The trailer: How eight years – and President Trump – changed the tone of the GOP on Medicare

In this issue: The Medicare Party, Trump's Persistence in the Blue States, the Legal Marijuana Boom and the Chapo Vote.

Conservative voters are critical of me for reacting, and here is the trailer.

In four weeks, Republicans will try to hang on to the House of Representatives with a message that bury the tea movement in hiding: keep us in our hands, and we will not touch the insurance- illness or social security.

In television spots, Republican candidates promise to protect the rights and preserve the most popular elements of the Affordable Care Act. In the attack ads, the Republican National Congress Committee warns that Democrats "support the $ 800 billion Medicare cut." During the debate, Republican candidates say the Medicare for All democrats would bring "Medicare for None".

On Monday, in a speech to the National Press Club, incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Warned that any democratic plan to expand Medicare "effectively ends Medicare under its current form ". It was the same sentence that the Democrats, quoting the Wall Street Journal, described Ryan's earlier plan to turn the Medicare plan into a "premium support" program. But in his speech this week, Ryan dismissed any discussion of change to warn that Democrats would break a system that worked for most people.

"As we work to reduce health care costs, Democrats are proposing to abolish our health care system as we know it," Ryan said.

Since 2010, when Ryan helped take control of the House by the GOP, Republican attacks on democratic health care plans have not changed. Then they warned that the Affordable Care Act would lead to rationing and Medicare cuts. (The ACA has reduced Medicare's long-term spending by at least $ 700 billion – by reducing payments to providers while expanding coverage for beneficiaries.) In 2012, as a candidate for Vice-President Ryan insisted that Republicans preserve Medicare and modify the program. only for young people, who were years away from entering the system.

"Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program and its raid," Ryan said at the Republican National Convention this year.

Two years later, he urged Republicans to adopt his "Roadmap for America's Future," a vision for "an opportunity company with a net of security". Anyone under the age of 55, he said, would be allowed to withdraw from social security and enroll in a private account system. Anyone under the age of 55 would get, instead of Medicare's guaranteed benefits, "the resources they need to choose from a list of various Medicare-certified plans." Medicaid beneficiaries would receive an allowance "to buy their own health care coverage like everyone else", thus replacing the single payer coverage that they were receiving from the state.

But in eight years, Republicans have completely abandoned the idea of ​​reducing social security or Medicare to reduce the deficit. In 2010, during the 2011 budget negotiations, they argued that cuts needed to be made to keep the country's budget under control. This year, campaign after campaign, the Republicans have abandoned this rhetoric. Like the president, they argue that Medicare and Social Security are sacrosanct and that a growing economy will take care of any deficit.

Donald Trump changed the Republican Party in many ways; the most impactful was probably his insistence that it was not necessary to change Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. This ignored years of ideological efforts, mainly in Washington, to use the federal debt issue as a way to convince the parties to restructure their rights. And it worked Trump was able to convince voters who had never supported a Republican in the presidency since the 1980s, thanks to his support of the older ones.

This year, Republicans have largely abandoned the idea that rights must be restructured to reduce debt. The debt has dropped so much that the representative Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.), Who chairs the Joint Economic Committee, celebrated Tuesday in a statement that the deficit was only 782 billion dollars. Why? It was "22 billion less than CBO had planned earlier this year."

The deficit was up from 2018, which Paulsen attributed to the increase in federal spending. But both parties approved funding that increased federal spending, mainly by eliminating the mandatory defense spending cuts resulting from the 2011 debt negotiations.

The Republican party that fought for these spending cuts was defined as a break with the former Republican party, one that had expanded the welfare state and dispelled concerns about the debt. The Republican party that Ryan is leaving behind is now defending much of the welfare state that President Barack Obama has left behind, and warning that new, more radical Democrats would explode to create a more powerful government .

Another example: during a debate on the night of Wisconsin, Leah Vukmir, who had been endorsed by Ryan in her primary, warned that Senator Tammy Baldwin (D) would terminate her private insurance if her plan "Medicare -for-all "became law. But it was not everything. Baldwin, she said, would put Medicare at risk and Republicans would only try to get rid of the unpopular parts of ACA and keep everything else as it was. ;it was.

"According to his plan, the Affordable Care Act goes away, Medicare disappears," said Vukmir.

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Senate of Minnesota. No poll has shown that Senator Tina Smith (D) was in serious trouble, but Republicans are scrutinizing the map in search of annoyances and the president has made two campaign stops highlighting his opponent, Karin Housley. Smith's response has been to present himself as a convinced liberal, an approach you see in many Midwestern swivel chairs. If you are trying to count the number of ads in which Democrats are walking around in a workshop and talking about vocational training, you will have nothing left to do.

