Category Archives: Bernie Sanders

Dueling Visions for Minnesota: Scandinavia or South Dakota?

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Elections in a purple state can give you whiplash. 

After red wave elections, we’re led by Republicans like Tim Pawlenty who push for low taxes, poor services, and culture wars.

After blue wave elections, we’re led by DFLers like Tim Walz who push for higher taxes, better services, and cultural tolerance. 

After elections with more mixed results, legislative stalemates cause us to keep the prevailing status quo frozen in place.

That makes every election cycle extremely consequential.

The South Dakota Vision for Minnesota

In 2022, a decidedly purple Minnesota – at the time, it was the only state in the nation with one chamber of the state Legislature controlled by Democrats and the other controlled by Republicans – held a particularly high-stakes election. 

If Minnesota voters had elected ultra-conservative former physician gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and a Republican Legislature dominated by far-right Trumpers, Minnesota would have become a conservative promised land, much like its neighbor to the west, South Dakota. 

During the campaign, Jensen and other Republicans proposed a race-to-the-bottom on taxes, including eliminating the state income tax, which would have led to dramatically worse services.  Republican spinmeisters prefer to say “smaller government,” but the reality is that it would have meant much worse services. The anti-vaxxer Doc Jensen also pledged a South Dakota-like war on public health and culture war initiatives to force conservatives’ thinking on gays, guns, God, and gynecology on all Minnesotans. 

In other words, think Kristi Noem, with a stethoscope prop.

The Scandinavia Vision for Minnesota

Fortunately, 192,408 more Minnesotans voted for incumbent Governor Tim Walz than Jensen. More surprisingly, since it was predicted to be a historically horrible year for Democrats, Minnesotans also elected narrow DFL majorities in the state House and Senate.  The all-important Senate majority is especially razor-thin at 34-33.

Walz and the DFL-controlled Legislatures are armed with a $17.5 billion budget surplus and are offering a vision that is more like a social democratic-led Scandinavian country in the 1970s than South Dakota in the 2020s:

  • Paid family and medical leave;
  • An enormous funding increase for public schools;
  • A targeted child tax credit to dramatically reduce childhood poverty;
  • Free school lunches for all students;
  • An opportunity for people without employer-based health insurance to buy into public health insurance (MinnesotaCare/Medicaid), instead of only being able to choose private insurance;
  • Down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and rent vouchers;
  • A huge package to save the beleaguered childcare sector and make child care free for poor families and more affordable for middle-class families;
  • Large subsidies for weatherization, electric vehicle infrastructure, and solar energy expansion to combat climate change;
  • A range of gun violence prevention reforms, such as universal background checks, red flag laws to prevent people who could be perceived as a threat to themselves or others from getting guns, raising the legal age for obtaining military-style rifles to 21, and banning high-capacity magazines;
  • Legalized marijuana and expunged records for past offenders;
  • Driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants;
  • Automatic voter registration;
  • Enfranchising felons who have served their time; and
  • A capital gains tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.

The list goes on. Overall, think Bernie Sanders, with a Fargo accent.

This is the most dramatic swing of state policy in my lifetime, and perhaps in the history of the state. And if somebody you may have never heard of, Judy Seeberger (DFL-Afton), had received just 322 fewer votes in her state Senate race, most of those changes would never have been possible. Without Seeberger’s handful of votes in the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota would still be stuck in limbo between the South Dakota vision and the Scandinavia vision. 322 votes.

Harris Strikes Right Balance On Health Care Reform

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Democratic presidential candidates have been having a white hot debate about whether to support Medicare-for-All, which would move people onto Medicare and eliminate private health insurance plans, or a Medicare buy-in option, which would allow Americans to choose between government-run Medicare and corporate-run health plans.

Substantively, Medicare-For-All is Best

Substantively, Medicare-for-All makes more sense.  Going to a government-run single payer system would be the fastest and most effective way to cover all Americans, reduce administrative overhead, stop excessive profiteering, reduce medical costs, make the American economy more competitive, incentivize better health care best practices, and produce better outcomes. 

Compared to health systems used by other developed nations that are to varying degrees more like Medicare-for-all would be, the current U.S. system is worst.

Yes, a large tax increase would be needed to finance Medicare-for-All, and Democrats should be honest about that. At the same time, Americans would no longer be paying premiums, deductibles and copays.  Many Americans who have subsidized employer-based coverage should see higher pay as employers are freed of that enormous expense.  Because of these kinds of issues, 200 independent economists recently signed a letter stating that Americans would be paying less overall with a single government-run system than they pay under the current system, not more.

Politically, Medicare Buy-In Option Is Best

Politically, however, a Medicare buy-in option makes much more sense.  Because many Americans get extremely nervous about not having the option to stick with their familiar private health plan, about 75% of Americans support a Medicare buy-in option compared to about 56% who support Medicare-for-All.   Given how difficult it will be to defeat Trump in 2020 and pass something in the Senate in 2021 and beyond, political marketability and sustainability is no small consideration.

Harris’s Hybrid

After initially indicating support for Medicare-for-All, Senator Kamala Harris yesterday proposed a thoughtful hybrid approach.  While Harris still calls her proposal “Medicare-for-All,” it’s more accurate to call it “Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It,” since it allows Americans to choose private plans that are required to have the same benefits as Medicare.  After a 10-year phase-in to limit transition-related bumps, all Americans would have the kind of coverage Medicare currently offers, with some coverage upgrades.

This approach would achieve much, but not all, of the substantive benefit of Medicare-for-All, and it has enormous political advantages over Medicare-for-All.  Importantly, when Trump and the corporate insurance interests attack “government-run health care that takes away your insurance coverage,” those critics can be disarmed with very simple and compelling rebuttals: “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to choose it.” “If it’s as bad as they claim, no one will choose it.” 

Those simple, powerful rebuttals, which can only be used with a buy-in option, de-fang the “they’re taking away your health insurance” bite.

Progressive critics like Sanders are criticizing the Harris plan as too “moderate.” It certainly is moderate compared to the Sanders Medicare-for-All plan.  But when compared to ACA repeal/Trumpcare, where 20 million lose their coverage and all Americans would lose popular and effective ACA protections, the Harris proposal represents huge progress.  Also, the Harris plan offers an important quantum leap forward from the current ACA-driven system. 

Importantly, the Harris proposal offers Americans a consumer-driven path to the future.  When given a choice, it’s very likely that most Americans will choose the cheaper and better Medicare option over corporate care. Corporate care won’t be competitive with Medicare, because of its higher overhead and the need to make profits. But giving all Americans the ability to comparison shop and vote with their feet is key, so that Medicare-for-All eventually comes to American by popular mandate, rather than government mandate. Taking that consumer-driven approach ultimately will make Medicare-for-All more politically durable.

Though I don’t know all the details yet, I like the general balance Senator Harris has struck.  Obama’s former chief Medicare/Medicaid administrator Andy Slavitt said it well:

“Sen. Harris’s plan balances idealism and pragmatism. It says in effect: We have a mandate to get everyone affordable health care and put people over profits — but we don’t need to tear down the things people have and they like in order to do it.”

That’s what Democrats need: Idealism to stay true to their progressive values and excite lightly voting Democratic constituencies such as young people and people of color and pragmatism to smooth over political and logistical challenges and win over critically important moderate swing voters. 

Left of Eden

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Guest post by Noel Holston

On the first night of the first round of debates among Democratic presidential aspirants, Julián Castro, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, had a spotlight-grabbing moment when he upbraided fellow Texan Beto O’Rourke for not supporting his plan to end criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants crossing our southern border from Mexico.

On the second night, when a different 10 hopefuls fanned across NBC’s Wheel of Fortune stage, the impact of Castro’s attack was obvious. Aked if they backed Castro’s plan, nine candidates raised their hands. All 10 said they would back federal health subsidies for undocumented immigrants, an idea President Barack Obama nixed a decade earlier.

The candidates’ stampede to out “left” each other reached its most bizarre point when Castro volunteered that his universal healthcare plan would cover abortions, including abortions for trans women. At least this would not be a benefit that would significantly affect the deficit.

Since those nights, one of the hottest topics among the commentariat has been whether Democrats are going to blow their opportunity to dethrone President Trump by catering to their most progressive constituents.

Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart asked, “Will the Democratic Party go too far?”

“I’ll vote for almost any Democrat, but lurching left won’t beat Trump,” read the headline on a USA Today editorial by Tom Nichols, a national security professor at the Naval War College and a self-identified “Never Trump”-er.

“Democratic candidates veer left, leaving behind successful midterm strategy,” read the headline on a Washington Post analysis piece by Michael Scherer, one of its national correspondents.

Hogwash, say others, among them Keith A. Spencer, writing in Salon.com about “hard evidence” that supposedly proves a centrist Democrat will belly flop in 2020.

Other op-ed’s have warned Democrats to beware of Republican trolls trying to trick them into pursuing foolish moderation.

So, what are Democrats to do?

Well, what if they borrowed a phrase from “A Clockwork Chartreuse,” Loudon Wainwright III’s tongue-in-cheek paean to an anarchist: “Let’s burn down McDonald’s/Let’s go whole hog.”

Here are few things Democratic candidates can advocate at the next round of debates – July 30 and 31, CNN — if they really, really want to test the notion that the way to deny Donald Trump a second term is not moderation but a triple jump to the left. In no particular order:

Claiming “originalist” interpretation, ban private ownership of all firearms designed after 1789, the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

Ban bacon and big-ass pick-up trucks.

Remove slave owners’ heads from Mt. Rushmore.

Outlaw Mountain Dew.

Expand national park acreage to include Texas.

Along with abolishing private health insurance and replacing it with Medicare for All, reimburse patients for parking at hospital ramps.

Mandatory kale consumption.

