<"Puppet On A String"
The Reckoner>
<i.>
Last week, Massachusetts voters hit the polls for their party's primary elections. In the most closely-watched races, Democratic Congressman Richard Neal and Senator Ed Markey romped to renomination, for different reasons. Both races offer object lessons for progressives willing to take notes, as they work on broadening their reach nationally.
For progressives, Neal seems like the perfect poster child for everything that's wrong with the current system, starting with his entrenched status (31 years), and readiness to act as a corporate water carrier. Not surprisingly, the House Ways & Means Committee's chairman stood out in 2019 as Congress's top collector of corporate PAC (Political Action Committee) donations, The American Prospect notes.
All told, Neal hoovered up $1.4 million from familiar suspects like AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, General Motors, Google, Lockheed Martin -- just read the list below for yourself. It's enlightening, to say the least, especially you consider issues like Neal's successful crusade against a proposal to limit surprise medical bills.
Surprise billing occurs when patients use services outside their network, often resulting in thousands and thousands of dollars in sticker shock. It can happen despite your best efforts, as Sonji Wilkes discovered, when she racked up a $50,000 bill for her son's hemophilia treatment.
Although the Wilkeses had chosen a hospital in their network, they didn't realize it had outsourced their son's intensive care treatment to a physicians' group that didn't accept any insurance, Washington Monthly reported. Their insurer also refused to pay, shoving the family down a dark financial rabbit hole. Eventually, their bill got dismissed as part of a class-action lawsuit, but by then, the damage had been done.
Such horror stories had seemingly generated sufficient late last year to pass the Lower Health Care Costs Act, until Neal -- and his ranking Republican counterpart, Kevin Brady, another corporate PAC money collector -- went to work. The language gradually changed from limiting surprise costs (subject to appeal), and requiring insurers to pay, to a mixture of voluntary negotiations and arbitration as the preferred solution.
Corporate interests love arbitration for the reasons progressives loathe it. Arbitrators typically hail from the industries they oversee, which means their buddies' interests are more likely to prevail. Arbitration allows companies to hide their misdeeds, since it's a private process, with no public review to determine if the arbitrator got it right. For consumers caught in this bear trip, there are no juries, no appeals, and no legal recourse, once the gavel bangs down. Small wonder that critics like Zach Cooper, a professor of health policy and economics at Yale, harshly denounced the final product: "It's a plague on both our houses."
For progressives, Neal seems like the perfect poster child for everything that's wrong with the current system, starting with his entrenched status (31 years), and readiness to act as a corporate water carrier. Not surprisingly, the House Ways & Means Committee's chairman stood out in 2019 as Congress's top collector of corporate PAC (Political Action Committee) donations, The American Prospect notes.
All told, Neal hoovered up $1.4 million from familiar suspects like AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, General Motors, Google, Lockheed Martin -- just read the list below for yourself. It's enlightening, to say the least, especially you consider issues like Neal's successful crusade against a proposal to limit surprise medical bills.
Surprise billing occurs when patients use services outside their network, often resulting in thousands and thousands of dollars in sticker shock. It can happen despite your best efforts, as Sonji Wilkes discovered, when she racked up a $50,000 bill for her son's hemophilia treatment.
Although the Wilkeses had chosen a hospital in their network, they didn't realize it had outsourced their son's intensive care treatment to a physicians' group that didn't accept any insurance, Washington Monthly reported. Their insurer also refused to pay, shoving the family down a dark financial rabbit hole. Eventually, their bill got dismissed as part of a class-action lawsuit, but by then, the damage had been done.
Such horror stories had seemingly generated sufficient late last year to pass the Lower Health Care Costs Act, until Neal -- and his ranking Republican counterpart, Kevin Brady, another corporate PAC money collector -- went to work. The language gradually changed from limiting surprise costs (subject to appeal), and requiring insurers to pay, to a mixture of voluntary negotiations and arbitration as the preferred solution.
Corporate interests love arbitration for the reasons progressives loathe it. Arbitrators typically hail from the industries they oversee, which means their buddies' interests are more likely to prevail. Arbitration allows companies to hide their misdeeds, since it's a private process, with no public review to determine if the arbitrator got it right. For consumers caught in this bear trip, there are no juries, no appeals, and no legal recourse, once the gavel bangs down. Small wonder that critics like Zach Cooper, a professor of health policy and economics at Yale, harshly denounced the final product: "It's a plague on both our houses."
<"Party Of Lowered Expectations"
The Reckoner>
<ii.>
We should also continue pressing for accountability from the institutions that let Neal slip off the hook for this surgically orchestrated smear campaign. That includes the state party officials who solemnly vowed to investigate the students' conduct, even as it advised them to delete emails showing links between the two sides, and the media, whose "he-said, she-said" coverage failed to convey what was really going on.
First, such groups offer an alternative to sticking with a Democratic Party structure that talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. Second, they provide resources that insurgent candidates often struggle to muster on their own. Third, they offer a rallying point for supporters, as the Sunrise Movement showed, by making 350,000 calls for Morse at the height of the smear campaign against him. And, while those efforts weren't enough to tip the balance, without them, Morse's challenge would have been snuffed out before it started, along with his public life.
