Congratulations to Scott Brown in his history making upset victory in Massachusetts, it surely shows that no seat is safe or certain in the age of the independent voter or amid the shifting tides of anti-incumbent sentiments. The one thing that is abundantly clear is that Brown rode to victory on a wave of independent voter support and not because large numbers of Massachusetts voters have suddenly embraced the principles of the G.O.P. and switched their party affiliation. In his acceptance speech Brown acknowledged: "Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken." Also, let us take a moment to thank Mr. Brown for putting the Republican Party back in the game of creating meaningful legislation for now they will no longer have the political cover of hiding behind the excuse that the Democrats control everything due to their filibuster proof supermajority. The arrival of Scott Brown in Washington means that the G.O.P. will now be held accountable for actually producing some sort of legislative product. The days of just saying "no" to every proposal put forth by the Obama Administration are over.
The degree to which the Massachusetts election is a repudiation of the Obama Administration is less than perfectly clear. A post election poll by Peter Hart, Election Night Survey Of Massachusetts Senate Voters, produced findings that reveal evidence of a working class revolt arising from unaddressed economic concerns; a continued desire to fix health care with no support for an abandonment of reform efforts; the sense that Obama has done too little rather than too much; that local issues trump the issue of Obama's overall approval and; that there is no evidence of any endorsement of the Republican agenda on the economy or otherwise. According to Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, Obama's approval rating in Massachusetts was 60 percent before the election as well as thereafter. In contrast a poll by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health found, as per the Post's Dan Balz: "Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal-government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts." Interestingly, 52 percent of Brown's supporters said that Obama was not a factor in their decision to vote. Balz points out another noteworthy finding from this poll: "Among Brown's supporters who say the health-care reform effort in Washington played an important role in their vote, the most frequently cited reasons were concerns about the process, including closed-door dealing and a lack of bipartisanship. Three in 10 highlighted these political maneuverings as the motivating factor; 22 percent expressed general opposition to reform or the current bill." There is also an element of misconception in Scott Brown's opposition to Obama's health care initiatives. In an article detailing Brown's involvement in Massachusetts's health care reform, David M. Herszenhorn points out: "Mr. Brown, as a state senator, voted in favor of the Massachusetts universal health care law in 2006, when the state became the first in the nation to pass a far-reaching overhaul guaranteeing coverage for nearly every state resident and requiring everyone in Massachusetts to obtain insurance. Mr. Brown, in campaigning against the health care legislation emerging in Washington, has sought to portray it as fundamentally different from the Massachusetts plan. But Massachusetts was actually an important model for what Congress has developed, arguably the model for what Congress envisions." It is hard to make the argument that the Massachusetts voters are against health care reform when 68 percent of the voters in Tuesday's election say they support the existing state plan. Slightly more than half of those who voted for Brown also favor that plan. Even Jennifer Nassour, the Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said on the New Hour (1/20/10): "We have health care in Massachusetts and we do want quality health care for everyone, like we have it here in Massachusetts." Beyond Massachusetts there is new evidence in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that reveals that while Americans are evenly divided over the health reform proposals being debated in Congress, they are actually more supportive of reform generally, when specifics are examined.
Like the Hart poll above, the Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard polling shows, according to Balz: "GOP policies prove even less popular, with 58 percent of Massachusetts voters saying they are dissatisfied or angry about what Republicans in Congress are offering. Among those voting for Brown, 60 percent give positive marks to the policies of congressional Republicans, but a sizable number, 37 percent, offer a negative appraisal." To date, the Republican Party on Capitol Hill continues to trail the Democrats on the issue of overall approval ratings. Likewise, the numbers of Americans who identify as Republicans is at historically low levels. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 22.5 percent of those polled identify as Republicans. What does this all mean for Scott Brown? I think the simple answer is that if he wants to get re-elected in 2012 he will act more like Olympia Snowe of Maine than South Carolina's Jim DeMint. In fact Snowe has indicated a renewed interest in a health care compromise and Scott Brown my very well be the ally she has been looking for on her side of the aisle. Deep in their hearts, Republicans know that the health care system is broken and unsustainable in its current form and ultimately they don't want to be the ones associated with continued failure.
No analysis of the 2010 Massachusetts election can be complete without acknowledging that the Tea Party Movement has moved, at least for the time being, from the fringe into the mainstream of American politics. When you sift out the gun toting crackpots living out their "Minuteman" fantasies and the ideologically challenged that sport placards about Fascism, Socialism and Marxism thereby revealing their utter lack of understanding of these ideologies or there applicability to the present, there are actually people within the movement who know how to make a difference. In Massachusetts they did. But the real question for the G.O.P. is has it made a deal with the Devil in jumping onboard the Tea Party tiger? It is one thing to embrace the Tea Party Movement when the opposition is a Democrat, but what about the prospect of intra-party challenges during the upcoming 2010 Republican primary process. The Tea Party crowd has been up front about its wanting to "purify" the G.O.P. of those who don't hew to a far right agenda. Even Republican heavyweights like John Cornyn R-TX are in their cross hairs. Likewise, for Scott Brown, getting too close to the Tea Party Movement may result in a one-way ticket back to Massachusetts in 2012. A new group within the Tea Party Movement called "The National Precinct Alliance" aims to take over the G.O.P. from the bottom up by capturing local committee leadership positions which will allow the movement to endorse candidates, formulate policy platforms and control asset allocation. The net result may be either an all out civil war within the G.O.P. or a restructured party far to the right of center. As conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer recently pointed out in one of his editorials, politics in America is played within the 40-yard line, on either side of midfield. When either party tries to push past that 40-yard line there is push back within the electorate. That said, it is hard to imagine a G.O.P. reformed by the Tea Party Movement as occupying any turf around midfield which would have a net affect of alienating independents and pushing the G.O.P.'s favorability ratings even lower than they are today. When you combine the Tea Party Movement's penchant for ideological purity with the likes of it's leading personalities: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, you have a formula for driving independent voters into the hills and thereby affecting a drain off of support for any type of centrist Republican agenda. Mark my words, the G.O.P. may be celebrating the election of Scott Brown now but they will soon rue the day that they got onto the Tea Party tiger, especially when they see where the ride is taking the G.O.P.
