Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 890
November 6, 2013
Loyal Obama Supporters Whose Good Plans Have Been Canceled by Obamacare
San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are "cradle Democrats." They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama's re-election.
Since 1995, Hammack and Brothers have received their health coverage from Kaiser Permanente, where Brothers worked until 2009 as a dietician and diabetes educator. "We've both been in very good health all of our lives—exercise, don't smoke, drink lightly, healthy weight, no health issues, and so on," Hammack told me.
The couple—Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59—have been paying $550 a month for their health coverage—a plan that offers solid coverage, not one of the skimpy plans Obama has criticized. But recently, Kaiser informed them the plan would be canceled at the end of the year because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The couple would need to find another one. The cost would be around double what they pay now, but the benefits would be worse.
"From all of the sob stories I've heard and read, ours is the most extreme," Lee told me in an email last week.
I've been skeptical about media stories featuring those who claimed they would be worse off because their insurance policies were being canceled on account of the ACA. In many cases, it turns out, the consumers could have found cheaper coverage through the new health insurance marketplaces, or their plans weren't very good to begin with. Some didn't know they could qualify for subsidies that would lower their insurance premiums.
So I tried to find flaws in what Hammack told me. I couldn't find any.
The couple's existing Kaiser plan was a good one. Their new options were indeed more expensive, and the benefits didn't seem any better. They do not qualify for premium subsidies because they make more than four times the federal poverty level, though Hammack says not by much.Hammack recalled his reaction when he and his wife received a letters from Kaiser in September informing him their coverage was being canceled. "I work downstairs and my wife had a clear look of shock on her face," he said. "Our first reaction was clearly there's got to be some mistake. This was before the exchanges opened up. We quickly calmed down. We were confident that this would all be straightened out. But it wasn't."
I asked Hammack to send me details of his current plan. It carried a $4,000 deductible per person, a $40 copay for doctor visits, a $150 emergency room visit fee and 30 percent coinsurance for hospital stays after the deductible. The out-of-pocket maximum was $5,600.
This plan was ending, Kaiser's letters told them, because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. "Everything is taken care of," the letters said. "There's nothing you need to do."
The letters said the couple would be enrolled in new Kaiser plans that would cost nearly $1,300 for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).
And for that higher amount, what would they get? A higher deductible ($4,500), a higher out-of-pocket maximum ($6,350), higher hospital costs (40 percent of the cost) and possibly higher costs for doctor visits and drugs.
When they shopped around and looked for a different plan on California's new health insurance marketplace, Covered California, the cheapest one was $975, with hefty deductibles and copays.
In a speech in Boston last week, President Obama said those receiving cancellation letters didn't have good insurance. "There are a number of Americans—fewer than 5 percent of Americans—who've got cut-rate plans that don't offer real financial protection in the event of a serious illness or an accident," he said.
"Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad-apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received, or use minor preexisting conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy. So a lot of people thought they were buying coverage, and it turned out not to be so good."
What is going on here? Kaiser isn't a "bad apple" insurer and this plan wasn't "cut rate." It seems like this is a lose-lose for the Hammacks (and a friend featured in a report last month by the public radio station KQED.)
I called Kaiser Permanente and spoke to spokesman Chris Stenrud, who used to work for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He told me that this was indeed a good plan. Patients in the plan, known as 40/4000, were remarkably healthy, had low medical costs and had not seen their premiums increase in years. "Our actuaries still aren't entirely sure why that was," he said.
While many other insurance companies offered skimpier benefits, Stenrud said, "our plans historically have been comprehensive."
Kaiser has canceled about 160,000 policies in California, and about one third of people were in plans like Hammack's, Stenrud said. About 30,000 to 35,000 were in his specific plan.
"In a few cases, we are able to find coverage for them that is less expensive, but in most cases, we're not because, in sort of pure economic terms, they are people who benefited from the current system ... Now that the market rules are changing, there will be different people who benefit and different people who don't."
"There's an aspect of market disruption here that I think was not clear to people," Stenrud acknowledged. "In many respects it has been theory rather than practice for the first three years of the law; folks are seeing the breadth of change that we're talking about here."
