The Grass Crown: Drusus, the Non-Protagonist Hero

I wondered what to call Marcus Livius Drusus, who is the most heroic and admirable character in The Grass Crown, but not the  main character.  When the main character is not heroic or admirable, he is called the protagonist or the anti-hero or, if you want to be long-winded, the non-hero protagonist.  So the best designation I can come up with for Drusus is the non-protagonist hero.

His role in First Man in Rome was ambiguous.  We first see him as a young lawyer championing an Italian who does not have Roman citizenship, and it makes us admire him.  We do not admire him when he quite brutally forces his sister to marry the despised Quintus Servilius Caepio.  (He marries Caepio's sister).  But when he goes off to war and the army is wiped out because of his snobbish father-in-law's insubordinate conduct (he refuses to obey his military superior because he considers him a social inferior), Drusus begins the question the old order.  That he is wounded and his father-in-law and brother-in-law run away while an Italian comes to his assistance opens up a breach with his in-laws and a friendship for the Italian.  And when he realizes that the Italian allies didn't even know that what appeared to be incompetent generaling was actually rank insubordination, he becomes a supporter of Marius and a full-on champion of the Italians.

In The Grass Crown, Drusus emerges as the clear hero of Book II and Book IV and the non-protagonist hero of the novel as a whole.  He makes up for forcing his sister to marry Caepio by leaping to her defense when her husband starts to beat her and drives his brother-in-law from his house.  After his sister and her second husband die, he brings up her five children, along with his adopted son.  The four middle children are not that important, but Servilia, the oldest, will become Caesar's long-term mistress and Cato, the youngest, will become Caesar's arch-enemy.  And this is one that can't be blamed on an over-imaginative novelist; it actually happened in real history.

Drusus' father was a prominent conservative politician and the arch-foe of Gaius Gracchus.  His tactic was to undermine Gracchus by outbidding him with measures that were not meant to pass, but only to obstruct.  Thus when Gracchus proposed offering land to the poor on generous terms, the senior Drusus offered more generous terms.  Incidentally, the second novel also seems to indicate that I may have been mistaken in my assessment of the Gracchi.  The impression I had of Rome's popular party in general, from the Gracchi to Marius down through Caesar was that they could be described as pure left-wing populists.  They championed Rome's lower classes, sought to weaken the Senate and strengthen power centers outside the Senate, and to widen citizenship.  They punched up but did not kick down, and damaged their own popularity as a result.  (Kicking down is popular).  But this appears to be an oversimplification.  The Gracchi really were, to some degree, principled against kicking down.  They could easily have distributed land to Rome's poor simply by taking it from the Italians.  Their unwillingness to do so appears to have been the main reason they championed Italian citizenship.  Yet at the same time, the Gracchi were not immune to the temptations of kicking down. Gaius Gracchus funded his reforms by squeezing the provinces and was as hated there as he was loved in Rome.

But Drusus was the ultimate proof that things just aren't so simple.  Unlike his father, he seriously proposed a program that sounded very much like the Gracchi -- distribution of individual-sized parcels of land,* cheap subsidized grain, expansion of the Senate, citizenship for all Italians.  He differed from the Gracchi in that he sought to enhance the Senate's instead of weaken it and was scrupulously careful to respect Senators and not offend them.  But he was the son of a prominent conservative politician and gained the support of many other conservative politicians, with the result that the popular party turned against him, even though he was enacting much of what they supported! McCullough accurately identifies his main opponents as Lucius Marcius Phillipus and Quintus Varius, and she paints both men in the most unfavorable light, but she neglects to mention that they were both leaders of the popular party.**  Maybe right wing populism was more of a factor in Roman politics than I realized.

Drusus is portrayed in a most sympathetic and heroic light.  Aside from protecting his sister from her abusive husband and being devoted to his wife and devastated when she dies, his championship of the Italians gets (almost) everything right.  When his Italian friend proposes to illegally sign Italians up as citizens, Drusus indignantly refuses and thinks that he talks him out of it.  When he finds out that the Italians are, nonetheless, illegally signing up, he splits the difference -- denounces the action, but quietly urges anyone illegally signed up to flee and escape the roving commission coming to punish them.  When Marius comments that what is needed is a tribune willing to put his life on the line for the Italians, Drusus fearlessly says that he will be that tribune.  As tribune fighting for the rights of the Italians, he always scrupulously follows the rules, respects the Senate, prevents violent outbreaks at his meetings, and so forth.  He also plays a dangerous double game.  When he visits his Italian friends, he knows they are plotting rebellion if he fails.  As a patriotic Roman, he must denounce any such plans he knows of as treason, while as a loyal friend he does not want to betray them.  So he visits the Italians knowing that they are plotting treason, but lets them conceal any details from him so that he does not actually have anything to reveal.  He successfully passes most of the program the Gracchi fought so hard and died for.  Then Phillipus scours the Italian peninsula and finds every time a misfortune occurs on the day Drusus introduced his legislation and convinces the Senate that this is a very bad omen.  Drusus argues that this is really a warning about what will happen if he fails, but Philippus prevails and gets all of Drusus' legislation repealed.  And although as Tribune, Drusus could veto this action, but with true statesmanship, he declines to do so.  (This is historically accurate).

