how many more need to flip? (0.00 / 0)

Is anyone keeping count?
We've got a good conversation going about healthcare & SCHIP, join us below in the diary section:

For the Record, On SCHIP: by: John Autry - Oct 15

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by: Metrix @ Mon Oct 15, 2007 at 20:31:55 PM CDT

Jim Marshall On SCHIP (0.00 / 0)

have contacted Jim Marshall twice about S-Chip. Today Received his most recent response. This I will say about Marshall: he always answers me by letter with a detailed response. There couldn't be too many constituents like me, because these are personalized responses.

He doesn't like the funding source, as it is the most regressive (tobacco tax) revenue source and pays for the expansion on the backs of poor people.

While he favors the continuation and even an expansion of SCHIP, he feels Dems shouldn't engage in budget charades that we have regularly attacked Republicans for. He says the proposed funding would lapse in a few years and that whatever we do should be shown as permanent and paid for. He says we aren't serving all of the children in the income classes SCHIP was designed to reach and the "expansion" would be better if it did this before expanding into other income classes.

Just thought readers might benefit by knowing his specific and detailed response to a constituent.

P.S. Marshall's Democratic opposition is weak.  The retiring Mayor, Jack Ellis, really doesn't stand a chance, even though he is correct that a real Democrat is needed. Ellis was in one political controversy after another for the last 8 years.  The other opponent is a school teacher.  Has no name recognition whatsoever.  Marshall's announced Republican opposition is a retired General in Warner Robins, home to an Air Force base, and home of the economic engine which drives this district.

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by: dww44 @ Mon Oct 15, 2007 at 21:54:13 PM CDT

Pressure works? Are we sure? (0.00 / 0)

We lost eight Democrats on the original vote: Castor, Kucinich, McIntyre, Etheridge, Hill, Marshall, Taylor, Boren.

We were nineteen votes short of an override-margin.  However, my impression has been that Pelosi has been saying from day one that she needed 15 more Republican votes, suggesting she knew all along that she was going to pick up four of these eight votes on the override.

Reps Etheridge and McIntyre represent the tobacco state of North Carolina, and must surely have objected to the funding mechanism that Republicans in the Senate insisted upon: the cig tax.  Rep Castor also objected to the cig tax, and has some kind of major cigar business in her Florida district.

If I'm getting this right, then those three plus Kucinich are probably the four that Pelosi knew she was going to pick up on the override.

In that case, McIntyre flipping might have had zero to do with any pressure at all, from the netroots or anyone else.  Like Kucinich and Castor, McIntyre may have been making a political point with his original vote, aimed at a local audience of business constituents, and nothing more.

This is an important question.  It is vital to understand the actual forces at work in these events, including the actual impact of the various strategies being tried by the netroots.  If we perceive a certain strategy to have worked, when really it had no bearing on the course of events, then we'll make the mistake of trying that "successful" strategy again sometime in some different circumstance and will be unpleasantly surprised when it fails.  There needs to be a very clear understanding of which actions cause which results, or else we'll never know how to choose the actions we need to force the results we want.

So whether or not "pressure" was responsible for flipping McIntyre is a very important question.  And from the quoted material in Chris Bowers' post immediately preceding this one, it looks like pressure from us may have had little to do with what could well have been a pre-choreographed "flip."

Baron Hill may be another matter entirely.  For one, he's in a competitive reelection race, and "flip-flopping" by voting against and then for is probably a bad idea for him. (For people like Etheridge and McIntyre and Castor, the friendly message to the relevant businesses matters more than the non-existent "electoral consequences" of flip-flopping).  So he might be one who really was won over through pressure.  But that shouldn't be assumed; that should be verified.  Otherwise we'll be assuming we've got a successful strategy in our hands here, when really we're just taking credit for the sunrise. 

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by: texas dem @ Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 06:11:10 AM CDT

This is interesting. (0.00 / 0)

From the comments to Bowers' post on McIntyre:  Dan Boren flipped two weeks ago.  An actual flip; he just changed his mind, partly I'm sure because of the intense public debate around this issue, which was created deliberately by the netroots and other parts of the Democratic coalition.

So that counts as a real victory.  Although, given that Chris didn't seem to be aware that it had already happened two weeks ago, one has to wonder whose pressure it was that changed Rep Boren's mind, and when.

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by: texas dem @ Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 06:25:45 AM CDT

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Yeah, I do wonder why so many people missed Boren. I get most of my news from The Carpetbagger Report, MyDD, and Daily Kos, so I learned it on one of those sites. (Yet today, the Carpetbagger clearly missed it too. Go figure.)

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by: Nautilator @ Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 22:38:28 PM CDT

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