Jonathan Chait is basically correct, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Bernie Sanders has gotten us zero percent closer to a single-payer system for health care. Convincing almost all Democrats who have presidential ambitions to sign on for his bill is a form of progress, even if we can legitimately debate whether it alone moves the needle more or less than a rounding error from zero.
The reason I’m a little more optimistic than that is because Sanders doesn’t have to be the details guy who explains how the public is weaned off employer-based health care or convinced to pay the taxes needed to put everyone on Medicare. If he can just get the party to make that a consensus goal, he’s surely done better than zero percent.
Campaign in Poetry, govern in prose.
That’s not to say there isn’t an element of frustration in watching how Sanders operates. I don’t dismiss poetry if it’s good. This poetry is not that good.
There’s a lot of value in having this discussed. Getting it into the air, into people’s ears. Getting them used to these ideas is very important. It’s not enough to have good ideas, you need to sell them.
And repetition is really very important to shifting people’s notions. I think that this is something the GOP understands well. They just pound on an idea day after day with all of their outlets, and it’s amazing the crap that they manage to sell to people. Really Trump is a manifestation of repetition and selling, selling, selling. It’s Gross but it seems to work.
Democrats seem so afraid of the own voices. At least Sanders gets out there and shouts and doesn’t back down. People seem to like that in a ‘leader’.
I disagree but leaving that aside, even if its not that good wheres the better poetry? You go to war with the poetry you have.
As I noted below, this is entirely personal.
Bernie has moved the ball left on health care in 18 months far more than all of these bloggers could in a lifetime.
And these bloggers just can’t stand it.
You do realize that 1/2 of all GoFundMe fundraisers are for medical bills, right? That’s a fucking disgrace in the richest country in the world.
If anyone’s interested in a long, meticulous article that delves into this topic in exhaustive depth: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/09/tell-me-lies-tell-me-sweet-little-lies.html
I think the Sanders plan is moving the needle back from everybody having affordable health care. Not only is single-payer not needed for universal affordable health care, it’s not even the method used in most countries, including Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Japan. A priori, the US will be one of the most difficult countries to get to a single-payer system because we are further from it than almost any developed country was at a similar stage.
Now that almost the entire Democratic 2020 field is officially supporting this particularly difficult (for the US) road to universal health care, they can all be attacked for a plan that will take away the existing insurance for the large majority of employees in this countries and impose extremely large new taxes. The failure to repeal Obamacare had established that most people think everybody should have health care. The Republicans lacked something to attack when resisting universal health care. Now the Republicans will have an angle of attack, by going after a specific, and somewhat problematic, plan.
Yes, and that is why there is a movement to stop using ‘single payer’ and to us ‘universal coverage’. Universal coverage is the true goal, single payer is just one method of getting there.
This bill is ‘Medicare for All’, with all children covered on the first anniversary of passage, and everyone on year 4. This is a great way to go at the problem in the early stages. Virtually everyone knows someone on Medicare, creating millions of advocates. Even the deplorable people who don’t want health care for poor people of color understand Medicare works.
It’s lead by a very poor leader, but can’t help but advance the ball in the correct direction.
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No. Universal coverage without single payer only perpetuates the cycle of worse outcomes for higher cost, because of the 100% perverse incentives for any private “insurer”. Universal coverage on the model you suggest can only be achieved by diverting an unprecedented stream of Federal funding directly into the pockets of insurance company executives. They’d love it, and that is why it may actually happen; but the quality of care would continue to degrade.
The countries that you name regulate their “insurance” industries. It is absolutely unthinkable for the US to do so.
The problem is not that health care is too expensive. The problem is that health care is bad and swiftly getting worse. This is entirely down to perverse incentives for the existing participants and their engagement models. Removing private entities from any role is the precondition for quality.
There are plenty of multiple-payer systems with no private insurer in the chain, France being the clearest case. Germany’s “private” insurers are so nonprofit that they might as well be public; the value of their independence from government is that conservative legislatures can’t raid them for cash the way they do in Britain and Australia. They’re insulated from attack.
Personally, I like the French system the best of the ones I have studied.
No private insurer in the chain, independent from government..,what sort of legal entities are you talking about and how do they exist within the legal system without government having established them in some way or another.
It is an illusion to think that any form of legal entity is insulated from attack by lawmakers. Or that non-profits will act always in the interest of their beneficiaries.
Multiple entities tend to increase administrative cost to the detriment of payment for health care.
Both France and Germany seem to function through having strict regulations that depend on non-corrupt regulators and a legislative body not seeking to sabotage it. Single payer that is relatively simple with transparent single source financing is easy for the public to keep track of and hold accountable. The current issue in the US and UK is the general disconnection of the legislative and executive (and by their operation on the courts) of politicians from their constituents and their attachment to sources of campaign funds within but mostly outside their states and districts.
The politics of the possible is removing the age restriction on Medicare. In Medicare, the actual payments move through contractors that CMS selects–often IT arms of remaining non-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shiel or investor-owned insurance companies that are integrating those accounting systems with Medicare Advantage programs. When the actual bargaining starts in earnest of Sanders’s proposal, the immediate impact on Medicare Advantage plans will be one of the issues.
On issue after issue, the consequence of compromising issues could add complexity to the system and pages to the final bill brought to the floor. Complexity allows points of potential corruption. The overall effect exposes the bill to the 2000-pages complexity argument that dogged the Affordable Care Act.
The great benefit of using Medicare branding is the most people think they understand how Medicare operates and view it positively. And do not want it to disappear.
While in theory the German insurers are independent, the former chief statistics officer at the Swedish Department of social affairs claimed in a lecture that once you start looking under the hood it isn’t so different from the Swedish county run – and state regulated – system. The way taxes versus health care is debated in Swedish elections is mirrored in Germany in debates over insurance fees – which are somewhat related to income as I understand it – versus level of health care. In practice they could probably raid the insurers by increasing costs to the government, changing rules etc.
Given the variation of systems in Europe, I think you are on the right track with the question of which system you can get to faster from where you are. One question though: Would insurance companies accept the kind of dull, regulated existence of the German insurers? Because otherwise that route depends on organisations that will sabotage the route if they can.
I really believe the Obamacare plan was to make the business unattractive to for-profit companies (with the strict cap on “medical loss ratio”) and turn it over to nonprofits, co-ops, and government-created entities like the Multi-State program. You can see something like for-profits fleeing from the individual markets in all these cases like the Arizona counties where there is only one company offering a plan.
