Why Pete Buttigieg Isn't Going Away

Republicans have one advantage over Democrats: their base is far less diverse and is united by its racism and religious extremism - plus a dose of severe greed among a significant portion of the wealthy. Democrats in contrast have a diverse base that often agrees on little with some elements easily manipulated and played for fools by Republicans and right wing religious leaders who cherry pick bible passages to induce low information voters (especially black voters) to either (i) vote for candidates that will further the GOP's white supremacist agenda, or (ii) stay home from the polls in a funk and by default cast a vote for anti-black Republicans.  A case in point: a recent Facebook exchange where a black male said he could never vote for Buttigieg since he is gay implying he'd stay home and allow white supremacist champion Donald Trump to be re-elected if it came down to that choice.  Talk about acting against one's own best interest.  Of course, this same individual demands that gays support his civil rights. This is but one example of the divisions within the Democrat base.

Where the Democrat nomination ultimately goes remains unknown, but one thing appears clear for now: Buttigieg is not going away any time soon.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the next phase of Buttigieg's unlikely campaign.  Here are highlights:

We’ve reached an odd moment in an odd Democratic-primary race. With less than 100 days until the Iowa caucuses, former Vice President Joe Biden is struggling to hang on to his lead in the polls and is short on cash. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is making some people nervous that she’ll be Hillary Clinton and George McGovern rolled into one, and that nominating her means throwing the election to Donald Trump. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is recovering from a heart attack, and some observers believe that he has reached his ceiling of support. And while many voters keep saying they haven’t made up their minds yet, 14 other candidates are trying to convince voters and themselves there’s still a way to pull it off.

And then there’s Buttigieg. Several top Democratic officials who are not backing any candidate, as well as some operatives who are, have told me in the past two weeks that there’s a spot for him, but that the nominee can’t be him. They say the same things: He’s too young, too inexperienced, and unable to draw support from African American voters. They worry about the question that keeps coming up in focus groups and that reporters are beginning to ask: whether he’s struggling to win people over because he’s gay.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, last weekend, I asked people at a Buttigieg town hall whether they thought he was ready to do the job. “Have you ever listened to him speak? He’s got brains, he’s got class, he’s got poise,” Chuck McKinney, a retired carpenter who’d driven in from Lake Lure, North Carolina, told me.

This is the point in the 2008 race when Barack Obama began an ascent that never stopped. He broke out at the Iowa Democratic Party dinner in November 2007.

Buttigieg’s campaign has leaned into the Obama comparisons for a while. On Wednesday, his team sent an email to supporters from Larry Grisolano, a consultant who worked for Obama and has been on Buttigieg’s campaign since the summer: “Pete’s campaign this year is rekindling the same excitement I felt at this time in 2007,” he wrote.

And notice how Buttigieg delivers his big finale on the stump these days: “I know hope went out of style,” Buttigieg said in Rock Hill on Saturday. He asked the crowd: “Do you have a sense of hope to bring about change for our republic?”

He’s a young veteran and a polyglot from the Midwest talking about a record of accountable local government. He is strangely fit for this political moment, but he’s also fitting himself for it constantly.

But the core brilliance of Buttigieg’s campaign is making the carefully planned seem nonchalant, like he’s ambling when in fact he’s in the middle of a plié. Every sentence is precisely arranged, the words weighted, playing off ideas like faith and security and freedom. Operatives on other campaigns grumble that he’s a construction, a “celebrity” who wows reporters looking for the hot new thing, but it’s working.

When I asked how his whopping total of 19,506 votes between two mayoral races could actually win a presidential election, he called that “an exquisitely Washington mind-set.” When asked whether he’s the epitome of white, male privilege, he turns it back with, “When it comes to identity, I am very mindful of the privileges that go with being white and being male. I also have the experience of belonging to a category of people in America that would have been assumed to be effectively ineligible for the presidency.”

[T]here’s the latest line that he appears so eager to push, he hit it twice at the October Democratic debate and has repeated it at nearly every recent public appearance: “I want you to picture what it’s going to be like, what it’s actually going to feel like in this country, the first day the sun comes up after Donald Trump has been president,” he said on the debate stage in Ohio. “It starts out feeling like a happy thought; this particular brand of chaos and corruption will be over. But really think about where we’ll be: vulnerable, even more torn apart by politics than we are right now.”

All the more reason not to go with Buttigieg, his doubters say. . . . Aha! Buttigieg says: Now is his time. Now more than ever, in fact.

“Look, they blew everything up, which means that there is a chance to build something new and better on the rubble,” Buttigieg said. “I mean, not to over-dramatize it, but I think about areas where buildings have been destroyed in the world, and then architecture of a new kind flourishes.”

He was an intelligence officer stationed in Afghanistan; he rarely ventured outside the wire, and mostly guarded transports when he did. “My vehicle, to my knowledge, was never targeted,” Buttigieg said, already preparing to turn it into the point he’s making. “So I don’t go around acting like I was out in the Korangal Valley. I’m somebody who did my part. But I think it’s an important contrast to draw with somebody who avoided doing his part when it was his turn.”

