Mar 5th 2014

Why the GOP Will Lose Its Bet Against ObamaCare

by Robert Creamer

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on amazon.com.
 
From all indications the GOP has gambled all the marbles on the proposition that ObamaCare will sink Democratic candidates this fall.  But the odds are good, they have made a losing bet.
 
In fact, it’s looking more and more like ObamaCare may even be a net positive for Democrats this November.
 
Of course one reason why Republicans are banking so heavily on the toxicity of ObamaCare is that they really don’t have much else to fall back on.  The popularity of Republicans in Congress is at an all time low.  And Democrats have the high political ground on just about every other major issue.
 
Raising the minimum wage is enormously popular with a public that is sick of stagnant wages while Republican Wall Street bankers continue to rake in record bonuses.  Republicans say no.
 
Large majorities favor continuing federal unemployment benefits in an economy where there are still three job seekers for every job.  But the Republican leadership has blocked continued unemployment benefits.
 
The GOP’s anti-woman, anti-gay outbursts make them look like an artifact of another era to young people and swing voters.  As the New York Times reported last Friday:
 
In the past few months, Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor “Abortion Barbie,” likened Allison Lundergan Grimes, a Senate candidate from Kentucky, to an “empty dress,” criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thighs, and referred to a pregnant woman as a “host”.
 
Their seminars on “how to talk to women” don’t seem to be working.
 
Overwhelming majorities favor immigration reform that the Republican leadership has single handedly blocked in the House.
 
Americans completely disagree with GOP “climate deniers” who don’t believe in science and are tied at the hip to Big Oil.
 
Over ninety percent of the population agrees with Democrats that it’s time to perform background checks on 100% of gun sales in the United States – but the GOP put up a stonewall to commonsense gun violence legislation after the massacre at Sandy Hook.
 
Most Americans reacted with revulsion to the GOP shutdown of Government last fall.
 
So it’s no wonder that Republicans have pinned all of their hopes for the Mid-Terms on the proposition that the botched ObamaCare roll out would sour the public on the signal accomplishment of President Obama’s first term.
 
But once again, the Republicans are on the wrong side of history.
 
As a political matter, it is much harder to take things away from people than it is to mobilize them to achieve some yet unrealized goal.  Republicans used that fact to great advantage as they frightened people that the Affordable Care Act would “take away” their health insurance or force them to abandon trusted medical care providers.
 
Their problem is that this same fact of human nature has begun to work for the Affordable Care Act as more and more Americans have begun to experience the law’s benefits and don’t want to see the GOP take those benefits away.
 
Unfortunately for the GOP, the Affordable Care Act is working.
 
Since enrollment began in October 4 million people have picked a private plan on the new marketplaces. Another 6.3 million have signed up, renewed or learned they are eligible for Medicaid.  And 3.1 million young people can now stay on their parent’s plan until they are 26.
 
So as of today, more than 13 million Americans have already enrolled in some form of ACA benefit, and there is every indication that the pace will massively accelerate as this year’s deadline for enrollment approaches at the end of March.
 
Young people are signing up at a higher rate.  Enrollment of 18-34 year olds that is necessary to keep down the insurance rates on the exchanges increased 65% -- more than all other age groups combined.
 
Groups like Our Time have recruited more and more young people.
 
In fact progressive organizations of all sorts have put their shoulder to the wheel and are helping to enroll Americans in the final push to March 31st.
 
What’s more since ObamaCare was passed, health care costs have gone up at the slowest rate ever recorded – and the Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the ACA will cut the deficit over 3 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
 
Consumer protections have gone into effect that most people do not want the Republicans to take away.  Voters simply don’t want to go back to the days when insurance companies could enforce life time benefit caps, or cut off policies if you get sick, deny coverage or charge exorbitant premiums if you have a pre-existing condition, or charge you more for coverage because you are a woman.
 
Nearly 6 in 10 uninsured people have been able to find coverage for less than $100 per month – often with government subsidies that make health insurance affordable
 
Most important, there are more and more examples everyday of people whose lives have literally been saved by the Affordable Care Act – people who couldn’t afford check ups who have found they needed life saving procedures after they got ACA coverage; people who couldn’t afford life saving therapies without going bankrupt or would simply would have died without their new health care coverage.
 
The problem for the GOP is that all the memories of the malfunctioning web site, and GOP scare tactics are beginning to fade from memory.  Turns out there weren’t any “death panels” – and most of the people whose coverage didn’t meet the new standards of the ACA could get better coverage at lower prices.  
 
And most of the “horror stories” sited by the GOP turn out on closer examination to be bogus.
 
In fact, in the eight months between now and the November elections, most Americans will come to realize that the Affordable Care Act was a pretty good idea.  And by November 2016, it’s success will be seen an a clear validation of progressive values and the progressive agenda of the Democratic Party. 
 
