It’s true that Barack Obama won Indiana in 2008, but he lost it in 2012 and Clinton took a shellacking there this year. Even Evan Bayh couldn’t carry the Hoosier State which seems to have come down with a case of Trump Fever. It’s unlikely that Joe Donnelly would be serving in the Senate if he had not had the good fortune to run in 2012 against Richard “God Loves Rape Babies” Mourdock, and Donnelly is definitely one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2018. There have already been a series of articles written about Donnelly (as well as other red state Democrats like Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Claire McCaskill) that argue he will feel compelled to cooperate with President Trump. However, when it comes to confirming Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health & Human Services, Donnelly is in the “Hell No” caucus.
Today, U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly announced that he will vote against Congressman Tom Price, a leader in pushing for Medicare privatization, who has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Price, the current House Budget Committee Chairman, was an architect of the Republican budget that would end the Medicare guarantee to seniors and transform it into a voucher program. In addition he has helped lead discussions on overhauling and privatizing Medicare and has said it is a top priority.
Donnelly said, “Tom Price has led the charge to privatize Medicare, and for this reason, I cannot support his nomination. I am ready to work with anyone who wants to improve access to quality health care for Hoosier families and seniors, but the nomination of Tom Price would put us on a direct path to end Medicare as we know it, which would raise health care costs and break a fundamental promise to seniors. I have fought to protect Medicare, and I will continue to oppose efforts to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program.”
Last week Donnelly reiterated his commitment to Medicare and his opposition to privatizing Medicare, saying in part in a video message, “Let me say unequivocally to you now: I have fought to protect Medicare for this generation and for future generations. I have opposed efforts to privatize Medicare in the past, and I will oppose any effort to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program in the future. If my colleagues have pragmatic ideas that strengthen Medicare, reduce the costs of care, crack down on waste, fraud and abuse, count me in, but if they want to phase out Medicare, or privatize the system, count me out.”
So, there’s a line in the sand from a Rust Belt Democrat.
Tom Price is a nut, and his birther-curious stance appears to be more than an act.
Sat next to Trump's HHS pick Tom Price on a flight a few years ago. Seemed decent enough til he said he wasn't sure of Obama's citizenship.
— jelani cobb (@jelani9) November 29, 2016
You have to wonder about a public official who feels compelled to raise the issue of the president’s citizenship with an African-American stranger he’s sharing a row of seats with on an airplane. If that man is a writer for New Yorker and a professor at Columbia University, all the more so.
Sarah Kliff has a good Vox explainer on the Obamacare replacement bill that Tom Price offered in the House, as well as the other plans that are getting bandied about. I think it’s safe to say that the Republicans are gearing up to do some deeply unpopular things with our health care system. This will be true for governors who want Medicaid money, insurers who want a system that is profitable and attractive to their customers, the elderly who want their Medicare guaranteed, veterans who like the veteran’s hospital system, people in their 50’s and 60’s who want affordable insurance policies, folks who have preexisting conditions and want protection from loss of coverage, and millions of people who won’t be able to afford the stingy subsidies on offer and will now lose their access to health care.
Sen. Donnelly is smart to oppose all of this, and to oppose it by going on the record early as opposing the man who will implement it all.
This isn’t the kind of obstruction and opposition that Rust Belt voters will punish.
HAT TIP-TOD
WHAT TO DO ABOUT TRUMP? THE SAME THING MY GRANDFATHER DID IN 1930S VIENNA
By Liel Leibovitz
The first, and most obvious, is this: Treat every poisoned word as a promise. When a bigoted blusterer tells you he intends to force members of a religious minority to register with the authorities–much like those friends and family of Siegfried’s who stayed behind were forced to do before their horizon grew darker–believe him. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t lean on political intricacies or legislative minutia or historical precedents for comfort. Don’t write it off as propaganda, or explain it away as just an empty proclamation meant simply to pave the path to power. Take the haters at their word, and assume the worst is imminent.
******
Which leads me to the third principle, the one hardest to grasp: Refuse to accept what’s going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever. In the months and years to come, decisions will be made that may strike you as perfectly sound, appointments announced that are inspired, and policies enacted you may even like. Friends and pundits will reach out to you and, invoking nuance, urge you to admit that there’s really nothing to fear, that things are more complex, that nothing is ever black or white.
The Democrats seem to have got religion on this. A combination of the success of Sanders and the failure of Clinton. It is clear that the only road back from the wilderness lies in economic populism, and protecting Medicare is a great first fight. The other great fight will be protecting election integrity, because without it winning the other fights won’t matter. All the Dems seem to take seriously is the voter suppression side of the equation and see concerns about voting machines are ultimately strengthening those arguments. This is a serious mistake.
The Republicans will try to divide the generations. Tell the current old that their care will be preserved, so that they will accept the cuts for the younger. If this happens, it will be followed by a lot of anti-boomer rhetoric to justify cutting for the old as well. After all, boomers are the biggest target; Gen X is too small to save much money, and the millennials are too young to save much money soon. Democrats need to make clear that if the Republicans gut Medicare for the young, they will be coming for the old next.
