A Guest Post By Mike Lux: The Heart Of The Matter In The Democratic Debate

American politics has turned very strange. Of course, much of the reason for that is the truly weird person occupying the White House (and yeah, he’s also corrupt and downright evil, but you can’t deny, he’s just plain weird, too). But it’s definitely not just Trump. Republican sycophancy is at a historic high, and this cycle’s Democratic presidential primary gets pretty high marks for strangeness, too. On the one hand Democrats are 100% fervently united on beating Trump; on the other hand there’s this Grand Canyon like division in the soul of the party, and record setting levels of angst and fear for a party which has been winning most elections lately and whose leading candidates consistently are beating Trump easily in the polls.

We’re at a stage in the presidential primary campaign that we all knew we would get to: this shit is getting real. For most of the campaign up until the last few weeks, candidates were only gingerly poking at each other, worried in a big field about being branded in voters’ minds as the biggest asshole. But at this stage of the race, with the field already beginning to narrow and people wanting to distinguish themselves in different ways, candidates are worried less about that downside.

Presidential primaries are always tough. When I moved to Iowa in 1983, those who had been on Teddy Kennedy’s side and those who had been on Jimmy Carter’s in 1980 were still bitterly divided and talking obsessively about those old divisions. Mondale-Hart, Clinton-Tsongas-Brown, Obama-Clinton were certainly doozies, too. Candidates always battle very aggressively over issues, personalities, character, electability, etc. There’s never been a primary that didn’t leave some scars. And while like all Democrats who desperately want to beat Trump (i.e. pretty much all Democrats), I worry some about the primary getting too tough, I also take it in stride. You can’t take the politics out of politics, as my old friend Paul Tully used to say.

But 2016 and this one feel different to me in one big way. It’s less personal yet more fundamental. The nature of the divide ideologically, generationally, insider vs outsider wise is qualitatively different in these two elections. The Bernie vs Hillary fight, and this time around’s battle with Bernie and Elizabeth on one side and a rotating band of centrists on the other is about something more foundational: whether you think the country needs big, structural change, or just a little tinkering around the edges.

One of the fascinating ways this is playing out is the striking degree to which some of the Democrat-on-Democrat attacks echo the historic attacks of Republicans on the Democratic Party. The best example is the Biden/Buttigieg attacks on Warren as “elitist”. The funniest thing, as several people have noted, is that some of these attacks are happening at big money fundraisers. As Ryan Grim noted the other day:

"Joe Biden, meanwhile, spent the evening with a small group of ultra-wealthy donors, at a fundraiser hosted by a fracking developer and a health care industry executive. He used his time there to go after Warren for being elitist."

Besides the sheer oddness of two Democrats raising a lot of money from big donors calling the populist Democrat who isn’t doing big dollar fundraising and is scaring billionaires with her wealth tax proposals an elitist, what is most disturbing is that these attacks very much echo right wing and Republican talking points about the Democratic Party for the last 50 years. Generations of Republicans have attacked Democrats for being liberal elitists, it has been one of the most consistent attack lines for Republicans against Democrats for a very long time. Always deeply ironic coming from the party of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation for big business, but irony has never slowed Republicans down at all.

Joe Biden got very upset the other day when Elizabeth said his arguments sounded like they belonged in a Republican primary, but you can’t use Republican attack lines and not get some shade sent back at you.

According to Mayor Pete and the Veep, Elizabeth is elitist is because she is inflexible, because with her it’s “my way or the highway”. This isn’t so much ironic as just puzzling. Elizabeth has never, in the campaign or in her Senate career, indicated she isn’t willing to work collegially with others on legislative ideas. She has successfully drawn in Republican co-sponsors on several of her policy initiatives; she’s been part of Schumer’s leadership team in the Senate, which is all about teamwork. She’s praised policy ideas from several of her competitors, including Buttigieg, in this race.

The issue is not Elizabeth’s inflexibility. It is, instead a stereotype centrist and establishment types want to use when talking about progressives: they want to push the idea that progressives never compromise. Which is another kind of irony altogether: throughout my almost 3 decade career in DC politics, the compromising has mostly been on the progressive side. Progressives compromised to get Family and Medical Leave passed, even when it wasn’t paid leave. Teddy Kennedy compromised to get more modest health care reforms passed after Hillary Care went down. Progressives agreed to give up on the public option to get the ACA passed. Progressives agreed to give up on breaking up the big banks in order to get Dodd-Frank passed. In every single case, it was moderate Democrats who demanded “my way or the highway” in order to get the legislation enacted.

At the heart of the matter is the disagreement over something Obama said in his speech to the Democracy Alliance the other day:

"There are a lot of persuadable voters and there are a lot of Democrats out there who just want to see things make sense. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff. They want to see things a little more fair, they want to see things a little more just."

That to me is the perfect summary of the divide. Obama is a good man and did many good things as president, and he was obviously limited by Republican control of Congress for much of his time in office. But he never wanted to change things too much. He wanted things to be “a little more fair, a little more just”. Even in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 80 years, a crisis caused by a wildly out of control and far too powerful financial sector, he didn’t want to change things too much, or come down too hard on the forces that had destroyed the economy.

But for the progressives who see climate scientists increasingly panicked by the radically escalating crisis; who see income inequality and corporate concentration of power and wealth at their worst levels in almost a century; who see broken immigration and criminal justice systems: this not a time they want things “a little more fair, a little more just”. They want big structural change.

And what old mainstream political players like Stan Greenberg and me are seeing-- contrary to the interpretation of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party-- working class swing voters are more with the progressives than with the small changes moderates. Working class folks have been getting the short end of the stick in terms of the economy for about 40 years now, and they are sick of it. There’s a reason Donald Trump got elected: a whole lot of working class voters wanted big change, not small. Voters who had gone for Obama voted for Trump, or for 3rd parties, or didn’t vote, in enough numbers that Trump won those swing states. They got tired of “a little more fair, a little more just”, and wanted to blow the whole system up.

Remember as well that voters keep voting for big changes, and it wasn’t just Trump. Starting with the 2006 election, voters have voted for a change in power 6 of the last 7 election cycles, always by bigger margins that pundits predicted. Obama ran as the progressive change alternative to the establishment in 2008, and won. Trump beat heavily favored frontrunners in the primary, and Bernie came close to pulling off what would have been the most surprising upset in history in the Democratic primary. Voters want change, and establishment Democrats have been very hesitant to give it to them.