If they think back, the GOP has seen this movie before – and it did not end well. During his ill fated Presidential campaign in 1996, Senator Bob Dole famously acknowledged that he, and the Republicans were “there, fighting against Medicare” when it was passed in 1965.  The GOP practically claimed that Medicare would send the country down the path to becoming a Soviet Republic. 
 
Today, everyone in American politics understands that politicians have to keep their “hands off Medicare” – which along with Social Security are the most beloved and efficient programs ever passed by Congress.
 
In fact, as a fervent Democrat I practically cheer every time a Republican makes another wild, exaggerated claim about ObamaCare.  Go ahead -- make our day.  You will live to regret it – sooner than you think.                




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More Current Affairs

Apr 13th 2022
EXTRACTS" "Ukraine and Russia produce a substantial amount of grain and other food for export. Ukraine alone produces a whopping 6% of all food calories traded in the international market. At least it used to, before it was invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power." ...... "When it comes to cereals like wheat, corn, rice and barley, the big players talk about millions of metric tonnes, or MMTs. A single MMT of wheat contains about 3.4 trillion food calories,." ....."Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’ve got a real issue on your plate."
Apr 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "I don’t even know the little girl’s name. All I do know is what a friend of a friend wrote on Viber: that her relative, a senior nurse in one of Kyiv’s hospitals, “saw in the morgue a child with 20 varieties of sperm on her small body.” Since this information was conveyed in a private conversation, there is no reason to doubt its veracity."
Apr 8th 2022
EXTRACT: "Russian society has so far failed to stop Putin, just as German society failed to stop Hitler. And so, like a poisoned chalice, that task has fallen to the West, as it did in 1939. The West must now treat Putin and his regime the same way that Winston Churchill treated Hitler: Don’t talk to him, just defeat him. Dead-enders such as Putin are too fanatical and desperate to be reliable negotiating partners."
Apr 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "From 1807 to 1814 on the Iberian peninsula, Napoleon had to fight Spanish, Portuguese and British armies while beset by ubiquitous, ferocious insurgents. He described this war as his “bleeding ulcer”, draining him of men and equipment. It is the west’s aim to make Ukraine for Putin what Spain was for Napoleon. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, Ukraine and Nato will continue to grind away at Russia’s army, digging away at that bleeding ulcer and prolonging Russia’s agony on the military front, as the west continues its parallel assault on its economy. If Putin’s plan is to proceed with the Korea model, he will fail. There is a strong possibility that Putin has only a limited idea of how badly his army is faring. So be it – he’ll find out soon enough that there is now no path for him to military victory."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Policymakers expected that the country would be able to secure its energy supply entirely from renewable sources, so they resolved to phase out coal and nuclear energy simultaneously. The last three of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants are set to be shut down this year." ---- ".... the share of wind and solar power in Germany’s total final energy consumption, which includes heating, industrial processing, and traffic, was a meager 6.7%. And while wind and solar generated 29% of the country’s electricity output, electricity itself accounted for only about a fifth of its final energy consumption." ----- "If Germany suddenly halted Russian gas imports, gas-based residential heating systems – on which half the German population, approximately 40 million people, rely – and industrial processes that rely heavily on gas imports would break down....."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "For Putin, the past that matters most is the one the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted: the time when the Slavic peoples were united within the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Kievan Rus’. Kyiv formed its heart, making Ukraine central to Putin’s pan-Slavic vision. ---- But, for Putin, the Ukraine war is about preserving Russia, not just expanding it. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently made clear, Russia’s leaders believe that their country is locked in a “life-and-death battle to exist on the world’s geopolitical map.” That worldview reflects Putin’s longstanding obsession with works of other Russian emigrant philosophers, such as Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev, who described a struggle for the Eurasian (Russian) soul against the Atlanticists (the West) who would destroy it. ---- Yet Putin and his neo-Eurasianists seem to believe that the key to victory is to create the kind of regime those anti-Bolshevik philosophers most detested: one run by the security forces. A police state would fulfill the vision of another of Putin’s heroes: the KGB chief turned Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, is struggling to export last year’s harvest, and may be unable to produce much this year either. In addition, the war has caused a global fertiliser shortage, which will push up food prices around the world too. Coming at a time when the global pandemic had already increased food insecurity and depleted resources around the world, many countries may not be resilient to a major food crisis brought on by the war. Back-to-back global catastrophic events like this have not happened for close to 100 years." ----- "Another useful analogue is the case of Germany during the first world war. When war broke out in 1914, the German authorities had anticipated a short conflict – not too dissimilar to Russian assumptions a few weeks ago. Just like in Ukraine now, the first world war severely disrupted German farming."
Mar 31st 2022
