“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Charles M. Blow: Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy
I have finally found something about Donald Trump’s arrogation of the presidency in which to take comfort: his absolute ineptitude at legislative advancement.
The country may well be saved from some of Trump’s most draconian impulses by some of Trump’s most pronounced flaws: his lack of seriousness, his aversion to tedium and his gnat-like attention span.
The embarrassing faltering of the Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act might be both history lesson and harbinger. Republicans in Congress weren’t prepared with a workable plan, and Trump never had any plan. He campaigned on applause-line policies: Anything that roused a response from his rabid adherents, he repeated and amplified. He never gave details because the details didn’t exist, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand and articulate them if they did.
Trump was simply a megaphone for the primal screams of Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton haters flipping out over the cultural anxiety accompanying the ascension of women and minorities.
Amanda Marcotte: How to sell single payer health care: It’s a great policy, but has a huge political drawback
The very public battle over Trumpcare — which seems like it may, fingers crossed, be collapsing due to the public rejecting the ejection of millions of people from the health care system — seems to have had the side benefit of increasing public interest in the idea of a single payer government-run health insurance system. Polling shows that anywhere from 33 percent to 44 percent to 58 percent of voters back the idea of single payer, and in blue states that theoretically have the tax base to pull off statewide system — such as New York or California — single payer likely could garner more support.
And yet one of the bluest of states, California, has once again failed to get a single payer bill off the ground, in no small part because it was, as David Dayen at the Intercept argued, “a shell bill that cannot become law without a ballot measure approved by voters.” [..]
When one looks at the players involved, it’s hard to deny Dayen’s accusation. But it’s also worth pointing out that single payer, as it’s currently constructed, faces a major political obstacle that even a lot of electoral hustle may not be able to overcome: People really do not want to see their taxes raised to pay for it. Proponents of single payer aren’t doing enough to address that objection.
William Rivers Pitt: Trump, McConnell and Ryan in the Rubble of Hubris
What began in enforced secrecy with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and twelve angry men has been ended, for now, at the hands of three women in the bright light of day.
To recap: The first version of the Senate’s attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act was a horror. Several Republicans killed it before it could die in a vote. The second version dangled by a thread as John McCain went home to deal with a health issue, and was finally undone by Jerry Moran of Kansas and Mike Lee of Utah, who plotted their decision to join the “No” brigade with Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine at the same time as Donald Trump was downing ribeye and succotash with wavering senators at the White House.
The third version, a messy “Repeal Now And Pray For Rain Later” bungle that was originally floated in 2015, was killed by three Republicans — Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito — before it had time to tie its shoes. As of Tuesday evening, there is no fourth version to speak of. McConnell is making noises about bringing Version 3.0 to a doomed vote anyway, just to get everyone on the record.
Howard Fineman: After 6 Months, Donald Trump’s Presidency Is Stillborn
The scene in the White House was eerily reminiscent of the movie “The Untouchables.” The only thing missing was the baseball bat.
Playing the Al Capone role, President Donald Trump invited all 52 Republican senators to lunch Wednesday at the White House so he could threaten vengeance and chaos if they did not quickly produce “repeal and replace” legislation to sweep away Obamacare.
In Don the Don fashion, he ominously noted the presence in the room of a “couple of my friends” ― who “might not be very much longer.” It wasn’t clear whether he meant they would soon no longer be in the room, be his friends, be in the U.S. Senate or what.
Publicly threatening an entire political party — ostensibly your own — and all its Senate members is generally not the way to get things done in Washington. Even so, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (whom the president has blamed for the health care fiasco) agreed to try. Next week he will ask — beg — his GOP colleagues to let him bring a fully amendable “clean repeal” bill to the floor. If it gets there, anything could happen.
Robert Creamer: A Real Plan To Make The Affordable Care Act Even Better
Republican fantasies about “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are crashing on the rocks of two-to-one public opposition, and a tidal wave of ordinary people who are demanding their Members of Congress vote NO.
So what about a real plan to make the ACA even better? What about a plan to provide even more access to health care and make premiums more affordable – especially for working people — rather than the GOP plan to take health care away from millions?
The Affordable Care Act has massively increased coverage at much more affordable prices for many, many Americans. What’s more, it has prevented insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, installed many consumer protections for consumers and helped lower the rate of health care inflation. Most importantly, it established that in a civilized society, health care is not a commodity to be bought and sold, but a right.
The ACA was a major step in the right direction. And in many respects, the United States has a spectacular health care delivery system. But in others we still have a great deal of room to improve.
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