Archive for the ‘Tammy Baldwin’ Category

When asked which Democrats in red states are in trouble, most political junkies will rattle off the names of Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly. I’m not here to question any of those names. I’m here to remind people that this list isn’t comprehensive. This article reminds people that Tammy Baldwin has ‘earned’ a spot on that list, too.

As I’ve said in the past, the Marquette University poll is the gold standard in Wisconsin, just like the Des Moines Register poll is the gold standard in Iowa. If you want the low-down on the state of the races in Wisconsin, the Marquette poll is the most accurate.

According to the latest Marquette University poll , “a recent Marquette Law School poll of registered voters found Baldwin’s favorability rating dipped three points over the past year, from 40 to 37 percent, while her unfavorability rating climbed from 35 to 39 percent.” Simply put, incumbents with approval ratings under 40% rarely win re-election. That’s because people already know them. There’s little they can do to change people’s opinions, too.

That isn’t Sen. Baldwin’s opinion, though:

Baldwin responded to a question about her low popularity by asserting, “We’re a terribly polarized state, which I hate. When I started in political life running for office, people were ticket-splitters. There wasn’t the partisan polarization that we see,” claimed Baldwin.

Sen. Baldwin’s ticket-splitting statement starts about 3:30 into this video:

Twenty years ago, the Democratic Party hadn’t gone off the rails. People could consider splitting tickets. Now that Democrats are lunatic demagogues, nobody thinks about ticket-splitting. Sen. Baldwin faces a tough re-election campaign.

It’s apparent that Democrats don’t understand that their unanimous vote against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has painted them into a political corner. Let’s start with by examining the difficult position Sen. Manchin painted himself into.

Sen. Manchin said “he’s repeatedly tried to find areas to reach across the aisle and vote with Republicans for Mr. Trump’s agenda, but said he couldn’t do it this time. ‘There’s some good in this bill. I acknowledge that,’ Mr. Manchin said on West Virginia talk radio, after host Hoppy Kercheval pointed to the tax cuts he said the state’s middle class residents stood to gain.” Why do I think that Sen. Manchin’s constituents will hold it against him for voting against their tax cuts? Why shouldn’t West Virginians, aka Mountaineers, hold it against Sen. Manchin for voting with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the tax cuts?

Later, Sen. Manchin complained that “the bills seemed too skewed toward business, pointing to the permanent nature of corporate tax cuts, compared to the planned expiration of the reductions in the individual rate.” First, I’m reminded of President Reagan’s saying that you can’t be pro-jobs and hate the employer. Apparently, Sen. Manchin didn’t learn that lesson. Next, Sen. Manchin is whining about the Senate’s rules, which he’s repeatedly voted to approve. If the Senate’s rules weren’t so screwed up, the individual tax cuts could’ve been made permanent.

Sen. Manchin’s excuses sound like ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuses than legitimate excuses.

By contrast, Patrick Morrisey, Sen. Manchin’s likely opponent, will be able to vote for eliminating coal industry-hating regulations, great judges and never vote with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren out of party loyalty. Hint: Anyone that thinks Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren plays well with coal miners should view this video:

Hillary lost West Virginia by 40+ points. What should frighten Sen. Manchin is that it wouldn’t surprise me if Hillary is more well liked than Sanders or Warren.

At a town-hall meeting in Missouri last week, Sen. Claire McCaskill framed her vote against the bill as disappointment that the plan favored corporations. She argued the bill betrayed the principles Mr. Trump had originally proposed. “This isn’t Trump’s bill,” she said at the event in suburban St. Louis. “Trump campaigned on the bill being about you.” But one resident told the St. Louis Public Radio before the event that he didn’t understand her opposition to the bill and hoped she’d explain it more. “I’m having a hard time finding a way that it does not benefit the people of Missouri,” said Dennis Hugo, a 32-year-old, self-described Libertarian.

Finally, there’s this:

In Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, another Democrat, told his voters he met with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence over the tax bill. “From the beginning of this year’s tax reform effort, I’ve been willing to partner with Republicans, Democrats, and President Trump and his administration,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star. “Despite this common ground, the bill produced by Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan was the complete opposite of what the president and I had discussed,” Mr. Donnelly added.

In North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who said last month she was open to voting for the bill, said that the $1.5 trillion in additional deficits piled up by the tax cuts swayed her to vote against it. But some voters in her state don’t see that as a reasonable opposition.

Sen. Heitkamp is gonna have a ton of difficulty peddling that excuse. There wasn’t a tax cut package that wasn’t going to pile up deficits according to the CBO’s scoring. That’s actually the least of Sen. Heitkamp’s worries. She, along with Sen. Donnelly, Sen. Tester, Sen. Baldwin, Sen. Casey and Sen. Brown, voted against significantly reducing the estate tax on farmers’ estates. The full expensing of equipment isn’t insignificant to farmers, either.

In DC, the spin will be that this helps corporations, not working people. In Indiana, Montana and North Dakota, big farms are incorporated. Saying that the Democrats’ messaging doesn’t exactly fit those states is understatement.

Technorati: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, Jon Tester, Death Tax, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Democrats, Election 2018

Tammy Baldwin is a far left lefty whose political career is about to come to a crashing halt. According to Ed’s post, Sen. Baldwin announced that she’s supporting “the full socialist.”

Ed’s post includes a paragraph that says “Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Tuesday became the single-payer bill’s first supporter from the class of Senate Democrats up for reelection next year in states Trump carried. But other politically imperiled incumbent Democrats have said no to Sanders.” Sen. Baldwin just gave the Republican Party of Wisconsin a sledge hammer to pound her over the head with, which I’m certain they’ll do.

The headline is worth its weight in gold but it’s the underlying facts that’ll bury Sen. Baldwin. As Ed highlights, “Socialized medicine got rejected in more places than just Vermont. Colorado voters balked at it after discovering that it would cost more than their state budget too — and that it would drive costs upward continuously, forcing either higher taxes or sharper rationing of care. California’s state senate passed single-payer, but the assembly tabled it after no one could figure out how to get $400 billion a year to pay for it, which is more than twice the annual state budget.”

Let’s get realistic about this. California represents approximately 12% of the US population. Multiply that $400,000,000,000 (four hundred billion dollars) times 8. That means the federal tab for Sanders’ bill would cost the US $3,200,000,000,000 or north of three trillion dollars each year.

Sen. Baldwin should start writing her concession speech. In a state that’s looking more red each year, Baldwin just announced that she’s heading in the opposite direction as Wisconsinites. Claire McCaskill is toast, too:

Sen. Claire McCaskill said in a brief interview that lawmakers have more work to do to keep health care costs in check “before we would think about expanding that [Medicare] system to everyone.”

The problem for Sen. McCaskill isn’t that answer. It’s what she’s said in the past:

Four months ago, Sen. McCaskill opposed Medicare for all. Unfortunately for Sen. McCaskill, that wasn’t her final position:

Check out that 34-second clip. She used 4 qualifiers in the first 14 seconds to tentatively support Medicare for All. Can we officially call that ‘leaving a politician some wiggle room’? That’s what career politicians do. The last thing they want is to stake out a principled, firm stand on an issue. On an issue like this, the last thing Sen. McCaskill wants is to be pinned down.

The bad news is that voters want politicians pinned down on the biggest issues of the day.

Technorati: Single-Payer Health Care, Medicare for All, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, Claire McCaskill, Democrats, Election 2018