Tuesday, December 05, 2023
Monday, December 04, 2023
Plurality Of Voters Think Trump Will Be Convicted Of A Crime
The chart above reflects the result of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 25th and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,322 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Trump Tries To Mitigate His Authoritarian Statements
Trump's recent authoritarian statements are evidently starting to hurt him, because he now wants to turn the tables and accuse President Biden of doing that - while posing as the savior of democracy. It won't work. His statements are clearly the statements of a wannabe dictator, and in this age of television and tape, they can't be taken back. Here is part of how The Washington Post covered his recent attempt though:
Republican polling leader Donald Trumpmoved to deflect from criminal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and from his own pledges to take revenge on his opponents if he returns to the White House, seeking to parry warnings that he presents a danger to democracy.
His speech on Saturday was an effort to turn the tables on rising alarms from Democrats and some Republicans that Trump’s return to power would imperil free elections and civil liberties. As candidates ramp up appearances in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Jan. 15, the former president, who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and inspired his supporters to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, responded by comparing President Biden to a fascist tyrant, and the campaign distributed signs reading ‘BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY.’
“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump told a raucous crowd of a couple thousand supporters here. “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration.”
The speech showed that Biden’s framing of the 2024 election as democracy versus authoritarianism is resonating with voters, according to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. . . .
“Trump’s Iowa speech continues his use of fascist rhetoric: it’s us versus them, he tells his supporters, and ‘they’ are enemies who cheat,” she said. “Authoritarians have a lot of rhetorical tricks for explaining away anti-democratic actions as actually ‘democratic.’”
The Biden campaign called the speech an attempt to distract from Trump’s own promises to punish his political opponents, and a renewed push in recent weeks to repeal the 2010 health care law commonly known as Obamacare.
Throughout Trump’s political career, he has often responded to attacks by accusing his opponents of the same.
Sunday, December 03, 2023
Why Does Donald Trump Want To Eliminate Obamacare?
Donald Trump recently said he wants to overturn the Affordable Care Act and replace it -- even though he has no plan of his own. Paul Krugman discusses Trump's desire in his New York Times column:
Donald Trump hasn’t talked much about policy in this election cycle, except for vague assertions that he’ll somehow bring back low unemployment and low inflation — which, by the way, has already happened. (Unemployment has been at or below 4 percentfor almost two years. Thursday’s report on consumer spending showed the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying inflation getting close to its 2 percent target.) Most of his energy seems to be devoted to the prospect of wreaking revenge on his political opponents, whom he promises to “root out” like “vermin.”
Nonetheless, over the past few days, Trump has declared that if he returns to the White House, he’ll once again seek to do away with the Affordable Care Act, the reform that has produced a significant decline in the number of Americans without health insurance.
Why this renewed assault? “Obamacare Sucks!!!” declared the former and possibly future president. For those offended by the language, these are Trump’s own words, and I think I owe it to my readers to report what he actually said, not sanitize it. Trump also promised to provide “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE” without offering any specifics.
So let’s discuss substance here. Does Obamacare, in fact, suck? And can we believe Trump’s promise to offer something much better?
On the latter question, remember that Trump and his allies came very close to killing the A.C.A. in 2017 and replacing it with their own plan — and the Congressional Budget Office did a detailed analysis of the legislation that almost passed. The budget office predicted that by 2026, the Republican bill would cause 32 million people to lose health insurance, and that the premiums paid by individuals buying their own insurance (as opposed to getting it through their employers) would double.
There is, as far as I can tell, no reason to believe that Trump has come up with a better plan since then, or that a new analysis of his plan would be any less dismal.
But while ending Obamacare would have ugly results, how well has the A.C.A. actually worked?
The main point in Obamacare’s favor is simply the fact that the number of uninsured Americans fell sharply after the law went into effect. We’re still well short of the more or less universal coverage provided by every other advanced country, and the health insurance some Americans have remains inadequate, but the gap has narrowed a lot.
Now, Obamacare’s success hasn’t happened in quite the way its proponents expected. Most of the original discussion of reform focused on creating exchanges where individuals could buy their own insurance. And such “non-group” coverage has indeed expanded, but most of the rise in coverage has instead come from an expansion of Medicaid (which would be even larger if some red states, including Texas and Florida, weren’t still refusing to accept federal dollars to help their own residents).
Still, success is success, even if it didn’t happen quite the way you predicted. And I would argue that the insurance exchanges convey major benefits that go beyond the number of people currently using them. Before Obamacare, Americans with preexisting medical conditions who weren’t lucky enough to get coverage through their employers were in dire straits: Insurers either wouldn’t cover them at all or would charge exorbitant premiums. I personally knew some people who stayed in jobs they hated because they had health problems and feared losing insurance. Now insurers are prohibited from discriminating based on medical history; and this, combined with subsidies that keep premiums down, has given Americans some much-needed security.
But what about the costs? Was Obamacare a fiscal disaster? Calculating the true costs of the A.C.A. is tricky, in part because the law, while offering extensive subsidies, also included many measures aimed at reducing health costs. What I find striking is that federal spending on health care since the A.C.A. was passed has grown much more slowly than almost anyone expected.
For example, in its 2010 report on the long-term budget outlook, the budget office projected that spending on major health programs in 2023 would come in between 7.4 percent and 7.9 percent of gross domestic product. It now expects that number to be only 5.8 percent. Predictions that Obamacare would lead to runaway spending have proved completely wrong.
Why, then, is Trump still determined to kill a program that has improved many lives without busting the budget? Much of it, no doubt, reflects the general hostility of the modern Republican Party to any program that helps less fortunate Americans.
But it’s hard to escape the sense that there’s also something personal involved. In his rambling speeches, Trump often seems to believe that Barack Obama is still the president. Regardless of whether Trump is actually confused about this, the Affordable Care Act was Obama’s biggest achievement. And everyone still calls the program Obamacare.
Is Trump vain and petty enough that he would take health care away from millions simply to demolish his predecessor’s legacy?
Saturday, December 02, 2023
Santos Has Been Expelled From The House of Representatives
The House of Representatives has finally rid itself of George Santos. 311 members (105 Republicans and 206 Democrats) voted for his expulsion, while 112 Republicans (and 2 Democrats) voted against it.
Democrats Scott of Virginia and Williams of Georgia were the two No votes among Democrats. They should be ashamed of themselves, because Santos was not worthy of serving in the House. Democrats Green of Texas and Jackson of Illinois voted present, refusing to take a stand on the issue of expulsion.
The 112 Republicans who voted against expulsion should also be ashamed. They have put holding onto power above ethics, rules, and the law. I can't believe they didn't recognize that Santos was an albatross around their necks, and would give voters a good reason not to vote Republican next year.
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