This debate at the heart of the Democratic divide is important to have, even though we are 100% united on the need to beat Trump. Because if we win this election, and don’t deliver real change, big structural change as Elizabeth likes to say, to the working class folks of all races and regions in this country- swing voters and base voters alike- who decide elections, we will have a Republican candidate next time that is just as extreme, but smarter and more effective than Trump.

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go-- #NeverTrump Republicans Demand Democrats Nominate Biden

Republicans see this & get sick to their stomachs-- & really scared

Dear Republicans Who Lost Your Shitty Party To Trump— Keep Your Muthafucking, Failed Advice About How To Beat Trump To Yourselves

And that goes for everyone who works at— or reads— The Bulwark and half the people who work at MSNBC. The worst political figure anyone can remember stole your party right out from under you. And now you want to tell the lame enough Democratic establishment how to beat Trump? They may be stupid enough to listen. Hopefully no one down the chain from brain-drained Pelosi, Hoyer, Schumer and Perez will pay you any heed.

The last thing the Democrats need is someone like Jeb Bush with a “D” next to his name. Charlie Sykes has some unsolicited thoughts? Shove them right up your lilly white Republican ass, buster!

You know what, we already knew Trump was “a deeply dishonest, erratic, narcissistic, Twitter-addicted bully” (and rapist). The Democraps already shoved a former Republican with a Republican bottom line in her soul as our champion. She lost. We don’t need a senile, racist version of her now. We need exactly what you think we don’t.

Trump could still win reelection, because he has one essential dynamic working in his favor: You.

Trump’s numbers are unmovable, but yours are not. He doesn’t need to win this thing; he needs for you to lose it. There are millions of swing voters who regard Trump as an abomination but might vote for him again if they think you are scarier, more extreme, dangerous, or just annoyingly out of touch.

And, you have some experience at this, don’t you?

Despite the favorable poll numbers and the triumphalism in your blue bubble, you’ve already made a solid start at guaranteeing another four years of Trumpism. Last week’s pile-on of Joe Biden was a good example of how you might eat your own over the next 16 months.

George Will, Charlie Sykes… all the Republican garbage cans with mouths and pens will tell you every single reason Republicans have always/will always tell you about bold agendas like the New Deal will never work.

FUCK YOU, CHARLIE SYKES
FUCK YOU, GEORGE WILL
FUCK YOU MSNBC REPUBLICANS

The Democrats didn’t listen to your advice-- and the advice of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- in 1936. You remember what happened right? FDR won 523 electoral votes. You won 8. FDR won 46 states. You won 2. FDR won 27,747,636 votes (60.8%). You won 16,679,543 (36.5%). Democrats won 334 in the House (plus 8 more for “scary”-- to you-- socialists) and you won 88 seats. 88 seats. 88, you muthafucking assholes. In the Senate your scare tactics left you with 17 seats in the Senate. But minority leader Charlie McNary wore the same bow-ties that George Will was wearing last time I saw a photo of him.

Eat shit and die, you scumbags… and take your conservative Democrap friends with you. No, don’t die, don’t die— live long enough to kill yourselves-- ritually, en masse-- when President AOC is sworn in.

Biden ran for president-- or at least started running-- 6 times. And 5 times-- so far-- Democratic primary voters looked him over and said, collectively, "God Forbid!" Mike Lux worked for one of those campaigns in the '70s when he was just a kid. He says he likes Biden and Mike still embraces the lesser-of-two evils strategy that powers the Democratic establishment. Mike openly admits that he would enthusiastically vote for Biden in a general election against Trump. I know many people who would-- and some who wouldn't. If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you're still voting for Evil. Joe Biden is Evil-- and Mike made the case very well in his new video. Take a look as Mike Lux tries to teach a mangy old dog-- possibly rabid-- a new trick:

Mitch McTurtle-- The Personification Of Death Itself

Every year, Morning Consult puts out a national survey of all 50 states to determine how their residents feel about the states' two senators. And every year Bernie is the most beloved and McTurtle is the most detested. This year's survey, out this week, was no different: Bernie #1, McTurtle #100.

Thinking about the 2020 elections, these are the seven senators who will be facing the voters next year with bad approve/disapprove ratios:

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)-- 36% approve, 50% disapprove
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)-- 34% approve, 33% disapprove
• Martha McSally (R-AZ)-- 35% approve, 35% disapprove
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)-- 35% approve, 35% disapprove
• Dick Durbin (D-IL)-- 37% approve, 35% disapprove
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)-- 38% approve, 37% disapprove
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)-- 40% approve, 37% disapprove

Last week, the unpopular McTurtle was campaigning in front of a small group of right-wing Kentucky fat-cats when he boasted how he would continue gumming up the system next year-- if he's reelected-- to make sure no progressive legislation passing by the House is voted on in the Senate:

"If I'm still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate. They won't even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper: the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn't land on the president's desk."

CBS News reported that "before referring to himself as the personification of death, McConnell, the White House's most powerful ally on Capitol Hill, accused Democrats in Congress and those running for president of endorsing a fringe, far-left agenda that will imperil the American economy. 'You pass the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, you have fundamentally changed this country, fundamentally changed it into an unproductive place with significant unemployment and huge problems,' McConnell said, noting that some of his colleagues in the Senate who are running for president, like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, have vouched their support for both proposals. McConnell said progressive platforms are being touted by most mainstream Democrats, not just 'some young woman from New York who just got elected to Congress,' presumably referring to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx. 'It's much broader than that,' McConnell said."

Not much new there. When haven't conservatives smeared progressive proposals to help working families as "socialism" or "communism" or whatever nonsense popped into their minds? Versions of McTurtle from the 1700s on have fought tooth and nail to prevent progressive ideas from taking hold. A decade ago, Mike Lux did a great book about it, The Progressive Revolution, in which he laid out many of the progressive initiatives that entailed winning bloody battles (sometimes literally) against conservative opponents. These are the battles we won against the McTurtles of American history:

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• Women’s suffrage
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Yes, Republicans referred to the dozen or so final ones as "socialism" and used the same scaremongering McTurtle uses about them today when they fought them back in the day. Today Trump and McTurtle aren't content blocking new progressive proposals, they are working actively to roll back the fruits of progressives victories going back over a century.

