During the 2010 campaign, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell falsely charged that with the Affordable Care Act President Obama was "sticking it to seniors." McConnell's GOP was rewarded for that fiction, as a 21 point margin among voters 65 and older propelled the Republicans to an overwhelmingly victory in the midterms.

Now just two years later, it is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney who will really be sticking it to seniors. His Obamacare pledge to "kill it dead" will erase hard-won health protections today's elderly have gained under the ACA. Romney's proposal to slash Medicaid spending by more than a third over the next decade and give what remains as block grants to the states could jeopardize nursing home care for millions of Americans. And as the Congressional Budget Office and a new Kaiser Family Foundation study confirmed, the Romney-Ryan plan to "voucherize and privatize" Medicare will invariably lead to much higher costs for future recipients.

That's the word from the Kaiser analysis, which examined the impact if a Romney-Ryan style voucher plan was implemented today. (Note that Romney's premium support proposal only applies to future Medicare beneficiaries, those now 55 or younger.) As Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explained:

What Kaiser did was pretty simple. Its researchers modeled what would happen if seniors received a set amount from the government to pay for their Medicare benefits. That check would be equal to second-lowest bid from a private, Medicare Advantage plan. That's the same benchmark used in the Ryan Budget, Romney-Ryan proposal and the Domenici-Rivlin proposal.

That was step one. Step two was looking at whether that check would cover the cost of providing Medicare benefits under the traditional or private plans, in a given area. For 59 percent of seniors, it wouldn't: 25 million seniors would pay more for their current benefits if the government enacted this premium support model right now.

But that figure understates how the pain of Romney's Medicare gambit would be felt geographically. While nationwide 27 percent of seniors would face monthly premium increases of $100 or more, in high-cost states like Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey the figure tops 90 percent (see map above).

If the Kaiser study helped answer how many American seniors would pay more for health insurance under President Romney and Vice President Ryan, the Congressional Budget Office explained how much.

Continue reading »

On This Week with Christiane Amanpour, senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Robert Menedez (D-NJ) spar over this week's election and what it will mean for America. Of course, Amanpour brings up what's on the minds of all the Very Serious People - deficit reduction! She wants to know how you can "move the economy forward" without cutting the deficit -- even though we have several prominent Nobel Prize winning economists loudly proclaiming that it will deepen and lengthen the recession. Dear God, do these TV talking heads even bother to read?

Yes, worrying over the deficit is what's driving every unemployed person I know to the polls this week!

AMANPOUR: Do you think, looking at the polls, looking at what we've just seen, do you think this is as bad as 1994?

MENENDEZ: No, this is not 1994. No. 1, in 1994, the Republican brand, its image was much better than it is today. In every poll, Democrats as a brand fare much better. And, secondly, in 1994, it was a surge at the end. We've known that this midterm election is going to be challenging, and so our candidates for the U.S. Senate have been ready for this and have been creating the contrast in each election between their Republican opponent, who wants to bring us back to the economic policies that brought us into this mess in the first place, and their own policies that are working to get us out of it.

AMANPOUR: Senator Cornyn said they don't think they will get it this cycle. But you're saying that you're blaming the economy on President Obama's predecessor, but clearly the voters are not saying that. They are taking this economy very -- to heart and very badly.

MENENDEZ: Christiane, we understand that people are hurting in this country. But our goal is to have them understand and channel their anger on election day against the Republican Party that brought us to the verge of economic collapse in November of 2008, when financial institutions in this country were ready to collapse.

AMANPOUR: So why hasn't the message got out better, then, for instance on precisely this issue? A recent Bloomberg poll found that most Americans think that taxes have gone up since President Obama took office; that the economy has shrunk; that TARP, the corporate bailout, won't be mostly paid back. I mean, all of those are untrue. Why is the messaging so bad?

MENENDEZ: It's true that all of those are untrue, and I think the challenge is, when you're hurting economically -- and we have gone from negative job growth to positive job growth, from negative GDP growth to positive GDP growth -- but if you're still unemployed, none of that news makes that much difference to you. And that's the challenge in this election.

Our hope and our message and the contrast is you want to give the power back to the people who got us in this mess or do you want to continue to move progress forward?

