One of the most annoying distortions we get from lazy media coverage and political lightweights is the meme that Democrats want a sudden, all-at-once conversion to Medicare for all. No serious Democratic political leader is advocating immediate destruction of the entire private health insurance industry. Medicare for all is a goal to be achieved by measured reforms in a reasonable time frame that won’t cause a sudden disruption of America’s health care system and its millions of employees. To understand what Democrats are actually advocating for health reform, read “We read Democrats’ 8 plans for universal health care. Here’s how they work” by Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott. For a common sense take on progressive health care reform, check out Dylan Scott’s interview of Jacob Hacker at Vox.

From the KFF Health Tracking Poll – January 2019: The Public On Next Steps For The ACA And Proposals To Expand Coverage by Ashley Kirzinger: “A majority of the public say it is either “extremely important” or “very important” that Congress work on lowering prescription drug costs for as many Americans as possible (82 percent), making sure the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing health conditions continue (73 percent), and protecting people with health insurance from surprise high out-of-network medical bills (70 percent). Fewer – about four in ten – say repealing and replacing the ACA (43 percent) and implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (40 percent) are an “extremely important” or “very important” priority. When forced to choose the top Congressional health care priorities, the public chooses continuing the ACA’s pre-existing condition protections (21 percent) and lowering prescription drug cost (20 percent) as the most important priorities for Congress to work on. Smaller shares choose implementing a national Medicare-for-all plan (11 percent), repealing and replacing the ACA (11 percent), or protecting people from surprise medical bills (9 percent) as a top priority. One-fourth said none of these health care issues was their top priority for Congress to work on.”

Ezra Klein explains the pivotal importance of the filibuster question to health care reform at Vox: “While it’s possible to imagine a Medicare-for-more bill making it through budget reconciliation, if Democrats want to do something as complex as reconstructing the American health care system, they’re going to need to be able to write legislation in a simple, straightforward way…That means that Democrats either need to get rid of the filibuster, which they can do with 51 votes, or they need to repeatedly overrule parliamentary challenges to their reconciliation bill, which is pretty much the same thing.

My favorite headline of the day comes from ThinkProgress, where Addy Baird explains “Here’s what single-payer advocates want to hear from 2020 Democratic primary contenders: No co-pays, no deductibles, no need for supplemental policies, no private insurance.” My one modification would be that those who want additional private insurance should be able to purchase it. Baird notes further, “a study from the conservative think tank Mercatus found last July that Medicare for All would save the United State trillions, and 70 percent of all Americans — including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans — support Medicare for all, according to a Reuters poll from last August. Just 20 percent of Americans said they oppose the idea outright.”

“Schultz has revealed his hand with his attacks on Medicare for All proposals,” John Nichols explains in his article, “Howard Schultz Is Just Like Every Other Billionaire—Afraid of Losing His Wealth and Privilege: He calls Medicare for All “far too extreme,” but he is the real extremist.” at The Nation. “The idea that “we should get rid of …the insurance industry”—and replace it with a humane, efficient and affordable guarantee of health care as a right for all Americans—is, to his exceptionally privileged view, “far too extreme.” And don’t even get him started on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to make the very rich pay their fair share by imposing a 70 percent marginal tax rate on billionaires…Now, billionaire Howard Schultz is labeling Democrats who would guarantee health care for all, education for all and jobs for all as “far too extreme.” In fact, Schultz is the extremist—one of the “prophets of calamity” who FDR warned will “seek special financial privilege” by denying “the necessity of reform and reconstruction.”

Eric Boehlert has some noteworthy comments on media coverage of Schultz’s launch at Daily Kos: “Schultz is clearly benefiting from our Davos-style political culture, where billionaires are automatically held up as symbols of what is right and just. And if a billionaire raises his hand and says he wants become president without facing any primary-season opponents, the media parts like the Red Sea and prepares a seat for him in front of an eager television host…Schultz is also singing out of the same “both sides” hymnbook that the Washington press loves so much. He constantly stresses the idea that both Trump and Democrats have become dangerously out of step with mainstream America—that Democrats are just as radical as Trump, and that the two parties always represent mirror opposites of each other on the political spectrum…Schultz is simply advancing a fraudulent narrative, and the press is mostly letting him get away with it. Over and over…”

Does Howard Schultz support cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits? At New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Jonathan Chait cites Schultz’s “desire to cut social insurance programs. “We can get the 4 percent growth,” he said last year, “we can go after entitlements, and we can do the right thing — if we have the right people in place.”…In reality, there is no constituency for cutting these programs in either party. A 2017 Pew survey found 15 percent of Republicans, and 5 percent of Democrats support cuts to Medicare, while 10 percent of Republicans and 3 percent of Democrats support cuts to Social Security.”

