A Roadblock to Reform Gets Torn Down

The Senate's version of healthcare reform is finally ready for prime time. Considering that this was supposed to be ready in August, I'll withhold my applause on that point -- there's showing up to school tardy and then there's showing up late in the afternoon. It was the Senate who was the footdragger here; Pelosi was willing to keep the House in session during the August recess, but when Harry Reid caved and shut off the lights in the Senate, there really was no point in doing it. We all know what happened after that; the town hall shriekers made a big stink and an embarrassing spectacle of themselves, completely dissipating any momentum either chamber had. Forget two steps forward, one step back; August's progress to regress ratio was one-to-one.

Still, here we are. We (assuming they can pass it) have got a bill. Like anything that's the product of months of horsetrading, wrangling, and compromise, it's an imperfect bill. Writing for The Atlantic's politics blog, Max Fisher does a good job of collecting legitimate criticisms of the bill and, by legitimate, I mean that the words "IT'S OUT OF CONTROL SOCIALISM, LIKE HITLER'S GERMANY!" don't appear anywhere in the post. I won't rehash it here, since there's no reason for me to rewrite an already good post, I'll just cite the criticisms and leave it to you to check them out.

Still, like the House bill before it, the Senate's version is not the bill. Both pieces of legislation will go to conference committee, be melted down into some sort of legislative alloy of both, and returned to each chamber for a final vote. Unless a provision is in both bills, there's no guarantee it'll make it out of committee. Believe it or not, all this stuff that's been happening for most of this year could reasonably be called the start of this whole process. It's just the hardest part.





One feature of the Senate bill that's going to cause problems for people looking for reasons to oppose it is the score by the Congressional Budget Office.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post:

A preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate health care legislation finds that the bill will cost $849 billion over the next decade while covering 94 percent of eligible Americans, a Democratic leadership aide told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

The aide would still not get into the bill's specifics -- including whether it would include a public option for insurance coverage and what tax mechanisms would be pay for it. The aide did, however, say that 31 million currently uninsured Americans would be covered under the legislation. The bill would also lower the deficit by $127 billion over the next decade -- "going further than any other bill" -- and by $650 billion during the decade after that, according to the aide.

Cutting the deficit by $777 billion over the next twenty years kind of blows a hole in that whole "deficit-buster" argument. Obstructionists who oppose the bill simply to oppose the bill just got a little roadblock put up in front of their argument. And many of these people are named Joe Lieberman, as the following FOX News transcript of his reaction to the House bill shows:

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt -- $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein asked a question anyone who interviewed Lieberman should've asked, "What's the mechanism by which the public option increases the national deficit?"

Because that's not so obvious to people who know what they're talking about. Klein explained:

This has been Lieberman's standard argument for the past few weeks, but he has not, to my knowledge, explained how it works. Every analysis of the public option I've seen has concluded that it will reduce federal, and consumer, spending. Indeed, the stronger the public option is, the more it reduces the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a public option paying Medicare's rates would save the government more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and more after that.

Lieberman, of course, knows all of this. He just thinks you don't, because -- like his ideological twins across the aisle -- he works under the assumption that you're an idiot who'll believe anything he tells you to believe. Until the media starts asking questions other than "tell me why you oppose this bill," he's probably going to keep saying the same thing, despite the fact that it's been proved untrue at least twice now. Someone has to follow up, to probe, with, "now wait a second, the CBO score..." or he's going to keep pushing this lie any time he can get himself in front of a camera or a microphone.

Lieberman's not the only one doing this, he's just the first and best example that popped into my mind. We've got two bills, we've got CBO scores for both, but these people still get away with launching the same BS. I wish I could blame FOX News, but it's rampant. FOX should be the only place where this crap flies, not one of the many places. The media laughed at Mohammed "Baghdad Bob" Saeed al-Sahhaf as he told obvious lies while standing right in front of the contradictory truth, but if Joe Lieberman does practically the same thing, some anchor with blowdried brains will nod solemnly as if this was the wisest and most reasonable thing anyone ever said.

