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Democrats Agsinst Health Reform
Critique of Dr. Paul Krugman #39;s article inthe NyT on December 4, 2014 where the good doctor counsels the dems on how to be good dems.

By: Tom Dillon

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Democrats Agsinst Health Reform - Video

Democrats at the moment are going through a lot of soul searching. Why did they lose the last election so decisively?

Weve already noted New York senatorChuck Schumersmea culpa on Obamacare. Former Virginia senator and potential presidential candidate Jim Webbtold an audience in Richmond last week The Democratic Party has basically turned into a party of interest groups.

Those two views are not inconsistent. Obamacare was put together by special interests insurance companies, hospitals, drug companies, you name it they all had a hand in the final product. Search high and low for any overriding principle in the health reform bill and you are unlikely to find it

Are Democrats out of new ideas? asks Ezra Klein. He goes on to say:

The last few years has been a period of policy ferment on the right in a way it hasnt been on the left. The Republican Party is thick with ambitious young politicians arguing over big ideas. Rep. Paul Ryans budgets have taken over the GOP. Sen. Rand Paul has beguna war with the neoconservatives. Sen. Mike Lee has been fighting to move Republicansbeyond supply-side tax reforms.

There is less energy in the Democratic coalition. The Obama administration has been a factory of policy ideas but now its agenda is stalled and its not clear what comes next.For Democrats, the election should in part be a warning about their overwhelming intellectual exhaustion, wrote Yuval Levin, a leader among conservative reformers, in a triumphalist, but sharp, post-election analysis.

As I noted in aprevious post, Democrats really had only two policy proposals in this last election: a higher minimum wage and equal pay for equal work. These were repeated frequently by guests on TV talk shows and in campaign speeches throughout the land. But these are hardly new ideas. Equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land since 1964 and no one really believes that passing more laws is going to have much effect on the work place anyway other than making it more expensive to hire people. Also, almost no one who actually votes earns the minimum wage which mainly applies to entry level jobs, mostly held by teenagers.

Many in the Democratic Party thought Obamacare would create a new class of voters grateful for all the newly subsidized health insurance Obamacare has given them. But as Senator Schumerpointed out, almost everyone who votes already had health insurance. The uninsured basically dont vote.

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Democrats' Dilemma

More than a month after another midterm-election drubbing, House Democrats are still wondering what went wrong to put their seat count come January at its lowest 85 years.

Some think the campaign agenda was too negative, with little appeal to swing voters; others contend that the liberal, left-leaning message was just right but was drowned out by global crises. Most just want answers, any answers.

Theres a lot going on around here, privately, about the need for us to sit down and talk about the need to put a strategy together. Thats why we need to have a postmortem, said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), is not interested in indulging the angst-ridden or the frustrated members of her caucus, or those who just need to vent.

Its no use having a conversation unless you have data, unless you have analytics, unless you see what happened, she said in an interview in her Capitol suite, dismissing calls for a marathon session just so lawmakers can vent their frustration. I really have an attitude that some may not agree with: You have to know what youre talking about.

But after three straight lost elections, resulting in at least six straight years in the minority, Pelosi is facing her most uneasy moments in her 12 years as the top Democrat in the House. And tensions with Senate Democrats are high, as she largely blamed their poor campaigns for losses in House races. She is pushing a go-slow approach while her team pulls together voting and polling data so the party can chart a new course.

Thats a marked contrast to how Democrats handled the historic 63-seat loss after the 2010 midterms. During their first meeting after that devastating defeat, Pelosi opened up the mikes to dozens of defeated incumbents. It allowed the losing side to blow off steam but produced little concrete action for the road ahead.

Now, Pelosi has tasked a trusted ally, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), to run a new policy and messaging shop to craft a formula for returning the party to the majority. Israel, who ran the caucuss campaign arm for the past four years, has given presentations about the 2014 results but some lawmakers want a broader review in which they can offer critiques.

