Mediaboss Marketing

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton delivers a videotaped address at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting last month in Atlanta. Erik S. Lesser / EPA

Obama and both Hillary and Bill Clinton were closely watching the DNC's recent elections. Former Vice President Joe Biden and top Obama aides like Valerie Jarrett worked the phones for Perez, whom the former president personally lobbied to enter the race. And other DNC candidates sought the blessing of the Clintons for their bids.

Obama has thrown his weight behind a major campaign on congressional redistricting, run by his former attorney general Eric Holder. And he can ultimately decide the fate of Organizing for Action, the group that grew out of his presidential campaigns. OFA recently relaunched to criticism from many Democrats, who say it undercut the official party.

Bill Clinton, meanwhile, has been an active campaigner for down-ballot Democrats, and he is known to wield his celebrity and fundraising prowess to snub Democrats who have crossed him or his wife.

"Keep fighting," Hillary Clinton said in a recent video message to Democrats. "I'll be right there with you every step of the way."

See more here:
Five New Power Centers: A Guide to the Fractured Democrats - NBCNews.com

By Brett Guthrie By Brett Guthrie March 6 at 1:57 PM

Brett Guthrie, a Republican, represents Kentuckys 2nd District and serves as vice chairman of the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

With Congress moving forward to repeal and replace Obamacare, it is no surprise that the laws advocates are worried about their Washington-centered approach to health care being scrapped. It was surprising, however, to see former congressman Henry Waxman take up his pen to decry potential reforms to the Medicaid program especially since the policies he criticized were ones he once supported.

In a recent opinion piece for The Post, Waxman lambasted the idea of curbing federal spending on Medicaid by adopting a per-capita allotment reform. Waxman said it would be an unprecedented abandonment of federal responsibility that would pass the buck to the states and deny care to the most vulnerable among us. He claimed that imposing a per-capita cap or block grant would rip health-care coverage from the most vulnerable and dramatically shift the burden of costs to the states.

The policy idea behind a Medicaid per-capita cap is that the federal government would continue to provide matching funds for each individual enrolled in a states Medicaid program, but unlike in the current arrangement, the federal government would set a limit on the maximum allowable amount per enrollee. There would be spending limits per state in each of the main Medicaid eligibility groups: the elderly, people with disabilities, children, and nondisabled, nonelderly adults. These caps would be based on each states historical average cost for an enrollee in each eligibility group.

It is true that this change would significantly change Medicaids financing, but Waxmans critique of adopting a per-capita cap rings hollow. Although congressional Republicans support this idea, it also gained traction two decades ago with a Democratic president. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton proposed putting federal Medicaid spending on a more sustainable path by adopting a per-capita cap reform. And when a Democratic president proposed them, Waxman applauded per-capita reforms.

At a 1996 congressional hearing, Waxman noted that under a per-capita cap reform, the federal government would maintain its commitment to sharing in the costs of providing basic health and long-term care coverage to vulnerable Americans. He correctly pointed out that states would have both the incentives and the tools to manage Medicaid more efficiently, and the continued federal commitment would help when states face cost increases for reasons beyond their control, including recessions, regional economic downturns, natural disasters, and outbreaks of contagious disease.

We know how the Clinton-era effort ended: The president and Congress failed to pass reforms that would restrain Medicaids growth. As a result, todays Medicaid program is about three times larger than it was when Clinton proposed his reforms. The program consumes about 1 in every 6 state dollars. Next year, overall Medicaid spending is projected to be larger than the entire defense budget, and by the end of a decade, federal and state spending on Medicaid will total roughly $1 trillion each year. The program is projected to continue to grow at a rate faster than the economy or incoming revenue, an objectively unsustainable path.

Modernizing Medicaids financing by putting the program on a budget isnt draconian, its common sense. The fever-pitched fear-mongering against any effort to constrain Medicaid spending shows just how far to the political left Waxman, and the Democratic Party, have drifted. If more spending and more government were the answer, Medicaid patients would have access to world-class health care. Yet, research from an array of scholars has shown that too few providers accept Medicaid patients to meet existing needs and that Medicaid coverage often fails to improve health outcomes for many patients. We must focus on modernizing this Great Society program so it can offer real access to providers and improved health outcomes for decades to come.

