American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has an idea who might be behind the allegations of sexual harassment that plagued his campaign two years ago: the Devil.

The former CEO of the National Restaurant Association told RealClearReligion in a story published Wednesday that he didn't challenge allegations that he sexually harassed at least four women, some of them anonymous, while at the helm of that organization because it would have been a "huge distraction" from his campaign. He maintained that his accusers are "liars."

Now serving as an associate pastor at a Baptist church in Atlanta, Cain speculated to the publication that the Devil may have masterminded the allegations.

"It made me realize that there was a bigger force than right," he said, further blaming the media for "not doing their due diligence."

Cruz then launched into an epic soliloquy, with basically no interruptions, dysfluencies, or rhetorical cul-de-sacs.

“Number one: it should expand competition and use of the marketplace. Number two: it should empower consumers to exercise choice to meet their health-care needs. And number three: it should disempower government bureaucrats to second-guess and get in between doctors and their patients in making health-care decisions. Those are all general principles. Now let me give three specific policy proposals that are manifestations of those principles.”

Number one: Obamacare does that.

Number two: Obamacare does that.

Number three: Obamacare does that.

So much for his ideas. Next!

Cruz just recites the Republican across the state line thing without addressing the need for state and federal regulation of insurance to prevent the race to the bottom.

it gets a little darker if you read between the lines: the point of selling across state lines and removing 'gov't mandated bells and whistles' (ie minimum coverage req's) is to get people into high-deductible catastrophic plans that only count as 'coverage' if you squint -- somebody in a lower income quintile who's on the hook for the first 6 or 10k of costs? yeah that's the status quo dude.

he's especially cagey about the pre-existing conditions, which would be taken care of by delinking coverage from employment, ie you should never lose your coverage and have to restart elsewhere hence nothing would ever be 'pre-existing'. which starts to fall apart if you think about it for 10 seconds. never mind how a move toward employer/ee delinking flies in the face of all this complaining about "you can keep your plan" promises. nobody's plan would be the same if the employer-provided system were to go away.

xp well iow he WANTS a race to the bottom. he is from texas after all...

hey at least he didn't say tort reform

afaic the exchanges can never work at all but if a lot less americans go bankrupt from catastrophic medical bills (#1 cause of bankruptcy!) then the ACA is fine by me

Luckily people never go bankrupt from catastrophic legal bills. They just get what's coming to them.

the democrats need to stop being such chaunceys and tell the republicans 'look, you want a keystone pipeline? 50% of its profits pay for single-payer health insurance. you'd don't like it? go fuck yourself'

It's weird that they wouldn't ever do that, although I suppose things like this prevent the political momentum:

Then again, there's not that much support for single-payer anyway.

I am so happy that the term "glitches" has been universally adopted to describe a system that does not yet do what it was designed to do. By its very nature the word softens the criticism; it sounds ridiculous to say "I am OUTRAGED by these computer glitches."

watch computer glitches become the new welfare queens though

I think that's a consequence of everyone having used a Microsoft product at some point in the last two decades. It's not like anyone is shocked that a piece of software needs to be patched.

Which is more ridiculous, calling the flaws "glitches" or calling the program "Obamacare?" I still vote "Obamacare."

The biggest fuck up was screwing up the rollout while requiring the mandate, but seeing as they've extended the deadline for the latter, the flaws in the former are slightly more forgivable, as long as they, you know, fix them. It's been a few weeks, right? Apple/Microsoft/Google has at least as much trouble every time they roll something out. If these scrambling newbies are still screwing up in a few months, then we have a major, major problem.

all this talk of "glitches" is just free publicity maybe too, a rope-a-dope advertising campaign on the cheap?

don, your usa today link says nothing about single-payer that i can see -- it's a poll from last month (before the shutdown!) that gives numbers on approval and disapproval of "the health care law".

here's a 2007 poll aggregator

http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/Chart_of_Americans_Support

here's a 2009 CBS poll that says "On the matter of health insurance ... Nearly half of all Americans now want the government to provide it for all problems. That's up from just over a quarter in 1979."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/30/sunday/main4765027.shtml

a lot of the people in your usa today poll don't approve of "the health care law" because it's too galt and not jesus enough

xpost

even obama administration people are occasionally calling it obamacare now, right? i'm ok with the term now, and here's why. it was obviously a term promulgated by conservatives as a pejorative, and for a long time the reflexive response from liberals was to fight back against it. but now it's law, and eventually, probably with some tweaks, it's going to work well. people are going to like it. it'll be like social security or medicare. and at that point, obamacare will be a positive name, from a liberal perspective. it'll remind people which party pushed for it.

otm

Reaganomics.

