might sell with the people looking for an alternative to Trump, but it provides a poor mandate for the basis of a foreign policy that deals with the current world situation. The age of the US a sole superpower is gone—period. Which other power centers can the US work with to create a stable global system that brings prosperity and deals with global climate change? At the top of the list of “must-deal-with” are China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Phillipines, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Egypt, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, Iran, Turkey, France, Thailand, United Kingdom, Italy, Tanzania, and South Africa. And each of these have their own networks of power through foreign relations.
Clinton’s assertion is no more that a restatement of a policy of Pax Americana, something that we failed miserably at in W’s first major foreign policy action in 2001. Something that the US national security establishment and intelligence community seem to cling to as their reason for being. Something that without major changes in tone, attitude, and capabilities, is totally unrealistic.
The state of the world right now is the result of American misleadership and the institutional persistence and political propaganda that will not allow a policy departure from that Chaos-inducing policy. This is one point at which Trump adds accelerant to the chaos; Clinton does not deliver the leadership that she claims the US asserts. It is however, more possible for Clinton to change her view and approach that for Trump to engage with reality.
On Clinton’s key factors for strength:
The only way I see this happening without a huge wave progressive election is for infrastructure,education, and innovation to be folded into the military appropriations. Consider the consequences of that.
Is it an network of allies or a network of tributaries who are controlled through the implicit threat for forwardly deployed US bases in their countries? The continuing situation of Japan and Okinawa and the lack of accountability for the actions of US military in foreign communities exposes the subtle imperial nature of our relationship with our allies. Also, our attempt to use any excuse to deploy troops to new, more distant bases to anchor neoliberal governments does as well; our latest base in Tierra del Fuego from the just flipped government from Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to Mauricio Macri. Most foreign states understand their vassalage and enjoy the privilege of shirking their feudal dues, a situation that Trump has latched onto without context and Hillary says “Me too” also without context. The American identity of being the strongest, kindest, freeest, greatest nation in history must be defended at all cost. There never was a nation like us, Ozymandiaa.
Finally, a clearly stated rhetorical point, betrayed by our actual policies in fact for the nations of what most large corporations call CALA-Carribean-Latin America.
When was the last time this happened in fact? The Marshall Plan? More “most generous nation’ stuff. People are tired of their school going to crap for “no money’ while nominally the US is building schools in other “underserving” nations. Yet, Clinton has not made the case why either of these are part of prudent national security policy. In fact done well, some of these are worth more than the $1 trillion being poured into the F-35 and $1 trillion advocated for modernizing the nuclear triad.
This section says that Israel’s opinion drives our relationship with Iran regardless of the facts and that the Congress and Netanyahu working the refs over the agreement has had its effect in Democratic circles. Also, no mention of StuxNet as an action during the negotiations. Nor mention of what information they have that shows that Iran seeks a nuclear weapon other than Israel’s fear.
There’s your statement of the New Cold War in which the US succeeds in forcing the global system back into the “us or them” days of the earlier Cold War just so we can have a clear-cut enemy that can divert us from our internal domestic divisions and create military culture. We need to understand that it is we the US who has created this out of our failure to creatively deal with the fact that the US “won” the Cold War.
An attempt at a realistic, even-handed position toward “rivals” that fails for a lack of details of what those common interests are and where those many disagreements cluster.
And if by chance taking down ISIS in complete before November, then what? Can we then say that the Global War on Terror is over and repeal all of the authorizations to use military force and all of the suspensions of the Constitution that went with them?
On the other side of the argument, is that sufficient to end terrorism?
And the global networks supporting terrorism, do you include the Pakistani ISI, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a whole slew of “private military contractors”.
Scraaattttchhhhhhhh. “And one more thing. Yes, this is for you Donald Trump. But how many people will think Trump as qualified as the Presidents since World War II when it comes to this criterion. Not that he is, but how many people will think him so just because nuance doesn’t exist in politics anymore and likely not in US diplomacy either. And when do we fess up that a lot of our troops are not up to the cultural sensitivity required to support counter-insurgency without genocide.
