Tag: Opinion

Paul Ryan admits that he’s an “end Medicare as we know it” candidate.

But, somehow, we are not supposed to think that he would actually end the popular and successful healthcare program for the elderly, as well as related Medicaid programs for the poor and people with disabilities.

The “as we know it” part provides a sort of cover, as least in the eyes of a media that is more inclined toward stenography than journalism. [..]

Only when a candidate starts talking about ending entitlement programs-as in “doing away” with them-can we be serious about the immediate threat those programs actually face.

Meet Tommy Thompson, former Republican governor of Wisconsin, former Bush-Cheney administration secretary of health and human services, former candidate for the Republican nomination for president and mentor to Paul Ryan.

Paul Buchheit: Now We Know Our ABCs. And Charter Schools Get an F.

The Chicago teacher strike is over, but the assault on our nation’s children has just begun. As with all free market systems, the price is set high enough to ensure a profit for the companies doing business, even though not everyone will be able to afford their product.

With our private health care system, 1 out of 6 Americans are uninsured. It’s frightening to think of a private educational system in which 1 out of 6 children have to settle for an inferior education.

We’ve learned a lot in recent years from the struggles within our schools. Here are three sensible considerations for anyone involved in the education of our children.

Sam Pizzagati; The ‘Self-Made’ Hallucination of America’s Rich

Like Mitt Romney, most Americans who amass grand fortunes have a substantial head start.

Let’s cut Mitt Romney some slack. Not every off-the-cuff comment he made at that now infamous, secretly taped $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton reveals an utterly shocking personal failing. Take, for instance, Mitt’s remark that he has “inherited nothing.”

Not quite “nothing.” But there’s no reason to pick on Mitt either. Most deep pockets, not just Mitt, consider themselves “self-made.” The best evidence of this predilection to claim “self-made” status? The annual September release of the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans. [..]

Forbes made the same observation last year, too, and most news outlets took that claim at face value. But United for a Fair Economy did not. The Boston-based group’s analysts took the time to investigate the actual backgrounds of last year’s Forbes 400. They released their findings (pdf) on the same day Forbes released the new 2012 list.

The basic conclusion from these findings: Forbes is spinning “a misleading tale of what it takes to become wealthy in America.” Most of the Forbes 400, like Mitt, have benefitted from a level of privilege unknown to the vast majority of Americans.

Joe Conason: Looking for That ’47 Percent,’ Mitt? Check Red States and Elderly Republicans

While Mitt Romney may well wish he had expressed himself more “elegantly” at the swanky Boca Raton fundraiser where he denounced half the voting population as shiftless, government-entitled moochers, he isn’t backing away from those secretly recorded remarks-although what he said was entirely inaccurate, as well as obnoxious. [..]

Leaving aside the significant probability that his listeners included a few of the thousands of millionaires who paid no income taxes last year, there is no reason to believe that voters who don’t pay income taxes are certain to vote Democratic. A substantial number of the people who are too poor to pay income taxes, thanks to tax reforms supported by Ronald Reagan, are among the Southern whites inclined to vote for Romney. In 2008, according to the New York Times, 25 percent of voters earning under $15,000 per year and 37 percent of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000 per year voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

As we enter year twelve of the “war on terror,” drones are arguably the coolest tool in the American military arsenal. There is a breathless tone in describing these machines that loiter for hours, then fire Hellfire missiles at remote targets. But just below the gee-wiz is a simmering debate over the secrecy and legality of their strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. [..]

It took years for the U.S. to acknowledge that civilian casualties were not only a grave concern to Afghans and Iraqis, but were also hurting the U.S. war efforts. Generals admitted that for every civilian killed, a number of insurgents were born and attacks on U.S. soldiers grew. It is time that the U.S. apply these lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq to the not-so-secret, not-so-legal, and probably not-so-precise drone war.

Robert Reich: What Mitt Romney Really Represents

It’s not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it’s not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.

It’s something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces – the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that’s undermining our economy and destroying our democracy. [..]

So much wealth and power have accumulated at the top of America that our economy and our democracy are seriously threatened. Romney not only represents this problem. He is the living embodiment of it.

