Here's A Thought, Take The Popular Option

Kevin Drum is as shrill as he gets, which is to say, measured, polite, and miffed.

In case you missed it, Jon Stewart had a good riff on this last night. His question: Why are Democrats so lame? It's a good one! They have a huge majority in the Senate, the public is strongly in favor of a public option, and yet....for some reason they can't round up the votes to pass it. Hell, they can't even round up a normal majority to pass it out of the Finance Committee, let alone a supermajority to overcome an eventual filibuster.

If Democrats really do lose the House next year (about which more later), this will be why. If they don't pass a healthcare bill at all, they'll be viewed as terminally lame. If they pass a bill, but it doesn't contain popular features that people want — like the public option — they'll be viewed as terminally lame. At a wonk level, a bill without a public option can be perfectly good. But wonks aren't a large voting bloc, and among people who do vote, the public option is very popular. So, um, why not pass it?

I will minimally defend Democrats. The Finance Committee has a 13-10 split, which is a bit less of a majority than the 60-40 overall split. Stewart's point was that Democrats had a supermajority and didn't use it in the Finance Committee is inaccurate. Furthermore, there's no such thing as a supermajority in the patently undemocratic confines of the Senate. Because the public option isn't popular among land as well as people, it doesn't have 60 votes in a Senate organized around land. There's also the problem of unanimous opposition from an entire political party, which really does represent a crisis of governance.

That said, yes! Democrats are lame! Especially in this case, where they have a popular policy that also happens to be the policy that best brings down costs and provides competition in the insurance market. As for Drum's point that a bill without a public option can be good at a wonk level, he's talking about something like the Swiss health care system, where private insurers exist without a public alternative, but are strictly regulated. Which is perfectly fine except for a few things:

1) It is the second-worst system in the world in terms of costs, rivaled only by... the United States.
2) We have no history of regulatory strictness, in fact we have the opposite history, so actually pulling off a regulation-based check on the insurance companies is a real long shot.
3) The Swiss have higher co-pays, insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses than Americans, which politically would not fly at all. People are already crushed by the burden of high-dollar health care here.

The truth is that the difficulty of Democrats to include a public option - though I don't think it's dead yet - reflects the breakdown of our political system and the influence of corporate money. The Swiss have their health care plan because they put it in place relatively recently, and the large health interests didn't want a public component. It's the same here, and frankly politicians in both parties have been bought off.

As I said, I don't think this is quite over. Labor won't budge on their insistence on a public option, and for a White House obsessed with keeping their majority that's a big deal - lose the support of the AFL-CIO and you lose seats, period. What's more, progressives understand the pressure points now - mainly, the White House and Harry Reid. If he includes a public option in the merged Senate bill it will be very hard to get it out, and then Senators will be faced with the unpleasant choice of filibustering a bill that has the overwhelming support of the Democratic caucus and the White House to protect insurance company profits.

I'd make two calls today - Reid's office and the White House switchboard.

Unions And Health Care

The labor movement has generally been a pretty strong voice for health care reform. That actually makes them an anomaly, because they and the workers they represent already receive, for the most part, quality health care through their collective bargaining contracts. The health care is often so good, in fact, that many unions gave up several wage hikes in order to get it. And now, with provisions in the Baucus bill to tax insurance companies for offering "Cadillac" care, we're starting to see the unions' self-interest come into play. Richard Trumka, the new head of the AFL-CIO, told Ben Smith that he would fight the insurance company tax:

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka seconded a fellow labor leader who applied a barnyard epithet to the Senate Finance Committee's bill and with its proposal to tax some medical benefits.

"Gerry has much wisdom," Trumka said in an interview today, referring to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, who attacked the bill last week. "We don’t think that the way to provide benefits for everybody is to tax people's benefits so they end up losing their benefits."

"We will fight pretty doggedly attempts to tax benefits because we’ve paid for those benefits over the years – we’ve forgone wage increases, pension increases, days off, and everything else to get those medical benefits," he said.

Trumka at least offered an alternative to pay for coverage subsidies and Medicaid expansion - a financial transaction tax. It's a very good idea to tax a minimal amount on every stock transaction - it's a pure tax on wealth, would hit those who make money from selling back and forth a hundred times a day, and would probably lead to limits on computerized flash trading, which should be illegal anyway. But it just makes no sense as a way to pay for health care. I also think Trumka is being a bit disingenuous by saying that taxing insurance companies on high-dollar plans would "tax benefits." It could just as well incentivize insurers to charge less on high-dollar plans. Trumka has a serious argument about the trade-offs of the union movement, but that should be accomplished through negotiation - companies relieved of an enormous health care burden may be happy with a payout.