When it comes to wholesale destruction of Medicare I think all Dems already had religion on this. A few would have signed on to raise the effective age, cut services, etc., but this is far beyond what even the Bluest Doggy would ever have accepted.
One of the few spots with any hope in the wreckage that was 2014 was the Alaska Senate race, where Begich argued for an expansion of social security.
For red state Dems, this is the hill to fight on – defending Medicare and Social Security.
Donnelly is a long shot and the track record of Dems in PVI+5 seats in the last 3 cycles is truly awful.
The race I guess you run is defending Entitlements and arguing there needs to be a check on Trump.
“The race I guess you run is defending Entitlements…”
Democrats have got to stop using the term “Entitlements” to refer to Medicare and Social Security. The GOP has used this term, counter-intuitively but successfully nonetheless, to convey to the masses that these are “government programs” with all that has been made to imply, that are being given as opposing to being earned, as they really are, since anyone who works for a living, and most of us do, pay into these programs and have every right to expect something back. As opposed to a “premium support” check that, given the age of the recipients and cost of the insurance, will be virtually worthless. Which is probably the envisioned first step to getting rid of it altogether.
These red state voters have been condition such that when they hear the term “entitlements” their knee jerk reaction is not my tax dollars, sure, get rid of it. Yet they’re the same ones who have said “keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!”
Words definitely matter, and we need to be more direct and blunt: Trump and the GOP wants to take away your Medicare. Don’t let them. Instead of “repeal and replace” let’s keep and perfect.
When conservatives fought against passing AFCA, a very common sign held by conservative protestors was “Don’t touch my Medicare.”
Yet it seems like only Democrats get criticized for being out of touch with their base.
Privatizing Medicare in any way is such policy insanity that it has always been questionable exactly who Ryan and his Radical Repbs believe is the target audience for this braindead shit. Who can the audience be beyond the plutocrat class and the Pete Petersen-type debt scolds? (who basically are one and the same.)
What working class white is even sympathetic to this, let alone demanding it? Yet here Der Tweeter is, appointing one of the proposed Repub architects of the scheme to head HHS. Trumper is either so detached and/or ignorant that he doesn’t know what Grupenfuhrer Bannon is pulling, or he is himself dead set on enacting it.
There’s no civilized nation on earth that does anything like what Ryan, Price and the Radical Repubs are proposing. What is simply incredible is that the crackerjack media corps appears not even to understand the mechanics of either Medicare OR the privatization of it. You can’t buy health insurance when you are 80 from a private insurer—either insurers will never offer such a doomed product or you could never afford it, end of story, full stop. Nor will it be affordable if the gub’mint subsidizes some of the cost. It can’t work, the free market can’t provide it, and it will never exist.
This should be like shooting fish in a barrel for Dems if even Donnelly can see it, haha. But Ryan’s Repubs must be seeing something I can’t…
I think they’re just so enveloped in their bubble of bullshit that private = efficient and public = inefficient (when for healthcare it’s decidedly the reverse) that they actually believe it. Likewise with “repeal and replace” – most of them are just totally convinced that the magical “free market” can beat Obamacare. The fact that no even half-plausible replacement plan has been proposed in six years – because there is no such thing – just can’t get into the bubble. It’s like talking with Young Earth Creationists.
Yup, that’s what it seems like. They’ve been so divorced from reality and the responsibility of governance that they have gotten very very very high on their own supply.
It’s the “we’ll be greeted as liberators” taken to whole other level.
Whatever their motives they must know they are sitting on a massive stink-bomb while discussing, with rising concern, how they intend to arm and detonate it.
One rational explanation; they never expected to have the means to enact their stated intentions. Conclusion: somehow it will be blamed on Democrats.
No, actually, they don’t seem to know it. And maybe they’re right? I can’t tell with this country anymore. I think at this point the party consists of true believers and fellow travelers who perhaps don’t really care one way or another but can talk the lingo and like the gig. There are no “sensible” conservatives left.
I so agree with this. There are no sensible conservatives left and even if there area a few they aren’t serving in Congress or in many of the state legislatures. It’s also possible the sensible ones are so afraid of the Kochs, and the alt-right groups and their delusional afficiandos that they’ve long since lost all sense of moderation or any sense of moral courage.
The only good thing that may arise from the Trump years is perhaps a realization on the electorate’s part that sometimes you get what you didn’t want to pay for.
“Moral courage” has been missing from our leadership for quite some time…and that’s exactly what Trump exploited.
I think its even worse than that. If the list of losers in this is as Booman says, then the only winner is Randian ideology. And of course, it means more revenue to put to tax cuts.
When parsing Republican motives mere looting always rates pretty high.
