Could Obamacare Destroy Progressivism for a Generation?

     So I've been hearing this a lot from conservatives as of late, that if Obamacare continues to bomb, it could be the death knell of Progressivism for a generation. Some have even suggested that it could destroy the Democratic party for a generation. Here is my take:

1) Obamacare, if it really bombs, could really deal a severe blow to the whole Progressive cause, one which calls for a large, activist role for the central government in the economy and in people's lives, for possibly at least a decade or more, maybe two to three decades even. I am more cautious because nowadays with the Internet, politics is a bit different than how it used to be.

2) In terms of destroying the Democratic party, I think this is about as realistic as the constant claims of the death of the GOP. However, it could possibly destroy the more far-leftist behavior that the current Democratic party has been in favor of under President Obama.

IMO, what would really be ironic is if the GOP is continually unable to win the presidency due to its social conservatism (same-sex marriage and the like), but yet the Democratic party in winning the presidency is no longer able to pursue the solidly leftist agenda that it has been pursuing via President Obama.

The Future of the GOP

     I am wondering if the GOP will be able to get another candidate elected as President anymore. Some argue that the mainstream GOP's social conservatism (completely against abortion, anti-same sex marriage, etc...) is going to prevent this and is a good deal why Romney lost the 2012 election. If this is the case though, I fear for the GOP because it seems that either in the GOP, there are the ultra-right-wing Tea Party conservatives who scare away independent voters, or the more "moderate" conservatives who are essentially too moderate and come across more as a lighthearted version of a Democrat as opposed to a conservative who just happens to be moderate.

     By this, I mean many a "moderate" conservative has proven unable to defend basic conservative principles. They don't know how to fight against criticism of conservatism from the Left. A conservative who happens to be moderate is one that will come across as clearly conservative, but just more moderate on issues. At least that is how I see it anyway. A Bob Dole, a John McCain, a Mitt Romney, etc...are the moderate kind who are/were more like lighthearted Democrats. A Ted Cruz, a Rand Paul, a Sarah Palin, etc...these are your far-right Tea Party conservatives. Neither type seems able to win a presidential election for being either too right or too moderate.

Four problems I see with the GOP are:

1) Appearance of ramming religion down people's throats: Not all GOPers seek to do this, but there are some that do and this hurts the party

2) The harsh, hardline rhetoric against same-sex marriage strikes many as being thinly-veiled anti-gay bigotry on the party of the GOP: Again, this is not the case with all GOPers, but with many it seems to be the case, and this hurts the party

3) The harsh, hardline rhetoric against illegal immigration strikes many people as being thinly-veiled racism: again, most GOPers are not racist, but the hardline rhetoric strikes many independents as the GOP being racist. It also scares the daylights out of the Hispanic and Latino community

4) The extremist pro-life position of the GOP turns off many women and independents

     If these problems are in fact keeping away enough independents and women from voting for the GOP in the presidential elections, then either the GOP will have to change itself on some of these issues or it won't be able to win another presidential election. Now I don't think this is set in stone, however, for a few reasons. During the 2012 election, some said that the GOP can no longer count on the white vote to be able to carry it through to a presidential win. Basically, that the white vote is no longer lare enough to outdo the minority-women-independent-leftwing-youth block that tends to go more for the Democratic party.

     Maybe this is the case, but the thing is, Romney lost by about three million votes. Consequently, about three million Republicans stayed home during the election as they were not at all enthused about Romney. If these GOPers had come out and voted, then either Romney would have won or he would have lost by a much narrower margin. In addition to this, Romney had also been made irrelevant in the media right prior to the election by Hurricane Sandy, meanwhile Obama got a lot of great press from the crises and also, inadvertently, help from Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, a hardcore critic of Democrats, yet who gave great praise to Obama. This would be like Nancy Pelosi coming out in huge praise for George W. Bush. This hurt Romney as quite a few independent voters said that it was Obama's work regarding Sandy that made them decide to vote for him.

     And then to top that off, 80% of the Hispanic/Latino vote went for Obama, instead of the more normal 60/40 split the Hispanic vote usually takes. If the GOP is next time able to win back more of the Hispanic vote, doesn't have a natural disaster sideline its convention or campaign (it will be harder next time for a natural disaster to sideline the campaign itself as the Democratic candidate will not be in office and thus not able to get press for directing aid as the President can), and can enthuse those three million Republicans who stayed home in 2012 while at the same time not scaring away three million independent voters as a result, then it could probably win in 2016.

     Another aspect to this debate is that it would mean that the claim that the white vote is not adequate to outnumber the minorities, women, youth vote, etc...is incorrect (I am assuming the vast majority of those three million Republicans were white). I am not saying that this is a good thing, if the GOP is a predominately white party, but it would mean it can still win the presidency without needing to attract other groups. If the GOP can ease up its rhetoric and stance on abortion, and come across more reasonably regarding illegal immigration, and become more accepting of LGBT people, it naturally will start to attract these groups in larger numbers.