As repulsive and corrupt as the DC Democrats are, they are basically what stands between us and the conservative vision of America that includes none of that progress. Look, I went to high school with Chuck Schumer; believe me when I tell you I despise him far more than you do. But Friday he was correct when he said that McTurtle has turned the Senate into "a legislative graveyard... Leader McConnell ought to allow debate and amendments immediately-- which Democrats would welcome-- on commonsense, House-passed bills on democracy reform, combating the gun violence epidemic, health care, and so much more... On getting anything done to help the American people, Leader McConnell and the Senate Republicans in the first 100 days get an 'F'."

Earlier Friday, Pelosi-- who has plenty of flaws and shouldn't be speaker-- also took on McTurtle's decision to play the Grim Reaper. In a letter to House Democrats, she blasted McTurtle's approach to making himself into an obstacle to all progressive legislation:

In our first 100 days, the House was busy passing vital bipartisan legislation that addresses the issues that matter in the lives of the American people.

The House has sent the Senate legislation that has strong bipartisan support across the country, consistent with our For The People agenda. We urge Senator McConnell to take up the legislation as soon as possible.

• H.R. 1 – the For The People Act to restore confidence in our democracy;
• H.R. 8 & H.R. 1112 – the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act, commonsense gun violence prevention measures;
• H.R. 7 – the Paycheck Fairness Act, to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work;
• H.R. 1585 – Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, a strong improvement and long-term reauthorization of VAWA;
• H.R. 1644 – the Save The Internet Act to restore vital Net Neutrality protections.

In the coming weeks, we will be taking action on:

• The Protecting People with Pre-existing Conditions Act and other legislation to lower health costs by reducing prescription drug prices;
• H.R. 9 – the Climate Action Now Act to preserve the Paris Climate Accord and lay the foundation for more action;
• H.R. 5 – the Equality Act to end discrimination against LGBTQ Americans;
• H.R. 6 – the American Dream and Promise Act to protect Dreamers, TPS and DED recipients.

Our progress For The People stands in stark contrast to the inaction of the GOP-controlled Senate. The Republican Senate needs to wake up, and vote on these urgently needed bills immediately. If they don’t like our bipartisan bills, then they can pass their own version and we can go to conference.

Leader McConnell has declared himself the “grim reaper” of these House bills to make progress for working families. We will show him that these bills are alive and well with the American people. The middle class and America don’t want the Senate to be a legislative graveyard for so many of these important issues-- they want action.

Want to Pass Medicare For All? Make Voters Happy By Making Them Happy

Medicare For All is wildly popular. Why not just give the public what it wants?

by Thomas Neuburger

An argument (or "fervent discussion") is raging on the left about the best way to approach Medicare For All (M4A) legislation — Should the plan be proposed all at once, or piecemeal?

I recently contributed to that discussionhere: "Improved Medicare For All or Watered-Down Medicare For All?" It's not just the program's enemies who want to enact M4A legislation in stages, however; several of its friends have also advanced good-faith reasons why Medicare For All legislation should be tackled in chunks.

Mike Lux, who was involved in the Clinton-era health care reform battle, accurately characterizes the opposition this way. "The problem with MFA is that it takes on almost the entire industry at the same time.  Not to mention, of course, the entire big money conservative apparatus: the Koch brothers network, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the Wall Street banks who have made heavy investments in insurance/pharma/for-profit hospitals, all the conservative think tanks and media outlets and grassroots operations. It would also likely be opposed even by some labor unions who have great health insurance plans that they have collectively bargained for over the years, and various big businesses that have their own plans they administer."

This leads Lux to argue for "splitting the health care industry, getting parts of them to support our side and parts of them to agree to neutrality."

Fair enough; but look at the polling for M4A (above). The problem with this argument is that it prevents the public from having the one thing it really wants — a card on day one they can use to go to the damn doctor without paying money.

Here's Duncan Black (Atrios) to explain this position in the simplest possible terms (emphasis mine):

I Don't Give A Shit How You Bend The Cost Curve

"We" spend too much money on health care costs in this country, but I don't particularly care about that. I mean, I do, it's absurd, and we shouldn't, but it isn't actually my job do worry about how to fix that. It isn't your job. It isn't the job of voters to waste their beautiful minds worrying about what the best plan to cut health care costs is, and it's absurd that for some reason it's expected that voters all play Wonk for a Year and try to figure out who has the wonkiest wonko plan of all.

People are paid a lot of money to figure that shit out. Go figure it out. What kind of health plan should pass that makes voters happy and doesn't make them upset because it doesn't raise their taxes or upset the status quo or isn't "moderate" or whatever the fuck? One which mails them a card on day one that they can use to go to the damn doctor without paying any money. Then the wonks and the politicians can get to work for the next 10 years fixing the engine under the hood.

Make voters happy by making them happy. Tomorrow. Eat the up front costs because we are a rich country and we can afford to eat the costs, and then spend the next 10 years clawing money back from the other "stakeholders" who have been looting the bank accounts of dying people for decades. Just don't make us have to worry about how.

Make getting sick slightly less of a hassle than Comcast Customer Support and voters will love you. It's that simple. The details matter, but the wonks should be working out that shit between themselves, not by writing memos on op-ed pages because none of us should have to care about them.

Note Black's twin bottom lines:

• The best plan gives voters "a card on day one that they can use to go to the damn doctor without paying any money."

• "Eat the up front costs because we are a rich country ... then spend the next 10 years clawing money back" from the predators who've been looting from dead people for decades.

In other words, just get on with it and do the wonky stuff later. The public would love you for it.

Imagine if President Obama's 2009 health care reform plan was today's Medicare for All? Imagine how much support would he have gotten (assuming he wanted that for us in the first place, which he didn't)? Public approval would have been instant, full-throated and universal. Remember, "Hands off my Medicare"?

A fervent supporter of all the Medicare he can get

Black's bottom lines are wildly popular, easy to understand — and easy to love, since no one in the country is giving to the "undeserving" what they aren't also getting for themselves.

Which tells you immediately how to frame this: "Folks, it's called Medicare for All, not Medicare for Some. Everyone gets the new plan — free health care forever — or no one does. So pick one: Are you in or out?"

Only the predatory health care industries will say no to that. Actual voters are the plan's best friends. All proponents have to do is make them happy by making them happy.
 

