Republican Push to Limit HealthCare Hits Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin

Madison, Wisconsin—An out-of-state organization seeking to repeal ObamaCare to benefit health insurance corporations took out a half-page ad in the Wisconsin State Journal, (Madison, Wisconsin), this week to blast Sen. Tammy Baldwin, (D-Wisconsin), for backing people over insurance companies.

The ad is part of an early multi-state TV blitz in an effort to target Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018, (The Hill). 

One Nation is a massive SuperPac, affiliated with Republican senate SuperPacs and funded heavily by the health insurance industry.

Thirty-three U.S. Senate seats are to be contested in 2018 and the Democratic Party has to defend a whopping 25 of those seats, (Red State).

Republicans think they can flip Wisconsin's first-term Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin, but they know it's a fight.

Here's their strategy:

Republicans excite their base by repeatedly messaging their healthcare is earned, as opposed to the blacks' healthcare which comes out of your pay-check. [Sure it's crazy, but so is racism.]

Blacks and browns are making your healthcare rates soar, (by some manner too mysterious to note with no mention of, or accountability by health insurance companies): Fucking Obama catered to these people with Obamacare and made your life bad. White folks just don't have a chance. 

This is what One Nation is accomplishing, and they want to reach white swing voters.

This appeal is of course ludicrous. But the idea is to tie every issue to race with the compelling message that some manner of The Other is taking yours and getting paid for it no less.

In Wisconsin, appeals to race work and have for many decades. Whether the race-baiting politicians are natives like Tommy Thompson or transplants like Scott Walker and Donald Trump, the ole-time religion of blaming the black and browns is home-cooking in the Badger State.

The Tammy Baldwin v. Republican 2018 race will offer a leading indicator showing if Democrats have figured out how to prevail on an issue they should own: Healthcare.

Shouldn't be that hard and Baldwin is better than most Dems as witnessed by her defeat of Tommy Thompson in 2012 that saw Baldwin successfully define Thompson as what he is: An opportunistic hack who turned his back on Wisconsin. Baldwin won 51 percent to 45 percent.

The turnout in 2018 will be in the 55-percent range. Republicans have worked hard to suppress that urban vote in Milwaukee.

What's the early prediction on the Baldwin reelection race? There is none, Wisconsin folk are utterly unpredictable.

I'll make one observation that will inform the race.

Baldwin was first elected to Congress in 1998.

Magic 98

In 1998 I worked as a poll worker at the then Gordon Commons on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus at a voting precinct serving the southeast dormitories, (mostly freshmen and sophomores). The city-wide turnout wildly exceeded predictions, and the southeast dorms led even these turn-out numbers.

At the polls we ran out of ballots about 5:00 P.M, as students were coming to vote and being told to come back. I personally sprinted to a polling site at a Dayton Street school about a half-mile away and was told they too were out of ballots and to try the Memorial Union polling site. Sprinted to the Union. I picked up about 100 or so ballots, sprinted back to Gordon Commons and was shaking too much to counter-sign the ballots. Serious fun.

Baldwin defeated one Josephine W. Musser, 52 to 46 percent. It was a race many recall with fond memories. [That same 1998 race saw Sen. Russ Feingold narrowly defeat a rightwing Evangelical Mark Neumann by some 37,000 votes. Neumann blamed the Dane County turnout, so did many in Dane County, especially Madison's Isthmus neighborhoods. Read one homemade sign on an East Dayton Street house months later in the heart of the Isthmus in the spring of 1999: "one neighborhood" beat Mark Neumann. Milwaukee County with all those urban types also gave Feingold electoral breathing room.]

What happened in 1998? Baldwin captured the public imagination who saw in her candidacy the hopes and possibilities of people. It was that vivid. Everyone doing field work saw the same thing, but political consultants didn't see the throngs of people turning out as they did. This phenomenon was electoral magic—something that cannot be explained or predicted.

Twenty years later the 2018 race will feature Baldwin against a Republipuke who will run a campaign asking in effect, 'are you gonna let the niggers win and take your healthcare?'

Rightwing thinks anti-healthcare message is a winner in 2018
U.S. Senate races. Who needs healthcare?

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare, Rejects Activist Rightwingers

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obamacare, in a blow to rightwing activists and a political victory for the Obama administration cementing an accomplishment that sociologist and historian Paul Starr notes in 2010, is a "stunning historical achievement and the most important liberal reform since the 1960s" (Mal Contends).

The case is David King, et al., Petitioners v. Sylvia Burwell (No. 14-114). See also David King, et al., Petitioners v. Sylvia Burwell at the Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.

The Court upheld Obamacare that had been challenged on the basis that five words out of a massive law demanded its destruction.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor to form a 6-3 majority.

Some six million Americans faced losing their healthcare insurance had the Court ruled against the ACA.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.

