From Death Spiral to Death Panels: the Republican Way in Health Care

By | March 7, 2017
Yesterday I suggested four boxes of the health insurance reform complex: the ObamaCare exchanges, Medicaid, Medicare, and financing. In this post we consider the exchanges. Currently, over ten million people have insurance through the health insurance markets, or exchanges, established by ObamaCare. Many are subsidized. Some are getting a good deal on plans they could… Read More »

Will the Democrats Unite Against Neil Gorsuch?

By | March 6, 2017
Do the Democrats have a backbone? We may find out soon, if and when President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court comes to a head. Eleven progressive groups, including unions, environmental and pro-choice organizations, have sent a letter to the Democratic caucus in the Senate urging them to stiffen their spines on… Read More »

The War on the Ill

By | March 6, 2017
If we’re not invaded by Russians first, health insurance is about to become Topic A, as trolls on Capitol Hill ready the Republican repeal-and-WTF bill on ‘ObamaCare.’ We’ve all heard about divisions between black and white, male and female, young and old, immigrant and native-born. There’s another one that will be critical in the health… Read More »

Turning Ohio Blue: Sherrod Brown’s Populist Vision

By | March 5, 2017
This week Sherrod Brown, the Democratic senator from Ohio, unveiled a detailed roadmap for progressive populists who’d like to invigorate the Democratic Party’s focus on economic fairness. In “Working Too Hard for Too Little: A Plan for Restoring the Value of Work in America,” Brown, elected to the Senate in 2006, did something that few… Read More »

Sanders and Beshear: Compare and Contrast

By | March 2, 2017
3 comments
Millions of Democrats and independents who watched Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday night may have looked forward eagerly to the official Democratic Party response. It was delivered in folksy style by former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear. If those Democrats were looking for a clarion call to arms from Beshear, they didn’t get one.… Read More »

Tomorrow Belongs to Me

By | March 1, 2017
2 comments
The president didn’t throw up, so it went well. For him, this was a well-delivered speech. It was tailored to the same folks who showed up at his rallies. As such, it was a puzzle whose pieces can appeal to some but which do not fit together. One impossibility is clawing back regulation, reducing Federal employment, and… Read More »

The Lessons of the DNC Election

By | February 27, 2017
4 comments
The effort to rethink, rebuild, and reorganize the Democratic Party, and to yank it sharply to the left, didn’t end with the defeat of Keith Ellison’s bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday. It has just begun. And it’s happening all over the country. It would have helped, of course, to… Read More »

DNC Vote: Establishment 1, Progressives 0

By | February 25, 2017
Never mind that most of the energy in the hall in Atlanta was there for Keith Ellison, and that much of the energy in the streets, led by dozens of progressive groups, was organized by Ellison’s allies. In an unmistakable rebuff to the Democratic Party’s left and the wing of the party that backed Senator… Read More »

A Test in New Jersey

By | February 23, 2017
The following article originally appeared in The Nation on February 22, 2017. Whither the Democrats after 2016? A year before the 2018 midterm elections, that question will get its first real test in New Jersey, one of only two states (along with Virginia) where the governorship is at stake this year. And just as last… Read More »