Telling the public what they insist on hearing even if it is half-true and in some cases false in light of the war crimes that the US has committed and the failure of the US to end racial discrimination in policing and prisons.
The answer to the question is clear. We continue to live an almost 400-year-old lie. And our children grow up to participate in preserving the immoral behavior and the lie.
Why this speech seems dodgy to folks who are not Hillary fans. It’s a difficult circle for a truthful politician to square because the attitude of the national security and intelligence community establishments in covering their crimes is:
How is it that we keep putting our troops that we are obligated to support by looking the other way in situations in which war crimes are committed with the logic of “saving lives” no matter how many times history has shown that justification a lie.
Hillary Clinton must, as in obligation that if missing the media will hop on, deliver that Col. Jessup lie as if it is eternal truth.
Hillary Clinton must also do this strongly, firmly, convincingly without at the same time coming off as a horrid castrating bitch. Such is the bigotry against strong women.
This speech, while stronger, hides the policy struggle at the heart of US foreign policy and papers over the seams where Clinton is trying to walk the tightrope of being a leader strong enough while not turning off voters at how strong and determined Clinton can be.
Rhetorically, she must get much better to do in Trump. With respect to policy, she must become more realistic about the US place in the world before she can reassure a majority of Sanders supporters.
To do what’s needed, Clinton needs a broad mandate to be able to “right-size” the military, national security apparatus, and intelligence community while preventing those laid off from freelancing politically or for other nations. That requires some warnings about using the military, national security, and domestic security as jobs programs to the exclusion of addressing unemployment and underemployment.
Does not do for Trump what the argument against Goldwater captured in the Daisy Ad did.
Thanks. A lot of work in this.
Very well written, THD. This is front page material.
Hint, hint…
Er, just because it is ungodly long? Hah.
I hope I didn’t misread it. What seemed a major foreign policy and attack speech could merely have been a San Diego pander to the military and veterans who normally vote Republican but might vote for Clinton in the general election because of Trump’s incoherence.
I suspect it was all of the above. Hillary’s good at multi-tasking.
It’s simply false that Hillary needs a “mandate” to get things done. She needs a strongly Democratic Congress and nothing else. If you look at the two great periods of liberal legislation in the past century, 1933-1936 and 1965-66, FDR was elected on a mandate of balancing the budget and LBJ on a mandate of “don’t let the kook become President”.
For the converse, how much mileage did Obama get out his clear mandate? None whatsoever – the important stuff basically got through due to a brief period where we had 60 Senators.
FDR’s mandate was to end the Great Depression. Balancing the budget was the conventional wisdom and not up for serious debate in 1932.
LBJ’s mandate was to keep the US out of war. How did he fail at that with a Democratic Congress; he sabotaged it himself with the Tonkin Gulf scam.
What exactly was Obama’s clear mandate besides “Hope”. Where was the widespread public sentiment in Democratic constituencies, especially Blue Dog districts for universal healthcare or closing Guantanamo. It did not exist because it was not part of the narrative of the campaign. And was soon replaced by the mandate of fixing the bank collapse. That framing of the mandate left homeowner adrift.
Mandates can move Congresses; Congresses can frustrate mandates. Of their own party. There was in the Democratic base the naive assumption that election of a Democratic president would undo Republican disastrous policies with the rapidity that those policies were enacted. Forgot about the Democratic votes for some of those policies.
Question: did FDR succeed in his mandate to end the Great Depression before the full-jobs-and-plentiful-death policies of World War II? By the standards many hold Obama to at the Frog Pond, the answer to that would be an explicit NO. Unemployment remained around 15% the year before we entered the War.
Perhaps some perspective is in order.