Despite the losses, Pelosis position is as safe as it has ever been. No one challenged her during Novembers leadership elections, and her liberal base has even more leverage in the smaller caucus. Even her critics praise her fundraising prowess, and her loyal lieutenants have taken no visible steps toward taking over whenever the 74-year-old decides to retire.

Shes got an amazing reservoir of goodwill in the caucus. Who can do what she can do? The answer is nobody, said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who served as chief of staff to Pelosis predecessor, Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

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Pelosi wants less talk, more action as Democrats plot new path ahead

Democrat Tom Wolf may want to thank the Republicans and independents of Bucks County when he moves into the governors mansion next month.

Figures released this week by the Bucks County Board of Elections show just 43 percent (84,451) of Democrats took part in state and federal elections held Nov. 4.

When Bucks County voted to sack GOP Gov. Tom Corbett and Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, a Bristol Township native and former Bucks commissioner, records show Republican turnout was 53 percent (94,211) while independent turnout was 30 percent (21,711).

Wolf won that contest with 103,812 votes to Corbetts 94,584 votes, according to election returns.

Sixty percent of Bucks is registered either Democrat or independent. Yet Republicans accounted for half of all ballots cast on Election Day.

Overall, turnout was 46 percent. Thats the lowest turnout reported in Bucks County in 16 years.

Records show the lowest Democratic turnout in the communities of Bensalem (36 percent), Bristol Township (38 percent) and Bristol (39 percent).

The highest Democratic turnout was reported in the Central Bucks towns of Doylestown (55 percent) and Doylestown Township (52 percent), according to the board of elections.

By contrast, The highest turnout of Republicans was 62 percent in Durham and 55 percent in Lower Makefield.

The lowest GOP turnout was reported in the town with the fewest Republicans. Tiny Tullytown had just 251 registered Republicans on Election Day, officials said. Eighty-six of those Republicans voted, officials said.

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Democrats largely absent from November election

Southern Democrats who lost key races this election cycle

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

New Orleans (CNN) -- The 2014 elections seemed like the final reckoning for Southern Democrats, the culmination of a political metamorphosis that began in the Civil Rights era and concluded under the nation's first black President.

Wiped out in governors' races, clobbered in Senate contests, irrelevant in many House districts and boxed out of state legislatures, Democrats in the South today look like a rump party consigned to a lifetime of indignity.

"I can't remember it being any gloomier for Democrats in the South than it is today," said Curtis Wilkie, the longtime journalist and observer of Southern life who lectures at the University of Mississippi. "The party has been demonized by Republicans. It's very bleak. I just don't see anything good for them on the horizon."

Democrats are looking everywhere for solutions to their Southern problem. They hope population changes will make states such as Georgia and North Carolina more hospitable. They want more financial help from the national party. Some are even clinging to the dim hope that Hillary Clinton might help make inroads with white working class voters in Arkansas in 2016.

Success here is crucial for the party. There's virtually no way for Democrats to win back a majority in the Senate -- much less the House -- without finding a way to compete more effectively in the South. But the truth is there are no easy answers for a party so deep in the hole.

White voters have abandoned Democrats for decades, and the flight has only hastened under President Barack Obama. The migration has created a troublesome math problem: Democrats across the region now depend on African-American voters and not much else.

It's a disastrous formula in low-turnout midterms dominated by white voters. In Louisiana on Saturday, deep south Democrats bid farewell to their last remaining Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, who won the African-American vote but failed to secure enough white support in her race against Republican Bill Cassidy. Landrieu won just 18 percent of white voters on Election Day in November, and she failed to expand that margin in the runoff, resulting in another knife-twisting loss for Democrats hoping to put the devastating 2014 midterms behind them.

With Landrieu's loss, there are now just two Democrats senators hailing from the Old Confederacy: Mark Warner in Virginia and Bill Nelson in Florida. But both of those states have diverse populations and thriving economies that have pushed them away, culturally and politically, from their southern neighbors.

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The plight of Southern Dems