OK, now that Trump’s “moderate” advisors choked on health care (Priebus & Pence moderates?…yes that is the country we now live in) will he turn to his extremist advisors and open up the door to the possibility of expanding single payer care in the US? And should the Dems encourage this possibility?
First off, I’m not completely crazy to suggest this, as it was Trump friend and NewsMax publisher Chris Ruddy who floated this very idea more than a week ago. Among his suggestions:
- Ditch the Freedom Caucus and the handful of Senate Republicans who want a complete repeal of Obamacare. They don’t agree with universal coverage and will never be placated.
- Find a few parts of Ryan Care II that can win passage in the House and Senate with either GOP support or bipartisan support. Declare victory.
- Rekindle the bipartisanship in Congress that Obama destroyed. Empanel a bipartisan committee to report back by year’s end with a feasible plan to fix Obamacare.
- Reject the phony private health insurance market as the panacea. Look to an upgraded Medicaid system to become the country’s blanket insurer for the uninsured.
- Tie Medicaid funding to states with the requirement each pass legislation to allow for a truly nationwide healthcare market.
- Get Democrats to agree to modest tort reform to help lower medical costs.
- While bolstering Medicare and improving Medicaid, get Republicans and Democrats to back the long-term fix of health savings accounts. This allows individuals to fund their own healthcare and even profit from it.
Point 2 is water under the bridge now. But it is point 3 that is most intriguing.
So BlueMassGroupers…what do you say, should the Dems publicly start making noise about working with Trump to fix the ACA and maybe get an expanded single payer system to cover the working poor? Of course that would mean working with the devil on this (that would be Steve Bannon not Chris Ruddy). As for those wondering why a Steve Bannon would support something like this…I point to the first sovereign leader that implemented health care insurance and his motives behind it.
The Kaiser just might have something to say about your using that term to describe a mere Chancellor!:)
Seriously, I have a hard time imagining enough of the right people going along with this idea.
…it is that the unimaginable can happen.
Autumn Trump was indeed a nationalist on things economic, but Winter and Spring Trump has proven to be a rather orthodox conservative Republican indeed. I don’t see any signs of Autumn Trump anymore. Do you?
Since Actual Trump has shown no interest or understanding of politics, he’s going to listen to advisers and other powerful persons. That’ll keep him being a kind of Paul Ryan/Eric Cantor Republican.
As such, he’s as likely to embrace Single Payer as Sen. Sanders is to vote for the AHCA.
…Trump’s attention span does even come close to being seasonal, rather momentary…as in the last person he spoke with. So I’ll never dismiss anything as possible…from Trump embracing single payer to him giving the Nuclear codes to the Russians.
Trump will get plenty of talking heads on Fox and whispers in his ear from Bannon to throw Ryan to the Brietbrat dogs…and letting the economic nationalists have a shot (gulp).
And I could not disagree more about your Trump/Sanders point…Sanders behavior can be predicted based on 60 some odd years of consistent behaviors, whereas Trump lies by the minute and even he isn’t sure what he stands for (OK, he stands for anything that feeds his ego). Besides, how hard would it be to tell Trump he’s backing a truly conservative piece of legislation and it’s really a version of single payer?
my Hyperbole License is up for renewal. Payment in the mail.
Well, yes, of the two improbabilities, the Sanders one is much more remote.
The polling on this shows we really have four distinct political bases in America.
Base 1: Orthodox Republican: Economic and socially conservative
Base 2: Populist Independents: economically liberal and socially conservative
Base 3: Centrist Establishment: economically conservative and socially liberal
Base 4: Orthodox Democrats: Economically and Socially liberal.
The FDR coalition was broad: Base 2, 3, and 4. Reagan-Bush I was also broad: Base 1,2, and 3. Clinton/Obama was narrower Base 3/4. Bush II was also narrower with Base 1/3. Base 2 went for Perot in the Clinton years and stayed home for most of the Bush-Obama years. Trump found a way to bring them back but they are his least loyal.
On economic questions-especially healthcare- they are social democrats-they would largely agree with this quote from Debs:
Trump ran on single payer as recently as February 2016 and won the GOP nomination. It’s worth opening to him and Bannon who also is quoted wanting a WPA program to see if they bite. The risk is they do and take the credit and still do all the bad stuff they are proposing. The reward is Democrats use this to drive a full wedge between the Bannon and Ryan wings and use the Bannon wing to advance domestic liberalism while using the Ryan wing to check the excesses of Trumpism. It’ll require deft and smart people to lead this effort.
