I had no idea, when I bought those Driscoll blackberries the other day, what high-tech goings-on the company has been involved in.
The end of stoop labor, perhaps? Fewer jobs for farm workers?
[Hat tip: commenter “The Other Chuck.”]
The Walmart experience
There are certain things I buy at Walmart. One of them is plain old T-shirts, of which Walmart carries an astounding variety of shapes and types for prices that range from about $2.50 to barely $6.00. The other day I braved the Walmart aisles in order to lay in a supply to supplement my decimated stock of them (I use them for blogging and for sleep, in medium for the former and very large for the latter).
Then I wandered around the store for a while; wandering around the vastness of Walmart can be good exercise on a rainy day. In the produce section I noticed some wonderfully large boxes of wonderfully large blackberries for about $3.50, and decided to take a chance on them at that price. I wasn’t expecting much—after all, I’ve found that the blackberries in most groceries usually look good but are sourish. But hope springs, even at Walmart…
And lo and behold, when I got home and ate a few, I discovered them to be the very best blackberries I’ve ever tasted. Sweet and intensely flavorful. The brand is Driscoll’s, for anyone who cares to look for them. I was so taken with them that I went back the next day (yesterday) for more, hoping that I’d find some from the same batch. I bought three packages—and yes, they were just as sweet and just as good.
But the rest of my Walmart experience was disturbing. The entire store had an odd vibe—even for Walmart, and that’s saying something. It was about 9 PM, but the store was almost deserted, and there were three checkout aisles open. The first one I waited in featured one customer ahead of me, a person with some oddity that was indescribable but notable. Perhaps he was intellectually challenged, perhaps emotionally, perhaps both, but something was just off, and the same was true for the clerk behind the register, who sported red hair so brightly colored that it resembled no hair found in nature, and piercings on his face that were strange even for piercings. His nose, for example, had what looked like straight pins hanging from it.
The clerk was ringing up (archaic phrase, that) the last of four enormous canvas bags of goods the man was buying. At the very end, the laborious end for which I’d patiently waited, some glitch occurred that invalidated the entire transaction and the clerk said he had to start all over and ring everything up again. Since this had already been occurring at a snail’s pace (and a particularly slow snail at that), I moved to open register number 2.
Two young women were there, buying just a couple of things, so it looked promising. But then both of the women and the clerk, after hurried and almost-whispered consultation with each other, abandoned the register and disappeared. I waited for several minutes and they did not return. So I pushed on to register #3.
An older woman was there, buying two small cases of Enfamil. Perhaps for a grandchild, I thought. Seemed like this would be a simple thing. Of course, it was not. There were a lot of papers shown (not food stamps, by the way; bigger papers then that, and more of them). Then there was a wait for another clerk, a higher-up, to approve something or other. After that, the customer disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with some cash.
Let me add that at no time during all of these transactions did anyone, customer or clerk, address me or the fact that I was waiting. And if you want to know why I continued to wait, it was the power of those blackberries, the best I’d ever eaten.
And then finally it was my turn. The clerk who waited on me did address me, too, but only in song. Yes folks, he sang everything he said to me—and he wasn’t a good singer, either.
Are these signs of the coming apocalypse?
[ADDENDUM: I may not understand what was going on with the people in Walmart. But I may have solved the mystery of what was going on with the blackberries.
Driscoll’s has been transitioning to a sweeter variety of blackberry, and I may have tasted the fruit (literally) of their labors (the article is from 2013):
California-based Driscoll’s plans to phase out its sourcing of the public blackberry variety Tupi in Mexico over the next eight years, replacing it with sweeter cultivars in sync with an expanding surface area. blackberries.
Driscoll’s Blackberry CMx supply manager Gerardo Cruz [says]…
“We sell Tupi to the whole world, but the new varieties have a higher brix and are being accepted very well, and in that way we can differentiate ourselves from the competition,” he says.
“The average brix of Tupi blackberries is around 10° but our varieties Catherine and Dasha are above 13°.
