No, the Libertarian Candidate Did Not Cost Cuccinelli Virginia

Last night was not a good night for the Republican base. Sure, Chris Christie won big, but the base hates Christie. He signed a gun control bill into law (yeah, it was extremely limited, but any regulation at all is considered sacrilegious treason to the 'baggers). He's open to the idea that global warming is real and that humans are driving it. And, the very worst sin, he basically betrayed Mitt Romney right before the election -- getting plenty of photo ops with Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy. He even praised the President in a way that would be very easy to misunderstand as an endorsement. And he dissed Romney along the way, saying he "didn't give a damn" about getting a photo op with him. Tea Partiers will not celebrate Christie's win, because they don't consider him to be an actual conservative.

Another high-profile race was down in Virginia, where the media narrative has Democrat  Terry McAuliffe "barely" defeating Republican Ken Cuccinelli. It was closer than the polls had predicted, but with a nearly 3 point difference between the two candidates, the race is not remotely close enough for a recount under Virginia law. McAuliffe's win is solid and decisive. He put this thing to bed.

Immediately following Cuccinelli's loss, 'baggers took to Twitter to pile on Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis for stealing votes from Cuccinelli and costing him the race. But this particular bit of sore loserism is BS and is based on teabaggers' conception of Libertarianism. They think Libertarians are the Ron and Rand Paul types, who worry only about white, straight, evangelical male liberty and not so much about female, minority, and LGBT liberties. When actual, honest-to-goodness Libertarians got a look at Ken Cuccinelli -- who wants to make abortion illegal, ban certain sexual activities, and crack down on the Homosexual Menace -- they found they weren't exactly fans. Actual Libertarians vote against authoritarianism -- in fact, being against authoritarianism is what they're all about. According to CNN, "[I]f Sarvis had not been in the race, exit polls indicate McAuliffe would have beaten Cuccinelli by 7 points (50%-43%)." Those Libertarians, being the real deal and not just Republicans playing dress up, wouldn't have voted Cuccinelli in a million years.

The third party candidate didn't fracture the conservative vote as much as he divided the liberal vote. Instead of blaming Sarvis for their loss, wingnuts should be applauding him for coming within shouting distance of handing Cuccinelli an upset victory.

But of course, that little factoid doesn't explain why Cuccinelli lost, so it's of little use to the 'baggers. I expect to see some BS stories of voter fraud in the coming weeks and a continuation of the factually-challenged argument that Sarvis is to blame. But if you want someone to blame for Cuccinelli's loss and you want to be right, blame women.


Raw Story: During MSNBC’s election coverage on Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow of “The Rachel Maddow Show” talked about the deciding factor that handed the governorship of Virginia to the Democratic Party: women voters.

After the state elected one of its most far-right governors ever in the previous election, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), the Republican administration did everything within its power to restrict women’s access to abortion services and even contraception. In the gubernatorial election, Maddow said, women spoke back in the voting booth.

“You know, when you read the Beltway press about this race all along there’s been this kind of gauzy wonder,” Maddow said, “about how it is that Terry McAuliffe is doing so disproportionately well among women.”


The fact is that under current Governor Bob McDonnell, women's rights have been under direct and blatant assault. It was McDonnell, after all, who earned the nickname "Gov. Ultrasound," by virtue of his wanting to jam a wand into every woman seeking an abortion. And Cuccinelli was right there with him, every step of the way -- and not just as extreme as McDonnell, but more so. As a result, McAuliffe won women by nine points over all -- and unmarried women by an astonishing 42 points.

This is a real trend; Barack Obama won unmarried women by 36 points. There is a demographic crisis for the GOP as great or greater than that of Latino voters. Women -- unmarried women especially -- are not especially fond of being the subject of extra government. And they're voting against Republicans for the same reason that those Virginia Libertarians voted for Sarvis.

The Republicans are going to have to get serious about reforming their party -- not just pretending to change things with a "rebranding effort." They're going to have to get serious about liberty when they grandstand on the word; recognizing that liberty only for some isn't liberty at all, but a form a tyranny by a favored class, religion, gender, or other identity. They need to recognize that the era of wedge politics is over, that all the wedges work against them now, and that they're actually going to have to mean the things they say when they talk about freedom, rights, equality, and opportunity.

Frankly, I don't see that happening any time soon. And until they do, the Christie elections will be rare (he's still riding a wave of post-Sandy high approvals -- i.e., it's luck) and the Cuccinelli elections will be the norm.

If the 'baggers want to blame someone, they can go ahead and blame themselves. Which, of course, they won't -- meaning the problem will just perpetuate itself over and over for the foreseeable future.

