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Essays and opinion pieces from our hosts and listeners involving American politics touching on current events, politics, history, and the like.

Pop Goes The Political Culture, January 19, 2019

Abe Lincoln Is Judging Some of Us.

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU co-host

Greetings MPU-inverse! I’ve been taking a bit of breather from covering culture but it appears that culture is not taking a breather from needing to be covered. So, I am back and ready to tell a tale of two viral videos this week!

As I type this, rumor has it that Trump is about to try offering some temporary protections to Dreamers in return for $5.7 billion for his wall. If I recall correctly, this is very similar to a deal Schumer had agreed to in 2017 but Trump blew that up at the time. If I were one to predict such things, I would say that Democrats will counter with a lower dollar figure and permanent protections for Dreamers. But don’t quote me on this because when nothing is normal, nothing is predicable.

Now let’s get into the viral video portion of our blog post. Here is all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Cardi B Right: Cardi B took to Instagram this week to break down the current situation for federal workers affected by the payroll stoppage due to the partial shutdown. Unlike me, Cardi B doesn’t use phrases like “payroll stoppage” and frankly, she gets the point across better than I ever have. Take a look but be forewarned that she uses swear words.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by CARDIVENOM (@iamcardib) on

Reaction to the video has been mainly positive because, hello. She’s right. The shutdown is stupid, the wall is stupid, going to work without a paycheck is stupid and this all needs to end.

But there are some people mewling about her choice of syntax and wondering why she has to swear. I have an answer to that: it’s because she is Cardi B and she is talking to Cardi B fans. She is speaking in the vernacular most comfortable to her and to her audience.

I have no doubt Cardi B can code-switch to more formal American English but why should she? It isn’t necessary to express herself in this context. If she were on stage accepting a Kennedy Center Honor then yeah. Maybe code-switch for the occasion and the audience. But on her own Insta, talking to the community of fans she has built. Nah. She doesn’t need to talk any way but how she talks. If it makes some viewers uncomfortable, well, maybe those viewers aren’t the intended audience and the appropriate reaction is to go find a different messenger.

And  one other thing? You really should go get your pussy checked at the gynecologist. There’s no co-pay for annual exams and pap smears under ACA regs so make that appointment like Cardi B says.

March or Mob?: If you mention the March for Life to DC residents, they’ll probably heave a big sigh and ask what the date is so they can make plans to avoid it. Every year, on the anniversary of Roe v Wade, tens of thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators show up to have a march and other related events. They seem to schedule everything at a time and location to cause maximum headaches for anyone trying to get around town that day.

A major cohort of March for Life participants is the busloads of Catholic School kids who come in for the day. Their schools bring them en masse. They are teenagers and they behave like teenagers. They clog up sidewalks and Metro escalators and block doors and crosswalks. They leave their signs lying around town when they leave and they are generally a nuisance.

If you think I have a chip on my shoulder about them because they’re against abortion, you’re right. But they are also one of the only major advocacy groups that schedules events this large on a weekday. Most groups come on weekends so they’re not underfoot when you’re trying to get home after work.

Annnnnyway. Yesterday, was the 2019 March for Life and also the Indigenous People’s March, a far smaller event to be held at the Lincoln Memorial. The mission of that event was:

On January 18, 2019, we are uniting the Indigenous peoples across the World to stand together to bring awareness to the injustices affecting Indigenous men, women and children. Indigenous people from North, Central and South America, Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean are a target of genocide. Currently, many Indigenous people are victims of voter suppression, divided families by walls and borders, an environmental holocaust, sex and human trafficking, and police/military brutality with little or no resources and awareness of this injustice. We Must Unite and Help!!

If you are bracing yourself for some kind of clash between these groups well, stay braced and watch this video of what happened when some of the March for Life teens encountered Elder Nathan Phillips of the Omaha Nation at the Lincoln Memorial.

Here’s video of the same moment taken from a different angle.

As you can see, the name of their school has been discovered. The school has since taken the social media accounts and website private because of the reaction. I’m sure they are huddled with lawyers and the Diocese trying to figure out what to do.

Meanwhile, they have already failed as an educational institution and this is the proof.

Take away all the other biographical facts, erase all the reasons these people were in the same place, negate all the political backgrounds, and what you are left is a group of teenage boys taunting an old man as he peacefully makes music. If you can’t teach children not to do that, close your doors. Stop trying to be a school. You have failed.

Elder Phillips spoke of this with more grace than we should have any right to expect after such a jarring situation. We should take our lessons from him, not from the people teaching those boys how to behave.

That’s all I have for this week. The rest of the gang and I will be gathering to talk about the week’s events and spread our particular brand of sunshine to the podcasting world. Check us out when the new episode drops!

Gillibrand Shadowed By Her “Et Tu?” Moment

by Kevin Kelton

For Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the end of her presidential campaign may have come before it started.