-Wisco

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Photo source: New York Times

Red States Operate on the Blue States' Dime

Let's get right to the point. The five poorest states in the nation are Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Kentucky. The five wealthiest states are Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. Those are the numbers from the US Census and they tell us a lot about the partisan divide in America. Of the five pooorest states in the union, five are Red States that went for McCain in 2008. On the other hand, of the five wealthiest states, all five voted for Obama -- see for yourself. In other words, the anti-tax, screw-the-poor, federal-government-isn't-the-answer crowd comes mainly from the poorest states and are, therefore, among the most lightly taxed. They're the ones who seem mostly likely to benefit from federal government money. In terms of federal taxes spent in their states, Mississippi gets 202% of every dollar they pay, West Virginia get 176%, Arkansas gets 141%, South Carolina gets 135%, and Kentucky gets 151%. The only state in the five wealthiest that receives more than they pay out is Maryland, at 130%. People marching around in angry little circles with signs showing President Obama with a Hitler moustache haven't been paying their fair share. Kind of makes their concerns about the deficit a little hard to take, doesn't it?

If you want an example of socialism, there ya go. Republican voters are runaway socialists. Except the poverty of Redstatistan suggests that this socialism isn't exactly benefiting proletariat. In fact, they're getting worse.

Crooks and Liars:

Throughout their all-out campaign to stop health care reform, Republican leaders have relied on questionable forecasts from the Lewin Group, a subsidiary of insurer UnitedHealth Group. Now, another study funded by UnitedHealth has some unwelcome news for the GOP braintrust: the red states they represent are the unhealthiest in the nation. Following on the heels of the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 Scorecard of state health care system performance, the United Health Foundation's report is just the latest confirmation that health care is worst where Republicans poll best.

No wonder these people think government doesn't work -- their state governments are blowful. It's tempting to say that Republican voters get the governments they deserve, but the truth is that this is costing us all. We're reimbursing Mississippi for their tax dollars at a rate of better than 2:1 and not many -- certainly not you, not me, not the vast majority of people in Mississippi -- are getting much out of that investment.





But, of course, this is just another example of Republican voters being chumps. In Red States, money is pouring in, but it doesn't seem to be helping the general populace all that much. If the lower economic tier isn't any better off after this big federal money grab, the process of elimination dictates who the winners are here. Yet these people grab signs and throw tea tantrums in defense of the very people standing between them and their share of returning tax dollars. As I said -- chumps.

This used to be easier to explain; the religious right had turned populism into an almost entirely religious campaign. Republicans didn't talk about taxes on the campaign trail as much as they talked about abortion. Sure, taxes were part of it, but the real hook was always the three Gs -- God, gays, and guns. And these voters would elect these people over and over, never seeming to notice that these religiously-based problems never seemed to be solved. Every election year, abortion was just as rampant, gays were always on the verge of getting married or taking over schools, and the Democrats were just seconds away from snatching up everyone's guns. Meanwhile, everything that actually should've mattered to them got worse. Bridges crumbled, schools got worse, jobs kept leaving... True to the cliche, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

But now things have changed a bit. The religious right still figures into the Republican coalition, but it's become secondary to the teabaggers. It's easy to dismiss the teabaggers' cluelessness over just how badly they're getting screwed by saying they're irrational crackpots... Mostly because they are irrational crackpots. But that can't be it, can it?

To a certain degree, yeah, it can be. These people are partisan without actually understanding the issues. People who lump communism, socialism, and fascism together as if they're all just different names for the same thing don't really have the greatest command of the facts. People who watch Glenn Beck and say, "Y'know, that guy makes a lot of sense," aren't exactly masters of logic. If you need an explanation of why these people practically begged to be screwed by their elected officials, you can probably stop with this explanation; the right is their team and the left isn't, so go team!

