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The only bill that might be more unpopular than the Senate Republicans proposal to overhaul the health-care system is the one passed by House Republicans earlier this year. That legislation, a recent analysis determined, is the least popular piece of legislation in at least 30 years far less popular at passage than the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which it hopes to supplant.

It is not clear how much of that unpopularity stems from the unpopularity of the president whos halfheartedly championing it. But President Trump is unpopular and he supports the bill and the bill is unpopular, so its safe to assume theres some overlap happening somewhere in that mix.

It seems pretty clear, given all of those unpopular elements, that many Republicans on Capitol Hill are not excited to be talking about the issue. And, thanks to a tool from writer and developer Alex Litel that compiles congressional tweets every day, we can see that lack of excitement in real terms.

The calculus is simple. If an issue benefits one party more than the other, that party will try to bring it up more often. And in tweets since June 27 (when Litels tool began compiling data), Democrats in the House and Senate have talked about health care (or healthcare) at a much higher percentage than Republicans have.

Whats more, Democrats also often use the term Trumpcare, meant as a pejorative that links the health-care policy to the unpopular president.

By contrast, references to Obamacare are relatively rare. Republicans once used the term the way Democrats now use Trumpcare, but it seems like the effectiveness of doing so may have waned.

Heres another way of looking at those numbers. The circles below are scaled to the percentage of tweets containing each term on the left. Democrats consistently tweeted the words health care more than Republicans did, with that lull at the Fourth of July.

If we break that data out by chamber, we learn a bit more. Democrats on both sides of the Capitol tweet about health care more than Republicans, but House Democrats have done so much more than House Republicans.

Over the June 27 to July 9 period, Democrats sent nearly 10,300 tweets while Republicans sent around 6,800. Twelve percent of the tweets from Democrats mentioned health care (including 20 percent of those from Democratic senators) while only 3.5 percent of the tweets from Republicans did the same (including 6.5 percent of Republican senators).

That suggests that one party wants to talk about the issue more than the other. Which suggests further that it sees a political advantage in doing so.

Polling suggests theres good reason for Democrats to think that.

Link:
One hint that the GOP is struggling on health care: Democrats tweet about it a lot more - Washington Post

LOS ANGELES Long-standing tensions between the Democratic Partys moderate and liberal wings have ignited in California, where progressive activists are redirecting their anger over Donald Trump and congressional Republicans toward Democratic leaders at home.

Stoked by a contested race for state Democratic Party chair and the failure of a single-payer health care bill, activists are staging protests at the capitol. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon reported receiving death threats after shelving the health care legislation late last month, and security was tightened at the statehouse after activists disrupted a floor session last week.

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The rancor, a spillover from the contentious Democratic presidential primary last year, is aggravating divisions in a state regarded nationally as a lodestar for the liberal cause. Establishment Democrats fear the rhetoric and appetite for new spending could go too far, jeopardizing the partys across-the-board dominance of state politics.

All of it has taken on new significance as California embraces its role as the focal point of the anti-Trump resistance.

Were on the same team, said Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the Assemblys progressive caucus. We should not be fighting one another. We should argue with one another. It should not devolve into something where it could tear the party apart.

California established itself as a fortress of the opposition immediately after Trumps election, with Democrats advancing high-profile legislation to defy the new president on climate change and immigration.

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But progressives who have long agitated for more spending on social services and for stricter environmental and campaign finance rules believed that they might seize the post-Trump moment for other causes, too. Despite victories on a range of issues here in recent years, liberal activists have fallen short in other areas, unsettling progressives across the country who view California as a state in which they should be racking up wins.

Progressives this year have continued to press Gov. Jerry Browns administration, unsuccessfully, for a ban on hydraulic fracturing. Lawmakers proposed a debt-free college plan, only to settle for more modest measures to reduce the cost of higher education. And many progressives aligned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders bemoaned the narrow election of an establishment favorite, Eric Bauman, over their preferred candidate in the race for state Democratic Party chair.

Most recently, when Rendon announced that he would not allow a single-payer health care bill to advance through Californias lower house, tempers boiled over.

