#gop health care plan

[batboyblog]

2024 Senate Elections: You'd Better VOTE!

Yes it's election year yet again in America! but not just for President, almost as important will be the US Senate!

I'm not gonna lie this is a rough map for Democrats, we're playing a lot of defense in some pretty red states with even our best hopes for a pick up being pretty long shots. But even with narrow control of the Senate we've managed the biggest climate bill in American History a huge infrastructure bill thats bring high speed rail to America capped the price of insulin changed the law to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices bring savings to everyone, and put over 160 federal judges on the bench, 2/3rds of whom are women and/or people of color the first time white men haven't been the majority of nominees by a President. So let's keep progress going by voting for, supporting, donating, and volunteering for the following candidates in the races that will decide the US Senate this year.

Arizona

Ruben Gallego (Hold)

After frustrating Democrats by repeatedly voting against major Democratic priorities, supporting the filibuster and putting donors over voters, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2022. Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego was running to primary Sinema before she left the party and is now the likely Democratic nominee to unseat her and give Arizona the Democratic Senator it deserves. Gallego is a former Marine, combat veteran, Harvard grad, a former state representative, and since 2014 a member of Congress. Gallego is a member of the Progressive Caucus and is known for his blunt and combative style standing up to Republicans. In Congress Gallego has been a strong supporter of native rights advocating for tribes on health care and child welfare issues. Gallego is also the sponsor of a bill to bring about nation wide, free, all-day kindergarten which isn't available in many states. If elected Gallego would be Arizona's first hispanic Senator. Republicans hope that the Democratic vote will split between Sinema and Gallego allowing them to win this important seat. The Republican front runner is conspiracy theorist and Trump super fan, Kari Lake. Lake rose to national fame in 2021 for pushing conspiracy theories about Trump having won the 2020 election, as well as anti-mask and anti-vaccine Covid conspiracies. Lake was the Republican nominee for Arizona governor in 2022. During that campaign she ran on an aggressive anti-LGBT platform, saying she'd ban drag, and was against trans rights. Lake also is against Abortion in all cases. After losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Lake refused to concede, and still pushes the conspiracy theory that she's the rightful governor of Arizona. If you live in Arizona please make sure you vote, but more if you have any time between now and November, volunteer to help Gallego! and if you don't live there you can still Donate or buy a pro-choice shirt from his campaign!

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Florida

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Flip)

Florida's current Republican Senator Rick Scott is a right wing extremist pushing dangerous ideas even by the standards of the Modern GOP. During his first term as Senator Scott has pushed to defund the IRS, and the Department of Education. He's sponsored bills to punish schools that allow students to use preferred pronouns, to ban affirmative action, bans teaching critical race theory, and ban trans people from women's sports. Scott is against abortion in all cases. Most alarming Rick Scott proposed a radical plan that would "sun-set" ANY and all federal laws after 5 years, including Social Security and Medicare, Scott would place all federal programs and agencies on the chopping block every 5 years for a radical Republican minority to block their renewal and leave us without Social Security, or the EPA, to name just two examples. The likely Democratic nominee is former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Born in Ecuador, Mucarsel-Powell immigrated to the US when she was 14 and had work to help support her family. When she was elected to Congress in 2018 she became the first South American born immigrant and first person of Ecuadorian heritage to be elected to Congress. In Congress Mucarsel-Powell was a member of the Progressive caucus, she fought to expand medicare, and secured $200 million for Everglades restoration. After a narrow defeat in 2020 Mucarsel-Powell joined the gun control advocacy group Giffords to fight for gun control a personal issue for her after her father was murdered when she was 24. If you're in Florida please make sure you vote, and Volunteer to help remove on of the most extreme Senators, If you're not in Florida you can help Debbie win by donating.

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Michigan

Elissa Slotkin (hold)

Long time Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow is retiring this election, so there will be a tough fight for control of this important swing state Senate seat. The likely Democratic nominee is Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. Slotkin is a former CIA analyst, after retiring from the CIA she worked in the State and Defense departments during the Obama administration. Slotkin was first elected to Congress in 2018 winning and being re-elected in a tough swing district. In Congress she's fought for common sense gun control, supported the cap on insulin prices and Medicare drug price negotiation, she helped pass a law on drug price transparency, she championed the CHIP act to bring high tech manufacturing jobs back to America, and was a big supporter of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Slotkin is centering a pro-choice message in her campaign as well as gun control and bring down medical costs. Who the Republicans will pick isn't totally clear, it seems like it's between Former Congressman Mike Rogers and former Detroit Police chief James Craig. Craig ran for Michigan governor in 2022 before he was disqualified for fraudulent signatures on his nominating petition. Craig has listed cutting off US support to Ukraine as one of his top priorities, and endorsed Trump's 3rd run for President early in the primaries. Mike Rogers is also trying to win over Trump voters and has attacked the rights of LGBT students in schools calling it "social engineering". If you live in Michigan make sure to get out and vote, and also volunteer! And for everyone outside the state you can donate or buy some merch.

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Montana

Jon Tester (re-elect)

In most contexts Montana is a deep red state going for Trump in 2020 57% to 40%. This makes the reelection of Montana's only Democratic member of Congress and only statewide elected Democrat, Jon Tester maybe the toughest election for Democrats this year. A Senator since he was first elected in 2006 Tester has won a series of upset wins in Montana over the years. A 3rd generation farmer Tester has been as strong for small farmers and ranchers in Washington. Tester has always been a champion of accountably and transparency in government pushing ethnics and campaign finance reforms. Tester is rated one of the most effective senators and managed to pass more bills last year than any one else in Congress. He's never been afraid to stand up for the Democratic side even if it'd be an unpopular vote in Red Montana. Tester voted to impeach Trump twice, and he voted against all 3 of Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court. He supported President Obama on The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank, and has supported President Biden on the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Republicans seem likely to nominate right wing influencer and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. Sheehy promises to get drag queens out of schools and the Lord's Prayer in to the classroom. He also hopes to repeal Obamacare calling for a "total privatization" of health care and made statements against the very idea of health insurance, insisting people should pay full price at point of use. If you're a Montanan make sure to vote to re-elect a champion of the little guy, and also volunteer! if you're not please think of donating what you can, if you can only give to one campaign this cycle this one, or Ohio are the most important!