To win more of the Hispanic vote, I think the GOP needs to emphasize two things to Hispanics:

1) That the GOP, while against illegal immigration, understands that the government cannot just essentially slam a door shut on the border as that would cut in half families; that the GOP is very much a party of family values, and fully understands the concerns about family that the Hispanics have and is not going to do anything that just cuts families in half (how exactly to go about doing this with an immigration policy that appeals to conservatives I am not sure, but the GOP needs to have softer rhetoric with regards to the issue if it expects to win more Hispanics---also, the GOP really is supposed to be a party that understands family and family values and the importance of the family unit as a building block for society, and as such, should really have concern about this aspect of the Hispanic population that have combinations of illegals with legal immigrants).

2) Some Hispanics after the 2012 election said that they do not necessarily agree with the GOP's argument about limited government, that in their culture, people help one another and that is something that they strongly believe in. This is based on a misconception about conservatism however, i.e., that it is for a society in which people are on their own versus the Democratic party's view of a society in which everyone is in it together, which to them equals government programs. This type of wording was for example used during the Democratic National Convention. But it is an incorrect understanding of conservatism. Conservatism very much believes in people helping one another, but sees a distinction between society and government. Democrats and the political Left, on the other hand, equate the two as being one and the same.

     Society consists of things such as the family, community, church, charity, etc...all of which are people helping one another, but none of which involve the government. Seeing a distinction between society and government is also not arguing against the existence of a form of welfare state for safety net purposes, it is just arguing that having a "we're in it together society" need not mean a bunch of government programs or a large social welfare state.

     In explaining this, the GOP needs to explain to the Hispanic population that the reason it is for more limited government is because of how historically, many government programs intended to help people have only done the opposite and made the problems worse, how such programs can tend to explode in cost and be unsustainable financially, and so forth. That the GOP instead is for a limited size of welfare state for safety net purposes and believes fully in a society in which people help one another.

China Bubble

     So to anyone who has followed my blog for awhile will be aware, I have in the past often harped about the bubble in China and if/when it will burst and what the effect will be. I am willing to concede that I could be totally wrong on that and that the bubble was not the kind that will burst, however, after doing some Googling on the matter, it seems like the bubble is alive and growing in China right now. If this is the case, will the bubble have a breaking point at some point? Will it result in a crash that is unprecedented? And how would something like that affect the global economy, and the American economy in turn?

Will next year really be the calamity many are predicting?

     So we are in interesting times. It seems that Obamacare could really be an epic policy disaster and it has the Democratic party scared to death. Myself, while it does seem this way, I don't think anyone will know for sure until if/when the website gets working and then next year, when people with employment-based health insurance start getting kicked off of their policies and forced to buy new policies.
    
     I was rather shocked that President Obama said that they did not realize how difficult purchasing health insurance online was. This is the kind of thing that conservatives and libertarians have been yelling about since the legislation was proposed, i.e., that no one can predict exactly how such a massive and complex piece of legislation such as this will perform.

     I am hoping that this helps the GOP in the 2014 elections, but time will tell. And in the 2016 Presidential elections.

Obamacare

     So I am wondering how everything is going to go with the so-called Affordable Care Act. Is it going to collapse on itself or will it work well? If it does collapse, will the Democrats make the push for full-on single-payer? Personally, I am hoping the program collapses and that we do not end up with any single-payer system. I think there are better ways to repair the healthcare system of our country, and I do not want the government having such centralized control and/or influence over such a large portion of our economy.

     I do worry about the direction of the United States, because we have seen what excessive spending has done to quite a few of the European nations. And unlike those nations, which do not have to spend much on national defense, the United States does, in order to maintain the global peace. So if the U.S. goes to route of the European social democracies, what happens to our military budget?

Information Arts

     Science, engineering, and technology overall are subjects that fascinate me. At heart, I am an engineer. Profession-wise, I am intending to obtain some engineering degrees at a future date (right now I am in a bit of a predicament life situation-wise). Anyhow, one thing I find that I have tended to have a great deal of interest in is artwork that deals with communicating information. I don't know why this is, but I do find such things very beautiful. For example:

Maps
Globes
Clocks
Old-world navigational instruments
Technical drawings
Schematics and blueprints
Drafting (such as architectural drafting)
Graphical User Interfaces
Calligraphy
Fine books

     These are all things I love. These are usually not considered as "art" but to me they are very much art, as they are often very beautiful and often require great skill to produce. That they serve a function doesn't take away from their being art (a lot of art that we think was done solely for purposes of beauty in the past actually served some very functional purposes too, for example much of ancient Greek sculpture, which served religious, political, etc...purposes).

     Being that I love old-world technology such as steam engines, mechanical clocks and watches, maps, old-world navigation instruments, etc...I also am an admirer of the subculture known as Steampunk.

