The December 8, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 8, 2016

“After meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Tuesday to hash out plans to repeal Obamacare, top Senate Republicans are no closer to resolving an issue that’s splintering the GOP heading into the start of Donald Trump’s presidency: how long to give themselves to replace the law,” Politico reports.

“Pence communicated that the incoming administration is prepared to work closely with Congress on the issue, senators said, but did not dictate how long the transition period should last. That decision will affect millions of Americans’ health care and send insurance companies scrambling to adjust.”

“They have nothing to put in its place. And believe me, just repealing Obamacare, even though they have nothing to put in its place, and saying they’ll do it sometime down the road, will cause huge calamity, from one end of America to the other. They don’t know what to do. They’re like the dog that caught the bus.”

— Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), quoted by the Huffington Post, on Republican promises to repeal Obamacare next month.

A new Harvard study finds that over the full course of the election, it was Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, who was more often the target of negative coverage. Overall, the coverage of her candidacy was 62% negative to 38% positive, while his coverage was 56% negative to 44% positive.

Negative coverage was the order of the day in the general election. Not a week passed where the nominees’ coverage reached into positive territory. It peaked at 81% negative in mid-October, but there was not a single week where it dropped below 64% negative.

David Lauter of the LA Times says big Republican states could have a lot to lose from Obamacare repeal:

Of the five states whose residents receive the most in subsidies to help them buy insurance, four — Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia — have Republican-controlled congressional delegations.

Florida has the most to lose: Its residents will receive an estimated $5.2 billion in Obamacare tax credits this year, about one-sixth of the money that the federal government distributes to help people with their insurance premiums. That’s even more than California, the nation’s most populous state and the one Democratic bastion on the top-five list.

The data on the amount of the subsidies in each state were compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has tracked data on the Affordable Care Act since it took effect. The foundation based its estimates on the average amount of the tax credits and the number of people buying insurance under the law in each state.

The law provides subsidies to about 9.4 million Americans with moderate or low incomes to help them buy insurance. Almost half of those receiving subsidies live in the top five states.

Brian Beutler warns Democrats not to repeat Obama’s biggest mistake:

In the early days of their House majority, Republicans set arbitrary terms for raising the debt limit that Obama was under no obligation to accept. With the so-called “Boehner Rule,” named after then–House Speaker John Boehner, Republicans insisted they would only increase the debt limit by as much as Obama agreed to cut in federal spending. Obama could have told House Republicans to stuff it—that he would not negotiate with hostage takers, especially over something as solemn as the validity of U.S. debt. He also could have rejected their terms, but countered with new ones: that the debt limit gets raised no matter what, but he’d happily use mutually agreeable legislation as a vehicle for increasing it. Instead, he let the Republican terms stand basically unchallenged, and they mugged him.

We are still living through the repercussions of that horrible decision, but at least Obama learned from it. After August 2011, whenever Republicans tried to stage a crisis, Obama rejected their terms, and let the imperative for congressional action—to fund the government, for instance, or to raise the debt limit—drive Republicans into disarray. Eventually Democrats, along with a rump of establishment-minded Republicans, got done what needed to get done, without paying any ransoms.

Republicans reportedly are coalescing around a plan to streamline legislation that would defund the Affordable Care Act in two or three years’ time—creating a cliff, past which millions of Americans will fall back into the ranks of the uninsured. If this is true, it will be vital for Democrats to remember the lessons of 2011. Indeed, as Democrats transition into a national opposition party and attempt to save Obama’s signature achievement, it will be more important than ever not to repeat his original mistake. […]

If Republicans create a health insurance cliff three years into the future, Democrats can refuse to negotiate, or they can negotiate for mutually agreeable swaps, but it would be a huge error if they accepted the GOP’s terms and helped Republicans dismantle the consensus they’ve built—the one “most Americans would agree with”—that nobody can be denied health coverage in the U.S.

Secretary of state candidate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told Yahoo News that the United States cooperating with Russia is a good thing and that China is not America’s friend.

In a contentious exchange with reporter Bianna Golodryga, Rohrabacher compared Putin to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. When Golodryga brought up Russia’s history of alleged human rights abuses, he responded: “Oh, baloney — where do you come from?”

When Golodryga said she immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet republic of Moldova as a political refugee, Rohrabacher retorted: “Then the audience knows you’re biased.”

President-elect Donald Trump “is considering formally turning over the operational responsibility for his real estate company to his two adult sons, but he intends to keep a stake in the business and resist calls to divest,” the New York Times reports.

“Under a plan now being considered by the Trump family and its lawyers, Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, would also take a leave of absence from the Trump Organization, in the surest sign that she is exploring a potential move to Washington with her husband, Jared Kushner. Mr. Kushner is discussing an as-yet undetermined role advising his father-in-law, and Ms. Trump plans on being an advocate on issues in which she has a personal interest, like child care.”

James Hohmann on how Trump came to support a ban on all Muslims in America: “It was not an act. Trump’s concern about Syrian refugees entering the U.S. without proper vetting and his personal discomfort with Muslim radicalization is genuine and deeply felt, according to several people who have spoken with him directly. Much of what he said during his rallies was improvisational, and he certainly campaigned by the seat of his pants from time to time. But he thought the Muslim ban through, heard out objections from his advisers and spoke on the phone with several people before making the announcement.”

“Trump’s political instincts were certainly at play. He saw an opportunity to exploit the fears of the American people, and he captured it. He saw a rising tide of xenophobia and prejudice across the country, and he swam with the current.”

“Because he has few core principles, beyond winning, Trump was perfectly willing to stake out a position that he knew his major Republican rivals – for constitutional, legal, moral, practical and national security reasons – would never be willing to embrace. That gave him a textbook wedge issue, which worked to his advantage throughout the primaries.”

Jonathan Karl: “As President-elect Donald Trump puts together his White House team and makes his cabinet picks, he’s tapped governors, business executives and retired military officers, but there’s one group largely absent from the President-elect’s appointments so far: long-time Trump loyalists. With the exception of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who supported Trump early and landed the nomination for attorney general, Trump’s most high-profile political supporters during the campaign -– Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich -– are all, at least for now, without any known role in the incoming Trump administration. The same is true for those who ran Trump’s campaign during the first months of the Republican primary.”

“Until Trump started winning primaries, his campaign was run by a small band of dedicated loyalists. So far, none of them have been publicly offered jobs in the administration.”

“I don’t think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble. I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and we probably would have elected Hillary.”

— Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), in an interview with Politico.

I agree.

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  1. Jason330 says:
    December 8, 2016 at 8:50 am

    “I don’t think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble. I mean, if broccoli tasted like ice cream, I’d be 115lbs.”

    — Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), in an interview with Politico.

    I agree.

  2. SussexAonon says:
    December 8, 2016 at 11:33 pm

    The reason that republicans don’t have a replacement plan for Obamacare is because Obamacare WAS the Republican plan.

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