bottom up change

There’s really no excuse, but I do apologize to readers for completely neglecting this blog for months on end.  I started law school in the fall, and it has been a really bad distraction from writing.  The first semester was especially tough, and I didn’t have much time to follow the news or even think about much beyond my course work.  Still, I should have posted an update to tell folks what was going on.  So to the few dozen people who regularly checked my blog–if you are still out there–I’m sorry!

A lot has happened in American politics since my last post in August, but I take some pride in having predicted that the public option was dead in the summer after the town halls.  Whether or not the Democrats will now be able to pass health care reform at this point is anyone’s guess.  What is more clear to me is that the premise of this blog was demonstrated in 2009 with the rise of the Tea Party movement.

Since law school is still taking up a lot of my time this semester, I may not be able to post very often, but I will try to post whenever I have a chance.  Thanks for continuing to check in.

Continuing the family theme from my last post, in my family we have a list of quirky sayings that my dad likes to repeat, and they have become classic phrases that my sister and I frequently joke about.  One of them always comes when our dad is about to tell us a hard truth that we’d rather not hear: “I hate to say it, but…”  This phrase has been on my mind lately in reference to President Obama’s performance on health care reform.  I hate to say it, Mr. President, but you’re not getting the job done.  I know you think I’m just wringing my hands and getting “wee-wee’d up,” but we’ve been here before in the summer of 2007 and the summer of 2008 when you were performing miserably during the campaign.  There certainly is something about August inside the Obama camp.  Maybe the heat makes everyone lazy.

Last week I wrote about the shortcomings in the pro-reform organizing I’ve observed in comparison to the way that right-wingers have effectively gotten attention and shifted the momentum on the debate as a result of their town hall disruptions.  But today I want to put some of the blame for the declining support for health care reform on Barack Obama and his team in the White House.  As someone who has supported Obama from the beginning of his campaign for president, it’s tough to be critical on this issue.  I delayed my educational plans for a year to work on his campaign.  I supported him in part because I thought he would be effective at building support in the nation for health care reform.  His powers of communication, intelligence, and decency convinced me that he could be an effective advocate for health care reform.  But something has gone very wrong over the past few months.

Before I go any further, I should say that I still believe that a solid health care reform bill is going to pass this year.  The Democrats simply have too great a majority in the House and the Senate for them to get nothing done.  It also seems that Obama is willing to pass a bill without bipartisan support, relying on Democrats alone if necessary.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the White House, President Obama, and OFA have not done a good enough job organizing and selling the public option to the American people.  Nor have they effectively countered the lies and confusion being spread at the town hall meetings and on Fox News.  As a result, it now seems obvious to me that the public option will not pass.  If the alternative idea of “co-ops” passes, it will not be an effective competitor with the private insurance market.  The powerful insurance lobby and their ground troops at the town halls have effectively scared enough Americans about the public option to ensure that it won’t happen.  So we will have an improvement to our health care system as a result of the legislation that does pass, but not nearly what supporters of Barack Obama were hoping for when they volunteered for him and worked for him.

Like many other progressives, my frustration with the President’s recent performance went to a new level recently, when administration officials seemed to back away from a commitment to the public option.  But this only confirmed that something was up in the White House after President Obama himself seemed to diminish the importance of the public option at a town hall meeting in Colorado last Saturday.  He said:

All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform.  This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.

Obama is surely right when he says that the public option is not the entirety of health care reform.  But to say that it is just “one sliver of it” is just appeasement to the people who are trying to make health care Obama’s “Waterloo”, as Sen. Jim Demint (R-SC) bluntly put it last month.  Whether or not the public option is essential to health care reform is not the main point.  By giving his opponents the sense that they are winning this fight President Obama crossed the line from pragmatism into weakness.  Those who want to kill health care reform now smell blood, and will likely become even more aggressive in the weeks to come.  Perhaps it would have been necessary to concede on the public option later, after the August recess, when Congress reconvenes.  But to walk back this commitment right now is the worst political move that I have seen this White House play since Obama took office in January.