The employer-based system is no friend to health care and should not be artificially preserved by a giant employer deduction. Baucus' bill offers a backhanded way to get at that deduction, but with nothing to rein that in, health inflation will probably cause every union to give back health benefits anyway. So at some point, we have to start moving America off of employer-based health insurance.

In another development, this Politico article quotes Anna Burger from SEIU saying that she could support a bill without a public option. SEIU and Burger have since refuted that, but that union has always taken a slightly more pragmatic approach. I'm generally tired of hearing "X says he/she could live with a bill without the public option!" stories, so I'll let that one lie. Soon enough people will have to pick a side, anyway.

Washington, We Have A Jobs Problem

The jobs report for August showed another 216,000 losses. That's far less than previous months, in fact the smallest in a year, but still not very good. The unemployment rate jumped up to 9.7%, and it'll basically be a matter of time before we're at 10%.

The AFL-CIO released a stunning report about young workers, showing their struggles in the past decade, where they have less jobs, worse jobs and no security.

Some of the report’s key findings include:

31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.
By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

At the low end, workers are often paid under the minimum wage and cheated out of overtime pay.

This is just not sustainable. A thin layer of the super-rich exploiting a permanent underclass, with many out of work or unable to gain independence, will not result in a workable society. Social unrest is a more likely outcome.

We cannot forget this. The Democratic Party is becoming reliant on the professional class instead of the working class, and it leads to policy that doesn't help workers. The shrinking unionized sector, and the inability to create policy to reverse that trend, will come back to hurt the so-called "party of the people."

Labor's lack of clout to pass EFCA in even the most overwhelmingly Democratic -- and progressive -- Congress in decades is an indication that we already have a successful progressive movement in which labor plays only a modest role. Union support was less crucial to Obama's nomination and his general election victory than it was to any previous Democratic president, which is why he's not obligated to twist arms to pass the bill. Many Democratic victories in 2008 were in states and districts where labor is weakest, like Virginia and North Carolina. And I know dozens of engaged liberals who have no idea why EFCA matters.

The new progressive coalition follows the lines of the "emerging Democratic majority" that Ruy Teixeira and John Judis predicted in their 2002 book of that name: minority, professional, and younger voters, with help from a large gender gap. This is a coalition that can win without a majority of white working-class voters, whether union members or not. (Those who were union members were always solid Democrats.) In many ways, that's good because it helps to bring an end to the culture wars that limited the party's ability to speak clearly about matters of fundamental rights and justice.

But it's also dangerous. A political coalition that doesn't need Joe the -- fake -- Plumber (John McCain's mascot of the white working class) can also afford to ignore the real Joes, Josés, and Josephines of the working middle class, the ones who earn $16 an hour, not $250,000 a year. It can afford to be unconcerned about the collapse of manufacturing jobs, casually reassuring us that more education is the answer to all economic woes. A party of professionals and young voters risks becoming a party that overlooks the core economic crisis--not the recession but the 40-year crisis--that is wiping out the American dream for millions of workers and communities that are never going to become meccas for foodies and Web designers.

I think the lack of connection between Democrats and the working class reflects itself in all these jobless recoveries we're seeing. Policy just isn't made for the median income, but of, by and for the rich. It's a very dangerous situation.

Joint Session Of Congress

I think it's a mistake. Though Republicans will have to be on their best behavior, why wouldn't you use the power of the Oval Office, the gravitas of the same, and deliver an address looking directly into the eye of the viewers at home. That undergirds the seriousness of the effort. In a session to Congress, you have politicians as part of the show, and endless speculation on who cheered and who didn't.

That said, it will probably improve the chances of a bill. I just find it odd that the President hasn't talked directly to the camera in an Oval Office speech yet.

Meanwhile, the first element of this reset, before the joint session of Congress Sept. 9, is an AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati. Considering, as I've said, that the AFL-CIO has adamantly stated that they wouldn't support any health care bill without a public option, this is either a good sign or a looming disaster.

I'm not as pessimistic as Josh Marshall, but we shall see what kind of mettle the President has soon enough.

