There is comcern about implementation of the Affordable Care Act in both parties, report Scott Bauer and Thomas Beaumont at the Associated Press. But some Republican governors, Like Indiana’s Terry Branstad, are beginning to get real. As Maryland’s Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley is quoted it in the article, “Nothing could be more complicated than doing what we were doing before, which was to throw away more and more money on more expensive care for worse results.”
In his WaPo column, “Religion challenges left and right,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. argues that Dems may be missing a significant opportunity by not paying attention to the growing number of religious people who are embracing progressive values, as well as the progressive economics of the new pope.
At the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Craig Gilbert discusses the political implications of the dramatic increase in one-party states — to 37 from 19 a decade ago — in context of the gridlock on congress. “Half the states now have veto-proof legislative super-majorities for one side,” say the authors. “This is a striking new landscape in state politics. It stands in sharp contrast to a national government often paralyzed by partisan discord. And it coincides with a burst of ambitious, partisan policy-making in which red and blue states are governing in increasingly divergent and often controversial ways.” If the gridlock continues unabated at the federal level, expect to see an increasing percentage of the resources of the two political parties directed toward state races. The GOP has one-party control of 23 states, compared to 14 for Dems.
Share this story about senior citizens getting busted for singing in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s police state with any senior voters you know. Do check out the two videos with the story.
The Atlanta Constitution’s Jay Bookman has a few choice words about the integrity of House majority Leader Eric Cantor, who is trying to convince people that the Affordable Care Act will compromise their medical privacy by giving confidential information to the I.R.S.: “It is also a bald-faced, blatant lie, a lie that exposes the moral bankruptcy of the case that Cantor and others are attempting to make. There is no conceivable means under federal law for the IRS to access “the American people’s protected health care information,” and he knows it. His intent is to foster paranoia and distrust in the government, and if he can’t make that argument by telling the truth, he is perfectly willing to make it by telling falsehoods.”
Patricia Borns’s “Florida health care reform informers organize” at The Bradenton Herald provides an inkling of the kind of constructive activism that is needed at the state level to get consumers educated about taking advantage of Obamacare:”Seventy-eight percent of Americans have no idea there’s a health marketplace,” Enroll America State Director Nick Duran said. Team members, many hired within the past two weeks, must be ready to recruit and train volunteers, bring local partner organizations on board, and start knocking on doors by the statewide “weekend of action” event starting July 27…Florida Blue plans more than 3,000 seminars to demystify the new health reform guidelines…Nationally, Enroll America is funded by Kaiser Permanente, Families USA and other top donors to President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.”
Michael Tomasky gives former Obama re-election campaign manager Jim Messina a richly-deserved skewering for selling out to Britain’s tories.
Sam Hananel’s “Reinventing unions: Labor leaders get creative to halt decline in membership” at the Daytona beach News-Journal provides an excellent update on the new strategies being deployed in re-invigorate the labor movement. Notes Hananel: “Unions are helping non-union fast food workers around the country hold strikes to protest low wages and poor working conditions. They are trying to organize home day care workers, university graduate students and even newly legalized marijuana dealers. Members of a “shadow union” at Wal-Mart hold regular protests at the giant retailer, which long has been resistant to organizing…The actions in New York, Chicago, Detroit and other cities are being coordinated by local worker centers, nonprofit organizations made up of unions, clergy and other advocacy groups. While not technically labor groups, they receive generous financial support and training staff from the Service Employees International Union and other unions.”
It’s official. Chris Cillizza points out in this video that this is the least productive House of Reps, ever, or at least since they started counting bills passed. Under Boehner’s leadership only 22 bills have passed the House during this session.
Jonathan Bernstein talks sense at Salon.com in his post ” All the pundits are wrong: Conventional wisdom says the GOP has a grip on the House, but can’t win the White House. Here’s why both are wrong.” Bernstein explains: “…It’s not far-fetched to imagine a relatively good year for Democrats in 2014, breaking even or losing a handful of seats, followed by a Democratic presidential landslide in 2016. Or, even more plausibly: Republicans reclaim the White House in 2016, but prove as unable to govern as they were the last time they tried, yielding a Democratic landslide in 2018. Indeed, it’s not hard at all to imagine a relatively weak economy producing a GOP sweep in 2016, a Republican imposition of strict austerity in 2017, and the economic collapse that goes with austerity soon afterward.” Unfortunately, argues Bernstein, the presidency can also be up for grabs.