President Obama has tried to reassure progressives who were outraged by his apparent concession of the public option this weekend.  In a forum organized by OFA yesterday, Obama argued that the controversy with the left was somewhat “manufactured” because he still believes that a public option is the best way to lower health care costs.  But during this forum he never stated that the public option is a must.  He didn’t threaten to veto a bill unless it contained the public option.  Here were his words:

Now, my point is — this is sort of like the belt-and-suspenders concept to keep up your pants. You know, the insurance reforms are the belt. The public option can be the suspenders. And what we’re trying to just suggest to people is, is that all these things are important and that if the debate ends up being focused on just one aspect of it, then we’re missing the boat. If all we’re talking about is the public option, then the 80 percent of the American people who already have health insurance in the private insurance market, they say to themselves, “Well, what’s in it for me?” Their attitude will be, “This is not relevant to me.”

As a justification for downplaying the role of the public option in the White House’s arguments for health care reform, this is a pretty clear rationale: the White House is scared of Republicans trying to make it seem like Obama is pushing for a government takeover of health care.  But this is exactly the problem.  Instead of acting from a position of strength, which the President had just a few months ago, the Obama administration is acting from a position of weakness, seeking to quiet the debate on one of the largest parts of the plan.

Barack Obama and his team have made major mistakes and lost their message before and yet figured out how to come back from them before all was lost.  They know how to recalibrate and get back on their game.  But I’m convinced that the errors and timidity shown this summer have done enough damage to the health care reform debate that the public option is a lost cause.  Obama has proven me and many others wrong before, of course, so maybe he will do so again.  But time is running out.

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post reports that the Democrats are going to continue arguing that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party. The strategy seems obvious enough. Limbaugh is an unattractive figure who represents an ultra-partisan strain in American politics that is present on both the right and the left. Most Americans are turned off by this type of politics, especially after George W. Bush. At the same time, Limbaugh’s influence among Republicans is probably unsurpassed by any other public figure. Exhibit A: He was given the keynote address at CPAC last week. This recognition came despite the fact that, just before the inauguration, Limbaugh said that he hoped President Obama would fail. This statement and the CPAC invitation gave Democrats a clear opening to present the Republicans with a choice: they can follow Limbaugh and go further into the wilderness, or they can take a more moderate course and try to work with the President. This focus on Rush Limbaugh has payed dividends for the Democrats over the past few days, causing a fight to break out between Limbaugh and RNC Chairman Michael Steele. Steele meekly apologized Monday night for calling Limbaugh’s comments “ugly”, leading me to conclude that the Democrats are correct in their view of Limbaugh’s oversized role in the Republican Party (pun unintended).

Peter Daou has an interesting piece on The Huffington Post today, arguing that Democrats are making a serious mistake in “elevating” Limbaugh:

Empowering Limbaugh in the hopes of a bank-shot against Republicans
will yield the opposite result: Limbaugh will become more powerful,
Republicans will relish his increased influence and allow him to do
their dirty work.

I have had similar concerns about the anti-Rush strategy. I don’t want to hear more of this guy, and I don’t like the fact that Limbaugh is being given a lot of free press and an even larger megaphone to spew his venom. Nevertheless, I think the anti-Rush campaign that is gearing up (see Rush Watch) is much needed, and here is why.

Shortly after the inauguration, President Obama warned Republicans that they needed to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh if they wanted to get things done with Democrats. Limbaugh seemed to love the attention, absurdly claiming that Obama was frightened of him. But as we all know, Barack Obama has a very good political sensibility–he knows where the country is. That’s a large part of the reason why he’s president. What I believe Obama knows is that the country is sick of people like Rush Limbaugh dividing the country by portraying those they disagree with as enemies of the state. By allowing deputies like Rahm Emmanuel to characterize Limbaugh as the “intellectual leader” of the Republican Party, the President is essentially telling Republicans: “Listen. You’ve got a cancer in your party, and it’s not just a problem for you, it’s a problem for the entire country. We’re not going to solve the problems we’re facing if we continue demonizing those we disagree with. It’s fine if you don’t agree with me on everything. I wouldn’t expect that. But what I do expect is that we try to find common ground where we can and respect each other. If you’re going to continue empowering Rush Limbaugh and those like him, I’m going to call you out every time and remind the American people who is dividing the country instead of working together to solve our problems.”

So, Democrats are not empowering Rush Limbaugh and distracting themselves by focusing on him. We simply cannot solve many of our major problems if Republicans are afraid of Limbaugh. Since many Republicans do seem to take their cues from this guy, the American people need to know who this “intellectual leader” of the Republican Party really is. By showcasing just how extreme Limbaugh is–so extreme he wants the President, and by extension the country, to fail–Democrats are taking much needed action to clean up some of the toxic rhetoric in our political culture. President Obama was elected on a promise to unite the country, and he
will not succeed if he allows people like Rush Limbaugh to gain
legitimacy within the Republican Party. Hopefully all this focus on Limbaugh will shame Republicans into distancing themselves from him and his type of rhetoric.

