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Errand Into The Maze

So, the end of the year is upon us... upon me. And naively, I've decided to opt for the cliche of a fresh start.

The last couple of years have been kind of rough, something I've only generally alluded to, in passing, when I've had time to write. Baring my soul, my personal difficulties, sharing deep feelings.. these things are, oddly (I suppose), not why I write. It stems, I've said before, from my training as a writer, which is to avoid a lot of "I" or "me," try to stand apart from your subjects, make your observations based on concrete assessments, rather than feelings. Then too, there's my upbringing, which I tend to think of as pretty traditional, Western European values. In this age of oversharing, I like standing for old fashioned notions about not putting one's business out on the street, or using a format like a blog to settle personal scores.

But still, this has been a rough year. And I resolved, as part of making a fresh start, to try and unpack and expalin some (at least) of what happened and why, or at least my take on the why of it.

For me, a lot of the upheaval took place as I committed myself, with some trepidation, to pursuing an upward career path at Starbucks. I am, by nature, ambitious and somewhat driven - which is odd, as a Pisces and I think odd to people who don't know me well - and I like to feel I am headed toward a goal, not just languishing. I can, and I will, say that my ambition in a corporate setting varies, and a good bit of my enthusiasm may not so much have been mine as that of others, especially my logtime manager, who I consider a mentor and friend. I'm not so sure, ever that I wanted to be in management quite as much as she wanted it for me.

Still, I made a commitment and I did my best to see it through. And in doing so, I settled on some compromises: obviously, I would have to write less. My hours at work increased, as did my responsibilities, and (again, being ambitious) I know the politics of getting ahead - appear enthusiastic, volunteer, do extra, come early and stay late. And, sincerely, I was enthusiastic. I made the commitment, and I gave the extra time, quite willingly.

My single minded focus also meant some trade-offs socially and interpersonally; less time with friends, less direct contact, less free time. I saw fewer movies. Friends who were more distant, physically or emotionally (or both) became more distant still. I lost touch with people, and in some sense, I'm sure I lost patience - with others, with politics, with myself. Cut to the chase, make a point. Have a point. Don't waste my time.

On paper, things went well for the career plan - I was promoted, I grew and developed in many ways. I became a better manager of people, better able to supervise, and retain my sensitivity. I mastered many things I didn't think possible, and reoriented my thinking and expectations for myself and others day to day at work. There are a lot of positives to see over this experience, and they are the reasons I don't regret my choices. What I did was necessary, and the positive changes were worth a lot of the pain. Just not all of the pain.

For me, the unfortunate turn with my promotion was being thrown into a new, unfamiliar setting, one which, I quickly came to realize was simply "not a good fit for me." It's an oblique, politically correct phrase, I know, but I like its precise imprecision. It wasn't one thing, one person, one event. It was, simply, the totality of things - a bad commute, bad group dynamics, difficult working relationships, no sense of personal connection, no feeling  of being "a part of" a new team. All the things that I loved about my job - the camaraderie, the shared sense of accomplishments, the joy of it - all of it seemed to vanish. I dreaded going. I missed people. I felt like I was losing my friends, and a sense of myself.

And, truthfully, I missed writing. I missed critical writing most, the reviews of films, and TV and arts and the culture. But I missed the daily exercise of it, the sense I had while blogging near daily that my writing was strong and growing. I write most (and best) because I love the shaping of ideas with words. Without that... I have very little.

So I made a choice - not without some consultation and guidance - and decided, as they say, to "step back." Decisions like that, I must say, are remarkably freeing, because they are seen by so many as so unconventional. One of the happiest immediate results I got was a sense of being able to speak for myself, choose for myself, listen to my own inner voice. Few people understand life choices that don't, first, have to do with getting more - more money, more power, more stuff. That's never been my equation, for better and worse. I like to start by figuring out what makes one happy, and working out form there. More happiness, more peace of mind... amazing things can flow when these are in place.