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg has not-so-subtly presented himself as a Biden alternative. Sitting in a coffee shop in Concord, New Hampshire, in April, Buttigieg told me he didn’t think going deep on policy was a priority. He brought up an economic-development plan he wrote when first running for mayor that he said maybe a dozen people actually read. In September, he released his “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan, which has a policy paper behind it, but is basically appealing wordplay to get a message to people who will never read the whole thing, which is most people: “I’m not for eliminating private plans,” he said, “so I’m glad that we found a way in a headline to explain it.”

“He’s got workable ideas,” says Sherre Kearn, who works for the state government in Columbia, South Carolina, and had driven up to Rock Hill to hold a big Buttigieg sign last weekend. She says she voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries because of his focus on health care, but now she’s backing Buttigieg because she thinks he’s talking about practical solutions to health care.

Buttigieg has been accused mostly by Sanders and Warren supporters of tacking to the center in the past few weeks, with accusations that he came in bold when there was nothing to lose but now wants to come across as acceptable when winning is theoretically in sight.

He had $22 million on hand at the end of September, and the money keeps coming in, but he’s still a long way from first place, and always has been. And many political veterans believe that if somehow Buttigieg does make it to a two-way race with Warren, he won’t make it further than that, given his inability to attract the African American voters that would really make him the Biden alternative, given that they have been his backstop.

Buttigieg makes this next point because it’s self-serving, but it also happens to be true: Each of the four Democratic presidents since World War II (not counting the two who took over for dead men) were young and inexperienced: John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama. Candidates who get called “presidential,” Republican or Democrat, tend not to become president at all.

Trump has already made an issue of Buttigieg looking young enough to get carded, and never having done much. Buttigieg welcomes that.

“He might make it about age and experience, but fundamentally, that’s an argument about judgment and wisdom,” Buttigieg said. “And I think in a judgment and wisdom contest, this president’s on pretty shaky ground.”

He has another line he uses often, about how if there aren’t the kind of big changes he says his presidency would bring about, then the American experiment could unravel.
How close to the brink does he think we are?  “Closer than we think,” he said.

Pete Buttigieg's Impressive Rise in the Iowa Polls

An earlier post today noted my worries about Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren in a general election against Donald Trump.  The same applies to Bernie Sanders who appears a significantly weakened candidate in the wake of his heart attack. While I have not picked my favorite candidate, I am certainly paying attention to Pete Buttigieg who, as USA Today has noted is rising significantly in the polls:

Buttigieg has vaulted himself into the top tier of candidates on the back of a convincing debate performance, according to today’s Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll . . . Here’s where the race stands in Iowa: Former Vice President Joe Biden (19%) leads Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (18%), with Buttigieg capturing 13%, Sanders receiving 9%, and billionaire Tom Steyer, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and California Sen. Kamala Harris all tied at 3%. . . .

Among only debate watchers, Buttigieg topped the entire Iowa field with 19%, followed by Biden and Warren (tied at 17%), Sanders (9%), and Klobuchar (6%). Both Buttigieg (39%) and Klobuchar (28%) were seen as debate winners last week.

Yes, Buttigieg is young - so were many of the Founding Fathers at the time of the American Revolution - and gay, which means hard core Trump voters would not vote for him.  Neither would they vote for Warren, Biden or any of the other Democrat Candidates. He does, however, have the ability to attract non-aligned moderates and even some Republicans with his adult in the room approach to health care reform and foreign policy.   A column in the Washington Post looks at this aspect of Buttigieg's policy positions and impressive speaking skills.  Here are highlights:

The youngest candidate in the Democratic field [Pete Buttigieg], the one with no civilian experience above the position of mayor, is leading the debate on Syria and pushing one of the top-tier candidates to rethink a major strategic decision.

Buttigieg was on CNN and “Fox News Sunday” expounding on Syria. He told Fox News’s Chris Wallace:

When it comes to what is being done to not just the Middle East, for example, but to American credibility. The fact that right now people who put their lives on the line, trusting that the United States would have their back, and are now betrayed, the fact that U.S. troops in the field feel that their honor has been stolen from them by their commander in chief, how can you not be fired up about something like that?

It is worth underscoring that Buttigieg does not get many Brownie points in a Democratic primary for making a robust defense of U.S. leadership in the Middle East.

. . . Buttigieg has decided to be the grown-up, and incidentally, preserved his viability in the general election as sufficiently tough on national security.

Buttigieg candidly told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that he wasn’t going to play the game of promising an immediate pullout:

We know that we need to promote stability, that we need to stand by our allies and that there will be legitimate Turkish security concerns that will also be part of the equation. But right now what’s happening is the future over there is being decided by everybody but the United States. Russia, Iran, Turkey. . . . the first order of business will be to restore U.S. credibility. Not just with regard to the Middle East but globally.