But these people aren't exactly loyal to the Republican Party. The GOP isn't far enough right for them. After years and years and years of being told that Republican ideas work, maybe they've begun to believe it. Government doesn't work because it isn't far enough to the right -- in every situation where government fails, this is the reason. It's Bush reasoning all over again; if something isn't working, it can only be because you aren't doing enough of it. So, if you're sicker than everyone else, it's because corporations are regulated. If you're poorer than everyone else, it's because rich people are taxed to the point that they can't afford to pay decent wages.

Never mind that Redstatistan can look at Bluestatistan and see that all their ideas don't actually work. They won't look because they aren't interested (go team!). You have to actually try to be this ignorant, this level of being misinformed takes an actual effort, and Republican voters are more than happy to do that work.

Meanwhile, we wind up doing all the real work for them.

-Wisco


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An Insubstantial 'Truth'

Lionel Hutz: We've been getting a lot of calls about you, Marge. People love your hands-off approach!
Marge: Well, it's like we say: the right house for the right person.
Lionel Hutz: Yeah, about that... "the right house" is the one that's for sale; the "right person" is anybody.
Marge: Mr. Hutz! You're not suggesting that I bend the truth!
Lionel Hutz: Marge, there's "the truth" (frowns) and there's "the truth!" (smiles wide). Just take a look at some of our properties.
Marge: That house is tiny.
Lionel Hutz: We prefer to say "cozy".
Marge: That house is dilapidated.
Lionel Hutz: "Handyman's dream".
Marge: That house is on fire!
Lionel Hutz: "Motivated seller".
-The Simpsons, "Realty Bites"

Most of us know about the truth and "the truth." After all, we live in a world where "spin" is seen as acceptably dishonest. Truth is a slippery commodity in the United States and, when it shows up, it's generally pulled and twisted like taffy until it doesn't resemble truth at all. You yank it and mash it up until it looks like a wad of chewed bubblegum.

When the Washington Post reported that the US Chamber of Commerce seemed to be up to something shady, we got a glimpse of how "the truth" is manufactured:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama's health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation's economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber's senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: "The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document."

That's right, the Chamber is going to do a big economic study on healthcare reform, the findings of which they magically already know. "The truth."





For their part, the Chamber is shocked to be accused of cooking studies to match their anti-reform agenda. At their blog, The ChamberPost (yeah, I misread that as "chamberpot," too), Chamber minion Brad Peck sets the record straight. "A study of job impacts resulting from mandates is NOT a new idea. Now that final bills are emerging from both chambers an updated review is warranted..." he writes. "It is highly likely that this bill will increase costs for business and cost jobs... If it shows the opposite, so be it."

Remember the last time the business lobby released a study showing that they were totally wrong? Me neither. But I guess there's a first time for everything. No word on who this "respected economist" might be, but anyone who jumps in on this project can stop calling themselves "respected" and an "economist" and start calling themselves an "advertising executive."

Having caught the Chamber of Commerce pushing hinky data (before the data was even collected), WaPo was ready for the business lobby's pushback. At the paper's 44 blog, which covers policy and politics under the Obama administration, writer Alec MacGillis fires the ammo the paper kept in reserve. Turns out that not only has the Chamber done things like this before, but that they'd bragged about pulling this sort of PR stunt before.

[E]arlier this year, [Chamber senior vice president Randy] Johnson was far more candid about the nature of the studies commissioned by business groups to buttress their side in legislative battles. At a breakfast meeting at Chamber headquarters, Johnson urged the business people to tout the findings of a report that had been released just the week before by the Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs, a business coalition.

"We spent a lot of money to come up with this study," he told the business leaders. "It's not what these economic studies say -- it's the cover they give to members who are going to be with us."

