Looking Ahead to 2016: Politics | National Catholic Reporter

Looking Ahead to 2016: Politics | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Cruz's upcoming lead is likely cyclical.  The GOP base voters have a habit of "trying out" front runners - one that the Trump flirtation almost short circuited - and may well have.  The fault, however, is not with Trump or Cruz - but with the GOP base voters.  While Trump has empowered their insanity, it did not cause it.  That same insanity will put very real faces on the GOP attempt to keep the Senate and it won't be pretty.  As for the House, gerrymandering may assure the Republicans keep the House - however in 2010 the Democrats had no idea they would so badly. Charlie Cook likes to playit safe and seems to have his finger on the scales for the GOP just a wee bit, possibly from not disregarding Rassmussen and other polls that push rather than investigate.



Hillary may or may not win the nomination.  There is quite a Sanders movement that is almost as hard to pin down by polls as the Minnesota win by Jesse Ventura.  Be that as it may, it is about time for the Democratic nominee to be very straight with the American people about the nature of the pro-life movement as essentially a scam to goose pro-life voters to go Republican in hopes of achieving the impossible (and ill-advised dream) of overturning Roe v. Wade as a state's rights proposition. It is a pity Joe Biden could not run and be as honest.  This would be best said by a Catholic candidate - however most Catholic candidates want to play the affiliation card - and its hard to tell the truth while doing that.  Maybe Hillary or Bernie can.



Of course, most of the base election issues have nothing to do with how the next Democratic president will govern, although the economic positions likely will.  This is why some view Clinton as GOP-lite and are embracing Sanders, who will definitely have a progressive economic agenda and may actually bring in voters at the House level who don't usually vote - thus upsetting the gerrymander and enabling passage of this legislation.Clinton won't benefit from an insurgency, but likely would be no harder on capitalists than Donald Trump would.  



On Social Security, removing the gap on both the employer and employee contributions is a quick sugar high, but it increase benefits to the wealthiest.  It is far better to actually lower the cap on employee contributions, lowering benefits to the wealthy, while funding the employer contribution with either a payroll tax with no cap or a consumption tax - but by crediting all workers with the same annual contribution.  Sadly, although it would work, the conservatives would never go for it.



On foreign policy, you can count on either party and any candidate to let Israel have too much of what it says it wants, which is not even good for Israel.  This colors the rest of military and foreign policy in a way that makes who wins irrelevant, which is truly sad indeed.