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, Senator, because so many of the people we talked to say that they really want to see cooperation, bipartisanship, less of the poison, and solutions. And yet your leader, the Republican leader of the Senate, has said that if you win in November, "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." The Republican leader in the House, John Boehner, said this is not the time for compromise.

That doesn't sound like putting partisanship aside and working for the people. Is that the sum total of the policy?

Continue reading »

Despite what you might expect, Alabama's fifth congressional district features a tight race between two very different candidates -- with no "enthusiasm gap" among Democrats. In the left corner is Steve Raby, local business leader and former Legislative Aide and Chief of Staff for the late, great U. S. Senator Howell Heflin, last lion of southern liberalism. In the right corner is Mo Brooks, former state legislator, former Madison County District Attorney, current County Commissioner, and local shock-talk radio favorite at WVNN (where Brooks himself once filled-in for none other than Sean Hannity).

I went to Huntsville last week to visit the Democratic and Raby campaign headquarters. What I found there -- and at Steve Raby's rally two nights later -- suggests the major media narratives are not simply incorrect, but actually fly in the face of what has always been commonly accepted electoral practice. As usual, more after the video and a jump:

Continue reading »

So basically, everyone says they just love DNC chair Tim Kaine so much, they don't even care if they lose Congress this year. And that yucky Howard Dean, the one whose leadership led to taking the House, the Senate, and the White House? They seem to pretend he had nothing to do with that:

Senior Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill are expressing confidence in party Chairman Tim Kaine despite the possibility of huge losses in the midterm elections.

In an interview with The Hill, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the Obama administration will “absolutely” have confidence in Kaine’s leadership even if Democrats take a drubbing this fall.

Axelrod praised Kaine’s work on the nuts-and-bolts of party building, especially in comparison to the more controversial leadership style of Kaine’s GOP counterpart, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

“I think Tim Kaine is out there doing what he should be doing — building the party, building the party apparatus,” Axelrod said. “That is what you want a party chair to do. That is the guts of the job.”

Even though it really upset party insiders when Dr. Dean did it!

Lawmakers and party insiders contacted by The Hill expressed unified support for Kaine’s work as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and praised him for working to channel President Obama’s grassroots support into a tool for governing.

Kaine has worked quietly to integrate the White House’s political arm, Organizing for America (OFA), into the party’s structure while also juggling a heavy travel and fundraising schedule to prepare for the midterm elections.

Those efforts have seemingly insulated Kaine from the maelstrom of blame that can often tarnish party leaders who sustain heavy electoral losses during their time in charge.

[...]Kaine’s smooth relationship with congressional leaders stands in stark contrast to that of his predecessor at the DNC, Howard Dean.

Dean famously bickered with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) during his tenure, though the former Vermont governor also attracted accolades for his “50-state strategy,” which some say helped Democrats regain control of Congress in 2007.

Kaine is much more reserved than the outspoken Dean.

The former Richmond mayor isn’t known for his sound bites, and unlike Dean and Steele, he is not gaffe-prone.

Thank God we don't have to worry about Tim Kaine ever telling Democrats they need to stand up for the voters! Because that would really hurt their feelings.

The Party of Fiscal Responsibility? Seriously?:

The Washington Times reports today, however, on a new matter that has nothing to do with Steele's notorious gaffes, and more to do with his notorious mismanagement.

The Republican National Committee failed to report more than $7 million in debt to the Federal Election Commission in recent months -- a move that made its bottom line appear healthier than it is heading into the midterm elections and that also raises the prospect of a hefty fine.

In a memo to RNC budget committee members, RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen on Tuesday accused Chairman Michael S. Steele and his chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, of trying to conceal the information from him by ordering staff not to communicate with the treasurer -- a charge RNC officials deny.

Mr. Pullen told the members that he had discovered $3.3 million in debt from April and $3.8 million from May, which he said had led him to file erroneous reports with the FEC. He amended the FEC filings Tuesday.

When it comes to consequences, the financial problem could cause all kinds of trouble for Republicans. Deliberately filing deceptive FEC reports is criminal, and could lead to stiff penalties -- if not formal charges -- before the elections.

