Month: March 2012

Jonathan Last thinks so:

Imagine a world in which Obamacare is deleveraged, either in whole or in part, by the Supreme Court. Even if unemployment is declining, it’s still likely to be at over 8 percent by the time the Supremes issue their decision. Even accepting the rosiest of economic forecasts, our recovery will still be tentative and far from touching most voters. Gas prices will probably be better off, for example, but the housing sector won’t be. In that context, a loss at the Supreme Court would feed the image of Obama as a failed president, a man who couldn’t accomplish what he promised.

Douthat agrees:

I think this plainly true of a Supreme Court decision striking down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. That kind of decision might be good for Democrats in 2014 and beyond, given the mess of our current health system and the Republican leadership’s determined refusal to embrace a plausible path to reform. But for Obama, the immediate perception of political incompetence — he passed this big mess of a bill, and he couldn’t even manage to make it constitutional! — would overwhelm any potential advantages that his party might reap from the decision. 

The political consequences of Obamacare repeal were also debated in last night's reax.

Waldman takes stock:

Solyndra turned out to be, if not a complete nothingburger, not nearly as much of a big deal as Republicans so fervently hoped. Yeah, a bunch of money went down the toilet, and people in the administration really wanted the company to succeed, despite its weaknesses, and that eagerness caused some of them to write some sketchy emails. But that's really it. And Solyndra is, by far, the closest thing to a major scandal the Obama administration has suffered.

A close second is the "Fast and Furious" operation at the ATF, which was an obvious screw-up but without anything that even resembled corruption. Which, when you think back on every administration that preceded it, both Republican and Democratic, is pretty remarkable. It's entirely possible that Obama could finish out his first term without a single significant scandal. No shtupping interns, no trading arms for hostages, no secret break-ins, nothing. 

Alex Knapp captions:

Robotics company Boston Dynamics partners with the military on several different robotics projects, all of which are fascinating. Their newest, dubbed the "Sand Flea," is particularly cool.  This 11 pound robot moves around like a little car, but it can jump 30 feet into the air.  

A new study illustrates its relatively limited role: 

The key result of the Urban Institute’s simulation model [pdf] is that, when broken down, only 3 percent of non-elderly Americans would be subject to purchasing health insurance. That’s still about 7.3 million Americans, according to the study. But it signals far less government control than opponents of the healthcare plan suggest could occur. The remaining 97 percent would fall under one of four fully or partially exempt categories. The exempt would either already have employer coverage, have coverage through a government program like Medicaid, or have too low of an income to afford health insurance. Or they could qualify for partial subsidies in which they would pay in to their health plan.

Walter Laqueur worries that we were always deluding ourselves in thinking that the Arab Spring would lead to democracy in the Middle East:

It should have been clear that the odds against the emergence of a democratic order in the foreseeable future in the Arab world were impossibly heavy: The lack of a democratic tradition, the great and growing influence of Islamism, the weakness of the secular forces and their disunity, overpopulation in a country like Egypt, the inherent poverty that made it so difficult to find work for the cohort of young people—given these and many other circumstances, only a miracle could have led the uprising of early 2011 toward a democratic order of sorts. True, political leaders have to be optimists in their speeches and approach; frequently they have to proceed on the assumption of the “as if.” But this should not turn into self-deception, and decisionmakers must not base their policy on the occurrence of miracles.

No, they shouldn't. But equally, after the miracles of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, decisionmakers should not discount hope. Eric Chaney traces [pdf] the Arab democratic deficit all the way back to the time of Muhammed.

(Photo: A vendor walks past Egyptian riot policemen standing guard outside a court in Cairo on February 22, 2012. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images.)

Harry Enten rubbishes the idea that VP Rubio could help Romney in any meaningful sense: 

If Mitt Romney is losing by 3 points nationwide, he would still would be very competitive in Florida based on recent electoral history. So picking Rubio as his VP running-mate would probably help clinch a state he'd be expected to win in any event; with the effect of merely narrowing his defeat in the electoral college vote. The correct strategy for any candidate is to pick a candidate from a state that is either dead even or slightly leaning toward your opponent. That's why Rubio would not be a golden ticket to an electoral college victory. And beyond helping Romney in Florida, there's probably little else Rubio could do.

Previous thinking along similar lines here.

An epic battle with a happy ending:

Probably not:

There’s a reason why many analysts and House-watchers — including some Democrats — believe that while Team Blue should pick up around five to 10 House seats, they have very little chance of winning the House. The reason is that even if Democrats overperform — which would almost assuredly mean that President Obama was also rolling to a fairly easy reelection — they would still have to crack new Republican or court-drawn House maps, many of which are situated along the shores of the Great Lakes. Even if Democrats come close to maximizing their gains across the country while limiting the Republicans — a scenario much along the lines of what’s described above — the math, and the map, is daunting.

The Democrats' control of the Senate is also in danger:

[T]he Senate forecasting model gives Republicans a good chance to regain control of the Senate with an expected pickup of 6-7 seats.  That is due almost entirely to the fact that Republicans are defending only 10 Senate seats this year while Democrats are defending 23 seats.

Ezra Klein envisions it:

I think that path would look something like this: With health-care reform either repealed or overturned, both Democrats and Republicans shy away from proposing any big changes to the health-care system for the next decade or so. But with continued increases in the cost of health insurance and a steady erosion in employer-based coverage, Democrats begin dipping their toes in the water with a strategy based around incremental expansions of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

They move these policies through budget reconciliation, where they can be passed with 51 votes in the Senate, and, over time, this leads to more and more Americans being covered through public insurance. Eventually, we end up with something close to a single-payer system, as a majority of Americans — and particularly a majority of Americans who have significant health risks — are covered by the government.

But Klein doesn't welcome this scenario because "it’s not at all obvious it would be a good system, and, in the decades between here and there, there will be a lot of unnecessary suffering and deaths among the uninsured." I shared my thoughts on Obamacare and single-payer last night.