Social Security Under Siege on its Birthday

Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act.  Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, behind the President was the administration point person for the Act.

 Note--Your scribe, the Old Man, in the interest of transparency admits that he is a recipient of Social Security and Medicare and damn glad of it!

On August 14, 1935 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.  It was the crowning achievement of the New Deal.   It has rightly been acclaimed “the most successful American anti-poverty program in history.”  Once considered so popular that proposals to alter or abolish it were widely considered the third rail of American politics—too dangerous to seriously advance.  But that was before years of a carefully managed drum beat of hysteria that the system was somehow running out of money which has convinced many folks, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that they will never live to collect what they have been paying in for their entire working lives.

That kind of talk was the camel’s nose under the tent that allowed retirement ages to creep upward and for talk of limiting or reducing future benefits become fashionable in some quarters.  Proposals to privatize all or part of the system in whole or in part seemed to be gain steam for a while.  These would allow younger workers to take all or part of their Social Security contributions and invest them in private IRA-like accounts.

  

The fears of some Republicans in this 2005 cartoon were justified--George W. Bush's support of Social Security privatization helped cost him re-election and punished Congressional Republicans.

The wind was kicked out of that fantasy in the stock market collapse of 2008, which understandably raised doubts for the safety of investment in the volatile Stock Market.

But some bad ideas just won’t stay dead.  Republican Vice Presidential Candidate in 2012 Paul Ryan refloated various alleged reforms, including the privatization scheme.  That was good politics in the short run as Tea Party activists were threatening to sit out the election because Mitt Romney was allegedly too moderate or perhaps even a hated RINO (Republican in Name Only.)  But it surely it contributed to the GOP’s rather decisive drubbing at the hands of Barack Obama and Social Security loving Democrats.

In the 2016 clown car posse of Republican presidential wannabes mostly kept their yaps shut about Social Security even if their plans did not change.  Libertarian darling Rand Paul, however, was actually for abolition of the system, but you have to dig deep into his position papers and old speeches to safely conservative audiences to discover it.  Hapless Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, dragging bottom in the polls tried to attract attention and support from deep pocket oligarchs by making noises about hitting the program.  Jeb Bush, the White Hope of party regulars and insiders as a supposed moderate  who could win a general election, showed himself to be a clone of his brother who pushed so-called reform and privatization by suggesting that lazy Americans need to work until they are 70 or beyond.  Donald Trump avoided the topic except to claim that he would “save” Social Security.

Of course the demographics of a lot of Baby Boomers retiring together over the next few years in a kind of slow motion avalanche and the reduction of collection of FICA taxes after the economic collapse due to heavy unemployment and actually falling wages for those still employed did put a strain on the system, which could theoretically go bankrupt in a few years unless “something is done.”

But that something does not have to be further raises in the retirement age, reduction of benefits, privatization, or changing the system from social insurance to a means tested welfare program—the later program sometimes surprisingly advanced on the right knowing that it would erode support for the system among higher income voters.  

Even before his first run for the Presidency, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was sponsoring legislation to save Social Security without reducing benefits or raising retirement age.

Bernie Sanders, the Independent Vermont Senator and proudly self-proclaimed socialist who surged from being a snubbed dark horse challenger to a serious rival to Hillary Clinton as a populist powerhouse, long supported and proposed simple Social Security reforms that would keep the program safe and solvent well into the next century.  He pointed out that simply raising the cap on wage income subject to FICA taxes and/or levying FICA taxes on non-wage income above a certain level would do the trick.

Now, three years into the Trump era and the all-fronts attack on all popular Democratic programs from Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA),  to Environmental Protection Agency regulations, to voting rights and election security, Social Security cuts are once again on the table.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed the burgeoning deficit on social insurance programs and so-called entitlement programs when he publicly pledged to pursue massive cuts in October of last year.  Despite the fact that the ballooning deficit was clearly the direct result of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy which slashed Federal tax revenues and that the Social Security Trust Fund is entirely separate from the operational budget, McConnell has recently re-affirmed his intention to make cuts a priority in the next Congress.

Meanwhile even more draconian plans to actually abolish the Social Security System have been proposed by some Republican in the House of Representatives.  Although these bills have zero chance in the Democratic controlled House, they make propaganda points with the libertarian far right and the deep-pocket billionaires that finance them. 

Republican/Libertarian and Ayn Rand fan boy has long set his sights on destroying Social Security.  With his brother Koch family PACS and Dark Money fronts fuel new attacks on the system with the help of other billionaire oligarchs.

