0:03 hello and welcome to Our Hope and change
0:05 lecture on the Obama presidency we're
0:07 almost done with the class so today
0:09 we're looking at reapportionment
0:11 redistricting and gerrymandering we'll
0:14 be looking at the major components of
0:16 the ACA which stands for the Affordable
0:19 Care Act also known as Obamacare and
0:20 we'll be looking at what political Norms
0:22 were violated by the Republican
0:25 opposition during the Obama
0:27 presidency first
0:30 up Obama nominated two Republicans for
0:32 his cabinet and offered a position to a
0:35 third one and no president had appointed
0:37 two members of the opposition party to
0:40 their cabinet since FDR did it in his
0:41 Unity government at the start of World
0:44 War II Obama's policy proposals
0:47 continued this effort at bipartisanship
0:49 working with the GOP that is the
0:51 Republican Party one-third of his
0:53 stimulus package to counter the Great
0:56 Recession was made up of tax cuts that
0:59 the GOP had previously supported and his
1:01 Healthcare law was modeled on Republican
1:03 Governor Mitt Romney's plan in
1:06 Massachusetts which was based on the GOP
1:08 counter to Clinton's far more liberal
1:11 plan back in the90s on foreign policy he
1:14 kept W Bush's Secretary of Defense in
1:16 place and he honored Bush's status of
1:18 forces agreement and the timetable it
1:20 set for when to pull American troops out
1:23 of Iraq he basically offered a more
1:25 liberal version of Clinton's Third Way
1:28 or middle path but despite these
1:30 attempts at bipartisanship the GOP tried
1:33 to block Obama's program Republican
1:34 leadership forbade its members in
1:36 Congress from even negotiating with
1:38 Obama and tried to create the image that
1:41 he was the most partisan president ever
1:45 GOP Senator vavic concluded if he was
1:48 for it we had to be against it the GOP
1:51 used unprecedented delays holds and
1:54 filibusters to block legislation
1:57 filibuster can refer to both taking up a
2:00 lot of time and preventing something
2:01 from coming to a vote during a session
2:05 of Congress or it can mean demanding a
2:08 60 uh plus vote in the Senate instead of
2:09 the normal 50 plus
2:12 one now the Tea Party emerged as a
2:14 far-right fiercely conservative wing of
2:16 the Republican party but it got its
2:19 start back in the 1980s with a group
2:22 called citizens for a sound economy the
2:24 CSC worked with tobacco companies
2:26 against laws regulating secondhand smoke
2:28 exposure they argued that an
2:31 individual's right to smoke F outweighed
2:33 other people's right to not have to
2:36 breathe that in in public the csse made
2:39 the first tea party website in September
2:42 2002 long before Obama's presidency in
2:45 2010 in part in response to Obama's
2:47 election T party activists won primary
2:48 elections and steered the Republican
2:50 Party further to the
2:53 right now the fight over smoking and
2:55 pollution both came back to a basic
2:57 Civics disagreement about where one
3:00 person's rights end and another begins
3:02 and we see on the slide here the
3:04 definition of civics a social science
3:06 dealing with the rights and duties of
3:08 citizens and if we were in an elementary
3:10 school classroom the teacher might kind
3:12 of Swing her arm and say you know you
3:14 have a right to swing your arm but where
3:16 does that right end and you might get
3:18 close to a student and say it ends when
3:21 it butts up against that student's right
3:23 to not be hit right so all of our rights
3:26 have limits typically when they begin to
3:28 harm others now this was also about
3:30 where a business say rights ended when
3:33 weighed against public health the same
3:34 arguments against anti-smoking laws are
3:37 used in the climate change debate too
3:39 the first is an effort to present the
3:42 science as unsettled or controversial
3:44 when it isn't and the second is the
3:46 Civics argument over where individual or
3:48 corporate rights end and where
3:50 regulation should begin to protect
3:52 others and their rights how much Freedom
3:54 should an individual or business have if
3:57 the exercise of that freedom harms
3:59 others scientists linked smoking with
4:02 lung cancer in the early 1950s but
4:04 cigarette makers began a media campaign
4:06 denying that smoking was harmful or that
4:09 nicotine was addictive their 1963
4:11 internal memos later showed they knew
4:13 quote nicotine is addictive we are then
4:15 in the business of selling nicotine an
4:20 addictive drug end quote in 1976 major
4:22 tobacco companies started operation