That's little comfort to Hammack. He's written to California's senators and his representative, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asking for help.
"We believe that the Act is good for health care, the economy, & the future of our nation. However, ACA options for middle income individuals ages 59 & 60 are unaffordable. We're learning that many others are similarly affected. In that spirit we ask that you fix this, for all of our sakes," he and Brothers wrote.
Consumer advocate Anthony Wright said it's important to remember the way the insurance market worked before the act was passed, when insurers could deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. "It's impossible to know what the world would have looked like for these folks in the absence of the law," said Wright, executive director of the group Health Access.
"We certainly had an individual market, especially in California which was the Wild Wild West, where there was huge price increases, cancellations, a range of other practices.
"That doesn't mean that there were certain people who lucked out in the old system, who wound up in a group with a relatively healthy risk mix and thus lower premiums," he added. "The question is: Is health insurance something where people get a rate based on the luck of the draw or do we have something where we have some standards where people who live in the same community, of the same age, with the same benefit package are treated equally?"
Wright said discussions should focus on how to provide consumers like Hammack with assistance if they barely miss qualifying for subsidies.
So what is Hammack going to do? If his income were to fall below four times the federal poverty level, or about $62,000 for a family of two, he would qualify for subsidies that could lower his premium cost to as low as zero. If he makes even one dollar more, he gets nothing.
That's what he's leaning toward—lowering his salary or shifting more money toward a retirement account and applying for a subsidy.
"We're not changing our views because of this situation, but it hurt to hear Obama saying, just the other day, that if our plan has been dropped it's because it wasn't any good, and our costs would go up only slightly," he said. "We're gratified that the press is on the case, but frustrated that the stewards of the ACA don't seem to have heard."












The Real Winner on Tuesday Was Centrism, Say Centrists
Centrists — adherents to the poorly defined combination of petulance toward partisan politics, social liberalism, and insistent capitalism — are, given their positions of prominence in business and the media, oddly insecure. From those prominent positions on Tuesday came analysis of the night's election results: America loves centrism.
Take New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie was reelected by an overwhelming margin. Christie is a centrist, per centrists. He's earned that status in two ways. First, he is not a far-right Tea Partier, as we've noted in the past (as though that required much noting). Second, he's willing to "work across the aisle" with Democrats. Never mind that Christie himself told CNN's Jake Tapper that "I'm a conservative. I've governed as a conservative in this state, and I think that's led to some people disagreeing with me." That's just him running for president, the centrists will argue. He is one of us.
That quote came from Tapper's embed with the governor on Election Day, a level of access, Tapper proudly told Capital New York, that he hasn't seen since he toured with John McCain on the "Straight Talk Express" in 2000. McCain, of course, is also claimed by centrists. Centrist politicians, unlike partisan Democrats and Republicans, give it to you straight. That's how you can spot a centrist politician: They won't tell you what you want to hear, they tell you the hard truths in plain terms. (Except when they say they're conservative; that's just political realism.)
So a victory by Christie is a victory for centrists. "Message to Republicans:," The Washington Post's Carter Eskew writes, "Moderates Win."
[W]hile Chris Christie may be checking leases tonight on charter flights to Iowa and New Hampshire, his plain-speaking moderation will likely sound dissonant to those who still control the party’s energy and direction for the foreseeable future.
"Plain-speaking moderation" triumphs over the Republican base — on Tuesday, anyway.
Eskew also argues that Terry McAuliffe's win in Virginia was a victory for moderation, since the hard-right Ken Cuccinelli lost. The Post editorial board at large echoes this suggestion. McAuliffe won in part, the board says, because his campaign and the Democratic Party spent more and because his opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, was the wrong candidate for "a moderate swing state." But at its heart, "credit Mr. McAuliffe with crafting the right message." Their headline: "Terry McAuliffe's moderate message prevails."