Or just propose single payer anyway and see if Burned out Trump voters are receptive to it in this anti-elitist anti corporate climate. I’d wager they are.
Maybe. But there was not a whole lot of pushback against racism until at least Truman and a number of New Deal programs, designed to support “everybody”, instead tilted that to the paler side of “everybody”.
I could be wrong here and missing the context of the times. African-Americans did begin to vote Democratic after 1936. Note, though, that Wilson’s Administration was notable for its racism.
First, and most importantly, the only accurate label to describe Mr. Trump and those still support him is “Fascist”. Not “populist”. Not “economically liberal”. Fascist. As in government in complete service to business. Authoritarian. Ensure that as much wealth as possible flows to the already wealthy. The campaign is over, the candidate is chosen, the policy decisions and executive orders are being made.
Donald Trump is no populist. Never has been. The people who still support him are not populist.
I don’t know what “economically liberal” means. I think we need a term that means “tax the very wealthy”. The maximum gift and estate tax was SEVENTY-SEVEN PERCENT during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower (from 1941-1976). The top marginal income tax rate was NINETY ONE PERCENT during that same time.
That period — 1941 to 1976 — was arguably the period when the US middle class was the strongest it has ever been. Was Dwight Eisenhower a “liberal”? Was the Eisenhower administration a “liberal” administration?
I think we need new language to talk about economics.
I think your four axes are interesting, once we find a different label for the economic aspects. I think it might be even more interesting to draw it as a graph, with the horizontal axis plotting the economy and the vertical access the “social” aspects.
In that graph, with high taxes on the wealthy on the extreme left and low taxes on the wealthy on the extreme right, and with socially liberal at the top and socially conservative at the bottom, then the four quadrants become interesting.
Finally, I think I also want to quibble with the phrase “Orthodox Democrats”. I’m just not sure what that “orthodox” means. Where do the anti-abortion Democrats go in this picture? Where do the racist Democrats go? Are the lunch-bucket Democrats “orthodox”? I don’t know.
I think the point is that our candidates and government have moved dramatically towards the right-hand side of this picture your axes define.
I think economically liberal means in favor of policies (such as taxes) that redistribute money to those who need it. It need not only come from the rich. I think an economic liberal would support a broad increase in the income tax to help struggling school districts, for example.
I would also venture to say that if you support redistribution to the needy only from the rich, that makes you somewhat “economically conservative” because you’re not putting yourself on the line. It’s easy to be in favor of spending other people’s money while protecting yours.
Our economy is a catastrophe. Our wealthiest taxpayers are paying historically low marginal tax rates, as noted above. Our wealth concentration is at historic highs. Our social programs are being slashed in a misguided (and deceptively promoted) attempt at “austerity”.
We have been transferring trillions of dollars from the 99% to the 1% for decades. I am perfectly happy to continue paying the taxes I pay now. I am perfectly happy to pay higher taxes if and when I accumulate sufficient wealth to merit those higher taxes.
The need for higher tax revenues in order to help struggling school districts is NOT because we don’t collect enough income tax on W2 income. It is, instead, because we do not collect NEARLY enough taxes on the net worth, the increases in net worth, and the estates (when people die) of our wealthiest citizens.
The 99% have paid ENOUGH in taxes. The working poor have paid enough in taxes.
After we have restored the taxes on our wealthiest people to the levels of the 1950s and 1960s, then I will be more receptive to your final paragraph. After you have shown that the wealthy pay even the same marginal rate (never mind more) as me on their OVERALL net worth (not just their income for tax purposes), then we can talk about whether or not they’ve paid their fair share.
Right now, it is crystal clear for anyone who will look that being wealthy in America in 2017 is a ticket for a free ride from American government.
If it it were easy, we would have resolved this problem decades ago.
I agree with you that we should go back to the tax structure of the 1950s, with a top bracket that is basically confiscatory. That would curb income inequality quite a bit. However the tax structure of that era was not as kind to those leading up to the 1% compared to today either.
Let’s say that you make $175k right now. That’s probably achievable for a two-income family in the Boston area pretty easily. Your current tax bracket plays out like this: First $9,325: 10%; from that to $37,950: 15%; from that to $91,900: 25%; the rest is 28%. Your total taxes would be $41,981.35, or 24.0% effective.