-Wisco

[photo by domesticat]

Virginia, Democrats, the Tea Party, and Reality

Something's going on in Virginia that I think is worth taking note of. The gubernatorial race there is all over but the voting and Democrats make one final push for their candidate, Terry McAuliffe.


Reuters: President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats attempted on Sunday to tap into voter anger about a 16-day U.S. government shutdown and turn Virginia's upcoming governor's election into a referendum on Tea Party conservatives.

With Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe leading polls over Republican Ken Cuccinelli before Tuesday's vote, Obama and Democratic speakers at a rally in the Washington suburb of Arlington pressed party activists to focus on turning out the vote.

Northern Virginia's Washington suburbs, where many government employees and contractors live, was hit particularly hard by the government shutdown last month that resulted from a stalemate over the U.S. budget and debt ceiling that Americans for the most part blamed on Republicans.


Although Virginia's proximity to Washington DC made the government shutdown particularly painful there, the strategy of making it a referendum on the Tea Party would probably be as effective nationwide, if a Pew Poll on Tea Party favorability is any indication. Nationally, the Tea Party has taken a nose dive in polling, with favorables dropping 7-points during the shutdown to an all time low. At this particular moment in time, 'baggers are about as popular as a fart in an elevator.

And that seems unlikely to change, since pigheadedness and a complete disregard for reality has become hallmarks of TP thinking. Trapped in their Breitbart.com, FreeRepublic, Hot Air echo chamber, many 'baggers may be completely unaware just how widely hated they really are. In fact, since these propaganda sites only repeat happy news about their movement, some may even believe they're the most popular people in America.

Remember, when Mitt Romney lost, many in that Tea Party base were genuinely surprised, despite poll after poll showing that Mittens was so going to lose. Their echo chamber told them all the polls were wrong, that Romney was rocketing to glorious victory, and that America had finally had enough of this commie-socialist-nazi secret Muslim terr'ist from Kenya. Similar delusions may be rampant in Virginia.

The final Public Policy Polling survey on the race in Virginia shows McAuliffe heading into a pretty convincing win over Ken Cuccinelli, 7 points ahead as people make their way to the polls. As has been the case throughout the race, both candidates are unpopular. This is definitely a "lesser of two evils" race, where votes won't be cast so much for a candidate as against the opponent.

And polling shows that all those votes stacked up against Cuccinelli will be something of a mystery to Republican voters there. "Whether Republicans will learn any lessons if they lose on Tuesday is unclear," PPP reports. "Overall voters in the state think the GOP would have been better off nominating Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling than Cuccinelli by a 49/22 margin. But among Republican voters, they still think Cuccinelli was the right candidate to put forth by a 40/36 margin."

Bolling dropped out after polling showed him running 30 points behind Cuccinelli in the Republican primary. "What might've been" might be a fun exercise in supposition, but it was never going to happen. Republicans lined up behind Cuccinelli, the most extremist candidate their party was offering, because of Tea Party purity and that echo chamber assurance that their ideas and positions were so awesome that no one could ever seriously disagree with them. You wonder how many know how badly he's actually losing and how many are lost in the fact-free delusion caused by listening to talk radio and reading the rightwing blogosphere. How many will be standing there stunned, watching the final vote tallies on their TV screens, like Romney voters a year before?

And that's the Tea Party's greatest weakness -- their self-inflicted ignorance. As their poll numbers crash, as Democrats use "Tea Party" the way Republicans used the word "liberal" back in the '80s and 90s, as their political brand becomes ballot box poison, they tell each other that they're the bestest and smartest and most popular kids in school. Which means that as Democrats begin to launch an attack on that very weak brand, they're more likely to laugh at the "libtards" getting everything wrong than they are to defend their crumbling ramparts.

Unless Republicans can convince the 'baggers to have some sort of regard for reality, Virginia 2013 is a glimpse of their party's future.

-Wisco

[photo Vox Efx]
 

Getting Healthcare News from People Who Told You Second Hand Smoke was Harmless

Back in the '90s, one of Rush Limbaugh's big issues was the "junk science" that held that second hand tobacco smoke was bad for you. Never mind the obvious; that if first hand smoke was bad for you, the idea that second hand smoke was not is absurd. But Limbaugh was and is an expert in making endless gullible people believe patently ridiculous things, which made him the perfect propagandist to rile up dopes into thinking you had some sort of a right to smoke around the baby and that the liberal nanny state was taking that right away -- not because of health concerns, but because they're all commies who hate big business. Limbaugh continued the fight long after the battle was lost, insisting as recently as 2010 that "second hand smoke is harmless."