The California Nurses Association and other single-payer advocates descended on the Capitol, waving signs with Rendons name printed on a knife buried in the back of the California bear. Sanders himself admonished Rendon, and the nurses union said it planned to air radio ads targeting the Democratic speaker.

Corporate Dems: Don't underestimate grassroots taking action on #SinglePayer, RoseAnn DeMoro, head of the nurses union, said on Twitter.

The episode left a deflating mark on the progressive movements ranks across the country.

Its more than a disappointment, watching how it plays out there in California, said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America. For Democrats, for progressives, [health care] really encompasses everything thats going on in the country at the moment. And California is so critical, and California is this incubator of what happens in Democratic politics.

Yet as progressives look west for inspiration and to a raft of competitive House races in California in 2018 there are signs that intraparty conflict may only intensify. Though California is an overwhelmingly Democratic state, it is also home to powerful moderate influences both in the electorate and in a party whose ties with business interests have deepened as the Republican Party has fallen to near irrelevancy here.

Even as crowds assemble almost weekly in Los Angeles and San Francisco to rail against Trump, ruling Democrats recall the pummeling that California and its liberal policies took amid the recession, when the states credit rating plummeted, Sacramento became immobilized by budget impasses and state finances invited comparisons to Greece.

Campaigning in the 2018 race for governor, John Chiang, the state treasurer, told labor officials in Orange County recently that on issues ranging from health care to immigration to climate change, Were trying to show President Trump a different America.

But he also sounded a note of caution, informed by the lessons of a decade in statewide office: If we dont do this correctly, I think others are going to lose hope.

Brown, asked about challenges holding to a political center amid fervent activism on the left, told POLITICO, Look, you can always go too far. Trumps obviously gone too far in one direction. Its possible to go too far in the other direction.

Still, the surge of progressive energy coursing through the party makes that a difficult argument to make. Though Hillary Clinton won the California primary last year, Sanders campaigned throughout the state for weeks, calling the West Coast probably the most progressive part of America.

Paul Song, a California physician and former chairman of the progressive Courage Campaign, said of establishment Democrats, Whether it be single payer, whether it be [campaign finance] whether it be now moving forward on environmental issues, I think its a much more energized, aggressive base that I dont think theyve ever faced before.

The Democratic Party, he said, is basically [having] a civil war among themselves.

The division is apparent in the profile of rank-and-file Democrats, more than 40 percent of whom identify themselves as moderate or conservative, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

I think so much of the emphasis has been on, Were a blue state, were a deep blue state and so forth, said Mark Baldassare, director of the poll. The reality is that the Democratic Party doesnt speak with one voice The moderates hold a lot of sway.

California has adopted a raft of progressive policies in recent years, including a gas tax increase, stricter greenhouse gas reduction measures and a bill to eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Rendon said such policies are why were a beacon of hope for progressives throughout the United States and around the world. The way you do that is not through posturing, but through producing, and making sure that were focusing on policies that can actually be implemented to help people.

Rendon said he wanted a serious single payer bill to be presented to our house but that what he received from the state Senate was woefully incomplete, with no funding mechanism and lingering questions about delivery of care.

But Rendon also nodded to the concerns of Democrats leery of overextending.

Were still a big tent party, and we have folks within our Democratic caucus from throughout the state, really, who are Democrats, but who are moderate Democrats, Rendon said. And for us, its about making sure that were going to be able to create the architecture for plans that are actually going to get the support of our caucus.

Jones-Sawyer, the progressive caucus chairman, said Assembly Democrats are moving beyond their differences and focusing on crafting a more complete health care bill.

As for the broader, intraparty feud, he said that for years Democrats have been able to have our arguments within the family, on the floor and inside the party.

He added, Weve just got to get better and understanding were all on the same team, and we probably need some rules of engagement on how we disagree with each other when we disagree.

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California Democrats plunge into 'civil war' - Politico

The White House is accusing Senate Democrats of needless obstruction of President Trumps nominees to numerous government positions, complaining that former President Barack Obama had far more nominees confirmed at this point of his presidency.

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short argued during Mondays press briefing that the stalled nominations were jeopardizing national security and accused Democrats of playing to its radical left-wing base.

In an effort to prevent President Trump from following through on the policies for which the American people voted, Senate Democrats are putting his nominations through time-consuming parliamentary procedures not seen by the previous administration, the White House said in a statement.

