I must admit to being somewhat out of it. I’m not that interested in horse race politics anyway and I don’t know what’s going on. Last year, I did write, Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Real Liberal. That was about people going around talking about how Clinton was really a conservative. But it probably speaks to an unfortunate narcissism on my part that once I write about something, I consider the issue settled. But that ain’t reality. And I guess people still make that claim to such a degree that yesterday, Scott Lemieux felt the need to write, Can the “Hillary Clinton Is Really A Moderate Republican” Argument Be Salvaged? (SPOILER! No.)

I’m not really interested in the issue, because as I’ve noted: I have spoken! But Lemieux brought up Jon Huntsman. You can forget the likes of Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Huntsman is a guy that almost everyone in the establishment media thinks is a moderate. After all, he worked for the Obama administration! But Lemieux does a good job of summing up what Huntsman actually stands for, and it ain’t pretty. There is no moderation that I can see:

Let me add to this that Huntsman was also one of the guys who said that he so cared about the budget deficit that he would not take a 10-to-1 spending cut to tax increase deal from the Democrats. And then after he was no longer running for president, he went back on it and said that he would take it. He never said what he would require though. 7-to-1? 5-to-1? I’m damned sure he wouldn’t take 3-to-1, and there is no way he would ever take the actually fair 1-to-1 deal.

Lemieux noted that being seen as a moderate Republican “can be purchased on the cheap by taking a standard-issue conservative Republican and appending a few things like ‘maybe we shouldn’t crash the world economy’ and ‘now that I’m not running for office same-sex marriage seems OK’.” But I would say it is much worse than this. What defines being a “moderate Republican” is the same thing that defines being an establishment Republican: style. Huntsman hardly qualifies as a moderate Republican; he’s more in the Josh Barro realm where the press hardly think of him as a Republican at all.

Marco Rubio is the prototypical “moderate Republican.” And it basically just means that he is polite. The same thing can be said of Jeb Bush. Remember Terri Schiavo and all of Jeb’s abuses of power regarding that? What makes both men moderates in the eyes of the press is that they don’t scream; they don’t push a lot of conspiracy theories; and they don’t insult each other’s spouses (although they do insult the spouses of Democrats).

What all this means is that there is no such thing as a “moderate Republican.” It’s not just that any kind of moderation would make someone not a Republican. It is that the Overton window within the Republican Party is so small that to talk about a conservative or moderate Republican is meaningless. And the whole party is so bunched to the right that no one even uses the term “liberal Republican.” So, of course, Hillary Clinton is not a moderate Republican. But the more important point is that no one is a moderate Republican. They simply don’t exist.

There is something that rich people and their apologists talk about a lot. It is the idea that the corporate income tax is wrong because the owners of those corporations have to pay income tax twice: once for the company and once for the individual. Dean Baker provided the standard response to this nonsense, The Myth of the Corporate Income Tax as Double Taxation. Basically, it comes down to this: no one is forcing people to set up their businesses as corporations. People do it knowing that they will have to pay corporate income taxes. And they do it anyway, because they get a great deal of benefit — most especially protection against liability.

But there are several other things that I don’t understand about this whining point of the rich. The first is, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Corporations have First Amendment rights. Why shouldn’t such an entity have to pay income taxes? Really, I don’t get it. This whole discussion seems to be the usual thing where the rich want all the advantages of whatever they have, but none of the responsibilities. And since they only talk to each other, they get the idea that somehow it makes sense their corporate status should give them all kinds of benefits that other business people don’t get, but that they shouldn’t have to pay anything for it.

Let’s consider a little thought experiment. Let’s suppose that I hire you as a maid. I don’t pay you with my pre-tax salary; I pay you with my post-tax salary. I get paid and I pay my taxes. With the money left over, I pay you, and you too have to pay income taxes. How is this any different? The reason that corporations have these special rights is that they are a special kind of person. From the profits of the corporations, shareholders are paid. The fact that they don’t do any work (unlike the maid) doesn’t change things; they are being paid because they put money into the company. So yeah, this is double income tax — just like it is when anyone hires someone else.

But what I really don’t get is the Shakespeare aspect of this, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” What does it matter that we call these two taxes the corporate and individual income taxes? I’m being taxed all the time. I make money and I pay income and payroll taxes on it. Then I spend the money and I pay consumption taxes. The big issue here is that the rich are laser focused on the federal income tax.

