No Need To Monkey Around

There are few experiences more frustrating than when some idiot purposely monkeys around and tries to sabotage something you care about at the same time you're trying to fix that item. We know that many of the people in both the White House and HHS empathize with that frustrating feeling right now, even as they continue rushing to fix the problems with the federal health insurance enrollment website, Healthcare.gov.

That frustration was also evident at Thursday's mostly pointless hearing in the House - or as Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey called it, a "monkey court." Multiple software contractors for the new federal health insurance system spent hours ducking responsibility, even while some Republican House members seemed to almost revel in the problems of the Obamacare website.

Even as reliable reports of repairs to the healthcare website pop up daily, more people continue to enroll, and the positive opinion of Obamacare continues to grow. That hasn't kept the right-wing media or extremist Republican politicians from acting like a bunch of crazed monkeys about the Obamacare website problems.

Unfortunately, as Ed Kilgore noted in Washington Monthly on Thursday, the insane right-wing reaction to the health insurance rollout has begun to spread like a disease. Now, some of our colleagues in the left-leaning media have even begun to get caught up in the metaphorical poo-throwing - which is actually the most dysfunctional thing anyone on the left could do.

To paraphrase Napoleon, "Never interfere with the opposition when they're in the process of destroying themselves."

That is, in fact, exactly what the GOP has been doing over the last few weeks. Greg Sargent pointed that out brilliantly on Thursday, in a chart based on polling from the Washington Post and ABC News. As Sargent noted, "unfavorable ratings [for Republicans] have jumped 19 points among seniors, to 65 percent; 17 points among independents, to 67 percent; and 10 points among women, to 63 percent. Those are all key constituencies in midterm elections."

You don't just have to take Greg's word for it, though.

Larry Sabato, a well-known political prognosticator changed his take on key races this week in both Virginia and North Carolina to significantly favor the Democratic candidates, based in large part on Republicans not only turning voters off, but actually driving them to the Democratic Party. Sabato's predictions mirror multiple polls in the Virginia governor's race which have Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe up solidly in most cases over his GOP rival, Virginia's current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

There are even growing signs that Republicans may lose control of the House in next year's elections, as their hopes to regain the Senate have almost been snuffed out.

Of course, that's the time historically when members of the left-leaning media being throwing crap at each other, while Democratic politicians begin doing really stupid things, as Maryland Democratic Attorney General Douglas Gansler did this week.

We simply don't have either the time or the inclination to slap all of our left-leaning media colleagues and every important Democratic politician we know, while at the same time giving our best impersonation of Cher saying "Snap out of it!" So we'll simply say our piece here, and hope both groups of people are paying attention:

Stop trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Stop it. Now.

There's no need for Democrats and those of us on the left to monkey around like the idiots in the GOP are doing. Leave that kind of stupid maneuver up to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

Too Far? You're There, Nebraska.

If you're a sports fan of any kind, you've likely seen or heard the State Farm insurance company series of ads over the last couple of years, that capitalize on the "That Moment When" meme. For Nebraskans, we're definitely at one of those moments in history, as journalist Don Walton pointed out earlier this week - though frankly, many Nebraskans are still in denial about it.

What Walton noted in the Lincoln Journal-Star is a sad and disgusting fact if you're a Nebraskan who can think critically and prefers multiple worthwhile choices at the polls. Unfortunately, the question for 2014 isn't whether a Republican will replace current U.S. Senator Mike Johanns. The Nebraska Democratic Party doesn't even have a serious candidate for the 2014 U.S. Senate race. Further, even if such a candidate existed, and swept both Omaha and Lincoln, there are still enough low-information Republicans in the state overall that a Democratic candidate effectively has no chance to win statewide, at this time.

So 'That Moment' in Nebraska? It's happening right now. It's the beginning of the 2014 political circus - and Nebraska Republicans have a decision to make.

Will they choose a sane, old-fashioned, center-right, Republican to win the Senate seat - someone who actually understands the meaning of important words like "governing" and "compromise"?

Or will the second U.S. Senate seat from Nebraska go to some bat-crap crazy, neo- Confederate, Ted Cruz wannabe who's willing to do anything - ANYTHING - to get public attention and the spotlight, but couldn't govern his or her way out of a paper bag?

