Category Archives: Politics

Superdelegates and Pendulums

By DocJess | Published August 29, 2018

Reprinted with Permission

50 years ago, Democratic candidates were chosen by “The Party”.

50 years ago this week, at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, that began to change. There had been some primaries and caucuses in 1968,  of which Vice President Hubert Humphrey won a tiny amount, but “The Party” wanted Humphrey to be the party’s presidential nominee. They got that, and a whole lot of protests, and a disaster in November. Nixon won the Electoral College 301 – 191, with the remainder going to George Wallace. Continue Reading...

Also posted in Bernie Sanders, Delegate Count, Delegates, Democratic Party, Democrats, DNC, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Primary Elections, Superdelegates | 1 Comment

Following the Money: Congress 2018

By DocJess | Published April 22, 2018

There used to be an immutable law about campaign finances: more money always beats less money, unless candidates self-fund, which rarely works out well. WOW! Things have changed.

There are still some rules about campaign money that hold true. First, if, as a candidate, you can get a local voter to give you money, even $5, they are going to vote for you because they’re invested in you. Granted, if you do something incredibly stupid, that could change, although it may not. For example, there are people who fund candidates who still vote for said candidate even if the election falls between conviction and sentencing. (I am not making this up.) Contrary, if you, the candidate, sleep with a donor’s underage child and that donor probably will withdraw support, although sadly, not always. (Again, not making this up.)

Second rule is that if you cannot, as a campaign, raise a certain amount of money, you cannot be competitive. This amount differs based on the level of the election, and the cost of the media market, but all campaigns need to be able to fund a field operation at the very least. It’s pretty cheap to fund a school board operation: you need database access, some mailers/door lit, gas for the car to get to events. You can do that for less than a thousand dollars in most places. However, once you get to a state or Federal position, you need a paid campaign manager, likely a paid field person (both with legit skills), an office, advertising funds, and it goes on from there: in an expensive media market you’re looking at tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, to even more. Basically, you need enough money to run a credible, professional campaign. Continue Reading...

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Tax Cuts vs. Tax Reform

By tmess2 | Published October 30, 2017

The Republicans have set themselves the goal of passing tax legislation by the end of the year.  They took a major step by passing a budget resolution this past week which authorized tax legislation as long as that legislation had a net cost of less than 1.5 TRILLION over the next decade.  As such, as long as the CBO scores any legislation as complying with that cap, it is exempt from a filibuster.

That cap reflects a significant part of the current debate inside the Republican party — do they want a tax cut (reducing the overall tax burden) or tax reform (a revenue-neutral rewrite of the tax law).  This debate will be significant because the Republican approach is that those who make the most money pay the most taxes and therefore should get the most relief.  Thus, their proposals will be very top heavy on who gets the relief and the deductions most at risk will be those that benefit the middle class.

First, some Taxes 101 to set the background.  Both at the corporate level and at the personal level, calculating taxes begins with defining income.  Then there are certain authorized deductions from income that lead to a smaller income that qualifies as “taxable income.”  There are then income brackets in which you pay x% for the first $Y amount of income, than pay a slightly higher rate on the additional income above that amount (and just that additional income).  (E.g., If the top tax bracket is 40% and kicks it at $500,000, the taxpayer is only paying 40% on the income above $500,000 — so on an income of $700,000 that 40% only applies to the last $200,000 of income and the first $500,000 is taxed at a lower rate. )  After taxes are computed, the taxes can be reduced by tax credits. Continue Reading...

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The Democratic Party: Where do we go from here?

By DocJess | Published April 17, 2017

In the past week, I had three conversations that all intersect on the issue of the future of the Democratic Party. Three quite different people, and varying subject matters. I have not yet reached a conclusion, but the questions raised fascinate me.

Conversation 1

I belong to a political action group and we had a meeting. While the topic doesn’t matter, this comment still rings in my ears: “I work in a factory, and we make decisions immediately. I hope the rest of you won’t take this wrong, but you are pencil pushers.” Continue Reading...

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The Week in Review

By tmess2 | Published March 25, 2017

There is an old saying that a week is a lifetime in politics.  In most weeks, there is a lot happening either behind the scenes or at lower levels (e.g., committee hearings and markups on bills that nobody is watching).  It is the rare week, however, that so much is taking place front and center competing for the attention of the American public.

The big story of the week was the non-vote on and the collapse of the Republican effort at major health care reform — the so-called Affordable Health Care Act (a name that in itself was an attack on the bill that it was trying to “repeal and replace,” the Affordable Care Act.   There are several significant aspects to this non-event.

First, despite their efforts, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan could not get the sizable Republican majority in the House to pass a bill (forget the exact details of the last version of the bill, they could not get a majority behind any version) on one of the top Republican priorities of the past seven years.  While Trump may have been a great negotiator, it is very easy to reach a two-sided deal.  (Of course, it’s possible that Trump’s belief in his negotiating skill may be one of his great delusions.  He may have just been offering the right deal at the right time and actually have been taken to the cleaners in his business negotiations.)When you have three or more sides to a deal, however, it becomes very difficult to keep everybody on board.  This problem is particularly true in politics — when one faction thinks that a bill is too conservative and the other faction thinks that the bill is too liberal, there really isn’t any change that could make both sides happy.  At that point, it’s not really about negotiating but selling. Continue Reading...