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Nevada

Jacky Rosen (re-elect)

First elected to Congress in 2016 Jacky Rosen moved up to the Senate in 2018. In her first term as a Senator Rosen has championed green energy for Nevada. Together with fellow Democratic Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Rosen has gotten millions for solar manufacturing in Nevada as well as millions to replace the state's school buses with electric, and programs to study new groundbreaking green technology. Senator Rosen has been a supporter of gun control, is in favor of banning assault weapons. She sponsored a bill, the Background Check Expansion Act, that would require background checks for all gun sales closing loopholes for on-line sales and gun shows. Rosen is pro-choice and has sponsored a bill to protect doctors from being prosecuted across state lines for providing reproductive care, and is a co-sponsor of a bill to codify Roe V. Wade into federal law. Rosen will likely face Republican celebrity and army veteran Sam Brown. Brown ran and lost a race for the Texas State House in 2014 and ran and lost for Nevada's other Senate seat in 2022. Brown stated he was in favor of getting rid of the Departments of Education, Transportation, and Energy. Brown is against Red Flag gun laws that allow police to temporarily remove fire arms from the home of someone deemed a danger to themselves or others. Brown also has refused to say if he supports a national abortion ban, but does say he's pro-life and wouldn't support any judges that weren't. If you live in Nevada make sure to get out to vote and volunteer to protect the state's green future and the right to reproductive care. If you're not in Nevada consider donating or buying some merch.

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Ohio

Sherrod Brown (re-elect)

Ohio together with Montana represents the toughest re-elect for Democrats this year. The state went for Trump twice, elected a right wing radical, JD Vaince, to the Senate in 2022 and has had a Republican governor since 2010. To complicate thing more Democrat Sherrod Brown is one of the most progressive members of the Senate, regularly scoring along side Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the most left wing in the Senate. From the time he was first elected to Congress in 1992 Brown refused to take the Congressional Health Insurance until all Americans could be covered. Brown first supported a Medicare for all bill in 2006 and has supported different efforts to expand Medicare and health coverage. He was a key supporter of the Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Brown is a strong supporter of unions and has struggled his whole career to protect unionized manufacturing jobs in Ohio. He was one of the first Senators out on the picket line during the UAW strike of 2023. Brown's hard work has help make Ohio the center of a new booming lithium battery manufacturing in America, a green manufacturing future for the state. Republicans look likely to nominate former used car dealer and father-in-law of Republican Congressman Max Miller, Bernie Moreno. Moreno's main qualification seems to be having been endorsed by Donald Trump. He lists among his priorities "End Socialism in America" and "End Wokeness and Cancel Culture". If you're in Ohio make sure to vote to re-elect a progressive giant and volunteer too! If you live out of Ohio donate, if you're looking for the race where your dollar will matter the most, this one or Montana guys.

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Pennsylvania

Bob Casey Jr. (re-elect)

First elected in 2006 Bob Casey famously beat incumbent Republican homophobe Rick Santorum by 17 points. Since first entering the Senate Casey has moved leftward on a number of issues. First elected as a pro-Gun Democrat since 2012 Casey has sponsored a number of bills to expand background checks, ban assault weapons, ban extended magazines, and well as supporting mental health funds for victims of gun violence. For a number of years Casey was called the last pro-life Democrat in the Senate, however in 2022 he came out in support of Roe V Wade and voted twice on bills that would have codified the right to an abortion into federal law. Casey voted against all 3 of Trump's Supreme Court picks and has long supported Planned Parenthood's contraception efforts with federal funds, seeing easily available birth control as key to reducing the number of abortions. In 2021 Casey published a plan he called "The Five Freedoms for America's Children" modeled after FDR's famous speech. He proposed automatically enrolling all kids in Medicaid, an expanded child tax cut, a federally supported college fund for all kids who's parents make under $100,000, expanded free school meals, more funds for head start and abuse prevention programs. Republicans are rallying behind Mitch McConnell's hand picked candidate, hedge fund CEO David McCormick. McCormick worked for the Bush administration during Bush's second term. McCormick's wife Dina Powell also worked for the George W. Bush administration and was a senior aid to Trump as well. If you're in Pennsylvania make sure to get out and vote for a solid Democrat out to solve child poverty in America and keep the Hedge Fund guy from Connecticut out, and Volunteer if you can. Remember you can donate where ever you are.

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Texas

Colin Allred (flip)

Texas is currently represented by likely the most hated man in Washington, Ted Cruz. Republicans hate him, Democrats hate him more, he has a very punchable face, he might be the zodiac killer (thats a joke and meme). From shutting down the government in 2013 to try to overturn Obamacare, to leading the charge in Congress to overturn the 2020 election on January 6th Ted Cruz is a greatest hits of the worst parts of the Republican Party of the last 10 years. When Texas lost power in the middle of a historic ice storm in 2021 Ted Cruz and family ditched the state to go on vacation in Mexico, classy. Cruz in the Biden years has cast himself as a culture warrior fighting against "woke" publishing a book "Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America" in 2023 to kick off his re-election campaign. Texas is a traditionally red state but things are starting to shift and in 2018 Cruz narrowly won re-election over Beto O'Rourke. Democrats hope with the right candidate they can turn Texas blue and beat the most hated Senator in America. Democrats think Congressman Colin Allred is the man for the job. Allred is a former NFL Linebacker for the Titans. After the NFL he went on to get his law degree from UC Berkeley, and work in the Obama administration. Allred was first elected to Congress in 2018, unseating a Republican who'd been in office since 1997 and becoming the first Democrat to represent the area in Congress since 1968. In Congress Allred has supported bills to expand voting right and protect abortion rights, as well as gun control. In the Senate he promises to address Texas' shaky power grid and make sure Texas is never left in the dark again with its leaders missing. Lets do this Texas, make blue Texas a reality if you live in Texas remember to vote and volunteer, if you're an American who hates Ted Cruz you can donate to make in unemployed.

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Wisconsin

Tammy Baldwin (re-elect)

When Tammy Baldwin first ran for Congress in 1998 she was the first openly gay person elected to the US House and the first open Lesbian to serve in Congress. In 2012 she became the first openly gay person elected to the US Senate and the first Lesbian to be a Senator, she is still the only openly gay Senator. Through out her time in office Baldwin has been a tireless voice for LGBT rights, in 2022 she helped spear head the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act to help protect gay marriage, she's also a sponsor of the Equality Act to protect all LGBT people from discrimination. Baldwin is a progressive who was a member of the House Progressive caucus, opposed the Iraq War and supported impeaching Dick Cheney. In the House she introduced bills for a single payer healthcare system in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2005. In the Senate Baldwin is regularly listed as one of the most progressive members, voting against tax cuts for the rich, supporting a bill to require companies to have workers on their boards, she sponsored a bill to create a public option in Health Care, and has supported gun control efforts. The Republican field to challenge Senator Baldwin is uncertain, but former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke dominates the polls if he decides to run. Clarke's sheriff's department is accused a number of human rights violations from his time as sheriff, including allowing a prisoner to die of dehydration after 6 days without water in the Milwaukee County Jail. Clarke is a Trump super fan who has pushed conspiracy theories about mass shootings being fake, attacked Black Lives Matter, called Planned Parenthood "Planned Genocide", and called for the mass detention without trial of Americans because he believed there were a million ISIS supporters in America. If you're in Wisconsin make sure to get out and vote for a trailblazing icon and also volunteer if you can, all Americans can donate and support Baldwin wherever they are.