Change is hard, and uncomfortable. I cannot just "go back to how things were." Things are different now, trying to restart this blog is hard, harder than it was before. Resuming regular writing doesn't just happen. It, too, is work. I still have connetcions to build and rebuild, a support system to strengthen and reset. Some of my closest relationships have been entirely (and even irrepairably) changed, and as sad as that was, I still tend to think it necessary and, in some sense, inevitable. We grow, we change, we grow apart. I have come to see that the strongest friendships, the strongest personal bonds aren't about how we stay the same; it's how people adapt to changes in one another. The more flexible, the more opions exist as a result. And then too, I've learned that it's okay to say goodbye to relationships that just don't give you the things you need. What made sense once, at one point in time, may not make sense anymore. And that's okay.

Of course... I'm generalizing, taking myself out of it, trying not to get too personal, too wound up in the feelings or the specific personalities. That's me, what I say and how I say it. I don't regret the past couple of years, but as I thought about it, as I started on a "fresh start," I liked the idea of ending an "errand into the maze". I chased down a lot of blind alleys, tried to work out a set of puzzles, ran myself ragged at times... and now, I'm pretty much letting that errand, and that maze, go. Time to move on, move forward, do more of what I love and make more time for my truer passions. And we'll see what develops. That's the story I'm planning to tell, anyway.

Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing

One of the better bitter pills the right has had to swallow as a result of the election is that "Repeal Obamacare" was pretty soundly rejected as a rallying cry. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act continues, and conservatives are scrambling to try and figure out ways to revive their opposition and paint Obamacare as terrible, yet again.

Although I've never been thrilled with the ACA, or its organizing principle - that is, codifying the employer based health insurance system we have, and doubling down on it - I think we're obliged to see how it plays out. As I've said, I remain convinced that the real looming disaster in implementing the ACA is in Medicaid and the problems with expanding that program to everyone up to 133% of the poverty line, but the crunch time for that is probably months (though months, and not years) away.

Right now, the real developments in health insurance have to do both with the establishment of the "exchanges" - health insurance markets in every state that will help freelancers and small business employees get more affordable coverage, in theory - and seeing how employers react to new requirements for offering coverage.

What's interesting to me is that conservatives have settled on "outrage" and sympathy for an odd group of employers - midsize franchisees of chain restaurants like Applebee's and TGI Friday's. It's fascinating because the chains are frantic about the costs of offering insurance to wait staff and kitchen help, and because conservatives are trying to stake a "pro-business" claim by supporting the businesses in their whining about having to provide health insuarnce to workers. 

In a similar vein came news this weekend that Wal-Mart (naturally) has decided to set 30 hours as the lower limit for insurance for its workers, provoking (naturally) new howls about how Wal-Mart pushes its workers onto welfare, or in this case, into the Exchnages, rather than take its own responsibility seriously.

The inetersting thing to me is that these stories are two sides of the same coin, and a reminder why the ACA, or some solution was needed - it's service workers in these semi-part-time jobs in these shadow fields of endeavor who have the hardest time accessing affordable health care. Restaurants have notoriously refused to pay decent wages, never mind benefits, to workers. And while wait staff - especially in top boites - can survive and even thrive on tips, the same is not the case for kitchen workers and support staff. Wal-Mart, too in indicative of a problem (especially pervasive in retail and other service work) that doesn't actually have a good answer: making insurance available to part time workers is a laudable goal... but where is the reasonable point to draw a line in regards to hours worked?

I work for a company that - for now - offers a pretty full benefit package to workers starting at 20 hours a week (it's a little more complicated, but basically this). Wal-Mart probably deserves some scorn for going with 30, rather than a more inclusive number like even 25, but any number will serve to keep some workers out of the pool. And force the into other choices.

It's easy to lambaste these business owners for trying to limit coverage, but I tend to be heartened by the reverse predicament: that the ACA has forced these notoriously cheap employers to provide at least some sort of basic health care coverage to their full time staff. The threats of layoffs and cuts to hours may happen, but these are business people who know enough to know that providing worse service will not help the bottom line. Wal Mart can run on a small crew... but it does need bodies at registers and manning the floors. And if the net result is fewer people working more hours... than we may have broken an especially bad model that was good for business, but terrible for workers looking for a living wage and benefits.

But liberals should see the arnings in all of this. First, as much we'd like it to be otherwise, these businesses have to make choices about costs and expenses against how much money they can make doing business. Less profit will force other choices. Raising prices will affect who comes and how they spend. Each equation comes with a trade off. And for workers, we shouldn't make progress for some the enemy of good for all. More coverage, even for only a subset of these workers, is itself a vast improvement.

