An excerpt from Jack Meserve at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, writes—Keep It Simple and Take Credit:
As Democrats stare down eight years of policies being wiped out within months, it’s worth looking at why those policies did virtually nothing for their electoral success at any level. And, in the interest of supporting a united front between liberals and socialists, let me start this off with a rather long quote from Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House, on why Obamacare failed to gain more popularity:
There are parts to it that are unambiguously good — like, Medicaid expansion is good, and why? Because there’s no fucking strings attached. You don’t have to go to a goddamned website and become a fucking hacker to try to figure out how to pick the right plan, they just tell you “you’re covered now.” And that’s it! That’s all it ever should have been and that is why — [Jonathan Chait] is bemoaning why it’s a political failure? Because modern neoliberal, left-neoliberal policy is all about making this shit invisible to people so that they don’t know what they’re getting out of it. And as Rick Perlstein has talked about a lot, that’s one of the reasons that Democrats end up fucking themselves over. The reason they held Congress for 40 years after enacting Social Security is because Social Security was right in your fucking face. They could say to you, “you didn’t used to have money when you were old, now you do. Thank Democrats.” And they fucking did. Now it’s, “you didn’t used to be able to log on to a website and negotiate between 15 different providers to pick a platinum or gold or zinc plan and apply a fucking formula for a subsidy that’s gonna change depending on your income so you might end up having to retroactively owe money or have a higher premium.” Holy shit, thank you so much.
This point has been made before on Obamacare, but the tendency behind it, the tendency to muddle and mask benefits, has become endemic to center-left politics. Either Democrats complicate their initiatives enough to be inscrutable to anyone who doesn’t love reading hours of explainers on public policy, or else they don’t take credit for the few simple policies they do enact. Let’s run through a few examples.
Tax Cuts
As background, George W. Bush signed a tax cut in the first year of his term, during a recession, and sent out a rebate check of up to $600 to taxpayers, along with a letter saying that he and the Republican congress had passed the law providing that check.
Barack Obama also passed a tax cut in the first year of his term, also during a recession. Did he send out a similar letter and check, crediting he and his Democratic Congress? Let’s go to The New York Times:
Very high-minded. Let’s see if Franklin Roosevelt had similar qualms about sending checks:
[If you’ve gotten this far, be sure to read the rest of this excellent piece—MB]
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
”The most important reason I am concentrating on Winthrop and his shipmates in the 1630s is that the country I live in is haunted by the Puritans’ vision of themselves as God’s chosen people, as a beacon of righteousness that all others are to admire. The most obvious and influential examples of that mind-set is John Winthrop’s sermon ‘A Model of Christian Charity,’ in which he calls on New England to be ‘as a city upon a hill.’ The most ironic and entertaining example of that is the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s official seal. The seal, which the Winthrop fleet brought with them from England, pictures an Indian in a loincloth holding a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. Words are coming out of his mouth. The Indian says, ‘Come over and help us.’ That is really what it says.”
—Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates, 2008
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Operation Rescue Offers $10,000 Bounty for Doctors:
We saw how this strategy played out in Kansas, with tragic consequences. Operation Rescue collects "evidence" of wrongdoing by abortion providers. It then lobbies law enforcement to investigate the "evidence." In the case of Dr. Tiller, the organization found its ally in Phill Kline, now under investigation for ethics violations, who spent years investigating and intimidating Dr. Tiller and his clinic. Dr. Tiller was tried and acquitted of all charges, but that didn't stop Operation Rescue from continuing to claim that Dr. Tiller had performed illegal abortions.
When the law fails to hold abortion providers accountable for performing a legal medical procedure, Operation Rescue supplies information to an extremist who appears willing to take the law into his own hands, as Scott Roeder did.
In his murder trial, Dr. Tiller's assassin, Scott Roeder, claimed that his decision to murder Dr. Tiller was, in part, a result of the unsuccessful prosecution of Dr. Tiller.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin and Armando wrap up another crazy weekend, during which the Super Bowl was the most predictable thing that happened. The Trump White House proves dangerously incompetent, from top to bottom, but hopes to lay blame off on others.
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