Short post, to make a point about how juvenile this White House and our politics have become.
I took most of the New York Times‘ report on the latest White House drama, and just switched the names to Real World: San Francisco characters and producers, and it works.
I wrote this piece for Campaigns and Elections. Check it out!
Nationalizing a race, whether a state primary or a House special election, can help a campaign raise money and recruit volunteers. But history and recent results demonstrate that this strategy comes at too steep a price.
Let me preface this post by saying I’m an advocate of single-payer health care. Nothing I’m about to write negates that. I’m just writing about political reality.
Yesterday, four GOP Senators came out against the current Senate version of the odious TrumpCare ACA Repeal Bill, tossing a bit of a monkey wrench into their plans to move ahead to a vote.
Their internal fight makes this the perfect time for Democrats to roll out an Obamacare fix bill, and present a positive vision for the future of health care, to America. Part of that vision must be introduction of a public option on the Obamacare exchanges, in the form of a Medicare buy-in. Here’s why.
(Updates at end: 11:15am, 5/18/2017)
The “I” word.
It’s time to talk about it, Democrats.
As stories mount, and mount, that Donald Trump has not been faithful to the oath of office, one House Democrat (not named Maxine Waters), one House Republican, and one Senate independent have broached the subject. Yet, most Democrats refuse to even talk about it. Nancy Pelosi won’t. Bernie Sanders, a not-quite Democrat, says he’s “not there, at this point.”
Well, they better get there, and quick.
It is time for Democrats to call for an impeachment inquiry – hearings that investigate these matters, gather the facts, and determine if they warrant impeachment – all at the same time.
Why?
Yesterday, leaders of the building trades unions went to the White House, to meet with Donald Trump. Trump was just signing the executive orders to move ahead with the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Dakota Access Pipeline, both projects that many of those unions support.
When they came out, the union leaders spoke glowingly of Trump, who just delivered two projects to them. In fact, North America’s Building Trades Unions put out this release, which positively gushed about Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is, if nothing else, an avid salesman of himself. He got what he needed – the unequivocal praise of unions, for the price of just two projects.
Meanwhile, he is pushing through a harshly anti-labor nominee for the Labor Department, opposes any minimum wage, and supports so-called “Right to Work” laws that will end unions. Nowhere in their press release was any warning from the unions that they’d oppose Trump on such moves.
Looking at the whole exercise, I was reminded of the 1990s, when Bill Clinton engaged in what became known as “triangulation.”
When all the world is a show, people stop being people. They become characters and props.
Donald Trump views the world as his stage – a kind of “Truman Show,” except one in which he, the title character, controls everything around him so he can live in the show in which he wants to live.
Once contained within an actual reality show, now Trump sees the planet as one giant shoot of “The Apprentice,” where everyone has a role – good guy, bad guy, etc. – that he determines.
When you take that into account, Donald Trump’s press conference this week makes sense.
Yesterday, I posted something about Donald Trump’s likely debate strategy – lie, lie, and lie again, knowing that it would fall to Hillary Clinton to correct him, now that moderators have decided against challenging lies.
Forcing Clinton to do the job means she will have nearly no time to talk about what she believes, what she wants to do, or to launch attacks on Trump.
So, how can Hillary Clinton combat that strategy?
