While America was glued to the former FBI Director James Comey hearings on Thursday, HHS Secretary Tom Price testified about a bill to repeal and replace the ACA (Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare) before the Senate healthcare panel.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked the committee’s chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), whether the panel would hold any hearings on the GOP’s proposal, catching Hatch by surprise. After conferring with an aide about how to respond, Hatch answered McCaskill, saying that he didn't know if there would be hearings on the still-secret legislation, being drafted by a committee of only white men. Suggesting that Democrats should have no quarrel with the process, the chair said that Democrats had been invited to "give your ideas" about the topic of healthcare reform.

McCaskill was livid:

“No, that’s not true, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say, I watched carefully all of the hearings that went on [when the Affordable Care Act was crafted]. I was not a member of this committee at the time, although I would have liked to be. [Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa] was the ranking member. Dozens of Republican amendments were offered and accepted in that hearing process.

“And when you say that you’re inviting us – and we heard you, Mr. Secretary, just say, ‘We’d love your support’ – for what? We don’t even know. We have no idea what’s being proposed. There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions. There were no hearings in the House.

“I mean, listen, this is hard to take. Because I know we made mistakes [when the ACA came together], Mr. Secretary. And one of the criticisms we got over and over again that the vote was partisan. Well you couldn’t have a more partisan exercise than what you’re engaged in right now. We’re not even going to have a hearing on a bill that impacts one-sixth of our economy. We’re not going to have an opportunity to offer a single amendment. It is all being done with an eye to try to get it by with 50 votes and the vice president.

“I am stunned that that’s what [Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell] would call regular order, which he sanctimoniously said would be the order of the day when the Republicans took the Senate over. We are now so far from regular order that the newer members don’t even know what it looks like.”

A clip of McCaskill's spontaneous comments moved quickly to social media, causing writers like The New Republic's Brian Beutler to observe: “Like Obamacare or not, decent people should be furious about this. Not a word of what Claire McCaskill says here is hyperbolic or inaccurate. The reason Senator Orrin Hatch is acting like he’s been caught here is because he has. What Republicans are attempting to do to the health care system is the legislative equivalent of a mugging.”

There is no word to describe a group of conservative white men proposing to overhaul America's healthcare system with no input from other senators in open hearings -- except 'authoritarianism'. They haven't even invited Republican white women senators or the lone man of color Republican Sen. Tim Scott to serve on the committee. Maine Sen. Susan Collins has actually sponsored her own healthcare bill, but because she is adamant about protecting Planned Parenthood, she wasn't invited to participate in the committee proceedings which are determined to shut down Planned Parenthood.

The clandestine Senate Republican healthcare bill committee is operating in total secret, away from Democrats and Independents, all American citizens and any Republican senators who might disagree with their authoritarian plan for American healthcare, with a dramatic impact on women's rights to existing healthcare services.

Vice President Joe Biden called the upcoming NJ governor's race “the single most important” election of the next three years.

Biden-backed Phil Murphy won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, delivering a Hillary Clinton populist message grounded in his career as a Goldman Sachs banker. Bernie Sanders did not endorse Murphy, although his son did campaign for the candidate.

As Sanders progressives rip into NJ Sen. Corey Booker's ethical credentials in any future presidential race -- having accepted money from big pharma companies in his state -- the Murphy win shows that at a state level, the Sanders wing of the Democratic party is not running the show in New Jersey.

The Murphy primary win -- and expected future win as NJ governor -- also demonstrates that Democrats can run on a platform that shares 95% of Sanders' priorities -- as the 2016 Presidential campaign platform did -- without throwing every person with ties to wealth and big business out of the party as the Sanders camp is demanding.

The Democratic party supports campaign finance reform, and the purge of big money from American politics. In a discussion yesterday, I arbitrarily estimated that for Dems to run nationwide in local, state and federal elections with campaigns that spend HALF the money of Republicans would cost every Dem voter $1000 in campaign contributions to a wide range of candidates. For all we know the amount is $5000. I wish one of the Dem think tanks would actually run the numbers, so that when progressives argue to throw every $ from wealthy donors out of the election process, that they are in a position to also advise all of us about what we will now need to contribute as civic-minded citizens. Granted, Democratic control would then allow us to pass new laws on campaign finance. But the Sanders camp needs to explain what it will cost each of us to get to this point. It's NOT $27 a person.

As Mother Jones writes: "In many ways Murphy’s platform, in a state with close ties to America’s capital of high finance, represents another sign of the Sanders wing’s policy momentum. (Quick: name a prospective 2020 candidate who doesn’t support a $15 minimum wage or single-payer health care.) But for a movement rooted in animosity toward the donor class, Murphy’s checkbook ascendancy highlights the gap between where the party is and where the Left still wants it to be. A populist ex-banker, after all, is still an ex-banker." ~ Anne