Beyond the challenges facing the G.O.P. the other relevant question is: Can Barack Obama's new found populist campaign drain some of the steam out of the collective Tea Party kettles? Political commentator Sam Tanenhaus recently opined that the Tea Party surge in Massachusetts was a combination of two forces, anger over deficits and a drive for ideological purity. As I already said, the ideological purity issue is a poison pill for the G.O.P. and a subject beyond the control of the Obama administration as it is an internal G.O.P. issue. If Democrats can regain the initiative in crafting health care reform that truly reduces the deficit and successfully combines that with some degree of positive results stemming from the new populist push, then a large part of the Tea Party message will begin to dissipate.
One thing that the election of Scott Brown does not change is the embedded problems that beset health care and thereby deficit growth in America. Again, David Herszenhorn lays out the predicament: "Here's what has not changed about the health care system in America. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, by 2019 there will be 54 million people in the United States without health insurance. The chief actuary of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it will be even worse: 57 million people without insurance. In 2017, just seven years from now, the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted. Empty. Dried up. Done. Total national expenditures on health care will continue to soar, according to the chief actuary, to $4.7 trillion in 2019 from $2.6 trillion today. The average cost of an employer-sponsored family health insurance policy will rise to $20,300 in 2019, or about $10,000 more than today, consuming an ever growing portion of family income and continuing to put downward pressure on wages." The average American would do him/herself a favor in asking their employer a simple question: How much does my health care cost and how much has its cost increased over the last ten years? Then they might ask: If not for the cost of health care, how much would my income derived from my employment with this company gone up and with it my standard of living? Thereafter, they might just want to go over the fine print in their coverage to see what kind of health care they actually have and to what degree it protects them and their family assets from insurance coverage shortfalls.
When the dust clears and the supporters of Scott Brown emerge from their celebratory hangovers and head out onto the street to again address the issue of deficits and health care reform etc., they will see, sitting there on the horizon the same broken health care system with its runaway costs feed by a failure to address what are now the inherent inadequacies of the "free market" to provide affordable coverage to all. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same and so we are back to where we were a year ago, we have gone back to the future.
Democrats have an absolutely clear path to passing a strong health care reform bill quickly that will re-establish their image for being able to deliver real change, begin to rebuild their bond with their base, and allow them to move on to dealing with jobs and the economy. To fail to take this path will lead to a worse meltdown and beat-down than the 1994 or 1980 elections. What they have to do is buck up their courage, stop acting out, and get the deal done.
The path, which has been suggested by many other people as well as me, is to simply pass the full Senate bill, and then immediately pass a clean-up bill through the reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. The clean-up bill could include the provisions that progressives in the House and Senate, as well as wide majorities of the American people, have been demanding: the compromise on the benefits tax issue, more affordability for low and moderate income folks, ending insurers' exemption from anti-trust laws, a national insurance exchange instead of the weaker fragmented state run exchanges, and yes, some form of that public option that voters and activists keep saying we want. Doing this kind of double bill approach would allow all the good insurance regulations and other provisions in both the Senate and House versions of the bill that can't be passed through the reconciliation process because of Senate rules to still get done, while making the bill far more politically popular with voters and healing the rifts caused with the base because of all the bad compromises forced by Lieberman and other Democratic conservatives in the Senate.
If the Democrats turn from this path and give up on comprehensive reform after spending the last year working on it and coming so close, it would be one of the greatest tragedies in American history, a historic failure of nerve so unforgivable that I think it might literally break the party in two. If after spending a year on this, and putting Democrats' votes on the board in both houses in favor of it, they walk away and get nothing, they would be seen as utterly incompetent by swing and base voters alike. And don't think that going back to the drawing board and trying to get a scaled back bill that "everyone is in favor of" gets anything done. Having been successful by being the party of no, what exactly is it that the Republicans- any of them- would agree to? Olympia Snowe got every single thing she asked for in the Senate bill after delaying the bill for six months, and she still voted no. What makes anyone think she or any other Republican would vote yes for anything in an election year when it's working so well for the Republicans to say no to everything? And how long would it take to work out a deal with Republicans when we tried for a year and not one of them agreed to anything? While I'm asking questions, let me ask another: exactly which voters do Democrats think we pick up by walking away from health care reform after a year of work and already recorded votes on it in both houses? Certainly not the desperately disappointed base. Do Democrats think swing voters will reward them for spending a year on something, and then giving up on it and getting nothing? Swing voters are wanting results and real change. How does delivering nothing changing nothing on the main thing they have worked on the last year help them with those voters?
Okay, enough of asking rhetorical questions. As President Obama likes to put it: let me be clear. Democrats need to calm down, pull themselves together, and pass the Senate bill and then a parallel bill to clean up the problems in the Senate bill. Progressive leaders like Raul Grijalva need to stop making threats, join hands with their Democratic brethren, and just get this done. Conservative Democrats had their way in the Senate, but now they need to stop complaining and telling Democrats they should give up on passing anything, and get with the program. The President needs to settle down and stop having a failure of nerves, and sending negative signals to Congress. It is time to take the path available to us on health care, do what we should have done four months and get it over with, and move on to jobs, banks, energy, and immigration. By actually delivering on the change we promised, by actually taking on the special interests we said we would and solving problems, Democrats can rebound from this bleak moment and do fine in the next election. All it takes is a little bit of courage and common sense to take the path in front of them.
