“Regarding Obamacare going out the window, the answer is yes, absolutely. The Republicans already tried to repeal it, like, 50-plus times. Now they control both the House and Senate. Obamacare is gone.”
For anyone who’s been paying attention to Donald Trump’s word-salad explication of his policy positions, you might be alternately skeptical or terrified. (Indeed, a majority of Americans say they are scared of a Trump presidency.) If you’re among the groups of people he has insulted or threatened — which is, like, most of the country — you might also wonder what the future holds for you now. Will all immigrants and Muslims be deported? Will those on Obamacare get tossed to the wolves? Will women seeking abortions be “punished,” as he suggested?
Rather than spin ourselves into a sensationalist tizzy, we reached out to someone who studies this shit for a living: Julian Gottlieb, a visiting assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Oregon. Gottlieb studies American politics, the media and public policy, so he seemed like an especially good candidate to take the long view and explain what the fuck kind of ride we’re in for.
The Bold Italic: Let’s start with the big picture. Are we going to lose abortion access? What about Obamacare? It seems like with the GOP in the White House, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court, those two things are gonna go out the window.
Julian Gottlieb: In terms of abortion, it depends on two things: the Supreme Court’s composition, and whether Republicans try to do away with the filibuster. This is the only thing the Democrats can hang onto right now.
But once they get a very conservative justice in there to replace Scalia, it’s clear that we probably will see Roe v. Wade chipped away at in certain ways. Still, in the state houses, the Democrats didn’t do anything to alter the calculus of abortion access, which GOP-led state houses have already chipped away at. When Trump said he wanted to “punish women” who have had abortions, I’m inclined to think that he’ll do an about-face on that.
As for Obamacare being out the window? The answer is yes, absolutely. The Republicans already had, like, 50-plus votes to repeal it. Now they control both the House and Senate. Obamacare is gone.
I read a piece today that said that even if Congress repeals Obamacare, it probably won’t do much to drive down rising healthcare costs. They’re expected to rise regardless of what we do with Obamacare.
I think that A) repealing Obamacare, and B) whatever his restrictive version of immigration is — I imagine those are the two most likely things to make it onto his first-100-days agenda.
TBI: What will happen to people who have healthcare through the Affordable Care Act?
JG: I believe the way Obamacare was set up was that it would reimburse states until 2018 or 2019. If Trump repeals it before that, Medicaid may disappear, even in states that expanded Medicaid. The 20 million people who have coverage may very well lose it. So it depends on whether states want to keep funding Medicaid without the federal government.
I’d imagine that in California, the state will want to keep the state exchanges or some kind of public option, so it may not make a difference here. But states will have to find other funding mechanisms to keep things afloat. States that didn’t opt into the Medicaid expansion — those states are almost certainly now not going to expand coverage. There is a big remaining gap, like, 10–15 million people, still without coverage. Those people are almost certainly not going to see an expansion of coverage. But a lot of these state exchanges that rely on the federal government — a lot of them might be screwed.
TBI: So how did all the pollsters, including stats-star Nate Silver, fuck up so bad? We trusted them when they said Clinton had a small but solid lead, and clearly they were wrong.
JG: One thing I always had in the back of my mind, upon hearing of Trump’s victory, is that there’s a group of voters — maybe 2–4% — who were waiting in the wings to pounce on this election and didn’t really show their cards. The pollsters didn’t reach them at all. Beside that, polling has gotten harder because people don’t have landlines anymore. And polling tools decay over time — they’re vulnerable to not being effective in the next election cycle.
Nate Silver’s model is all proprietary, so he doesn’t completely tell what he’s doing. But he’s weighting polls depending on what’s been accurate. Though if all your polls are skewed wrong, you’re gonna miss something.
“If Trump manages the attorney general’s office in any way like he manages the lawyers for his business, they’ll basically be used to intimidate people — especially journalists and victims of sexual assault and those who’ve come forward with accusations against him.”
TBI: What’s going to happen to freedom of speech? Trump has shown contempt for journalists and seems to keep a personal-enemies list that includes many journalists and newspapers. Meanwhile Newt Gingrich, who’s likely to get a cabinet appointment, has spoken of bringing back the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). [Editor’s note: During the Cold War, the HUAC was used to witch-hunt suspected communists and make their lives miserable.]
JG: It really depends on how Trump uses the attorney general’s office. A common trope of the Republican party is that they want to run government like a business. If Trump follows through on that promise, if he manages the attorney general’s office in any way like he manages the lawyers for his business, they’ll basically be used to intimidate people — especially journalists and victims of sexual assault and those who’ve come forward with accusations against him. The fact that he’s floated those kind of ideas tells you something.
A wing of his supporters have been shouting, “lock her up. ” But it’s hard to say if he’ll follow through on those people’s will. I think the way Trump was able to completely capture unpaid, free media and steer the press toward covering the narratives he championed, hints at a scary time for the news industry. Especially given that the news industry hasn’t put up a vociferous defense of most working people in this country. When Trump says, “Drain the swamp,” he may well consider the media as being part of that.