By “independent” I really mean with a capital reserve–not run by the parliament with annual appropriations. It can’t be independent of parliament deciding how to set the premiums, but it is independent of parliament deciding to spend the money on something else. The current version of the Sanders bill pays taxpayers’ premiums directly into the Medicare Trust Fund, so it is sort of like that–much more stable-sounding than earlier versions which left all those questions blank, I think, so I have to stop complaining about that aspect.
The most telling exchange from the various Clinton interviews:
This is the debate worth having in a serious way about 2016. If you look at the work some have done on GOTV you find it was way down from 2012 and 2008. And the reason why was there was nothing close to the number of volunteers.
The Clinton wing of the party is very risk adverse. It cannot win without being attached to big money.
Consider this exchange:
Set aside the personalities for a second.
The reason Bernie’s progress in single payer matters is that it signals a willingness among ambitious leaders within the Party to go big. To run the risk of alienating big money donations in the pursuit of a more ambitious goal.
It is a LARGER politics. Make no mistake, it is a riskier politics. The fact that Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin who is up for re-election endorsed it is amazing.
Make no mistake: the GOP is going to hit her on taxes, which is the Achilles heal of Single Payer.
At its core it really isn’t a debate about policy as much as it is a debate about what is possible with the democratic system, and how you make change happen.
More than policy it really is at the heart of the division within the Party. Since 1984 Democrats have been prettified of being for broad based tax increases.
I don’t know how this plays politically. I don’t know whether it is a plus for Baldwin or not.
What is notable is she is willing to run the risk.
Its about altering the moral terms of the debate.
Will Bernies plan get enacted? No legislation survives first contact with congress. Yglesias of all people puts this clearly.
Its the opposite of repeal and replace which was a slogan suggesting improvement to cover only destruction.
You’re assuming the general public will understand the subtleties of the different ways to get to universal health care. The opposition, which apparently includes many Democrats, will use the same old easily understood scare slogans. Death panels. Socialism. Too expensive.
You are starting from a baseline low-information set with “Keep government out of my Medicare.”
Somebody needs to scale that wall if those people are to keep getting health care at all.
I agree, but subtleties don’t work. There needs to be a simple, inspiring, organized message and campaign.
It became abundantly clear in 2016 that the electorate could not care less about policy. They care about their fears and fee-fees and whites having to share power. Nobody heard a word the Dems said about policy in 2016. Not. One. Word.
The 2016 election has consequences that undermine those attitudes.
Conservatism is a failed ideology and policy now depending on outright, blatant, and undisguised lies and cons. And people are beginning to experience the real consequences of the half-a-loaf of the Affordable Care Act. And they do not want to go back to the free market that existed before Medicare.
How do we address this problem in 2020?
People wanted change in 2008. They got it. Obama was more popular than Romney in ’12. People wanted change again in 2016. Seems like they’re totally going to be open to change again in 2020. Policy won’t enter into the mix any more then than now. Messaging and personality will matter most, I suspect. GOP will have trouble distinguishing itself from DT. Unless DT gets shown the door and people fall in love with Pence, the GOP is going to have a rough time in 2020.
So basically just, ‘nominate the most appealing/change-y personality?’
Pretty much. Like it or not, unless you have a candidate the whole party falls in love with, it comes down to change-y personality.
And, I suppose, the candidate that can outsmart the Russian bot universe/hackers like Macron did.
I think both Hillary and Bernie talked policy. One was inspiring. The other wasn’t.
Unfortunately, we didn’t all agree on which was which.
Whatever, Chait is a concern troll. Does he somehow think that if during the actual legislative process and something falls short of everyone being on Medicare that Sanders will oppose it?
I really don’t get the criticism from a political standpoint. Shit, I’m seeing smarter analysis from some conservatives:
Warren Henry Report
The Tale of Two Overton Windows
The Right: If you believe in climate change you’re calling God a liar. We should put you in a camp, but we’ll settle for opposing every effort to address climate change.
The Left: Lack of insurance is bankrupting/killing Americans! Once we nail down every step of a completely feasible 2,324 Point Plan for addressing this issue, one in which nothing is overlooked or fudged, we’ll rally the American people using such mottos as “Read all 2,324 points on our website!” and “Point #657 was vetted and analyzed by budget scorekeepers of both sides!”
Ted Cruz just today released his “tax reform” proposal. No one anywhere of any importance in the media is going to ask him “how will you pay for that”, “where are the votes?”, “how do you phase this out and phase this in?” Etc.
Well, from your lips to Bernie’s ear. I don’t see a lot of flexibility in the way he’s been developing over the last couple of years.
BTW “everyone being on Medicare” is not what the Sanders bill offers, even though it uses the Medicare brand in its name. Medicare isn’t a single-payer system but a government-run insurance company offering future health care in return for premiums we pay with every paycheck, and when we use it post-retirement it’s not adequate but has to be supplemented with Part D private “Advantage” plans or assistance from Medicaid. The Sanders bill is more like Medicaid for all, paying for everything out of general revenues.
Right, his program is much more generous than Medicare. Maybe you could explain how you feel that way, considering I have come to the opposite conclusion and he’s become more flexible.
Maybe I should stop reading his tweets and seeing what else he’s been up to, but I don’t see where he’s shifted on anything since 2015. Which issue? Just saw a piece at Vox praising him for flexibility on the health plan, in fact, but I don’t get the argument (that he’s willing to phase in the program over a four-year period instead of insisting on doing it overnight, which would obviously never have happened, and that he’s not demanding cost-cutting measures on hospitals that he never demanded anyway).
Yes, it’s a lot more generous than Medicare, and in that sense it’s a lot more like what you and I want to see coming out of this process. So why does he insist on calling it Medicare? I can only think he wants it to sound comforting to old white voters. What happens when they find out during the 2020 campaign that the Sanders plan is nothing like their beloved Medicare but more like one of those “welfare” programs? I’d rather let non-poor people over the next four years get to understand the desirability of the alternatives, as Brian Schatz does with the Medicaid buy-in proposal.
You answered your own question. It’s called Medicare for All instead of Medicaid for All because it’s easier to market Medicare than it is Medicaid.
If marketed as Medicaid it allows Republicans to respond that it is welfare. Once marketed as Medicare, it’s harder for them to define it as welfare without insulting older people…many of whom are their constituents. It’s never going to pass…it’s only a ploy to move the ball closer, get people used to the idea, and get personal attention.