And while the Republican National Committee is already downplaying the significance of this, there's reason to believe the party is aware of the seriousness of the situation.

Actually, despite the fact that this is not strictly Michael Steele's fault, unnamed members of the RNC are quick to start pointing fingers his way:

Mr. Pullen said that Mr. Leavitt, acting on orders from Mr. Steele, tried to limit his access to the unreported past-due bills that the RNC owes for goods and services by barring staff members from providing him any information unless approved by the chairman. According to Mr. Pullen, he complained and Mr. Steele then allowed the information to flow.[..]

A faction of committee members has been critical of Mr. Steele's fundraising operation.

Before Mr. Steele took over as chairman in January 2009, RNC fundraising typically far exceeded donations to the Democratic National Committee.

Back on May 31, 2006, for example, the RNC had $43.1 million in cash on hand compared with the DNC's $10.3 million. Part of the RNC's edge over the DNC stemmed from Republicans holding the presidency, though they were about to lose control of Congress that year.

Wow. That's a whole lotta money they've lost. And they think we should trust them with the deficit?

First Citizens United commercial for midterms

Citizens United has only endorsed one nominee for the midterm elections thus far: Sharron Angle.

Via the Las Vegas Tribune:

Citizens United Political Victory Fund says their mission is to assist a conservative candidate who shares Ronald Reagan's vision of reducing the size of government, lowering taxes, cutting spending, promoting traditional family values, and keeping America safe. Their goal for the 2010 election cycle is to elect a candidate who will fight for conservative principles and challenge the agenda of the Obama Administration.

David N. Bossie, President of Citizens United said, "this is a critical race, and that is why it is so important to nominate a true Conservative with the credibility to stand up to Senator Reid's out-of-control spending and big-government ways. Sharron Angle is a strong candidate with impeccable Conservative credentials, and I am proud to endorse her for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate."

That ad at the top, by the way, isn't one Ronald Reagan would endorse at all. Reagan was good buddies with Iran's religious oligarchs -- such good buddies he and his pal Bill Casey swapped some weapons for hostages back in the day.

But then, it's very much in style to twist around what Reagan was about to serve the conservative message. Truth matters less than impression, and so we have Reagan, DemiGod of the teabaggers, overseeing their efforts. Never mind that he gave amnesty to illegal aliens, ignored the Constitution when it didn't fit with his plans, and systematically dismantled Main Street in favor of Wall Street. Forget all that for a minute.

Sharron Angle and Citizens United carefully ignore this fact: Reagan talked to the Soviets. Of course, they already had nukes, so I suppose there wasn't much of an option, eh?

There's nothing much good to say about Reagan, but there's far less to say good about Sharron Angle, and comparing her to him is a joke. Here's the most telling quote I've read about her time in the Nevada state legislature:

"She's very rigid and I have a little bit of trouble understanding her positions," the former lawmaker said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "She's a very difficult person."

Vucanovich explained that her concerns don't just stem from Angle's conservative views, but rather from her uncompromising style of legislating. The characterization appears to grow out of a reputation Angle developed among her colleagues during the years she served in the Nevada state legislature from 1999 to 2005.

"In the building we used to have a joke called 41 to Angle," Democratic assemblywoman Sheila Leslie recently told the New York Times. "She took great pride in voting 'no' for everything. We have some very conservative people in the assembly, but she was the only one voting 'no' on a technical cleanup bill. The lobbyists didn't talk to her, the legislators wouldn't talk to her, because when you vote no on everything no one wants to deal with you."

I'd say that about describes the entire Republican party, wouldn't you? About the only thing worse for Nevada than Sharron Angle would be...hmmmm. I can't think of what that is.

UPDATE: Today brings another example of Angle's apparent inability to grasp facts or imagine taking action on behalf of those she represents. From The Plum Line, this story:

What happened was this: Angle, under fire for saying she disagreed with something Harry Reid did that saved a project involving thousands of local jobs, claimed that what she'd really meant to say was that she opposed the stimulus. The problem, as a flummoxed local reporter pointed out, is that the stimulus had nothing to do with the project in question.

So Harry Reid picked up the phone and asked several banks to release funds to complete a private building project rather than throw 22,000 people out of work. They agreed, and the project was saved. Angle somehow twisted this into an anti-stimulus answer for a project completely unrelated to the stimulus.