Moderate Democrats, though, are never as celebrated as centrist Republicans, in part because prominent centrists themselves are generally just moderate Democrats, and in part because Republicans are harder to lure toward the middle. (Those two things are linked.) So Christie is really the success story of Tuesday for centrists, perhaps giving us a centrist president in 2016, after the long dry spell we've seen since the Obama, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush administrations.
After Christie's acceptance speech, CNN's panel (true to CNN's nature) was effusive.
Candy Crowley: If there's one thing you can say that both Chris Christie and Terry McAuliffe had in common in their campaigns it was selling themselves as "I'm the guy that can work with the other party and get things done for you."
Gloria Borger: The irony in this year is that the two people who won are the two people who kind of tried to run to the center the fastest. And they were victorious.
The Republicans on the panel — Newt Gingrich and consultant Alex Castellanos — pushed back a little, but the message was clear. Last night, Republicans lost. Centrists won.
Jon Avlon, at The Daily Beast:
On Tuesday night, Christie went a long way toward establishing himself as the Republican Bill Clinton, a charismatic candidate able to re-center his party and reach out beyond the base even in traditionally hostile territory. Hard-core conservatives might call him a RINO—a Republican in Name Only—but there’s another name for it. A winner.
Photo: Christie, left, and McAuliffe. (AP)












Yasser Arafat Was Full of Polonium When He Died
A Swiss forensic team has declared that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was practically bursting at the seams with polonium when he died in 2004, adding to fuel to the fire of long-running speculation that he was actually murdered. Al Jazeera obtained a 108-page report from the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne that says that Arafat's body had roughly sixteen times the regular levels of radioactive polonium in his system when he died. The Swiss report doesn't go so far as to say the polonium in Arafat's system was his cause of death.
This discovery ultimately concludes nothing about the cause of Arafat's death. The Swiss investigated whether Arafat had polonium in his system and concluded that, yes, Arafat had polonium in his system. Lots of it, in fact. But it's still too early to make any conclusions. "We can’t point a finger at anyone," Suha Arafat, the leader's surviving wife, told Al Jazeera. "The French are conducting a serious investigation. It takes time."
Radioactive polonium poisoning has long been speculated as the cause of the Palestinian leader's sudden illness that led to his eventual demise. (It's also been implicated in a few high profile assassinations, mostly involving Russians.) A previous Al Jazeera documentary suggested Arafat was poisoned, and prompted the French to investigate into Arafat's unsolved murder. Suha Arafat approved the exhumation of Arafat's remains for forensic analysis. Pieces of tissue were sent to Swiss, French and Russian labs for separate investigations. The French and Russian reports should come soon.












The Persistent Disappointment of 'The Mindy Project'
The Mindy Project, we're sorry. We wanted to like you—we still want to like you—but it's time to face the facts: You are a disappointment.
It's not just the ratings—though the ratings are bad. In fact, Mindy has been at the bottom of the barrel for Fox's sitcoms, with (at times) worse numbers that the critically reviled Dads. (Last night Mindy scored a 1.5 to Dads' 1.4) TV By the Numbers' "Cancellation Bear" still thinks Mindy Kaling's show about a romantically challenged OB/GYN has a chance at a third season, but it's not looking great. In an ideal world, this article would be one cursing audiences for not tuning in to a criminally unwatched sitcom, but, sadly, we can't really blame anyone since we've repeatedly found ourselves tuning to ABC during Mindy's time slot to watch Trophy Wife, leaving Mindy for the DVR.
From the beginning, Mindy was a show we cheered for, being unabashed fans of the persona Kaling herself cultivated on social media. When the uneven first season delivered inconsistent laughs, it was easy to chalk the problems up to growing pains. Fox was not exactly kind to the show, airing episodes out of order and in a confusing manner; sitcoms need time to develop, and a second season order gave hope that the show would figure itself out. But by the second season, it's clear that something is still off.