And he showed restraint when offered the opening to threaten to kick Turkey out of NATO:

Well, right now what we’ve got to do is engage Turkey as an ally. You know, I served alongside Turkish troops in Afghanistan. That alliance is important. And it’s leverage for us to make sure that we use our influence to prevent bad outcomes like the one that Donald Trump greenlighted that they’re doing right now. If they don’t act like an ally in the long-run, that’s going to have consequences.

Buttigieg declined to join Warren and others who have cheered for an immediate pullout from Afghanistan. . . . . Buttigieg pointed out, a lighter footprint with counter-terrorism capacity is “exactly what we had in Syria. A matter of just a few dozen troops, special operators in just the right places, making it possible to prevent the descent into chaos we’re seeing now. So you see, what was withdrawn from Syria is exactly the sort of thing that if we had it in Afghanistan would prevent endless war of the scale that we’re seeing now.”

On Fox News, Buttigieg again pitched an alternate path to Medicare-for-all:

I think that we have a chance to build an American majority around bold action. But it is the case that we could wreck that majority through purity tests. Look, take the example of this Medicare question. I’m proposing Medicare for all who want it. It means we create a version of Medicare, everybody can get access to it, and if you get — if you want to keep your private plan, we’re okay with that. I think that’s a better policy than kicking people off of their plan.

[O]n “Meet the Press,” he pointed out that “my plan is paid for. And we have an opportunity to get everybody health care without kicking people off their private plans and without the multitrillion-dollar hole that appears to be there, unexplained, in Sen. Warren’s plan.”

If Buttigieg is trying to position himself as the younger, more verbally adept moderate in the Democratic race, pushing Warren around and defending an internationalist foreign policy might earn him a starring role. As he shows command of policy and of the debate stage, he is making the case for his viability in the primary. And he implicitly is demonstrating that his cool, deliberate style would be a huge asset against Trump in the general election. A candidate who can go on any talk show and run a “straight-talk express” kind of bus tour with the media is one confident in his ability to be his own best advocate.

If Warren does come forward with details on her Medicare-for-all plan, Buttigieg can claim victory. Then, perhaps, he can get her to explain why it is so necessary to eliminate choice for Americans (if expanded Medicare is so great, they’ll select that under the public option) and how she is going to seamlessly reconfigure our entire health-care insurance system, going from primarily private to exclusively public payment.

Buttigieg is not the only candidate advocating a responsible internationalist role in the world, nor the only one challenging Warren. He might, however, have been the most effective and might the biggest impression with primary voters.

The Importance of Re-electing AG Mark Herring in 2017

Last evening, we attended a fundraiser for Attorney General Mark Herring at the home of our friends Tim Bostic and Tony London, the lead plaintiff's in Virginia's federal court marriage equality case that brought equal marriage rights to Virginia and state's within the 4th Circuit.  I was in a bit of a fog given my hand surgery yesterday morning and the prescription pain pills I was on (Rush Limbaugh's favorite!), but attended since we were on the host committee. It was a very nice evening and underscored why it is critical that Mark Herring be re-elected next year, especially since his likely opponent is right wing Republican Bob Bell whose positions are akin to those of Ken Cuccinelli, including his off the charts homophobia and disingenuous "family values" positions.  

Before Mark Herring made his remarks to those attending, Tim Bostic made an introduction which outlined the difference that Herring has brought to the office of the Attorney General.  Here are a few highlights from Tim's notes and statements which he was kind enough to share with me:

For 20 years the Republican Party had controlled the office of the Attorney General, using the job to increasingly pursue ideological agendas that ignored the needs and rights of their constituents.  The logical extreme was found in in Ken Cuccinelli, who went to court to fight against access to affordable access to health care insurance, to deny LGBT Virginians the equal treatment they deserve, to silence a UVA scientist . . . and to shut down health clinics for women.  In 2013, Virginians had had enough. They swept in a new team and they went to work.

Just 10 days after being sworn in, Mark Herring had a chance to show Virginians a different approach to the job, and to remind anyone who had forgotten after two decades of one-party control, that the Attorney General can stand up and fight for the people he represents.  He joined the fight for marriage equality, guaranteeing that Virginia would fight all the way to the Supreme Court for the fundamental rights of its people, when many times before, Virginia politicians had stood in the way. He has fought on the side of the people of Virginia every day since.  In case after case, his actions have been upheld, and they have made a real difference in the lives of Virginians.

Tim went on to list 15 different areas in which Mark Herring has brought positive change, ranging from making college more affordable, protecting women's clinic's from closure, addressing campus sexual violence, filing a brief with 22 other attorneys general to defend the Affordable Health Care Act, addressing heroin and prescription drug abuse, defending Virginia's Chesapeake Bay clean up plan, aiding Southwest Virginia landowners in receiving millions of dollars in natural gas royalties, seeking to hold big banks accountable for gambling with state retirement funds, brokering a deal to keep Sweet Briar College open, and establishing the first ethics and gift policy for his office. 

