AGENDAS
Obama has moved the agenda to where he wants it - The War on Poverty. Just like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, he is moving income inequality to center stage. The issues he is initially focusing are the minimum wage and unemployment benefits. These are pretty basic policies - even George W. Bush extended unemployment benefits when needed.
However, with the uncompromising Republicans these basic issues are revolutionary. Even better for Obama is the agenda the Republicans have chosen. The GOP has a problem because it needs to camouflage the open battle between its two wings and so once again Obamacare attack is front and center and in addition they are falling back on the old Republican standby - the culture wars of abortion, contraception and LBGT rights.
The very same day that Obama announced his income inequality priorities, the Chairman of The Republican Party National Committee, Reince Priebus, announced that he was postponing the National Republican Party meeting so that members could participate in the "March For Life" in Washington. This is an annual gathering, that has increasingly become more and more of a non event, to protest the Supreme Court 1973 Roe versus Wade decision on abortion.
However, the protest has now been extended to include contraception and Obamacare is being attacked in that it is forcing employers, against their religious convictions, to provide contraception in their insurance plans. Reince Priebus underlined the GOP 2014 position, at a press conference, on the Republican Agenda, “Promising to pound away at the Democrats and Obamacare”.
ON A CLEAR DAY ATTACK OBAMACARE FOR EVER
So ideally, the Republicans want to run on a failing Obamacare and in tune with this narrative the response of the chief Republican unelected megalomaniac Karl Rove was that Obama doesn’t give a hoot about poverty and he is using it to take away attention from Obamacare.
The Republicans are connecting the culture wars with Obamacare. They now say that Obamacare attacks religion by insisting that employers provide contraception in their health care plans. While there was a provision in the Act to exclude churches, certain religious entities have been deemed as employers and technically should provide contraception. Any rate the Supreme Court is going to decide whether or not employers, in general, who do not believe in contraception need include this in their plans.
This GOP approach immediately moves the issue into Women Rights. Polling shows that 99% of women who have been sexually active have used contraception. Jay H. Ell does not know what Rance and these guys are thinking. Why on earth would they want to focus attention on this issue confirming the Democratic smear that they don’t give a hoot about women’s rights? Insurance can cover Viagra but not the pill. Meanwhile Obama has just appointed the first female head of the Federal Reserve ever.
The Congress Republican majority have made it quite clear that the are going to carry on doing nothing other than attack Obamacare. (Immigration reform might be an exception but Jay H. Ell would not bet on it). Eric Cantor, the Chief House Republican whip, in order to keep the Obamacare fire burning has now brought up the fear of breaches of privacy in Obamacare. He has also sent a memorandum out to the districts, where he perceives that the Democrats are vulnerable, on how to attack those who have supported Obamacare. Cantor is even more specific telling the believers to attack, “Saying you were lied too that you could keep our own doctors”.
THE ISSUES IMPORTANT TO ELECTORATE
So on the face of it the country is so polarized that nothing can get done. However, it is not really. E. J. Dionne, of the Washington Post, writes that there is a majority consensus around the ideas of “economic justice” and a safety net for citizens but it is obscured by the fact that a minority of the Republicans hold the Party captive. He omits to say that the latter are controlled by the unelected Conservative institutions and their paymasters. MSNBC ran a story that the Koch Brothers have either directly or indirectly already put $400,000,000 into the fight.
On the issues that are central to this election, the electorate are decidedly against the Republicans. While the figures on Obamacare are currently in a flux, according to a Gallop poll, the issues that are front and central for the electorate have the following poll numbers, (Democrats numbers first): Compassion and caring for the electorate, 47 : 17; Minimum wage increase, 63 : 26 and increasing length of unemployment benefits, 63 : 40. Now Obama’s approval rating is 43% but he is running against the Republican Congress that is barely 20%. So there is no basis for the impression that the Country is "so divided".
The Republicans cannot totally ignore these populist measures so initially they fluctuated between calling those who need unemployment benefits and food stamps and the like - “bums” and that they favor these things, but unless Obama makes spending cuts, (from Obamacare preferably), they will not support them. Needless to say this has not gone too well with the electorate.