No single bill will fix all the challenges Medicaid faces, but Congress and the president have a historic opportunity to adopt permanent reforms. Working together with governors and state Medicaid reformers, we can empower states with new statutory flexibilities. We can modernize the waiver process so states can focus on managing their programs based on the needs of their patients, not managing paperwork for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We can create better tools and incentives for states to reduce costs, boost quality and improve health outcomes.

The basic architecture of Medicaid has remained largely unchanged over the past 50 years. We now have an opportunity to improve and modernize the program so it remains strong for the next 50 years. In the meantime, Democratic attempts to score political points by manufacturing fear of per-capita cap reforms not only are misguided, they are hypocritical.

Read the rest here:
Democrats' hypocrisy on Medicaid reform - Washington Post

State Senate Democratic leader Jay Costa said Monday that while his caucus has been frozen out of its computer network, "Our phones are operating, our offices are open, our members are conducting business as usual."

A Friday-morning "ransomware" cyberattack from an unknown source has left state Senate Democrats unable to access emails, internal working documents and other files.

Ransomware attacks frequently encrypt the contents of a server, making it inaccessible to its owner absent some form of payment, often in online currency.

Mr. Costa, who said he was following the guidance of investigators, would not disclose the terms being set for return of the material. But he added that "Right now we have no intention of dealing with the demand."

Mr. Costa said Democrats are continuing to work with Microsoft and law-enforcement on a forensic audit of the system, which he hoped would be available later Monday. That, he said, should give Democrats a sense of how broad the attack is, and how the Senate Democrats' servers were infiltrated.

This is different than a hack," Mr. Costa said. "As we know right now, theres been no compromise of the data. ... Theyre simply blocking access to us to be able to access our own data."

Mr. Costa said the FBI and the state Attorney General's office were involved in assessing the source and extent of the attack.

At a minimum, the material at issue includes Senator's emails, and working documents like analyses of the state budget currently under discussion in Harrisburg. Also frozen are information in the Democrats' constituent tracking service, which handles feedback from their districts.

Most of that material is backed up nightly, Mr. Costa said, meaning that even if the entire computer network has to be wiped clean, Democrats should eventually have access to material from as recently as Thursday evening. But he noted that would depend on whether the backed-up files had themselves been affected by the attack.

"I believe that wed be able to draw everything back down, provided that it wasnt compromised," Mr. Costa said. "We dont know that yet.

Asked why Democrats had been subject to attack, Mr. Costa said he had reached no conclusions, though he did refer to recent reports "that progressive agencies have been subject to attacks like this." Bloomberg News has reported that hackers, apparently from Russia, have been threatening to divulge information obtained from the networks of left-of-center groups like the Center for American Progress.

Although none of the other caucuses have been affected by a ransomware attack, Mr. Costa said that Senate Democrats "have everything that we should have, based on what Microsoft has told us .. in terms of defensive mechanisms.

He said the inaccessibility of fiscal documents would not affect the course of budget negotiations, but he added, At this point, were trying to ascertain the scope of what we dont have access to."

He said he hoped Microsoft could provide a "side-by-side" email system by Wednesday or Thursday to allow emails to come through. In the meantime, though, "Each of our members are communicating with folks in our district to let the know that a phone call will be preferable."

Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com

See the rest here:
Cyberattack still affecting computer network of Pa. Senate Democrats - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Democrats may place a greater value on a functioning government than Republicans doand thats commendablebut its putting the Democrats at a disadvantage, and is perversely undermining Congress itself.

By Seth Masket

The minority party in Congress usually doesnt have a whole lot of great options. They can either try to work with the majority and bend signature pieces of legislation a bit more to their liking, or they can stand united against the majority so that voters remember their opposition in case the majoritys plans go awry. Either way, though, theyre usually going to lose. But minority Democrats right now have a chance to do something that would actually help Congress in the long run. What they can do is act unreasonable.