Drusus is not altogether without his flaws, most notably a desire for power and overconfidence.  (He is also a bit manipulative, but then, he is a politician).  When all the Italians swear to be his clients if admitted to citizenship, he lusts for the power this would give him.  He does not desire power for its own sake, but only for what he can accomplish with it.  Nonetheless, as he passes more and more legislation, he becomes intoxicated with it and has growing trouble recognizing the limits to what he can do.  At the same time, he gets so caught up in his work that he forgets about the oath and, when confronted with it, he keels over, thinking that all is lost.  His mother tells him that so long as he is fighting for justice, whether his motive are pure matters only to his personal vanity, and injustices are usually defeated by people who stand to gain politically as a result.  Drusus seizes upon this and argues that all the Italians agreeing to be his clients is a good thing -- it ensures that they will be led by a true Roman of the Romans.  He wins more and more people over to his viewpoint and is poised just on the verge of passing this crowning achievement, when he is assassinated by political opponents, in the sight of his sister's children.   His last words (which McCullough gives in English and Latin, suggesting that they may be authentic) are "Who will succor Rome in my place?"

The Wikipedia describes the assassination of Drusus as "one of the main turning points in the entire series."  Thinking it over, I am inclined to agree.  If Drusus had lived, he would have been successful in extending citizenship to the Italians.  If he had extended citizenship to the Italians, the ghastly civil war that followed could have been avoided.  If Rome had not been weakened by civil war, the eastern despot Mithridates of Pontus would never have dared massacre every Roman and Italian in his domain, so there would have been no urgency in going to war with him.  And if the Mithriditic War had been avoided, Marius and Sulla might have avoided their falling-out and civil war that toppled the Roman Republic.

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 *He did, however, differ in offering individual-sized parcels of land first to Rome's upper classes and only later to the poor, which meant that many poor men would not benefit at all.  Sigh!
**Drusus' brother-in-law, Quintus Servilius Caepio was also one of his main opponents.  Given his father's extraordinary snobbery about  pedigree, it seems unlikely that Caepio was of the popular party.

The Grass Crown: Young Caesar

To the extent so long a series over more than one person's lifetime can have a hero, the overall hero of the Masters of Rome series is Julius Caesar.  He cannot properly be called a character in First Man in Rome, being seen only toward the end, as a baby.  He is two years old at the beginning of The Grass Crown and thirteen by the end and us emerging as a secondary character, but a character nonetheless.

He was foreshadowed in First Man in Rome in two ways.  First, when Marius has his fortune told, the fortune-teller foresees a glorious future for him, but says he will not be the greatest Roman ever; that title will belong to his wife's nephew.*  Also in that novel, several leading Romans are discussing Marius with Rome's defeated enemy, Jurgutha of Numidia.  Jurgutha has a high opinion of Marius but asks what if there were someone like Marius except a patrician.  The others, even Marius' best friend, all dismiss the idea as absurd.  We, the audience, are expected to know that there will be a patrician Marius -- Caesar.  Likewise, in The Grass Crown, we meet the young Cicero, a brilliant speaker and author, but absolutely positively not cut out to be a soldier.  He makes friends with young Pompey,** a fighting man but not a man of words.  Young Pompey says that he supposes that Cicero's brilliance makes him too sensitive to be a soldier and just as well; he wouldn't know how to deal with anyone who was as brilliant as Cicero and a top notch soldier.  Once again, we, the audience are supposed to know that Pompey will have a great friend and rival who will be as brilliant as Cicero and as soldierly as Pompey -- Caesar.

