Coalition Of The Killing Health Care Reform

I'm officially worried about health care reform because of the hands in whom the reform rests. Max Baucus has reverted to his old self. Spooked by a CBO price tag of around $1.6 trillion dollars over ten years for his initial version of a reform bill, he scaled it way back, limiting the subsidies that people would receive to pay for insurance and eliminating the public option (here's the draft). If the best you can call it is comprehensive incrementalism, that's not exactly the slogan on which you can stir people to action.

The numbers tell the story. In that plan, subsidies reached 400 percent of poverty. In this plan, they've been cut to 300 percent. In that plan, Medicaid eligibility was as high as 150 percent of the poverty line. In this plan, it's 133 percent for pregnant women and children, and 100 percent for childless adults. In that plan, the "gold" coverage was 93 percent of a person's estimated expenses, and "bronze" coverage was 68 percent. In this plan, those numbers are 90 percent and 65 percent, respectively. That means people with a low-cost plan might be covered for only 65 percent of what they're likely to need.

You're talking about forcing people to pay for health insurance, giving them less than what they need to afford it, and providing penalties if they don't. It's no surprise that this tracks perfectly with the plan from the health insurance industry. In fact, it's actually WORSE. And Baucus is actually looking to weaken it further through blessed bipartisanship.

Seven senators have formed a bipartisan group to find consensus on health-care reform legislation, a sign of fresh momentum after a week of setbacks.

The group, dubbed by its members as the "Coalition of the Willing," includes Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the ranking Republican on the panel, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa). Others who attended the first meeting this afternoon in the Capitol included Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), and GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the ranking minority member of the Senate health committee.

As Atrios notes, "The last coalition of the willing helped cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a war based on lies."

Here's the paradox. I'm guessing that the CBO score rose because health care costs continue to rise and we really can't wait to bend that cost curve. But there's a simple reason that the initial health care reform plan got a bad CBO score. That's because it didn't include the kind of rebust public option that could drive down costs 20-30%. Or the kind of comparative effectiveness research that could reduce overtreatment and put costs in line with effectiveness. And so the options for Baucus, when faced with a bad score, was to do less or actually to do MORE. Because the MORE reform that you enact, the MORE savings you get in the long run.

When the Lewin Group looked at various health proposals last year, it turned out that the one that did the best at controlling costs was Pete Stark’s bill:

Creates a new public health insurance program administered by the federal government to provide everyone with multiple choices for health coverage. Under the Stark bill (H.R. 1841), employers would either offer their employees coverage or pay into a fund to cover their employees through the new public program.

This doesn't mean all is lost, actually. In the House, Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly called for a public option, and the three committees working in tandem on the bill will provide one when they roll out their legislation. In fact, Pelosi has intimated that no legislation could pass the House without a public option, because "if it’s not real, it’s no use doing." Donna Edwards said the same thing here:

CENK UYGUR: Representative Edwards, of course you don't speak for the entire house, but you are inside the Democratic caucus. And what is your sense of the caucus? Will they insist on the house signing on the public option, or is that still negotiable?

DONNA EDWARDS: Well, I have, we've had a number of conversations in a variety of caucuses, you know that the tri-caucus, which is the Black caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, I mean, Asian Pacific Islander caucus, actually came up with a set of ideas and principles for healthcare reform, as did the progressive Caucus and a strong public option was part of that. Well if you add the numbers together, those caucuses, if you don't have those in the fold, then you don't have a bill.

CENK UYGUR: All right, that's pretty clear. And let me ask you one last thing, if somehow the bill does pass through without a public option and Barack Obama declares victory. "Hey, we got healthcare reform. Yeah we didn't get the public option, but we got healthcare reform overall." Is it a sham?

DONNA EDWARDS: Well I think it will be doggone near impossible to define reform as real reform, lasting reform for the American people if it doesn't have a public option. And I'm coming from a standpoint where I actually believe that we ought to have a single-payer healthcare system and I think that it's been very unfortunate that in some ways that has been taken out of the game, and off of the table. As a result, we are here scratching and clawing for a strong and robust public option. And I'm willing to do that, but it must be strong, it must be robust, it must cover everybody, and it must cover prevention, and it's got to be competitive.

However, clearly the Senate bill is in terrible hands, and there's still the nagging problem of how to pay even for a $1 trillion dollar bill. The various ideas run up the flagpole just don't seem to have broad support. For reasons of bipartisanship, Democrats in the Senate are destroying whatever merits the bill could have, to make the bill palatable to the kind of health industry CEOs that live to steal. You can see how this might go. Senators stiff-arm real reform. The House stiff-arms any half a loaf. And nothing happens.

That would be unacceptable to the President. And so his mission must be to sell the damn bill. He was elected in large part on this kind of plan, and he needs to impress that upon weak-kneed Senators who live in perpetual fear. Without tangible reform, people are just going to give up on the Democrats and it would be hard to blame them.

