Tag Archives: 2020 Election

Medicare for Me

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A lot of people dread turning 65, but not me. Ever since a cancer diagnosis in 2012, there’s nothing I’d rather do than tick off the years toward old age. I’ve eagerly awaited certain milestones:

  1. 60 for most senior discounts at the movies
  2. 62 for the lifetime pass to National Parks (I lucked in at the $10 rate just before it increased to $80—still a steal!)
  3. 65 for Medicare
  4. 66 and two-thirds for collecting 100% of my Social Security.

This month, I achieve Milestone #3, and I couldn’t be happier. Not just because it means I’m still alive and well, but because of the hundreds of dollars I’ll save every month for the same insurance and doctors I have now.

Don’t get me wrong—as a self-employed cancer survivor, I was thrilled when the Affordable Care Act passed, and pre-existing conditions could no longer be used as an excuse to deny people coverage. I was lucky enough to have good coverage pre-ACA through my husband’s employer. But my husband felt he couldn’t leave no matter how unhappy he became as the job grew more stressful. Employer-provided health insurance, which we were fortunate to have, equaled golden handcuffs. The ACA changed all that. My husband, also a cancer survivor, was thrilled to join me in the ranks of the happily self-employed.

We paid through the nose to keep our good coverage through Covered California, and it was a privilege to do so (in all senses of the word).

Still, as great an accomplishment as the ACA is, it highlights the problems in our for-profit healthcare industry. It’s why single-payer, universal coverage, the public option, and Medicare for All are so front and center in the 2020 campaign. Democrats have varied but serious proposals about how best to improve healthcare, while Republicans continue to sabotage an imperfect but substantial reform, even threatening to eliminate the ban on pre-existing conditions altogether and putting healthcare out of reach for tens of millions of Americans.

Medicare for All has always struck me as a way to borrow a catchy name and a popular program as an umbrella description of our aspirations for universal coverage. There are different ways to skin this cat. My personal preference is to initially lower the age at which Medicare eligibility starts (a proposal that Senator Joe Lieberman thwarted in 2009), funnel much younger people dropped from their parents’ coverage into it, and allow an opt-in for everybody by expanding the public option—essentially the glide path described by many Democrats to achieve Medicare for All. I understand the appeal and economic rationale of a rapid and far-reaching overhaul, but a more gradual transition avoids the risk for major implementation glitches and has far more buy-in from voters.

Which brings me back to Medicare for Me, my “OK, Boomer” achievement that moves me higher up the ladder on which I was already born—a ladder whose bottom rung swings far beyond the reach of so many.  I am glad to have reached this milestone, which makes my life easier and more affordable. I will be gladder still when Medicare for Me becomes Medicare for All.

Airlift: Feeding the Grassroots

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Like a lot of Americans, I went to a party on the Fourth of July. We celebrated Independence Day with fervent expressions of patriotism: BBQ, beer, and, of course, politics.

The sign on the door welcoming us read:

This was a couple of weeks after the first Democratic presidential debates, so there was a lot of buzz about the candidates. A few people had someone they were leaning toward, but most were so overwhelmed by the sheer number of contenders that they were waiting awhile for things to shake out. They wanted to give money to somebody, but who?

The presidential race of course generates a lot of attention (and money). But no matter who the nominee is, it’s what happens on the ground that matters most.

Luckily, there’s a lot we can do RIGHT NOW for Democratic victories, not just for President, but also for all-important Senate, House, and down-ballot races. Right before July 4th, I had gone to a gathering where I learned about Airlift, a new group I was excited to share with my fellow partygoers who were itching to join the fight.

Airlift’s tagline is “Feeding the Grass Roots,” with the goal of turning non-voters into voters. Airlift focuses not so much on candidates but on funding grassroots organizations working tirelessly year-round in their local communities to engage low-propensity voters, particularly young ones and people of color. Organizers listen to and talk with people about issues that matter to them, giving them a reason to vote. After a careful vetting process, Airlift funds groups with a proven track record of electoral success in key areas nationwide.

That strategy works. Remember how exciting it was in 2017, when Democrats flipped 15 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, paving the way for Medicaid expansion, and Doug Jones won Alabama’s Senate seat? These successes were followed by the 2018 mid-terms, when the steadily growing blue wave swept Democrats to victory up and down the ballot. Airlift played a key role, helping to:

  • Flip 21 house seats, including all 7 in California!  (West by Southwest Fund)
  • Restore voting rights for 1.4 million citizens in Florida (Organize Florida)
  • Turn Nevada almost entirely Blue! (PLAN Nevada)
  • Increase early youth voting in Texas by 500% (MOVE Texas)
  • Kick Scott Walker out of office in Wisconsin (Milwaukee BLOC Action Fund)
  • Pass redistricting in Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan (Lift the Midwest Fund)
  • Flip 15 Virginia house seats and win Medicaid expansion for 400,000 people (New Virginia Majority)
  • Pass automatic voter registration in Michigan and Nevada (MI-Liberation and PLAN Nevada)
  • Hire 600 organizers in Alabama who won the election for Doug Jones (Airlift special project)

And that was in the Fund’s infancy! This year, Airlift hopes to triple its first-year contributions. Efforts are organized around three strategic funds comprising 17 organizations: Lift the Midwest; West by Southwest; and Voter Motor. You can read all about these amazing groups here.

If we want to be true patriots and save our democracy, it’s time to engage and expand the electorate. 2020 will be a heavy lift. Make it easier by supporting Airlift today.

It will lift your spirits as well!

And They’re Off!

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With this week’s debates, the Democratic presidential primary race is officially upon us. So here’s my official position on the contenders: I love them all, and would be happy to vote for any of them. In fact, I would happily vote for anyone with a pulse and a “D” after their name. Even those whose name I can’t recall.

Oddly, the Democrats have gone from having no bench to an extremely crowded one that could cave under the strain of all those people jockeying for position on it. It’s an embarrassment of riches, whereas the Republicans just have rich embarrassments.

Still, enough is enough. The two dozen (and counting) candidates perversely echo the effect of Trump’s lies: so numerous that we tune them all out.  Let the winnowing begin!

I’ll share my opinions on specific candidates from time to time, even though these opinions will no doubt change weekly from now until the Convention. For now, just some general observations to kick off 2020.

Electability. It’s the mysterious “It” factor, even though nobody has a clue what “It” is. Most simply, “electability” means whoever gets the most votes. Except the Electoral College makes it not so simple, as Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can attest. So we have to consider the whole body politic as we try to squeeze, Spanx-like, all the weird excesses and lacks into some pleasingly redistributed configuration.

Since the highest priority of almost all Democrats and many swing voters is to get Donald Trump out of office rather than assert moral purity (aka “lose”) by refusing to vote for any non-preferred candidate, this shouldn’t be that hard. To recap, if everyone who is alarmed by Trump pledges to vote in the General Election for anyone with a pulse and a “D” after their name, problem solved.

Year of the Woman or B is for Boy? Until recently, none of the super-qualified female candidates was gaining much traction. Biden, Bernie, Beto, and Buttigieg formed the alliterative core of Boy Power. That’s shifted some, with Elizabeth Warren and now Kamala Harris gaining ground. Plus, the only bumper sticker I’ve seen so far besides “Bernie 2020” and “Any Functioning Adult 2020” is “Tulsi.”

Unconscious (not to mention conscious) bias is real. After the 2016 election, HuffPost ran a piece by Max Weiss called, “Things I Blame for Hillary Clinton’s Loss, Ranked.” It began,

Here is my response to the Slate article, “So We’re Still Blaming Jill Stein and James Comey, Huh?” This is a partial list of the things I blame, ranked.

1-199. MISOGYNY

Of course, Hillary won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, so except for the Spanx Problem, it’s hard to argue that a woman can’t win. What worries me is that I’ve been to many dinner parties in which someone invariably says, “Elizabeth Warren is such a school marm.” And these are people who LIKE Elizabeth Warren! A little while ago there were many stories about women who would love to see a female president but were afraid to vote for one. Even if legitimate, this worry can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Michelle Goldberg just wrote a compelling post-debate piece on this dilemma.)

Of course, Democrats and women candidates prevailed in the mid-terms. Trepidation about a female nominee has abated some, and the term “school marm” has mostly disappeared from my own social circle. We have to reckon with our own unconscious bias, just as I did in 2008 when I came to view as racist my conviction that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could never be elected president.

Feeling anxious?

I have a plan for that: vote for the nominee with a pulse and a “D” after their name.

Weathering the “Total Exoneration” BS Storm

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I’ve been sheltering in a secure, low-news bunker since Robert Mueller handed over his report to Attorney General William Barr last week. That’s so I can avoid getting caught up in the powerful cyclone of spin put out by Trump’s propaganda machine and amplified by mainstream pundits.

For the record, Mueller explicitly stated that the evidence does not exonerate the President regarding obstruction of justice. His investigation, besides concluding that Russia definitely meddled in the election, yielded 34 indictments, with several close Trump associates pleading or being found guilty and facing time. It’s also been a money-maker for the United States, netting more in fines and forfeitures than the investigation cost.

But what are facts in the age of spin?

