Month: February 2014

We are all familiar with the spectacle of a dog frantically chasing a car, which strikes us as stupid because, after all, what on Earth would the dog do with the car if it actually caught it?

That’s basically what we’re witnessing with the Republicans’ monomaniacal war on the Affordable Care Act:

The GOP’s message may well evolve between now and November, but the most tangible early indicator — advertising spending by conservative groups against Democratic candidates — shows how intensely it is focusing on the health-care law.

“It has been the predominant focus of both our grass roots and our advertising efforts,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the primary political operation of a donor network backed by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch.

Of the roughly $30 million the group has spent on ads since August, Phillips said, at least 95 percent has gone toward spots about the health-care law.

Democrats have been tracking that spending to help gauge what their candidates will be facing.

In Senate races, where control of the chamber is on the line, all but $240,000 of the $21.2 million that super PACs are spending on television advertising has gone into attacks centered on the health-care law, said Matt Canter, deputy executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The exceptions were ad buys in three states that criticized Democratic senators for supporting President Obama’s judicial nominees.

There is a lot of polling data about ObamaCare, and you can pick and choose which numbers you want to focus on. I like the fact that 57% of self-proclaimed independents think we should either keep the law as it is or make improvements to it, versus 33% who think it should be scrapped. I don’t like that 29% of voters say that they have been negatively impacted by the law versus 17% who say that they have benefitted.

Overall, you could fairly say that the law is slowly becoming less unpopular. This is a victory in itself, considering how much money the Republicans have spent on trashing the law, and how little money the Democrats have spent defending it. If the law were to become popular, the Republicans’ entire midterm strategy would collapse.

As I’ve noted in recent days, the Republicans are so focused on using ObamaCare as a weapon in the midterms that they don’t want to take on tax or immigration reform because either issue would divide their caucus and take the country’s focus off their war on health coverage.

But, I think the public is going to notice that they are like the dog that chases the car. If you elect them to dismantle ObamaCare, they will have no solutions. They can’t do better than ObamaCare no matter what they would like you to believe. Their proposed reforms would cost more money, insure less people, and take away plans from people who like their plans. Everything they claim not to like about the law, they would make worse.

So, while I am nervous about the differential in firepower and resources being dedicated to arguing about ObamaCare, I think the Republicans are putting all their eggs in one basket full of lies and distortion and that we ought to be able to outflank such a clumsy, plodding, charge.

[Cross-posted at Ten Miles Square]

Oh, that rascally Rand Paul and his principled stands…

On Wednesday — two years to the day after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) placed a hold on President Barack Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, over Murthy’s view that gun violence represents a significant public health threat.

“In his efforts to curtail Second Amendment rights, Dr. Murthy has continually referred to guns as a public health issue on par with heart disease and has diminished the role of mental health in gun violence,” wrote Paul in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“As a physician, I am deeply concerned that he has advocated that doctors use their position of trust to ask patients, including minors, details about gun ownership in the home… Dr. Murthy has disqualified himself from being Surgeon General because of his intent to use that position to launch an attack on Americans’ right to own a firearm under the guise of a public health and safety campaign.”

But Paul is actually out of step with most physicians. The idea that gun violence is a danger to public health is utterly uncontroversial among doctors’ groups, academic institutions that focus on public health, and children’s safety advocates. Although Paul criticizes Murthy’s position that physicians and pediatricians should ask patients about the presence of guns in their households, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a resolution in 2011 officially opposing any law that bars doctors from having open conversations about gun safety and the risks of having firearms in a household with their patients.

Of course, guns are projected to be the leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds next year. The list of accidental shootings is staggering. But, if you talk about it honestly, you can’t serve your government.

This doesn’t even have anything to do with the 2nd Amendment. It’s no different than your physician reminding you to keep your opioids locked away so that your kids don’t wind up as skid row junkies. It’s their job to keep you and your family healthy. To do that, they need ask questions about your home environment.

In 2004, I spent part of the summer in the Tampa area of Florida, organizing a voter registration drive. I was amazed by how many Floridians would tell perfect strangers that they were felons and could not vote. Later on, I moved up to Pennsylvania and organized Montgomery County for the dreaded ACORN. But I kept an eye on Florida on election night. We lost the presidential race, and we lost in the Tampa area, too. I didn’t like seeing that. What really leaped out at me, however, were the results of a proposed constitutional amendment to peg the state’s minimum wage to the federal inflation estimate. Even as Dubya was beating Kerry by 400,000, the very same voters voted (71%-29%) for the amendment with a margin of over 3 million. Roughly 1.2 million Bush voters also voted to raise the minimum wage.