EXTRACT: "The horrors of World War II – the death camps, slave labor, and inhumane experiments on people – produced a global commitment never to permit such crimes to be repeated. This began a transformation of international politics whereby appreciation of the value of every person’s life and dignity ensured that even most authoritarian governments at least paid lip service to human rights.  ----- But the Soviet Union and many of its successor states, particularly Russia, never internalized this change. More than three decades after the USSR collapsed, most post-Soviet countries are still governed according to the old “imperial” paradigm. So, it should come as no surprise that we are now witnessing a clash between fundamentally different sets of values and ultimate goals for statehood."
Mar 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective – such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about politics in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory."
Mar 24th 2022
EXTRACT: " Despite the death and destruction that Russia rains down daily on them, the vast majority of Ukrainians are bullish about the future: 77% believe the country is moving in the right direction, 93% think they can beat back Russia, and 47% expect to win in the next few weeks.  Ukrainian policymakers are no less bullish, driving a hard bargain in negotiations with the Russians. Several factors account for this remarkable optimism."
Mar 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, China’s role has been thrown into sharp relief. Prior to the war, some commentators suggested that China would openly side with Russia or seek to act as a mediator – so far Beijing appears to have resisted doing either. As Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, wrote recently in the Washington Post, Beijing has nothing to gain from this war, arguing “wielding the baton of sanctions at Chinese companies while seeking China’s support and cooperation simply won’t work”. Ambassador Qin also stressed that Beijing had no prior knowledge of the conflict,...."
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "The second source of Russian power is of course the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons would not deliver victory in a conventional war, but they could destroy a country in the blink of an eye. This brings us to a terrifying question: What will Putin do when he realizes that he cannot win his war in Ukraine by conventional means?"
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "An influential Shanghai-based academic commentator on international affairs, Hu Wei, recently advanced a cautionary argument that has been circulated widely in Chinese-language publications. In his commentary, which is unlikely to have been published without the approval of some of Xi’s senior courtiers, Hu wondered how Chinese communists would react if the war escalated beyond Ukraine, or if Russia was clearly defeated." ------- "For Hu, the answer for China’s leaders is simple. They should wash their hands of the relationship with Putin, ....."
Mar 12th 2022
EXTRACT: "Meanwhile, Xi seems to have realized that Putin has gone rogue. On March 8, one day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had insisted that the friendship between China and Russia remained “rock solid,” Xi called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to say that he supported their peacemaking efforts."
Mar 7th 2022
EXTRACTS: "........Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades,...." ---- "Russia’s prospects are bleak, at best; without China, it has none at all. China holds the trump card in the ultimate survival of Putin’s Russia."
Mar 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "Although Ukraine’s armed forces are outnumbered by those of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading our country, we take heart from the growing support we are receiving from friends abroad. Nobody should forget that this is not just an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it is an assault on the free world. ---- Putin has been at war with the free world for decades. "
Mar 2nd 2022
EXTRACT: "Moreover, with China sharing the Kremlin’s interest in containing the advance of liberal democracy around the world, Putin could count on the Chinese to provide an additional economic lifeline by purchasing Russian gas. But this new relationship will not be costless. As the world continues to divide into separate technological and economic blocs, Russia will become even more dependent on China, implying a loss of strategic autonomy. Russia may have a powerful military; but with a GDP similar to that of Spain and Italy, it is far from being an economic power."
Mar 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "The financial measures just announced against Russia are unprecedented for a country of its size. This of course means it’s impossible to predict exactly how their impacts will reverberate around the Russian – and global – economy. And we still need to see the exact details of the plan. But on their face they threaten the collapse of the Russian ruble, a run on Russian banks, hyperinflation, a sharp recession and high levels of unemployment in Russia, as well as turmoil in international financial markets."
Feb 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Putin apparently assumes that China will back him. But while he launched the invasion just weeks after concluding something akin to an alliance agreement with Xi in Beijing, Chinese officials’ reactions have been very distant with calls for “restraint.” Given Putin’s near-total reliance on China for support in challenging the US-led international order, lying to Xi would have no political or strategic advantage. That is what is so worrying: Putin no longer seems capable of the calculations that are supposed to guide a leader’s decision-making. Far from an equal partner, Russia is now on track to become a kind of Chinese vassal state."
Feb 25th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Russia’s ascent to global power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in numerous tragedies not only for the neighbors it subjugated and gradually absorbed, but also for its own people. China’s current leaders, in particular, should be mindful of this history, considering that imperial Russia seized more territory from China than from anyone else." ----- "Putin is taking Russia hurtling back toward the nineteenth century, in search of past greatness, whereas China is forging ahead to become the defining superpower of the twenty-first century. While China has achieved unprecedentedly rapid economic and technological modernization, Putin has been pouring Russia’s energy-export revenues into the military, once again cheating the Russian people out of their future."