...I'm told by sources that the WSJ report isn't quite right, that the President's remarks on Labor Day may be more generic in nature. I would be shocked if the words "health" and "care" didn't make it in there somewhere, however, and so if the AFL-CIO wanted to make their feelings known publicly, they have the opportunity to do so in front of the President.

The Good Kind Of Kabuki

This Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak story has evolved rapidly in the past 48 hours. Labor in particular has basically given Specter a choice - support our issues or we'll support somebody else. The famously ornery Snarlin' Arlen will have to decide whether he only responds to right-wing pressure.

On today's "Top Line," Richard Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, warned that union leaders may drop their longstanding support for Specter, D-Pa., if -- as he has promised to do -- he votes against them on their legislative priority, the Employee Free Choice Act.

"Those decisions will be made by people in the state, and our members in the state know who will stand with them. And if Arlen Specter -- he stood with them in the past -- if he continues to stand with them, they'll support him. If he doesn't, they won't support him," Trumka told us.

Sestak echoed this after a meeting with the SEIU's Andy Stern, saying bluntly, "I cannot see the unions across the board supporting Specter if he cannot support EFCA ... [Stern] let it be known that it’s very much on the top of their agenda.” And leading Democrats are hinting to Specter that his ability to stave off a primary challenge will be dictated by his record as a Democrat.

I'm wondering whether at least a little of this is kabuki. Sestak loses nothing from calling out Specter - even if he decides against running, he gains credibility as a Democrat enunciating Democratic principles. And if Specter does end up voting the right way on health care or EFCA, Sestak gets at least some of the credit. And given that Sestak has only grown louder in his criticisms, he certainly hasn't heard from on high - say, from the White House - that he might want to tone it down. It serves their interests to have a credible voice pushing Specter, or a chorus of voices.

Regardless of the theater at play here, Specter cannot exactly take the chance of not listening.

Your Free Market At Work

2008 was a mixed year for corporate America. On the one hand, everybody lost money and almost crashed the global economy. On the other hand, some CEOs got PAAAAAID!!

More U.S. chief executives got pay raises than had their pay cut in 2008, a year when billions in taxpayer dollars went to prop up struggling companies and millions of workers lost jobs, according to an AFL-CIO survey released on Tuesday [...]

The executive pay study of major companies by the AFL-CIO, the country's largest labor federation, calculated compensation that included stock options granted to CEOs but not yet vested.

Some governance experts favor this method, which is intended to take into account the intent of corporate boards.

Using that methodology, Citigroup Inc CEO Vikram Pandit made $38 million in 2008, compared with the roughly $11 million reported in the company's compensation section in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Citigroup collected $45 billion in government bailout funds in 2008.

"When it comes to CEO pay, many companies continue to hew to the fiction of pay for performance," said Daniel Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO's Office of Investment.

I like how the article characterizes the AFL-CIO's methodology as if it's novel. They calculated CEO compensation based on their total compensation. What's the mystery here?

As I said before, ultimately CEO compensation is hard to stop with caps or bonus limits because money, like water, can flow around a rock. Adding marginal tax brackets and significantly taxing the highest ends of total compensation would have a greater impact. But the big story here is the complete disconnect between pay and performance. Wall Street talks sweetly about capitalism as long as they don't have to play by its rules.

Organizers Getting Organized

The split between the AFL-CIO and the Change To Win federation represented a difference in philosophy, between growing membership of unions and maintaining the best contracts and deals for those dwindling numbers already inside the union structure. It made sense at the time, and has led to membership drives and faster union growth. But eventually, it hit a wall because the institutional barriers to union organizing require a federal response. In that spirit, organized labor is reforming a coalition called the National Labor Coordinating Committee.

Today, the American labor movement proclaimed its intention to come back together -- helped, of course, by the fact that Democrats now control both Congress and the White House and are bent on enacting universal health insurance and, perhaps, some legislation that would make it easier for workers to join unions. After meetings in Maryland this week, the presidents of the two federations and of the nation's 12 largest unions -- including the National Education Association, which heretofore has not belonged to any labor federation -- announced the formation of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an interim body that could pave the way for labor's reunification by forming a new federation with roughly 16 million members.