It simply amazes me that Democrats could last eight years of frantically chasing whatever the hell Republicans want to talk about that week as if the Earth will crash into the sun if America don’t solve whatever problem right now and act as if they slept through the whole thing. Remember how putting aside whatever you were doing for what felt like a solid month to argue whether we should invent some new government power to stop one man in Florida from letting his brain dead wife pass on? Then there was the time Republicans convinced a swath of America that stretched from Fred Hiatt to Tom Friedman to Matt Yglesias that if we didn’t attack Iraq tomorrow Saddam Hussein might hit the east coast with radioactive al Qaeda terrorists dropped from remote control planes powered by biological weapons! You know how they did that? Sales. Whatever crappy policy the Republicans wanted to pass, they sold the hell out of it. We can agree that Republicans couldn’t govern their way out of a room with no walls, no floor and no ceiling, but god knows they could sell.

Watching Democrats try to fix health care I see a photo negative of the Bush years. Here is an issue with obvious urgency. Setting aside our shameful infant mortality rate, uninsured rate and other statistics, medical bills are by far the leading cause of personal bankruptcies. Insurer misconducy wrecks lives every day in every city in America. The right options are obvious and relatively few in number. Huge majorities support doing the right thing [...]

Democratic politicians have dropped on this issue. I hear that Obama supports the public option. That would mean more if it felt even a little more urgent than his idea that we should have a college football playoff series. Ted Roosevelt didn’t call it the bully pulpit because it lets you chat on the radio for five minutes a week.

Congressional Democrats who wet their trousers at the thought of legislating without permission from Republicans are an order of magnitude worse. The liberal media is AWOL. When was the last time you saw a third party ad on TV that made you feel anything at all?

Anyone who can find evidence of message coordination on this issue wins a prize. Hell, I’ll give partial credit for proof that Democrats went into this with a coherent sense of what they want. Belaboring the obvious, people who care about what they’re doing normally enter negotiations with some firm goal in mind. Most would agree that it is moronic to make negotiating itself the point. Yet how is that any different from kicking off a ‘health care reform’ initiative without any firm idea of what the reform will entail? Reform is a process. Pick a goal and fight for it.

In my opinion, if Democrats cannot treat even a half-victory like the public plan as more important than Mitch McConell’s anguished, fake tears then they don’t deserve to win.

Mike Lux says this is just part of the troubles and it can smooth over. And Nate Silver believes that if the President takes hold of the debate we would see some rapid movement. I wish I shared their optimism.

Wired For Conservatism

E.J. Dionne is one of the first traditional media journalists, to my knowledge, to openly state that the media tilts to the right, in the context of how the chattering class leaps at any utterance from the Newt Gingrichs and Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys of the world, and he explains how this distorts the debate in Washington and what people pick up in the cultural milieu.

If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina [...]

This was brought home at this week's annual conference of the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive group that supports Obama but worries about how close his economic advisers are to Wall Street, how long our troops will have to stay in Afghanistan and how much he will be willing to compromise to secure health-care reform.

In other words, they see Obama not as the parody created by the far right but as he actually is: a politician with progressive values but moderate instincts who has hewed to the middle of the road in dealing with the economic crisis, health care, Guantanamo and the war in Afghanistan.

Dionne goes on to describe a panel he witnessed Tuesday with Jared Polis, Donna Edwards and Raul Grijalva - three of the most progressive members of Congress, but three whose names aren't in the Village Rolodex, and whose views have almost no impact on the way the debates in Washington are presented to the public. That doesn't mean they don't have power and importance - their decision along with the Progressive Caucus to pool their power and force the public option into the health care debate was masterful - but it confuses the way Obama is presented, and the space to criticize him from the left. Edwards explained this very specifically:

Polis, Edwards and Grijalva also noted that proposals for a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system, which they support, have fallen off the political radar. Polis urged his activist audience to accept that reality for now and focus its energy on making sure that a government insurance option, known in policy circles as the "public plan," is part of the menu of choices offered by a reformed health-care system.

But Edwards noted that if the public plan, already a compromise from single-payer, is defined as the left's position in the health-care debate, the entire discussion gets skewed to the right. This makes it far more likely that any public option included in a final bill will be a pale version of the original idea.

Her point has broader application. For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media's discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.

And actually, this SUITS Obama. If he wanted to pick his enemies, he's much rather have Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney than Jared Polis, Donna Edwards and Raul Grijalva. For one, the public has a fairly definitive opinion of those conservatives, at least relative to Obama, and the President wins those debates without saying a word. For another, Obama has no need to move from the moderate center if the Beltway criticism doesn't approach him from that perspective. His choice of advisers and policy options clearly put him in that moderate mainstream of the Democratic Party, and it's where he feels - has always felt - the most comfortable.