Before Social Security was enacted those who lived beyond their income producing years were the poorest sector of society, particularly those who could not rely on the support and/or charity of family.  And the necessity of supporting an elderly relative drove many young families into poverty because of the extra expenses and the foregone income of those who had to become caretakers. 

Today, those over 65 are the least likely of all age cohorts to live in poverty. 

The battle for Federal retirement insurance was a long one.  The first such scheme was advocated as early as the 1820’s by trade unionists and socialists in Europe.  German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck implemented the first old age insurance plan in 1889 in the hope of achieving social stability in the new German Empire and uniting the loyalties of citizens of the various principalities he had brought together.  The German system provided contributory retirement benefits and disability benefits as well.  Participation was mandatory and contributions were taken from the employee, the employer, and the government.  It would become essentially the model for F.D.R.’s initiative. 

Social security plans had spread over Europe but were resisted as unwanted government interference in business in this country.  Social security, along with unemployment insurance, a government medical plan, the eight hour day, and limits to child labor were key planks of Eugene V. Debs’ Socialist Party platform of 1912.  It was widely supported by most of the labor movement, although some craft unions which had wrung private pension plans from employers were opposed. 

Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins spearheaded the drive for Social Security for the administration.  Republicans in Congress bitterly opposed the program, decrying it as socialist, un-American, unconstitutional, and a business destroying tax burden.  Sound familiar?   

A poster promoting the 1939 Amended Social Security Act

But the program was still wildly popular with voters, who elected large majorities of Democrats committed to the program in both houses of Congress.  Some compromises, however, had to be made and the original system was far from perfect.  Nearly 50% of all workers were excluded from coverage including workers in agriculture, domestic service, government employees, and most teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers. The act also did not cover those who worked intermittently including most seasonal workers. 

These provisions fell especially heavy on women and minorities who were disproportionately engaged in these occupations.  90% of all domestic workers were women and 2/3 of all employed Black women worked in domestic service.  And Southern Black men were predominately engaged as agricultural workers.  For these reasons the NAACP actually opposed the legislation that reached Roosevelt’s desk calling it, “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.” Most women qualified for old age insurance only through their husbands.  Women’s payments under the system were based on the presumption that mothers would not be in the work force.

Black workers heavily employed in agriculture, domestic service, seasonal and casual labor were largely excluded from Social Security coverage.  Women of all ages were disadvantaged by having their benefits tied to their husband's earnings.

The Social Security Act also established the Aid to Dependent Children, a welfare program designed to support children in unemployed families who had exhausted unemployment insurance.  Management of these programs was left to the States, at the insistence of Southern Democrats who did not want to disturb the racial status quo.  As a result Southern states routinely adopted rules making it difficult or nearly impossible for Black families to qualify. 

This became one of the major reasons, along with increased employment opportunities as the country geared up for war later in the decade, for the Great Migration of rural Southern Blacks to Northern cities. 

In 1937 the Social Security withholding tax went into effect and the system began building reserves to make the first payments to retirees, originally scheduled for 1942.  Some economists charged that the income taken out of circulation by the tax was responsible for the 1937 Roosevelt Recession.  Others have pointed to drastic reductions in Federal spending because of budget concerns and because key elements of the New Deal had been declared unconstitutional as being the real culprit in the downturn.  Some felt that building a huge reserve before beginning to make pay-outs was a drag on the economy. 

So in 1939 Social Security was amended to begin making payout two years earlier than planned.  This caused the plan to become de facto a pay as you go system with current workers supporting the immediate benefits to retirees instead of relying of a large accumulated fund.  The amendments did establish a trust fund for any surplus funds managed by the Secretary of the Treasury. The money could be invested in both non-marketable and marketable securities. 

But because this trust fund became a Treasury Department asset, Congress later began to borrow against it to fund current general spending.

Amendments to the act also tied women’s benefits more closely than ever to their husband’s income. The amendment added wives, elderly widows, and dependent survivors of covered male workers to those who could receive old age pensions. These individuals had previously been granted lump sum payments upon only death or coverage through the Aid to Dependent Children program.  

Ida Mae Fuller receives first Social Security check.in 1940.