The report, written by Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist from LECG Consulting and titled An Empirical Assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act: The Economic Implication, found that an increase in 1.5 million union members in one year would lead to the loss of 600,000 jobs by the following year. "Jobs losses directly attributed to the passage of card check legislation would be equal to the entire population of Boston or seventy-five percent of San Francisco," the Chamber's press release on the report stated.

In the confines of the Chamber hall, though, Johnson was refreshingly open about the "empirical" nature of the card-check report. The unions had ordered up their own studies, Johnson noted, and this was the business community's counter.

There's the truth and then there's "the truth." In a week or two, handsome and/or pretty representatives of the US Chamber of Commerce will be able to go on talking head show and wave around a glossy ad flier -- I mean, a "study by a respected economist" -- saying that healthcare reform will lead to a new dark age for American consumers. It cost them a lot of money, but it's totally worth it. For the media's part, they'll be "unbiased," which is news-talk for "credulous," and leave any analysis of the study to a talking head from the other side of the debate. This will all turn into a shouting match, the anchor will say they're out of time, and when the smoke clears, the only thing you'll know about the issue is what you came in with -- you'll have learned absolutely nothing.

That's how "the truth" gets traction.

-Wisco


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No Courage Here

In 2001, we all witnessed an American tragedy. The terrorist attack on 9/11 was unprecendented in its damage and loss of life. The plot was deceptively simple, hijack airliners and take them on kamikaze runs. We tend to see such massive loss of life as something that requires a complex mechanism -- a Bond villain with stolen military hardware or some sort of deathray -- and the idea that it was relatively simple just made it all worse. Who else could do this -- and when?

Most of the power that day's fear held over us was spent as political capital by the Bush administration. In terms of pointless waste of life, the Iraq war far surpasses September 11, 2001. After more than 4,000 Americans have been killed and Conservative estimates put the Iraqi body count at around 100,000. Eight years later, 9/11 has become part of the background in America. We live a constant "now" and 9/11 has finally become "then." At least, for most of us.

The news that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged 9/11 co-conspirators will be tried in New York City has demonstrated that some can't -- or won't -- let 9/11 become history. It's always part of their "now." Moments after the decision was announced, many slapped 9/11 on their sleeves and freaked out.

USA Today:

"Unconscionable," declared Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "Dangerous," said former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. "An unnecessary risk," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Democrat Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia called Friday's decision to move Mohammed from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, misguided, saying war criminals "do not belong in our courts."

I've got a lot of respect for Jim Webb, but sometimes he just comes out of left field. Some of this is just the typical right wing grandstanding designed to show that President Obama can't do anything right. If the White House had chosen a different route, it's hard to imagine he'd be getting a lot of praise from most of these people. But it's FOX News that demonstrates the underlying fear for the right -- that former President Bush might get pulled into the whole thing:

The Obama administration, in deciding to try alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in a New York courtroom, has said it is setting its sights on convictions, but some critics say a civilian trial -- instead of a military tribunal -- could end up targeting the Bush administration and its anti-terror policies.

One of those five defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been at the center of the debate over those Bush-era polices, in particular the harsh interrogation techniques used on Mohammed and others in an effort to obtain information on Al Qaeda and any additional attacks.

"The government is going to try to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed on trial. Defense lawyers will try and put the government on trial," former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News.

This is an unfounded fear for many reasons, not the least of which being that evidence obtained through torture would be inadmissible. "Ain't gonna happen," writes CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen for he New York Times. "Depending on who is running the show (Mohammed wanted to represent himself at his military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay), it's likely that the government's post-capture treatment of Mohammed will be a factor in the trial. But it won't determine the outcome, especially if the government does not seek to introduce any of Mohammed's post-torture statements to jurors. The fact that the feds are bringing him to New York to stand trial indicates that they have plenty of other evidence that they can use to get their conviction."

Of course Giuliani -- a former federal prosecutor -- knows this. He's just doing what he always does; getting face-time on cable networks by humping 9/11 like a drunk prom date. We really dodged a bullet when he dropped out of the presidential campaign in 2008. The fact that we dodged that bullet by about 100 miles should tell the cable networks how much we give a damn what Rudy thinks, but there ya go.