Though the show did away with some supporting characters that appeared in the first season—Amanda Setton has gotten an assistant job on The Crazy Ones, Anna Camp's best friend duties have been revoked—it's still clearly not sure what it's doing with its inexplicably expanding ranks of principal characters. Mindy herself and her professional partner Danny Castellano (Chris Messina) are pretty set, she as the neurotic, self-involved, somewhat shallow lead, and he as her grumpy (but lovable!) Staten Island-born foil. But they're surrounded by a parade of sloppily-drawn sidekicks. The show has transformed Dr. Jeremy Reed (Ed Weeks) from Mindy's British lothario hook-up to a sad-sack, work-obsessed stickler. And this season, they've added Adam Pally's weird, bro-y Dr. Peter Prentice, who essentially takes up the same air occupied by weird bro-y nurse Morgan (Ike Barinholtz). The other office denizens, like Beth Grant's wily nurse, are even more underdeveloped, to the point of meaninglessness.
It's not that the show doesn't have its very funny moments. In last night's episode, Timothy Olyphant played a hot pro-skateboarder that Mindy dates. (Mindy's men seem to come out of a weird fantasy land where everyone has odd but fascinating professions.) A dinner scene between Kaling, Olyphant, Messina, and Saturday Night Live's quietly brilliant Vanessa Bayer, as Danny's boring, hummus-obsessed date, was a winner. But then there was the b-plot, which involved Reed's daddy issues brought on by Prentice and seemingly came out of nowhere.
The guest casting, though it does provide for some laughs, is part of the problem. Mindy loves to bring on board well-known guest stars. James Franco appeared in this season's early episodes, and Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn is on her way in. But guest stars are best on sitcoms when they add a bit of surprise to a well-established ensemble. See, for instance, the inspired use of Taye Diggs on last night's New Girl, or any number of stars that appeared on 30 Rock over the years. The way guests are deployed on Mindy only exacerbates the too-many-people problem.
All of this is not to say we're not still rooting for Mindy, but right now, it's more notable for how it's has failed to live up to potential. And there may not be much time left to do so.












Sebelius on Healthcare.gov: 'A Miserable Five Weeks'
While appearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius summed up the Healthcare.gov launch perfectly: "There is no excuse for what has been a miserable five weeks." Tuesday afternoon may have been a low point, when meeting notes between federal officials and contractors were released by Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House oversight committee, and they showed just how bad the launch went. In her written statement, Politico reports, Sebelius hit the same talking points — they're working on the site, and "by the end of November, the experience on the site will be smooth for the vast majority of users." But as the notes show, the administration didn't realize just how bad the site was until October 8.
Right off the bat, Sebelius was asked why the administration won't delay the individual mandate, something both Democrats and Republicans have been calling for. Her answer:
Sebelius: Delaying the Affordable Care Act won't delay people's diabetes, cancer, or Parkinson's
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) November 6, 2013
In addition to calls to delay the individual mandate, and questions about the website, enrollment numbers and cancelled plans, Sebelius will likely have to continue answering questions about how well the website secures personal information. On Tuesday, Marilyn Tavenner of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appeared before another Senate committee, and both Republicans and Democrats on that committee grilled her about security breaches, including a man who accidentally received a stranger's private information. "This is an example of critically defective security measures on Healthcare.gov that risk the private information of millions of Americans," Republican Sen. Tim Scott said.
While Sebelius meets with Congress, President Obama will be focusing on fixing the things he can fix. On Wednesday, he'll travel to Texas to try to push Republican governors like Rick Perry to expand Medicaid, just as Republicans in Ohio, Michigan and Arizona have. And long-term, Obama and his Healthcare.gov fixer Jeffrey Zients be working on making the government's IT procurement process less inefficient and more open to new technology. Not that any of that's going to fix anything immediately, but you can only say "we're working on it" so many times.












