Much has been written about how Jane Kim beat San Francisco's "progressive machine" last week to win the District 6 Supervisor race. But a precinct analysis of the election results tells a far bigger story, and explains how she pulled it off. Just like Howard Dean's Fifty State Strategy helped Democrats win nationwide, Jane Kim was everywhere - and conceded no part of District 6. Debra Walker carried the North Mission and a few progressive pockets, but racking up margins in some core precincts is not enough when your opponent actively contests every neighborhood. Kim beat Walker in the Tenderloin (where she had a better operation), and easily won the Chinese precincts - but also carried places like Treasure Island and the Western Addition. And as Jane's field coordinator for condos in Eastern SOMA, I'm very proud she won those precincts by a landslide - as we were the only campaign to show up. These were the Rob Black voters of 2006, but Kim proved that even a progressive can win those neighborhoods - if you bother to talk to them.
Howard Dean seems to have lost his mind, as was quite apparent on Countdown last night. Kieth tried mightily to reason with him, but to no avail. He also introduced the conundrum perfectly in his introduction, saying:
Howard Dean thinks Muslims can and not should build a mosque two blocks from the site of of 9/11. He weighed in saying there should be a compromise without saying how the center should compromise.
Nor did Dean say whom they should compromise with, nor how such a compromise could be reached, or accepted, given that no one really objected to it before rightwing sacks of shit started lying about it.
"Too many people have been frightened by the wingnuts, they can't all be bad!" That seemed to the core of Dean's logic. And he's right. They aren't all bad. But that's not the issue. He's also right to want to reach out to them. So do I. So do the proponents of the mosque cultural center. But what's needed for that is not for the cultural center's proponents to change anything they are doing--it's for lying rightwing sacks of shit to stop lying about them, and find someone else to direct their venomous lies at. Or better yet, for folks to simply stop paying any attention to those lying rightwing sacks of shit.
Rather that simply repeat some variation of Kieth's attempt, I'm going to try a somewhat different approach. I want to question a whole raft of highly questionable assumptions that Howard Dean seems to have made. And by "question," I really only mean "point out," since merely to bring them out into the open is enough to demonstrate how questionable they are. Somehow, Dean seemed to think that:
(1) There was a sizable group of people of goodwill out there who don't want the cultural center built two blocks from ground zero, but that might be willing to accept some sort of compromise--presumably somewhere between 2 ½ blocks and 5,000 miles or so--
(2) A sizable group that no one had ever been aware of before the lying wingnut sacks of shit started whipping up religious hatred;
(3) But that nonetheless could and should be taken seriously;
(4) And could be negotiated with as a group;
(5) Without involving any of the lying wingnut sacks of shit;
(6) And that also involved a significant number of 9/11 family survivors;
(7) Whose suffering gives them special standing;
(8) Even though no organized group of 9/11 family survivors has actually objected to the cultural center;
(9) And the only organized group of 9/11 family survivors to weigh in on the matter has expressed its approval for the cultural center.
Now, I just want to say that I don't consider any of the above to be top-tier moral concerns that we ought to be considering. These are just fairly simple, straightforward nuts-and-bolts kinds of things that we should be able to look at fairly quickly, and conclude--ala Emily Litella --"Nevermind!"
In fact, as already stated, I'm quite willing to recognize that Howard Dean really does have good intentions here, wanting to find a way to bring people together. He's just suffering from a massive brain fart that's preventing him from seeing that this just isn't that sort of a situation. This more a "townspeople swept up in a fit of madness, for which they will be profoundly sorry in the morning" sort of situation. Different movie. Calls for different sort of heroic action. That's why I'm trying to walk him through all the little details that really don't fit the situation as he hallucinates it to be.
But having laid all that out for his benefit--and for anyone else who might be swayed by him--I just have to conclude with what I regard as the truly morally significant point that for me renders all the rest of the above simply irrelevant: These are people of goodwill, with a long record proving who they are. In contrast, anyone who objects to their building a cultural center has something wrong with them. There's a lack of understanding what America is all about, to begin with it. It's not just abstract tolerance in a hypocritical "sure you've got rights, but come on!" kind of way. There's an actual valuing of diversity that's behind the Enlightenment philosophy on which our country was founded. And those who object to the cultural center near ground zero really don't understand America well enough to be responsible citizens. They need our help to become fully aware of what it truly means to be an American, not our indulgence or our pity to remain enshrouded in darkness and ignorance of their own birthright as Americans.