Governor of Rhode Island. "The Alliance for Better Rhode Island" of the Democratic Governors Association attacks GOP candidate Allan Fung, claiming that he "supported Trump at every stage of the process." Democratic star Gina Raimondo, who struggled to get her approval ratings, consistently led Fung in a three-way race; The blue-state democrats see the Trump connection as the easiest way to discredit the Republicans.

Texas 32. The Conservatives say the Democrats will be hurt by the image of protesters who will heckle the Republicans and give them mouths. Democrat Colin Allred's new ad is directly addressing this debate, with images of Pete Sessions' (D) representative telling a city hall audience that they "do not listen".

Virginia 10: The NRCC will be either triumphantly proven or disastrously wrong in the race of the GOP People's Representative Barbara Comstock. Their latest announcement, part of a $ 5 million purchase, accuses Democrat Jennifer Wexton of "easily dropping dangerous predators", with particular emphasis on reducing the punishment of women. an "illegal immigrant who abducted and raped his victim four times". This case had already been used against Wexton, including in a special election of 2014 she won by 15 points. Democrats continue to think that Republicans are spending money on an impossible race; The NRCC insists that Comstock is underestimated. A Washington Post poll released today revealed that Wexton had gained 12 points.

West Virginia Senate. Since May, no poll has shown that Senator Joe Manchin (D) had problems, but the majority in the Senate, PAC, continues to hammer GOP candidate Patrick Morrisey for his greater vulnerability: his past as a lobbyist from the Healthcare Distribution Management Association. The Democrats have used this technique to blame the opioid crisis on the GOP Attorney General and, just as important, to avoid any Morrisey attack on the daughter of Manchin, CEO of the company that makes EpiPens.

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POLL WATCH

Generic ballot (CNN / SSRS, 739 likely voters)
Democrats – 54%
Republicans – 41%

CNN polls have provided election stories all year round, noting some short-term democratic collapses in the spring and a surge in the summer. This poll, conducted during the period when Brett M. Kavanaugh was confirmed in the Supreme Court, reveals a 30-point lead for Democrats among all voters. Among registered voters, the advance of Democrats rose from 11 to 9 points over last month. But the biggest gap between this poll and the polls that contributed to the story of last week's "Kavanaugh's Rewind" is the enthusiasm gap. The percentage of Republicans "extremely" or "very" enthusiastic went from 50 to 53%; Democrats have gone from 55 to 62%.

Legalize marijuana in Michigan (Detroit News / WDIV, 600 potential voters)
Yes – 62%
No – 35%

State pivotal elections in 2016, the birthplace of Democratic Reagan, Michigan, will likely become the first Midwestern state to end the ban on marijuana for recreational purposes. It was a sleeping problem in the race for the governor; Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer called for early legalization, a position that helped her to lead and then defeat a leftist challenger. Michigan voters are also on track to vote the vote and a nonpartisan re-constituency reform, but legal marijuana is becoming a winning and defining issue for Democrats.

Illinois 14 (NYT / Siena, 501 electors)
Randy Hultgren (R) – 47%
Lauren Underwood (D) – 43%

This is exactly the kind of neighborhood where a Republican victory would suggest that the Democratic wave stopped once it crossed the suburbs. Fifty-one percent of voters in this district of Chicago are in favor of a "control" of the president, but a majority supports him and a majority wants Kavanaugh to be confirmed. Hultgren won by 19 points in 2016; it does not seem like it starts again. Underwood, a female candidate for the first time, announced Tuesday she raised $ 2 million in the third quarter, almost doubling her total winnings so far.

Governor of Maryland (Washington Post / University of Maryland, 648 potential voters)
Larry Hogan (R) – 58%
Ben Jealous (D) – 38%

Hogan never gave up control of this race. The question that arises is whether Democrats who trust Hogan for health care and the economy vote against Republicans and reduce democratic control of the state legislature and county offices . Hogan's campaign and the Republican Governors Association's additional campaign hammered Jalous as a Liberal who would have wiped out the state. It is not clear if this brand image is stuck to other Democrats.

New Jersey 11 (Monmouth, 356 electors)
Mikie Sherrill (D) – 48%
Jay Webber (R) – 44%

The Republicans refused to abandon this race, even though Sherrill raised $ 6 million and Webber, a former GOP president, went on to raise a million dollars. But there has been no marginal movement since the last election this summer; Undecided voters broke evenly, helping the democrat maintain his lead. According to voters, with a margin of 13 points, Trump's endorsement of Webber makes them less likely to support him.

