November 12-13, 2016
Nov 12 01:34 Ezekiel Emanuel fights for Obamacare Nov 12 11:31 Gov. Dayton ignores geography Nov 12 15:16 It's never Hillary's fault? Nov 12 15:42 President Obama's legacy? Nov 13 01:29 President Obama's state of denial Nov 13 02:29 Wolgamott to request recount Nov 13 08:16 Mapping this election Nov 13 13:05 The Democratic civil war starts Nov 13 19:05 Biased media, DFL, getting it wrong
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Ezekiel Emanuel fights for Obamacare
Thursday night, Megyn Kelly interviewed Ezekiel Emanuel, whom she called "the architect of Obamacare." Dr. Emanuel told several untruths, starting with his saying that "The Republicans keep talking about 'repeal and replace' but they've never given a credible bill that gets everyone insurance, including people who have pre-existing conditions at an affordable price."
Based on a quote from this article , that's BS. In the MPR article, University of Minnesota health policy expert Steve Parente is quoted as saying " Rather than flat-out abolishing Obamacare, Parente thinks it's more likely that Congress will lean toward House Speaker Paul Ryan's reform proposal. That uses tax credits to help people cover the cost of their insurance. Under the Ryan proposal, Parente says it's possible MNsure could survive because that plan allows for more state experimentation."
That sounds like a proposal that would help people with pre-existing conditions get insured. While Emanuel apparently doesn't like it, it's certainly a credible plan. Later in the interview, Emanuel said "What they're proposing are these high-risk pools, not just to have a number of people who are older or sicker, but to super-concentrate them to give them subsidized coverage at the state level. It's about the most inefficient way of giving people insurance for just those 3,000,000 people in those high risk pools that costs $25,000,000,000 to pay for them. That is not a good proposal."
Apparently, Dr. Parente thinks differently:
Another option would be to return to Minnesota's insurance system prior to the ACA, he said, which includes the Minnesota Comprehensive Insurance Association. That program guaranteed coverage to people with expensive pre-existing conditions who were turned down in the private insurance market.
Let's be clear about this. The architect of the ACA is lecturing us about what's efficient and what isn't. Dr. Emanuel's credibility on this issue doesn't exist.
Let's stipulate that anyone who helped put the ACA together should be ignored in replacing the ACA. It's the sane thing to do.
Posted Saturday, November 12, 2016 1:34 AM
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Gov. Dayton ignores geography
This article highlights how out-of-touch Gov. Dayton is. It says that Gov. Dayton thinks the 2011 government shutdown was the Republicans' fault. It wasn't. He said that Republicans were extremists in 2011. According to the AP article, "Though Dayton conceded Minnesota voters are divided and said he was willing to compromise when he's outnumbered for a second time, he put the blame for 2011's discord squarely on Republicans. 'They were the extremists. They were unwilling to compromise,' he said."
During the 2012 campaign, DFL candidates insisted that they were moderates. Minnesotans voted to give the DFL legislative majorities in the House and Senate. In 2014, voters thoroughly rejected the DFL, restoring Republicans to the majority in the House. In 2016, the first time DFL senators were up for re-election since giving the DFL total control of St. Paul, voters dumped the DFL as the majority party in the Minnesota State Senate.
According to the article, "Dayton had urged voters to send him Democratic Legislature, the path of least resistance to his goal of expanding early education and metropolitan transit options for his final two years in office. Dayton said Wednesday that he knew a Democratic takeover of the House was a reach but that he expected to hold the Senate." Think of 2016 as a total repudiation of Gov. Dayton's agenda.
This video strongly suggests that Gov. Dayton will attempt to mischaracterize Republicans as extremists:
This portion of Gov. Dayton's press availability lays the foundation for that belief:
GOV. DAYTON: Minnesotans are very narrowly divided. That was very clear in the vote for president, very clear in the vote for some of the contested congressional races. It was very clear in the vote for the Minnesota State Legislature. We are a closely divided electorate in Minnesota and across the nation. The question now for all of us who have the responsibility to lead is if we're going to push those divides farther or are we going to do what we can to rise above them and to bring people together.
While this election's results were tight mathematically, voters sent a clear message to politicians.
Nationally, President-Elect Trump tapped into what I'm calling rural frustration. Big city elitists essentially ignored people who worked in mines or built infrastructure. In Minnesota, the DFL minorities in the House and Senate are mostly from urban areas.
The DFL lost seats on the Range. Tom Saxhaug and Tom Anzelc, 2 longtime DFL stalwarts, got thumped. Anzelc lost by almost 2,500 votes. Saxhaug lost by 545 votes. The DFL lost seats in rural Minnesota in 2014. It's indisputable that the DFL doesn't understand rural Minnesota. It's like the DFL thinks of Willmar, Alexandria, Brainerd and Marshall as foreign planets.