Ari Melber: Republicans Are Fact-Checked at Twice the Rate of Democrats

A tabulation of recent rulings from PolitiFact, a prominent but increasingly controversial website devoted to fact-checking candidates’ claims, found that “statements by Mitt Romney and other Republicans” were rated false “twice as often as statements by President Obama and other Democrats.” That’s a lot more false statements by Republicans, which makes it harder to cling to the false equivalency that “both sides do it.”

Or maybe not.

A snap poll of conservative reactions shows that the study of Politifact, from George Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), proves the conservative theory that the fact-checkers are out to get Republicans. [..]

And the Romney campaign is entitled to that view. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, though, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of the facts-what matters is what the facts think of him.

Framk Bruni: A New Inning, Late in the Game

THE way Kevin McClatchy figured it, he had to choose. He could indulge his dream of presiding over a big-time professional sports team, or he could be open about his sexuality. The two paths didn’t dovetail.

He went with sports, and in February 1996, at the age of 33, became the youngest owner in major league baseball when he led a group of investors who bought the Pittsburgh Pirates. For the next 11 years, he was the team’s managing general partner and chief executive officer, not to mention its public face. And for all of that time, he took pains not to let his players, the owners of other teams or anyone beyond a tiny circle of family and close friends learn that he was gay.

In a lot of ways George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer (or finance minister) is Britain’s answer to Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president. True, he’s a toned-down version – no Ayn Rand, please, we’re British – but other aspects of the package are there in full force: Mr. Osborne is articulate, has a vision that’s completely at odds with everything we actually know about macroeconomics, and he was for a while the darling not just of the right but of self-proclaimed centrists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr. Osborne’s big idea in 2010 was that Britain should turn to fiscal austerity now now now, even though the economy remained deeply depressed; it would all work out, he insisted, because the confidence fairy would come to the rescue.

Never mind those whining Keynesians who said that premature austerity would send Britain into a double-dip recession.

Herman Schwartz: Imprisonment without End at Guantánamo

The Supreme Court ruled in a 2008 decision that Guantánamo detainees must have a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge their detention at a habeas corpus hearing.

This decision, Boumediene v. Bush, has repeatedly been subverted, however, by right-wing judges on the federal Court of Appeals in Washington. Yet the justices don’t seem to care – for they have declined to review any of the D.C. circuit’s rulings undermining the Boumediene decision.

Their indifference was most recently demonstrated in June, when the Supreme Court refused to review a decision, Latif v. Obama, that granted government intelligence reports a presumption of accuracy – regardless of how they were prepared. As a result of the court’s action, many Guantanamo detainees face what could be many years of indefinite detention.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was one of these detainees. Until last week, when he was found dead in his cell on Sept. 9. Yet the military had twice recommended that Latif be released, as Wikileaks disclosed last year. An interagency national security task force had approved this in 2009, and his release was ordered in 2010 by the district court.

Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Still Might Win

Can Romney possibly recover? A survey conducted between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16 by the Pew Research Center – before the “47 percent victim” video came to light – showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters.

That’s the biggest margin in the September survey prior to a presidential election since Bill Clinton led Bob Dole, 50% to 38% in 1996.

And, remember, this recent poll was done before America watched Romney belittle almost half the nation.

For the last several days I’ve been deluged with calls from my inside-the-beltway friends telling me “Romney’s dead.”

Hold it. Rumors of Romney’s demise are premature for at least four reasons [..]

David Sirota: Drug Dealers Protecting Their Turf

If you heard a drug dealer denigrate his competitor’s product as unsafe, would you trust his criticism? Or would you think he’s a hypocrite with ulterior motives? Last week, thanks to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO), these became the central political questions in the fight over whether to continue America’s destructive War on Marijuana.

The frontline in that war is Colorado, where the federal government has interfered with its system of state-regulated medical marijuana businesses, despite President Obama’s promise to refrain from doing so. Countering that crackdown is a 2012 ballot initiative that would make Colorado the first state to fully legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol.

Enter Hickenlooper. In the same month a poll showed majority support for the marijuana legalization initiative, the governor blasted the measure for allegedly “detract(ing) from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state” and for “send(ing) the wrong message to kids.”

An overbearing and at times ridiculously aggressive Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown came across as a desperate man Thursday night, as he attempted to gain the upper hand in the first debate of this year’s most closely watched US Senate race and, by extension, in a re-election contest that seems to be slipping away from him.

Brown literally attacked Elizabeth Warren, his surging Democratic challenger, from start to finish. [..]

Warren was smooth and effective, “explaining things” with the same assurance that Bill Clinton displayed in Charlotte. It wasn’t always easy; as Brown interrupted at every opportunity-to accuse Warren of lying about her heritage, of attacking asbestos victims, of starting Occupy Wall Street.

But Warren never sweated it. She knew she had the winning hand.

And she played it. Again and again.

Ralph Nader: Not a Gaffe, but the Real Romney

There was something missing from the release of a tape showing Mitt Romney pandering to fat cats in Boca Raton, Florida, with these very inflammatory words: “There are 47 percent who are with him, (Obama) who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax.” Romney said his job “is not to worry about those people.”

Hey, Mitt, why start with the 47 percent? Fully 100 percent of the nation’s 500 biggest corporations are dependent on various kinds of corporate welfare – subsidies, giveaways, bailouts, waivers, and other dazzling preferences – while many pay no tax at all on very substantial profits (see their familiar names – General Electric, Pepco, Verizon etc. – here (pdf)).

Ari Melber: Why Obama Is Right About Change, Wrong About the Outside Game

The latest miniature controversy in the presidential campaign actually touches on an important idea.

“You can’t change Washington from the inside.”

That’s what Barack Obama said he learned as president, when questioned at a forum on Thursday.

Mitt Romney seized on the remarks, saying Obama has surrendered to the forces of Washington. Romney’s aides are eager to cast Obama in his own “YouTube moment,” naturally, and challenge his commitment to “change.”

Obama is correct, of course, that fundamental reform and social change is not usually hatched by Washington insiders. That is not a controversial view. It’s the premise animating grassroots conservative activism from Grover Norquist to the Tea Party, which primaries Republicans who represent the 2-0-2 for too long.

You can’t really understand Obama’s relationship to the inside game, however, without digging into the weeds of his unusual experiment with a grassroots, outside game: The 2009 creation of Organizing for America (OFA), which was designed to extend his massive field army from the last campaign into a governing force.

Katrina venden Heuvel: Progressives must work to retake the Supreme Court

While the election is dominated by talk of the economy and Mitt Romney’s latest foreign policy blunder, don’t lose sight of one important fact: Perhaps nothing will have a bigger impact on the United States’ future than the Supreme Court. And with four justices above the age of 70, the next president of the United States could have enormous power to shape the court for generations to come. Age is not, as Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner has suggested, just a number.

In a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock on the most important matters of the day, the Supreme Court has become what Bill Moyers calls “The Decider.” A majority of the justices has taken a far right turn in its decisions. [..]

They’re right. The court headed by right-wing Chief Justice John Roberts has suppressed the ability to organize through labor unions. It has weakened the right to bring class-action lawsuits. It has impeded ordinary people’s access to courts. It has given corporations more power – and personhood – to inflict their will on Americans. It has shielded financial institutions from accountability. It even threatened the Constitution’s commerce clause in its health-care decision, putting a range of social programs and protections at risk.

In natural terms, our economy is a giant sequoia. Unfortunately, our present corporate and governmental leadership can’t seem to grasp one of the basic laws of nature: You can’t keep a mighty tree alive (much less have it thrive) by only spritzing the fine leaves at the tippy-top. The fate of the whole tree depends on nurturing the roots. Recent studies show that increasing the minimum wage even during hard times is good policy, providing higher pay but no loss of jobs.

Sadly, we’re led by a myopic crew of leaf-spritzers. [..]

One of the least excusable of today’s injustices is that in this country of unsurpassed wealth, it’s an abomination that the power elites are casually tolerating poverty pay as our wage floor. How deplorable that they can actually juxtapose the words “working” and “poor” without blinking, much less blushing.

Jamal Abdi and Robert Naiman: Meet the Press Gives Netanyahu Cheney’s Bully Pulpit for War

If you happened to catch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Meet the Press this past Sunday, you may have thought you were watching a rerun from ten years ago.

After all, it was September 2002 — almost a decade ago to the day — that Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press to sell Americans a war based on distortions that he claimed were an “absolute certainty.”

And when Cheney met the press, he was never challenged. Eventually the free pass that the media gave Cheney and others led us into a quagmire in Iraq to dismantle WMD that didn’t exist.

It was déjà vu all over again this past Sunday when Netanyahu presented his own absolute certainties to Americans. He told us that Iran “is racing to develop nuclear bombs” and said if the U.S. does not set a redline for war to block Iran’s enrichment program, Iran would “proceed to the bomb.”

Eugene Robinson: Standing Up for Teachers

Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them.

It has become fashionable to blame all of society’s manifold sins and wickedness on “teachers unions,” as if it were possible to separate these supposedly evil organizations from the dedicated public servants who belong to them. News flash: Collective bargaining is not the problem, and taking that right away from teachers will not fix the schools. [..]

The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher “effectiveness,” depending how this elusive quality is measured. But there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income.

Yes, I’m talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they’re not shirking responsibility. They’re just stating an inconvenient truth.

Ari Berman: Is Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law Headed for Defeat?

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court today vacated a lower-court decision upholding the state’s voter ID law, instructing Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson to rehear the case, looking specifically at whether the state is doing enough to make sure that every eligible Pennsylvania voter has the right ID to cast a ballot. The supreme court, in a 4-2 decision, found a “disconnect between what the Law prescribes and how it is being implemented,” and noted that “if the Law is enforced in a manner that prevents qualified and eligible electors from voting, the integrity of the upcoming General Election will be impaired.” [..]

The important takeaway from the ruling is that the supreme court shifted the burden of proof from the plaintiffs, who in lower court had to show that eligible voters would be disenfranchised by the law, to the state, who now has to prove that voters will not be disenfranchised. That’s why lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the ACLU and the Advancement Project, are optimistic about the chances of receiving a preliminary injunction when the Commonwealth Court rehears the case, possibly as soon as next week. [..]

This month, in a speech at his country’s stock exchange, British Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband embraced a big new idea: predistribution.

The term was coined here in the US, by political scientist Jacob Hacker (you may know him as the man who came up with the public option). In a 2011 paper, Hacker noted that our discussions of government responses to inequality often begin and end with redistribution-taxing the rich to provide benefits for the rest. But Hacker argued that’s only half the equation (maybe less). He urged his fellow progressives to pay more attention to predistribution: “the way in which the market distributes its rewards in the first place.” That includes regulations that protect consumers and empower workers. “The regulation of markets to limit extremes and give the middle class more voice is hardly easy-witness the fight over financial reform in the United States,” wrote Hacker. “But it is both more popular and more effective than after-the-fact mopping up.” [..]

Much of the British story is all too familiar. Failed austerity, political resistance to taxes and a left-of-center party that spent much of the 1990s proving its willingness to get out of the market’s way. An upsurge in grassroots activism against inequality. And an awful human toll.

“We want a market economy,” says Miliband, “not a market society.” That’s true on both sides of the pond.

Leslie Savan: The GOP’s Self-Mutilating Panic

The Republican Party is counting down its own “127 Hours,” and it’s getting ready to cut off one of its arms with a dull blade. As poll numbers rise for Obama and other Democrats down-ballot, it’s sinking in that the victory the GOP thought it would achieve with obstruction and falsehoods will probably turn into a defeat for both the presidency and the Senate.

Here are three headlines from just this morning that sound to me like desperate self-mutilation (and none of this is to even mention the Romney campaign’s complete meltdown over events in the Mideast):

“Kansas Goes Birther: State Board Considers Removing Obama From Ballot”

“House GOP Bill Would Actually End Welfare Reform Work Requirements”

“Romney predicts Obama will lie in debates”

Each of these actions is more likely to hurt than help the politicians in question. But it’s panic time for the GOP and they can’t help it.

Ruth Coniff: How Obama Trapped Himself in Chicago Teachers’ Strike

The Chicago teachers’ strike put President Obama in an awkward position. Caught between his own former chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and his base of support in the teachers’ union, he was easy prey for Mitt Romney, who declared that the President had taken the teachers’ side (not true) and that Democrats and unionized teachers are the enemies of parents, school children, and quality educatio

Romney’s attack was dumb and misleading.

But the big problem for Obama was that he was trying to play both sides of this highly charged issue.

Obama wanted no part of the Chicago teachers’ fight. He didn’t want to antagonize Emanuel–a major campaign fundraiser and political ally. Nor did he want to alienate labor as he heads into the homestretch in this Presidential election.

But what tripped up Obama the most is that he has essentially adopted George W. Bush’s free-market, live-and-let-die education policies–but is running with the support of people who desperately want him to defend public schools against increasingly aggressive rightwing attacks.

Wenonah hauter: Obama Administration Backwards On Food Safety

Recently, with Obama re-election posters blanketing the audience at the Democratic National Convention and Republicans mocking Obama’s campaign slogan, the word of the moment was Forward. But when it comes to food safety, this Administration is stuck in reverse. The 56-page 2012 Democratic Party Platform included no mention of food safety or the President’s monumental signing of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Even more alarming are the Administration’s proposed set of rules for the inspection of poultry that would take us back to the days of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” That proposal would turn over key inspection duties to the poultry companies so that they can police themselves and allow them to increase line speeds in chicken plants from the current 35 birds-per-minute to to 175 birds-per-minute. That’s right – one USDA inspector will have ONE THIRD OF A SECOND to inspect each bird to make sure that it did not have an animal disease, fecal contamination, tumors, improperly removed intestines or feathers before it is dipped in a chemical soup meant to kill microbial pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter. A Food & Water Watch analysis of the proposal’s pilot program reveals large numbers of defects – including feathers, bile and feces – were routinely missed when company employees instead of USDA inspectors performed inspection tasks.

To the best of my knowledge from information gleaned from internet data sources, there are three countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They are India, Pakistan and Israel. One additional country — North Korea — withdrew in 2003 after being a signatory for 18 years.

Iran signed in 1968 and ratified the treaty in 1970. In light of their alleged insistence on starting a nuclear weapons program, some might say that the treaty is a joke. I’d agree to the farcical nature of the document, but not because of Iran’s actions — although hat’s off to the North Koreans for withdrawing publicly in the face of being labeled by George W. Bush as members of the Axis of Evil.

No, this week’s big Washington Post story about the U.S. revamping their nuclear weapons is reason enough to scoff at the legitimacy of the NPT. And it’s not just the nuclear weapons program that the U.S. is improving; it’s the bombs. The Washington Post confirms, “At the heart of the overhaul are the weapons themselves.” And this revamp won’t be cheap. “Upgrading just one of the seven types of weapons in the stockpile, the B61 bomb, is likely to cost $10 billion over five years, according to the Pentagon.”

John Nichols; After 225 Years, It’s Time to Respect the Constitutional Rights of Workers

Americans have for generations accepted the basic premise that labor rights are human rights. And when this country has counseled other countries, and the international community, on how to forge a civil and democratic society, we have long recognized that the right to organize a trade union and to have that trade union engage in collective bargaining as an equal partner with corporations and government agencies must be protected.

When Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas struck down substantial portions of the anti-labor legislation that Governor Scott Walker signed last year, legislation that was written and implemented with the express purpose of undermining trade union rights and constricting collective bargaining rights, the judge grounded his decision in a recognition of the fact that trade unionists in the United States have basic rights that must be respected.

Jim Hightower; Ryan Runs Into the Truth

To borrow from President Lyndon Johnson’s colorful analysis of a Nixon speech, “I may not know much, but I know chicken [poop] from chicken salad.”

Paul Ryan, the GOP’s current vice-presidential nominee, has spent his career in government trying to blur the boundary between the two. Over the years, the ambitious right-wing politico has carefully assembled a stinking salad of positive adjectives to create his public persona: an earnest, straight-shooting, big thinker with integrity and deeply held conservative convictions.

The media swallowed each spurious ingredient, helping push him forth as a tea party rock star and, now, a man who could be next in line for the presidency.

