Bleak Friday
by Tom Sullivan
There is nothing like Donald Trump sitting behind the Resolute desk to focus Democrats’ minds. The famously undisciplined coalition of interests demonstrated remarkable focus in the 2018 campaigns. Contrary to the suggestion Democrats needed a positive message (as if theirs was only anti-Trump), not since 2002 has an opposition party spent so little of its campaign efforts attacking an incumbent president, writes Paul Krugman, citing research by the Weslyan Media Project.
Instead, Democrats ran on health care and won. Bigly. Can they do it again? What else deserves their attention?
While with control of the House in Democrats’ hands, further repeal of the Affordable Care Act will be off the table. Although they may be able to prevent further piecemeal demolition of Obama’s signature program. Republicans under Trump eliminated the individual mandate and reinsurrance, Krugman notes. Democrats still lack the legislative clout to swing Medicare for All or some form of Medicare buy-in. They can talk about it plenty, but delivering will take more warm D butts in seats. Krugman suggests the states might move the needle themselves until that happy day arrives.
Not really a national program, Obamacare empowers states to create their own federally-supported insurance marketplaces. California worked at it. Republican-controlled North Carolina did not. Krugman offers Democrat-controlled states can advance their health care agenda for now by reversing the sabotage themselves:
The most dramatic example of how this can be done is New Jersey, where Democrats gained full control at the end of 2017 and promptly created state-level versions of both the mandate and reinsurance. The results were impressive: New Jersey’s premiums for 2019 are 9.3 percent lower than for 2018, and are now well below the national average. Undoing Trumpian sabotage seems to have saved the average buyer around $1,500 a year.
Now that Democrats have won control of multiple states, they can and should emulate New Jersey’s example, and move beyond it if they can. Why not, for example, introduce state-level public options — actuarially sound government plans — as alternatives to private insurance?
There is more to be addressed than health care. Working Americans need jobs paying enough so they can raise their families without having to depend on government assistance to put food on the table.
Writing for Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky urges Democrats to address wage theft. Employers taking time or holding back wages from employees is widespread and not just among large employers. (Last week I wrote about a man south of Delhi, India being attacked and scalped for asking for his son’s back wages.) With the notable exceptions of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (not a Democrat) and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, few Democrats mention the problem, Tomasky writes.
Perhaps most notable for 2020, however, is that even while it failed in the Senate, Brown’s proposal to a) tax companies that pay so little their employees must depend on SNAP, and b) provide tax benefits to companies that raise wages. Every Democrat voted for it. Including Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, and Jon Tester, Tomasky adds. This is an issue Democrats can agree on and run on in 2020:
Wages, work, and the idea that if you work full-time you deserve a decent life have to be the cornerstones of what Democrats present to people in 2020. Medicare for All and free college, which constitute most of what I’m hearing out of the newly energized left that will be seated in the next House of Representatives, are secondary. Medicare for All failed in Vermont, and free college does nothing for the 65 percent of young people who don’t go to college. But everybody (mostly) works. Everybody is entitled to a good wage. If the Democrats haven’t firmly associated themselves with these simple ideas by 2020, they have failed.
Those $20,000 a year clerks enduring the Black Friday crush may be getting food stamps or working second and third jobs to get by. Even those working the high-end stores. Many will be part-timers covering their own health insurance out of that (or not). An America drawn to hope in 2008 finds itself in what appears to be a death-spiral of government corruption and dysfunction amidst an opioid addiction crisis and wage and hope stagnation. They voted for something in 2018, something Democrats will have a hard time delivering without more leverage in the states and in Washington. Democrats know what they have to do. Fortunately, they already agree on it, and voters too.
