Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence: Journalism Without Facts

by: AdamGreen

Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 07:30

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: