Category: The Dish

It just become the 11th state to join the National Popular Vote Compact, whose members agree to award their electoral votes in presidential elections to the winner of the popular vote, effective as soon as 270 electors’ worth of states sign the compact. Rick Hertzberg cheers:

A lot of people labor under the misapprehension that the Electoral College status quo is good for small states, or rural states, or states that don’t have big cities in them. Actually, the only states it’s good for, qua states, are swing states. The jurisdictions that have approved N.P.V. so far come in all sizes. Four are small (Rhode Island, Vermont, and Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia), three are medium-sized (Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts), and four are large (New Jersey, Illinois, California, and now New York).

The discerning reader will have noticed that all eleven, besides being spectator states, are also blue states. The absence of red states from the roster is due largely to to a suspicion among Republican politicians and operatives that N.P.V. is somehow an attempt to get revenge for 2000. In opinion polls, Republican rank-and-filers, as distinct from Party professionals, strongly favor the idea of popular election. And a nontrivial number of Republican pros favor the plan itself.

Ryan Cooper looks at which states get screwed over the most by the Electoral College:

It turns out that many states have huge populations of people who are ineligible to vote. California and Texas, for example, have 5.1 million and 2.6 million non-citizens, respectively, which cuts down their voting-eligible populations significantly. Florida, meanwhile, has slashed its voting population by over 10 percent through the disenfranchisement of felons. (Ironically, this makes its position in the Electoral College look “fairer,” since by raw population the Sunshine State comes out the worst.)

Dick Morris is sure this is all a Democratic conspiracy:

Democrats usually see a smaller percentage of their people go to the polls than Republicans do. Under the electoral vote system, they figure why beat the drums to get a high turnout in New York City when the state will go Democratic anyway? But if it’s the popular vote that matters, the big-city machines can do their thing — with devastating impact.

And think of the chances for voter fraud! Right now, the biggest cities, the ones most firmly in Democratic control — Washington, D.C., New York City, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco — are all solidly in blue states. Not only does this make it unnecessary to maximize turnouts there, but it also makes it unnecessary to promote double voting, fraudulent voting, and all the other tricks of the trade at which Democrats excel.

Kilgore mocks:

Morris seems to think Republicans absolutely have to have a thumb on the scales via the distorting effect of the Electoral College. That’s perfectly in line with the sense you get from many Republicans that it’s only fair they get other thumbs on the scales through restrictions on voting or the Senate filibuster or limitless corporate campaign contributions—or ideally, from courts that rule progressive legislation as unconstitutional. As is often the case, Morris provides a caricature—but still a reflection—of arguments other conservatives are embarrassed to make.

Nate Silver, however, doubts the NPV movement has a chance as long as red-state politicians appear to share Morris’ fears:

Republican voters are nearly as likely to support ending the Electoral College (61 percent of them would vote to do away with it as compared to 66 percent of Democrats, according to a Gallup poll last year). But Republican legislators in those states evidently feel differently, or perhaps have calculated that the Democrats’ Electoral College advantage in 2008 and 2012 was an anomaly that will soon fade.

If Utah, Texas and similar states do begin signing onto the compact, what signal might that send to the blue states? Might legislators in Vermont and Maryland suddenly decide they agree with Alexander Hamilton’s position on the Electoral College after all?

My personal view is that the Electoral College should be abolished (even if that means we’d have to change the name of this website). But based on the signatories to the compact, blue and red states seem to think of it as a zero-sum game.

A reader writes:

Thank you so much for giving me a platform to share my Obamacare success story! Well, actually, it’s my brother’s story and it starts about a year ago. He was 25 and working for a small radio group in Ithaca, NY. He got into a PhD program at IUP, and since he was barely making any money, he decided to quit his job and spend the summer relaxing and traveling and visiting friends before starting school.

Those plans got thwarted when he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in June. Three surgeries later, I am happy to say that he is in recovery and doing great, but damn, my family would’ve been fucked without Obamacare. It let my brother stay on my parents’ insurance, so he was covered when he got his diagnosis. I’m not sure what the costs of his treatment have been exactly, but the bill for just administering the radioactive iodine pill he had to take was almost $200,000.  When you add to that all the tests and the three surgeries, the costs have got to be close to a million, if not more. My family would likely be considered well-off, but those costs would’ve bankrupted us.

It’s possible that he would’ve been on Cobra without Obamacare, but I think it’s at least equally likely that he would’ve decided to just wait until he could join the school plan because Cobra is so expensive. At the very least, Obamacare has saved my family from significants costs. And, because he now has a pre-existing condition, it’s the only reason he can buy health insurance and will be able to for the rest of his life.