The White House released figures Monday showing the Senate has confirmed less than a quarter of President Trump's 216 nominations while the Senate confirmed 69 percent of Obamas 454 nominations before the August recess his first year in office.

The numbers, however, make clear that both the Trump administration and Senate have been historically slow in dealing with nominations.

Matt House, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the White House has only itself to blame for the slow pace at which theyve filled vacant administration posts.

Thus far, the nomination process has been defined by the failure of the Trump administration to submit names for hundreds of vacant jobs, incomplete and delayed ethics and nominations paperwork from the nominees themselves, and repeated withdrawals of nominees for key positions, he said.

But the Senate is sitting on dozens of nominations that have been submitted.

According the press secretarys office, the Senate has confirmed 48 of Trumps 197 agency nominations. The White House said only two of Trumps 23 judicial nominations have been confirmed.

The White House statement said this pace threatens key aspects of the government, including national security, by leaving positions vacant. Positions still awaiting confirmation votes include deputy secretary of defense, principal deputy under the secretary of defense and assistant secretary of defense, the White House said.

Other positions not yet confirmed by the Senate include solicitor general, assistant attorney general, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

Fox News Chad Pergram and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Link:
White House rips Democrats for 'needless obstruction' on Trump nominees - Fox News

Just checking in again: Theres still a big partisan divide in the U.S. over what kind of impact the media has on the country.

85 percent of those who identify as Republicans (as well as the Republican-leaning) think the news media has a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, according to a Pew Research study released Monday that looked at perceptions of several national institutions, including the news media, colleges and universities, churches, labor unions, and financial institutions. Thats about the same percentage of Republicans last year who thought the news media had a negative impact on the countrys direction, though thats up from 68 percent in 2010.

Democrats themselves are divided on their view of the news medias impact on the country. But 44 percent see it as having a positive impact on the country, up from just 33 percent a year ago (46 percent say the news media negatively impacts the country).

Breaking that down further, 53 percent of Democrats with a college degree believe the news media has a positive effect on the countrys direction (a jump from last year when that was 31 percent; as well as two years ago, when it was 30 percent). Among Democrats without a college degree, the change is smaller: 40 percent think the news media has a positive effect, up from 34 percent in 2015.

Other institutions are seeing a similarly widening partisan divide; notably, colleges and universities:

58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say colleges and universities negatively impact the country (last year, that number was 45 percent). 72 percent of Democrats and the Democratic-leaning say colleges and universities have a positive effect, a number that has mostly held steady in the past several years.

The full study is available here.

See the article here:
Surprise! Democrats and Republicans are divided on the impact of the news media - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

Democrats in Congress are unified in their support for significant federal involvement in healthcare, but they are not unified on the extent of that involvement.

Although there have been several reports about growing support for a single-payer system within the Democrat caucus, most Democrats are still apprehensive to embrace a European-style approach, such as the one long-espoused by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in which a national government serves as the sole funder and arbiter of care.

A letter sent on Monday by Senate Democrats to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., highlights four potential Obamacare reform proposals, none of which introduces a single-payer system.

The plans propose extensions to existing tax credits, subsidies, and cost-sharing payments, but none of them removes private insurers or other intermediary organizations from the equation, as a single-payer system would do.

Even "Medicare for all" proposals have fallen short of being bona fide single-payer systems. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act in January, which garnered a lot of support. Although pitched as "Medicare for all," Conyers' bill did not attempt to set up the federal government as the sole arbiter of care. Though the bill excludes private, for-profit insurance companies from involvement, it welcomes public or private non-profit organizations.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., has similarly supported what she calls a "Medicare for all" proposal, but only as an option for people to buy into the program at an affordable price. Her proposal leaves private insurance companies mostly as they are under Obamacare.

The ACA was a big step in the direction of single-payer, as it significantly increased federal involvement in healthcare. Though their reform proposals continue moving the conversation toward socialization, few Democrats are prepared to dismantle the marketplaces and the health insurance system as they stand, and to take a wholesale leap toward a national system.

The rest is here:
Despite reports, Democrats not yet ready to embrace single-payer healthcare - Washington Examiner