Gillibrand, of course, is a charismatic and mostly liberal New York senator who has 12 years of congressional experience (going on 14) that stands out among the other “fresh faces” who will populate the 2020 Democratic field. But the issue that may forever define her in the eyes of Democratic voters was her role in ousting Al Franken from the U.S. senate.

The beloved Minnesota senator and originator of SNL’s “Al Franken decade” catchphrase was a rising star in the party before Gillibrand and a handful of likewise self-righteous female legislators decided to truncate his senate decade six months early.

In retrospect, it was an ill-conceived career move.

When the Franken scandal was breaking in 2017, there seemed to be clear political advantages to her role as the leader of the #MeToo mob that forced Franken to resign. Doug Jones was stuck neck-and-neck with jailbait dater Roy Moore in their hotly contested Alabama senate race, and the political calculation was that by sacrificing Franken on the alter of the Me Too movement, they might push Jones to victory over Moore and get the Democrats one seat closer to controlling that chamber. Jones did ultimately win by a nose, maybe in part thanks to Gillibrand’s role in cleaning out her party’s own closet. (Rep. John Conyers was also sent packing from the House to prove the Democrats’ bona fides on sexual harassment.)

But the party still fell short of winning back the senate in 2018, and there is not a single major vote that has taken place since Franken’s exile that went the Democrats’ way because of the seat Jones flipped. And Jones is nowhere near the liberal lion of the senate that Franken proved to be while bludgeoning Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions in his senate confirmation hearing and effortlessly slapping down right-wing bullies with wit and charm. In that regard, Jones’s win has proven little more than a pyrrhic victory so far.

In the meantime, millions of Franken’s admirers in the party are still seething at Gillibrand for fragging one of their own. Many, including billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, feel that it was naked political opportunism. (Gillibrand still maintains that she did it for the right reasons.) And while Franken’s appointed replacement, Tina Smith, held onto the seat in 2018 and has been a reliable liberal senate vote, she has been no substitute for her outspoken, passionate, charismatic, and roundly respected predecessor. Indeed, had his relatively mild missteps in the evolving battle of the sexes not dislodged him from his rising perch among the liberal leaders of the party, Franken might’ve been running for president himself this time around.

Instead, it’s the woman who some feel stabbed him in the back that is flexing her national political muscles. But her “et tu, Kirsten?” moment hangs as a Sword a Damocles over her run.

Watching Gillibrand announce her presidential run in front of a live TV audience on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” one couldn’t help but sense that her reason for running (“As a young mom, I will fight for your children as hard as I would fight for my own”) felt rehearsed and banal. She babbled the standard Democratic lines about being for “better public schools,” healthcare being “a right and not a privilege,” and “finding common ground.”

But when asked by Colbert what would be the first thing she’d do on day one of her presidency, she fumbled over hackneyed promises to “restore the integrity and compassion of the country” and “bring people together” before scrambling for safe haven in a trite shoutout to Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” she quoted the late civil rights leader to audience applause. But what King’s 1957 line about nonviolent resistance has to do with being president is perplexing at best.

Unless Gillibrand can articulate a platform that is more than platitudes, her moment in the light may be be fleeting. Running because you’re a mom who can quote MLK will only get her so far. Against more forceful and inspiring female candidates like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard, the NY junior senator may feel like an also-ran. To break through, Gillibrand will have to win back many of the diehard Democratic primary voters who still blame her for the Franken debacle.

If she can’t, it’s highly unlikely that 2020 will be the start of the Kirsten Gillibrand decade.

Kevin Kelton is the cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast and founder of Open Fire Politics. He is also a former Saturday Night Live writer who has never worked with Al Franken…or Kirsten Gillibrand.

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Begins … Without the United States

by D.J. McGuire

Remember the Trans-Pacific Partnership? That was the major trade agreement between 12 nations, including the United States, that most Americans thought had died when Donald Trump pulled America out of it in early 2017.

Well, Trump may have pulled us out of TPP, but he didn’t kill it (Telegraph, emphasis added).

The world’s most radical trade pact has come into force across the Pacific as the US sulks on the sidelines, marking a stunning erosion in American strategic leadership.

The White House assumed that the TPP would wither on the vine without US impetus.Instead, long-standing US allies across the Pacific have brushed off pressure from Washington and forged ahead regardless with what is now known as the “anti-Trump pact”.

“America is the biggest loser,” says the Peterson Institute in Washington. The fall in food tariffs under the CPTPP means that US farmers will be undercut by exporters from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in the lucrative Japanese market. Wheat from Canada will be $70 cheaper per metric tonne by 2020.

Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and Singapore have ratified the agreement (Quartz). They will all soon benefit from the tariff reductions that will take place (Reuters). Those of us old enough to remember when Japan was considered the corporatist and protectionist bete noire of the free world can only marvel as Japan moves into agreement while the United States does not (Japan News and Nikkei Asian Review).