Allow me to explain. As I noted in this earlier piece, Congressparticularly the Senateis an institution governed strongly by longstanding norms. Any effort to represent the views of 50 different states, or 435 congressional districts, and still manage to reach conclusions is necessarily going to be complex, and it will seem chaotic and cacophonous even when its running well. But each chamber of Congress has developed norms over the decades that allow members to speak their piece and serve their constituents while still making decisions and keeping the government functioning. Generally, adherence to such norms can be frustrating in the short run but allows for a more functional chamber in the long run that works better for everyone.

Congressional Republicans have been far more willing than their Democratic colleagues to engage in violations of some of these institutional norms in recent decades. Such norm violations include a presidential impeachment, several government shutdowns over budget disputes, and refusals to raise government borrowing limits, threatening the credit of the United States and actually lowering its credit rating. More recently, the Republican Senate majority refused to consider President Barack Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, even though there was nearly a year left in Obamas presidency.

The Democrats, while occasionally playing hardball, have generally responded by operating within longstanding institutional norms. Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to consider impeachment proceedings for President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Democrats havent initiated any budget shutdowns or threatened credit defaults. They have, in most cases, sought to protect their institutions and their norms by acting like the adults in the room and refusing to engage in reckless behavior.

This behavior is, in the long run, not only bad for Democrats, but for the institution.

OK, time for some game theory. No, seriously. If youve ever taken any sort of economics or political science class involving game theory, youll probably be familiar with a very simple classroom exercise involving the prisoners dilemma, which is a useful metaphor for most political exchanges. In a prisoners dilemma, two players are competing against each other, and each has just two optionscooperate or defect. If they both cooperate, they both get a nice reward (say, $1 each). However, if Player 1 defects while Player 2 cooperates, Player 1 gets an even bigger reward while Player 2 pays a penalty. (The reverse happens if Player 1 cooperates while Player 2 defects.) If both players defect, neither gets a reward nor pays a penalty. Thus, each player wants the other to cooperate, and both prefer jointly cooperating to both defecting. But since each cant trust the other to cooperate, the usual outcome is for both to defect, leading to no payoff for either player. (The ferryboat scene in Dark Knight remains my favorite example of the prisoners dilemma, but there are plenty of others out there.)

Playing this game many times, though, can lead the players to develop norms of trust. Neither is happy with the low payoff, so reaching some sort of agreement about cooperation can be beneficial to both.

This hasnt been the pattern in Congress. On a range of issues and tactics, Republicans have defected while Democrats have cooperated. This leads to a greater payoff for Republicans, whether were talking about election results or policy preferences. It means that the Congress slowly but steadily becomes less representative of the nation it represents. And, more generally, it means that the institution becomes worse. When institutional norms are repeatedly violated without penalty, it means those norms are functionally impotent; further norm violations become even more likely.

We might perhaps expect voters to exert some discipline over congressional Republicans here. After all, government shutdowns and impeachments generally dont poll well. People dont like to see dysfunction. Yet voters have shown little interest in actually punishing Republicans for this behavior. The government shutdown of 2013, for which voters largely blamed Republicans, was followed a year later by further Republican gains in Congress and state legislatures.

Why have Democrats continued to play this strategy? Clearly, they have a different set of incentives than Republicans here. Perhaps they place a greater value on a functional government than Republicans do. That may be commendable, but it has put the Democrats at a disadvantage, and it is perversely undermining the institution itself. If congressional Republicans are going to pay any price for these transgressions, and if the institution is going to have some chance of becoming more functional, it is congressional Democrats who need to take charge here. But how?

A classic article outlines an alternative version of the prisoners dilemma that spans many iterations. In this game, it may make sense for one player to act irrationally in the short run, forgoing some payoffs, giving that player a reputation of unpredictability or even craziness. This can improve that players negotiating position further down the road. Arguably, Republicans have been pursuing this path for some time now. It could make sense for Democrats to adopt a similar strategy, at least to the point that Republicans believe that Democrats are as willing to damage the institution as they are.