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Hate in America

By DocJess | Published February 27, 2017

Last night, we in Philly heard that hundreds of headstones were turned over Saturday night at a Jewish cemetery, a week after similar vandalism in St. Louis. Many people are saddened, appalled and surprised. They should be sad and appalled, but not surprised. This is Trump’s America.

I have been working with Indivisible locally, and I am heartened by the number of people completely new to politics who are suddenly aware, and ready to take action to both resist the Trump agenda, and help elect people who will serve America, and not what is actually the Bannon administration.

I keep hearing two themes through my work with Indivisible. First, people are concerned about what they can do to stop hate. And by “hate” I mean not just the vandalism, but the verbal abuse people see foisted upon innocent people, just for the colour of their skin,  The ICE roundups are another form of hate: people question what they can do to help those who will be caught up in the dragnets. Hate also in the form of the administration’s moves against sick people (“repeal Obamacare” and dismantle Medicaid), Hate in the form of transgender bathroom rights. I’m a doctor, and I’m telling you, the only thing that matters is that you wash your hands. (If you’re a long-term reader, you remember back to SARS and fingers, nails, fingers, fingers, fingers.) And let’s not forget the hate of literacy in terms of claiming the media is the “enemy of the people”.  The hate is creeping down from the Cheeto Team, and up from the GOP state legislatures. Continue Reading...

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But Don’t Call Them Czars

By tmess2 | Published January 22, 2017

Eight years ago, when President Obama took office, Faux News and others spent a good chunk of their time complaining about President Obama’s use of “czars.”  By czar, they meant members of the White House staff who did not have to face Senate confirmation who were assigned responsibility for certain policy areas.  Now that Republicans are back in the White House, they are about to learn the same lesson that the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations knew — that the White House staff serves an important role in a functioning government.  But, you can be pretty sure that these positions will not be referred to as czars by Fox News.

There are several reasons why Presidents tend to depend on “staff” advisors rather than executive branch people subject to Senate confirmation.  The first reason has to do with the nature of Senate confirmations.

Most of our allies are parliamentary democracies.  While there is some distinction between the appointees to ministries (mostly members of parliament) and the Prime Ministers personal staff, the bottom line in most parliamentary democracies is that parliament does not individually confirm members of the government.  Depending on the country, parliament may have a single vote to approve the entire government (but, in others, the government takes power without any formal vote).  This process puts the full government in place on Day 1 of the new government. Continue Reading...

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Protecting Democracy

By DocJess | Published November 30, 2016

democracy-header1Every day, more nominees. I never thought I’d actually be rooting for Mittens so there will be at least one adult in the room.

If you’d told me that “President of these United States” was an entry-level elected position, I would have laughed.

Who could have predicted that the Weekly World News would have gotten more right over its years of publication than what is shown on most news stations. (At the very end of this post is the best story EVER about the Weekly World News.) Continue Reading...

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Who “Cost” the Election?

By DocJess | Published November 12, 2016

I spent Election Day working for the county, greeting voters, putting those voters in one of six lines to make things move more quickly. Our polling place saw about 2200 voters that day, plus 184 absentee ballots. From that one polling place, there is a lot of insight about what went wrong.

The loss was obvious when the tape was run a little past 9, indicating that while Clinton had won the vote, turnout wasn’t high enough and the percentage wasn’t big enough. This ended up being the pattern across both the state of Pennsylvania and the country at large.

First, an anecdote that explains something. The voter who came out from voting grinning ear to ear, proud. Told me that although a lifelong Democrat who had never voted for a Republican, she proudly voted for Donald Trump. Why? “I did all my research because I wanted to be really sure and I think Clinton went bad when she shot all her partners at the Rose Law Firm and then Vince Foster.” When told that never happened, the response was: “Yes it did. I read it on the internet.” Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court and Politics

By tmess2 | Published October 29, 2016

no_more_hate (2)In setting up the federal judiciary, the Framers wanted to separate the judiciary from politics to a certain degree.  By giving judges and justices an unlimited term, judges would be free from having to decide cases on what is currently popular.  Not that the courts would be absolutely immune from politics, but the influence of politics on the courts would be that elections to the “political” branches would be in the choice of new judges and justices to fill vacancies.  The courts would be “conservative” in the sense of reflecting the values of the time at which judges or justices were appointed with a gradual change reflecting changes in those values over time through the appointment of new judges and justices.  (On the Supreme Court, nine of seventeen Chief Justices served more than a decade, and thirteen of seventeen served more than six years.  Of the Associate Justices sixty-eight of one hundred have served more than ten years, and another thirteen have served more than six years.)

The fact that federal judges do not have to stand for election does not mean that judges are not political or aware of politics.  To ask that judges not view close legal issues through a certain political philosophy and that judges not be aware of the potential impact of decisions on elections is asking too much.  However, the Supreme Court wants the public to perceive that they are above politics and would prefer that the Supreme Court rank somewhat low on the list of important issues in any election.  This desire to “lay low” has been reflected in pushing off the arguments on the most controversial cases until after the election (or even later for cases that might currently reflect a 4-4 split).  Even in terms of which cases are being granted for review later this year, the Supreme Court was avoiding cases that were likely to generate headlines.  That changed yesterday when the Supreme Court issued its order reflecting which cases it had just accepted for full review.  While none of the cases on the list are surprises in terms of the Supreme Court granting review, two of the cases are highly controversial — one dealing with transgender rights and the other with sex offenders and the First Amendment — and most expected the Supreme Court to push a decision on reviewing those two cases until after the election, particularly with the election controlling who gets to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Continue Reading...

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