Nice going, Driscoll’s.]
Sanctuary!
I just published a post about sanctuary cities mayors’ defiance of Trump’s order regarding reporting the arrest of illegal aliens.
But now I want to emphasize the power of the word “sanctuary,” which was originally chosen by the activists behind the movement, I believe, to take advantage of the aura around it. “Sanctuary” implies something connected to the sacred—and it conjures up classic scenes such as this:
That’s for the older folk. That scene—and Laughton’s ringing cry of “Sanctuary!”—sent chills up my spine as a little girl when I first saw it, and it does the same thing now. For the young of more recent years, though, there’s this rendition of the exact same scene:
Animation has the freedom to show just about anything. All the animators have to do is imagine it and then draw it (or computer-generate it). If they want Quasimodo to swing on that rope, they draw it and don’t have to worry about having a living person do some sort of clever (but perhaps risky) stunt.
But for my tastes, the live action film has it all over the cartoon, in both its power and its appeal to the imagination. When Quasimodo holds the real live Esmeralda over that real live crowd (even if some sort of trick is used to simulate it and he’s not really holding her way up high), the cartoon can’t even begin to achieve the same effect. Note, also, the emphasis in the older film on the ecstatic reaction of the crowd, a joy and fervor in which we are encouraged to join.
And Charles Laughton in that role has it all over everybody, now and forever.
Sanctuary mayors defy Trump
Of course they do.
When a president tries to go against many years of local policies that have successfully defied the federal government—with some of those years involving the cooperation of the federal government in that defiance—it’s not going to go down easy.
It’s one thing for Trump to say he’ll end sanctuary cities. But even with the support of the majority of Americans in that endeavor, the local pockets of resistance (that is, the sanctuary cities themselves) are determined. It’s one thing to say this will change; it’s another thing to enforce that change.
The majority of the citizens of the cities involved detest Donald Trump, and most of them probably think he’s an illegitimate president as well. Their mayors are declaring their intention to defy his orders, and threatening to sue:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions took the podium at the White House press briefing to fire the broadside at cities that refuse to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they have illegal immigrants in custody. Judging from the response from mayors of the nation’s biggest cities, the Trump administration has a fight on its hands.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio downplayed the significance of Sessions’ message and said in his weekly television segment Sessions was more “saber-rattling.”
April 10, 2014: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at Cooper Union in New York. Expand / ContractNew York Mayor Bill de Blasio fired back after Sessions’ warning. (Associated Press)
“If they actually act to take away our money, we’ll see them in court,” vowed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said taking federal funding from the city would be “unconstitutional.”
“We will fight to protect the safety and dignity of all Angelenos,” Garcetti said. “We will work closely with our representatives in Congress to make sure that Los Angeles does not go without federal resources that help protect millions of people every day.”
In other words, we want to take federal money and fail to comply with federal law. Note, also, that the Trump order wasn’t to round up all the illegal aliens in town, it was “to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they have illegal immigrants in custody.”
While not a technical term, “sanctuary cities” are seen as communities that have refused to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after detaining illegal immigrants. By federal law, they are required to inform the feds when they have an illegal immigrant in custody, even if he or she has not been convicted of a crime…
Sessions not only warned of “withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,” he said the Trump administration could even “claw back” money that has already been disbursed to sanctuary cities.
And take a look at this:
And Boston Mayor Marty Walsh called the threat ”˜destructive’ and ”˜irresponsible’. Walsh has said that he would shelter immigrants in City Hall if needed, with the support of Boston Police Commissioner William Evans who said officers would not arrest immigrants living in the U.S. illegally unless they are accused of committing violent crimes.
Does that mean that in Boston there will be a two-tiered system of law enforcement? That illegal immigrants will—with the cooperation of the police department and its head—get off scot free for all but violent crimes, while the rest of Boston’s residents will continue to be arrested for non-violent crimes? So (for example) it’s okay to commit identity theft if the perpetrator is an illegal alien, but not if the criminal is a citizen or a legal non-citizen resident?
