From Boehlert I see that the Washington Post featured the Teabagger March on the front page today and devoted a lot of space to explaining that these are just regular folks from all around America expressing their thoughts. I've been getting the sense in the media for the past few days that they are about to take a U-turn on this story, even as they continue to highlight Joe Wilson and his outburst.
The "just plain folks" narrative is quite at odds with some other ones--such as the Ayn Rand superman one, about which more later this weekend--but consistency has never been a big deal with Versailles. And speaking of lack of consistency, there's the annoying fact that while Democrats have not fared that well among less-educated whites (though not as badly as Versailles supposes), this is not primarily because of lower-income whites, as Larry Bartels explained some time ago in "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?":
Digby writes about this McClatchy article, highlighting an online poll of Canadians about their (our) health care system.
While the results are generally positive for the Canadian system in comparison to the American one (though McClatchy characterizes it as a "split verdict"), my inner social scientist is always nervous about trusting opt-in online polls too much, and I know this topic actually comes up fairly regularly in Canada so here's a broader overview on the subject of comparative polling. It turns out we do have polling firms here that do real phone polling so there's no need to worry about the possibly libertarian bent of online poll respondents.
First up, this Harris-Decima scientific poll from July 5th gives an even brighter picture than McClatchy's effort, which as it relates to comparisons gives us this:
By an overwhelming margin, Canadians prefer the Canadian health care system to the American one. Overall, 82% said they preferred the Canadian system, fully ten times the number who said the American system is superior (8%).
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.
Recently, I critiqued the DSCC's "petition" asking Norm Coleman to get out -- saying there was no "theory of change" about why people taking that action would have any impact.
To be constructive, I gave a free piece of advice to the DSCC on how to organize people strategically: ask people to give $1/day until Norm goes away. If Republicans in DC saw the DSCC's warchest growing by the day, their incentives would reverse -- instead of telling Norm to keep going, they'd tell him to get lost.
The DSCC didn't take that advice. But Howard Dean's Democracy for America was all about it, and partnered with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (which I co-founded) to make it happen at NormDollar.com. Instead of raising money to help generic Democrats, we're raising it to support bold progressives in 2010.
Since Saturday, over $20,000 has been raised -- prompting news coverage in the New York Times, ABC, Politico, Huffington Post, and great support at Digby's blog, MyDD, CrooksandLiars, FDL, Senate Guru, The Seminal, The MN Progressive Project, and others blogs.
Here are some of the (truly appreciated) comments, rounded up from Huffington Post and MyDD:
A beautiful campaign. I usually don't start to donate until election season starts, but with this I'll definitely donate. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Now this is a constructive campaign program! My buck's in the mail.
I like this campaign so much that I'm in for two dollars a day.
From $5000 to over $7500 in one hour. Love it. The first time I donated again since the elections.
Up to $12,000. Wonderful pace, people. Tell your friends! This will work... send Coleman's financial backers a message they will understand.
Done! Told all my friends, family and acquaintances. This is a delicious way to counteract the deplorable legal foot dragging.
I just donated. Take note haters...this is how it's done...no ridiculous hats with teabags hanging off...just smart thinking and smart planning.
In 2008, one first-time progressive candidate in a key congressional district went through four campaign managers before losing.
Another spent $47,000 to retain a media firm that never produced a single TV ad. Another spent $40,000 on field consultants -- enough to pay 10 field staffers for two months, but which only bought a few hand-holding consultant calls. And others wasted thousands of dollars and weeks of staff time designing C-rate websites.
Every election cycle, inexperienced candidates who run on bold progressive ideas -- candidates who political insiders predict "can't win" -- come within a few points of victory. But too many lose winnable races due to the mistakes and inefficiencies of their campaigns.
Who is getting the backs of these progressive candidates? Who is helping them run competent, efficient campaigns so they can win? Right now, nobody.
...The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) will fill this void - providing needed infrastructure and strategic advice to progressive candidates so they can run first-class campaigns and win.
One thing I realized at MoveOn -- and that many folks across the blogosphere have written about in recent election cycles -- is that it makes no sense for the progressive community to raise tons of money for candidates who then spend it inefficiently, including on bloated consultant costs. We need to step up and help progressive candidates not just raise money, but run effective campaigns and win.
I'm going to break the rules for a standard "What Digby Said" post by actually adding a couple things. First, go read her eviscerate the notion that Bush was sailing in popularity until God Himself smote him with Katrina, forgetting the little matter of Terri Schiavo.