I’ve talked about this a lot, most recently in, Why We Only Talk About the Income Tax. We have a system where property taxes are very slightly regressive (the poor pay more than the rich). Consumption taxes are quite regressive. And payroll taxes are ridiculously regressive. The income tax is the only part of the tax system that is even moderately progressive. So we talk talk talk about the income tax.

The rich and their apologists know that it makes no sense to complain about the corporate income tax. In fact, as Dean Baker noted, “The corporate income tax is a 100% voluntary tax…” It’s a tax they complain about paying, but they aren’t required to pay it. But it’s the usual whining point of the rich about everything: they don’t believe they should have to pay for anything they get. They want special privileges that other people and businesses don’t get, but they think it shouldn’t cost them anything.

I’ve long been in favor of eliminating the corporation — especially when I was a libertarian. So I say we give the rich what they want: repeal the corporate income tax — right along with the corporation as a legal entity. Do I have any takers?

I’ve come to be pretty tired of the Clinton and Sanders camps sniping at each other — especially over healthcare reform. It’s hard for me to be objective, of course, because I am a Bernie Sanders supporter. But I do think more sniping comes from the Clinton camp. It isn’t a question of total sniping. But there is a whole lot more institutional sniping by Clinton supporters. And I understand it: she’s the establishment candidate for a reason: she’s the safe choice. And as a Sanders supporter, I have to admit: I don’t see much in the way of policy differences between the two once they are in office. We live in a democracy, not a autocracy. So I wish everyone would just cut it out.

But there are substantive differences between the candidates that are worth talking about. Healthcare reform is the big one: the “fix Obamacare” approach and the “replace Obamacare with single payer” approach. What I don’t understand is why these have to be different. As you all know, I’m very happy with Obamacare, Covered California: I Died and Woke Up in Canada. I certainly would prefer a universal, single-payer system. Obamacare is a complicated mess. And I don’t really see why I had to decide between the bronze and silver plans. Like I’m in any way qualified to know what is best for me! But that’s the way our neoliberal system works.

Still, it seems to me that Obamacare is single-payer just waiting to happen. For this discussion, forget people who get their insurance through their employers. For one thing, it makes this all easier to think about. But more important, I think that now that we have Obamacare, employer provided health insurance will (Quite rightly!) become a thing of the past. It will probably take twenty years, but eventually, healthcare just won’t be provided in that way. It’s existence is a fluke of history anyway.

So we have a system now in three parts: Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for the old, and the Exchanges for everyone else. Currently, Medicaid provides free healthcare to those making up to 133% of the poverty level. (Because of John Roberts, this isn’t true in most red states, but that will change over time.) What I want to know is why we can’t change the Medicaid level. Why not increase it to 150%? Or 400% (the level where government subsidies end on the exchanges)? Or why can’t we lower the age for Medicare? How about 60 years old as a cutoff? For people like me who want “Medicare for all,” this seems obvious. Whenever the Democrats get control of the government, they can increase the number of people who qualify for Medicare and Medicare. And eventually, you end up with a universal, single-payer healthcare system.

As far as I can tell, there is only one objection to this healthcare reform plan: it isn’t realistic. But it is more realistic than simply jumping to a full out single-payer healthcare system. And it has the advantages of being a gradual process — one where the insurance companies can gradually move into other areas. But even more than that, our healthcare problems are a lot bigger than our fragmented private insurance market.

Dean Baker recently wrote, Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders, and Medicare for All. He noted, “Getting universal Medicare would require overcoming opposition not only from insurers and drug companies, but doctors and hospital administrators, both of whom are paid at levels two to three times higher than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.” And that’s important. The country needs to get used to the fact that our idiosyncrasies have distorted our system such that healthcare reform is complicated. And it is going to take time on a lot of fronts to deal with this. There is no quick fix.

So in a sense, I agree more with Hillary Clinton about healthcare reform. But I know a little bit about negotiation. And if Clinton is talking about the very reasonable idea of making Obamacare work better and having it cover more people, the most likely result will be that nothing will change. But Sanders’ unreasonable push for single-payer healthcare right now is much more likely to result in good changes to Obamacare. Let’s not forget that Obama ran in 2008 on the unreasonable idea that we didn’t need an individual mandate. We didn’t get his more liberal plan, but we did get a plan that is providing me with healthcare and dental insurance at negligible costs.

None of this means that Clinton is bad. But similarly, none of this means that Sanders is unrealistic. I’ll proudly support either of them.