Reid also declares that Olympia Snowe was negotiating in bad faith, that she was never going to support a health care bill, and that talking to her was a waste of time.
Given that both Lieberman and Snowe were negotiating in bad faith, we should have been pushing for reconciliation as hard as we were pushing for the public option.
Then again, Kissell only leads a potential primary challenger 49-15, and only 28% of Democrats know he voted against the bill. For an incumbent, those are pretty weak primary numbers-someone could actually knock him off. However, the North Carolina primary is on May 4th, so it is unlikely that a strong primary campaign would be able to gear up in such a short time.
Ned Lamont's main opponent in the Democratic primary for Governor in Connecticut has dropped out. Current polling on the campaign indicates that Ned is now the strong favorite in both the primary and the general election. Get ready for Governor Lamont!
It turns out that if I delete content from a website that I--quite literally--own, then I am engaging in censorship. I don't remember the part of the first amendment that declares everyone is allowed to use everyone else's printing press.
This is the last day to submit your comments to the FCC in support of Net Neutrality. Go do it, now.
The FDIC is trying to limit risky bank behavior by linking it to limits on executive pay. The good news not just the ruling, but that the ruling is causing blowback from the conservative members of the FDIC. This is a perfect example of the type of fights Democrats have to pick with financial institutions in 2010. As I wrote yesterday, banks must be portrayed as the culprit, and Democrats have to come across as fighting the banks father than colluding with them.
Keep picking fights like these, and pick them as publicly as possible.
In a recent Washington Post article titled "A Good Time to be a Conservative"; Mr. Kristol made a bold assumption, claiming the "center of gravity" within the Republican Party would shift farther to the right, propelled in that direction by a collection of conservative personalities from beyond the Beltway. Indicating a lack of faith in the G.O.P.'s elected leadership, Kristol says: "Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots." Kristol's logic is derived from two polls. First, the Gallup Poll of October 26, 2009 that puts the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives at 40 percent, and an earlier Rasmussen Poll indicating that the only 2012 Republican presidential prospects polling double digits are Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. When one looks inside the numbers, it would appear that there are more than a few flaws in Mr. Kristol's math and intuitive reasoning.
The Gallup results show that the net increase in the percentage of people identifying as conservatives had taken place within that subset of the electorate classified as independents. Quoting Gallup: "Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008. By contrast, among Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who are "conservative" has increased by one point each." In spite of the shift in independents identifying as conservatives, the actual percentage of voters who identify with the G.O.P., which is the defacto conservative party, has fallen to historical lows. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 25 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans. That percentage improves when registered and likely voters are polled, but the G.O.P. still trails the Democrats here as well. To date, had independents firmly embraced the principles of the conservative movement generally or the G.O.P. in particular, the percentage of voters identifying as Republicans would show a marked increase and so far that is not the case. I would argue that the shift to the right among independent voters is far from solid and is conditional, being subject to a set of factors that will likely change by the time of the 2012 election. In fact an even newer Gallup Poll reveals just how transient independent political attitudes actually are. That poll: "Race for 2010 Remains Close; Democrats Recover Slight Lead", which came out on December 14 states: "The current generic-ballot results are similar to those Gallup found in July and October of this year, and indicate that the Republican gain observed just after the Nov. 3 elections was not sustained. Shifts in candidate preference for Congress typically occur primarily among independents, whose "unanchored" status makes them much more vulnerable to short-term events in the political environment than are those who claim allegiance to either major party." I would go beyond the latest Gallup findings to suggest that the number of independents identifying as conservatives will decrease proportionately to the degree to which the G.O.P. moves to the right, especially if the Republican Party finds its public image welded to the personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd.
In his reliance on the results of the above cited Rasmussen Poll, Mr. Kristol is in effect betting the house on a collection of would be candidates that, in spite of polling in the double digits, leave much to be desired when it actually comes to getting elected. Kristol is one of Sarah Palin's most passionate cheerleaders, but in suggesting that the future of the conservative movement might lie in the fortunes of Ms. Palin, he seems to be gambling on a horse not worth the wager. Mid-December poll results from both Pollster.com and Polling Report.com show Palin registering an unfavorable rating of 48 percent. An ABC poll of November 15th showed that 53 percent of respondents would not vote for Palin with 60 percent saying she was not qualified to be president. More damaging still is a CBS poll of November 15, which revealed that 62 percent of those Republicans polled felt that Palin lacked the ability to be an effective president. At the time of Palin's resignation from elected office, Republican strategist Mike Murphy opined: "If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don't think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected." Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, reflecting on Palin's resignation said: "She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party." The reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are, according to Pew Research, now at a seventy-year high. Recently, two Republican heavyweights: Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC, and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) both declined to endorse a 2012 Palin presidential bid when they appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.