Back? Ok, check out Bush's comprehensive approval chart:
It isn't a coincidence that Bush's disapproval rating shot past his approval rating for the first time at the end of Q1 in 2005. The Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo was passed on a special session of Congress on March 20th, a Sunday and Bush actually interrupted one of his many vacations to fly to DC and sign the bill just after 1am on Monday morning. He even stayed up past his bedtime.
I've been genuinely mystified by the disappointment and surprise being expressed by many liberals over the fact that Obama's most significant appointments thus far are composed of pure Beltway establishment figures drawn from the center-right of the Democratic Party and, probably once he names his Defense Secretary and CIA Director, even from the Bush administration -- but not from the Left. In an email yesterday, Digby explained perfectly why this reaction is so mystifying (re-printed with her consent):
The villagers and the right made it very clear what they required of Obama --- bipartisanship, technocratic competence and center-right orthodoxy. Liberals took cultural signifiers as a sign of solidarity and didn't ask for anything. So, we have the great symbolic victory of the first black president (and that's not nothing, by the way) who is also a bipartisan, centrist technocrat. Surprise.
While there's certainly some truth to this, I believe it's clearly overdrawn, since a good many people were convinced that Obama's policies were already quite progressive--he was against the Iraq War, remember?--and it wasn't just cultural signifiers they were depending on. We've certainly had no shortage of such commentators here making such arguments. And Wednesday, Nate Silver weighed in with what purports to be a fairly comprehensive sorting of Obama's policy initiatives into their ideological positions, showing a huge overall tilt in the progressive direction. I think Nate's categorization is somewhat questionable, but I do think that the impression he has is one that is widely shared: Obama appears quite progressive to many who have supported him, and that is a major reason why they have felt little or no need to pressure him. Digby is correct in saying that there's misperception involved, but it's just not as simple as she indicates.
A further complicating factor is that there's no obvious relationship between holding out for a policy promise and choices involving personnel. I'm definitely not saying that policy and personnel have no relationship. I'm saying it's something that needs to be understood in terms of a larger framework.
In short, I think that there's a good deal that's problematic with Digby's comment--and yet, I think the main thrust of it is absolutely correct: The left gave Obama a pass, so pleased with what he had to offer that they put little energy into asking for more, while established Beltway/special interests showed no such reluctance.
Digby's response to the election outcome was to post MLK's "I have a dream" speech without comment: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com... This is my comment:
I was privileged to see MLK in person and hear him say "we as a people will get there" (to the Promised Land), so it meant a lot to hear Obama quote the phrase. The first part of the sentence was "I may not get there with you, but..." - we didn't know he would be gone within weeks, but he seemed to know. Afterwards I wondered who he meant by "we". When he said that to a mostly black audience, it sounded like he might mean African-Americans. When he said it to a mostly white audience, like the one I was in, it sounded like he meant all Americans, and that was true too. Later I realized he also meant humanity. Jesse Jackson wasn't the only old guy shedding a tear tonight. And as skeptical of Obama as I was until the convention, and as much as I disagree with him in some important ways, I believe we may have found ourselves a leader for once. People world-wide are grateful today. He even had the wisdom to be somber about the victory, which is certainly appropriate.
It's a strange feeling: the election went my way on nearly every issue and candidate on my ballot. Pinch me. I'm sure I'll be criticizing Obama again soon, (it's time to start nipping at his heels tomorrow) but right now it feels great! It's been a long time coming.
If two of the smartest people on the political Internets cannot discern any identifiable "clear message" coming from the Obama campaign how will the typical low/medium information voter figure it out?
From Obama, honestly, I don't sense a really clear message. There are attacks on McCain, some of which are quite good. There are positive uplifting commercials. And there are ads/messages targeted to particular states -- like Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the DHL layoffs in Ohio. But it's hard for me to come up with a clear cut Obama message in way that it's pretty simple for me to do with McCain. Even the 'change' message, which is the basis of Obama's campaign, seems much more diffuse to me than it was during the primaries.
...the central problem for the campaign is that nobody knows what Obama stands for. It's a perennial problem for Democrats, but I think it may be an even bigger problem this time. The hope and change theme was galvanizing in the beginning but it isn't enough to sustain full campaign. What was once inspiring has become a fog.
Two from the awesome Scott Harper Horton, First, his interview with the fired (for not abusing his office) former Federal Prosecutor David Iglesias, and Second a good rundown of AG Mukasey's latest evasions on the new revelations about the persecution of Governor Siegelman.
Oliver Willis writes of conservative bloggers trying to attack the Coburn-is-a-jerk omnibus Bill by comparing some money for the DC Subway in it to the Ted Stevens Bridge To Nowhere. The little chart explains the matter quite well.
