The Health Care Moment Has Its Epiphany

There's something of a consensus that Netroots Nation didn't offer enough adversarial panels and instead largely consisted of bloggers agreeing with one another. But that's not true. I personally witnessed the most adversarial panel of the weekend, and it was spectacular, because finally, both factions of the debate about health care policy on the left were able to come together and understand the political contours of the brewing fight in the Congress.

The panel was entitled "Time for Action: How the Netroots Can Lead on Healthcare Reform," and was put together by Eve Gittleson, who blogs at Daily Kos under the moniker nyceve. There's a good liveblog of the panel here, but what you need to know is that Gittleson stacked the deck. She had some great health care activists who are doing great work in different areas of the space: Giuseppe Del Priore, MD, MPH a New York cancer surgeon; Hilda Sarkisyan, whose daughter, Nataline, died after being denied a liver transplant by Cigna; Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles City Attorney, who is pursuing civil and criminal investigation into insurance practices; Geri Jenkins, RN a member of the Council of Presidents of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. And then Ezra Klein, associate editor for The American Prospect and a health care policy guru, appeared at the end of the panel. The aforementioned speakers were all powerful advocates. Sarkysian, whose family HAD health insurance and still couldn't get their daughter what she needed, said bluntly "This is not a good country anymore." Del Priore discussed the need for doctors and patients to handle questions of care and the need to arrest insurance executives for their crimes in denying coverage. Rocky Delgadillo outlined the schemes, like rescission (even based on spousal applications), that insurers are engaging in to maximize profit at the expense of patient care. He also mentioned how California regulators ignored a million-dollar fine to Blue Cross because they feared they would lose the case if it went to court, which is just unbelievable. And Jenkins argued that the insurance industry will play no role in reforming health care, and we need to move immediately to a not-for-profit system.

Good points all. And then Eve turned to Ezra:

Eve: Ezra, why does HCAN want to condemn Americans to this kind of system? I get confusing emails from Elizabeth Edwards and MoveOn talking about the atrocities of the insurance industry, then marginalizing the only viable solution. Can you explain this new Edwards HCAN initiative, the TV commercials, etc. . . What's it all about? What are they trying to do? It seems there are three initiatives on the table--676, Wyden and HCAN. What's wrong with Wyden and Edwards? And a follow-up...what can we realistically expect from President Obama?

I hope you don't mind that I'm sand-bagging you. I love you, really, Ezra. I just don't agree with you on this point.

This apparently startled Mr. Klein. But for him to not know the position of Eve and the CNA and an activist like Hilda Sarkysian speaks a lot to his cloistered state in Washington. Because I know all about this fight. I made one positive comment about HCAN upon their launch and took massive amounts of crap for it. I was called a defeatist and admonished for not being true to the cause. My only point was that having an organization with $40 million dollars to spend on calling out health insurers on their garbage is going to be tremendously helpful to whatever reform we get through the Congress, and furthermore I didn't see them having much of a place at the table in the policy debate. In other words they were finally an organization concerned with moving public opinion and playing the health care debate out on political grounds rather than policy grounds. And on the panel, Klein echoed the importance of politics over policy:

You can take a lot of approaches to health reform. You can emphasize policy, politics, principles, or some mix thereof. Judging from the panel, Health Care for All, and the California Nurses, could use a bit more politics in their approach. It was a panel about "health reform" -- not care or policy, but "reform" -- at a conference of engaged politicos that never mentioned the Senate, or votes, or the conditions required for presidential signature.

There was a lot of talk about "fighting" insurers and other special interests, but not much about what that fight will look like, or where it will take place, or who decides the winner. My argument, was that, for reformers, insurers aren't the real enemy. Setting them up as the opponent actually gives them too much credit. Insurers are stupid, profit seeking beasts -- the enemy is American politics, and in particular, the structural feature of the US Senate that have repeatedly killed health reform in the past. No matter what your policy preference, that's where your organizing has to be focused, because that's where the actual fight happens: In Congress. Not on panels, or on blogs, or among the Left. In the US Senate, where you have to get to 60, or at least figure out how to get rough Democratic unity for using budget reconciliation and then convince Kennedy and Carper to vote "aye" on the same bill.

This is basically the same argument Ezra makes continuously on his site, but it appeared to hit the audience like they never heard it before. And considering that it's largely the correct analysis, it was generally well-received, I thought. I spoke later with Eve, who told me that she had a conversation with someone from HCAN and "they are not the enemy." What a concept - all elements of health care advocacy on the left working together, for a change, toward a common goal.

