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Month: March 2017

Trump’s blowing up the world order with nothing to replace it but cartoon fantasies

Published by digby on March 31, 2017

Trump’s blowing up the world order with nothing to replace it but cartoon fantasies

by digby

This New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen got lost in all the hullabaloo this week but I wanted to make sure people saw it. I don’t think the country fully appreciates the ramifications of Trump blowing up the existing world order with nothing but an odd affection for Vladimir Putin to replace it. But that’s what he’s doing:

When Donald Trump met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany earlier this month, he put on one of his most truculent and ignorant performances. He wanted money — piles of it — for Germany’s defense, raged about the financial killing China was making from last year’s Paris climate accord and kept “frequently and brutally changing the subject when not interested, which was the case with the European Union.”

This was the summation provided to me by a senior European diplomat briefed on the meeting. Trump’s preparedness was roughly that of a fourth grader. He began the conversation by telling Merkel that Germany owes the United States hundreds of billions of dollars for defending it through NATO, and concluded by saying, “You are terrific” but still owe all that dough. Little else concerned him.

Trump knew nothing of the proposed European-American deal known as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, little about Russian aggression in Ukraine or the Minsk agreements, and was so scatterbrained that German officials concluded that the president’s daughter Ivanka, who had no formal reason to be there, was the more prepared and helpful. (Invited by Merkel, Ivanka will attend a summit on women’s empowerment in Berlin next month.)

Merkel is not one to fuss. But Trump’s behavior appalled her entourage and reinforced a conclusion already reached about this presidency in several European capitals: It is possible to do business with Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but these officials are flying blind because above them at the White House rages a whirlwind of incompetence and ignorance.

Trump’s United States of America has become an unserious country, the offender of the free world.

The German debt to the United States is vast since the federal republic was crafted from ruin through enlightened American postwar involvement. Germans never forget this. But that debt is not material, something Trump’s lazy, ahistoric little mind cannot grasp. Germany owes the United States no NATO debt. America is not Europe’s defense contractor, paid to deliver services like, say, the caterers at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

This is not rocket science. As Adam Schiff, a Democratic representative, tweeted about NATO: “Unlike health care, it’s not that complicated.”

NATO is a successful organization dedicated to the collective security of its 28 members, which have pledged to defend each other if attacked and maintain defense budgets to that end. By bringing stability it has contributed enormously to American prosperity. Trump did not discover, as he boasts, that Europeans have been underspending on defense. That has long been an American concern. Germany increased its military spending by 8 percent last year but has not reached the target, set by NATO in 2014, of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. These are pretty elementary facts.

Yet Trump tweeted: “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with Angela Merkel. Nevertheless Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” And later, in an interview with Time magazine’s Michael Scherer: “What I said about NATO was true, people aren’t paying their bills. And everyone said it was a horrible thing to say. And then they found out.” Trump added, “I got attacked on NATO and now they are all saying I was right.”

Yes, Mr. President, everyone is saying you are right! And they’re saying, wow, you made a BIG discovery about NATO spending! They are also saying there’s an unidentified lying object in the White House.

Trump, as noted above, showed no interest with Merkel in the European Union. The E.U. just marked its 60th anniversary in Rome with vows of indivisible union and renewal. It did so as Theresa May, the British prime minister, prepares to submit Britain’s formal exit demand this week, and just after the French rightist Marine Le Pen, who may soon lead France, met with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Putin is deploying money and propaganda to back Le Pen and fast-forward E.U. unraveling. Trump, as allergic to multilateralism as he is susceptible to autocracy, has welcomed the unstitching of Europe.

Obviously, Trump is not alone in his desire to end the post-war order. Brexit is an example of the impulse in Europe manifesting itself as well. If we had a sane president he or she would use the prestige of the US to try to bring people together to confront the cause of this obvious discontent and start to figure out how to deal with it constructively. Instead, we’ve elected an incompetent misfit to lead the world and it’s dangerous as hell.

It’s undoubtedly necessary to reassess the way we’ve done things for the past 60 years. But keep in mind that the past 60 years have not featured a world war or nuclear conflagration, the two main reasons for the global security umbrella being created in the first place. Trump is too dumb to know that. He thinks if we hold military parades featuring a lot of fancy hardware “nobody will ever mess with us.” Bannon is essentially a nihilist with a phony veneer of nationalism who apparently thinks it’s time to cull the herd. They are not serious people to say the least.