A lot of this, though, will come back to those exchanges, and by extension to these questions of how and how well the Medicaid expansion is done. Businesses, in their plans, will be heloing to, in some ways, enhance the division between the "working poor" - those who have the jobs and the willingness to do the long hours - and a new tier of people, just under them, who choose or are pushed into situations with some hard choices and harsh realities. Will the exchanges and Medicaid provide good coverage (and if the Exchanges are that good... will employers simply push their workers onto them?) , or do they become, between them, insurers of last resort for those with the least income and the fewest choices? That question could have a painful answer, but if we're trying to decide whether a bit of something is better than nothing... well, I'd rather not have nothing.

So... You Either Have Insurance Or Pay A Tax, But Congress Can't Make The States Offer Affordable Coverage To Poor People?

There will be lots of focus today on the 5-4 upholding of the indvidual mandate, and that's sort of fair: the requirement to have insurance or pay a relatively small fee was the linchpin of a much broader consitutional argument, and that argument, as I suggested earlier this week, remains a non-starter. While Congress may not have the right to "compel" commerce, it does have the power to tax you if you don't show proof of health insurance. It's worth pointing out that 4 Justices would have accepted the Commerce Clause argument, while 4 others would have rejected the tax claims as well. So... basically, only John Roberts thinks that Congress can tax you, but can't regulate commercial inactivity. Or something.

Lost in today's coverage - except, admirably, from Megyn Kelly on Fox - is the 7-2 decision that may yet prove the bigger problem: the Court sharply limited Congressional ability to force the states to expand Medicaid coverage or face the loss of all Medicaid funds. The practical implications of this are still being sorted, but from what I can tell, this could be not only a huge mess for Medcaid recipients, but also for the individual mandate.

Remember, the ACA does about 4 things to make sure that everyone has access to affordable health insurance: most people will get covered by their employers (including ending pre-existing condition limits, lifetime caps, and extended coverage for young people on parent plans to age 26), seniors remain covered by Medicare, people above 133% of poverty but unemployed (or self employed or such) can buy coverage on new "insurance exchanges"... and people at or below 133% of poverty figures were to be covered by Medicaid.

Unfortunately, Medicaid right now isn't budgeted to offer that kind of massive expansion of coverage. So Congress, trying to paper over the problems of adding a huge budget increase did what it usually does when poor people are involved: Congress played math games, pretending that a less than full increase of funding can somehow cover the first five years of the expansion, and then told the states that after the first five years, a large bulk of the expansion would become their budget problem instead. 

Let's be clear: Medicaid right now already fails to adequately cover the small number of people in dep poverty it needs to cover. Medicaid expansion doesn't just enormously increase the problems of insuring poor individuals (who, most likely, need healthcare they can't afford now, meaning costs for care will have a large initial spike... but Medicaid is also the insurer of last resort for poor elderly people in nursing homes. By widely exapnding the ability of people to qualify for Medicaid, it's likely that even more elderly people in extended care will need coverage. And for the sunbelt states - most of which were the main parties to this suit - that cost increase could be crippling.

What the Supreme Court said - apparently - is that these states could decide not to expand Medicaid and to refuse the funds tied to the expansion, but still receive their existing Federal Medicaid grants. And it may be, as some theorize, that even with that permission, a number of states will take the extra money and do some sort of expanded offering to their poor citizens. But it's also quite possible that Texas, say, will just refuse to do anything, not lose the limited Medicaid funds it already gets, and leave millions of poor people with no real way to get insurance coverage.

And guess what happens then... under the mandate's tax policy... they owe the tax.

In a sense, Roberts has shown himself to be a more traditional conservative, a more Reagan era appointee than many guessed at the time of his appointment. A product of the Reagan Justice Department, Roberts was part of the first wave of true believers, and his decision - and make no mistake, this ruling is all him; no other Justice or group of Justices agreed with the whole of his opinion - reflects those beliefs. While he makes more allowances for federal power than some far right types would like, he also shows the myopia to policies which make it hardest for people in poverty to change their circumstance, a classic Reagan-era conceit. This is "Welfare Queens" and Bootstrap Logic all over again, and in some ways worse. And the end result is some real mischief, which explains why my sympathies lie most with the angriest Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who correctly pointed out that health care reform is meaningless if it doesn't help the most vulnerable and in need. Upholding a tax on lack of insurance was never the worst thing this Court could do - the worst thing would be making it harder to make sure poor people never faced that tax.