Is Schultz the ‘austerity candidate’? In his article, “The phony centrism of Howard Schultz,” Damon Linker writes at The Week: “He’s a Democrat who wants Democrats to be less ambitious, to trim their sails, to stop making policy promises premised on raising taxes on people like him…That doesn’t make him a centrist. It makes him a rich Democrat who opposes his fellow Democrats taking a bigger chunk of his income or wealth…Of course he doesn’t put it that way. Instead, he talks about prudence. About the danger of budget deficits. About the importance of Americans living within their means. The country simply can’t afford universal health insurance or free college tuition — even though, somehow, such comparably wealthy countries as Canada, Denmark, France, and Germany manage to have something approaching one or both.

Is Schultz’s economic elitism basically ‘Republican Lite’? At The Guardian, Luke Savage observes, “He expresses concern that so many have so little money in the bank but doesn’t think low-earning workers deserve a raise, a union, free health insurance, or the opportunity to get an education without drowning in debt courtesy of sky-high tuition…Schultz is pledging to be a tribune for the billionaire class to which he himself belongs, over and against the growing current of popular, social democratic policies continuing to gather momentum within the Democratic party and among the wider US electorate.” Savage cites Schultz’s “vague, self-interested brand of class harmony as an alternative to meaningful reform…Instead, the grip of billionaires on the American political system – be they conscientious or not – must be broken once and for all.”

Jacob Rodriguez reports at 9news.com, Denver’s NBC affiliate, that “A bill in the Colorado Legislature that would effectively do away with the Electoral College as we know it has passed the state Senate and moves to the state House of Representatives,” where Democrats hold a 41-24 majority. Rodriguez explains further:

The bill – SB 42 – would tie Colorado’s Electoral College votes to the outcome of the national popular vote once enough states adopt similar laws. Once 270 electoral votes-worth of states join the movement, the president will be chosen by whoever receives the most votes nationally, according to the nonprofit National Popular Vote…Should Colorado approve this, 13 states representing 181 electoral votes would be in. However, the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” can’t take effect until enough states sign on to equal the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.

Rodriguez notes that “Some of the other states that have approved similar legislation include California, Illinois, New York and Washington state.”

So where might the National Popular Vote movement win over states with the the needed 89 electoral votes? In the map below, from nationalpopularvote.com, “each square represents one electoral vote (out of 538).”

The National Popular Vote movement has received some bipartisan support in different states, but the most reliable supporters across the nation have been Democrats in the state legislatures. In the wake of the 2018 elections, some of the states most likely to enact the reform in the near future include MI, NC, PA and VA, which together would bring in states with 64 additional electoral votes. Since Republicans dominate Texas politics, Florida is clearly the most winnable of the big states, although it has a Republican governor.

Polls indicate that a substantial majority of voters in nearly all states support the reform. In Florida, for example, nationalpopularvote.com notes that,

A survey of 800 Florida voters conducted on January 9-10, 2009 showed 78% overall support for a national popular vote for President. By political affiliation, support for a national popular vote was 88% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans, and 76% among others. By gender, support for a national popular vote was 88% among women and 69% among men. By age, support for a national popular vote was 79% among 18-29 year olds, 78% among 30-45 year olds, 76% among 46-65 year olds, and 80% for those older than 65. By race, support for a national popular vote was 80% among whites (representing 70% of respondents), 69% among African Americans (representing 13% of respondents), 79% among Hispanics (representing 13% of respondents), and 72% among others (representing 4% of respondents). The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 1/2%.

For a guide to citizen action to support the reform in every state, click here.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I think the answer to this question depends on how you interpret the rise of the “young anti-capitalist left” as it’s termed in a recent, lengthy 538 report by Clare Malone. This group includes politicians like Ocasio-Cortez, organizers like Maurice Miitchell of the Working Families Party, organizations like the DSA and Justice Democrats and activist writers like Sean McElwee.

I take these folks seriously and think they perform an important role in raising the profile of some key left issues and generating energy and a sense of the possible around those issues. As Paul Krugman put it in Malone’s article on the specific issue of the Green New Deal: “If the Green New Deal means that we’re going to try to rely on public investment in technologies and renewables and things that will make it easier for people to use less fossil fuel, that’s a pretty good start.”

So all that’s great. But it’s important to keep in mind that the real left movement among the Democrats in party-wide and, for the median Democrat, that does not take them to the same place as this young anti-capitalist left.

Consensus Democratic leftism today rejects ‘business as usual’ and involves a sweeping indictment of the economic and political system for generating inequality and doing little to help ordinary people in the wake of the great financial crisis. Substantively, Democrats today – in particular aspirants for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination – are far more willing to entertain and endorse ‘big ideas’, such as going beyond the ACA, aka Obamacare (which is now vigorously defended) to ‘Medicare for all’, free college education, universal pre-kindergarten provision, vastly expanded infrastructure spending, including a Green New Deal and even a guaranteed jobs program. Taxing the rich is ‘in’ and worrying about the deficit is ‘out’.