It’s a nice idea that we should just “withdraw” from all these foreign obligations but we used to understand that foreign problems will find us anyway. One just hopes that the rest of world keeps their heads while the United States goes batshit crazy or we’ve got bigger problems than we realize.

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They just keep persisting

Published by digby on March 31, 2017

They just keep persisting

by digby

Over at the America Prospect, Adele Stan recaps the latest in the Russia scandals and observes that the Trump administration seems to have a particular problem dealing with “uppity women” who challenge them. She discusses, Sally Yates, April Ryan and the most uppity of all, Hillary Clinton, who spoke up on behalf of Ryan this week. (I might also mention the several female federal judges who ruled against Trump’s original travel ban.) Her conclusion is the quote of the day:

Ultimately, the fate of the republic may depend on the questions and testimony of uppity women. Much will be revealed in the way they are treated by the administration, the media, and the public.

Indeed.

The activism too. This poll of women involved in directaction.org, the group organizing daily calls to congress reveals that women are at the forefront:

Interesting to note what these people are most concerned about in this political moment. I would say they understand the immediate priorities quite well. One hopes their representatives do too.

Along these lines, you might find this discussion between Lena Dunham and fired New York Times editor Jill Abramson about “pushy broads” interesting.

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What do you mean “we” orange man?

Published by digby on March 31, 2017

What do you mean “we” orange man?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

So we come to the end of yet another exciting week of foreign intrigue, Twitter tantrums, scary testimony, horrible policy rollouts and GOP catfighting — the new normal.

Thursday’s biggest news was all about the unfolding Russian investigation scandals. First The New York Times reported that two White House officials had leaked the information to House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, which he claimed showed Trump transition team figures had been caught in incidental intercepts. The Times identified the two leakers: One of them is a member of the White House counsel’s office and the other is a 30-year-old Michael Flynn protégé and National Security Council member.

That second guy’s name is Ezra Cohen-Watnick and until now he was best known for the fact that H.R. McMaster, Flynn’s successor as national security adviser, wanted to fire him because the CIA had called Cohen-Watnick a threat. McMaster was overruled by President Donald Trump himself. If this whole Nunes song and dance was not part of a cover-up, the White House has gone to great lengths to make it look like one.

Meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, a former FBI agent and cybersecurity expert by the name of Clint Watts was blowing everyone’s mind with his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which he said the Russians meddled in the GOP primary, targeting Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Watts claimed that Trump and various associates helped the effort by parroting Russian propaganda during the campaign.

He uttered a line that may very well end up being remembered the same way that John Dean’s famous phrase about “a cancer on the presidency” is remembered. Watts told the committee to “follow the trail of dead Russians,” referring to the recent spate of prominent Russians who have died under mysterious circumstances, if it wants to find clues about the Russian money-laundering operation that Watts suspects is at the center of all this.

Then at the end of the day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Flynn, the former White House national security adviser, had requested immunity for possible testimony before the intelligence committees in the House and Senate — which neither panel has agreed to provide. There’s a good reason why they wouldn’t. Back when a medal-bedecked Col. Oliver North testified in the Iran-contra scandal, he was granted immunity. He put on quite a performance that let former President Ronald Reagan off the hook, and North’s congressional immunity ended up being the means by which he beat a criminal rap.

Those weren’t the only big Trump stories by any means. He apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed again and started the day off with this provocative tweet:

To which Republicans replied, “What do you mean ‘we,’ orange man?”

Later on Trump got personal and called out the leadership of the House Freedom Caucus:

A major Tea Party leader, Mark Meckler, had this to say in response, according to The Hill:

The man who promised to “Drain the Swamp” now appears to be the “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” He is now on the side of the swamp monsters.

The head swamp monster would no doubt be House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is loathed by many members of the Republican base, and yet now Donald Trump has inexplicably allied himself to him, for no good reason other than personal pique at the Freedom Caucus. Even some of Trump’s most loyal supporters are starting to get concerned:

On “MTP Daily,” Michael Needham of Heritage Action called the health care bill a disaster, saying, “This is a great opportunity to take a pause and get the policy right and that is what the House Freedom Caucus is doing. Talk about grown-ups, they’re the one who are saying, ‘We want to get the policy right, we’re willing to negotiate,’ and it’s the moderates who say they literally won’t pick up the phone if they call.”

