A Grand Illusion

A letter to Democrats:

“With the loss of Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat, Democrats no longer enjoy a filibuster-proof Senate majority, though they still enjoy the largest Senate majority any party has achieved in the past generation. The loss of this one vote does not require Congress or the President to abandon Senator Kennedy’s life work of health care reform. A year of political infighting, misleading debates about death panels and socialized medicine, and sheer inaction has left Americans exhausted, confused, and disgruntled. Americans are also bearing the severe consequences of deep recession and unemployment. Still, a majority of Americans support the elements of the Senate bill.

…

Alternatively, Congress can abandon this effort at this critical moment, leaving millions more Americans to become uninsured in the coming years as health care becomes ever less affordable. Abandoning health care reform—the signature political issue of this administration—would send a message that Democrats are incapable of governing and lead to massive losses in the 2010 election, possibly even in 2012. Such a retreat would also abandon the chance to achieve reforms that millions of Americans across the political spectrum desperately need in these difficult times. Now is the moment for calm and resolute leadership, pressing on toward the goal now within sight.”

Krugman, who I don’t often agree with said this another way. Democrats in both houses already voted for this. It’s too late to avoid the ignominy of voting for supposed socialist health care. If you scrap this project now you look impotent, your constituents get none of the benefits they would if the bill passes and Republicans can still say you support a “government takeover of health-care” or some other such nonsense, which they will do either way. House Democrats, vote for the senate version.

Pass the damn thing!

Oh, I don’t know, a majority of Americans.

As Democratic congressional leaders and White House officials work to shape health care bills that will go to the House and Senate floors, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and now wins clear majority support from the public.

Here’s the breadown.

A couple of important results: 57 percent of respondents support a government-run health insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it (37 percent strongly support it while 31 percent strongly oppose it); and, “How much confidence do you have in [Obama, Republicans in Congress, or Democrats in Congress] to make the right decisions for the country’s future – a great deal of confidence, a good amount, just some or none at all?” Net results are Obama: 49 percent, Republicans in Congress: 19 percent, Democrats in Congress: 34 percent.

Two words: Ha and Ha.

Quickly, I’d like to welcome Alex, of Stuck on the Palmetto fame, who, after being hounded by me for months, has started contributing to AGI. Alex is the best local blogger I’ve read, and hopefully he’ll contribute to this blog a lot more. I also hope his writing we’ll push me to blog more often.

Also, if you had any doubts what a complete disaster the Bush years were, or you have an ongoing debate with some pesky interlocutor who keeps brandishing that standard, this article is a must read.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

The Census’ final report card on Bush’s record presents an intriguing backdrop to today’s economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama’s combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush’s two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

Remember Republicans foremost counter to President Obama’s stimulus package was that it would not be much of a stimulus because it needed, what else, more tax cuts.

I have to admit that I get some amount of schadenfreude from reading about the Bush years in hindsight–until it sinks in how much that administration fucked up this country–because it proves us who were arguing against the administration’s policies correct. But there is no pleasure in reading this article. It is just too much. Practically every economic indicator you can think of declined during the Bush.

Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.

Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.

Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent.

Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.

If I were to ever crash one of those stupid teabagging protests, those are the bullet points I would put on my sign.

The Birther non-controversy has stirred up a lot of malarkey, but this blog post in Slate by Joan Walsh takes the cake. However, not for the reasons you might think. Joan Walsh, like most serious people, doesn’t give a shred of credibility to the Birthers, instead she focuses on Liz Cheney’s contemptible tactic of refusing to repudiate them on CNN and then sending out a weak-kneed statement “clarifying” her position. Joan Walsh correctly points out that she’s trying to have the best of both worlds. She manages not to distance people suspicious of Obama’s birthplace and also to appear rational.

What was surprising was this:

“Several people in my letters made a point I wish I had: It’s rich of Liz Cheney to talk about Obama refusing to defend the country, when her father famously got five deferments from Vietnam service because, in his own words, he had ‘other priorities.’”

What is this sins of the father bullshit? What does Liz Cheney have to do with her father’s non-war record. You can’t call someone out for making a cheap political point and then present this as some sort of great argument you hadn’t thought of.