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If you're an American citizen and will be 18 years old (or older) by November 5th 2024, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! make sure you're registered to VOTE please check Vote.Org to find out what you need to do, what deadlines there are and act NOW

If you're an American living outside the US, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE. Please checkout Vote From Aboard they have literally all the information you need to get registered and get your ballot wherever in the world you are, and Check out Democrats Abroad to take part in the global primary

Where ever you live in the US, there is an important life changing election happening! Get off your phone or computer and get involved, There are Events happening all around you right now Volunteer

Finally if you're a US citizen of any age any where on earth you can donate, donate to elect Biden/Harris donate to elect Democrats to the Senate, To the House, to Governorships, to local office

and the smallest thing you can do is reblog this very long post, thank you!

[qqueenofhades]

I am FULLY ONBOARD the Harris/Waltz train, tho before this i was leaning towards Mark Kelly (AZ is a swing state! He's an ASTRONAUT!) If you want or have time, no pressure, but any thoughts on what makes Waltz a better pick?

I like Mark Kelly too, and since he's married to Gabby Giffords (having run for public office after she got shot and could no longer do so) he would have been an amazing pick in terms of supporting the first female POTUS. But he is a less charismatic public speaker than Walz (for whatever that's worth, but politics is a mess of Aesthetics and Vibes that matter as much and/or more than actual facts) and more moderate/conservative. He's been a great senator and picking him would defuse some of the BORDER IMMIGRATION BLAH BLAH!!! scaremongering that Republicans love to run on, but it would also leave open the possibility of losing a special election and other dangers with the Democratic senate that we really need to minimize. So Walz is a better choice for that alone, but also:

He really has serious progressive credentials as governor, even if he was a fairly mainstream Democrat (who flipped a rural red House district in Minnesota that Democrats have not been able to win again after he left) during his 12 years in the House. This is an INCOMPLETE LIST of what he was able to do in two years with a one-seat Democratic majority in Minnesota:

A Climate Action Plan that included:

Investing in energy infrastructure

100% carbon-free electricity by 2040 goal

Transition off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy resources

Building more electric vehicle charging stations

Providing funding to help workers acquire new skills through apprenticeship programs in clean energy fields

Direct state funding for transit

Money for rail

Tax credit for e-bikes

Permitting form to fast-track clean energy projects

And that was in addition to:

Codified abortion access in Minnesota

Guaranteed paid sick time and paid family and medical leave

Funded replacing ALL LEAD PIPES IN THE STATE

Free school breakfasts and lunches for all

Made public college free

Stronger labor protections

Drivers’ Licenses for All

Voting Rights Act to reverse recent court rulings that make voting harder, including restored voting rights to convicted felons

Banning medical debt from credit bureaus

The "Taylor Swift Bill" requiring all ticket "junk fees" be shown up front

Banning most "junk fees"

No book bans

Protection for tipped workers

Banned non-competes

Legalized recreational cannabis

Gun control, including increased penalties for straw purchases of firearms, expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years

Made MN a Trans Refuge State, and required health plans to cover “medically necessary gender-affirming care.”

Pay increase for Uber and Lyft drivers

Elimination of the so-called “gay panic defense”

A ban on “doxxing” election workers

A prohibition on “swatting” elected officials

In March, during the height of the Gaza/uncommitted primary protests against Biden, Walz said that young people should be listened to and they had a right to be speaking up and the situation in Gaza was horrible and intolerable, without directly slamming Biden or getting involved in the issue in a way to draw negative headlines. Regardless of what you think about any of it, that is a very deft way to handle it and pairs well with Kamala's better responsiveness on the Gaza issue overall. That was a big part of the reason why Gen Z/younger voters were very excited about Walz despite him being an "old" (actually the same age as Kamala but he has joked that teaching high school for 20 years will do that to a guy) white guy. If half the battle in politics is making the right pick to excite your core voters and reach out to new ones, then Harris nailed it. As I have said in earlier posts, there was just too much energy with young voters FINALLY checking in when Harris became the candidate, to risk introducing a big ideological split with Shapiro.

Aside from that: the most insufferable Smart White-Bro Political Pundits (TM) are big mad about Walz, many Never Trumper Republicans thought they were entitled to a "moderate" in exchange for oh-so-generously lending us their vote against Trump and not run the risk that we might end up with someone *gasp* progressive, and the regular MAGA Republicans are hysterical, which means they're terrified. It's also incredibly hard to paint Literal Midwestern Stereotype Dad (football coach, social studies high school teacher, military veteran, etc) as THE EVIL END OF AMERICA in the way they desperately want to do, though the fact that they're trying shows that they've got literally nothing. The fact that Kamala picked Walz against the PREVAILING WISDOM!!! that she had to take Shapiro (for whatever reason that might have been) is also a good sign, because by far the most genuine and extensive enthusiasm that I have seen from Democratic voters, especially those feeling burned out or disillusioned or angry with specific policy choices of the current administration, was for Walz. Having everyone excited for the pick beforehand, effectively using the "weird" line, and rallying behind the guy, only for her to actually go for him, is inspiring. It makes people feel like they're being heard and the Democrats have decided to win by being progressive, and not just endlessly Catering To The (Imaginary) Middle as they have always been told to do (and often done). That alone is MASSIVE.

Walz is tremendously funny, personable, has Democrats from AOC to Joe Manchin praising it (again, shocking), was right out the gate supporting Kamala, has already been majorly successful on TV, was by far the most progressive-on-policy picks of the VP finalists, is incredibly, hilariously wholesome and small-town Midwestern (he's the JD Vance that they wish JD Vance was), and is already sending ActBlue gangbusters with donations again. And when you're getting this kind of response on the Cursed Bird Hellsite, just:

Just. I don't know what's happening either. But let's enjoy it, and then work hard, because we gotta fucking do this and for possibly the first time this entire year, I really think we might. Heck yeah.

[alex51324]

"The bill – the Right to Contraception Act – would enshrine into federal law a right for individuals to buy and use contraceptives, as well as for health care providers to provide them. It would apply to birth control pills, the plan B pill, condoms and other forms of contraception."

One GOP member said:

“This is a show vote. It’s not serious,” GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said. “Plus, it’s a huge overreach. It doesn’t make any exceptions for conscience. … It’s a phony vote because contraception, to my knowledge, is not illegal. It’s not unavailable.”

So...you blocked the bill because it's unnecessary, ...and you also blocked it because it doesn't include a carve-out that will let you make contraception unavailable.

That is definitely not at all what someone would do and/or say if their party was planning to restrict access to contraception if they take power in 2025!

(PS: Per that same link, they also want to repeal the prescription drug pricing agreements that Biden negotiated, including the one that caps insulin at $35.)