While this rescued many widows from poverty, the amendments also devalued the value of benefits a woman could receive from her own labor.  If a married wage-earning woman’s own benefit was worth less than 50% of her husband’s benefit, she was treated as a wife, not a worker and the dependents of women who were covered by Social Security benefits were ineligible for her benefits.  Changes were also made to the Aid to Dependent Children program, including raising the age of eligible children to 18. 

Despite being far from perfect, the first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont.

The Greenbacks—Third Party Rebellion Lessons

Chatter is ramping up again about a possible serious third party bid on the left in the 2020 presidential elections.  This time the talk focuses not on the Greens, who hovered on the fringes of American politics for almost two decades expecting to explode into a serious contender.  Their two-time nominee Dr. Jill Stein seems to have had as many Russian contacts and been hyped by Putin bots and trolls in an effort to splinter the Democrats and left that their brand has been perhaps permanently tarnished.

No, this time the talk centers on a Democratic Socialist or at least progressive party inspired and perhaps led into the elections by Senator Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 years old on the day of the election.  The so-called Berniebots are so consumed with seething rage at Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, and any everyone who supported her that reconciliation seems impossible.  They often lash out in ways that make it seem that they believe the Democrats are worse than Donald Trump.

Currently they are manufacturing all sorts of scenarios in which a Sanders led party can win the Presidency, although none of these show any evidence of taking more than a fraction of Congressional and Senate seats.  All depend upon a shattered Republican Party with three or more factions tearing themselves to pieces—Trump or a Trumpist avenger cloaked in neo-fascist populism, conventional conservatives and/or religious right theocrats, and libertarian Ayn Rand worshipers.  It also posits an utterly supine Democratic Party with the weakest possible nominiee.

Some of this is marginally imaginable if Sanders himself is the nominee.  But at his age his health may well prevent that.  And there is no heir apparent.  Many of the obvious choices like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have already been savaged for minor deviations from the line or for simply supporting the Democratic ticket in 2017.  Indeed no figure could satisfy the purity tests demanded by hard-core Sanderites.  Any nominee for a new third party other than Sanders would limp out of their convention with factions of the movement having already stomped out and setting up rumps. 

There are no exact parallels in history but there are some lessons to be learned.  Take, for instance, those post-Civil War Greenbacks.

The Greenback Party logo was rather charming.

On November 25, 1874 a new political party was born at a convention held in Indianapolis, Indiana.  They called themselves the Independent Party.  In some states they would first appear on the ballot as the National Party.  But within months the new party was widely known as the Greenbacks as they grew at an astonishing rate challenging the entrenched Republican and Democratic Parties.

The Party was formed out of frustration with both major parties as major eastern banking interests demanded that the Federal Government stop issuing paper money and return the issuance of currency to the banks.  Federal paper money, popularly known as greenbacks, had been first issued under Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase to help finance the Civil War.  Inflation had been an inevitable result.

The banks and conservative hard money politicians in both parties, wanted not only to stop the government printing presses, they wanted to require that bills be redeemed in specie—gold.  This would create instant deflation.  But farmers and others who took out loans in inflated dollars would be required to repay the full face value of the loan plus interest in the much more expensive new currency or gold.  This alone would wipe out many farmers and small businesses.  It was also a blow at western mining interests by demonetizing silver coinage.  Silver coins would continue to circulate, but notes—printed currency—would have to be paid in gold.

The banks got their way with the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873.  Facing ruin, borrowers and their soft money supporters in both parties, organized to challenge the banking oligarchs of the Gilded Age.

Within months the new party was established and running under different names in most states.  Although its greatest strength was in the Mid-West and West, it also found support among small farmers in the South, and Northeast.  In fact, with Democrats and Republicans fracturing mainly along the lines of the Civil War, it looked for a time like the Greenbacks were the only truly national party.

The Species Payment Restoration Act of 1875 completed what the Coinage Act had begun.  It limited remaining Greenbacks in circulation to $300 million and The Secretary of the Treasury was directed to “redeem, in coin” legal-tender notes presented for redemption by January 1, 1879.

A poster for the 1876 candidate Peter Cooper

In 1876 the new party nominated the distinguished, but eccentric 85 year old Peter Cooper as its candidate for President.  Cooper was an industrialist who had built the first practical locomotive in the U.S.; a philanthropist who had founded the Cooper Union, a college open to students of all economic, religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds; and a leading liberal voice in New York City politics.  The party knew it had no chance to win the presidency, but the prestige of Cooper led to success in getting on the ballot in most states and helping elect local office holders.