It’s especially interesting, since one of the original rationales for establishing sanctuary cities was to encourage crime reporting by illegal aliens who were the victims of crimes, without those victims having to fear deportation themselves. This turns that rationale on its head.
Trump’s order, however, might be unconstitutional for the following reason:
Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, has argued that Trump’s withholding of federal funding would be unconstitutional: “Trump and future presidents could use [the executive order] to seriously undermine constitutional federalism by forcing dissenting cities and states to obey presidential dictates, even without authorization from Congress. The circumvention of Congress makes the order a threat to separation of powers, as well.”
Perhaps Congress should take this up. There’s a history there, too:
On June 16, 2007 the United States House of Representatives passed an amendment to a United States Department of Homeland Security spending bill that would withhold federal emergency services funds from sanctuary cities. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was the sponsor of this amendment. 50 Democrats joined Republicans to support the amendment. The amendment would have to pass the United States Senate to become effective.
There was another failed attempt to do this in 2015. This is one of those situations in which, if the bill came before the Senate today, the Democrats might try to block it with a filibuster or voting against cloture. However, that might be a controversial move, and there might not be enough Democratic senators willing to go that route. I’m pretty certain that Jeff Sessions is well aware of all the possibilities.
I happen to be in favor of Trump’s policy—or, to be more precise, I am in favor of Congress passing a law to the same effect. Of course, that doesn’t mean it would be easy to enforce. It would be very difficult to enforce if—as in the quote from Boston—the head of the police force of a city, with the cooperation of the mayor, is determined to defy it. The idea of threatening the withdrawal of federal funds is that it won’t come to that, because the cities would be coerced into cooperation. But they might just say they will cooperate in order to get the funds, while winking at it in actual practice.
So, what’s going on with Gorsuch?
Remember him?
One of these days the Senate is going to vote on his nomination, and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that they’ll approve him. But not just yet. And the mechanism by which it will happen—in particular, whether the nuclear option must be invoked to accomplish it—remains to be seen:
The Senate Judiciary Committee delayed the vote until next week to consider the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the delay was requested by the Democrats.
At least 15 Democrats and independents, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have announced their opposition to the Denver-based appeals court judge, arguing that Gorsuch has ruled too often against workers and in favor of corporations.
Schumer said Thursday he would be comfortable filibustering the nomination.
Gorsuch is one of the most qualified judges ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court, and Schumer and the the other 14 know it. They’re doing this to placate their base, and because they don’t like Gorsuch’s conservative point of view, and because they’re still angry that the GOP blocked Garland. Of course, the GOP was well within its rights to do so, and didn’t have to fiddle with nuclear options at all at the time because the GOP was the majority party in the Senate.
More:
The committee will meet again April 3 to recommend Gorsuch to the full Senate favorably or unfavorably.
McConnell has said he hopes to confirm Gorsuch on the Senate floor by the end of that week, before the Senate leaves for a two-week recess and in time for the Court’s April arguments.
If 8 Democratic senators vote for cloture, the 60-vote threshold will be reached and McConnell won’t have to use the nuclear option. I don’t know whether 8 will break ranks on this; my guess is that they won’t, but it’s just a guess. If necessary, though, I think McConnell is prepared to go nuclear in order to get Gorsuch confirmed. It’s that important.
And the winner is…
Hey, wait a minute. What’s the contest? you ask.
As well you might. It’s a competition I’ve never heard of before: European Tree of the Year.
And the winner this year is a glorious oak with a history:
A Polish tree that two Jewish brothers used as a shelter for hiding from the Nazis during World War Two has been voted European Tree of the Year 2017.
Oak Jé³zef, in the village of WiÅ›niowa, south-eastern Poland, was also printed on Polish 100 zÅ‚oty bills. Today it is admired by many visitors and is captured in many photos and paintings.
The Brimmon Oak, in Newtown, in Wales, came runner-up in the competition.