So marketing matters. Reality not so much.
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But what if people realize that M&Ms actually melt in your hands, or that Coke hasn’t taught the world to sing in perfect harmony, huh? What then, smartypants?
Mark my works, those brands won’t survive the LIES.
At this point it is marketing. He has no chance of doing this until he gets the party behind him. I think it is aspirational or what some in my business called a budgetary – a group of ideas and potential funding and costs that may need to be flushed out.
If we do not try this, we will never get it and continue to pay twice what everyone else does and some will still not have health coverage. And when people get sick the family suffers as well when the costs increase. When families suffer the community is not far behind. Medical care today is simply too expensive left to the individual.
It can be marketed as Medicare for All by paying for it by eliminating the cap on payroll taxes as a major part of paying for it, and sweeping Medicaid rules into it, cutting out the major roles that individual states have in lowering health care benefits under Medicaid.
Using the eliminating of the payroll tax cap makes the taxing progressive, transfers Medicaid from coming from the general fund to coming from the Social Security Trust Fund, puts everyone on the same footing, and eliminates the stigma of being poor (or a person of color) from receiving government health care. It weakens the force of a lot of the Republican dog whistles.
And yes, having the elderly supporting Medicare leaves the Republicans with the argument “Keep government out of my Medicare”, which the Medicare Advantage lobby will use to preserve their golden goose.
The transition from private insurers happens by preserving the current medical cost rations for all private health insurers. That sets a stable market in which competition can occur for those willing to have premium care rationed to those able to pay. There is still a private market so long as insurers don’t get greedy; realism about what their customers can afford and what services they will pay for will preserve that.
Breaking the three-way relationship between employers, private insures, and employees breaks the use of golden handcuffs in place of salary, and frees up the labor market for employees to leave bad situations for better situations. It also gets rid of the barrier that employers insisting on no regulation make to the current system and employers not longer have that large expense that they claim makes them uncompetitive.
It also means that the US economy and its domestic production becomes on the same competitive footing as other industrialized nations. And the political pressure is aligned to bring the provider costs down and deintermediate the health care industry by making it easier for providers to have individual practices once again.
It should be simple enough to understand what is going on, offer people the option to have coverage at lower cost (the first two savings are the 15% overhead and mark-up that the ACA allows insurers and the reduced cost of billing and collection by providers).
Employees will see their health care premiums (or Obamacare premiums) shift to the new payroll tax rates. The progressivity of that rate should be transparent to the public before the bill passes.
All along the way the attempt of the GOP will be to make the bill more complicated, less generous, and more expensive.
If Democrats do their homework and have a technically good health care bill that is in clear prose and solid legal language the echoes the prose and hold fast to not cutting corners or serving special interests, they could possibly get public support that pressures this through in Trump’s term.
Trump signing a Democratic-written healthcare bill passed with a minority of his own party in Congress would give his base a Hobson’s choice in 2020. And likely a primary challenge to Trump. Which will seek to repeal this bill, which will be popular only to the true conservative believers.
Reality always matters. Marketing through crooked media not so much. How do you communicate reality around the crooked media? The moment Democrats have the reality that voters want and are able to end run the shock jock media, they win again. History did not end in 2010.
Sanders initial proposal is to tax employers based on compensation. They already pay health care for their employees and hence, this continues that except that it is Medicare for all. It also makes it easy to move that large chunk of people and their families from corporate health care to Medicare.
To the extent employees pay any part of their health care they can be charged a payroll tax. They and their employers would presumably pay based on compensation.
The proposal on the table includes everyone, no opting out. You can buy more coverage if you like just like on Medicare today with the Advantage Plans. Everyone including children get a Medicare card and throw away the corporate card.
The neat thing about this financing is it pays for a very large chunk of people, and employers are already paying it ( excepting those buying insurance or on Medicaid paid by government)
From Vox – Yglesias
Calling it Medicare seems obvious: because people know what Medicare is and they can wrap their heads around it. They have experience with it, and they generally like it.
Exactly. It’s false advertising, like Republicans offering a “middle-class tax cut” targeting people making over $200K. And leaving the moral issues aside, the way of the world is that Republicans get away with that shit and Democrats don’t. I don’t think it’s going to help us get there.
I’m having trouble connecting your first (“it’s a middle class tax cut but actually you need to make $200k+ for it to be of use”) with your second (“it’s like how Medicare operates but better as it doesn’t include the shit everyone hates”).
My second would be more, “It doesn’t operate like Medicare but ‘people know what Medicare is and they can wrap their heads around it. They have experience with it, and they generally like it.'”
I was at least partly wrong about that, because the current version of the Sanders bill does operate within the Medicare program, like special Medicare for people under 65 with disabilities, which I believe works pretty well. But it doesn’t operate at all like the Medicare people know, where you start getting the benefits when you stop paying the premiums.
Nitpick: You still pay premiums for Medicare even when you’re on it; they’re just a lot less than insurance through employers or directly purchased on the exchanges. My monthly premium for a bronze plan for just me (in Massachusetts) got up to over $600 in the last couple of years before I went on Medicare; now it’s $59/month for my Tufts Advantage plan plus $134 deducted from my Social Security monthly payout. So I’m still paying premiums and copays but a lot less than I used to.
Not a nitpick. I should have known better.
Hey, I didn’t know till I got to enrollment time and started digging into my obligations and choices.
I’ve got a bill on my desk that proves it.
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The issues on the back burner for now can be downgraded for now: demands to break up large banks, ban hydraulic fracturing, impose a carbon tax.
Attorneys general are pursuing banks like Wells Fargo. That issue might gain political salience again.
The drop in oil prices as renewables come onstream have bankrupted several fracking operations and cut back production in others. Pipelines to handle that production are in legal battles. And Hurricane Harvey did damage to some of the refineries that were to take that fracked production. Economics might do those in. So might the realization that diverting domestic production to strategic petroleum reserves might be more necessary to ensure military supplies than to be welfare for oil companies.
A carbon tax (a pseudo-market gimmick) is actually unlike a democratic socialist policy of direct regulation of pollutants (CO2 in this case). It has turned out to be a boon for financial manipulators without actually reducing CO2 where it has been tried. It’s one of those mistaken but popular ideas like bitcoins.
I call that pragmatic politics.