[liberalsarecool]

Mitt Romney calling out MAGA/Republicans.

We can't move forward until MAGA dies out. They will never atone. The fascism will just get more and more obvious.

The media owes it to America to point out the emptiness of Republican rhetoric.

No policies. No plans. No ideas. No health care. No immigration. No infrastructure. No student debt relief. No climate policy.

70% of Republicans believe a lie rather than just admit Trump lost because the lie is the glue that holds the myths and conspiracies together.

Admitting Trump lost is taking power from the GOP racist white construct.

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[beardedmrbean]

FRANKFORT – Potential mothers could claim child support during pregnancy under a new proposal before the Kentucky legislature.

House Bill 243, filed by Republican Reps. Amy Neighbors of Edmonton and Stephanie Dietz of Edgewood, would change Kentucky law to claim child support "at any time following conception."

The bill is designed to support pregnant mothers, Neighbors said.

"There are a lot of costs associated with a pregnancy and basically getting ready for baby," Neighbors said, pointing to car seats, other needed supplies and lost work time when a pregnant mother has to attend doctor appointments.

But abortion-rights advocates see the bill as part of an attempt to advance an anti-abortion agenda by laying the groundwork for fetal personhood under Kentucky law.

Bills based on the idea that a fetus is a person have been filed across the country after the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Neighbors said her decision to introduce the bill was not directly influenced by Kentucky's ban on most abortions but rather by a desire to support women during pregnancy.

The measure also would allow paternity testing prior to birth, as long as it's safe to do so, Neighbors said.

The bill was sent to the Committee on Committees on Jan. 11. Neighbors said she believes HB 243 will have widespread support from House Republicans.

Critics see bill as attempt at fetal personhood

Abortion-rights advocates told The Courier Journal the measure is an attempt to cement into law the belief that life begins at conception.

Rep. Lisa Willner, D-Louisville, said the measure would create a "slippery slope" for pregnant people.

"What the bill would do would be to grant full personhood to an embryo from the moment of conception," Willner said. "These so-called personhood laws could result in a pregnant woman facing child abuse charges and even incarceration if she seeks treatment for drug or alcohol abuse.”

“The legislature should instead focus on bolstering actual support for pregnancy, such as ensuring insurance access, covering doula and midwifery services, and expanding mental health supports," Willner said.

"This bill is an underhanded attempt to advance an anti-abortion agenda and lay the groundwork for fetal personhood in state law by allowing people to seek child support for a fetus," said Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director for the Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates.

Wieder is also concerned the bill would open the door for surveillance of pregnant people because it would require the state to verify their eligibility for child support. She agreed with Willner that the legislature should focus on health care during pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood will ask its supporters to call legislators and express their opposition, Wieder said.

"We may actually be able to stop this because Kentuckians don't want more restrictions to abortion, and this is another abortion restriction that would be codified in law," Wieder said.

But when asked when asked about the comments from abortions-rights supporters, Neighbors said, "I can’t stress enough that my goal is to simply be supportive of mothers, children, and families."

National trend

The bill is the first Kentucky measure Willner has seen that creates a potential personhood definition for a fetus, she said.

But other states and Congress have considered, and in some cases adopted, similar bills around child support.

In 2021, Utah adopted a measure that requires fathers to pay 50% of the mother's pregnancy expenses. Indiana's legislature last year expanded the list of childbirth-related expenses fathers could be held responsible for paying, though the legislature stopped short of categorizing those payments as child support.

Georgia's abortion law applies the state's child support rules to any fetus "with a detectable heartbeat."

Washington Republicans have introduced bills similar to the current proposal in Kentucky. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, in December introduced in their respective chambers the "Supporting Healthy Pregnancy Act," which would require biological fathers to pay child support for medical expenses during pregnancy.

"These bills are often introduced by folks who are pro-life or anti-abortion who believe that a fetus or unborn child is a rights-holding person," said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California-Davis. She is writing a book about the fetal personhood movement.

"The strategy behind them is to set a precedent that, you know, that life in the womb has rights essentially, which would obviously have extensions to abortion too," Ziegler said. "Essentially it would mean liberal abortion laws would be unconstitutional."

A separate Kentucky bill introduced by Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville, would add exceptions for rape, incest, maternal health, and lethal fetal anomalies to Kentucky's near-total ban on abortions. __________________

I thought this was what they wanted, people keep going after pro life people for fetal child support and now that it's on the docket they're mad for some reason.

[rapeculturerealities]

Senate GOP blocks bill to guarantee access to contraception | CNN Politics

Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to block a bill put forward by Democrats that would guarantee access to contraception nationwide, as Democrats seek to highlight the issue in the run up to November’s elections.

The bill – the Right to Contraception Act – would enshrine into federal law a right for individuals to buy and use contraceptives, as well as for health care providers to provide them. It would apply to birth control pills, the plan B pill, condoms and other forms of contraception.

[sheisraging]

If you're considering not voting or casting a pointless 3rd party vote in the upcoming US elections*, I'd urge you to read about Project 2025, which is the Republican transition plan for if they win the 2024 election (link is for the wiki page, not the actual website).

A short summary:

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants—whom Republicans characterize as part of the "deep state"—and to further the objectives of the next Republican president. It adopts a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, a widely disputed interpretation of Article II of the Constitution of the United States, which asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration.

Among the many horrifying and notable points:

Abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or terminated. Basic research would only be funded if it suits conservative principles.

Promotes the ideal that the government should "maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family."

Proposed recognition of only heterosexual men and women, the removal of protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and the elimination of provisions pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from federal legislation.

Individuals who have participated in DEI programs or any initiatives involving critical race theory might be fired.

Explicitly reject abortion as health care

Revive provisions of the Comstock Act of the 1870s that banned mail delivery of any "instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing" that could be used for an abortion.

Restrict access to contraception.

Infuse the government with elements of Christianity, and its contributors believe that "freedom is defined by God, not man."

Criminalizing pornography

Combat "affirmative discrimination" or "anti-white racism," citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807.

Recommend the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the country.

Promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such sentences.

Reform the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) so that the nuclear household structure is emphasized.

Give state governments the authority impose stricter work requirements for beneficiaries of Medicaid

Mandate that federal healthcare providers should deny gender-affirming care to transgender people

Eliminate insurance coverage of the morning-after-pill Ella (required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010).

Remove Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices.

These are just a few things and I'm sure lots of people will be like lol this will never happen but lots of people said this about overturning Roe, as well.

*FWIW - I think it is absolutely valid to be angry, discouraged, and disappointed in our current administration.

Be mad at Biden! (though I would encourage looking into some of the actually positive things his administration has achieved).

But also consider what's at stake for a huge population of this country if we wind up with a GOP win.