In 1955, with inflation adjusted dollars, you would pay this: first $34,268: 20%; from that to $68,536: 22%; from that to $102,803: 26%; from that to $137,071: 30%; from that to $171,339: 34%; the rest is 38%. Your total taxes would be $46,623.56, or 27.2% effective. So your taxes would be higher in 1955.
There are a few more deductions available for people today too. In 1955, you received $600 exemption per family member which is about $5,500 today. From that form, I do not believe there was a “standard deduction”. In 2017, you are allowed $4,050 exemption per person, and you get a standard deduction of $12,600. The $175k income in 1955 was turned into a taxable income of $153,000; today’s $175k income is turned into a taxable income of $146,200. There are also a number of deductions aimed at the middle class; mortgage interest deduction, child care credit, American Opportunity Tax Credit (college), 401k tax deduction, to name the largest.
Adding that all up, the middle class, especially the lower middle class is taxed substantially less than it was in 1955. If you made $37,951k in 2016, you paid 14% pre-deductions. In 1955 you paid 20%. Your taxes are 30% lower. The poor are taxed even lower (10% vs. 20% in the first bracket)
Now of course, Social Security and Medicare are higher today than they were in 1955, and those are levied on all income, so it is possible that people are paying more in taxes today – but at least in the case of Medicare, they are getting something more in return.
My basic point here is that there are people who think that taxes on the rich are too low, and there are others who think that taxes on everyone can go up – so there are definitely degrees of being “economically liberal”.
I think it’s important to look at the whole picture.
While it is true that the marginal tax rates on the middle class were higher in 1955, it is also true that government goods and services were significantly higher as well. One of the most pernicious ways that the wealthy exploit the rest of us is to persuade us, dishonestly, that federal deficit spending is “bad”, that the national debt is “bad”, and that we therefore need to slash “unnecessary” federal spending. The 99%, pretty much by construction, benefits more than the 1% on federal programs that benefit the general public. So the effect of slashing those programs is to transfer wealth (in the form of the value of federal goods and services) from the 99% to the 1%.
Secondly, your example only looks only at the income tax. It really is important to include gift and estate taxes, as well as long- and short-term capital gains taxes, in the picture. It is also important to include effective (as opposed to posted) corporate tax rates.
I suggest that there are therefore three interesting regions of this dimension, whatever we call it, as follows:
1. Those who argue that all taxes are bad, that current taxes are too high, and that we should reduce every tax rate whenever possible. This is the Grover Norquist/Barbara Anderson crowd.
2. Those who argue that income taxes can and should be increased on everyone.
3. Those who argue that the effective rate on the very wealthy must be disproportionately increased, because we have already disproportionately transferred so much wealth to the very wealthy.
In my view, this dimension needs a far better name than “economic liberal” — perhaps something along the lines of “Tax fairness” or “Tax realism”. The plain truth is the government needs money — lots of it — to function in today’s world. That money can only come from taxes.
The effect of narrowing the discussion to include only income taxes of the middle class is to continue to ignore the stinking carcass of the dead elephant in the room — the obscene policy of wealth transfer from the 99% to the 1% that has dominated government economic policy since the Reagan era.
I’m happy to posit the three groups above. If the axis were drawn with my group three on the left and my group one on the right, then I would position my own attitude at the left in group 3.
It’s defined differently for Base 1 and Base 2, with the former policing sexuality/religiosity and the latter policing race/borders.
In some context that means very Adam Smith (without people realizing that even he called for certain policies to curb the worst excesses thereof).
The Democrats gain nothing by working with 45 or anyone in the GOP.
And the GOP and Trump are the ones with the credibility issue. They would have to do a whole lot to convince Democrats they could even trust the process.
Which isn’t going to happen.
They should sink or swim on their own.
Both political priorities of his in the recent past. I think that’s the approach the OP is discussing. I think the prospect is remote-the GOP remains hostage to its corporate masters even if it’s voters want a more populist economic program.
At the least we should be using his disadvantaged voters feeling of betrayal as an entry point to giving us a second look rather than mercilessly mock them as redneck rubes.
The three most important reasons the AHCA was defeated was broad popular distrust of the bill and its right wing authors, unified progressive opposition, and grassroots protests at town halls. So far-the resistance is working.
It’s a nice fantasy, but single payer wasn’t a possibility when the Democrats had full strong control of the house, senate, and presidency. The ACA was the best they could come up with – it is still a fairly conservative law that cemented the role of insurance companies into our system.