In spite of the fact that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have double-digit support among Republicans, none of them breaks a 40 percent favorability rating among voters generally, except Huckabee. However, Huckabee's 40 percent approval rating was registered before Maurice Clemmons, an inmate pardoned by Huckabee, gunned down four police officers in late November. That said, we might see a decline in Huckabee's overall standing in the polls. Poll numbers aside, in the 2008 Republican primaries, Huckabee was only able to win in the south and thus his viability as a national candidate is questionable. Furthermore, Huckabee's past equivocation on the topic of evolution works to his detriment when it comes to appealing to that large segment of the population that believes in science as well as religion. Mitt Romney, as a result of his Mormon faith, had problems with the evangelical base of the G.O.P., which plays a crucial role in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. Moreover, Romney may well run into formidable headwinds from the far right as a result of his relatively moderate approach to politics and policy positions. Newt Gingrich, who's favorable ratings are the lowest, at 14 percent, has a closet full of skeletons of his own which led in 1998 to his stepping down as the Speaker of the House and his departure from Congress altogether. Needless to say these issues will surely be resurrected and they will be in the forefront of the debate in the event that Gingrich becomes a serious presidential contender.
It is in his rather absurd suggestion that the G.O.P.'s center of gravity might travel further to the right as a function of the influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party Movement, that Kristol, having slipped his moorings to reality, has embarked on what can only be considered a voyage of political fantasy. Neither Limbaugh nor Beck are particularly compelling personalities beyond the realm of their audience. Both traffic in the sensational, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction with their primary purpose being incendiary commentary rather than legitimate hard news analysis. The media watchdog, Media Matters for America has compiled fifty-three pages of citations detailing Limbaugh's distortion of facts or their deliberate misrepresentation for political purposes. For Glenn Beck there are forty-two pages. The latest NBC/WSJ poll (June 2009), which I was able to find on Limbaugh's popularity, showed that 50 percent of those responding viewed him in a negative light. A similar poll in September showed Glenn Beck registering a positive rating of just 25 percent. In spite of the fact that both Limbaugh and Beck have a committed following, accurately measuring the true size and composition of their respective audiences and the extent to which they actually reflect more than a thin slice of this country's political spectrum is almost impossible. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post attempted to plumb the length and breadth of Limbaugh's audience and therefore his influence, in a March 2009 article: "Limbaugh's Audience Size? It's Largely Up in the Air." Relying on interviews with media industry sources, Farhi claims that Limbaugh's audience fluctuates between 14 to 30 million, depending on the issues of the day. Quoting Michael Harrison of "Talkers Magazine", Farhi puts Limbaugh's average audience at 14.25 million listeners per week, which is just under 5 percent of the population. Glenn Beck's audience is far smaller and his largest audience to date was roughly 3.4 million viewers on September 15, 2009, which amounts to just 1.1 percent of the population.
When it comes to the Tea Party Movement, it is equally difficult in coming to an agreement as to just how many people are involved here and to what extent they really reflect more than a microcosm of American political life. According to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, a pro-Tea Party group, just 578,000 people participated in the 2009 April Tax Day Protests. Their website does not display figures for the July 4th protests nor does FreedomWorks.com or any other pro-Tea Party website that I came across. The largest number I remember seeing is in the neighborhood of 215,000 protestors. Regarding the September 12th Washington D.C. protest rally, Talking Points Memo described the turnout as follows: "FreedomWorks, the main organizers of the Tea Party event in Washington this past weekend, has dramatically lowered its estimate for the size of the crowd at the event from 1.5 million, a number the group now concedes was a mistake, to between 600,000 and 800,000 people -- though this is still substantially more than the tens of thousands that most mainstream media outlets have estimated, and which FreedomWorks wholeheartedly rejects." Thus if we add up the total attendence at all three Tea Parties, using the higher estimates, we come up with a gross attendence of roughly 1.6 million or just one half of one percent of the population.
What the math reveals is that the actual number of people who either participate in Tea Parties or who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, presumably many do both, is a rather small percentage of the overall population, even considering that portion that would identify as conservative. That said, its a bit of a strectch to assume that such a statistically insignificant number of people is either enough to move the Republican Party further to the right or that it is likely to do so.
There is one final flaw in Kristol's analysis and that is his ignoring the rising tide of moderates within the party that are opposing any suggestion that the G.O.P. needs to be purified of any moderate tendencies via litmus tests that even Ronald Reagan would fail, that political orthodoxy should be the face of the G.O.P. or that Republicans can only win elections when they embrace ultra conservative ideas. The now formidable array of moderates seeking to stem any drift to the far right encompasses a spectrum of Republican notables from sitting Senators to strategists and political commentators including: Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Inglis, Mickey Edwards, Christie Todd Whitman, Newt Gingrich, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker and a host of Republican strategists. Gingrich, appearing on Meet the Press (5/24/09) stated that the G.O.P. has to be "broad enough to incorporate divergent views and can't be purged to the smallest conservative base." Tom Ridge stated that the G.O.P. "needs to be less shrill and less condeming of those who don't hew to a far right view." Following the departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican Party, Olympia Snowe, in a New York Times editorial opined: "There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and contiuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities." At an April debate over the future of the G.O.P. Lindsey Graham made the following observation: "We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing." I could go on, but anyone who has been paying any attention to the civil war within the Republican Party knows that there are more than enough voices and intelligent arguments being made to more than call into question the logic and wisdom of people like Bill Kristol and their fanciful notions that the redemption of the G.O.P. lies in the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the rank and file Tea Party participant. All one has to do is examine the results of the 2009 off-year elections and what is evident is that where Republicans won elections, in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, they did so by running moderate campaigns that played to the centrist voter. In contrast, the great and financially costly effort by the far right in trying to influence the congressional election in New York's 23rd Electoral District resulted in a conservative failure with a Democrat capturing a seat held by the G.O.P. since as far back as the Civil War.