4:24 Berkshire to protect the industry from
4:27 regulation arguing that the science was
4:30 unsettled smoking was still legal and
4:32 socially acceptable in libraries
4:36 classrooms restaurants bars and even on
4:39 airplanes in 1994 seven tobacco
4:41 Executives testified before Congress
4:44 that quote nicotine is not addictive but
4:46 a tobacco company lawyer leaked secret
4:48 internal memos to the New York Times
4:49 proving they knew
4:51 otherwise and proving the companies had
4:54 known the truth for decades in 1996
4:56 Clinton announced that the FDA would
4:58 regulate nicotine as a drug and the
5:00 industry sued and operation Burkshire
5:03 was made public during that lawsuit now
5:05 in 2000 then Governor Mike Pence who
5:06 would of course go on to be vice
5:09 president under President Trump wrote an
5:11 oped arguing that smoking doesn't cause
5:13 enough harm to Warrant the government
5:15 regulation it had received and you see
5:18 an excert here on the slide of that
5:20 Pence wrote quote despite the hysteria
5:22 from the political class and the media
5:24 smoking doesn't kill in fact two out of
5:26 every three smokers does not die from a
5:29 smoking related illness and nine out of
5:31 10 smokers do not contract lung cancer
5:33 that is not to say that smoking is good
5:35 for you new Splash smoking is not good
5:38 for you the relevant question is what is
5:40 more harmful to the nation secondhand
5:43 smoke or backhanded big government
5:45 disguised and do good or Health Care
5:48 rhetoric so he's arguing there's more
5:50 harm in the regulations and how they
5:52 expand the power of government than
5:54 there is in smoking itself so he uses
5:57 statistics to downplay the real harm
5:59 caused by smoking both to smokers and
6:01 those exposed to secondhand
6:04 smoke oil companies used the same
6:06 strategy to defend their contributions
6:10 to climate change in the 1970s and 80s
6:13 experts substantiated anthropogenic or
6:16 human caused global warming this was the
6:19 scientific consensus former vice
6:21 president Al Gore's book and documentary
6:23 and Inconvenient Truth helped publicize
6:25 this conclusion but conservatives and
6:27 energy companies sewed questions in
6:30 doubt much like operation Burkshire
6:32 years later once climate change became
6:34 apparent they argued that the only
6:36 measures that should be taken had to be
6:39 economically advantageous meaning they
6:42 couldn't cost any company's profits or
6:43 conversely they argued that there was
6:45 nothing that could be done about climate
6:48 change and so we just have to live with
6:51 it now 2010 was a census year which
6:52 happens every 10 years in the United
6:55 States and back in 1911 Congress passed
6:57 a law capping the size of the US House
7:00 of Representatives in 19 19 29 they set
7:03 that cap at 435 members so the US House
7:07 is capped at 435 members but as it is
7:09 based on population and can't get any
7:12 bigger than 435 people every year after
7:16 a census so the census 2020 we did this
7:21 in 2021 and so on Congress goes through
7:23 reapportionment they use the new census
7:24 numbers to determine how many
7:26 representatives each state will get in
7:28 the house for the next 10 years so in
7:32 April of 2021 based on that 2020 census
7:35 Texas North Carolina Florida Oregon
7:37 Montana and Colorado each gained one
7:39 additional representative in Congress
7:41 which also gave them an extra rep in the
7:43 Electoral College now if you're going to
7:46 add a seat for those States but you
7:49 can't change that 435 number you have to
7:51 take it away from other
7:54 states New York Illinois Ohio
7:56 Pennsylvania California Michigan and
7:58 West Virginia all lost one seat in
8:00 Congress and one one Electoral College
8:01 vote in this
8:03 reapportionment now once a state knows
8:05 how many seats it will get it redraws
8:08 the district Maps or re districts the
8:10 districts are the areas each
8:12 representative in Congress will serve
8:14 and Republican victories in the 2010
8:16 primaries and state elections when they
8:18 had a lot of say in redrawing these
8:21 election Maps uh during redistricting so
8:23 they drew election Maps favorable to
8:26 Republicans so this is called Jerry
8:28 mandering now if we look at the
8:30 depiction here and I wish it wasn't in
8:32 blue and red so just ignore that we've
8:35 got team blue with 60% and team red with
8:40 40% of popular support so in a fair map
8:43 team blue should have about 60% of the
8:45 seats in that house and team red should
