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Where to Begin...

There are so many things to write about, so much that's so awful (look, I'm an optimist, but even my sense of joy has been sorely tested), and I've avoided writing for so long (hey, I was just commiserating with the other writers on strike... heh heh), I hardly know where to begin.

So let's start here: Al Capone.

Of all the strange tangents Trump goes on at his, well, bizarre and frankly kinda tired, rallies, one of the weirdest moments is when compares his situation to that of Chicago's number one gangster. It's usually to suggest that, like Capone, Trump is being nailed on trivial charges, like tax evasion.Of course, what he also like to imply, in so many words, is that, like Capone, he too is a slightly outlaw badass who cannot be contained by the tired rules of conventional laws.

Which, if you think about it, is a kinda weird stance for a former President of the United States.

Seven years on, with an intervening stay in the White House and a violent riot to cap off his term, It's frequently suggested that as a nation, we have become inured to Trump's outrageousness, his breaking of norms, the lack of basic decency. Still, there are moments - "poisoning the blood of our nation", anyone? - where we can still get caught off guard by the breaking of a new norm, a bridge yet again not too far. I'd argue the casual tossed off lines about Capone are themselves a new, and striking low.

Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts in 4 separate indictments, 2 Federal, one each in New York, and in Georgia. That's on top of several civil suits crawling along, and random legal issues like being disqualified from ballots in Colorado and Maine over (apparently serious) suggestions that his running violates Section 3 of the 14th Amendment - the one where if you, like, participated on the wrong side in the Civil War, you can never hold public office again. The kind of thing we never thought we'd need after, you know, the Civil War. In pretty much every case, Trump has followed the time-honored (dishonored?)  legal strategy taught to him by Roy Cohn - challenge everything. Bury them in paper. Work the refs. Proclaim your innocence and claim unprecedented mistreatment.

Trump has filed motions to dismiss in all 4 cases - at this point, all are in some stage of stasis or collapse - and the striking thing about them is their sameness: "i didn't do it, if I did do it it wasn't a crime, and if it was a crime, I'm either allowed to do it, or immune from being prosecuted for it." Some have noted that the arguments he makes in one case often suggest problems with another (like claiming to be an "Officer of the United States" in Georgia, except that "Officer of the United States" is why the 14th Amendment would apply to him). The immunity claim is so over the top, it may set new precedent in the Supreme Court, where immunity was roundly tossed in US v Nixon. 

But to really contemplate the absurdity of Trump and his Capone via Cohn approach to law (with detours into Watergate era madness), let's just point to one of the cases - the one where Trump took some of the nation's most top secret documents, left them in boxes literally all over Mar A Lago, and refused to return them, to see how his arguments are really hopeless:

• "i didn't do it" - for months, Trump asserted to investigators, the National Archives, and eventually the press, that he had not taken any documents. he insisted he was being treated differently from other former Presidents (leading to the amazing discovery that yes, apparently people can accidentally walk off with secret documents from the White House more than you'd think). Eventually, in another unprecedented moment, the FBI raided Mar A Lago (aka a presidential residence), and discovered the boxes and boxes of documents and other detritus Trump had hoarded and hid. 
• "It's not a crime, or I'm allowed to do it" - Trump subsequently insisted that he had "every right" to take the documents under an apparently creative reading of the Presidential Records Act - a Nixon(!)-era law meant to make clear how records should be collected and filed by the Library of Congress. And by creative, I mean the well known "they're mine and you can't have them" doctrine. Amazingly that's not even the issue that may be resolved at trial - the simpler problem is that Trump had highly classified documents, violating the Espionage Act. And that crime, one that's charged out fairly routinely, doesn't require motive or misunderstanding. Just having the documents when and where you shouldn't have is enough.
• Immunity - Astonishingly, even in this, Trump continues to insist that the President is immune from the Espionage Act in some combination of "Executive Privilege" - which Trump aqpparently takes to mean "if I want it, it's my privilege to have it" - and Presidential declassification - a defined process Trump didn't follow, but Trump asserts (often hilariously) "it's declassified if I say so." Just to underline the absurdity of that argument, one of the holdups in the documents trial is that the documents involved are so highly classified, Trump's lawyers have had to scramble to set up a site in Florida secure and limited enough to view them to prepare for trial, so secret they may not be able to be introduced in open court.

And just to be clear... these are not the arguments or defenses of an innocent man. In the trial over falsification of business records that may close The Trump Organization in New York, Trump's lawyers literally maintain that years of fraudulent valuations of Trump properties used in tax and loan filings are a "common practice" in real estate... or in  other words, they have literally admitted to the fraud. Case after case, trial after trial... Trump makes guilty man arguments, brazenly waiting for someone to agree that it doesn't matter if he wantonly breaks laws.

And sure that's a lot like Capone... but should it be? Federal crimes are often the simplest of process crimes - like sending false information by mail, or filing a false tax return - for an obvious reason: it's the kind of housekeeping, minor detail that criminals don't think of while committing major crimes. In 2016, when Trump refused to show his tax returns claiming he was "under audit" it's becoming clearer he was half right - his tax returns build so thoroughly on one lie after another that untangling them will indeed take years. Illegality is so familiar to him, innocence passed him by a long, long time ago.

Where to begin... at the very least we should be able to concoct a standard for the Presidency that avoids the commission of massive fraud, theft of documents and fomenting insurrection. Start there. Start somewhere. Trump so thoroughly violates First Principles, it's amazing, seven years on, that we still have him here to kick around. Or yes, to kick us around. Set aside the collapse of the Republicans, the sycophants defending him, the opportunists tied to him... just for a moment. Start here. Donald Trump should not be President ever again, because we have standards. Principles. Something. That's a real fine place to start.

Instant Gratification Takes Too Long

The one thing that won't die in the internet age - the instant, and wrong, hot take - for me is actually the hopeful sign that our way out of the pandemic year isn't in fact written yet. The nearly cataclysmic changes we've all experienced in the past year aren't minor, aren't things you just "get over"... and the massive implications for our society and our economics (never mind our politics) are things we can only begin to start figuring out.

And that's why I don't mind the "jobs will instantly return to normal" and "everyone has to stop wearing sweatpants and put on real clothes again" type hot takes. The instant gratification culture of immediate analysis and pronouncements has been thoroughly up ended, even if the media may be the last to really understand what hasn't happened, and what isn't happening, and even start beginning to make sense of where we actually are.