Here’s the first, in photographs of the actual tree and the artwork on the zloty bill:
And here’s the Welsh runner-up”
The bathing suit competition was a little rough.
I love these trees. Old trees (we have plenty of them in New England) can often be very very beautiful, gnarled and twisted and full of personality and a sense of their great antiquity.
Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown
I found the following at Buzzfeed. Now, Buzzfeed isn’t a site I usually visit and certainly not a site I often (or ever?) quote. But this description of the current news coverage struck somewhat of a resonant chord in me nevertheless:
There’s so much discordant noise that just making out each individual thing and tracking its journey through the news cycle requires enormous effort. It’s tough to get your bearings. Trump’s presidency currently poses a fundamental question for each person: Is this overall moment weird but ephemeral, maybe not so bad ”” or is it an emergency? Given the current level of uncertainty (does Trump really mean X?) and the sheer volume of incoming information (what will Trump do tomorrow?), each day demands your judgment. Is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal?
These questions are exhausting.
I’m not familiar with author Katherine Miller’s work, but although I’m going to assume she’s a liberal, the phenomenon of overload being described there is a more universal one—although for the right, the “fundamental question” about each moment includes the question “is this good?” or even “is this great?” in addition to the more neutral or negative choices Miller lists.
Think back to those first few heady weeks of Trump’s presidency (seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?) when there was a sort of euphoria on the right (even among non-supporters of Trump) about the scope and unexpectedness of the GOP victory and the prospect of having a government with the right firmly in control of two branches and probably about to be at least somewhat in control of the third. That giddyness is gone—which makes sense, because reality was always going to intrude. But part of that reality is that, at this point, even someone like me—who analyzes and reacts to the news on a daily basis, and has long been skeptical of coverage—has gotten to the point of dreading reading about politics.
What will Trump do today? Will it be good, okay, or counter-productive and harmful? And how relentless and distorting and over-the-top (and successful) will the negative media spin on it be?
And above all: where to find anything even approximating the truth? It’s like panning for gold in a river that has little or no precious metal left, even of the gold dust variety.
Don’t worry, though; I’m not about to stop blogging. I seem to be a glutton for punishment.
NOTE: The title of this post comes from this Rolling Stones song:
[ADDENDUM: And yes, I realize that any angst we feel today is small, small potatoes compared to what the citizens of many other countries (or eras) feel or felt on a daily basis. Nevertheless, it’s still tiring, frustrating, and often confusing.]
Trump and the timing of the Obamacare reform attempt
Commenter “Brian E” writes that Obamacare repeal “was not part of [Trump’s] campaign platform,” and offers a series of ways in which Trump suggested that Obamacare be tweaked.
He certainly made such suggestions. But not only did he never say “don’t repeal it,” he explicitly promised many many times not only to repeal it, but to call on Congress and work with them to repeal it immediately as well as to replace it:
Trump is correct [when he claims that at] no point in time did he pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare in 61 or 64 days. Instead, he pledged to demand a repeal on Day One ”” even if it took a special session of Congress to make it happen. He pledged on several occasions to repeal it “immediately.” The message he conveyed to his voters was very much not that “this is something we will get to eventually” but that this was something that would come first on the agenda.
That WaPo article I just quoted goes on to offer many additional campaign statements of Trump’s to that effect. This one from September, 2016, is typically unequivocal, and it is not the only time Trump said as much:
On my first day I’m going to ask Congress to immediately send me a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Trump made many more campaign statements in that vein (some are listed in the article I linked). Now Trump is trying to back off from the fact that he made these promises (should I put the word “promises” in scare quotes?). However, Trump spoke often not only of Obamacare repeal/replace, but of the importance of doing it immediately.
Now, there are a lot of things a person could say about that if a person wanted to get Trump off the hook (not that Brian E. is doing that; I think he’s just explaining some of the specific things Trump said he wanted in the bill). A person could say that Paul Ryan also had a role in the recent bill and its haste, of course that’s correct. But that does not undo what Trump said, and the fact that he made it clear that this had to be done right away, and that he pushed the passage of this particular bill which was clearly inadequate and hasty.