Democrats are also highly unified on core social issues such as opposing racism, defending immigrants, promoting LGBT and gender equality and criminal justice reform. In short, the center of gravity of the Democratic party has decisively shifted from trying to assure voters of fiscal and social moderation, to forthrightly promising active government in a wide range of areas.

But this hardly means the Democrats are becoming a radical, anti-capitalist party. Far from it. As leftism goes, the current Democratic iteration is of a fairly modest variety, approaching, at most, mild European social democracy.

Nor is it the case that incumbents and moderates are being thrown out wholesale and replaced with candidates much farther to their left. Across the country, only two Democratic incumbents in the House lost primaries, and none in the Senate did. A Brookings study found that self-described “progressive Democrats” did well in primaries this election season but establishment Democrats actually did somewhat better. The same pattern obtained in the general election in November.Thus, the change in the party is less a leftward surge featuring new politicians with a radical agenda (though this is happening to some extent) and more a steady party-wide movement to the left.

So the Democratic party is moving to the left, but the young anti-capitalist left is only a part of that movement, rather than defining that movement. That’s an important difference to keep in mind. The Democrats have been, and need to remain. a “big tent” party.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Results from the last election were remarkable for Democrats among whites under 45 and I don’t think that fact has gotten enough attention. This is a big chunk of the white population and if it is truly slipping away from the Republicans that blows quite a a hole in the GOP’s white voters-oriented strategy.

Using the Catalist data, which I believe is by far the most accurate data currently available, I find that Democrats carried the national House vote among whites under 45. Ditto for the Iowa gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Senate and gubernatorial elections, the Arizona Senate election, the Virginia Senate election, the Montana Senate election, the North Dakota Senate election and the New Hampshire gubernatorial election. Wow. That’s every statewide contest Catalist has released so far, with the exception of the Georgia gubernatorial election, where whites under 45 were nevertheless significantly less Republican than older whites. I think I detect a pattern!

Just a couple of observations about Speaker Pelosi’s double-wammy victory strategy that left Trump and his whisperers grumbling. You could almost see the glee in the eyes of Pelosi and Schumer, when Trump doubled down on how proudly he would own the shutdown. But credit the Speaker with deftly leveraging her superior understanding of the process and rules, along with an impressive sense of timing. But she also displayed the “first-class temperament” that empowered FDR’s victories amid near-hysterical opposition: it’s about having the guts to stand firm and face down a bully, and to do it cooly and methodically, while everyone else is freaking out. It didn’t hurt that she had the experience of raising four toddlers into adulthood. An understanding of child psychology is an assett in dealing with egomaniacal politicians. I like how Eleanor Clift explained it at The Daily Beast: “Eyeing her favorite dark chocolates in a bowl next to the sandwiches and salads, she told how her husband likes hard chocolate and keeps it in the freezer. “I like to put it in the palm of my hand to soften it up,” she said, an apt metaphor I thought for how she had just handled President Trump over the five-week government shutdown…Not many politicians have gone up against Trump and emerged victorious, with their dignity intact. How did she do it? “First you start with a feather,” she said, “then you move to a sledgehammer.” Well-played.

After a suitable period of mass schadenfreude, it might be good to ponder what strategy will be needed, if Trump declares a national emergency and tries to use the military to build the wall. At The Pacific Standard, Emily Moon quotes  Andrew Boyle, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program, who explains what would happen: “Would he be able to declare a national emergency? The answer is absolutely. There is virtually no restriction on the executive’s ability to declare a national emergency, and that is a shortcoming of the [National Emergencies Act of 1976]…What avenues are there for pushback? One possibility—a weak possibility—is congressional override of the national emergency. That would require a veto-proof majority in the House [of Representatives] and Senate, and that’s a challenge…Another option is a lawsuit of some sort. Assuming [the declaration] goes forward, then any lawsuit would also have to deal with the specific language of those various provisions—language like “military necessity.” There would be arguments about whether building the wall is of “military necessity.” In other words, the whole mess would likely be decided in court,  which is not a particularly good look for the Prez and his party heading into the 2020 elections.

Speaking of schadenfreude, Democrats can be forgiven for marinating in it for a short while, with respect to Roger Stone’s indictment. The self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” has a history of involvement in nasty political shenanigans going back to Watergate, the “Brooks Brothers Riot” and a long history as a Trump operative — and that’s just the stuff we know about. If he is held accountable for his role in Putingate, it may put a damper on the GOP’s proclivity for illegal election games, at least for a while.