Over the course of his career, William Kristol is a man who has backed more political losers and also-rans than winners and it would be nothing less than disastrous for the Republican Party to heed his advice or put any stock in his predictions. Kristol worked for former Secretary of Education William Bennet, the voice of personal responsibility during the Reagan Administration, who subsequently lost much of his credibility when he admitted to losing over a million dollars in Las Vegas slot machines. He was Vice President Qualye's Chief of Staff. Kristol managed the failed Senatorial campaign of Alan Keyes in 1988 and Keyes would go on to fail twice more in seeking a seat in the Senate and then two more times when running for president. Kristol championed the pardon of Scooter Libby and the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, a decision that McCain's staffers would later admit to be his single biggest mistake. But it is in an examination of Kristol's unabashed cheerleading for the War in Iraq that his predictive abilities are revealed to be so totally lacking. It was Kristol who predicted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would unleash a chain reaction of democratic reform across the Middle East that to date has failed to materialize.
Bill Kristol represents that desperate sort of conservative that can't abide the dynamics of political change wrought by the election of Barack Obama. Likewise, the relatively rapid decline in the influence of Neoconservatives since the 2004 election can't bring him much joy either. To my mind, Bill Kristol falls into that category within the Conservative Movement that is firmly wedded to the notion that their orthodox ideology is the only one acceptable for America and that anything else is either politically irrelevant or treasonous. Kristol's faulty logic gives rise to the notion that he is engaged more in wishful thinking than objective political analysis. His prediction as to future direction of the G.O.P. amounts to nothing more than a political "Hail Mary pass" in hoping beyond hope, that somehow or other the Republican Party can be moved to embrace the orthodoxy of the far right. In my opinion, having watched him over the past decade and read his articles, he seems to be increasingly assuming the role of a shill for ultra conservative ideas, becoming as a result less objective in his political analysis. Republicans would be well advised to part company with Mr. Kristol, least they find themselves facing a future of continued electoral defeat and a decline in the party's appeal among that now indispensable factor in American politics, the unaligned independent voter.
In search of the elusive, filibuster-proof 60th vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eviscerated the Senate's health care reform bill on Tuesday. Potential GOP swing voter Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) confirmed that Reid promised to kill both the public option and the expanded Medicare buy-in, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.
Snowe didn't pledge to support the bill, of course. She didn't even promise to cooperate on the procedural votes required to pass the bill before Christmas, a deadline that the Obama administration has its heart set on. In other words, Reid gave away the progressive crown jewels of health reform on spec to a senator who cheerfully turned around and continued the Republican stalling strategy. From Snowe's vantage point, that's a great move. The longer the bill hangs in limbo, the more Reid will give away.
Former Democrat Joe Lieberman (I-CT) seems determined to kill the bill. Lieberman must be motivated more by a desire to spite liberals than any principled policy stance. He keeps threatening to filibuster policy proposals he once campaigned on, like the Medicare buy-in. Lee Fang of TAPPED notes that Lieberman told the New York Times that he now opposes the buy-in because it's beloved of lefty single-payer types like Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY); and the policy wonk behind the public option, Prof. Jacob Hacker.
The Women's Media Center has launched the #UnderTheBus campaign, which calls on supporters to contact their representatives and urge them not to let Lieberman and his close, anti-choice ally Ben Nelson (D-NE) sell out women's health care for political gain. Nelson has hinted he won't vote for the bill unless it contains strong abortion funding restrictions.
Stephanie Mencimer reports in Mother Jones that a bunch of teabaggers decided to stage a sit-in to oppose the health bill at Lieberman's office. Mark Meckler and some Tea Party Patriots showed up at Lieberman's office and asked to meet with the senator. When they were told he wasn't available, they all sat down. When they tried that routine at Sen. Barbara Boxer's office (D-CA), her staff ignored them. Lieberman's staff called the cops. (Note to teabaggers: Sit-ins are for enemies, not allies.)
The senate bill is so watered down that it wouldn't even stop insurance companies from capping benefits, as Roger Bybee reports at Working In These Times.
Former congressional candidate Darcy Burner says she'd rather see the bill die than have it pass in its current state. She argues that if health care reform doesn't curb costs, it's just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. She writes in AlterNet:
The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health costs from eating up an ever-increasing percentage of our national productivity.
The House bill has two major cost-control mechanisms: the public option and the 85 percent medical-loss ratio requirement. The Senate bill is on track to have neither, and nothing new to replace them. The Senate bill is a recipe for national disaster. If it's that bill or nothing, I prefer nothing.
Adding insult to injury, the Senate also voted down a bill yesterday that would have made it easier for consumers to purchase cheaper prescription drugs abroad. Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent suggests that the White House was relieved to see the Dorgan-Snowe bill defeated because it would have violated the deal it struck with pharmaceutical companies earlier this year. The drug companies promised up to $80 billion for health care reform if Democratic leaders withheld support for several initiatives that would cut into drug company profits.
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I am a team player. I believe in compromise and negotiation, and have always been okay with taking half a loaf or even a quarter at times. I have never believed in making the perfect the enemy of the good. And as an aging diabetic, a small businessman with skyrocketing health care costs, and a veteran of the Clinton health care war room and 30 years of other health care fights, I have wanted a health care reform bill badly, worse than I have ever wanted any piece of legislation in my life.
But there does sometimes come a bridge too far.
When Joe Lieberman turned his back on a compromise that he has been strongly and publicly supporting for at least 9 years, and one that he signed off on in private last week, and added that he would not negotiate on anything, period, this Senate health care bill got too heavy to carry. When the entire progressive core of Senators folded up like a cheap suit in response, insult was piled on to injury.
I understand all the reasons the White House and Harry Reid don't want to go to reconciliation at this late date, and have been inclined to support them on that up until now. But at this point I think House progressives simply need to say hell no to this deal.If Lieberman was willing to negotiate at all, I would be inclined to try to negotiate in good faith, but with him saying taking it or leave it, I say progressives should leave it.