One application of this strategy would be maximal opposition to President Donald Trumps appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. This could take the form of a filibuster, which Republicans do not have the votes to end. Republicans have signaled that they are perfectly fine with the Court shrinking to eight members if they dont get a ninth who satisfies their preferences; Democrats can signal the same thing. They can say, We already have a nominee for this position in Garland. Confirm him and we will be open to considering Gorsuch for the next open seat.

A potential risk of such an action would be that Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster on Supreme Court Justices. Two thoughts on that. First, if Senate Republicans are prepared to eliminate the filibuster as soon as an important vote comes up, then the filibuster is already functionally dead anyway. Let it go. Second, theres good reason to believe that Republicans arent about to kill the filibuster. Control of the Senate has bounced around a good deal, and Republicans only hold a four-seat majority. Its not unreasonable for Republicans to think theyll be in the minority again soon, and it would be a useful tool to hold onto.

Now, what would happen in the long run? Basically, if presidents are unable to place people on the Supreme Court unless their party controls a supermajority in the Senate, the Court is going to shrink pretty quickly and substantially. Eventually, members of both parties will find the situation unacceptable and work toward an amicable solution. More generally, if Democrats push this strategy on a range of policies and nominations and signal a willingness to put government functionality at stake, it could force Republicans to reassess their position and possibly restore some longstanding norms.

Now, there are certainly risks to this strategy. For one thing, an increasingly dysfunctional Congress could just end up ceding more authority to the presidency. Obama made an aggressive unilateral move on immigration reform in 2014 in large part because Congress couldnt or wouldnt do anything on the subject. Another risk is that, with both parties behaving recklessly toward Congress, some serious long-term damage to the institution could result. But these risks may be worth taking to get a functional Congress and a responsible party system again.

Thanks to John Patty and Sean Gailmard for helpful ideas and feedback.

Read this article:
The Case for Democratic Recklessness - Pacific Standard

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Monday is naming 19 membersto the Frontline Program for its most vulnerable incumbents in 2018.

The initial Frontline roster, obtained first by Roll Call,is about half freshman members. Eight members won in districts President Donald Trump carried last fall. And all of them, save for one, are National Republican Congressional Committeeinitial targets.

Seven of the members on this years list were also on the DCCCs initial 2016 Frontline list. Out of the 12 Frontline members on the 2016 list who sought re-election last fall only Nebraska Rep. Brad Ashford lost.

Each of these Democrats knows how to win tough races proven by their success in a difficult national environment in 2016, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujn said in a statement.

The Frontline Program will help these members again build strong campaigns, maximize resources and take advantage of the energy from the grassroots, so that they can continue to fight on behalf of the hardworking people in their districts, Lujn added.

Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win control of the House next year, which makes protecting their incumbents a high priority during a midterm year when turnout is typically less favorable for the party.

The NRCC named 10 members to its incumbent protection program last month.

Here are the 19 members on the Frontline roster, which is subject to change as the cycle develops:

Republicans have identified 36 targets for 2018, a third of which are in Trump districts. But several of those members are absent fromthe initial Frontline roster.

Trump carried Minnesota Rep. Collin C. Petersons 7th District by more than 30 points, which led Peterson to have a closer-than-expected re-election against an underfunded challenger. The same was true for fellow Democratic-Farmer-Labor Rep. Tim Walz, who won re-election by less than one point. Both seats could be strong pick-up opportunities for Republicans if open. ButInside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzalescurrently rates them bothLean Democrat.

Republicans also have their sights set on Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright, whose 17th District Trump won by 10 points. Inside Elections rates his seat Democrat Favored. Trump more narrowlywon Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind's district. His seat is also rated Democrat Favoredbut could present a stronger opening for Republicans if Kind runs for governor.

Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android.

Excerpt from:
Democrats Identify Vulnerable Members for 2018 - Roll Call