Now granted, this week they all had a big juicy target. AHIP, the health insurance lobby, put together a fake grassroots front group called The Campaign for an American Solution. Of course, that "solution" involves funneling more cash and customers to the same broken insurance system we have now. Now, who was the very first group to coordinate a counter-attack on this front group on the first stop of their listening tour in Columbus, OH? That's right, HCAN

Well, that didn’t take long.

A day after Politico reported the health insurance industry is launching a health care reform campaign next week, the progressive reformers are firing back.

Health Care for America Now announced Friday that it plans a news conference and a rally next week to counter the insurance industry’s Campaign for an American Solution, which launches in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday with a roundtable discussion among uninsured locals.

“They’re pretending that the health industry represents the American public, and we need to make it really clear to them and the public that all they represent are their own profits,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care Now.

Indeed they did attend the launch, and got to ask some tough questions, confronting the head of AHIP and asking her how an insurance industry group could possibly be objective in pushing for lower rates and higher quality coverage when they are concerned solely with the profit motive. It got heated, and I'm glad they did. And all of a sudden, Daou's Triangle started closing. Rep. Pete Stark came up with a great quote:

"America's Health Insurance Plans' new 'Campaign for an American Solution' rings as true as the tobacco industry's efforts to end smoking. There is nothing grassroots about it. It is designed, financed, and coordinated through their Washington trade association with the singular goal of protecting their profits.

"I hope it is true that these companies intend to be a positive force in health reform efforts, but I tend to be cautious when the fox starts drawing up plans for a new henhouse."

HCAN called up the hotline for the Campaign for an American Solution that they set up for the public to provide input... and they got an answering machine. They've trickled this out one by one and pretty much ruined the launch of AHIP's front group. That's REALLY important for the future of health care reform. Because on the policy the views are far closer on the left than most people imagine. Everyone knows that whatever system is ultimately put forward can be paid for in a far better manner than the current wasteful, inefficient system. So expense should never be a deterrent, meaning we can build whatever system we choose and it is extremely likely to go revenue-neutral very quickly once we eliminate the shoddy budgeting of the current broken system. We know that health insurers will not jeopardize their profit margins unless they're forced to. Once you recognize these two realities, the policy goals become fairly clear. The political goals have to include attack dogs pushing back on the false memes of the right and the insurance industry, and pressuring the Senate to do the right thing.

Now Obama's plan includes some better regulation toward insurers (including guaranteed issue and community rating) and a public option to compete with the private insurance market and take the step toward a sequential single-payer. (His latest addition to the plan, a tax credit for small businesses who offer quality health care, is borrowed directly from the Clinton plan, raising hopes that eventually he'll just borrow all of it, as he should). Despite this being a fairly modest set of reforms, McCain and the right are going to denounce it as government-run "Hillarycare" anyway. So it's vital to have a broad coalition to give as good as they'll get from the right and give the lawmakers backbone to push the policy forward. Matt Stoller writes:

Coalitions are strange beasts, with multiple moving parts, but they are also the only way anything gets done. A coalition has a core of organizers behind it, and a variety of groups out in front who each take different roles. Some people can talk to Republicans, some people can talk to Democrats, some people threaten, some people cajole, some people talk to businesses, etc. HCAN is driven by labor in the form of SEIU, the NEA, AFSCME, and United Food and Commercial Workers, as well as groups primarily funded by labor such as Americans United for Change and the Campaign for America's Future. It is also driven by direct mail and Foundation based organizations, such as La Raza, Planned Parenthood, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, and the National Women's Law Center.

Stoller goes on to make the point that HCAN should broaden their mandate and make this a fight about general health, and I agree. Going after convenience stores that sell fatty, sugar-laden food to kids sounds like it could be a part of their mandate. The farm bill, the transportation bill (more mass transit and more livable, walkable cities means healthier lives), and others could be brought onto the field of battle. But the larger point is that coalitions of this nature are built because they work. And the benefit is that they give lawmakers breathing space to do their job and the spine to do it right. This moment in health care demands that everyone understands the political spade work necessary to reach the desired outcome. So out of the ashes of that contentious NN panel came something pretty special. Groups across the center-left ideological spectrum working together to end the health care crisis in America and restore treatment as a basic human right.