The AHCA went down because Republicans did not try and come up with a bill that all of its constituent members could agree on. Remember, there are Republicans who opposed AHCA because it did not cut off insurance from as many people as they liked (i.e. they wanted zero tax credits; they want to cut back Medicare to eventual elimination; they want to remove all regulation of insurance plans).
So basically Republicans had to build a coalition of “members who wanted to cut taxes on the rich but didn’t want to totally screw the elderly” along with “members who want to cut taxes on the rich and who don’t care who gets screwed because the market is supreme”.
They also have to muster 60 votes in the Senate, which they will not be able to do with any plan that removes subsidies for the poor. The main problem is that their conservative base (Tea Party) was sent to Congress specifically to repeal all of Obamacare. They cannot compromise.
and even then, still no.
They can sink or swim on their own. We’ve seen enough from Trump and the GOP to know which direction they’ll go in.
But, by all means, if they turn a corner and do a wonderful job they’ll all win reelection,Democrats will lose, and it’ll be just perfect for the country.
Good luck to them.
Until then, if they ask for help, throw them an anvil.
the ‘we can’t trust them’ thing is real.
If they try to appeal to democrats in the legislature with some bill that sounds nice on the surface, we can be sure that they’ll either stab us in the back or put in a bunch of poison pills under the surface that make it disastrous, and probably both.
And anything that legitimizes Trump *legitimizes Trump.* That makes it more likely the Republic is snuffed out.
Zero cooperation isn’t just a tactic to win back power. It’s a necessary tactic to save the Republic.
Let them sink or swim on their own. They will drown. It will be painful, but the country needs to learn that Republicans aren’t in the business of running government — only tearing it down. It’s a shame we needed to live this lesson, but it had to happen.
I emphatically and categorically reject item 3.
The GOP practiced an explicit scorched-earth political strategy against Bill Clinton, and did the same against Barack Obama. The premise that bipartisanship was “destroyed” by Barack Obama is an outrageous lie that turns history and facts on their ear.
No “bipartisan committee” is needed to fix anything. What is needed is for rabidly partisan GOP ideologues to start paying attention to actual facts in the actual universe we live in. When those rabidly partisan GOP ideologues start to do that, the spirit of bipartisanship will be miraculously revived.
The aspects of Obamacare that need repair are the parts the GOP explicitly and intentionally spent the last eight years trying to destroy. If they will stop their political terrorism, solutions will emerge.
THAT, in fact, is why they conduct their political terrorism. The GOP does not want solutions to emerge. In their hearts, they know they’re wrong. That’s why they do what they do.
Whatever you are smoking, you can keep it.
It’s from the linked piece-which again-is a conservative Republican close to Truml calling for the President to ditch Ryan and work with the Democrats on Medicare for All. Trump won’t do it-but if he really cared about being popular and getting re-elected it’s exactly what he should do.
I didn’t see that as a Medicare for All solution at all. It seems more like a shitty Medicaid for catastrophic coverage but the real action is with health savings accounts (and through tort reform). The Dems should not work with anyone on that.
…to a real solution. At best an expanded Medicaid for the working poor, which is basically the aim of Obamacare.
In playing out this scenario, trying (and especially succeeding) could be the end of the current alignments within the two parties…certainly it will lead to a very public civil war in the GOP.
Feel free to downrate the comment to oblivion.
But it’s not clear. When I quote, i quote. When I paraphrase, I give context. The Latin sic is useful in this context too.
The point is a good one-if the author quoted is saying Obama killed bipartisanship than it makes it very difficult for him, the OP, or folks from the Trump admin to work with Democrats.
My proposal isn’t meeting these guys half way-it’s using the wedges this vote exposes to the advantage of the minority.
Democrats saved Obamacare from Trump / Ryan attempt to destroy it.
Now, we should focus on winning back Congress next year and then introduce single payer Medicare for all and force the panderer in chief to sign it.
See how easy that was.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Rep Conyers sponsors H.R. 676, a Medicare For All bill that has been present for years. Now is the time to put our energy into getting it done by contacting potential co-sponsors. The link to give the particulars in detail of the legislation, and who has signed on already is here. This is a don’t just sit there, do something moment.
I would say:
1) Work with them when we have to, like on filling SCOTUS seats. I don’t think we should escalate that battle. Let Mitch’s ploy go down as a historical anomaly. Hang it around his neck whenever possible, try and restore some decorum to the SCOTUS process.
2). Don’t help Ryan damage Medicare, Social Security, or anything else.
And the balance can be tricky, but in general I think our instincts should guide us. Overthinking — like, ahem, trying to get any Republican to support single payer — will only get us into trouble.