There may be something more wrong with them--something that we can feel sorrow and sympathy for, such as the tragic loss of a family member that still troubles them so deeply that they cannot think straight, for example. But although we can certainly feel sympathy and sorrow for someone like that, we cannot say that it makes sense for anyone else to be bound and limited by their own personal inability to heal just enough to stop blaming the wrong people. It's tragic enough that they are still so badly damaged that they cannot think straight. But that is no justification for damaging anyone else, much less damaging everyone else. The solution is for them to be healed well enough that they can stop blaming those who are in no way responsible. Indulging their false accusations only strengthens and prolongs their delusions, without doing anything to address the real source of their pain.
Reconciliation is one thing. And I'm all in support of that. But reconciliation with someone who has done you no harm? With a case of mistaken identity? There's no need for reconciliation in a situation like that. There's a need for therapy. And I'm all for it.
Today I dropped in on the health care rally in DC. Everyone who's anyone was there (not literally, but it certainly felt that way when I was there).
Howard Dean was there. We got to ask him if he thinks the Democratic leadership is prepared to move forward without Republicans and if he agrees with the statement that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made at the health care summit that everyone shares the same goal of covering all Americans:
Hello again. Well yesterday we took a look at laws seven and eight, of The 48 Laws Of Power. Today we look at the next two laws, one of which is incredibly important for Progressives to start following.
In Part I, I dealt with the introduction and transition of Gerard Alexander's WaPo commissioned editorial, "Why are liberals so condescending". In Part 2, I dealt with the the first of the four liberal narratives Alexander cites as manifestations of so-called "liberal condescension." This diary deals with the second such narrative.
If Alexander's first narrative is a transparent bunch of hooey, the same cannot be said about his second one. There is some truth in claim that liberals look down at people repeatedly voting against their economic interests, for cultural causes that are repeatedly ignored or outright betrayed between elections. But this is an isolated observation, and the question is one of context, which raises a host of subsidiary questions: Are liberals who do this more or less condescending than the cynical conservative manipulators who run these games? Is there anything particularly liberal about this? Or is it simply a matter of elite attitudes towards the masses? Or--as Jack Balkin's analysis "Populism and Progressivism as Constitutional Categories" suggests, of people who identify with progressivism towards those who identify with populism? And what about those on the left who reject the 'stupid voter' narrative one way or another? Such as George Lakoff, Drew Wesson, Larry Bartells ("What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?"), or me, for that matter? And, finally, what about all those liberals who are themselves members of the working class who haven't been fooled at all, but sure are pissed at Democratic elites for doing such a lousy job on their behalf the last three decades or so? The welter of questions like these points to where a genuinely honest debate about elitism and condescension, left and right, might take us. But it's not at all a direction in which Alexander has any interest.
Indeed, Alexander regards his interpretation of this narrative as so self-evidently true, without any possible alternatives, that he lays it out in a single sentence, then points quickly to three examples in support, before (condescendingly, one might think) telling us what it all means. First:
There's been a lot of analysis about why Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race, because it was so obvious. Failing to accomplish what you campaigned on depresses your base, emboldens the enemy and convinces independents that you're a loser. The lesson is not that Democrats went "too far" - but that they didn't go far enough. If I had faith in President Obama and the Democratic Party, I would be hopeful that they learned that lesson. But only one person seems to get it - former DNC Chair Howard Dean - who was unceremoniously kicked to the curb last January. It was Dean who gave Democrats a backbone in the run-up to the Iraq War. It was Howard Dean's "Fifty State Strategy" (as opposed to Rahm Emanuel's recruitment of Blue Dogs) that won Congress in 2006. And it was Dean's playbook that Barack Obama used to beat Hillary Clinton in an historic campaign. Beltway Democrats resent Dean, because he cares more about helping progressives win than stroking their ego. And - what's most unforgivable - he's been proven right.