The Greenbacks crested in the off-presidential year of 1876 when they elected 13 members of Congress. Thomas Ewing, Jr. of Ohio a pre-war Kansas Free Soil leader and post-war soft money Democrat, was the leading spokesman for the party in Congress and the most widely known and influential public figure.

In 1880 the party broadened its base and attracted new support from industrial workers in the Northeast, especially the politically savvy Irish, by adopting a staunchly pro-labor platform advocating a progressive income tax and the eight hour day.  It also made a bid for the support of middle class reformers, previously primarily Republican, by endorsing women’s suffrage.  The rise of the Grange Movement mirrored Greenback popularity among its original farmer base.

Iowa Congressman James B. Weaver got the 1880 nomination.

The 1880 Presidential Candidate was Iowa’s James B. Weaver. He received 305,997 popular votes, 3.3% of the total and the high water mark of the Greenbacks in Presidential elections.

Despite the continued popularity of their core demand—the return to a system of government issued currency detached from gold—in some areas, the party began a decline.  Those middle class reformers never did abandon the Republicans in any significant degree.  Southern Democrats gained in popularity as Reconstruction ended and they seized state governments from Black Republicans and fusion or pro-union whites leading to the Jim Crow Era.

The conservative press of both major parties savagely attacked the Greenbacks as wild eyed radicals in 180.

Meanwhile the Knights of Labor largely collapsed following the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the rising craft union movement was both conservative and actually hostile to mass industrial workers greatly weakening their political power and influence.  The Irish returned to the traditional Democratic loyalties in most big cities.

Back in Indianapolis the 1884 Party convention nominated Benjamin F. Butler for President.  Butler had also received the nomination of an even smaller Anti-Monopoly Party.  The sitting Governor of Massachusetts, Butler was a polarizing figure in American politics.  A pre-war Democrat, Butler was a political general famous for his occupation command of New Orleans and the order to treat “disrespectful” ladies as “women of the streets plying their trade.”  He had a later command of the Department of Virginia where he refused to return runaway slaves that reached his lines to their owners, declaring the “contraband of war.”  He was also widely suspected of corruption.  Elected to Congress after the war he became a leading Radical Republican and one of the managers of the President Andrew Johnson’s unsuccessful impeachment prosecution before the Senate.  Back in his home state of Massachusetts he ran three times for Governor, finally winning in 1882 on a Democrat-Greenback fusion ticket.  

The nomination of controvercial former Civil War Union general and Massechusett Governor Benjamin Buttler killed the remaining support of the Greenbacks in the South.

Butler’s presence on the ticket, despite a Mississippi running mate, virtually killed the Greenbacks in the South.  As head of the ticket he won only 177,096 popular votes, just 1.7% of the total.  The party was also reduced to just two seats in Congress, one of them taken by former Presidential candidate Weaver.

By 1888 local party apparatus around the country had collapsed.  Only 8 delegates showed up for a nominating convention.  They gave up and went home.  The party was essentially dead.  But not its ideas.

In the 1890’s the new Populist Party took up most of its core platform.  The Populists’ first Presidential Candidate in 1892 was the last Greenback in Congress—James B. Weaver.  In 1896 fiery Nebraska orator William Jennings Bryan got the nomination of both the Populists and Democrats, campaigning on the old Greenback demand of the free coinage of silver and end to the de-facto gold standard.

What the Fug Just Happened?

Donald Trump will be President of the United States.  In the immortal words of Margo Channing, “Fasten your seatbelts, we’re going to have a bumpy ride.”

So, what the fuck just happened?

The despicable Rudy Giuliani, of all people, offered one of the best historical insights last night in an interview on MSNBC.  He compared Trump’s victory to Andrew Jackson’s triumph over John Quincy Adams in 1828, a watershed election that road a populist wave and smashed the reigning political establishment. It was the paradigm shift election that I failed to consider in my blog essay yesterday.

Like Trump, Jackson was a popular personality—a folk hero—of a sort that despite being personally wealthy and having adopted the trappings and lifestyle of the aristocratic Southern Planter class, convinced the common man that he was their champion.  In doing so he smashed his own political party—the Republicans founded by Thomas Jefferson—and built on its ruins the Democratic Party.  He ousted a respected and successful incumbent president.  He did it so completely that it took years for a ragged Anti-Jacksonian coalition to form a fragile, unstable, and self-contradictory new opposition party—the largely hapless Whigs.  Jackson had more or less a free hand to pursue sweeping change including the final destruction of the Bank of the United States, the development of the political spoils system to reward supporters and punish enemies, and launch is Indian removal policy.  Each of these was highly popular with the people who elected him, and deplored by the old political establishment and traditional business interests.  It also sharply divided the nation geographically with the South and emerging West in one camp and New England and the Northern states heavily settled by the New England diaspora in another—divisions which persist in some ways to this day.