The drop in oil prices has almost nothing to do with renewables and much to do with Saudi Arabia choosing to pump oil like mad. Fracking continues, just at a much slower pace. And your thought that the refineries damaged by Harvey will not be restarted is madness. The future of fossil fuels is changing, but they will be with us for a good while yet.
It’s envy.
I really don’t think it is more than that. They just can’t stand that Bernie is driving the debate within the Party. And he is.
When fucking Max Baucus says it is time for single payer you know the debate within the Democratic Party has shifted enormously. When Jeannie Shaheen, hardly from the left of the Party, signs on to Bernie’s bill you know the politics have changed.
Three of the leading candidates for President have endorsed Medicare For All.
Maybe it’s envy but I’m not sure that’s it. I think that is a much better description for the “far left” who have eschewed electoral politics altogether.
If you look at what I do as an analyst, it’s always from the perspective of what can move legislatively, what the obstacles are, the deadlines, the ways things can be stopped cold or opened up with clever pairing.
I obviously have little use for false promises and pie-in-the-sky fantasies. In fact, I specialize in puncturing them, especially when they come from the GOP.
That’s the part of Chait’s piece I agree with. In a real sense, you can argue that we’re no closer to single-payer than we were a year ago because no chance is still no chance.
And I get irritated when people get excited about something that has no chance of happening. That’s what upset me when people started to believe Sanders could actually get the nomination. A lot of positive energy was misplaced and it curdled badly.
But Chait’s still wrong here in an important sense. Is it jealousy? I don’t think so. It certainly isn’t for me. I voted for Sanders precisely so he could move the needle as the convention on the platform. I want him doing stuff like this.
I just wish he were better at it. I wish he didn’t leave a swath of broken dreams behind him.
How would you like him to be better at if, specifically? Like what would you have him do, with this particular proposal? You think he’d be better served with saying that “we might need to add co-payments and small premiums to get a better CBO bill because of how they score things”? If Sanders has broken any dreams, Obama broke millions more.
I don’t know too many people who express bitterness about how things worked out with Obama, at least ones who lay it mostly at his feet. There are some, naturally.
But I know a lot of people who basically went half-mad as the fact that Sanders wasn’t going to win became evident and they started casting about for people to blame.
Sanders created a false hope that made people go insane, which is different from being disappointed or even disillusioned.
It’s not all bad. It’s not all negative. But too much of it has been, and that’s where he’s not good enough, because creating false hope is not equal to providing guidance and inspiration that leads towards the goal.
I don’t think he needs to have all his t’s crossed and i’s dotted on his proposal. But I do think he could level with people. He could take more care to not raise unrealistic expectations, to be more honest in his approach so he and his cause aren’t so easily laughed out of town by his ideological opponents.
It’s hard to define. I just wish he was better at this.
“I voted for Sanders precisely so he could move the needle as the convention on the platform.”
So did I. So why did we have to have that acrimonious debate here all through the campaign? Because you wanted people to vote for him without believing he was going to win? Then not too many people would have voted for him — and the needle wouldn’t have moved.
“I don’t know too many people who express bitterness about how things worked out with Obama … “
Yes, but there’s this difference: Obama won, twice — Sanders didn’t.
“I know a lot of people who basically went half-mad as the fact that Sanders wasn’t going to win became evident … “
That wasn’t Sanders fault. It’s the nature of the game. You run to win. Sanders did move the needle — big time. That’s just what you’re saying in this post.
Sander’s even said, many times, from beginning to end, “If I don’t win, vote for Hillary, because Trump will be extremely dangerous to this country.” But in the mean time, he ran to beat her.
We just had a local (city council) Democratic primary in my neighborhood. The vote was on the 12th. We worked our butts off to GOTV in a totally bilingual campaign. The candidate had never run for office before. He ran an excellent campaign but it was only a month. The incumbent was running for his third term and had the total support of de Blasio, who with his fucking hyper-gentrified rezoning is treating our heavily minority/immigrant/working-class/middle class community like a colony. Our candidate (Hispanic like his opponent) got 31% of the vote — which is considered “very significant” under the circumstances. I — and I think all of us — honestly thought he could win. We had some very tangible problems breathing down our neck and a victory would have made a huge difference. We wake up the next day and those problems have just gotten worse, Sure we’re disappointed. But we started a movement. It’s not going away.
Let’s see if we can explain the bitterness.
Oh, that’s right, Donald Trump fucking won.
Had Clinton won the bitterness would be 1/10th of what it is.
Most of what you write about Sanders is honestly utter horseshit. The vast majority of Sanders people were in it to create something that would last beyond this campaign. And that is happening. Candidates inspired Bernie won in many local elections on Tuesday.
So the idea that he created disillusionment is itself delusional.
Another Vermont politician. With a better chance of winning. Didn’t win. And Bush was reelected. And it didn’t cause a rift. I consulted for DFA and there wasn’t an ounce of bitter to be found. All sunshine and freaking optimism. No name-calling or online trolling Democrats. No backlash from “the establishment.” But a permanent, activated movement for the left that paved the way for future innovations and gains.
And, yes, Dean had a much better chance of winning the nomination than Sanders, because he actually was in the running. He still had the weight of the establishment against him, and they teamed up on him and took him down. The way he was strangled in the crib had a large component of personal self-destruction, but there was initial justified bitterness about his treatment. It still didn’t linger like this.
Maybe it should have.
From my outside view it looks like you have a faction fight that is ongoing, and in most fights origin stories and grievances are important. The discussion on blogs is a reflection of the ongoing fight for control over the party.
Kerry didn’t write a book about how Dean destroyed his chances, did he? Well, he didn’t have to, Dean had no peace wing taking over state parties, because he lost early. So there was no ongoing fight.
As long as there is an ongoing fight over control, grievances will be kept by each wing. And if you think your internal fight is bitter, you should check out UK Labour.
I recall a fair amount (from remaining online Dean backers) of bitterness about the outcome, but most directed at the MSM for greatly distorting his “Dean Scream” making him out as an out of control lunatic. A smaller number were still bitter at Kerry and Establishment Dems for their rough media ads directed at Dean pre-Iowa, one of which was particularly over the top.
Speaking of IA, Dean still looked like he would be a major force in getting the nom in the leadup to the first contest, but then they held the caucuses and he ended up — was it in 4th place? — when he was expected to finish first or no worse than a close second. Then the nonstop Scream coverage, and he was finished. So, “better chance of winning the nom” mostly in the months leading up to IA, not when the voting started. And post-IA, he’d lost so much support, there were few diehards around to register much on the bitterness radar.