And that's exactly what seems to have happened.

In My Weakened State

Just when I think I have experienced most any kind of flu or similar illness, I get hit with something else. Or so it seemed this week when I came down with an intestinal bug, one that has, apparently, been making the rounds.

I have discovered that is actually frightening to be unable to keep any solid food in your system for more than an hour. Also, lack of nutrition makes you lightheaded and occasionally incoherent.

I have also discovered that "I am just one stomach flu away from my goal weight" is really only funny when you don't have said stomach flu.

Since much of this week it has been difficult to form coherent sentences, I thought writing was pretty much out of the question.

I went to the doctor on Thursday. And, let it be said that at least I seem to have found a really good set of medical professionals for my primary care practice, at a clinic designed for people of modest incomes. It is literally amazing every time I go there. This time, the caring older lady doctor diagnosed me right quick, and handed me an easy to fill scrip of affordable medication within 20 minutes of my arrival.

A day and a half later, I am attempting to reintroduce solid foods and get back to work. It may be too soon for both (Thursday morning, when I thought I could handle both, was a disaster, but that was before the pills), but I'm big on trying to get back on the horse as soon as possible. The worst that can happen is... I fall off the horse. Or I wind up in my store's back room, sobbing (somthing I was pretty close to on Thursday morning).

Like food poisoning, there's nothing quite like a stomach or intestinal virus to make clear both the basic necessity of food and the fragile state of one's health when normal food intake is interrupted. Trying to remember to treat myself gently and handle with some care is not the worst lesson to be reminded of... although I could have done without the multiple trips to the bathroom and the feeling that the life was being sucked right out of me.

Anyway, let's see how the next few days go, and hopefully, I can get back to more fully writing my thoughts. 

ACA, Meet The Supremes

I haven't written much about politics, and even less on healthcare in a long while, and I wouldn't necessarily see a reason to start now, even with the Supreme Court arguments this week... but I think there's a few points that bear repeating. 

Which is to say: I feel like much of this "health care debate" is old news and the point's been made, but let's try again, just for giggles.

First, I tend to think the Supreme Court case is premature, but at this point, it was unavoidable. Once three Appellate Divisions had ruled, 2-1 in favor of it, there was pretty much no way for the Supreme Court not to take up this case. That's why the Supreme Court exists, to resolve disputes among the different Circuits. Still, I think the Court will regret taking this up too soon and in an election year, when the decision can't help but be all politics, and little in the way of good law.

Second, even though I think the case should have been left aside, I think the arguments that came out this week were fascinating reminders of why we're having this dispute. As someone with a lot of understanding about the issues of healthcare and health insurance in America, I still tend to forget how few people can see the bigger picture, or have thought deeply about the system of insurance and payments that we have. That, I think, has been a big driver of the "mandate is unconstitutional" side, and a lot of their naivete was on display in the Court recordings. Paul Clement's attempts, for instance, to separate health insurance as a market from healthcare services was almost laughable (and for everyone so sure of the outcomes... it was also telling that the most skeptical voice on this separation was John Roberts). Why people buy health insurance, how people use health insurance, what healthcare costs for people who don't have it, what kind of care people without health insurance can get... these are basic questions for understanding the health care problems we have, and the displays of lack of comprehension of these topics within the Supreme Court debate was deeply revealing... and deeply depressing.

Third, I think it was pretty clear that the mandate is constitutional, if unpopular. Healthcare is, virtually by definition, interstate commerce. Even separated from health service, health insurance is interstate commerce (all that takes is one company that operates in more tha one state, buying health insurance for its workers). Devising a system where people show proof of insurance or pay a penalty is a "necessary and proper" function of the tax code. This isn't hard. There might be a narrow argument that the government can't "compel" economic activity... but compulsion seems like a vague, hard to define standard (if passports require a photo... why can the government compel you to get one?). 