Others find a different motive behind the criticism -- blind terror.

Glenn Greenwald:

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

If Bush thought he could've earned political points by going on tour and dancing on the graves of 9/11 victims worldwide, I have no doubt he would've done it. Rudy Giuliani learned that from Bush and so did the vast majority of the Republican party. When they get backed into a corner or think they see a chink in their political opponent's armor, they 9/11 the 9/11 with a 9/11. That date isn't an event for these people, it's not a remembrance, it's a prybar to jimmy open the fears of wingnut followers who -- let's face it -- are especially open to fear-based arguments.

Just because some of us are cowards, it doesn't mean we all have to live by the cowards' rule. We can do this right and use the Constitution as our guide or we can throw everything we've fought for and built out the window because a death cult succeeded once. If that's all it takes for you to abandon the rule of law and to stop believing in the American system of justice, then I can't help you. You're going to have to find some tiny shred of courage within yourself, put on your big kid pants, and deal with it.

Because it looks like we're going to do this the American way for a change.

-Wisco


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Lou Dobbs, Unemployed Xenophobe

He was the finest newsman the world has ever known and now CNN has let him go. The tragedy is nearly inexpressable, but WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah gives it a good try:

What makes Lou Dobbs so special is his independence and fearlessness. Dobbs clearly set his own agenda. He had no interest in the "conventional wisdom" of his industry. Dobbs thinks like a real American newsman – a throwback to an age when journalists actually believed they were watchdogs of government and asked tough questions in the interests of the people.

When virtually his entire profession and elites in all the other political and cultural institutions of our time were making excuses for allowing tens of millions of illegal aliens to occupy our country, Lou Dobbs was alone in his focus on the issue critical to America's safety and security.

When virtually his entire profession and elites in all the other political and cultural institutions of our time were making excuses for Barack Obama's unwillingness to prove his constitutional eligibility to serve in the White House by simply showing the American people his long-form birth certificate, Lou Dobbs was alone in asking why.

That's right, Lou Dobbs was the "one reason to tune in to CNN," birther Farah tells us. Joe's a big fan, even offering Lou a job at his big pile of crazy he calls a website. "Let me be the first to say I would be proud to work with Lou Dobbs," Farah writes. "He's got his pick of assignments here at WND."





I'm sure he probably has something else in mind. But if Lou Dobbs ever wants to cover the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, I'm sure he'll know where to go. Some things are beneath even Lou Dobbs.

I'm guessing about that, by the way. There's no evidence to support the idea.

"Over the past six months, it's become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us," Dobbs said on his final show. "And some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving." The evidence suggests that those "leaders in media, politics and business" were CNN president Joe Klein and the "urging" of Dobbs to go "beyond the role here at CNN" came in the form of a demand to clean out his desk.

"Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor," New York Times reported Wednesday. "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Whether Lou quit or was canned is probably a matter of interest only to Lou, but it's clear that Lou Dobbs could only have remained at CNN if he stopped being crazy old Lou Dobbs. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert probably put it best, when he said that Dobbs was leaving CNN to "spend more time misinforming his family."

Because, man, did Lou ever have a talent for catapulting the propaganda. There was no conspiracy theory so insane, so obviously absurd, that he wouldn't report it. In 2006, Dobbs told his audience, "There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican- Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the reconquista, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of invaders to achieve that takeover."

While I don't doubt that there are Latinos who think this would be a good idea, I think there might be maybe four of five of them. As threats to national sovereignty go, this isn't one, and as movements go, it's not. Yet Dobbs went out of his way to associate the reconquista "movement" with the Mexican flag, ensuring that every time some nutjob Dobbs fan saw a Cinco de Mayo celebration, they'd think they were seeing a bunch of radicals bent on conquering a big chunk of the United States. From the transcript of that show:

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In San Diego today, another sea of Mexican flags echoing the nationalist theme in protests earlier this week.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

ROMANS: Chants celebrating La Raza, the race, and signs proclaiming the true history of the Southwest. A Southwest they say still belongs to Mexico.