Foreign Policy

     So it seems that President Obama's foreign policy has finally blown up on him. One major misconception I have always felt that many people had during the 2012 election was how it was said that usually, the Republican candidate is seen as being much stronger on foreign policy than the Democrat, but how in this case, the Democrat was seen as just as strong. The problem is, Obama was not really very strong on foreign policy, he just seemed that way because the limit of most Americans' knowledge on his foreign policy was that he used drones to gun down terrorists and he gave the order to have Osama bin Laden killed.

     What all of this ignored was two-fold:

1) Neither one of those is per se really foreign policy

2) It ignored his weakness with regards to countries like Russia and Iran. For example, how he initially, upon first becoming President, tried appeasing Russia by giving up the missile defense shield and, at least as they themselves saw it, betraying our allies Poland and the Czech Republic. 

     It turned out that Mitt Romney was right on two things for which he was mocked, one on his claim that terrorists could cause a problem in Mali (which happened a few months later) and two, his claim that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe. I think this appearance of weakness from the United States is going to have some major longer-term repercussions for American, and global, security, as our allies are not going to be as willing to stick with us under the fear that we will not protect them, and at the same time, we are likely also going to see further aggression and challenges to our power.

     I also think that the cultural attitude many Americans seem to have about the U.S. playing a smaller role in world affairs, due to their being sick of Iraq and Afghanistan, is a dangerous line of thinking. Like it or not, the United States underwrites global trade and global security. It is because of the United States that the European nations have been able to get away with spending so little on national defense since the end of World War 2 (and thus why they have been able to spend so much money on their bloated social welfare states). If the United States withdraws from the global stage, it will create a power vacuum, one which will be replaced by something far worse (Russia-Iran-China).

     And talk about energy independence will not free the U.S. security-wise from global affairs either. Even if the U.S. made itself 100% independent of Middle Eastern oil, the problem is that plenty of the other major economies in the world get a sizeable amount of their oil from the Middle East. What this means is that if a blow-up ever occurs in the Middle East, and their economies thus tank big-time, it will tank the U.S. economy, which is interlinked with them, as well, and thus force us into the conflict. Also our support of Israel (which I fully support 100%) will keep us involved in the Middle East.

     I do wonder why President Obama has seemed so naïve and amateur on a few issues regarding foreign policy. For example, I am not any foreign policy expert, but thus far, he has said/done the following:

1) In the third presidential debate, one of the arguments that he made is that we spend more on defense than all the other major countries combined. Is he unaware that that is because they spend virtually nothing? It isn't that they all spend a reasonable amount and the U.S. way overspends. Trust me, the U.S. military budget is not excessive. If anything, it is severely underfunded right now and should have its budget increased significantly, but the money isn't there. The vehicles of the Army and Marine Corps have been driven way beyond what their original intended service life was supposed to be because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because the soldiers had to bolt armor onto those vehicles that they were not made to handle, it added a lot of additional wear-and-tear on the vehicles. So the vehicles have been driven way beyond what they were supposed to be and with a whole lot of extra wear-and-tear to boot. The Marine Corps is especially hit hard by this as they have always made due with older equipment.

     The military should always be in a state where it can fight a sizeable conflict if necessary. Not being in such a state only invites aggression. Some may say, "Well even in its current state, the U.S. military is still plenty capable of bombing any other country to the Moon if required." The problem is that bombing capability means nothing if the military lacks the ability to send in a sizeable contingent of ground troops. This is because if bombing the country creates a power vacuum whereby utter chaos breaks out and you have the problem of things like WMDs falling into the hands of terrorists, then use of ground troops is going to be required.

     Yet one of the major concerns of the military with regards to possibly bombing Syria is that if we do so, and the situation unravels where ground troops are needed, the military is in no position right now to be getting into such a conflict. The military should always be in a position where it can fight such a conflict if need be. To be in the current state it is in is a very precarious position for the United States to be in and can only invite aggression from our enemies.

2) His establishing a red line regarding Syria and use of chemical weapons. Did it not occur to him that if the red line was crossed, that he would have to do something? It is like he was caught completely off-guard or something. I mean it shouldn't take an expert or even a highly-intelligent person to know not to create any ultimatum unless you are willing and/or able to take action about it. One would think he would have at least consulted with his advisors, asking them the question, "IS there anything we can really do if Syria uses chemical weapons?" I have read some theorize that he has surrounded himself with yes-men is the problem.

3) He has said that "the tide of war" is receding. How is he so sure of that? If history is any lesson, wars can have a nasty habit of popping up when people least expect them. No one saw World War I when Europe was on the cusp of it, and then when it was clear that a conflict was going to occur, most thought that it would be very short. This reminds me of how he has said that wind and solar power are the energy sources of the future. Again, how can he know that for sure? (but that is a different topic).

Anyways, just wanted to get all that off my chest.