Contrast with Bernie Sanders* who was a solid 45%er consistently, and unlike Dean he actually won a few contests outside of VT and his support did not taper off dramatically as the season wore on.
I think he missed an opportunity, to compliment his fine rhetoric on economic insecurity, to really go after Hillary on her hawkish FP stance, but, alas, Bernie never showed strong on FP issues, apart from the Iraq War vote, and his FP attitude could even have been called NeolibconLite.
* in honor of Bernie and his leadership on Medicare for All, I have just ordered some items from Vermont Country Store, including some chocolate comfort food goodies to help me through these dark Trumpian times.
Dean could have won the nomination in the sense that it was possible. The only way Sanders could have won is if Hillary were indicted.
But I won’t repeat myself. I wrote about Sanders’s chances for a year. He had no chance, ever.
Had he started earlier and been more successful in dividing the party in, say, 2014 or very early 2015, he might have had a chance. But he wasn’t serious about winning the nomination until it was far too late to actually win it. And he actually never had “what it takes” to pry off any piece of the establishment.
Dean did better in both respects. But he lacked something else, which was discipline and skill as a campaigner. Sanders was actually far superior in those respects.
Dude I am a native Vermonter. I met Dean in 1982.
I know very few active Vermonters who would say Dean has one half the political talent Bernie Sanders has. Dean didn’t even become governor on his own. Of the Vermont Democrats I have known I would put Kunin, Leahy and another governor, Salmon well ahead of Dean in terms of political instincts.
Look in your own mirror to find bitterness. Dean blew up his own campaign. And he didn’t come close to getting as far as Sanders did.
Most of the Sanders people are busy working.
Try not to shit on us while you wallow in bitterness.
Jared Bernstein has it right:
But yea, Bernie should pick up the phone and call you.
you are tiresome.
this is your response to me arguing that Sanders is a better and more disciplined campaigner than Howard Dean?
also, you assign bitterness to me, which is plain odd. and you seem to want to lump me together with some class of bloggers who all somehow have something in common, but I can’t see the justification for it.
finally, I agree with Bernstein, which ought not surprise you. I said I wish Sanders were better at this, not that I wish he wasn’t doing it.
The problem is that single-payer is being used as a “litmus test”. That seems to be driven mostly by supposedly grassroots demands, although Bernie encourages them by insisting single-payer is the only way when it’s really only one of many, and even if it’s the long-term goal it doesn’t have to be reached in one just. I’d like Bernie to be more honest about single-payer; it is the most cost-efficient way to provide healthcare of all the many routes but it’s also the most disruptive to the current system.
I do wonder how much of the support is genuine grassroots. The approach to this issue is so perfectly designed to split the Democrats I suspect a lot of the social media support is astroturf from conservative and Russian trolls, or even the Macedonian fake news industry.
Good grief. The clinical paranoia about Russian influence in our pristine land of freedom and honest elections would make the reckless red-baiter Joe McCarthy blush.
Hillary Clinton herself seems to be doing a pretty good job of helping along the intraparty rift, even when she isn’t blaming Russia.
Sometimes, just sometimes, things are not One Gigantic Dark Conspiracy Led by the Kremlin.
Here’s the problem: Sanders has just handed Republicans a bludgeon (Republicans don’t do rapiers) with which to clobber Democrats.
“Single payer” polls okay, but so does free ice cream and world peace. Once you dig down to the details (cost, quality, etc.), the support is very, very soft. Once a price tag appears, support will drop like a safe from a roof. And the GOP will ride the hobbyhorse across the finish line while Democrats sulk in the loser’s circle asking, again,”What went wrong?”
And Sanders, who has never had to actually accomplish anything while assuring us he’s an expert on everything, will pay no price.
Democrats, meanwhile, will lose again, pundits will shake their heads sadly at the spectacle of yet another blown opportunity (while chuckling ruefully), and Bernie will of course be reelected (though, of course, not as a Democrat) from the Magical Land of Oz – I mean Vermont – and live out his days telling us it’s our own fault.
There are a number of ways Democrats can retake power. None of them involve Sanders. Or do you really think Sanders voters will come to the rescue of Democrats?
Hah!
You’re bitter now and you were bitter in the primary. I’m glad Dems aren’t listening to your advice, whatever it happens to be.
Not bitter.
Realistic. Which is Kryptonite to Bernie Bros.
Let’s all follow the fearless leader! Right off a cliff…
Oh, and free magic dust for everyone.
Your predictions in 2016 proved you do not know what is politically possible.
And yet you think you can predict the future well enough to shit on the work of others.
Sheer arrogance.
No we can’t!!
No we cant’!!
Wait…you’re bringing up 2016 predictions?
Clinton by 10%. Ossoff by 4%.
Seriously?
Haha. You noticed that as well.
Could you be explicit about what you would like him to do to be “better at it?”
What you are calling the “far left” used to be the center of the Democratic Party.
I’m talking about anarchists and some communists who think state power is a waste of time and effort, or that voting is pointless. In many ways I’d say they are envious, because the far right has shown how useful it is, and now Sanders is showing it from a left (yes ew icky liberal) side.
Are you saying Sanders eschews the power of the state?
No I am saying that a lot of far lefties — actual far left — who (rightly) view Sanders as essentially a liberal, but also believe the things he wants to do as “good” in concept but “meaningless” in reality because either it won’t happen or he will be Allende’d or Mitterrand’d if he actually tried to challenge capitalist power, and that engaging in electoral politics at all is pointless at best and actively harmful at worst because of this reality.
There definitely is a component of the Democratic Party that believes nothing more risky or radical will work so why try but I simply don’t see any left or right correlation with that approach. If I had to choose, I’d say it’s the right-centrists who are unwilling to step out there and do or say anything energizing or inspiring. Whoever holds a nothing can be done opinion is misguided. The Republicans have shown that unthinkable policies and memes and slogans can be successful if presented in an attractive manner. Demagogic and inflammatory, but nonetheless gained traction beyond all expectations.
Here I go arguing to pay attention to the math and the geography again. Winning (after population growth) now means gaining 175,000 to 180,000 votes in a Congressional district.
There aren’t that many far left advocates in any geography. Heck, the Greens can’t pull the numbers with their policy proposition and are constantly looking enviously at the Democrats.