I think our total resistance has paid off. Mitch will have to go nuclear to confirm Gorsuch who is loathed by working America according to most polls, AHCA failed and ACA is the law of the land, and there are fissures in the GOP we can exploit. Maybe use the HFC to hold Trump’s war powers/military spending down and investigate the Russia ties while using the Tuesday Group faction to oppose cuts to social spending.
The GOP’s voters are increasingly downwardly mobile which is why a Trumps
Message resonated with them and some swing voters. It’s up to Democrats to push a strong alternative that actually lifts them up while calling out Trump/Ryan as they double down on trickle down.
I think it serves us to a point, and that point can move and sometimes is elusive. But I don’t think we can go full-on obstruction like they did and get away with it.
It sucks, really … they DESERVE full-on obstruction. But as usual it falls on us to be the adults.
He’s an ideological appointee of a compromised president. If we don’t oppose that, even if we lose, we are also compromised.
You seem to be saying, For the good of the country, we have to suck it up and be the adults. I’m saying, For the good of the country, we have to draw the line, even if that feels uncomfortable.
I’m worried about an escalating SCOTUS arms race, where we end up with nominees only being confirmed when the president’s party has the Senate.
I’m not sure if Des should filibuster…but isn’t the escalation you fear, already here? “The Garland rule” now states that a President whose party does not control the Senate, does not even get a hearing for their SCOTUS nominee. Ya, things can get crazier than that. But all the Dems are suggesting is to use a well-established tradition and not do something unprecedented like Garland.
The question to me is, how do we de-escalate? No one’s served if we play their game.
It’s frustrating because they were rewarded for their obstruction. If you call Trump a reward.
Which reminds me … I don’t buy for a second that the electorate signed off on their obstruction. Their base did, and we lost the general, but people who claim SCOTUS was a real campaign issue are lying. HRC never really made it one (that’s not a shot — making SCOTUS an issue might have backfired).
They did get away with it and they and this administration actually deserves this treatment. What gains do the Democrats get by compromise? In 2002 that strategy saddled us and our 2004 nominee with complicity in an illegal war; our leaderships support of which didn’t save our Senate majority or help us in the House. It also got us bad bills like NCLB, tax cuts, and a partial birth abortion ban which Bush could accurately claim had bipartisan support. The goodwill from Daschle on all three was rewarded with his unseating in 2004.
McConnell was rewarded for his obstruction with a House and Senate majority and a Supreme Court vacancy he engineered for his party. It’s duplicitous but also ingenious. We have two polarized voting bases which turnout when their side has momentum at its back. In our case-the wind is at our back right now-even Republicans concede this is our highest point since November.
F the Democrats for a second. I’m talking about the COUNTRY. What does THE COUNTRY NEED? Functional government.
Mitch lost seats. He retained his majority, but he was not rewarded.
So bring it back to politics. Yes there are things to fight for, but “They did it to us first and got away with it” sways how many votes, exactly?
What the COUNTRY needs is to banish the dishonest, ignorant, racist and sexist asswipes that now control our government. They are in the majority in the House and Senate, and they own the White House.
There is no possibility of compromise with these political thugs. There is only their way — “alternate facts” and all.
This is not about payback. It is, instead, about calling a spade a spade. America is currently governed by political terrorists who must be unseated.
THAT — and only that — is what the country needs. Your desire for functional government is a fantasy from your apparent reluctance to admit how bad the current situation actually is.
If we can’t disagree without getting personal, the discussion is over.
I hear what you’re saying, and I know how bad it is. What I’m saying is, it can get worse. I would rather try and fix things, even if that’s futile, than help them make things worse.
People have been calling me naive my entire life. They don’t mean it as an insult. Entire tomes, some of them marvelous, have been written on the difference between “naive” and “innocent”.
I don’t mean to insult you. I do mean to say that, to me, your heartfelt desire to reach out to the other side to establish some sort of bipartisan “functional government” denies the basic reality of the other side.
Suppose you and I were in combat, and a uniformed soldier for the other side is standing in front of us, smiling, with a automatic weapon that still has smoke trailing from the muzzle. The room around us is filled with the bodies of dozens of innocent civilians on the floor, their blood still flowing red.
The soldier is smiling because his weapon has jammed, and he’s temporarily unable to fire. I hear you saying “He’s stopped shooting, let’s talk to him”. I think the first thing we do is disarm him, shooting and killing him if needed.