Stop construction of Trump’s wall; commence construction of automated “people mover” walkways.

Change national anthem to Neil Diamond’s immigrant-friendly “(Coming to) America.”

Abolish apple pie as the national dessert. I’m thinking rhubarb.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” which is scheduled for publication fall of 2019 by Skyhorse.

Are Progressive Candidates “Out of Touch?”

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Among political reporters and pundits, the fashionable take on Democratic presidential candidates is that they’re recklessly veering too far to the left, consequently putting their chances of defeating Donald Trump at risk. That critique is all the rage.

Fox News‘s Howard Kurtz::

“But the Democrats are in danger of marching so far left that they go over a cliff. That’s not just my view. Mainstream reporters, who tend to be less sensitive to liberal positions that match their personal views, are openly acknowledging and debating the dramatic shift. It was even on the front page of The New York Times.”

The New York Times:

“The Democratic debates this past week provided the clearest evidence yet that many of the leading presidential candidates are breaking with the incremental politics of the Clinton and Obama eras, and are embracing sweeping liberal policy changes on some of the most charged public issues in American life, even at the risk of political backlash. But with moderate Democrats repeatedly drowned out or on the defensive in the debates, the sprint to the left has deeply unnerved establishment Democrats, who have largely picked the party nominees in recent decades.” 

Time:

“That sound you heard in Miami on Wednesday evening? El partido demócrata dando un fuerte giro a la izquierda. The screech of a Democratic Party swerving hard to the left.  As the first 2020 Democratic debate wrapped here, there was a palpable sense that the 10 contenders on stage were reflecting the sentiments of the most liberal corners of the party.”

Yes, Democrats are more liberal than they have been in my lifetime.  Yes, it’s possible that they could eventually go too far. But I disagree with the punditosphere that Democrats have hit that point.

Why Moving Left?

The explanation of aghast pundits has been that Democrats are supporting progressive policies for two primary reasons: 

  • Echo Chamber Parrots. First, they argue that Democrats are more liberal because they spend too much time in self-reinforcing  “echo chambers” — social media and cable news channels where like-minded ideologues radicalize each other and get isolated from opposing viewpoints. Pundits say candidates spend too little time in the habitat of “real people,” which they usually identify as Mayberry-esque Main Street cafes.
  • Liberal Bidding War. Also, pundits explain that Democrats are now more liberal because they’re desperately trying to out-liberal each other to court ultra-liberal primary and caucus voters.

These are both very real occupational hazards for politicians, and valid contributory factors for the shift to the left.  I don’t disagree with them, but they’re not the only explanations.

Democrats Are Listening To Americans

Many reporters and pundits are missing or under-emphasizing another explanation that is at least as important,: 

  • Listening To Americans. Democrats are moving left because they are actually listening to Americans.

Democrats are not just marching in lockstep with Rachel Maddow, Moveon.org, Daily Kos, Paul Krugman, and Bernie Sanders. They’re not just trying to one-up each other. They’re also reading the survey research.

The polls support a move to the left. For instance, market researchers are finding that Americans’ support for progressive policymaking is at a 68-year high.   

The American Prospect recently compiled a long list of recent survey polls showing overwhelming majorities of Americans embracing a broad range of progressive attitudes and policies, excerpted below. Remember, the following is dozens of independent statistically significant surveys speaking, not the liberal American Prospect magazine speaking:

The Economy

82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.

78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement on the financial industry.

Inequality

82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.

66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.

72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, and 23 percent say it is “somewhat important,” to reduce poverty.

59 percent of registered voters—and 51 percent of Republicans—favor raising the maximum amount that low-wage workers can make and still be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, from $14,820 to $18,000.

Taxes

76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.

60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.

87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.

67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.

Minimum Wage

54 percent of registered voters favored a $15 minimum wage.

63 percent of registered voters think the minimum wage should be adjusted each year by the rate of inflation.

Workers’ Rights

74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.

78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

Health Care

60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”

60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”

64 percent of registered voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.

Education

63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.

59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.

Climate Change and the Environment

76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.

68 percent of voters think it is possible to protect the environment and protect jobs.

59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.

Gun Safety

84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

77 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

Criminal Justice

60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).

Immigration

68 percent of Americans—including 48 percent of Republicans—believe the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” Just 29 percent say that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.”

65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”

64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. Only 5 percent say it makes the United States a worse place to live, and 29 percent say it makes no difference.

76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. Only 15 percent think they should be removed or deported from the country.

Abortion and Women’s Health

58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

68 percent of Americans—including 54 percent of Republicans—support the requirement for private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control.

Same-Sex Marriage

62 percent of Americans—including 70 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans—support same-sex marriage.

For people who suffered through eras when the NRA, the Catholic Church, the health insurance lobby, the Moral Majority, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Tax Reform, and trickle downers like Reagan, Gingrich and Bush dominated politics and policymaking, these findings are pretty stunning.

Make no mistake, America has changed. A solid majority of Americans now are supportive of left-leaning policies, whether or not they self-identify as “liberal.” In a representative democracy, public opinion is supposed to have a powerful impact on candidates and policymakers, and it is.

“Scaring the Independents”

“Harumph,” say the grizzled veteran pundits and reporters. Hubris-laden Democrats are going to scare away the Independent voters and be responsible for four more years of Trump. 

That’s certainly a danger, and an important thing to monitor in coming months.   But remember, all of those polls listed above have a representative number of Independent voters in their samples, and breakouts show that on most issues a solid majority of Independents also are backing very progressive policy positions. 

In addition, when you look at how Independent voters are currently leaning, they are leaning in the Democrat’s direction by a net nine-point margin.


Obviously, these polls are just a snapshot in time, so Democrats could still lose Independent voters after they are exposed to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of attacks.  However, it’s worth noting that, after watching Democrats being lambasted for embracing progressive positions in recent years, Independents are still leaning fairly decisively blue.

Expanding the Electorate

Finally, let’s not forget that it will be easier for Democratic candidates to win if they can expand the electorate. That is, Democrats need to make the overall size of their electorate larger than it has been in past presidential election by motivating and activating the parts of their coalition that have traditionally voted in relatively low numbers, such as low-income people, people of color and young people. Even just a few percentage points improvement with those groups could impact the outcome of the 2020 elections up and down the ballot.

Positions in the “mushy middle” — ACA stabilization tweaks, incremental tax reform, inflation adjustments only to the minimum wage, semi-punitive immigration law changes, Pell Grant adjustments, etc. — probably won’t particularly motivate and activate these important voters.

Bolder progressive policies — Medicare-for All, Medicare buy-in option, repealing Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy to fund help for struggling families, increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, family medical leave benefits, bold immigration law changes, higher education loan forgiveness — might.

Short-term Needs. So even if supporting progressive policies were causing Democrats to lose amongst Independent voters — and remember, so far the data seems to indicate that they aren’t — there is an argument for Democratic candidates to take those progressive stands anyway, in order to keep young people, poor people, and people of color from sitting out election day in large numbers, or backing a left-leaning third party candidate.

Long-term Needs. Appealing to those lightly voting groups with progressive policies is also important for the long-term future of the Democratic Party, not just the 2020 election. That’s because people of color are the fastest growing portions of the population, and today’s young people obviously will be voting for many years. Making those groups into committed members of the Democratic coalition would pay long-term dividends.

More Room To Grow. Still, some maintain that voter turnout is going to be so large in 2020, due to the polarizing nature of President Trump, that the size of the electorate will be maxed out without having to motivate lightly voting groups with progressive policies.

But when you look at the dramatically lower than average turnout figures for loyal Democratic constituencies in 2018, when their turnout levels were actually very high compared to 2014, it’s clear there is still much room for growth with these groups. For instance, 36% of young people voted in 2018, compared to 53% of the total population. Again, even an increase of a point or two in some of these categories could be decisive.

Who’s Out of Touch?

So yes, Democrats have indeed moved left in recent years. That much is obvious. But given this consistent stream of survey research from a wide variety of sources, I can’t agree with those who conclude that Democratic candidates are the ones who are “out of touch” with the pulse of the American people.

Championing Both Medicare-for-All and Buy-in Option

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During last night’s Part I of the Democratic Presidential debate, moderators and candidates acted as if candidates must make a choice between advocating for Medicare-for-All and a Medicare buy-in option.  It was one of the few areas of division among the progressive candidates

Why?  Progressives should be simultaneously advocating for both policies. 

Stop Bashing Buy-In Option

Medicare-for-All advocates like Sanders and Warren need to stop taking cheap shots at a Medicare buy-in option. 

The reality is, without a filibuster-proof Senate majority, Medicare-for-All simply can’t pass for a while.  Therefore, progressives need a Plan B that helps as many Americans as possible, shows that Democrats can deliver on their health care rhetoric, and advances the cause of Medicare-for-All. 

That’s what a Medicare buy-in option does. 

It helps more Americans in the short-run by bringing much more price competition to the marketplace and ensuring every American has at least one comprehensive coverage option available to them, even in poorly served areas. 

Beyond helping Americans in the short-term, a buy-in option also advances the cause of Medicare-for-All. Americans have been brainwashed by decades of conservatives’ vilifying of “government run health care,” but a buy-in option will give younger generations of Americans first-hand evidence showing that Medicare is not to be feared. It will show millions of Americans that Medicare is cheaper and better than conservatives’ vaunted corporate health plans.

And that will help disarm conservatives’ red-faced criticisms of “government run health care” and Medicare-for-All.

Stop Bashing Medicare-for-All

At the same time, champions of a Medicare buy-in option like Biden and Buttigieg need to stop railing on a Medicare-for-All. 

Even though Medicare-for-All can’t pass right away, progressives need to keep explaining what the world’s other developed nations figured out a long time ago, that a single payer government-run is the only real solution for any nation that hopes to control costs, cover everyone, and improve health outcomes.