Much of the coverage regarding America’s exclusion is focused on the man who pulled us out – Donald Trump. My opposition to the president – politicallyand personally– are well known to readers here. In this case, however, Trump is far from the only culprit. His opponent – yes, the one for whom I eventually voted – walked away from her support for TPP during the campaign. Indeed, she walked away from freer trade in general – a policy and political mistake that I firmly believe led directly to her defeat in several states where Gary Johnson (the one pro-TPP candidate) won more votes than Trump’s margin of victory (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona).

The two nominees, sadly, reflected political parties that were, at the time, far more interested in emotional tribalism than well-thought-out economics. The Republicans’ weakness was exposed in 2015 when some of them started calling Trade Promotion Authority and TPP “Obamatrade” – paving the policy road for Trump. Democratic politicians long held protectionist views as a sort of tribal signaling to organized labor (although, as the Pew Research Centerrevealed, Democratic votersdidn’t share that view).

That it led to the wife of the man who managed to get NAFTA through Congress in 1993 became a political casualty of all this was painfully ironic (to some – or maybe just to me).

There is, however, cause for optimism. The Democrats are, if anything, even moresupportive of freer trade agreements (see Pew’s link above), while Trump’s tariffs are losing popularity (Pew again).

Republicans, sadly, are following their leader into protectionism – yet another reason to presume Trump will easily be renominated in 2020. However, if Democrats can choose a nominee that can appeal to supporters of freer trade and opponents of tariffs (or, as I’ve started to call us, “trade doves”), not only can the party hold the swing voters who crossed over in 2018 (and win more of them), but they can also ensure that the country moves away from its current protectionist cul-de-sac.

We might even be able to re-enter the TPP.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described progressive conservative – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015. He is also a contributor to Bearing Drift.

Inside MPU: The 2020 Race and Education Reform

Welcome to another edition of Things Podcasters Talk About When They’re Not Podcasting. In this case, it’s exactly what we would be talking about if we were podcasting. The fact that we were doing it at 9am on New Year’s Eve just demonstrates that we are all giant nerds who never really stop thinking about politics. How this turned from a conversation about presidential candidates to a wonk-fest about education reform still puzzles me but I suspect it was my fault.

And if you’re wondering why Kevin didn’t weigh in, it’s because it was only 6am on his coast and he’s smart enough to be asleep at that time of day.

So here you have it. Early morning analysis from 3 out of 4 MPU co-hosts. Enjoy!

 

Why Jay Powell Should Stay Right Where He Is

by D.J. McGuire

Having shaken the foreign policy establishment to its core (which, by itself, is not automatically a mistake) by choosing to cut and run from Syria (which, given the situation on the ground, definitely isa mistake), President Trump is now taking aim at the Federal Reserve’s independence in setting monetary policy.

President Donald Trump has begun polling advisers about whether he has the legal authority to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, according to two people familiar with the matter, who described the President as newly furious at the Fed chief as markets tumble.

Earlier this year, Trump’s advisers told the President that it was doubtful he would have the law behind him if he fired Powell. But Trump has renewed the issue after the Fed again raised its benchmark interest rate this week.

So far, the White House hasn’t come to a final legal determination on Trump’s authority to fire his Fed chairman, whom he nominated a year ago. The law states the President can fire a Fed governor for cause, but it hasn’t been tested on the firing of a chairman.

CNN

This is what Trump said to his Treasury Secretary.

I totally disagree with Fed policy. I think the increasing of interest rates and the shrinking of the Fed portfolio is an absolute terrible thing to do at this time

Mnuchin via Twitter

For those of us in the economic field, this is the equivalent of using a nuclear weapon. As noted above, a Fed Chair has never been fired.

This will be a serious test for both political parties. For my old party (the Republicans), it will be about how much they are willing to let Trump abuse his power and shatter stability. Just about every opponent of Keynesian economics prefers sound money and stable economic policy. A president who fired a Fed Chair because he (Trump) prefers looser money would be the exact opposite of both.

That said, it is just as challenging for my new party (the Democrats). They’ll be willing to call out Trump on abuse of power and stability, but I wonder if they’ll be willing to defend Jay Powell for what he is doing.

This matters because Powell needs defending – not just on a constitutional level, but on a policy one as well. An expansion in its tenth year, a Keynesian sugar high tax cut that is over $150 billion annually, and price hiking tariffs on finished goods and inputs alike are a bonfire worth of inflationary kindling. Any Fed Chair worth his or her salt would respond exactly as Powell did – raising interest rates and reducing the balance sheet from quantitative easing. All that goes double or morefor a Fed Chair in Powell’s situation – with interest rates still well below normal and a balance sheet vastly swelled by quantitative easing.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell is doing exactly what he should be. As such, he should remain exactly where he is. I fear no Republican will be willing to say either. Many Democrats will say the latter, but I fear I may be the one of the very few willing to say both.

That doesn’t make me wrong, though.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described progressive conservative – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015. He is also a contributor to Bearing Drift.