[bringbackgoth]

Putting here a note I posted on another pessimistic take regarding the presumed Dem Nominee:

I have been seriously floored by all the pessimism I’ve seen surrounding this extremely predictable and honestly inevitable event. Kamala is a cop, and has participated in unforgivable acts. We should always keep this in mind. With this in mind, she was one of the few Democrats in the Senate that voted against Israel, and, overall as a senator, was very progressive. At times even voting more progressively than Bernie Sanders. As a presidential candidate in 2019 - she proposed more radical federal abortion protections that went beyond Roe v Wade, limiting state abortion laws. As a presidential candidate, she proposed a $10 trillion climate plan. As a senator, she was an original co-sponsor of the non-binding resolution defining the Green New Deal aimed at transitioning the U.S. to 100 percent clean energy within a decade while providing people with job guarantees and “high-quality health care.”(backed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). She also said in 2019 that there was “no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,”. In 2020 Harris said she was “prepared to get rid of the filibuster” (which Biden long opposed) to pass it in the face of GOP opposition to climate action. Harris was an early voice inside the administration advocating for forgiving student debt, even before Biden. Harris��� own plan from her 2019 presidential campaign, which would have offered forgiveness for Pell grant recipients who start businesses, drew criticism from progressives who called it confusing and less ambitious than proposals from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). More recently, Harris was the face of the Biden administration’s decision in 2022 to wipe out all debt owed by hundreds of thousands of students who attended Corinthian Colleges, a chain of for-profit schools that Harris prosecuted as California attorney general. She supports free colleges(including fees) for ALL Americans attending 2-year colleges(and 4 year colleges for middle class students which I'm weirded out by but I'm not going to oppose any 'free college' narratives)

There are a few more things to add, I got all of this from an article on Politco about how the Harris administration might differ from Biden and I encourage you to look into it and check the sources or do your own diligence.

This article is only comparing Harris to Biden which I think is a huge failure and I plan to compare these same points to the Trump administration to really get an idea on what we might be going up against.

Remember that in the USA, in the Presidential Election, we might not be voting for the candidate that conforms perfectly with our own ideology... We are voting for the candidate that we believe we have the best chance of influencing, the candidate that might actually listen to what the American Populace is screaming at them.

That wasn't Joe Biden, clearly, and send a thank you to all of the dems in the senate in congress that pressured him out. Kamala, however, is much more likely to listen to the country, especially when it comes to Netanyahu. She condemned Israel as early as December.

Trump will fast-track the genocide in Gaza. His sons have already spoken out about how ripe Gaza is for premium real-estate.

VOTE

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Joe Biden will sign legislation protecting access to abortion care into law if Democrats win control of Congress in midterm elections this fall.

In remarks to a Democratic National Committee event on 18 October, the President announced plans to sign a bill to codify Roe v. Wade protections on the 50th anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision – what he intends to be his first act of 2023.

In June, the nation’s high court struck down precedents established by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion care.

Following the latest ruling, more than a dozen states have outlawed most abortions or severely restricted access to care, leading to the closures of dozens of clinics. Patients and providers across the US have warned of devastating consequences to losing access to legal abortion, while Democratic officials have made abortion rights central to their midterm campaigns as Republicans mull national abortion restrictions.

“If Republicans get their way with a national ban, it won’t matter where you live in America,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “The only sure way to stop these extremist laws that have put in jeopardy women’s health and rights is for Congress to pass a law.”

Democrats would need to pick up several seats in the currently evenly split US Senate for abortion protections to prevail.

Mr. Biden also said he will veto any anti-abortion legislation passed by a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives passed the Women’s Health Protection Act earlier this year, though Senate Republicans have repeatedly obstructed its introduction in that chamber. That bill would codify the right to abortion care as affirmed by Roe v. Wade.

House Democrats were only joined by three Republicans to pass the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act, which would protect the right of abortion patients who live in states that have outlawed or severely restricted care to travel to other states without risking prosecution or legal action in their home states.

The bill also would protect providers and others who help patients travelling out of state for their care.

Legislation would also shield interstate shipments of US Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs used for medication abortion, the most common form of abortion care, accounting for more than half of all abortions in the US.

In a briefing with reporters on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Republican-led abortion restrictions “disturbing” and “very dangerous.”

“It’s backwards, again, it’s dangerous and it’s severe, in stark contrast to the President and the commitment that he has to leave these decisions between a woman and her doctor,” she said.

This fall, voters in several states will determine whether their state constitutions include explicit protections for abortion care, while elections for control of state legislatures, governors’ offices and secretaries of state will also determine the fates of abortion access across the US.

In his remarks on Tuesday, President Biden pointed to Kansas voters shooting down a recent anti-abortion ballot measure in that state, signalling the electoral consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in midterm elections.

“One of the most extraordinary parts of [the Dobbs decision] was when the majority wrote, ‘women are not without electoral or political power.’ Let me tell you something – the Court and extreme Republicans who have spent decades trying to overturn Roe are about to find out,” he said.

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

March 20, 2024

"Trump has tried to walk back his support for Social Security and Medicare cuts," said the head of Social Security Works. "This budget is one of many reasons why no one should believe him."

Defenders of Social Security and Medicare on Wednesday swiftly criticized the biggest caucus of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives for putting out a budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 that takes aim at the crucial programs.

The 180-page "Fiscal Sanity to Save America" plan from the Republican Study Committee (RSC) follows the release of proposals from Democratic President Joe Biden and U.S. House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas)—who is leading the fight to create a fiscal commission for the programs that critics call a "death panel" designed to force through cuts.

The RSC document features full sections on "Saving Medicare" and "Preventing Biden's Cuts to Social Security," which both push back on the president's recent comments calling out Republican attacks on the programs that serve seniors.

The caucus plan promotes premium support for Medicare Advantage plans administered by private health insurance providers as well as changes to payments made to teaching hospitals. For Social Security, the proposal calls for tying retirement age to rising life expectancy and cutting benefits for younger workers over certain income levels, including phasing out auxiliary benefits.

The document also claims that the caucus budget "would promote trust fund solvency by increasing payroll tax revenues through pro-growth tax reform, pro-growth energy policy that lifts wages, work requirements that move Americans from welfare to work, and regulatory reforms that increase economic growth."

In a lengthy Wednesday statement blasting the RSC budget, Social Security Works president Nancy Altman pointed out that last week, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in the November election, "toldCNBC that 'there's a lot you can do' to cut Social Security."

"Everyone who cares about the future of these vital earned benefits should vote accordingly in November."

"Now, congressional Republicans are confirming the party's support for cuts—to the tune of $1.5 trillion. They are also laying out some of those cuts," Altman said. "This budget would raise the retirement age, in line with prominent Republican influencer Ben Shapiro's recent comments that 'retirement itself is a stupid idea.' It would make annual cost-of-living increases stingier, so that benefits erode over time. It would slash middle-class benefits."