Card Carrying Liberal

I'm in some good company at around :22.



(this is a Living Liberally project to use "The Liberal Card" as a discount card for local businesses. Great idea, BTW)

Siegelman's Lament

Don Siegelman got a special pass from Alabama lawmakers to attend Netroots Nation, and he sat down with Air America's Sam Seder for an in-depth discussion of his case. Most of it was devoted to explaining the entire history of Siegelman and Karl Rove in Alabama - you can find plenty of that information in Scott Horton's archives. The story is quite sordid; both US Attorneys in Alabama and a cast of characters worked for years to put Siegelman behind bars. But Siegelman tried to keep the focus off of himself and onto the principle of justice. "My fate is in the hands of the 11th Circuit. What's important is the preservation of the rule of law in this country."

And that means getting Karl Rove in the Congress to testify. He has blown off the House Judiciary Committee, leaving for a paid junket on the day he was set to appear. There's not much time left in the Congressional session to get a resolution on this. At Netroots Nation, Siegelman asked Sen. McCain to step in.

On Friday, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman called on John McCain to compel his informal adviser Karl Rove to testify before Congress, and to remove Rove from any and all campaign capacities.

"Sen. McCain should distance himself from Karl Rove," said Siegelman. "And I think it is important and a smart political move [for him] to call on Rove to go and obey the law and to show up before the Judiciary Committee, to put his hand on the Bible, and to try to tell the truth - or at least plead the fifth." [...]

...he argued that it was absolutely vital that the presumptive Republican nominee -- who, according to published reports, has received money from and privately consulted with Rove -- insist that the former Bush confidante respect Congress' investigative prerogatives. Barack Obama, he added, should do the same.

"I would like to see Senator Obama speak out on this issue and call on Congress to hold Rove in contempt because no man is above the law," he said. "And I think its set a terrible example going forward if we do not hold Rove accountable."

There's no question. Rove's roots in Alabama go back to the days when he was rigging Supreme Court elections. Siegelman was the one Democrat he could never beat, so he put the full force of federal law to bear to ruin his career and his life. As the former governor said, "if this can happen to me, it can happen to you and your family." We need to send Karl Rove to jail.

UPDATE: At emptywheel's site, both Siegelman and fired US Attorney David Iglesias marvel at the logic that Karl Rove thinks he can avoid testifying by claiming that his role in the US Attorneys probe was part of his "official duties."

Claiming that the performance of "official duties" includes possible unlawful or criminal activity sets a dangerous new precedent, namely that as long as an advisor works in the West Wing of the White House, they have carte blanche to engage in any possible activity without being subject to the rule of law.

Um, yes.

California Pols at Netroots Nation - A Roundup

2) Charlie Brown (CA-04) - Charlie has been to all three Netroots Nation events, including the first two when it was known as Yearly Kos. He is a hero among this community, and he has a lot of support here. In fact, he proved it with a very well-received appearance at the Lurker's Caucus.

One of the people attending the caucus was Charlie Brown. He was there to do what a great many political candidates came to the convention to do -- speak to people, press the flesh, make them aware of his campaign and expand awareness. I was taking a seemingly arbitrary route around the room in calling on people to talk about themselves, and Charlie was one of the first people I called on.

Obviously there was a great interest in him, and there was a lively give and take between the attendants and The Colonel for about 15 minutes. He cheerfully answered questions and gave us all a good measure of him.

Now, there are a couple of things here that make this moment extraordinary to me. First of all, the odds were very slight that there were any people in this caucus who were from his home district. And this was the Lurkers Caucus, a group whose only unifying distinction is that they don't blog!! But here was Charlie, in a convention filled with bloggers, talking to the very people least likely to blog his appearance. (Yes, I'm blogging it now, but he didn't know I was going to be there...)

Secondly, after he spoke, we still had about 50 minutes of the caucus and we had resumed moving around the room, giving people opportunities to express themselves. Now, I know that Charlie was not there to share his lurking experiences. He was there to campaign. I fully expected him, and would not have blamed him in the least, to quietly slip out of the room in search of more campaigning opportunities at the convention. In fact, that's part of the reason I kind of steered the circuit of speakers to allow him to speak early. But Charlie stayed for the entire session, listening to people explain why they don't blog!

It was indicative of the respect Brown has shown for this entire community, from top to bottom, and it's what's going to make him a great Congressman from the 4th District. This is one of the top races in the country from the perspective of the netroots.