Trump Leaves Syria With Fight Against Daesh Unfinished and With Putin Ascendant

by D.J. McGuire

Those who know about my long and strange trip through Election 2016 know that I landed on my eventual choice (Hillary Clinton – yes, for those of you who didn’t know, thatHillary Clinton) due to one issue – Syria.

A quick refresher:

…I saw reports from the United States (Reuters) and from the region itself (al-Hayat, although the Jerusalem Post has a better translation, it also gets Akram al-Bunni’s name wrong). They revealed the preference of the Syrian opposition – the real opposition, not the Iraqi Ba’athists who keep Daesh operating – for Mrs. Clinton.

That tipped the balance, and countered Johnson’s superior positions on economic matters, at least to me. This year has been a long-running internal conflict between my inner neoconservative and my inner libertarian…and in the end, the neoconservative won.

For the analyst in me, this is a real leap of faith, but if there is a chance of a free Syria, I have to take it. If that means voting for Hillary Clinton, then God help me, that’s what I must do.

Obviously, we never got to see if Mrs. Clinton lived up to that. Her Republican opponent, by contrast, insisted that all he cared about in Syria was ISIS. He even contradicted his own running mate’s critique of Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad (CNBC).

Only we now know Trump was more interested in the appearance of defeating Daesh (as ISIS is known in the locale) than the reality of defeating Daesh – for he claimed a premature victory this morning and announced he was pulling troops out of Syria (CNN).

Trump issued his first public comments on the decision Wednesday evening in a video message posted to Twitter, in which he pointed to the sky to reference US military personnel who have been killed in Syria.

“We have won against ISIS,” Trump said. “We’ve beaten them and we’ve beaten them badly. We’ve taken back the land and now it’s time for our troops to come back home. I get very saddened when I have to write letters or call parents or wives or husbands of soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country.”

There was only one problem with Trump’s assertion: it was a lie – as folks in his own Administration acknowledged:

Resistance to the move was strong among some in the administration. A senior administration official told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the President’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria is “a mistake of colossal proportions and the President fails to see how it will endanger our country.”

“Senior officials across the administration agree that the President’s decision-by-tweet will recklessly put American and allied lives in danger around the world, take the pressure off of ISIS — allowing them to reconstitute — and hand a strategic victory to our Syrian, Iranian and Russian adversaries,” the official said.

No matter, Trump wants his victory lap – and he’ll have it even if the race is still going on.

In the meantime, Russia and Iran now know there is no one to stop them from propelling Bashar Assad to regain total control of Syria. Any attempt to use the area we controlled to allow Syrians to build a future free of Ba’athismis out the window.

Oh, and in case anyone – anywhere – tries to discount the accusations and evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime with the what-did-Putin-really-get-for-it question, we have the answer right in front of us.

Putin got Syria. He got his chief client state in the region (the Tehran mullachracy) as the pre-eminent power in the northern Middle East. The forces of tyranny are ascendant in the region (and worldwide) as we retreat.

Once again, for emphasis, the battle with Daesh was notover (CNN).

Tobias Ellwood, a minister in the British Ministry of Defense, said in a tweet that he “strongly” disagrees with Trump’s comment on Wednesday that ISIS had been defeated. “It has morphed into other forms of extremism and the threat is very much alive,” Ellwood wrote, while the Defense Ministry told CNN there would be no immediate change to its current operation in Syria.

If anything, the only real surprise here is that people are surprised. Trump has been an isolationist for decades, and has always preferred the big splash of symbolism over the hard work of real action. He has repeatedly promised to pull our troops out of Syria; it has been his staff that pulled a Sir Humphrey Appleby and prevented it until now.

I also understand and appreciate those who are concerned about the lack of Congressional authorization. One could argue that this deployment was consistent with the anti-al Qaeda authorization of 2001, given that Deash was once al Qaeda in Iraq, but even I consider that a slender reed on which to lean. A far more robust argument should have been made by Trump himselffor Congressional authorization against this specific enemy at the very least. Instead, Trump is pretending the battle is over as a cover for his decision to cut and run.

When it became clear Trump had defeated Clinton two years ago, I hoped against hope that I would be able to say I was wrong, and that Trump had confounded my very low expectations of him. Instead, he validated them.

Again, this was the issue that led me to switch from Gary Johnson to Hillary Clinton. I knew it was a leap of faith then. I have been proven right now – in the worst way imaginable.

Donald Trump lost Syria – check that, he gave Syria away.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described progressive conservative – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015. He is also a contributor to Bearing Drift.

A Fake News Intervention

by Kevin Kelton

Hi. Come in and sit down. I’m here – we all are here – because we love you and we need to tell you something. This may be a little tough to hear, but hear me out.