That 15% number of yours ignores the WPA workers. The way we count unemployment has changed since 1935, too. Apples/oranges. An interesting paper and comments…
Here are the yearly averages for the three series:
Moore Lebergott Darby
1929 3.2% 3.2%
1930 8.7% 8.7%
1931 15.9% 15.3%
1932 23.6% 22.9%
1933 23.4% 24.9% 20.6%
1934 19.1% 21.7% 16.0%
1935 17.6% 20.1% 14.2%
1936 14.2% 16.9% 9.9%
1937 12.2% 14.3% 9.1%
1938 18.4% 19.0% 12.5%
1939 16.3% 17.2% 11.3%
1940 14.6% 9.5%
Basically, if you want to evaluate the effect of government work programs, compare the Lebergott series to the Darby series. If you want a more readable trend line (while avoiding accusations of playing politics) use the Moore series.
http://tlrii.typepad.com/theliscioreport/2009/01/calculating-the-unemployment-rate.html
Well, each of the figures in the eighth year of FDR’s Presidency are double to triple the unemployment rates we now have in the eighth year of Obama’s Presidency.
With differences this great, the apples and oranges argument doesn’t cut it.
The many hagiographies of FDR and his Administration and simultaneous demonizings of Obama and his Administration we are treated to here each fail under closer scrutiny. Perhaps each of these Presidents and Administrations were actual human beings with strengths, weaknesses, and multitudes of differentiations and contexts from which we should judge their ideologies, characters and actions.
With respect, most economists would tell you that the remaining shreds of the FDR safety net went a loooong way toward preventing the worst of our Great Recession. They served as automatic buffers, putting money in the hands of spenders to keep something ticking along.
And a lot of our U3 drop is due to people LEAVING the workforce. Check it out.
Unemployment Rate – U6
Unemployment Rate – U6 2000 – 2016
Year Jan Feb
2014 12.7 12.6
2015 11.3 11.0
2016 9.9 9.7
Yes, and the Affordable Care Act, with its provisions of free and subsidized health insurance for tens of millions of Americans, will ease the recovery from the next recession. So will a number of additional actions which have been taken during Obama’s terms. For example, did you see the recent regulations placed on payday lenders and other financial institutions by the CPFB?
And we see here that the interpretations of unemployment rates which are maximally charitable to Roosevelt show that the rate is as low or lower under Obama in the eighth year of their respective Presidencies. Not bad, considering the fact that, unlike FDR, our President was successfully kneecapped all along by a political Party and movement which were quite happy to commit economic treason.
In 1994, the formulas for unemployment rates were “harmonized,” as the Kenyans would put it. “Long-term discouraged workers” were defined out of official existence in 1994. LOL
Percent of Labor Force Participation is another metric for the state of the labor market, since there is uniformity in counting over the years(began in ’48). Europe is doing better than we are… Do some research.
Southern Europe is doing demonstrably worse in employment rates than the U.S.
I think somewhere in these comments of yours here that you’ve come close to conceding the point I made in the last paragraph of my 10:58 comment last night. You sure are resistant to it, though. All this effort to boil the books…
The greatness of FDR is in no way diminished by the greatness of Obama.
Nope. Not in the undoctored metrics. Check the labor participation rates, as I suggested.
https:/www.thefinancialist.com/the-participation-gap
But really, you don’t seem to comprehend my points or want to, so let us leave it there. I just could not leave your nostrums unchallenged.
“Undoctored.”
It’s nice to know that there are places people can go to get their preferred set of facts.
Me, I look at the tremendous social and political unrest throughout Europe, much of it related to the desperation many unemployed Europeans are suffering under their much more severe austerity governments, and it makes me believe that unemployment is a bigger problem there.
Faith-based political views. They’re not just for the right any more.
As far as the people who got jobs in the CCC and the WPA, FDR fulfilled his mandate. And those jobs created agricultural demand which noticeably brought farms back from the agricultural depression that started in the early 1920s. People who got jobs in the newly created “alphabet” agencies move from farming to middle class white collar jobs with little more than a high school education and some business school. All of those certainly thought that FDR met his mandate before World War II. So certain were they that after the 1936 landslide policy briefly went back to its old ways of balancing the budget with FDR going along. It was a fiasco and Roosevelt soon reversed course amid the fight over the National Recovery Administration and the “packing of the Supreme Court”.