The media has an interest in defining the terms of the debate, indeed a self-interest, given the conglomerates that they are. When ABC News gives the same amount of space to Sean Hannity as they do to the Secretary of State, implicit in that editorial decision is the fact that Hannity has spent many years as part of the ABC Radio Network. When business stories betray a perspective more sympathetic to corporate America than the working class, the very fact of the corporate behemoths that populate modern media bear a lot on that decision. But these decisions also enable Obama to operate without equal pressure from all sides of the policy argument, essentially a free hand. This may keep conservatism alive, but it also co-opts the Democratic Administration by giving them the only pressure they consider important - pressure from the right.

Netroots Nation Notes

I think I have a particularly bad memory for events with huge groups of people where I meet hundreds of people at one time. So I'm going to rack my brain and put down everything here I can remember that I don't want to explore in a longer post.

• One of my favorite panels was the Iraq panel, which featured some of my favorite bloggers. Matt Yglesias gets the prize for the funniest insight when he talked about the White House's surprise at Hamas winning the Palestinian elections and said "You'd think Republicans would figure out that nationalism combined with excessive religiosity would be a powerful electoral strategy." Also that was the panel when I looked over and saw someone accessing my site in the middle of it. First time that's happened. I talked to him later at some bar, but didn't mention that.

• You've probably heard around the blogosphere about the final two keynotes, from Donna Edwards and Van Jones, but let me reiterate that they were quite amazing. This year the best keynotes were surely at the end. Here were two African-Americans stressing the need to stay true to principles, to work outside the system and take it on, to criticize our nominee when necessary and to work from the bottom up for change. Edwards is inside Washington as the newest US Representative, and despite being an early supporter of Sen. Obama she would not be silent in the face of his decisions that she didn't agree with.

And that's an important lesson. And it's a lesson that I learned, actually, when Bill Clinton became president. Because when Bill Clinton became president, many of us on the left, liberals and progressives, became very silent. And that was a mistake, because that mistake brought us some policies that were really not so great. And so we really can't make that same mistake with President Barack Obama.

But we need to be on the job today to make sure that he, and not John McCain, is elected as president of the United States. And don't be fooled about that.

... Finally, I want to share with you that not on any day, by any stretch of the imagination, do I believe that the United States Government should be listening to my phone calls. And if they do, and if they decide they want to listen to my phone calls, then they need to go to a real court and get a warrant.

And I want to tell you that just temporarily we lost that fight. But it's only temporary. Because it's going to come back. Because there is no way -- it's about the American public being smarter than the politicians in Washington.

• As for Van Jones, and I really knew little about him before this weekend, but his speech was stirring. He's an environmental justice activist who has keyed in on green jobs as a way to unite progressives and the poor ("when oil demand goes up, the price goes up; when solar demand goes up, the price goes down."), create a new post-carbon economy and save the planet for the next generation. Fresh off an 8-day trip to the Arctic with Jimmy Carter and other luminaries, he's seen the consequences of climate change and knows the need for action. But there's a danger, as Isaiah Poole notes:

But Jones also reminded the audience that Carter tried to rally the nation around a clean energy and conservation agenda in the late 1970s, only to see his popularity collapse in a lethal combination of inflation and stagnant economic growth—“stagflation.”

Jones said the same toxic economic brew—sharply rising inflation and sluggish economic growth—could quickly undo Sen. Barack Obama just as it did Carter if he wins the White House. Only this time, the consequences could be much more dire.

“If we are not careful, if we are not smart, this could be the precursor to a right-wing backlash that would make us miss John McCain, Make us miss George W. Bush,” Jones said.

The right is MUCH better at backlash than governing, and they'll certainly try to divide the disenfranchised and use Barack Obama "as a pinata," like Jones said. I don't think there's a lot of thought yet about how to deal with this because it's premature. I'm glad Jones brought it up, as it made me think.

• The "Larry Craig caucus" sign in front of the men's bathroom was priceless.

• Other notable panelists and speakers - Wes Clark (there's a TPM interview here), Florida Congressional candidate Annette Taddeo (a non-Cuban Hispanic Jew from South Florida), the always great Charlie Brown (CA-04), Hilda Sarkysian (the health care activist whose daughter died while waiting for a liver transplant), and of course Paul Krugman and Rick Perlstein. I'll have more on the health care panel and Don Siegelman at another point.

• The Rude Pundit went out to the conservative "competitor" to NN and had some fun with Mike Stark. They apparently accosted John Fund and Grover Norquist and accused both of having sex with each other. Classic. After Norquist told him to fuck off they apparently went over to TGIFridays. Hilarious. By the way, I'm publicly apologizing to the Rude One for getting in the way of his game on Friday night.

• It was awesome to personally meet Texas' greatest populist Jim Hightower, my new (or old) favorite blogger Jesse Taylor of Pandagon, and so many others. The Editors and the Sadlynauts have to show up at some point and then life will be complete. I'm sorry to have missed Jeremy Scahill and Mark Danner.