First of all, can we dispense with the idea that any Republican who isn’t a member of the Freedom Caucus is a “moderate”? I’m not sure any House Republicans can be called moderate, but if there are some they represent a very small faction. They’re conservatives. The Freedom Caucus is extremist or, if you want to be polite about it, ultraconservative. The rest are conservatives.

As for these conservatives who refuse to pick up the phone, Needham is right about that. Rep. Chris Collins, a spokesman for the Tuesday Group — a mainstream conservative bloc in the House — told reporters:

We have never negotiated with the Freedom Caucus. There was never a meeting scheduled with the Freedom Caucus. We will never meet with the Freedom Caucus, because it’s not appropriate for a group of ad hoc members.

Members of the Freedom Caucus are far from being “grown-ups,” but they were not the only members of Congress balking at Ryan’s monstrosity of a health care bill. A lot of mainstream conservatives refused to vote for it, too, with the prospects for support worsening as vaunted negotiator Trump stumbled up to the bargaining table and clumsily tried to buy off the Freedom Caucus without realizing he was playing a zero-sum game. (Just ask former House Speaker John Boehner how easy it is.)

It’s pretty clear that Trump learned nothing from his experience last week. He still doesn’t understand the character of the GOP hard-right faction in Congress or the people who support them. He doesn’t realize that with a 35 percent approval rating, his threats, subtle or overt, are ineffective. That’s particularly true when the group he’s threatening is supported by the Koch brothers, two of the 10 richest men in the world. He doesn’t recognize that any major bill that is popular with only 17 percent of the country and will directly affect tens of millions of people is a losing proposition.

In other words, Trump is likely to repeat the same mistakes all over again, starting with tax reform — which many experts predict will be every bit as difficult as the health care measure. But then, Trump has never admitted to making a mistake in his life. He couldn’t change now if he wanted to.

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They always tip their hands

Published by digby on March 31, 2017

They always tip their hands

by digby

I know it’s shameful to do this but I can’t help it. In light of the revelations yesterday that the White House was the source of Devin Nunes’ “information”, I have to republish the opening to my Salon piece from the morning after his bizarre little vaudeville act:

One of the more unusual characteristics of President Donald Trump and his closest associates is the extent to which they seem to have psychic powers. Recall that on Aug. 21 conservative operative and longtime Trump associate Roger Stone tweeted gleefully, “it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel,” referring to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Lo and behold, on Oct. 7 WikiLeaks released its trove of Podesta’s emails.

It wasn’t long after this that Trump’s close ally, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, exhibited a similar eerie prescience. Days before FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency would examine Clinton emails found on a computer used by Anthony Weiner, Giuliani told Fox News Trump has “got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. . . . I’m talking about some pretty big surprises. . . . . We got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this around.” Was he ever right.

Then on March 15, in the wake of the president’s manic early-morning tweetstorm accusing former President Barack Obama of arranging for him to be wiretapped, Trump demonstrated his own awe-inspiring clairvoyance. Trump told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that despite all the denials from every institution and person in a position to know, “You’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”

Wouldn’t you know it? On Wednesday House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was shown some documents by a “source” that had him so up in arms he couldn’t even take the time to alert the other committee members before he ran to the White House to show the president. When asked if he felt vindicated by this alleged bombshell, Trump replied:

I somewhat do. I must tell you I somewhat do. I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found, I somewhat do.

It’s amazing how Trump and his people are able to see into the future this way, isn’t it?

Of course, Roger Stone is now in the crosshairs of a serious counterintelligence investigation and undoubtedly regrets crowing about what he knew. Giuliani was unceremoniously put out to pasture after it was rumored he helped rogue elements of law enforcement with an anti-Clinton crusade on behalf of Donald Trump. And nobody on the planet really believes that Nunes’ bizarre performance “somewhat” vindicated Trump — or vindicated him at all. Indeed, all Nunes’ stunt did was open the door to a bunch of new questions that Trump may very well regret being asked.

They are so proud of their crude dirty tricks and underhanded manipulations that they have to crow about it publicly before it happens. It really helps to pay attention to what they say. Trump is an epic liar so it’s always difficult to sort out his fantasies from reality but this one was easy. We already knew that the White House Counsel had been reported by the New York Times to have been looking for FISA orders. Trump’s winking to Tucker Carlson seemed rather obvious to me.