So how influential is Fox News in forming political attitudes? At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum takes a look at some data and studies, and makes the case that “Without Fox News, Republicans Would Be Toast.” As Drum concludes, “I’d guess that the real effect of Fox News is more likely something in the ballpark of one or two percentage points…Which is still a lot! Even a one percentage point influence would have been enough to swing both the 2000 and 2016 elections. I think it’s safe to say that the precise quantitative effect is hard to estimate precisely, but it’s still pretty clear that without Fox News the Republican Party would be in a world of hurt. Who knows? It’s even possible that they wouldn’t have won a presidential election since 1992.”

“National attention has focused on a handful of young, left-wing first-time members of Congress elected to safe seats. But realistically, the future of the House lies with a larger group of Democrats who eked out narrow wins in newly purple districts,” write Ella Nilsen and Dylan Scott at Vox. “Most of the freshmen come from swing districts,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who beat four-term incumbent Republican Leonard Lance by 5 points in 2018. “We come from places where voters want us to focus on getting things done that can actually be achieved.”…Whatever you call it, these members are less interested in a 70 percent top tax rate or a Green New Deal than they are in passing targeted fixes to protect the Affordable Care Act and lower the cost of health care, promoting renewable energy, and maybe looking for an infrastructure deal to fix crumbling roads and boost rural broadband to speed up slow internet in their districts. They’re happy to discuss the more ambitious policy ideas animating the left, like Medicare-for-all, but they still have serious reservations.” However, “One unifying front among Democratic first-term House members, from the centrists in swing districts to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is cleaning up Washington. Many of them campaigned on that promise. House Democratic leadership is pushing a sweeping anti-corruption and voting rights plan, and first-term Democrats across the political spectrum want to see it passed.”

Dick Polman explains why “Democrats Are Newly Emboldened on Gun Control” at The Atlantic. Polman explains, “it appears that the ever-mounting national casualties—from Sandy Hook to Parkland to the Pittsburgh synagogue, with 116,000 shooting victims annually, 35,000 deaths annually, and historically high gun violence in schools—have undercut the NRA’s power and its purist defense of the Second Amendment…And Democratic confidence is abetted by the recent rise of the well-funded gun-reform movement helmed by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, and Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting. Democrats are clearly more comfortable talking reform, knowing that the NRA is getting pushback at the grassroots level. Indeed, the NRA (which has its own problems right now, reportedly with Special Counsel Robert Mueller) and other gun-rights groups were actually outspent by gun-reform groups during the 2018 campaign, by roughly $2.4 million—a heretofore unthinkable development.”

Sen. Kamala Harris had the most impressive announcement roll-out of all the  presidential candidates thus far. Her charismatic gifts and skill set were displayed at the well-staged announcement event in Oakland, and the media coverage was broad and positive. Her “America, we are better than this” message recalls Jimmy Carter’s call for a government “as competent, as compassionate, as good” as the American people,” which resonated well in the wake of the Ford Administration and seems even more appropriate for our times. Some are skeptical about her rep as being a little too ‘tough on crime’  for many Dems. But that may prove to be an asset in the general election. One question mark is how well she learned the lessons of the 2016 Clinton campaign’s failures regarding the Electoral College and the Rust Belt. Even if she fails to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, however, she will likely be high on the winner’s short list for a running mate.

Besides Kamala Harris, California may soon have other credible presidential candidates, including Governor Gavin Newsome and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. In his article, “California: The State of Resistance” in The New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg chonicles the rise of the Golden State as locus of progressive reforms and the political transformation that made it possible. Greenberg says “The California legislature’s rebellion against President Trump’s polices may be the most serious one that an individual state has mounted against the federal government since South Carolina threatened to secede over cotton tariffs in the 1830s…Democrats now hold every congressional seat, some of them in districts a Democrat had never won. Only seven of the state’s fifty-three congressional seats are now held by Republicans. (It’s worth noting that Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, and Devin Nunes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee—both Californians and two of the most fanatical Trumpists in Congress—were reelected.) Today only 25.3 percent of registered voters in California are Republicans, a new low.” Greenberg notes that California also has the highest poverty rate of the 50 states, and a host of difficult social problems related to housing, immigration.

In “Why Are Democrats Freaking Out About “Electability?”, Alex Shepard shares good news at The New Republic: “While Democrats are understandably scarred by 2016, the party has learned its lesson: There will be no coronation this time around, no stark contrast between two candidates representing their respective wings of the party. And while the 2020 primary thus will be crowded, it will be a marked contrast to the “clown car” Republican primary of 2016. For the next year, the Democrats will showcase a party that looks and sounds very different not only from the GOP, but from the Democratic Party of just a few years ago. Rather than a moment of anxiety, this should be a moment of hope and pride—and Republicans should be the ones feeling queasy…There’s no reason to believe that a lengthy debate about ideological differences in the party will be harmful. Democrats have been engaged in exactly that for the past two years, and they have paid little to no political price. They won 40 House seats in a historic midterm election, and every well-known Democrat currently leads Trump in early 2020 polling.”