The Zombie Meets Political Reality

'Zombies, Vampires and Republicans' is not the name of a low-budget summer horror movie.

Though I freely confess that I would pay to go see that based on the title alone.

Actually that was the title of the esteemed Princeton University economist Paul Krugman's op-ed in the New York Times last Monday.

One that was both timely and insightful given the current political climate.

It offered his usual mix of progressive-tinged wit, wonky economic insight for the common man, and sharp political insight; it was published on June 19th, the eve of one of the most anticipated special Congressional election in modern history (we'll come back to that in a minute).

Krugman's op-ed also offers insight into today's decision by Senate Majority Leader McConnell to delay a vote on the Republican healthcare bill after at least six Republicans came out against it in the wake of yesterday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of this draconian piece of legislation showed that it would strip well over 22 million Americans of their healthcare by 2020, drastically increase healthcare premiums and gut Medicaid like a fish.

When Krugman uses the term 'Zombie', he's not talking about the fictional flesh-eating humanoids popularized in films like Night of the Living Dead or TV shows like AMC's The Walking Dead.

Krugman uses the word zombie to describe the derisive inside-the-Beltway term for "policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along."

The Senate's version of the healthcare bill, which was famously negotiated in total secrecy away from the sunlight of public scrutiny (by actual vampires apparently), is a prime example of a zombie.

Home for the holidays: Sen. Mitch McConnell

It's not a healthcare bill at all.

It's a massive tax cut for the wealthiest 1% that redistributes hundreds of billions of dollars from bedrock social safety net programs like Medicaid in order to lavish people who are already loaded with more cash.

Republicans figured they could slip it past the white working class base that elected Trump.


They figured that the Obama-fear-hatred the GOP base cling to like well-worn blankies would serve as sort of a political smokescreen and distract decent working class folk while they slapped a 'Repeal Obamacare!' sign on a tax break for the wealthy.

But unfortunately for Republican politicians and Trump, Obama isn't the president anymore.

Now that the levers of power in Washington in the House, Senate and White House are all controlled by Republicans, all the irrational disinformation about the Affordable Care Act and election campaign hysteria generated around conservative rallying cries to repeal Obamacare just don't have as much political oomph as they used to.

Now that millions of veterans, working and middle class people over 50 and people who work jobs that don't offer healthcare, people who used to fall through the cracks of the healthcare net in America, realize that the Affordable Care Act guarantees them access to healthcare - a majority of people don't want it repealed.  

The Republican healthcare zombie ran smack into the harsh political reality that the GOP just doesn't persuade the mainstream on issues anymore, because their policies don't actually do anything for them (the working class white base) which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering is how the GOP stays in power these days.

With a little help from the Russians of course.

All roads lead to Rome for Republicans, and Rome means tax cuts for the rich, the Senate bill was exposed for that even though they tried to craft it in secret.

Capitol Police escort a disabled protester from
Sen. McConnell's office last week

What's interesting to me is that McConnell could only lose two votes from his own party to get his zombie passed and six Republican Senators came out against it - rumors are that even more opposed it but stayed silent.

One would have thought McConnell would have gotten the message last week when cringe-worthy
video of Capitol Police hauling away disabled people in wheelchairs who showed up at McConnell's Senate office to protest the bill went viral.

But no, he was unmoved by such emotional displays by people who will be decimated by draconian cuts to Medicaid.

McConnell thought he could get the votes to ram it past in time for Senators to go home for their hardly-deserved July 4th break.

But the CBO score revealed the truth, and all the Obama-bashing in the world isn't enough to hide the fact that 22 million people are going to lose their access to healthcare.

The zombie met political reality today and McConnell was forced to delay the vote while Senators go back to meet to see what kind of compromises they can make to get the votes needed to pass it.

But Republican Senators from states like Kansas, Maine, Ohio and West Virginia realize that the 2018 midterm elections are on the horizon - they know what slashing Medicaid will do to their older constituents and to their chances for re-election.

To the casual political observer glancing at the calendar, the 2018 midterm elections might seem a long ways off - but they're really not.

The special election last Tuesday for Georgia's hotly contested 6th Congressional District between Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel made that quite clear.

House candidate Jon Ossoff (D-GA) waves during
his concession speech last week

The tens of millions of dollars, intense national focus and social media reach that both the Democratic and Republican parties poured into this race made it the most expensive in American history.

While there have been four different special Congressional elections already (all won by Republicans), the race in the Georgia 6th is widely seen as the first real opening salvo in the upcoming national political war for Congress.

An astounding $59 million was collectively spent on this race by both political parties.


And the campaign contributions speak to the candidates themselves.

The bulk of Karen Handel's donations came from large Republican Political Action Committees (PAC's) largely funded by the big conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers, the reclusive Trump-backing hedge fund gazillionaire Robert Mercer, or the shadowy casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, these 1%'ers can now legally pour virtually limitless amounts of anonymous cash into elections, like a gushing fire hose shoved through the broken window of a house.

That unprecedented flood of cash, combined with the despicable kinds of Republican voter suppression tactics that Karen Handel herself specialized in when she served as Georgia's secretary of state from 2007 - 2010 (read Ari Berman's June 19th article on Handel in The Nation), helped Republicans keep this seat Red.

But the Georgia 6th has been Republican since before Ossoff, a former Congressional staffer and documentary film maker, was even born, the district of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a place where Democrats used to lose by a margin of 20 points.

Karen Handel is sworn into office: a reward for her
years of Republican voter-suppression tactics in GA

With the help of over $24 million raised from 200,000 different small campaign contributions from individual donors all over the country (like me) and an additional $8 million from the Democratic Party, Ossoff did something very few in the DNC expected him to do - he made the race competitive.