REPUBLICAN RESPONSE = OBAMACARE
As Jay H. Ell has explained in previous blogs the demographics are totally against the Republicans and we are witnessing a last ditch Alamo stand. The fight is gelling down to an economic struggle between those who want distributive economics and those who insist on trickle down economics. Needless to say those with massive resources have all but taken the Republican Party over. With the gerrymandering of the constituencies the Republicans have control of the House of Representatives with far fewer votes. While the split in the Republican Party is in the open they are united against the Democrats. So the policy is simple - do nothing and make the Democrats and Obama look impotent, smear Obama and Hillary off the face of the earth and of course attack Obamacare. Then with voter suppression for the Democrats, bring out the Republican base on cultural issues and hope the voter turn out will be low enough to keep the House and win back the Senate.
The relative silence on Obamacare specifics by the Republicans seems to indicate that Obamacare is not doing as badly as they hoped. Over 2 million had been recruited by the end of December not counting the new Medicaid enrollees. The original goal was 7 million recruited by the end of March. While the economic viability of the plan depends on younger, less ill, citizens to enroll, the Democrats are going on the offensive with the “happiness” stories of those enrolled to date. When you realize that 2 million people went bankrupt in 2012 because of health bills there are lots of “happiness” stories out there.
Any young person would be nuts not to enroll. The cost is relatively low. One attack of appendicitis and he or she could be facing a bill up to $50,000. A fall on the basketball court with a bone fracture that needs an operation even more. So the Republican narrative on the Affordable Care Act is more likely to be general than specific. There will be the usual jibes at big government, choosing your doctor, the cost and the fact that it is really an attack on religion.
Republican Presidential hopefuls have chimed in on the “War against Poverty”. Rand Paul represented both Republican responses to the economic inequalities. Initially, his approach was more in line that the unemployed need to get off their butts and get a job. He then, within 2 weeks, got all empathetic, and said that if benefits were to go beyond 6 weeks, then the money must be made available and cuts must be made by Obama to pay for it. Mark Rubio, the real Latino white hope, basically said that each state must address their unique “poverty” situation. However, Rubio has no credibility as he lead the compromise on immigration reform and then when this became politically embarrassing he voted against his own legislation.
Republicans have used the occasion, on the 50th Anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, to say that he failed. His programs are institutions today in America that no one would dare touch - Medicare the universal healthcare for seniors; Upgrading Social Security that is keeping a large number of seniors from poverty; Medicaid which is the basis of universal care on the poor; Head Start the program that gave preschool poor children the opportunity to obtain education and care to close the gap on those more privileged; Nursing home facilities for the elderly - just to mention a few of the 100 legislative programs that Johnson initiated.
Let any Republican even in the most conservative of districts actually run against these programs and see the response. The immediate effect of Johnson’s war was to reduce those in poverty by half. The problem is that ever since Reagan the Republicans have conducted a war against “entitlement” and not evolved the programs further. As Reagan maintained in the war against poverty, poverty won and ever since the Republicans have burrowed away at these programs.
While the Republican agenda appears moronic what else can they do? They can’t really give a softer image to income inequality as all hell will break loose within the party, even more than there has. So on a clear day they attack Obamacare forever. They have to rely on a low voter turn out and the good old standby cultural issues to bring out the base regardless of economic reality. They then have to hope that their voter suppression tactics keep the minorities and the youth away from the polls. At the moment that seems the mood.
WHAT WILL BE THE OUTCOME?
It is early days yet and three variables that may change the tone of this race are out there:
*In the Primaries, the establishment, having provided the Republicans a clear cut choice, trounce the Tea Party. If they do then the Republicans need not run on their Obamacare loony tunes manifesto. That is pretty unlikely as the Establishment candidates to date have been out to prove how right wing they are as well. So even when the Establishment candidates win they are so compromised that if they try and sound reasonable in the general election they are confronted with endless videos from their primaries. This is what happened to Romney. So this is a long long shot.
*Obamacare crashes or the narrative changes to such an extent that it moves above the 17% of the electorate that currently rate it as a key issue that concerns them, to a percentage that can impact an election.
*Obama himself is smeared of the face of the earth so that he becomes the issue not the Republican Congress .
While the electorate seems not much interested in Obamacare there is a disconnect between the present polling results and the policies the electorate rate as important. There is a major consensus that “economic justice” is supported yet the polling shows that the Senate is in play for the Republicans and they will retain the House. Quite frankly Jay H. Ell cannot believe that the electorate, at the end of the day, will vote in contradistinction to the way they feel on issues. But at the same time he cannot believe that 9 months before an election the polling can mean anything. So watch this space!
We are also due to hear Obama spelling out his vision for attacking income inequality. But as things stand it is going to have to be a vision as there is no way he is going to get it through Congress. Obama will do what he can with executive orders but he may have to wait for Hillary to get it going.
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