Ryan Lochte Injured By Fan
No, no. Don't worry. I know you see that headline and think that poor, hapless swimbo Ryan Lochte stuck his hand in a fan to see what would happen and lost some fingers or something. But no, his handlers are more mindful than that. He was injured by a fan, like a person fan, not a cooling fan. But he was injured! So we should be concerned about that. What happened was this: An overeager fan approached him in Florida and bowled him over. Yes, Ryan Lochte was essentially tackled by a fan, who jumped on him, causing him to fall over and hit his knee, thus tearing his MCL and spraining his ACL. What is it with athletes? They're so fragile! I mean, I get why they are, but it's just weird. Anyway, Lochte is supposed to make a full recovery, but he's taken an immediate break from training and competing. So, sweet, huh? Ryan Lochte's got a few weeks to chill heck out. That could be nice for him. Though he has to be wary of fans now, of course, saying "Sorry, I can't hug. I got hurted the last time." One fan had to go and ruin the whole stupid thing. [TMZ]
Holy s--t! Jennifer Aniston has a new haircut! The most famous hair in America has been roughly hewn into a choppy bob, a boppy, for no apparent reason. Aniston told Vogue, " "I actually don't have any red carpets coming up. This is truly just for me!" What the heck?? No red carpets coming up? Girl, don't sleep on awards season. I know you're not in a big Oscar movie, but come on. Make yourself known! Go to a ding-dang premiere or something. Show off this jazzy new 'do. Because a new Jennifer Aniston haircut represents a new phase in Jennifer Aniston's life. Might she be about to marry Justin Theroux? Something's happening. Every time she gets a big new style, something changes for her. What will it be this time?? [Us Weekly]
Lady Gaga's manager is walking away from the gig, because he wants to focus on investing in the tech world, where he's had some success. So, OK, another person lost to the horrors of Silicon Valley, ho hum. This story is really only worth mentioning for this line, from a Page Six source: “If you ask Gaga who manages her now, she’ll say, ‘Gaga.’" Haha, OK. Good. Glad that's happening. Hopefully she's wearing the teeth when she says that. Oof. There is no Dana, only Gaga. Fine. All right. Carry on, dork. [Page Six]
Oy. Some fur is flying between Jon and Kate, vis a vis their eight. The Gosselin reality family is in turmoil after dad Jon made some comments to Oprah that the kids are having some problems "developmentally" in the wake of the show and their parents' divorce. Kate is very unhappy about this, so she's released a statement defending her children, saying that most people who meet them find that the children "are the most normal, pleasant, polite, loving and well adjusted children they have ever met. Most even go on to say that they are a 'a delight' to be around." Really? Most people who meet the children use the word "delight"? Who are you hanging out with, Kate Gosselin? Who's saying "delight" in America in 2013? I'm calling a little BS on that one. Also, doesn't it make complete sense that the kinds would be a little wonky because of how they came up? I'd think it was weird if they weren't affected at all. I'm oddly glad they were affected! It means they're absorbing the world around them. They're still young-ish (the twins are 13! Aieeee!) so I'm sure they'll be fine, but come on, Kate. "A delight"? Stop making things up. [Us Weekly]
Oh! Prince William is going to hang out with Taylor Swift! She's going to perform at a charity benefit that he's hosting, which is exciting. Imagine Taylor Swift meeting Prince William and Duchess Kate! "Hiiiiiiii!! Oh my god, I'm such a big fannnnn of you guys!" And Kate limply shaking her hand and saying, "Charmed, I'm sure," while William shifts awkwardly and says, "Welcome to England, Miss Swift." That's going to be great. And then Harry striding in and Taylor near fainting and Harry saying, "Yeah, nice to meet you," in a really dismissive way, and then she writes an angry song about him called "The Frog Prince" and he says "The f--k? I talked to her for like three seconds!" and Kate nods and says "Yeah, she's crazy," and then Harry says "Well I'm crazy about you," and turns to her in the bed and they kiss and another illicit morning begins. [People]
Justin Bieber had a party in Brazil to which he invited ten girls he did not know. At the party they were served "chicken nuggets, chocolate, lollies, chips and peanuts." Oh. Oh Justin, no. There were also pineapple slices apparently, but come on now. Chicken nuggets, Justin? Pssh. Step it up, dude. Step it up. The party sounds like it was mostly the girls milling about snacking on things and then Justin coming outside at one point to say he was going to bed. Sounds like a great party! Eesh. This kid's life is starting to seem really depressing, isn't it? Maybe he should get out of the biz and, like, go to McMaster or something and just live a normal life. Because these Brazilian chicken nugget parties sound like a nightmare, honestly. Get out of the game, Justin. I think you'd have more fun. [Daily Mail]












Pot, Gambling, Secession, and Other Fun Stuff People Voted For Last Night
Gubernatorial races in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York's mayor's race dominated the news last night, but while we were focused on things like humanoid Grumpy Cat Joe Lhota go down in flames, people were voting to legalize weed in Maine's biggest city and secede from Colorado. Here's a quick roundup of those "down ballot" contests that make local elections so much more interesting:.