It may be early, but from the looks of the race so far, it appears Nebraskans seem more than willing to let extremist right-wing out-of-state political interests buy the seat and install their latest puppet, Ben Sasse. Sasse, a relative political neophyte, a Harvard and Yale graduate, and current president of Midland University picked up the endorsement of the tea-party backed Senate Conservatives Fund this week, over former Nebraska state treasurer and Navy hero, Shane Osborne. That doesn't mean Osborne would be a better candidate.

As Dave Weigel noted in Slate yesterday, both Osborne and Sasse already seem to be thinking of themselvess as Ted Cruz-like figures, though the money backers of the extreme right only seem to be treating Sasse like Cruz.

Don't think the 2014 U.S. Senate from Nebraska race will be a runaway for Sasse, though.

Not only will Karl Rove and the business wing of the GOP likely be attacking tea party extremists like Sasse. The 42-year old Fremont teabagger will also have to face three other GOP opponents, plus the newest entrant to the race, rancher Jim Jenkins.

Jenkins, a former Democratic voter in Nebraska who admits he voted for corporate shill Mitt Romney in 2012, is running as a "Non-Party" independent candidate. That just may entice some of those old-fashioned sensible moderate Nebraska Republicans who understand there is no realistic future in governing with the right-wing fanatics.

No matter who Nebraska Republicans choose to fill that seat, as Don Walton pointed out, the race for the next U.S. Senator from Nebraska effectively ends next May. So this is that moment - when most of those current Republican candidates begin acting like clowns, trying to show Nebraskans just how far to the extreme right they're willing to go to get their party's nomination.

How will Nebraskans know when these candidates have gone too far to the extreme right for common sense and good governing?

If you have to ask, you're already there.

In-Flight Warning: Stay On Target

With as much media hype as the sputtering rollout of Healthcare.gov has received this past week, we understand how you might have gotten the impression large sections of the internet were somehow frozen and broken. However, not only is most of the internet working fine - you're reading this online right now - but the main portal for Obamacare is indeed functional, and getting better all the time.

We don't want to appear as though we're ignoring the problems. In fact, as Brian Beutler of Salon pointed out on Tuesday, it's actually a very good thing that we're drawing some attention to the failures of the website now, before it's too late to fix the problems.

Still, as both Lucia Graves and Jonathan Cohn pointed out, the rough start to the federal health insurance exchange doesn't really matter that much. The next few weeks - specifically, between now and Thanksgiving - are really going to be the ones that count. Then the system will either work or it won't.

So while the machines of Obamacare may cough and sputter now like some wheezing airplane, the two major subjects you should be keeping your eyes on right now are 'Jobs and The Economy,' and the Icarus-like collapse of the Republican Party.

We've been saying it regularly for years now, and both Greg Sargent and Ryan Cooper echoed that refrain perfectly this week, noting that virtually every fight Democrats and the left have this fall should be about jobs - especially in the budget battle now happening on Capitol Hill.

Tuesday's delayed release of the September jobs numbers made that clear to anyone who knows how to read the data. While the jobs numbers were in positive territory, and the unemployment rate dropped again, the numbers still weren't the kind of figures that anyone who truly wants the economy to sharply improve would like.

One of the key factors that became obvious with September's jobs numbers is that Obamacare is not ruining the economy the way Republicans thought it would. In short, Obamacare isn't turning full-time jobs into part-time jobs. In fact, most of the jobs growth this year has been from full-time jobs.

Which means both Republicans and their right-wing media parrots have been lying about the effects of Obamacare on the economy all along.

As a slew of awful polls has already pointed out this week, Americans no longer like or trust Republicans - and that includes the extremists in the GOP. As Steve Benen's crystal clear chart showed on Tuesday, there is no more distinct group Americans dislike and feel betrayed by right now than the Republican Party.

That, frankly, is not a good thing.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats are attempting to get the American economy back off the ground, and flying high once again. It doesn't help that our nation's entire right wing seems to be seriously broken and won't easily be repaired.

If Americans want to keep focused on what we, collectively, think is important - namely, more jobs and a rapidly improving economy - it might help if we all kept our attention zeroed in on the target of an improved economy, instead of constantly pointing at the latest healthcare website computer glitch.