The real danger here is that Angle didn't take the 10 minutes to see what the problem was. Instead she served up the knee-jerk tea party answer about smaller government and stimulus failure, which should be a pretty strong indicator of her inability to actually work through a problem and solve it on her own.

But hey, Citizens United thinks she's the Reagan ideal, so there's that, anyway.

(h/t Desert Beacon)

Ruth Marcus writes a pretty good article in the Washington Post about the crack pot conservatives running as teabaggers in the upcoming midterm elections like Rick Barber. After watching Barber's insane political ads she concludes her article with this:

As to the video, Barber was unapologetic. "We can't be so naive to think that just because we live in America that can't happen to us," he said. "We are being fed a socialist agenda spoon by spoon, and we don't see it coming. In Germany, when Hitler was first elected under the Socialist Party, no one would have thought in a million years it would have gone where it did."

I would not have thought in a million years that this kind of thinking would be inside the conservative mainstream. If it is not, it is time for rational conservatives to speak up.

I would not have thought in a million years that a Washington Post writer would have no clue about the history of the conservative movement. Does she not realize that there was a fight for the soul of that movement between William Buckley of the NRO and Robert Welch of the Birchers? Barry Goldwater refused to dismiss the Birchers as wackos entirely because they were useful like the teabaggers, but he did attack Welch.

Rick Perlstein's: 'Beyond The Storm:'

The attendees fell into two camps. Buckley and Kirk said they were ready to write the Birchers out of the conservative movement altogether. Goldwater and others canceled accommodation. He thought there were a lot of 'nice guys' in the Society and not just 'kooks' and that it wasn't time to precipitate breaks in the conservatives' fragile movement.

They settled on a compromise. National Review would attack Robert Welch, not the John Birch Society. Goldwater would take the line that Welch was a crazy extremist, but that the Society itself was full of 'fine, upstanding citizens' working hard and well for the cause of Americanism.

Haven't we heard the same thing from Newtie and Rove about the teabaggers? Sure, they have racist signs and say racist things, but it's only a few people.The rest are great Americans. Right wing extremists have populated the conservative movement since it began. It's only when a Democrat is elected president that they freak out and expose themselves to public view. That's why I came up with the idea of writing our new book. I thought what was happening should be documented. The 'Whiplash politics' practiced by the conservative movement as soon as Obama was elected, (The Tea Party folks) which is really the GOP now was just another chapter in their checkered history. Ruth Marcus should know that. I often wonder if the MSM is just too scared to write about the tea party people or conservatives because they were traumatized during the HCR town hall meetings last summer. They were shocked by the vitriolic insanity that was splashed across the nation. Here's another tip for Ruth. Conservatives rarely abandon their wingnuts. They may attack a Michael Steele once in a while, but they will never forsake a conservative transmitter like Coulter, no matter how far out they get.

Anyway, please support liberal authors and buy this book.

Oh, and Dean Baker takes her down because she doesn't know jack about Social Security either.

Of course, it's an anonymously sourced article and it's in the Telegraph, which is a right wing rag. But you never know, they might be right:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

Friends say he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.

"I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

An official from the Bill Clinton era said that "no one will be surprised" if Mr Emanuel left after the midterm elections in November, when the Democratic party will battle to save its majorities in the house of representatives and the senate.

It is well known in Washington that arguments have developed between pragmatic Mr Emanuel, a veteran in Congress where he was known for driving through compromises, and the idealistic inner circle who followed Mr Obama to the White House.

His abrasive style has rubbed some people the wrong way, while there has been frustration among Mr Obama's closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president's legislative that his background promised.

"It might not be his fault, but the perception is there," said the consultant, who asked not to be named. "Every vote has been tough, from health care to energy to financial reform.

"Democrats have not stood behind the president in the way Republicans did for George W Bush, and that was meant to be Rahm's job."

The tone, of course, is that Rahm is the "bad" guy and the rest of the inner circle are the "good" guys. I don't think it's that simple. I think Obama's choices reflect his own philosophies, and you simply can't pin everything on Rahm. We have a Democratic president who's trying to gut public education, Social Security and Medicare and who refuses to deal with the national tragedy of long-term unemployment. Are we supposed to believe Rahm tied the president to a chair and hypnotized him? I'm not buying it.

