The December 7, 2016 Thread

Ed Kilgore on Biden running in 2020 when he will be 78 years old, and while our Party Leadership will be in their 80’s:

The obvious obstacle to a Biden run in 2020 is, of course, the veep’s age. He just turned 74 a couple of weeks ago, and would be 78 on Inauguration Day in 2021. But on this coming January 20 we will be holding the first inauguration of a septuagenarian as an incoming president (Ronald Reagan missed this distinction by turning 70 eleven days after he took the oath). And the renewed speculation over Biden inevitably draws attention to the virtual gerontocracy currently afflicting the Democratic Party’s leaders as the opposition tries to design a way to force the 45th president into retirement.

Biden is, by any standard, a tad long in the tooth. But he’s a year younger than Bernie Sanders, the reigning Democratic primary vote-winner now that Hillary Clinton (a wee slip of a girl, at 69) has gone into seclusion for a time. And Sanders is a year younger than House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Yes, there are some younger Democratic leaders: Senate Leader Chuck Schumer is only 66, barely old enough to qualify for his favorite government program, Medicare. Elizabeth Warren, probably the early front-runner for 2020 if she decides to take that path, is 67.

Time to retire every Democratic leader above the age of 75. It is time for a new generation. It’s time for Kamela Harris and Cory Booker and Xavier Bercerra. But I am genuinely sorry we will miss out on a President Biden. But sometimes life just happens and we don’t get what we want.

Jonathan Chait: “HUD is traditionally a magnet for scandal under Republican administrations, for two reasons. First, its mission of providing affordable housing for the urban poor is marginal, at best, to the core Republican agenda… Second, the agency’s program structure lends itself naturally to profiteering. HUD works closely with private developers to build affordable housing. Without careful oversight, the agency can easily become a slush fund to distribute sweetheart contracts to the administration’s buddies.”

“There is an additional risk factor in Trump’s administration. The president is planning to continue to run his business empire in office, without disclosing his income. And so Carson, a man with no experience in government but extensive experience in the field of bilking, and a proven loyalist of Donald Trump, will apparently oversee an agency whose mission lends itself to corruption. If Trump’s priority was to ensure the most effective and efficient use of every housing dollar, Carson would make a very strange choice. But that may not be Trump’s priority at all.”

Here is the trailer:

Julia Turner on Trump’s Stunt Presidency: “The Carrier deal is a triumph for Donald Trump, and it’s one that should terrify those concerned about what his presidency might bring (and how long it may last). The incident shows how keenly Trump understands the power of a concrete example. The Carrier deal will be good for the workers whose jobs will stay in Indiana, yes, but it functions primarily as a stunt that expertly reinforces Trump’s brand. As a candidate, he promised to use his deal-making skills to improve the lot of the American worker. Now, nearly two months before he even takes the oath of office, he has delivered. No matter what happens on Trump’s watch—to Carrier, to the manufacturing sector, to employment numbers overall—there will be some set of voters, and not just Trump fans, who vividly remember this moment, thanks to its clarity, to its tangibility.”

“Each critique of the Carrier deal requires the listener to hold in his or her head several levels of abstraction: ideas about how systems and incentives work, ideas about cause and effect, ideas about how corruption can unfurl or how policy can affect millions of people. And so each critique has less impact than the sturdy story: Last week in Indiana, Donald Trump saved a thousand jobs.”

Rep.-elect Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) told the Bergen County Record that Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) “has not returned his calls or responded to a certified letter asking about a transition, especially to ensure constituent requests do not fall through the cracks.”

“While polarizing politics is all too common, Garrett’s apparent unwillingness to discuss a transition with his successor is not.”

Brian Beutler at the New Republic says the conservative alternative to Obamacare is Obamacare:

But that very desire to avoid responsibility for bad outcomes is the source of Democratic leverage. Republicans will have taken millions of insured Americans hostage, hoping Democrats would help them pick off the victims. By doing nothing, Democrats will turn the gun back on Republicans themselves.

During the fight over Social Security privatization in the Bush years, Nancy Pelosi understood the strategic logic behind refusing to collaborate on an unpopular project. According to her biographer Marc Sandalow, she told her members, “Our plan is to save Social Security, stop privatization, and stop raiding the trust fund. It’s going to be his privatization versus Social Security.”

That logic holds just as well for Obamacare repeal. So long as Republicans need Democratic votes to “replace” it, the alternative to Obamacare is Obamacare—or perhaps something so indistinguishable from Obamacare that Democrats pass it as the cost of saving health care reform from partisan brickbats.

And the real alternative to Obamacare is Medicare for all.

Cook Political Report: “The 38 Governors races on the ballot in 2017 and 2018 may end up being the biggest story of the cycle. There is a lot at stake for both parties as most of the Governors elected this cycle will be in office in 2021 when the next round of redistricting takes place. Thus, there is no time like the present to unveil the first iteration of gubernatorial ratings of the cycle.”