• Don't really know what to say about that Markos/Harold Ford discussion, but it was such a cavalcade of discredited conventional wisdom that I don't know how to put it. As I said, Ford essentially said that we should have ignored FISA because the Constitution doesn't poll well, which really assumes that we should be led around by the whims of the electorate instead of leading, an odd pose from the head of the Democratic Leadership Council. That said I think Markos did the right thing staying above the fray, as Ford was hanging himself with his own rope.

• We came in second in the pub quiz - basically one question away from beating the Daily Kos front-pagers. I missed the "Who Shot J.R." question, which in a way angered me the most.

• News coverage was generally good, although the Austin American-Statesmen came up with a terrible Page One story on Sunday that called Nancy Pelosi (D-Beijing) and injected all kinds of opinion into a straight news story. I didn't link it because the Statesman took it down and apologized today.

• I have to say this was the best conference yet. It was extremely well-managed, and better integrated with the city to allow for tourism as well as interaction with everyone in a social setting. I like the diversity of the panels that allowed you to customize your experience, and become exposed to all sorts of different viewpoints. It's a little overwhelming, and I think people ran out of gas by the end, so some midday break sessions might have been useful. Overall, I'm sure the organizers will continue to tweak it and improve it even more. And of course, just putting a couple thousand irreverent bloggers in the same space is bound to be a blast.

The Speaker's Lost Her Conscience

We're seeing a real separation of those on the side of justice and those on the side of cover-ups in the FISA fallout. On the side of justice, for example, is Patrick Leahy:

But after months of negotiations, the House today unveiled a new FISA bill that I cannot support. While I applaud the fact that this legislation includes some of the important surveillance protections we wrote into the Senate Judiciary Committee bill last year, it fails to hold the Bush-Cheney Administration accountable for its illegal wiretapping program.

I will oppose this new FISA bill when the Senate votes on it next week. We must do everything we can to protect Americans from the Bush-Cheney Administration's erosion of our civil liberties and callous disregard for the rule of law -- and this new FISA bill fails that test.

Of course, he was cut out of the decision-making on this "deal."

On the side of cover-ups is Nancy Pelosi:

Tomorrow, we will be taking up the FISA bill. As you probably know, the bill has been filed. It is a balanced bill. I could argue it either way, not being a lawyer, but nonetheless, I could argue it either way. But I have to say this about it: it's an improvement over the Senate bill and I say that as a strong statement. The Senate bill is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. This bill improves upon the Senate bill.

But you probably know that. What you may not know is that it's improvement over the original FISA bill as well. So it makes progress in the right direction. But these bills depend on the commitment to the Constitution of the President of the United States and of his Justice Department. So while some may have some complaints about this, that, or the other about the bill, it is about the enforcement, it is about the implementation of the law where our constitutional rights are protected.

But I'm pleased that in Title I, there is enhancement over the existing FISA law. Reaffirmation, I guess that's the word I'd looking for. A reaffirmation that FISA and Title III of the Criminal Code are the authorities under which Americans can be collected upon. It makes an improvement over current law and the Senate bill in terms of how you can collect on Americans overseas.

It's an improvement over the Senate bill in terms of – the Senate wanted to say, “Okay, we will agree to exclusivity,” which is, in my view, the biggest issue in the bill, that the law is the exclusive authority and not the whim of the President of the United States. They said, “We will agree to exclusivity, but only a narrow collection of things will fall that that category. Under the rest, the President has inherent authority under the Constitution.” That's out. That's out, thank heavens.

And it is again in Title II, an improvement over the Senate bill in that it empowers the District Court, not the FISA Court, to look into issues that relate to immunity. It has a strong language in terms of an Inspector General to investigate how the law has been used, is being used, will be used.

So that will be legislation that we take up tomorrow. We will have a lively debate I'm sure within our caucus on this subject and in the Congress. It has bipartisan support.

She's out of her mind. She says that the problem was with implementation of the bill, yet the bill lets the White House off the hook for 7 years' worth of illegal implementation of warrantless spying. She won't say that the District Court will assuredly immunize the telecoms because they are empowered only to see if the President gave them a piece of paper which said "this is legal." She thinks exclusivity is the most important part because that's what Feinstein told her, but if the President can hand over a piece of paper and make the illegal suddenly legal, there's nothing exclusive about FISA.

Before Pelosi became the Minority Leader in 2003 she was the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. She was briefed on these activities and knew at least the colors of what was taking place, if not the details. She's protecting her capo Steny Hoyer and protecting herself. This is what Nancy's allowing to go forward:

Reports of the newest FISA compromise indicate that, on telecom immunity, a federal court would be compelled to grant the telecoms immunity if there was substantial evidence that the Bush administration assured them that the warrantless surveillance program was legal. Doesn't that actually endorse and extend to private actors the Nixonian view that if the president says it's legal, it's legal, regardless of what the law says and the Constitution says? Wouldn't that set an awful precedent that an administration could get private actors to do whatever they wanted including breaking the law?