3) Debbie Cook (CA-46) - I think Debbie Cook, Annette Taddeo and Alan Grayson were among the most well-received newcomers at the event. Cook's passion for environmental and energy issues matched up perfectly with the overriding concerns of the entire conference, which helped a lot. At the Energy Panel she sat on, along with Alaska Senate candidate Mark Begich and Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, people in the room told me she was the most impressive. And Talking Points Memo was similarly taken with Mayor Cook, as can be seen in this interview for the popular site.



Cook switched her flight so she could make the Netroots candidate event on Friday night. I think she served her candidacy a great deal through this appearance, and considering that in-district donations to her campaign passed 70% in Q2, she has a lot of potential to raise her national profile online.

4) Rocky Delgadillo, LA City Attorney - Delgadillo, who lost to Jerry Brown in a primary for the Attorney General in 2006, appeared on a health care panel that I thought was the most interesting of the entire conference. I'm going to do a larger story on it, but Delgadillo's work in this area, rooting out corruption and illegal acitivity among health insurers, was justly recognized. I didn't see him walking around the conference. Here's a great diary from nyceve at Daily Kos about his efforts.

5) Mike Lumpkin (CA-52) - Calitics actually held an extended breakfast conversation with Lumpkin, running in the open seat created by Duncan Hunter's retirement. Here's a pic:



That's me, my subpar breakfast, Brian, Mike Lumpkin, and Lucas.

I thought Lumpkin was pretty good. He's a former Navy SEAL with 20 years of experience in counterinsurgency and command techniques, serving in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Notably, his plan for Iraq includes a total withdrawal of all forces, leaving no residual troops. He tends to frame most of the issues in terms of national security, which I guess is to be expected, and he talked about securing the border as well as energy security as two of his major issues on the campaign trail. Duncan Hunter's son, also named Duncan Hunter, is his opponent, and in the primary polls revealed that a substantial portion of voters thought they were casting a ballot for the incumbent, so this is not really an open seat in the traditional sense. Still, this is a race to watch, and I appreciated Lumpkin taking the time to talk with us.

6) Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Mayor - Mayor Newsom walked around the hall on Saturday, showed up at our Calitics/Alternet Books party, and introduced Van Jones on Sunday morning. Joe Garifoli has a little interview on why he attended:

Newsom is no stranger to online communication. He's been regularly courting Bay Area bloggers for stories that the uh, ahem, other news poohbahs in town aren't into. Just this week, he chatted up the city's wind power project with a handful of local and statewide bloggers. He's a Daily Kos and Huffington Post regular reader and occasional poster, and he copped to following threads around Facebook. "I really don't have time to be on there," he said of the social networking time suck.

"I'm not a convert, I'm one who recognizes the power and extraordinary influence the netroots have. Not just with politics, but it's about a different interactions with people." He went to Austin because "I wanted to understand more fully the intensity behind those names. We actually met 'Bill in Portland Maine.'"

Clearly Newsom was there to build a profile for a statewide run for governor, and I thought that was generally successful. There seemed to be a buzz around his visit as he walked the halls, and the crowd was receptive to his Sunday morning message, which focused on the environment. Some were skeptical of the message, and I hope he clarifies his position, but when I spoke with him, I found him very willing to engage on the issues. I asked about prison policy, one of my hobby horses, and while he wasn't fully informed on the topic, he expressed a need to drill down and asked me personally to provide him with whatever information I could muster. You bet I'll do so, and I respect anyone in politics willing to have a two-way conversation.

7) Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House - You may recall she had a little discussion with some dude on Saturday morning. That's been well-covered elsewhere. Speaking to Pelosi's staffers, I can tell you that she enjoyed the back and forth and expected MORE of a grilling, which may have been a fault of the organization or the perhaps too-respectful commenters themselves.

8) Russ Warner (CA-26) - This was Russ' second Netroots Nation, and he did his best to focus on meeting as many people as possible. I did tend to see him and his campaign staff just about everywhere. He delivered his passionate message about his son, who was in attendance, at the Netroots candidate event as well.

9) Steve Young (CA-48) - Steve is running for Congress but he's also a member of the community, and during the California caucus he was as active as anyone in participating in the discussion. The numbers he's been showing around on his race suggest there is a real chance here, and I hope he got a lot out of the event.

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.