"Perhaps most insultingly, given the Republicans' claim to be the party of 'family values,' this budget would eliminate Social Security spousal benefits, as well as children's benefits, for middle-class families. That would punish women who take time out of the workforce to care for children and other loved ones," she continued. "This coming from a party that wants to take away women's reproductive rights!"

The caucus, chaired by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), included 285 bills and initiatives from 192 members in its budget plan—among them are various proposals threatening abortion care, birth control, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) nationwide.

"The RSC budget would also take away Medicare's new power to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs, putting more money into the pockets of the GOP's Big Pharma donors," Altman warned. "And it accelerates the privatization of Medicare, handing it over to private insurance companies who have a long history of ripping off the government and delaying and denying care to those who need it."

"In recent days, Trump has tried to walk back his support for Social Security and Medicare cuts," she noted. "This budget is one of many reasons why no one should believe him. The Republican Party is the party of cutting Social Security and Medicare, while giving tax handouts to billionaires."

"The Democratic Party is the party of expanding Social Security and Medicare, paid for by requiring the ultrawealthy to contribute their fair share," Altman added. "Everyone who cares about the future of these vital earned benefits should vote accordingly in November."

Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler also targeted the Republican presidential candidate while slamming the RSC plan, saying that "Donald Trump's MAGA allies in Congress made it clear today: A vote for Trump is a vote to make the MAGA 2025 agenda of cutting Social Security, ripping away access to IVF, and banning abortion nationwide a hellish reality."

"While Trump and his allies push forward their extreme agenda, the American people are watching," Tyler added, suggesting that the RSC proposal will help motivate voters to give Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris four more years in the White House.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Donald Trump’s vile lie about immigrants eating pets in Ohio may be the most headline-grabbing (and meme-generating) statement from Tuesday night’s presidential debate. But it wasn’t the most shocking. Eight years after he campaigned on a promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, Trump was questioned about his plan to replace the legislation that now provides crucial health care to a record 50 million Americans—and Trump admitted that he still has no plan. He’s never had a plan. He has only the “concepts of a plan.”

What Trump means by “concepts” isn’t clear. What is clear is that Trump has been eager to put the lives and health of millions of Americans at risk to satisfy his long-simmering hatred for Barack Obama, who shepherded the 2010 act known as Obamacare in an effort to provide affordable health care to all Americans .  During a closely watched presidential debate, Trump admitted that the issue he has run on for three straight elections is a mere talking point backed by nothing.  “We are working on things,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it. We’re going to replace it.” Asked about these statements on Wednesday morning, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN that Trump would produce a health care plan “in the not too distant future.”  “I don’t have a date for you this morning,” Leavitt said, “but I’ll definitely get back to you with one as soon as I can.”  Leavitt tossed in some claims that Trump’s plan would be based on the “free market.” Which is strange for her to say, because Trump doesn’t have a plan. 

Trump’s embarrassing admission doesn’t just show a yawning gap in his policies: It underscores that Trump has no actual plans. He’s simply been lying since 2015, when he sailed down a golden escalator on a wave of racism and hate to announce he was running for president.  In 2016, replacing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t just one item on Trump’s to-do list—it was the core of his campaign. [...] Trump’s obsessive attacks on Obamacare and his open admission that he has never developed an alternative are now an absolute negative for his campaign and for the GOP in general. As Stat notes, it’s creating uncertainty for Republicans—who are left with Trump’s “concepts” as their only plan—and for a health care industry that doesn’t have a clue what might be coming its way. Still, Trump remains willing to rip away the health care of 50 million Americans with no replacement to offer—a level of vindictive recklessness that's hard to imagine.

Don The Con has teased people repeatedly of a plan to replace Obamacare, but recently admitted that he has no replacement plan on the debate stage Tuesday.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

In defense of Deliverism

There are many ways to slice up the coalition that is the Democratic Party, but one important axis are the self-styled adults-in-the-room, who declare themselves to be realists, and the party's left wing, who are dismissed as idealists who don't understand politics: neither how to win elections nor how to wield power.

The "realists" are the ones telling us that we can't have nice things. They say that if the Dems promise bold action - protecting abortion, controlling assault weapons, funding infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, providing health care - they will lose elections. When Dems do win elections, they insist that none of these things are possible: the Supreme Court will strike them down, or the GOP will filibuster them, or the business lobby will subvert them.

For these realists, every negotiation is a grand bargain in which all the grownups meet in smoke-filled rooms where they niggle and cajole and flatter their way into tiny, incremental policy changes, "signature achievements" that are so modest that the enemy can't possibly weaponize them as the deeds of radical socialists who will bring the country to ruin.

To do otherwise, the realists say, is to court catastrophe. Wielding power will destroy the "comity" that makes the legislature effective. It will "delegitimize" the institutions whose trustworthiness is key to enacting sound policy. When they go low, we must go high - not out of a sense of decorum, but to preserve the republic itself.

This kind of politics - the "triangulation" politics beloved of the consultant class - took over the Democratic Party in the Bill Clinton years (see also: UK Labour under Tony Blair). But its foremost practitioner - the Triangulation GOAT - was Barack Obama.

Obama's inside/outside game was indeed remarkable. He assembled and steered a massive, grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign that leveraged his skills as a once-in-a-generation orator to inspire huge numbers of historical nonvoters to show up and cast their ballot (recall that nearly every US election is won by "none of the above," so GOTV is a winning strategy, if you can pull it off).

Then, after the election, he switched off that grassroots.

Literally.

At the time, Obama's grassroots was the most successful netroots in history. Talented coders and digital strategists figured out how to leverage the internet to identify, mobilize and coordinate volunteers across the country. And while netroots activists did their work across the whole internet, their home base was a server the Obama campaign controlled. Once Obama won, they switched that server off.

You see, the rabble is useful when you're out there, trying to turn voters out to the polls. But if you plan to spend your term in office playing eleven dimensional chess, you don't want the mob jostling your elbow and shouting in your ear.

If FDR's (possibly apocryphal) motto was "I want to do it, now make me do it"; Obama's was "I want to do it, now go away." Rather than surrounding himself with the great unwashed, Obama created a cabinet of technocrats, grownups from the upper ranks of industry and the consultant class.

Think of Tim Geithner, Obama's Treasury Secretary, who counseled that the banks should be bailed out with no strings attached, not even a requirement that they halt the seizure and liquidation of swathes of Americans' family homes. When Geithner told Obama he had to "foam the runway" for the crashing banks with the roofs over everyday Americans' heads, there were no grassroots organizers foaming at the mouth in outrage. Thus did Obama end the Great Financial Crisis - by creating the Great Foreclosure Crisis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

But Obama's signature achievement wasn't his economic policy - it was his healthcare policy. The Affordable Care Act was a carefully triangulated compromise, one that guaranteed a massive flow of public cash to America's wildly profitable health insurance monopoly and steered clear of any socialist whiff that Americans would get their care from the government.