A person could also say, “Oh, those statement were among things that Trump said but didn’t mean.” But it’s ex post facto rationalizing, a perfect way to justify making excuses for anything Trump said that doesn’t work out.
Or a person could say that Trump’s not a policy wonk, so he relied on Ryan to tell him the bill was a good one. But Trump had better have a mind of his own and the ability to judge such things—or have advisors who are independent of Congress who can explain such things to him so he can understand, or we are in deep trouble.
I’m sure there are other ways avid Trump supporters could spin this to absolve him of responsibility. Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.
This particular defeat has many fathers, but one of them is Trump. I’ve long said that during the Trump presidency I will do my utmost to be fair to him. I will give credit where it’s due, and blame him when he deserves it. I intend to continue that path.
But I’d much rather he give me cause to give the credit.
“Oliver Twist”: on depicting violence
As far as I’m concerned, the 1948 David Lean black-and-white version of “Oliver Twist” is the masterpiece of the many movie versions of the story. I first saw the film as a child and it scared me horribly at times, but I recognized its artistry and chiaroscuro brilliance. Here’s a clip depicting the death of Nancy, in which Robert Newton is absolutely perfect as Bill Sykes. And the dog’s behavior sends chills down my spine to this day. :
Here’s an older silent version from 1922, a version which I had no idea existed:
The musical film “Oliver” was a much brighter entity entirely. But Oliver Reed was still a very good Bill Sykes, although the scene in question was substantially changed from the way it’s depicted in the book:
Note that in all three versions, the actual violence is somewhat hidden and/or mimimized. That’s not the way of current movies, but it’s very effective. The imagination can fill in the horrific gaps, and Nancy’s death is all the more poignant and terrible for that.
The Greeks had a prohibition on graphically depicting acts of violence onstage, despite the often-bloody plots of their tragedies:
…[I]n traditional Greek tragedy, no blood””not even that of an animal””was spilled on stage. In the piece ”˜Drama and Dromena: Bloodshed, Violence, and Sacrificial Metaphor in Euripides,’ Albert Henrichs points out that in Greek tragedy “the most extreme forms of tragic violence are presented as off-stage events, out of sight but very much within the emotional reach of the audience.”…
Sophocles…spares no detail of Oedipus’ bloody fate””an act so repulsive that it could make even modern audiences flinch. Yet only after the chorus’ description does Oedipus himself re-enter the stage, blinded. Just as he comes into view, the chorus gives voice to the audience’s shocked reaction, exclaiming, “This is a terrible sight for men to see! ”¦I shudder at the sight of you.” (Oedipus the King 1297-305) Here, the chorus narrates the action, informing the audience of the events that occurred offstage. Their vivid descriptions serve to fuel the imaginations of the spectators, who are left to picture the horrible sight…the chorus members do not act as impartial observers; they react to the tragic events that unfold before them in the same way the author intends the audience to react. In effect, they play a dual role: both relaying the necessary information to the audience and modeling the audience’s intended emotional response.
…Interestingly, the Greek tragedians made the best of their limited circumstances, discovering effective ways to manipulate the emotions of the audience””chiefly through the chorus””conveying a greater overall sense of tragedy.
In the story of Oliver Twist, the dog serves a similar function to the Greek chorus. Although the dog is unable to speak, it is an eloquent witness and expresses the horror the audience is expected to feel, particularly in the Lean version. Every time I see those clips from Lean’s movie—the way the light streams through the window on the morning after the murder, the depiction of the flow of Sykes’ thoughts interspersed with the dog’s trembling—I am in awe of what the director has done there.