That World War II accelerated progress out of the Great Depression should not hide the fact (as conservatives are wont to do) that the programs put in place in 1933 and later did move millions of people out of the Depression before World War II and was responsible for FDR’s enduring popularity.
What World War II did was (1) give labor power to gain and enforce contracts during a labor market that was tight because of the draft. (2) Actions to prevent wartime inflation caused most Americans to come out of the war in 1945 with more savings than they had ever had. (3) Progressive taxation distributed those benefits downward. (4) The wartime labor shortage provided jobs and job experience for women and minorities. (5) As manufacturing recovered in the Northern industrial belt, job opportunities opened up that allowed African-Americans to escape Southern discrimination and rural poverty and have for a time better paying blue collar and domestic jobs.
All of those created the consumer products and housing shortage in the late 1940s in spite of the 1946 GOP Congress trying to reinstate austerity economics. And it fed over into the 1950s consumer boom and transformation into an imaginally suburban society and culture beginning in the 1950s with the appearance of the premier consumer good, the television.
Conservative revisionism has tried to diminish FDR’s accomplishments.
The highest U6 got was 17.1%, I believe, in our latest crash. FDR faced near 25% with NO existing safety net. And a Dust Bowl to boot.
Nor did his people have the advantages of a previous crash and recovery of that depth to study for suggestions.
There was a reason why FDR had those majorities. Look at the effect of his work programs on the numbers.
It is unfortunate for us that neoliberalism was the instructor for our attempts at recovery. But it sure has exposed it to the sunlight.
There had been no severe market crash in the U.S. before 1929? You’re hanging part of your argument on that? That’s factually untrue.
What do you think of the Affordable Care Act?
I wonder why they called it the GREAT DEPRESSION?
And why do you keep making it about personalities? It is about policies and whether they worked.
Agreed. There are many evidences that the ACA is working, among many other policy wins.
What’s interesting about the Clinton/Obama critiques here is that the booming economy and job market of the Clinton Administration is discounted as being created by bad policy which pumped up an artificial bubble and that it takes time to judge policy, but critiques of Obama show no such understanding that it takes time for the results of policies to bear full fruit.
In the meantime, job growth every single month for years and years, job growth which in whole has been sufficient to cut the unemployment rate in half, is somehow considered proof that the policies Obama has managed to get through Congress are shabby. Some even claim that the policies are intended to fail the middle and lower classes, because Obama is in thrall to Wall Street.
When Wall Streeters are asked if they agree, they scream and wail like stuck pigs about the horrible regulatory schemes of this President and his first Congress. Maybe that means something.
I think this is the third time you have challenged me with claims that ACA is working with no links to support your assertions. If you have ’em, show ’em.
What do you think is the intent of ACA? Maybe that is our different POV? To supply insurance? Or to measurably supply health care that leads to better outcomes?
There has been no significant improvement in our infant mortality rate. I’ve posted those links twice. That is unexpectedly disappointing. They aren’t sure why, except the root causes are complex.
Recently, Mass Care HAS started generating numbers that allow one to say her citizens have improved health from access. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24320165)
It does take time to evaluate the total package of intended and unintended consequences from legislation. So far, ACA self-reporting has been mixed among the economic deciles…helping the lowest, but high deductibles are reported to be reducing HC use in the higher ones. (http://www.nj.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2014/12/people_increasingly_going_without_health_care_even_whe
n_they_have_health_insurance.html)
Caveat: This IS polling, not a disciplined survey.
But it has been noticed and is being commented on by ACA designers, like Emanuel: Oncologist Ezekiel Emanuel, the former special adviser for health care policy to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, says insurers and employers moved to high-deductible plans rather than trying to come up with “a more intelligent plan design.”
Emanuel, who is considered an architect of Obamacare, says that he is “not a fan of high-deductible plans” and that what’s needed are “smart deductibles” that don’t discourage people from using the services they really need to stay healthy. He cites the preventive care visits that aren’t subject to deductibles under the ACA. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/01/middle-class-workers-struggle-to-pay-for-care-d
espite-insurance/19841235/)
If you leave loopholes, they will be found. Will the Cadillac Tax accelerate that trend?