Long downplayed as a theory of the radical ethnic fringe, the la reconquista, the reconquest, the reclamation, the return, it's resonating with some on the streets. It's the idea that the Southwest United States is stolen land called Aztlan.

Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, a shameless xenophobe, helped whip up the hysteria, claiming that this was pretty much the equivalent of having al Qaeda running the bodega down the street. "And now we see that hundreds of thousands of these people, if not several million, are willing to wave the Mexican flag and not seek assimilation in the United States, but are instead declaring their allegiance to Mexico while here illegally. This can cause huge problems," he told Romans. "If only a fringe element of them want to commit acts of violence in the future to -- in order to push their claim of legitimacy in terms of their right to this area that we now occupy in the United States, it can cause great damage and loss of life in our country."

Oddly, going on four years later, the big illegal Mexican alien terrorist attack has yet to happen. But I suppose it's only a matter of time. In the meantime, they'll just have to satisfy themselves with spreading leprosy.

And that's just a sliver of what was wrong with Dobbs and his show. There's some speculation that Dobbs will follow fellow CNN-alumnus Glenn Beck over to FOX News, but it's hard to see why they'd want him -- Lou's rating's were tanking. My best guess -- and it is a guess -- is that he'll join some nonprofit organization in some way. Perhaps even one that doesn't have anything to do with the lurking Mexican Menace within our borders. Or maybe he'll just make do with his radio show.

In any case, CNN is better off without him. News is news, opinion is opinion, but Lou Dobbs was just a great big lie machine. A hatemonger, a fearmonger, a conspiracy theorist, and a fraud, he'd be a much better fit over at FOX.

But I have my doubts that even they would take him. Maybe WingNutDaily is really the best shot he has. After all, Joseph Farah obviously has a huge man-crush on him.

-Wisco


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Two Party System, Four Party Reality

I've never been a big fan of mix-and-match polling. When you take results from one poll and compare them to the results of another, you really can't expect the comparison to work out perfectly. Each polling organization has different criteria for respondents and may or may not probe them -- i.e., ask them "which way they lean" or for "their best guess" when they get a "don't know," for example -- and this can throw the results one way or another. And each pollster has different ways of whittling down their respondents so that the group represents America as a whole. Who's a Republican, who's a Democrat, who's white, who's black, who's what gender, etc. are all demographic questions -- usually published toward the end of the data -- that show those polled reflect the larger populace.

That caveat aside, until someone lets me write a national poll (or until I win the lottery and can afford to do it myself), mixing and matching polling data is going to be about the best I can do. Yesterday, Gallup polling showed that, after flatlining for more than a year, Republicans bumped up on a generic congressional ballot to beat Democrats by 4 points:


Click for larger image

If you look at that graphic, you see Democrats on a slow, steady slide, with Republicans barely moving at all. Republicans aren't looking better to people, Democrats are looking worse. "As was the case in last Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, independents are helping the Republicans' cause," Gallup reports. "In the latest poll, independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52% to 30%. Both parties maintain similar loyalty from their bases, with 91% of Democratic registered voters preferring the Democratic candidate and 93% of Republican voters preferring the Republican."

Now comes the mixing and matching, courtesy of a Pew poll:

[V]oters who plan to support Republicans next year are more enthusiastic than those who plan to vote for a Democrat. Fully 58% of those who plan to vote for a Republican next year say they are very enthusiastic about voting, compared with 42% of those who plan to vote for a Democrat.

"The big enthusiasm gap, you’d think, lends weight to the argument that Dems need to pass a health care bill without delay," writes Greg Sargent. "After all, it seems pretty clear that passing a good health care bill would do a lot more to boost the Dem base’s enthusiasm than showcasing Michele Bachmann’s latest antics could ever accomplish."

