Eric Levitz gives respectable Centrist advice to the silly hippies supporting Medicare For All

Eric Levitz has provided us a very current example of chronically centrist journalism in The Left’s Most Naïve Cynics Have Turned on AOC New York 12/22/2020.

Now that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are coming into power using similar "bipartisan" language to that of the Obama-Biden Administration 12 years ago but with a distinctly more visible and powerful progressive left in the Democratic Party, the star pundits and reporters have to reposition their rhetoric to be able to stick with some form of Both Sides Do It in which the two parties are mirror images of each other, one center-right the other center-left, both with "fringe" elements which can conveniently be used to emphasize the centrism of the two main parties.

Jay Rosen has been analyzing press frameworks like this for a long time. If you're not already paying attention to his Twitter account or his PressThink website, this is a fine time to start. In his most recent post, he writes, "What happens now in the political imagination of the press, and to its practices that Trump broke; how journalists can build it back better after the siege lifts; the dangers of reverting to form after form failed them, and us - these are things that do concern me." (Two paths forward for the American press 11/16/2020)

Levitz' article takes off from the current pre-Christmas flap in which comedian/commentator Jimmy Dore raised his online profile notably by attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a sellout and shill for the health-insurance industry because she wouldn't embrace a very particular political maneuver to force a vote in the House on Medicare For All. The idea would be for progressive Congressmembers to withhold a vote for Pelosi as Speaker unless she agreed to the Medicare For All vote. There's nothing inherently absurd about the suggestion. But it's pretty clear that it would have been no magic bullet for an immediate legislative goal but rather one in a long series of efforts to forefront the issue.

Declaring a very specific tactical idea like that, which almost no one notices in real time and even fewer will remember a month from now, to be a fundamental test of anyone's basic political principles is silly on its face. But politics is politics, and show business is show business. And in the YouTube world in which Dore operates, the algorithms that promote content and produce rating and revenue are particularly fond of controversies and scandals. The old journalistic maxim of "if it bleeds, it leads" has an online counterpart.

Levitz' article is valuable in highlighting a range of arguments that can and will be used to discredit and marginalize the left, although he is careful to state that is not his intention. And most progressives would probably agree with Levitz' closing summary:

Ignoring the structural obstacles to single-payer’s passage, the fragility of public support for the policy, and the simple fact that people can share political values while earnestly disagreeing about the best way to advance them — all for the sake of declaring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an enemy of America’s uninsured — is a sound strategy for ginning up interest in your rant-based YouTube show. But it is also a recipe for converting your politically naïve viewers into anti-political cynics and making the U.S. left as self-deluded and internally divided as corporate America wishes for it to be.

Levitz also focuses on arguments made by Briahna Joy Gray and Kyle Kulinski, both of whom have significant practical political experience, in support of the tactic.

But the particulars of this parliamentary tactic, which the House progressives aren't pursuing in any case, are not as interesting for me in this article as three other features. One is that Levitz' entire, rather longish article focuses in good Establishment press corps style on the political horserace. Who's up, who's down, what are the odds in this race? But he never gets around to mentioning the substance of national health insurance, aka, Medicare For All. He doesn't squeeze in even a sentence to talk about how the overall performance on public health of the US system companies to the many nations around the world who have well-established national health insurance system. (Spoiler: they generally deliver strikingly better public health results at lower overall costs than the US system.)

In his horserace analysis, he makes much of the fact that the general concept of Medicare For All polls well but that particular elements poll less well. Surely it can't be a total surprise to an experienced political reporter that the general public relies on broad impressions of programs and don't normally spend a great deal of time pouring through think tank position papers on them. Levitz puts a great deal of emphasis on a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that finds that even a majority of supporters of the notion of Medicare For All "believe they would be able to keep their current health insurance under Medicare for All." But polls can be tricky. Do those respondents mean they want to keep their very specific current health insurance? Do they mean they want to keep their current doctors? Or that they would expect that Medicare For All would provide a comparable type of health insurance to what they currently have?

He uses this to make a second point I want to emphasize, a seemingly pragmatic argument that, well, since powerful lobbies are opposed to Medicare For All, maybe instead go for incremental changes that maybe might not draw such strong opposition. This was the argument that Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel used in 2009 to argue for throwing in the towel on the Affordable Care Act altogether.

In PunditWorld, the questions may vary. But Centrism is always the answer! Even when one of the Both Sides is tripping out on QAnon fantasies.