The summarization is simple. While Minnesotans are tightly divided numerically, they're essentially divided geographically. As long as the Metrocrats dominate the DFL, that won't change anytime soon.
Posted Saturday, November 12, 2016 11:31 AM
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It's never Hillary's fault?
According to this article , Hillary Clinton's supporters are blaming her defeat on FBI Director Jim Comey. That isn't surprising but it isn't the truth, either.
According to the article, "Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri and other Clinton aides sought to provide explanations during a private conference call Thursday with supporters of the Democratic nominee for a loss that to many came out of nowhere. They were pressed on the call for answers and insight from supporters stung by the surprise loss. At one point on the call, Podesta noted that Comey is the guy 'who we think may have cost us the election,' according to one Clinton surrogate who relayed details about the call to The Hill."
During a recent interview with Bret Baier, Trey Gowdy demolished Podesta's arguments, saying that Jim Comey didn't tell Hillary to use a private server. Nor did he tell Ms. Abedin not to turn over all of her emails. Chairman Gowdy finished, saying that "God knows that he didn't tell Anthony Weiner to send sexually explicit texts to allegedly underage people." This video tells the tale:
Hillary lost because she was the worst presidential candidate they've nominated since I started voting for presidents in 1976. Al Gore and John Kerry were terrible, too, but they didn't have the ethical and potentially criminal baggage hanging over them like Hillary did.
Let's be clear about something. Hillary would've lost this election by 8-12 points if not for the media's propping her up for the last eighteen months of the campaign.
Posted Saturday, November 12, 2016 3:16 PM
Comment 1 by eric z at 13-Nov-16 09:31 AM
Candidate Clinton lost because progressives saw zero cause to vote for her since she like Bubba is GOP lite.
Add to that, her phony facial expressions and forced stupid laugh, and she came across as a poor choice for glass ceiling breaking, since a strong, high-character, fully honest no-bullshit candidate would be needed to do so, with Madeline Albright locked in a closet for the duration, much as happens with some during university pledge weeks.
Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gebhard, there are honest, bright, and policy-correct Dems. It's that the entrenched power holders in the party: mediocre superdelegates, lobbyists, bankers, and other establishment decision makers favored losing with a Clinton than winning with a reformer.
Comment 2 by eric z at 13-Nov-16 09:34 AM
In describing an ideal glass ceiling breaker, I forgot, bribe-free.
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 13-Nov-16 12:35 PM
Eric, stay tuned for my next post on what Democrats need to do.
President Obama's legacy?
Rich Lowry's article highlights President Obama's legacy. Saying that it's a dismal legacy for Democrats is understatement. Lowry nailed it by noting "What was supposed to be the crowning political achievement of Barack Obama's presidency set the predicate for the unraveling of his legacy. Since before he was elected president, Obama put down as a marker the transformational example of Ronald Reagan. That entailed moving the political center of gravity of the country in his direction; winning re-election; and cementing his standing by securing a de facto third term for a Democratic successor."
That's a good observation but he added to his opinion with substantive information when he wrote "His party has been devastated beneath him. It began in 2010, when Republicans took the House by winning 63 seats, the biggest pickup since 1948, and six seats in the Senate. In 2014, Republicans gained another 13 House seats and took control of the Senate. Democrats lost more than 900 state legislative seats in this period."
The statistics in Lowry's posts are true. Still, they don't tell the story like this picture does:
Actually, this picture might be more devastating:
Then there's this:
Results are still trickling in, but it looks like Republicans will still control an all-time high 69 of 99 state legislative chambers. They'll hold at least 33 governorships, tying a 94-year-old record.
That means that come 2017, they'll have total control of government in at least 25 states, and partial control in 20 states. According to population calculations by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, that translates to roughly 80 percent of the population living in a state either all or partially controlled by Republicans.
Word it whichever way you'd like. These statistics say the same thing. President Obama had a dramatic negative effect on the Democratic Party over the last 8 years.
Posted Saturday, November 12, 2016 3:42 PM
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President Obama's state of denial
This NY Times article highlights the fact that liberals haven't come to grips with the fact that the nation rejected President Obama's agenda this past Tuesday night.
Dan Pfeiffer, a senior advisor to President Obama, said "It was not a rejection of Obama or Obama-ism. It was probably more about the two candidates running in this election." It's indisputable that Hillary wasn't a good candidate. Still, this isn't an either-or situation. Just like FBI Director Jim Comey didn't lose this election for Hillary, it's equally true that President Obama's policies tied a millstone around Hillary's neck, too.
Obamacare was something that Mrs. Clinton couldn't avoid. With premiums skyrocketing right before the election, Hillary was essentially silent. Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, Bill Clinton and Gov. Dayton criticized the ACA right before the election. From that point forward, Mrs. Clinton was trapped in an impossible situation. From that point forward, President Obama's signature achievement was attacked. It will be largely dismantled, which is good news for families because it's hurt more people than it's helped.