All these positives could be undone if Mark's likely Republican opponent, Del. Bob Bell, a would be Ken Cuccinelli clone, were to be elected in 2017.  On his own website, Bell makes it clear that, like Cuccinelli, his prime concern is pushing through special rights for far right Christians, including license to discriminate laws, diverting public education fund to private interests, unrestricted gun rights, and "states rights" under the 10th Amendment - an argument used throughout Virginia's history to support slavery, the Jim Crow laws, force prayer in schools, and, of course, open discrimination against LGBT Virginians.  Here's a sampling of what Bell's agenda would likely be via his website:

Rob Bell is pro-life.  In their most recent scorecard, he received a 100% rating from the Family Foundation.  

Rob also supports the traditional definition of marriage, and voted for Virginia’s Constitutional marriage amendment. He supports  . . . religious liberty.

Rob supports the ability of parents to make educational choices for their children.  In addition to supporting tax credits for school tuitions, he strongly supports home schooling.  . . .  Rob has repeatedly patroned the “Tebow Bill” to give home schoolers better access to extracurriculars at their local public high school.

Rob also supports school choice for public school students.  In 2012, he co-patroned House Bill 1626 to create tax credits for scholarships for students to attend private schools.  

Moreover, the 10th Amendment specifically states that all powers not delegated to the federal government “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In 2010, Rob co-patroned House Bill 10, which opposed the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health care law and helped form Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s legal challenge against it. 

Rob is also a strong supporter of the Second Amendment which he believes protects right of law-abiding citizens to own firearms for hunting, target shooting, self-defense, and other reasons. Rob is a gun owner, a concealed carry permit holder, an NRA member and a longtime member of the Rivanna Rifle & Pistol Club. He is rated ‘A’ by the NRA.

Rob also supports screening for illegal drugs to receive cash welfare benefits.  He thinks it is a terrible idea to give someone cash if they are addicted to methamphetamine or crack cocaine.

To garner a 100% score with The Family Foundation - a hate group in all but formal designation - Bell voted for a "personhood" bill that, if enacted, would have banned most forms of contraception in Virginia, and supports the closure of women's clinics that are often the sole source of health care for poor women.  He is obliviously an opponent of LGBT rights of any kind and uses the euphemism of religious liberty" to support special rights that place conservative Christians above the law. Similarly, Bell wants to shift public education funds to home schoolers and allow home schoolers on public school sports teams even as they reject the very same school educationally.  Common sense gun laws are anathema to Bell, and he would emulate costly drug testing laws of other states for welfare recipients where such tests have failed to turn up any drug abuse problems on the part of recipients.  Likewise, he opposes expanding health care for working class Virginians without health insurance.

What is remarkable - actually it's not with Christofascists - is that while Bell wears his supposed religiosity on his sleeve, most of his agenda is diametrically the opposite of what the Gospel message would call one to do. 

In short, having Bell in the office of the Attorney General would be a disaster.  Between now and the 2017 elections, be assured I will address this topic more and we have already offered to host one or more fundraisers for Mark Herring at our home. 

Why I am Not Feeling the Bern

As noted last night in a post, I like some of the issues that Bernie Sanders is talking about, but I continue to have doubts on his ability to win in the general election and, even if he were to win, whether any of his proposals could ever be implemented.  On some issues, he's like Donald Trump: sound bites and slogans, but short on any substantive or detailed plans.  Yes, America's healthcare system remains badly broken and Americans continue to pay far more than in any other country in the world for one of the least effective systems.  Yes, big money in politics is a serious problem, but does Sanders offer any viable solution?  Yes, the system is rigged and the middle class have been sold down the river, often by appeals to racism and religious extremism.  But can Sanders really work a change.  Then there's foreign policy.  What does Sanders propose in detail?  A piece in Huffington Post summarizes many of my misgivings.  Here are excerpts:

I began this campaign as a Hillary fan who respected Bernie Sanders and what he had to say about the economy and U.S. politics. I'm not surprised that this message has appealed to so many people, both those I know, and those I don't, in part because it's something which has gotten less attention than it has deserved, even if there are problems with elements of it.

In my calmer moments, I think that the Sanders campaign might represent a positive shift for the discussion of certain topics within the Democratic Party and the broader populace. Listening to him over the past year, however, I began to increasingly believe that for all the positive things his campaign represents, it also represents something deeply problematic: a fetishization of not knowing.

For me, this probably began with the discussion over foreign policy. . . . .  I think there is space for multiple proposals about what we do now, and though I'm sympathetic to much of what Obama is doing and Hillary is suggesting continuing, I would have thought a liberal candidate for the presidency would have been talking about the need for increased foreign aid, or greater openness to refugees, or, well, something.

Instead, his primary comment on international affairs seems to be to reiterate and reiterate and reiterate that he had voted against the Iraq War in 2002. When forced to discuss other matters, he quickly bobbles. In the most recent debate, he seemed unsure about whether North Korea has a single or multiple dictators, and then managed to take both positions in a matter of minutes about whether the U.S. should negotiate without preconditions with other countries.

