For some insightful comments about the Democrats approach to discussing the ACA at the Convention, read Ed Kilgore’s “Talkin’ Obamacare” at The Washington Monthly. Among Kilgore’s observations:
…Yes, ACA doesn’t poll that great, at least as an abstraction. But as we’ve known for a long time, a sizable chunk of those expressing disapproval of the legislation are people who think it should have been much stronger and/or more “public” than it was–i.e., people with zero sympathy for the GOP point-of-view on the law. And more importantly, polls have consistently shown solid majority support for most of ACA’s key provisions, with the exception of the individual mandate. Given the Republican Party’s ironclad decision not to offer any glimpse of what if anything they’d replace ObamaCare with if they succeed in repealing it, Democrats had little to lose and a lot to gain from dramatizing what Americans would lose if the law goes away–including, very crucially, provisions that have already taken effect…The potential power of this way of discussing ObamaCare was pretty clearly shown yesterday by Stacy Lihn’s speech about the lifetime cap on insurance payments that ACA outlawed, and that if reimposed could rob her of the ability to secure for her daughter life-saving heart surgery…
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