We know you and we see you. You are bright, educated, and consider yourself relatively smart, sophisticated, worldly, and informed. You’ve voted Republican most of your life (or at least over the last decade or so) because you love your country and truly believe in conservative political philosophy. While you think of yourself as open-minded and are still somewhat open to voting for the right Democrat, you’ve always hated the Clintons, and you came to particularly resent and despise Hillary during the 2015-16 campaign as you learned more and more about her true evil intent – from her “illegal” email server to her support for Muslim terrorists to the highly corrupt Uranium One deal, her secret concussion, The Clinton Foundation “slush fund,” how she and the DNC cheated Bernie to fix her nomination, the “highly suspicious murder” of that poor young DNC staffer who was about to spill the beans, and all her other “crooked” behaviors that were revealed to you day after day by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, conservative media outlets and blogs, and of course by your close, trusted friends on Facebook and the links with the salacious headlines that they reposted and urged you to read…day after day after day.

YOU WERE DUPED. And you still don’t know it (or do but can’t accept it) because you are still being duped by the same powers that filled your brain with fake news and utter nonsense. You think you were immune to the more far-fetched conspiracy stories. But you’d click anyway, at first just once or twice to see what people were saying. But soon you were doing it regularly – as each click got you more and more intrigued. You say to yourself, oh, I never really believed that stuff.  You just thought they were funny and had a slight “ring of truth,” even though you didn’t really buy into them.

It was just recreational web surfing. It was fun; it was harmless. You could stop anytime you wanted.

But you absorbed it all – fake new story after story after story – and it clouded your judgment and subtly changed your perceptions. Your mind was slowly poisoned, so slowly you didn’t realize it was happening. You still sincerely believe you are smart, informed, and your belief system is right and true. But you have been brainwashed and used by people smarter than you. You are a walking, talking disinformation campaign and you don’t even know it. You are part of a massive, worldwide disinformation pyramid scheme.

You are a Russian bot in human form. And you don’t even realize it.

Consider this an intervention by a friend. You are on a very self-destructive path. You are a disinformation addict, and the disinformation pushers have you hooked just like a junkie. You shoot-up regularly on Twitter, Facebook, and with Fox News and other disinformation cartels who are playing you like a fool and cashing in on your addiction. Only in this case, you won’t die from your overdose. You’ll only kill the nation you love. Look at what happened to Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen – two other “smart men” who got duped and hooked, and saw it destroy their lives. Learn from their mistakes.

We all love you and are here for you. But you need to make a change, and make it fast. So please read these articles and start to turn your life around now. 

Senate Report on Russian 2016 Disinformation Campaign Shows Its Scale and Sweep

Michael Flynn, James Woods, Ann Coulter Regularly Shared Content From Russian Fake News Accounts

Fake News Ecosystem Still Thrives in 2018

Mainstream Advertising Pushing Fake News

Kevin Kelton is a former Saturday Night Live writer and cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast. He also runs the Facebook political group, Open Fire Politics.

Obamacare and State’s Rights

It is 8pm on a Saturday night and the last thing I want to be doing is writing yet another piece about a manufactured crisis arising from Republican attempts to undermine the Affordable Care Act. I HATE writing these pieces and I HATE these peckerwoods who have spent the past 8 years proving that they like insurance companies better than they like people who buy insurance. I especially hate the Texas judge who dropped a ruling last night saying that absent the individual mandate – which was nullified by a provision of the tax reform bill last year – nothing in the ACA should remain. Hate. Hate, hate, hate.

I bet the only person who hates this more that me is Chief Justice John Roberts, who has done pretty much everything in his power to avoid dealing with the questions of severability in the Affordable Care Act. The guy had to work really hard to find a legal justification for upholding the individual mandate in 2012. He didn’t want to answer the question of how much of the rest of the law should survive if the mandate was struck down so he redefined the mandate as a tax and said it was as constitutional as apple pie and slavery before the 13th Amendment was ratified.

At least that’s how I read it. I’m not a legal scholar. So I will leave the subject of severability rulings to people who are (and believe me, they are alllllll weighing in on the likely next rulings as this case makes its way to appeal).

What I will do is reassure everyone that not changes will take effect at this time. Your insurance election for 2019 will be compliant with the ACA. So don’t stress about that part.

However, it is clear that the GOP does not want to leave even a shred of Obama’s signature bill standing. They are picking at it piece by piece and before long, we will find ourselves looking at one of two outcomes. Either we will have a full scale return to the kind of private insurance market we had prior to 2010, where employers and insurers decided who got to have health insurance. Or we will see some sort of public option made available to people below Medicare age.

I would actually place my bets on the second thing happening because consumers really like being able to buy insurance and they don’t want to go back to a market where insurers are allowed to say “Oh, you had wonky mole once and now you want a health insurance policy? LOL, nope.”

But until we reach the breaking point that ushers in a new insurance world order, we have to proactively protect ourselves from the predatory practices of the insurance industry. Since we can’t lobby the courts to rule the way we want, we have to turn our attentions to state legislatures.

Yep. That’s right. I, Rebekah Kuschmider, a known proponent of a strong federal government, am telling you to abandon Congress and head to your state capitol instead.