A lot of need for tweaking being exposed. But you need clear-eyed criticism, not partisan denial or demonizing, to make improvements. Plus the votes.
To be fair, these out of pocket increases are not the fault of ACA, the trend was already there. But the Cadillac Tax could exacerbate.
“Similarly, out-of-pocket costs really are rising and they are rising more quickly than wages, which is a big reason why people feel their impact. The law’s critics frequently complain about rising deductibles, as if the law were responsible for them — citing, among other things, a recent Commonwealth Fund report on the increases in out-of-pocket costs for consumers. But as Sara Collins, a vice-president of the Fund and co-author of that study, told HuffPost, “the trend in higher deductibles began well before the Affordable Care Act… the trend is entirely separate from the Affordable Care Act.”
[…]
…it’s not surprising that so many people assume the Affordable Care Act is to blame (or, in some cases, to thank) for the changes they are seeing. By enacting such sweeping legislation, Obama and his allies tied their law to everything that happens in health care — good and bad and in between.”
(http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/may/problem-of-underinsurance/)
The “Cadillac Tax” portion of the ACA is politically unpopular, Congress just voted to delay its implementation, and it is likely to eventually be killed permanently.
Re. health care expenses, the yearly cap in out-of-pocket costs is a new and important benefit in the ACA:
https:/www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit
Nothing in the ACA is a silver bullet. It is much better overall than what preceded it.
Your last paragraph here is peculiar. If we installed single payer health care there most definitely would be Americans who felt they were made better off, and there would be Americans who felt worse off, particularly in terms of health access.
Single payer would be an even more major policy change than the ACA. Wouldn’t Americans feel that single payer was “…tied…to everything that happens in health care — good and bad and in between”?
Yes, they would. It is inescapable.
This being true, I’m puzzled why you would offer this as an implied critique of the ACA.
Did you read the introductory phrase? “To be fair…” That does not suggest the post to be critical of ACA, per se, but of developments that are impacting health care accessibility that still need addressing.
The financial viability of Medicare has been significantly improved:
http://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicare-is-not-bankrupt
This improvement in Medicare’s prospects are related to the bending of the health care cost curve:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/22/new-data-show-slow-health-care-cost-growth-continuing
The uninsured rate has dropped by over six percentage points in less than four years…
http://www.gallup.com/poll/190484/uninsured-rate-lowest-eight-year-trend.aspx
…and is down most among Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans.
Each of these trends would be more significant if two dozen GOP-controlled States had not made their foolish decisions to refuse Medicaid eligibility expansions, as enabled by Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling in the Burwell case.
The division between Stupid States and the others is true of health care access and other quality markers as well, as shown by many of the charts here:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/dec/changing-landscape
Among the factors which have improved acute health care quality and reduced costs has been the ACA’s regulations of Hospital re-admissions. Providers are financially penalized when their discharge decisions lead to an unacceptably high rate of re-admissions. These regulations have led to a real decrease in re-admissions in the U.S.:
http://www.americansentinel.edu/blog/2016/03/01/readmissions-reduction-effort-where-are-we-now/
It’s often said that the ACA is a corrupt deliverer of profits to the private health insurance companies. While insurers have increased their number of customers, the many regulations of private plans, from required issue to medical loss ratio, have caused the insurers to lose overall profits:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/health-laws-strains-show-1446423498
I have more, if you want it.
We have discussed this before, too. The Medicaid expansions should have been federalized–standardized, run by and paid for by the national government. Everybody treated the same. Egalitarian. That would have avoided the end run that John Roberts invented.
That was never even considered under today’s operating system.
The “Laboratory of the States” theory should have been retired after it was used to destroy welfare back under Bill Clinton. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/08/beating_up_on_welfare_recipien039097.php)
It is all water under the bridge, I realize. And we have learned nothing from the kludge we have made of it and will be making even more of it because we have to carve out rentals for capitalism.