A reader in Georgia:

My ex and I are splitting soon. I’m leaving my job in a few weeks and moving to another state across the country and will be unemployed for a few months as I switch careers. He’s staying here and working his way through his last couple of semesters of college. He has a pre-existing condition that requires medical oversight and expensive prescriptions. Until I leave my employer in a few weeks, I pay for his insurance through my employer-provided domestic partner coverage. Now that I’m leaving my job and moving to another state, he will have to purchase insurance on his own, something that was impossible before Obamacare due to pre-existing exclusions from the individual health insurance market.

Because we live in a GOP state, thanks to Obamacare, he can buy insurance (yay!) but doesn’t make enough to qualify for subsidies (boo!).

Instead of something affordable, he has the option to pay full-cost for ACA medical coverage ($200 to $250/month) in addition to the deductibles for medical visits and prescriptions needed for his medical condition. He doesn’t make enough annually to qualify for subsidies because he is a full-time student and part-time employee. If Georgia had opted into the ACA Medicaid expansion, he would have qualified for that, saving the monthly premium altogether.

There couldn’t be a starker contrast between the two parties on healthcare. The Democrats want to make it available to millions of Americans like him and the Republicans are doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening. As a bonus, they are also fighting against raising the minimum wage, which would be a huge boost for all the students out there who have to support themselves and go to school. More and more, the GOP seems to be working against hard-working Americans and not for them. I don’t understand why more people don’t see this.

Another reader in a red state:

I am a physician working in Indianapolis. Much of my work is at a county hospital system that supports the poor of the city by providing healthcare to any citizen in the county regardless of their income. Obamacare has allowed many of these patients to come off the county system’s rolls.

Indiana sadly has not fully expanded Medicaid because our governor, uber Republican Mike Pence, refuses to do so. Even without expanded Medicaid, many of my patients have been able to sign up and all are incredibly appreciative. One interesting effect is that many of them now have the ability to get a second opinion and different care options because they are no longer tied to the county system. I started to get worried about our system (and myself) when after the first of the year, I had about five patients leave for second opinions but was rewarded by all of them returning to our practice. Obamacare has allowed these patients to both not be tied down to a system strapped for funding and also gain confidence in the care they receive when they note that we are caring for them just as well as they can get elsewhere.

Our system has its limits and we can’t provide some very expensive care, like radiation, but Obamacare allows these patients to find providers that can give this care. This effect will reduce suffering and prolong lives. I have always been a big supporter of this legislation but the benefits I am seeing are remarkable and under reported.

Another in the medical field:

I have a lifelong chronic disease, Crohn’s, for which I take a biologic that costs about $130,000 per year. These meds keep me and many other people healthy, and out of the surgical OR and off emergency room beds. It also saves me from debilitating pain and allows me to be a productive member of society. Before the ACA, I was stuck paying incredibly high premiums (>$1300/mo) through COBRA and then a HIPPA conversion plan.

Unfortunately for me, I live in a state that did not (yet) expand Medicaid, and since I am a no-income student, I do not qualify for subsidies on the exchanges. So instead, I use my school’s health insurance plan, which is better than nothing, but not excellent. With no out-of-pocket-maximum, I end up with about $10,000 of out of pocket costs every year.

While the ACA hasn’t given me cheaper insurance, it has given me immense security knowing that if my circumstances change, my medical care won’t suffer. As you wrote of your own experience, “It gave me a baseline of security that simply didn’t exist before.”

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, as a medical student, the ACA has changed the landscape for medical providers. I anticipate that it will pump money into the medical establishment’s pockets much like Medicare made physicians rich several generations ago (and continues to do so today). Whether that is a good, bad, or neutral thing, I can’t say. But for those people who now newly have access to a lifesaving service, it is of incalculable value.

(Photo by Yoon S. Byun/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

John Sides calculates that the GOP’s House majority could grow significantly larger:

[B]ased on the current model and current conditions, there is a real chance that the 2014 election could give the GOP as many or more seats as it had after the wave election of 2010.  There is less of a chance, though still a chance, that the GOP could command a majority as large as its post-WWII high-water mark.  But, as of now, 2014 appears unlikely to give the GOP the unprecedented majorities it had after 1928 (or after 1920 for that matter, when it controlled 302 seats).

Sean Trende, meanwhile, wonders about the Democrats picking up Senate seats:

Don’t get me wrong: For Democrats to gain seats this cycle would be the equivalent of drawing a straight flush. With that said, straight flushes do occur, so it’s worth examining how it might occur here.

The first thing that would have to happen is that the playing field would have to improve for Democrats. Of the 11 Democratic seats that RCP currently rates as leans Democratic or worse, Democrats are probably at least slightly favored in Michigan, Iowa, New Hampshire, and perhaps Colorado. If the political dynamic were to shift toward the party, these seats would probably be out of the GOP’s reach on Election Day.

The way this could occur is fairly straightforward: The Affordable Care Act improves; there’s no massive rate shock for premiums in September or October; and the economy slowly gains ground.  This should propel President Obama’s job approval upward, lifting the collective Democratic boat.

Now we don’t see this occurring just yet.