What Digby said. She has the transcript of Gov. Dean's appearance on Hardball with Matthews, with Matthews essentially sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to believe, in the face of polling by Democracy for America and PCCC demonstrating otherwise, that the progressive base was sending a message. Their polling showed that voters in Massachusetts think the health care bill isn't strong enough, and that 73% of Obama voters who switched to Brown believed Obama isn't following through on the change he promised. Check out the entire transcript.
The central point to me is that Villagers have their preconceived notion of what any defeat means: that this is a center-right country and voters were saying that Democrats went too far to the left. Whether or not that matches up with polling or facts is irrelevant. It's why I'm so concerned that the rest of the progressive agenda- immigration reform, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, ENDA, and other "hot-button issues" will be thrown under the bus until after the election, if at all. Our side has to push back quickly and wherever possible against the conventional wisdom parade. That means LGBT leaders have to take to the airwaves and op-ed pages with their own numbers demonstrating how LGBT voters will stay home in 2010 if change isn't delivered, making threats. Same on immigration- I found out the other day that, according to Pew, 50,000 new Latinos turn 18 every single month. This movement forward on stuff like the deficit-reduction commission and Gerry Connolly and Harry Mitchell calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts will only be the start in terms of the shift towards what will and will not be done in 2010 unless there is pushback from our side.
I find myself gripped in a bitter argument- with myself- about the fate of health care reform. It's sort of like watching the schizophrenic Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings saga fight angrily with himself over how to deal with Frodo: "the master is so nice to me, he takes care of me and wants to help me" vs. "I will strangle him, I will crush his head against the rocks, I will feed him to the giant spider". In my case, the raging fight with myself goes more like "But there are so many nice things in this bill, I really like a lot of it, and I've wanted this bill for such a long time" vs. "those evil insurers are screwing us again, I want to kill this bill, crush it against the rocks".
Okay, now that I've officially admitted that the health care fight has driven me crazy, let me take a step back and look a bit more coolly at this whole dynamic, and how we turn this chickensxxt into chicken salad. Here are some thoughts as we move forward:
1. I think everyone in this battle needs to be honest with themselves about the negative consequences of all the paths forward. I hate to make this analogy, but this is feeling a little too much like Afghanistan to me right now, in that all of the choices have big downsides, and we each have to pick the choice we think has the smallest. Passing a bill with no public option will demoralize the Democratic base, tick off millions of Americans forced to buy insurance without the choice of that public option so many wanted, make the 2010 elections very problematic, embolden the big business special interests on the next big issues Democrats face, and create little downward pressure on insurance rates which will probably mean rising health care costs for the next several years. Going to reconciliation means serious delays as we wait for bills to be split apart, parliamentary rulings with a great deal of uncertainty to them, more negotiating over how to remake the bills and get the voters, further delaying tactics by the Republicans, more filibusters of the part of the part of the bill that can't go into reconciliation, less time for climate change and jobs and immigration reform, and the likely loss of important parts of the current legislative package. Killing the bill entirely means we lose all the good regulations and expansions of coverage in this legislation, create a devastating political loss for the President and Democrats in general, lose the chance to finally enshrine in America the idea that health care is a right not a privilege, lose momentum for future legislative fights, and quite possibly the blow the last chance in a generation to get anything big done in terms of health care. Whatever people are saying in public as they position themselves for the final days of battle, I hope they aren't fooling themselves that any of these paths is trouble free.
2. The details still matter enormously. Right now, way too many of the details favor the insurance industry. Assuming this goes to conference committee, we shouldn't just be focusing on the big things that have gotten all the attention, like the public option: progressives in the House should be fighting like tigers for the less visible but incredibly important things like improving the language on community rating, insuring people earlier, and taking more of the burden for paying for Medicaid off of the states. Some of those details may be a lot easier to improve than the high profile items.
3. One of the things progressives should absolutely extract before they even consider voting for this is a promise from Obama, Pelosi, and Reid that health care is revisited again, through reconciliation and in general, to keep improving the legislation as long as the Dems are in control. This should absolutely not be one of those deals where leadership says, "okay that was hard, we'll never go back to that issue again". Progressives should also demand a firm promise from Obama that the primary person doing the implementation of this bill in HHS should be a strong progressive, because the initial regs on this bill will be hugely important.