President Obama's aides are citing President Obama's accomplishments:
Moreover, although Mr. Obama said that all of his progress would go "out the window," advisers now argue the opposite: that many accomplishments cannot be overturned. He will be remembered, they said, for pulling the country out of the Great Recession, saving the auto industry, bringing home most troops fighting overseas, killing Osama bin Laden, enacting higher fuel efficiency standards and restoring relations with Cuba.
Killing bin Laden was something big that he'll deservedly get credit for. I don't think he'll get credit for pulling the nation out of the Great Recession, though. TARP was enacted before the 2008 election. That pulled us out of the Great Recession. Further, Obamanomics never worked that well. Economic growth has been anemic for 8 years. (It's difficult to claim that President Obama pulled us out of the Great Recession when economic growth was virtually nonexistent for 8 years.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to say that President Obama pulled us out of the Great Recession when voters elected Donald Trump. Trump specifically ran on a program that's intent on reversing most of President Obama's economic agenda. Trump plans on enacting tax reform, including the lowering of marginal tax rates, regulatory reform that's killing the energy industry and repealing the ACA. I'm betting that this talking point will disappear once those things are enacted and the economy starts growing at a robust clip.
Bringing the troops home is something President Obama's political base will appreciate but I don't think the nation at-large agrees. They won't agree because the price of bringing the troops home was the rise of ISIS.
This is President Obama from Fantasyland sounds like:
"When I think about the polarization that occurred in 2009 and 2010, I've gone back and I've looked at my proposals and my speeches and the steps we took to reach out to Congress," he told the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in a pre-election conversation published by Vanity Fair. "And the notion that we weren't engaging Congress or that we were overly partisan or we didn't schmooze enough, or we didn't reach out enough to Republicans - that whole narrative just isn't true."
First, Speaker Boehner didn't reject President Obama's stimulus plan out of hand. Second, it was President Obama that rejected the Republicans' ideas without giving them serious consideration. He told Eric Cantor that "elections have consequences. You lost."
When his policies get dismantled, which is inevitable, he'll have nobody but himself, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to blame.
Posted Sunday, November 13, 2016 1:29 AM
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Wolgamott to request recount
This St. Cloud Times article reports that Dan Wolgamott "will formally request a recount after the canvassing boards of Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties and the state have certified the election results." Wolgamott was defeated by Jerry Relph in the election to see who would represent SD-14 in the State Senate for 2017-2021.
According to the article, "Wolgamott said he would request the recount 'to ensure that our voting process was as fair and accurate as Minnesotans expect it to be.'" The truth is that he won't win. If Mr. Wolgamott doesn't know that, then it's a good thing he wasn't elected because he isn't smart enough to represent SD-14.
Seriously, it's impossible to make up a 142-vote margin in a race where 37,000 votes were cast. When King Banaian was elected to represent HD-15B in November, 2010, he initially won by 10 votes. That triggered an automatic recount. In the recount, Dr. Banaian gained an additional 4 votes. Carol Lewis, his opponent that year, gained 1 vote, meaning that Dr. Banaian officially won by 13 votes, not 10.
In 2014, Jim Knoblach defeated Zach Dorholt by 69 votes. Dorholt didn't bother asking for a recount, probably because he knew it was a lost cause.
To be fair, it's entirely possible that the DFL powers-that-be might've ordered Wolgamott to request a recount because the majority of the Senate potentially hangs on the outcome to this race.
Posted Sunday, November 13, 2016 2:29 AM
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Mapping this election
If pictures are worth 1,000 words each, then this election has given us a ton of words worth pondering. Before getting to the pictures, though, it's important to establish a foundation for why these pictures happened. Victor Davis Hanson wrote this article , which explains, at least in part, why Hillary was doomed before the start.
Dr. Hanson correctly states "even as Obama left the Democrats with ideological and political detritus, he also had established an electoral calculus built on his own transformative identity that neither had coattails nor was transferrable to other candidates. Indeed, his hard-left positions on redistribution, social issues, sanctuary cities, amnesty, foreign policy, and spending would likely doom candidates other than himself who embraced them ." It doesn't end there, though.
Dr. Hanson is right in stating "What then has the Democratic Party become other than a hard left and elite progressive force, which without Obama's personal appeal to bloc-voting minorities, resonates with only about 40 percent of the country. The Democratic Party is now neither a centrist nor a coalition party." This graphic helps illustrate Dr. Hanson's point:
This graphic paints a bleak picture for the Sanders/Warren/Ellison wing of the Democratic Party:
It's impossible to be a national party when you don't control any levers of power in Washington, DC, especially when you control the governorship and legislature in only 2 states. Democrats hold only 15 governorships and 30 of the 99 legislative bodies (Nebraska is unicameral). It's difficult to spin that into a picture of being a vibrant national party. That's the picture of a decaying regional party at best.