Now, Bernie Sanders is not the first candidate to not be an expert on even something as significant as foreign affairs. But what's deeply troublesome here is how he seems to have no respect for knowledge on it. It's visible in the almost-disdain he expresses for Hillary Clinton's experience on the matter. She had been Secretary of State for four years, but he has been in Congress for more than two decades. Exactly when does he think he'll have sufficient experience to speak fluently on foreign policy?

Even more disconcerting has been his apparent unwillingness to find advisers to help bridge the gap. It was only 15 years ago that Democrats mocked George Bush Jr.'s disinterest in foreign policy; he at least had the courtesy to be embarrassed by what he didn't know, and hired a staff, including professors of international relations and former Secretaries of Defense, to help. They proved to provide much terrible advice, but there was at least an effort to appear informed. Sanders hasn't done so.

But foreign policy isn't a crucial part of the Sanders campaign. Health care, though, is. Five years ago, Sanders proposed a universal health care bill that failed to get any co-sponsors. When he was reticent to provide information about what plan he was proposing now, the Clinton campaign started to criticize that bill. In response, Sanders withdrew his support of that bill, meaning it now had zero support. Shortly before the Iowa caucuses, Sanders proposed a new plan, which was written by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at U-Mass Amherst, whose research focused on the history of the labor union movement in France and the U.S. The plan would cost in the area of $14 trillion over 10 years . . . . 

When the Sanders campaign was presented with this disparity, as well as others, they quickly attacked Thorpe, and then changed their numbers to acknowledge $444 billion per year of increased costs, but also, instantaneously, magically, found the same number of savings elsewhere. This is not how somebody tries to suggest a serious effort to improve the deeply problematic health care plan in the U.S.

For efforts to promote human rights, these are the people one would expect to have the most understanding of how to do so. One of the fascinating things about this campaign has been seeing how so many of those who should know Bernie Sanders the best, and have worked the hardest on what would appear to be his issues, have been so eager to oppose him. He spent more than a decade in the House; of the 188 Democrats there now, two endorsed him, and 157 endorsed Hillary.

Sanders serves in the U.S. Senate with 45 Democratic-voting colleagues; not only have none endorsed him, but 39 have endorsed Hillary. Sanders has been a significant figure in Vermont politics for four decades. Patrick Leahy, his fellow Senator from Vermont, endorsed Hillary. The incumbent governor of Vermont, and two former Democratic governors of Vermont, endorsed Hillary.

Sanders has focused on issues relating to the labor movement; virtually every single major labor union has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Again and again, when the Sanders campaign learns of these moves, the emphasis is on their being parts of the establishment. And they are parts of an establishment. But if this establishment is the enemy, then on whose side is he?

Feel free to leave your comments.

The Case Against Bernie Sanders - and a Rebutal

The Hillary Clinton v. Bernie Sanders nomination contest is heating up as Sanders moves up in the polls against Clinton and the fall out is that opinion pieces that both make a case against Sanders and others that seek to rebut them.  Where the truth lies is likely open to debate, but it is important to try to get a handle on the competing arguments.  A piece against Sanders recently appeared in New York Magazine.  A countervailing piece appears in Commonweal that seeks to counter the New York Magazine piece.  First, here are highlights from the New York Magazine piece by Jonathan Chait:

Until very recently, nobody had any cause to regret Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Sanders is earnest and widely liked. He has tugged the terms of the political debate leftward in a way both moderates and left-wingers could appreciate.

Sanders’s rapid rise, in both early states and national polling, has made him a plausible threat to defeat Hillary Clinton. Suddenly, liberals who have used the nominating process to unilaterally vet Clinton, processing every development through its likely impact on her as the inevitable candidate, need to think anew. Do we support Sanders not just in his role as lovable Uncle Bernie, complaining about inequality, but as the actual Democratic nominee for president? My answer to that question is no.

Sanders’s core argument is that the problems of the American economy require far more drastic remedies than anything the Obama administration has done, or that Clinton proposes to build on. Clinton has put little pressure on Sanders’s fatalistic assessment, but the evidence for it is far weaker than he assumes.  

At the very least, the conclusion that Obama’s policies have failed to raise living standards for average people is premature. And the progress under Obama refutes Sanders’s corollary point, that meaningful change is impossible without a revolutionary transformation that eliminates corporate power.

Nor should his proposed remedies be considered self-evidently benign. Evidence has shown that, at low levels, raising the minimum wage does little or nothing to kill jobs. At some point, though, the government could set a minimum wage too high for employers to be willing to pay it for certain jobs.

Sanders’s worldview is not a fantasy. It is a serious critique based on ideas he has developed over many years, and it bears at least some relation to the instincts shared by all liberals. The moral urgency with which Sanders presents his ideas has helped shelter him from necessary internal criticism. Nobody on the left wants to defend Wall Street or downplay the pressure on middle- and working-class Americans. But Sanders's ideas should not be waved through as a more honest or uncorrupted version of the liberal catechism. The despairing vision he paints of contemporary America is oversimplified. 

