Again: Giving him side-eye or the evil eye or whatever isn’t gonna change the fact that he’s gonna have tremendous power over the Dem Senate caucus even if they flip both GA seats.
In 2018, a progressive tried primarying Manchin. She got 30%.
In 2020, the same progressive was the nominee against Capito. She got 27%.
#FunFact: Remember how the “Bernie woulda won” folks insisted that Bernie would have won West Virginia in 2016 because he won the primary there?
Hillary received 26.4%. This year, the Bernie-style progressive received...27%.
(Biden got just under 30% this year BTW.)
My point is there's been this raging debate about whether you need to be a centrist/"conservadem" to win in WV *or* if there's really a huge cache of "hidden progressives" living there who were just waiting for a Bernie-type champion of the WWC to free them.
It's the former.
And no, I'm not happy about that AT ALL. There's a reason I raised money for EVERY Dem challenger, even in WY, OK, TN, SD & WV. I *wanted* that to be the case. I raised $56,000 for Paula Jean Swearengin when she won the primary.
It just isn't the case.
For those wondering, I raised the following for the "ultra long-shot" Dems:
AL (Jones): $177K
KY (McGrath): $236K
LA (Perkins): $75K
NE (Love): $45K
OK (Broyles): $59K
SD (Ahlers): $58K
TN (Bradshaw): $66K
WY (Ben-David): $62K
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The Washington #ACA exchange also announced that 30% of *new* enrollees have selected the new "Cascade Care" policies...aka the much-touted Public Option plans.
It's worth noting that this only amounts to around 720 people so far...but it's early yet.
WA's new quasi-Public Option is an important step, but it doesn't magically slash healthcare costs in half...because the main expense isn't on the *carrier* side, it's on the *provider rate* side. I watched this play out in real time last year: acasignups.net/19/04/29/washi…
The most important points in this @CoveredCA press release:
--90% of CoveredCA enrollees receive financial assistance, including 41,000 *middle-income* enrollees who were previously ineligible due to earning >400% FPL
--the average subsidized enrollee is only paying $127/mo for #ACA coverage, with subsidies covering 80% of their premiums
--*unsubsidized* enrollees who shop around for a better deal will save an average 7.4% on their premiums in the same metal tier
For all the "progressive v. moderate" bickering re. downballot, in the end, Democrats managed to get 12 million MORE people out there to vote for Biden than Hillary. We GOTV.
The REAL problem is Republicans *also* managed to get nearly 10 million more *Trump* voters out there.
For decades the assumption has been that of the ~40% of American non-voters, most of them were Democrats, so all we had to do is increase turnout as much as possible and voila.
The reality is more complicated--large chunks of them vote Dem...but large chunks also vote GOP.
Even if it's true, "just ramp up turnout" doesn't necessarily guarantee success.
Let's say there's ~100M who don't generally vote. Let's say that 60M are Dem ideologically.
If so, that means this year Dems turned out 20% of their chunk but the GOP turned out 25% of theirs.
1. DON'T MISS THE DEADLINE! In most states you have until December 15th to #GetCovered, but 10 states have a later deadline:
CA: Jan. 31
CO: Jan. 15
DC: Jan. 31
MA: Jan. 23
MN: Dec. 22
NV: Jan. 15
NJ: Jan. 31
NY: Jan. 31
PA: Jan. 15
RI: Jan. 23
2. MAKE SURE YOU ENROLL IN AN ACA-COMPLIANT PLAN! Use the official ACA exchange or an *authorized* 3rd-party site *which only sells ACA-compliant plans*!
...which is why the infighting between moderates and the far-left seems overstated. Aside from the “defund” wording hurting somewhat I’m not sure there’s as much “blame” to go around as many think.
The key to a big blue wave was to tie every GOP enabler to Trump. That...just didn’t happen, or at least it didn’t happen enough. Instead we got sort of a mixed bag. We gained 1-3 seats (tbd) in the Senate, lost perhaps 8-9 seats in the House (in red districts to begin with).
Here in Michigan we elected Biden, Gary Peters, flipped the state Supreme Court...but in the state legislature we gained two and lost two. Here in purple-trending-blue Oakland County, Dems won 5/6 county-wide races and 12/21 commission seats.
VT and MA both have GOP governors, and we remember what happened in the 2010 MA special election. Even in the House seats which are guaranteed to go blue, that’d still mean months with a vacancy which could mean a GOP majority in the meantime.
This is interesting, though: “John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress who was an adviser to Mr. Obama on climate change.”