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bluewater's JournalBiden faces challenge from Warren in Iowa
Joe Biden has had a steady lead in Iowa polls, but Democratic strategists say Elizabeth Warren is rising and poses the greatest risk to him in the Hawkeye state.Iowa has long been seen as a tough state for Biden, as its caucus-goers tend to go for more progressive candidates.
That would seem to fit the bill for Warren, though she is battling fellow progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for support among Iowa caucus-goers.
A Monmouth poll released last week provided great news for Warren, showing her with 19 percent and ahead of both Sanders (9 percent) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who won 11 percent.
But Biden was still in first, with 28 percent.
“I would definitely say she’s is the largest threat to Joe Biden,” Pat Rynard, founder of the popular Iowa Democratic news site Iowa Starting Line, said of Warren.
“My main observation is that she is the coalition candidate. She is the one in the field who can appeal to progressive activists while not scaring away the rest of the voters.”
Democratic consultant Tracy Sefl, who hails from Iowa, said Warren — who spent the first 5 months of her campaign tailor-focused on the state — is gaining traction because her campaign fits well with what Iowa voters want.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/456904-biden-faces-challenge-from-warren-in-iowa
Some labor unions split with Biden on 'Medicare for All'
Labor leaders dispute candidates’ claims that single-payer will leave their members worse off.Joe Biden and other moderate Democratic candidates opposed to “Medicare for All” have cast the plan as anti-labor, arguing that it would leave union members worse off by stripping them of the health care benefits they painstakingly negotiated.
But not all labor unions agree.
Only a few major unions have come out against the single-payer system that would all but eliminate private insurance, while many others remain undecided and some of the biggest labor groups in the country have embraced the plan.
Those supporting Medicare for All — or at least not yet ruling it out — say health care increasingly dominates contract battles, consuming bargaining power that could instead be directed toward raising wages and improving working conditions.
“When we’re able to hang on to the health plan we have, that’s considered a massive win," Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, told POLITICO. “But it’s a huge drag on our bargaining. So our message is: Get it off the table.”
It's true that union workers are wary of giving up hard-won benefits, even when promised a plan that covers more services for less money. That’s why Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Beto O’Rourke, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and John Delaney, among others, have invoked organized labor in recent debates and candidate forums to argue against mandatory single-payer health insurance.
"I've been listening to a lot of folks in labor who have said to me, 'Look, we negotiated contracts where we've given up wages for these health care benefits, and under the Medicare for All plan we would lose them, or we would be certainly in fear of losing them," Harris said days after the debate at a forum in Nevada hosted by the public sector union AFSCME.
But single-payer backers have hit back, asserting that union members would benefit from a government system that effectively guarantees comprehensive benefits and takes health care out of labor negotiations.
“We will do what every other major country on Earth does — guarantee all of you health care so you can sit down and negotiate decent wage increases,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who wrote the Senate Medicare for All bill and made the policy the centerpiece of his 2016 presidential bid, told the AFSCME forum in Nevada.
It’s an argument that resonates with many labor leaders.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/11/joe-biden-medicare-for-all-unions-1456179
Inside Warren's early-state sleeper campaign
The working idea: to mobilize a force not only on election days, but also to move Congress on issues for which there is broad existing public support.
By Jonathan Allen
Late last month, Gabriel di Chiara Spada, a political operative for Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign, showed up at The Writer's Block bookstore in downtown Las Vegas to hear children read emotional accounts about President Donald Trump's plan to end the "temporary protected status" for immigrants from certain countries.
"Separating families is wrong, no matter which agency or program or court is responsible," he tweeted along with a picture of an 8-year-old girl reading an op-ed about children who are U.S. citizens being cut off from parents who are not. "The words of these kids proves it."
It's a bit unusual for a presidential campaign's staff to invest time in events that aren't directly related to the candidate's election. But for Warren's team, it's all part of the plan: A small army of her organizers has deployed to early-voting states and embedded into local communities.
"She is generating buzz because her campaign shows up everywhere," said one prominent Nevada Democrat who asked to remain anonymous to give a candid assessment. "Every time there’s a community event, there is Warren representation there."
By pitching in locally, Warren's organizers hope to demonstrate at a personal level that they are investing in the concerns of the same voters — and potential volunteers — whose support they are courting for the Massachusetts Democrat at the federal level. It's just one part of a political organizing operation designed to match Warren's message of igniting a movement, voter by voter, that creates "big, structural change" in the country.
"We have to build something that has a line through the primaries, through the general election, through getting Congress to do big things," said the Warren campaign's chief strategist, Joe Rospars, who worked on Barack Obama's two winning bids for the presidency.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/inside-warren-s-early-state-sleeper-campaign-n1039781
Kamala Harris: My 3AM Agenda
Kamala Harris
Published on Aug 8, 2019
This election is about American families and what wakes them up in the middle of the night. My 3AM Agenda offers and delivers tangible benefits that improve Americans’ daily lives; including Medicare for All, giving working and middle-class families an overdue raise, and guaranteeing women are paid equally.
Learn more at kamalaharris.org/3AM.
Beto and Warren call Trump a "white supremacist"
Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren call President Trump a "white supremacist"
Other 2020 Democrats, like Joe Biden and Cory Booker, have not gone as far in their condemnations of the president
by SHIRA TARLO
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke both said they believe President Donald Trump is a white supremacist — the fiercest denunciations yet of the commander-in-chief's rhetoric from Democratic presidential candidates.
Warren told the New York Times "without hesitation" that Trump is a white supremacist who has "done everything he can to stir up racial conflict and hatred in this country."
"He has given aid and comfort to white supremacists. He's done the wink and a nod. He has talked about white supremacists as fine people," Warren told the newspaper, seemingly referring to Trump's infamous "both sides" defense after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a self-professed neo-Nazi killed a counter-protester.