Fourth, the mandate isn't nearly what its opponents try to make it out to be. No one is "forced" to do anything, or buy anything, under the regulation. It says, basically, either you have health insurance or you pay a fee. The fee is comparatively small (indeed, it may be small enough that it, too, creates a perverse incentive to not buy insurance until one is absolutely desperate). Most people already have health insurance - again, more than 85% of the population, most workers through their employers, and the elderly through Medicare, just for starters. Those percentages have probably shifted somewhat since the economic downturn, but the vast majority of Americans are, still, insured. That makes the fee a dead issue for almost everyone, and the point of the healthcare legislation is that, with the mandate and other incentives, business and insurers will work harder to make sure more workers are insured, and for others, there will be increased access to programs like Medicaid, or the new health insurance exchanges.

This is not a great, or an elegant, or a nearly perfect solution to our healthcare problems; the solutions do nothing about health care cost, and they codify our employment based system of insurance in ways that probably make things worse. But that brings us back to the yearlong debate about the ACA tyo begin with - yes, there are other solutions... but most of them require enormous leaps in our healthcare systems that we're just not prepared to make as a nation. Broadening the availability of insurance is a reasonable, workable workaround. And doing it probably buys some time to craft other solutions without leaving millions with few healthcare options.

Finally, to go back to the beginning, the real mistake here may be the first one the Court made: as they debated on the first day... this case probably should be punted until the penalty fee actually goes into effect (this is the argument over the "Anti-Injunction Act" which says that you can't sue the government over a tax the government hasn't yet collected). Until the government has to start collecting the fee, we won't know how many people have to pay it. And the better case against the fee is actually probably by people who have no way to get insurance... a prospect which is much more likely to be the case if the Federal government and the States can't work out differences over Medicaid, if the health exchanges don't come together successfully, or if eocnomic conditions get worse. Even Massachusetts had to reexamine the timing and structure of their mandate fee, and the avilability of low cost insurance, as it became clear that the fee made more sense for many uninsured people when affordable insurance was unavailable. That may well be a signpost for a similar outcome, on a much larger scale, when the penalty fee goes into effect.

I'm not trying to play Mary Sunshine here - of course the Sipreme Court's conservative majority could overturn the whole thing; proof that this is far more a political choice than anything about the laws involved, more a way to score points for conservatism generally. But conservatives have, really, still no answers for the various problems our healthcare systems create, only a "fend for yourselves" approach that's disastrous not just for some, but for most of us. The Affordable Care Act is unpopular... but more to the point, it is still not really understood. And that may be reason enough to do away with it. But it's not a good reason... just like this case, really, is not a good case.

Yet More Articles We Never Finished Reading: Supreme Obliviousness

As the Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein puts it, “Paul has turned the health-care fight from kind of a conservative dream that’s untied to reality into a very serious threat to undo the president’s signature accomplishment.” This alone would be a landmark achievement—and, for most lawyers, would have required their complete attention. But health care is just one of seven cases that Clement will be arguing in front of the Supreme Court this term, a caseload previously unheard of for a private attorney. In fact, since leaving the position of solicitor general under Bush, he has become, in the Obama age, a sort of anti–solicitor general—the go-to lawyer for some of the Republican Party’s most significant, and polarizing, legal causes....

At the age of 45, Clement, who has thinning brown hair and the faintest trace of a midwestern accent left over from his Wisconsin childhood, is already in the upper echelon of the Supreme Court bar. It’s an elite group of lawyers who, much like the justices they routinely argue cases before, conceive of themselves as being Olympian in their detachment from politics. Almost all of them graduated from Harvard or Yale or Stanford law school; clerked for a Supreme Court justice; or worked in the solicitor general’s office. (In Clement’s case, he did all three.) Now, in their private practices, they pride themselves on handling only serious cases brought by serious people in a serious manner; even if their client doesn’t prevail—or, worse, turns out to be on the wrong side of history—that stigma doesn’t fall on the lawyer. John W. Davis, who argued the losing side in Brown v. Board of Education, is still held up as an exemplary Supreme Court advocate.