The committee will be headed by David Bonior, the former Michigan congressman and House Democratic whip who was the foremost congressional opponent of both the Reagan administration's support for Nicaraguan contras and the Clinton administration's support for free-trade legislation with China and other repressive regimes. Bonior, who headed former senator John Edwards's 2008 presidential campaign, might possibly emerge as the head of the new federation. He is currently president of American Rights at Work, a pro-union advocacy group that has been coordinating the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, and he would be an articulate spokesman for a movement that could surely use one.

The union presidents have largely agreed to focus the federation (its name is still up in the air) on the political and lobbying operations at which the AFL-CIO has excelled. They will continue meeting over the next several months to hammer out details -- a timetable that could produce a plan to be ratified at the AFL-CIO's convention in September.

Smart move by the Change to Win leadership, who saw their visions meet with the realities of the workplace and a political structure tilted in the favor of management. The Employee Free Choice Act may be on life support in this Congressional session, thanks to Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln, but the labor movement can still make tangible gains through policy, particularly with respect to health care, and having a unified organization will be a big help.

Chris Good has more.

Biden on Employee Free Choice

Here are the relevant remarks by Joe Biden at his "hidden" address, which I have all the words of, to the AFL-CIO in Miami. I have to say that the Vice President is very good in these settings.

U.S. labor doesn't say that corporations and government must tolerate workers forming unions. It doesn't say that corporations and government must allow unions if after using every trick in the book they can’t stop them. Here's what the U.S. government says in the bargain made back in the '30s: It said, the National Labor Relations Act explicitly says -- and that came later -- the National Labor Relations Act explicitly says, this nation's policy is to encourage -- encourage -- collective bargaining, encourage unions. (Applause.)

But all kidding aside, look, folks, the fact of the matter is as President Obama said -- and he means it -- you can't have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. And you heard what we said, what I said independently and what we said together: We will judge the success or failure of our administration at the end of our four years based on whether or not the standard of living of the middle class has increased, or not. That's the bottom line measure. And guess what. Neither one of us believe it can get better without you getting stronger. (Applause.)

Well, in this country today, legal industry -- excuse me -- the legal industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars exclusively in an effort to block workers from pursuing their legal rights, from unions being able to get collective bargaining agreements.

I mentioned the productivity increased by almost 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, but wages fell by $2,000. If our basic bargain had been intact, if paychecks rose with productivity growth, as they did from World War II to the early '70s, families would have gained $10,000 over that period, instead of losing $2,000. (Applause.)

So, folks, that's why there's no one thing we have to do. This is all going to be difficult, and one of the most difficult things will be to reinstitute that basic bargain. And I think the way to do that is the Employee Free Choice Act. (Applause.)

Folks, let's get it straight -- we're not asking -- we're not asking for anything we don't deserve. And we're not asking for anything that wasn't intended when the NLRB said we should be encouraging -- encouraging -- unions. We just want to level this playing field again [...] I have a simple, basic belief, one that we're going to work hard to put into action: If a union is what you want, a union you're entitled to have. (Applause.)

He's obviously preaching to the choir, but there's nothing in there to suggest the Administration is backing off of Employee Free Choice. Nor should they. All it would do is end the criminal enterprise that management has gotten away with for 30 years.

The Miami Herald has more.

...You can thank Biden for his stance here.

Defining The Problem

Too often Democrats let Republicans define the debate, even during this era of epic conservative decline. In the traditional media, the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act has consistently been about whether or not unions want to "eliminate the right to a secret ballot election" for workers.

Now of course, this isn't true. In fact, even under EFCA, if 30% of the workforce calls for a vote, they get a vote. But this is not the real problem in labor-management relations. That argument is about the implications of EFCA passing. In fact, the current circumstances of labor elections is the problem that needs to be solved by EFCA. I finally found the best and most coherent argument around that at the AFL-CIO site (h/t Ezra). The truth is that the system for labor elections, the vaunted "secret ballot," is broken.

Today, CEOs get contracts that protect their wages and benefits. But some deny their employees the same opportunity. Although U.S. and international laws are supposed to protect workers' freedom to belong to unions, employers routinely harass, intimidate, coerce and even fire workers struggling to gain a union so they can bargain for better lives. And U.S. labor law is powerless to stop them. Employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is crushed by brutal management tactics.

Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.

Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.