The key insurance industry reforms of the Affordable Care Act, specifically must-issue rules for insurers, combined with abolishing annual and lifetime coverage caps, are extremely popular (one poll shows that 81% of people think it should be illegal to deny coverage based on health history). It would not be a heavy advocacy lift to ask state lawmakers to pass such rules in individual states. Building out those regulations without also tying them to reforms that directly address consumer behavior the way the individual mandate did could make them nearly unassailable in the courts. States certainly have the right to protect consumers from abusive or discriminatory industry practices.

But, like with everything else in advocacy, your elected officials don’t know you want this unless you tell them. This is the time to tell them.

State legislative sessions will begin in the first months of 2019. Get online now and find the contact information for your state lawmakers. Drop them a line saying you want to be protected by ACA-like regulations on the health insurance industry and ask them to add that to the agenda for the new year. Then keep emailing and calling until they listen.

As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It’s time to be a part of one of those thoughtful, committed groups again. You know how to do it. Let’s get it done.

 

 

Pop Goes The Political Culture, December 9, 2018

Cheaters never win, right Michael and Paul?

Howdy, MPU-inverse! As most of you know, we’re taking it easy for the month of December and not recording regularly. The news, however, is on no such hiatus.

Over the past week, we’ve learned that what Trump really wanted was to build a tacky hotel in Moscow. He was even willing to give Putin a free penthouse to smooth the way to getting all his permits and stuff. His plans were stalled when he accidentally won the election. Now everyone around him is being indicted for financial misconduct and lying to Congress and Bob Mueller about all the financial misconduct.

The true tragedy of all of this is that if Americans hadn’t been so very excited Trump’s rand of boorish racism, he would have lost and none of this would be happening. Trump and Cohen would be building their tacky hotel. Manafort would be working in the shadows of criminal regimes, and Christine Blassey Ford would be able to live peacefully in her own home instead of having upended her entire life in a fruitless attempt to make the Senate think twice about confirming a(nother) sexual predator to the Supreme Court.

But, you know. Emails and shit.

Anyway, here’s what else has been going on in the world while we were all watching Maddow break down the latest criminal filings.

And the Oscar goes to…Not you, Kevin Hart: This week Kevin Hart was invited to host the Oscars. Sweet! Everyone loves a funny Oscar host! But then something predicable happened. People who are familiar with Hart’s off-color brand of humor fell a little tickle in their memory banks and went back to his social media archives. It turns out Mr. Hart is fond of using homophobic slurs on Twitter. 

Gross.

Shortly after this came to light, Mr. hart withdrew from his hosting duties, leaving the Oscar’s host-less. And while I submit that we could simply have a red carpet show followed by posting a list of Oscar winners online and save everyone a lot of trouble, chances are good that the Oscar powers that be are busy reading old tweets from whomever they are considering next.

There are two things that we need to discuss in the aftermath of this. First, we should all know now that our public social media feeds are now part of our professional resumes. If you don’t want your future employment to be affected by past posts, don’t post it. Assume every boss you ever had or ever will have can see your social media posts. Only post what you can live with in the long term.

Second, I flatly refuse the “What? It was years ago and he was being funny!” defense. I hereby declare that the last moment that homophobic humor was excusable was in 1978 with the release of the movie Animal House*. Everything after that is not ok. Kevin hart is a smart man and a good comic and he should know have known better.

In summary, don’t be an asshole on Twitter if you want good jobs later. And don’t make fun of race or sexuality. The end.

*And I’m not even sure about Animal House. Stonewall happened in 1969. Creative people should already have known better by the 70s.

Fox & Friends International: Our newly nominated Ambassador to the UN is Heather Nauert a former Fox and Friends host who has been working as a media flack at State Department. She is best known for talking about US-German cooperation during WWII.

For anyone reading this who is too young to have gotten to WWII in history class or who gets their information from FoxNews personalities, the US and Germany did not cooperate in WWII. Quite the opposite, in fact.  This will not be news to anyone else at the UN, because most countries relay on academic and professional resumes before appointing people to diplomatic posts. Trump apparently reviews headshots. 

Geekout: The new Avengers trailer is out and it is lit.

Speaker Race: The Democrats who voted Nay on Pelosi’s nomination for Speaker of the House are slowly reversing their positions and pledging their support in the final leadership vote in 2019.

Duh.

Voting against Pelosi when she was running unopposed is a nice bit of political theatre. It lets the Members go home and fundraise on the idea of supporting new leadership. They can say “Hey! I tried!” without having actually risked any kind of negative consequence, like, say. a Republican Speaker of the House.

When such a consequence is actually present, these same Members are going to vote for for Pelosi and really? They always were.  Their resistance was performative and transactional. It helped them in their districts and it got Pelosi herself to sit down with them and promise to help them with their other priorities for the coming Congress.

This is how Pelosi plays the game. She lets her caucus beat her up when it will help them at home, so long as it won’t hurt the party as a whole. Once they need to step up and vote with leadership, they do it, because they know if they help her when she needs it, she will help them when they need it.