The August recess is a good time to assess the performance of Speaker John Boehner, who has recently called attention to himself with his Face the Nation comment that “we should not be judged by how many new laws we create…ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”
Steve Benen responds at Maddowblog:

Let’s appreciate exactly what Boehner is trying to do here. When he and his Republican colleagues sought power, they told the electorate that they would work to find solutions to national problems. After having been unsuccessful, the Speaker of the House has decided to rebrand failure — he wants credit for his record of futility and expects praise for the fact that he and his caucus have made no legislative progress since he took power three years ago.
Instead of finding solutions to ongoing challenges, Boehner believes Congress should be focusing on undoing solutions to previous challenges. By the Speaker’s reasoning, we should probably change the language we use when it comes to Capitol Hill — Boehner and his colleagues aren’t lawmakers, they’re lawenders.
…On the surface, his rhetoric is the epitome of the kind of post-policy nihilism that dominates Republican thought in 2013 — Boehner doesn’t want to build up, he’d rather tear down. Given an opportunity to look forward and make national progress, the Speaker sees value in looking backward and undoing what’s already been done.

Yet, judging Boehner, even by his own standards yields unimpressive results, since congress has successfully repealed zero laws under his leadership.
One of Boehner’s constituents puts it this way at Democraticunderground.com:

In one sentence, John Boehner expresses his contempt for the American people and the job he was sent to Washington to do. If you’re for anarchy, Boehner is your representative. For anyone wanting a functioning government, this is the person who needs to lose his seat in Congress. The fact that his district is so gerrymandered that he can’t lose is testament to the true problems our country faces. I am ashamed that John Boehner is my representative in Congress!!!

Ed Kilgore adds in his Washington Monthly post, “The awesome Weight of Governing“:

As Ezra Klein pointed out a few weeks ago, the only thing that keeps the 113th Congress from rivalling the 112th Congress as the worst ever is its remarkable laziness (unless you count all those votes to repeal Obamacare as hard work):
The 113th Congress simply isn’t doing much. Sure, they’re less popular than dirt mixed with mud, but the 112th Congress was less popular than Nickelback! But thus far, the 113th has avoided shutdowns and debt-ceiling brinksmanship and they’ve managed to avoid leading us into any new, completely unpaid-for wars. So…hooray?
But they’ve still got a year-and-a-half on the clock. That’s time they could use to pass immigration reform and secure their reputation as a Congress that did something big and important and overdue. Or it’s time they could use to learn some tricks from their predecessors and shut the government down or nearly breach the debt ceiling.
So now Republican members get to go home and hear from “base” constituencies who want to shut the government down and breach the debt limit. I’m sure they’ll come back refreshed and reassume the awesome weight of governing.

Boehner has had ample opportunities to demonstrate real bipartisan leadership, but has never risen to the challenge. It’s only fair to add, however, that he is enabled and encouraged by the equally-unproductive majority of his party in the House.

At The Hill, Russell Berman and Erik Wasson report on signs of (gasp) bipartisanship emerging within the GOP, or at least from House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers. Wasson and Berman note that “Rogers called for a bipartisan deal that would replace the unpopular sequester with something bridging the gap between the House budget and Senate spending measures he said were too costly to pass the lower chamber.”
Greg Sargent argues the latest round of GOP attacks against Obamacare could be the dying gasps of a doomed campaign. “By holding countless repeal votes, and by continuing to insist Republicans will continue targeting the law for elimination, Boehner and other GOP leaders are only keeping alive the hope that Obamacare will be destroyed before it becomes part of the American landscape…They’ve been feeding the repeal monster for literally years now. Even if a government shutdown does happen, of course, Obamacare won’t be defunded. But plenty of other damage will be done in the process. If GOP leaders can’t control this monster, it’s on them.”
Dem digerati should read Beth Reinhard’s National Journal post, “Why Democrats Are Laughing at the Republican Digital Strategy — And Why They Shouldn’t Be.” Reinhard reports that the new GOP system “can merge different campaign spreadsheets on one data platform. That means canvassing lists, phone banks, fundraising reports, event sign-in sheets and social networks are all integrated with outside data for highly detailed profiles of voters and supporters.”
Reinhard has another good article at the National Journal, “Democrats Using Voting Rights Issues to Protect Senate Majority,” which observes “Jotaka Eaddy, senior director of voting rights at the NAACP, said the backlash against voter ID laws nationwide was one reason turnout among black voters topped white turnout for the first time in 2012, 66.2 to 64.1 percent…”It’s important that we move our outrage into action, and I expect to see a similar impact on the 2013 and 2014 elections,” Eaddy said. “A lot of people will go to the polls with this issue in the forefront of their minds, and if Congress fails to act there will be serious repercussions.”
This new PPP poll should have Mitch McConnell worried.
At The Guardian, Harry J. Enten reports that “Felon voting rights have a bigger impact on elections than voter ID laws.” Enten explains, “A study of felon voting patterns (pdf) from 1972 to 2000 found on average 30% of felons and ex-felons would vote if given the chance, and about three out of four would vote for the Democratic nominee for president. This would have doubled Al Gore’s margin in the national vote…In terms of pure numbers, 137,478 of African-Americans in Alabama, 107,758 in Mississippi, and 145,943 in Tennessee are kept from voting.”
On the same topic, see Josh Israel’s “Felon Voting Restrictions Disenfranchise More Minority Voters Than Voter ID Laws” at Think Progress.
Shanta N. Covington explores an important distinction in the debate about voter suppression, “The difference between ‘impact’ and ‘intent’ on your right to vote” at MSNBC.com.
Here’s a hopeful note, from Deborah Foster’s PoliticusUSA post, “Can Government Pick Up Where Unions Left Off?“:”Across the country, municipalities, counties, and increasingly some states have passed worker-friendly laws like living wages, paid sick leave, expanded family leave acts, bereavement leave bills, and pregnancy disability provisions. At a time when unions are increasingly neutered, workers should turn their attention to local government to put in place rights already enjoyed in most other Western democratic nations. One way to strengthen this process is to identify the grassroots victories in these local communities as steps in an overall movement with its own identity, not unlike the grassroots movement to gain same sex marriage rights by chipping away at the discriminatory laws that blanket the country. The distance to the goal always seem formidable at the start, but as progress is made here and there across the country, soon we could have a groundswell that gives us national remedies.”
You go, guys.

