Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

Are Working Americans Serfs of Citizens? →

The Hobby Lobby case has generally been framed as being primarily about the freedom of employers to exercise religious views. The freedom of the worker to do whatever she wants to with the compensation she has earned by her work, however, seems to be overlooked in that paradigm. Health insurance is not some kind of largesse bestowed upon workers by generous employers. It is something that employers over a certain size are required by law to provide, like social security payments of a minimum wage. In this regard it is part of the basic compensation package for employees.

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Hillary Clinton's Outsider Insider Candidacy →

In a year when, even more than most, the Democratic Party, and indeed the country, may be looking for an outsider, Clinton is about as far from being an outside as possible, except for one thing. Clinton would have a real chance at being the first woman president. That alone makes her different from every other previous president as well as every other nominee from a major political party. Thus, Clinton is a consummate insider with one very substantial outsider credential. That alone may not be enough, but it is something on which Clinton can build a successful campaign.

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What Do Obama's Bad Poll Numbers Mean?

During his last years in office, Obama will have several items on his agenda, but fixing the ACA should be at the top of that list. The administration has framed the ACA as the signature legislative accomplishment of Obama's presidency. Fixing the ACA will not be easy, as clearing up computer problems is only part of it. The broader problems of ensuring that people can keep their insurance policies and that younger healthier people sign up for health care through the program are more important. Making progress, or even to be seen as working hard to make progress can begin to turn Obama's poll numbers around. The state of the Republican's in congress makes this somewhat easier for Obama as his political opponents are discredited outside of their own partisan base.

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Bill de Blasio and the Future of Progressive New York →

The last time New York was governed by a Democratic mayor, it was a very different place. When David Dinkins took office in 1990 maybe 1,000 New Yorkers had an email address, people who rode bikes were considered weird even by progressives, racial tension was at the center of city politics and climate change was known as global warming and was not an issue anybody but a few scientists and environmentalist discussed. Most significantly, the people in the city were very different, age replacement, immigration and other population movements have changed the city a great deal. Joe Lhota learned this the hard way as he and former mayor Rudy Giuliani sought to scare people by painting a fear mongering and inaccurate picture of Dinkins, a mayor who many New Yorkers don't remember at all.

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The Future of the Health Insurance Policy →

The bigger problem is that for the ACA to work financially, healthy people, particularly young childless healthy people, need to sign up for insurance. In any health insurance system, these young healthy people keep the cost down for others. While this may not seem fair, any American who has received health care through their employer has been part of a similar system. At a big company, the young healthy workers subsidize the older and less healthy workers. The difference is that people who get health insurance through their jobs are mandated to participate in the program. Of course, everybody is mandated to buy health insurance, but it will soon become clear that the enforcement of this mandate will not be strong.

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The Myth of the Republican Civil War

The primary reason for this is that there already has been a civil war in the Republican Party; and the far right won. The situation in the Republican Party today is very different than at various points in the 20th century when liberal or moderate Republicans fought with right wing for control of the party. Today, there is no battle between the moderate and far right wing of the Republican Party. That fight ended years ago with the moderates losing. Although there may be a small handful of centrist Republicans remaining in the party, they do not have a lot of power and move quickly to the right as they become national figures. The most recent obvious example of that was Mitt Romney who had governed Massachusetts as a moderate, but ran for president as a unapologetic conservative. Even people like Chris Christie who are said to represent the moderate wing of the party are, in many respects, conservatives who either have had to govern or who come from the northeast.

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Contempt for President Obama is Behind the Shutdown

The government shutdown is not driven by a Republican desire to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Nor is it about trying to reign in government spending or limit the national debt. It is, at its core, the latest act in an effort by the far right of the Republican Party to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama.

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The Republicans Finally Took Their Ball and Bat and Went Home →

Recent Republican actions have made it clear that too many in that party are unwilling to accept defeat and plan for the next fight. The Republican Party is like that annoying kid many of us knew growing up who would threaten to take his ball and bat home if he does not get to pitch and bat cleanup. For Republicans this is now a guiding principle of policy making not just the petulant and destructive behavior of a spoiled child.

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Red Baiting is the Last Refuge to which Joe Lhota Clings →

Lhota's argument that New York does not need a Stalinist mayor is probably true, but not exactly pertinent, and amounts to little more than name calling. However, if one is going to play the guilt by association game, it is considerably more relevant to raise the question of whether New Yorkers who came to this city from other parts of the US or the world to escape religious persecution, homophobia, racism or fanaticism needs a mayor who represents a party which continues to reflect those values-not 25 years ago, but today. It is hard to miss the irony that Lhota's campaign is shaping up to be framed on the one hand by an attempt to tar de Blasio for positions he took, which were good and defendable ones, a quarter century ago, and on the other hand by running from the extremist reputation of his own party.

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Still No Movement on Gun Regulation

It is the nature of progressive change that it often seems natural and inevitable in retrospect. This sometimes makes it easy to forget how much hard work it took and how much uncertainty there was in the middle of the struggle. This week provided evidence of how far we are from progressive change in other areas. The horrible shootings in both Washington DC and Chicago are a reminder, although it is not clear why anybody would need one, that gun violence remains a serious problem in the US. Both of these shooting took a terrible human tool killing a total of 13 and wounding at least that many.