1828, 2016--Comparable elections?

Of course this comparison isn’t perfect.  Adams was an incumbent.  But Hillary Clinton was running largely as the anointed heir of two term Barak Obama.  Obama leaves office personally popular and with an approval rate north of a majority.  Clinton inherited much of his constituency, buy lost chunks on the left and among socially liberal millennial voters.  Jackson, though a national political outsider, was not only a celebrated and accomplished general, but had a long successful political career as a judge, member of the House of Representatives, military Governor of Florida, and twice a U.S. Senator.  He knew a thing or two about the levers of power.  Trump, on the other hand is completely devoid of any military—unless you credit his prep school ROTC time—elected office, or public service experience.  He doesn’t even have deep or wide political ties or support even in the Republican Party that he seized as a buccaneer’s prize.  More than one old line Republican last night observed that he had dismantled the house that Ronald Reagan built.  His Republican Party, even if it keeps the name, will be as new a creation as Jackson’s Democrats.

This was an electorate that was looking for change, almost any change, the more radical the better.  Bernie Sanders rode that same yearning among variant demographic groups to his surprisingly strong challenge for the Democratic nomination.  His failure to win the nomination bitterly disappointed his followers who saw Clinton as a corrupt trimmer and defender of entrenched elites despite her generally progressive record.  Many were slow to follow Sanders’ lead in rallying behind her.  While most eventually came around, it was largely without enthusiasm.  This morning some of the hard-core Bernie-or-Bust hold outs were busy on line barely concealing a gloating I-told-you-so and smugly asserting a don’t-blame-me posture on the defeat of Clinton and the failure of the Democrats as if their fingerprints were not on the corpse.

Could Bernie have beat Trump?  Maybe.  He was my candidate too, and I had high hopes for a surge that would bring deep progressive and social democratic values to the center stage of American politics.  But could he have broadened his coalition to include the disenchanted and disempowered working and middle class white voters who Trump zeroed in on with laser like efficiency?  That is more doubtful, largely because their resentments were also tied to race, immigration, so-called cultural values, and a distaste for the smart assed seemingly privileged young people who were Sanders’ most visible supporters.  How likely were they ever to jump into bed with those people? 

Could Bernie Sanders really have beaten Trump?  We'll never know.

Secondly, could Sanders, despite his spotless record on women’s issues, have mobilized the emotional and zealous support of so many women who saw a long held dream coming true?  Would at least some of those women be just as disappointed and alienated if he had edged Clinton out at the Convention as the Bernie-or-busters were?  You betcha.  And without that ardent female army, Clinton could not have done as well as she did.  She did, after all was said and done, win the popular vote.

The yearning for change was recognized by many, but dismissed by too many, including Clinton herself.  Although she made large accommodations to the Sanders platform and campaigned with him, progressive icon Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the formidable and beloved Obamas themselves, she always seemed to shy away from committing to sweeping change and reform.  She kept arguing for the effectiveness and practicality of incremental change.  It was in her political DNA.  But voters of all stripes were not interested in incremental change and in the end failed to be swayed by the real fear of losing long held gains.  Her best opportunity came with the selection of a Vice Presidential running mate.  In any other year Tim Kane would have been a perfectly reasonable choice—a popular senator from a battle ground state—with a folksy campaign style.  But Elizabeth Warren would have ignited the left and brought most of the enthusiastically home.  And we have seen how effective she can be on the campaign trail.

Still despite these stumbles, Clinton was clearly the favorite to win against a bizarre and erratic candidate with a scandal of the week, a vicious temperament, and a sexist potty mouth.  He repelled many traditional Republicans along with everybody else.  I believe that the polling showing a steady lead for Clinton was entirely accurate up to the last week or so.  She managed to survive innumerable slurs and faux scandals fostered by the false equivalency of the media which seemed to demand tit-for-tat to every revelation of another Trump abomination.  Virtually everyone thought that all of that had been taken into consideration and the sides at settled into a fixed gap.

Clinton--Confident and coasting.....