I enthusiastically agree that things can get worse — much worse. There is already strong evidence of outright treason that the people we’re talking about steadfastly suppress. The insecure thug in the Oval Office has his hand on the nuclear trigger.
I think the way we fix things is to do whatever it takes to disarm these guys. I think we do NOT make any effort AT ALL to reach out to them, throw them a lifeline, or do anything else that helps them.
They are already destroying America (just take a look at the weather outside our windows and look at what is currently happening to NASA and the EPA). I think that the actions you propose will only enable them.
I do NOT want to help them clear the jam in their weapon.
(Apology appreciated, thank you.)
That metaphor … I’m just not there. I hope we don’t get there. They’re the opposition, not the enemy.
Our different reactions to my metaphor perhaps clarifies the difference in our perspectives.
For me, they went from “opposition” to “enemy” somewhere during the prior administration. Their behavior in shutting down and threatening to shut down the government — not just once, but over and over again — were the actions of an enemy. I think we saw political terrorism, repeated over and over.
When they nominated Donald Trump, then used the FBI to crowbar him into office, they cemented their role.
In my view, we are today in the grips of a genuinely fascist regime. I think the challenge is to somehow recapture our government.
At least 3 million more than the voters who went for Trump. Bases win elections-the few swing voters that defected to Trump in the Rust Belt are already souring on him and you want to give him a lifeline? There is only one party interested in doing the hard work of passing legislation-last week should’ve provided amble proof of that. The sooner it’s out of powe the sooner the center right can reform itself as a serious opposition again.
Seriously?
Yes, seriously.
The polling is finally catching up to them since their obstructionism was premised on passing better legislation than Obama once they are in power and they are failing to do that. Our party is cohesive and finally figuring out how to oppose-something we didn’t do much of last time a Republican stole the White House. Maybe if either of these guys got in with a real democratic majority we could talk about meeting them half way. Their problem is they lose the popular vote and pretend it’s a mandate for far right policies nobody wants.
If Nelson goes along with the type of opposition you plan he’ll be out of the Senate in 2018. He’ll vote for Gorsuch.
According to reports like this Washington Post story, Mr. Nelson has already said he’s voting “no” on Mr. Gorsuch (emphasis mine):
I guess we’ll see what happens. If Mr. Nelson or Florida voters are foolish enough — and spineless enough — to be swayed by more lies from the rightwing lie machine, then I think we might all be better off by writing them off.
In my view, ALL of the evidence — going all the way back to the Bill Clinton years — shows that:
1. Naive attempts to “compromise with”, “build bridges to”, “work with”, etc. today’s GOP only enables more political terror. We should not negotiate with terrorists. Period.
2. The GOP has NO program to advance, no ideas that have a prayer of working. This is the single largest takeaway from their health-care collapse. We see the same in their stances towards immigration reform and climate change.
3. The GOP has NO moral courage whatsoever. They happily lie, cheat, and deceive without compunction, restraint, or even awareness (cf Sean Spicer, Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, etc.)
Fla Dems keep nominating whites centrists who keep losing so they might as well try progressives-gosh maybe even a candidate of color in one of the most racially diverse states in the union-for a change and see if it works. Nelson has never lost an election and he won’t now. He survived worse cycles than 2018.
is for us to be firm and knock these guys back. For the cheaters to not prosper. Visibly. For a lesson to sink in. For there to be a lesson other than, We can get away with murder.
Do that and maybe we’ll get back to the good old days of actual bipartisan rules of the game.
You’ll certainly never see it again if we don’t start standing up to these guys. Why should they stop doing things we essentialy reward them for?
The GOP *BLEW IT UP*.
It’s gone.
We play by their rules until they are utterly defeated, or we gain nothing.
And a traitor to this country does not get to appoint a stolen Supreme Court pick.
Perhaps you can anticipate my response to this.
Who thought we should just leave Stalin alone and get out of the international politics business because he was a naive pacifist. Containment worked and MAD worked precisely since our side was just as committed to using nuclear weapons as the other side. So every escalation has to be met with a counter escalation.
Unlike nuclear warfare, the worst outcome here is going to be the loss of the filibuster (good riddance!) possibly leading to the loss of the GOP majority and presidency-a great outcome. Keep playing offense. This helps the country far more than working with Trump will-even on an objective basis. We will get a much better infrastructure and health care deal under a Democrat. This isn’t Ted Kennedy walking away from Nixoncare-this is Ted Kennedy Borking Reagan.