The ACA was an technocrat's iron-clad dream policy. It would work! After all, it "aligned the incentives" of healthcare investors and "harnessed markets" to drive efficiency. No one could accuse this policy - which was copypasted from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's RomneyCare - of being "socialist." It was invented by a Bain Capital consultant!

Sure, the left would carp about Medicare For All and whine about the unjust enrichment of insurance barons. And sure, the right would try to convince "low information voter" lumpenproles that the individual mandate was an imposition on their Freedumb (TM), but in the end, more of us would get covered, prices would come down, and America would flourish.

That's not how it worked out. Prior to ACA's passage, 85% of Americans had health insurance. Today, it's 90%. That's not nothing! 5% of the US is more than 16m people. But what about the 85% - 282m people - who were insured before the ACA? Their insurance costs have doubled - from an average of $15,609 for a family of four in 2009 to $30,260 today. Obama promised that ACA would lower the average family's insurance bill by $2,500/year - but instead, insurance costs increased by some $15,000.

ACA wasn't just about cost, though: it was supposed to end discrimination, by forcing insurers to take on customers without regard to their "pre-existing conditions." On this score, too, Obamacare has failed: thanks to the ACA's tolerance for high-deductible plans, the number of Americans enrolled in plans that force them to pay for their chronic care out of pocket has skyrocketed from 7% to 32%. Yes, your insurer can't discriminate against you for having diabetes, but they can make you pay an extra $2,000 in deductibles every year before covering any of your diabetes care.

Now, maybe business-as-usual would have been even worse. Perhaps not passing the ACA would have left Americans poorer and sicker. But we're not comparing ACA with doing nothing - we're comparing ACA with more muscular, direct programs, like M4A. What if Obama had enlisted his grassroots, summoning up a left-wing answer to the Tea Party that turned the GOP into the party of no (including no compromises)? What if he'd jettisoned comity, appointed new judges, sent every executive order the Supreme Court rejected back to the court to be struck down again?

What if he'd governed like Lincoln, or FDR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

There's a name for this kind of politics: it's called deliverism:

https://prospect.org/politics/case-for-deliverism/

Deliverism is the idea that if you promise things to the voters, they will vote for you. It's the idea that if you deliver things to the electorate, that they will re-elect you.

Deliverism is a subject of hot debate in the Democratic Party, because Biden is an empty vessel that gets filled by different party factions, which means that his policy is incoherent, but includes some of the muscular, get-stuff-done politics of the Dems' Warren-Sanders wing, but that agenda is often undermined by the "responsible grownup" do-nothing Schumer wing.

The responsible grownups say that deliverism is dead, because voters mostly respond to hot-button cultural issues, while material improvements in their lives barely move the needle:

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/the-death-of-deliverism/

In support of this proposition, deliverism's critics point to Obamacare, lauding it as a policy that made Americans better off, but still failed to win enough support for the Dems to defeat Trump at the end of Obama's second term.

In their rebuttal in The American Prospect, David Dayen and Matt Stoller point out that for most Americans, Obamacare didn't produce any improvement to their health care. The ACA made their care far more expensive, and the ensuing concentration across the sector (mergers between insurers, and between insurers and pharmacy benefit managers and pharmacies) made their care worse, too:

https://prospect.org/politics/2023-06-27-moving-past-neoliberalism-policy-project/

The rise in health care costs is no mystery: monopolies have taken over healthcare. In particular, healthcare is now the domain of private equity rollups, where a fund buys and merges dozens or hundreds of small businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/18/wages-for-housework/#low-wage-workers-vs-poor-consumers

Every layer of the healthcare stack is has grown steadily more concentrated since the Obama years: "Hospitals, doctor’s practices, health insurance, pharmaceuticals, ambulances, nursing homes, rehab facilities." As Stoller and Dayen put it:

> Every part of our health care world is increasingly controlled by greedy bankers who kill people for money.

The same corporate concentration has eroded wages, meaning that workers are paying for higher healthcare cost out of smaller paychecks.

Stoller and Dayen argue that the polls show that politicians who make material improvement to voters' lives do win popularity. Take the Child Tax Credit, which lifted more American children out of poverty than any initiative in history. The majority of voters who received the credit favored the Democrats. After Joe Manchin killed the credit, that support flipped, and that cohort now supports the GOP by a 15% margin.

Sure, Biden couldn't order Manchin to support the Child Tax Credit. But he could have gone to WV and campaigned for it with Manchin's base. He could have loaded the bill with pork for WV that was linked to the credit, and dared Manchin to vote against it. He could have "fought dirty" (which is what the grownups call "fighting to win").

The grownups say that if Biden had done that, he might have alienated Manchin and lost future votes, or caused Manchin to run as a Republican in his next election - but that presumes that Manchin won't switch sides anyway, and it presumes that failing to deliver the Child Tax Credit wouldn't also jeopardize the Dems' legislative majority.

The grownups in the Democratic party say we can't win by campaigning on economic issues like monopoly, nor on pocketbook issues like M4A. But when Biden slashed the cost of insulin, his approval numbers shot up.

The grownups' claim that they should steer Democratic electoral strategy is grounded in the idea that they can win elections, and without electoral victories, the Dems can't do anything. The grownups' claim that they should steer Democratic governing strategy is that they can win policy victories, and that these will get the Dems re-elected.

But neither of these claims hold water. Far from being pie-in-the-sky idealists with no theory of change, the party's left is incredibly good at getting stuff done. Take the antitrust enforcers Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, as well as the recently departed Tim Wu. They aren't mere idealists - they're brilliant tacticians and proceduralists who have figured out how to use their existing authority to do more than decades of their predecessors combined:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

By contrast, the grownups in the party - people like Pete Buttigieg - have notably, repeatedly failed to master the procedural technicalities needed to exercise comparable authority. You can't be a technocrat unless you understand the techniques:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

As for electoral strategy, the consultant class puts all its focus into eking out these incredibly marginal wins - the name of the game is to guarantee a 50.1% win and then move on to the next fight, which ensures that governing will be impossible. Meanwhile, union organizers like Jane McAlevey seek out 97% majorities for strike votes, in the teeth of voter suppression, gerrymandering, dark money and disinformation campaigns that are far worse than anything we see in a general election. And yet it's the party's labor wing that is smeared as unserious about electoral victories:

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

It's true that the right has been scoring electoral wins with appeals to ideology and identity rather than by promising concrete, material improvements for their supporters' lives. You can win elections that way - but only by demonizing half the country as the enemy and then promising to make their lives miserable.

