I swear to God, you can’t teach this kind of stupid. And there is nothing in science showing that it is either genetic or inherited either. Which leaves us with only one possible explanation. The GOP Senators are actually interstellar refugees from the stupidest fucking planet in the solar system.
Right now, all of the attention in politics is centered on the GOP’s naked power grab in attempting to fill Justice Ginsberg’s seat. There are all kinds of dire threats and warnings flying around, and battle plans for retaliation. This is the kind of shit I got into politics for in the first place.
Right now, there are three major areas being affected that are the hot spots. One, Trump gleefully opines that he wants that seat filled by election day, so that he has an ironclad majority of justices ready to coronate him for another four years. A more belated consequence in terms of the calendar would be the eventual overturning of Roe v Wade. which, given current polling would be an action fraught with peril for the GOP to take. The third one is that the ACA case will be heard the week after the election, and another conservative justice would all but guarantee the law’s repeal.
This is the one where the GOP totally has its head up its ass. Let’s say that the Democrats win the White House and the Senate in the finalized tallies. The SCOTUS hears the ACA case the next week. With a solid majority of conservatives on the court, the deliberations may not take very long before the law is overturned. Which means that Joe Biden will take the oath of office on January 20thy with millions of more Americans newly uninsured, and in the middle of a pandemic that Trump worsened.
Let’s just take a quick look back at the ACA. That quickly became Obama’s spotlight first term agenda issue, and it pushed pretty much everything aside. And even so, it took almost a year to hammer the legislation through for Obama to sign into law.
And this is where the Republicans let their bloodlust to overturn the ACA and Row v Wade, and it is blinding their best judgement. Joe Biden is not running on Medicare for all. Biden is rightfully proud of the ACA, and his role in passing it. His plan is to strengthen and improve the ACA, while letting people who would rather opt for a form of Medicare for all do so. That’s his platform, and he’s sticking to it.
But what happens if Joe Biden takes the oath of office, and the Affordable Care Act is as dead as Paddy’s pig? Biden doesn’t even have the framework for a new healthcare plan, much less the detailed plan itself. Everything he wants to do is based on the ACA providing the framework. With tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and a raging pandemic quite possibly in the middle of the second wave, with the flu thrown in, does Biden have 18 months to try to craft a new healthcare plan and get it passed?
Maybe Biden doesn’t have a ready made healthcare plan available, but Bernie Sanders sure as hell does. And as he likes to remind everybody, he wrote the damn thing, and it’s in bill form, ready to go. Let’s be fair, the majority of the progressive caucus wants Medicare for all, they’re tolerating Biden’s plan because he presents the best shot at getting rid of Trump. But once Biden’s plan sleeps with the fishes along with the ACA, progressive pressure to go with Bernie’s bird-in-the-hanbd is going to be crushing.
And I believe it will fly through. Once the reality sets in, and all of those red state Trombies who had been getting coverage through Medicaid suddenly find that their family can’t go to the doctor, they’ll scream for action. And the quickest path to providing universal medical coverage is passing Sanders’ Medicare for all plan.
Back in 2009, the more progressive Democrats were already screaming for Medicare for all, and the GOP had cardiac kittens. They trotted out Caribou Barbie and “death panels for granny.” And they got their wish, Obama ended up with a watered down health plan full of holes, and unpopular at the roll out to boot. But in their desperation to finally keep a promise that nobody even wants them to keep anymore, they could actually end up sticking themselves with their healthcare nightmare, and throwing away all of those lovely insurance industry campaign contributions. Ain’t irony a bitch?
I think the more likely result will be this: Schumer finally shows some spine and kills the filibuster. Democrats have long had a number of improvements they’ve wanted to make to the ACA and by the time the new Congress convenes they should have a draft bill that includes a brand new ACA with those fixes. And includes the thing that Obama traded away in the naive (yes – I said it!) hope that at least some Republicans would vote for the original ACA.
The PUBLIC OPTION. It can be either being able to buy in to the federal government system, or Medicare or the inclusion of either. Once that door is cracked open people who have freaked about the possibility of losing their private insurance will see friends, co-workers and family getting as good or better coverage and for less money than their precious private plans and within a few years it will be game over. Sure, the GOP will go back to court and try the whole kill it via SCOTUS doing the very thing conservatives howl about r.e. Democratically appointed judges and Justices – “legislating from the bench.”
SCOTUS likes to think of itself as insulated from the public and politics but the current Federalist Society Five is watching events closely, and I’ve got a feeling that while Clarence “Hurt Feelings” Thomas and Brewki Brett “It doesn’t count as sexual assault or rape cause I was wasted” Kavanaugh won’t budge the other three, Roberts, Gorsuch (who knows he’s in a stolen seat) and Scalia who is lost without the other half of what used to be called “Scalito” will know damn well overwhelmed the credibility of the Court. I even suspect that behind the scenes, realizing what might unfold including court packing those thee are BEGGING McConnell to back off. They will still have a 5-4 majority for at least a while and it only takes four votes to accept Cert on a case from the appellate level. There are plenty in the pipeline they can do their nasty deeds with when the heat over this has died down.
Roberts in particular doesn’t want the seat filled right away precisely because of the ACA which he knows will cripple the GOP up and down the ballot for years to come. Only Justices who hear oral arguments can vote on a decision and he probably figures he can wrangle Gorsuch to uphold the ACA as is. He didn’t want this mess before the Court. And given his somewhat torturous logic in his decision upholding it he’s willing to twist into a pretzel to make the whole thing go away.
Anyway, I think that’s a more likely option than a Medicare for all bill. 2022 is around the corner and we don’t want or need a repeat of 2010 and my suggestion takes the steam of of conservative’s sails to gin up the same anger they did over the ACA by denying them their “The gud-dam fedrul gubmit forced you into SOCIALIZED MEDICINE ads. Give the masses a few years to see how much people other than seniors like Medicare, insurance companies time to come up with private versions and plans that cover gaps AND Congress to pass stuff that will prevent the kinds of shenanigans currently going on with “Medicare Advantage” plans or alternatives that only seem more attractive and as I said the public will be ready for Medicare for all and it won’t cost us politically.
I’d have to put some thought into it…but assuming a radical right court kills the ACA, what’s the chance that M4A has a shot?
I firmly believe that the ACA is the best way to go, but it needs a lot of work. One of the things that it needs is to incorporate a lot of Medicare and Medicaid into it. This would solve a lot of problems and make certain that most of America is covered.
It needs to be *more* than Medicare and Medicaid – both of which are limited in scope.