A little early for pundits to weigh in on Trump’s win in Nevada. We’ll have that tomorrow.
As you know, we have had some great discussion on health care options. Bernie is pushing Hillary hard, her response is an interesting incrementalist state-based public option (suck on it, Joe Lieberman, wherever you are). That this is now on the table (warts and all) is a terrific development.
Clinton revives support for health care 'public option' (Politico, which broke the story):
Hillary Clinton wants to bring back the public option, offering a competing vision to Bernie Sanders’ support for a more progressive health care system.
Clinton's campaign has updated its website to note her continued support for the government-run health plan that was dropped from Obamacare during the law's drafting. The idea was popular among progressives who prefer a single-payer plan -- like the one Bernie Sanders is touting.
‘Public option’ makes a comeback with Clinton’s endorsement (Steve Benen):
It’s worth noting for context that this doesn’t come as a complete surprise. For example, Clinton supported a public option as a candidate in 2008, though she’s said little about the policy since. Her press secretary, Brian Fallon, expressed support for a public option during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in January, but the campaign’s official position on health care wasn’t changed until yesterday.
For progressives, it’s an important step. In fact, the closer one looks at the circumstances, the more encouraging they appear: Clinton just won the Nevada caucuses, she’s likely to win the South Carolina primary, and one might expect her to feel less pressure, not more, about appealing to voters on the left. Clinton is probably feeling more confident about her chances now than at any point in quite a while.
In other words, her support for the public option isn’t some kind of desperation move, made in haste in the hopes of winning over progressive skeptics; it’s largely the opposite.
Postscript: I’m very much inclined to give The New Republic’s Brian Beutler credit for keeping this issue alive, by the way. Brian published a good piece in mid-January, making the case for the public option, not only on the policy merits, but also as a political winner in a Democratic nominating contest. His commentary appears quite prescient now.
Hillary Clinton re-embraces the public option for health care (Tim Fernholz):
But, just as Sanders must field awkward questions about whether his plan can even be implemented, Clinton must answer how she will cover everyone under the patchwork Affordable Care Act, which has dramatically increased health insurance coverage without fully extending universal coverage.
The good news? A lot of the uninsured, almost half, are eligible for government aid already
Here’s some wonk responses as well:
Charles Gaba (aka brainwrap):
If she's serious about this, this could be very interesting indeed.
For weeks now, I've noted that while Bernie Sanders's National Single Payer plan may be promising way too much, way too quickly, Hillary Clinton's healthcare plans seemed to be "not nearly enough, possibly ever". I couldn't say that definitively, though, because while the proposals she has put forward would improve the ACA in various ways, none of them would really be a dramatic step forward for achieving affordable, universal coverage.
I wrote up a few ideas of my own about how a Clinton administration might try to do just that, but what I've really been wanting is for Hillary herself to state flat-out just what she has in mind for not simply nipping/tucking the ACA, but substantially expanding it.
WIth this move, it sounds like Hillary may have found her way to do so, thanks to the Section 1332 State Innovation Waiver portion of the Affordable Care Act:
Balloon Juice (Richard Mayhew):
Reading this in wonkese, I get something a little different than a grand plan. It is a concentrated effort to play small ball. What I see is the following sentence:
“A Clinton Administration will help states with their 1332 waivers and will lean in the direction of more coverage and state flexibility rather than the most stringent financial models. States that want to experiment can count on HHS accepting Arkansas like 1115 assumptions”
The 1332 waiver process allows states to do a lot of experimentation, customization and tweaking as long as the resultant program covers the same or greater number of people at the same or better coverage, does not leave behind the most vulnerable and does not cost the individual nor the federal government more money. Federal government cost neutrality is a key barrier. A friendly administration like the Obama Administration can allow states to make far fetched assumptions on cost neutrality to further other goals like Arkansas did for their Medicaid expansion waiver. This is what the Clinton campaign is actually promising. They’ll put the thumb on the scale for expansion and allow the supporting cost arguments to be pro-forma.
This goal is also eminently achievable.
Xpostfactoid:
Clinton is here suggesting that her HHS will support state initiatives to form their own public options. In a vague way, she references the ACA's Section 1332 "innovation waivers" enabling states to propose alternative schemes to the core ACA structure that would meet the ACA's coverage and affordability standards. The great advantage of this proposal -- as with Clinton's promise to ramp up healthcare antitrust enforcement -- is that it would not require legislation.
As Kaiser's Larry Levitt has pointed out to me, "Nothing in the ACA stands in the way of a state creating a public option." He further noted that a state would not need an innovation waiver to form one. It would, however, need funding, and that's where the waiver might come in. If the state could find other means of savings, those measures might be integrated in a waiver proposal with a public option.
Hope to hear soon from Brian Beutler, who really pushed this. The great thing is having the argument at all. Thank you, Bernie and Hillary.