4. One final thought here: two of the progressive leaders I respect most on our current political scene are Howard Dean and Sherrod Brown, and the fact that they have taken diametrically opposite positions on the legislative tactics regarding whether to move the bill forward doesn't bother or surprise me in the least. This is a hugely complicated issue, and I think the good and the bad in this bill make it a close call, as do the specifics on legislative tactics. Progressives should not be attacking each other over the different calls we are all trying to make.
This has all become a mess, both policy wise and even more politically. Progressives have become divided among ourselves over how best to navigate the incredibly rocky shoals in front of us, but we should keep talking with each other and pivoting off each other as we try to improve this bill.
Kill the Bill or be killed by the Senate Health Care Reform Bill. That is the choice Americans face. Death looms large in the United States today. The Single-payer health care plan died in the Senate. Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont, and the father of the more recent Single Payer Plan "which eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy, and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies" was brought to his knees on the floor of the Senate. As he tried to cope with the loss of common sense and what the citizens crave, reluctantly Mister Sanders acknowledged the proposal did not have the votes to pass.
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.
Governor Dean posted this dairy over at DailyKos earlier today and I wanted to make sure no one here missed it. -Charles Chamberlain
We're in the final stretch in our campaign for healthcare reform including a public option.
The good news is we're winning.
I know that sometimes it is hard to tell. After all August was a brutal month filled with right-wing fear mongering and misinformation. Whether led by Glenn Beck, FOX news or Rep. Joe Wilson, too many Americans were told to disrupt Town Halls rather than participate in them. And of course the media covered every moment of it.
But the real story of August is that these scare tactics didn't work. Support for President Obama's Healthcare Reform Plan which includes the choice of a public health insurance option has increased since the beginning of August.
This is a testament to the fact that you never gave up. All summer we worked together to make sure Congress got the message that inclusion of a public option in any healthcare reform bill passed this year is non-negotiable. And every time Republicans tried to kill it or the insurance industry claimed it's already dead, you stood up and proved them wrong.
Now what we keep hearing is that Congress doesn't have the votes to pass a public option.
Once again, thanks to your help, we have proven them wrong...
Six worthy items on health care for this evening (most of which were first posted on Open Left in Quick Hits):
The RNC sends out a press release attacking the co-op proposal. No one could have predicted that Republicans would also not agree to the co-op "compromise" proposal, either. Just like no one could predict that Republicans will still attack the health care bill once co-ops are dropped, too.
In an interview today on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan," Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R) said he'd vote against any health-care reform bill coming out of the committee unless it has wide support from Republicans -- even if the legislation contains EVERYTHING Grassley wants.
"I am negotiating for Republicans," he said. "If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a good negotiator."
Grassley will only vote for the bill if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. Given that the RNC is already attacking co-ops, that should be an easy bar to cross. It truly is a relief that Grassley is negotiating in good faith.
Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY), says that President Obama could lose "100 votes" in the House if the public option is dropped:
WEINER: The President does seem like he's moving away from the public plan, and if he does, he's not going to pass a bill. Because there are just too many people in Washington who believe that the public plan was the only way that you effectively bring some downward pressure on prices, and if he says well we're not going to have that, then I'm not really quite sure what we're dong here.
BECKY QUICK: So you would not vote for a bill that made it through, if it got through...
WEINER: Not only I but I think there's probably a hundred members of the House, who believe for various reasons that you need to have something to bring down prices. Otherwise you're basically, what you're doing, you're keeping the cost arc. . . the CBO agrees with that. You know as it was, I think the public plan had been watered down so much. So if the President thinks he's cutting a deal to get Senate votes, he's probably losing House votes.
It is a good thing that the Democratic leadership will be able to make up the votes by negotiating with Chuck Grassley and through Kent Conrad's co-op idea. Here is the video on Weiner:
Joe Sestak (whose campaign I work for) seems to have found a way to avoid rowdy protesters at town halls: just hold the meetings in places where right-wingers feel uncomfortable about being loud and noisy. Recently, he has held two town halls, one in a predominantly African-American church, and another in a veteran's center. Neither event had significant protests.