That doesn't invalidate deliverism as a strategy for winning elections. People may not have the time or interest to follow politics in detail. They may not understand how the ACA's internal technical workings are structured. The ACA has a lot of deficits - for example, it doesn't allow people to discover which insurance companies deny the most claims:

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-often-do-health-insurers-deny-patients-claims

But even if that data were out there, there's only so much attention people can or want to pay to their insurance policies. People want health care that works: that takes care of their illnesses and injuries, without bankrupting them. Something like the VA (at its best). Or Medicare (at its best).

Improving peoples' lives isn't merely good governance - it's also good politics. Playing hardball is hard and can be unpleasant, sure, but most of the risk from taking big swings while in office is that the voters won't stand with you and give you the political capital to score big wins.

"I want to do it, now go away" guarantees that there will be no polity at your side, giving you political capital. The politics of grand bargains only produces unimpressive, incremental change.

For all the failings of the GOP's radical wing (and there are many such failings), there is this one virtue: they get stuff done. The GOP has taken massive swings - seizing the courts, dismantling the administrative states, stacking elections, and siphoning off trillions for its donors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

The Democrats don't need to copy the GOP's abandonment of material policy for ideological hardlines. Indeed, it shouldn't: when they go low (culture war bullshit), we go high (delivering real benefit to voters). But the Democrats' left wing could sure stand to learn a trick or two from the GOP's right - namely, how to turn "I want to do it, now go away" into "I want to do it, now make me do it."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

The Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop (I’m a grad, instructor and board member) is having its fundraiser auction to help defray tuition. I’ve donated a “Tuckerization” — the right to name a character in a future novel:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/clarion-sf-fantasy-writers-workshop-23-campaign/#/

[Image ID: An old fashioned tickertape parade. In an open-top convertible, surrounded by security, is a kicking Democratic Party donkey colored red, white and blue.]

[moontyger]

Back in January, I wrote about how Republicans wanted women with life-threatening pregnancies to be forced into c-sections instead of having quicker, safer—and medically standard—abortions. That’s right: they wanted to force women whose lives were already endangered to have major abdominal surgery rather than a ten minute procedure. At the time, I got quite a few messages from folks telling me there was no way this was going to happen—that doctors would never do it.

Well, a new report out of Louisiana shows that that’s exactly what’s happening. Usually I like to be right. Not this time.

Yesterday, Lift Louisiana published a report showing the absolutely nauseating impact the state’s ban is having on maternal health and pregnancy care. It outlines women being denied miscarriage treatment and care for ectopic pregnancies, delays in prenatal care, women being forced into major abdominal surgeries like c-sections, and the way that the state’s ban is nullifying the EMTALA—federal law requiring life-saving and stabilizing care, even if it means providing an abortion.

As you can imagine, the people this is impacting most are those from marginalized communities, and Black women in particular.

All of it is a nightmare, every bit of care denied. But it was the forced c-sections that took my breath away. The report details one case, for example, where a woman’s water broke 20 weeks into her pregnancy—far too early for a fetus to survive. In order to “preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion,” the doctor performed a c-section.

As NPR notes, this patient was not given a choice. She was forced into the surgery. From a Louisiana emergency medicine physician:

“What that means is now this person has had a c-section, right? And that means that she’s at higher risk for any future pregnancies. She can no longer deliver vaginally ... [T]he appropriate thing to do, again would be a D&E…without subjecting the patient to this unnecessary abdominal surgery. But my colleague didn’t feel like she could do that while remaining in compliance with the law or appearing to remain in compliance with the law.”

[mariacallous]

Ahead of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, a liberal Gen-Z-led group has purchased a handful of domain names related to the top Republican primary candidates in an effort to extinguish support from young voters.

“Republicans are not investing in outreach to young people, and we know why,” Jessica Siles, deputy press secretary for Voters of Tomorrow, said in a statement to WIRED on Friday. “Their regressive, radical stances on abortion rights, guns, climate change, and other top issues are overwhelmingly unpopular with Gen Z. Since Trump and Haley won’t accurately inform young people of their views, we will.”

Voters for Tomorrow has bought up new domain names—GenZforTrump.org and GenZforHaley.org—in an effort to sway young voters in battleground states from backing Republicans in the 2024 election. The websites will redirect to another site, GenZvsFarRight.org, which the group says will outline how “out-of-touch” the GOP’s platform is with the needs of young voters. On the redirected site, the group outlines Trump and Haley’s records on the environment, LGBTQ+ rights, and gun safety, among other issues, without explicitly encouraging people to vote for Biden.

To reach them, the group is launching a digital ad campaign across Instagram and Snapchat, hoping to reach at least half a million users in battleground states where they say the youth vote could make a difference for Democrats. “Gen Z will determine our next president,” the ads say, as they ask users to visit the websites for more information on Trump and Haley. Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, and Florida are some of the states where these ads will run, and the group plans to spend as much as it takes to reach at least half a million voters, Jack Lobel, Voters of Tomorrow's 19-year-old national press secretary, told WIRED on Friday.

For nearly a decade, domain trolling, or the act of buying up URLs related to an opposing candidate and redirecting them to unfavorable information, has become a popular digital media tactic for campaigns. In 2015, Senator Ted Cruz and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina had domains related to their GOP presidential campaigns swiped up by trolls before they were able to grab them. CarlyFiorina.org, at one point, displayed 30,000 sad-faced emojis to represent the workers she laid off at HP. In 2020, the Biden campaign bought KeepAmericaGreat.com, the Trump campaign’s reelection slogan, attacking Trump’s handling of the pandemic.

“P.S., If the GOP candidates had invested in young voter outreach efforts like we are, maybe we wouldn’t have acquired these website domains in the first place,” stated Voters of Tomorrow’s press release.

It’s impossible to know whether these domain trolls have the power to sway voter sentiment. But Voters of Tomorrow thinks they do. “Trump is the greatest threat to our generation, and we’re going to continue to expand that belief in our generation throughout this project because the stakes of the 2024 election are unprecedented,” Lobel said.

In 2020, young people came out to vote in record numbers and arguably helped turn the election in Biden’s favor. But a recent poll from the Harvard Kennedy School has shown that the same demographic appears less likely to vote in 2024 than in the prior presidential election, declining from 57 percent to 49 percent. The poll reported that a plurality of these voters distrust Biden and Trump to act on critical issues like climate change, gun violence, and health care, which could dampen their desire to vote in this year’s election. Those same voters said Trump was the better choice to address the current crisis in Gaza over Biden by 5 percentage points.

These numbers could spell trouble for Biden and the Democrats come November. Around 41 million Gen-Z voters will be eligible to vote for the first time in 2024, according to Tufts University. Of those voters, more than 8 million of them will be first-time voters, and could play an outsize role in electing the next president.

“Young voters have historically been left out of the political process, and that changed with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Young voters realized their power. And since then, we’ve been showing up in droves to shape elections,” Lobel told WIRED. “Going into 2024, we have to build on that power.”