Many people have criticized McCullough for letting her admiration of Caesar spill over into outright hero worship.  TV Tropes complains that he is portrayed as "smarter, tougher, stronger, braver and more morally decent than anyone else in the books by a ridiculous measure." The "more morally decent" is the one that really matters.  A villain, after all, can be smart, tough, strong and even brave and still be no less a villain.  These qualities just make him a more formidable villain.  So how does the child Caesar rate?

Well, at the age of two, he already has an intelligence of 18 (for a two-year-old) and a charisma of 18,*** but, of course, no more knowledge or experience than any other child his age.  His mother Aurelia was last seen in First Man in Rome happy and proud after having two daughters to finally have a son. We now meet her in The Grass Crown weary and run ragged, because a two-year-old with an intelligence and charisma of 18 can be quite a handful.  At two years old, he already speaks complete sentences and uses big words. His mother is very strict with him because everyone else immediately falls under the spell of his charisma and indulges him.  His family scrapes together the money to get him a tutor.

By the age of ten, he has taken on the very adult responsibility of helping his uncle Marius recover from a paralyzing stroke.  He sometimes shows some impatience and petulance but no more, after all, than one would expect of a child shackled with such an adult responsibility.  He supports his partially paralyzed and rather heavy uncle taking him walking around Rome.  We are assured that he is remarkably strong for his age, but he is still just ten after all, and when they get back he collapses from exhaustion -- or does he just pretend to in order to get his aunt's sympathy?  The author does not commit herself either way, but clearly his real or pretended collapse does get his aunt's sympathy, which will give him an incentive to fake it in the future.

As for his moral sense, it is hard to tell.  He recognizes what a jerk his cousin Young Marius is, but he is still his cousin.  He also sees Sulla for what he is -- but it is clear that that is partly because he is more than a little that way himself.

But most disturbing is the episode in which they kill the witness.  According to the novel, Young Marius marched under the command of the consul, who led his troops to defeat by incompetent generalship and then refused to retreat.  Young Marius then killed him and managed an orderly retreat, but was now threatened with execution on the testimony of the only witness to the incident. McCullough is clearly taking liberties with the facts here.  By all historical accounts, the consul actually led his troops to an initial victory, until he was killed, at which point they fell apart, leaderless.  By one account, the consul boasted that he was as good a general as the senior Marius, where upon the junior Marius killed him.

Nonetheless, in the novel Marius hears that his son is facing possible execution and decides to go investigate -- and to take a professional hitman (who is friends with the young Caesar and his mother) with him.  Aunt Julia, understanding very well the implications of what this means, asks Marius not to take his nephew with him, but Young Caesar insists.  They take off in a cart.  Marius and the hitman wait until the young Caesar (who is still just a child, after all) is asleep before discussing the one and only witness against Young Marius.  The senior Marius doesn't quite come out and say, "Someone should do something about that witness," but the message is clear enough.  They arrive and ask the commander to talk to the witness.  The commander has some doubts about letting the hitman go along, but Young Caesar uses his charm to persuade him.  Clearly he knows what is going on.  They ride by a high cliff and the hitman takes a careful action to scare the witness's horse.  It rears up, and the Young Caesar grabs it by the bridle and appears to try to restrain it, but actually sends both men and horses over the edge.  He grabs a tree; the others fall to their deaths.  Everyone, even Marius, despite hiring the hitman to kill the witness, is convinced that it was an accident. Only Young Caesar, the hitman, and Sulla (when he hears about the incident later on) know better.

Clearly by the age of ten Caesar has a dexterity of 18 as well as intelligence and charisma.  But he does not, to put it mildly, seem very morally decent!  At the age of ten, he is already a party to murder.  And keep in mind that neither Plutarch nor Seutonius (Caesar's earliest biographers) tell us anything whatever about his childhood.  That means that this episode is fictitious, completely made up by the author.  She isn't starting out by making her hero very admirable!

Also, by age 13, when Marius takes over and festoons the walls of Rome with the heads of his enemies, Young Caesar has become quite insufferable.  Marius appoints him Flamen Dialis (high priest of Jupiter).  As such, he was not allowed to touch iron or a horse, or to leave Rome for more than one night.  All of this naturally had the effect of ruining any prospect for a political or military career.  The author treats this as a deliberate attempt by Marius to prevent Caesar from having such a career, although there is no evidence that he had any such motive.  Young Caesar sulks and pouts over this appointment in a very self-centered manner.  He seems to care less about the savage slaughter taking place than that his future career has been ruined and now he will never be called the Fourth Founder of Rome.  What a jerk!  I have not done more than peek at the third book, Fortune's Favorite, but my general impression is that he becomes so insufferable in that book that you wish the conspiracy would hurry up and do its job.