This shit makes me furious.
Quarrel with motherfucking LBJ and his Congress for failing to Federalize Medicaid from the start in the way you desire here.
Think it through: why did Johnson and Congress need to craft Medicaid in the way they did? Think hard; maybe it’ll come to you.
What you do by offering this critique is you take the very best part of the ACA and turn up your nose at it. This, at a time when the GOP proposal is to block grant health care for Americans with low incomes out of existence. Unbelievable levels of bad faith coming from you here.
And you infer that the Law was poorly written, creating the opportunity for Roberts to create this loophole? Jesus fucking Christ, there was no one other than the most radical Federal Society acolytes who seriously believed that the Court could rule on Medicaid in this way.
What I get from you in posts like this is that you believe politics do not exist, and elected officials are unconstrained by elections, Legislative procedure and Judicial response. You seem to inhabit a wispy world where politicians should coolly pass into law and regulation the best policies according to you.
I might agree with you that more fully Federalizing Medicaid would lead to better access and care for low-income Americans. But please return from the clouds your head seems to reside in and consider the fact that the ACA as it is barely passed, is the most controversial Law of our time, remains fairly unpopular in whole, and is one bad election result away from being eviscerated.
The evidence fairly screams at us that the ACA contains all it could at the time, and this claim you seem to be forwarding that Obama and Congress failed us somehow is an offensive historical analysis.
Good Grief. What part of “they never considered it” did you miss?
If reformers are talking about that as the necessary next step, are they “dissing the best part of ACA”, too?
Laws are not holy writ. We CAN fix them if we admit there is a problem, but not if we REFUSE to even discuss it.
Regrets for my temper earlier.
As I mentioned in my post, I agree that, if crafted and administered well, it would be better if Medicaid were more Federalized. We have not elected a Congress which will do so, and we’re quite distant from that day at the moment.
Let’s face it, many here at the Pond critique the ACA not to improve it, but to attack Obama and the Democratic Party. Just yesterday, you doubted that the ACA is working. You still haven’t agreed that it is a worthwhile Law.
So, forgive my infuriation.
Some are saying that federalizing Medicaid is the next logical step after Obamacare…
The substantive rationale for federalizing Medicaid is stronger than ever, given that less than half of the states have agreed to expand the program as Obamacare envisioned to cover a large portion of currently uninsured Americans. By relying on states to administer and partially fund government coverage for low-income citizens, Medicaid has always varied enormously in its reach and effectiveness across the country, compounded by poor administration due to nebulous accountability, fragmented responsibilities, and, at best, political ambivalence. The ongoing recalcitrance of so many states even when the federal government would finance virtually all the costs of the expansion under Obamacare lays bare how deeply dysfunctional our continuing reliance on state governments remains in carrying out services for the poor.” (https:/tcf.org/content/commentary/the-next-step-after-obamacare-federalizing-medicaid)
About half the States started out Stupid and were unwilling to take great gobs of money from the Feds to provide care to low-income Americans, but a few have bit the bullet since then.
http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacares-medicaid-expansion/
We’re up to 29 States which have accepted some form of expansion, and 5 more are considering it in the current legislative year. They’ll all accept it inevitably; we need to take leave of the image of The Fist Black President before they will, apparently.
The more we can standardize health care thru federalizing Medicare and S-Chip or Medicaid early enrollment, the better the utilization and the better the efficiencies.
It will be a long slog, probably.
Agreed, with the caveat that Federalizing Medicare more completely would most likely mean that the regulations of the program would be largely left to the Executive. We saw what can happen to decent laws when those laws were regulated by corporate attorneys appointed to Federal agencies by the Bush Administration.
In order to achieve a bigger Federal role for Medicaid, we need to turn out our voters for every election, not just the general Presidential elections. When progressives label our President and other Democratic Party leaders neocons and corporate sellouts whose bad values cause them to pass bad policy, even inferring these attacks when discussing outstanding achievements like the ACA, they make it easier for voters to disengage and not turn out.