Bingo. The Democrats' big problem right now is that they can't get their act together. Republicans are sitting on the sidelines, talking trash about Democrats, while Democrats battle Democrats on the field. Politically, the efforts of Blue Dog Democrats to drag healthcare reform to the right are suicidal -- because, if anyone's going to pay an electoral price here, it's going to be Democrats in swing districts. Their timidity is destroying them.





But the Pew poll isn't entirely bleak for dems. According to the poll, 52% want to see their representative reelected, while 34% want most incumbents reelected. In other words, it's all someone else's fault. Like term limits, everyone seems to think this is a good idea -- until it comes to their people, then it's a different story. It's the rest of Congress that sucks. Still, Pew notes that these percentages are "the most negative in two decades" for the month. So there's that.

If you want some real good news, you can look to the Republican Party itself. No longer the lockstep, hivemind, zombie clan, Republican voters have begun to develop opinions all on their lonesome. Unfortunately, they aren't very experienced at this opinion-making stuff and it shows; Obama is a Communist Hitler, healthcare reform constitutes some sort of human rights abuse, and a lot of Republicans really suck. There's where all your GOP enthusiasm is coming from: scattershot crazies at Tea Parties.

Already, the teabaggers are taking their election year advantage and throwing it in the toilet. Unwilling to learn the lessons from NY-23 (or taking a different lesson from it), they're moving on in their big RINO hunt to find "Republicans In Name Only" in other races.

USA Today:

Some South Carolina Republicans are not happy with their own Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Last night the Charleston County Republican Party’s Executive Committee voted to formally censure Graham for supporting a climate change bill, bailing out banks, and granting amnesty for illegal aliens.

"Charleston County Republican voters have grown increasingly frustrated with Senator Graham and his voting record, which are frankly out of step with the beliefs of Republican voters,” said Charleston County Republican Party Chairwoman Lin Bennett. “This vote should not surprise any of us. What this shows us is that Charleston County Republicans are demanding better from Senator Graham."

Graham has been working with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., on bipartisan legislation that would require companies to cut pollution or buy credits from companies that decrease carbon emissions -- which contributes to global warming.

Graham may or may not be "out of step" with Republican voters, but the Republican opinion on climate and environment is out of step with everyone else. Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that 77% believe in global warming and want carbon emissions cut. According to Paul Bedard at US News, the mood among strategists is "Shift the debate to creating alternative clean energy sources. And stop trying to foil President Obama simply for the sake of handing him a defeat." And here's the Republican base -- who the GOP has to rely on -- demanding that elected GOPers do the exact opposite.

If the Democratic Party is actually two parties right now (and it is), then so is the Republican Party -- for the first time in a very long time. Do they go where the enthusiasm is and turn off the Independents or do they go to the Independents and turn off the base? An advantage in a generic congressional ballot is largely theoretical. Once things become more concrete and people take stands, rather than remain purely conceptual, we'll see how things work out.

If Lindsey Graham, one of the most consistently conservative members of the Senate, is too liberal for the teabaggers, who are they going to be excited about in 2010? Likewise, who are all these Independents going to go to if the Republican slate is mostly Glenn Beck types? Something's got to give and -- one way or another -- some of that enthusiasm is going to evaporate. And, in districts where the teabaggers manage to put up a rightwing nutjob, Democratic enthusiasm will rise.

Still, Democrats need to get their own act together. If we can't get healthcare reform passed, Democrats will begin this thing by standing in a hole. And, when all those Blue Dogs lose their seats, they won't have anyone to blame but themselves.