For far too long, progressives have been afraid to educate Americans about why a single-payer system is needed.  When fearful progressives sensor themselves from explaining why Medicare-for-All is needed, they leave the stage to conservative and corporate demagogues relentlessly spreading myths about the evils of “government-run health care.” 

And when progressives leave the stage to conservative demagogues — surprise, surprise – progressives lose the debate.

Start Pushing Both

What would it sound like to advocate these two positions simultaneously? It could sound something like this:

Ultimately, we must cover everyone, control skyrocketing costs, and improve health outcomes. And you know what? Ultimately, the only way to do that is Medicare-for-All. 

In America, Medicare has proven effective and is popular with those who use it. In developed nations around the world using government-run systems like Medicare, everyone is covered, costs are much lower and health outcomes are much better. 

So Medicare-for-All must to be our ultimate goal. We have to keep our eyes on that prize. We need it as soon as possible.

At the same time, the Republican-controlled Senate won’t pass Medicare-for-All.  That’s reality folks.

Given that reality, what can Democrats do right now to both help the American people and pave the way for Medicare-for-All in the long-run?  A Medicare buy-in option.  A buy-in option has lots of public support among Republican voters, so it has a much better chance of passing the Senate than Medicare-for-All.

Let Americans choose between corporate care and Medicare. If they want to keep their private health insurance, they can. But given them another option.

President Trump is afraid to give Americans make that choice. I’m not. He knows Americans will like Medicare better, and doesn’t want to give them that option. I’m not afraid, because I know that a Medicare plan that isn’t required to profit off of patients will be cheaper and better that corporate care. So let Americans choose.

Enacting a buy-in option now will show more Americans that they have nothing to fear from Medicare coverage. And that will help us move the American people towards embracing Medicare-for-All.

Pols and pundits keep framing this issue as if it must be a battle to the death for progressives. But Medicare-for-All versus a Medicare Buy-in Option is a false choice.  Progressives should be advocating for both, and stop savaging each other on the issue.

Don’t Donate To Presidential Candidates

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If you want to defeat Trump in 2020, I’d argue one of the worst things you can do right now is donate to Democratic presidential candidates.  I’m serious. 

Bear with me. 

Last time I checked, Democrats have something like two dozen candidates in the race.  That means any given donor’s chances of picking the winning candidate who ultimately runs against Trump are poor.  Therefore, the contribution you give today could be, for the purposes of defeating Trump, pretty much wasted.

But what if you really feel strongly about a candidate? 

Look, the policy differences between most of the candidates are not very significant.  The differences get artificially magnified in heated primaries, but let’s keep things in the proper perspective.  If you feel strongly about Issue X, the odds are very good that you are going to have several candidates in the race who agree with you, if not all of them. 

So, donating now won’t particularly help promote Issue X. That’s why it’s very difficult to pick a Democratic candidate deserving of your donation.

Finally, making a contribution to an individual candidate now could inadvertently prolong the portion of the campaign season where Democrats have so many candidates in the race that their message is pretty much incoherent.  Candidate winnowing is particularly needed with a field of 24, because a crowded, contentious field muddles the eventual nominee’s message and probably muddies the nominee’s reputation. 

Candidates typically leave the race when they run out of money to pay for staff and ads, so giving to candidates now could simply delay the badly needed winnowing phase of the campaign. 

So, which candidate or candidates should get your contributions?  None of them. 

Instead of contributing to one of the Democratic presidential candidates at a stage of the process when the race is essentially a roulette wheel, direct your contributions to Unify, Or Die. 

Unify, Or Die was started by the hosts of the excellent podcast Pod Save America, in partnership with Swing Left.  The idea simple and brilliant.  People who want to defeat Trump can Donate to the Unify, Or Die Fund now, and the minute there is a Democratic Party nominee, all of the accumulated funding immediately will go to the Democratic nominee, so they can hit the ground running post-Democratic Convention against Trump and his massive war chest

So before you write that next big Hickenlooper check, stop, think big picture strategy, and redirect your money to a unified movement to remove the most corrupt, incompetent, and bigoted President of our times.

Medicare Buy-In Option: The Next Span in the Bridge to Medicare-for-All

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Democratic presidential candidates are lining up in support of Medicare-for-All, and I’m glad they’re making that case to Americans.  Around the world, single payer systems like Medicare-for-All are delivering better and cheaper health care than Americans are getting, and we need to adopt such a system as soon as possible.  As William Hsiao, Ph.D., professor of economics at the Harvard School of Public Health puts it:

“You can have universal coverage and good quality health care, while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.”

But for reasons I’ll explain below, I don’t believe Medicare-for-All can pass in 2020, even if Democrats control Congress and the White House.  So, we need to extend a meaningful bridge to Medicare-for-All.

So what could Democrats pass to make Medicare-for-All possible in the relatively near future?

The 74-Year Battle

Before we get to that, let’s back up to reflect on how we got here.   In 1945, Harry Truman wanted what we today would call Medicare-for-All.  For 20 years, it went nowhere.  What was dubbed “socialized medicine” by Ronald Reagan and other Republicans just didn’t prove to be politically feasible.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson had a partial breakthrough. He passed Medicare for 65 and older, but it wasn’t as comprehensive as today’s Medicare. As support for Medicare grew, improvements were made.  In 1972, Republican Richard Nixon agreed to expand coverage. In the Reagan years, home health care, hospice services, and a limited prescription drug benefit were added.  In the George H.W. Bush era, the prescription drug benefit was expanded.

The historical lesson:  Health care reform in a nation dominated by powerful private health insurance companies has been supremely arduous, and therefore incremental.  This is true even though Medicare has proven popular and efficient.

Medicare-for-All Next?

Unfortunately, three-quarters of a century after Truman started advocating for Medicare for All, the debate still is treacherous. In 2019, the Medicare expansion debate boils down to essentially this:  Should progressives push for 1) publicly financed, mandated Medicare-for-All; 2) voluntary, consumer-financed Medicare buy-in option; or 3) a publicly financed, mandated “Medicare at 50.”

Many progressives, myself included, point to the polls showing strong support for Medicare-for-All, and say now is the time to push for it.

Indeed, progressives should continue to make the case for making Medicare-for-All the goal. At the same time, we have to recognize that in the current political environment, Medicare-for-All has much less popular support than a Medicare buy-in option.  A January 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll finds that  56% of Americans support Medicare-for-All, while 77% support a Medicare buy-in option.  So when conservatives and insurance companies start attacking, the buy-in option would be much more politically bullet-proof than Medicare-for-All.

Moreover, as the debate heats up Medicare-for-All and Medicare-at-50 will be vulnerable to two of the most deadly attacks in all of American politics.  First, opponents will say they’re “massively expensive.” Second, they will say consumers would be “forced to give up your current coverage.”

We shouldn’t discount the political power of those two critiques.  When it comes to taxpayer expense and mandated change, American voters have historically been very easily spooked. Those two attacks, which would be greatly amplified via hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the most intensive political and special interest propaganda the nation has ever seen, will be very effective at eroding support.

Therefore, today’s poll numbers for Medicare-for-All and Medicare-at-50 will not hold up, and when they shrink, congressional votes will disappear.

Advantages Of A Medicare Buy-In Bridge 

A Medicare buy-in option, however, is much more politically durable, and not just because it has 21 points more support in the KFF survey than Medicare-for-All.

Not Expensive. First, a Medicare buy-in option wouldn’t have a big taxpayer price tag like Medicare-for-All or Medicare-at-50, because consumers under age 65 would be paying premiums, not taxpayers.

Not A Mandate.  Second, a buy-in option wouldn’t force any consumer to give up their current coverage, which they would need to do with either Medicare-for-All or Medicare-at-50.  Under the buy-in option, consumers who want to continue to pay more to keep their private coverage could still choose to do so.

The fact that a Medicare buy-in option is voluntary and self-financing would largely disarm the most potent political attacks that have been working since 1945.

A Bridge To Medicare-for-All. But make no mistake, passing a Medicare buy-in option would constitute dramatic progress that would make Medicare for All much more likely in the future.  Let me count the ways:

  • More Affordable for Millions.  Because Medicare has much lower overhead than private health insurance, it would give millions of Americans more affordable coverage than they have today. By the way, if private insurance somehow turns out to be cheaper and/or better than the Medicare option, as conservatives have long claimed, consumers obviously will choose it.  If that happens, Republicans will be proven correct. So let patients decide, not politicians. Conservatives should have nothing to fear from giving this option to consumers.
  • Aid Cost Control.  A Medicare buy-in option would give Medicare a bigger pool of consumers, which would give Medicare officials much more leverage to negotiate cost control with hospitals, doctors, device makers and pharmaceutical companies. “Medicare-for-more” would not be as effective at leveraging lower costs as “Medicare-for-All” will be, but it will bring important progress.
  • Deepen Medicare Support. As more Americans voluntarily switch from private insurance to the cheaper Medicare buy-in option without experiencing worse service and coverage, it will show Americans that this “government-run health care” is not the horrific bogeyman Republicans have made it out to be.
  • Broaden Generational Support. Finally, while Medicare currently mostly only has senior citizen champions, newly converted believers in Medicare would be in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s. This would dramatically strengthen the Medicare-for-All base of support.

So, a Medicare buy-in option would be much more politically feasible than Medicare-for-All or Medicare-at-50, and it is the next logical span of the bridge to Medicare-for-All to add. Progressives shouldn’t be hesitant to build it.

Democrats’ Pending McCain Moment

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Arguably Senator John McCain’s finest moment came in Minnesota, when he corrected a Minnesota woman who called Barack Obama an Arab, a shockingly widespread belief at the time among Republicans.  With the audience chuckling, and an easy cheap-shot applause line tempting the candidate, McCain showed political discipline, courage and integrity when he famously corrected her. “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with…”

(By the way, it would have been much more admirable had Senator McCain added something like: “And ‘Arab’ should never be used as a criticism or slur, because most people of Arabic descent are decent family men and women, and many are American citizens who love this country every bit as much as we do.”  That would have been even more courageous and constructive. But I digress.)