Chris Matthews raised some eyebrows on MSNBC last night, when he accused Sen. Ted Cruz of “political terrorism,” provoking an argument with McCain’s senior campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, who said, in essence, it’s a term that should be reserved for those who actually try to kill their adversaries. Schmidt preferred “demagogue” and “irresponsible.”
In my view they were both right. Matthews was correct in saying that much of the behavior of key GOP leaders is intentionally destructive and designed to paralyze government into dysfunction and chaos. That meets some of the requirements of terrorism. But Schmidt is also right in saying that applying the inflammatory term to political dialogue implicitly trivializes the damage that murderous political terrorists have done worldwide.
Credit Matthews with a perceptive observation. Current Republican strategy does have significant sociopathic elements, which should be condemned by all responsible citizens, not just us partisan Democrats. But to most people, I would guess that using the term “political terrorism” to describe Republican legislative obstructionism is rhetorical overkill which demonizes adversaries. You never help your case by overstating descriptions of your opponent’s behavior.
When rising Democratic star Rep. Alan Grayson called his Republican opponent, Daniel Webster, ‘Taliban Dan,’ in the 2010 congressional race, Grayson apparently hurt his own cred with a number of voters. Sure he had a point, in that his opponent urged making divorce illegal and forcing abused women to remain in their marriages, not so unlike Taliban policy towards women. But using the term may have contributed to Grayson’s defeat in that election. Thankfully, Grayson was elected in 2012 to a different district, proving that you can recover from verbal blunders, if you learn the lesson.
In his Washington Monthly post, “Nihilism or Principle,” Ed Kilgore notes that top journalists including James Fallows and Jonathan Chait may have strayed into rhetorical overkill territory in describing the behavior of GOP leaders as “nihilism.” The term sort of fits much recent Republican behavior, particularly the knee-jerk opposition to anything Obama, regardless of the consequences. But nihilism, as Kilgore observes, entails an absence of ideology, while the GOP is heavily laden with extremist ideologues, with Cruz as exhibit A.
It’s not all that hard to visualize McConnell and Boehner being portrayed in an SNL skit as the nihilists in “The Big Lebowski.” Boehner does seem to relish with nihilistic gusto his recent anointing as the least productive Speaker, maybe ever. If Republicans have not quite earned the “nihilist” designation, some of them seem to be dabbling in the nihilist spectrum.
Nor is it too much of a stretch to argue that Republicans are flirting with both “political terrorism” and “nihilism.” But I don’t think there is much benefit in pushing the terms as memes, and Dems can hurt their cause by doing so. It’s quite enough that the GOP richly deserves the “obstructionist” designation, which even its defenders sometimes affirm. The term resonates well because it is wholly, not partially accurate.
With respect to Dems calling out Republicans for “sabotage,” however, we are on very safe ground. You would be hard-pressed to find a more accurate one-word term to describe the current strategy of Republican congressional leaders. The GOP’s proclivity for sabotage is unprecedented in scale, beyond blocking the progress of legislation. They are now into preventing the implementation of duly-enacted laws at every opportunity, consciously thumbing their noses at the Democratic process and the American people. That may not literally be anarchy, political terrorism or nihilism. But the trend is disturbingly in that direction.
For now, however, the wisest course would be to pass on attacking Republicans with terms that don’t quite fully apply and which sound like unjustified ad hominem attacks. Better, Democrats continue to call out Republicans for gridlock, obstruction, paralysis and sabotage (GOPS), terms which resonate with more accuracy every day.