At the most base level... people died. I've been stunned at the number of conversations of the past few months - you know, those reconnecting "hey, we haven't seen each other for a year" post vaccination convos, and dinners and re-gatherings - where that conversation veers into frank discussions of loss and pain and death. More than half a million people died of Covid (that we know of) - random, often pointless losses of family, parents, coworkers. But often, just as surprising, the losses people share turn out to be the other deaths - not covid, but the other stuff of cancer, heart attacks. The reckoning of these losses, over 18 months, has really only just begun, in part, yes, because Trump lacked the basic humanity to properly put the losses in context. But separation, and the near incomprehensibility of losses on this scale, is also a big part of it. No one in popular media, really, has yet found the words, the context, for all this loss. We're just beginning to grope for the words.

Then, too, I think of the enormous life changes so many have experienced as a result of this strange surreal, and yes, lost, year. People who have made major, significant life changes over the pandemic. All of the people who put significant life changes on hold because of it. And so many who have changed nothing... but for who everything has changed. Six months ago, I quit my job and embarked on this new course of writing and living differently. Only today, did it occur to me that perhaps expecting everything to be sorted after only six months is, well, not very realistic. Extrapolate that kind of major upheaval in so many lives... and really, our culture has no comprehension of what is and isn't happening in people's lives, and the ways those changes impact economic and social life. Are people "going back to work?" What does work even mean just now? What is "going back?" So much economic analysis just now is slapdash, lazy, and obvious. It will take months, if not years, to sort out all the forces in play, and what they mean.

And sure, it seems frivolous to relate these near existential issues - life and death, work and purpose - to the more superficial parts of our lives, the daily business of consumerism and consumption that make our American culture hum. But that's the point, isn't it? So much of the frothy, frivolous exercises merrily rolling along in early 2020... are just gone. if nothing else, the pandemic was a forced pullback to "is that really important" that offered many a chance to reassess all sorts of choices And that's just the beginning. Stores have closed that will never reopen. Dining has changed. Vacations have changed. New routines are part of all of our lives. And it's routines and habits that really guide our interests and choices. And again... we're only just beginning to figure out what these look like, what they might mean.

Just one obvious practical example to finish: "planes are full again." It's the hopeful, meaningless, deceptive storyline that will drive this summer's coverage of travel and leisure. Domestic air travel is still well below half of what it was before the pandemic, losses that have nothing to do with leisure or vacation travel (and don't even start on the embers of international). It's business travel that was the backbone, and profit center, of airline revenue. Will it resume? Sure; some of it will seem essential, some will argue that face to face beats Zoom and win. But many won't. At a moment when the whole concept of the "downtown office" is in flux, major city to city air travel looks like a relic.And again, that has economic implications no one wants to face and has gone largely undiscussed.

It's an odd moment, this juxtaposition of the "now now now" internet world we have and the almost luddite realities the pandemic placed on our existence. It's an odd, fascinating place none of us expected to be, and trying to intellectually sort out what it means is useful, and necessary... and all but impossible when we also want it all figured out, entirely, as of yesterday. As you peruse that Vogue telling you to get out of those sweatpants, and take in those reports that lazy workers are reluctant to give up unemployment to go back to work... just remember, no one, really, has figured any of this out. Instant gratification takes too long... and maybe the problem isn't "instant"... it's that maybe we're beginning to figure out this life needs more than just... gratification.

We're Done Here

As if anyone needed more evidence, surely Donald Trump's foray into the science of "sunlight and disinfectant" as potential treatments for COVID 19 were proof enough of the problem he poses as President.

But last week's disaster is really the culmination of six weeks of lasting proof that Trump is more or less done proving he's simply too incompetent to continue as President.

I'm not saying "it's over" or even confidently asserting victory in November - that, despite their complacency, is the actual work the Biden team will have to do to get this thing wrapped up. What am I saying, though, is that we should all simply move on from engaging with the ridiculous discussion of whether Trump's presidency has been anything other than a disaster form start to finish.

One of the reasons I stepped away from blogging obsessively about Trump as President is that from Day 1, it was clear there just weren't enough synonyms for "incompetent." From his failure to staff up appropriately (dozens of White House roles and thousands of Executive Branch positions have simply gone unfilled), to the disastrous appointees he has had to repeatedly replace (More cabinet secretaries than there are in the heavens, the revolving door of "Communications Director"), Trump established in short order that he was not and would not be up to the task of being President.

It's a failure that covers every level, every standard, every notion of what it is to be President. His conspiracy theory obsessed, petty mindset meant that from the start he failed to provide the necessary (and customary) approach to politics of trying to work with both sides of the political divide. This stymied even reasonable suggestions that he could construct some worthwhile legislation (infrastructure week, how we miss you) to advance his own stated priorities. Instead he has exercised a ham handed, largely unsuccessful approach to do just what Republicans attacked Barack Obama for - ruling by executive fiat, trying to manhandle the regulatory state, and refusing to submit to even basic oversight.

And what domestic policy was there to speak of, anyway? His promised wall amounted to a small project of fence construction, a spot of refurbishment, and years of ill will as he attempted to seize miles of private property along the southern border (almost entirely unsuccessfully, and very likely striking the death blow for "government taking" libertarians have craved, but big business GOP interests, like builders, have opposed). While Trump has made a practical mess of immigration and set back environmental regulation by 30 years, these efforts have at best been scattershot, and have forged unlikely coalitions of opposition that could have lasting impact. While Trump drove through a horrendous tax package that eviscerated the corporate side of federal taxation, inaugurating a stock market bubble it took the pandemic to burst, the scorching deficits and laughable economic policies he produced have largely underlined that the "business acumen" he supposedly brought to bear as President was a dreadful stew of failure, financial idiocy and seventies era thinking that never worked to begin with.

Trump ignited so much passionate opposition and resistance to his plans and policies that the nation saw more dramatic protests in the space of weeks after his taking office that normally take years. Millions of women protested. Charlottesville blew up in ugly chants of racial and ethnic hatred. Thousands turned out at international airports to protest the draconian and misbegotten "Muslim ban." And in short order, thousands of neophyte activists, organizers and candidates had built a powerful new network of political strength that destroyed Republican control of the House of Representatives, returned Nancy Pelosi to her key role as Speaker, and up ended the political dominance of the GOP in numerous states as Governorships and state house dominance evaporated overnight.