In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

If labor elections were legitimate, there wouldn't be the need for legislation. Instead, think of it as your "secret ballot" Presidential election marred by: mandatory pro-McCain training sessions held across the country, mandatory meetings where "Obama is a Muslim" propaganda is foregrounded, threats to take away your job if you vote for Obama, and threats to close your workplace entirely if Obama wins. There is nothing democratic about these one-sided farces characterized by intimidation and harassment. That's why we need a new system for determining whether workers want to collectively bargain, and majority signup is simply the best practice out there.

This week, hundreds of volunteers with SEIU fanned out to McDonald's restaurants across the country and asked them if they were comfortable with their CEO making 770 times what they make, while they oppose common sense steps to join unions for their workers. As a result, the company backed off its opposition!

After more than 500 activists visited nearly 100 McDonald’s locations nation wide to talk with workers and consumers about McDonald’s opposition to Employee Free Choice, the company released a statement saying their reported position against the bill was a “misrepresentation” and that they “try not to take sides in political issues.” [...]

This victory is a great start for our campaign to restore the middle class and protect workers’ rights to speak out for better wages and benefits. Standing together, we can make Employee Free Choice a reality!

The Employee Free Choice Act does not restrict workers' rights, it affirms them. We must make it a reality in 2009.

X Marks The Spot

(via Markos.)

The worst part of this collapse for McCain is that early voting has begun in a lot of states, and people are getting their absentee ballots, and estimates are that 1/3 of all votes will be cast before Nov. 4, so he'll be heading into Election Day well behind. Though the Obama campaign appears to have not taken advantage of the early voting window in Ohio the way that they should have, other states are showing much better results for them, and the voter registration numbers are even better.

Since January, the Florida Democratic Party has had a net gain of 415,580 voters, while the Republican Party of Florida has only gained 169,841. This shows that the gap between Democrats and Republicans in Florida has grown by 245,739 voters this year alone.

I don't think that one debate has the power to swing this tide, though I'll still watch it and obsess over it, of course.

Finally, let's give some credit to the behind-the-scenes players doing the ground work for Obama in the battlegrounds. It's really paying off. The WSJ profiles Working America today.

The little-noticed group formed by the AFL-CIO has no role in workplaces or contract bargaining and collects no mandatory dues. What it does is sign up members, 2.5 million so far, and persuade them to vote Democratic.

Working-class whites are important because they make up just about half of the electorate. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows Sen. Obama has built a six-point lead over Sen. John McCain in part by cutting his deficit among these voters to 11 points.

Two weeks ago, when Sen. Obama trailed Sen. McCain by 18 points among this group, the presidential race was essentially tied, according to the WSJ/NBC poll [...]

Organized labor has much at stake in this election, as its leaders are hoping a Democratic president and Congress would push through legislation that could help reverse unions' long membership slide. Roughly 70% of Working America members have voted Democratic since the group was formed in 2003, the same percentage as union members, according to the AFL-CIO. The group says it has been signing up an average 50,000 new members a week for its database as the election approaches, up from 20,000 weekly during 2007. In its biggest state, the pivotal electoral battleground of Ohio, Working America's 800,000 members could make up more than 10% of the vote on Election Day.

Wow. Those are incredible numbers. And a third-party validator is probably more impactful for these groups than the Obama campaign.

This Is Why McCain's Avoiding The Press

Because whenever he says anything out loud it's an embarrassment.

The Politico looked into his claim that 300 economists support his budget plan. They, um, don't.

Upon closer inspection, it seems a good many of those economists don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda. And at least one doesn’t even support McCain for president.

In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain’s economic plan, many were unfamiliar with — or downright opposed to — key details. While most of those contacted by Politico had warm feelings about McCain, many did not want to associate themselves too closely with his campaign and its policy prescriptions.

Howard Beales, an economist at George Washington University, explained that he signed the letter as "an expression of support for [McCain], not necessarily each and every detail of his plan, which I may not have had time to study closely." [...]

Constantine Alexandrakis, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, expressed second thoughts about signing.

"I would describe myself as an Obama supporter," he explained. "Maybe I shouldn't have rushed into signing the letter."

(I'm signing up for Prof. Alexandrakis' class at B-school, sounds like he doesn't read the papers too closely.)

The New York Times looked at McCain's health care plan and found that sick people are pretty much left out.

If Senator John McCain’s radical plan for remaking American health care is to work, he will have to find a way to cover people like Chaim Benamor, 52, a self-employed renovator in this Baltimore suburb. Mr. Benamor never found it necessary to buy insurance before having a mild heart attack last year and now, 13 years shy of Medicare, has little hope of doing so.