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NC: Trading rights for tournaments by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 31, 2017

NC: Trading rights for tournaments
by Tom Sullivan

You must be doing something right if everyone is angry at you, the saying goes. NC Gov. Roy Cooper and the state’s general assembly will be making that argument in defense of the repeal yesterday of the state’s notorious HB2, a.k.a. the “bathroom bill.”

It was the best bill he could get Republicans to agree to, Cooper explained, saying, “In a perfect world with a good General Assembly, we would have repealed House Bill 2 fully today and added full state wide protections for LGBT North Carolinians.”

The first thing that stands out is that neither caucus held together. Over half the Democrats in the Senate minority voted yes. Thirty percent of Republicans voted no. In the House, one third of Democrats voted no while Republicans split almost evenly.

The bill does not ban transgender persons from using the public facilities matching their gender identities, but does not explicitly permit them to either. This matches most other states, the Raleigh News and Observer reports. But it bans state municipalities from passing or amending public accommodations ordinances (like the one Charlotte passed that sparked this controversy) until after the 2020 governor’s race.

The News and Observer continues:

With no state law or local ordinances addressing sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination in public accommodations, establishments like hotels and restaurants would still legally be able to discriminate against LGBT people – or any other class of people that state law doesn’t explicitly protect, like veterans.

The repeal bill extends until 2020 the ban on municipal ordinances regarding implementing minimum wage, hours, benefits and leave policies.

Cooper immediately drew heat:

LGBT groups, the NAACP, the ACLU and other progressive groups appealed for a “no” vote on HB142. State NAACP President William Barber called it “anti-worker, anti-access to the courts, and anti-LGBT.”

The deal also places Cooper at odds with Charlotte’s mayor – and fellow Democrat – Jennifer Roberts.

Conservative groups were not happy either. The N.C. Values Coalition and Christian Action League opposed the repeal. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest expressed concern that some Republicans who voted for the bill may face primaries.

In a statement issued Thursday morning, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina condemned any deal that “uses the rights of LGBT people as a bargaining chip.” Because what gets lost in the coverage is the tawdriness of the state’s renewed urgency to repeal the offensive HB2 in the face of an NCAA deadline for selecting tournament sites. When dollars and dribbling are on the line in North Carolina, rights and principles are negotiable.

The New York Times Editorial Board writes this morning:

It’s mystifying that Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat whose narrow election in November was seen as something of a referendum on H.B. 2, would regard the amended law as a suitable compromise. The repeal law did away with the birth certificate requirement, which was unenforceable all along because it would have turned law enforcement officials into genital inspectors. But it bars schools and other government entities from adopting policies allowing transgender people to use the restroom of their choice. And it still prohibits anti-discrimination ordinances until 2020.

Mr. Cooper said the compromise with the Republican-controlled legislature was “not perfect,” but he held out hope that the repeal would start to “repair our reputation.” He and other Democrats who supported the compromise said they concluded that a modest step toward undoing the law was the best they could hope for while Republicans have veto-proof majorities in the legislature. That is misguided. The deal was struck days after The Associated Press reported that the backlash against the law would cost North Carolina at least $3.7 billion in business over 12 years.

Cooper’s decision is all the more mystifying since the same NCGOP team burned him with the whole world watching on his last try at repeal in December.

Charlotte’s mayor Jennifer Roberts called the state’s actions yesterday a “false repeal.” Echoes of Indiana Jones’ quest for the Holy Grail. Time will tell whether those who drank from the cup of compromise chose poorly.

As California goes …

Published by digby on March 31, 2017

As California goes …

by digby

This is a great long-read by Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect about America’s biggest state California getting ready to take on the Trump agenda at every turn. And why we might actually be able to do it.

CALIFORNIA IS THE TRUMP administration’s most formidable adversary, not only on matters of immigration, but on damn near everything. No other entity—not the Democratic Party, not the tech industry, surely not the civil liberties lobby—has the will, the resources, and the power California brings to the fight. Others have the will, certainly, but not California’s clout.

There’s no mystery to the clout. California is immense, a state of 40 million, home to an economy that is the world’s sixth-largest. But the will? Has the home state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan truly become so overwhelmingly progressive?

It clearly has. What was remarkable about California’s performance in last November’s election wasn’t merely that it went for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a margin of four million votes; that’s partly just a testament to the state’s size. What was remarkable was that the share of its voters who cast ballots for Clinton—61.5 percent—was greater than any other state’s.