Blaming the far left for the outcome of 2016 ignores the fact that Democrats cannot win through marketing in a stacked communication system. To the extent that the Sanders campaign pursued standard marketing tactics, they slowed their momentum. To the extent that they could put their candidate in informal sessions face to face with voters and talking policy, that strengthened their position. That is why caucuses played to their strength and the marketing environment of primaries did not. Making a political argument to persuade 68 million people is not the same as making a marketing argument that manufactures consent through a one-time vote. Political persuasion works on gaining commitment, not just consent. It sells tough decisions, like using government to deal with a Great Depression or preparing for a worldwide war while staking out a stance of neutrality. Or passing a civil rights bill that upsets working majorities in at least 11 nominally Democratic states.
Bernie Sanders’s biggest handicap is that he started his primary campaign too late in the cycle and did not have enough time left to cover all of the important geography from the beginning.
The extent to which his campaign went negative on Clinton instead of sticking to Sanders’s policy vision undercut his appeal and drew out the Clinton campaign’s worst instincts.
To the extent that people believe in foreign interference in the campaign, they also grant that some of the most egregious anti-Clinton attacks might well not have been from Sanders’s campaign.
And the idea that Sanders has any ideological affinity with Putin trades on the idea that Putin is still a socialist-supporting communist. The significance of Putin from an international relations perspective is that Russia has parity with the US in nuclear weapons, and the rest of the world expects the US and Russia to use non-proliferation to bring down the total number of US and Russian nuclear weapons on the way to abolition. The alternative is other nations copying Iran and going for the Japanese policy of latent deterrence or going flat out in imitation of North Korea. The brake on that happening is the fact that nuclear weapons are very expensive to develop and build, even after the designs and manufacturing requirements are known.
Most lefties have some degree of panic about that driving the tactics they are pursuing. And often that gets framed as the perception that the most dangerous nation in the world at the moment is the US, which has an expansionist foreign policy, imperial ideas of national interest (the American Century, exceptionalismm, US nationalism to the point of jingoism), and delusional domestic economic policies that are sacrificing the bases of national power (broadbased wealth, strong infrastructure, expanding basic scientific research agenda, government credibility).
Being fearful about media consumers believing the wrong things about Democrats because of lefties is fear of losing the marketing war, which is very difficult because of the hold that Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, and other shock jocks have on their audiences. That fear and the pulled punches that Democrats use in response or the silly attack strategies (“deplorables”) that allow marketing jiu-jitsu that we have seen are what weakens the Democratic position. For all of the scapegoating, the lefties in the US, who Democrats love to use as foils are, in fact and know themselves to be, irrelevant. And most folks know for certain that they aren’t mistaken for big-D Democrats.
Time to stop the scaegoating, tighten the game, and focus on the real competitor–the now divided metastable Republican Party and its Libertarian and Alt-Right hangers on. Not the lefties that have declared once again their separation from the Democratic Party They are in fact the independents that polls treat as closer to Democrats than they actually turn out to be. They must be wooed just like the centrist independents, and with real deliverable policies not legislative tricks. But at the moment they are not a large enough bloc for professional consultants to bother with. Nonetheless, the professional politicians play them as foils for “betrayal”. That has turned out to be a tragic strategy, if a purely rational one.
Frankly Democrats were spared taking responsibility for the health care system failures because the GOP is run by Cruella de Vil and was so over the top in trying to destroy Obamacare that any failures of the law are now their fault.
But, every other country that has a similar system, like Switzerland, has an ironclad health insurance mandate, like our insurance mandate for driving. And the health care is heavily subsidized and heavily regulated of course. In Switzerland if you refuse to purchase health insurance they can fine you, garnish your wages or even imprison you, just like in the U.S. if you drive without insurance and get pulled over.
The failure to provide both significant subsidies, meaningful insurance regulation so that insurance companies are required to provide basic health care coverage at cheap, highly subsidized rates, and a mandate with teeth, means that Obamacare is basically unworkable in the long term.
It’s not a question of enrolment rates either, it’s a question of what procedures are covered, and the deductibles. A $5,000 deductible, common on health plans, essentially means that if you get seriously ill, you wind up with huge medical bills that force families into bankruptcy. Lots of my bankruptcy clients come to me for that reason, they’ve been bankrupted by health care co-pays from their crappy plans.
So, Obamacare was never going to work long term despite the decline in the uninsured, because for political reasons the mandate was weak, the regulation of insurers was laughable, and the subsidies were pitifully inadequate.
All that could be fixed with good will, but there is no good will. I’m totally convinced that the GOP simply stepped directly in front of a speeding bullet with their insane repeal antics. Now they own the US health care mess.
We might as well admit two truths:
If we admit both #1 and #2 we might as well admit that Single Payer health care or the expansion of Medicare to cover everybody, is the ONLY Possible way to solve the problem in our political system.
The public is sensible to resist the mandate because there’s no regulatory pressure forcing insurers to offer basic coverages without profit, which means health care costs vastly too much and is unaffordable for millions of people, while millions of others have coverage with huge deductibles that would bankrupt them in the event of serious illness.
The political fight is now on our side. We can say “we tried insurance mandates with Obamacare and the GOP sabotaged everything and fought everything. Much simpler to push for Single Payer.
Of course this has it’s own set of problems, but politically, it’s doable. The insurers had their way on Obamacare, and they screwed us royally. Now we screw them without mercy.
It’s impossible to fix Obamacare because the GOP won’t cooperate, …
A lot of the haters, and those that scream “save the ACA first!!” don’t seem to understand this point. The GOP isn’t saving anything about the ACA as long as they control the House, Senate and presidency. They’re even trying to kill it by 1,000 cuts right now.
When they’ve succeeded in killing the ACA I’ll probably take a different tack than I’m taking right now (if there’s a Democratic presidential candidate pushing Berniecare in 2020 I will totally find a way of supporting it hard). But everything I see Republicans doing at the moment seems like fail, in spite of the presidency and congressional majorities. Republicans intrinsically can’t agree on what they want to do about this, just as they can’t on immigration. They’re not a functioning party any more, as Boo has explained very clearly.
Trump apparently just abandoned The Wall, over dinner with Chuck ‘n’ Nancy. Republicans don’t exist.
And, of course, this morning our Twit In Chief tweeted out no deal! no deal!
He sure is doing his damnedest to encourage the Democrats to make legislative deals with him, no?
And in the same tweetstorm a whole blizzard on how only a crazy person would not support Dreamers:
He’s agreed to both sides of the deal but he hasn’t made it.