ON THE TRACK

For next week, podcast presenters Chapo Trap House will tour part of the country that has confounded the Democrats in 2016 – the Midwest. From Ohio to Michigan to Wisconsin, five young left-wing writers will take over the rock scene and talk, among other things, about the gravity of the political system that makes everyone fail.

"Mass action is the only antidote to that, and it's terrifying because the American society over the last 100 years has been structured to defeat any mass activity of all kinds," Matt said. Christman, one of five regular co-hosts of the podcast, interviews before the Chapo show in Washington last month. "Forget things like creating suburbs; Watch the media. The demonstrations just do not do what they did before.

Chapo, a left-wing program funded by more than $ 100,000 in monthly donations from listeners, has become a cult hit with at least part of a demographic group that Democrats have trouble understanding: young people who do not support the Trump administration but fail to get excited about the president's opposition. In a poll conducted in June by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 28% of adults under 30 said they were "absolutely sure" to vote in mid-term. Polls that show greater voter participation among young people continue to think that many of them favor third parties.

What young leftists hear in the Chapo Trap House podcast and in "The Chapo Guide to the Revolution," which has become a New York Times bestseller, is critical of both the Liberals and the Conservatives. They do not see real resistance to President Trump from Democrats. They see a party related to the financial sector that lacks daring ideas. What interests Chapo is the defeat of conservatism and nationalism and the end of capitalism. The wrong kind of "resistance", they fear, would undermine these goals.

"When I saw things like the Women's March, I was delighted," said Virgil Texas, the co-facilitator who focuses primarily on electoral politics. (During the 2016 election night, his job was to analyze the voting numbers that showed Trump was ahead.) "When you've passed all Twitter accounts [b.s.] Over the past two years, I think your average left-wing, democrat and suburban citizen has become more radical. "

Christman accepted. "The fact that they want to do something, perhaps after a lifetime of political inertia, is a good sign," he said. "The important thing is the weight of the organization, and it's up to the people on the left to decide. You have potential infantrymen now; The question is whether they are headed for something like Jon Stewart's "Rally for Sanity," which did nothing. "

The "Rally to Restore Mental Health and / or Fear", a gathering held in Washington shortly before the 2010 midterm elections, has been largely forgotten by pop culture. This remains well known on the far left.

Designed as a parody of Glenn Beck's hot tea party gatherings, this event brought together Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and a host of celebrities on the mall, around the cause that prevented marginal activists from dominating politics. A few days later, Republicans swept the mid-term elections, blocking the control of most states and the House and effectively blocking the Obama agenda.

With Trump in the White House, what worries writers, activists and podcasters left is that the "resistance" ends in the same way, with a return to normal that triggers a new reaction from from the right.

"Anything that does not contain, in its DNA, a fundamental critique of capitalism, will ultimately be futile," Texas said.

2020

Kirsten Gillibrand. She campaigned with Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan over the weekend, helping on the last attempt before the end of the voter registration period.

Bernie Sanders. He delivered his second major foreign policy speech on Tuesday, calling for a fight against right-wing global populism and "rallying the entire planet in defense of the fossil fuel industry." From October 19, he will make campaign stops in the country. nine states, including three stops in Iowa.

Elizabeth Warren. She was in Atlanta on Tuesday, campaigning alongside Georgian governor candidate Stacey Abrams and Massachusetts Congress candidate Ayanna Pressley, who is on the verge of becoming the first black woman member of the New England Congress. England.

READING LIST

"#MeToo is a" movement against victimization, "says G. Martin, Senate candidate, by Jonathan Martin

Republicans are beginning to think that Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) has no way to get re-elected. But she and her representative, Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) Have fully collaborated with journalists, Cramer unabashedly portraying Brett M. Kavanaugh as a victim and Heitkamp putting up an emotional defense of women victims of sexual assault.

"Can Mike Bloomberg Make America Boring Again?" From Ben Smith

If people talk about running for president, Kevin Sheberg, Mike Bloomberg's adviser, tells reporters that his boss is particularly well placed to run and win.

"Wall Street is booming under Trump. But many of its donors adopt Democrats ", by Shane Goldmacher

For the first time in years, the financial industry puts forward bets on Congressional control.

COUNTDOWN

… 23 days before the only debate in the Senate race in West Virginia
… 24 days before the final report on jobs before the workplace
… 28 days until mid-term