You know, Olympia Snowe has been saying we should just wait for another month or two, give ourselves all a little time to keep thinking and talking about this bill. It is an absurd position, since she has been thinking and talking about this bill for a year now. But I'm starting to agree with her. Maybe we need to take some extra time, slow the process down until the White House and the Senate are willing to take progressives' points of view into consideration. Along with getting rolled on the public option, this Senate bill is worse than the House bill on the Medicaid numbers, affordability, the anti-trust exemption for insurers, the financing (taxing middle class health care benefits rather than the wealthy), and the structure and rate of eligibility expansion for the exchanges. Perhaps if all or most of that were fixed, maybe then this bill would be more acceptable. But as it is, it is a very heavy load for progressives to stomach.
Look, as disappointing as this, there is still quite of good in the bill, too. It expands Medicaid coverage for people above the poverty line, expands S-CHIP coverage dramatically, still has some good tough insurance regulation and investments in other important health related programs. But progressives need to push back right now, and demand something better. There are two Houses of Congress and the House needs to assert itself right now. And I certainly hope that when all this gets done, Lieberman gets stripped of his committee assignments, and a hold is placed on every single thing he wants for the rest of his tenure in the Senate.
Emanuel didn't just leave it to Reid to find a solution. Emanuel specifically suggested Reid give Lieberman the concessions he seeks on issues like the Medicare buy-in and triggers.
"It was all about 'do what you've got to do to get it done. Drop whatever you've got to drop to get it done," the aide said. All of Emanuel's prescriptions, the source said, were aimed at appeasing Lieberman--not twisting his arm.
I contacted a Senate aide to further confirm the story. When I asked the aide if the Huffington Post and TPMDC stories were true, the aide responded "absolutely."
Further, the aide confirmed that Joe Lieberman is lying (I'm not exaggerating the language). Immediately after the Gang of Ten struck a deal on the public option, Harry Reid contacted Lieberman to hear his thoughts. Lieberman indicated that he was liking what he was seeing, and just wanted to wait for the CBO score. For him to change without the CBO score is mendacity, pure and simple.
Finally, the aide also said that this is still about saving lives. We keep talking about cost, but this bill still saves lives. For all of its tremendous disappointments, the aide kept emphasizing that the bill saves lives. This shows, if nothing else, that Alan Grayson's messaging appears to have won the day for Democrats.
I don't really know what to think right now. Too angry to think straight. After a very long campaign, we had appeared to secure a deal that I thought was acceptable. We promptly get stabbed in the back by none other than Joe Lieberman (and the CBO, btw), and then just as promptly told by the White House to accept it all.
The cloture motion on health care reform will be filed either tomorrow or Thursday, setting up a vote two days later. With a very crowded legislative schedule, and demands from the White Hosue to pass the bill in 2009, there really isn't any other option. My bet is that Olympia Snowe will probably vote for the bill now, as will Roland Burris. All of this makes even the unlikely prospect of a no vote from Bernie Sanders on the cloture motion irrelevant. Barring further mendacity, this bill now has sixty votes.
The next step will be the conference committee, unless the White House demands that also gets thrown in the trash to appease Lieberman, or Nelson, or whoever.
When thinking about how to make the health care bill better, at this point there are two main questions:
What can be done to make either Lieberman or Snowe support better legislation? At this point, it appears we only need either Lieberman or Snowe to achieve a health care deal with vast Medicaid expansion, smallish Medicare buy-in, moderate subsidies, and a new regulatory regime. Keeping in mind that there are many fights left to be had, and Mike's warning that no deal is final until it lands on the President's desk, for all intents and purposes only one more vote is needed to pass this bill. That vote, unfortunately, needs to come from either Lieberman or Snowe.
OR, if that fails
What can be done to circumvent the need for 60 votes altogether? If the current framework of the Senate compromise is not good enough for you, and you would only be willing to support something better, then you need to figure out a way to circumvent the need for 60 votes altogether. A 51-vote Senate would produce a bill comparable, and perhaps even better, than the one produced by the House. Achieving a 51-vote Senate requires either reconciliation or nuking the filibuster entirely.
Of all the critics of the various campaigns for better health legislation, they don't advance the campaign unless they offer solutions for the current predicament we face. We can save the broader post-mortems on how the fight could have been waged differently from the beginning for later. Right now, we need to deal with the problem at hand, rather than look into the past.
I personally don't have particularly comprehensive answers to either of those two questions. In the extended entry, I describe what strategies I can think of for getting to 51 votes, and for pressuring Lieberman and Snowe. Hopefully, the discussion that ensues can lead to something more comprehensive.
At the absolute latest, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe will join the Senate Democratic caucus by Tuesday, June 12, 2012. She may not actually register as a Democrat, but she will start caucusing with Democrats by that date--or even earlier. Here is why:
Snowe is up for re-election in 2012.
The Maine primary is held on the second Tuesday in June. So, in 2012, this means June 12th.
Snowe is losing to a generic conservative primary challenger 59%-31%, among likely Republican voters.
Maine has a closed primary system, meaning that only registered Republicans can vote in Maine Republican primaries. Same day registration is allowed, but that won't change the outcome in such a lopsided campaign.
It is a rock-solid guarantee that conservatives will primary Snowe from the right in 2012. Not only is she pro-choice, but her lifetime Progressive Punch score on critical votes is identical to Arlen Specter's (27%). If they are not going to primary challenge Snowe, they are not going to primary challenge anyone. And we all know they will keep running primary challenges.
In 2012, all major Republican Presidential candidates will endorse Snowe's inevitable primary challenger. This is both because that challenger will comfortably lead Snowe in the primary, but also based on the pattern we just witnessed in NY-23. It didn't take long for all leading Republicans to fall into Hoffman's camp once he proved more viable, and more popular among the Republican base, than the moderate Scozzafava.
Republican Presidential candidates looking to appease the base will make sure that he entire Republican establishment lines up behind Snowe's primary challenger.
In the past, Harry Reid has approached Olympia Snowe about joining the Senate Democratic caucus. He confirmed this to me over the phone more than three years ago, right after the 2006 elections.
Without establishment support in her own party, trailing badly in the polls, and with an offer to join the Democratic caucus, Snowe will bolt the Republican Party and join the Democratic Senate caucus by June 12th, 2012, at the very latest.
So, sometime in the next 945 days, Senate Democrats will pick up another seat.
Might be a time to start preparing a primary challenger to Olympia Snowe of our own in 2012.
Per House of Progress in Quick Hits, both Blanche Lincoln and Olympia Snowe have stated they will vote for the Baucus health care bill in the Finance Committee. This guarantees passage of the bill, even if both Ron Wyden and Jay Rockefeller vote against it. Either of them voting against the bill was highly unlikely, anyway.
The most important ramification of all this is that it is clear a health care reform bill will pass the Senate this year. The House will do the same. The only questions that remain are what form the final bill from each chamber takes, and whether or not they can agree on a final version.
Snowe and Lincoln both said that they will be watching the merger with the Senate HELP bill closely, and that their vote on final passage is not assured. I think I speak for nearly everyone here when I say that feeling is mutual.
Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option.
Some senior White House staffers are now beginning to try to sell this trigger to progressive groups as the compromise version of a public option, saying the White House doesn't want to have a floor fight in the Senate, and that they can always fix it in conference committee. That way they can pick up Snowe, satisfy that desperate urge for being officially bipartisan (even though Snowe can't bring a single other Republican with her), and not have to worry about procedural hassles in the Senate. But by finally winning Snowe over, the White House is risking something far more politically dangerous: an ugly fight within the Democratic Party, further erosion of Obama's standing with his base, the specter of more primary fights.
The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.
As someone who spends every single day working hard to build and strengthen the bridge between the progressive community and the White House, I feel like the White House is triggering a bomb to blow the bridge up from under me (pun fully intended).
This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.
Hi, folks. Meet Nancy Randolph from Maine -- a very nice lady I've talked to a lot in the last week as we prepared a new TV ad released today.
Before her first husband died of cancer, they thought they had great health insurance...until their insurance company denied him needed care. That drove them into bankruptcy.
Now, the senator who Nancy voted for -- Republican Olympia Snowe -- opposes the public health insurance option. And Nancy has something to say about that.
Our goal is to flood Maine and DC with $100,000 worth of these ads -- to really ramp up the pressure on Snowe. In just a few hours, we're $32,000$34,000$36,000 $45,000 of the way there -- but we do need your help.
As you know, this a critical time to put pressure on Snowe.
All week, the powerful Senate Finance Committee will take important health care votes -- including on whether to include a public option. Snowe will be a key vote on the Finance Committee.
Markos' recent poll shows Maine voters favor a public option 2 to 1. Among independent voters, it's 3 to 1. Yet Snowe urged President Obama to take the public option off the table "because it's universally opposed by all Republicans in the Senate."
Senate Democrats are going to have to move forward on healthcare without a single Republican supporter after Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday she could not back the Finance Committee's bill.
Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) failed to win any Republican backer despite weeks of intense negotiations behind closed doors to strike a deal.
This is great, great news. There is no longer any justification for the Baucus bill, as it simply cannot reach 60 votes.
To reach 60, you need all 59 members of the Democratic caucus, plus at least one Republican. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are the only two possible Republicans, for a total universe of 61 possible supporters.
With Snowe opposing, that leaves only Collins. The universe of possible supporters is reduced to 60.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday that he would not support Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus' (D-Mont.) health care reform bill in its current form - primarily because it lacks a public insurance option.
That reduces the Baucus bill to a maximum of 59 supporters.
The only justification ever given for the Baucus bill, and all of its problems, is that it could reach 60 votes. Well, that justification no longer exists.
The Baucus bill cannot get 60 votes in the Senate. The only way it can pass is through reconciliation. However, the bill was specifically designed to avoid having to use reconciliation.
Even beyond the Senate, given the Progressive Block, it could not have gotten 218 votes in the House.
Not only is the Baucus bill a highly questionable piece of legislation, it simply is not able to pass into law. Given how frequently conservative Democrats justify abandoning progressive policy by claiming that said policy cannot pass through Congress, it gives me great pleasure to point out in order for health care reform to pass, it actually requires a more robust public option in both the House and Senate.
One of reasons to think that Senators pushing the "trigger" are not being honest is, as in the case of Olympia Snowe, they say they "continue to oppose the inclusion of a public option in any package." So, if they oppose the public option in any package, why should we believe that they would ever support a trigger that would result in a public option?
A second reason to think that Senators pushing the "trigger" are not being honest comes from Senator tom Carper today. Carper says that he believes the trigger can bridge the partisan divide:
"I think that [the trigger] could end up being the compromise because it bridges the differences between those who are for a robust public option and those who are adamantly opposed to a public option."
"I raised it with the president," Carper continued, referring to his public option with a trigger proposal.
"Olympia Snowe and I are both advocates of this approach," he added, referring to the Republican senator from Maine who so far has been alone among GOP senators in wanting to craft a compromise with Democrats.