Very soon, I suspect Democratic presidential candidates will have their own McCain moment in front of them.  For instance, eye-for-an-eye Democratic activists at rallies will surely echo and mock Trump supporters by chanting “lock him up.”  Though that chant isn’t as racist or removed from reality as the “Arab” remark, it’s also ugly in its own way.

In that same moment, Trump shamelessly promoted ignorance, disinformation, and mob rule by leading the chant, because he is a petty, short-sighted and dishonest authoritarian.  But Democrats should show swing voters that they are better than Trump and his sycophantic Trumpublicans, and should not further normalize Trump’s abhorrent behavior by aping it.

A primary problem with the Trump supporters’ “lock her up” chants was not just that Secretary Clinton hadn’t been found guilty of any jailable offense, or even charged with one.  It also was that politicians should never be making incarceration decisions and declarations about political opponents, Putin-style.  In our American democracy, those are decisions that should be reserved for the independent judicial branch of government, after due process has been completed.

So when the “lock him up” chants inevitably start at Democratic rallies, Democratic candidates and party leaders should immediately stop their crowds and gently but firmly say something like this:

“No my friends, that’s them.  That’s not us.  That’s not how it works in this great democracy of ours. Incarceration is for the judges and juries in the judicial branch to decide, not for us.  But here is something that we can do, and must do. Vote them out!  Vote them out! Vote them out!”

That will show swing voters — Independents, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans — that Democrats are the adults in the room. It will show them that it’s not true that “both sides do it,” as moderates frequently assert.   It will show them that Democrats are focused on democracy and not being an authoritarian lynch mob.  It show them that Democrats are leaders not demagogues.

For a country suffering extreme Trump fatigue, those things will matter a great deal in the 2020 elections.

Barack Obama showed Democrats the way.  At campaign rallies, his fired up supporters often started  booing their opponents.  But Obama firmly redirected his supporters in a more constructive democratic direction. “Don’t boo. Vote.”

In other words, Obama was a moral leader, not a demagogue.  His wannabe successors will have a similar moral test in front of them in the upcoming campaign.  They need to follow President Obama’s lead.

Five Reasons Democrats Should Push A Medicare-for-All Option

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As the next iteration of Trumpcare/Ryancare is finalized by warring conservatives, it’s fair to demand that Democrats share their post-Obama vision for health care.

Yes, Democrats need to be fighting efforts to repeal and replace the increasingly popular Obamacare/Affordable Care Act (ACA) system with Trumpcare/Ryancare. Though the ACA is the spurned love child of the Heritage Foundation, Orin Hatch, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, it’s much more humane than Trumpcare/Ryancare, which would cause at least 24 million Americans to lose their Obamacare health coverage, and many more if states choose to further weaken protections.

Cursor_and_medicare-for-all_jpg__360×216_But for the long haul, Democrats need to set their sights higher than Obamacare. They must become full-throated champions for allowing Americans the option of buying into the Medicare system.  Here are five reasons why:

Reason #1. Medicare is popular “government run health care.” For decades, Republicans have robotically vilified “government run health care” and “socialized medicine,” presuming that Americans agree with them that government will screw up anything it undertakes.  And Democratic politicians have cowered in fear.

However, Medicare is a notable exception to that rule. While the private sector-centric Trumpcare/Ryancare has 17% approval and Obamacare has 55% approval, Medicare has the approval of 60% of all Americans, and 75% Americans who have actual experience using Medicare.  It’s not an easy thing for a health plan to become popular, so Medicare’s relative popularity is political gold.  Democrats need to tap into it.

Reason #2. Medicare is better equipped to control medical and overhead costs than private plans. Medicare has a single administrative system, while dozens of health insurance corporations have dozens of separate and duplicative administrative bureaucracies.  That decentralized approach to administration is expensive.

Also, for-profit health insurance corporations have to build profits and higher salaries into their premium costs. For instance, the insurance corporation United Health Care, to cite just one of dozens of examples, pays it’s top executive $33,400,000.   That’s 135 times more than the not-for-profit Medicare system pays its top executive, about $247,000.

Medicare also is large enough that it has a great deal of negotiating leverage.  It could have even more if Congress empowered Medicare to more effectively negotiate pharmaceutical prices.

Because of all of that, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities finds:

Medicare has been the leader in reforming the health care payment system to improve efficiency and has outperformed private health insurance in holding down the growth of health costs…  Since 1987, Medicare spending per enrollee has grown by 5.7 percent a year, on average, compared with 7.0 percent for private health insurance.

So, if Democrats want to better control health care costs to help the economy and struggling Americans, the Medicare model offers the best hope for doing that, not the corporate-centric model that we currently are using.

Reason #3. A Medicare-for-All option is very politically viable. Most Democratic politicians understand that a Medicare-for-All option makes good sense policy wise, but shrug it off as politically infeasible. They’re dead wrong.

By a more than a 5-to-1 margin, Americans support having a Medicare-for-All option. An overwhelming 71% support it, while only 13% oppose it. If you won’t try to sell a proven progressive idea that is supported by a 5-to-1 margin, you have no business being in progressive politics.

While “government-run health care” has been a weak brand for brand for Democrats, they have a clear path for rebranding their agenda.  Medicare brand equity is right there waiting for Democrats to take advantage it, if they’ll only open their eyes to the opportunity.

Reason #4. A Medicare-for-All option will expose private health corporations as uncompetitive. Right now, one of the Democrats’ biggest political problems is that too many Americans have been brainwashed by conservatives into believing that the private sector is always more efficient and effective than the public sector. In other areas that don’t involve “public goods,” that is true, but not with health insurance.

The best way to bust that “private is always best” myth is to allow Medicare to sit alongside corporate health plans in the individual marketplace. If American consumers choose Medicare over private plans, because Medicare proves itself to be the cheapest and best option, then the conservatives’ “private is always best” myth finally will be busted.

Reason #5. A Medicare-for-All option can serve as a bridge to the best health care model – a public single payer system. The research is clear that countries who have single payer health care financing have better and cheaper health care than the United States has with it’s substantially private sector based health care system. For example, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Commonwealth Fund finds:

Even though the U.S. is the only country without a publicly financed universal health system (among 13 high-income countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States), it still spends more public dollars on health care than all but two of the other countries. …despite its heavy investment in health care, the U.S. sees poorer results on several key health outcome measures such as life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic conditions.

Obscure research reports like this aren’t proving persuasive to American voters. But when younger Americans are able to see for themselves through their shopping that Medicare is cheaper and better than private health insurance options, Medicare will build a bigger market share.  After Medicare earns a larger market share, Americans may ultimately be much more open to shifting from a Medicare-for-all option to a Medicare-for-all single payer system that the United States ultimately needs in order to compete in the global marketplace and become a healthier nation.

It’s not enough for Democrats to only expose the reckless Trumpcare/Ryancare model and defend Obamacare status quo.  They must also promote a Medicare-for-All vision for moving America forward. With the current President and Congress, a Medicare-for-All option obviously can’t pass.  But aggressively promoting over the coming years will improve the chances that this Congress and President will soon be replaced and that a Medicare-for-All option can be enacted in future years.

How Democrats Lost to the Worst GOP Presidential Candidate of Our Times

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Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about three million votes, a larger margin than Presidents Nixon and Kennedy had. She only lost the electoral college by roughly 100,000 votes (0.08 percent of the electorate) in three states. In a race that close, there is a long list of things that might have shifted the outcome of the presidential race.

I am sure that the Clinton campaign’s get out the vote (GOTV), data mining, advertising, debate zingers, primary election peace-making, voter suppression battling and many other things could have been better.  Who knows, those improvements might have swung that relatively small number of votes. But if I had to name the top three things that swung the election, I wouldn’t name any of those more tactical issues.  Instead, these are my nominees:

WORST POSSIBLE NOMINEE PROFILE FOR OUR ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT TIMES.  I admire Hillary Clinton on many levels, and think she has been treated very unfairly in this campaign and throughout her career.  But early on in the nomination cycle, it was extremely clear that general election voters were in a white hot anti-Washington establishment mood, and were looking for someone very different than a Hillary Clinton-type candidate.

Hillary Clinton was the ultimate Washington establishment candidate. Her resume, network, husband and demeanor absolutely screamed “Washington Insider.”   Democrats could have run a less establishmenty candidate that was more sane than Trump –Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, others — but they chose to run a candidate who had the worst possible profile for the times.

This created two huge problems 1) It caused Hillary to lose change-oriented voters who supported change-oriented Obama in the past and 2) It caused much of the Obama coalition to sit out the race, or effectively throw their vote away by supporting a third party candidate.

President-elect Trump won a somewhat smaller vote total than Republicans have been winning in their past two presidential losses.  Despite all of the post-election hype about the Trump political magic show, he didn’t perform that well, historically speaking.   The difference wasn’t that Trump created a tsunami of support, it was that the cautious establishment-oriented Democratic candidate was unable to generate sufficient excitement among the Obama coalitions of 2008 and 2012, particularly millennials and people of color.  This chart tells the story.

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COMPLETE LACK OF ECONOMIC MESSAGE. In May, I made this argument:

The Clinton campaign needs to stick to a small number of lines of attack, even as the Trump vaudeville act continually tosses out new bait to lead the Clinton campaign down dozens of different messaging paths.  Trump is clearly incapable of message discipline, but Clinton can’t allow his lack of discipline to destroy hers.

