Wolf Blitzer Skewers Wasserman-Schultz's Medicare BS

Ugh.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I'm not a big DWS fan as it is...she's certainly no Stephanie Cutter!

She's just totally FoS here, and Blitzer is right to hold her feet to the fire. It was so painful that I couldn't even watch the whole thing. Sadly, I've just come to expect this kind of mendacity from the red team...but...et tu, blue team? Really? It's so much more gut-wrenching when the blues lower themselves to this level.

And there is a perfectly good answer available to WB's question. Roughly and off the top of my head:

Yeah, Wolf, no one over 55 is directly affected by this. Why not? Because it's a bad plan, and R&R know that it's a bad plan. They exempt 55+ folks from this plan because Republicans know that seniors know and care more about Medicare than any other group--it's not juts an abstract policy proposal to them. It matters. And they would massacre this plan at the polls if it applied to them. Romney and Ryan are betting that people 55 and over will be selfish and short-sighted. They're betting that they'll say "Well, I'd never vote for that if it affected me...but so long as it doesn't...so long as this terrible plan only affects other people, people who come after me, I'll vote for it." But when we vote, we're not supposed to take only our own narrow interests into account. We're supposed to be asking whether the policies are good in general, not just good for us. It's as if R&R had gone to Florida or Ohio and said "Hey, vote for us and we won't apply the Ryan budget to you guys. We want your votes, and we'll buy them by exempting you from the terrible laws we plan to put into effect. They'll affect everybody else, but not you. How 'bout it?" However, we, the Democrats, hope that most people 55 and over are not selfish and short-sighted. No, this policy won't affect you folks, because R&R know that you'd crush them at the polls if it did. But don't just ask "will this affect me?" Ask "how would I vote on this if it did affect me?" Here, as always, you should vote in accordance with the Golden Rule, and legislate unto others as you would legislate unto yourself. Don't vote for a Medicare policy which could be summarized as ...and devil take the hindmost...

I realize that DWS has a hard job. She is, so far as I can tell, on the right side of history. She's fighting against a party that has made lunacy, dogmatism and mendacity the cornerstones of their entire approach to campaigning and governing. That can make it seem as if anything goes in service of beating them. But not anything goes, and, in particular, this doesn't go. A real moral and tactical low point for the Dems.