Despite authorizing a monarchy today, Pelosi managed to swear in Rep. Donna Edwards, a real progressive that tossed out her telecom-money-besotted chum Al Wynn, and actually used the words "Do you solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States?"

To which I would have said, "I don't know, Madam Speaker. Do you?"

...incidentally, we're hearing that Sen. Obama's staff is reviewing the FISA issue. His staff has known what was about to happen for some time. He can still end this tomorrow. He can make sure this never sees the light of day in the Senate. I know it would be terribly partisan to stand up for the rule of law and the Constitution, but it's well within his capacity. We'll have that test of his conscience in the coming days.

Old Corporate Democrats Never Die

They just go to K Street.

Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) is expected to announce Thursday afternoon that he will leave the House in June to join a Washington, D.C., law firm, according to Democratic sources.

Wynn was defeated in February in his bid for a ninth term when he lost the Democratic primary to challenger Donna Edwards.

They can all go to K Street for all I care, and spend their time lobbying actual Democrats who beat them out for their seats. People like Donna Edwards.

Responsible Plan

Second, I'm going to be trickling this out as the day progresses, and we have to wait until 5:30pm ET for the official release of the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. But I've collected a bunch of video from the Congressional candidates who have currently signed on and the military leaders who were instrumental in its creation.

Brigadier Gneeral John Johns:



Major General Paul Eaton:



Eric Massa, NY-29:



A compendium of all the candidates who have signed on thus far.



In addition, here's an excerpt from Chellie Pingree, from ME-01, writing about the plan at the Huffington Post:

Let me be clear: we have to stop the war and end our occupation of Iraq. More "surges" or "pauses" won't solve anything. But we need a plan -- a responsible plan to not just end military operations in Iraq but to also start putting our efforts into using non-military means to address the political, economic and humanitarian problems in the region. At home we have to rebuild a broken military and repair our institutions of government. The checks and balances built into our Constitution must be restored and we must restore our commitment to an independent media.

The problems that the Iraq War has created are complex and reach into every corner of our society. The solutions are complex, too, but within our reach. Working with Darcy Burner (candidate in WA-08) and Donna Edwards (candidate in MD-04) we have developed a package of policy proposals that, if elected, we will work to pass in Congress. The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq goes well beyond ending military activity in Iraq -- it includes proposals that not only get us out of Iraq, but begin to repair the damage the war has done to our economy, our society and our standing in the world. We have also focused on what went wrong in the run up to the invasion, with the goal of preventing a future Administration and Congress from getting us into another unjustified, indefensible, misguided war.

I heard from Darcy Burner yesterday at a conference held by the New Organizing Institute, and I'm reading over the plan in more detail now. As I said, I'll have more later, but let me just say that, speaking for me only, the amount of support a candidate for Congress or the White House will get from me, in terms of dollars, volunteer time, online organizing, precinct walking, etc., is largely predicated on whether or not they support this plan. This is non-negotiable.

Again, more on this in a bit.

A Nice Birthday Present?

Voters in Maryland appear to be rejecting a corporate Bush Dog Democrat:

Update--Huge night for progressive movement: With every precinct coming in with at least a 10% improvement for (Donna) Edwards over 2006, let me reiterate this point: the new primary voters who are coming out for Barack Obama are also going to result in the first progressive displacement of a centrist, corporate, congressional Democrat via a primary in years. This it it. This is what we have been working for and building for. This is our emerging majority. We finally have the organization, and the voters, and the whole ball of wax. The movement has thoroughly come of age.

Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and the whole gang fought hard to keep Al Wynn in power. Donna Edwards had nobody but the people. And the people were enough.

Barack Obama's going to wake up one day and figure out that the movement he's inspired is a whole lot more progressive than he is, and if he wants to stay out in front of it he had better implement a progressive agenda.

This is a small step, ultimately, but the Donna Edwards victory, if it happens, would be a powerful reminder that the progressive movement is present, growing, and ready. I hope we can pull it off.

UPDATE: It's official. What a great victory. Edwards will not only be a Congresswoman whose vote we can count on, but a real progressive leader in the House. And Al Wynn will be just another lobbyist.

Don't mess with the progressive movement.

MD-04: One Day For A Better Democrat

The Washington Post actually endorsed Donna Edwards this weekend, and it's a good article:

For her part, though, Ms. Edwards, a lawyer and foundation executive, has been an effective, energetic advocate for a range of liberal causes -- the environment, higher minimum wages, stemming domestic violence, campaign finance reform. As a community organizer, she has been an unstinting voice for improving mass-transit options, although sometimes at the expense of building roads that the 4th District badly needs. Even in cases where she clashed with local developers, however, she won their respect as a sensible and no-nonsense adversary. Poised, persistent and principled, she would make a fine representative for the 4th District.