And ask first term Obama how many Republican votes and goodwill for his policies watering down ACA got him. Thank God the Freedom Caucus nuked his Grand Bargain with Boehner and nuked the AHCA here.
Let’s try another historical comparison: When the Pope was a Borgia, what happened? What about when King John was plundering England while the rightful King was off fighting an immoral war?
As we’ve established repeatedly, you guys have lost all faith in working across the aisle. I’ve lost most of my faith, but I still believe in its necessity. Vive la difference.
The Prospect shows how to accomplish bipartisanship. It’s a two step process.
Step 1 is recognizing who wrecked this. It was exclusively the GOP. The Hastert rule emboldened conservatives and marginalized Democrats under Bush, the McConnell approach to Obama made bipartisanship all but impossible. Even as they were voting to impeach Clinton-they were still able to do business with him and pass substantial bipartisan legislation they never reached out to Obama with.
Step 2: Help the Republican Establishment and Trump marginalize the far right
Until the HFC and Tea Party is marginalized, until Ryan is marginalized, only then will the environment be conducive to bipartisanship. I am confident if Democrats take back the Congress the combination of actual oversight over Trump and Trump’s desire to get re-elected will lead to actual bipartisanship. He is far more inclined to deal than a more expliticlty partisan President like Bush, and by that point he can jettison most of the right to try and win the middle to get re-elected.
Step 3 Wait for Trump and Tuesday group to make real overtures
So far Democrats have made the value of their votes far more important than they should be in a minority. The GOP is incapable of passing substantial legislation despite holding majorities in both Houses and the White House. This cannot continue-they now have incentives to reach out to us on our terms. Just like the Soviets eventually elevated Gorbachev and agreed to arms reductions. You needed an inflexible American like Reagan rather than a gullible one like Carter to achieve that concessions. I am a liberal and totally oppose Reagans legacy-but on arms control he was a better negotiator and got better results than his predecessors. Similarly, only Nixon could go to China. So Schumer has to play hard to get, and only then will Trump negotiate with him as an equal. This has been true throughout his business career-he plays wild and crazy and eventually agrees to deals that allow him to survive while making real concessions.
We have never lost faith in working across the aisle-it is they who have lost faith. And they just lost a party line vote when they are in the majority. Hopefully this loss humbled and humiliates them enough to reach across the aisles as partners instead of bullies. Until then-you beat bullies you don’t compromise with them by letting them beat you up in one area to save another.
“You beat bullies” — no, actually, you don’t. Because violence is wrong, and that’s why you object to the bully in the first place.
My only point being, these metaphors are self-fulfilling. If this were war or violence or football, the answer would be easy. Unfortunately it’s politics.
If you like, think of it this way: they have nukes at the moment, and we don’t. Should we work with them, or oppose them? (Rhetorical question, no answer required.)
First off-we are talking about political game theory so the ‘violence’ being committed is destroying what’s left of the decorum Mitch McConnell hasn’t beaten us to destroying. You find nobility in turning the other cheek as he does that hoping the Senate of old can be restored. That’s a fine noble principle to have when your rights, your access to health care, your access to clean water, and your access to a fair shot at the American Dream isn’t under unprecedented assault.
I am strongly against bipartisanship for it’s own sake if it leads to hurting ordinary Americans like Justice Gorsuch will when he is on the bench overturning civil and voting rights protections, environmental protections, and regulations against predatory lenders. I am strongly in favor of naked partisanship in the name of fighting for what I believe in. And I am strongly in favor of bipartisanship on fair terms. When both sides come to the table as equals and negotiate and compromise a fair resolution. The Republicans have narrowly redefined bipartisanship for nearly three decades to mean when Democrats vote for their bills but not the other way around. I am always happy to accept and reward Republican support for progressive legislation-and happy to make reasonable concessions to achieve that support.
Kennedy and Hatch met halfway-Kennedy didn’t give Hatch everything he wanted just to say it was bipartisan. There is an incredibly important distinction you have consistently ignored between those two precepts. And a reality that even Hatch these days has no incentive or interest to meet us half way. We are ready to meet them as equals when they are. I strongly agree with that. But by no means do we lay down our arms unilaterally-especially when we have them on the run.
The GOP doesn’t.
We have to play by their rules, or the country suffers.
And I could restate my point, but that would be tedious. Peace.