Have you noticed…
…that it’s not just the Democrats who are crowing over the GOP failure to pass the replacement for Obamacare? Have you noticed the over-the-top hype the MSM is currently making of that failure? This is the worst debacle ever, etc. etc. etc…
I wonder if the ordinary voter feels that way. I wonder if he/she doesn’t care more about other things right now, and just sees this as part of typical DC gridlock. I wonder if he/she doesn’t think that perhaps a bill on the subject will be passed later, in the not-altogether-distant future.
I think what happened with the Obamacare replacement was a failure and an enormous error, but I certainly don’t see it as insurmountable. What will be insurmountable is if the GOP keeps on being unable to come up with some sort of solution to the problem—perhaps not a perfect one, but an improvement. And what will be even more insurmountable would be if the failure on Obamacare were followed by similar miscalculations and broken promises on other issues of importance.
Did Obamacare succeed in creating the expectation of universal health care?
Charles Krauthammer thinks it did:
On Friday’s edition of ‘Special Report’ on Fox News Channel, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer made the case that President Obama’s strategy for Obamacare was not to create a perfect health care system, but to create the expectation that health care is something the government is responsible for. He said Obama had been successful at “creating the expectation of universal care” and that as a result “the zeitgeist of the country has really changed.”…
“That is the logic of Obamacare. It was a jerry-rigged system which would temporarily create an entitlement, but would not work because it is financially impossible… But they have succeeded at creating the expectation of universal care, and once you have that… What we’re going to get is Democrats going to a single payer,” he added.
This is indeed what we’ve been hearing and thinking since Obamacare was passed. It was certainly the fear of most people on the right—that the passage and then the implementation of Obamacare would constitute a point of psychological no-return because entitlements cannot be turned back. Even if the GOP could agree on a way to do so (and so far, they cannot), the idea is that the public would not accept that way anymore, because they have become psychologically dependent on it, and wedded to the idea that health care is a right and not a privilege.
But I’m inclined to turn Krauthammer’s idea on its head. I reflect that Obamacare was preceded many decades ago by Medicare, and then in the early part of the 21st century by Part D (passed by the GOP, you may recall). In between (1986) we had EMTALA, the law that guaranteed emergency medical care at hospitals and didn’t really figure out how to pay for it—a law that was passed by a Republican Senate and Democratic House, and signed by Ronald Reagan, as part of a larger bill:
That’s government racketeering explained in a nutshell: create the problem (strain on hospitals due to mandated free care) and use it as an excuse for wealth transfer, which is what universal healthcare amounts to in the end. And look how perfectly it works. The requirements under EMTALA are ostensibly what led to “Romneycare” and inspired the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich to propose government- mandated health insurance coverage, giving liberals and libertarians a fair basis for pointing to “conservatives” as the ones who first proposed health insurance mandates.
Our previous system of health insurance worked pretty well for most people, actually, but it was extremely complicated and quite a few people fell through the cracks. Meanwhile, the growing entitlements (such as EMTALA) were at least part of the reason that health care was becoming more expensive and more often out of the reach of many of those without any insurance. Without going into the ins and outs and the details at the moment, I’ll just say that the expectation that the federal government do more to alleviate the burden was growing and growing and growing, and all the laws that I just mentioned were passed not just to expand those expectations but in response to expectations that had already expanded in a slow but seemingly inexorable progression.
I use that word “progression” purposely. “Progressives” of the left call themselves that in order to promote the idea that their policies represent a natural, normal, and morally good example of human progress going forward in time. But those policies also create dependence, restrictions on liberty, rising costs, and bureaucratic messes that are hard to fix and resistant to change.
Yes, as Krauthammer suggests, Obamacare has “create[d] the expectation that health care is something the government is responsible for.” But it’s also true that Obamacare reflected and was a response to the already-evident fact that the belief that “health care is something the government is responsible for” had been growing and growing for many decades. The details of Obamacare may not (and in fact were not) popular. The idea of it was. The whole thing was a system in which the expectation fed into the legislation, and then the legislation solidified the expectation that something similar would continue.
