Brian Beutler/New Republic:
In late November, a Republican elector, who concluded he could not in good conscience vote for Trump, resigned. Another, Texan Republican Christopher Suprun, announced he would be a “faithless” elector, and that other Republicans would join him.
“I am confident in saying, at this point I don’t think I will be the only one voting for someone other than Donald Trump who is carrying a Republican elector seat,” Suprun told ABC News.
On Monday, Suprun and several Democratic electors signed an open letter to James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, demanding a briefing about “whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations.” Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, issued a supportive statement on their behalf.
Critics of this noisemaking argue these electors and their supporters are hypocritically threatening an established norm—that the Electoral College should rubber stamp statewide election results—after having insisted on the importance of similar norms when Trump was traducing them.
If the Electoral College installed a random person, let alone Clinton, into the presidency, it would be wildly destabilizing. But this critique rests on a false choice between an Electoral College that acts like a pliant, ceremonial relic, and an unprecedented but constitutional Electoral College coup.
Fact is, every piece of resistance to Trump is important in delegitimizing his win. Don’t complain because you don’t think it’s the One Serious Thing That Serious People Can Get Behind. It doesn’t have to be successful to be part of the accumulation of doubts about Trump. He lost the popular vote. Even some of his electors won’t vote for him. The Russians meddled. Comey interfered. He has no mandate. And it all has the advantage of being true.
And yes, that Russian mischief is still in the news. David Frum/Atlantic:
Five Questions About Russia's Election Hacking
As the culpability of Putin’s government becomes more clear, a host of other issues remain unresolved.
Sarah Kliff/Vox:
But Obamacare’s success in Whitley County and across Kentucky hasn’t translated into political support for the law. In fact, 82 percent of Whitley voters supported Donald Trump in the presidential election, even though he promised to repeal it.
[Kathy] Oller voted for Trump too. [She signs people up for Ocare.]
“I found with Trump, he says a lot of stuff,” she said. “I just think all politicians promise you everything and then we’ll see. It’s like when you get married — ‘Oh, honey, I won’t do this, oh, honey, I won’t do that.’”
I spent last week in southeastern Kentucky talking to Obamacare enrollees, all of whom supported Trump in the election, trying to understand how the health care law factored into their decisions.
The is a great example of “see what you believe, and don’t believe what you see”. They were told Trump and Republicans would repeal Obamacare, but they just don’t/won’t believe it, predominantly because they don’t want to.
The question is not whether Republicans will end coverage for millions. It is when they will do it. Oller’s three years of work could very much be undone over the next three years.
In southeastern Kentucky, that idea didn’t seem to penetrate at all — not to Oller, and not to the people she signed up for coverage.
“We all need it,” Oller told me when I asked about the fact that Trump and congressional Republicans had promised Obamacare repeal. “You can’t get rid of it.”
There are commenters here that insist that Ocare sucks and everyone hates it, and we just don’t get it. Read the above piece, it’s a real eye opener.
RAND points out US health care is not all terrific, in fact we get too little for what we pay:
One of the many curious aspects of the recent presidential election was the virtual absence of discussion about America's health. To be sure, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was front and center, but the Obamacare debate has largely been about the costs of care and insurance coverage.
Neither candidate devoted much airtime to the return America is getting for spending over 17 percent of its gross domestic product on health care. The short answer is not nearly enough.
Noam Levey/LA Times:
Trump and the GOP are charging forward with Obamacare repeal, but few are eager to follow
Intensifying the political risks for Republicans, a growing number of patient groups are warning that millions of Americans are in danger of losing vital health protections and that Republicans need to agree on a replacement plan before they uproot the current system.
“When people get cancer, they have to know that they are going to have insurance,” said Chris Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society’s advocacy arm. “There have been and are problems with the ACA, but we have to make sure that what is done and the way it is done is not going to leave people who have cancer or who may get cancer … in the lurch.”
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network last week sent a letter to congressional leaders urging them not to repeal large parts of the healthcare law without first developing replacement legislation that guarantees patients the same protections.
GOP leaders, who have repeatedly promised their core voters that they would repeal Obamacare, oppose any delay in a vote, despite the risk that Republicans may be held responsible for any ensuing turmoil.
Vox:
America’s president-elect is an alleged sexual predator. This theory of sexism explains how it came to this — and why even many women voted for Trump.
Meanwhile, a hostile sexist would claim the benevolent sexist is overreacting — that the tape doesn’t actually describe sexual assault, just normal male sexual aggression.
These attitudes might seem diametrically opposed to one another. But they’re actually two sides of the same coin, Peter Glick, professor of psychology and social sciences at Lawrence University, told Vox. People can hold both of these sexist views at the same time, and they very often do.
“It’s how men can wear ‘Trump That Bitch’ T-shirts at a Trump rally, and then go home and say, ‘I love my wife and daughter,’” Glick said.
Trump expresses both hostile and benevolent attitudes toward women all the time. When he likes a woman, he praises her in a patronizing way (usually focusing on her physical beauty). When he doesn’t, he viciously insults her.