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care what you or I think of her. She doesn’t care what Republicans think of her. She doesn’t care what the media thinks of her. She has two constituencies: the 12th District of California and the House Democrats. She will do what she can to gain support from those groups of people. If doing that means the rest of us don’t love her, she can live with that.

That’s it from me for this week, folks. Be careful if you’re in the path of the winter storm on the east coast. Everyone, have a great week!

What the Georgia Runoff Told Us

by D.J. McGuire

Tuesday night was Election Runoff Night in Georgia. The results give some hope – and some concern – to both parties.

For the Republicans, victory was sweet for Brad Raffensperger, who held off a strong challenge from Democrat John Barrow to win the Secretary of State position. For Democrats upset at how Raffensperger’s predecessor (Governor-Elect Brian Kemp) handled the job, the defeat was bitter.

That said, it wasn’t all good news for the GOP. Republicans usually do better in runoffs than on Election Day in Georgia, and this was no exception. However, Barrow’s margin of defeat was more than a percentage point lessthan Clinton’s in 2016.

If the Democratic nominee in 2020 merely repeats that one-percent-plus improvement across the nation, then Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and the presidency goes to them – while Florida would be close enough for another of those hand recounts. If Republicans were hoping this election showed a post-midterm return to normal for them, they’re in for a disappointment.

For the Democrats, the loss was painful, but instructive. Barrow, a former Congressman from east Georgia, actually outdid his former running mate Stacey Abrams in rural vote share, but he underperformedin the Atlanta suburbs. Gwinnett County, which went to Abrams by more than 12 points, went for Barrow by barely more than one. Cobb County actually flipped back to the GOP (Abrams won it by nearly 10 points).

Then there was turnout, which wasn’t even 40% of what was seen on Election Day.

Now that we have Barrow’s defeat to add to the story, some things stand out.

First, Stacey Abrams was a better candidate than initially recognized.Conventional wisdom says Barrow, a white male with rural ties, should have done far better than Abrams. He didn’t – even on Election Day it was the performance of the Libertarian in his race that forced the runoff; his share of the vote was lower than Abrams’ share up-ballot. The fact that the Georgia Chamber of Commerce stayed neutral in the race should have been a clue. As it is, now we have some data behind it.

Secondly, the suburbs matter everywhere. Even GOP-leaning states saw their suburban areas pull away from them. They just had enough rural voters to make up the difference. In Georgia, though, they managed to stem some of their losses here, which was enough to counter a weaker rural presence against Barrow. Democrats clearly saw that appealing to rural voters at the expense of the suburbs has consequences – and not good ones.

Finally, African-American candidates help Democrats. One could call Georgia 2018 a microcosm of the Obama 2012 to Clinton 2016 turnout effect. African-American turnout fell from 2012 levels, enough not just to lower Clinton’s popular vote margin but also to turn the Electoral College against her. Now, we saw an African-American “progressive” (I use the quotes because what most conservatives think a “progressive” is and a candidate who doesn’t earn the opprobrium of the local Chamber of Commerce are two very different things) still do better in Georgia than a moderate white ex-Congressman.

I don’t think it’s just about turnout, though. Democrats are caught in an argument about how to rebuild their coalition. Do they attempt to win back “white working class” voters in rural areas? Or do they look to growing their already large margins about racial minorities and younger voters?

For yours truly, neither is as important as winning over center-right independents and moderate Republicans who stuck to Trump in the hope of getting a standard Republican administration and are struck with horror at the rampant trade warrior instead. Those voters are far less likely to cross over to a Democratic Party trying to outdo Trump on protectionism or isolationism – the kinds of things that obsess Democrats worried about “white working class” voters.

It might just be that African-American, Hispanic, or other non-white Democrats – who are spared the advice about “white working class” voters because (1) too many people shallowly assume they can’t win those voters over or (2) many assume that said voters also have serious racial animus behind their support for Trump – can spend more time appealing to supporters for freer trade and genuine internationalism. Whether those candidates themselves appreciate that in 2020, of course, remains to be seen.

In short, Republicans have reasons to be happy and worried, while Democrats have reasons to be frustrated just hopeful, about the elections to come over the next two years.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described progressive conservative – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015. He is also a contributor to Bearing Drift.

Behind the More Perfect Union Scenes

Regular podcast listeners are probably aware that Kevin, D.J., Greg and I are all pretty good friends. We have an ongoing FB message group where we talk about everything from the logistics of setting up recording session to headlines to our ongoing arguments about which Harry Potter book is the best (::cough::Half-Blood Prince ::cough::). Today, we’ve been in near-constant contact, thanks to the combined forces of Kevin holding a grudge and the entire Trump team lying to Congress.

What follows is actual screen shots of a conversation between me and Kevin (I’m in blue, Kevin is gray). He was researching the limitations of Fifth Amendment protections during actual testimony to refute an argument I had made previously, suggesting that you can invoke the Fifth at any time. I was wrong, Kevin was right. Then we segued into Ivanka’s potential jeopardy in the Trump Tower Moscow.  Then…well, see for yourself.