Swing voters are disgusted by establishment figures like Hillary and Congress, because they see them as part of a corrupt Washington culture that has rigged the economy for the wealthy few to the exclusion of the non-wealthy many.  That is the central concern of many Trumpeters and Bern Feelers, and so that issue is the most important messaging ground for Clinton.

Therefore, Secretary Clinton should align a disciplined campaign messaging machine – ads, speech soundbites, policy announcements, surrogate messaging, etc. — around framing Mr. Trump as: Trump the self-serving economy rigger.

Why choose this framing over all of the other delicious options?  First, it was proven effective against a billionaire candidate in 2012.  There is message equity there.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Second, it goes to the core of what is bugging swing voters the most in 2016.

Needless to say, this never happened. The Clinton campaign reacted to pretty much everything that Trump did, and never stressed anything close to a bold agenda for addressing income inequality.  She also failed to offer much of a critique of a Trump economic agenda that would badly aggravate income inequality for Trump’s base of voters.

For reasons I’ll never understand, the economic populist message and agenda that an unlikely candidate like Bernie Sanders used to light up the political world earlier in the election cycle was almost entirely ignored by Team Clinton.  As a result, 59% of Americans are somewhat or very confident that the economy will improve under President-elect Trump.  Given the truth about the devastation that will be caused by Trump policies, shame on Clinton for allowing that level of public delusion to develop.

CANDIDATE WITH WAY TOO MUCH BAGGAGE. The “controversies” swirling around Secretary Clinton were less a product of corruption than they were a product of three decades of relentless witch-hunting by conservatives in the Congress and at Fox TV, and gutless false equivalency reporting from the mainstream media. The FBI Director’s shameless manipulation of the email investigation and the New York Times’ ridiculous inflation of the email issue was especially damaging to Clinton.

But as unfair and maddening as most of the Hillary criticism was, Democrats knew full well that it was coming.  They knew Clinton had three decades worth of earned and unearned skeletons in her family closet, but arrogantly chose her anyway.

If Democrats hope to win more Presidential elections, the days of always nominating the candidate with the longest political resume must end. In the current environment of non-stop congressional and media investigations, long political resumes now will always come with a long list of real and imagined “scandals.”   Those alleged controversies will, quite unfairly, make veteran insiders increasingly unelectable, because confused, under-informed voters will always tend to conclude “if there is corruption smoke, there must be fire,” as so many did with Clinton.

If Democrats had run a candidate who didn’t have known “scandals” looming, and who had a background, demeanor, agenda and message that gave voters confidence that they were willing and able to do something about an economy rigged in favor of the 1%, Democrats wouldn’t have needed to look for a stray 100,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They could have won in an electoral college landslide over the worst Republican presidential candidate of our times.

Hillary, the ACA and the Art of the Possible

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Cursor_and_hillary_clinton_-_Google_SearchThough I’m a solid Hillary Clinton supporter, I don’t particularly relish defending her at water coolers, dinner tables and social media venues.  When defending Hillary Clinton to those who hoped for more, I often feel like I do when defending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to those who hoped for more.

To be clear, neither Hillary nor the ACA were my first choice. Elizabeth Warren and single payer were my first choices.

Neither Hillary nor the ACA are as bold as I’d prefer. They both promise modest incremental change, rather than the more revolutionary change that is needed.

Neither Hillary nor the ACA are, shall we say, untouched by special interests. The ACA is the product of accommodations made to private health insurers, physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, while Clinton is the product of accommodations made to corporations, unions and military leaders.

Also, neither Hillary nor the ACA are easy to understand. Hillary is a wonk’s wonk whose eye-glazing 20-point policy plans don’t exactly sing to lightly engaged voters.   Likewise, the ACA has given birth to 20,000 pages of the densest regulations you’ll ever find. (By the way, a primary reason the ACA is so complex is that conservatives and moderates insisted that it accommodate dozens of for-profit insurance companies instead of  using the more linear single payer model that has been proven effective and efficient by other industrialized nations. In this way, the need for much of the ACA complexity was created by conservatives, not liberals.)

At the same time, neither Hillary nor the ACA are anywhere near as bad as the caricatures created by their demagogic critics. Hillary is not a serial liar and murderer any more than the ACA led to “Death Panels” and force-fed birth control.

The bottom line is that both Hillary and the ACA, for all their respective flaws, are far superior to the alternatives. The steady, smart, savvy, and decent Clinton is much better than the erratic, ignorant, inept and vile Trump. The current ACA era, with a 9.2% uninsured rate (4.3% in Minnesota, where the ACA is more faithfully implemented than it is in many states) and all preexisting conditions covered is much better than the pre-ACA status quo, with an uninsured rate of 15.7% (9% in Minnesota) and millions denied health coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.

Hillary and the ACA both bring progress, but they are hardly the final word.  The fact that I am supporting the ACA in 2016 doesn’t mean I’m going to stop advocating for ACA improvements, a Medicare-for-All option and ultimately a single payer system. The fact that I am supporting Hillary in 2016 doesn’t mean I’m not going to push for more progressive, bold, compelling and independent leaders in the future.

But politics is the art of the possible.  Hillary and the ACA are what is possible at this point in the history of our imperfect democracy.   As such, I can champion both comfortably, if not entirely enthusiastically.

The Wrong Bernexit

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So you, like me, voted for Senator Bernie Sanders for President. Now maybe you’re considering switching allegiances to the Libertarian presidential candidate, Governor Gary Johnson?

I respect your decision to shop around and do thoughtful research.  Here’s something to inform your decision.

Gary Johnson Bernie Sanders positions table2

(Source for Sanders positions here.  Source for Johnson positions here.  Source for estimate of Sanders spending increase total here.)

Yes, Governor Johnson would do some very smart and important things, such as scale back the war on drugs and be careful about entering military quagmires. But most of the centerpiece policies championed by Senator Sanders are vehemently opposed by Governor Johnson.

Hillary Needs A Singular Trump Critique, Not Dozens

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One of the problems with running against a historically bizarre opponent like Donald Trump is that there are so many different juicy ways to run against him.  Most activists and pundits think of that as an opportunity, but it also poses a very real problem – focus.

Because Trump is such an outrageous cartoon character of a candidate, Secretary Clinton could be tempted to use her campaign platform and resources to frame up Mr. Trump in a myriad of different ways.  But that would be the biggest mistake she could make.

Screen-shot-2016-01-29-at-10_54_35-AM-1140x554_png__1140×554_

Trump the bigot.  Trump the philanderer. Trump the misogynist. Trump the bully.  Trump the trigger happy. Trump the uncouth.  Trump the simpleton.  Trump the liar.  Trump the inciter.  Trump the right winger.  Trump the failure.  Trump the blunderer.  Trump the neo-facist.  Trump the war criminal.  Trump the con artist.  Trump the demagogue.  Trump the hypocrite.  Trump the rejected.  Trump the authoritarian.  Trump the unstable.  Trump the novice.  Trump the flip-flopper.  Trump the all-of-the-above.

It’s dizzying.  One of the worst possible strategies is the last one — to throw everything at Trump in roughly equal measure, which is de facto what is happening at the moment.  And that is what happens when you don’t have a disciplined communications strategy.

Singular Key Message Needed

The essence of communications strategy is sacrifice.  You have to walk past some tempting messages in order to have a focused strategy.  If you say everything you possibly could say about an opponent, you effectively are saying nothing.  All of those very valid Trump critiques piled one upon the other becomes a cacophony to voters.  Subsequently, eyes roll and ears shut.

The_Key_to_the_Key_cg-50_jpg__320×247_So communications strategists typically identify a small number of messages or themes that they strive to repeat and stress above all the others. They’re often called “key messages,” or “frames.”

The key message is the one idea that you need to stick in your target audience’s mind in order to achieve your goal, which in this case is persuading swing voters to reject Trump and get more comfortable with Clinton.

Therefore, the Clinton campaign needs to stick to a small number of lines of attack, even as the Trump vaudeville act continually tosses out new bait to lead the Clinton campaign down dozens of different messaging paths.  Trump is clearly incapable of message discipline, but Clinton can’t allow his lack of discipline to destrory hers.

Trump The Economy Rigger

So which crystallizing key message should Clinton stress?

Swing voters are disgusted by establishment figures like Hillary and Congress, because they see them as part of a corrupt Washington culture that has rigged the economy for the wealthy few to the exclusion of the non-wealthy many.  That is the central concern of many Trumpeters and Bern Feelers, and so that issue is the most important messaging ground for Clinton.

Therefore, Secretary Clinton should align a disciplined campaign messaging machine – ads, speech soundbites, policy announcements, surrogate messaging, etc. — around framing Mr. Trump as:

Trump the self-serving economy rigger.

As Clintonista James Carville might say, “it’s the economy rigging, stupid.”  That is, Trump the privileged billionaire selfishly seeking to win control the Washington levers of power in order further rig the economy to benefit himself and his privileged class at the expense of everyone else.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s precisely the strategy that Team Obama used to defeat billionaire Mitt Romney in 2012.

Why choose this framing over all of the other delicious options?  First, it was proven effective against a billionaire candidate in 2016.  There is message equity there.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Second, it goes to the core of what is bugging swing voters the most in 2016.

With this kind of framing, the Clinton-Warren or Clinton-Sherrod Brown team would focus like a laser on Trump’s tax giveaways to the rich. It would highlight his proposals to weaken Wall Street protections. It would stress Trump’s opposition to Clinton proposals to  increase the minimum wage hikes and taxes on the wealthy. It would hammer relentlessly on Trump’s refusal to reveal his taxes, and stress that he doesn’t want ordinary Americans to know that the billionaire pays a much smaller percentage of his taxes than they do. It would focus on his history of lobbying to create and perpetuate the wealth-protection measures to rig the economy in his favor, while harming the rest of us.