Ha, conservatives would claim that as positive, right?

its unprecedented that a larger gov't program have the president's name in it, total coup for Obama in the long run.

Anybody know anything about the Netherland's public/private combined system referenced by Washington Monthly and Mother Jones?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/more_about_obamacares_complexi047483.php#

it it yet reasonable at this point to assume that Obamacare won't be dismantled within a few years by a Republican president/congress? serious question

Reagan tried to dismantle SS until the '82 election results changed his mind.

"Is it reasonable to think we'll have a Republican President in a few years?" is the more pressing question IMO.

On the R's current crazyland track, it's becoming more and more remote, but unforeseen events may intervene and revive their presidential hopes.

not gonna happen while Dems control either house of congress or the presidency, and even if they don't (which is frankly inconceivable to me at the moment) there's ways to stop repeal

its unprecedented that a larger gov't program have the president's name in it, total coup for Obama in the long run.

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 24, 2013 6:25 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the year is 2050...

OBAMA 2: THE COUP

he warned us about the long game

boots riley gonna be mad

xp i think it's totally possible we'll have a republican president in a few years just because voters are fickle. republican house + senate + president, i don't think so, but they might only need two of those and a bunch of the usual democrats (see Bush II era)

don, your usa today link says nothing about single-payer that i can see -- it's a poll from last month (before the shutdown!) that gives numbers on approval and disapproval of "the health care law".

I can't find a poll where a majority of Americans want a single payer system (and yes, it might be hard to find a poll where a majority of Americans could even define what that is.) If there were even a majority of Americans clamoring for single payer, then pols would be much more inclined to start playing hardball with that and the pipeline. As it stands now, there's just not momentum for it.

But I'm pretty sure that if we just gave everyone a single payer system, it would enjoy the permanence of other social programs like SS.

don, i can't take rasmussen seriously at all, sorry

support for 1gle payer is (to generalize) inferred from a mishmash of polling and anec-data, i.e. those on the left who think o-care "doesn't go far enough" plus the frequently recurring stories of a tea-party type saying "why can't we get rid of obamacare and just have medicare and medicaid open to everyone?" <-- happened just today, but i'd have to dig thru twitter again for the cite

haha waht

it was some journo quoting an audience member at a townhall somewhere. sorry, i shouldn't throw that out w/o a direct quote

'support' doesn't exist in a vacuum, if the dems went full out on the issue a lot of dem-leaning people would find themselves 'supporting single player' (/learning what it was) and the tea party types would be informed that 'medicare for all' is not supposed to be their view on things

I read that one too goole, also forgot where

there's no way at least half of americans don't support medicare for all

I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

don, i can't take rasmussen seriously at all, sorry

I'm not a huge fan of polling, but killing a messenger like Rasmussen hasn't created a majority of Americans supporting single payer. And yes, we can "infer" whatever we want by combining whatever we want in order to "prove" whatever we want but most politicians can't get a vote through with that sort of methodology.

I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

OTM.

xp

FWIW I used to think single payer would never happen but now I'm nearly certain it will happen in my lifetime.

yeah, that's what i meant, support for single payer might be there in one way or another, but it's not "really" there enough to matter

idgi why are we any closer to single payer than before

xp

what party actors decide to do and how they react to each other is probably more important than any jane q. public's kneejerk response to distilled terms like "government takeover" or "single payer" or w/e

Shakey we're closer because Obamacare passed and in the next decade people are going to want something easier than this shitshow. Americans vote easy whenever possible.

xp

you are aware that that is textbook Tea Party conspiracy theory, yes?

personally I just don't see how the mechanics of that work politically - Dems would have to admit that ACA was flawed and now they want to replace it with something better...? the opposing talking points write themselves.

the messenger's already dead

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/?_r=0

http://www.examiner.com/article/rasmussen-reports-polls-get-the-election-really-really-wrong

always a good rule of thumb to take "conservative" talk in general with a grain of salt imho

agree that rasmussen's been a joke in the polling industry for at least a decade. still don is correct re:
I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

get your government hands off my medicare

always knew "iatee" was a sock, just wasn't sure who the puppetmaster was

nobody in the democratic party believes that the ACA was supposed to be the end game for american health care

xp

waht