This public option fight has been a loooong fight. We've all been hit with numerous requests to sign petitions, make phone calls, attend rallies, give money, etc.
In our money-laden, lobbyist-laden political system, it's easy to wonder if grassroots pressure makes a difference. And as MLK said, "sometimes we get discouraged and sometimes disappointed with the slow pace of things."
The fight is not over. But today's New York Times had some very encouraging news for activists:
Senate Leader Takes Risk Pushing Public Insurance Plan
...lawmakers said Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) was increasingly leaning toward the idea of including a version of a public insurance option, albeit one that would allow states to opt out of such a system, in the chamber's bill.
...Mr. Reid's outlook was shaped, in part, by opinion polls showing public support for a government insurance plan, which would compete with private insurers.
..."There is a growing sense that we need to lead on this issue and not wait for it to be offered on the Senate floor," a senior Democratic aide said. "The idea is that it's better to show some fight."
Hmmm...polls are fueling a "growing sense" among Reid's crew that "its better to show some fight" than to cave quietly?
Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Stephanie Taylor immediately put out this response:
"The growing sense that it is time for Majority Leader Reid to be strong and lead comes after an intense week of grassroots activism -- and the release of our new poll showing that Reid's political survival in Nevada requires strong leadership on the public option.
Thousands of people donated this week at BoldProgressives.org to launch a TV ad in Nevada that asks 'if Harry Reid is strong and effective enough as a leader to pass a public health insurance option into law.'
Grassroots pressure is working, and we will continue to keep the pressure on until the insurance companies are defeated and a strong public option is passed into law."
A lot of other groups have also been keeping the pressure on Democrats for months and months: Democracy for America, MoveOn, Blue America, FDL, Credo, OpenLeft, and others. National and state bloggers -- and progressive media voices like The Young Turks -- have pushed politicians and gotten facts out there that the mass media consistently missed. And many local activists have started their own grassroots efforts to pressure their senators.
Sometimes we get discouraged. This fight has been long. It's not over yet. But it's important to take note of progress along the way and recognize that grassroots pressure works.
I arrived in Portland, ME yesterday afternoon. Very pretty, and lots of islands no one really knows about- they're all spread outside Portland with houses and fishing boats scattered on them. Fall is supposed to be especially great for leaf-peeping, and as you land, you see a shimmer of trees changing color.
There's a palpable buzz in the campaign today because today is the day early in-person voting starts in Maine. I'll have more on that later. Everywhere I went last night- an indie coffee shop, a restaurant, a shopping mart- had either No on 1 Maine signs in the windows or stickers to take at the counter. Great to have the community support.
As I've written before, today is also the campaign finance deadline for No on 1 Maine. We've now raised over $2,000 here at the OpenLeft/Better Dems page. I am thrilled and grateful, 500% so.
If you haven't given yet, take a second to throw in some cash and help the campaign get the resources it needs.
The first 9 people who kick in at least $30 at the Blue America '10 page each wins a special DVD of Barbra Streisand's spectacular 1966 television special Color Me Barbra (which includes a rare poster). And if that wasn't fabulous enough, we also have something pretty mind-blowing for the person who donates the most by 6AM (PT) tomorrow. The picture is above. It's a gorgeous Joan Osborne RIAA custom double platinum award for both Relish and "One of Us." It's rare, collectible, unique and... well, what a gift it would make for anyone who you happen to know who went bonkers over the song below! And, more important, what an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Maine!
The contest just launched this morning. You can get some bang for your buck here in Maine AND some cool stuff over at the Blue America '10 page on ActBlue.
Like you say, it is easier to get the progressive Dems because they are our ideological cohorts. I want to rephrase this in another way, which is that we start every piece of legislation with John Tanner with him being in a "culture of caution" type of mentality, and we have to flip him. With a Keith Ellison, we start from a position that he will likely tend to agree with the position we would like him to take, and need to ask him to withstand pressure.
My question is what kinds of pressure are needed to get members to "stand firm" "hold on" against pressure from the leadership, corporate interests, etc. It seems to require re-learning pressure tactics, with some exceptions like a call to a House office would be phrased likely the same way.