Executing that kind of messaging strategy would require the Clinton campaign to largely take a pass on the other juicy lines of attack against Trump, all of which will be magnified during daily news coverage, but are unhelpful diversions of public mind space compared to this framing.  It would require her to be saying things like this:

“You know, I care much less about today’s latest sideshow than the fact that Mr. Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the rich and oppose a minimum wage hike will further rig the economy for the ultra-wealthy. His outrageous giveaway to  his fellow billionaires is much more offensive to me than his latest round of crudeness.”

Focusing on “Trump the self-serving economy rigger” would make Clinton look a bit more like a change-agent, and less like a defender of the despised Washington status quo.  It also would help erode the silly notion of among some swing voters that Trump is somehow the champion of the common man.

This won’t come naturally for Secretary Clinton.  Her establishment instincts will continually tempt her to focus her critique of Trump through a Washington lens.  She’ll instinctively want to crow about the fact that she knows more about policy details, and that the smarty pants Washingtonian centrists, and even some conservatives, are embracing her and rejecting Trump. She’ll want to scold Trump about saying things that, well, refined Washingtonians simply do not say.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  When Clinton does that, many swing voters hear her as “Washington insider looking down her nose at Washington outsider,” and in the current political climate the instincts of many will be to side with the outsider. Hillary needs to fight her instincts and frame Trump as the ultimate nest-feathering insider masquerading as an outsider.  She doesn’t need to feel her inner Bubba and triangulate the center right, or jump on each of Trump’s outrage du jour.  As much as she may want to resist it, Hillary needs to feel the Bern.

 

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Note:  This post also was published as part of MinnPost’s weekly Blog Cabin feature.

Note:  Collage portrait by Conor Collins.

What Can Hillary Learn From Bernie?

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Cursor_and_clinton_smug_-_Google_SearchAs a Sanders supporter, I concede there are many valid reasons to worry about him. But one of the biggest “go-to” criticisms used by Senator Hillary Clinton and her supporters strikes me as simplistic and overblown. More importantly, her focus on that issue makes me worry that she perhaps doesn’t truly understand what it takes to be an effective general election candidate and President.

Before I get to that, here are just a few of the more valid reasons for being concerned about supporting Sanders: 1) You don’t think enough moderate voters will ever be willing to pay higher taxes to allow him to be elected in a general election; 2) You worry whether a perpetually shouting septuagenarian white guy is the best option for leading an increasingly diverse electorate that values charisma (see McCain v. Obama); 3) You worry that the term “democratic socialist” Sanders uses to describe himself is too toxic to attract swing voters in November;  4) You worry that if we don’t elect a remarkably well credentialed female leader like Clinton, the shameful White House glass ceiling will remain intact for a very long time.

Those are valid concerns. While I also have a list of concerns about Clinton, I do admit that Sanders is not an entirely safe political bet.

But one thing I’m not particularly worried about is his policy aptitude.  Many Clinton supporters, and Secretary Clinton herself, have become obsessed with the notion that Sanders doesn’t have the necessary policy chops for the job.  That certainly was an oft-repeated Clinton theme on last night’s MSNBC’s “town hall” broadcast.

As evidence, Clinton and her supporters continually point to her more detailed policy plans, or editorial board interviews in which Clinton shows a deeper grasp of policy detail than Sanders. For instance, many Clinton supporters have been pumping social media channels full of articles like this from Vox’s Matthew Yglesias:

“Hillary Clinton does a better job than Bernie Sanders at explaining the details of his bank breakup plan.”

I’ll be the first to admit, Sanders should have a stronger answer to questions such as “how would you break-up the banks.” After all, that is a marquee issue of his campaign.

At the same time, let’s keep all of this in proper perspective. These interview performances are hardly evidence that Sanders is not intelligent enough to be President. They aren’t evidence that he will fail to surround himself with advisors who are experts on such details. They’re not evidence that breaking up the banks is a regulatory impossibility. Therefore, they are not particularly strong evidence that Clinton would be a better President.

Moreover, maybe, just maybe, communicating on a less wonky level to lightly engaged voters is a more effective way to connect with them.  After all, that approach has led to Sanders swiftly moving from being an obscure fringe candidate with almost no support to a serious contender for the nomination of a party he only recently joined.  That approach also has led to Sanders polling significantly more strongly than Clinton in general election match-ups against Republicans, according to Real Clear Politics current average of major surveys.  So maybe, there is something here Clinton can learn.

Real_clear_politics_4-26-16

If the American people were interviewing Sanders as a candidate to become the nation’s lead banking regulator, his failure to go deeper into the regulatory weeds would concern me. But we are interviewing Sanders to be hired as the nation’s Chief Executive, a position that operates at a much higher level.

Think of it this way: The Obama Administration’s White House and Treasury Department is thick with brilliant, learned staffers who know much more about banking regulations and foreign policy than President Obama. But that doesn’t make Obama a lightweight, and it doesn’t mean those staffers are more qualified than Obama to be President.

The most important qualifications for a President to have are the right values and vision, the backbone to stick to that their values and vision, the communications chops to persuade the American people, the ability to enact the related policy agenda, and the judgment to react wisely to developments that we can’t yet foresee. Those things are infinitely more important than the ability to score the highest marks in the editorial boards’ Wonk Olympics.

At this stage, I realize my guy Sanders is not going to be the nominee.  I can count.  As the great Mo Udall said, “the voters have spoken, the bastards.” Therefore, I am, gulp, hereby “ready for Hillary.”  Actually, given the alternatives, and given how much there is to admire about Clinton, this is not close to a difficult decision.

But Clinton needs to disabuse herself of the notion that the ability to spout policy details like a Spelling Bee champ is among the more important qualifications for President. Rather than smugly dismissing Sanders’ preference for addressing the American people on an inspirational and aspirational level, Clinton should have enough wisdom and humility to learn from Sanders’ approach.  Doing so would make her a better candidate and President.

Bernie Needs To Give Democrats One Final Parting Gift

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Sanders_from_behindPresidential candidate Bernie Sanders has already given much to the Democratic Party. But even though his chances of being nominated remain slim, he still has a bit more he could give to his adopted party.

Largely because of Clinton’s dominance when it comes to establishment-oriented super delegates, we’re being told by elite analysts like FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver that Hillary will likely be nominated, even after a likely Sanders win in Wisconsin today and a possible win in Clinton’s home state of New York. Sanders’ exit from the stage couldn’t come soon enough for frustrated supporters of Hillary Clinton, who see Sanders as an annoying speed bump on her trip down Inevitability Lane.

Bernie’s Gifts To Democrats

But the fact is, Sanders’ questioning of Clinton has helped her improve as a candidate. Though still too cautious and programmed, Clinton is a better candidate now than she was before Sanders joined her on stage.

Beyond changing candidate Clinton for the better, Sanders has also changed the Democratic party for the better. This longtime political independent has reminded Democratic partisans that it’s okay to dream of progressive policies that go beyond the cautious incrementalism ushered in during the 1990s by the Clintons and their center-right Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

With every major western nation operating universal health care systems that are more fair, effective and efficient than today’s complex Rube Goldberg-style Affordable Care Act (ACA) machinery, Sanders reminded Democrats that it’s reasonable to both appreciate the progress being made under the ACA, while continuing to fight for the superior single payer models.

Sanders also reminded Democrats that a college degree is as vital today as a high school degree was at the time the American public education system was created, so we need to keep fighting to update our public education system by offering tuition-free public higher education.

Sanders reminded Democrats that even Republican presidents such as Bush, Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower all required wealthy Americans to pay more to support their country than we do today, so it’s reasonable to ask more of the wealthy again to help rebuild the American dream for the lower- and middle-class.

Sanders reminded Democrats that the party that created a wide array of popular socialist programs that built the great American middle class — New Deal job programs, Social Security, the GI Bill, the Rural Electric Administration, Medicare —  doesn’t need to cower in fear every time conservatives label their proposals as “socialism.”

Finally, Sanders shined a light on the corrupting influence that big money has had on America’s corporatized Congress.

Democrats owe the Independent Senator a debt of gratitude.  The fact that many to most of Sanders’ proposals could not have passed in the short-term with a Republican-controlled Congress does not mean that progressives shouldn’t advocate for those policies, to improve their viability over the long-term.  It’s self-defeating to allow do-nothing congressional conservatives to limit how Democrats use the bullypulpit.

Bernie’s Parting Gift

But where does Sanders go from here? If delegate geeks like Nate Silver are correct that it’s impossible for Sanders to come from behind to win the nomination, should he just pull out of the race, as indignant Clinton supporters have been demanding?

Before Sanders leaves the stage, I’d ask one more favor of him:   Expose Trumponomics for what it is.   To limit the number of Sanders refugees who are tempted to support Trump over Clinton in November, Sanders should spend the next few weeks exposing the fraud Mr. Trump is attempting to perpetrate on Americans.

For instance, Sanders should explain that billionaire Trump may claim that his partial self-financing makes him independent from the uber-wealthy interests, but Trump’s tax plan exposes the truth. According to a Tax Policy Center (TPC) analysis, Trump’s tax plan would give an average tax cut of $1.3 million per year to the richest one-tenth of one percent.  Sanders should make sure his audience understands that billionaire Trump plans to further enrich his fellow billionaires.

Sanders should also explain how the businessman’s proposals will destroy the American economy, rather than make America “win so much will be sick of winning.” For instance, look at what Mr. Trump’s plan to lavish the mega-rich with tax breaks would do to the national debt:

“The Tax Policy Center estimates the proposal would reduce federal revenue by $9.5 trillion over its first decade and an additional $15.0 trillion over the subsequent 10 years, before accounting for added interest costs or considering macroeconomic feedback effects.”

