Showing posts with label David Gergen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Gergen. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

If Hillary Clinton's Hispanic support slips...then what?




MSNBC reports that Latinos may be softening on their support for Hillary Clinton. One immigrant activist, Marisa Franco, said, “I think she really personifies that candidate whose talking points are dictated by polls and not by taking a firm position on your values.”

In the caucus following the New Hampshire primary, Nevada, leaders of the most powerful union in the state decided they would not endorse any candidate; the union "...a collective of bartenders, housemaids and cooks, is a massive political machine with more than half its membership of Hispanic origin."

With Martin O'Malley out of the race, the Latino support will now be split between Clinton and Bernie Sanders. In Nevada the Hispanic population is 26.5%, but in New Hampshire it is only 2.8%. Bernie leads Hillary 57% to 34% in New Hampshire, Clinton holding an almost 20-point lead in Nevada.

David Gergen made an interesting statement on the CNN Monday night coverage of the Iowa caucuses. He indicated that Hillary Clinton might take many of the southern states but he felt it was possible that Bernie Sanders could take California, The Latino population there is 37.6% but Sanders main group, the millennials, is 77.6%. That would be a huge victory. 

Monday, January 28, 2013

Obama gets tough in opening second term


 
 
Mitch McConnell doing Obama
It looks like the President is tired of taking the crap that the Republicans have been dishing out for the last 4 years.  It started with a comment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in October of 2011.  He said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”   He wasn’t, and McConnell turns out to be the idiot he looked like for the last four years.  He and House Speaker John Boehner, since the GOP took over the house in 2010, have spewed a non-stop diatribe of what a failure Barack Obama had been.  They were wrong and the American people knew it.
 
And because the Republicans were trounced last November in the elections, Boehner now is taking a new approach.  He is saying that “Obama’sfocus is to annihilate the Republican Party.”  Actually, Obama doesn’t have to do anything.  The GOP, led by the Tea Party, is doing that all on their own without any help.  The remark from Boehner made at a Ripon Society luncheon was confirmed by the Speaker’s spokesperson.  Even with a Republican majority in the House that can block the President’s legislation, it is obvious that this gang of obstructionists is running scared, as they should be.
 
David Gergen, who has advised four Presidents, said: “Years from now, historians are likely to look back upon Barack Obama's second inaugural address as a rich treasure trove for understanding his presidency and possibly the course of American politics.”  It’s the sort of thing you say about a great President.  Another interesting comment by Gergen was that not only was Obama more confident, but that he was also “liberated.”  Gergen thinks that refers to the comfort of a second term and not having to run again, as well as showing that Republicans are not willing to compromise.  Either way it is very promising.
 
Obama’s inauguration speech reminds us of Lyndon Johnson’s brand of liberalism and the Great Society.  It is a welcome return to values that espouse equality with the emphasis off the wealthy and now directed at middle America, lower income brackets and the needy.  Another famous Mitch McConnell comment following Obama’s speech was: “The era of liberalism is back.”  How fitting that it comes at a time when we must pass new laws on gun control, comprehensive immigration reform and improving the environment.  The President also plans to work on his 2010 Obamacare.
 
Gergen says, “He emerged as an unapologetic, unabashed liberal -- just what the left has long wanted him to be and exactly what the right has feared.”     
 
Pulitzer Prize winner Historian Gary Willis writes about Lincoln’s maneuvering of the Declaration of Independence into the “founding creed of the country.”  In it, Lincoln says, we are all created equal, which was mirrored by Martin Luther King 100 years later in 1963, and what President Obama was talking about when referring to the declaration as our “founding creed.”  Gergen maintains that Obama has made equal opportunity the “central goal of his presidency.”  He adds that the GOP expected a plea for partisanship but received something of an ultimatum to cooperate, or else.
 
The question is whether Americans support Barack Obama in what he wants to accomplish in his second term.  According to a CNN/ORCInternational survey released Jan. 22, the percentage of those believing global warming is a fact resulting from cars, power plants and factories has doubled to 49%.  On immigration, 53% want a path for illegal immigrants to legal residents compared to 43% who want to deport them. Today, 51% favor all or most of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with 44% opposed to all or most of it.  Is there any doubt why the President would demand cooperation from Republicans?
 

 

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Will Obamacare decrease health care costs?

The short-term answer is sort of.  Long-term, well, in 2014, when the program begins to expand, it jumps 7.4 percent, then, drops significantly in 2015, gradually rising to $4.8 trillion in 2021, 19.6 percent of GDP.  In 2010 it grew by only 3.9 percent, the same rate as the GDP.  This, according to The Economist, which reports that health care spending will grow modestly up to that 2014 spike.  The question is how Obamacare will eventually reverse upward spending.

Americans spent just under $2.7 trillion on healthcare in 2011, almost 18 percent of GDP.  That’s more than the feds spent on defense, Social Security or any other single item in the budget.  Jill Horwitz and Helen Levy, writing on CNN, say the Affordable Care Act has many provisions that are designed to force the health care system to evolve into a more frugal approach in the future.  Here are some of them.

“Accountable care organizations, patient-centered medical homes, value-based purchasing in Medicare, incentives for hospitals to provide better, safer and more efficient care, an excise tax on "Cadillac" health plans, and better information about treatment effectiveness to help patients and providers make informed decisions.”


President Obama

The two mention the plan of Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-Wis), which simply unloads the healthcare problem on the states and individuals.  Not as good as the Affordable Care Act, they claim, adding that shifting these escalating costs to those who can least afford them will deprive them of the care needed.  Obama’s health care reform addresses the most effective approach to spending problems.  But are voters ready to accept this ultimatum just decided by the Supreme Court?

David Gergen, senior political analyst for CNN thinks the American public is ready to move on.  GOP contender Mitt Romney must appease the Tea Party by forcefully coming out against the Affordable Care Act, but that’s no longer what most voters are interested in.  It will take more than this kind of rhetoric to win in November, but it could help a Republican voter turnout.  It’s jobs and the economy that Americans want solutions to.

Gergen said that public response to the Supreme Court healthcare decision for a couple of weeks following would be significant.  According to a Gallup poll taken on July 4, less than a week after, the reaction was an even split.  It was 46 percent for and 46 percent against; 79 percent of Democrats agree while 83 percent of Republicans disagreed.  The question is, just how much of that 83 percent on the right disagree enough to make it an issue in November?

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