Radley Balko:
I wish I could introduce Richard Cohen and Lloyd Green to Antonio Morgan. Cohen of course is my Washington Post colleague and columnist. Green is a former Justice Dept. official and former opposition research counsel for the Republican Party.
The two wrote remarkably similar columns this week about Hillary Clinton’s response to the protests and riots in Baltimore. Both compared the civil unrest of 2015 to the civil unrest in 1968. Both cited Nixon’s “tough on crime” campaign, which even members of that campaign team have since admitted was an overt, often racist appeal to white fear of black people. Both scorned Clinton for being “soft on crime,” and daring to criticize mass incarceration in a speech given the same week as the riots. Both mentioned New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and his shift in tone from gently criticizing the New York City police department for excessive force after the death of Eric Garner to robustly defending the officers after they were accused of roughing people up at a recent protest. Both columns noted polls suggesting that much of a America, especially white America, is fed up, and both cite one particular poll which found that 96 percent of respondents expect more racial strife this summer. Both referenced the recent shooting of NYPD Officer Brian Moore, and note that he’s the fifth officer to be shot since December. And both concluded that all of this means that Hillary Clinton is setting herself up to be the next George McGovern or Michael Dukakis.
Green complains that Clinton’s “campaign rollout video had no footage of cops or firefighters” and concludes, “Message to Hillary Clinton: Law and order still counts.” Cohen concludes that Clinton’s bleeding heart means, “We might be heading back to Nixonland.”
I’ll get to Antonio Morgan in a bit. But first, let’s unpack all the wrong in these two columns.
Richard Cohen is, remarkably, still employed. Nice work if you can get it.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Point-counterpoint on Bridgegate
Jonathan Rauch:
Here's a question whose answer may seem obvious, but isn't. Which is worse, a system in which political hacks can cause a massive traffic jam as a form of political payback, or a system in which it's a federal crime for political hacks to exact such retribution?
Norman Eisen:
Bridgegate is a perfect example of why we need fewer "hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals" in our politics, not more. There is no justification whatsoever for government officials abusing their powers, stopping emergency vehicles and risking lives, making kids late for school and parents late for their jobs to retaliate against a mayor who withholds an election endorsement. We vote in our democracy to make government work, not break. We expect that officials will serve the public, not their personal interests. This conduct weakens our democracy, not strengthens it.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel/NY Times:
A new survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 75 percent of emergency room doctors reported increases in patient volume since the Affordable Care Act went into effect. There was a similar result when Oregon introduced a limited expansion of Medicaid in 2008. Researchers at Harvard and M.I.T. found that, 18 months after the expansion, per-person emergency room visits among the new Medicaid patients had increased by 40 percent. This was most likely because previously uninsured individuals could now go to emergency rooms without owing a co-pay.
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act point to these increases as confirmation that yet another promise of the law was false. But these failures do not mean that the emergency room problem is unsolvable, just that insurance coverage alone is insufficient.
In Seattle, an unusual partnership seems to have found a solution.
NY Times:
During the urban crime epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s and the sharp decline in crime that began in the 1990s, the unions representing police officers in many cities enjoyed a nearly unassailable political position. Their opposition could cripple political candidates and kill police-reform proposals in gestation.
But amid a rash of high-profile encounters involving allegations of police overreach in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., the political context in which the police unions have enjoyed a privileged position is rapidly changing. And the unions are struggling to adapt.
“There was a time in this country when elected officials — legislators, chief executives — were willing to contextualize what police do,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And that time is mostly gone.”
PPP:
PPP's new Arizona poll finds the state has the potential to be a swing state next year, although early head to heads between Hillary Clinton and the Republican field still lean more towards the GOP.
Clinton is within 3 points in match ups with 7 out of 9 of the Republicans we tested. She actually leads Rick Perry 44/41 and she is tied with Jeb Bush (at 41%), and Ben Carson (at 42%). She is down by 1 point each to Ted Cruz and Scott Walker (44/43), by 2 points to Marco Rubio (43/41), and by 3 points to Mike Huckabee (44/41). The only Republicans with more robust leads are Rand Paul who's ahead by 5 points at 45/40 and Chris Christie who's up by 7 points at 46/39. Clinton's deficit in every match up is smaller than the amount Barack Obama lost the state by in 2008 and 2012.
EJ Dionne:
Republicans and conservatives have a brand problem. Their presidential campaign will only aggravate it as candidates are forced to double-down on an ideology that is in danger of decline. Moreover, the next year is likely to intensify deep stresses inside their coalition. Mike Huckabee gleefully highlighted these frictions when he announced his presidential candidacy, and Clinton moved quickly to exploit them.
If Democrats have a problem with white working-class voters, Huckabee brought home how Republicans have challenges of their own. While the GOP’s candidates fall all over themselves to cater to ultra-rich donors whose taxes the Republican hopefuls promise to cut, the party’s rank-and-file have reason to wonder what’s in all this for them.