In late April, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, announced that if elected president he would seek to insure people like Mr. Benamor by vastly expanding federal support for state high-risk pools like Maryland’s, or by creating a structure modeled after them. But as Mr. Benamor’s case demonstrates, even well-regarded pools have served more as a stopgap than a solution.

Though high-risk pools have existed for three decades, they cover only 207,000 people in a country with 47 million uninsured, according to the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans. Premiums typically are high, as much as twice the standard rate in some states, but are still not nearly enough to pay claims. That has left states to cover about 40 percent of the cost, usually through assessments on insurance premiums that are often passed on to consumers.

(His pre-existing condition plan is really disaster capitalism at its best - or worst.)

The AFL-CIO looked at his veterans record and found that he doesn't much give a damn.

He wants us to keep spending $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, just like Bush... he even took sides with Bush against increasing health care benefits for veterans.

The Democratic Party again took a look at his ad buys and noticed some illegal coordination:

The short-story is this: on July 2, the McCain campaign placed $1.5 million in advertising in the Virginia area. The next day -- July 3 -- the McCain campaign canceled that media buy. On the very same day -- July 3 -- the outside group made a large media buy in the same region, filling the gap created by the McCain campaign's cancellation.

It's possible this was all just a coincidence, but given the close connections between the McCain campaign and this particular group (Vets for Freedom, also known as VFF), I have my doubts. In May, VFF attacked Barack Obama with swiftboat style ads. This created a bit of controversy, because at the time both Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman were on VFF's board of directors. Each has since quit the group, but it's hard to imagine that the McCain campaign has cut ties with the outfit altogether.

And Republican economic hack Larry Kudlow took a look at his energy policy, and was delighted to report that any meaningful step to combat climate change has been totally eliminated, in a sop to the right-wing.

I went back last evening and carefully read his 15-page policy pamphlet called “Jobs for America.” Here’s what I found: There is no mention of cap-and-trade. None. Nada. There is a section about “Cheap, Clean, Secure Energy for America: The Lexington Project.” But that talks about expanded domestic production of oil and gas, as well as the need for more nuclear power and coal along with alternative sources. Then it has the $300 million battery and flex-fuel cars. But nope, no cap-and-trade.

So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn’t missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

So, like I said, no wonder he's ducking the press. Although, I doubt they'd have much to ask him beyond how awesome it was to have served his country and "Would you like another donut?"

AK-Sen: Series Of Tubes Loses Labor

Amazingly enough, Ted Stevens used to be a pretty good friend to labor. I guess when you've been in the Senate that young you've voted for everybody's interests at SOME point. But that's all over now and Stevens is a doctrinaire Republican with a side of corruption and pork. And he's now lost the AFL-CIO endorsement for the first time in history. Mark Begich is their endorsed candidate.

Alaska could see a federal sweep this year. Even Obama.

Bring It On, McSame

This is fantastic.

Senator John McCain does not plan to make any public statements during today's brief visit to The Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach.

But union families, organized through the Monterey Bay Labor Council, intend to make some of their own.

A union demonstration against the senator's economic policies will take place at noon at the Highway 1 entrance to Pebble Beach during McCain's $2,300-per-person fundraising luncheon. The demonstration is part of the AFL-CIO's recently launched $53 million "McCain Revealed" campaign, which focuses on McCain's support of President George W. Bush's economic policies, which the AFL-CIO claims have hurt working Americans.

McCain's spent three days here in California, giving speeches that show he's as out of touch with America's domestic and foreign policy challenges as he is unsuccessful with a teleprompter. Please come back, John, we'll leave the light on for ya. Between this labor muscle and a general distaste for Republicans, the more McSame wastes his time arguing for a third Bush term in California, the better.

More On McCain's Bind

I hear that Barack Obama went after John McCain on his flip-flop on taxes. That's great, and I hope we'll see more of it, but you can't really expect the Democratic candidates to have a major focus on McCain right now. They have to run against one another right now. In a way, getting hundreds of thousands of new Democrats to register in Pennsylvania is more effective than making some statement against McCain, so I'm not so concerned about that. And considering that labor will be going all in to define McCain right now, I'm even more unconcerned by the negatives of an extended campaign.

The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union organization, will announce plans Wednesday for a $53 million effort to elect a Democrat to the White House.