8:49 have about 40% now if team blue wanted
8:52 to gerrymander this District or these
8:54 districts it could draw these five
8:56 districts this way making sure that they
8:59 held 60% in each district and they
9:01 therefore they would win 100% of the
9:04 seats in that house so five blue seats
9:06 and no red which is not very fair to
9:09 team red who deserves 40% of those seats
9:11 now if you were team red even though
9:13 you're the minority at 40% you could
9:16 still draw a map that would give you the
9:19 majority in your house if you draw these
9:20 kind of weird districts you can break it
9:23 up so that team red will have three safe
9:25 seats each election and team blue
9:27 despite being the majority will only
9:30 have two and that is called Jerry
9:32 mandering we can see how Jerry mandering
9:36 worked in North Carolina in 2010 in 2010
9:38 in North Carolina each party wins
9:40 roughly 50% of the vote 50% for
9:44 Republicans 48% for Democrats and yet
9:46 Republicans win nine of the 13 seats
9:49 that they send to the US House in
9:53 Pennsylvania Republicans won 54% of the
9:54 vote to the Democrats
9:57 46% but that gave them
10:01 72% of the seats in the US House 13 out
10:03 of 18 House
10:06 Seats now we can also see this in Texas
10:08 where in 2011 Republicans Drew maps to
10:10 dilute Black and Hispanic voting power
10:12 fearing that those groups would support
10:15 Democrats and that's how we get weird
10:17 Maps districts like this that stretch
10:18 all the way from San Antonio all of this
10:21 rural area up into this little sliver of
10:23 Austin all right to make sure that that
10:26 is a safe Republican District but Black
10:27 and Hispanic texts ensued arguing the
10:30 maps unfairly boosted voting power and
10:31 when the courts ruled that the original
10:33 Maps were drawn with discriminatory
10:36 intent Texas Republicans argued that the
10:38 maps with only minor changes to fix the
10:40 most egregious parts of it should be
10:43 used instead and that is what happened
10:45 now this map is an idea of what Texas
10:46 might look like if it was not
10:50 gerrymander the 2010 gerrymander ensured
10:52 that Republicans gained four new house
10:54 seats from Texas in 2016 that they
10:56 likely would have lost under Fair Maps
10:59 the AP statistical analysis of us house
11:01 races in November 2016 found that the
11:04 Republicans won 22 seats more than
11:07 expected and in the US House that's huge
11:09 computer generated maps are one way to
11:12 prevent partisan or racial
11:14 gerrymandering in gerrymander districts
11:17 candidates run further and further from
11:18 the center because you don't have to
11:20 worry about the other party winning you
11:23 only have to compete within your party
11:25 and so people tend to get more and more
11:28 extreme so Jerry mandering is one factor
11:30 among many for the excessive
11:33 partisanship we see from the Obama era
11:35 forward Additionally the Supreme Court
11:37 has been hostile to voting rights since
11:41 the 1980s in Shelby County volder 2013
11:44 they gutted the Voting Rights Act of
11:47 1965 ruling that pre-clearance was
11:49 unconstitutional pre-clearance meant
11:50 that states with the history of voter
11:52 discrimination had to get permission
11:53 from the federal government to change
11:56 their voter laws and they had to show
11:58 that it would not harm minority voters
12:01 in in response to Shelby County volder
12:03 States especially in the South cut early
12:05 voting times and locations and attempted
12:08 to pass voter ID laws that further
12:09 restricted access to the
12:13 ballot in rucho V common cause 2019 the
12:15 Supreme Court ruled that courts were
12:18 largely powerless to stop partisan Jerry
12:21 Manders in 2015 the Supreme Court called
12:23 Jerry mandering quote inconsistent with
12:25 Democratic principle but they had never
12:27 struck down an extreme Jerry Mander
12:30 leaving it to State Court to do that but
12:33 surprisingly in June of 2023 the Supreme
12:36 Court struck down an Alabama gerrymander
12:38 and Allan V Michigan ruling the map
12:40 violated the Voting Rights Act by
12:43 unfairly diluting black voting power so
12:45 this is an ongoing fight there's cases
12:47 in front of the Supreme Court as I am
12:50 recording this in November of
12:52 2023 now Obama's biggest achievement was
12:54 a national healthc care law the patient
12:56 protection and Affordable Care Act the
12:59 ACA also known as Obamacare
13:01 now Obama's plan moved the Democrats to
13:04 the right on Healthcare he abandoned