Pelosi Weighs In

On the Maliki timeline question, which I asked her a few hours after the news broke, but her answer then is pretty similar to this:

President Bush has long maintained that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq should be governed by the situation in Iraq. It is now clear that the situation in Iraq is that Prime Minister al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders want the withdrawal of our combat forces to be completed within a 16-month period, as recommended by Senator Obama.

The safety of our troops demands that their withdrawal be well-planned. President Bush should direct officials of his Administration to meet immediately with their Iraqi counterparts to draft plans for the secure withdrawal of our forces within the timetable endorsed last week and today by Iraq's leaders. The honorable, responsible, and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq will enable us to refocus on the real war on terrorism in Afghanistan and around the world.

A lot of people are panning Speaker Pelosi's session at Netroots Nation, and it's true she engaged in an awful lot of buck-passing. However, Gina did try to ask some substantive follow-ups. The thing is that Pelosi is a pro who has been batting away questions for years. In the main, Pelosi is one of the better House members yet she's being sabotaged by the rest of her leadership. That's partly her own fault and I'd welcome a move by her to throw Emanuel and Hoyer under the bus, but it's not likely to be forthcoming. Her speakership is weak and the public gives Congress a 9% approval rating.

And of course, a lot of that buck-passing is CORRECT. The problem with most legislation is in the US Senate. That said, I would hope that, under a new President, the Speaker can take control of the political debate in a far better fashion. This Iraq quote is a good step.

Meet Mark Begich, Alaska's Next Senator

This is really good to see.

Alaska’s U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Stevens and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich has been a toss-up for several months now, but the Democratic challenger is now ahead 50% to 41%. When “leaners” are included, Begich leads 52% to 44%.

Begich began running his first television ads of the campaign on July 8 and the survey was conducted nine days later.

I've blogged about those ads previously, but this week I got to know Mark Begich as a person. He held an informal event with a bunch of us bloggers on Thursday at Netroots Nation, and because of the whirlwind of events I haven't gotten around to it until today. Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, which has 43% of the population of the state (and 70% of the media market), got into the campaign late for very calculated reasons. First of all, media is cheap, and an ad buy like he's started can have an immediate impact. Begich outraised Series of Toobz Ted Stevens in the second quarter, so he will have the needed resources. He had the same strategy in 2003, when he beat the sitting incumbent mayor of Anchorage in a close vote, and then went on to manage the city out of fiscal crisis and got them on better footing. The key, to him, is to be direct - to shoot straight with people and tell them what you believe. He calls in to any conservative talk show and even engages with random commenters on the Anchorage Daily News blog - so much so that his campaign staff has had to rein him in a bit!

Alaska is really a different kind of state, one that relies on help from the federal government because of its proximity and relies on the oil and gas industry for its wealth. Ted Stevens has cynically used this to steer contracts to his political friends and allies, but as Begich said "his clout is no longer working for Alaskan families," and there's a disconnect between the state's needs and the rhetoric in Washington. The one question I got to ask him was about oil exploration, because it's interesting that his first ad, in Alaska, was about his commitment to wind energy. "I couldn't have run that ad a couple years ago," he said, "but things are changing. Alaska is starting to view itself as an energy state, not an oil and gas state. He gave the example of salmon fishers off the coast (about 50% of our salmon come from this area) not being able to ice down their catches because it's now too expensive to pay for the energy to generate the ice. So their solution was an ice barge for all the ships and boats, powered by tidal energy. Alaskans are feeling these problems every day, and it's a common thread that unites them. And it can be the spur to real innovations and diversification of our energy future. That comes with a comprehensive energy policy, and while it's clear that Begich would vote for drilling in ANWR - although he said that a lot of the oil could be sucked up by nearby existing fields if they bent their pipes a little bit - he would use it as part of a comprehensive energy policy, which we currently don't have.

There are other issues in the campaign as well, including the SCOTUS (the reduction of the fine necessary for Exxon to pay in the Valdez aftermath weighs big with voters) and veteran's issues (11% of the state are vets, and yet there's NO VA HOSPITAL up there). The good numbers notwithstanding, this race isn't over - Begich described a 3-4 point "rubber band effect" where voters often come back to the GOP in the last week, and the local press is notoriously soft on the legendary Stevens. But there's a real opportunity here to send a pragmatic progressive to Washington who has the competence, the ability and the principles to lead Alaska in the Senate. I was pretty impressed.