John McCain greets employees at Savvis Inc. during a campaign stop in St. Louis, Mo., Tuesday. (Associated Press)
The AFL-CIO will rely on one of the oldest strategies in the political playbook: Define your opponent before your opponent defines himself. The labor organization will launch its “McCain Revealed” campaign to paint McCain as anti-worker and to tie him to the economic policies of President Bush. The AFL-CIO, which is an umbrella group for dozens of large national labor unions, has tailored messages about McCain for each of its member unions. Members of the American Federation of Teachers will get information about where McCain stands on education, for example.

That'll be important in old labor states in the Rust Belt. Meanwhile, McCain is still in a tremendous bind. He is being defined by Democratic groups as the same as Bush, and yet people like Tony Perkins are demanding that he move further to the right, which only validates these Democratic claims. And the result of that bind is relationships with people like this:

Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a "strong, true, consistent conservative." The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain's effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."

The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the "spiritual desperation" of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual "culture" ("homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree"), the "abortion industry," and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.

In a chapter titled "Islam: The Deception of Allah," Parsley warns there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization." He continues:

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

I know that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock with the expressed purpose of defiance against Allah. That just the kind of religious freedom they sought.

McCain's really in trouble. He uses the rhetoric of a progressive reformer while accepting the sludge of lobbyists and evangelical nutcases. Further, he doesn't even UNDERSTAND the rhetoric he uses.

In general, (Theodore) Roosevelt does not seem to think, as today's conservatives tend to, that the government is a necessarily inefficient and generally counterproductive force best used only in cases, like the national defense, where there is no workable alternative. He agrees with today's progressives, who tend to think that while of course the government should be made as efficient and flexible as possible, used well, it can help us to set the terms of economic activity in ways that benefit everyone, and ameliorate some problems that we, as a people, decide we should not have to live with. He seems to see government as an essential tool for achieving some collective goals; and while he seems quite clear that that tool must be used wisely and with skill, he does not seem to think that our efforts to use it will inevitably be counterproductive. To judge by this speech, he would have been baffled by Ronald Reagan's quip: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

If McCain wants to sign on to the idea of using government to ameliorate social problems, requiring employers to insure their employees against illness, unemployment, accident, and age, providing a living wage, and keeping people from falling too far into want and penury, it's news to me.

These discrepancies are going to come out in the fall. Trapped in a vice, needing to excite base conservatives and simultaneously run away from them, dozens of contradictions and unfortunate partnerships are going to come to the surface.

Songs of Innocence and Experience

I think we're starting to see a realignment in the Democratic Presidential primary with a Washington insider/Washington outsider split. I admire and respect Chris Dodd, but he and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are clearly on one side of this, wedded to conventional thinking, while Barack Obama and John Edwards are on the other. Richardson is outside of this debate and under the radar, Kucinich is to the ideological left, and Gravel is on his porch and wants you off his property.

Biden was clearly the defender of Washington convention wisdom, the David Broder candidate, at last night's AFL-CIO debate. He took shots at Obama and Edwards at various points for their lack of experience. This exchange was typical:

Throughout the 90-minute debate, each sought to show superior labor credentials, producing one memorable scrape between Edwards and Biden.

"It is fine to come up on this stage and give a nice talk," said Edwards, who is competing hard for union endorsements. "The question is: Who's been with you in the crunch? In the last two years, 200 times, I have walked picket lines. I have helped organize thousands of workers, with 23 national unions."

Minutes later, Biden issued a withering putdown, saying he has walked with and fought on behalf of labor for more than three decades, often in difficult circumstances. "That's the measure of whether we'll be with you when it's tough," he said. "Not when you're running for president in the last two years, marching on 20 or 30 or 50 picket lines."

Right, it's not tough to stand with labor when the Bush Administration is pushing back against unions at an historic rate. Apparently organizing thousands of workers is the wrong thing to do. Biden's actually demeaning it. Somehow I don't think that's a winning answer. Nor is this ideological blind spot that says that only bipartisan solutions will pass. Seems like we've had a relentlessly unipartisan President accomplish a good bit of what he's wanted over that past 6 years. And it reveals a crucial disconnect between the Biden mindset and that of the country outside of DC.

