Although this here blog has been silent for a while as I am knee deep in my crash-course on health policy and other distractions I will hopefully write about later, I thought that this succinct description of the Republican, courtesy of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), was worth passing along (h/t TPM):
I am positive that I am not that knowledgeable about the details of the health care debate. This is a little troubling on a personal level since, tomorrow (i.e., eight hours from now), I am going to a class focusing on health policy. Yes, I too thought that I was done with classes years ago, but it is part of my program that I take this class. Although I study health, I study neither health care nor health policy, though part of the program that I am in is designed to have participants think more about health policy. Can't say that there is much better of a time to have a tutorial than now and I am really looking forward to it.
Let me start my thoughts by saying that I think that Obama's speech was great. Given my cursory knowledge of the subject, I think that his plans sounded reasonable. Of course I would like a full-fledged universal insurance program, but I don't think that it is possible or, frankly, at this point that important. If insurance is made affordable enough to make good health care attainable to all Americans, I think that reform will have succeeded. While fully universal coverage would be a better option, having the organizational structure in place to show the American public that it is possible will succeed in making it impossible to get rid of it. The perfect demonstration of this point is the number of people out protesting last month against government-sponsored health care who didn't want Medicare touched. Beyond the cognitive dissonance that makes it difficult to believe that these people make it through a regular day, the fact that Medicare and Social Security are untouchable demonstrate my point.
At the same time, it is also true (again, to my limited knowledge) that both Social Security and Medicare have remained largely the same since their creation. The fact that neither has changed significantly doesn't bode well for incremental-style changes that some in the center and the right (including Newt Gingrich) are advocating. Simply doing something isn't going to cut it in terms of creating good policy; therefore, if anything like what Obama proposed tonight is passed through Congress, then he and Kathleen Sebelius need to develop a strong agency that is relatively impervious to meddling in the future and that aggressively pursues its mandate at its inception. If the agency that is developed is strong enough to assert itself and to regulate the insurance industry to accomplish the goals laid out by Obama, then I think that a bill resembling Obama's outline tonight — with all of its significant shortcomings — can actually improve the state of health care in this country.
[1] TPM has also noted that this might lead to a censure of Rep. Wilson by the House for violating the rules of decorum. Following these rules, the Minorty Whip, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) was also caught violating the rule to "Refrain from eating, smoking, or using electronic equipment, including cellular phones or lap top computers, on the floor." Video here.
Shorter Weiner op-ed in NYT today: Not even God has enough money to run against Bloomberg. Also I want a baby. Can't blame the guy.
I also get freaked out when I find myself agreeing with Charles Krauthammer just when I least expect it. But his little screed today on Caroline Kennedy made some sense to me. As a New York resident, I love that she doesn't have to raise money and it's kind of cool that Obama drew her out of the woodwork. Furthermore, Kennedys tend to be pretty reliable, which I guess is...good...mostly? However, Krauthammer's point that
"[...] in a country where advantages of education, upbringing and wealth already make the playing field extraordinarily uneven, we should resist encouraging the one form of advantage the American Republic strove to abolish: title"
rings pretty true. Not that the other potential candidates - Carolyn Maloney, Andrew Cuomo - are hardscrabble urchins pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Still, there's the scent of entitlement all over this potential appointment. And creepy the way that Bloomberg is really twisting Paterson's arm on this one. I could be convinced that Kennedy representing me and my family in the Senate is ultimately a good thing, but I'd like for the argument to include something besides, "but she's a Kennedy!"
Obama wins with 311 Electoral Votes - I think he'll pick up Ohio and Virgina and come up just short in North Carolina and Florida and well short in Indiana. But, in the surprise, I think that he will pick up Nevada in a close race.
Dems have 59 Senate seats at the end of the night including a Franken win in Minnesota.
In the end, I predict very gracious speeches by both McCain and Obama.
Update: I hope that I am wrong and that Obama wins by more, but this is my pragmatic prediction.
I belong to no organized political party...I'm a Democrat!