This campaign wasn't exactly Limbaugh's idea. Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds enlisted him and others in a big PR push that included the arguments that nicotine was "NOT addictive,"  to "point out 'victimhood' of smokers--outside in wind and cold--as pariahs." The idea was to "create fear of loss of liberty" and to "incite smokers to rebel and spread that rebellion to nonsmokers now!" Who would be more perfect than Limbaugh's audience of "dittoheads"  -- a group of constantly whining conservatives completely convinced of their perpetual victimhood? Always quick to reactionary rage and never prone to deep thinking, the far right talk radio base has always been a herd of buffalo that corporations could panic into a stampede and send to trample (or try to anyway) anyone they wanted. They became the "town hall mobs," which in turn became the Tea Party.

This, I believe, is essential background in understand the furor around this:


Talking Points Memo: Donna received the letter canceling her insurance plan on Sept. 16. Her insurance company, LifeWise of Washington, told her that they'd identified a new plan for her. If she did nothing, she'd be covered.

A 56-year-old Seattle resident with a 57-year-old husband and 15-year-old daughter, Donna had been looking forward to the savings that the Affordable Care Act had to offer.

But that's not what she found. Instead, she'd be paying an additional $300 a month for coverage. The letter made no mention of the health insurance marketplace that would soon open in Washington, where she could shop for competitive plans, and only an oblique reference to financial help that she might qualify for, if she made the effort to call and find out.

Otherwise, she'd be automatically rolled over to a new plan -- and, as the letter said, "If you're happy with this plan, do nothing."

If Donna had done nothing, she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more a month for insurance than she will now that she went to the marketplace, picked the best plan for her family and accessed tax credits at the heart of the health care reform law.


"The info that we were sent by LifeWise was totally bogus. Why the heck did they try to screw us?" Donna told TPM's Dylan Scott. "People who are afraid of the ACA should be much more afraid of the insurance companies who will exploit their fear and end up overcharging them."

Bingo.

The outrage over these letters isn't that corporations are lying to customers in an attempt to rip them off (i.e., anger directed at the right people), the outrage is from the gullible chumps who are falling for this con. And they're the same people who always fall for corporate cons, who believed Limbaugh when he told them that burning a pack a day around the kids was fine, who believe that the jury's still out on asbestos and global warming and nuclear waste. They actually are perpetual victims, just not victims to the people they believe they are. They're victims to corporate lies and they rarely learn anything from this recurring mistake.

So as the rightwing media reports half the story -- and a carefully selected, edited, and redacted half at that -- the base eats it up. You take a story of insurance policies canceled because they're so lousy that they're now illegal, you cut out a few facts here and there, add a little outrage and stridency, and presto -- a story about pretty much everyone in America seeing their insurance situation worsen under Obamacare. These are the same people who'd tell you it's fine to keep an ashtray by the crib and we're supposed to take them seriously.

Personally, I don't trust them any farther than I can throw them -- and, as a former smoker, that's probably not very far. They've shown over and over again how untrustworthy they are; as have the corporations who fax them their talking points every morning.

-Wisco

[photo by Eli Duke]

Poll: Obamacare Beats the GOP Alternative

There's a reason that Republicans took a beating from the public over the government shutdown. Yes, Obamacare remains unpopular, but the fact is that people don't see it as bad enough to scrap. The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll show us that, although the law is approved of by only 44% of respondents, 47% want to keep the law as is or expand it, opposed to 37% who want to repeal it.

And if Republicans vastly overestimated American's desire to scrap Obamacare, they're currently making a similar over calculation of outrage over a buggy website. Kaiser finds that while 75% of Americans fallowed the shutdown story closely, only 51% say the same of the online exchange's rollout. Those who say they've followed the stories very closely show the starkest difference -- 44% followed the shutdown very closely, compared to only 22% who are as interested in the website story.

Writing for the Washington Post political blog The Fix, Sean Sullivan and Aaron Blake explain that Republican grandstanding over Obamacare was counterproductive for them:


It’s especially stinging for Republicans because Obamacare was at the center of the House GOP strategy that led to the shutdown. Republicans’ repeated refusal to pass a clean stopgap spending bill was rooted in an unyielding desire to use the budget debate to pick apart the health-care law. They talked over and over again about the negative impact of the law, and how it needed to be stopped.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s unsteady unveiling of HealthCare.gov during the same period gave rise to widely publicized causes for concern. But instead of allowing those issues to dominate the conversation, Republicans elbowed them to the side with their fight against the health-care law in Congress, which dealt the party a big-time political blow, even before taking into account the missed opportunity to spotlight the rollout woes. The party’s image plunged to an all-time low in the wake of the shutdown, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed.


"[P]olitics is all about moments," they say. "When an opportunity arises, if you’re not there to seize it, you lose, even if the other side doesn’t win. The GOP just learned that the hard way."