Meanwhile, Brian Beutler on the GOP race:
If this race is proving anything, though, it’s that what constitutes “moderation” to elite conservatives (relative dovishness on immigration aimed at swing voters in a general election) isn’t what constitutes moderation among Republican voters (restrictionist immigration policy paired with heterodox support for redistributive social policies). The big flaw in the assumption that Rubio (or anyone, really) can make up ground against Trump in blue states is that “moderate” voters are actually Trump’s ace in the hole.
Evan McMorris-Santoro:
Overall, it’s a good map for Clinton. Even Sanders supporters agree that’s true.
But Sanders sees a chance possibly to win five of the Super Tuesday states — Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont.
The delegate math works against him, even w/o superdelegates (who will move toward the winner).
Look at the state delegate (superdelegate) numbers:
South Carolina |
February 27 |
53 (6) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Alabama |
March 1 |
53 (7) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
American Samoa |
March 1 |
6 (4) |
|
|
Caucus |
Closed |
Arkansas |
March 1 |
32 (5) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Colorado |
March 1 |
66 (13) |
|
|
Caucus |
Closed |
Democrats Abroad |
March 1-8 |
13 (4) |
|
|
Primary |
Closed |
Georgia |
March 1 |
102 (14) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Massachusetts |
March 1 |
91 (25) |
|
|
Primary |
Semi-closed |
Minnesota |
March 1 |
77 (16) |
|
|
Caucus |
Open |
Oklahoma |
March 1 |
38 (4) |
|
|
Primary |
Semi-closed |
Tennessee |
March 1 |
67 (9) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Texas |
March 1 |
222 (30) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Vermont |
March 1 |
16 (10) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
Virginia |
March 1 |
95 (15) |
|
|
Primary |
Open |
That’s 288 at stake in the five “assume Bernie wins” states (proportional allocation, of course) and 624 in the “assume Hillary wins” states. At some point, the delegate count trumps everything. Ask 2008 Hillary.
Well, the stages of candidate grief are still applicable:
- Shock
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
Look for it in the pundits. Some of them still can’t accept Trump as the nominee. And look for it in us, whenever our candidate loses a contest.
Dan Drezner:
The second strand is anger at the mainstream media for enabling rather than critiquing Trump. Most of the recent fire has been concentrated on the hosts of “Morning Joe,” but in many ways this echoes a argument from last summer that media coverage of Trump enables him. According to this narrative, the media never condemned Trump’s racist, bellicose rhetoric, instead giving him tons of free coverage and thereby boosting his electoral chances.
So what’s going on? I have a theory, but it’s very speculative and I will welcome pushback from actual experts in campaign politics.
Basically, I think the fault lies with political scientists.
There are some great Donald Trump pieces out there. Start with how he is pushing the GOP ever further into Crazyland, this from CBS:
After months of avoiding a firm position on how he would handle the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz now says he would have federal agents go look for people who do not have legal status.
In an interview on Fox News' Monday evening, host Bill O'Reilly pressed Cruz on whether, he, like fellow candidate Donald Trump, would specifically go out and round up people in the U.S. illegally.
"Of course you would," Cruz said. "That's what [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] exists for. We have law enforcement that looks for people who are violating the laws. It apprehends them."
Stu Rothenberg is still skeptical:
None of this means that Trump can’t now win the nomination. But to do so, he will need to broaden his appeal – something that he has shown no inclination or ability to do, at least to this point.
But South Carolina’s results didn’t change Trump’s prospects in the Republican race very much. The outcome was more of the same, not an indication of his growing support in the party. Until that happens – and it could happen or never happen – the GOP nomination is very much up for grabs.
Ironically, Trump’s victory in the Palmetto State wasn’t the most significant development on Saturday. It wasn’t as important as Cruz’s disappointing showing or Bush’s exit from the race. Those two developments could alter the dynamics of a very unpredictable race. We will see whether they do.
But Chris Cillizza is not:
Donald Trump is on course to win the 1,237 delegates he needs to be the GOP nominee
Paul Waldman on the grown-up in the WH:
We’re now in a presidential campaign in which the frontrunning candidate proclaims his enthusiasm for torture (“I think [waterboarding is] great, but we don’t go far enough”) to the bloodthirsty cheers of the crowd, while one of his main competitors implies he’d like to use Guantanamo to torture suspected members of ISIS (“Not only are we not going to close Guantanamo, if we capture a terrorist alive, they are going to Guantanamo and we are going to find out everything they know,” says Rubio).
The truly depressing thing is that those who so expertly wield the tools of fear and hate are almost certainly going to win this one. Obama isn’t going to be able to close the prison at Guantanamo, and his successor won’t either. The prisoners there will probably die of old age before some future president can close the prison without being stopped by contemptible politicians who are so practiced at appealing to what’s worst in us.