Even better than e. coli conservativism, now confirmation of collapsing mine conservativism. I wonder if Bob Murray is friends with Phil Gramm?
DDay at Digby's runs down the really insipid notion conservatives are working on as their only defence against a Democratic nominee that can draw crowds in the hundreds of thousands: Popularity = fascism.
New UN Human Rights Chief appointed. A female judge from South Africa. She has big shoes to fill left by Canadian Louise Arbour who is a personal hero of mine.
More UN News, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon mildly criticizes moves by the Israeli defence ministry to resume settlement activities. Considering Moon was the Bush Admin's pick for SG, I'm mildly encouraged by the small shows of independence by him.
Down in the updates to both his pieces, Greenwald praises Tim Noah and John Cole for publishing meaningful apologies and rejections of their earlier viewpoints which led them to support the invasion. What's missing, and what I'd like to do is take a moment to remember some people who got it right. The world had gone mad in 2002-2003, so it is all the more important to look back and note who managed to keep their heads and call things accurately 5 years ago.
These are the people we need to commend and look to for guidance come the next purported existential threat to our safety. I wish I could say I was one of them. I wish I could say I marched against the war here in Toronto (yes, there was a protest here). I wish I could say I wasn't beguiled by the belief that no one could tell lies this preposterous without getting called out by the press, that maybe it was just a good bluff to get Saddam to disarm without firing a shot, or that maybe they really knew what they were doing and it could work out well. I'm happy to say I wasn't for the war, but I wasn't opposed to it like I should have been, watching the evidence and spotting the tricks the way the people below did. So my hat is off to them, and here is my homage:
On the main page of the website supporting the book, Schaller puts his case succinctly:
The South is no longer the "swing" region in American politics -- it has swung to the Republicans. Most of the South is beyond the Democrats' reach, and what remains is moving steadily into the Republican column. The twin effects of race and religion produce a socially conservative, electorally hostile environment for most Democratic candidates.
Spending valuable resources in Southern states is a dangerously self-destructive strategy that could serve to relegate Democrats to minority-party status for a generation. Political attitudes and demographic changes in other parts of the country are far more favorable to Democratic messages and messengers. The Midwest and Southwest are the nation's most competitive regions. There are opportunities to expand Democratic margins in the Mountain red states while consolidating control over the reliably blue northeastern and Pacific coast states. Before dreaming of forty nine state presidential landslides, the Democrats ought to first figure out how to win twenty-nine states. And that means capturing Arizona -- or even Alaska -- before targeting Alabama.
McCain may put Arizona out of reach for this electoral cycle, the maps show that neighboring states Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado are not. Obama's strength in the West is particularly embarrasing-not to mention debilitating-to McCain.
But it's also embarrasing to Obama, since it belies his earlier rationale in reaching out to religious conservatives, and his claims to be a mapchanger by drawing unprecedented numbers of blacks to the polls, and contesting Southern states Democrats otherwise would lose. It is not the religious conservatives dominating the South who have responded most to his calls, nor does he put more pressure on McCain there than Clinton does. His "unique" contribution is to do what Schaller mapped out as the natural thing for the Democratic Party to do, regardless of their nominee.
As I put it in a recent comment in the discussion of that diary:
When you have a rhetoric that says one thing, but a material reality that says another, it's always best to trust the material reality first, and seek to understand why that rhetoric works within that reality.
In this particular case, my explanation of why is simple...
A number of us, including Digby, have pointed out that the right policy solution for the Rush Limbaugh hate speech is not to condemn his right to speak, but to remove his government subsidized channel to speak to the troops while attacking their right to hold political views different from the Commander-in-Chief.
We need to start matching our moments of outrage to policy solutions that reinforce our ideological vision for the country. Part of that vision is for a government that no longer subsidizes right-wing hate speech but instead promotes a diversity of views over the media. And that's what this ask is directed to do, in an environment suitable for such an ask.
I've been looking forward to reading Matt Bai's book, The Argument, for months now. In the circles I run- which include Democracy Alliance donors, netroots activists, and Clinton administration folks, all of which are central characters in the book- everybody was buzzing about it, and more than a few people were more than a little nervous about what he would have to say.
I have to say, from a pure reading pleasure point of view, it was worth the wait. I feared that it would be one of those books that, since I already knew most of the stories told in it, that it would be pretty boring- one of those books that I had to read to know what nasty thing he said about whom, but not something I would enjoy slogging through. I turned out to be wrong, because Bai is an engaging writer who can be very funny in his writing a lot of the time.