"I know she has raised it with the president," Carper added.
Here's the problem with this. Both Carper and Snowe have a seat in the Senate Finance Committee, the lone Senate committee to still not pass a bill. Three other Conservadems--Bill Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Kent Conrad--also holds seats on that committee. Olympia Snowe is even part of the "gang of Six" that is negotiating health care for that committee. So, if the trigger had such support and was such a great means to bridge the partisan divide, then why isn't there even a trigger in the legislative framework for that committee introduced by Max Baucus.
Carper and Snowe are not being very honest about the trigger. They should stop saying that they oppose all public options before trying to convince people they would actually allow a public option in through a trigger. Further, they need to at least show proof of concept through their own committee before claiming it was such a good idea. Until that happens, there is no reason to believe them.
"The point is I don't support a public option. And none of my Republican colleagues do and some Democrats in the Senate and even in the House. I think the point is how do we bridge the divide?" That is why, she said, she suggested the so-called trigger mechanism months ago.
In response to this statement, Open Left's rudimentary deductive logic analyst, Chris Bowers, says that if President Snowe opposes a public option, but she supports a trigger, then she only supports a trigger that well never result in a public option. Otherwise, she is contradicting herself, and actually supporting a public option.
"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," she said.
Some people, including national speech-giver Barack Obama, argue that the entire point of the public option is to offer lower-priced health insurance than private companies. However, their concerns have been noted, and placed in a filing cabinet no one will ever open again.
Elsewhere in Washington, D.C., it has been reported that a group of House Progressives are threatening to defeat any health care reform bill that lacks a robust public option that is available on day one (of 2013) and tied to Medicare rates (for a few years). However, even though Progressives tend to get their way on everything, there was no indication that either President Snowe, or anyone in her administration, believed a word the Progressives said.
The past year has revealed a comprehensive philosophy of government championed by conservatives and moderates when they oppose major progressive economic reforms. I call it "crime and reward." The philosophy is summed up as follows:
The flaw in progressive legislative proposals is that they don't give enough money to the corporations that caused the problem(s) which overall legislative effort is supposedly trying to solve.
It applies in all major cases. Check it out:
The way to lower health care costs is to give companies that have increased health care costs even more money: As Olympia Snowe and many others have articulated, the problem with a public option is that it lowers the cost of health insurance rather than increasing the amount of money private health insurers generate in revenue. While one would think that the purpose of health care reform legislation is to lower the price of health insurance, it appears that for many the purpose is actually to make sure that the companies ratcheting up health care costs receive even more money from the process (ie, through mandates to buy their over-priced insurance and no lower priced, public option).
The way to fix climate change is to give the companies that are the main cause of climate change even more money: As Collin Peterson and Claire McCaskill have articulated, the problem with climate change legislation is that it doesn't give enough money to the energy and agricultural conglomerates that are primarily responsible for global warming.
The way to fix the financial crisis is to give the financial institutions that caused the financial crisis even more money: This one is pretty straightforward and has been covered extensively. From the Wall Street bailout program itself, to making sure that Congress doesn't pass laws restricting executive bonuses out fear that financial institutions won't take our money, the government's solution to fixing the financial crisis is to give the people and companies that caused the financial crisis even more money. The progressive alternative, temporary nationalization, should be opposed because it wouldn't make enough money for shareholders.
On the three major areas of public policy that were addressed by the federal government over the last twelve months--health care, climate change, financial crisis--the "moderate" solution has consistently been to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the corporations that caused climate change, the financial crisis, and skyrocketing health care costs. It is a crime and reward ideology. When powerful private sector companies cause major national and global problems, the "moderate" solution is to give those who caused the problem hundreds of billions of dollars.
Crime and reward. Through a conservative-moderate alliance, it is the system of government under which we live, even in the era of the Democratic trifecta.
The main goal of health care reform is to lower the cost of health insurance. Apropos, Olympia Snowe thinks that the problem with a public health insurance option is that a public option would... wait for it... lower the cost of health insurance:
In an Associated Press interview in Portland, Snowe said it would be unfair to include a government-run health insurance option that would take effect immediately.
"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," she said.
Well, duh. That is the whole point. You can't lower the price of health insurance unless you start offering lower-priced health insurance. It's a tautology.
So, naturally, during the fight to lower the price of health insurance, so-called moderate Senators think that the problem with the public option is that it would... lower the price of health insurance. While it may be news to so-called moderate Senators, protecting the crappy products of large corporations is not their job description.
It is pretty amazing that many moderates and industry figures are actually arguing that the problem with including a public option in health care reform legislation is that a public option would lower the cost of health insurance. Clearly, they have a different view of the purpose of health care reform than most Americans.
Of all the hurdles facing healthcare reform in 2009, the U.S. Senate is arguably the most formidable. But the prospects for passing a healthcare bill this year have brightened noticeably over the past few days, thanks to a senate seat pickup in Minnesota, solidifying support for the budget reconciliation strategy, and tentative overtures towards bipartisanship from key Republicans.
Chris's current front-page blog points out that we may need 59 seats to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed. I shouldn't need to convince anyone about the importance of this bill for unions, working families, and the Democratic Party. The question is, can we get to 59?
Right now it looks tough. A run-off in Georgia doesn't necessarily favor us, as a low-turnout election probably favors Republican white voters compared to Democratic black and poor voters. Minnesota is a toss right now. Alaska is a joke.
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the incidents involving several companies, including Comcast Corp., Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., have raised serious concerns over the companies' "power to discriminate against content."
They want the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal regulation is needed.
Senator Dorgan already features Net Neutrality on his website, but an investigation could be a signficant step forward.