No One Gets To The Left Of Bernie

If the Trump-hating/AOC-hating/Elizabeth Warren-hating/Bernie-hating, clueless Starbucks Guy is running on reducing a deficit his class built up and on cutting what he calls "entitlements," and on opposing Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal and fair taxes on the wealthy, why doesn't he just run as the Republican his top aides and advisors all are?

Earlier in the week Miss McConnell and John Thune proposed repealing the weak estate tax, which is expected to be paid by fewer than 2,000 Americans a year. As Erik Sherman pointed out for Forbes readers, "The PR game that was waged to promote and forcibly sell the massive tax cut of 2017-- a move that has only begun to put the country into trouble-- is over. Corporations, the rich, and the politicians that serve them had their way. Now that particular façade has been dropped by those who erected it and the likely truth is out. The $1.5 trillion giveaway was supposed to create new jobs and significant investment by companies in facilities and equipment, all of which would drive economic growth." It turns out that 84% had not changed investment or hiring plans because of the drastically diminished corporate tax cuts and only 4% of corporations hired more people because of the tax cuts. The vast majority did nothing more than they would otherwise have. Trickle down/voodoo economics still doesn't work-- except for the already very wealthy. McConnell, Thune and the rest of the GOP are waging class war against the rest of us-- we most of us don't even know it. "GOP senators are now arguing to end the estate or inheritance tax because it's such a burden-- on fewer than 2,000 families a year," Sherman continued. "Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, and John Thune on the Senate Finance Committee are all saying that there has to be a big cut." How about a guillotine?



Yesterday, there was something strange about Sydney Ember's NY Times headline-- in 2019, rather than say 1980-- saying Sanders Unveils Estate Tax Plan, Joining Democrats Who Want to Tax the Rich. Bernie, she wrote, "introduced legislation on Thursday that would increase the number of wealthy Americans subject to the estate tax. With the bill, Mr. Sanders joins a growing chorus of left-wing politicians calling for new ways to tax the rich. Welcome to the party begun by Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren? Ummm.... maybe Sydney's headline writer is a 5 year old child prodigy who missed what Bernie had been talking about since 1970?

If passed and signed into law-- it may take a few years-- Bernie's new bill, the For the 99.8% Act, would establish a progressive estate tax on the fortunes of the top 0.2 percent of Americans and significantly increase rates on billionaires, raising $2.2 trillion from the nation's 588 billionaires. Bernie: "At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent. Our bill does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little."

His bill only applies to the wealthiest 0.2% of Americans. It would establish a 45% tax on the value of an estate between $3.5 million and $10 million; a 50% tax on the value of an estate between $10 million and $50 million; a 55% tax on the value of an estate in excess of $50 million; and a 77% tax on the value of an estate above $1 billion-- a return to the top rate from 1941 through 1976, while also closing tax loopholes that have allowed billionaire families to pass fortunes from one generation to the next without paying their fair share of taxes. BONUS: "The Kochs, a family worth over $97 billion, would owe an estate tax of up to $74 billion. And the family of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who has a net worth of more than $130 billion, would pay an estate tax of up to $100 billion."

The For the 99.8% Act was endorsed by a number of leading economists including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Robert Reich and Darrick Hamilton.

"The estate tax was a key pillar of the progressive tax revolution that the United States ushered one century ago. It prevented self-made wealth from turning into inherited wealth and helped make America more equal. However, the estate tax is dying of neglect, as tax avoidance schemes are multiplying and left unchallenged. As wealth concentration is surging in the United States, it is high time to revive the estate tax, plug the loopholes, and make it more progressive. Sen. Sanders' bill is a bold and welcome leap forward in this direction," said Emmanuel Saez, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

“One century ago, the US invented steeply progressive estate and income taxes in order to maintain the egalitarian and democratic legacy of the country. Today's US is becoming even more unequal than Pre-World War I Europe. The way out is stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs and a more progressive tax system. Sen. Sanders' estate tax bill, including a 77 percent tax rate on estate values above $1 billion, is an important step in this direction,” said Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics professor.

One of the country's best political-economics reporters, Zach Carter took this on from another perspective yesterday. Carter wrote that "Socialism is having a big moment in America. After a surge in popularity during the financial crisis of 2008, the long-verboten political label at last lost its toxicity after Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run and the election of democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in 2018. Among self-identified Democrats, socialism is now more popular than capitalism, reflecting a trend that has been evident among young voters for years. Bankers and billionaires are, of course, desperate to reverse this political tide. Eyeing the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the CEO of one giant bank recently told Politico that the party’s nominee “can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders.” To plutocrat Michael Bloomberg, Sanders is a “demagogue” preaching “unreason,” while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) will transform the United States into a “non-capitalistic” system where “people are starving to death,” like “Venezuela.” The rhetoric from the 0.01 percent is more than a little overheated. But for most people, Warren and Sanders hail from the same left flank of the Democratic Party-- both are supporters of enacting Medicare for all, breaking up the banks and dramatically increasing taxes on the very wealthy... Whatever Warren and Sanders say to establish their political brands, the two senators do in fact represent a very similar way of thinking about politics. That’s why billionaires hate them both.

All of these proposals transfer money and power from the super-rich to the not-rich. Take postal banking. About 32.6 million households rely on a check-cashing service, payday lender or other expensive, small-dollar financial bottom-feeder at least once a year, according to the FDIC. On average, these households earn about $25,500 a year and spend nearly 10 percent of their income-- $2,412-- on these sketchy financial products. That’s over $82 billion going from hard-up homes to predators every year. You can deal with payday lenders a lot of different ways: ban them, regulate them or, the preferred tack of Warren and Sanders, have the government make them obsolete. If every household can get a low-fee bank account with the Post Office, they won’t have to turn to legalized loan sharking to get by. That’s bad news for payday loan executives, like ACE Cash Express CEO Jay Shipowitz, who made almost $4.5 million in 2004 alone. Is postal banking socialism or reformed capitalism? Yes.

In America today, the super-rich not only control an outrageous share of the national wealth, they also exercise a degree of political power incompatible with basic democratic principles. The choice for Democrats in 2020 is not really about policy minutia-- it’s about power-- who has it, and who doesn’t. And both Sanders and Warren have proved they are willing to confront the powerful and attack their sources of power. We can call this socialism, New Deal liberalism or Jeffersonian democracy-- whatever the label, it’s a critical ideological test for anyone who wants to be the next president of the United States.

Running for re-election in 1936, FDR noted that the “economic royalists” of “business and financial monopoly, speculation” and “reckless banking” all counted themselves among his political “enemies.”

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” Roosevelt said. “They are unanimous in their hate for me-- and I welcome their hatred.”

For today’s Democrats, that’s the ticket.

Yeah, that populist approach that Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson and Jeff Merkley are taking... not this:

How Should Progressives See The Speakership Battle?

It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go. We need someone else to lead the Democratic Party in Congress. She's part of a status quo-- like Hillary-- that voters are not happy about. IT IS TIME FOR HER TO MOVE ON and make way for someone who comes from a different, more up-to-date personal and political context. Pelosi's priorities are no longer in synch with the priorities of the Democratic base. But that does not mean throwing her out and replacing her with a cabal of Wall Street and Big PhRMA-backed corporate shills. God forbid! And the Seth Moulton #5WhiteGuys coup is exactly that. The Congressional Progressive Caucus wants nothing to do with it-- nor do the vast majority of House Democrats. Blue Dogs, New Dems and other reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party are all that this coup is about.

Alan Grayson left his House seat to run, alas unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate. But when he was in the House he was a great admirerer of Pelosi. He still is and when i asked him how he feels about the current leadership battle, he told me that personally, he "found that she was the only leader in the House-- on either side-- committed to the fundamental ethic that our job was to pass good legislation that would make the world a better place, and that electoral success would (and should) follow only from that."

A few days ago Chris Hayes talked about the leadership battle on his MSNBC show with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above), who has already participated in a Climate Change sit-in in Pelosi's office (None of the #5WhiteGuys showed up.) She said when she read Moulton's letter, her "main concern was that there is no vision, there is no common value, there is no goal that is really articulated in this letter aside from 'we need to change.' I do think that we got sent to Congress on a mandate to change how government works, to change what government even looks like. But if we are not on the same page about changing the system and that values and how we're going to adapt as a party for the future, then what is the point, then what is the point of just changing our party leadership for the sake of it."

Keep in mind that Pelosi strongly backed Ocasio's opponent while the DCCC and her House Majority PAC spent $5 million electing Anthony Brindisi (NY), Ben McAdams (UT), Max Rose (NY) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ), the dishonorable and corrupt Blue Dogs who have foolishly signed on as members of Moulton's disintegrating coup.

Prodded by Hayes to define how she sees the coup, Ocasio aded that "if anything, I think that what it does is create a window where we could potentially get more conservative leadership. When you actually look at the signatories, it is not necessarily reflective of the diversity of the party. We have about 16 signatories. 14 of them are male. There are very few people of color. There's very little ideological diversity; it's not like there are progressives signing on. It's not like you have a broad-based coalition."

Since he's always so sensible, I asked Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who currently has the single best voting record, according to ProgressivePunch, of anyone in Congress. "Practically speaking," he told me yesterday, "the alternative to Pelosi right now is chaos. But chaos is not a progressive value-- it’s the classic opportunity for opportunism and right-wing politics.  Pelosi has been an historic figure who has engineered major legislative advances on everything from Dodd-Frank to the ACA. When it’s time for a change in leadership, progressive forces within Congress and across America will be ready."


UPDATE: One Less Coup Plotter

Brian Higgins is neither a Blue Dog nor a New Dem. He's an ordinary congressional Democrat and never appeared to me to be someone who belonged on Seth Moulton's list of coup plotters. And early yesterday his hometown paper, the Buffalo News, reported that he reversed course and will back Pelosi for speaker. He told the paper that he "decided to support Pelosi after she agreed to rank two of his top priorities among the new Democratic House's priorities. He said Pelosi agreed that Democrats will advance a major infrastructure bill early in the next Congress, and that Higgins will be able to take the lead as House Democrats work to pass his proposal to allow people to buy in to Medicare at the age of 50." The paper suggested that Higgins' withdrawal from Moulton's scheming "could take the steam out of the effort to replace Pelosi."

Children In Cages

Reporting for The Hill the week, JulieGrace Brufke-- whose byline I've never seen before so maybe she's new and about to learn something valuable-- made a grievous error in the opening two words of an important story, Democrats in swing districts advised to avoid talking about immigration. The error she made-- common inside the Beltway where people don't know shit from shinola-- was in referring to Third Way, the far right of the Democratic Party and the far right of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party that works assiduously against progressives and progressive ideas, as "left-leaning." How about "right-leaning," a far more accurate description of the Wall Street-funded group? That said, let's take a look at what JulieGrace was reporting.

Basically the Republican wing of the Democratic Party avoids an issue that resonates with millions of actual Democrats: Trump's inhumane, racist, xenophobic immigration agenda. Doug Pagitt, the pastor and executive director of Vote Common Good in the video up top, just reminded me that "One of Jesus most famous quotes from Matthew 19 is 'what God has brought together no one should ever separate.'" Keeping families together goes beyond politics for tens of millions of American families. But when it does come to politics, Alan Grayson reminded me of something else, something darker: "The Democrats in charge," he warned me yesterday, "want other Democrats to run not as Democrats, but rather as not-Republicans. To do that, however, you have to be able to explain why you are not a Republican. And now our party leaders don’t want that, either. The issue-phobia that afflicts the party is now chronic, pervasive, and possibly fatal."

ICE, ICE by Nancy Ohanian

Melissa Byrne, a progressive organizer and strategist, is an old friend. She was incensed by the Third Way memo to candidates. She told me that "Third Way has a record of losing and being beholden to the Wall Streeters. They shouldn't be invited to anything within the Democratic sphere. We don't need them. We don't want them. Bravery wins and throwing immigrants under the bus is how we lose morally and at the ballot box. Shame on the Third Way." Another old friend, Murshed Zaheed, was no less incensed: "Folks in the establishment are perfectly comfortable with status quo and maintaining their little fiefdoms within the current parameters of white supremacy. Sorry, I am done being polite on this stuff after seeing what Schumer and the Congressional Democratic leadership has done the last few years... There are Democrats working pretty hard at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory... Notice that Third Way's VP of Policy [co-founder Jim Kessler] was formerly Schumer's legislative director. These people will stumble over themselves for good photo ops-- and show up at 'marches'-- but when it comes times for action-- they show their true colors."

The kinds of Democraps the Third Way memo appeals to are Blue Dogs like former CIA spy Abigail Spanberger who's running against immigration-hardliner and extremist arch-villain Dave Brat (R-VA). Spanberger is an Eisenhower-era Republican-- maybe slightly to the right of that, not an actual Democrat. She put out an ad distancing herself from the progressives and from mainstream Democratic Party ideas. She has fully embraced the DCCC's one strategy: "sure we suck but we don't suck as bad as the Republicans. WE ARE THE LESSER EVIL, so you suck that up, bitches!" It's why the Democrats have done nothing but lose, lose, lose for the last decade and why there is no Blue Wave, just an anti-red wave. Spanberger-- one of the most repulsive candidates the DCCC recruited this cycle-- and that is saying a lot-- referred to immigrants in her ad as "criminals" and "gangs." So how is she different from Trump and Brat? She is every bit as vile and detestable as they are... but with a "D" next to her name. Just imagine what that monster is going to be like in Congress!

Mike Lux is another old pal but you may remember him from an incredible book, The Progressive Revolution, that we covered here frequently. Before writing that, Mike worked in Nebraska and Iowa politics, and then in the Clinton White House, and has been an advisor to candidates like Elizabeth Warren. This morning I asked him about the Third Way memo. This is what he told me and said it was OK to share at DWT:

For many years, the conventional wisdom among the DC Democratic Party establishment has been to avoid tough issues in swing states and districts at all costs. That’s why Al Gore chose to never talk about gun issues in 2000, and two decades later why Democrats avoid talking about immigration and other racially charged issues in working class white areas today. The problem with this approach is that those same issues are the ones that Republicans talk about non-stop everywhere they go. The result is that their side builds the framing of the question at hand and defines the terms of the debate. So Gore lost his home state of Tennessee and the state of West Virginia, which has always gone for Democrats before that time, because the NRA said Gore would take folks’ hunting rifles away, and Gore never answered, so people assumed the NRA was right. Today, (while the same right wing drumbeat on guns is going on) Trump says immigrants are rapists and killers, coming to steal our jobs. If we fail to answer, if we fail to take the argument to the voters and make our case, we will lose those blue-collar voters once again.

Watch a right-of-center Third Way asshole, a real elitist piece of crap, arguing with Bernie campaign manager Jeff Weaver. Too bad Debbie Wasserman Schultz wasn't on stage to explain how she and her team at the DNC were able to rig primary after primary for her centrist candidate. These are exactly the people who refuse to understand that by refusing to draw a strong contrast on immigration and against white supremacist policy they manage to send the message to communities of color that Democrats won’t make meaningful progress on those issues.



Now watch the one below, when they get into specific policy and somehow Steven Rattner missed this little factoid in the graphic. The Third Way, No Labels and so-called "Problem Solvers" wolves in sheep's clothing folks from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party always do seem to, don't they? Meanwhile, today Pramila Jayapal told me she's working on the new version of the Medicare for All bill and including dental and eye care, an idea that will appeal to pretty much all normal Americans, if not Republicans and the Third Way establishment.

Trump's Divisive, Deceitful Midterm Message

Yesterday, USA Today published an OpEd that someone wrote for Señor Trumpanzee: Democrats Medicare for All plan will demolish promises to seniors. It's an absurd and misleading way to look at Medicare For All... and it's exactly what Republican candidates are saying about it from coast to coast. It's no different from the hysteria Republicans raised when Democrats began the process of passing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid-- and every other piece of progressive legislation of the last century. In fact not ONE Republican in the House voted for FDR's Social Security bill-- and the only Republican senator to support it, George Norris (NE) soon left the party and was re-elected as an Independent with Democratic Party support! The Republican Party's response to cure the Depression that their agenda had plunged the country into, was to oppose banking reform, oppose work relief programs, oppose breaking up the monopolies, oppose the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, oppose unemployment insurance for workers, oppose everything that went on to make the U.S. a successful middle class country.

Mike Lux wrote about this in his fantastic book, The Progressive Revolution-- How The Best In America Came To Be, almost a decade ago:

If you look at our country’s long history, from the days of the first stirrings of our revolutionary impulses against Britain to today, progressive leaders and progressive movements have moved this country forward in the face of bitter-- and frequently violent-- opposition from reactionaries and defenders of the status quo. Consider the major advances in American history:

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• Women’s suffrage
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Every single one of those reforms, which are literally the reforms that made this country what it is today, was accomplished by the progressive movement standing up to the fierce opposition of conservative reactionaries who were trying to preserve their own power. American history is one long argument between progressivism and conservatism.

The striking thing about this long debate is how much the arguments that have occurred are repetitive over time, in terms of their rhetoric, constituencies, philosophy, and the values they represent. From generation to generation, the conservatives who oppose reform and progress have used the same kinds of arguments over and over again. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described the division as one between “public purpose and private interest.”

The Conservative Argument

Successful businessmen and their allies make America great, and we should not undermine their authority or cost them money because that will mean bad things for the economy and all of us. Their freedom to run things as they like benefits everyone in the long run. And they should be the ones who control the government as well, because they know how the world works, and we can trust them to protect out national interests because of their knowledge and wisdom. An excess of democracy is a dangerous thing.

We must adhere to tradition because once we tamper with tradition, society goes to hell. It’s a scary world out there, and the people who have always run things can protect us, but only if we stay with our traditions and keep things the way they have always been. People who are different from us create problems, and we don’t want our traditions or the carefully built structure of our society undermined.

If people are poor, it’s probably their own fault because they are too lazy to work, didn’t study in school, and are generally bad people. Society shouldn’t spend any money on helping people who can’t help themselves, and we can’t afford it anyway. Ultimately, each of us is responsible for ourselves in the world, and we shouldn’t be relying on government or anybody else to make it.

We should fear change and be wary of hope because when things change, we just don’t know what the unintended consequences will be.

The Progressive Argument

We are all created equal and deserve both equal rights under the law and equal oppor-tunities to make good lives for ourselves and families. That means that the laws should not be formulated to favor one race of people or to help the wealthy over the poor. And it means that we all should have a good education, enough food to eat, adequate health care if we get sick, and a decent place to live.