The current impasse among Congressional Republicans represents a split between those moderates who don’t think we can or should go back very far—those who prefer tweaking Obamacare to keep the general idea in place but somehow make it “better”—and those on the right who think that turning it back entirely (and replacing it with one or another far more conservative solution) is not only possible but necessary for the good of the country and its people. This is a profound split rather than a minor one. It’s also an obvious split, and anyone who worked on a new bill to replace Obamacare had to be cognizant of it.
[NOTE: In yesterday’s thread on the pulling of the bill, several commenters remarked that the 2016 election sent a message to establishment Republicans that they had lost, but they didn’t get the memo. I understand what people who say that are getting at, but I disagree at least somewhat. After all, on the subject of replacing Obamacare, the person whose election most represented that anti-establishment message was Donald Trump, and yet he is also one of the Republicans in government who is furthest to the left on health care reform. No, this does not break down to a simple “establishment versus the right.” Trump’s victory was not a victory for conservatism, you may recall. Although he’s certainly a lot more conservative than Hillary would have been, his conservatism is spotty and inconsistent, and does not include his attitude on health care reform.
Also, see this on the subject of who was to blame for the rush on health care reform. Promises, promises. I blame both Ryan and Trump for the rush (which I see as having been fatal to the effort), and for the failure to design and back a bill more GOP members of Congress would be willing to support.]
No vote on health care reform
If you don’t get enough people on board for “yes” and schedule a vote anyway, you’re going to end up having to cancel it. And that’s what happened today. There was a lot of jockeying for position and a lot of arm-twisting (and perhaps twisting of other body parts), and now all that’s left are the threats and the excuses and the pause and the ridicule.
I don’t know what the ultimate result will be for Obamacare, Trumpcare, Ryancare, something-or-other-elsecare. I do know that today is embarrassing for both Trump and the GOP, both of whom promised that Obamacare would be repealed and replaced, pronto, and both of whom look like the Keystone cops (without the humor, that is).
Chuck Schumer was quick to make hay of the debacle (temporary or otherwise):
In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today.
“They can’t write policy that actually makes sense, they can’t implement the policies they do manage to write, they can’t get their stories straight, and today we’ve learned that they can’t close a deal, and they can’t count votes,” he said.
“So much for the Art of the Deal.”
Trump’s supporters will say that the master negotiator was playing his usual 3-D chess. I don’t see it, although I do know that news cycles are short, and this one will disappear soon, to be replaced by another. I also believe that this bill was not a good one and that a better one can be crafted, although I’m not sure whether that will happen and how long it would take. In the meantime, Obamacare wends its merry way downward.
Some think Obamacare should die of its own accord. Trump is on record as having said that at one point, but he’s said many things at many points.
I also believe that this statement by Paul Ryan is not going to impress anyone:
Ryan says it is difficult moving from an opposition party to a governing party: “We’re feeling those growing pains today.”
“We came really close today but we came up short,” he says.
He calls it a “disappointing day” and says the GOP needs time to reflect.
“It all comes down to choice — are we all willing to give a little to get things done?
A party that’s not ready for prime time and asks for a little patience is a party that’s not going to get anyone’s respect. They had many years in the wilderness to reflect on this, and they should have been better prepared. The GOP leadership isn’t leading—and that “leadership” includes both Ryan and Trump, the latter of whom at least has the excuse of having never been in government. Not that that’s an excuse any more valid than Ryan’s “we’re new at being in power.”
The thing that angers me is that it wasn’t hard to see this coming; I certainly didn’t think the vote would happen. Why did they let it get to this embarrassing point? Obamacare repeal and replacement was a huge cornerstone of the platform of the Republican Party (including Trump). They should have come to a better compromise or at least figured out a more effective way to twist arms. But, just as compromise seems to be impossible these days between right and left in the US as a whole, it also seems impossible for the moderate vs. conservative wings of the Republican Party. And if they manage to do it in the next few months or even the next year, and pass a bill for health care coverage that actually works and makes sense, I’ll be happy to put today behind me and praise them.