Links To Go Go (Hurry, Hurry,
No matter. Despite a spirited challenge from Holyoke, MA Mayor Alex Morse -- who focused on Neal's corporate ties, and support for ideas his opponent deemed impractical, like the Green New Deal, and Medicare For All -- voters apparently had no second thoughts. Neal took 83,457 votes (58.8%) to 58,390 (41.2%) for Morse, who even lost his hometown (4,366-3,940).
That had to hurt, I'm sure, when you consider that Neal showed no remorse for his practices, as he made clear during a debate between them: "If you contribute to my campaign, you're buying into my agenda. I'm not buying into yours." So much for money as a medium of exchange, I suppose.
Presumably, then, we might take this statement from Neal's victory speech with a barrel of salt: "We will put legislative action behind the powerful words of the recognition of racial and economic disparities that still confront America. We must address concentrated wealth in this country and level the playing field for everyone."
Presumably, then, we might take this statement from Neal's victory speech with a barrel of salt: "We will put legislative action behind the powerful words of the recognition of racial and economic disparities that still confront America. We must address concentrated wealth in this country and level the playing field for everyone."
Markey also won decisively, with 766,134 votes (55.44%), to 617,961 for Joe Kennedy III (44.6%). Much of the drama centered on whether Joe III, as Camelot's latest acolyte, had offered a convincing rationale for his candidacy beyond, "It's the next step up the ladder," and "I'm a Kennedy, you owe it to me, what other reason do you need?"
Ironically, given the mainstream media's penchant for "horse race" style coverage ("Who won, who lost? Who's ahead, who's behind?"), it wrongly identified Joe III as the first Kennedy to lose an election. That milestone actually belongs to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who fell short in a 1986 Congressional race. So rest easy, Joe III fans. He's out of politics for now, but at least he's not the punchline of a trivia question...yet.
Markey's victory seems all the more surprising, since he's taken stands that leave him out of step with today's Democratic Party. That includes voting with Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden for the infamously draconian crime bill of 1994, and the 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, for the Iraq War, in 2003. Not exactly a good place to sit these days.
Yet Markey's full-throated support for the Green New Deal enabled him to decisively outflank Kennedy, overtake him in polls, and generate the excitement among young voters, in particular, to lift him across the finish line. He also benefited from Joe III's inability to explain why voters should elevate him from the U.S. House, where he'd carved out a low-key, yet undistinguished career, to the hallowed halls of the Senate.
Joe III's failure to frame a winning rationale naturally prompted lots of sour grapes and raspberries from the usual anonymous suspects, like the consultant who claimed: "The Markey campaign did a masterful job convincing voters Ed is someone is not." Maybe so, maybe not. But I have a simpler response. If you can't really explain why you should get the job....maybe you shouldn't get the job.
Yet Markey's full-throated support for the Green New Deal enabled him to decisively outflank Kennedy, overtake him in polls, and generate the excitement among young voters, in particular, to lift him across the finish line. He also benefited from Joe III's inability to explain why voters should elevate him from the U.S. House, where he'd carved out a low-key, yet undistinguished career, to the hallowed halls of the Senate.
Joe III's failure to frame a winning rationale naturally prompted lots of sour grapes and raspberries from the usual anonymous suspects, like the consultant who claimed: "The Markey campaign did a masterful job convincing voters Ed is someone is not." Maybe so, maybe not. But I have a simpler response. If you can't really explain why you should get the job....maybe you shouldn't get the job.
<Self-Explanatory...
The Reckoner>
The Reckoner>
<iii.>
So what are the big takeaways here? Start with the obvious: timidity doesn't always equal success. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said as much in 2019, when she gave Markey a crucial endorsement credited with boosting his viability in the race. She cited Markey as one of the few established figures to show any interest in her ideas, after her election to Congress.
In AOC's eyes, Markey is "not just resting on his record of the past, but he's aggressively pursuing an agenda for the future." That, she argued, "is what a progressive is, and that's what progressivism is all about." Markey summed it up in his own distinct fashion after winning his primary race:
In AOC's eyes, Markey is "not just resting on his record of the past, but he's aggressively pursuing an agenda for the future." That, she argued, "is what a progressive is, and that's what progressivism is all about." Markey summed it up in his own distinct fashion after winning his primary race:
“March in the streets, protest, run for school committee or the city council or the state legislature—and win. But don’t just challenge the status quo, dismantle it. Take things over. When they say ‘slow down,’ go faster. When they say ‘not now,’ start that day. When they say ‘not that way,’ redraw the map. When they say you’re too young, show up with your friends. Every reason the critics and cynics offer to give up or give in is proof positive that you should push forward—and hard."
Think about the long game. It's never only about one campaign, or one election. If nothing else, Richard Neal's win shows how tough it is to topple an entrenched incumbent. Unlike recent peers who lost their primaries (like Elliot Engel in New York), Neal didn't bring a knife to his particular gunfight, having amassed a $4 million war chest. Clearly, he came prepared, and ready to play; so should we. In practice, it can take two, three or four tries to pick off someone so well-situated Any strategy for change should take this reality into account.
