The quiet men won

In 1952,  in the wake of nerve and life-shattering World War II, the movie "The Quiet Man",  won the hearts of a nation.  John Ford, the director got an academy award and John Wayne made his mark starring in a non-western.  This week the quiet men won, too.  Competence and credibility spoke louder than any tweet or shouts over helicopter engines or exhortation from a rally podium.

Joe Biden, who had no campaign money, no get out the vote on the ground organization,  no fancy in house polling to target voters,  no multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, no thousands attending his rallies, won even in Michigan. Why?  His years in the public arena spoke louder than any the tools magnifying modern campaigners' shrill voices and high tech methods.  A quote uttered by a mourner of FDR's death and repeated by more than one candidate this winter, "we know him and he knows us",  was a message that rang clear to a wide and diverse group of demographics. Biden's blue-collar  Scranton PA roots, the tragedies in his life that shaped him to be a dignified empathy in chief, and his having Pres. Obama's back for eight years spoke louder than any words.  His most effective inoculation against his opponent's attacks on his person, that his stutter speech impediment means he is senile or demented, failed as his confidence returned in his voice and he appeared back on his game. The Russian disinformation machine is betting on their bots and the Trumpsters' tactics to paint  Biden as over the hill.  Tuesday showed many ignored Joe's life long stuttering problems causing him to search for words and they still preferred him over, crowd-rousing orators.   His quieter voice contrasted with the current occupant to the White House and served to elevate Biden's appeal as a competent, effective, and experienced public servant.  His quiet voice won.

More quiet men spoke. Vice President  Mike Pence quietly conducted a Coronavirus update press conference and allowed the scientists and experts to speak.  His administrative experience as a governor and development of voter support for public policy initiatives kicked in, garnering praise from numerous media pundits.  Getting nationwide recognition for his efforts,  Colorado's Governor Jared Polis quietly explained on national television why seventeen confirmed cases of Coronavirus (including those in Vail and Summit County)  in Colorado triggered his declaration of a state of emergency.  It gave him tools to give special attention to protecting the most at-risk citizens and expanding access to testing. He announced he was directing the  Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to ensure paid sick leave for workers in food handling, hospitality, child care, health care and education who are awaiting testing and to find ways to cover sick leave for people whose employers do not provide it, such as unemployment insurance.

https://www.cpr.org/2020/03/10/colorado-coronavirus-update-gov-polis-announcement/

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-colorado-state-of-emergency/

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/colorado-governor-declares-state-of-emergency-over-coronavirus-covid-19-2020-3

More thoughts about Biden's unexpected surge on March 10.

I really do not know who is pushing whom...the voters or some controlling factor in DNC, because I am not aware if the DNC had phone banks or other techniques to get that kind of turnout and vote for Biden. Biden was broke, had no ground organization or advertising bucks, but the voters already knew him and who he was and knew where he was coming from and why. That was the upside of his being effective and left of center all of his many years of public life. However, the DNC may have had a great deal of pressure on those candidates in the "moderate" lane to endorse Biden just before the March 10 vote. Except for a few states, Bernie's votes were in the mid-'30s and if the "moderate lane" candidate votes were added together, the moderate lane total was higher than the Bernie/Warren votes. That was true in Colorado. The DNC is rather broke, too. In a perfect world, idealism should prevail and addressing people's needs should be the motivation for voting for this or that. It usually is. This year what is unusual is that the electorate is thinking strategically. That never has happened in my years in politics. I think Bernie is making a mistake is claiming voters for Biden were the "establishment". Voters for him probably do not think of themselves as "establishment" . and puzzling, too. It was a simultaneous and organic uprising of the middle, not a manipulated one by media or some incredible political organizing. That this time electability is foremost may have been foremost for two reasons: hating Trump and what he stands for and the sad realization that if the candidate is not electable, we give Trump 4 more years to work his evil. I think those character issues and Trump's misogynism accounted for the suburban women surge in turnout. Why did then every single county in Michigan go for Biden instead of Bernie? I had not expected that either at all. I do not know. why, but I can speculate. Partly I suspect that Biden was not Hillary. Hillary had no blue-collar bonafide unlike Biden and the other, much to my feminist dismay, Biden was not an aggressive woman. I am working through my channels to get Biden to embrace Bernie's priorities if not his method of a socialist revolution. and changing the basic economic structure of the country. I am looking forward to the debate on Sunday to see how Biden responds to Bernie's clear issue challenge. Hopefully, Biden rephrases the goal and methods and embraces similar goals and concepts. I think most voters like Bernie's goals, just not using a revolution to get there and will settle for Bernie light. Another factor, voters realize that unless there is a blue wave that brings in a blue Senate (and enough to threaten the filibuster) and keeps the House...and occupies the White House, neither Bernie's platform and or Biden's have a prayer in hell of being enacted for years. Another factor, speaking as an old person, it is a demographic that has a gut negative reaction to the word socialism and communism. The younger generations have not gone through the cold war and do not fear the word. The Michigan vote was a bit like Obama and Iowa. Biden had to demonstrate he could win in a state where the majority electorate in the primary was not African American but was representative of the rust belt states exactly the ones that swung to Trump in 2016. Biden is right about the importance of the youth vote, and I hope the party and Biden can come together. In the long view, I think none of this will be factors in November. There will be a huge voter hangover from the Coronavirus and a realization among the unaffiliated and more rational republicans that Trump is an incompetent fool and Biden's experience is to be valued. I also think the Coronavirus has exposed and laid bare the failure of our current health system and such issues as paid sick leave and levers the government can use to remedy the gaps of capitalism that progressives support. A word about Grand County...our demographics are not typical of the rest of the nation: we are 89% White, with only 8% foreign-born/or ethnic or racial minority. It is no wonder Trumpists carry the county and Democrats have been in the minority. I do not have much faith this will change in the future until the demographics change.