The third point is that he closes with a standard diversionary argument that, hey, there are lots of problems in the world, so why worry so much about this Medicare For All thing? It's too hackneyed to be original. But it's worth quoting this paragraph to see how political analysis works when all that's really important is the horserace issues going on in The Center. He begins with what sounds like a sympathetic observation.

Dore justifies casting such aspersions by appealing to the moral horror of America’s status-quo health-care system: Given the consequences of delaying the achievement of universal coverage, he argues that acquiescing to political reality — instead of mounting an effort to change it (however improbable that effort may be, and whatever other opportunities for building power that Hail Mary may foreclose) — is unacceptable.

Then comes the real point:

Yet there are countless other moral atrocities that the U.S. government has the power to ameliorate. There are 26 million refugees in the world whom the United States could welcome to its shores. There are myriad nations beset by a history of colonial subjugation — and a future of ecological decline — that deserve climate reparations from the United States and transfers of green technology to abet their sustainable development. Medicare for All would not reduce suffering as much as the resettlement of tens of millions of displaced people or trillions of dollars in transfer payments from the U.S. to the Global South. In calling on House progressives to force a vote on the former but not the latter, Dore & Co. tacitly concede that, when setting legislative priorities, the moral righteousness of a given policy must be weighed against its political viability. Their disagreement with AOC is therefore not one of principle; they too believe that some morally urgent causes are too improbable to be worth prioritizing over imminently winnable fights. They just have a different judgment of how winnable the fight over Medicare for All is at the present moment. [my emphasis]

Oh, look, the silly hippies are making a big deal about Medicare For All again. Hey, what about the 26 million refugees in various parts of the world? Shouldn't you bleeding-heart do-gooders be fixing that first, yuck, yuck?

But, hey, back to real news! Who's ahead in the 2024 Presidential polls?

Explaining the US health insurance system to a German-speaking audience

Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, a Green Party member of the lower house (Bundesrat) of the Austrian Parliament, explains on her web page (Über Den Tellerrand – USA III 10/29/2020) and her Facebook page for German-speaking readers how the health insurance system in the United States works.

In the EU, where national health insurance for all is the norm, the privatized health-insurance system in the US is generally seen as fairly bizarre, even downright pathetic. She writes (with my translation into English):

Bevor Obama 2010 den ACA (Affordable Care Act) einführte, war es für Versicherungsunternehmen möglich, den Kund*innen aufgrund von Vorerkrankungen eine Versicherung zu verweigern. Dazu zählt beispielsweise Krebs, wenn in der Familie eine Vorgeschichte besteht oder man diesen bereits überwunden hat, Schwangerschaften oder etwa auch Covid-19. Der ACA führte auch dazu, dass sich 20 Millionen mehr US-Amerikaner*innen versichern konnten. Trump und die Republikaner haben schon öfters dagegen gewettert, wie schlecht der ACA aus ihrer Sicht ist und 2017 versucht, diesen durch eine konservative Alternative zu ersetzen. Gescheitert ist der Plan vor allem daran, dass diese Version vor allem Trump-Anhänger*innen die Versicherung entzogen hätte, während es bis zu 200.000 USD in Steuer-Erleichterungen für die reichsten 0,1% gegeben hätte. Doch auch mit dem ACA bleiben immer noch viel zu viele Menschen auf der Strecke und ohne Versicherung.

[Before Obama introduced the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, insurance companies were able to deny insurance to customers because of pre-existing conditions. This includes, for example, cancer if there is a history in the family or if you have already overcome it, pregnancies or, for example, Covid-19. The ACA also allowed 20 million more Americans to be insured. Trump and Republicans have often railed against how bad they see the ACA as a way of replacing it with a conservative alternative in 2017. The plan failed mainly because this version would have deprived Trump supporters of insurance, while there would have been up to $200,000 in tax breaks for the richest 0.1%. But even with the ACA, far too many people still fall by the wayside and without insurance.]

The Trump Administration, of course, is suing in a case now before the Supreme Court to end the prohibition on health insurance denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. With The Handmaid Amy Coney Barrett now on the Court, the chances of it being struck down have increased.

Never Trumpers - and a Mark Shields stuck firmly in 1990

On Friday's PBS Newshour's Political Wrap, David "Bobo" Brooks dn and Mark Shields grumped about how it was obvious that what the Democrats really need is to be more like Republicans. Shields and Brooks on Democratic debates, Supreme Court rulings 06/29/2019 (transcript here);

Shields, if anything, was even worse. Shields has always been anti-abortion and only mildly supportive of women's rights on the issue, if at all. Here, he sounds like he actually thinks the Republicans have more-or-less surrendered to the Democrats on abortion!