On foreign policy, Trump's approach wasn't just quixotic: it was haphazard, incoherent and foolish. Trump lurched into conflicts with NATO that called into question the fundamental organizing principles of our entire postwar approach to diplomacy. His romancing of Putin and the Russian state was clearly motivated by venal self interest. His dalliance with North Korea and Kim Jong Un was dangerously shortsighted and irrelevant. And his middle eastern policies simply made no sense - a misunderstanding of nearly every geopolitical imperative of every actor in the region that left death, destruction and chaos in the wake of everything he touched.

Trump, of course, has no sense of personal responsibility, no moral compass and no shame. Trying to indict him on his failings doesn't just result in defensiveness it ignites a storm of invective and blame shifting that reflects childlike notions of behavior and comportment. Bullying. Childish name calling. A tyrant of the toy shop with literally no supervision, Trump would surely be a master of corruption and pillaging of his office, if only he knew how. From ham handed moves to personally profit from government largesse, misusing the pardon power to clearly thwart thorough investigations of previous acts, Trump would love to abuse power, but lacks the cleverness to even try to hide it. And while impeachment may not have resulted in removal from office, the stain of the process - never mind the desperate kitchen sink maneuvering to save him - will not only follow him, it may very well presage the implosion of the party that decided protecting him at all costs was safer than simply admitting the litany of errors that got him to the most powerful job in the land. At this point, the likely loss of his reelection effort may not simply be a rejection of him and his failings, but a broad based thumping that recasts the Senate majority and leaves the remaining GOP a shell of itself, incapable of ever reconstituting in its current form.

On top of all of this, then... comes a pandemic of unthinkable proportions that has upended nearly every aspect of every American's everyday life. It took a week to puncture Trump's economic bubble, a week more to destroy the international oil market, and six weeks of dithering to force a public health response to a crisis Trump treated, initially, as yet another political enemy he could simply slogan out of existence. No president is as uniquely unsuited to this disaster as Trump has been, and the failed response, every day, at every level, is testament to how completely he has managed every bit of federal executive power into meaninglessness. Plan? What plan? Tests? What tests? Thorough reporting and clearly measured progress? You must be joking. It's not that anyone could have predicted this (though some did) or that so many things were caught so underplanned and under prepared (clearly, they were). No, the "secret sauce" of American ingenuity has been that, often almost miraculously, our leaders rise to occasions where failure seemed the only option. Trump is, as much as anything, simply proof that we may well have run out of miracles. Because what we failed to appreciate is that it's not miracles. It's competence. And decency. And the capacity of all Americans to come together in difficult moments, knowing we can and should do what's right and what's best, inspired by the commitment of our leaders. Trump is, literally, none of that. 

And here we are. The noise making, perpetual generating anger machine of the right still wheezes along, making mountains out of molehills, trying to turn Tump shit into Shinola, but no amount of lipstick will dress up that pig. Americans - the people who exist as a nation built on an idea, not an identity - believe in the upbeat and the story of success. Failure is not an option. We tend to look away from failure, to try and ignore the stench of a thing as it collapses and dies. The final months of the GW Bush presidency (remember when he was the worst?) were an obvious exercise in "let's not even talk about how bad this has gotten" as we focused on the bright, shiny promise of the Obama to come. I suspect that, come this summer, that's the real story of the unwinding of Trump, even as a farce of MAGA hats and shrill complaints animates the public discourse. Don't engage, don't even start with them... look away. It may, like a train wreck, be hard to look away. But it's wrong to enjoy, too much, watching a thing as it dies.

There's no "I wonder if he can salvage this." At best/worst, Trump can maybe manhandle the whole process of elections in a pandemic to his advantage; I genuinely doubt that will work. Even if he tries, there's just no getting around it: what seemed unthinkable - whether "he can't be that bad" to "there's no way he'll win it" to "you can't really believe he's lying now" - has all been proven out. You can't say you don't know. You can't wonder if it will somehow be different. We can, yes, choose to have more of this. But i have to say... I think we're done here.

A Price Above Rubies

In America's mix of egalitarian and elitism, it's not hard to find oneself living or socializing in close proximity to great wealth. It's one of the oldest staples of Hollywood - the good (or bad) kid from a modest upbringing getting exposed to the ways of the upper class. The scholarship kid at boarding school. The everyday worker who marries the boss' daughter. That time you went to dinner in a fancy New York restaurant, surrounded by the obvious displays of people with far more money, if not taste, than yourself.

In some ways, I feel bad for Tom Price. It's not easy to be in close proximity to extravagance, natural, even, to feel somehow you should get to do and have the same things. I was a scholarship kid at a fairly elite private college where other kids drove the spare family BMW, amongst other luxuries large and small. I lived in Manhattan. I've had the privilege of a private showing of the Chanel Couture collection. As much as you think you know about wealth, there's always a level more.

Sadly, the lesson of the last few days is that these are the moments that really do show one's moral compass, and in that, Tom Price failed. Excessive use of private jets on the government dime is a ridiculous, petty excess that flies in the face of claims to cost consciousness and an interest in cutting the size of government. And it's not as though Price's fall was recent. His history of questionable stock deals in health companies while Chairing the House Committee overseeing their affairs was, it's clear, just an indication of Price's sense that he wanted in on the gravy train rolling nearby.

It's gotta sting when you're so very close to it, and reminded constantly of just how far away that life actually is.

Donald Trump may not be as wealthy as he claims, but he is, of course, the very essence of the eighties era "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" that he came to embody, and take as his "brand." (Trump, in fact, doesn't have the usual Gulfstream size PJ as his main plane - he has a 737 gaudily painted with his logo that hangs out, visibly, near the runways at LaGuardia.) And he has, naturally, stacked his Administration with like minded, and similarly well-heeled, millionaires and billionaires. In the midst of revelations this week involving a number of Trump officials... there sits Betsy DeVos, who doesn't spend government money on a jet, because she owns one.

Of course, as the adage goes, money can't buy taste, and the kind of wealth Trump and his friends bring to DC is a kind of ostentatious, showy display of wealth that rubs many, rich or not, the wrong way. Trump's gilded, golden everything decor in his homes and Country Clubs is designed to impress the easily awed, not demonstrate classic, sublime taste associated with older, quieter money (even DeVos, in that regard, seems more understated and private). Trump's is the conspicuous, elaborate consumption of someone who cares more about showing off, and the appearance of class than anything actually classy. Even Trump's much lampooned language about "the best" and "big league" in regards to what he owns betrays that endless need to show off, to preen and self aggrandize. What's sad, ultimately, about Price isn't just the small, petty nature of his fall - it's the way he let Trump's especially tasteless approach to extravagance further warp his own sense of entitlement. Surely, there are better ways to aspire to being upper class.