I learned from that. Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) did not.

They should have learned that raising the minimum wage is wildly popular even among a significant percentage of conservatives in Southern states. Even today, the minimum wage in Florida is only $7.93, which is a fourteen cent (2%) raise over last year that will give a 40-hour worker an extra $5.60 a week.

Politically, no matter what kind of ads the Republicans run, there is no reason to oppose a minimum wage hike. Maybe you might not like the policy, or you could be totally beholden to corporations like Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. But anyone who is forcing Harry Reid to stall on this issue out of fear? That person deserves to lose their seat. They are too stupid to keep it.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett is really unpopular:

Quinnipiac University released a poll on Wednesday that shows nothing but terrible news for Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s incumbent Republican Governor. He trails against every potential Democratic candidate. However, against the odds-on favorite, businessman Tom Wolf, Corbett trails by a nearly insurmountable margin of 19 points, 52-33. It looks like it is time for Corbett to call the moving van because he’ll be looking for a new home after the November election.

The poll shows that Pennsylvania voters are sick and tired of Corbett and just want him gone. 55% state that he does not deserve to be reelected, with only 34% saying he should be given a second term. Corbett only has a 36% approval rating. 52% of voters disapprove of the way he is doing his job. In fact, Pennsylvania voters disapprove of the way Corbett has handled pretty much every major issue.

Only 31% approve of the way the Governor has dealt with the state’s economy. Worse, only 29% feel he has done a good job handling health care. The same percentage of voters also approve of the way he has handled the state’s spending. A solid majority, 55%, feel that Corbett does not care about their needs or problems. Only 28% have a favorable view of the Governor, with 46% seeing him in a negative light.

Now, I live in Pennsylvania and I fully understand why most people here would rather have pube-lice than reelect Corbett. What I don’t understand is why Corbett is being punished for sins at an appropriate level but some other governors who are cut from the exact same cloth are still getting decent numbers. What has Corbett done that has not also been done by Kasich or Snyder or Walker? As far as I am concerned, a rational electorate would be giving them all Corbett reelect numbers.

Also, the poll shows that York County businessman Tom Wolf is now the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. I didn’t expect that and am not sure, yet, how I feel about it.

Janet Hook reports (ironically, in the Wall Street Journal) that the reason no one is legislating anything big in Congress anymore is because the Republican Party won’t allow it. Their desire to repeal legislation, not create it, has been voiced even by the Speaker of the House. Never mind that they aren’t repealing anything, either.

Even if you won’t read this information on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, it’s comforting to see it stated so plainly in the news pages. Even when the Republicans try to legislate, it doesn’t go well. Jonathan Cohn has a laugh at the result of their health care bill, which the Congressional Budget Office scored to hilarious effect. CBO estimated that their reforms would kick a million people off their insurance, leave half of them with no coverage whatsoever, and add $73 billion to the deficit. Try running on that clusterfuck.

Meanwhile, Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp is basically being told to take a hike by his colleagues even before he can unveil his grand plan to reform our tax system. The Obama administration partly preempted Camp by sending his partner in crime, Max Baucus, to China to serve as our ambassador. Despite that, Camp wants to press on but Mitch McConnell just told him to drop dead.

Pretty soon, no one outside the leadership will be left in Congress who remembers how to actually mark up a bill in a way that it can actually pass.

Probably about a decade ago, I took a tour of Christ Church on 2nd Street in the Old City section of Philadelphia. It was once the tallest structure in America, and it served as a place of worship to fifteen signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin is buried in a nearby annex. At the time of the founding of our country, the congregation was led by the Most Reverend William White, who was only the second ordained bishop of the Episcopal Church. There is a church historian who accompanies people taking the tour, and he told an anecdote about George Washington, who attended services there off and on over a period of 25 years. This historian said that Rev. White had approached Washington about his unwillingness to take communion and asked him simply not to attend at all on Sundays when communion was given because a man of his stature rejecting the sacrament undermined belief in the faithful. According to this historian’s account, Washington complied with this request.