In case you haven't figured out by now, we need to fix the Citizens United decision - and we need to switch to all-public financing. Because the politicians are already far too adept at perverting the system to their own ends. From Rolling Stone (subscribers only):

One afternoon in late April, Karl Rove welcomed an elite group of conservative political operatives and moneymen into his home in Washington, D.C. Along with his protégé Ed Gillespie, who succeeded him as George W. Bush's top political adviser, Rove had gathered together the heavyweights of the GOP's fundraising network. In attendance were the political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as the leaders of two new megadollar campaign groups loyal to Rove: American Crossroads and the American Action Network. Rove's plan was straightforward: to seize control of the party from Michael Steele, whose leadership of the Republican National Committee was imploding in the wake of a fundraiser at a lesbian bondage club. By building a war chest of unregulated campaign cash – an unprecedented $135 million to be raised by these three groups alone – Rove would be able to wage the midterm elections on his own terms: electing candidates loyal to the GOP's wealthiest donors and corporate patrons. With the media's attention diverted by the noisy revolt being waged by the Tea Party, the man known as "Bush's brain" was staging a stealthier but no less significant coup of the Republican Party.

"What they've cooked up is brilliant," says a prominent Democrat. "Evil, but brilliant."

Rove and Gillespie, who effectively ran the Republican Party throughout the past decade, recognized that Steele's weakness represented an opportunity to stage a quiet comeback. But taking control of the party, they knew, would require a new kind of political machine. The Supreme Court, in its recent decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, opened the floodgates for unlimited political spending by corporations and individuals. But the court left in place strict limits on contributions to party committees – and it preserved the legal firewall that bars campaigns from coordinating directly with the outside groups now empowered to spend millions on their behalf.

That's where Rove and Gillespie come in. As free-agent strategists, they are in a unique position to skirt such prohibitions and coordinate all parts of the GOP – both inside and outside the official party structure – because they're not officially in charge of any of it. In the run-up to November, they will be the ones ensuring that the many tentacles of the court-sanctioned shadow party – from startups like American Crossroads to stalwarts like the National Rifle Association – operate in concert. "They will be making sure that everybody is expending themselves properly, as opposed to duplicating efforts or working at cross-purposes," says Mary Matalin, who served with Rove in the Bush White House. "That's something that the committees and the campaigns really don't do – legally cannot do."

As demonstrated by the big-money meeting at Rove's home – first reported by the National Journal and confirmed to Rolling Stone by one of its boldface-name guests – Rove's fundraising prowess makes him the undisputed ringleader on the "independent" side of the firewall. At the same time, he continues to strategize with party officials, enabling him to coordinate the GOP's national effort with individual campaigns across the country. "Members of Congress in both chambers continue to be in touch with him," Matalin says. "Governors continue to be in touch with him. Individual races continue to be in touch with him. That's just Karl, and that's undeniable."

For the man known as Turd Blossom, it's been a treacherous, four-year climb back to the pinnacle of GOP politics. The Rove brand was tarnished in 2006, when Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate. His exit from the White House the following year was dogged by scandals, from the political firing of U.S. attorneys to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. And with his longtime enemy John McCain serving as the party's standard-bearer in 2008, Rove could only sit by and watch as the fearsome big-money machine he built over the course of a decade – his political Death Star – was blasted out of orbit by an insurgent Obama campaign powered by hundreds of millions in small-dollar donations.

This is a tale of how the empire strikes back.

(h/t TPM)

Glowing in the news of a resurgence of his approval rating, President Obama tried to pass some of that popularity onto his party and tried to remind supporters that the upcoming midterm elections do have consequences. Frustration at the incumbency shouldn't mean giving Republicans the wheel again:

After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. You can't drive. We don't want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.

Damn straight, we can't afford to go into that ditch again.

I completely understand the level of frustration; I feel it too. But I also know that the choice to sit this election out or to go to third party candidates (and I say this as a registered third-party voter) is to hand the keys of the car back to the same guys who drove us into that ditch.