Nevertheless, despite these lawyers’ contention that they aren’t political animals, they are, of course—and their extrajudicial activities often reflect as much. Ted Olson, the man Clement has supplanted as the top conservative Supreme Court lawyer, was an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton, served on the board of directors of The American Spectator, and helped found the Federalist Society. His legal cases were always assumed to reflect his ideological convictions. (Even now that he is seeking to overturn Prop 8, Olson’s personal support for gay marriage is a major story line in the legal fight.) The unusual thing about Clement is that, while he’s undoubtedly a conservative and a Republican, he has managed to avoid this fate. His persona is rarely conflated with the case he’s arguing.

                Jason Zengerle, "The Paul Clement Court", also in New York's current issue.

Clement's political persona is "rarely conflated with the case he's arguing"... except, of course, that he's arguing the opposing side of Obamacare, the repeal of DOMA, arguing against race-based redistricting in Texas and defending South Carolina's attempt to impose voter ID. Clement is defending such a laundry list of right wing cases that Zengerle can barely keep a prose-bound straight face as he attempts to sell the notion that Clement represents a non-partisan ideal in Supreme Court advocacy. It's not the examination of Clement I object to, or the attempt to do a "let's see it from his side" presentation of Clement's views (that, at least, is moderately interesting). But seriously - the man is the former Solicitor General for George W Bush, currently serving as the go-to Supreme Court lawyer for Republican state Attorneys General. If that alone isn't a clear indication of the man's politics... then what, exactly, do political labels mean? It's not as if Clement can be mistaken as a Democrat, or that we can even find a liberal who'd take the depth and breadth of conservative causes on Clement's plate (and the example that proves that observation is Ted Olsen, the most noteworthy example in recent years of a lawyer crossing his usual political expectations to argue in favor of gay marriage rights). It would just be more honest, and more accurate to paint Clement as the kind of Republican that's all too hard to find these days: pleasant, respectful, willing to respect the rule of law, whatever the outcome, after making a well thought, full throated argument for his side. That's admirable enough, without pretending he's somehow nonpartisan.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: The Crying Game

If the nineties were the decade of Prozac, all hollow-eyed and depressed, then this is the era of Xanax, all jumpy and edgy and short of breath. In Prozac Nation, published in 1994, Elizabeth Wurtzel describes a New York that today seems as antique as the one rendered by Edith Wharton. In the book, she evokes a time when twenty­somethings lived in Soho lofts, dressed for parties in black chiffon frocks, and ended the night crying on the bathroom floor. Twenty years ago, just before Kurt Cobain blew off his head with a shotgun, it was cool for Kate Moss to haunt the city from the sides of buses with a visage like an empty store and for Wurtzel to confess in print that she entertained fantasies of winding up, like Plath or Sexton, a massive talent who died too soon, “young and sad, a corpse with her head in the oven.”

            Lisa Miller, "Listening to Xanax," New York Magazine (current issue)

Miller actually kicks off this article remembering the night she rummaged through her dying mother's medicine cabinet - in front of her mother's home care nurse - looking for an Ativan, surely a sign of the bad to come all by itself. But Miller's evocation, and dismissal, of Wurtzel (as fashionable now as it was when her book first appeared - Wurtzel will forever be punished for speaking truth to medicalizing women's problems) is itself an all-too-glib indication of missing the point: there will still be late nights of crying on the bathroom floor, whether you choose a happy pill like Prozac or an anesthetizer like Xanax or Ativan. We just haven't gotten to that part of the story yet.

And PS, congratulations to the various drug companies enjoying free advertising for their trademarked drug product names!

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

Rush Limbaugh beat me to it.

There I was, trying to explain to my Mom last weekend about the sense that the "insured contraception mandate" discussion was not, as Republicans claimed, about religion, but indeed about contraception, I also said, as a follow-on, that I thought the subtext of the "debate" - and the reason Republicans got some traction on it - was because the real issue was sex, and Americans are uncomfortable with talking about that.

And then Rush Limbaugh took the subtext and made it text.

If there's something heartening about the latest Rush furor, I think it may be that feminism finally had a clear example of "slut shaming" that made an often abstract discussion very literal. Slut Shaming is trying to marginalize voices, especially women's voices, in political discussions by calling people things like sluts and whores, implications that are negative, sexual, and promiscuous. Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, was offering a reasonable, thoughtful take one the issues of contraceptive cost and availability, and there was Rush, to call her a slut and a whore.