We should expect the neoliberal establishment will fight dirty to keep control, and plan accordingly. Morse learned this lesson the hard way, when the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College Democrats dis-invited him to future events in a letter that hinted darkly of him making improper sexual advances on students. It's a classic homophobic trope, but one that quickly gained ground after the college paper published the letter. The timing certainly proved convenient, as Morse's internal numbers showed Neal polling at 45 percent (see link below).
The situation rapidly escalated into all-out attacks, including a $1 million ad blitz by a pro-Neal Super PAC that claimed Morse had sex with college students. The shadow group apologized, claiming the ads had "accidentally" gone out to radio stations, even as they "accidentally" continued airing right through Election Day. In the end, no victims ever surfaced, because they never existed.
Innuendo-laden as they were, the ads served their purpose by weaponizing Morse's sexuality, throwing less discerning voters off the scent of Neal's dark money fixations (as well as turning thoughtful people off politics for good -- the kind we need to challenge creeps like him). It's one of the ugliest examples of this gambit that I can remember, and shouldn't go unnoticed in a future campaign. After all, if this is what Neal does when he wins decisively, what'll he actually do in a close race? And what does that say about his character, or lack of it?
Innuendo-laden as they were, the ads served their purpose by weaponizing Morse's sexuality, throwing less discerning voters off the scent of Neal's dark money fixations (as well as turning thoughtful people off politics for good -- the kind we need to challenge creeps like him). It's one of the ugliest examples of this gambit that I can remember, and shouldn't go unnoticed in a future campaign. After all, if this is what Neal does when he wins decisively, what'll he actually do in a close race? And what does that say about his character, or lack of it?
We should also continue pressing for accountability from the institutions that let Neal slip off the hook for this surgically orchestrated smear campaign. That includes the state party officials who solemnly vowed to investigate the students' conduct, even as it advised them to delete emails showing links between the two sides, and the media, whose "he-said, she-said" coverage failed to convey what was really going on.
We should continue creating alternatives to get the results we're after. Staying tethered to the Democratic Party isn't the only viable option, nor is it the only option, as progressives have realized, as they elect more candidates like AOC, and Jamaal Bowman, who knocked off Engel. AOC recognized as much by withholding her dues to the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), which notoriously requires anyone it helps to use only its consultants and staff, thereby ensuring that the dependence remains permanent. The appearance of issue-driven progressive groups like Indivisible, Justice Democrats, and the Sunrise Movement is one of the most exciting and positive developments in recent years, for three reasons.
First, such groups offer an alternative to sticking with a Democratic Party structure that talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. Second, they provide resources that insurgent candidates often struggle to muster on their own. Third, they offer a rallying point for supporters, as the Sunrise Movement showed, by making 350,000 calls for Morse at the height of the smear campaign against him. And, while those efforts weren't enough to tip the balance, without them, Morse's challenge would have been snuffed out before it started, along with his public life.
Groups like Justice Democrats can also serve as a pressure point, by raising questions that established parties and politicians often prefer to duck: How does your embrace of PAC money square with the rhetoric you're dishing out? If your record is really in sync with our ideas, what examples can you give? What have you done for us lately? What will you do tomorrow, and how do we know you'll actually follow through? '
Even if we don't win this race, or that one, knowing that the uncomfortable questions won't stop coming will put a spoke in the "don't ask, don't tell" game that both major parties often like to play. Raising them also puts the media on notice that we want more beyond the "he said, she said"/"horse race" coverage that leaves the larger issues safely untouched, and allow the "don't ask, don't tell" merry-go-round to keep on spinning.
Above all else, we should continue to working to put more people in power that will actually do what we want, at the federal, state and local levels. Scoring policy is more likely when you're working with people who seem genuinely committed to making them happen, and not settling for anything less, as Ed Markey stated in his election night victory speech:
"The time to be timid is past. The age of incrementalism is over. Now is our moment to think big, to build big, to be big. This is what this election is all about. This is what this moment demands.”
I couldn't have said it better. -- The Reckoner
Links To Go Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Hoover Up All That Dark Money):
American Prospect
Richard Neal Is Number One
In Corporate PAC Donations:
Jacobin
Alex Morse: "I Would Be
One Of The Few Democrats
To Stand Up To The Democratic Party":
Politico: Why Joe Kennedy's Senate Campaign Flopped:
Sludge: Richard Neal Took Big Bucks...
https://readsludge.com/2020/05/05/neal-took-big-bucks-from-lobbyists-while-killing-a-surprise-medical-bills-fix/
The Intercept
Massachusetts Hopeful Alex Morse
Couldn't Overcome Homophobic Smear:
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/02/alex-morse-primary-result-richard-neal/
The Nation
Ed Markey Has A Message For Democrats...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ed-markey-progressive-aoc/
The Intercept
Massachusetts Hopeful Alex Morse
Couldn't Overcome Homophobic Smear:
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/02/alex-morse-primary-result-richard-neal/
The Nation
Ed Markey Has A Message For Democrats...
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ed-markey-progressive-aoc/
Washington Monthly
Why Congress Can't Stop Surprise Medical Bills
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