Trump's extravagant obviousness, too, is why losing Price is neither the end of this story, nor even likely it's worst example (and we do, after all, still have the oblivious displays of Steve Mnuchin and his recent bride, who may be hiding for now, but seem likely to reappear at any moment). The ridiculous trips, the family with no sense of propriety, combined with dozens of hangers-on, some rich and wasteful, some poor and aspiring... the stories can, and will, write themselves (the world waits, Scott Pruitt - don't stop now). And then of course, there's the even more familiar territory of say, Ryan Zinke, and the casual selling of favors to vested interests, like the oil and gas industry.

Still, at the heart of this Dynasty-like resurgence (I, for one, am not so sure that the CW's revival/reboot isn't a stroke of genius) is that sad, small tale of Tom Price. Covetousness and greed are embarrassing; it's almost painful to watch anyone's flaws laid out in such public, shaming display. American culture markets conspicuous consumption like it's, literally, going out of style. You will never have enough. You will never be rich enough, or thin enough, well dressed enough, or live luxuriously enough. The penthouse apartment, the private jet, the furs, the cars... the list is, truly, endless. And yet, how we punish those who succumb most to the siren's call.  It is vengeful, bordering on cruel.

The trick of course, is to learn what it means to have enough. To see luxuries as just that - the occasional extra, a little bit more, a nice perk. When I get to fly in the front of the plane, dine in the 5 star restaurant, buy the Tom Ford fragrance at Saks... I try to remember to be grateful. And to enjoy it without asking for more. At the very least, it gives one the luxury of giving Tom Price something worse than scorn... and that's pity.

The Christian Thing To Do

For years, Conservatives have held religious faith and their own sense of religiosity over the heads of liberals; calling it "holier than thou" would be an understatement. From the rise of the Moral Majority to the attempts at political advocacy run out of evangelical churches to the Christian Coalition, the conservative right grew over the past fifty years in part by appeals to religious fundamentalism. And with it came notions that no one knew religion, morality and decency better than they did.

Much of this legendary religious certainty came in the face of internal tensions, never fully reconciled: the most stridently antiabortion rhetoric defined as "pro-life" came from people just as likely to turn around and express a near bloodthirsty interest in the death penalty, and after 9/11, acceptance of even the most casual justifications for the use of life endangering methods of torture. We were treated to lectures on immorality and marital fidelity from folks eager to elect much married, often multiply divorced leaders with scandalous histories of adultery. The most stunning revelations of closeted men seeking men, often much younger men or even boys, for gay sex have come from a cadre of religious leaders closely associated with conservative causes, or members of the GOP in Congress.

And yet, in the face of this, conservatives have continued to wield their mighty sword of piety and religiosity at every turn, unencumbered by a sense of humility or certainly even a modicum of irony. To this day, the notion of liberals as shameless, godless hedonists, angry antireligious extremists bent on taking God out of schools and all aspects of modern life wherever possible, persists.The arguments around these issues are intense, extreme, and most certainly, endless. 

If liberalism could be defined as "a belief system" - something I heard much of growing up - what's been in remarkable over the past 25 years is watching liberalism move away from articles of faith to expressions of defensible public policy. Sociology, urban planning, education theory, economics, healthcare and energy policy... the list of areas where research and analysis has reached into thinking about government policy and actions is wide and deep. Policies that liberals advocate - from early childhood education, to nutrition, to environmental concerns, to energy policy and more - are built not on feel good pronouncements but the actual evidence of studying what works and what doesn't. That such policies and ideas often help to achieve desirable, compassionate ends is often not just a goal, but an added benefit.

Indeed, what;s been fascinating in the push/pull of political debate over my lifetime is the way what used to be a debate over emotional vs. rational in terms of left vs. right in this country, has reversed. It is now the left, more often, approaching debates from the position of thoughtful, rational approaches to policy and political action, while the right retreats ever more into orthodoxy, and rigid expressions of belief unmoored from fact. Emotion - particularly anger and hatred (and distrust) - rule the day. It is often impossible to even have rational debate across our deep divide because what we often call "not agreeing to the same facts" is one side simply refusing to deal in facts at all. Feelings are what matter - be it fear, suspicion, anger, righteousness or anything else. And often, it's so impossible to take seriously, the right has a growing internal reliance on a host of writers and commentators whose careers are built, entirely, on an abject rejection of seriousness altogether.

In the roughly 36 hours since the Trump Administration's budget has been made public, one organization in particular has come to the forefront of the debate over its absurd priorities and bad choices: Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels is funded, in part, in many communities out of Community Development Block Grants, grants that are made to organizations providing services meant to help communities in need. As Seth Meyers said in his witty takedown, no one, really, opposes delivering food to old people. Because that's all there is to Meals on Wheels: a healthy meal delivered to senior citizens in need of care at home.

In zeroing out the funding for Community Development Block Grants, Trump's Director of OMB, Mick Mulvaney justified that choice saying there's no proof the grants made under the program go to programs with any proven results or demonstrated need. What, he was asked about Meals on Wheels. Mulvaney largely sidestepped describing Meals on Wheels directly as ineffective, but maintained his broader point - these things may sound good, but they don't really do much.

Since then, there's been a wide ranging debate online about Meals on Wheels as the "Christian Thing To Do." That debate, of course, isn't actually simple: there are a variety ways to look at, and define, Christianity. What's striking, to me, is that the debate in many ways simply misses the point: it doesn't matter if one thinks Meals on Wheels is Christian or decent or otherwise morally good. The main thing is, it does an important, useful service, and the effectiveness and need for that service is well documented, and easily proved.

Liberals, in some sense, need to get over the tired right wing boilerplate of religiosity and moral certainty - we are well past the point of the Religious Right owning, or earning, their spot as the moral high ground. The election of a twice divorced, serial adulterer as their champion speaks volumes to the myriad ways that so called "evangelical voters" (Usually self described, and often less overtly religious than the wider public) have simply given up on expressing moral decency in politics. The right has nothing more than a belief system at this point to justify their views, and, more often than not, that belief system is confused, deeply flawed, and morally inconsistent.