"Donald Trump has a central message," she added. "He says to the American people, if there's anything wrong in your life, blame them — and 'them' means people who aren't the same color as you, weren't born where you were born, don’t worship the same way you do."
O'Rourke, meanwhile, said on Wednesday that the president made it "very clear" that he is a white supremacist who has "dehumanized or sought to dehumanize those who do not look like or pray like the majority here in this country."
The pair's pointed declarations follow last week's back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, which left at least 31 people dead and 53 injured.
The shooter accused of carrying out the massacre in El Paso wrote in a racist screed that "this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas," directly echoing Trump's repeated warnings of "an invasion" at the border ahead of the 2018 midterm election cycle.
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/08/beto-orourke-and-elizabeth-warren-call-president-trump-a-white-supremacist/
Warren highest FAVORABILITY in IOWA poll
Monmouth University
Poll type: Live
538 Rating: A+
2020 DEMOCRATIC FIELD – IOWA PARTY VOTER OPINION
__Favorable, Unfavorable, Net rating___
Biden...... 73 19 +54
Sanders... 58 33 +25
Warren.... 76 14 +62
Harris...... 68 19 +49
Buttigieg.. 68 11 +57
Booker..... 56 16 +40
Klobuchar. 50 17 +33
O’Rourke.. 43 24 +19
Castro...... 47 13 +34
Steyer...... 34 25 +9
Bullock..... 22 19 +3
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_ia_080819/
Disclaimer : These polls are more than 6 months out from the Caucus, and hence are early polls. No single poll should be over emphasized.
Biden Leads, Warren strong in latest PENNSYLVANIA POLL
Franklin & Marshall College
Poll Type: Live
538 Rating: B-
Biden....... 28%
Warren......21%
Sanders... 12%
Harris........ 8%
Buttigieg... 6%
https://www.fandm.edu/uploads/files/366978281722999151-f-m-poll-release-august-2019.pdf
Disclaimer : These polls are more than 6 months out from the Primary, and hence are early polls. No single poll should be over emphasized.
Winning the battleground states in the rust belt is important. In this poll Warren shows surprising strength in Biden's home state.
Warren SURGES in latest A RATED Monmouth Iowa poll !!!
Monmouth University
Poll type: Live
538 Rating: A+
_____April 9th --> August 8th
Biden....... 27% --> 28%
Warren...... 7% --> 19%
Harris........ 7% --> 11%
Sanders... 16% ---> 9%
Buttigieg... 9% ---> 8%
Klobuchar.. 4% ---> 3%
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_ia_080819/
Disclaimer : These polls are more than 6 months out from the Caucus, and hence are early polls. No single poll should be over emphasized.
Democrats Are Having the Wrong Health Care Debate
They should skip the argument over Medicare for All and find the best ways to tackle affordability.
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel
[snip]
For the other 295 million Americans who have some form of health insurance, the problem is high costs. Even with health insurance, high premiums, deductibles and co-pays, surprise hospital bills and exorbitant drug prices inhibit people from accessing care and taking their medications, threaten to drain their savings, or even force Americans into bankruptcy. Democrats need a plan to deal with this problem.
Four policies can effectively tackle the affordability issue. First, we need to address drug prices. The United States has just over 4 percent of the world’s population, and yet it accounts for nearly half of global drug spending. On average, the United States spends $1,443 per person a year on drugs. This cannot be explained by utilization; the difference is the drug prices we pay.
[snip]
Second, hospital prices are soaring and must be contained. Medicare and Medicaid set their own hospital prices, which have risen modestly in recent years. But hospital prices for the roughly 160 million Americans with private insurance have shot up as much as drug prices. In 1996, hospitals charged private insurance companies about 6 percent more than Medicare. In 2012, they charged 75 percent more than Medicare. A recent RAND study indicates that, on average, hospitals now charge private insurance companies 141 percent more than Medicare.
The main culprit behind this price escalation appears to be the mergers of hospital systems, which creates local monopolies. Researchers at Yale calculate that capping prices for inpatient care for private insurers at 120 percent of Medicare would save about 20 percent of those costs, approximately $90 billion per year. That cap may be too aggressive, but a cap of 140 percent would save more than $30 billion.
[snip]
Next, we need a policy that targets wasteful insurance billing practices. In 2010, the National Academy of Medicine estimated that about 14 percent of health care spending was related to billing and insurance-related administrative activities. Updating those numbers for today, the Center for American Progress estimates that we spend nearly $500 billion a year on billing and insurance processing. Based on comparisons with other countries, about half of that is classified as “excess” — a polite way of saying waste.
[snip]
The fourth option is to push even harder on switching from fee-for-service payment to value-based alternatives. As it stands, when physicians avoid an unnecessary test or deliver the same outcomes for less money, they suffer financially. Capitation, bundles and global budgets make doctors and hospitals responsible for both the total cost of caring for patients and the quality of their outcomes. Ultimately, it is doctors who write orders and decide on a patients’ suite of tests and treatments.
[snip]
These four simple policies can easily save more than $100 billion and, if pushed aggressively, maybe close to $200 billion per year. Americans and American businesses are crying out for affordable health care. That, along with auto-enrollment, should be what Democrats fight for in 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/democrats-health-care.html
It's not enough to just say Medicare for All is politically unattainable or would cost too much. Candidates that oppose Medicare for All must show their own math on how they would make health care affordable.
Right now, it simply is not affordable for average working families.
Bernie & Warren DESTROY Dem Debate...and Marianne!
David Pakman Show Published on Jul 31, 2019
--Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dominate the first night of the second Democratic presidential debate, and Marianne Williamson does pretty well, too
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