-Will Rogers
Despite my best efforts to spend my time writing for my dissertation, I find my mind wandering to the Super Tuesday results from yesterday and what it might mean from both a political and sociological perspective come time for the Democratic National Convention in August. Part of this stems from a very contentious thread posted by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. She argues that yesterday bodes well for Democrats as we approach the general election because there are two good candidates and turnout is incredibly high. No contentious arguments, she claims, will be able to overcome that momentum and give the Republicans the advantage in the general election.
This obviously brought out a good deal of discussion about who would do what if Clinton won the nomination and how she won it. This got be thinking, from an organizational point of view, what does the convention mean, then? How could all of the different scenarios play out and, what—if anything—would we expect from the outcomes. For my own mental clarity, here is what I see as the possibilities[1]:
I am not sure if this is all of the scenarios, feel free to add others. I am interested in an organizational point of view, how these scenarios get negotiated among the participants. From a political point of view, I think that it is going to become very obvious who has power in the Democratic Party and whether there is a foreshadowing of changes in the powerful players in the Party. From a sociological point of view, this presents a very interesting case study of what happens when rules are made by an elite membership in an organization where everyone is presumably fully knowledgeable and what happens when a wider audience then sees how those rules are (or, are not) upheld and what that means for legitimacy of both the organization and the actors themselves.
[1] In case it is not obvious from my past comments, I support Obama in this race.
In general, I hate conversations, expositions, soliloquies or any other form of communication that begins with "Our tax money pays for [INSERT ITEM HERE]." Both my father and mother-in-law (to be) are supported by the federal government and I know that most of the people who work for the federal government work their butts off. I think that Reagan, et al. have done such a good job beating in how "bad" government is and how we need to starve the beast that vital services are being cut (see Bush's attempt to eliminate child health care).
But, I seriously want to ask what the f*ck are we paying these people for? From David Kurtz at TPM:
Correct me if I'm wrong here. But by my calculation, more U.S. senators (72) voted today to condemn a newspaper ad attacking Gen. Petraeus than voted yesterday (56) to lengthen the time off troops get from the frontlines in Iraq, thereby reducing individual soldiers exposure to actual attacks. Am I missing something, or is that about right?
And, the Democrats couldn't even be sure to get a Barbara Boxer alternative passed. So, instead, they all caved and blasted their own base (MoveOn) at the behest of the Republicans while they wouldn't stand up and condemn the Swift Boat Vetrans. What the hell! No wonder no one thinks they can do anything, they can't even protect their own donors never mind defend habeus corpus, support our troops, or end taxation without representation!
UPDATE: I guess we don't need to pay our Senators, they make money the old fashioned way: bribes! I will miss the Incredible Hulk ties on the Senate floor, though.
Although this might be too late to even matter, given our obsession with only covering the news that happened in the last thirty seconds, but I thought I would take a tiny bit of time to write my postmortem on the debate Tuesday night. I know, there was already another one last night; but, all told, I think that it might help me as much as inform you on what I think about the election and the state of politics in this country.
Let me start -- since this appears to be the custom -- by declaring the "winner" to be Dennis Kucinich. I put "winner" in quotes because I think that this is the thing that disturbs me the most about the political class in this country. Politics among the main-stream media is a game. And, for all of their chatter and objections to the MSM, many of the larger blogs are, in fact, guilty of the same thing. There are notable exceptions in both the main-stream media and the blogosphere, but, by-and-large this is still the modus operandi of the political class.
I know that this is not the first political discussion where this has been the case - in fact I wrote an angry letter to Wolf Blitzer after Al Sharpton's Democratic Convention speech in 2004 about the fact that the only thing that Blitzer saw fit to discuss was how far over time Sharpton went and whether this would be an embarrassment to the Democratic Party (which, of course, was not only morally and professionally corrupt, but idiotic. The DLC crowd, already too frightened of Sharpton to begin with, already banished Sharpton to the 4:00pm time slot meaning that Sharpton going over by ten minutes didn't matter. Yet, this was too nuanced of a point for Blitzer and he proved too stupid to pick up on). But, I guess this seemingly laborious tangent gets at my larger point which is this:
No Politics (capital "P") is ever going to create the change that we need without the politics (little "p") to support it.