Dennis Jett: Another reason no one trusts Congress

It would be interesting to know if anyone on Capitol Hill ever takes time out from being seduced by lobbyists to wonder about what Americans think of their elected representatives. Congress has the lowest approval rating ever in public opinion polls and only one American in ten is gullible enough to think they are doing an adequate job. If Congress were a company, it would have gone out of business long ago.

The skepticism reflected in the public’s attitude is due in part to the partisan politics that has become the driving force in Washington. The national interest is routinely sacrificed for political gain and even economic recovery can be put on hold if it increases the chances for changing the occupant of the White House.

Another reason for the low esteem of Congress is that much of what takes place there falls somewhere between farce and theater of the absurd. Take for instance congressional hearings. One might think that they would be an opportunity to elicit unbiased information, call attention to problems and explore options for dealing with those problems.

Paul Ryan has not sautéed in foreign policy in his years on Capitol Hill. The 42-year-old congressman is no Middle East savant; till now, his idea of a border dispute has more likely involved Wisconsin and Illinois.

Yet Ryan got up at the Values Voter Summit here on Friday and skewered the Obama administration as it struggled to manage the Middle East mess left by clumsily mixed American signals toward the Arab Spring and the disastrous legacy of war-obsessed Republicans. [..]

Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor. The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte.

A moral, muscular foreign policy; a disdain for weakness and diplomacy; a duty to invade and bomb Israel’s neighbors; a divine right to pre-emption – it’s all ominously familiar.

David Swanson; Funding Teachers Doesn’t Get Embassies Attacked

We’re not out of money. We’ve stopped taxing billionaires and corporations, and we’re funding war-preparation so generously that we’re sparking a global arms race that will eventually generate some enemies with which to justify the war preparation . . . which will make sense to students who were never taught to put events into chronological order. They couldn’t be taught that because their teachers had to be laid off so that greedy billionaires could stuff a little more cash into their fat “Job Creator” tote bags.

Funding teachers doesn’t destroy our environment, erode our civil liberties, hollow out our economy, antagonize the world, or kill anyone. Funding teachers doesn’t get our embassies attacked in nations we’ve “liberated” and leave our Secretary of State wondering out loud how someone could attack our embassy in a city we’d rescued — forgetting that we’d rescued it with heavy bombing on behalf of an ad hoc coalition of rebels, religious nuts, terrorists, racists, child soldiers, former enemies from Iraq, former allies turned enemies from Afghanistan, and CIA stooges. Funding teachers could actually help us develop a society of people with something better to do than attack each other’s primitive superstitions. This same old stuff happened last year when I was in Afghanistan and an idiot in Florida started burning Korans. I had to be careful not to get killed.

Robert Kuttner: Thank You, Paul Ryan

Two years ago, the Democrats handed the Republicans their two crown jewels — Social Security and Medicare. By targeting Medicare for budget “savings” that could be used to finance what the Republicans called Obamacare, the White House gave the GOP ammunition to contend that the Democrats were taking benefits away from seniors.

Expanding health coverage for the young and defense of Medicare for the elderly got depicted as a zero sum game. Republicans made huge gains in 2010 with seniors. Instead of the political winner it should have been, Obamacare became an epithet. [..]

Now, however, Republicans have given Social Security and Medicare back to the Democrats (where they belong.) Polls show that Medicare is no longer a winner for the Republicans, and the Democrats have embraced the term, “Obamacare” as positive label.

The reason, of course, is Paul Ryan.

Robert Reich; Why Romney and Ryan Are Going Down

Unemployment is still above 8 percent, job gains aren’t even keeping up with population growth, the economy is barely moving forward. And yet, according to most polls, the Romney-Ryan ticket is falling further and further behind. How can this be?

Because Republicans are failing the central test of electability. Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they’re relying largely on one slice of America — middle-aged white men — and alienating just about everyone else. [..]

Romney, Ryan, and the GOP don’t seem to know how to satisfy their middle-aged white male base without at the same time turning off everyone who’s not white, male, straight, or middle-aged. Unfortunately for Romney and Ryan, the people they’re turning off are the majority.