The December 4, 2016 Thread

Some salient observations from Thomas B. Edsall’s New York Times op-ed, “Who Can Tell the Future of the Democratic Party?“:

“A random examination of Obama’s speeches during the 2008 campaign reveals his sensitivity to the concerns of the white working class — from which his maternal grandparents, with whom he lived for many years, came. He rarely turned to an explicit “identity politics” strategy…Even when speaking before civil rights and women’s rights groups, Obama took pains to avoid particularistic appeals…Every campaign seeks to mobilize specific constituencies. Identity politics are, and have always been, a fact of life. The issue is what takes precedence: those constituency-specific appeals or a sustained emphasis on a more encompassing appeal to a broad economic class…The tried and true way for a politician to market a coalitional regime amid a cacophony of particularistic demands is to forcefully assert the primacy of the whole. This worked for the Obama insurgency in 2008 because his coalition members were willing to temporarily suspend their immediate demands in favor of a more encompassing victory.”

Kathleen Parker:

More than a month and a half away from Inauguration Day, Trump’s only discipline seems to be making good on bad faith. His attacks both on the media and on those who, rather rarely, burn an American flag, are fundamentally assaults on the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Do Trump followers really not care about these founding documents and their bearing on all the freedoms we take for granted? Or, could they really not know any better?

Most disturbing is the absence of objections from the right. Where are the Republicans when the leader of their party speaks so dismissively toward our principles of freedom and the journalists, many of whom they know personally, who practice in good faith the spirit of the law? How long before Trump’s words persuade some off-balanced Second Amendment “patriot” to take out a “crooked” media person, fully expecting to be applauded by the president-elect?

… his persistent attacks on the media, threatening to restrict press freedom, are so misplaced, potentially dangerous and, not least, impossible for him to do constitutionally. Either Trump knows this, which makes his crowd-baiting not only offensive but also irresponsible, or he’s unfamiliar with the Constitution, the defense of which is one of the primary functions of the presidency.

“President-elect Donald Trump’s ultra-wealthy Cabinet nominees will be able to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes in the coming weeks when they sell some of their holdings to avoid conflicts of interest in their new positions,” the Washington Post reports.

“The tax advantage will allow Trump officials, forced by ethics laws to sell certain assets, to skip the weighty tax bills they would otherwise owe on the profits from selling stock and other holdings. The benefit is one of the more subtle ways that the millionaires and billionaires of Trump’s White House, which already will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history, could benefit financially from their transition into the nation’s halls of power.”

My column: "Repeal and delay won't work" https://t.co/ReESPQ6QIU

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) December 2, 2016

Politico says Prepare for the Obamacare cliff.

Congressional Republicans are setting up their own, self-imposed deadline to make good on their vow to replace the Affordable Care Act. With buy-in from Donald Trump’s transition team, GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol are coalescing around a plan to vote to repeal the law in early 2017 — but delay the effective date for that repeal for as long as three years.

They’re crossing their fingers that the delay will help them get their own house in order, as well as pressure a handful of Senate Democrats — who would likely be needed to pass replacement legislation — to come onboard before the clock runs out and 20 million Americans lose their health insurance. The idea is to satisfy conservative critics who want President Barack Obama’s signature initiative gone now, but reassure Americans that Republicans won’t upend the entire health care system without a viable alternative that preserves the law’s popular provisions.

New York Times: “When Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, called Donald Trump shortly after the Nov. 8 election, they talked about domestic policy and infrastructure. But when Ms. Pelosi raised the specific subject of women’s issues, the president-elect did something unexpected: He handed the phone over to another person in the room — his 35-year-old daughter, Ivanka.”

Yes, you can blame millennials for Hillary Clinton’s loss – The Washington Post https://t.co/5MnpuQTDDg

— John Aravosis (@aravosis) December 4, 2016

Josh Marshall says the Republican Repeal and Delay Plan is a recognition that Republicans still have no plan to replace Obamacare with anything. The real plan is simply to go back to how things were before 2010.

But that has become at least optically impossible since many key provisions are very popular – a ban on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, kids up to 26 on parents plans, 20 million people with new coverage. But as the Times notes, they feel the need to repeal it now to fulfill their campaign promise. Repealing it now without any clear plan or roadmap for replace it will produce chaos in insurance markets. They do not appear to have a plan to deal with that other than to blame Democrats for it if they come up with a plan before November 2018 and Democrats don’t help them pass it. I remain skeptical of how this all works in the Senate.

Trump's nomination of @DanaRohrabacher as Sec. State would confirm Trump's intention to align America with Russia. https://t.co/FYMPMZHtQd

— Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) December 4, 2016

If Romney and Giuliani are eliminated, my bet is that it will be Bolton.

Thomas Frank at The Guardian writes about how the Democrats could win again, if they wanted:

This year the Republicans chose an honest-to-god scary candidate, a man who really ought to have been kept out of the White House, and the party’s centrists choked. Instead of winning, the pragmatists delivered Democrats to the worst situation they’ve been in for many decades, with control of no branch of the federal government and only a handful of state legislatures. Over the years, and at the behest of this faction, Democrats gave up what they stood for piece by piece and what they have to show for it now is nothing.

Another shibboleth that went down with the Hillary Titanic is the myth of the moderate swing voter, the sensible suburbanite who stands somewhere between the two parties and whose views determine all elections. These swing voters are usually supposed to be liberal on social issues and conservative on economic ones, and their existence gives a kind of pseudoscientific imprimatur to Democratic centrism.

For years people have pointed out that this tidy geometry doesn’t really make sense, and today it is undeniable: the real swing voters are the working people who over the years have switched their loyalty from the Democrats to Trump’s Republicans. Their views are pretty much the reverse of the standard model. On certain matters they are open to conservative blandishments; on economic issues, however, they are pretty far to the left. They don’t admire free trade or balanced budgets or entitlement reform – the signature issues of centrism – they hate those things. And if Democrats want to reach them, they will have to turn away from the so-called center and back to the economic left.

President-elect Donald Trump “has disclosed owning millions of dollars of stock in companies with business pending before the U.S. government and whose value could rise as a result of his policies,” the Washington Post reports. Trump’s stock holdings, which are separate from the more high-profile real estate and branding empire that he has said he will separate from in some fashion, represent another area rife with potential conflicts of interest that Trump has yet to address as he prepares to take office.”

Amy Walter: “If personnel is policy, most of Trump’s cabinet picks suggest he’ll govern more like a traditional, conservative Republican than a populist, big government or anti-establishment GOPer. Yes, senior advisor Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, his pick for National Security Advisor, are controversial and potential bomb-throwers. But, the rest of his choice thus far are for more conventional. In fact, his cabinet picks thus far don’t look a whole lot different from those a President Ted Cruz would have chosen.”

“For a guy who spent the campaign in a kind of ideological fluidity, he’s put together a ‘dream team’ on the Cabinet for conservative and mainstream Republicans who have long pined for lower taxes, school choice/private school vouchers, an end to Obamacare and a dismantling of Dodd-Frank.”