13:06 models of a National Health Care system
13:08 like clintons and like many other
13:10 nations have and instead he picked up
13:13 what had been the conservative model of
13:15 regulating and subsidizing private
13:16 insurance instead of providing
13:19 government insurance similar plans had
13:20 been supported by Republicans Richard
13:23 Nixon n Gingrich and Mitt Romney but by
13:25 2008 the Republicans had also grown more
13:28 more conservative on Healthcare they had
13:29 moved fur to the right and they no
13:32 longer supported their own former plans
13:35 which Obama picked up in 2012 the GOP
13:37 argued that Healthcare was not a right
13:39 and shouldn't be guaranteed by
13:41 government that that was a personal
13:43 responsibility Obama's healthc care law
13:46 involved three different categories for
13:47 Americans who already had health
13:50 insurance typically through their jobs
13:53 it abolished pre-existing conditions as
13:56 a cause for denying care so before
13:58 Obamacare if you had an injury that
14:00 dated back from before you were with
14:03 this current insurance company they
14:05 could use that as an excuse to deny you
14:08 care today so for example when I was 8
14:10 years old I broke my right arm I got a
14:11 big scar on it right if you've seen me
14:14 in person you've probably noticed that
14:16 and let's say I develop arthritis in
14:18 that arm from when I broke it when I was
14:21 eight years old if Obamacare wasn't in
14:22 place the insurance company that I have
14:25 today could say we don't have to cover
14:27 any of the scans or any of the treatment
14:29 to do with that arm because you broke it
14:31 when you were eight and therefore it's a
14:34 pre-existing condition the other thing
14:37 Obamacare did for insured people was it
14:39 scrapped junk Plans by setting minimum
14:42 requirements for health insurance plans
14:44 and this addressed the problem of maybe
14:45 young people who thought they had decent
14:47 health insurance they just didn't use it
14:49 a whole lot and then they get a
14:50 catastrophic illness or they're in a
14:53 terrible car wack and they expect that
14:54 insurance plan to cover their health
14:57 care only to find out it doesn't cover
15:00 just about anything so those plans go
15:01 away because we now have a minimum
15:03 standard for what healthc care plans
15:06 have to require in the United States now
15:08 the second group is for people on
15:10 Medicaid which you will remember as
15:12 lbj's Great Society program that
15:14 provides government health insurance for
15:17 the very poor now the Affordable Care
15:20 Act provides States money funds to
15:22 expand the number of people that they
15:25 cover in Medicaid so for people in the
15:27 third group that still can't afford
15:29 their own health insurance but weren't
15:31 poor enough for the expanded medicaid
15:35 offerings the ACA provided for statun
15:37 Health Care exchanges this is kind of
15:40 like buying Health Care via Sam's Club
15:43 or Costco instead of going as an
15:45 individual to a health care company and
15:47 saying or an insurance company and
15:49 saying I need to buy insurance how much
15:51 would it be for me you get all these
15:53 uninsured people together and we say
15:56 okay we've got 200,000 people who need
15:58 this level of coverage what price are
16:00 you going going to give us now because
16:02 having so many people is going to pull
16:03 our buying power it's going to lower
16:07 that cost and then the ACA provided
16:11 subsidies that is money to make up the
16:12 difference between what these people
16:14 could pay based on their salary for
16:17 insurance and what insurance actually
16:21 cost so let's say based on your income
16:23 you can reasonbly pay reasonably pay
16:26 about $500 for insurance a month but
16:29 insurance cost $1,200 a month then the
16:30 government would step in and pay the
16:33 other 700 to the insurance company to
16:35 make sure you are covered under the
16:37 state run health
16:39 exchanges now finally the Affordable
16:42 Care Act required all Americans to have
16:44 proof of health insurance or they could
16:47 pay a tax penalty and this tax penalty
16:49 or the requirement that you have
16:51 insurance was called the individual
16:53 mandate so we're going to watch a clip
16:55 of a news program from the Obama era
16:58 roughly 2014 explaining the idual
17:01 mandate and how they understood it at
17:03 the time so consider this a primary
17:04 source from the
17:06 era go take a look at what the
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