 

There you have it, friends. The intellectual lives of the More Perfect Union cast. Politics, legal analysis, and reality television. We are truly unique in the world of podcasting.

Pop Goes The Political Culture, November 24, 2018

Actual photo of Rebekah and Greg discussing everything Harry Potter.

Greetings, MPU-inverse! It’s been a delightful week of feasting and giving thanks and shopping at small businesses over here. I was hoping that by shopping at Amazon, I would be supporting a future local business but no. No, Amazon decided northern Virginia, just a few miles from where I live was a better locale for a portion of their HQ2. Governor Hogan, Republican and commercial real estate expert couldn’t seal the deal on that big boost to economic growth, whereas Democrat Ralph Northam had no problem. GREAT JOB LARRY! Way to make sure Maryland continues to lag the region in jobs growth!

Grrrr.

The gang and I will be talking a lot about state politics in the next episode so you’ll get to hear more about why I’m really annoyed that Larry “I can’t make economic growth happen” Hogan was re-elected. Until then, here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

We Said “Stay Out!”: Many of you have probably read the story of the American who was killed by residents of Sentinel Island off the coast of India this week. The 26 year old called himself an explorer and adventurer and engaged in missionary work as well. But not the good kind of missionary work where he built shelters and dug wells or something useful. The kind where he showed up in a region where he was prohibited from visiting and tried to convert a group of uncontacted peoples with a history of killing intruders.

Christocentric patriarchal colonialism is a helluva a drug.

Opinion on what the guy was doing are mixed but I think we can all agree that the history of Sentinel Island is fascinating. Basically, it’s a small land mass where people live in neolithic conditions. It’s been overseen by various authorities over the centuries. Barring a period where a particularly foul British general was treating the residents as oddities that he could manipulate and “study” at his own whim, the island’s population have kept themselves apart from the rest of the world. They are, in fact, actively hostile to anyone wandering into their territory and they repsond by shooting arrows at them. They even shot arrows at aid helicopters airlifting supplies to them after a tsunami. They don’t like outsides at all.

I read a fascinating twitter thread on them here. They really have no good reason to trust outsiders and and they protect themselves accordingly.

I hope future busybodies like the missionary who died there take note that these people do not want to buy what they’re selling.

Every Pregnancy A Wanted Pregnancy: When the CDC isn’t doing the incredibly important work of making sure we don’t eat tainted romaine lettuce, they also track other significant health data. Last week, they released a report showing that the abortion rate had dropped to the lowest point in a decade. Before everyone starts crediting Trump policies for this situation, take note that the year for which the CDC was analyzing data was 2015. So, thanks Obama!

The CDC just presented data, not any explanation for why the abortion rate was lower in 2015. Much of the report is mind-bogglingly specific statistics and descriptions of methodology but this one phrase really stood out to me:

However, despite the multiple influences on abortion, because unintended pregnancy precedes nearly all cases of abortions,§§§§§§ efforts to help women avoid pregnancies that they do not desire might reduce the number of abortions (83–85).

Recent data indicate that the proportion of pregnancies in the United States that were unintended decreased from 51% in 2008 to 45% during 2011–2013, after a slight increase from 2001 to 2008 (52).

Seems pretty clear cut to me. When pregnancies are wanted or welcomed, they are completed. Create an environment in which more pregnancies are welcomed and fewer people will terminate them. That means better access to contraception for those who don’t want to be pregnant and better quality of life – including higher wages and lower housing, health care and childcare costs – for those who would raise children if the opportunities presented itself.

Those are the answers folks. Birth control or a pay raise. Either one of those things can stop an abortion. We just need the social will to provide them

Harry Potter and The More Perfect Union: Last week on the podcast Greg sullied my good name by saying my taste in Harry Potter books is faulty. He believes that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is superior to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I beg to differ. I also think JK Rowling is on my side on this matter. While she does not name a favorite book, she does admit that her favorite character is Dumbledore. Since Half-Blood Prince is basically ALL ABOUT DUMBLEDORE, we can infer that she also loves that book very, very much. There is hardly any Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire.

Take that, Greg.

The Once and Future Speaker: The Washington Post published a very good profile of Pelosi and her method of securing support in her run for Speaker in the 116th Congress. In her typical fashion, she is addressing each Member of her caucus and finding out what they need to get to yes, then giving it to them. This isn’t the first time she’s done this and it won’t be the last. This whole discussion reminded me of the last internal battle to pass the ACA. I talked about it in a series of tweets this week.

Nancy Pelosi is the most underrated politician and broker of power in Washington today. We have elevated Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Hillary Clinton to mythic status in the discussions of progressive women’s rise but Pelosi is sometimes overlooked.

This race for Speaker should show everyone that you underestimate her at your own peril.

Tune in for the podcast when it drops so you can hear us discuss all the important political news and for Greg’s rebuttal to my (excellent and undeniable) point about JK Rowling and Dumbledore.