I’ll say this about TEA Partiers: they’re as furious with political outcomes as the biggest Obama haters from the Left, but TEA Partiers turn out to vote and work to turn out others of like mind. Speaking to the issue we’re discussing here, they’re reliably turning out voters who want to carve up Medicaid and shove it in the trash.
Meanwhile, our ideological side suffers from inconsistent turnout, and when progressives solely blame the Democratic Party for not generating enthusiasm and turnout, those progressives are abdicating their own responsibilities to organize and turn out voters. Progressives don’t have to organize turnout within Democratic Party structures if they don’t want to, but if they sit on their asses and then bitch about the results of the Presidential, Congressional and Legislative primaries, they’re not getting what needs to be done, and you and I will never get the policies we want.
Am very curious to see if the momentum for 2018 among Sanders folks will have success in Congressional seats going to some better than typical DNC fare.
I certainly hope people in the Sanders movement stay engaged in 2018 and beyond. They’ll be listened to if they stay engaged and help organize voters effectively.
Look what the far right conservative movement has been able to achieve recently. For example, they didn’t whine “oh geez, the GOP establishment is outspending us 12 to 1, even though we hate Eric Cantor. It’s too haaaard to win!” Nope, they organized and took out the damn House Majority Leader and replaced him with an undistinguished nobody.
Progressives energized by Sanders who end up deciding that it’s all beneath them because the system is rigged, man, and they decide to disengage or, worse, actively undermine our fight to deny the GOP the Presidency…well, they’re ensuring that political and policy outcomes will continue to displease them. People have to be in it for the long run and learn from their disappointments.
Me, I’m excited by how effectively we’re pushing the Party and its leaders to the left. I want it to continue, regardless of the outcome of the POTUS primary.
Wow. Compare and contrast the rate of growth in GNP between the two periods. That is the difference between programs putting cash in the hands of spenders and those putting cash in the hands of the elites.
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html
I agree that the overall performance of the government during the Roosevelt Administration was outstanding. I’m merely trying to point out that the recovery from the Great Depression was imperfect and great suffering was felt in the Nation for a long time.
Then there’s the treatment his Administration gave to African-Americans, Japanese-Americans and others, which was far from admirable in many areas.
And then we could talk about the mechanized mass slaughter of non-military citizens in all theatres of World War II.
I accept the greatness of Franklin, his Adminstration and Congress, terrific warts and all. One would wish that people opposing Obama from the left could have the same broad perspective on the subjects listed above, and place today’s events and actions into better context.
Barack is one of our greatest Presidents. Feel free to list Presidents with a greater progressive legacy. It’s a short list.
oh yes, new cold war, using the shenanigans of her own ppl in Ukraine as excuse. I think we’ve known that is in the works for a while. Hoping Obama does an end run around that plan in the months that remain.
Look at all the Monsanto connections to State and think about Ukraine wheat fields and European resistance to GMOs.
didn’t know about that, wow.
question, I concluded years ago make a reliable litmus test for discriminating between, essentially, neocons (those who, i.e., put the phantom of “security” [but only for USians!] above all else, but most saliently, above individual rights/liberties/Constitutional and International Law protections) . . . and the rest of us:
Was Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) the hero or the villain of A Few Good Men?
At some stage in a political season I realize that control of the political is not in the hands of the people and that the ship of state will chug into whatever harbor those in the corridors of power choose. No matter.
If Trump is elected he will follow the orders of those in power. If it is determined that US troops need to take out a world leader or invade a country, it happens. The US put Nazis into power in Ukraine under Obama. Anything is possible.
If Clinton is elected I expect the ship of state to stay its course of oil wars and continuing pressure against Russia and any allies.
It may never have been in the cards but the one candidate who could possibly be an agent of change, Sanders, isn’t going to reach the White House. Quite frankly, if this were the sixties he’d be dead by now. His scant foreign policy revelations are curious, since it’s an easy territory to gain ground over Clinton.
Politics, more than ever, seems to be professional wrestling.
extraordinary proof” (or however that goes).
RE: