52 Senate Republicans Are Both Political Cowards And Willing To Put Their Dying Party Over The Country And The People

-by Chip Proser

The 3 Senate Democrats-- Doug Jones (AL), Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)-- who seemed up-in-the-air about the impeachment vote, all voted "guilty," as did Republican Mitt Romney (UT). Why didn't more Republicans do what they knew was right? Just going by what they've said publicly-- certainly Susan Collins (ME), Lamar Alexander (TN), Ben Sasse (NE), Rob Portman (OH) and Lisa (AK)-- we know they knew full well what Trump is. I assume way more than 20 of the Republicans know. Was it just cowardice?

Pramila Jayapal isn't a senator yet, but she's the well-respected congresswoman from Seattle, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. "Instead of showing courage," she told her constituents yesterday, "all but one Republican senator today exemplified cowardice. In putting party and politics over country and Constitution, Republicans drove a stake in the heart of our democracy. The case for convicting and removing President Trump was overwhelming and irrefutable: President Trump endangered the sanctity of our elections by inviting foreign interference in our most sacred democratic institution. He betrayed our national security, violated the sacred trust of the American people, and threatened the very future of our democracy. At every turn, the President and his Administration obstructed the House-- refusing to turn over even a single document or provide even a single witness. In spite of this unprecedented obstruction, the House did its job and Donald Trump will forever be an impeached president. Since the House impeached President Trump, more and more damning information about the President’s abuse of power has come to light. Instead of pursuing the full truth, Senate Republicans eagerly enlisted themselves to be President Trump’s co-conspirators-- covering up the President’s misconduct without even caring to find out the extent of his misconduct. It is a disgrace that Mitch McConnell refused to give the American people what they deserve and what the Constitution demands: a fair trial with witnesses and impartial justice. President Trump will be held accountable one way or another-- whether through the courts or the ballot box-- and the American people and history will not forget the Republicans’ cowardice."

Sherrod Brown of Ohio, on the other hand, is a senator. He penned an OpEd for the NY Times yesterday, In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out Of Fear. He said that in the Senate "fear does the business." He asked his readers to "Think back to the fall of 2002, just a few weeks before that year’s crucial midterm elections, when the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was up for a vote. A year after the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of members of the House and the Senate were about to face the voters of a country still traumatized by terrorism. Senator Patty Murray, a thoughtful Democrat from Washington State, still remembers 'the fear that dominated the Senate leading up to the Iraq war. You could feel it then,' she told me, 'and you can feel that fear now'-- chiefly among Senate Republicans."

For those of us who, from the start, questioned the wisdom of the Iraq war, our sense of isolation surely wasn’t much different from the loneliness felt in the 1950s by Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, who confronted Joe McCarthy’s demagogy only to be abandoned by so many of his colleagues. Nor was it so different from what Senator George McGovern must have felt when he announced his early opposition to the Vietnam War and was then labeled a traitor by many inside and outside of Congress.

History has indeed taught us that when it comes to the instincts that drive us, fear has no rival. As the lead House impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, has noted, Robert Kennedy spoke of how “moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.”

Playing on that fear, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought a quick impeachment trial for President Trump with as little attention to it as possible. Reporters, who usually roam the Capitol freely, have been cordoned off like cattle in select areas. Mr. McConnell ordered limited camera views in the Senate chamber so only presenters-- not absent senators-- could be spotted.

And barely a peep from Republican lawmakers.

One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”

Fear has a way of bending us.

Late in the evening on day four of the trial I saw it, just 10 feet across the aisle from my seat at Desk 88, when Mr. Schiff told the Senate: “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that Republican senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’” The response from Republicans was immediate and furious. Several groaned and protested and muttered, “Not true.” But pike or no pike, Mr. Schiff had clearly struck a nerve. (In the words of Lizzo: truth hurts.)

Of course, the Republican senators who have covered for Mr. Trump love what he delivers for them. But Vice President Mike Pence would give them the same judges, the same tax cuts, the same attacks on workers’ rights and the environment. So that’s not really the reason for their united chorus of “not guilty.”

For the stay-in-office-at-all-cost representatives and senators, fear is the motivator. They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all-- that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:

“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”

“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”

“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”

My colleagues know they all just might. There’s an old Russian proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first cut by the scythe. In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.

So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold: They claim that calling witnesses would have meant a never-ending trial. They tell us they’ve made up their minds, so why would we need new evidence? They say to convict this president now would lead to the impeachment of every future president-- as if every president will try to sell our national security to the highest bidder.

I have asked some of them, “If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?” Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.

They stop short of explicitly saying that they are afraid. We all want to think that we always stand up for right and fight against wrong. But history does not look kindly on politicians who cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election. They might claim fealty to their cause-- those tax cuts-- but often it’s a simple attachment to power that keeps them captured.

As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, “We can act out of fear” or “we can stick to our principles.” Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way. In November, the American people will have theirs.

I've been talking with former Columbus mayor Teresa Tomlinson for about a year and a few weeks ago we sat down for a relaxing dinner. She's running for a Georgia U.S. Senate seat that's currently held by a total 100% Trump enabler, David Perdue. Her campaign motto is all about gumption but as we were getting to know each other she wrote a guest post for this blog, Crippling Political Fear. Back in July, she wrote that "It’s fear that cripples the Democratic Party. Fear of our policies, fear of who we are, and fear of the Republicans. Yes, fear is what has politically cost us in the last many election cycles. One cannot lead if one is afraid. The thing about leadership is that people want their leaders to be brave. They care less about what you think on the issues than whether you have the moxie to fight for them and the strength of conviction to tell them what you really think."

She was admiring The Squad because they are "fearless about their beliefs. They refuse to be bullied, and that is dangerous to the Republican playbook of shaming scared Democrats into milk toast, mealy-mouthed, baby-splitting positions that are equivocal and stand for nothing. American voters revile those who won’t tell the people what they think. Even if you don’t support the policies-- or certainly some of the statements-- of The Squad, you can’t deny that you appreciate that they unabashedly tell the world what they think."

A classic example of this crippling Democratic political plague of fear is 2014 Democratic Senate candidate Alison Grimes, who refused to say whether she voted for the leader of her party, the two-term first black president, Barack Obama. And, the legion of Democratic candidates that year who refused to say they supported the Affordable Care Act (ACA), because the polling showed it was unpopular. Did we think any voter believed that a Democrat running for federal office didn’t fundamentally support the notion of providing healthcare coverage for millions of previously uninsured constituents? Our citizens could have used a little leadership from Democratic candidates during that cycle. Our president would have benefitted from the leadership of those Democratic candidates because fear begets disrespect and that disrespect spilled throughout the party and weakened Obama as its leader. Maybe if we had all spoken out and pushed back against the Republican political propaganda machine, we would not have allowed the bell-curve to slide so far right.

The nation has had its share of politically lukewarm Democratic candidates-- structured by the national party for perceived winnability not leadership. Even if they had a tagline of-- “Fighting for you”-- no one believed it.  How could they if they didn’t fight for the ACA or weren’t willing to admit America has a gun violence problem?

...When Democratic leaders believe that beginning impeachment proceedings is about polls or election results, they, too, are giving in to fear: they are afraid that following the Constitutional checks and balances and leading will cost them their job, so they mitigate and delay. Unfortunately, their job is to lead by upholding the Constitution, not to get re-elected.

Impeachment is not about undoing the last election or impacting the next. It certainly is not about the polls as the Founding Framers made perfectly clear in Federalist Paper, No. 66. It is about stopping a president who would abuse and misuse the power of the presidency so that not another day passes-- not another circumstance presents itself-- where a president, unfit for duty because of the commission of High Crimes or Misdemeanors (defined as misdeeds) can inflict his/her poor judgment on the office, the country, or the people. Oh, if only impeachment proceedings had been instituted sooner, the damage that might have been averted.

Instead, Democrats are afraid of what the Republicans will say about it-- what the bullies will do to us on the way home. So, we cut through the alley to avoid the fight and controversy. We detour our duty of leadership and good government. Commencing impeachment proceedings is about employing the constitutional duty that our elected leaders were sworn to do-- not about mitigating to the finish line and hoping no one notices that we wouldn’t use the tools entrusted to us to keep the American system on the rails. All Democrats, and many Independents and Republicans, understand that Donald Trump has committed High Crimes or Misdemeanors, so if this conduct doesn’t warrant the commencement of impeachment proceedings, then what would? We must seriously consider the example of tolerance for harmful conduct at the highest levels of our government we are creating.

The key to winning is that you don’t aim to win, you aim to lead. If you lead, the winning takes care of itself-- or at least you move the needle so profoundly you set up the next winner, as did Stacey Abrams in Georgia with her heroic non-loss in Georgia. She was who she was and voters responded to that.

That’s not fear, that’s winning.

Retired Admiral Mike Franken, one of the candidates running for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by Trump enabler Joni Ernst (R-IA) told us today that "In my previous line of work, if you make a mistake in judgment, the shortcoming is documented. I'm joining my friend Senator Joe Manchin in calling for a vote on censuring Donald Trump for conduct unbefitting the office of the President of the United States. Let's see if Joni Ernst remembers telling Jake Tapper about the president's mistake in using his office's influence to investigate Joe Biden in Ukraine and whether she remembers her military training to document and censure poor or misguided performance. This is an opportunity to separate those who understand the importance of leadership in crisis from those who fall for political expediency."

OK, so now let's close out the night and, in some respects, the week, with some commentary from the inimitable Samantha Bee. She was really rockin' this week:

Careerism Vs Courage-- How Will They Play Out In The Impeachment Vote?

Saturday morning, I pointed out on Twitter that though Pelosi managed to hold the entire Democratic caucus together to pass H.R.-3, her rather weak drug price reduction bill, just before the vote, the Republicans offered a way to kill the legislation via a Motion to Recommit. That failed but 3 super-conservative fake-Democrats voted with all the Republicans for it-- Blue Dogs Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Mikie Sherrill (NJ) and Ben McAdams (UT). Another Twitter user, Maria, offered up a typical excuse for this kind of bad vote: "NJ is big Pharma territory."

What she meant is that several drug companies are based in New Jersey. The Big PhRMA companies-- Pfizer, Amgen-- Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Merck, AstraZeneca, Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Milan, Bayer, etc-- give millions of dollars in bribes to many members of Congress annually. Last cycle, New Jersey's delegation did pretty well. Among the current House members, the biggest amounts went to:

• Frank Pallone (D)- $117,200
• Bonnie Watson Coleman (D)- $59,812
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog)- $49,280
• Bill Pascrell (D)- $45,500
• Don Norcross (New Dem)- $38,900
• candidate Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog)- $35,311
• candidate Tom Malinowski (New Dem)- $24,097
• Donald Payne (D)- $20,800
• candidate Andy Kim (D)- $19,018
• Chris Smith (R)- $12,250
• candidate Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog)- $7,228

But the impetus for bribery from these savvy companies--and from their lobbyists-- follows power, not geography. Pallone didn't get a lion's share of loot ($694,170 since he was elected) because he represents Middlesex and Monmouth counties, but because he is chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and can-- and does-- protect the drug companies from progressive legislation like Medicare-for-All. The 5 current House members who have taken the most in bribes from PhRMA are those who serve their masters best, not those who live in their districts:

• Fred Upton (R-MI)- former chair of Energy and Commerce- $943,531
• Anna Eshoo (D-CA), chair, Energy and Commerce's Heath Subcommittee- $891,815
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- corrupt minority leader- $849,550
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- corrupt majority leader- $719,572
• Frank Pallone (D-NJ)- chair of Energy and Commerce- $694,170

A warning from progressive California congressional candidate Cenk Uygur: "Drug companies don't give politicians money for charity, they do it to buy them. And unfortunately it works. Everyone knows these are bribes. The only people who won't acknowledge it are corporate politicians on both sides and the corporate media. This is a sick system that lets people die for profit. Any politician that takes money from the drug companies is selling out their voters on behalf of their donors."

On Friday evenings, Chris Hayes has taken to doings his MSNBC shows in front of a live audience. This week one of his guests was Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D). In his last couple of seconds on the air, Brown managed to blurt out one of the most crucial things he has ever said about electoral politics and how it impacts American politics. Unfortunately an ad was calling and it never got discussed on the show: "If politicians are willing to lose an election, they're always better at their job." That idea goes beyond geography, beyond sources of campaign funds, beyond ideology, even beyond partisan affiliation. It goes to character-- integrity, honesty, sense of honor... courageousness. Nothing else much matters in politics without it.

It's the opposite of political careerism. And it speaks to the real reason why craven and cowardly political hacks like Gottheimer, Sherrill and McAdams were willing to cross the aisle and vote with the GOP to kill a bill that would reduce the cost of medicine for their constituents in Bergen County, in Morris County and in Salt Lake County.

In the next few days, Pelosi will tell Hoyer to call an impeachment vote. Several Democrats in difficult districts have already announced they intend to vote to hold Trump accountable for his on-going criminal behavior. One, putrid New Jersey Blue Dog Jefferson Van Drew (widely expected to bolt the party and seek reelection as a Republican) has said he is absolutely voting against impeachment. He's not even in a prohibitively red district. Obama won the NJ-02 district comfortably both times he ran. Trump won in 2016-- 50.6% to 46.0%-- not because the district had suddenly turned red, but because Hillary was such a lousy candidate for the working class voters who dominate the district. The PVI is just R+1, not that much of a stretch for a Democrat.

There are no normal Democrats talking about voting against impeachment, but there are around a dozen from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who are... all Blue Dogs and New Dems, of course. These are the other Democrats besides Van Drew who are most likely to vote against impeachment... along with their districts' PVIs. (Notice that 3 are in blue districts.)

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- R+12
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- R+6
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- R+13
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- R+10
• Chrissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA)- D+2
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- R+3
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- R+2
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- D+6
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- R+4
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- R+6
• Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI)- D+17

Some of the least courageous of the usual wafflers have aleady come out to say they are voting to impeach the bastard, including Elaine Luria (VA), Max Rose (NY), Conor Lamb (PA), Colin Allred (TX), Susan Wild (PA), Susie Lee (NV) and Tom O’Halleran (AZ). O'Halleran, a former Republican legislator currently pretending to be a Democrat, is now a Blue Dog. He has a very intense primary from progressive activist Eva Putzova and that has, of late, moved him towards the mainstream on issues-- like this-- where he would be more comfortable voting with the Republicans. In his announcement Friday, he said that "Trump abused the power of the presidency and broke his oath of office when he bribed the nation of Ukraine by withholding military aid they had already been promised in exchange for help investigating a political opponent. I will vote to impeach the President because this bribery and abuse of power violated the constitution and put our national security and our international relationships at risk." It's lucky we have Putzova pushing him so hard.

Last summer progressive Democrat Teresa Tomlinson called for impeaching Trump. She's running for a Senate seat held by an extreme Trump partisan, David Perdue. At the time, Tomlinson wrote that "It’s fear that cripples the Democratic Party. Fear of our policies, fear of who we are, and fear of the Republicans. Yes, fear is what has politically cost us in the last many election cycles. One cannot lead if one is afraid. The thing about leadership is that people want their leaders to be brave. They care less about what you think on the issues than whether you have the moxie to fight for them and the strength of conviction to tell them what you really think... That’s what the Right can’t stand about The Squad. Those women are fearless about their beliefs. They refuse to be bullied, and that is dangerous to the Republican playbook of shaming scared Democrats into milk toast, mealy-mouthed, baby-splitting positions that are equivocal and stand for nothing. American voters revile those who won’t tell the people what they think. Even if you don’t support the policies-- or certainly some of the statements-- of The Squad, you can’t deny that you appreciate that they unabashedly tell the world what they think." She continued with a statement all Democrats wavering and quivering in fear-- especially an arch-coward like Brindisi-- should study:

Impeachment is not about undoing the last election or impacting the next. It certainly is not about the polls as the Founding Framers made perfectly clear in Federalist Paper, No. 66. It is about stopping a president who would abuse and misuse the power of the presidency so that not another day passes-- not another circumstance presents itself-- where a president, unfit for duty because of the commission of High Crimes or Misdemeanors (defined as misdeeds) can inflict his/her poor judgment on the office, the country, or the people. Oh, if only impeachment proceedings had been instituted sooner, the damage that might have been averted.

Instead, Democrats are afraid of what the Republicans will say about it-- what the bullies will do to us on the way home. So, we cut through the alley to avoid the fight and controversy. We detour our duty of leadership and good government. Commencing impeachment proceedings is about employing the constitutional duty that our elected leaders were sworn to do-- not about mitigating to the finish line and hoping no one notices that we wouldn’t use the tools entrusted to us to keep the American system on the rails. All Democrats, and many Independents and Republicans, understand that Donald Trump has committed High Crimes or Misdemeanors, so if this conduct doesn’t warrant the commencement of impeachment proceedings, then what would? We must seriously consider the example of tolerance for harmful conduct at the highest levels of our government we are creating.

The key to winning is that you don’t aim to win, you aim to lead. If you lead, the winning takes care of itself-- or at least you move the needle so profoundly you set up the next winner, as did Stacey Abrams in Georgia with her heroic non-loss in Georgia. She was who she was and voters responded to that.

That’s not fear, that’s winning.

Hard To Imagine Trump Resigning... But The Mooch Knows Him Better Than I Do

The Mooch says Republican senators will pressure Trump enough over the next 3 months that he'll resign by March. Yesterday he told Yahoo Finance that "When you talk to elected Republicans privately, they can’t stand the president. They know the president is a lawless person and basically a criminal."

Scaramucci said Republicans can’t ignore the new polls from Fox News and NBC/Wall Street Journal which show a growing number of Americans, 49%, want Trump removed from office. “I predict that’s now going to have to go to 60 and when it’s 60, Republicans are going to have to cut and run.”

Scaramucci recently filed paperwork to create a political action committee (PAC) which will use its funds to defeat Trump if he fails to leave office before the 2020 presidential election.

“I am in the process of raising the assets and I will make an announcement in early January the number of assets we’ve raised and where we are going to target the thing,” he said.

Scaramucci’s PAC will focus on 11 swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Florida targeting suburban voters, “to explain what the president is doing actually to their children,” he said. “You can’t have somebody that is lawless at the top of the food chain, who is supposed to be the number one law enforcement official in the United States.”

Scaramucci suspects voters are turned off by the presidents “repetitive lying” and “bullying.” Among Republican voters, Trump’s approval rating has fallen eight points since September to 74%, according to a recent ABC News Washington Post poll. But 61% strongly approve of Trump’s performance as president which is essentially unchanged. It’s one reason Scaramucci says Republican leaders still defend Trump publicly but trash him privately.

“The president tries to shame people. He'll bully people,” said Scaramucci. “Remember, we have to be 100% loyal to him like he's David Koresh, or Jim Jones from the Jonestown Kool-Aid punch. If you're not 100% loyal to him he flips out.”

Scaramucci said Republicans should have acted sooner despite what he calls their fear to act.

“The stink of the president would have lasted a little while, but not that long. I mean, they're overestimating his power of intimidation,” he said. “And they're underestimating how good they could be post his departure.”

Sherrod Brown was on with Colbert yesterday and the Ohio senator told him that "Most Republican senators, when you talk to them individually, quietly, will acknowledge that Trump is a racist. They’ll acknowledge that Trump is a misogynist, they’ll acknowledge he has trouble telling the truth... It’s pretty clear that Republican senators, I mean they’re not going to go down as profiles in courage. It’s pretty clear that they like the tax cuts that Trump gave them. They like the attacks on the environment and on labor rights, and they like the young right-wing judges. And they’re all scared of their base. They’re all scared of a Republican primary from a Trump supporter that could take them out." Moscow Mitch wasn't on with Colbert, but he said that "I’m pretty sure how it’s likely to end. If it were today I don’t think there’s any question-- it would not lead to a removal. So the question is how long does the Senate want to take? How long do the presidential candidates want to be here on the floor of the Senate instead of in Iowa and New Hampshire?"

As much as I'd love to believe it, I think The Mooch is dead wrong on this and that McConnell has it about right. The Mooch may know Trump better than I do, but me and Moscow Mitch know Capitol Hill better than he does and there just aren't enough Republican senators with big enough cajones and enough integrity to go to Trump and tell him to retire. It's easier for them to make a bad bet that he'll come through this whole mess fine and they'll all live happily ever after.

Sherrod Brown Thinks We're Looking For A No-Can-Do President-- He's Wrong

I didn't bother writing a Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President post about one of the very worst Democraps trying to run, New Dem multimillionaire John Delaney. That's because he's not really a threat to anyone any more. He sold his Maryland House seat to David Trone and then moved to Iowa about a year ago. He isn't gaining any traction. He rarely breaks 1% in the polls. He's a joke candidate and I spent enough time writing about how horrible he is when he was in Congress.

This is John Delaney, although he loves to say: "People have a hard time labeling me. Some of the things they hear me talking about are on the total progressive or liberal end of the spectrum, and in other ways I'm kind of a solutions-oriented moderate who wants to get things done," snidely implying-- the way Hillary did-- that progressives don't get things done.

Fact of the matter is, centrists like Delaney (and Status Quo Joe Biden), sit around with their fingers up their asses when it's time for action to get the big and important things done. It was the progressive movement, not the centrists, who fought for and passed Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, free public education, corporate regulations, union rights, women's suffrage, emancipation of the slaves, the Bill of Rights (which politicians like Delaney and Biden bitterly opposed) and... even independence from Great Britain. "Moderates" and centrists have had plenty of time to fix this (below). Why haven't they? Really, why?

So... where does that leave Sherrod Brown, the fella in the video up at the top of the page? I don't think he has the character to be a good president. He's not terrible and in many ways he has even been excellent from time to time on one thing or another-- particularly trade and labor. Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President? No, not at all. I just don't trust him to do the right thing as president-- #3 of Chris Hayes' diktat:

Yesterday he was on CNN's State of the Union and, once again, he defined himself as one of the "that's too hard to do" crowd. The time for Medicare-For-All is now. 70% of the American public backs it. But it's too difficult for Sherrod Brown? Sherrod Brown should stay in the Senate and debate and get nowhere near the presidency (and that includes the #2 spot). If the debate was over the Bill of Rights, Brown would be suggesting we just do 3 or 4 amendments and that 10 are way too many and we'll never get it through and it's going to cause people "angst and anguish." He's just the wrong guy as a person-- who sometimes backs good policy but... just watch that video. Do you want that stumbling fool in the White House? And he sounds like a Republican when he backs himself into a rhetorical corner.

This is CNN's tweet about the show. But make the effort to read those comments under it. Sherrod Brown For President is DOA.

Amy Klobuchar And Sherrod Brown Want To Be President Too

I've tried to make it clear that the Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President series is not just for any candidate I don't like, but really for the very worst of the worst, like Gillibrand and Bloomberg. So... I may not want to see Amy Klobuchar get the nomination, nor Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, but none of them belongs in that series. Still all fair game for criticism of course, but not as a "Worst Democraps." For example, reporting for BuzzFeed News yesterday, Molly Hensley-Clancy wrote that there's more to Klobuchar than Minnesota Nice. "[B]ehind the doors of her Washington, DC, office, the Minnesota Democrat ran a workplace controlled by fear, anger, and shame, according to interviews with eight former staffers, one that many employees found intolerably cruel. She demeaned and berated her staff almost daily, subjecting them to bouts of explosive rage and regular humiliation within the office, according to interviews and dozens of emails."

Dead Armadillo by Nancy Ohanian

It looks like two of the next announcements will be from the Midwest: Amy Klobuchar on Sunday and Sherrod Brown... soon. Since first being elected to the Senate in 2006, Klobuchar has rarely been a topic for DWT. The last time she was involved with anything controversial was when she got into a mud-wrestling match with Justin Bieber as she spearheaded an effort-- for which she was well-paid-- to make it a felony to stream certain content online. She introduced a Luddite "illegal streaming bill" (SB 978) for Hollywood, co-sponsored by 2 corporate whores, John Cornyn and Chris Coons, meant to make the streaming of any copyrighted material on the Internet a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. At the time, the nonprofit, Fight for the Future, was particularly concerned and launched a campaign called "Free Bieber," using the example of Justin Bieber’s rise to fame, doing cover songs, as a way to get out the message. (Ironically, Bieber’s camp issued a cease-and-desist over using his name in the campaign.) The implications were far broader than a Bieber, though. When Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon covered Madonna’s "Material Girl" at Occupy Wall Street, if someone had uploaded a video of the performance to YouTube, Madonna (or whomever owns any part of her music or publishing) could sue the uploader if it’s deemed a "public performance." October 23, 2011:



In the end, the Senate was just embarrassed by the bill and it didn't get a vote. She introduced it again a year later and the Senate basically told her to just stop wasting everyone's time. This week she made a spectacle of herself again-- the only serious candidate for the Democratic nomination to vote in favor of making it a crime to boycott Israel. Voting against the bill were Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, even Kirsten Gillibrand, while Klobuchar joined all the Republicans and the AIPAC-Dems to vote for another clearly unconstitutional bill that appeals to her (or her donors).

The only other time we thought about her this year was when she was blandly and ineptly questioning Brett Kavanaugh. Justin, a sharp lawyer friend of mine told me her performance would have flunked her out of Duke, where he had graduated.

NBC News began its day yesterday with a report from Chuck Todd and Co. about how geography-- ie, the Midwest-- is destiny in presidential races. A stretch, at best. "People," they wrote, "often forget this about Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign: One of his strengths-- in both the primaries and general election-- was geography. Obama’s Illinois borders Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Indiana, and Obama won all of these states in either the primaries/caucuses (Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin) or the general election in 2008 (Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana). And part of the POTENTIAL that Klobuchar brings to the 2020 Democratic field is the ability to replicate this Obama strength from 2008. Minnesota, after all, borders Iowa (whose caucuses could be more important than ever this cycle), as well as Wisconsin (which could be 2020’s all-important battleground state in the general election)." Most of Minnesota borders North and South Dakota, Manitoba and Ontario, although I guess in theory you can see across Lake Superior from Grand Marais to Isle Royale, which is part of Michigan but has no inhabitants. I doubt Klobuchar is hanging her hat on the geography theory.

Daniel Straus and Holly Otterbein had a more salient theory for what Sherrod Brown could be hanging his hat on-- being Biden without the baggage. That Biden is nothing at all-- except the name recognition from having been a part of Obama-- other than the baggage isn't occurring to anyone yet. His lane is largely discredited neo-liberal corporatism and I doubt Brown really wants to identify with that, at least not in a primary. None-the-less, they insist that Biden and Brown "are on an early collision course in the initial days of the 2020 presidential race. They’re chasing the same potential supporters, touting the same themes and even using some of the same language to go after President Donald Trump. And Brown, kicking off a pre-campaign tour of key presidential voting states last week, made clear that if he gets into the race he intends to run, essentially, as Biden without the baggage."

Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk county supervisor who hosted an event for Brown in Iowa, introduced him by ticking off a list of votes-- including opposing NAFTA, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and voting against authorization of the war in Iraq-- that had featured Biden on the other side.

"All those things that I said that Sherrod Brown got right, Joe Biden got every single one of those things wrong." Schwartz said. He said that the congressional record might not come to mind immediately for other caucus-goers. But "we've seen Biden on the campaign trail many times already so we already know what to expect,” Schwartz continued. “He certainly has done great things for the country [quick-- name one] but I just don't think that’s what folks are looking for."

Brown’s “Dignity of Work” tour introduced himself as a progressive who can “talk to workers” and railed against the distractions of Trump’s “phony populism”-- echoing a memorable Biden line from the midterm campaign trail. Brown’s political pitch is that he can win back the Midwest for Democrats after winning reelection in Ohio in 2018-- a version of the rationale that the Scranton-born former VP can reconnect Democrats with the working-class white voters who have left the party in recent years.

...Brown himself is more diplomatic. When asked whether he and Biden are trying to make the same appeal to voters, Brown pivoted to his campaign slogan. "I'm not going to make the comparison to anybody, but my whole career has been about the dignity of work," Brown said.

As Brown and Biden both consider the presidential race, they and their respective supporters have both tried to frame themselves in a specific light: progressive Democrats with long lists of liberal policy positions who can nevertheless reach out to voters across the partisan divide.

Brown will also face questions from the left-- he has firmly refused to endorse Medicare for all, for example, saying he first wants to see more incremental changes like lowering the Medicare eligibility age. But at each stop in his early pre-campaign tour, Brown has laid out his background of winning elections in an increasingly Republican-leaning state [Democrats just won 3 of the 4 House seats and came within a hair of winning the 4th] while also staying a champion of major liberal issues like fighting for same sex marriage and voting against the war in Iraq.

"I think Democratic primary voters want somebody that’s going to be on the side of workers and will not compromise on civil rights and workers’ rights and LGBT rights," Brown said during a stop in Cresco.

Ohio attorney, activist and blogger Tim Russo knows Brown up close and personal-- and is no fan. Friday he was writing about the beginning of revolution: When The Boots Wear Out, Will Anyone Be Ready To Listen. Russo wrote that in the clip from Doctor Zhivago, "Alec Guiness plays a Russian Bolshevik joining the czar’s final army with the sole purpose of being in place when World War I grinds the working class soldiers to dust, predicting, 'when the boots wore out they’d be ready to listen.' As a new presidential campaign begins to reveal to America that hindsight is indeed 2020, American boots are beginning to wearing out."

Ohio voted for Obama twice, then Trump in 2016. To establishment media, and establishment Democrats, this somehow means Ohio is irrevocably a Republican state. To Alec Guiness’ character in Doctor Zhivago, it means quite something else. Ohio has been voting for radical change three presidential elections in a row now, but change never comes. In a hopelessly rigged game, both political parties’ establishments now shamelessly plundering America before our eyes, Ohioans know to the bones in their weary feet the boots are indeed wearing out.

The Obama-Obama-Trump voter of Ohio may just stop voting altogether in 2020. If the choice for Ohio in 2020 remains an abusive, insulting, pointless D vs. R, why subject oneself to ever more self humiliation? I used to seethe in anger at nonvoters. How dare you? Now, I’m close to giving up voting myself. My own personal story of endless exile imposed by the very Democrats I helped elect myself would be enough justification.

Boy, did I help, swallowing hook line and sinker every fraudulent con designed to excise every coming generation’s security into some repugnant oligarch’s third yacht, fourth home, tax haven hedge fund on an island with a private jet strip built solely to escape the reckoning they know is coming. That is my Generation X’s responsibility-- we bought it. Such fools we were. Turns out, we weren’t temporarily embarrassed millionaires in waiting. We were suckers.

Americans aren’t yet 1931 hobos begging brother, can you spare a dime; yet. But we know our road is cut off before us. The 2020 presidential election may be the last chance America has to avoid the hell the characters in Doctor Zhivago would soon endure, as the boots slowly wear out.

This morning, Tim, no doubt fired up by Alex Guiness, was still waxing poetic-- if a little more pointedly so: "As we march back from the fake front to face our real enemies in our worn out boots, snakes like Sherrod Brown will wave their canary logo at us, but we will all know his bird is kept in a golden cage gilded by Wall Street. Rotted boots tend to cleanse the soul and open the eyes."

Sherrod Brown? No

Yesterday, The Washington Post introduced us to a sad new feature of its 2020 coverage, The Post 2020 Power Ranking. Karen Tumulty, the moderator, noted that her "pick for the most interesting candidate-to-be is Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). He’s seasoned, a little on the bland side for a populist, and most importantly, a Democrat who knows how to win in a swing state that became Trump Country in 2016. His 'Dignity of Work' swing through Iowa is a pitch-perfect way to start." His ranking is an absurd #4 on their list. Outside the Beltway, the only things remotely interesting about Brown showing up in Iowa was him calling Howard Schultz a "total idiot" and then going on to disqualify himself by giving a thumbs down to Medicare for All.

Brown, whose Senate voting record is consistently ranked by ProgressivePunch in the Top 10, is known to grievously disappoint at key junctures. In 2006, when he made the jump from House to Senate, he cravenly voted for Bush's torture program-- the only progressive who did-- because he thought it would play well in Ohio. (He later apologized and admitted he fucked up but not before he became the first Blue America-endorsed candidate to ever be un-endorsed in the midst of a campaign.) That torture bill Brown voted for was opposed by all but 34 Democrats, almost all of whom have long since been defeated for reelection or otherwise driven from office-- garbagecrats like John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog and then R-MS), Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA), Stephanie Herseth (Blue Dog-SD), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Harold Ford (Blue Dog-TN), Melissa Bean (New Dem-IL)... I basically don't care about fake Democrats who can almost always be counted on to support conservatives in a pinch. I very much did however, care about Sherrod Brown's vote, a vote that revealed the man's character to me. I expect more, a lot more, from self-promoted leaders like Brown, whose record has been so mostly exemplary. But he violated a core value-- Thou Shalt Not Torture Nor Tread On Habeus Corpus. No exceptions.

Just before his 2018 reelection a few months ago Brown did an interview with CNBC's John Harwood during which he disavowed his own past support for reinstating Glass-Steagall (while still trying to sound as though he's a progressive or a populist).

Harwood: But it sounds like it's more of a defensive agenda – that is, to prevent things that have been done from being dismantled, as opposed to trying to break up banks or reimposing Glass-Steagall.

Brown: Yeah, I have little interest in reimposing Glass-Steagall. That's an answer to a question that's not being asked. Breaking up the banks-- they're too big and too powerful-- that's not on my agenda. My agenda is to, as you say, play defense, to make sure we have a vibrant consumer protection agency. It's to do oversight. I mean, the appointees from the administration to be these regulators are people, some of whom had a lot to do with the housing crisis, and a lot to do with the Wall Street greed and overreach. So you're damn right I play defense when they're trying to do things to undermine the economy.

A couple of weeks ago, reporting for Splinter. Libby Watson wrote about how soft Brown has been on Medicare-For-All. She noted that it isn't just the "centrists" who are "cautioning against moving too fast or far on single-payer, worrying that focusing on Medicare for All will water down the Democrats’ message on protecting the Affordable Care Act from Republicans" and pointed out that Brown backs Medicare for retiring cops and firefighters before 65 but isn't backing Medicare for All. "Remember," she warns, that despite his left-ish credentials on issues like Wall Street, Brown took $830,000 from corporate PACs in 2018."

Giving cops and firefighters healthcare is fine, just as it would be great to give teachers or nurses or public sanitation workers healthcare, but it’s in no way an alternative to Medicare for All, and it sure is a weird way to approach the problem of the financial barriers to adequate healthcare-- expanding access one job at a time, in order of how noble Sherrod Brown deems your job to be. Similarly, Brown’s other proposed Medicare for All alternative-- a bill that would allow a Medicare buy-in at age 55, which he proposed in the last Congress-- kicks the can down the road for a lot of people, as if no one under 55 has medical debt or puts off necessary medical procedures or buying prescriptions because they can’t afford it.

You can argue that this is a matter of only proposing what’s “possible,” that Brown and other Democrats don’t believe Medicare for All is possible in one go, and so an incremental approach is needed. But a Medicare at 55 buy-in isn’t going to pass a Republican Senate, and I’d bet that even Medicare-for-Cops wouldn’t either-- this is the party that just tried to kill the Affordable Care Act and eliminate protections for preexisting conditions, after all.

Democrats like Brown don’t understand that proposals by major party members also define what’s “possible.” That’s why we’re talking about single-payer at all. If you’ve got two years of twiddling your thumbs before another shot at passing legislation, why propose these half-measures unless you really believe only people older than 55 deserve healthcare?

Brown has 2020 presidential aspirations, so it’s hard not to see this odd proposal as trying to ride cops to the White House. He’s clearly of the generation of Democrats that grew up believing the way to get Middle America to trust you is to talk a lot about cops and the troops, and the “dignity of work” over the indignity of rapacious capitalism. But “give Medicare to cops” or lowering the Medicare age to 55 doesn’t get us closer to Medicare for All, and it doesn’t make it easier to make an argument about universal care to expand eligibility to other selected groups. At this rate, lowering the Medicare age by 10 years once every 50 years (or one or two careers at a time) would get us single-payer by approximately 2300. Chuck Grassley might still be kicking around by then, but most of us won’t be.

If anything, both these proposals double down on the bizarre proposition of the current American system that only certain groups deserve healthcare. That’s awful policy, but it’s also shitty politics, as anyone who isn’t a cop or a firefighter or was born after Cheers premiered has no reason to support these policies. Brown might find that in 2019 and 2020, “Healthcare for Some” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Now with Brown all but in, Common Dreams staff writer Jon Queally followed up on his Medicare-For-All not practical comments over the weekend. On Friday, Brown "broke from the pack of announced and expected Democrats by coming out against Medicare for All-- characterizing a system that would cover everybody and leave nobody as not 'practical'-- and was greeted by a widespread reaction of Thank you, Next and Adios from progressives no longer willing to entertain half-measures when it comes to solving the nation's healthcare crisis or bolstering the private insurance industry."

"I know most of the Democratic primary candidates are all talking about Medicare for all. I think instead we should do Medicare at 55," Brown said during a question and answer session at the Chamber of Commerce in Clear Lake, Iowa. Brown said that reducing the age or letting people over 55 buy into the existing Medicare system early would have a better chance of getting through Congress.

"I'm not going to come and make a lot of promises like President Trump did... I'm going to talk about what's practical and what we can make happen. And if that makes me different from the other candidates so be it," Brown said.

Progressive critics like Splinter's Libby Watson, however, took issue.

"You know what isn't practical?" she added. "Spending twice as much as other rich nations for worse outcomes."

"It's always 'practical' to leave people behind, and maintain corporate power," tweeted Michael Lighty, a healthcare policy expert and founding fellow at the left-leaning Sanders Institute. But ith the right kind of "leadership," he noted: "We can make the necessary possible."

Ahead of Brown's comments, Watson on Friday wrote a long and detailed column explaining why the kind of "Medicare at 55" or "Medicare buy-in" plan the senator is proposing-- basically a public option, but available only to certain segments of the population-- is not just bad policy, but bad politics.

It's not necessarily that what Brown is calling for would "make things worse," she argued, "it's that things are already catastrophically bad, and anything that just tinkers around the edges keeps us in dire straits." And by not taking the fight over healthcare to the next level by demanding a policy that would actually solve the problem, Brown is exemplifying the worst tendencies of the Democratic Party's old guard:

Democrats frequently admit defeat before they've even got their trousers on. This is one of the major differences between establishment Democrats and the newly popular leftist politicians, like Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: They understand that you don't turn up to a knife fight with a banana and a shirt that says I Am So Frightened on the front. But prominent Senate Democrats and at least one presidential candidate have already shown that they're willing to compromise on single-payer. That is not how you win a fight.

...Brown's comments on Friday appear very out of touch with national voter sentiment-- whether in the mid-west or elsewhere-- by calling a solution that garners massive (and growing) public support, and which studies show would be less expensive and more cost-efficient than the current profit-driven system, not politically realistic:

For Watson, however, not even the strong polling numbers tell the whole story. "Single-payer supporters don't say we should have the policy because people support it," she wrote. "We believe it's good, just, and more humane than our current nightmare, and that the conventional wisdom that it would be deeply unpopular is wrong."

While all the Democratic 2020 candidates will ultimately be pressed on their solution to the nation's ongoing healthcare crisis, Dr. Carol Paris, former president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a single-payer system like Medicare for All, told Think Progress this week that anyone who runs must demonstrate they understand that only Medicare for All—a system with "No co-pays, no deductibles, no need for supplemental policies, no private insurance"—has the the ability to confront the current system's inherent failure.

"I want to know that candidates," she said, "are using that term to mean improving traditional Medicare and expanding it to everyone from birth to death residing in the United States."

Because they've taken great pains to lay it out clearly and succinctly, other Medicare for All proponents like the Democratic Socialists of America have said the American people should "accept nothing less."

In the closing argument of her column, Watson put it this way:

The American healthcare system is fundamentally broken. We spend twice what other rich nations do for much worse outcomes, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy. Like the Affordable Care Act before it, the public option would preserve the rotten system that leads to this. It is motivated by a cowardly, straight-up wrong idea of pragmatism, the kind of half-hearted idea that Democrats—willingly bullied for 30 years by Reaganite, anti-government, Chamber of Commerce-funded slimeballs—think is all we can possibly achieve.

"Fuck that," she concluded. "Fight for single-payer or get kicked out of Washington trying."

Updated: Sen. Brown spars with Iowa Democratic voter over his refusal to embrace Medicare for All.

On Friday night at meet and greet event at the home of a local Democratic leader in Black Hawk County, Iowa, Sen. Brown was pressed on his Medicare for All stance by Ruth Walker, a 78-year-old retiree from Cedar Falls. The following transcript of the "lively exchange" was posted Saturday morning in a news story by Cleveland.com reporter Seth A. Richardson:

Walker: “It isn’t like it won’t work. I think advocating part way measures is not going to work. We tried part-way messages and it doesn’t work.”
Brown: “I want to get there, but I want to help people’s lives.”
Walker: “But we’ve been doing this forever. We need to get there.”
Brown: “I understand that. I understand that. We missed by one vote getting Medicare-at-55 because of one guy.”
Walker: “I mean Medicare-for-all. That’s the problem, though.”
Brown: “I know you did. I know you did. I understand that, but we are no closer to Medicare-for-all today than we were 15 years ago.”
Walker: “We haven’t been advocating very long.”
Brown: “OK, well, I want to improve people’s lives today. I know Congress won’t pass Medicare-for-all.”
Walker: “They will if they found out the people are brought – educate the people.”
Brown: "Well I try to educate the people. But I want to help people make their lives better right now. If we can pass Medicare-at-55 tomorrow, two things would happen: a whole lot of people’s lives would improve and a whole lot of voters would think that the next step is to do more.

"My ideology says universal coverage today, just like yours. But I want to see people’s lives better. We’ll keep having this debate and people will say, ‘Medicare-for-all. Medicare-for-all,’ and nothing will change. I think if we can make that change of Medicare-at-55 or Medicare-at-50, it will make all the difference in the world and then we get to the next step. Otherwise it’s this sort of tilting at windmills where everybody feels good saying, ‘ I’m for Medicare for all. I’m for Medicare-for-all,’ but nothing changes.

“And I want to educate people too, but I want to change people’s lives and help people now. We have a different disagreement there. We want to end up in the same place, but we’ve got to get Congress to act as quickly as we can when we were so close before.”

Is Brown worth saving? I wonder if he knows Stephanie Kelton. He should since, from 2014 until 2016, she served as Democratic chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee. Over the weekend, she wrote a column for Bloomberg thaBrown would be wise to pay attention to, The Wealthy Are Victims Of Their Own Propaganda, to avoid that kind of victimhood himself. One of her wealthy friends, she wrote, was complaining to her about AOC's 70% marginal tax rate and about the new wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren. She's argued in the past that we can pay for a Green New Deal and that the obsession with finding a dollar of new 'revenue' to offset every new dollar of spending is the wrong way to approach the federal budgeting process. She worries that we have a long way to go before politicians and the journalists who interview them stop demanding a road map to the source of funding for every new spending proposal. "My wealthy friend," she wrote, "doesn’t want to pay for your child care. He doesn’t want to help pay off your student loans. And he sure as heck doesn’t want to shell out the big bucks for a multi-trillion-dollar Green New Deal. So where does that leave Democrats, who insist that they need the rich to pay for their progressive agenda? Here’s what I told him."

"I am with the Democrats. I want to see us build a cleaner, safer, more prosperous world. I agree with billionaire hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio, who argues that inequality has become so extreme that it should be declared a “national emergency” and dealt with by presidential action.

"And I worry very much that it may prove impossible to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy (who have enormous political power). Then what? The planet burns, our third-world infrastructure falls into total disrepair, and our society becomes ever more bifurcated until the tensions reach a boiling point and... The pitchforks are coming.



"The problem is that every politician is confronted with the question, “How are you going to pay for it?” What these journalists are really asking is, ‘Who’s going to pay for it?’

"The question is designed to stop any meaningful policy debate by dividing us up, and get us fighting over where the money is going to come from. Since none of the headline politicians has really figured out how to respond-- by explaining that when Congress approves a budget, the Treasury Department instructs the Federal Reserve to credit a seller’s bank account-- they all end up trying to answer it by pointing to some new revenue source.

"And then there are self-imposed constraints, like PAYGO, that require lawmakers to offset any new spending with higher taxes or cuts to some other part of the budget. That means you can’t even get a piece of legislation to the floor for a vote if isn’t fully “paid for.” It also makes passing anything that much harder, since it requires politicians to raise taxes or carve out money from other programs. And don’t even get me started on CBO.

"So that’s why you see people like Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Warren looking at the ultra-rich to fund their agendas. Billionaires are the magic money tree!

"To be blunt, the super-rich have become victims of their own successful marketing campaign. Conservative billionaires like Pete Peterson spent decades complaining about debt and deficits, putting enormous sums of money into a PR campaign to turn politicians and the public against deficit spending.

"So here we are. As Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 campaign, ‘You have to go where the money is.’ That means you!

"What can higher-income taxpayers do? I guess they could point the finger at Congress and say: “Don’t look at us! That’s where the money comes from!” Because the truth is, funding a Green New Deal with some deficit spending means we get good-paying jobs, a cleaner world and more safe assets (Treasuries) for everyone, including wealthier taxpayers."

To help my friend see the choices we face, I sent him a sketch that is shown here in a chart.

You don’t need precise data to make the point. Just think of it, loosely, as a reflection of the gap between the top and the bottom. Start off with today’s degree of disparity, represented by the black bar on the left.

Now suppose someone offers you three different ways to reduce inequality, shown in bars A, B and C. Each will leave you with a less unequal society but the same absolute disparity between the top and the bottom.

To get outcome A, you simply tax money away from the rich (the part shown in gray at the top). This does nothing to improve the material well-being of anyone below, but it does compress the distribution, so inequality is diminished.

Option B is your standard Robin Hood redistribution. Money is taxed away from those at the top, and money is invested in programs to lift everyone else (shown in blue). Again, the distance (or degree of disparity) between the top and the bottom is the same as under Option A, but this time the top lost and the bottom gained.

Finally, consider what happens if we simply invest in programs to benefit the non-rich (student-debt forgiveness, free child care and so on) without treating the super-rich as our piggy bank. In Option C, the top doesn’t move, but the bottom is boosted to new heights.

It’s sort of incredible that the option that is clearly better for both groups is the one we’re most afraid of. But that’s what happens when deficit phobias force politicians to “pay for” everything by going where the money is.