And this is hardly the only metric that spotlights California as the nation’s most progressive state. California is one of just six states that have a Democratic governor and Democrats in control of both houses of the legislature (California Democrats actually hold two-thirds of the seats in each house). No Republican has been elected to a statewide office (there are ten of them, counting the two U.S. senators) since 2006. In 2012 and again in 2016, state voters have approved ballot measures that made the nation’s most progressive state income tax even more progressive.

Since Jerry Brown became governor in 2011, he and the legislature enacted laws that expanded Medicaid so comprehensively (including a provision that extended it to undocumented minors) that the percentage of uninsured Californians dropped from 19 percent to 7 percent; raised the minimum wage to $15; created the nation’s first automatic retirement plan for workers (who numbered an estimated 6.8 million) whose employers didn’t provide one; registered as a voter every California citizen who showed up to get a driver’s license; set the highest fuel-efficiency standards in the nation; and appropriated $30 million annually for legal assistance for immigrants before Donald Trump was even nominated. Currently before the legislature, with a good chance of enactment, is a bill that would have the state cover all the costs—tuition, room, board, books—incurred by students at the University of California and the California State University system, and another bill, less of a sure thing, that would establish single-payer health care in the state.

The state’s leftward movement continues apace.

The state’s leftward movement continues apace. Hillary Clinton carried 46 of the state’s 53 congressional districts, including seven represented by newly nervous Republicans. She carried Orange County—ancestral home of the Goldwater Revolution—thereby becoming the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1936. All four Republicans with Orange County districts will face strong challenges in 2018.

Californians know the state’s demographics explain a lot of this change, but only a relative few can tell you what the forces were, and are, that translated the rising number of Latinos and Asians into progressive political power. Both California and Texas, for instance, are 39 percent Latino, but in California, the nation’s most strategically savvy labor movement politically socialized and mobilized the Latino community as Tammany once did the Irish, while Texas, all but devoid of a labor movement, has seen no such development. California’s fast-growing Asian communities, which constitute nearly 15 percent of the state’s population, have moved left in recent decades, with more than 70 percent of their vote going to Democrats in recent elections. Add the Latinos and Asians to the state’s African American population and the large number of white liberals in the state’s metropolitan centers, and California’s newfound status as the nation’s leftmost state should come as no mystery. Indeed, among the world’s six largest economies—the United States, China, Germany, Britain, France, and the Golden State—California’s citizenry and elected leaders are clearly the most progressive.

And they have the wherewithal, along with the will, to fight the Trump administration on climate change, social insurance, immigrant rights, and much else…

The conclusion:

Middle-class white liberals, a mobilized Latino community, left-moving Asian Americans, a powerful environmental community, a uniquely vibrant union movement, a tech sector willing to fund at least some anti-Trump campaigns, women coming forth as candidates, properly enraged millennials, and some deft political leaders—these are the pillars of the California resistance. Together, they form Trump’s most potent opponent.

I know Californians aren’t Real Americans and all, but there is a boatload full of us. And we’re resisting.

Read the whole thing. California is a microcosm of the new America. It even includes a lot of white rural folks and conservative military types who vote Republican. But the majority is this demographic, class and racial mix that will be the future while Trump’s throwback politics are the past.
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Meanwhile, back in the states

Published by digby on March 30, 2017

Meanwhile, back in the states


by digby

They never quit: 

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday signed a law requiring doctors to investigate women seeking abortions before they can actually receive the procedure. The measure purports to block abortions that are based solely on the sex of the fetus, but actually bans women from getting the procedure until their physician has put in an unspecified amount of “time and effort” obtaining her pregnancy-related medical records.

House Bill 1434 — which creates the “Sex Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act” — was passed by the Arkansas House of Representatives and Senate this month, and will go into effect in January 2018. It forces doctors to ask a woman if she knows the sex of the fetus and, if she does, they must then gather all medical records pertaining to her “entire pregnancy history.” Under the law, doctors are prohibited from providing a woman with an abortion until they’ve taken a “reasonable” amount of time to get the records — which could potentially result in an indefinite waiting period, the Center for Reproductive Rights noted in a statement.

Of course it will result in an indefinite waiting period. That’s the whole point.

But hey, keep telling us feminists that we should STFU about abortion because it’s a) icky and b) hurting the cause.  It’s all working out so well.

