Monday Open Thread [6.8.15]

“The Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court for the second time in three years, but the public has rendered a judgment ahead of the court’s ruling. By a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent, more people say the court should not take action to block federal subsidies in states that didn’t set up their own exchanges,” according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Egberto Willies of Daily Kos says that President Obama has already fundamentally changed this nation and the next President must reflect that:

It is a formidable task to nudge the juggernaut [i.e. the United States] leftward where there is both an uncompromising, obstructive right-wing Republican Party and a sect of the Democratic Party beholden to the plutocracy. It is even more difficult when the citizenry, the poor and the middle-class, have been so beaten down that they no longer feel their worth and they no longer feel they can make a difference.

Well, the president has done his part sans TPP and a few other missteps. The next president must be someone who will unabashedly effect liberal policies, progressive policies. Going forward, it is time to ensure that the cleaver is used against the plutocracy, and it is time to ensure the planted seeds are fertilized and grow. […]

Obamacare must morph into Medicare for all (single payer). Social Security must be expanded by taxing all income, wages and capital gains, equally. The federal minimum wage must be increased to what it would have been if it kept up with inflation with an earned productivity benefit added. The defense budget must be retooled away from a corrupt military industrial complex to serve our true defense needs. The entire American infrastructure must be rebuilt. Where the private sector is derelict in maintenance and build-out of critical infrastructure, the government must intervene (universal wi-fi access, electrical grid, etc.).

Brian Beutler notes that Hillary’s “grand strategy” appears to be one of taking bold positions.

The nature of the strategy involves staking out a variety of progressive issue positions that enjoy broad support, but it’s not as straightforward as simply identifying the public sentiment and riding it to victory. The key is to embrace these ideas in ways that makes standard Republican counterspin completely unresponsive, and thus airs out the substantive core of their agenda: Rather than vie for conservative support by inching rightward, Clinton is instead reorienting liberal ideas in ways that make the Republican agenda come into greater focus.

Nancy LeTourneau reviews the various bold positions Hillary has taken and is impressed.

It is obvious that Hillary Clinton has put a lot of thought into the roll-out of her presidential campaign. And so far, she’s hitting all the right notes. With her bold speech about voting rights this week, she adds to an impressive array of issues she’s covered so far. […] Watching all this unfold, it’s clear to me that Clinton has a plan and is not going to let the media derail that with their trumped-up “drama.” Of course she’ll talk more to journalists over the next year. But for now, she is avoiding them in order to stay on the offense about her agenda rather than get swamped with playing defense to theirs. As someone who came into all this as a skeptic about Hillary Clinton, I can say that I’m impressed.

She just has one last question:

[F]oreign policy. I agree with those who say that she has said enough about her mistake in giving George W. Bush a “go-ahead” on invading Iraq. Rather than continually re-hashing the past, I’d like to hear what she learned from that mistake. We all know by now that she argued in favor of engagement in Syria’s civil war and has, at best, been lukewarm about the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran.

Given the unrest that continues in the Middle East, I hope to hear reassurances from Clinton that she will not chose military engagement as her first option when/if things escalate. I’d also feel a bit more comfortable if she would show some willingness to occasionally challenge Israeli PM Netanyahu – as President Obama has done.