becky sarwate

Nine hour voting lines in my hometown city of Chicago wasn’t the only unfortunate news coming out of the Land of Lincoln this morning. For the first time since 1998, with 99 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, Illinois has a Republican Governor. Although he has declined to issue a concession, Pat Quinn remains 180,000 votes behind his opponent with early, mail-in and provisional votes left to be counted. I wish I could share Quinn’s desperate optimism.

If there is a bright side to the situation, Quinn is the first Illinois Chief Executive since the late 1990s to anticipate a life in the private sector, rather than prison. He was first sworn into office in 2009 after the humiliating (for the state and its voters) impeachment of Democratic predecessor Rod Blagojevich. Quinn was elected to his own full term in 2010 following a tough battle with Republican State Senator Bill Brady, and despite a low approval rating.

Having survived life in the lowlights as Blagojevich’s Lieutenant Governor and a 2011 “Illinois is Broke” viral and traditional media campaign regarding the poor condition of the state’s finances, social services and pension funding plans, there was good reason to believe that Quinn could tough it out this round. In areport this morning, the Chicago Tribune describes Governor-elect Bruce Rauner as “untested…a wealthy equity investor making his first bid for public office.” His inexperience didn’t stop the conservative-leaning paper from publicly endorsing the candidate on October 10 however.

A late October scandal also seemed to bode well for the incumbent’s chances of holding onto office. Mid last month,Republican News Watch reported that the Tribune’s liberal rival, “the Chicago Sun-Times published a devastating article which includes alarming allegations that Bruce Rauner himself personally threatened a female executive and her family.” Subsequently, writes Doug Ibendahl, “The newspaper has been reminding readers for three years that it’s not in the endorsement business anymore. But they’re making an exception for Rauner this year, and the governor’s race is the only race in which they endorse.”

Things that make Illinois voters go hmmm….compared to the relatively benign Pat Quinn. But perhaps that was Quinn’s ultimate undoing. The experienced, dull bureaucrat failed to offer voters enough striking change. A March 2014 Crain’s Chicago Business article entitled State in deepest financial hole ever put it succinctly: “Illinois is far and away in worse shape than any state in the country, although the red ink is flowing more slowly.”

So instead, Illini voters get the untried one percenter. One of the national electorate’s great failings is an inability to connect that a Chief Executive from any party only has so much power when faced with a majority opposition. In this case, Rauner is going to have to try to work with a Democratic-led State Senate and House, the very same people “he vilified during the campaign as part of a ‘corrupt’ political system controlling Springfield.” The $46.5 million that Rauner is reported to have spent on his victory isn’t going to amount to much after he takes office.

It could have been worse. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan successfully fended off Republican efforts to infiltrate Democrats’ veto-proof hold on the state legislature, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) was comfortably re-elected to a record fourth term. But with Rauner set to try to unleash a predictable anti-tax agenda in an already broke state, frustrated voters who decided to send Pat Quinn a message last night are reminded that wishes come true are often less enjoyable in the experience

Though the paper of record does its frustrating best to bury the implications in an innocuous headline, this week The New York Times published an assortment of answers to the question, “Is the Affordable Care Act Working?” Leveraging seven specific subqueries, a variety of writers evaluate the data one year from the official rollout of Obamacare, assessing the legislation’s early efficacy.

If readers are able to get past the meaningless non-reporting of the piece’s opening summary, there is plenty of good news to be found:

“After a year fully in place, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded in delivering on President Obama’s main promises, an analysis by a team of reporters and data researchers shows. But it has also fallen short in some ways and given rise to a powerful conservative backlash.”

Let’s take a step back from the inexplicably conflicted tone of this summation and jump right into question one, asked and answered by writer Margot Sanger-Katz. The legislation’s first and most important goal was deceptively simple: lower the number of the hardworking uninsured, who live just one accident or illness away from financial ruin. So, “Has the percentage of uninsured people been reduced?”

The answer just 12 months later is a resounding yes. Per Sanger-Katz, “The number of Americans without health insurance has been reduced by about 25 percent this year — or eight million to 11 million people.” The detailed response offers a number of facts, figures and charts that elaborate on the myriad ways in which formerly shutout people are now able to avail themselves of at least basic coverage – the extension of benefits to young adults attached to parental policies, expansion of Medicaid (despite 23 red states rejecting the aid for purely shameful, partisan reasons), etc.

Honestly, were the analysis to stop there, it would be material enough for supportive Democratic candidates to tout in the last few days of midterm campaigning. At the same time, the unbendable numbers should leave obstinate Republicans who did everything possible to stop Obamacare’s implementation with a lot of ‘splaining to do. We know by now, of course, that neither of these scenarios will occur. I propose a new slogan for the Affordable Care Act: Obamacare -The Most Successful Legislation in Recorded History for Which No One Wants Credit.

In the interest of brevity, I am going to skip a few other answered questions in the Times piece that point to significant patient benefits – expanded coverage at mostly affordable costs, and an end to the pre-existing conditions nightmare. Right about now you may be asking yourself: This is the 21^st Century and corporations are people! How have the lowly insurers fared in this great sea change? I give you the piece’s fifth question and answer:

“Has the health care industry been helped or hurt by the law? Wall Street Analysts See Financial Boon Across the Health Care Spectrum.”

