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"Click here, contribute $5, and fight for Ohio, Florida, a Democratic Senate and four more years. This is the only way we win".

This was in an email from Crystal King, Political Director at the DSCC, one of the many I get on a daily basis.

I hope this isn't true; my assumption had always been that winning an election was a function of a strong argument and a compelling case.

Ms King's assertion means either:

1. The party platform is irrelevant,
2. The candidate doesn't matter,
3. The outcome is solely a function of cash raised.    

If she's right, election outcomes are essentially for sale and we can give up and go home how. 

The Consumer Market for Health Care

Republicans are believe that market forces can bring down the cost of heath care. Their argument, if their litany of self serving sentiment and half baked ideas can be characterized as an argument, is that markets are efficient which must be good since efficiency means less waste.

Here are three problems for Republicans to consider when they stop pontificating and start thinking.

First, there may be no waste, but that's not the same as perfect competition. Buyer power is low so profits move to the more concentrated sellers.  Consumer surplus declines;  producer surplus increases. Individuals and companies (which are both numerous) buy from a few large insurance companies.

While waste is problematic, I'd rather have inefficiencies than a lean and mean delivery system, high prices and one in which private equity pockets all the created value.

Second, profit motives distort decision making at the point of delivery; despite the rhetoric about the primacy of quality care, data demonstrate clearly that profitable procedures are often used when less profitable ones may be more effective.     

Third, choosing between providers requires information - and there isn't any.  How many people died under your GP's care last year? How many surgical procedures when wrong at the hospital you use? Currently there's no way of knowing.

Forth, just because money changes hands doesn't make something a market. A protection racket involves an exchange money, but you are unlikely to get away with telling the local crime boss that you would like to look around in the market for another supplier for protection services. Perhaps the local Triad gang does a better job for less money and you'd like to check out their protection terms... 

When you've just had your teeth pulled and the dental practice sales manager (seriously - that's her title) offers you a "great deal" on dentures and a finance plan, you not really in a great position to say, "I'll get back to you". Extend the market logic, as Republicans suggest,  to health care more generally. Do you really want to have to deal with used car sales tactics when you are wondering if you are going die? When you're in the ER, hoe much choice do you really have?

Why the Dems will lose

The Democrats will lose the White House this November and quite possibly the Senate, leaving the Republicans with control of all three branches of government¹. Despite the fact that, perhaps because, Democrats are generally intelligent, fact driven thinkers, they seem completely unable to articulate clearly and succinctly why anyone should vote for them.

For example, three leading Dems on Candy Crowley's "State of the Nation" suggested

1. "We don't want to go back to the failed policies of the Bush era"; yet Paul Ryan is quite clear that he doesn't either. What he wants is to balance the budget by cutting government spending. That's not what Bush did, so this is an easy claim for the Republicans to dismiss.  
2. In answer to Crowley's question about youth unemployment among college graduates: "We want more people to go to college, not fewer and the Republicans will be cutting PEL grants". But this doesn't answer the question and is of little help of comfort either to unemployed recent college graduates with a mountain of debt, or high school graduates wondering whether a college degree really is a good investment. 

It's this inability to articulate a clear case and a compelling vision of the future that will sink the Democrats this cycle. The Dems are angry, but unlike the Tea Party, have been unable to channel that anger into a concise message. Occupy Wall Street is exhibit #1. The current flailing for an electoral life preserver is exhibit #2. 

It's tempting to say, they deserve what's coming to them were it not for the fact that most of us will be paying the price while our erstwhile representative go off to cushy lobbying gigs. We deserve better.

The Three Branches

If the Democrats loose big time in November (as I think they will), the White House will go to Mitt Romney. Both Houses will fall to the to the Tea Party. And with the Supreme Court leaning Republican and at least one Democratic appointee likely to retire in the next 4 years, the Supreme Court will be 6 to 3 constructionist / Republican oriented.

With what appears to be increasing use of legal challenges to legislation by the right, the composition of the Supreme Court is now perhaps the most important determinant of the country's future direction.