The Other Portland Wants Legal Pot, TooIn Portland, Maine, residents there voted to legalize the possession of marijuana. And it wasn't even close. "With all 12 of the city’s precincts reporting just before 10:30 p.m., the legalization referendum held a 9,921-4,823 advantage. That represented more than 67 percent in favor of the measure," The Bangor Daily News reports.
Unfortunately for these folks, the state of Maine, unlike Oregon, still finds pot illegal and police there have still promised to enforce state laws. Still, advocates believe that Portland might have a Denver-like effect in the state and possibly the whole East Coast. Denver voters approved a similar ballot measure in 2005 before the state followed in 2012.
Secessionists Live in ColoradoSpeaking of Colorado, there were 11 counties in the state where the "51st State Initiative" floating the idea of secession appeared. In five of those counties, the proposal to break away from the rest of Colorado failed, but "in six of the 11 counties where the secession question appeared on the ballot, the measure passed by strong margins," The Denver Post reported. The move was more of a political gesture as secession is almost impossible, since it requires approval of the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. The last time a state let a new one break away was when Maine left Massachusetts in 1820. (Although West Virginia did secede from Confederate Virginia in 1865)
The main push for secession came from rural voters upset by Democrat-backed measures coming from Denver, like gun control and green energy requirements. "The heart of the 51st State Initiative is simple: We just want to be left alone to live our lives without heavy-handed restrictions from the state Capitol," 51st state advocate Jeffrey Hare told The Denver Post.
Fracking Good in Ohio, Bad In ColoradoStill in Colorado, three towns passed anti-fracking initiatives that will ban the controversial gas drilling technique in their localities. However, a fourth town defeated the anti-fracking bill, as did two other towns in Ohio that will push for more drilling.
New Jersey Raised Minimum Wage by a DollarThis vote wasn't close either. On Tuesday, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that amended the state's constitution to raise the state's minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 an hour. "But it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. One late-September poll showed support at 76 percent with opposition at just 22 percent," The Washington Post reported last night. With that vote, Chris Christie's great state becomes the fifth in the country to raise the minimum wage using its constitution.
Massachusttess Resident Will Have to Go to New York to GambleTwo Northeastern states tackled the question of adding more casinos to their lands, with one rejecting the idea and the other embracing it. New Yorkers agreed to an expansion of casino gambling (but only upstate, not in the big city), while two different casino plans were voted down in Massachusetts. The Suffolk Downs proposal in East Boston, will try another approach that keeps the casino solely in the town of Revere.
Washington Doesn't Care About Genetically-Engineered FoodWashington state voters on Tuesday denied a bill that would have required food containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) to sport a label saying as much. "The vote was 54.8% opposed to labeling and 45.2% in favor of it," USA Today reports. This is a victory for agricultural biotech companies and pro-GMO organizations like Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who donated heavily to the "No on 522" campaign. That effort raked in some $22 million in fundraising, the Seattle Times reported.












Cable Pundits Would Much Rather Talk About 2016 Than 2013, Thanks
There was a lot of time to fill during cable news broadcasts on Tuesday, with results from the few interesting races spread out over multiple hours. Some of that time was filled with other news stories. But a lot of it was spent talking about 2016 and the presidential race in 2016 and did you know that Chris Christie might run in 2016?