Just think of the 80 yards of the field that Republicans have surrendered to them on the abortion issue. [R]epublicans have been running away from what Republicans did in Alabama and Georgia and in Missouri, in Ohio. And the president has been distancing himself even.

And what do Democrats do? I mean, they basically just endorse abortion and throw in — well, how about trans people, covering abortion?

I just — I mean, to me, they just — wasn't thinking in terms strategically. I mean, they owned the majority position in the country, safe, legal, rare. And so, to me, I just don't understand the strategy.

Abortion rights are under siege across the country. And Shields thinks the problem is - that Democrats are fighting back.

He also repeats what he must know is a propagandistic polemic against national health insurance, aka, Medicare for All, that doesn't really make any sense (to put it generously):

And at great political cost, the Democrats, without any help from the Republicans, with total objection and resistance, passed it in 2010, under a Democratic president, Barack Obama. And ever since then, five consecutive elections, Republicans have run on, we're going to repeal it, going to repeal it.

As a consequence, Democrats — public by 2-1 thinks the Democrats are better on health care. So what do the Democrats suggest? We're going to get rid of it. We're going to get rid of it, going to get rid of — you like private health insurance that you have and guaranteed for preexisting conditions covered under the Affordable Care Act, we're going to get rid of private insurance.

Bobo's fellow Never Trumper Bret Stephens also thinks - surprise! surprise! - that Democrats aren't being Republican enought (): "None of this means that Democrats can’t win in 2020. The economy could take a bad turn. Or Trump could outdo himself in loathsomeness. But the Democratic Party we saw this week did even less to appeal beyond its base than the president. And at least his message is that he’s on their — make that our — side."

Stephens seens to be preparing for a "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me" moment. Even though, he isn't even a Democrat. I never trusted the Never Trumpers. This is why.

Digby is slightly more generous in Hey, NeverTrumpers: Please quit lecturing actual Democrats about how to win Salon 06/26/2019. But she has their number (italics in original):

I'm not a NeverTrumper-basher. ...

So I hope the NeverTrump troops don't take this the wrong way. But they really need to zip it when it comes to haranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they were a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans, the people who couldn't stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them. They should know better than anyone that running against him is like running against an alien from outer space. There is only one race that Democrats and NeverTrumpers can look to for clues about how to defeat him — and neither of them were successful, so nobody gets to claim the high ground here. ...

More importantly, NeverTrumpers telling Democrats what they shouldn't do is even worse. It's not just insulting, it's also strangely naive. In a way, it explains why some of these folks were so surprised that a demagogic con man took out that venerable list of GOP all-stars back in 2016, with none other than the odious Sen. Ted Cruz being the last man standing. These are not normal times, and simply assuming that the way for Democrats to win is to be more like pre-Trump Republicans is going to fall on deaf ears, and for good reason[.] ...

But if there are Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who are appalled by Trump's assault on the system and the Republican Party's descent into madness, these NeverTrumpers could make their best contribution e by helping those folks realize that stopping Trump means we can all live to fight each other another day on the issues where we may strongly disagree. There's no guarantee of that if Trump wins again.

"Bipartisanship" - schlechte Idee für amerikanische Demokraten in 2019

Paul Starr hat eine gute Zusammenfassung davon, wie die Erfahrung von Obamas Präsidentschaft eine sehr praktische Widerlegung seines Bipartisanships (parteiübergreifendes Handelns), als „no red America, no blue America“ bekannt. Starr nennt das eine „Theorie des Wandels". (2020 and the Democrats’ Theory of Change American Prospect 03/21/2019)

Er erklärt das so:

Selbst geschickt interpretiert, ist die Theorie des Wandels, die Obama 2008 als Kandidat propagierte, schon lange nicht mehr haltbar. Er hat wichtige Dinge getan, insbesondere das Konjunkturgesetz [Recovery Act] in den Tiefen der Großen Rezession, das Affordable Care Act [ACA, „Obamacare“] und die Finanzreform — aber keiner von ihnen dank "Bipartisanship". Die Republikaner weigerten sich, selbst mitten in der größten Wirtschaftskrise seit der Depression Partner bei der Regierungsführung zu sein. Der einzige Grund, warum Obama bedeutende legislative Erfolge hatte, ist, dass die Demokraten in den ersten zwei Jahren die Kontrolle über den Kongress hatten, einschließlich einer filibuster-proof Mehrheit des Senats für etwa sechs Monate, was es dem ACA ermöglichte, durchzukommen. [meine Hervorhebung]