The last repeal gasp from Graham and Cassidy looks like a real loser as well:
Horrible, but it can’t pass.
I’m inclined to agree – it is unlikely to pass. So far I haven’t seen the usual suspects line up to push this monstrosity (including the think tanks), nor does there appear to be any significant enthusiasm among Senate Republicans to go through the torture of voting on the matter yet again. Most likely, as far as repeal this session goes, we can stick a fork in it. ACA will be more entrenched by the time the next Congressional session starts. The political headwinds suggest the GOP will not be able to take advantage of what should have been a favorable map in 2018 (and hence will not add substantially to their current slim majority – Larry Sabato has written on the matter recently) and it is appearing more and more plausible that the Democratic Party will flip the House in 2018 (if we are to be cautious, at bare minimum, the GOP majority if it exists will be considerably smaller). If the heavy lifting to accomplish repeal was not doable under more favorable circumstances, imagine how difficult it will be to accomplish under diminished majorities in at least one of the houses and with an even more unpopular and despised White House occupant. I still advise vigilance this session until the clock runs out on the current window for repeal (Sept 30). But right now, it’s looking good for those of us who have tangibly benefited from ACA.
The insurers didn’t screw us, the racists of the GOP did because they couldn’t stand the idea of a black president being successful at something. Let’s face it, despite the limitations that Obamacare had on things like CEO bonuses, etc… Obamacare was effectively a giveaway to the Insurance companies which is the exact reason why it won’t die in Congress. Furthermore, it’s amazing how many people in deep red states love the Affordable Care Act but hate Obamacare – even though they’re the same damn thing.
The ACA was never supposed to be the end-all/be-all, but it was an important step toward universal coverage. The difference is that it seems a lot of people understand that changing policies like this takes several years, but we’re in a society now where if you don’t win the Presidential election then all hope is lost and we’re fucked. The tea party didn’t gain prominence by winning Presidential elections, but by slowly chipping away at the system and moving things their way.
I agree with the comments above that what we need is Universal Coverage for all; and the ACA provides the means for that, but it needs to be helped.
For example, lets say that every American citizen is granted full and free health care equivalent to the Bronze plan on Obamacare. No subsidies, no premiums, no co-pays, etc… If you want preventative medicine from a Primary Physician or Specialist and guaranteed coverage from Urgent and Emergency Cares, then you have it – without fear of going bankrupt.
If you want a better plan, and can afford to pay a little extra for it, then you can through a private insurance company.
If your employer sees offering top-notch health plans as an attractive incentive to obtain/retain the best talent, then they can offer you plan that exceeds the basic coverage of the ACA.
The reality is that the majority of people would probably opt for private insurance, if it meant better coverage and the competition from public insurance will mean that Private insurance will have to be more competitive.
From a Progressive perspective, offering Government health care for everyone would actually be a Republican idea by bolstering the competitive market. However the twist is that the competitor would be a regulated government agency that can offer the marketplace a service more efficiently than a private company.
Re. Cugel’s statement “A $5,000 deductible, common on health plans, essentially means that if you get seriously ill, you wind up with huge medical bills that force families into bankruptcy. Lots of my bankruptcy clients come to me for that reason, they’ve been bankrupted by health care co-pays from their crappy plans.”
This infers that the ACA has increased healthcare-cost-created bankruptcies, or the ACA has done nothing to bring them down. This is incorrect.
These sort of bankruptcy filings have been reduced by half, from 1,536,799 in 2010 to 770,846 in 2016.
So, let’s get real about the outcomes here. Cugel utterly fails to describe the pre-ACA and post-ACA regulatory standards in the areas he describes. Much is lost by failing to describe, in even general ways, those standards.
Megan McArdle wrote an article for Bloomberg in January this year which disputes that conclusion. She concludes with this:
She is suggesting that if you lose your job and can’t pay your bills that result in a bankruptcy, some would say the hospital stay caused it. But it may just as well be any number of things. But I agree that Obamacare likely reduced the number of bankruptcies, I’m just not sure it is quite so much. Wouldn’t it be nice though if we could take it out of the equation nearly completely.
Helpful heuristic to avoid wasting too much time on nonsense:
Megan McArgleBargle is always wrong.
If she tells you it’s nighttime at midnight the sun just went supernova.
Good Lord THIS, a million times this. McArdle is an astonishingly horrible analyst. That she is failing upward is a massive indictment of our media owners.
Facepalm.
Seriously the inability of bloggers to give Sanders credit for anything at this point approaches self parody.
Right? His plan covers dental, vision and even repeals the Hyde Amendment. What more could people ask for?
Seriously, the inability of BernieBros to see his personal flaws at this point IS self parody.
.
Sanders is beating the neoliberal Democrats like a rented goddamn mule. He lost but instead of giving up he’s using his position to keep fighting. It’s so uncivil. That’s why he won’t get any credit — he’s trying to actually do something.
And he convinces Jeannie Shaheen to support the bill. Which I just love.
Jimmy Carter’s New Hampshire chair. Her husband was Clinton’s ’08 National co-chair. She was Kerry’s campaign chair. And Al Gore’s. And Gary Hart’s New Hampshire chair (where I met her).
Want to win the New Hampshire Primary? Jeannie has managed the winning campaign SIX times in New Hampshire. 2016 was the first time she has lost.
This is a really productive way of looking at it. As we kept saying last fall, it is a very remarkable achievement for Sanders to have done so much to shift the discourse in a better direction, and now with all these Senators scrambling into the truck we’re seeing the effect at its most powerful ever, which is fantastic. As long as he’s able to see that there can be a universal, minimal-or-zero cost-sharing approach that doesn’t exactly fit his template, because when a committee-negotiated bill starts coming out four years from now it won’t be the same, and some of the fans are going to think they’re being cheated.
In the meantime, don’t forget Murray-Alexander and the bipartisan bill needed for November 1 and Open Enrollment!
Jonathan Chait is basically correct, …
Not about Democratic Party politics he isn’t. He should stick to critiquing the GOP.
As I understand Sanders he says (1) we are already paying the $3.5 trillion or such amount or $9800 for everyone. And we are not getting our money’s worth. Other countries get better outcomes with about half the cost as us. You can easily see why that is true. He notes a number of areas that would immediately become less expensive with single payer Medicare for all, (2) he will take four years to get us there to avoid disruptions, (3) today over 60% of health care is paid by the federal and state governments. Corporations are next, followed by all of us. He intends to tax corporations a payroll tax. The intent being to keep them in the game. I would think this could change in the future. The remainder falls on all of us and we are paying a lot today. So this is the part that becomes more taxes. I don’t know as though anyone has figured it out yet but, as noted, we are already paying it. It may not be a bad guess to say that cost for some will go down and up for others. But expect savings.