I had fortified myself in advance thanks to Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer, who offered a pre-report rant before he himself disappeared into his hidey-hole.  Pfeiffer predicted that unless the Mueller report resulted immediately in Nancy Pelosi donning her sunglasses and sauntering from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office in her new role as President following the Constitution’s prescription for succession, the media would declare a huge victory for Trump and a huge loss for the Democrats. As the Pod Save hosts have been reminding listeners since just about forever, defeating Donald Trump and his Republican enablers will require the hard work of organizing to win the 2020 election—in House, Senate, and state races as well as the White House. It was never going to be through a Deus Ex Muellercha.

In any case, with my news consumption down as I wait for the Total Exoneration Bullshit Storm to pass, I’ve freed up a lot of time for other things. If you, too, want to limit your exposure to the Mueller Report Obsession, here are some suggestions:

  1. Do your taxes. Ready or not, April 15th is just around the corner. Why not just get it over with? Be sure to think about how Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment has been to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut benefiting mostly the super rich and big corporations while blowing up the deficit Republicans pretended to care about under President Obama.
  2. Schedule a doctor’s appointment. You might want to do this really soon, since once again the Republicans are going after your healthcare with a vengeance, not just via death by a thousand cuts, but with wholesale elimination.
  3. Calculate how long it will be before you’re eligible for Medicare. Oh, silly me! Republicans do care about deficits again, which is why they are now threatening Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other vital social programs.
  4. BTW, just as you shouldn’t have been holding your breath for the Mueller Report to save us, don’t hold your breath for Medicare-for-All anytime soon. Be sure to instead work toward it via any of the avenues being proposed by Democrats, but for heaven’s sake don’t insist on any purity tests!
  5. Have sex! Following the news is not only a time-suck, it’s a libido-killer. Put that device down and snuggle up! But if your time until Medicare eligibility is substantial, first make sure to . . .
  6. Stock up on birth control. Already the Trump Administration, under the guise of “religious liberty,” has made it easier for employers to refuse to provide free contraceptives as required by the ACA. The aforementioned threat to the ACA will only make things worse in the family planning department.
  7. Speaking of which, make a donation to Planned Parenthood to counteract the Republicans’ war on the organization. Bonus activity points for donating in Mike Pence’s name.
  8. Be careful, though! If you don’t want to have a baby but followed #5 while failing to follow #6, you may find yourself needing an abortion. This has become more and more difficult and is about to become even more so as states like Georgia pass so-called “heart-beat bills.” Besides banning most abortions, often before a woman realizes she’s pregnant, the goal of these clearly unconstitutional laws is to trigger a Supreme Court hearing with the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade.
  9. Ah, yes! Remember the Supreme Court? One of whose seats was stolen by Mitch McConnell? The branch of government that motivates Republicans to vote more than Democrats? When I made calls to Nevada for the 2016 election to see if people supported Clinton or Trump, one man told me, “I think they’re both idiots, but I’m a conservative, and I want conservative justices on the Supreme Court so I’m voting for Trump!” Impeccable logic. People who are alarmed by the rightward lurch of the Supreme Court might try it. Planking in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s 86th birthday is nice, but insufficient.
  10. Hug your children. Give thanks that they have not been wrested away from you and put in cages. Spare a thought for those who have.
  11. Take a hike. It’s good to get out in nature. Do it while it lasts–it won’t be too much longer if Trump and his fellow climate deniers remain in charge.

Refreshed by your alternative activities to reading about Trump’s “exoneration” by Robert Mueller as interpreted by Attorney General Barr? Here are a couple of other suggestions once you’re ready to emerge from your bunker:

  1. Call for the release of the Mueller report.. But please, relinquish any vestigial hopes for a savior. Instead,
  2. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

This Vox article describes how people did just that for the 2018 mid-terms. They knocked on doors, made phone calls, registered voters, and talked to people about their concerns. Contrary to what you may have heard about Democrats in disarray because they’ve been taken over by wild-eyed lefty purists, they did so with a high degree of pragmatism and personal engagement. As someone who’s knocked on a lot of doors and made a lot of phone calls in a lot of campaigns, I can attest that what happens on the ground is quite different from what media hype would have you believe. People I talked to in the swing district I visited every month in the run up to the mid-terms worried about healthcare, good jobs, traffic, and affordable housing and education. Russia and the Mueller investigation never came up.

Besides which, criminally guilty or exonerated, we’ve never needed evidence beyond what Trump and his Republican enablers display multiple times a day. From despicable character to destructive policies to deep corruption, it’s there plain as day. As George Conway (husband of Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway!) writes in the Washington Post, “If the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Let’s do something about that. Mueller Time must now be Our Time.