How McCullough will succeed in making such an obnoxious character sympathetic remains to be seen.

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*Whether this story is true is anyone's guess.  The fortune teller who foretold a glorious future is mentioned in Plutarch.  The part about the wife's nephew is the author's own invention.
**This appears to be historically accurate.
***The real Caesar was, in fact, extraordinarily intelligent. He was said to have known the names and faces of every soldier in his legions!  He was also extremely charismatic.

Masters of Rome Continued: The Grass Crown

I have by now read the second book in the Masters of Rome series, The Grass Crown.  This book details the falling out between Marius and Sulla.  It requires a much greater understanding of Rome's political institutions than the first book, but that will be addressed later.  I want to start here with some purely literary comments.

First, as I commented before, there are certain recurring motifs one sees throughout the series.  The earliest ones are already appearing in the second book. Consider:

In First Man in Rome, Marcus Livius Drusus keeps his sister prisoner in their (large) house, mostly to keep her from bringing dishonor on her name, as their mother had done.  In The Grass Crown, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus locks up his wife, Dalmatica, for being too fond of Sulla.  Just for good measure, in The Grass Crown, Drusus also locks up his sister's daughter, Servilia, though with better justification.

In First Man in Rome, Drusus forces his sister to marry Quintus Servilius Caepio by locking her in her room on a diet of bread and water until she submits.  In The Grass Crown, Sulla beats his daughter to force her to marry Quintus Pompeius Rufus, Jr.  (She wants to marry Marius' son). Interestingly enough, although Sulla is undoubtedly a villain and Drusus may fairly be called the hero of the second novel (more on that later), Sulla ultimately comes out better in this regard than Drusus.  Recognizing the problems that go with a forced marriage, he asks his friend Publius Rutilius Rufus for advice.  Rutilius says that if the daughter actually gets to know Pompeius and Young Marius, she will recognize that Pompeius is the better choice, as it indeed turns out.  Things might have been quite different if Drusus had shown a similar sensitivity to his sister.

In First Man in Rome, Publius Rutilius Rufus makes some comments about sons resembling their fathers, but not perfectly, and how glad many unfaithful wives are of that, and how they go out of their way to assure their husbands that really the boy looks just like Uncle Lucius Tiddlypus.  In The Grass Crown, Livia Drusa has an affair while her husband is away and then assures him that her son got his red hair from some obscure uncle.

In First Man in Rome, Julilla (sister of Marius' wife and aunt of the future Julius Caesar) develops a deep crush on the handsome Sulla, follows him around, writes him love letters, and starves herself to force her family to let him marry her.  They end up marrying,  In The Grass Crown, Dalmatica develops a deep crush on the handsome Sulla and follows him around, pining after him, until her husband locks her up.  They end up marrying after her husband dies.

In First Man in Rome, Julilla sinks into alcoholism and kills herself as her marriage to Sulla falls apart.  Her mother has to take over bringing up the children.  In The Grass Crown, Drusus brings his mother in to bring up the children after his wife and sister both die in childbirth.

And finally, this one called for some unfair peeking ahead, but in The Grass Crown, Drusus runs himself ragged fighting for Italian citizenship, growing thin and haggard as he neglects to eat and sleep.  Finally, confronted with evidence that all the Italians have sworn to be his clients if admitted to citizenship, he keels over.  He remains unconscious so long, turns such a ghastly gray color, and has such a violent fit that everyone around him fears (or hopes) that he is dying.  His wife and sister being dead, he is taken home to the care of his mother, who is quite confident that his is not dying, he just passed out because he hasn't been eating.  Some honeyed wine will revive him, and good food will make him good as new.  It turns out to be true.  As is well known, Caesar was an epileptic. Several books later Caesar has a fit and people fear for his life, but a wise doctor recognizes this is simply an attack of hypoglycemia and revives him with some sweet wine.