He forced Republicans who thought this would be an easy victory, to funnel tens of millions from their Big Donor war chest into this one race.



Ossoff didn't just compete, he almost won.

And it wasn't some 20-point political blowout, when the votes of all 259,488 people who cast ballots were finally tallied up in the early morning hours of last Wednesday, Ossoff garnered 48.1% of the vote to Handel's 51.9%.

He lost by just 9,702 votes by rallying the local Democratic base and doing what the Democratic Party used to be known for - Standing up for the little guy.

He made issues like the economy, defending Medicare and Medicaid, protecting civil liberties, and defending women's health issues and supporting Planned Parenthood and  fighting voter suppression cornerstones of his campaign - so he may not have won the seat.

But he set the stage for the 2018 midterm elections by showing that standing firm on a solid progressive platform can rally the Democratic base - and even persuade some disenchanted Republicans to switch sides as well.

Will that be enough to overcome nationwide Republican voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering of political districts to dilute Democratic and progressive voting blocs?

Organizations like Flippable, a group comprised of former Hillary Clinton staffers determined to use complex political analysis to challenge Republicans at the state level with small targeted donations, think so.

Ossoff winning 48.1% of the Georgia 6th District and a majority of Americans rejecting the Republican healthcare bill is enough to hang the hat of hope on - and maybe enough to stop the zombie in it's tracks in 2018.

Pretty Little Liar: Fox's Megyn Kelly Busted for Lying About Colorado Voter Fraud

Fox host Megyn Kelly

As a rule I really try my utmost to refrain from mentioning Fox News anchor/host Megyn (It's Meagan with a "Y"!) Kelly if at all possible.

The cacophony of half-truths, uninformed reactionary drivel, fictional controversies and flat out stupidity that spills out of this woman's mouth is such low-hanging fruit that the blog could basically be about her.

Admittedly it is difficult to resist her moments of hard-hitting journalism, like when she boosted everyone's holiday spirit last December by assuring her younger viewers that Santa and Jesus Christ are both white.

Yup. That Megyn Kelly.

Denver TV station KUSA was one of the first media outlets to report that during the Tuesday October 21st broadcast of Fox News' "The Kelly File", the bubbly blond anchor took to the air to whip up concocted fears about a provision of the new Colorado voter law.

In an ominous tone Kelly suggested that 2013 changes to the law enacted by Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper allowed Colorado voters to print out a ballot on their home computers and simply give it to what she termed were unspecified "collectors".

Turns out she lied TWICE on that one. First: active duty Colorado citizens who are serving in the military, or are overseas ARE permitted to print out their own ballots and mail them in; but that law has been on the books for years, it wasn't changed in 2013 as she claimed.

Second: Colorado citizens are NOT allowed to print out a ballot on their printer and give it to a "collector", they must vote at their assigned polling site or state law allows them to mail in a ballot - which is also allowed in many other states and is perfectly legal.

True to form, neither Fox News nor Kelly has bothered with any kind of apology or explanation; they rarely do after being caught trying to pass off lies as truth.

But kudos to the local Colorado TV stations who took responsibility for publicly calling out Kelly on her lies in order to clarify the issue for Colorado voters; a number of whom actually contacted television stations to ask about Kelly's bogus claims.

Her comments reflect a Republican party desperate to try and win back a majority in the US Senate and there's no tighter Senate race than the one in Colorado. Democratic incumbent Mark Udall is locked in a tight race with GOP candidate Corey Gardner (Republican Congressman representing Colorado's 4th District) who has a slim 1-percentage point lead over Udall according to an article on the Latin Post.com Website.

It's sad enough that the GOP has to lean on Fox News chief Roger Ailes to use faux-tainment hosts like Kelly to pass off false information about Colorado voter laws, but the laughable part?

The Republican party are the ones openly using a national campaign of voter discrimination, voter repression and voter misinformation to try and achieve victory in November.

Take these examples that were reported on ThinkProgress.org, Texas election judge William Parsely was forced to turn away a 93-year old US veteran who came out early to vote - the man was registered to vote but his driver's license had expired a few years ago as he no longer drives. So he was turned away and will have to obtain a valid state ID before the elections to vote as he has for years.

Or how about Georgia, where campaign workers have labored to fan out across the state to register as many black voters as possible in the past few months. When organizers checked their databases against the state's in August, they found that some 50,000 new voter registrations have simply vanished - mysteriously most of the missing registrations are for minority voters who live in the counties surrounding Atlanta; areas with large black populations where Republicans are desperate to keep voter participation low because of the large increases in black, Latino and and Native American populations in the state in recent years.

Reps from progressive groups like the New Georgia Project and the NAACP have taken Secretary of State Brian Kemp to court in an effort to get the missing voter registrations counted in time for the November elections; Kemp refused repeated requests to meet with the groups to provide information on how the state lost 50,000 registration forms.

Remember Brian Kemp is the same Secretary of State who was caught on tape at a GOP fundraiser earlier this summer warning attendees that "registering all these minority voters" could tip the balance in favor of Democrats.

Yup, same guy responsible for "misplacing" 50,000 new voter registration forms.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs for today's GOP. Unable to win on the issues, they view stripping people of their voter rights as a logical strategy to win the November elections; an idea that is repugnant to the basic principles of Democracy and the guarantees enshrined in the Constitution.

So it's not surprising that false information about Colorado voter laws are spread by a pretty little liar like Megyn Kelly. You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.