Joe Coscarelli introduces the above video:

With NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia still technically temporary, he’s doing his best to fit in. [Yesterday], that included a special appearance — or bizarre PR stunt — during a televised Q&A with Vladimir Putin, in which Snowden served up a chance for Putin to tell the world that Russia doesn’t spy on its citizens like the big bad U.S. does. “I’ve seen little public discussion of Russia’s policy of mass surveillance,” said Snowden. “So I’d like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze the communication of millions?”

Putin, it’s safe to say, was not caught off guard by the line of inquiry.

For Allahpundit, this proves that Snowden is a tool of the Kremlin:

Only two possibilities here. One: There’s an FSB agent out of frame with a gun pointed at Snowden’s head, just to make sure that he reads the cue card as written. In that case, decide for yourself how likely it is that Snowden’s refused to share any U.S. state secrets with Russian intel. Two: He’s doing this cheerfully, either at Putin’s request as a condition of his asylum or at his own request, to exploit a Putin press conference as a way to further needle the NSA.

Whatever the answer, the stark fact is that he’s asking a question here which he knows — absolutely knows — will generate a self-serving lie told by a guy who embodies the type of fascism that Snowden claims to abhor. For your information, the name of Russia’s mass surveillance program, a.k.a. “PRISM on steroids,” is the System of Operative-Investigative Measures, or SORM. Via Joshua Foust, they’ve been using it for years but lately, as in so many other ways, they’ve gotten more aggressive with it.

But Elias Groll points out that nobody was talking about SORM yesterday:

Putin’s answer was comical on its face — and that should give us doubts about the extent to which Snowden is a really a “pawn” in some grand propaganda scheme. Does anyone actually think that Putin doesn’t aggressively use surveillance to go after his opponents and that Russian surveillance is strictly governed by the law? After all, the Russian intelligence services have spent the last few weeks leaking intercepted phone calls between Western officials.

So thanks to Snowden, here we are talking about how Putin is a liar and a skilled user of aggressive surveillance tactics. That probably isn’t the response the Russian strongman was hoping for.

Adam Taylor fact-checks Putin:

[Agentara.ru editor Andrei] Soldatov argues that there were three key points made by Putin, each of which was a half-truth or a lie. First, Soldatov says, Putin argued that the FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet era’s KGB, needs to get a warrant from a court before surveillance can begin. This is true in theory, Soldatov admits, but in practice the warrants are not required to be shown: Telecoms agencies and Internet providers do not have the necessary security clearance to view the warrants, in any case.

Secondly, Putin seemed to suggest that the Russian legislature, the Duma, has oversight over the FSB. This is not true, Soldatov says, arguing that while the State Duma does have a Special Committee for Security, it has no actual oversight for secret services.

Finally, Putin argued that Russia doesn’t have the “hardware and money the United States has.” Soldatov says this is “not entirely correct.”

Snowden quickly came out with an op-ed claiming he was actually trying to catch Putin in a lie and start a debate over surveillance in Russia:

I expected that some would object to my participation in an annual forum that is largely comprised of softball questions to a leader unaccustomed to being challenged. But to me, the rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin’s answer – whatever it was – would provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push the discussion further.

When this event comes around next year, I hope we’ll see more questions on surveillance programs and other controversial policies. But we don’t have to wait until then. For example, journalists might ask for clarification as to how millions of individuals’ communications are not being intercepted, analysed or stored, when, at least on a technical level, the systems that are in place must do precisely that in order to function. They might ask whether the social media companies reporting that they have received bulk collection requests from the Russian government are telling the truth.

Mike Masnick buys that explanation:

[T]his latest response suggests that Snowden is (once again) playing a game where he’s several moves ahead of many folks. The question may have set up a propaganda answer, but it appears there was a bigger strategy behind it — and one that remains entirely consistent with what Snowden has claimed his position has been since the beginning. Frankly, while this possibility was raised about his original question to Putin, many people (myself included) thought it was unlikely that Snowden would so directly go after his current hosts (who only became his hosts thanks to the US pulling his passport). Putin is not known for gracefully handling those who directly challenge him, and I don’t think it would be surprise anyone if Snowden had continued to stay out of the question of Russian surveillance, simply out of basic necessity.

But Benjamin Wittes doesn’t buy it:

I’m not sure why this grotesque display does not move Snowden’s many admirers. Perhaps people may rationalize what he did and say that he’s posing the same question to the Russian leader about which he forced a debate in this country—and that he is thus being consistent. But they can’t actually believe that. These are sophisticated people, after all, many of whom are journalists. They must know the difference between a scripted set-piece appearance with an authoritarian strong man on state controlled television and asking the tough questions in the context of democratic dialog. They must know that Snowden either played that role willingly or was, in one way or another, encouraged to do by authorities who have enormous leverage and control over him. They must know, in other words, that at this point at least, Snowden—by his own volition or against his will—is very clearly working for the Russians.