How is this possible given the immense howling we heard from the right about the threats to private sector and business growth? Writer Reed Abelson observes, “From the beginning, opponents of the Affordable Care Act have warned that it represented a ‘government takeover’ of the health care system that would lead to crippling regulations on both for-profit companies and nonprofit players. But to the contrary, Wall Street analysts and health care experts say, the industry appears to be largely flourishing, in part because of the additional business the law created.”

In another words, exactly NONE of the oft-shouted objections to reforming America’s broken health care system came to fruition. Not a one. Everyone wins except for the low-income uninsured, who remain so thanks to the cruelty of their Republican governors. This should be a huge asset to struggling Democratic candidates and a kick in the teeth to overconfident Repubs. But it won’t be. And why? Because somewhere along the way, almost every single legislator as well as the mass media decided to buy into the GOP’s narrative. Obamacare is a very bad thing.

Even the “liberal rag” New York Times offers no assistance in righting this ideological injustice. How to else to explain the throwaway last sentence of the article’s opening summary: “[Obamacare] has also fallen short in some ways and given rise to a powerful conservative backlash.” Um, so what? Show me a piece of perfect legislation and I’ll show you a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Also, here’s a short list of other forces that have given rise to “powerful conservative backlash:” a woman’s right to make family planning choices, the normal functioning of government and the living and breathing of one Barack Obama.

The numbers are out. Will they make a dent in the collective ACA dithering, hair-splitting and denial in time to make a difference at the polls?

The Ebola crisis in West Africa is a deadly serious threat. But for many reasonable, concerned Americans it’s become difficult to separate the reality of the devastation occurring on that continent, from the overblown media and political hysteria that’s dominating our national news cycle. Can any person of intelligence stay engaged when, as our own Justin Baragona reported this week, Keith Ablow, a Fox News Contributor Claims Obama Wants Ebola To Spread In US Because He Hates America?

It’s possible to feel empathy for the two Dallas, Texas healthcare workers who’ve been diagnosed with the disease after treating an infected patient, without extrapolating that we’re on the verge of a pandemic. And to take the argument a step further (I’m looking at you Fox News and Republican lawmakers), it’s a cynical act on the verge of criminal to needlessly stoke constituent fears of the unknown for perceived political gain. There’s no medically valid reason to doubt CDC Director Dr. Tom Friedan’s working theory that Nina Pham, the 26-year-old woman who was the first to contract the disease Stateside, did so because of a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) “breach in protocol.”

There’s even less justification for leveraging the situation to foment xenophobia. I offer Washington Post writer Gail Sullivan’s piece, “For the right, Ebola is the latest rallying cry for closing the Mexican border,” by way of example. Sullivan observes “[First US-diagnosed patient Thomas Eric] Duncan arrived on a plane from Liberia. But that hasn’t stopped people from stoking fear that Ebola will spread to the United States via our border with Mexico, a country that has seen exactly zero cases of Ebola thus far. Few seem as concerned about Ebola entering the United States via Canada, our less politically-fraught border to the north.”

Less malevolent, but still shameful reporting practices have assisted in alienating thinking people. Earlier this week, Jon Stewart did a great send-up of mass media’s Ebola coverage. As the legendary Will & Grace character Karen Walker once observed of an anecdote, “It’s funny because it’s sad.” That is certainly true of the “sanity-resistant” faux analysis surrounding the isolated Texas cases. While there’s nothing humorous about the real suffering of real people, a variety of opportunists with an Ebola agenda make it hard to accommodate genuine concern with sneering disapproval. Rather than fight the good fight, it’s often easier to disengage. After all, there’s a new season of The Walking Dead on AMC.

To these layers of coverage perturbation, New York Timescolumnist Frank Bruni added another on Tuesday with his piece, “Scarier Than Ebola.” The writer opens with a succinct and withering indictment of our culture: “We Americans do panic really well. We could use a few pointers on prudence.”

Bruni continues, “During the 2013-2014 flu season…only 46 percent of Americans received vaccinations against influenza, even though it kills about 3,000 people in this country in a good year, nearly 50,000 in a bad one.

These are deaths by a familiar assassin. Many of them could have been prevented. So why aren’t we in a lather over that? Why fixate on remote threats that we feel we can’t control when there are immediate ones that we simply don’t bother to?”

It’s a feature of human nature that we are inclined to ruminate on the novel and titillating rather than the routine. It’s an impulse we come by honestly, but also one we should endeavor to check. To continue Bruni’s argument, there are thousands of risks Americans take almost unconsciously every day that pose a greater threat to body and spirit than Ebola, such as getting in a car, drinking milk after the sell-by date or listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show. And by indulging in the worst of our impulses, we not only ignore real risks, we enable truly terrible reporting and disingenuously motivated political speech.

But at the end of the day, Fox News and anti-immigration lawmakers are just giving us what we want. If there were no audience for this type of garbage, it would fade away. Let’s stop indulging it and regain a little perspective. Perhaps that will create space to aid and support eradication of Ebola where it truly exists at epidemic levels – Western Africa.