Having said all of this, I do not want to give the impression that I believe that destructive political rhetoric is only the province of Republicans. It is also probably true that some on the left wanted George W. Bush to fail, although none were as explicit as Rush Limbaugh. It’s important to be careful and consistent in condemning extreme partisanship wherever it is found.

In light of the Oscars tonight, there’s this tweet from Mike Madden, who was reporting from a White House dinner for Governors that also took place tonight:

Sign White House
isn’t the Oscars: Social secretary Desiree Rogers, asked who designed
her dress, replies, “I don’t know, actually.”

A sign that the White House was like the Oscars?

There’s an old saying that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people. With the Obamas in the White House, we may have to restrict that statement to Congress. And if you’ve seen her, you know that it is probably unusual that Ms. Rogers didn’t know what she was wearing.

Last week President Obama had some tough words for financial executives who were receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidized bonuses for, well, basically running their companies into the ground. Obama called it “shameful.” Well, today, he has followed through on his tough language with some tough action, and I commend him for it:

I think it’s safe to say that today was Barack Obama’s first bad day as President. Tom Daschle withdrawing from his cabinet nomination for not paying all of his taxes was bad enough. On top of that, Nancy Killefer has also withdrawn her nomination as Chief Performance Officer for not paying all of her taxes. I wrote here yesterday that I didn’t think that Daschle should have to resign for his tax mistakes. He has a reputation for integrity on Capitol Hill from his days in Congress. Further, I can’t imagine that he’d be stupid enough to try tax evasion during 2008, knowing full well that if Obama won the election, he’d likely have a top job and would be vetted thoroughly. Finally, unless there’s evidence that a nominee was engaged in tax evasion, I don’t think it’s right to bar someone from serving in high office because of a tax mistake. I don’t do the most complicated tax returns by any means in my job, and yet the taxes that I do can be challenging. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Daschle and his accountant simply made an honest mistake.

At the same time, this is politics. In this game, it often doesn’t matter if you’re really in the wrong or not since the media tells the narrative. The narrative that was developing was that in Obama’s troubled cabinet appointments, he was reneging on his campaign promise to change Washington and muddying his message of “a new era of responsibility” from the inaugural address. If Daschle were the only nominee who had tax problems, I don’t think he would have resigned. It’s the pattern that made this a political problem for the administration. The same goes for Killefer.

What is still unclear to me is why President Obama would say that he would “absolutely” support Daschle yesterday, but then today in his interview with Brian Williams he takes responsibility for the withdrawal. It seems that Daschle was asked to leave, so I suppose that Killefer’s withdrawal may have pushed the administration into a corner on this one. It’s too bad. Daschle would have probably been just about the perfect person to help get health care reform done.

Then again, Andrew Sullivan has a plausible take on why Daschle went down: those horrible glasses.

I’ve missed you. After an ordeal with a very strange medical problem (my salivary gland became blocked and swelled up, making me pretty sick) I’m back to blogging. And since President Obama has had such an action-packed week with Congressional Republicans (and Rush Limbaugh), it’s hard to know where to begin! One thing you quickly learn about this blogging stuff is that you cannot take a day off without feeling like you’ve missed a week.

Were you like me on Friday, January 9th, waiting until the clock struck 1pm to buy a ticket to the inaugural parade using ticketmaster.com? And did you, like me, keep on entering the distorted text into the box only to see the screen telling you vaguely that “Sorry, no exact matches were found, but other tickets may be available.” Did you keep going back, hoping that maybe the intertubes were clogged and that the site was experiencing excessive demand which was slowing down the purchasing process? I must have entered text like this in the box several dozen times:

The computer was toying with us, people.  It turns out that 5,000 inaugural parade tickets were sold in less than a minute.

Remember HAL, the super-intelligent computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey? There’s a point where HAL starts giving Dave clever evasions to keep him from knowing exactly what is going on (basically, that HAL has taken over the spacecraft and is about to kill everyone).  Maybe I’m exaggerating, but tickets that sell out in less than a minute by a computer system that doesn’t tell you they are sold out comes dangerously close to HAL and needs to be unplugged.

Ok, I admit it, I’m just complaining that I didn’t get a ticket.  Did you get one?