Mr. Wynn has long touted what he regards as a pragmatic ability to work across partisan lines. We're all for bipartisanship, but in Mr. Wynn's case, too often his stances have been unthinking and out of step with his district's interests. His vote to scrap the estate tax suggested he was indifferent to his own middle-class constituents. By flip-flopping on fuel-efficiency standards and opposing campaign finance reforms, he showed his contempt for clean air and clean government. And he seems scarcely aware of the import of his votes to permit federal courts to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case and to support a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning: granting federal courts a license to meddle in private affairs and cramping free speech.

These may be the votes that pissed me off more than any in the Bush era: the estate tax, the energy bill, the Schiavo vote, flag-burning, and you can add the Iraq war and the bankruptcy bill. Wynn is a horrible Democrat, particularly in a district which is so reliably liberal. He relies on low-information voters, and tomorrow he's relying on a bunch of new Obama voters that know nothing about him and will just pull the lever for the incumbent. Also, there are a lot of other candidates in the race to splinter the vote and keep Wynn going.

Edwards almost beat Wynn two years ago. I really hope she can pull it off.

QOTD

Matt Stoller:

Hoyer had signs up outside, and he loves the Maryland flag, though it made him look a bit like the Congressman from Medieval Times.

Get that man a writing job!

The context of this is the Donna Edwards-Al Wynn race in MD-04, which we can win. I know Mark Pera got trounced last night, and it turns out that John Laesch narrowly lost to Bill Foster, although provisional and overseas ballots could change that. But Donna Edwards, who came close last time, is the best opportunity for a progressive to beat an incumbent Bush Dog Democrat.

Primary Watch: Donna Edwards, Mark Pera

The IL-03 election is just a day away, and Dan Lipinski has decided to tag Mark Pera supporters as a bunch of far-left socialists. They papered the Southwest Side of Chicago with these flyers calling Pera supporters "left-wing extremists" from "San Francisco and Hollywood" (guilty, but I've also lived in Chicago), who are "political punks" that snicker at the military and old people. No, really:



This is a Democratic primary, mind you.

Meanwhile, Donna Edwards outraised Al Wynn in the 4th quarter of 2007, and has more cash on hand as well as support from independent groups like SEIU and the League of Conservation Voters.

If we get just one of these two races, it'll be a political shock to the system. I think we can get both, because progressives and Democrats are so disappointed in this Congress and these incumbents.

Go Mark and Donna!

The Opportunity Of The February Primaries

It's actually in two Democratic primaries against incumbents, in Illinois and Maryland. I've been talking a lot about them, but that's because it's the area in which the progressive movement has the most ability to succeed and really change direction in Washington.

In IL-03, removing Dan Lipinski and replacing him with progressive Mark Pera is quite important.

But how do you send a signal when the other side is even worse? You take out some of the worst of your own party in the primaries. Dan Lipinski came to his office through an act of fraud when the elder Lipinski withdrew and made sure there’d be no competition by sticking a plant on the Republican side of the ballot. He remains in that seat with the blessing of the supposedly tough on corruption Chicago Tribune that dismisses the rank corruption that got him in office and has kept him in office as a number of interlocking State and Federal PACs and Campaign Committees throw money around to keep control of the 23rd Ward and the 3rd Congressional District. Federal employees work for these State PACs and Campaign committees while earning a good living on the tax payer dime. State PACs run by a registered lobbyist.

Oh, and he’s horrible on gay rights, immigrant rights, contraception and abortion, and civil rights.

And he’s in a safe Democratic seat where the primary will determine the ultimate victor. He’s the perfect target: corrupt and conservative.

Mark Pera, on the other hand, got in a race that looked nearly impossible and is oh so close to pulling it off. Help him do it.

Here's Mark Pera on breaking the special interest vice grip.



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In MD-04, Donna Edwards is a real deal progressive with excellent policy credentials going against blowhard Al Wynn, who's base appears to be telecom and energy lobbyists. He's now whining that his opponent is doing too well with fundraising, a clear tactic to muddy the waters and create controversy where none exists in a desperate attempt to hold onto power.

The campaign manager for Rep. Albert R. Wynn has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission alleging fundraising improprieties by Donna Edwards, his chief rival in next month's Democratic primary.

The Wynn campaign gave reporters copies of a 34-count complaint today alleging illegal collaboration between Edwards and several of the organizations supporting her in the Fourth District contest.

"There seems to be a vast, dare I say, left-wing conspiracy designed to circumvent campaign finance laws," Wynn told reporters during a conference call. "Within this scheme, her supporters are coordinating efforts to exceed fundraising limits and engaging in illegal campaign activities." [...]