But that changed rapidly in the last week and a half or so.  This is what I think happened:

1. The unexpected discovery of totally irrelevant e-mails of Clinton aide Huma Abedin—a Muslim—on the laptop of her estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner of dick selfie fame, in an investigation of his further transgressions.  In a letter to Republican leaders in Congress FBI Director James Comey said investigators would determine whether the emails contained classified information.  This was falsely reported as reopening the closed investigation of Clinton’s use of private e-mail servers as Secretary of State.  Previously the FBI had announced that no charges would be brought against her for that, but that she had acted somewhat recklessly.  Within hours rumors were circulated and given credence that the Abedin/Weiner e-mails, which had not yet even been examined, contained evidence that would get Clinton indicted and sent to prison on some unspecified charge.  The Clinton campaign loudly called foul and charged Director Comey, a Republican Obama appointee, with meddling in the election.  The flurry of headlines and breathless media speculation reminded many traditional Republicans who were repulsed by Trump that they hated Clinton more.  Instead of leaving the Presidential line blank, voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson, or even holding their noses and voting for Clinton, many made a last minute decision to come home a vote Republican from the top of the ticket down.  On Sunday, two days before the election Comey quietly released a new letter to Congress saying that the e-mails had been examined and that they did not affect the Bureau’s previous conclusion.  In other words the whole fracas was a meaningless diversion.  But the damage was done.
2. A week out from the Election a lot of Republicans looked around and were convinced that Trump was going down in flames.  That meant Hillary Clinton would fill the currently vacant seat—assuming Congress didn’t cave and finally seat Obama’s moderate nominee Merrick Garland and one, possibly two more in her first term.  That sent shivers of revulsion down many social conservative spines, and abject terror in those who feared a reversal the Citizen United Version allowing for virtually unlimited spending by PACs under the guise of free speech and possible enforcement of sanctions for the voter suppression schemes the Republicans rely on to try and stave off the inevitable wave of minority voters becoming majority voters.  Senator John McCain, held up by some as a sane Republican and a target of Trump scorn, floated a pledge, “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that ... that the next president [Clinton] should get to fill the Supreme Court’s open seat.”  By bringing the Court back into the discussion, more wavering Republicans were rallied.
3. But the number one cause that moved many wavering working class voters who were not necessarily bound hand and foot to the Republicans has been overlooked by most commentators.  Despite numerous attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act—Obama Care—the program allowed millions of Americans to get medical insurance coverage.  While far from perfect and somewhat buggy, the program was generally popular.  With medical coverage more Americans were seeking the routine health care that helps prevent far more expensive treatments later.  Untold numbers of American families were saved from bankruptcy when faced with a medical emergency, and lives were literally saved by access to health care.  The Republican drum beat for repeal was falling on increasingly deaf ears.  In fact the relative success of the program was a major reason that Obama’s personal popularity was surging in opinion polls.  Then two weeks before the election the Department of Health and Human Services announced that some insurers are dropping out of state pools and that premiums for 2017 would jump sharply.  In the 39 states using the HealthCare.gov platform, the median second-lowest cost silver plan, which sets the benchmark for premium tax credits, will increase 16%, while the average increase looking only at states on the federal exchange is 25%.  Projected average premiums will rise to $5,586, still below the cost of comparable private insurance but a huge ding to many tight family budgets.  Press reports presented eye popping numbers for month increases and largely failed to note that for most lower income customers, Federal subsidies would cover all or most of the increase.  The big hikes were a result of too many young health adults still refusing to enroll despite tax penalties for failing to do so.  Their premiums were meant to offset the high cost of older and sicker clients.  It was perhaps the inevitable result of the mixed system relying on insurance companies to provide coverage, over a bolder and simple single payer plan.  But Obama and Congressional Democrats settled for the mixed system for political expedience.  After all, half a loaf was better than none.  Those big increases were not just a theoretical burden.  They sent wavering consumers rushing into the waiting arms of the Republicans.  As a result Obama care is probably doomed and millions of Americans will lose their health care coverage.

Of course there was a lot of other stuff going on, not the least of which was the exposed depth of long smoldering racism, xenophobia, and misogyny lurking in wide swaths of White America, particularly mature and older men who feel their rightful heritage is being stripped away from them.

To save this nation from a grim fate we must find ways to reach out to and reassure these folks that the future—a multi-racial and ethnic future—is not their mortal enemy.  Tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.