Another point I gave more thought to this time than last is what one would cut out if one wanted to shrink the books down to a more manageable size.  In First Man in Rome, I would definitely cut out the description of the migratory patterns of the various Germanic tribes, and also some of the more gratuitous and extraneous gossip in Publius Rutilius Rufus's letters.  I would not cut out the descriptions of how Roman soldiers build a fortified camp, or how they maintain guard while doing it because these descriptions are important to understanding Roman military dominance.  In The Grass Crown, there was a whole lot more I wanted to cut.  I could definitely have done without a lot of the descriptions of the various places Marius visits while touring the East.  A lot of the pedigrees and genealogies just made my eyes glaze over.  There is also a lot of background on minor characters that is not strictly necessary.  And there is one scene where a lawyer is arguing for his client as a war hero who gave his blood for Rome and suddenly turns around and strips off his toga, then tears open his tunic and leaves him standing in his loincloth to show off his war scars.  Our main characters snicker at the whole thing as obviously staged.  And the scene is staged -- it's sole purpose appears to be to give the author an excuse to include a section in her glossary about why Roman men definitely did not wear loincloths when they had their togas on.*

And then there is the matter of names.  As discussed before, Roman men all had at least a given name and a clan name, and the aristocrats had at least one cognomen, sometimes more.  Women had no given name, only the feminine form of their family name(s).  Cognomina could pile up fast.  We meet Pompey the Great's father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (Gnaes Pompey the Cross-eyes).  His bloody record during Italy's civil war soon wins him the name Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo Carnifex (Gnaeus Pompey, the Cross-eyed Butcher).  He appears to mind Strabo more than Carnifex.  And then there is Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis, Quintus Varius, the Cruel Halfbreed of Sucro.  Sucro was a place in Spain and "Sucronensis" in this case did not mean victor at Sucro, but merely born in Sucro, i.e., not in Rome or even Italy.  Hybrida (Halfbreed) of course meant that one of his parents (presumably his mother) was not Roman at all.  Sulla refers to him as the Spanish cur (mongrel), Spanish (i.e., non-Roman) being every bit as insulting as mongrel.  Unsurprisingly, he preferred to be known as Quintus Varius.

At the time, men were usually addressed by their praenomen et nomen, i.e., their forename and clan name.  The practice of addressing by the cognomen occurred later, but was well established by Caesar's time.  One sees the beginning of it in this book, interestingly enough applied mostly to women and children.  To address a man by his cognomen was considered insulting.  But when Livia Drusa (sister of Marcus Livius Drusus) has two sons, one purportedly by her first husband, Quintus Servilius Caepio, and one by her second husband, Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus, they are simply known as Young Caepio and Young Cato.  Likewise, the soon-to-be famous son of Gaius Julius Caesar is known as Young Caesar.  The daughter of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus is properly named Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, but everyone just calls her Dalmatica.  And Young Caesar ends up marrying the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who he addresses as Cinilla.

We do see the vague beginnings of addressing men by their cognomen.  When Drusus is angry at his brother-in-law, he rudely refers to him as Caepio instead of a more polite Quintus Servilius.  And then there is the matter of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and his rival, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. (They are distant cousins).  For them to address each other as Lucius Cornelius would be confusing, so they call each other Lucius Sulla and Lucius Cinna instead.

One final remark.  When the main character in a novel is not particularly heroic or admirable, he is called the protagonist or the anti-hero.  What is the name for the most heroic and admirable character in a story who is not the main character?  Because whatever the name for such a character is, it applies in The Grass Crown to Marcus Livius Drusus.

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*Because the toga kept one arm completely immobilized and when men visited the latrine, they had to part their togas, lift their tunics, and whip out their potato peelers with one hand, something they could not do if there was a loincloth in the way.  The author said she personally experimented with this, although she was a woman with nothing to whip out.

The First Amendment as Applied to Communists

The issue of whether radical groups could advocate violent revolution was raised again after WWII in the case of Dennis v. U.S.  In this case, the defendants clearly belonged to the Communist party -- tightly centralized, disciplined, and under the direction of the Soviet Union -- but not engaged in any violent activity because their Soviet overlords believed (correctly) that the time for revolution was not at hand in the US, and that any revolutionary behavior would just lead to crackdown.  Furthermore, while the anarchists and radical socialist had opposed US involvement in WWI, Communists supported US involvement in WWII and suspended any revolutionary or other activity that might interfere with the war effort.  They were charged with seeking the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

The majority held that:

The obvious purpose of the statute is to protect existing Government, not from change by peaceable, lawful and constitutional means, but from change by violence, revolution and terrorism. That it is within the power of the Congress to protect the Government of the United States from armed rebellion is a proposition which requires little discussion. Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a "right" to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change. We reject any principle of governmental helplessness in the face of preparation for revolution, which principle, carried to its logical conclusion, must lead to anarchy. No one could conceive that it is not within the power of Congress to prohibit acts intended to overthrow the Government by force and violence. The question with which we are concerned here is not whether Congress has such power, but whether the means which it has employed conflict with the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