These tragedies have led, not to any discussion of gun regulations, as few in Washington think there can be any progress at this time in that area. Rather, they have led to a strange kind of meta-narrative in which the theme seems to be that nobody is talking about gun regulations after these shootings. This is, of course, a way of talking about gun regulations, albeit one that is not very confrontational, nor very hopeful.

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Third Term Problems for Bloomberg and Quinn →

In October of 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg successfully persuaded the City Council to change the law governing term limits so that he could run for a third term in 2009. The speaker of the City Council at that time, without whose support the change would not have been possible, was Christine Quinn. This law did not make national news and barely resonated beyond the political elite in New York as most New Yorkers who were thinking about politics in late October of 2008 were paying more attention to the prospect of the presidency of George W. Bush coming to an end, and the likelihood that an exciting Democratic Senator for Illinois would get elected president in early November.

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Syria and the Foreign Policy Echo Chamber →

If an app existed that could maximize the number and breadth of strong arguments against a policy decision as well as the potential damage that policy could cause while minimizing the possibility that the policy in question could accomplish anything, it would produce the administration's proposed strike against Syria.

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Is Hillary Clinton in a Weaker Position Now? →

Hillary Clinton has not yet announced whether or not she will be a candidate for president in 2016, and already there is a PAC aimed at thwarting her candidacy. The creatively named Stop Hillary PAC is committed to trying to destroy Clinton's aspirations by running negative ads and otherwise seeking to portray her in the worst possible light. Clinton remains the front-runner for her party's nomination, should she run, but it is possible that the right is making a mistake by attacking Clinton.

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Anthony Weiner Could Create Problems for Hillary Clinton Too →

Even if Weiner and Abedin had no connection to Clinton, it would be hard to watch Abedin's support for her husband and not think of Hillary Clinton's support for President Bill Clinton during the various sex related scandals during and before the Clinton presidency. Hillary Clinton has a long record of accomplishment since she and her husband left the White House. Should she run for president, that is the record she will want to highlight. Anything that brings attention away from that record and back to the worst periods of the Clinton presidency is bad for Hillary Clinton. That is precisely what this scandal is doing now.

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Anthony Weiner Is a Caricature of a Politician →

Weiner entered this race knowing there would be more revelations about his online conduct while simultaneously arguing that since he has reconciled with is wife, we the voters should forgive him too. The initial coverage of Weiner reflected this angle which, along with his name recognition, contributed to his impressive poll numbers. This was a mischaracterization of why Weiner's conduct is so troubling. This scandal was never primarily concerning Weiner's personal life and relationship with his wife. The real issues in the scandal are Weiner's serial dishonesty, unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions and extraordinary self-absorption. Again these are characteristics that are not exactly in short supply among politicians, but more extreme in the case of Weiner.

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Zimmerman's Acquittal Shows How Little Has Changed →

One of the most painful aspects of the George Zimmerman verdict is not that he was found not guilty, but that the verdict was so unsurprising. The message this verdict sent, that killing an unarmed African-American man for no particular or rational reason, is not a crime, is not new. On the contrary, it is a message that the criminal justice system has sent over and over again through the years, and only occasionally in the context of high-profile trials like that of George Zimmerman. Zimmerman's acquittal is a reminder that regardless of what our constitution or laws say, or of the ethnic background of the occupant of the White House, our criminal justice still does not treat all people as equal.

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The President and the Republicans →

The plight of the Republican Party during the years Obama has been in office has been damaged because every time they begin to make some traction against the President, some nut metaphorically runs into the center of the political dialog yells "We hate women!" several times and runs out again, changing the subject and the political dynamic. This time the nut was Rick Perry, but it has been Todd Akin, Rush Limbaugh and others in recent years. Sweeping anti-abortion legislation, of the sort proposed by Perry, may help with the Republican base and in solid red states and districts, but it damages the Republican Party nationally and with swing voters.

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Edward Snowden and the Story of American Weakness →

This entire episode has been bad for the U.S. for several reasons, but one that has been largely overlooked it the extent to which it makes the U.S. look weak. Spying on citizens, tracking their phone calls and other communications is what one expects from vulnerable authoritarian regimes, not from governments claiming to be the leaders of the free world. Strong countries have a functioning modern state that can assure secrecy and do not seek to cut fiscal corners by contracting out key functions to private companies who often enjoy useful ties to current and former government officials. Again, this kind of incompetence and weak state is not what the most powerful country in the world should be projecting.

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The NSA and the Foreign Policy Establishment →

Interestingly, the public opinion data suggests that the NSA surveillance program is supported by a majority of the American people, although one that falls significantly short of a consensus. It is likely that one of the reasons for this is that opinion leaders have begun to close ranks in support of this program. The speed with which the foreign policy establishment, ranging from former vice-president Dick Cheney to noted New York Timescolumnist Thomas Friedman, have evinced support for the program and criticism, in some cases spilling over to an amateurish contempt, for Edward Snowden, the man who made this information public, is one of the most interesting sub-plots to emerge from the news about NSA surveillance.

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President Obama is Soft on Our Civil Liberties →

President Obama has disappointed some progressives on issues including health care, banking and finance, and foreign policy. In these areas, however, there is room for debate, with some progressives believing Obama has abandoned his progressive principles too quickly, while others have argued that the president has had to act pragmatically; and that delivering something is better than producing nothing. Civil liberties, on the other hand, is one area where Obama has unambiguously failed his progressive supporters, and his country more generally.

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