Great news for "the left" -- Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence wrote us a memo!
Who is Jill Lawrence, you may ask. She is the prognosticator who declared three months ago, "It may be too soon to write a requiem for the public option, but I'm going to do it anyway..."
Surprise, surprise, she now writes, "Memo to the Left: The Public Health Insurance Option Is Dead, Get Over It."
I actually don't care that someone would question whether the public option is dead. Ezra Klein -- a smart guy -- wrote just last Friday, "The public option: Very alive or totally dead?" (He also wrote, "the story of the public option's resurgence has been a mixture of smart organizing and Senate cowardice," much appreciated by the thousands of folks who have been organizing on this issue.)
What I resent about Jill Lawrence's "memo" is that she engages in journalism without facts. Check out her main three arguments against progressives:
First, a public option could complicate passage in the House. Pelosi is trying to balance potential loss of support from anti-abortion Democrats against gains that may come from moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats who prefer the Senate bill. They like it in part because it has no public option.
I spoke with Jill Lawrence and she said this on the phone. I asked her point blank, "What yes votes turn to no votes because of the public option?" Her answer, "Well, I don't know the names."
I suggested she find them. Evidently, she couldn't. But she threw this unsupported argument out there anyway.
One could just as easily say some members of the House are more likely to vote for the bill if it has a public option. Unlike Jill Lawrence, I can name names. The Atlantic's Chris Good wrote about Rep. Scott Murphy (D-NY) -- a former "no" vote -- in his piece, "A Moderate Dem For The Public Option." When signing our House public option letter, Murphy said:
"Our nation's health care system is broken. To have real reform we need to ensure three things; accessibility, accountability, and affordability. I support this letter because the public option would help achieve all three of these goals and help to keep costs down by giving the American public a competitive option to private insurers."
Jill Lawrence's first point goes down in flames. But, she took two more stabs at it. Here's the next one:
In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There's about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, "Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure's building. Just forget about it," actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it's really critical to take this stand, because without it, there's no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
6:50pm - I finally found a minute to sit down and type up some thoughts on my first trip to Netroots Nation. We are close to done with day 1 of filming. We filmed 8 panels, interviewed a handful panelists, and are prepping to film President Bill Clinton's keynote address. Below, you will find a play list of day 1 coverage, including interviews with Greg Dworking (DemFromCT), Nate Silver, Congresswoman Donna Edwards, Monique Hoeflinger, and Michael Wilson:
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.
I'm going to enjoy tomorrow's Meet the Press with Markos debating Ford, but in all honesty, it doesn't really matter who does a better job. There are millions of people behind Markos, and there are a few narrow special interests behind Ford.
Glenn Smith wrapped up what the DLC is really about, so if you want deep insight, read him. If you just want to mock Harold Ford, below is his concession speech from 2006, and here are some of his fear-mongering pandering church-y commercials throwing around the God word like candy to a suicidal diabetic. At the time these were considered teh awesome. They probably still are. Anyway, here's Ford conceding a race to a Republican in a year when basically no other Republicans won. I look forward to watching tomorrow's debate on the future of the Democratic Party.
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