… Donald Trump calls CNN “fake news” he is playing to someone, somewhere, who believes in, or wishes to believe in, real news. When he repeatedly calls Hillary Clinton a liar he is playing to someone who believes, or wishes to believe, that the truth matters. Donald Trump does this, in service to his own untruths, by resting on an uneasy alliance of purported, reverence for truth, blind ignorance and political gamesmanship: this unholy tripod is entirely mediated — that is to say, bound together — by naked emotionalism…
That’s the ‘rules’ by which they play. And the ultimate product of these rules is something blown up. It’s the ‘rules’ by which every fascist ever has always played and it is chapter and verse of the GOP playbook since proto-Fascist Newt Gingrich stoped crapping his diapers (1997- or so…) Eventually, it explodes under the tensions inherent. And everybody, right or left, who plays by these rules end up blowing things up.
We don’t want to blow things up. We don’t want that explosion. What we want is to cause the present thing to collapse and to manage the collapse. You see, the real, underlying, root of the problem is that the so-called Right is increasingly more frustrated and angry at the GOP leadership and their failure to deliver, but has been forbid from ‘defecting’ to the Left: Hillary Clinton was the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower and would have given them just about every sane thing for which they asked. The answer, on the part of the GOP leadership, is to demand insane things and to paint their implacability as the hinge upon which the Republic turns. The problem, when seen in this light, is remarkably petty — indeed picayune — but it’s informed by a remarkable degree of latent nativism and xenophobia and the energy needed to fan those flames… We don’t want it to explode. We want it to collapse.
Like any tripod, if you weaken one support you weaken the entire structure so our job is simply described, if not so simply, or easily, implemented: to support a reverence for truth, to inform the ignorant and to play fair. We must also refuse to engage with or engage in the naked emotionalism that binds the structure together. (Note well, that while ‘naked emotionalism’ is a different animal from passionate advocacy/opposition, it’s easy for the latter to become the former, so there’s a needle to thread there, also…) Success lies in getting more and more people to realize the impossibility, indeed the naked insanity, of the GOP and managing their return to the enfolding comfort of sanity.
I think, on the issue of “we gain nothing,” some recognition is necessary: we’re already at that point. As well, those whom it might, at first blush, appear to have ‘gained something’ have not really gained much at all. All this is to say, part of any reverence for truth and/or informing the ignorant is not to try to change or color the consequences but to face them and name them. We gain nothing. This is a truth. So it is with ‘them’ also: they have gained only a whirlwind from which they attempt to reap… and we all know how that will end..
We should do everything possible to prevent the GOP from doing bad stuff, including Gorsuch. That means delay. The White House will tinker with regulations to damage the ACA. That needs to be opposed.
Obstruction for obstruction’s stake is not necessary. Trump, in my opinion, is going down. One way or another, he’s unlikely to last past the mid-term elections, and we want to make sure to hang as much baggage on GOPers as we can to weaken them in the House and Senate. We should also delay anything destructive the GOP pushes for.
What we need now is people at town meetings calling for investigations into the Russia Connection. Those GOP clowns who were upset about town meeting protests would really be on the hot seat with questions about their support of the nation over their partisan interest. The media has finally caught up with the story, and we need pressure on Trump’s enablers.
Should we work with Trump on single-payer? WE should work on single-payer. People are warm to it. Trump won’t be of much use in the process. The GOP now knows he’s next to useless. They aren’t going to pass single-payer, no matter what he does. Increasingly, he’s going to have more negatives than positives. We don’t need to associate a failed president with a good policy.
This is a great point:
We actually have an alternative to Trumpcare-building Obamacare into single payer. We actually have an alternative on infrastructure-a new WPA funded by raising taxes on the wealthy. We actually have an alternative to belittling immigrants-common sense immigration reform. We actually have an alternative to an improvised egotistical foreign policy-the foreign policy of the last eight years that brought the world back in. So let’s propose those policies-let’s hold 50 votes on single payer. Let’s set the agenda now that the GOP doesn’t have one.
And the climate is such that movement on Medicare and Medicaid expansion could be really popular moves with Trump, his voters, and the Tuesday Group in Congress. We could cobble together a coalition on that issue and also on tax reform following Cardin-Goetz that would radically push the economic conversation from the right back to the center left. But let’s negotiate from a position of strength, not weakness as Democrats are want to do.
If he were a normal President who accepted the constitution, yes. Because he is who he is, ABSOLUTELY NOT. By the same logic, let’s just adopt China’s system. After all, they’ve had much higher job growth for several decades now. If people are even considering such a Faustian bargain, we are finished.
The only thing we should give the Fascists is a swift kick in the ass !
Fred Rich LaRiccia