An attorney with the independent Campaign Legal Center in Washington who was asked by The Sun to review the complaint said it didn't appear to contain any facts that would constitute illegal collaboration.

"Interestingly, and unlike most complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission, there's not a single provision of federal campaign finance law directly cited in the complaint," attorney Paul Ryan said. "Several of the allegations, in my view, make clear the complainant doesn't really have a clear understanding of what constitutes coordination under federal law."

You can help Donna Edwards here.

This is the opportunity. This is where we must focus our energies.

Dropping Like Flies Edition

This week's Republican to decide he's had enough is Rep. Jim Walsh, who represents a pretty blue district in NY-25 (the Syracuse area), where there is a great progressive candidate named Dan Maffei already in the wings (he lost by a mere two points last time). That flipped seat will improve the government in major ways, and while the change in the President is obviously of paramount importance, what's happening in the Congress will have positive ramifications well into the future. Getting Donna Edwards and Mark Pera into the House over some bad Bush Dog Democrats would also help. You can donate to them here. I'm in for twenty bucks.

More And Better Democrats

Two very big Congressional primaries on the Democratic side are happening in the next few weeks, and the progressive movement should arguably be more concerned with them than the Presidential primary. The leverage that progressives can have in setting the national agenda is directly tied to their ability to punish those wayward Democrats who undermine core values and principles through their votes and their behavior.

In MD-04, Rep. Al Wynn is holding one corporate fundraiser after another in an effort to keep his seat against grassroots progressive Donna Edwards. The latest includes practically every telecom and cable interest in America, at a time when they're all trying to get amnesty for breaking the law and spying on American citizens. Earlier he held one for energy lobbyists. Wynn's constituency is clearly the kind of powerful interests that have attempted to buy government over the last couple decades. Donna Edwards represents a step back from the brink.

In IL-03, Mark Pera is challenging Bush Dog Dan Lipinski, and Pera schooled Lipinski in a recent debate.

Speaking on the issue of energy and the environment, Pera said he would never have voted for the 2005 Bush energy bills, which gave big oil and energy companies $22 billion in tax breaks and allowed for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary Lipinski said he voted against drilling in ANWR and has resisted pressure from the Bush Administration to pass legislation that included tax breaks for big oil.

Pera said Lipinski had misrepresented his record to the voting public.

"I can't believe what I am hearing," Pera said. "Congressman Lipinski voted to open up [ANWR] for drilling. Congressman Lipinski voted for $8 billion in tax cuts for big oil. Now that he has a challenger like me, he's having an election year conversion."

Lipinski later admitted to voting twice in 2005 for the Bush energy bill (HR 6) in 2005, calling both votes a "tough choice."

The Pera-Lipinski primary is February 5. The Wynn-Edwards race is February 12. Both are crucial to the furthering of the progressive movement. You can donate to both of them at Blue America.

Ending The Bush Dog Majority

DiFi's paean to the guy who won't say waterboarding is torture is one of the more depressing things I have read as a Democrat. The worst part is clearly this dross:

I believe that Judge Mukasey is the best nominee we are going to get from this administration and that voting him down would only perpetuate acting and recess appointments, allowing the White House to avoid the transparency that confirmation hearings provide and to diminish effective oversight by Congress.

How could oversight consisting of rubber-stamping a nominee because he's "not as bad as Alberto Gonzales," which is like saying "he's not as bad an actor as Mr. T," be construed in ANY way as effective? Who cares if there's a confirmation hearing if the revelations that come out of them are dismissed?

Feinstein then says that waterboarding is already banned by the military under the Army Field Manual, and the Congress should quickly pass a bill putting non-military interrogation under the Field Manual too, and then that will be that. First of all, waterboarding already violates international law and at least three domestic laws, no matter what agency is carrying it out. And of course, Feinstein has no understanding of basic Constitutional measures like the veto, nor any hope of internalizing basic political strategy. (The excerpt below refers to a Fred Hiatt editorial that advocates the same thing as DiFi. In fact, I'm not convinced that Fred Hiatt and DiFi aren't the same person.)

That's not to say it would not also be a good thing to enact the Biden bill, which would specifically require all United States personnel, including the CIA, to use only interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual. That would be yet another step that would help prevent the Bush Administration from violating the current bans on torture by doing things such as implausibly characterizing its torture as "not torture."

HOWEVER . . .

1. Whether or not the Biden bill ever becomes law, it remains the case that the torture is, in fact, unlawful -- and that the Senate and the Congress have voted repeatedly for actual laws and treaties (the supreme Law of the Land) that say so.

and,

2. Just in case the Washington Post has forgotten about yet another legal text, it's worth reminding Fred Hiatt that although the Senate's vote to confirm Judge Mukasey would effectively make him the Attorney General, the Senate does not have the power to "pass" the Biden bill. That would require President Bush's signature, as well (or supermajority votes of both chambers) -- and President Bush won't sign such a bill, precisely because he wants to be able to keep violating the longstanding legal prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment.