Democratic candidates smell and draw blood on health care

A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News, July 5, 2019.
https://www.skyhinews.com/opinion/opinion-democrats-smell-and-draw-blood-on-health-care-issues/

 Democrats smell blood when it comes to health care as a winning issue. The danger is that the loyalties to various kinds of proposals and their partisan proponents become such a  divisive issue, it loses in 2020. Any hope to improve health insurance to any degree during a Trump second term would be lost as well. 

 Democratic candidate debates last week have renewed the national focus on health care policy because nearly all of the twenty on stage put it on or near the top of the issues they addressed. It is no wonder. A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll in June 2019 before the debates found that 87% of Democrats put health care at the top of the list for candidates to discuss. The various candidates touted their approaches and criticized their opponents' health care plans with enough passion and drawing blood with criticism to give rise to the fear that the party is seriously divided.

 Both Republican and Democratic strategists will be sharpening their swords on the issue. In the 2018 midterms, coverage of pre-existing conditions was the hot button topic, even forcing Trump and some GOP candidates to pledge to protect pre-existing condition coverage without even providing a plan of how to do it or its cost.  

 What we can expect is for the GOP to claim that any plan with Medicare for All in its title or any variations thereof is nothing but socialism, a term that frightens GOP voters, but it does not scare most  Democrats,  especially younger ones, per a recent Pew Research Center poll.  The GOP has a grand old historical tradition of calling "socialism"  any government provided assistance to seniors such as Medicare and Social Security and they have begun beating the war drums against Medicare for All now with the same fire breathing tactics of yore. They would benefit from seeing the health care debate becoming lost in a socialism v capitalism controversy.

In taking sides of the various health care proposals,  Democrats could lose sight of who are the real enemies. They are the GOP who failed in their first attempt to repeal without replacing Obamacare and the Trump administration who would sabotage Obamacare out of existence, making it either unaffordable for many consumers or economically unsustainable.  Using executive orders,  Trump has eliminated the mandate for all to be insured and now permits employers to provide junk and cheaper insurance plans without all of the essential benefits.  Both of these  Trump actions are undermining the balance in the  "pool" of potential claimants. Increasing the numbers in the pool of those who use the benefits more than those who do not, leaves more of the sicker more expensive to treat in the pool,  increasing the costs for all of the participants and taxpayers associated with Obamacare.   There are fears that if employers offer poorer quality insurance plans,  they will dump the underinsured or uninsured sicker into Obamacare, unbalancing the pool even more.  Trump will want voters to buy his promises to repeal Obamacare with no comparable replacement proposals. Trump voters were pacified by those empty promises in 2016 and again in 2018 and may believe him again in 2020. 


There are several fundamental issues that may decide which plan comes out on top. One is the cost of the total replacement of Obamacare with Medicare compared to the public option method that allows consumers to buy into Medicare as a choice within or outside of Obamacare exchanges. The cost to taxpayers or to consumers of any Medicare for All plan at this stage is speculative and subject to self-serving claims. In fact, we may never get the official nonpartisan actuarial cost projections until the Congressional Budget Office weighs in on specific legislation being proposed in Congress. 

 The cost factor is not the only a worry to taxpayers, but it is also Important to consumers who fear they still have to pay too much out of their own pockets in co-pays and deductibles in any plan. Bernie Sanders proposed to replace all health insurance, Obamacare, employer or union provided, or private plans with Medicare for All. Sanders will have to convince voters higher taxes will be offset by the elimination of premiums and lower out of pocket expenses.  An issue that may scuttle the Sanders type proposal is the loss of union or employer-provided insurance, private plans, or supplementals. being proposed by him and some Democratic party candidates. The issue is fluid.  What was revealed in the KFF poll is that voters currently do not have a clear picture of the differences between the various Medicare for All proposals. The majority feared taxes would increase, there would still be deductibles and co-pays,  and 55% thought employer health insurance would still be provided. 

 Sen. Kamala Harris has supported both Sanders' plan and public options in the past and clarified her position after the debate to permit private insurance to exist in any case.  Julian Castro and Andrew Yang along with Sen. Kristen Gillibrand in the debate, and/or in prior public statements supported Medicare or Medicaid for All closer to the Sanders' model, but still permitted some limited private insurance.  The remainder of the debaters, including former vice president Joe Biden, supported the public option approach to some degree or another and would not eliminate private or employer insurance. 



_________________________________________________________________________
  
https://newsatjama.jama.com/2019/01/03/jama-forum-the-2018-midterm-election-results-and-health-care/
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-june-2019/

https://time.com/5616864/2020-democratic-candidates-health-care/

 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/436162-medicare-for-all-where-2020-dems-stand 

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/25/stark-partisan-divisions-in-americans-views-of-socialism-capitalism/

• 
  
•