Progressives (Liberals)

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@hightor,
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Seydlitz

Good man! Thanks. I stayed in touch with him for a couple of years after he moved but we didn't keep that up.

but Blatham’s afraid of universal healthcare

Already, surveys show that people want universal healthcare. They damn sure want to get better paychecks. They are on board with much of it already.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Over the last two nights in Detroit, the biggest debate among Democrats had to do with health care. Some of the presidential candidates want to completely get rid of private insurance companies. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is in that camp.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ELIZABETH WARREN: The basic profit model of an insurance company is taking as much money as you can in premiums and pay out as little as possible in health care coverage.

SHAPIRO: Other candidates, like former Vice President Joe Biden, want Americans to be able to choose their health care coverage.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOE BIDEN: No one has to keep their private insurance, but they - if they would like their insurance, they should be able to keep it.

SHAPIRO: Dr. Zeke Emanuel has heard all this before. He was part of the team that drafted the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration. And he's here in the studio. Hey there.

ZEKE EMANUEL: Nice to be with you, Ari.

SHAPIRO: Let's start with terminology because the phrase "Medicare for All" is being used to describe a lot of different things. In its purest sense, what does true "Medicare for All" actually mean?

EMANUEL: Well, it is - that's the Bernie Sanders' sense, and that is, we get rid of private insurance. Everyone is in Medicare fee-for-service. And in Medicare fee-for-service, you get to choose your doctor. The government pays the doctor or the hospital, so there's no co-pays, no deductibles; vision, hearing aids and other things that aren't in traditional Medicare packages are covered.

SHAPIRO: Which other Democrats besides Bernie Sanders are on that end of the health care spectrum?

EMANUEL: Well, it appears that Elizabeth Warren is.

SHAPIRO: Right.

EMANUEL: Although, not necessarily all the time.

SHAPIRO: And those are really the only two. Everyone else is sort of on a scale somewhere in between those.

EMANUEL: Right, right. I might say on a scale somewhere in between, that has more government intervention than Barack Obama had in the Affordable Care Act.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

WARREN: Everyone is further towards more - government taking more responsibility.

SHAPIRO: And I do want to ask you about why the Obama administration went the course that it did. But first, just to understand the facts, right now, when you look at American health coverage, what percentage of Americans get health coverage on the private market as opposed to some form of government-provided health care?

EMANUEL: So you have about 150 to -60 million people have employer-sponsored insurance, and then about another 15 million people have individual coverage or through the exchanges, and that gets you to something like 55 to 60% of the population has private insurance. And then you have another - call it 130 million people who have Medicaid or Medicare coverage. So that's the breakdown. And we have roughly 89, 90% of Americans have health insurance.

SHAPIRO: So when you were working on the law that became known as Obamacare, there was no discussion of totally eliminating private coverage, but there was discussion of giving everybody the option of getting on Medicare, as is known as the public option. Why didn't the Obama administration ultimately go that route?

EMANUEL: Politically impossible. The charge against it was led by Joe Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut, where a lot of health insurance companies were based.

SHAPIRO: He was an independent who caucused with the Democrats.

EMANUEL: Correct. But he wasn't the only one who was opposed to that. There were other Democrats who didn't take the lead the way Senator Lieberman did, and they were opposed. And it became clear we couldn't get that provision enacted and passed the bill. And that, I might remind the audience...

SHAPIRO: (Laughter).

EMANUEL: ...Was with 60 senators in the Senate and...

SHAPIRO: Sixty Democrats - excuse me.

EMANUEL: Sixty Democrats in the Senate, right, and an overwhelming number in the House. There are people who have other views, and they listen to their constituents. And many constituents, whether union members or people with employers who give them good benefits or, I just don't want to think about it, and I'd rather let my employer deal with it, those people actually like their system, even if they have complaints about the insurance companies now and then.

SHAPIRO: So as you point out, this debate about political viability a decade ago is happening with 60 Democrats in the Senate. Right now Democrats don't even control the Senate. We don't know what the situation will be in 2020. But what do you think the political calculus is in this moment? I mean, do you think that a public option has become more politically viable in the last decade?

EMANUEL: Absolutely. I think it is...

SHAPIRO: Even without a supermajority in Congress?

EMANUEL: I think both Republican and Democratic voters recognize that they want to have security, and a public option does communicate that security to them. It will always be there, and the government will stand behind it. And I do think that tells you - we learn from experience. If the marketplace isn't working, let's try something else. And I think that has to be the motivating factor behind any Democratic bill. We're aiming for universal coverage, and as we learn, we've got to revise and reform the system based upon how it's performing, not based upon some ideological commitment.

SHAPIRO: So how much is the debate that we're seeing this week among Democrats just about the difference between what it takes to win a Democratic primary and what it takes to actually get legislation through Congress?

EMANUEL: I think most of what we're hearing is about trying to differentiate your candidacy on health care from other candidates running. I might also say, one of the things that's been bothering me about the quality of the debate we have is it really is focused on coverage, and I think a much bigger element is affordability. We haven't had so much talk about the affordability argument, and that really has gotten a very small amount of the debate, and it needs a lot more of that debate.

SHAPIRO: Dr. Zeke Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and is now at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks for coming in today.

You and Blatham deserve one another. You like the sound of your own voice a little too much, and love to ponder about History and **** but you both come terribly short in terms of practical solutions.

History is not going to tell us what to do next. It's famously a lantern attached at the back of the traveler, illuminating the path behind but not the path ahead.

One thing that would surely help is to get a president in the White House who actually believes CC is a big problem, and wants to do something serious about it.