But one cautionary note: I don’t mean to say that journalists will be locked up, although we have a history of locking up whistleblowers and intimidating journalists (so that’s not a new thing). But I think that that also speaks to the power of people like Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald, who are not paid for and bought. They’re very credible adversarial journalists. As long as they have independent sources of funding and speak the truth about power, I think those kinds of journalists will be emboldened.
Still, dark times loom for a lot of establishment news agencies. CNN lost a lot of credibility in this election — HuffPo too. Think about what they represent: they passively accepted the unionization of their writing staff, but they also embody some of the larger problems with the new media landscape. And yet they’re very sensational. Huffington Post uses independent contractors and unpaid writers, and their polls were at, like, 98% for Clinton. Their credibility takes a huge hit.
Nate Silver takes a big hit, even though he tried to adjust his models accordingly right before the election.
I think a lot of the media should be worried about censorship and intimidation, but still, they have a lot of self-inflicted wounds.
“I would be lying if didn’t say I have worries in the back of my mind about Trump locking up journalists. I don’t want to be hyperbolic about that.”
TBI: What about journalists? Have we reason to be fearful? Particularly in light of how easy it is to surveil people now, vis-à-vis the NSA and the telecom companies’ capitulation to federal agencies that surveil us.
JG: I’m inclined to think that if indie journalists survived Bush, they can survive Trump. But I would be lying if didn’t say I have worries in the back of my mind about Trump locking up journalists. I don’t want to be hyperbolic about that. Still, the Obama administration doesn’t have a great record on press freedom either. Maybe it’s time for a soul-searching moment for the left.
“I have damning things to say about the role of Silicon Valley in this election. The real world is much more complex than building apps and liking things on social. Mark Zuckerberg is a total dilettante when it comes to politics, and because of his reluctance to step into the political fray — for corporate and political reasons — he came to tacitly accept all the hate and bullying and intimidation that came through on his social media network.”
TBI: What role did (or didn’t) Silicon Valley play in this election outcome?
JG: I have damning things to say about the role of Silicon Valley in this election. They have so much hubris to think that they can “disrupt” every industry and create platform monopolies. A lot of Silicon Valley companies are glorified marketers. They have a stupid view of politics as overcomplicated. The real world is much more complex that building apps and liking things on social.
[Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg missed an opportunity to have powerful things to say about politics. I mean, he’s a total dilettante when it comes to politics, and because of his reluctance to step into the political fray — for corporate and political reasons — he came to tacitly accept all the hate and bullying and intimidation that came through on social media networks. Twitter is to blame too.
“What’s happening on the West Coast with Silicon Valley is that the gains of all that economic growth are not distributed well, and there’s a populist revolt because of that.”
People on the left should be very wary of the role Silicon Valley is playing in politics. The big battle we’re having on the West Coast is about how technological innovation can distribute economic growth. What’s happening on the West Coast with Silicon Valley is that the gains of all that economic growth are not distributed well, and there’s a populist revolt because of that.
TBI: A lot of people on the left are more scared about Trump than they were about Bush I, Bush II, Reagan or Nixon. Is this a reasonable fear?
JG: I have a much more complex perspective on this.I think the subtle proto-fascism Trump used in this campaign is far scarier than anything Bush or Reagan did or said.
That said, Trump’s complete willingness to do an about-face also — and the fact that he lost the popular vote—means he’s going in with a weaker mandate. (Although he does have Congress, which makes him more dangerous.)
But I mean, Trump’s not a true populist; he’s a demagogue. There are already musings that he’ll fill the cabinet with Wall Street types.
I think he’ll show some reluctance to mess with the West Coast—Cascadia and California, which went in the opposite direction (more left) on most donw-ballot issues.
But I don’t want to give you the false impression that I’m optimistic about what will happen in this country. The racism and xenophobia is now much stronger than what it was with Bush.
TBI: Some people are now calling for California’s secession from the United States, a #Calexit. How realistic is that?
JG: I welcome this idea, which you saw on ballots up and down the West Coast, that state and local politics are the place to toy with what democracy and inclusion look like. Whether this means statehood or a more decentralized federalism, the result could be the same.
The important thing to remember is that some of our national struggles don’t go away even if we start to have a more decentralized democracy. We have a lot of all-consuming conflicts that we’re engaged in in the Middle East. Decentralization poses a lot of challenges there.
I mean, consider this — there are a lot of defense contractors with factories in California. How would a Calexit work exactly, given those companies’ close ties to the United States military?
I don’t want to speculate about what Trump would do, but not every Republican in Congress is comfortable with that kind of decentralization. Think about the battle for reproductive rights: if Roe V. Wade is overturned, does that mean states that want to keep abortion legal get to protect that? Or the state rulings on same sex marriage? It’s unclear.