What the Post might have written that might have made some sense: "Because Judge Mukasey and the Bush Administration do not seem to understand that the techniques they refuse to disclaim are torture and cruel treatment that are already unlawful several times over, the Senate should tell President Bush that it will confirm Judge Mukasey if and only if -- and after -- the President signs the Biden bill."

It's called leverage, and it doesn't take a wizard to see its possibilities. But far too many Democrats are so consumed by fear that the part of their brain that thinks strategically has shut down. Well, that's partly true. It's either that or they really aren't interested in Democratic Party principles, just in using the voter lists. This has been made clear by Bush Dogs' unwillingness to pay their DCCC dues because one Democrat, who holds no official position within the party leadership, had the temerity to suggest that they maybe should be primaried if they hold no respect for their constituents or the party message. This is what's killing the party right now, although not nearly in the same numbers as it has the Republicans. We need a party willing to fight special interests and understand their role in opposing the President, not one that gets fat off special interest money and overrides Congressional rules to stab progressives in the back.

Former Colorado parks director Lyle Laverty's confirmation to a top post in the U.S. Interior Department was pushed through the Senate on Monday while a member blocking the vote was home tending to his wife and newborn twins.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., for seven months had opposed Laverty's confirmation as assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, demanding that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne address ethical lapses within the department.

On Friday, Wyden's wife gave birth to twins, and the senator was in Oregon on paternity leave Monday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scheduled the vote.

"I am fuming," said Scott Silver, co-founder of Wild Wilderness, an Oregon forest advocacy group. "If an effort was made to go around Wyden, knowing that he was with his wife in the hospital just becoming a father of twins, that is truly shameful."

Right now progressives are either shut out or outvoted in the leadership, and are undermined in the rank and file by Bush Dogs and nervous Nellies. We need aggressive challenges to those who refuse to stand up for Democratic values or oppose Bush. We also need respected progressives to step up and join the fray; I'm glad to see Tom Udall reconsidering the Senate race in New Mexico, with the blessing of the DSCC. But those opportunities are rare. What's more common is Bush Dogs in reliably Democratic seats where proud progressives like Donna Edwards should be sitting. Nancy Pelosi actually held a fundraiser for her opponent in MD-04, corrupt incumbent Al Wynn. But the "counter-fundraiser" online raised as much money. And EMILY'S List endorsed Edwards, along with Progressive Maryland, a great state-based grassroots organization. The only way to rescue me from my despair over these sniveling cowards that pass for our Democratic majority is the hope that people like Donna Edwards can start chipping away at them, and in some way restore the party inch by inch. It's going to be a long road.

Breaking The Establishment Grip

This week, we learned that the Democratic leadership considers their strongest base of supporters nothing more than pests.

Though opposed to the war herself, Pelosi has for months been a target of an antiwar movement that believes she hasn't done enough. Cindy Sheehan has announced a symbolic challenge to Pelosi in California's 8th Congressional District. And the speaker is seething.

"We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow," Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor. Though crediting activists for their "passion," Pelosi called it "a waste of time" for them to target Democrats. "They are advocates," she said. "We are leaders."

In other words, don't question your leaders.

The leaders also ran to the New York Times to plead their case, which they happily lapped up as it plays into a narrative of Dems divided that the other side has been pushing since approximately 1856. They call Pelosi's style "responsible leadership." There's nothing responsible with giving the President a blank check for war and carte blanche to spy on Americans.

I've actually been more forgiving than most bloggers about what the Congress has done, there's actually an impressive list of accomplishments on lobbying reform, education, the minimum wage, and instituting the 9/11 Commission recommendations. But the tone, the whole "shut up and respect your elders" as a means to silence citizens who the Congress is supposed to be working for, is beyond the pale. And then there's this.

District 4 spans Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Dist. 4) is running for his ninth term in the Feb. 12 primary and is also facing off against Fort Washington attorney Donna Edwards, who lost to Wynn by just three points last year [...]

Meanwhile, Wynn campaign manager Lori Sherwood said Wynn raised about $160,000 in the last quarter, and has $400,000 still on hand.

She said the campaign plans to bank over $1 million, and that a fundraiser scheduled next month in Montgomery County with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should help them rake in the dough. Sherwood said the details of that event are still being worked out.

Al Wynn has sold out this party over and over again, and in the last primary against Donna Edwards, his thugs beat up her supporters at a debate. Yet he's an incumbent, so powerful forces will stick together, I guess. Edwards is a true progressive that would actually help her further her goals. But as I said, incumbents stick together.

The establishment refuses to stay out of these primary battles which are good for democracy. Well, fine. We'll just outraise Nancy's little fundraiser and make the whole thing backfire. At some point this will turn around. But it's a long fight.