-Wisco


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Missing the Point

The weekend's big news is being overshadowed by what legislators probably had hoped would be a minor story. In passing healthcare reform in the House of Representatives, a bit of last-minute horsetrading gave us the Stupak-Pitts amendment. Worried that maybe a nickel of taxpayer dollars might wind up in some abortion provider's pocket, the amendment attacks the "problem" with a handgrenade, making it all but illegal for insurers to cover abortion services. No plan that competes for subsidized customers would be allowed to provide abortion coverage and, as a result, it's nearly impossible to see a way in which insurers would provide coverage at all.

And so now, the big sticking point going forward has become -- pretty much out of the blue -- abortion rights and coverage. The always insightful Greg Sargent explains the situation:

One side point: It will be much tougher for pro-choice Dems to cave and support the bill with Stupak than it was for House progressives to cave and back the bill despite its lack of a robust public option.

Here’s why: Because the public option had initially been written off for dead, the version liberals did secure allowed them to claim they had won something. By contrast, Stupak is a significant step backward for advocates of abortion rights and women’s health issues. So it will be much tougher for pro-choice House Dems to back a final bill with Stupak in the end. This will intensify.

In other words, giving up a real public option is one thing, since it involves losing something that never got beyond the conceptual stage anyway. But giving up ground on abortion rights is another, since it involves losing something people have fought long and hard to gain and would hurt women most in need of reform. Additionally, in a battle where "being a woman is not a preexisting condition" has become a slogan, adding yet another hurdle in front of women seeking adequate health coverage would not be what you call a win.





Yet, in all the coverage of the issue and -- worse -- in the statements from elected officials, we're aren't seeing very many explain it this way. What we're seeing from the media is horserace coverage and what we're getting from pro-choice Democrats are explanations of process. I can't think of a better way to trivialize what we're really talking about here.

The television media is probably the main culprit here. Given a choice between "easy to understand" or "comprehensive," they go with the former. "Amendment make pro-choice Democrat mad! Grrr! Big fight! Watch!" As always, I feel compelled to remind you that a TV pundit's job isn't to inform you, a TV pundit's job is to get you to watch TV.

But how difficult is the Stupak amendment to explain? Rep. Diana DeGette seems to have done a pretty good job of making it accessible; "Frankly, the women of America should be furious because this just does not say no federal funding for abortion, this says women cannot use their own money to buy an insurance policy that would include a legal medical procedure."

You could probably be as peanut-brained as the TV news producers seem to think you are and still be able to wrap your mind around that. It's not an extremely wonky issue. It's when we fall into explanations of process that pro-choice Democrats get into trouble, as Sen. Claire McCaskill demonstrates:

"...Obviously, I have been a pro-choice candidate for my entire political career, and obviously there is controversy always surrounding this issue. But we are talking about whether or not people that get public money can buy an insurance policy that has a coverage for abortion. And that is not the majority of America. The majority of America is not going to be getting subsidies from the government...."

"And so, I am not sure that this is going to be enough to kill the bill," McCaskill added. "And frankly, once again, this is another example of having to govern with moderates. We can't just turn our back on the fact that the reason we are in majority, is because states like Indiana, and Arkansas, and Louisiana, and Missouri, and North Carolina, and Virginia sent Democrats to the Senate."

McCaskill was later forced to clarify that she was against a similar provision in the Senate. For future reference, the best way to fight something is not to start out by explaining why you expect to lose. And the way to keep that expectation from being a self-fulfilling prophecy is to actually explain what's wrong with the provision, rather than get bogged down in the nuts and bolts legislative wrangling. Just because the media wants to turn the whole thing into a freakin' soap opera (McCaskill's comments came on MSNBC's Morning Joe) doesn't mean you have to give them one. Talk about the Stupak amendment and how it screws women by actually making insurance coverage worse, then let go from there. In any case, there's no shortage of people in the know who believe McCaskill's wrong about the vote count.

So, what's wrong with the Stupak amendment and what would it mean for women nationwide? Who cares? All you need to know is that there's going to be a big fight and you can watch it all on the teevee machine.

That's what we're calling "news" these days.

-Wisco


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