The majority held that the statute did not violate the First or Fifth Amendments because it was directed as "advocacy, not discussion."  The Court commented that although Gitlow and Whitney had not been expressly overruled, the view of the dissent had ultimately prevailed -- speech could be forbidden only if it posed a "clear and present danger" of imminent lawless conduct.  But it then defined "imminent" extremely broadly where the issue was violent revolution:

Obviously, the words cannot mean that before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited. If Government is aware that a group aiming at its overthrow is attempting to indoctrinate its members and to commit them to a course whereby they will strike when the leaders feel the circumstances permit, action by the Government is required. The argument that there is no need for Government to concern itself, for Government is strong, it possesses ample powers to put down a rebellion, it may defeat the revolution with ease needs no answer. For that is not the question. Certainly an attempt to overthrow the Government by force, even though doomed from the outset because of inadequate numbers of power of the revolutionists, is a sufficient evil for Congress to prevent. The damage which such attempts create both physically and politically to a nation makes it impossible to measure the validity in terms of the probability of success, or the immediacy of a successful attempt.

 It held that the "gravity of the evil, discounted by its improbability" was the formula to apply.  Since violent revolution was so great an evil, speech in its favor could be legislated against even if the danger was extremely remote.

Justice Felix Frankfurter issued a concurrence that was effectively a call for judicial restraint, urging the Supreme Court to leave such matters to the legislature.  Justice Jackson also concurred, saying that the "clear and present danger" test was fine and good for anarchists and radical socialists who generally engaged in spontaneous and individualistic violence, but that Communists, as a tightly disciplined conspiracy, were too dangerous for the formula to apply, and that stronger measures were needed.  He argued that the Communists were guilty of a criminal conspiracy (to overthrow the U.S. government), and that the First Amendment did not protect criminal conspiracies.

Justices Douglas and Black dissented.  Black argued that the defendants had not conspired to overthrow the U.S. government or even circulated publications advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government, and that banning organizations that believed in violent revolution was a form of prior restraint.  Douglas began:

If this were a case where those who claimed protection under the First Amendment were teaching the techniques of sabotage, the assassination of the President, the filching of documents from public files, the planting of bombs, the art of street warfare, and the like, I would have no doubts. The freedom to speak is not absolute; the teaching of methods of terror and other seditious conduct should be beyond the pale along with obscenity and immorality.

But he argued that nothing of the kind had been done, and that the courts were acting as if it had.  He went on to argue that the danger posed by the Communist Party was negligible, and that the law could not legitimately treat it as a serious threat.

Can Obamacare be Saved from the Supreme Court?

So, granted that the Supreme Court will probably cut off the subsidies for anyone buying health insurance on a federal exchange, the question is, can anything be done about this.  I am assuming that the Supreme Court decision is a foregone conclusion and nothing will change their minds.  What other alternative are there?

The one that gets mentioned most often is for states that don’t have exchanges to start them.  At the national level, low information voters will no doubt blame Obama for their loss of health insurance.  But at the state level, and among people in the know, there will start to be pressure to build state exchanges.  News on that front is revealing.  The states of Illinois and Delaware are frantically attempting to cobble together something that looks like a state exchange.  This will no doubt lead to further disputes and litigation over what is and is not a state exchange.  The best account I have seen on the subject says that to be considered a state exchange,the state must:

• Enact authorizing legislation or a have a properly issued executive order establishing the exchange;

• If the exchange is operated by an independent agency or non-profit, establish a properly constituted governing board;

• Have in place exchange governing principles;

• Fulfill all exchange functions, either itself or by contract with a private entity or under arrangement with HHS

• Provide funding for the exchange, which must be self-sufficient for 2015.

So far as I can tell, this means the state need not build the actual website, but must have the exchange authorized by the legislature or governor, put regulations in place, and provide funding (which necessarily must be approved by the legislature).  I have no idea whether this is doable by next June, and, if so, how many states are willing to do so.

Sixteen states (including Mississippi!) have submitted briefs to the effect that they relied on the federal exchange on the understanding that their citizens would be able to receive subsidies through it. But the states of Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Nebraska and South Carolina have filed briefs urging the courts not to allow people buying insurance on federal exchanges to receive subsidies.  Apparently these six states are willing, not only to deny their citizens health insurance, but to actually strip it away rather than submit to the horrors of Obamacare.  It seems a safe assumption that these states will do nothing to protect their citizens' subsidies.  Other states that refused Medicaid may follow their example. But in any event, this time the Supreme Court does not have the option of allowing states to opt out of letting their citizens receive subsidies to purchase health insurance. Either all citizens buying insurance on federal exchanges may receive subsidies, or none may.