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Fixing whatever is wrong with Obamacare isn’t that complicated

Published by digby on March 30, 2017

Fixing whatever is wrong with Obamacare isn’t that complicated

by digby

This piece by Henry Aaron lays it all out:

Republicans insist that Obamacare is failing. Facts refute the charge. The law set out to expand health insurance coverage, and it has done so — by more than 20 million people. Overall health care spending since enactment of Obamacare has been well below historical trends. Commonly reported measures of health care quality have been improving.

To be sure, the law has its problems. Obamacare leaves some people with burdensome health insurance costs. Too few insurers offer plans in some areas.

The AHCA would have made the first problem worse and done little to solve the second. It would have ended Medicaid for millions of poor people, and raised premiums for individuals and small groups by as much as 20%. It would have slashed help for people in their 50s and 60s.

It would have used the savings from these cuts to finance tax reductions for the well-to-do and to pay for premium subsidies for people with incomes as high as $200,000 a year, most of whom can afford to buy health insurance on their own if they are not covered through work.

The problems of insurers are more complicated. Through inexperience or the desire to attract customers, some insurers initially set premiums so low that they lost money. Unsurprisingly, they then either raised prices or stopped selling in the Obamacare marketplaces.

Those drafting Obamacare foresaw such difficulties and authorized payments to insurers that enrolled sicker-than-average customers. The Republican-controlled Congress reneged on that commitment.

Unwilling to take responsibility for problems they helped create, Republican critics now allege that insurance prices are excessive and that marketplaces are collapsing.

Both charges are false. Premiums are lower, not higher, than projected before Obamacare passed. And independent analysts now agree that after the price adjustments, insurance markets will be stable and that insurers will make money.

Trump and Republicans should devote themselves to correcting acknowledged flaws in Obamacare, not to sabotaging it. Many of these improvements would advance Republican objectives and help politically red states: 

• The Obamacare mandate that large-and medium-sized employers provide insurance to workers applies only to workers employed 30 or more hours a week. Republicans correctly criticized the design of this mandate. It should be improved or repealed. 

• Some Republicans have proposed replacing the 40% excise tax on high-cost health plans, the so-called Cadillac tax, with a requirement that people include the cost of employer-financed health insurance above certain thresholds in their personal taxable income. Democrats should welcome that shift. 

• Nineteen states have been unwilling to extend Medicaid coverage, partly from a fear that the federal government will cut payments and leave states holding the bag. Congress should reassure states on this score. It would help all states, most of which are Republican-controlled. 

• Republicans and some Democrats have decried the provision of Obamacare authorizing the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an unelected group empowered to hold down growth of Medicare spending by proposing cost-reducing changes that would take effect unless both houses of Congress mustered majorities to block them. So, change it.

Should the GOP move ahead on these repairs, Democrats would want something in return. For instance, they would seek to raise, rather than lower, assistance for those who currently face high out-of-pocket medical costs. But that’s the kind of tradeoff Donald Trump, supposed dealmaker, should proudly strike — isn’t it?

There is a deep irony here. Medicaid, which Republicans now seek to roll back, was originally a Republican proposal. The Obamacare marketplaces, the requirement that individuals carry insurance, and subsidies to help them afford it were originally Republican ideas.

Republicans now fail to acknowledge clear-cut evidence that these ideas are working and refuse to consider changes that would make them work even better. So sad.

Aaron thinks that this could be the basis for a compromise with Republicans but I really, really doubt it. If Democrats had a majority in the congress and a Democratic White House they could do this and yet it wouldn’t be a slam dunk. And as our politics are currently constructed, they would have to do it all without GOP buy-in and would have to appease red state Democrats who would be facing the Koch brothers and swarms of wingnut activists.

That’s the reality. But it’s important to put this out there so that people know that whatever problems exist with the ACA, they are fixable. There may be more problems in the future that need to be fixed too. That’s how this stuff works. In the old days you could get bipartisan co-operation to fix such problems in existing programs. But those days are gone.

Right now we have a president who has said that he wants the program to blow up so he can blame the Democrats. And frankly, I think the rest of the Republicans probably secretly agree with him.  Their opposition has always simply been a weapon with which to bash Democrats. It’s clear by now that they don’t have the slightest idea of how to successfully replace it without killing people.

Right now the best hope is that the program toddles along for a couple of years until the Democrats can take back the congress, pass these fixes, let the lunatic in the White House run against them in 2020 and beat him.

Damn…

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