The left has done admirable work, in my lifetime, to move away from a cadre of True Believers more interested in orthodoxy than then effectiveness. The right, on the other hand, seems to have simply given up on fighting the regression further into extreme beliefs unmoored from the real world and how it actually operates. And it's well past time that liberals need to let go of the pointless exercise of engaging with conservatives on Who Is More Morally Decent. Not because we can win the argument - and endorsing food for old people, surely, puts us there - but because the argument really isn't the point. Governing sensibly, thoughtfully and appropriately isn't just The Christian Thing To Do. It's the intelligent defensible thing we've been right about all along.

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The Know Nothing Party

From the beginning, the cries of "repeal Obamacare" - cries that started before the thing was even passed - made no sense. "Repeal Obamacare" has always had an air of exactitude that betrays how little its opponents understand about the bill, or for that matter healthcare policy, at all. Which is why the expanded "repeal and replace" mantra, never mind the farce now playing out in Congress, is both stupid, and dangerous.

You can't replace something with nothing, the saying goes, and yet that is, very much, how Republicans are approaching health policy. The ACA is a flawed, messy piece of legislation that no one can, or should, entirely love. But those real, practical problems within the ACA are nothing like the visceral antipathy of opponents who long ago gave up on trying to respond thoughtfully to the issues raised in healthcare reform.

If Republicans succeed - and on some level that's always a distinct possibility - the current bill is obviously disastrous: millions losing health insurance, problems around delivery of care will increase, costs will once again spiral out of control (to say nothing of the pointless windfall of tax cuts for the very very wealthy). Conservatives have no answer to these concerns because, as I've tried to point out for years to anyone who'd listen, the right has little or no serious expertise in healthcare policy, or for that matter, policy more generally. They have continuously thrown buzzwords and catch phrases where a policy should be: "free market solutions," "patient choice," ""bottom up, not top down." These terms are meaningless. And the nonsensical bill they threw together, in desperation, shows just how thin their thinking on the topic really is.

For one thing, this isn't repeal. The bill literally amends the Affordable Care Act, which alone may be a deal killer that even a majority in the House can't accept. Second, as long expected, the bill hedges on dealing with "popular" provisions of the ACA: the "stay on your parents plan til 26" option for children, the protection for preexisting conditions (though weakened), even, interestingly, a refusal to flat out kill the expansion of Medicaid, which for anti-poverty conservatives should have been an easy lift. 

More importantly, conservatives betray their failures by wilting at every turn when hard choices come up - the ACA, as it turns out, is a complicated fabric of interlocked pieces where pulling on one thread causes the whole thing to unravel. I'm not sure even many of its supporters realized how intricate the construction has turned out to be. Pretty much any and every move conservatives have made has revealed a simmering mess just waiting to blow up in their faces - from trying to kill its financing to removing the insurance mandates to "bending the cost curve"... Conservatives have been forced back to the ACA because its basic premise - retaining the guarantee of employer based health insurance - underpins even their disjointed approach to a solution.

Once again here's the real point: if you use employment as the basis for insuring people, you have to provide solutions for people who don't fall under the defining criterion. That is, you have to deal with retirees (Medicare). You have to deal with people self employed or freelance or otherwise outside conventional employer-employee models of work (the exchanges or the individual market). And you have to deal with people who are unemployable or unable to be employed, such as the poorest and least educated (Medicaid and disability). This is the problem, and there really aren't a lot of great answers. There never were. The only solution is to spend the additional money to provide the options to the people who otherwise can't afford access to care. And fundamentally, the debate we're having isn't about the buzzwords about markets, and freedom and mythical choice: it's the basic, practical fact that the right simply wants to do less and have it cost less and damn the people who get hurt in the process. That's not a policy - it's the abdication of policy for nothing more than the monetary gain of a select few.

I've resisted wading into the weeds of what we're calling a "healthcare debate" partly because no one should be giving the right the cover of taking these proposals seriously as policy. They're not, and they shouldn't be. Until the conservative right can own up to its realities and face the problems they're trying to avoid by any means necessary, this isn't any kind of a healthy, productive conversation. Getting lost in their sea of silly tax credits, cuts to Medicaid (never mind their long desired death blow to the program entirely, a/k/a "block grants"), and reverse engineered regulatory changes is a fool's errand.  The choice is much more simple, the terms especially stark - we can wreck the progress we've made increasing access to insurance and care, or we can deal with the problems we actually have. The rest is nonsense.

The sad fact is that the real failure of the ACA, still, is the failure to educate the public, the media and the political class about the realities of healthcare in the US. Conservatives get away with their falsehoods and fabrications and fantasies of free markets because few people arrive at the discussion armed with the information needed to confront them with facts and knowledge to refute their claims (this, sadly, applies to a number of other discussions, like education). Absent that information and awareness, it's easy as conservatives do, to claim a "death spiral" in insurance, to make hay out of the meaningless "choose your doctor" arguments, and on and on. The Know Nothings triumphed in November, and "repeal and replace" is the triumph of their crazed ambitions. Party on. If we're lucky, the best we can hope for is their complete failure.

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Sexy Rexy

It's hard not to see the obvious petulance in Trump's selection of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Barely a week of serious attention to his potential nomination, already raised red flags all over the place that Tillerson will face major hurdles just trying to get confirmed. (Then again, what is the forthcoming Trump presidency but one giant scarlet scarf waving in the wind?) Trump long ago ceased being anything but what he appears in the press, and "never back down" is clearly a big piece of his storyline. 

So Tillerson it is.

There's plenty to fear, and loathe, in Trump's cabinet selection process, but what I find fascinating is Trump's apparent approach to his slogans of a "fresh start" and "draining the swamp." There's a sense in which it would be refreshing, challenging even, to approach the business of Washington by looking beyond the circle of "Old Washington Hands" - a circle that did seem, somehow, smaller and even more insular under President Obama, who was especially taken with "meritocracy" appointments, usually from the small collection of Ivy League grads and the similarly small group (MIT, Stanford, U of Chicago) of related top drawer schools. More than a few outsider observers of the Obama world pointed out that the President would benefit from shaking up his input and moving beyond a core group of especially loyal confidantes. It's also telling that, while he twice acknowledged the need to rethink his advisors after major electoral losses, he actually never did in any significant way.

It would be easier to feel good about Trump's choices as breaking a mold if his choices didn't move from the small insular world of DC insiders and like minded intellectuals to selections from even more insular worlds: the "C-Class" of boardroom magnates, along with top drawer Generals, and a loyalist coterie of highly wealthy members of the donor class. It belies Trump's own myopia in overvaluing family ties, personal discipline and sense of self made success, without showing a real awareness that really shaking things up would mean reaching beyond your own comfort zones. In that sense - and this will matter, I think, in many ways many people don't see - the built-in failures of Trump's coming Presidency won't be all that different from the "boomer generation" self centeredness of both George W Bush and Barack Obama. Trump's example is extreme, to be sure; but both Bush and Obama could have used more insight from outside their familiar circles, and Trump, surely, is making choices that make his circle even tighter.