Leider betont er weiter, dass die Demokraten es vermeiden sollten, Medicare For All (staatliche Krankenversicherung ähnlich wie die in West-Europa) oder Reparationen für die Sklaverei zu befürworten. Letzteres ist ein Thema, das nicht ernsthaft diskutiert wurde, und sicher nicht in einer Weise, die ein großes Publikum beschäftigt hat. Und nur wenige amerikanische Wähler würden es schnell mit irgendwelchen aktuellen Programmen identisch sehen. Es versteht sich von selbst, dass die Republikaner es als „soziale Hängematte" stigmatisieren würden. Aber sie tun das trotzdem mit jedem Programm, das den Oligarchen keinen besonderen Nutzen bringt. Dennoch ist es im Moment ein so kompliziertes und verwirrendes Konzept, dass ein demokratischer Kandidat ungewöhnliche Finessen besitzen müsste, um es effektiv als Wahlkampfthema zu nutzen.

Aber das ist nicht der Fall bei Medicare For All. Medicare ist ein Programm, das die Leute verstehen und wissen, dass es funktioniert. Menschen, die noch nicht 65 sind, kennen Leute, die es sind. (Jetzt ist Medicare für Leute 65 oder älter.) Oder sie haben Eltern oder andere Verwandte, die sind, und sie wissen, dass es gut funktioniert. Das bedeutet nicht, dass es keine nennenswerte Anzahl von Wählern gibt, die selbst das gegenwärtige Medicare-System abschaffen würden, wenn FOX News und Donald Trump anfangen würden, die Idee aktiv voranzutreiben. Aber es bedeutet doch, dass Medicare For All in Umfragen sehr populär ist, auch bei den Republikanern. Und es ist eigentlich geradliniger zu erklären, als das es bei dem ACA ist. Demokratische-Partei Zaghaftigkeit oder dampfende Hoffnungen auf „Bipartisanship“ sollten die Verwendung dieser Frage durch die Partei nicht hindern.

And nur um klar zu sein: Medicare for All ist nicht nur ein gutes Wahlkampfthema. Es ist auch eine ausgezeichnete Idee.

Bipartisanship - bad idea for Democrats in 2019

Paul Starr has a good summary of how the experience of Obama's Presidency provided very practical refutation of his no-red-America-no-blue-America feelgood bipartisahip pitch. Starr calls that framing a "theory of change". (2020 and the Democrats’ Theory of Change American Prospect 03/21/2019)

He explains it this way:

Even cleverly interpreted, however, the theory of change that Obama espoused as a candidate in 2008 has long ceased to be tenable. He did get important things done, notably the Recovery Act in the depths of the Great Recession, the Affordable Care Act, and financial reform—but none of them thanks to bipartisanship. Republicans refused to be partners in governing even in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Depression. The only reason Obama had significant legislative achievements is that for his first two years Democrats had control of Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate majority for about six months, which is what enabled the ACA to pass. [my emphasis]

Unfortunately, he goes on to stress that Democrats should avoid advocating Medicare for All or reparations for slavery. The latter is an issue that hasn't been seriously discussed in a way that has engaged a large audience. And few American voters would quickly idenify it with any current programs. It goes without saying that the Republicans would stigmatize it as "welfare," but they do that anyway with every program that doesn't brings special benefits to oligarchs. Still, it is such a complicated and confusing concept right now that a Democratic candidate would have to possess unusual finesse to use it effectively as an issue.

But that is not the case with Medicare for All. Medicare is a program that people understand and know that it works. People who aren't yet 65 know people who are. Or have parents or other relatives who are, and they know it works well. That doesn't mean that there aren't a significant number of voters who would abolish even the present Medicare systems if FOX News and Donald Trump started pushing the idea actively. But it does mean that Medicare for All polls very well, even among Republicans. And it's actually more straightforward to explain than the ACA is. Democratic timidity or vapid hopes for Bipartisanship shouldn't dominate the Party's use of this issue.

And just to be clear: Medicare for All is not just a good campaign issue, though it is that. It's also an excellent policy.