Unfortunately, I suspect that raising awareness about Slut Shaming is about as good as it gets; what's really problematic here is that conservatives will continue to get truck out of the contraceptive debate because liberals, even as they defended and praised Sandra Fluke, tended to run away from the uncomfortable aspect of the contraception debate that is  the reality of our American cuture: that is, that we are nation at once obsessed about sex and deeply conflicted about the issues around it. And the idea of people having sex, especially a great deal of it, tends to raise flags about morality that cloud reasonable policy discussions.

Which is to say... it's fine if you want contraception, ladies... just don't be all sexed up about it.

By All Means, Let's Make The Election About Domesticated Fags And Loose Living Tramps (Thanks, Newt!)

I have to admit I pretty much figured this year's Presidential election was foreordained as a Romney vs. Obama slugfest over the economy, with a predictable, if dismal, win for President Obama. And that's probably what we're still going to get. But how we get there, apparently, still matters.

If Romney has failed to exactly inspire the Republican base, the last couple of weeks haven't been entirely about him. What's changed, I thnk, is that Rconservatives have decided that they can't win on economic issues... and so they unpacked their favorite old trunk, the thing we often call "social issues."

Maybe it's age, maybe it's the sense that I've heard this song before, but my patience for euphemisms is pretty much gone. And so, I am tired of hearing about "social issues" when what people mean is "let's say awful things about blacks, gays and other minorities and see if Americans will give in to their worst instincts."

"Social Issues" is supposed to be about abortion, gay marriage, "family values" and the like, but really, it's about dressing up age-old prejudices and judgements about others without saying the ugly words. What's wrong with gay marriage? Something about men, women, tradition and procreation... since marriage equality opponents insist, all the time, that they don't hate gays. And what's behind the spate of new restrictive abortion laws and the brouhaha over Catholic charities and insurance coverage for contraception? Concern for life and religious freedom, not hatred of women or opposition to contraception, since that's what they keep telling us.

If there's a reason American conservatism has utterly failed to broaden its appeal, certainly in the past thirty years, it has a lot to do with just how negatve and unappealing their pitch has been. There's been virtually nothing positive that conservatives have had to offer, nothing but anti-this and opposition to that. Immigration, in fact, is a perfectly sensible issue that really does need reform, but it's become a "social issue" about the Mexican border and a specific group of undocumented immigrants because... well, "anti-Hispanic" isn't attractive, either. 

It's not surprising, really, that conservatives have drifted back into this corner; an actual election about economic injustice and issues like health care would have been an interesting discussion, especially if the right had something to offer groups of people - especially in the working class - who have really been shafted, left and right, over time. But of course, Republicans have nothing to offer on jobs, housing, financial reform, or health care. All they have is an intense dislike for President Obama and anything he's done on those issues. 

I'm not sure Mitt Romney really does have anything to offer, but to his credit, he's studiously avoided reverting to the social issues morass unless heavily pushed; it's not really the Mormon way (Orrin Hatch is a good example of this), and it's not Romney's style to appeal to people's worse instincts. So perhaps it's understandable that the "not-Romneys" of the primary season have found themselves forced to resort to the basest appeals to the base.

Of all of them, though, I suspect the real turning point  was South Carolina and Newt Gingrich's win; Gingrich really had nothing to offer except boilerplate rhetoric built on right wing talk radio bromides, the familiar litany of how things are terrible and liberals are to blame for it.  It's Gingrich who, rather skillfully, re-introduced the sham issue of insurance coverage for contraception. And Gingrich offered the kind of rhetorical cover that conservatives need to revert to "social issues" as their driving force - we're not clased-minded bigots... we're decent people looking out for America, and the Constitution.

Of course, Gingrich himself is a twice divorced Catholic convert who would, literally, say just about anything to win an election, and the dissonance between who he is and what he says just got more pronounced as his prominence grew. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, doesn't have quite that problem. Unlike almost any of the other conservatives who got big and flamed out, Santorum doesn't have to go to some of the ugliest places to sell his fealty to "social issues"; he's already been there (remember "man on dog"?). And so Santorum pitches himself as the populist voice of the unheard working (white) man (and we do mean men), and all of the "social" issues are covered as well.