Partly too, I suspect, the handwringing over Trump's choices as ethically dubious - along with the looming questions of his own ability to separate his business interests from his role as President - reflect the sunset of progress made since the presidency of Richard Nixon. Few people under the age of 50 will have any real recollection of life before or during Watergate, and how crucial it was to  set higher and better standards of expectations in Presidents and those who serve them. A lot of what we're talking about as "concerns" with the cabinet or with Trump - the idea of having vested, material interests in the outcomes of various choices and and policies set by the President or the Executive Branch - seem quaint, really. We all know that businesses and lobbyists already have outsized influence in many areas; why does it matter, really, if the President owns a hotel operation in Kuala Lumpur (or more to the point, Manila)? Do we really care that the incoming Secretary of State has only dealt with foreign leaders, in the course of a near 50 year career at one company, in terms of that company's business goals?

Well... yes. And yes. The trouble is that these ethical issues don't resonate like they used to, when the President's reelection committee ran it's operations in a White House office and the President's top advisors were also his primary Bag Men for campaign tactics. We've had a generation plus to learn the right words, calm the right anxiousness, pretend we're all trying really hard to be scrupulously fair. It's not surprising, really, that we've forgotten, in many ways, why the need to be vigilant never goes away, why so many people just assume, blithely, that there must be an acceptable way for Trump to paper over his business issues or Rex Tillerson to simply set aside a lifetime of work for Exxon as little more than stock options on paper. We don't just think the rules matter; we believe, earnestly, that people understand why we have the rules. 

That awakening is likely to be rude, and enormous ('Big League", that's the phrase, right?) and, I'm convinced, probably inevitable. Whether it's the naïveté of the "Let's give him a chance" crowd, the dithering of DC types trying to pretend that this just another regular transition, or the bully boys refusing to brook any dissent to the ascension of their awesome leader... all the pieces are in place for a massive failure of public trust. And I tend to think Cassandra like wails of impending doom just won't get the job done. If so many can't see the collapse awaiting us... then we may just need to accept that what's about to happen, much like this election, was simply the kind of bad turn we had to take to realize we should take bad turns.

Soon enough, we will not be re-litigating the events of this past year - Trump can't keep running against Hillary forever, no matter how he'd prefer it - and we will be full bore into what comes next. And Trump, it's worth remembering, isn't just a narcissist blowhard (as bad as that seems): he's also an inexperienced, in many ways inarticulate, newcomer to a job that is not generally forgiving to rookie mistakes. And, in his first set of major choices, Trump has put in place a large group of similarly inexperienced newcomers with little or no thought to explaining his thinking, or trying to win over his many skeptics. All of that matters. 

There may be a case to be made for neophytes like Tillerson, or Betsy DeVos, or Seth Mnuchin; Trump hasn't made them. It may be that he doesn't realize that he's moved from one sales job into another, larger one; it may be that the kind of skills he needed to sell real estate don't actually translate well into the selling of public policy. I tend to think if Trump were more adaptable, more flexible, had more ease with changing up his approach, he could make the case for Rex, really sell it, get more people to buy the Sexy in Rexy. And the others. But he's not and he hasn't and it's a recipe, even now, that doesn't bode well for where all of this is headed, and I don't mean just Bad Things For Liberals To Disapprove.

We forget, in these changing times, that people dislike and fear change, especially change that is offered with no rationale or explanation. Trump is already laying the foundation for an Administration of wrenching change, and making no case for it that most Americans can or will sign on to support. I would at least think he knew enough to try and sell Change as the new Sexy. And instead... nothing.

Trump is, even now, deeply unpopular for a soon to be President. He starts, more than even George W Bush, with low approvals, half the country in no mood to even think about supporting him, and an electoral loss in the popular vote that calls his legitimacy in many ways into serious question. A savvy politician, really, would see that (a genuinely great politician would have never won in this manner to begin with). There are reasons to fear who Trump is and what he will yet do, but politically, I wouldn't overestimate him as a genius or capable of achieving the most modest of goals. All he's had to do over the past few weeks is sell the nation on the assembly of a team of advisors and department heads... and he can't even do that. That's not even the hard part. The hard part is what happens next. And I don't mean that in a sexy way at all.

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Our Brand Is Bulls**t

Look, I think we've all tried avoidance... humor, anything. It wasn't until I said it again, out loud, yesterday, that I realized how surreal it is to even say: Donald Trump is a candidate for President of the United States. What is that? How does that even happen? Why are we even taking this seriously?

Ok, let's talk about Donald Trump.

Did I think Donald Trump would get this far? No; but to be fair - to myself, at least - I think we need a definition of "this far" that makes sense. I didn't think his run was entirely serious, so no, I thought he'd get bored or annoyed and walk out earlier. I didn't think he'd win the majority of Republican voters... and he hasn't. I didn't think he'd make any sort of potential winning candidate, never mind a successful winner in this fall's race... and so far, he's neither. So did I think he could win the GOP nomination? Well, sure, if he stuck it out. I just thought the GOP had more sense then to let it go that far. And maybe, they still do.

Let's remember that Trump is winning because the field of candidates on the right is awful. There were 17 awful people running (George Pataki! Dear God!), and even the relatively interesting ones - Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, arguably Rick Perry - came loaded with baggage that would have been a hard sell in the best scenario. And Republicans voters do seem to have a fascinating death wish - eviscerating, one after another, any hope of a coherent, thoughtful opponent to either Democrat this fall. And so, now you have one relatively sane alternative - John Kasich - who stands virtually no chance of winning anywhere that's left, and Ted Cruz vs. Donald Trump, a choice of frying pan or fire I'm glad I'll never have to make. So bad, it makes reviving Mitt Romney look good!

Mostly, though, this debacle has happened because Trump has found, and kept, a core of support that no other Republican can touch - the white working class voter, mostly male, whose anger and rejection of status quo has reached critical mass. At best, the GOP has been, since the nineties, a fragile coexistence of the very rich, the "values voter" of the religious right and those working class whites, attracted by a mix of let's be frank, coded messages about blaming others for their problems and a tough guy attitude about guns, war, and fighting the good fights. It was always a bad fit - the policies favored the rich, the religious right got taken for a ride as their issues lost one by one, and the working class  got hammered both by bad policy and by economic forces set in motion by those wealthy folks, many Republican, out for themselves and their own personal gain.