It’s been said before, but it appears the GOP has done precisely as much preparation for a post ACA+Medicare world as neo-cons in the Bush admin did for a post-Saddam Iraq.
Or BP did for a busted deep-ocean well-head.
It’s laughable (if I can be allowed to laugh at something horrific) seeing these stories about various GOPers saying they will repeal parts of the ACA, they will replace parts, they don’t need to replace parts, etc.
If you create a sufficiently large puff of smoke, stage left, you can make an elephant stage right disappear.
The deportations should do the trick.
DIdn’t Kentucky elect a GOP governor who promised policies that would strip medical insurance from thousands…and wasn’t he elected with the votes of those thousands?
Remember, for those voters, it’s not about logic. It’s not even about self-interest. It’s about pissing off liberals and, as gravy, doing stuff that harms people of color. Oh–and don’t forget the babies. It’s about saving the babies from the evil abortionists.
Good for Donnelly. He is definitely not a progressive but this is one hill we need to defend- for all of us. Other safety net programs need to be defended as well. This is a common cause for all democrats. We need some of these people in leadership positions. The old ones need to go.
Here’s how to begin to push back on the GOP Medicare buccaneers:
“Hillary Clinton won the majority of votes in this year’s presidential election. The loser, for the majority of voters, will now be a minority president-elect. Don’t let anyone forget it. Keep referring to Trump as the minority president, Mr. Minority and the overall Loser. Constant repetition, with discussion in the media and over social media, questions the legitimacy of the minority president to ignore the values of the majority. The majority, at the very least, needs to keep its values in the public eye and view the minority president’s action through majority American values.”
https:/georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minority-president-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-
can-do
It needs to be said, repetitively and from all quarters, that something as extreme and unpopular as Medicare privatization is being called for by a minority of a minority, for no reason other than ideology.
And given this:
“I think it’s safe to say that the Republicans are gearing up to do some deeply unpopular things with our health care system. This will be true for governors who want Medicaid money, insurers who want a system that is profitable and attractive to their customers, the elderly who want their Medicare guaranteed, veterans who like the veteran’s hospital system, people in their 50’s and 60’s who want affordable insurance policies, folks who have preexisting conditions and want protection from loss of coverage, and millions of people who won’t be able to afford the stingy subsidies on offer and will now lose their access to health care.”
There are no winners with Medicare privatization. Donnelly is smart to draw that line in the sand now. Democrats would be wise to do the same.
Well good luck.
The reason why Paul Ryan endorsed, albeit reluctantly, Trump is that Trump made a DEAL with him that Ryan could cut & gut Soc Sec & Medicare. Trump told Ryan: don’t listen to what I say on the campaign trail – which, to his chump voters, he (Trump) said that he would “protect” Medicare & Soc Sec from crooked Hillary and the Dems.
Now we see that Trump is making good on his promise to Ryan with this appointment.
Will the Trump voters get upset about this and, uh, DO something about it? Remains to be seen.
Traditionally this voting block is often completely satisfied with red meat. Ergo, yesterday Trump tweeted about dealing harshly with flag burners (aka the dirty hippies), and then I read somewhere today that Trump is going out on a Thank You tour to his “constituents.”
Will the Trump voters be satisfied with this type of red meat? And not care about losing Medicare & SS? Who knows? Remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump could get them to go along with this… and if they get mad about it later, Fox & Rush will blame it on Democrats and the base will continue voting for Republicans.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yes, they will be satisfied with the red meat.
…the fuckers. It’s not clear to me yet how nice I should be, or when to watch out for being told I need to take an anger management course, but, you know that’s sort of what Hillary did to Russ Feingold when he told her off about supporting the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. But it’s pretty clear who the enemy has always been. And it’s not the Republican retards now running the country. They weren’t smart enough to win; we wanted to lose. We’re tired and fuck-all who cares anyway anymore. If we survived Reagan and Bush, we’ll survive Trump. So will the kids, let’s not be melodramatic. How horrifying might it become? Well, we’re not doing very well, then or now, describing that.
I’m torn. Half of me looks at the world and it looks quite nice now, since I was a kid fifty years ago. The other half, that looks at it I suppose from a point in time a few years after I’ll be dead and says, ‘eh, not so bad.’ So, kids, folks older than me, no offense, it could always be worse. But back to the topic at hand.
It’s kind of a giveaway that the guy’s name is Price. He doesn’t sound like he’s hellbent on stealing my money within the next twelve months. I guess the robbery will happen during the second year and active more-or-less unnoticed, like the housing collapse was, underneath other, more entertaining diversions, like increased deportations and consideration of legislation to enact religious registries (don’t they already have that shit on us?). But I’m not worried.
All hell would break loose. Even if everyone doesn’t love keeping the money-in-the-bank they already deposited, they … well, they’ll get to see a lot of Muslims registered and Mexicans deported. (Suspect there’s more than a little crossover there.) And then they’ll die, which is what they look forward to the most, and maybe they’re right.
So, who needs Medicare?