Some have suggested that Sanders and Trump compete for the same type of voters, those most frustrated with the status quo. Therefore, before Sanders leaves the stage, he should conduct a seminar for “open to Trump” voters about the fraud Mr. Trump is attempting to perpetrate on them. Doing so could constitute Bernie’s greatest gift of all to the Democratic Party.

Note:  This post was also chosen to be featured by MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

The More Relevant Poll Finding Pundits Are Ignoring

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trump_angry_-_Google_SearchDonald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now pretty assured of winning their party’s nomination for president, both because they are far ahead and because it seems unlikely either will implode with their respective bases. They have both had fundamental vulnerabilities exposed, yet they both continue to have a sufficient amount of support to win their nominations.

As the campaigns shift to the general election, Team Clinton shouldn’t take Donald Trump lightly, says the boy who watched slack jawed as a sophomoric but entertaining professional wrestler with no real policy agenda became Governor of Minnesota.   The Trump-Ventura parallels are imperfect. For instance, the Minnesota electorate in 1998 was divided by three strong general election contenders, making the general election threshold unusually low for the middle finger voting block to attain.  Still, that experience has given me a healthy amount of respect for the electoral appeal of entertaining protest candidates.

But to put this in casino terms, in honor of the candidate who somehow finds ways to regularly bankrupt rigged casinos, I’d much rather have Hillary Clinton’s hand than Donald Trump’s hand. Here’s why:

As pundits continually remind us, Trump is indeed the runaway Republican front-runner. But this doesn’t mean he is broadly popular.  All this really means is that his antics have charmed about 40% of the one-third of Americans who participate in Republican primaries. That equates to about 14% of the general election electorate.  So, yes, he’s the front-runner for the nomination, and that’s a shocking thing.  But we have to keep in mind that eight months from now, he needs to win over a lot more people to win a general election.

The problem for Trump is, general election voters are a very different audience than the people currently voting for him. Most notably, they include large numbers of Independent voters. To win a two-candidate — don’t you even think about it, Michael Bloomberg — general election Trump has to win Independent voters.

What do Independent voters think of Trump’s nomination campaign performance.  As of December 2015 poll showed 47% of Independent voters would be embarrassed to have Mr. Trump as President.  Only 20% of Independents would be proud to say “President Trump.”  Even pilloried Hillary, one of the more systematically smeared political figures in modern political history, has a much lower 32% of Independents who say they’d be embarrassed to vote for her.
National__US__Poll_-_December_22__2015_-_Half_Of_U_S__Voters_Embarrasse___Quinnipiac_University_Connecticut

This is a big problem for Trump, because the “would be embarrassed” question is a reasonable approximation of “would never vote for.”  Therefore, the finding shows that Trump’s pandering to his authoritarian-loving base has badly damaged his chances in a general election, perhaps irreparably so.

Now, if anyone is uniquely positioned to dig himself out of this hole, it may be Mr. Trump. First, he’s instinctively talented at reading audiences and adjusting to them on the fly. He’s like a veteran door-to-door salesman in that way.  Second, he’s no ideologue.  He’s perfectly comfortable changing positions to win over whichever audience happens to be in front of him at the moment, and skilled at deflecting “flip-flopper” criticisms. Therefore, as soon as the Republican nomination is in the bag, we can expect Trump to quickly be moderating his positions and tone, and that should help him partially rehabilitate himself with some Indies.

Still, it will be very difficult to erase the memories of Trump’s boorish behavior over the past several months.  Social media and massive ad buys will keep Trump’s Greatest Hits fresh in general election voters’ minds.  Moreover, over the next eight months Trump will still have his hard core Trumpeters coming to his rallies, which will continually tempt him to pander to them, both to win their adoration in that moment and to ensure that they don’t stay home in November.   So, Trump will moderate compared to his current self, but he probably will remain plenty embarrassing.

These same numbers also show how critically important it will be for Hillary Clinton to partner with Bernie Sanders to get Sanders’ 18-34 year old supporters to the polls in November.  After all, an astounding 73% of these younger voters would be embarrassed to have Trump as their President. This should be a solid voting block for Secretary Clinton in the general election, but they could easily stay home in large numbers if they can’t get more excited about her than they are now.

So as the nomination fights wind down, it’s time to stop obsessing about the nomination horse race numbers and delegate counts, and start focusing on the more general election-relevant data points in the survey research. When you dig a little bit deeper into the data, there still is a very high wall around the White House for the wall-obsessed Trump to scale.

Sanders Drawing Wrong Parallels To Explain Democratic Socialism

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Cursor_and_Denmark_flag_-_Google_SearchWhen presidential candidate Bernie Sanders explains why Americans shouldn’t fear his “democratic socialism,” he usually points to Scandinavia.

“I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn what they have accomplished for their working people. In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what “freedom” means… they have gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that comes with economic insecurity. Instead of promoting a system which allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system which guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all — including the children, the elderly and the disabled.”

His opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton, who clearly understands American exceptionalism biases, quickly shuts down Sanders’ arguments with a smug shrug: “We are not Denmark.”

By continually citing countries other than America to explain democratic socialism to Americans, Senator Sanders is hurting his case. Instead of pointing to Norway, he should more consistently cite the New Deal.

First, let’s consider the definition of “democratic socialism” offered by Democratic Socialist’s of America:

“Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.”

Truth be told, the United States of America is no stranger to this kind of democratic socialism. It was brought to us during some of the most successful and popular presidencies of the past century. Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower enacted a whole series of popular measures that fit under this definition of democratic socialism.  At the time their ideas were proposed, they were criticized as infeasible, un-American and socialistic, just as Sanders’ ideas are today.

Therefore, Senator Sanders should be explaining his democratic socialism with American examples that a large majority of Americans already know and love. Sanders might say something like this:

You want to know what democratic socialism is? When the great Republican Teddy Roosevelt dissolved 44 corporations to protect the middle class, and when he protected ordinary Americans from the railroad companies and other big corporations, his critics said “you can’t pass that, because it’s socialism.”  But he passed them anyway, because the American people demanded it.

When the enormously popular Franklin Roosevelt used government funding to put Americans to work building community infrastructure, they said “you can’t pass that, because it’s socialism.” When FDR proposed a Social Security system of government-run pensions that lifted millions of American seniors out of poverty, conservatives said “you can’t pass that, because it’s socialism.”  But he passed those things anyway, because the people demanded it.

When Harry Truman enacted Medicare, people like Ronald Reagan called that socialism too.

And you know what? When Republican Dwight Eisenhower invested in an enormously expensive interstate highway system and had 90% income tax rates on the ultra-wealthy, they said it again: “You can’t pass that, because that’s socialism.”  But he passed those things anyway, because the American people demanded it.

And despite the dire predictions from critics, America’s economy prospered under these policies that were all predicted to be catastrophic for the economy.

So in 2016, when the defeatist “no you can’t” crowd tells Americans “you can’t pass bills to provide higher education and health care to all, because that’s socialism,” I get my inspiration and courage from Teddy, FDR, Give ‘em hell Harry and Ike.  Because of them, I know America can overcome the cynics’ name-calling and naysaying to do great things for the middle class now, just as we did then.”

Democratic socialism is already in America, and it is enormously popular. Surveys consistently show that Americans are vehemently opposed to cutting or eliminating democratic socialist programs such as Medicare, Social Security, and the minimum wage.

Americans not only have embraced democratic socialism in the past, they strongly support it for the future. A recent GBA Strategies poll shows that likely 2016 voters overwhelmingly support a whole range of Sanders’ ideas being dismissed as socialist ideas lacking sufficient political support:  Allowing governments to negotiate drug prices has 79% support. Medicare buy-in for all has 71% support. A $400 million infrastructure jobs program has 71% support. Debt-free college at all public universities has 71% support. Expanding Social Security benefits has 70% support. Taxing the rich at a 50% rate — the rate under conservative icon Ronald Reagan — has 59% support, and only 25% in opposition. Breaking up the big banks has 55% support, and only 23% in opposition.

This is hardly a portrait of a nation that opposes democratic socialism.  Overwhelming support for democratic socialism is already there, ready to fuel a 2016 presidential candidate.  But for two reasons, Senator Sanders needs to cite American parallels to explain his approach, not European.

First, citing examples of American policies will help build confidence that bold measures can be enacted over fierce opposition now, just as they were in the days of Teddy, FDR, Truman and Ike.  Second, citing American examples will paint Sanders’ democratic socialism label and his policy ideas red, white and blue, rather than just red.  It will show that such ideas have been embraced in the past by idolized Republicans and Democrats.  It subsequently will normalize democratic socialism.

Americans are in a very nationalistic, ethnocentric and nostalgic mood. So, rather than continually pointing to the Rikstag, Storting, and Folketing to explain democratic socialsm, Sanders needs to point to the faces on Mt. Rushmore.

Note:  This post was chosen for re-publication in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin feature.

The Health Reform Middle Ground Between Bernie and Hillary

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Cursor_and_bernie_hillary_debate_msnbc_-_Google_SearchTo hear Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign tell it, you would think that there is absolutely no way to transition from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) world of today to an eventual Medicare-for-All world that her opponent Senator Bernie Sanders promotes.

The Clinton campaign asserts that the ACA and Medicare-for-All are effectively mutually exclusive. That is, they claim that if you support Medicare-for-All, you must be against the ACA. For instance, former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton was put out on the stump to play Chicken Little:

“Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era — before we had the Affordable Care Act — that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”

Chelsea’s mom, a bona fide health care policy expert, knows better. She knows that Senator Sanders proposes to consolidate public insurance programs to make coverage better and more efficient, not eliminate public coverage.

The Clinton campaign’s dire warnings aside, there is a potential middle ground between Senator Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Model and Secretary Clinton’s Stick With The ACA Model.  It’s a middle ground that is more politically viable than what Sanders proposes, and more progressive than what Clinton proposes.