I can’t find a specific account of this history online, but Rev. White did report that Washington never once took communion in his church.

In Bishop White’s response of August 15, 1835 to Colonel Mercer of Fredericksburg, Virginia, he writes:

“In regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth requires me to say that General Washington never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister. Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant…I have been written to by many on that point, and have been obliged to answer them as I now do you.”

It might be lost on the modern mind what the significance of this dispute was really about. In the 18th Century, established churches were the norm in the colonies, and people who did not belong to an established church were disqualified from holding office in most colonies. In practice, however, it was enough to attend a church from time to time to “belong” to it, and thereby meet the prerequisite for office. George Washington belonged to Christ Church when he was in Philadelphia, but he didn’t take communion because he didn’t believe in the Trinity. He didn’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth had turned water into wine or that taking communion was a legitimately sacramental act. Refusing to take communion was an act of personal integrity, but it was also an unstated declaration of independence from Anglican orthodoxy.

He wasn’t abnormal in this respect, but his stature made it an issue. Respectable people who didn’t believe didn’t stay away from church in those days, but they didn’t take communion. There are a few different words for these people, but the most common are “Deists” and “unitarians.”

The second president, John Adams, was explicitly a unitarian, as was his son John Quincy Adams, who served as our sixth president. Thomas Jefferson was famously hostile to trinitarianism. James Madison and James Monroe both displayed deist tendencies. As a result, it’s fair to say that our country did not have a president who believed in the divinity of Jesus until after the end of John Quincy Adams’ presidency in 1829. That’s the first 40 years, or 18 percent of our history as a nation.

President Andrew Jackson was the first president to obviously accept trinitarianism, but he only did it in old age, after he had served two terms as president.

I mention all this because I think it is relevant for understanding whether or not this country was founded on Christian principles and what that might actually mean, even if it is true.

What happened to Miles O’Brien is so flukey that it kind of freaks me out. The next time I drop something heavy on my forearm, I’m definitely going to overreact. I feel really sorry for him, but I guess he’s taking it well.

Amanda Marcotte created a Twitter war with this piece. I think her side is badly outnumbered.

Remember when the Republicans acted like people who like their health insurance should be able to keep it? That was a lie.

As I understand it, polls have shown that it would be easier for a black lesbian to get elected president than an atheist. That’s fine. You know, a lot of people don’t trust atheists because they don’t understand them at all. But, Ayn Rand was an atheist. So, I just thought I’d point that out.

Yeah, I agree that most people are less likely to be falsely accused of rape than to have a space rock land on their head, but that’s only in our world. In the world where pregnant baby girl is going to get beaten half to death by angry daddy, making the false “He forced himself on me” excuse seems like a rational self-preserving decision. That’s how you know that guys who are obsessed with being falsely accused of rape are about as enlightened about women as your typical Mormon outlaw polygamist. Or, in other words, James Taranto would probably throttle his daughter before flying her to some place where she could get an abortion without the neighbors being any wiser. Guess which half of that he thinks should be legal…

The National Review’s Quin Hillyer can’t enjoy his ice dancing without some flamboyant homosexual getting in the way. Really.

What’s on your mind?

The difference between how Dana Milbank interpreted the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on greenhouse emissions and the way pretty much everyone else interpreted them is enough to give you whiplash. Maybe Dana’s right and Justice Kennedy is going to eviscerate the EPA, but the people who actually have experience watching the court thought Kennedy was siding with the EPA. They also didn’t think any likely ruling would have much impact either way.

I know who I trust to be correct about this, and it isn’t Mr. Milbank, who seemed to be guided by one question Justice Kennedy launched at the Solicitor General. That’s his style of analysis: look for the gotcha moment and present it as if it explains everything.

If someone wanted to, they could make an amusing video montage of the 2012 Republican presidential aspirants using the words “Ronald Reagan” incessantly in each of their thirty billion debates. Once Reagan left office, the GOP decided to lionize him. They named a Washington DC airport after him. Grover Norquist launched a project to “name at least one notable public landmark in each U.S. state and all 3067 counties after the 40th president.” He’s made real progress in that regard, too. There’s a portion of Interstate 65 in Alabama that has been named the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, and there is the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, for example. All across the country, theaters, roads, and courthouses bear the name of The Gipper.

What’s fascinating about this is that the 40th president has a much more moderate record, even on taxation, than his Republican contemporaries. But they don’t judge him on his record. They see him as the vanguard of a revolution. His accomplishments were constrained by the fact that he spent eight years dealing with a Democratic House of Representatives and two years dealing with a Democratic Senate.

It wasn’t until the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, long after Reagan had slipped into senility, that the conservatives gained the chance to really exercise “Reaganism.” And the revolutionaries were constrained by the presidency of Bill Clinton, who they soon impeached.

I think the fundamental disconnect between how conservatives view Ronald Reagan and how every one else views him, is that conservatives don’t really care what he actually did, but only what (they think) he stood for.

So, for example, it doesn’t matter that the budget deficit exploded under Reagan or that he continuously raised the debt ceiling. It doesn’t matter that he repeatedly raised taxes. It doesn’t matter he talked about nuclear disarmament. Those things resulted from the necessity of dealing with a Democratic Congress. Either that, or they are overshadowed by the former president’s strong Cold War rhetoric.

We tend to see this is as simple projection. Conservatives impose their own beliefs on a president who may not have shared them, at least not to the same degree. But there is an alternate reality somewhere in which Reagan would have had the congressional support to pursue his “real” agenda. You can say the same thing about President Obama. With Obama, he did have two years where he was able to (mostly) pursue his agenda, albeit only a few months in which he could impose his will. Yet, his agenda never contemplated that he would take office in the midst of the worst economic crisis in more than a half century. Had he taken the oath of office in normal economic times, his first two years would have been devoted to a lot of different things.

I think it’s a mistake to look at the record of presidents and think that they did exactly what they wanted to do. In a sense, the Republicans have a perverse view of Reagan that bears little relation to his actual performance in office. But, in another sense, they’re correct to see him as far more radical than his record. He truly was the vanguard for these lunatics.

For historians, that should not count in his favor.

In Obama’s case, the reverse might be true. And liberals may come to view him less by what he actually accomplished (especially in his second term) than by his significance as the man who ushered in the end of the era of Reagan.

On the other hand, most liberals that I know are more likely to spend their golden years nitpicking Obama’s presidency than working to name their streets and schools after him.

That’s just how we roll.

[Cross-posted at Ten Miles Square]

Curtis Gans has a major article up at the Washington Monthly (for which, I did a little editing) that predicts that the Democrats could defy conventional wisdom and do much better than expected in the midterm elections. His argument is similar to one I have been mulling over for several months, and I have even touched on some of his themes in previous posts.

I think the most important thing for analysts to remember is that the sample size for second-term midterm elections in the postwar era is so small that we can’t safely generalize. It’s not just that the sample size is small, though, it’s that there have been highly specific influences on each of the examples. The Republicans under Dwight D. Eisenhower had to deal with a deep recession in 1958. The Vietnam War had a huge influence on the 1966 elections. WaterGate was the main theme of the 1974 elections. Iran-Contra dominated the 1986 midterms (my memory was faulty here because the story broke after the midterms). A great economy offset the impact of l’affaire Lewinsky in 1998. And 2006 was a referendum on the war in Iraq, as well as a reaction to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Terri Schiavo controversy, the Abramoff scandal, and other pent up frustrations with the Bush administration.

When we look forward to November, we don’t see a recession or a country deeply divided over a war that is going badly or a major scandal. The economy could be a lot better, but the stock market is at a near high. The president’s poll numbers could be stronger, but he isn’t in anything like the situation faced by Nixon, Reagan or Clinton.

So, the beginning point for analysts should be to consider how prior midterms might have gone if the administrations had not been mired in controversy. Without Watergate, would the Democrats have done so well in 1974? Without Iran-Contra, would the Democrats have retaken the Senate in 1986? Without the Lewinsky scandal, would the Democrats have retaken the House in 1998?

Most analysts properly focus on the tendency of Democrats to show up in much higher numbers in general elections than in midterms, but 2006 proved that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Democrats will lose as a result. In 1998, we learned that the public may not reward the Republicans if their opposition becomes pathological.

So, I don’t think we can do very well in predicting what will happen in November by looking at the limited sample of previous postwar midterm elections. We know that we have a challenge in getting out the vote. Beyond that, we don’t know much.

Curtis Gans is correct that we cause to be hopeful.