Even those who do share Sanders’s critique of American politics and endorse his platform, though, should have serious doubts about his nomination. Sanders does bring some assets as a potential nominee — his rumpled style connotes authenticity, and his populist forays against Wall Street have appeal beyond the Democratic base. But his self-identification as a socialist poses an enormous obstacle, as Americans respond to “socialism” with overwhelming negativity. Likewise, his support for higher taxes on the middle class — while substantively sensible — also saddles him with a highly unpopular stance. 

Against these liabilities, Sanders offers the left-wing version of a hoary political fantasy: that a more pure candidate can rally the People into a righteous uprising that would unsettle the conventional laws of politics. Versions of this have circulated in both parties for years, having notably inspired the disastrous Goldwater and McGovern campaigns. The Republican Party may well fall for it again this year. 

Sanders has promised to replace Obamacare with a single-payer plan, without having any remotely plausible prospects for doing so. Many advocates of single-payer imagine that only the power of insurance companies stands in their way, but the more imposing obstacles would be reassuring suspicious voters that the change in their insurance (from private to public) would not harm them and — more difficult still — raising the taxes to pay for it. 

[H]ere is a second irony: Those areas in which a Democratic Executive branch has no power are those in which Sanders demands aggressive action, and the areas in which the Executive branch still has power now are precisely those in which Sanders has the least to say. The president retains full command of foreign affairs; can use executive authority to drive social policy change in areas like criminal justice and gender; and can, at least in theory, staff the judiciary. What the next president won’t accomplish is to increase taxes, expand social programs, or do anything to reduce inequality, given the House Republicans’ fanatically pro-inequality positions across the board.  

[I]t seems bizarre for Democrats to risk losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands zero chance of enactment even if they win. 

Against this criticisms, the piece in Commonweal offers counter arguments.  Here are excerpts:

The leadership of the Democratic Party, which never took Sanders very seriously, is finally starting to worry. So are center-left pundits. In this morning’s New York Times, Paul Krugman takes a shot at Sanders’s single-payer health-care plan, while New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait has a blog post titled “The Case against Bernie Sanders.” One gets the sense that Krugman is slightly more sympathetic than Chait to Sanders’s underlying ideology, but both argue that Sanders’s leftist platform is unrealistic in the current political environment and may even threaten the important gains made by meliorist liberals in the past eight years.  

To their credit, both Krugman and Chait try to avoid condescending to Sanders and his supporters, but there is some unavoidable condescension in their claim that Sanders is naïve in imagining single-payer health care could ever get off the ground in the United States. The title of Krugman’s column, “Health Care Realities,” suggests that supporters of a single-payer system—or what Sanders often calls Medicare for all—are, well, not quite in touch with reality. Krugman reminds readers that it was all a Democratic Congress could do to push through Obamacare, which was modeled on proposals originally advanced by Republicans. 

I think it’s still too early to say how large Sanders’s grassroots campaign may yet become. But putting that point aside, I’d like to offer an answer to Chait’s question. Obama’s passionate volunteers were drawn to his personal charisma and to the general promise of change after eight years of George W. Bush. Of course, Obama ran with a set of detailed policy proposals, but it wasn’t his proposals that created most of the excitement around his candidacy; it was his image and his rhetoric. Sanders’s only charisma is a kind of anti-charisma.  

Like Trump, Sanders is an anti-establishment candidate, but unlike Trump and a lot of right-wing populists, he does not run on his personality or promise miracles of leadership that will somehow overcome structural constraints on executive power. He is always reminding his supporters that he cannot do what needs to be done alone—no president can. It will require a new movement that motivates people who have become cynical about politics to organize and to vote. 

Chait describes Sanders’s politics as “fatalistic” and “despairing,” but this gets it exactly wrong. True, Sanders despairs of any significant progress being made before we change the way political campaigns are financed (his perseveration on this point has become a joke among the Beltway commentariat). But he offers voters the hope that, even after Citizens United, such change is still possible if enough of them care enough to vote for it. It is the other candidates who are “fatalistic” about the role of corporate money in politics, which is why, unlike Sanders, they are willing to accept huge amounts of it.  

Political scientists have a word for that: oligarchy. This is the central fact of American politics today, and it is the focus of Sanders’s campaign. His dissatisfaction with this state of affairs does not amount to fatalism or despair. At least, that is not the way most voters have understood it; they have understood it as outrage or indignation—and the challenge for the Sanders campaign is to get them to understand and embrace it as righteous indignation. 