Lots of people find it hard to believe that someone with such a conspicuous wealthy lifestyle as Trump could be the salesman for what working men (and some women, but mostly men) want, but I think people miss that the lifestyle he celebrates - ostentatious and somewhat tasteless - is both what ordinary people think rich looks like and favors the aspirational. You may never get into the right schools, the right clubs, marry into the family of taste and class... but you could make some good money, buy a lot of nice things, and say the hell with the snobs. And Trump, really, has been all that, and more.

It's bullshit, but that's what Trump sells: bullshit. Real estate, except for maybe cars, is the home of the most pure sell: the selling of a dream, of hopes... and it favors a salesman who can, basically, lie like a good rug. Say whatever you have to say, but close the deal. Trump is a closer. And he's done it so long, it's beyond instinctive now: it's his air, what sustains him, what keeps it all afloat. Just keep slinging the bullshit. Somehow, it will all work out.

It would be nice to say that Trump's bullshit is finally coming back to haunt him, but I think that's wishful: the media loves a show, he knows it, and he has not stopped delivering since he jumped in to the race. No one organization, it seems, can keep up with the pace of his lies, his misstatements, his exaggerations, his obfuscations and reversals. They just keep coming. And nothing it seems, can thwart the feeling among a core of working class voters that, even with lies, even with policy proposals that can't possibly happen, he's still just what the country needs and the right man for the job.

This disconnect - the "I don't believe it, really, but I like his tough talk" - is part of his brand, too, really. He's the guy who has to sell the property when it isn't finished, the guy who has you walk the model apartment and sells you the idea. It's all caveats and hypotheticals, and you know it won't look like the brochure. But either you trust his sales job, or you don't. Many of us don't. But it's why those who do trust his pitch can say, "no he won't really build a wall. He'll just take on immigration. It's part of why Trump and Sanders are at least tangentially linked - Sanders too is offering a sales job of traditional revolutionary leftism, and he too, has fans who admit that his proposals may not be workable... but he's staked a position and you know what he really believes. Perhaps. I'd say it's more a question of one's tolerance for the bullshit. If you've never trusted the sales rep, well, I suspect you're one of the people turning down what either man is trying to sell.

And sometimes, really, what we can miss is that within Trump's bullshit are hard truths that some hate to admit and politics is meant to avoid. The job of selling is layering the bullshit on top of some, maybe only a few, real facts, facts that help your sell, but still facts. Trump has reversed pretty much every Republican by admitting carried interest is ridiculously unfair and should be ended. Lurking within his xenophobia on trade and immigration are acknowledgements both that offshore manufacturing is a hard reality and low wage immigrants make the economy go. He's critical of George W. Bush and his handling of Iraq and Afghanistan (even while sounding wildly xenophobic and anti-Muslim). And yes, he stepped across a generally accepted line by stating the obvious: if abortion is a crime, a woman who gets one is a criminal.

It was bullshit, his conversation with Matthews, just two guys who talk fast and tough, bullshitting each other, that lulled Trump into admitting the logical fallacy anti abortion forces like to sell - criminalize abortion, and arrest doctors, not women. It's not their fault, or it is their fault, but they're just dumb, or crazy, or who knows. Trump couldn't help himself - I suspect he just wanted to show Matthews that he was smart, too, that he wasn't some loudmouth with no smarts to back it up. And he went for it. 

Now. of course, Trump is selling more bullshit - he never said it, the question was confusing, he was misunderstood out of context, yada, yada, yada. In his wake, Trump has left people gasping at every new outrage, every beyond the pale moment. That, too, just adds to the show. Made you look! And you knew it was bullshit, but you still looked, you're still taking it seriously... and he's still humming along. People ask, does Trump even believe the bullshit - as if, somehow, his own rejection of it would tell you something. It's a search for something irrelevant - off of the sales floor, virtually any salesperson I've met is a tremendous cynic. It's hard to respect the people who fall for your lines. I keep telling people who wonder if Trump is "for real" that you're looking the wrong way - what we need to ask, and figure out is... why are the people supporting him buying what he's selling. And can you sell them something else?

Trump is the triumph of America's real skill - salesmanship. It's what we do, it's how our economy works, selling is who we are, right down to the American Dream. We're good at it - we lie to ourselves and we lie to the world and occasionally we have to admit we've lied, but usually just to sell something else, something more. We invented modern advertising, we perfected the hard sell. It's impossible to blame Trump for turning back on us the tools we use everyday to make this country run. He's selling, and no, not everyone is buying. But some people are, and the GOP has the hard choice of rejecting the sales pitch and turning off the fans and buyers, or seeing this sales pitch through to what will be, almost without a doubt, a complete debacle. Stopping this train, now, would require skills at outdoing Trump that so far, no one seems to have - maybe if we called the cast of Million Dollar Listing. But even they would tell us, you need something to offer as an alternative sell. And what Trump knows, deep down, is that the forces opposing him in the GOP are armed, mainly... with bullshit.

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The Song Remains The Same (Humming A Few Bars of Bernie)

The recipe, by now, is clear: Open with some grand statements about the need for sweeping change. Complain about a "coronation" or the "domination" of "The Clinton Machine." Sprinkle in some statistics about income inequality - stagnating minimum wage, the massive gains of the top 1%, maybe a lament about no banker ever being arrested for the financial crash of 2007... Stir in some angry rhetoric, add some promises to achieve miraculous changes, maybe even a revolution... and Presto!

It's an article about Bernie Sanders!

I have read at least 4 complete versions of this exact piece, most recently Thomas Piketty for The Guardian. Piketty, a French economist, made waves with his recent book Capital in the 21st Century, suggesting that only by stopping wealth accumulation among the small number of wealthiest people can an economy thrive, with statistics to prove it. His argument has much the same attractiveness as Sanders' polemics, and in much the same way has invited considerable scrutiny of the statistics. And the polemics.