There is one other possibility.  Congress could insert the words “or the federal government” to the phrase exchange "established by the state."  Yes, I know.  Most people will now fall out of their chairs laughing, saying that after a Republican blowout, what are the changes of Congress actually making Obamacare work?  My answer to that is two-fold.  The first is that voting against a law as an abstract proposition is one thing.  Actually seeking to strip people of their health insurance is quite another.  Another answer is that, while Republicans can hardly be expected to fix a law they hate and bitterly opposed, fixing this one part could be made part of a larger compromise.  Since it involves expenditure, one way to do it would be to pass a Republican-friendly budget giving them a number of things they want (and face it; with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, they are going to get a budget that goes mostly their way), and in exchange inserting the four magic words that will prevent people from being stripped of their health insurance.  The advantage of doing this as a budget measure is that it can be passed by a simple majority in the Senate, so only five Republicans (assuming a 55-45 majority) will have to defect.  (A larger number will have to defect in the House).  Or, Democrats can agree to repeal the employer mandate and the medical devices tax in exchange for inserting those four magic words.  But that would require 15 Republicans to defect; a much harder thing to do.  And it would require John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to risk their perches by actually bringing such a measure to the floor, where it will probably pass with mostly Democratic votes.

Does that seem impossible?  Well, here is my answer.  It is impossible if we don’t bring about serious political pressure.  Republicans can rejoice in millions of Americans losing their health insurance, confident that Obama will be blamed.  It is up to us to see to it that Republicans get blamed.  I have already seen a few comments that there should be a lot of heartbreak stories hitting the news soon, about people with serious medical problems who were finally able to get coverage through the exchanges thanks to subsidies and now are in danger of losing them.  And we can urge all these people, and their families, and their friends, to call their Congressman demanding that he save their subsidies.  We can organize people whose subsidies are threatened to throng town halls, demanding to know why their Congressman isn’t protecting their coverage.  But won’t Democrats be blamed as well?  At least Democratic representatives have an easy answer – I do support that measure.  It’s the Republicans you need to work on.

So here is my advice.  Get such a movement going right away.  Don’t bring in any extraneous issues.  Don’t talk about same sex marriage or immigration or annoying cultural cues; focus exclusively on Save Our Subsidies (SOS).*  Don’t mention Obamacare.  Don’t mention exchanges or subsidies.  Don’t mention Democrats or Republicans.  Just say that the Supreme Court is threatening to take away people’s health insurance and Congress can stop them any time its wants, so why isn’t Congress acting. Don’t worry about fine-tuned policy details, and don’t be afraid do demagogue the issue.  Let Republicans besieged by people fearing the loss of their insurance do the explaining for a change.  (Because once you have to explain, you have lost).  Democrats can simply assure people that they do support that measure.  Republicans will have to do the explaining.  Blanket the airwaves in Republican districts with ads sayings, “By June, the Supreme Court could hand down a decision stripping _______ citizens of our state of their health insurance.  Congressman X  won’t vote to stop them.”  (The healthcare and insurance industries should be happy to pay for them).  Will this get such a measure passed?  I have no idea.  My hope would be to generate enough pressure to get enough Republicans to defect to pass it as a compromise.  And at the same time, we should step up the pressure on states to establish their own exchanges.

We only have until June!  The time to act is now!  I personally vow to find some sort of group dedicated to pressuring Congress and/or the states to act ahead of this decision and start devoting time and effort to it.  The insurance coverage of millions hangs in the balance!

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*Actually, subsidy is usually seen as a bad word, so something else will have to be used.

Republicans and Healthcare.

Democrats and healthcare are easy to explain.  Democrats want everyone in the US to have access to health insurance.  The easiest way to achieve that is by the federal government.  Every other industrial country has managed to have its national government guarantee all citizens access to health insurance, so why not the US?

But what about Republicans and healthcare?   Why does Obamacare drive them to such hysteria that they are willing to see people in their states suffer rather than the plan succeed?  Some people would say it is pure partisan spite.  I imagine there is an element of that, but it didn’t start with Obama, after all.  Universal healthcare has been a Democratic goal since the days of Truman, and Republicans have thwarted it every time.   They did make an exception in the case of Medicare-D under GWB, but it took a lot of arm-twisting to get it passed, and Republicans have generally repented of Medicare-D as a failing they have vowed never to repeat (although not, of course, to repeal).  What is the big deal here?