In other words, candidates pander to this kind of media attention horse-race Politics as if it were the run up to the World Series because rich and/or powerful people see this as a giant game in which, if they are players, they will look brilliant (and, as no small benefit, gain power and/or money themselves). I know, this is not a big shock and seemingly nothing that hasn't been said before. Wow, so powerful people corrupt politics against the interest of most of the population. Call the newswires!
It is not, for me, that this is a point that hasn't been made; but, for me this debate actually showed the potential of another kind of politics that sits outside of media punditocracy. Candidates were forced to interact with (gasp!) a crowd. And, yes, it was raucous. Why was it raucous and why did they not heed Olbermann's pleas to be quiet? Because every single one of the members of that crowd was there to help them make an excruciatingly important choice: Who do I want to be my next President? Who am I going to support by going and knocking on doors (because, let's face it, that is what all of the candidates want, even though, to quote Bill Richardson, all will "continue to take labor's money")? People should be engaged for that decision - it is more scary how passionate most people are.
Olbermann realized this and stopped trying to get them to be quiet. Kucinich realized this and played to the crowd. Clinton tried as best as she could to get into it, but was obviously uncomfortable. Obama has gotten too used to talks in punditry and has lost his community organizing sense. The DLC attack dogs (a.k.a. Dodd and Biden) were too busy attacking Obama and Edwards so that Clinton could look above the fray. And, despite what my esteemed colleague thinks, Richardson didn't make any sense to me (though, apparently, he did much worse last night). And Edwards...John, John, John... No one is there to listen to how you walked the picket line 200 times or have hob-nobbed with labor federation presidents. First, if anyone in that stadium has walked off the job, they have probably walked their own picket line over 200 times. You don't earn credit by walking picket lines X number of times - because you are in a stadium full of people who have done it more. And, second, while you are pandering to the correct people who actually make the endorsements, I would guess that a significant majority of rank-and-file members have a profound distrust for their leadership (and, speaking as a former local president, it is good to have mistrust in one's leaders - they should have to earn it).
So, my horse-race odds casting, though I hate it is as follows. Clinton got out of there unscathed (helped by the fact that there was mysteriously no question about her union-busting lead advisor), Obama looked good, but didn't win much particularly since he was in his home state. Kucinich was the man and Edwards lost, I think, all hope of breaking into the top two. There, I did it.
But, the bigger point that I think that the Democrats can learn from this is the potential power of the crowd. That debate was fun - people cheered, they booed, they waved behind the camera. That is America. Those are the people who give the President their job. I thought that the Democrats lost a huge opportunity during the 2006 State of the Union address. Tim Kaine had just gotten elected governor in a reddish state, the feeling was jubilant, the base was mobilized and people were beginning to realize that the President was out of touch. Bush hardly mentioned New Orleans only four months after the Hurricane and saw fit to talk more about human-animal hybrids. Tim Kaine could have delivered an address "in front of the American people" by giving a public speech to his new constituents in Virginia. And, the symbolism is so stark that even the punditocracy wouldn't miss it - there would be President Bush giving his speech to Congress the ultimate "insider's" venue while the Democratic rebuttal was given to a slice of the American people. The applause wouldn't be staged; no endless sitting and standing, this side clapping, that side sitting on their hands all following the lead of the Majority and Minority Leaders. No, real live people deciding when they would applaud and boo.
But, as long as Clinton and Obama look to get out unscathed, quite literally afraid of the unwashed masses, then progressive politics really have no chance. Despite what the DLC Democrats think, we aren't going to out fundraise or outspend Republicans, but we can, if we find leaders who can, connect with people. It is scary that a single candidate knew how to work that stage in the Democratic primary. And for it, he might have won my vote. Democrats should strategize that.