At one point, MSNBC's Chris Matthews brought on two panelists to discuss exit polls in the New Jersey gubernatorial race that showed Chris Christie trailing Hillary Clinton in the next presidential election. This is a question about a theoretical Republican candidate facing a theoretical Democratic candidate based on polling results from a small subset of voters three years in advance. This was half an hour before the network called the gubernatorial race for Christie, which it did shortly after the polls closed. Before Christie won his second term, MSNBC was holding a marginally useful poll up to the light, trying to see if he could win a race in three years. "The reason we're interested in Chris Christie," Matthews said, "is because he's considered to be a likely mainstream candidate." Well, and he's governor of a state of 8 million people.
text { font-size: 11px; }But MSNBC couldn't hold a candle to CNN's enthusiasm for other races. We tracked each mention of 2016 on each network between 7 p.m. and midnight to get a sense of what the conversation looked like. At right, those mentions broken down by half hour. Fox News had a big spike in the 10:30 half hour — right after Christie finished his acceptance speech. (On Twitter, that's when 2016 mentions peaked before midnight as well, according to data from Topsy.com.) But CNN talked about 2016 more than the other two main networks combined over the five hours, mentioning it at least once every 10 minutes, on average.
The analysis wasn't strictly centered around 2016. MSNBC talked about 2014 as much as 2016 over the five hours. CNN also returned to 2012 regularly — how Tuesday night's turnout compared to it, and so on. Fox News brought up other elections the least; most of its commentary on future races came around the time of Christie's acceptance. (We've broken out all of the mentions by each network in 10-minute increments below.)
Part of the reason that CNN was so focused on future was that its coverage differed from Fox News'. Where the latter interspersed election results with its regular programming, CNN hosted a special edition of Crossfire after results were in, sprinkling its pundits throughout the night. When you focus on getting feedback from Newt Gingrich, he's going to tell you why McAuliffe's win in Virginia is bad news for Democrats next year. That's his role.
If you're curious, the periods with the longest lulls in mentions of other elections correspond to two things. First, when poll results came in. Second, when candidates were giving their acceptance or concession speeches. In other words, when news was happening.
CNN MSNBC Fox News











Five Best Wednesday Columns
Charlie Stile at The Record on how Chris Christie won over Democrats. "Christie discreetly and methodically courted Democrats with every lever of power at his disposal. By the end, many of those Democrats would supply the manpower, money or simply the photo ops for his campaign," Stile explains. Christie's leadership during Superstorm Sandy helped him keep the governorship, but it was his Democratic support that really propelled him to victory. For example, "Christie won the unofficial support — and admiration — of George Norcross, the South Jersey insurance executive and the state’s most powerful Democrat, by carrying out an overhaul of the state’s higher education system that poured more money into that region." At base, "Christie revived the transactional, political dynamic that vanished during the rocky tenure of [Democrat Jon] Corzine, his predecessor." By working out deals with certain Democratic mayors, Christie won the support of some of the more liberal towns in New Jersey. Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker's Washington correspondent, tweets, "@PoliticalStile has the best piece I've read on how Christie won."
Jonathan Chait at Daily Intelligencer on why Christie won't go to the White House. Republicans "now see the enticing chance, in the form of Christie’s all-but-declared presidential candidacy, to right their course without veering left," Chait explains. But don't "measure the drapes" in the White House just yet. For one, Christie will fall to the left of other Republican primary candidates: He's "openly endorsed gun control, called for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and conceded the legitimacy of climate science" as well as participated in Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. And he's already been vetted once: "Mitt Romney wanted to make Christie his vice-presidential nominee, but took a close look at what the vetters came up with and ... promptly changed his mind." Huffington Post political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui tweets, "[Christie] faces uphill battle, especially in primary. Chait has good points here."
Nate Cohn at The New Republic on what Terry McAuliffe's win means for Democrats in 2014. A narrow victory in Virginia's gubernatorial race "doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2014," Cohn argues. "[Ken] Cuccinelli was relatively competitive in race where everything went wrong. He was decidedly outspent. His party never unified around his candidacy and a libertarian candidate was there to take advantage. The government shutdown probably didn’t help. And, of course, Cuccinneli was a pretty flawed candidate in his own right." Most importantly, "McAuliffe did as bad as President Obama in coal country and western Virginia, the exact sort of places where Democrats need to rebound to retake the House." Matt O'Brien, an economics writer at The Atlantic, is skeptical: "I'm not sure the inability of a horribly flawed candidate to win big augurs poorly for Democrats in '14."
Elizabeth Kolbert at The New Yorker on the real threat of climate change. A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "reads like a laundry list of the apocalypse — flood, drought, disease, starvation," Kolbert explains. "Climate change, the group noted, will reduce yields of major crops by up to two per cent each decade for the remainder of this century." Things look worse for animals: "Under the most likely scenarios, many species 'will not be able to move fast enough during the 21st century to track suitable climates,' and there is a chance that some ecosystems, including the Arctic tundra and the Amazon rainforest, will undergo 'abrupt and irreversible change.'" So what's to be done? "Any genuine 'preparedness' strategy must include averting those eventualities for which preparation is impossible," Kolbert argues. "This is not something that the President can do by executive order, but it’s something he ought to be pursuing with every other tool." MSNBC reporter Ned Resnikoff darkly jokes, "Regardless of what happens [in the elections], we're still on track for global, civilization-wide catastrophe."
David Dayen at Salon says Wall Street slumlords are back. Investors are "flocking to the latest product peddled by large banking interests, even though they look almost exactly like the mortgage-backed securities that were a primary driver of the financial crisis. These new securities, backed by rental payments, also have real-world implications for millions of renters, who could end up turning in their monthly checks to Wall Street-based absentee slumlords," Dayen argues. While these securities have secured a AAA rating from ratings agencies, "you’ll remember that mortgage-backed securities were bestowed triple-A ratings during the housing bubble, and that this spurred massive purchases, fueling demand for more and more home loans to create more securities." Dayen concludes, "if Americans weren’t seduced by the mythical dream of homeownership and turned to renting, that could certainly be positive. But it’s hard to trust that the same financial titans who blew up the economy won’t distort and pervert the rental market ..." David Gaffen, who covers U.S. markets for Reuters, tweets, "How [Wall Street] could wreck the economy again."












The CIA Is Taking Its Time Handing Over the Drone Program
For about the last seven months, people have celebrated reports that America's drone program would be handed-off from the CIA to more transparent Defense Department. Well, here's the thing: the transition process is going to take a lot longer than first expected.
Months later, we're learning the celebrated policy switchover will take a while. "This is the policy, and we're moving toward that policy, but it will take some time," an intelligence official told Foreign Policy's Gordon Lubold and Shane Harris. The CIA to DoD switch was first announced at the end of March. The switch was made to consolidate military operations against wanted terrorists under one roof, but also, once the drones were under DoD control, to add new layers of transparency to the one of the administration's most controversial programs. Whispers followed that the DoD was going to scale back on drone strikes completely.
Officials want to make sure the program stays active during the transition, and the President's directive took many by complete surprise. Unsurprisingly, the logistics of moving an active drone program from one department to the other is not an overnight process, even if it had been carefully planned out in advance. But others question the Defense Department's ability to stomach the drone strike program at all:
But the pitfalls of transferring operations reside in more practical concerns. The U.S. official said that while the platforms and the capabilities are common to either the Agency or the Pentagon, there remain distinctly different approaches to "finding, fixing and finishing" terrorist targets. The two organizations also use different approaches to producing the "intelligence feeds" upon which drone operations rely. Perhaps more importantly, after years of conducting drone strikes, the CIA has developed an expertise and a taste for them. The DOD's appetite to take over that mission may not run very deep.
Former CIA officials who don't want their drone program given over to the military — where a shroud of official "covert" secrecy can't protect military officials from Congressional hearings — are pushing back against the switch. "The agency can do it much more efficiently and at lower cost than the military can," one former intelligence official told FP.
But plans to hand over drones to the military are apparently still full steam ahead. It's just going to take some time for the little drone that could to get over the hill.












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