When I feel nasty, I want to say that Republicans value a high rate of uninsured as a positive good.  But that is (probably) unfair.  More accurately, the libertarian wing of the Republican Party considers it deeply immoral for government at any level (with the possible exception of county indigent funds) to spend taxpayer money making healthcare available to anyone.  The “constitutionalist” wing has no objection to state or local governments doing so, but considers it unconstitutional for the federal government to spend taxpayer money on healthcare.  And Jonathan Haidt would assure us that the Tea Party sees any government guarantee of health insurance as violating the laws of karma, since anyone who is uninsured must have done something to deserve it.

Regardless of which view one takes, this is an awkward position to be in, since the federal government has, in fact, been spending taxpayer money quite regularly on healthcare since 1965.  And, worse yet, the American people seem to like it and would get terribly upset if the government actually stopped.  So what do you do?  Well, stop the rot where it is now, and hope that maybe some day in the distant future you can reverse it.  This means an almost hysterical overreaction to any attempt to expand government coverage of health insurance at least partly as an act of displaced aggression against the illegitimate abominations like Medicare and Medicaid that already exist.

It is really like the intensity of a lot of conservative churches in their opposition to same sex marriage.  They denounce same sex marriage as an existential threat to traditional marriage of a man and a woman.  There is just one little problem here.  The traditional Christian view of marriage was not just one man, one woman, but also a lifelong indissoluble bond.  Easy divorce is a greater threat to traditional Christian marriage than same sex marriage ever could be.  But conservative churches failed to hold the line against divorce, and now it is too late.  So the fight against same sex marriage is at least partly a displaced aggression against all the other changes that have happened to marriage, a matter of stopping the rot now in hopes of reversing it some time later.

The Supreme Court Guns for Obamacare Again

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the latest challenge to Obamacare, and in such unseemly haste, is alarming.  The haste is what worries me most, for several reasons. 

Normally, the Supreme Court waits for a circuit split, i.e., for two different circuits to disagree before it takes on a challenge.  This time the claim of a circuit split was extremely dubious.  The Fourth Circuit has ruled in favor of the government.  A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled against it, but the decision was on track to be overturned by the D.C. Circuit as a whole.  Instead the Supreme Court jumped in and decided to hear it.  It takes four justices to decide to hear a case.  Clearly the four who lost last time around were stung to the quick and determined to kill Obamacare at the first chance they got.  That they were so quick to jump at the chance strongly suggests they are confident that this time Roberts will rule their way.

Another reason for the haste was articulated by the challengers of the law.  The faster they act, the fewer people will be stripped of their health insurance by an adverse court ruling.  Presumably the Supreme Court wants to strip people of their health insurance as soon as it can so as to limit the number being affected.

But the timing right after an election that was a Republican blowout is most suspicious.  Republicans have always had several goals.  (1) Kill Obamacare.  (2) Make sure Obama gets blamed when millions lose their health insurance.  (3) Make the subject so toxic that Democrats will never touch it again.  (4) Avoid coming under pressure to do something themselves.   This set of priorities rules out an open repeal now that people actually have gotten insurance because openly voting to strip people of their health insurance is a surefire loser.  If Republicans win the triple crown in 2016, they might vote to repeal the individual mandate in hopes of inducing a death spiral.  If the death spiral hits soon enough, they can probably blame Obama for it (just as Obama escaped too much blame for the bad economy in his first term by blaming it on Bush).  But if it takes longer, they will be blamed.  And if the death spiral gets seriously underway while Republicans are in power, they might come under pressure to do something about it. 

Enter the Supreme Court.  If the Supreme Court rules that people cannot receive subsidies if they buy insurance on federal exchanges, it will successfully kill Obamacare in the majority of states that did not set up their own exchanges.  By doing stripping millions of their health insurance during the Obama presidency, the Supreme Court can ensure that Obama and not they are blamed for it.  The whole uproar will probably convince Democrats just how high a priority preventing any expansion in health insurance is to Republicans and prevent them from tackling the issue ever again.  And while Republicans can ride the wave of outrage over so many people losing their health insurance to victory in 2016, they can at least hope that the outrage will have died down enough by the time they come to power, and people will have adjusted well enough to the new situation that they will not come under any pressure to do anything about it, and people will finally accept high rates of uninsured as the will of God and/or the free market.