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Already, surveys show that people want universal healthcare. They damn sure want to get better paychecks. They are on board with much of it already.

All of this precedes Sanders.

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show positive change for the first time in decades.

I gather you refer to Sander's influence on the party. I agree. He's been a very positive influence in moving the party left. That is what I hoped would be a consequence of his candidacy. But this leadership role (which is what I consider it) does not logically entail that 1) he's the best candidate for office or 2) that all other Dems are somehow fake.

In the least, we all know that people running for office will say anything to be elected, and they will find a way to be relieved from their promises once in office.

Most support the Israeli crimes -

That, several strategists warned, means the party stands to lose voters to Democrats in 2020 and beyond

oralloy wrote:

My position is unchanged. I've been saying from the start that DNA shows that the Palestinians and the Jews share a common Bronze Age ancestry.

You've been conflating this with other flights of imaginative interpretation.

oralloy wrote:

I'm actually 100% right.

Not by a long shot.

oralloy wrote:

"The views of the leader of Israel" do not count as "the world asking Israel for something".

Israel, as a part of the world, doesn't ask itself for a two state solution, hence, the world as a singularity doesn't. There is no world unanimity to support your assertion.

oralloy wrote:

"Not asking for a two-state solution" is a far cry from "asking Israel for something other than a two-state solution".

It's an example of another portion of the world not asking Israel for a two-state solution, which contradicts your assertion of the world asking Israel for a two-state solution.

oralloy wrote:

What, other than land for peace, is the world asking of Israel?

For one, a single state.

Most of Dems and likely all Republicans are on the take.

With 66 weeks to go until the election, the Democrats tasked with saving a sinking ship of state have shown that they would rather drown in a sea of self-righteousness than steer the Donald Trump-rotted hulk to a fresh shore.

You know the presidential debates this week were a disaster for Democrats because Republican attack ads are already parroting the lines used by the leading candidates: Take away people’s private health care, decriminalize the border, socialism!

And rather than effectively prosecute the easy case against the worst president ever, the Democrats went after one of the best: Barack Obama. This is a winning strategy only in a world where everyone gets a trophy, which is to say, much of the younger Democratic base.

Debates are supposed to refine and reduce a party’s message. The unwinnable and unpopular are shown to be just that. Crazy falls away. Good ideas rise. A story emerges. A governing strategy is presented. You can imagine the Day After Trump, which is what a majority of the country desperately wants.

I know politics ain’t beanbag, but beating Trump is: make it about him, and his horrid, racist, anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-environment, anti-science, anti-truth, anti-progress, anti-city, anti-American policies. He has no discernible governing philosophy but to rant and rage, to divide and belittle. People are begging for change.

In savaging one another, all but a handful of the 20 Democrats on display this week ignored one of the best things the party has going for it: Trump is actively trying to take away health care from millions. His administration is litigating to kill all of Obamacare, which would gut cherished protections for pre-existing conditions. The Democrats crushed the 2018 election on a message to save this enduring part of Obama’s greatest legacy.

But progressive Democrats have replaced that winning message with a losing message of their own: eliminating the private health insurance of more than 150 million Americans. This is how Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders expect to win.

Perhaps in a world where Mitch McConnell would let a modern idea see a vote on the floor of the Senate, replacing all private health insurance with a government-run system would be worthy of vigorous debate. And maybe it’s a debate the Democrats could even win. But as of now, it’s wildly unpopular.

As Senator Amy Klobuchar said, “We are more worried about winning an argument than winning an election.” To which Warren has replied that someone should not go through all the trouble of running for president without big ideas. True. But nor should someone go through all the trouble of running for president and not have the right ideas needed to win.

Sanders, as wild-eyed, scowling and angry as an Old Testament prophet on the downside of the prediction racket, is a sloganeer. Like all sloganeers, he has simplistic ideas; they sound best when shouted through a bullhorn. He should run for president of the socialist party of his choosing, and leave the Democrats to fight for the American majority.

Two things are going on in a debate: There are the personal clashes, atmospherics and zingers, always the focus of the pundit class, which views politics as theater, and then there are the statements and projections of policy, which voters pay attention to. Warren may be the best debate athlete, but she’s promoting unwinnable positions on health care, open borders and how to pay for all the trillion-dollar things she wants to make free.

Meanwhile, Obama, of all people, is now a target for cannibalistic candidates from the left. No Democrat is more popular. A Pew survey last year found that more people named him the greatest president of their lifetime than any other. He wasn’t attacked directly by name this week, but his policies — the audacity of common sense — were.

“If you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back,” said Joe Biden, espousing a position mocked by many Democrats. “It’s a crime.” This was Obama’s position. Trump has taken it to a cruel and catastrophic new level, separating families and keeping children in cages. But because enough Democrats want to decriminalize border crossings, Trump can still get the edge on this issue.

The Beltway magpies projected a Biden collapse after the first debate. A month later, he still leads the field by a healthy margin. As long as Biden keeps defending the best of Obama’s legacy, he will continue as the Democrat most likely to rid the world of Donald Trump.

But he may still falter on acuity and focus. And by rattling off a number at the end of the debate that sounded as if he were giving out his personal PIN code, Biden clearly had a senior moment.

That leaves room for Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The youngest candidate in the field shows the most wisdom of the ages. He’s bright, articulate and forceful and projects a toughened American optimism. When he shamed Republicans for refusing to stand up to Trump, he showed that he’s one of the few candidates rising to history’s call — hearing the same clarion that guided Barack Obama.