So, just find places wingers are scared of--like African American churches--and the protests melt away.
Speaking of town halls, is the national news media just done with that story? There is virtually nothing about the health care protests today on the Elections section of Google News. Last week, there was virtually nothing but the town halls in that section of news. Either national news outlets are bored with the story, or there are more taken with the latest conflict: Dems vs. Dems on health care. Or both.
As Democrats, we should have known all along that fighting with ourselves was a sure way to clear Republican protesters off the headlines. There are few stories the national political news media likes more than Dems vs. Dems.
Here is a great speech by Howard Dean to fire you up on the health care fight:
I spoke just before Howard did, and I remember almost nothing about what I said. Best speech I have heard in a while.
I'm co-moderating a panel discussion starting at 9 AM EST this morning with Gov. Dean on health care reform. Thanks to many of you who posted questions for him, I selected a few good ones to ask.
You can follow along with the live UStream below:
It will also be carried live on C-SPAN.
And feel free to leave questions/comments, one of our team will be checking during the event for follow-up.
And if you're here in Pittsburgh, remember to stop by the OpenLeft caucus this afternoon at 4:30 in room 310. Then at 6:30, myself, Chris Bowers, Adam Green and Adam Bink will be comprising team OpenLeft and dominating pub trivia/candidates' night at Mullen's. Come on by to have a drink and meet the candidates.
I wanted to let y'all know that not only will I be at Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh this year, but I will be returning to the OpenLeft pub trivia team with several of our other front-pagers, ensuring our sound victory. Obscure questions about the 1884 election FTW.
The second is that I'll be discussing the financial system and economic crisis with Ian Welsh and my friends Digby and Bob Kuttner, moderated by Jay Ackroyd. Not one to miss. Saturday August 15th, 3-4:15 in room 318.
We'll also be doing an OpenLeft caucus, date/location TBA.
I'm looking forward to meeting many of y'all in person. Click here to register.
I posted a diary a while back ("Obama is bad"-compared to whom?), and I keep seeing articles that make me want to re-post it.
I do agree that Obama has been disappointing. He is a moderate rather than a Progressive. But I keep seeing the suggestion that progressives should form or support a 3rd party.
"A new party for progressives"? Are you kidding me? Have you forgotten how Nader helped Bush steal the 2000 election from Gore?
I DO agree with Darcy Burner that what America needs is "more and better Democrats". But splitting the Democrates into two pieces is NOT the answer. Splitting equals losing. I would love it if the Republicans would officially split into the Libertarian Social Darwinist party and the Theocratic Christian Taliban party. If they did that, they would lose even more influence.
What we need is a fourfold strategy: First, elect as many real Progressives as possible, in the House, the Senate, and elsewhere. This includes seating Al Franken.
Second, build a strong Progressive movement within the Democratic party. Be willing to primary the DINO's (for example, help Joe Sestak beat Arlen Specter). If we Progressives make it clear to the Democratic leadership that we want them to act like real Democrats, they will be less swayed by the dollars of lobbyists.
Third, we need to remove the Republicans from power. I will do all I can to expand Democratic control of the Senate in 2010, even if it means helping the most Conservative Blue Dog defeat the most liberal Republican. The party of Bush does not deserve to control anything larger than a tiny Alaskan town like Wasilla.
Fourth, we need to change the national dialogue. For years now, "liberal media bias" has been one of the favorite Orwellian labels of the Right. It is true that blatant racism and sexism are unpopular, as they deserve to be. But Big Media is Big Business, and Fox is not the only corporation to regurgitate right-wing talking points about the economy. We need to support progressive media, such as MoveOn, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Air America, and so on.
Once the Democratic Party has more than twice as much membership, and twice as much money, as the Republican Party... once the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is much stronger than the Lieberman/Specter wing, which is much stronger than the entire Republican Party... then and only then can we seriously consider splitting the Progressive Party away from the Democratic Party. If the Democrats win every election for the next decade or two, then I will think about supporting a progressive third party. Until then, do NOT forget what Nader did to Gore in 2000.
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