There is zero chance of this passing anytime soon. At the moment it is aspirational, a way to end bankruptcy and personal harm from inadequate insurance or money. And the harm extends to the entire family and may be lasting. It will never pass unless the democrats get behind it. There is not enough support within the party today.
I think Obamacare was a big help but it is clearly too expensive for many and insurance companies keep finding ways to make it more difficult and our friends across the aisle will one day repeal it.
The general plan is available at the Sanders Institute web site.
And remember a lot of Obamacare as it exists was making premature concessions and getting the health industry onboard simply to blunt republican opposition. That was a total failure.
Careful with what it is that is actually taking four years to implement. With Obamacare it was the marketplaces and the subsidized healthcare. The restrictions on denial for pre-existing conditions, recissions for use of benefits, and benefit maximums went into effect as quickly as the regulations could be written, go through public review, and implemented.
The four years on the Sanders proposal is the phasing out of employer-subsidized health care insurance. One possibility is that during the interim employer subsidized health care insurance could function as supplemental insurance, lowering employer costs, retaining tax cuts, and allowing employees to carry both Medicare and employer-subsidized plans.
What should go into effect after passage is the shift from Medicaid and Obamacare to the upgraded Medicare, the elimination of the payroll cap, the end of the individual mandate, and the extension of the Medicare billing and payments system to all patients of providers; that is a way of migrating data to the Medicare system without burdening citizens with enrollment again. This will be a way of quickly migrating Medicaid patients to the Medicare system. This data migration might take up to four years. Some patients seeking health care will enroll sooner. Also, no doubt the Sanders plan has extra funds for rural and urban community clinics (he manuevered this into the ACA); those should be appropriated as soon as possible. Or Republicans from rural areas can be vulnerable; in the webcast ACA markup hearings in 2009, Marsha Blackburn was angling for her share of rural community clinic funds. No doubt the Tea Party tried to crack down on the bring home the bacon tendency of politicians, but what do they actually have to show their constituents. (Bringing back the bacon on the QT of course.)
There should be an immediate reduction in costs of procedures as provider exchange the surety of payment for reduction to Medicare pricing. If there are no deductibles and co-pays, the nominal Medicare price schedules will have to increase to reasonable costs anyway. Providers now begin migrating their computer systems to handle only one payer with one set of rules–unless they like the complexity of the premium trade.
That should quickly save 30% to 45% of the premium that Americans pay without getting better services.
If it were me I would give all employees of corporations a Medicare card and tell the companies to remit the payments to the agency each month as a percent of payroll. Same for employee portions as a payroll tax.
There should be immediate savings from eliminating corporate costs and taxes. Procedural costs and drug costs may take a little longer.
I think there will be a shit storm of providers not wanting this and political opposition. The dems have to have a solid backing or it all fails.
link for above.
In a world where politics was actually about debating the merits of conflicting policies, this would be problematic.
But we don’t live in that world — we live in the Trump world, where this kind of crude, primary-color symbolism is apparently the only galvanizing force that voters respond to.
So, I’m for it — very strongly.
Right. That’s pretty much what Aristotle says in book III, chapt.1 of the Rhetoric.
Neither Sanders nor anyone else in a position of national attention has dared to speak about the real healthcare problems in the United States. It isn’t insurance…that”s just a small part of it. The problems are that Americans are not:
1-Being well-served by the medical/pharmacological establishment as it now stands
2-Being well-served by the entire food production and marketing system as it stands
and
3-Being well-served by the two dominant political parties, both of whom are almost totally owned by the same corporate interests that control the media and said healthcare/food production systems.
Obesity and lack of exercise are rampant in this country, especially in the less wealthy communities. Media constantly pushes foods that are not only not healthy, but actively unhealthy, crammed full of dangerous chemicals from the time that they are planted or bred to the time that they are distributed and consumed. Computer programmers have an acronym. “GIGO.” “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Same with our food supply.
Doctors prescribe medicines that simply have not been thoroughly proven out. They prescribe these medicines with a liberal hand, even when there are other avenues to health. There is a massive payola system in place for this, paid for by Big Pharma. Bet on it.
And here is the bottom line:
There are now too many consistently sick people here…sick from over-prescibed drugs, sick from poisonous foods and sick from a poisoned environment…for the medical system to be able to deal with them on a better, more effective basis. Who or what is to blame for this predicament? The corporate culture is to blame. And who is necessary for adequate funding to run a campaign in the current system? The same corporate culture. Bernie Sanders comes closest of all of our national politicians to openly condemning the whole system publicly…and Elizabeth Warren as well…but even going a quarter of the way towards pointing fingers in the right directions has earned them the beginnings of a serious non-personing effort from the major media. They are not to be trusted. Not by the real controllers.
I must admit that I see no possible, overall positive cures for this problem. We are going to continue to bumble along as we have been doing until some kind of real breakdown occurs.
And then?
I don’t know.
A breakup on the U.S.S.R. level?
Probably, if not worse.
I wish that I were more sanguine on this subject…I’d certainly get an overall better reception here, at the very least. But I am not. Sometimes yelling “Fire!!!” in a crowded theater is the right thing to do…like when there is a fire.
Sorry, but there it is.
I am on a tour of New England/Northern NY this week, working in various universities. As is my wont, I am driving, and I am…as usual…keeping my eyes and ears open. There will be a long post about this within a week, but here’s a heads-up. The entire corporate-owned service system here is broken; the entire academic system has been so poisoned by digital madness that it is essentially non-functioning except by its own definitions, and the only people who seem to have kept their human warmth and hard work approaches alive are the working classes of all races…not coincidentally, many of whom were labeled “deplorables” by Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose closest real contact to them for 40+ years has been making meal orders.
Pishing around about which politician has something to say that will or will not get him or her elected pales in comparison to our real problems.
Later…
AG
You want medicare for all?
Start with getting it for every person under the age of 21 currently on Medicaid anywhere in the US.
5 years after that, put ALL children under the age 21 on it. Then just wait for the parents to come to their teenie senses (or die).
Then when the ‘rents have had enough, open enrollment for Medicare. You’ll have Medicare for all in 15 years, with far less bullshit.