For example, I just saw PCCC's ad on TV last night trashing Snowe, Nelson etc. for taking insurance industry money. What would our ad asking Ellison and Woolsey to maintain their position refusing to vote for a bill without a public option look like? I can see a number of possibilities, including a more generic ad on why the public option is important. But I think the tactics may be different.
I want to think a little bit about the pressure tactics we've used for our own side so far. The successful campaign to raise over $400,000 to thank Progressive Block members was, I think, the first major effort to help support the Progressive Block. It used a carrot rather than a stick. My thought experiment is what would happen if we took the carrot approach to the airwaves. I only see the ads aired on local TV, but so far, they range from ads from organizations like PCCC trashing Ben Nelson to AHIP and other front groups vaguely asking for Congress to slow down/find a bipartisan solution, to conservative groups threatening death panels and cuts to Medicare with images of worried seniors. But the ads are united in one fact- they are universally negative.
What if, as a change of pace, we aired a positive ad. Seabrook has a good start in a reply to my comment. What if we showed a smiling Earl Blumenauer, lauded his commitment to a strong public option that will reduce costs and cover the uninsured, etc., and asked constituents to call and thank him? The theory behind pressuring members to change their position is to incite anger and angry phone calls to the member to get them to flip. Is there any less use behind doing the opposite? Is money raised to give to campaign accounts on ActBlue better used to go on TV and thank Democrats who are most likely to betray the public option? It would obviously cost more than what's been put into most members' accounts, but perhaps it would be more effective to get them to stand firm.
And I believe that constituents eventually get turned off by relentless stream of negative ads, muting the TV, changing the channel. A positive ad might grab attention and make them look at the public option a different way. It could carry over to, say, pressure on Ron Wyden. Perhaps constituents would start asking him why he isn't supporting it like Blumenauer is, if they can be convinced that it's a good thing.
I don't know the answer, but I thought I would put it out there for some thoughts.
Remember right after the Obama victory when everyone asked what the progressive movement's role would be in this new political world?
The big question for movement leaders was (and is) what to do when Obama goes weak on an issue like FISA when the progressive base really wants to love Obama. The environmental bill presents some similarly muddy water and a strong line of progressive activism isn't obvious.
Fortunately, the public option is not muddy at all. It appears to be one big sweet spot for progressive activism -- with movement actors fighting on Obama's side (and on the side of 76% of Americans) against lame corporate Democrats who are standing in the way of Obama's agenda.
Better news -- progressives aren't missing this opportunity! We're going for it! We're fighting hard and strategically. Check out these five TV ads by movement actors. (And if you want to be part of the action, take out $20 and help fund whichever one you like best.)
Some of my favorite progressive bloggers are teaming up with one of my favorite progressive filmmakers to air a new ad in Arkansas calling out Blanche Lincoln for selling out on the public option.
For weeks I've been working on an action so we could get busy defending the best option we have and I think we've come up with a great idea. We are going to target Blanche Lincoln first with TV ads, with the help of Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, and expose her actions to her constituents in Arkansas. This will be the first play because she is up for re-election in 2010 and has already received the second most money from the HIC of any Senator.
Watching the health care debate unfold is frustrating and predictably enervating. These kinds of debates are often followed by a deepening of public apathy and a sense that government can't help solve the big problems. And this plays into conservative hands since they are the ones who want to stoke that belief so that the citizens don't get it into their heads that they can get an equal shake with those who think they own this country.
We can't let that happen with health care. It is just too important on every level, for individuals, business and the country at large. It's time to get involved. To that end Blue America is launching a campaign to raise money to run some television ads. We've got to get these wavering Democrats off the fence about a public plan choice or this thing is going to fall completely apart before it even starts.
Perhaps it's not surprising that Lincoln is showing so much compassion for the poor insurance companies. She's taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from them over the years. In fact, she's already received $14,500 from insurance companies for her 2010 campaign, the second highest of any senator up for re-election next year. And the only reform they support is reform that will get the taxpayers to pay the overpriced premiums for the 47 million uninsured without having to change their ways. The fact is that insurance companies are not in any danger of going out of business because of the public plan choice unless they continue the kind of practices that have brought us to this crisis.