Chait is right that, in functional terms, the most a Democratic president can hope to do in the immediate future is to serve as a bulwark against Republican lawmakers. But the presidency cannot be understood only in functional terms; it is also a bully pulpit. If the next president will not be able to change the tax code or curb Wall Street unilaterally, he or she will at least be better placed than any other politician to steer the nation’s political conversation toward subjects of real importance. That is what President Obama has done with gun control and immigration, and that is what Sanders would do with wealth and income inequality. If you believe, as many Democratic voters do, that those are the issues the country ought to be most focused on, then Sanders is your candidate. As Krugman might say, it is a question of priorities. 

Which brings me to my main point about Hillary Clinton. If, as Krugman and now Chait have argued, what we need most in the White House is a dependable bulwark against Republican mischief, then we should be voting for a candidate whose record demonstrates consistent opposition to Republican policies. That candidate is Sanders, not Clinton, who has been all over the place on many issues.  

If Sanders’s campaign is less about personality than Obama’s was, it is also true that his appeal to voters who don’t trust Clinton has something to do with character. With most issues, including the ones that ought to matter most in this election, you know where Bernie stands: it’s where he’s stood all along. He may lack polish and aplomb, especially compared with Obama, but he’s solid. And that’s exactly what you want in a bulwark.  

Both arguments have some merits.  That said, I don't know which side I fall on because my number one worry is making sure that a Democrat - or someone running as a Democrat - wins in November.  That is the most important issue before us.

Intellectual Integrity - A Missing GOP Trait

I continually bemoan the state of today's Republican Party where ignorance is embraced and celebrated and where ideological purity trumps objective reality be it in economic matters or the on going denial that climate change is a real phenomenon.   The problem is exacerbated by the growing extremism and ignorance of the party base - in good measure due to the rising of the Christofascists who are mutually exclusive of logic, reason, and intellectual curiosity - and the party primary process which forces the best candidates from campaign contests since the base only votes for know nothings and extremists be they religious extremists or white supremacists who merely don't wear KKK robes in public.  A column in the New York Times looks at the shrinking intellectual integrity in the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

The 2016 campaign should be almost entirely about issues. The parties are far apart on everything from the environment to fiscal policy to health care, and history tells us that what politicians say during a campaign is a good guide to how they will govern.

Nonetheless, many in the news media will try to make the campaign about personalities and character instead. And character isn’t totally irrelevant. . . . . But the character trait that will matter most isn’t one the press likes to focus on. In fact, it’s actively discouraged.

You see, you shouldn’t care whether a candidate is someone you’d like to have a beer with. Nor should you care about politicians’ sex lives, or even their spending habits unless they involve clear corruption. No, what you should really look for, in a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, is intellectual integrity: the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions, the willingness to admit mistakes and change course.

As Franklin Roosevelt put it in a celebrated speech, “The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

What we see instead in many public figures is, however, the behavior George Orwell described in one of his essays: “Believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.” Did I predict runaway inflation that never arrived? Well, the government is cooking the books, and besides, I never said what I said.

So what’s the state of intellectual integrity at this point in the election cycle? Pretty bad, at least on the Republican side of the field.

Jeb Bush, for example, has declared that “I’m my own man” on foreign policy, but the list of advisers circulated by his aides included the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, who predicted that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, and shows no signs of having learned from the blood bath that actually took place.

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell no important Republican figure has admitted that none of the terrible consequences that were supposed to follow health reform — mass cancellation of existing policies, soaring premiums, job destruction — has actually happened.

The point is that we’re not just talking about being wrong on specific policy questions. We’re talking about never admitting error, and never revising one’s views. Never being able to say that you were wrong is a serious character flaw even if the consequences of that refusal to admit error fall only on a few people. But moral cowardice should be outright disqualifying in anyone seeking high office.

We really, really don’t want the job of responding to that crisis dictated by someone who still can’t bring himself to admit that invading Iraq was a disaster but health reform wasn’t.

I still think this election should turn almost entirely on the issues. But if we must talk about character, let’s talk about what matters, namely intellectual integrity.

Are Today's Republicans/Conservatives Reactionaries?

Once upon a time conservatives respected education, science, and knowledge and did not daily deny objective reality if it collided with mythical religious belief.   Those were the types on conservatives I grew up with in the Republican of yesteryear.   Now, to be a Republican means joyously embracing ignorance, rejecting science, and sticking one's head in the sand in the face of measurable evidence.  What caused the change?  From my perspective, the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP.  Anything and anyone that doesn't conform to their fantasy world religious beliefs must be rejected and attacked no matter how negative the consequences.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.

Before I get into that, let me remind you of some other news that won’t matter.  First, consider the Kansas experiment. Back in 2012 Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis.

So will we see conservatives scaling back their claims about the magical efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus? Of course not. If evidence mattered, supply-side economics would have faded into obscurity decades ago. Instead, it has only strengthened its grip on the Republican Party.

[W]e have evidence that the number of Americans experiencing financial distress due to medical expenses is also dropping fast.  All this is utterly at odds with dire predictions that reform would lead to declining coverage and soaring costs. So will we see any of the people claiming that Obamacare is doomed to utter failure revising their position? You know the answer.