Bernie Sanders has been in Congress since the seventies, a longer span in elected office than virtually anyone running for President, and yet he is billed as an exciting outsider bent on breaking the Washington machine. As a Senate Committee Chair, Sanders oversaw Veterans Affairs - the largest, most complex, and most poorly run bureaucracy in the whole of government - and yet he remains seen as capable of sweeping change that dwarfs the VA exponentially. Sanders was, until late last year, a "Democratic Socialist" who ran as an Independent to win his elections in Vermont, yet now he wants the Democratic Party's nomination for President, as if he'd been involved in the party's politics all along. Sanders, at 74, would be as old as Ronald Reagan was when he left office (Reagan, we now know, had early symptoms of Alzheimer's by that time, but Sanders seems quite healthy), and would be the oldest President ever. The caveat to that is that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (who is older than her by some months), would also be older (at 70, each) than Reagan when he took office.

Trump - let's put in a pin in that for later, shall we? - and Sanders have been enjoying dual status as loud, angry outsiders battling their way to their respective nominations, mostly as vocal spokesman for those left behind, not just by the limping post 2007 recovery, but for years before. Trump enjoys considerable success attracting working class, less educated whites, while Sanders attracts some of the same crowd, as well as a large swath of young people, mostly college students and recent grads. The Sanders folks bristle at equations where the two are joined, even tangentially, but both do offer similarly flavored lines about getting stuck by the man, the wealthy business owning class that has profited from lowering wages, increasing worker productivity and swallowing nearly all the profits.

"Feel the Bern!" is the rallying cry of Sanders supporters, yet it's not enough, in their estimation to simply agree with the generalized sense that yes, there's massive income inequality, a disturbing concentration of wealth, and a host of economic issues to address.  In Sanders view - as he has made abundantly clear in speeches, interviews, and debates - economics is the frame for all of America's (and the world's) problems, a Marxist, Socialist view that's been, until recently, largely set aside in favor of other, more complex approaches. His proposals, in turn, reflect that singleness of thought: plans to increase taxes, mainly on the wealthy and big corporations, to pay for a "Medicare for all" type single payer health plan, a plan to enable free tuition at state run colleges and universities, and some  additional strengthening of the social safety net.

To say that this doesn't exactly add up, or seem entirely achievable... is to rain on exceedingly popular parade.

Though he deserves credit for saying it passionately and with conviction, much of what Sanders offers isn't especially new. The Medicare-for-all proposal showed up during the debate over the Affordable Care Act and then, as now, it bogs down both over the cost and complexity of implementing a state run insurance program for every person... but also over just how such a plan would actually control the cost of care, when Medicare's fee for service model has served as the incentive for much of the problem we've had in healthcare since it was created. Fee for service creates an incentive, fairly obviously, to add services which aren't always medically necessary. And setting the fees is mainly of interest to those whose livelihoods - like medical professionals, hospital executives and pharmaceutical concerns - revolve around receiving them.

The college tuition plan is even more curious, since the tuitions and fees of state schools are determined by, well, the states that operate them; even Sanders, in the most concrete legislative proposal he's made, acknowledges that the federal government can't subsidize the entire bill. And of course, any discussion of how these proposals, and the underlying tax increases, could ever pass Congresses heavily, if not over-represented by Republicans would even come close to passing any of this, is where fantasy simply takes over. Sanders has suggested, when pressed, that there simply would have to be a "revolution," presumably electing very left leaning majority legislatures in both houses, to achieve anything like what he's proposed.

Indeed, the song of Bernie Sanders has been a romantic theme of the dreams of liberals for generations, at least back to the era of Roosevelt, if not back to the Gilded and Industrial Age. It's a utopia of healthcare, education, easily accessed social services, world peace and shared resources. It's hard not to love (if you love, you know, world peace and all of that)... it's also, just, extremely unlikely to ever, ever happen.

All of these developments, the rise of Sanders, the enthusiasm of kids and those left behind, a campaign of who can promise more liberal things to the liberal left... strike me as unsurprising, if a bit sudden and a little extreme. Hillary Clinton's strength, rarely valued, is both understanding how big systems work (i.e. process) and seeing, in practical terms, how to manage achievable goals in a realistic setting. None of that, really, captures people's dreams (unless, like me, you dream about process), and it can seem, to some, like a dismissal of passion, anger, and certainly rage.

But the song of Sanders is a dream that cannot happen. There's few ways to spell this out more clearly to the crowds of supporters feeling the Bern, but there it is. It's pie in the sky proposals that can't deal with the systems we already have developed over time (whether political, economic or social), and won't happen due to resistance at the most basic levels from forces well beyond the supporters' control (not just wealth and power, but the sincere disagreements of intelligent opponents... of whom I am not one). At every turn, when asked what compromise, or reality, or failure might look like, Sanders returns, firmly, to the Dream of the Revolution. It must happen, just this way. We cannot compromise, we cannot fail. Until, of course, we do.

It's hard to fight a dream. It's hard - and I've said this, repeatedly, over these blogging years - to walk the American psyche back from anger and fear. Sanders is, in many ways, as much of a political triumph as the Occupy Wall Street crowd has ever known, and likely will ever see - a full throated endorsement of their incoherent anger, lack of specific goals, and vague plans for an oversized, unrealistic future that most people can't see or favor. It's losing sight of the practical, everyday issues, working poor people actually face, in favor of the intellectual exercises of an educated class with the luxury of time and space to engage in them. It's a pretty song, as a siren's song often is. And just as the song remains the same, the rocks will still dash the boat. Hopefully, lefties can shake off the dreams and get down to the practical matters at hand... but that song... it's just so pretty...

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Playing For Keeps

I'm sure I said, at some point, that it was a midstake for President Obama to say "if you like your plan/doctor, you can keep it/them," and not just for the pronoun disagreement.

I can't seem to find it anywhere on the blog, so probably I just say it in conversation, but I'm sure I said it.

It's interesting that this tension over "keep what you like" has become the dominant news story in the Failure of Obamacare storyline. Give conservatives credit for tripping over a storyline that finally works for them, though I'm pretty sure they don't understand why or how it can backfire.

Obama supporters, naturally, make excuses for their hero, but really, it was a dumb thing to say, one that betrayed at least some failure to appreciate the real problems in health insurance that needed reforming, probably due to lack of familiarity than (I suspect) a deliberate desire to mislead. In the wake of a dawning reality that at least some people - a lot, numerically, but a small percentage of all the insured - will lose health insurance plans they may have "liked," we are. imperfectly, moving into a discussion that may actually turn out to be healthy and necessary. Which is, again, why conservatives may want to be careful what they've wished for actually happening. 

The discussion we've needed to have, of course, is the one where people finally get some education and information on the realities of healthcare and health insurance in America.