Digby's been writing TV scripts for a whole week to try to salvage health care reform from the tender mercies of Democrats who have grown worthless to working families after millions and millions of dollars in legalized bribes from the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Insurance Giants. Robert Greenwald is standing by with a camera crew ready to start shooting. The first batch of ads are going up on TV in Arkansas and, man, do we need help. We have a new Blue America Page that I want to urge you to visit today.
Glenn Greenwald is reporting that Comcast is refusing to run an ad critical of Representative Chris Carney, an ad which features Comcast itself as a major donor to and beneficiary of Carney's policy choices. The network told him that they would "face potential liability for any defamation contained in the spot."
Blue America PAC has traditionally helped progressive Democrats get elected, but today, they launched a serious campaign aimed at hurting a freshman conservative Blue Dog Democrat, Chris Carney. It is a very significant development.
A major new ad campaign aimed at freshman Democratic Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania will begin this week. The campaign -- funded by donations fromreadersofseveralblogs -- will swamp Carney's Northeastern Pennsylvania district with a coordinated series of ads on television stations and top-rated radio programs, full-page ads in six out of seven of the largest newspapers in Carney's district, and strategically placed billboards on major roads...
Carney is a so-called "Blue Dog" Democrat who continuously sides with the Bush administration and supports its most radical policies. In addition to his leading role in demanding warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, he has repeatedly voted against timetables to end the war in Iraq. He is a close associate of Douglas Feith, with whom he worked on pre-war "intelligence" at the Rumsfeld Pentagon, and Carney still claims that "there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda." Unsurprisingly, then, Carney has spoken out against Congressional investigations into those responsible for pre-war intelligence "failures" (which would include himself and Feith), calling such investigations a "major distraction."
It is an extremely vicious and effective series of ads, accusing Carney of helping Bush and his campaign contributors to institute a Communist Russia and China-like warrantless wiretapping program.
Carney is a reprehensible politician and he will lose in 2010. He voted against a hate crimes bill he had promised to support in his 2006 campaign, so he is a bad faith operator. Eventually, his district is going to decide that they'd rather have the real thing, and put a Republican in his place. The question here is whether an aggressive critique of a vulnerable freshman Democrat six months before an election, a campaign clearly designed to help Carney lose the seat this year or in 2010, is wise. With FISA being debated and Pelosi pushing aggressively for a 'compromise' with the White House, pressed by Blue Dogs like Carney, there's an open question about how valuable these kinds of Democrats really are.
U.S. Representative Mike McIntyre announced today that he will vote to support the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and not support the presidential veto of this bill.
McIntyre's district has a Republican PVI of +3, which isn't particularly high, and the district's demographics are shifting rapidly. Baron Hill flipped earlier this week in response to pressure, Jim Marshall is facing a primary challenge, Bob Etheridge is undecided, and Gene Taylor is still obstinate (though he's getting criticized by radio ads from pro-life group Catholics United).
My friend Carole, a terrific Democrat who knows how to work a room, had the ear of a Major Insider at the Magic Johnson party for Hillary this past week (I'm still listening to everyone and leaning Obama). She was pushing for DC attention to the CA-45th, as she often does, because we have two Democratic candidates (so far) to challenge Mary Bono, and our Dem candidate will need some real support. Mr. Major Insider thought our GOP/Dem breakdown was 80/20ish, a common misconception, and one which drives Carole right up the wall. Our actual numbers are:
Dem (35.85%) * Rep (45.53%) * Other (18.62%)
Not only that, the CA-45th has a high growth rate with newcomers trending Democratic, a weak Bushbot incumbent, a bargain media market (for California), and last year's race was the first potentially competitive one in thirty years. But the DCCC gave Roth no tangible support. So why no love from Washington? Follow me past the flip for the many reasons why the Democratic Party needs to start playing to win in the CA-45th.