Then of course there’s this. This article makes  a lot of the fact that pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Anne Coulter have distanced themselves from the Birthers. It also suggests that they have been slow in doing so. The travesty here is not that they have been slow in repudiating them but that they are reporting on them at all. I mean any media outlet and not just those with a right wing slant. No one should have to repudiate it because it’s so obviously stupid and no one should be reporting on it because it’s so far on the fringe. Without a doubt more people believe in UFOs than subscribe to the Birther mentality (It seems to be more of a general outlook than an actual ideology; one that combines xenophobia, nostalgia and conspiracy theories).

My general point here is that this sort of ideological way of thinking very easily makes you look like a fool. Joan Walsh makes one nonsensical argument the sheer stupidity of which undermines the good point she’s making. Eric Kleefeld calls out Coulter and O’Reilly for not repudiating the Birthers but doesn’t think about why they would have to in the first place. Why do they do this? It seems to me the thought process is this. I do not think x, therefore I dislike anyone who does. Anything that can be said against the people who believe x is acceptable.

In the summer of 2007, I went to work communications for a group called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. The organization was an offshoot of MoveOn.org, and other groups like Americans United for Change, which sought to end the war in Iraq by putting pressure mostly on Republicans who were vulnerable in the coming elections.

We operated much like a lobby, targeting specific senators and representatives, trying to persuade them to vote with us. There was a major difference. While lobbies use mostly the carrot to get elected officials on their side, we used only the stick. We put together highly organized field programs in about twenty states, and did everything we could to be a thorn on the side of pro-war representatives.

One of our field people’s favorite tactics was to follow representatives around with a video camera, and ask them questions like “Representative X, why do you continue to send State Y’s sons and daughters to Iraq?” or “Representative X, why do you continue to support George Bush, and not the people of State Y?” Then, we’d try to get the videos on the evening news. If they answered the question, they rarely looked good because they just didn’t have a good answer, and if they simply kept walking, they looked evasive on a very important issue. You have to remember how unpopular the war and George Bush were around this time. This was right before the surge, and during the time Iraq was spinning out of control. The economy had not totally collapsed at that point, and the war and its mismanagement were the main concerns of the American people. None of the representatives who were still supporting it wanted to talk about it.

About 20 of the roughly 30 elected officials that we targeted, were not reelected in 2008. We obviously can’t take credit for that since they were vulnerable before we targeted them, but I’d like to think we helped even if just a tiny bit.

Why am I telling you this story? Take a look at this picture:

One of the senators we targeted was a Sen. Arlen Specter, then the senior senator from Pennsylvania. Sen. Specter and President Bush had a rally during that time in Philadelphia, and we pounced. We organized a bunch of field people and protesters in Philadelphia. I hired those ad trucks, which is logistically harder than you expect. It was nearly impossible to find a high resolution picture of Bush and Specter together. Eventually, my newspaper background lead me to the idea of buying a picture from Getty Images.

When Senator Specter announced he was switching parties this week, I would estimate that a substantial majority of the people who attacked him for the positions he took as a Republican welcomed him with open arms into the Democratic party, including myself. But we had nothing to do with Specter switching parties. It was the extreme ultra-right wing of his party that drove him away. Instead of being happy with having a Republican senator in a moderately liberal state, the Republicans attacked him, and tried to get him out of office for taking moderate stances.

It wasn’t enough to have a Republican in office; they wanted another Rick Santorum. Well, we know how poorly Santorum worked out for them, and it didn’t work with Specter either. In two election cycles, Republicans went from controlling Pennsylvania’s two Senate seats to controlling none.

My ultimate point is one you’ve heard before, that politics is the art of the possible. And I’ll gladly take the pragmatist over the intransigent ideologue, the fanatic. That doesn’t mean that as Democrats we have to sacrifize our ideals, or stand for absolutely nothing at all in order to build a universal coalition. But it does mean that we shouldn’t canibalize the candidates that don’t vote down party lines. Sen. Specter is going to take some positions as a Democrat that we don’t like, and we have to call him out on it, but we have to think twice before we decide to run liberals against him in the Democratic primary.

And so, after working so hard to be a thorn in the side of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), I welcome Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) to the Democratic Party.