Our society works well only when it has a sense of community, an understanding that we are all interdependent on one another, that we are all diminished if any one of us is suffering, and that we look out for those who can’t take care of themselves.

America is a democracy that should be a government of, by, and for the people. We don’t trust elites to look out for the rest of us, and we want everyone to have a say in how the government and the economy are run.

Fear And Hope

The arguments by conservatives all too frequently invoke fear-- of change, of one another, of foreigners and foreign enemies, or of certain people. They proclaim a loud and fervent patriotism and a love of traditional values, quite often quoting the Bible to justify their point of view, while ignoring those patriots and Bible quotes that don’t fit their agenda.

Progressives, on the other hand, have called for hope, rather than fear, and for changing things for the better, rather than just leaving things the way they have always been. We have been for more power for regular folks and less power for elites. And we have been for a stronger sense of community, rather than the sense that each of us is on his or her own.

The central theme of this book is to show how these political arguments have been repeated over time and time again since the American Revolution, how the same alternative visions of America keep being argued over and over, and how when progressives have won the day politically, the country has moved forward.

The good news is that a more progressive vision of what America can aspire to has prevailed enough times over the years to make us a far better country. While it is certainly true that the United States is more conservative by many measures than the industrialized countries in Europe, and that progress has been uneven and painfully slow, we are also the country that invented the modern notions of democracy and equality, and that legacy has echoed down through the generations and inspired new movements to make their claims on the American dream.

...We also know that the progressive arguments and movements have prevailed again and again and have created democracy where progress is always possible. Movement leaders such as Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rachel Carson have always been ahead of the politicians and have pushed our country to become better. Our history is full of progressive leaders fighting the good fight, and winning much of the time, to create a better nation. The battle between conservatism and progress will continue to be fought as long as there is a United States of America.

Sound familiar? It should. Today Trump is the spokesperson for the reactionary pushback and his lackey's USA Today is demonstrative of just what Lux warned about in 2009. Although not even Lux could have guessed that anyone would be so blatant in their disinformation and propaganda the way Trump is-- unlike any western public figure since Joseph Goebbels.

Dishonestly called “Medicare for All,” the Democratic proposal would establish a government-run, single-payer health care system that eliminates all private and employer-based health care plans and would cost an astonishing $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years.

As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums. I have kept that promise, and we are now seeing health insurance premiums coming down.

I also made a solemn promise to our great seniors to protect Medicare. That is why I am fighting so hard against the Democrats' plan that would eviscerate Medicare. Democrats have already harmed seniors by slashing Medicare by more than $800 billion over 10 years to pay for Obamacare. Likewise, Democrats would gut Medicare with their planned government takeover of American health care.

The Democrats' plan means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice, seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised. By eliminating Medicare as a program for seniors, and outlawing the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans, the Democratic plan would inevitably lead to the massive rationing of health care. Doctors and hospitals would be put out of business. Seniors would lose access to their favorite doctors. There would be long wait lines for appointments and procedures. Previously covered care would effectively be denied.

In practice, the Democratic Party’s so-called Medicare for All would really be Medicare for None. Under the Democrats' plan, today’s Medicare would be forced to die.

The Democrats' plan also would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health care decisions. Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors’ health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The first thing the Democratic plan will do to end choice for seniors is eliminate Medicare Advantage plans for about 20 million seniors as well as eliminate other private health plans that seniors currently use to supplement their Medicare coverage.

Next, the Democrats would eliminate every American’s private and employer-based health plan. It is right there in their proposed legislation: Democrats outlaw private health plans that offer the same benefits as the government plan.

Americans might think that such an extreme, anti-senior, anti-choice and anti-consumer proposal for government-run health care would find little support among Democrats in Congress.

Unfortunately, they would be wrong: 123 Democrats in the House of Representatives-- 64 percent of House Democrats-- as well as 15 Democrats in the Senate have already formally co-sponsored this legislation. Democratic nominees for governor in Florida, California and Maryland are all campaigning in support of it, as are many Democratic congressional candidates.

Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal, founder and co-chair of the Medicare For All Congressional Caucus, issued a powerful and straight-forward statement after Trump's disgraceful OpEd, pointing out that it is "littered with falsehoods and misleading statements. He lied to the American people countless times on his Presidential campaign, he continued to do so while in office and now he’s lying in this Op-Ed. He broke his promise to the American people by continuously attempting to usher in a health care plan that would have rolled back the progress of the Affordable Care Act and left millions without the coverage they need. Donald Trump simply can’t be trusted to protect health care for the American people-- let alone talk about it accurately and honestly. The fact of the matter is that Medicare For All works and is popular. It promises to streamline our fragmented health care system to lower costs for drugs, procedures, and services. No one should be one health care crisis from bankruptcy. No one should be worried about obtaining lifesaving medicine due to cost or access. This caucus is committed to not only making sure that every American across the country has quality, affordable health care but also holding the President accountable for making meaningful improvements to our healthcare system instead of continuing to promote policies that take healthcare away from people."

PolitiFact took a quick look at all the lies in Trump's OpEd. Here are 8 of Trump's biggest lies in the OpEd. They actually found around a dozen.

Trump: Medicare for All "would establish a government-run, single-payer health care system that eliminates all private and employer-based health care plans and would cost an astonishing $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years."

Trump is citing a study by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University of a health care plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The study predicted a $32.6 trillion rise in federal spending over a 10-year period ending in 2031. The same study also forecast, however, that total health care spending would fall by about $2 trillion.

...Trump: Medicare for All would "take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives."

This is a "horrible mischaracterization of the proposal," said Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute. Medicare for All would actually give an expanded version of traditional Medicare to everyone, with broader coverage-- including items such as dental and vision care-- while eliminating virtually all out of pocket costs, she said.

"I find it impossible to imagine that the approach could lead to everyone losing coverage," Blumberg said. "A theoretical failure would be a political inability to raise sufficient revenue to pay for these very generous benefits. That could theoretically lead to reductions in benefits from the proposal’s more expansive level, but even that would be very likely to be more generous that current Medicare benefits and cost-sharing."

Here’s a reason seniors could actually benefit: Currently, Medicare payment rates tend to be lower than payment levels on commercial plans, giving providers an incentive to accept a new commercial patient rather than a new Medicare patient. "From that perspective, equalizing payment levels for everyone could benefit seniors," said Christine Eibner, a health policy analyst with RAND Corp.