“In 2018, Republicans have 26 seats up, at least 16 of which will be open largely due to term limits… Democrats have just nine seats up in 2018, including three that will be open.”

Senator Susan Collins of Maine has signaled there might be some serious cracks in the Republican plans for Medicare and Obamacare.

Though Collins opposed the Affordable Care Act and says it needs many fixes, she might not support repealing the law if a suitable, detailed replacement is not identified. However, Collins stressed in a brief interview Friday that she’s not sure how she would vote on the issue…

Collins said plans to privatize Medicare – which have been proposed by Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan – have many problems, and she’s voted against similar ideas. Privatizing Medicare would provide skimpier benefits and be more costly to seniors, critics say.

“Suffice it to say I have a number of reservations,” Collins said Friday during an interview by phone. “A complete upending of a program (Medicare) that by and large serves seniors well is not something that appeals to me.”

Steve Benen accurately notes the Republican’s “alternate reality.”

GOP leaders said Obama’s auto rescue wouldn’t work; his Recovery Act wouldn’t end the Great Recession; his health care reform law would crush the job market; and his tax increases would push the economy towards another recession. None of these things happened in reality, and Republicans managed to get the entire story backwards.

But instead of explaining how and why they were wrong, Pence and Ryan have decided to simply make up their own story, claiming that the job market has been “crushed” and “killed” by White House policies.

Chances are, they’ll continue to embrace their own alternate reality because the electorate has rewarded their failures with complete control of federal policymaking. It’ll be the first time Republicans have enjoyed such dominance since the Bush/Cheney era – which also happens to be the last time Americans saw a healthy economy deteriorate into an economic catastrophe.

Vanity Fair looks at why Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is believed to have sunk Gov. Chris Christie’s chances at a job in the new administration:

Much has been made of Kushner’s familial loyalty even within the Trump campaign, as reports swirled that he convinced his father-in-law to pass over New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, first as the vice-presidential pick, and again, when he got ousted last month as head of the White House transition team. Christie, as U.S. Attorney, was responsible for putting Charlie Kushner behind bars. A source close to the campaign told me recently that there was a major sticking point in the Christie relationship that Jared could not let go of, and that’s what led him to convince Trump to bypass him.

According to the source, Charlie Kushner was going to be released 28 days early from his sentence. The family was ready, eager, anticipating his arrival home. But he ended up finishing out the time. This source claims that Jared Kushner believes that Christie made sure that Charlie Kushner stayed behind bars for the full sentence, even though the family had already started preparing for his early release. “That really sort of twisted the knife in and he just couldn’t let go of that part of it,” the source said. A source close to Kushner confirmed that this is true.

Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast and his take on Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees:

By my count, Ben Carson, nominated by Donald Trump to be his HUD secretary, makes the fourth designee who seems to oppose the very mission of the department he’s about to take over. There’s Jeff Sessions at Justice, who isn’t likely to be enforcing many civil rights cases or pursuing many antitrust violations. Tom Price at Health and Human Services, who wants to dismantle the same Obamacare that it’s HHS’s job to implement and who more broadly will bring a ferociously anti-statist world view to an agency that embodies the state’s concern for its citizens’ health and well being—especially its female citizens, who have extra reasons to worry about Dr. Price. And finally there’s billionaire Betsy De Vos for Education, who’s basically against, y’know, public education.

Critics of the Carson choice complain that he’s totally unqualified because he has no background whatsoever in housing. Well, if you wanna get technical about it, that’s true. But as the Beast’s Gideon Resnick wrote the other day, Carson has actually shown interest in public-housing issues for some time. The problem is that his interest is pretty much of the “public housing is social engineering” variety, even to the point where he (inevitably) compared the things the government does to house its poorest people to socialism and communism.

“The Republican congressman who made his name as the instigator of John Boehner’s ouster last year was set to take the reins of the House Freedom Caucus on Monday night. And first up on Rep. Mark Meadows’ to-do list: Torpedoing GOP leadership’s tentative plans to take as long as three years to replace Obamacare,” Politico reports.

Meadows said the proposal will be “the first big fight I see coming for the Freedom Caucus.”

He added: “It should be repealed and replaced, and all of that should be done in the 115th Congress not left to a future Congress to deal with.”

First Read: “Every day, it seems that Donald Trump’s secretary of state list keeps expanding — yesterday was Jon Huntsman’s turn in the spotlight. But here is something to chew on: Is this expanding list all about helping Rudy Giuliani, the original frontrunner for the job? Every time that someone new is examined (whether Huntsman or Mitt Romney or David Petraeus or that Exxon-Mobil CEO), does that help Giuliani’s case?”

King James is joining the resistance.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are headed to New York City this week to play the Knicks and their taste in hotels is getting as much attention as their skills on the court. Some players, among them superstar LeBron James, are refusing to stay at the hotel their management booked for them: the Trump SoHo.

Cavaliers general manager David Griffin said on Monday that the team would find alternative accommodation for any players who don’t want to stay at a Trump property and that plans have been made for any “group that wants to be elsewhere to be together elsewhere.”