The middle ground is this: Amend the Affordable Care Act to allow ACA exchange shoppers the option of voluntarily buying into Medicare.

This middle ground approach would effectively empower patients to decide the fate of Medicare-for-All.  Here’s how:  If over the years enough ACA exchange shoppers choose of their own free will to buy into Medicare, we will be making progress towards a public single payer system, which in numerous other western countries has proven to be a more effective and efficient model than America’s current model.

On the other hand, if private insurance options prove to be the most attractive, on a quality and/or price basis, the Medicare buy-in option will die off, because it will be exposed as being as inferior as Republicans claim it to be.

But with this Medicare buy-in option, patients would effectively decide Medicare-for-All’s ultimate fate, not politicians.  That’s why it’s a middle ground position.

Senator Clinton maintains that a public option lacks sufficient congressional support to pass, and that is certainly a distinct possibility. But if she proves to be correct and it gets defeated, the ACA will still be there. At that point, we would simply stay with the status quo ACA model.

But I’d like to see an aspirational President who was willing to lead a campaign to enact this middle ground approach.  Because this would be merely optional for patients, it is much more politically feasible than Sanders’ proposal to mandate Medicare-for-All.  Even if a Medicare buy-in option loses, promoting the issue now may pave the way for eventual passage in the future.   It moves the national debate forward.

I actually think a passionate, committed President would have an outside shot of passing this.  After all, there already is a great deal of support for this approach. GBA Strategies recently asked 1,500 likely 2016 voters whether they supporting giving “all Americans the choice of buying health insurance through Medicare or private insurances, which would provide competition for insurance companies and more options for consumers.”

An overwhelming 71% supported this Medicare buy-in option, including 63% of Republicans and 71% of Independents. Only 13% opposed. 

After the special interests start their multi-million distortion and lobbying campaigns, the Medicare buy-in option may well get defeated in a Congress that defeats just about everything. (In fact, any of Senator Clinton’s ideas for incrementally improving the ACA also face a steep uphill battle with a Republican-controlled House).   But this survey tells me that there is a solid foundation of support to build on. So why not lead the American people towards this place halfway between Bernie and Hillary, and at least try to make some progress.

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

“Trump Wave” Is Only In A Very Small Pond, Except When It Comes To The Issue of Terrorism

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Cursor_and_trump_supporters_-_Google_SearchWatching the news coverage of the Republican presidential campaign, you get the feeling that there is a wave of support for the ideas of leading Republican candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. For example, Talking Points Memo recently reported:

GOP Campaign Official to Senate Candidates: Ride That Trump Wave

The Republican Party is preparing Senate candidates for the very real possibility that Donald Trump could be the party’s presidential nominee.

According to a seven-page memo obtained by the Washington Post, National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Ward Baker is encouraging Senate candidates to understand Trumpmentum, use it to their advantage, and then ignore Trump’s most bombastic positions.

But is there really a national wave in support of the positions of Trump and the other extremely conservative contenders? Remember, only about one-third of the general election electorate votes in Republican primaries, so even front runner Trump is only winning about 31% of one-third the overall electorate. So, yes, Trump is riding a wave of sorts, but it is still a relatively modest wave on a relatively small pond.

Ideological Wave?

So, in the midst of all of this Republican primary coverage, it’s important to keep an eye on what the nation as a whole — as opposed to the narrow slide of Republican primary voters — thinks of the positions of the Republican contenders. Public opinion surveys show that there is no wave of support for most of their extremely conservative positions.

  • Americans oppose deportation of undocumented immigrants. While bombast about mass deportation of immigrants fueled Trump’s rise to the top of the Republican heap, Gallup finds that only 14% of Americans support deporting all undocumented immigrants to their home country. Among the Independent voters Republicans need to persuade in order to win in November, only 19% support such deportation.  In the general election, this position is a liability, not an asset.
  • Americans oppose repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Every major Republican candidate wants to repeal the ACA, and primary voters love them for it.  But among all Americans, a November 2015 Kaiser survey finds that 42% either want to expand the ACA (26%) or keep it as is (16%), while only 30% support the Republicans candidates’ repeal position.
  • Americans oppose tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Every major candidate’s tax proposal dramatically cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. But an April 2015 Gallup survey finds that 62% of Americans say that upper income people pay too little in taxes, not too much. The same survey found that 69% of Americans think that corporations are paying too little in taxes.  Americans want to increase taxes on the wealth and corporations, while Trump, Carson, Cruz and Rubio all want to cut them.  Again, in the general election, this position will be a leg iron for the Republican nominee.
  • Americans want stricter gun control laws. Every major Republican candidate opposes stricter gun control laws, a wildly popular position at Republican rallies. But an August 2015 Pew survey finds that Americans actually overwhelming support a wide range of stricter gun control laws. For instance, there is huge support for background checks for gun shows and private sales (85% support), laws to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining guns (79% support), a federal database to track gun sales (70% support), and a ban on assault-style weapons (57% support).

So for the most part, the Republican candidates’ ideas are extremely unpopular with the Americans who will pick the next President less than a year from now.

The Anti-Democratic Wave

But there is one major exception to this trend, and it’s a very significant one.  According to a November 2015 ABC News/Washington Post poll, battling terrorism is currently the second most important issue to Americans.  It ranks just behind the economy, and ahead of health care, immigration and tax policy. On that issue, a majority of Americans are much more aligned with Trump, Carson, Cruz and Rubio than they are with Clinton and Sanders.

  • Americans want military intervention to counter terrorism. In the direct aftermath of the Paris terrorist assaults, an NBC News poll finds that 65% of Americans want to send troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Also, 58% believe that “overwhelming military force is the way to defeat terrorism,” while only 38% believe that “too much military force creates hatred that only leads to more terrorism.” Similarly, Democrats have a losing position when it comes to Syrian refugees, with 56% of Americans opposed to increasing the number of Syrian refugees in the nation.

Public_Attitudes_Toward_the_War_in_Iraq__2003-2008___Pew_Research_CenterIn other words, the national mood is much like  when America rushed into the Iraq War in 2003.  Pew found that public support for that military action was 72% in 2003, but ultimately decreased to 38% by the end of the war.

While Vice President Dick Cheney estimated that war would cost about $80 billion and end quickly, the last Iraq War lasted seven years and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it cost about $1.9 trillion, or about $6,500 per American.  The human toll for America was also high – 4,487 American troops died and at least another 32,226 were seriously wounded.  Still, almost three-fourths of Americans are ready to do it all over again.

Overall, this notion of a Trump wave is not supported by public opinion data. Americans are not buying most of what Trump and the other Republican contenders are selling. But if the election becomes dominated by the need to combat terrorism with military interventions, such as if there are a steady stream of ISIS attacks, Democrats could be in big trouble.

Why Progressives Have Every Right To Question Hillary Clinton

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Hillary_is_ready_for_HillaryA lot of liberals I know are privately not all that sure if they are “Ready for Hillary,” as the Clinton boosters put it.

How can a good progressive not want to elect the first woman to the White House? If we’re not “ready,” that must mean we are sexist, right?

Hillary Clinton is running for President, not just precedent. Progressives have to make sure she truly is the best person to promote the progressive agenda over the next eight years.

This progressive has questions, and I’m not apologizing for them. Here are a few:

Is Hillary progressives’ best messenger? John Kerry.  Al Gore.  Michael Dukakis. They are all fine people, brilliant policy minds, and relatively unpersuasive on the stump. Consequently, progressives lost with them.  The 2008 vintage Hillary Clinton fell into the same category for me – relatively robotic, condescending and insincere in tone.

After President Obama, progressives are spoiled on this front. During the last two presidential elections and debates over the stimulus, health care reform and other issues, Democrats have re-learned what we learned during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House — what a huge advantage it is to have a talented Persuader-In-Chief.

Having this concern doesn’t mean I’m a misogynist. It means I want progressives to win arguments. After watching Hillary Clinton on stage for a long time, I’m not at all convinced she possess that talent.

Is Hillary a hair-triggered neocon?   In the wake of President Obama finally cleaning up George W. Bush’s messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, liberals are understandably wary of more catastrophic preemptive wars promoted by neocons.  Therefore, it should give progressives pause that neocon Robert Kagan reportedly advises Ms. Clinton on foreign policy and military issues, and considers her a kindred spirit. Here is what Kagan told the New York Times.

“If she pursues a policy, which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that…”

Because of disturbing reports like this, and because Hillary voted to authorize the disastrous Iraq War, progressives have every right to question her very carefully before blindly endorsing her.

Will Hillary Take On Wall Street? As a U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary has built very close ties on Wall Street. She is no Elizabeth Warren in either tone or substance. Politico recently reported what corporate types who know Hillary well have concluded about her:

Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.

The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

At a time when the country has the most income inequality it has had since 1928, I’m just not too thrilled with the idea of electing the corporate lobbyists’ favorite Democrat.

An unpersuasive communicator?  A darling of the hair triggered neocons?  The Wall Street lobbyists’ favorite Democrat?  No, progressives should not automatically pronounce themselves “ready” for that kind of leader.  These are not small issues for progressives. The rumpled septuagenarian socialist Bernie Sanders is hardly an electric personality, but he is getting an increasing amount of interest from progressives, because of these types of concerns about the front-runner.

To earn the right to win the Democratic presidential election, Hillary Clinton needs to prove to progressives that she has improved as a communicator since the 2008 race, explain in detail what kinds of military actions she would and wouldn’t support, and lay out a detailed plan for reigning in corporate abuses and reducing income inequality.

If Hillary Clinton doesn’t do those things in the coming months, I will make no apologies for supporting an alternative. (Oh, and I’m also extremely ready for Senator Elizabeth Warren, if she changes her mind in coming months.)  At the same time, if Hillary does those things, I then would be ready for her to be my party’s nominee for President, and precedent.

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.