Trump: "We are now seeing health insurance premiums coming down."

Trump references an article about the cost of "benchmark" plans under the Affordable Care Act falling 2 percent in 2019. But it’s worth noting that the decline occurred after ACA premiums rose significantly in 2018 due to uncertainty about what the Trump administration would do with the law.

In addition, ACA premiums are a minority of all private health insurance premiums. In its annual survey of health insurance benefits, Kaiser reported earlier this month that for employer-sponsored health insurance, the average premium for a solo policyholder increased 3 percent over the past year, while the average family premium increased by 5 percent. That exceeded the growth in employee wages and overall inflation.

Trump: "The Democrats' plan that would eviscerate Medicare."

Trump’s link goes to a New York Times article that says the opposite.

"Coverage for these people would become more generous because the Sanders bill would expand to cover dental, vision and hearing aids, which are not covered under current law," the article said. "The bill would also get rid of nearly all cost-sharing requirements in the program. Beneficiaries could go to the doctor or hospital without having to pay any money out of their pocket. The program would require co-payments for certain prescription drugs."

Trump: "Seniors would lose access to their favorite doctors."

Trump "ignores that under Medicare for All, there would be no provider networks, so everyone would have access to whatever physician or hospital they choose," Blumberg, of the Urban Institute, said.

Trump: "Democrats have already harmed seniors by slashing Medicare by more than $800 billion over 10 years to pay for Obamacare."

The Affordable Care Act reduced payment rates and the rate of increase in Medicare payments to providers by about $800 billion over 10 years. It also levied a tax on families making over $250,000 to help finance Medicare. It imposed a tax on net investment income for those making over $200,000 and raised other taxes.

In all, the law had about $630 billion in additional revenues over 10 years.

In addition, Obamacare made Medicare better for many by adding some prevention services and reducing prescription drug costs for those caught in what was called the "doughnut hole."

Trump: One effect of Medicare for All would be "outlawing the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans."

Private plans would be going away, because everyone who currently has them would get Medicare coverage instead. There wouldn’t be a need for Medigap plans, which are private plans that currently pay for items that Medicare doesn’t cover.

Trump: "The Democratic plan would inevitably lead to the massive rationing of health care."

Both the House and Senate Medicare for All bills are short on details for the transition to a new health insurance system. The Senate proposal lays out a four-year period during which a public insurance plan would be offered to the general public and current Medicare users would see expanded benefits and a cap on out-of-pocket costs.

Two other factors are worth keeping in mind. First, there’s ample evidence that Americans pay more for the same services than in other countries, and while every health care system struggles, those aren’t in collapse. Second, there’s evidence of overtreatment in America. Estimates say between 20 to 30 percent of care is unnecessary and may leave patients worse off.

"It’s possible that some providers would reduce their supply of services under a single-payer plan, particularly if payment rates were below what they are currently receiving," said Christine Eibner of RAND Corp. "But it’s far from clear that such supply reductions would be widespread."

We have an ActBlue page dedicated to candidates who want to sign on to Medicare for all legislation when they get to Congress in January. If you want to see the list of candidate-- or, hopefully, contribute to their campaigns, just click on the ActBlue thermometer on the right.

Mike Siegel is running for a Texas seat occupied by an extremist who has repeatedly voted to destroy Medicare, multimillionaire Michael McCaul. McCaul, one of the wealthiest members of Congress-- he married into a rich family-- doesn't believe in the safety net and doesn't believe in society providing for the less fortunate. Siegel is very different. "Medicare-for-All," he told us yesterday, "will guarantee healthcare for every American, and will have positive impacts on every aspect of our society. By having universal healthcare, we will save lives. We will reduce emergency room visits by providing preventative care. We will reduce the cost of prescription medicine. We will encourage innovation, because Americans will not have to cling to undesirable jobs just to receive healthcare benefits. And we will dramatically improve the quality of life in rural areas, where hospitals are currently closing because of Republican governors who refused Medicaid expansion. If anyone wants private healthcare after we implement Medicare for All, nothing will stop them. But by having Medicare for All, we will ensure that every American has the basic support they need to survive and thrive."

If there was one issue that got Randy Bryce to jump into the "impossible" race to defeat Paul Ryan, it was the issue of healthcare. It's what he talks about with Wisconsin voters constantly. This morning I asked him about Trump's OpEd. He reminded me that "The Koch brothers paid for a study that says we will save two trillion a year with Medicare-for-All based on current spending. Our health care costs more than anyplace else but we still have people spreading out their insulin because they can't afford the prescribed dosage. Higher premiums arrive annually to healthy people in order to cover the expense of those who don't have coverage. Every other industrialized nation has it. Why don't we? Aren't we worthy to be healthy? What part of providing for the general welfare of our citizens has excluded the ability to see a doctor? It's time to stop the lies. There is more than enough to go around (especially if some people would stop giving tax breaks to money hoarders).

Bryce's feisty campaign manager, David Keith would like nothing more than to hear Trump/Ryan sock puppet Brian Steil, a corporate lawyer, echo the anti-healthcare message. "The louder Trump is on this issue, the angrier Randy's base will be. Medicare for All makes sense to working people. Trump's OpEd was written for him by Beltway think tank staffers who have never stepped foot in a place like Southeast Wisconsin. You see, people here don't like the Beltway talking points. They like straight talk. Medicare for All is straight talk. That's why Bernie did so well here with both Democrats and Independents. We challenge President Trump to double down on this message. The people are not on his side on this one."


UPDATE: Ted Lieu

"Just like his misleading press conferences and toxic political rallies, Trump's USA Today OpEd is full of conspiracy theories and outright lies. Trump and Republicans in Congress have supported healthcare proposals that would weaken protections for those with preexisting conditions, eliminate health coverage for millions of Americans, and raise costs for those that are lucky enough to keep their coverage. They have purposefully sought to sabotage the Affordable Care Act at every turn, harming real people who need help.

The United States is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. There is no reason we should not be able to provide quality affordable health care for our people. When you hear Republicans fear-mongering about universal single-payer health care keep in mind that we already have a successful single-payer healthcare program in America. It's called Medicare. Unfortunately it is only for people over 65-- the oldest and costliest people to insure. There's no reason it wouldn't work for the rest of us."