I don't know if Santorum can actually ride this wave all the way to the Republican nopmination; it would be frankly hilarious if he pulls it off, but we (and he) can't possibly be that lucky. It's telling, though, that Romney and his team are, yet again, flummoxed by Santorum's success. He's the one thing they don't quite have an argument against: a true believer who thinks moderation is for wimps.

Either way, an election that revolves around the angry right renewing its worst calls against gays, pushing familiar virgin/whore/mommy lines about women's roles in society, selling familiar prejudices about blacks and hispanics... is an election held on familiar ground that they really can't win. There's too many of us, too few of them, and too many like me who are tired of listening to carefully chosen words meant to mask really hateful ideas and prejudices. None of it makes President Obama a better President, but it certainly makes clear the starkness of the choice. Which is a much easier election than the one about those pesky problems with jobs and housing and health care and such. 

Euphemisms And Political Math... And Birth Control

Abortion is a form of birth control.

If I have to explain the obviousness of that statement, then we both have a problem... and a good explanation of the wild politics of the past week.

Nothing was stranger, and yet more American, than all the men - and it was almost always a man - who said, piously, that the discussion we were having "was not about contraception" as if it were true. It's about freedom of religiion, it's about government coercion, it's about the rights of the Catholic Church...

Most obviously, this debate is all about contraception, and the fact that abortion is a form of contraception.

Lots of people said this "controversy" - and it's not "controversial" when the vast majority of women, Catholics and, in fact, most Americans favor coverage for contraception - started last November, but the seeds of this debate go back to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Remember when they tried to strip provisions to cover abortion out of the bill? That was the warning shot for this. And then, as now, a big problem is the muddle of euphemistic words like "pro-choice" and "women's health" when we discuss contraception, and more pointedly, abortion.

Liberals often seem confused by anti-abortion, pro-life rhetoric; I think part of the mistake is that many of the "reasonable", pro-choice people see two separate issues: a dispute over abortion, that may also extend to contraceptives. The truth, I think, is that many people have it backwards: truly Pro-lifers oppose contraception, birth "control" of any kind. Abortion is just the most extreme example.

Morning after pills, "Plan B", tubal ligation, the pill, IUD... there's scientifically little difference to what these approaches do to prevent pregnancy. And it's problematic to try and separate them, to try and draw some sort of "contraceptive line" where some of these are better/different/more reasonable than others. Yet, that's the "muddy middle" of the pro-choice moderates, the ones who say "safe legal and rare" and genuinely mean that abortion shouldn't really happen all that much. If at all.

There's a tacit agreement among many professional Democrats that abortion politics are in fact too loaded to touch; that while pro-life conservatives are wrong on the specifics, they're right on the emotional impact of opposing abortion and calling it baby killing. It's safer to talk about "women's health" (as if we don't know that the main differential here is... pregnancy), it's safer to try and set artificial distinctions for liberals than to take on the whole stupid, brutal underlying argument: that, at heart, conservative pro-lifers don't want women to exert control over the sexual reproductive process.

This issue - the one where we try, at a very basic level, to do something based on common sense that helps women - is a "loser" for the left because the left is terrified about being seen as favoring infanticide. And basically, my point is, we can't turn this around until liberals are willing to try harder and own it. That is, until someone can stand up and make the basic point that the breadth of contraception, from condoms to abortions, are all on a continuum, all practical and all useful, we're kind of doomed. We wind up wilting the closer conservatives get to calling us baby killers.

In that context, I'm not surprised that the President - and his men - invented a fig leaf of compromise that might, maybe, survive close scrutiny: most women will be able to get coverage for contraception. Those who work for certain charitable organizations will also get coverage, just as a paid add-on absorbed by the insurer.

The real news here, though, is probably that the thin shreds of obfuscation that the euphemisms provide really broke down this week; as with Susan Komen and Planned Parenthood, the real action here was how many women, especially younger professional women, made it clear that the euphemisms were silly and that access to conraception, women's health care, and, yes, abortion, is not up for grabs. Or up for debate. That, in itself, is a big step towards reframing the discussion of women and pregnancy and who decides to be not pregnant, and when. But the problematic math remains: as long as conservatives are more comfortable linking abortion to other methods of contraception, as a way to stop all of them, lefties are in the weaker position. We can't win defending half a position, no matter how artfully we try to word it.