These pictures illustrate the transformation Donald Trump brought to the GOP:
Posted Sunday, November 13, 2016 8:16 AM
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The Democratic civil war starts
This article in The Hill points to the Democrats' uncivil war within the ranks. What's important to highlight is the fact that both sides are right.
For instance, The Hill reports that Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former Labor Secretary, said "This has been a huge refutation of establishment politics and the political organization has got to be changed...if the Democratic Party can't do it, we'll do it through a third party."
Later in the article, an unnamed Democratic strategist said "The Sanders people should be mad at themselves. If they had come out to vote, Donald Trump wouldn't be president. If they were trying to prove a point, all they've done is further damage everything they claim to be fighting for. It's somewhat typical of that crowd."
It's indisputable that Hillary Clinton represented the establishment. It's indisputable, too, that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren don't represent the establishment whatsoever. Anti-Establishment Democrats face a dilemma as do Establishment Democrats in that Tuesday night represented a refutation of anti-Establishment policies and a refutation of Establishment politicians.
Robert Reich definitely believes in the uber-left's policies. It isn't a secret that he's a true believer. That being said, there's no doubt that the unnamed strategist quoted earlier is right. Running farther to the left will hurt Democrats. I wrote here that Democrats of all stripes have been rejected. Typical Democratic policies like income inequality and minimum wage simply aren't appealing to many people. The American people want pro-growth policies where people at the lower economic rungs have a chance of becoming the next Bill Gates, Michael Dell or Fred Smith.
The Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the Party is too focused on what I'd call the jealous wing of the Democratic Party. Similarly, the Establishment wing of the Democratic Party is in disrepair. In this article, Krystal Ball proclaims "Call me crazy, but I don't think Wall Street's favorite senator, Chuck Schumer, and San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi are the ideal people to address the economic anxiety of middle- and working-class Americans and credibly call for reform."
She's right. Schumer and Pelosi haven't had a fresh idea in over a decade. They're contributing nothing. It's time to put them out of our misery. In the end, this picture symbolizes the upcoming Democratic Party's uncivil war:
Posted Sunday, November 13, 2016 1:05 PM
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Biased media, DFL, getting it wrong
This Our View editorial in the Mankato Free Press gets it wrong. That isn't surprising. It's predictable. Let's look at what the MFP got wrong.
MFP's headline is simple: "Our View: Legislature : Make divided government work." Let's be clear about something. Republicans gained seats in the House during a presidential election. While they were expected to hold onto their majority in the House, it was expected that they'd have fewer members than they started 2015 with. Republicans gained a net of 6 seats in the Senate, defeating 4 incumbents, flipping 3 open seats previously held by the DFL, then losing Senate Minority Leader Hann's district in Eden Prairie.
The thing that brought the GOP their majorities is known to everyone paying attention to this election. In district after district, voters frequently rejected the ACA, often by wide margins. What's astonishing is that 52 of the 76 GOP victories in the House races were won with more than 58% of the vote, something that's unprecedented in MNGOP history. In race after race, MNGOP candidates said that fixing MNsure and the ACA were the most important, most frequently, issues mentioned by voters.
Republicans have offered plans to fix the most important parts of the ACA. The DFL has offered a one-time fix for skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Factor in that the DFL created MNsure without a single Republican vote. That brings us to this indisputable truth: the DFL needs to come in the Republicans' direction. In the vast majority of races, voters rejected the DFL's ideas on health care.
These paragraphs are especially disgusting:
Recent news stories reported that DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and GOP House Speaker Kurt Daudt "struck combative tones" for the upcoming legislative session with the Republicans in control of the Legislature. We hope both leaders get rid of those combative tones sooner than later.
The people of Minnesota find such tones tiresome. Last year's legislative session left too much important work undone. Tax breaks for famers and small business, major bonding projects and road funding were left at the table.
There was a time when politicians worked to do what's best for Minnesotans. That's disappeared with Dayton. He's done what his special interest puppeteers told him to do. It's his obligation to move in Speaker Daudt's direction because voters rejected the DFL's ideas on health care. Voters rejected the DFL's tax policies, too. Again, it's Gov. Dayton's and the DFL's obligation to move in the Republicans' direction on fixing MNsure and taxes.
If Gov. Dayton, Lt. Gov. Smith and the DFL insist on not listening to the message voters sent on Election Day again, they'll soon be removed from controlling any of Minnesota's levers of power. That's because they'll soon be dealing with a Republican governor and GOP majorities in the Minnesota House and Minnesota Senate. It's that simple.
Posted Sunday, November 13, 2016 7:05 PM
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