Justice Scalia penned a dissenting opinion joined by rightwing activists justices, Thomas and Alito, that even for the often peevish Scalia reads as petulant and polemical. "We should start calling this law SCOTUScare," writes Scalia (p.47).

Scalia's currency on the Court has been declining in recent years as his increasingly incoherent opinions have veered into what Judge Richard Posner derided as "gotcha' jurisprudence," as described in Posner's book Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013) (p.182).

Many legal observers prior to today's decision doubted that the Court would follow Scalia as Scalia has devolved into a radical and activist ideologue; see "A Court of One" (Murphy, Simon & Schuster). (Greenhouse, NYT) (See also Moncrieff, The New Republic; and Lithwick, Slate).

President Obama Delivered a Statement on Today's Affordable Care Act Ruling

Scalia Around the Bend in ObamaCare Law Case

Updated - "To reject the government’s defense of the law, the justices would have to suspend their own settled approach to statutory interpretation as well as their often-stated view of how Congress should act toward the states."

I have no doubt that the justices who cast the necessary votes to add King v. Burwell to the court’s docket were happy to help themselves to a second chance to do what they couldn’t quite pull off three years ago. To those justices, I offer the same advice I give my despairing friends: Read the briefs. If you do, and you proceed to destroy the Affordable Care Act nonetheless, you will have a great deal of explaining to do — not to me, but to history. (Greenhouse, NYT) (See also Moncrieff, The New Republic; and Lithwick, Slate)
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Justice Antonin Scalia may be playing devil's advocate or he may just be playing, not taking too seriously the lives and health of Americans.

In Oral arguments in King v. Burwell, Scalia is enjoying himself contemplating millions of Americans losing their health insurance because of a four-word phrase that comports less-than-perfectly with a nearly 1,000-page law, the Affordable Care Act, but fits well to sensible, fair-minded jurists. (Barnes, Washington Post)

It's a game for Scalia and his brand of jurisprudence, an incoherent game with no rules but a game nevertheless.

Scalia's intellectual legal nemesis, Richard Posner, in his book Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013) notes Scalia's appetite for "'gotcha' jurisprudence" (p.182).

Scalia is a goof. But he may have to go along with his betters this time.

From SCOTUSBlog:

After the Solicitor General briefly discussed the standing issue, he outlined the government’s two broad arguments on the merits. The first is that the government’s interpretation of the statute, which makes subsidies available on exchanges created by both the states and HHS, is the best way to give meaning to all the words of the statute. The second point is that the government’s reading “is compelled by” the structure and design of the statute–specifically that it was designed to ensure state flexibility in setting up exchanges, to avert death spirals, and to provide affordable care for all. He argued that in light of these goals, Congress simply could not have intended for the statute to function as intended.

That provoked an immediate and sharp response from Justice Scalia, who said that “of course” Congress could have enacted a statute that functions the way petitioners describe. Justice Scalia then engaged the Solicitor General in a back and forth about whether statutes can ever be written in less-than-optimal ways, and about whether they can ever be nonsensical. The argument implicit in the questioning was that even if Congress wanted to enact a law that works, it doesn’t mean that it actually did so. In that sense, Justice Scalia seemed to be drawing an even harder line than the petitioners.

... Justice Scalia’s questions are very interesting in light of recent statements he’s made reiterating that statutes should be read as a whole. Of course, the government urges such a reading in this case, arguing that a holistic reading supports its view of the subsidy provisions, but the petitioners make whole-statute arguments as well even as they emphasize the particular words in Section 36B that support their argument most clearly.

Poll: No movement in historically low numbers for GOP

Think that much publicized outreach to minorities, young adults and women is gaining ground for the Republicans?

Look at this happy family that obtained healthcare, and they're
black! This must stopped at all costs; they breed, you know?

How about continual attacks on the working poor obtaining affordable healthcare.

Forget it.

By Erica Seifert of DCorps:

The final Democracy Corps battleground survey of 2013 belies the conventional wisdom that Republicans have enjoyed a major rebound over the last few months. On the contrary, our survey of the 50 most competitive Republican House seats and the 30 most competitive Democratic seats shows that there has been no movement. Furthermore, the second tier of less vulnerable Republican target districts has actually destabilized -- meaning that there may be more Republican seats up for grabs than many believe right now. ...

[T]his poll finds that Republican members are damaged by their total focus on Obamacare. Voters increasingly believe that these vulnerable Republican incumbents are part of the gridlock in Washington, are too focused on battles with Obama, and are too aligned with Speaker Boehner, whose plans have not helped the economy or the jobs situation. We tested a series of messages and attacks (both for and against Republican incumbents), and found that battling on Obamacare is their weakest case for re-election. In fact, it undermines it.