Normally, I'd say I don't think the GOP has learned anything. Republicans don't do learning lessons. But this is a "fire hot" lesson. Even the most obstinate, headstrong child will not touch the pretty red glowing spirally element on the stove twice. They're currently trying to undermine confidence in the law, but talk of repeal died almost as soon as the shutdown started.

Greg Sargent points out that part of the Republican Party's problem here is that they don't have any alternative. This puts them in the position of being the party of the status quo. And no matter how bad people think Obamacare may be, they believe that the unsustainable non-system of healthcare delivery we had was worse. By offering nothing other than repeal, Republicans are selling a crap sandwich that everyone's already said they didn't want -- and that's working out for them about as well as they really should've expected.

And no, health savings accounts aren't going to save them. It was never a popular idea and is likely even less so now, as people find themselves stretched so far they can't put anything in their regular accounts. Health savings accounts were never a solution or an alternative. They were just a different payment plan on the lousy and inefficient system that we finally scrapped. So even the old Republican ideas aren't actually anything like a plan, they're all simpleminded bandaids that don't address the underlying structural problems. Healthcare would've been just as unaffordable.

Until Republicans get it together and come up with some sort of alternative, it's hard to see how their position on the Obamacare issue is going to improve their standing with the public. They're standing on a loser, offering a loser -- and that's just not going to catapult them to popularity the way they seem to think.

-Wisco

Deficit Falling at Fastest Rate Since WWII -- And Not Because of Spending Cuts

Republicans like to say that you can't spend your way to prosperity. Why that statement doesn't get them laughed out of whatever room they're in every time they say it remains one of life's great mysteries. Of course you can spend your way to prosperity; ask any prosperous person. The only wealthy people who haven't spent their way to prosperity are those who've inherited wealth. Even lottery winners spent something to gain all their riches, even if it wasn't much. Wealthy people became wealthy by spending money -- and even by borrowing money.

Conservatives are dead wrong on this point and, indeed, the opposite is actually true -- you can't save your way to prosperity, since you're never going to be able to save more than you make -- or at least, figuring in interest, not much more. It's a case of Republican talking points contradicting other talking points; you can't spend your way to prosperity, but successful people are "risk takers" who put money on the line to get things done. One the one hand, conservatives praise entrepreneurs, on the other, they argue that entrepreneurial efforts are obviously doomed and only a fool would believe that you can spend money to make money. No wonder people who listen to talk radio make no sense at all when they start talking about economics. It's all a muddled mess of contradictory propagandizing with no real connection to how things actually work.

All of this started bouncing around in my head when I read this:


The Hill: The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2013 was $680 billion, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.

This is the first time that the deficit has fallen below $1 trillion during President Obama's time in the White House.

[...]

The deficit has dropped $409 billion from 2012, when it was $1.089 trillion.


Is this a case of saving our way to prosperity? It's not. It's a case of bringing in more money. "Most of the change comes from higher tax receipts," the report goes on. "Receipts rose to $2.77 trillion in 2013, up from $2.45 trillion in 2012. Spending was $3.45 trillion, down from $3.53 trillion in 2012."

All those sequester cuts the Republicans love so much? Not doing a whole lot, other than slowing the rate of economic growth. You can't save your way to prosperity. As the economy improves, revenues rise. As revenues rise, the deficit falls. Therefore, if you want to reduce the deficit, you worry about the economy, not the deficit. Work on the economy and the deficit will fix itself. What's holding America back isn't poor economic stewardship from the White House, it's congressional obstructionism in service to an obsession with something that is simply not the problem. Deficit spending is a symptom, not the disease.

Republicans have everything bass-ackward here. You spend money when times are bad and save money when times are good. When the economy turns south, the last thing you want to do is cut back on government spending. It's idiotic. The economy staggers when people stop spending money -- so why would anyone think that this is the best time for the government to also stop spending money? All that does is make everything worse. I find it absolutely astonishing that this very, very obvious fact isn't very, very obvious to everyone.

"As a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the deficit fell to 4.1 percent, representing a reduction of more than half from the deficit that the Administration inherited when the president took office in 2009," said White House Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell. "The deficit reduction since that point represents the fastest decline in the deficit over a sustained period since the end of World War II." If deficit reduction were the key to economic prosperity, shouldn't we all be rolling in the dough right now? Instead, we continue to live with a struggling economic growth. If austerity is such a great thing for the economy, why isn't it working?

No, what we need to do is unchain the economy by eliminating the sequester cuts and abandoning any and all austerity measures. Economics hasn't been suddenly reversed and the old cliché that it takes money to make money is as true as it's ever been.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]