If there is anything that has been apparent since the Democratic takeover of Congress, it’s that many and probably most of the current Republican members of Congress will NEVER work with Democrats for the good of the country. Since the rise of Newt Gingrich, the majority of Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that they don’t care about the good of the country. Grover Norquist is inadvertently one of the most honest of conservatives, and when he referred to bipartisanship as date rape, he wasn’t revealing just his own personal view, he was describing the mindset of much of the Republican Congressional caucus and it’s allies in think tanks, among campaign hacks and activists, and in a sizeable chunk of its electoral base.

It’s a realization many of us had come to long ago. It’s one of the reasons many of us ended up on progressive blogs, the knowledge that George W Bush, his allies in Congress and the people who push them in to power will use unscrupulous means to attain, maintain and exercise power. They know they have to conceal their unscrupulousness from the public. While the Republican party has veered farther and farther to the right, the American people haven’t really budged. In fact, on individual issues, the American public is more liberal today than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and far more liberal than it was when Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, which provided the mandate to enact our major civil rights legislation and the most major extension of the social welfare state since the New Deal and World War II [...]

Senator Biden, please look around, and realize that the solutions to our nation’s woes, the answers to our challenges, aren’t bipartisan. The involvement of people looking for solutions and to meet our challenges could eventually be bipartisan, but current evidence suggest otherwise. No more than four House Republicans have voted for any of the most meaningful pieces of legislation dealing with Iraq. Only four Republicans have joined the Senate Democrats on Iraq. The Republican Study Group in the House engages in delaying tactics almost every day; to see one reason why the House—which has passed significant legislation—isn’t doing more, look at how many bullshit procedural votes the Republican offered last week. In the Senate, the Republicans continue to use the filibuster and cloture votes to bottle up almost everything the Democrats try to accomplish. The Republicans go along with just about everything Bush and Cheney shove down our nation’s throat.

And it's in this category where Hillary Clinton is lining up. Her starpower and a fond look back at her husband has propelled her far out in front of the field so far. But the true colors are starting to show. She's starting to take hits for having a top aide whose PR firm includes a union-busting shop. The Yearly Kos debate was memorable for her only through her stirring defense of those poor, downtrodden Washington lobbyists. And last night's debate offered more missteps.

I'm watching the AFL-CIO debate, and Clinton has made some more major mistakes that open her up to charges of being an elitist and out-of-touch insider. In the argument over Pakistan, Clinton just said that if you are running for President you "shouldn't say everything you think", and got booed.

Earlier, she had fleshed out her opinion on Iraq. While outlining her plan for the country, most of it was focused on withdrawal, but there was an important caveat.

But if it is a possibility that Al Qaeda would stay in Iraq I think we need to stay focused on trying to keep them on the run as we currently are doing in Anbar province.

Anbar is tactically meaningless, as Al Qaeda has left the region and gone elsewhere in Iraq due to tribal pressure. That Clinton is saying that Anbar province is an example of the success of the surge suggests a serious lapse in judgment. She has learned nothing. I have heard that O'Hanlon is an advisor of hers, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. She is making the liberal hawk argument for remaining in Iraq, or even, supporting the surge.

Clinton's been trying to blur the lines on all of these fronts, trying to get the Democrats on stage to unite behind her, but it's not likely to work; the rest of these guys want the job too. And the true measure of how she's feeling the heat is the fact that she's doling out the pork, offering temporary bailouts for homeowners facing foreclosure. It has a lot of merit, particularly the predatory lending penalties and eliminating early payment penalties, but that doesn't seem to me to be a long-term solution. It's a short-term fix to engender compassion for her and her campaign. Because there is some faltering going on right now.

I would think that the last thing Clinton wants is for Biden and Dodd to join with her on the experience train. Obama and Edwards run the risk of cancelling each other out if they don't differentiate themselves, but clearly this is a change election. Presidents historically don't have a lot of Washington experience. That's just not what the country likes. And it's because Washington experience breeds a kind of contempt for real people and real solutions, rather than bipartisan "serious" solutions. This moment at the AFL-CIO debate cannot be credibly answered by Washington insiderism.

QUESTION: After 34 years with LTV Steel I was forced to retire because of a disability. Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of my pension and my family lost their health care.

Every day of my life I sit at the kitchen table across from the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family and I can’t afford to pay for her health care. What’s wrong with America and what will you do to change it?

That is where the country is at right now, and I question whether Hillary Clinton will be able to make the sale that she's the one to change it.