And the list goes on. On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America’s body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience. And no matter the issue, it’s the same chunk.
The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together, with the set of people insisting that climate change is a hoax pretty much the same as the set of people insisting that any attempt at providing universal health insurance must lead to disaster and tyranny?

Well, it strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest.

And why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure.

[W]e’re living in a political era in which facts don’t matter. This doesn’t mean that those of us who care about evidence should stop seeking it out. But we should be realistic in our expectations, and not expect even the most decisive evidence to make much difference.

Obamacare's Poll Numbers Improve In Republican Districts

Many in the GOP continue to believe that Obamacare is their silver bullet against Democrats come November 2014.  But perhaps such will not be the case - poll numbers for Obamacare are ticking upward even in Republican Districts.  True, some in the GOP base who cannot tolerate anything associated with a black president will rally to sound bites about Obamacare, but perhaps some of the more sane moderate voters will not.  Time, of course will give us the correct answer.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the improving polling for Obamacare.  Here are highlights:

Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act continue to shift in the law’s favor, even in Republican-held congressional districts, a new poll set to be released Monday by a Democratic firm will show. 

The poll, which was conducted by Democracy Corps in battleground congressional districts and shared in advance with The Huffington Post, shows 52 percent of respondents want to “implement and fix” the 2010 health care reform law versus 42 percent who want to “repeal and replace” it. Those numbers were 49 percent to 45 percent, respectively, in the firm's December poll.

The favorable trend toward Obamacare has been witnessed not just in Democratic districts but also in Republican districts.

According to the findings, 43 percent of respondents in districts held by a Republican member of Congress now say they oppose the health care law because it “goes too far.” That number was 48 percent in December.

In Republican districts that are the most likely to flip to Democratic control in the 2014 elections, the shift of opinion toward the Affordable Care Act is equally pronounced. Fifty-four percent of respondents from those districts now support implementing and fixing the law versus 40 percent who support repealing and replacing it. In December, those numbers were 48 percent and 44 percent, respectively.

Eight percent oppose the law because it does not go far enough -- a portion of those likely Democratic voters who wanted either single payer or a public option. In December, those numbers were 42 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed and 6 percent who wanted the law to go further.

All told, the polling data supports the findings of other recent studies showing public opinion has become more supportive of the law. Democracy Corps is a Democratic firm. But the numbers that it registered on Obamacare this month are across-the-board better than the numbers it registered in December, when the law’s popularity was at its nadir. Certainly, perceptions of the law have improved enough that Democrats no longer universally view it as an election loser.

Democrats Need to Run on Health Reform

The November elections are still more than six months away - an eternity in politics - and the playing field may be shifting more than some seem to realize when it comes to the Affordable Health Care Act, derisively known as Obamacare amongst those in the GOP who want to restore the Gilded Age and throw a majority of average Americans on the trash heap.  Ironically, many in the base of the GOP are too stupid to understand that folks like the Koch brothers have then targeted for the trash heap as well.  Despite the AHCA, America's healthcare system remains in crisis and, in my view, the only real solution is a national health care system that would put voracious health insurance companies out of business and force real reform in how medical care is delivered.  An editorial in the New York Times argues that instead of fleeing from the AHCA, Democrats need to campaign on it and healthcare reform.  Here are column excepts:

The Republican attack machine, fueled by millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, has Democrats so rattled about the health reform law that many don’t want to talk about it. They’re happy to run on equal pay for women, or a higher minimum wage, or immigration reform — all of which provide important contrasts with a do-nothing Republican Party — but they haven’t said much about the biggest social accomplishment of the Obama administration.

On Thursday, President Obama had a suggestion for them: How about standing up for the Affordable Care Act? Democrats, he said at a news conference, “should forcefully defend and be proud of the fact that millions of people” have been helped by the law — people who now have health insurance for the first time, or were not kicked off a policy when they got sick, or who can now leave a job without fear of being uninsured. “I don’t think we should apologize for it, and I don’t think we should be defensive about it,” he said. “I think there is a strong, good, right story to tell.”

Not only are the overall numbers strong, but a substantial portion of the sign-ups — 28 percent, so far — are between the ages of 18 and 34, a sign that healthy people are joining the system, which will help keep premiums affordable. That number should ideally be a little higher, but it is an unmistakable refutation of the predictions of failure from health care reform’s opponents.

That’s exactly the right tone to take, and the White House itself has been slow to take it, uncertain until a few weeks ago whether the law’s most basic goals would be met. Now that the law is proving to be even more successful than expected, it’s time for Democratic congressional candidates to remind voters what government can accomplish.

They can point out, as Mr. Obama did, that House Republicans have taken many votes to repeal the health law — and yet they have not voted on a single measure that would put people back to work rebuilding roads and water plants.

It’s important to move on to jobs and the economy, as Mr. Obama urged Congress to do. But first voters need to be reminded that government programs can improve life for all Americans. When one of those programs begins to do its job, its authors shouldn’t be afraid to say so.