These are heady days for red state propagandists. After years of leading the nation in poverty, low incomes, poor working conditions, dismal educational performance, awful health care systems, shocking teen birth rates, sky-high divorce rates, bloody gun violence and just about every other measure of social dysfunction, Republican-dominated states finally have some good news to […]
Category: Democrats
From the very beginning, one massive irony has loomed over the Obamacare debate. The elephant in the room? Health care is worst where Republicans poll best. From access to care and insurance coverage to the health of their residents, red states generally produce the most dismal rankings. And while Democratic-led states are now embracing the […]
During his press conference on Friday, President Obama pondered why the GOP's "number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care." But in attributing the 40 Affordable Care Act repeal votes, the threats to shut down the government over […]
In recent weeks, pollsters and pundits have been wrestling with a seeming contradiction at the heart of the country's abortion debate. On the one hand, the United States is a pro-choice nation, with consistent majorities of Americans voicing the belief for two decades that abortion should be legal in some or all cases. On the […]
Last week, former Bush Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt offered a very instructive look back at the rollout of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. In what the Washington Post's health care reporter Sarah Kliff praised as a "great piece," Leavitt recounted the technical troubles, process pitfalls, rapid responses and lessons learned […]
At the very start of his political career back in the 1970's, Montana Senator Max Baucus asked New Deal veteran James Rowe Jr., "Do you think I should run as a Republican or a Democrat?" Rowe's uneasy answer--"I sure hope you'll be a Democrat"--has defined Baucus' career ever since. After all, he voted for the […]
The Obama administration on Friday lifted the covers on its compromise budget proposal for fiscal year 2014. But despite slashing the national debt by a projected $1.8 trillion over the next decade (bringing the total reductions since 2011 to $4.3 trillion) through painful changes to Social Security and Medicare, Republicans are predictably balking at Obama's […]
America's soul-searching to mark the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq went pretty much according to script. While many of its liberal supporters offered their mea culpas for having been so catastrophically mistaken, the Bush administration's architects of the war doubled-down on their epic failure. (Meanwhile, some of their biggest cheerleaders lamented only […]
One day after New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Republican brinksmanship on the debt ceiling as "hostage-taking," President Obama used his Monday press conference declared, "They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy." But you don't have to take their word for it that […]
As President Obama and Congressional leaders negotiate in Washington, the American people need to keep a couple of things in mind about the looming "fiscal cliff." For starters, the issue is not that the national debt will go up (which roughly half of those in one poll believe to be the case), but that it […]