Bill Scher at Liberal Oasis and CAF also interviewed Begich and has the video to prove it. That's below. See in particular his thoughts on protecting our fundamental constitutional rights from the politics of fear, and his beliefs about the netroots.

Puppet Show And Spinal Tap

The Republican Party is not what it used to be.

Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.

The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.

"With so many people concerned about the economy, it simply wouldn't be fair for us to ask delegates from all over the state to spend money to attend a convention if we know that a quorum won't be present," state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden said in a release.

This is similar to the fact that they held a competitor conference to Netroots Nation in Austin to "confront" the progressive blogosphere, and yet nobody knew about it, the attendance was pathetic, and their keynote speaker (not the Republican nominee, but the Libertarian one) paid to come to NN and wander around.

What a pathetic political party that is right now. Of course, it's up to us to make sure they have many more years in the wilderness.

Netroots Nation Hangover

As I said, it's really hard to follow the news and even discuss the news you're seeing before you in the middle of a big convention setting like that. If my nose is buried in a computer the whole time I've wasted by money. Netroots Nation has grown from a Meetup the first year, to what is now, for me, a giant family reunion. We see the friends and colleagues with whom we interact online all year in a completely new and vibrant setting, and our "threads" of discussion on the special events (Speaker Pelosi with Al Gore, Donna Edwards, Lawrence Lessig, Barack Obama's 6-minute video message, Van Jones, Bob Barr, various parties) happen in meatspace in real time. It's not a closed loop, as I'll be recollecting conversations and thoughts for weeks. But it's very hard to replicate that interaction instantaneously.

For now, I'll say that it was a fantastic event. All of the problems with the Chicago event, which mostly had to do with venue, were remedied. Yes, there were a lot of incredible panels all going on at once - I particularly regret missing Jeremy Scahill and Rik Hertzberg - but this offers a wide variety to everyone, and there were enough events that had a commonality of experience so that we all felt we were in the same convention. Next year's event in Pittsburgh will undoubtedly carry on the tradition. Gina Cooper, a real hero in all of this, is leaving, but next year Raven Brooks will be taking over the duties and I'm sure he'll be able to pull it off just as well.

Having the extra day in Austin was nice, too. After the Van Jones keynote (or sermon, if you will; he was pretty amazing), we hit up the world-famous Stubbs for their gospel brunch and the LBJ Library and Museum on the U-T campus (there was a 2-mile walk in 100-degree heat in between there, which helped work off the weekend's beer). I have further thoughts on that as well, but for another time.

For now, I'll just say that I'm back and ready for action again. Anything happening? Any Presidential candidates in Iraq right now?

...oh yeah, and this guy is a schmuck.

My Interview with Bob Barr

You may know that Bob Barr has arrived at Netroots Nation. He bought a one-day pass and decided to mingle with the assembled conventioneers. And he drew a crowd. I first spied him when Kate Sheppard of Grist was interviewing him about his environmental policies (a lot of "we don't know if man is causing global warming, we need further study, etc). All of us wanted to talk to him, but we didn't quite know what to ask. But after a couple of minutes it hit me, and my good buddy clammyc lent me his voice recorder and I sidled up to Barr to ask my first question.

Me: Rep. Barr, do you believe the impeachment of President Clinton was a good deterrent to the expansion of executive power and the establishment of the rule of law for the executive branch?

answer on the flip...

Barr: (chuckling) Good Lord no!

Me: So do you regret your role in the impeachment of President Clinton as House manager?

Barr: No, having public officials adhere to and be answerable to the rule of law is very, very important. What distresses me greatly is that Congress has not done, in the case of this President, what they should have done. And that is to inquire into what this Administration has done with regard to breaking the laws, on the electronic surveillance of people without warrants, the improper use of US Attorneys, etc.

Me: Would you have endorsed the impeachment articles that were referred to the House Judiciary Committee last week?

Barr: I'm testifying this Thursday before the House on some of these issues, not in the context of impeachment, but in the context of the rule of law and the separation of powers. So we will be getting into some of these things. But I think it would make no sense at this point to do impeachment--

Me: At what point would it have made sense? What year would it have made sense?

Barr: You're not going to let me answer a question!

Me: I'm sorry, I'm just trying to follow up.

Barr: Go ahead, ask your question.

Me: Well, you're talking about a timeline, that it wouldn't make sense 6 months before the end of the President's term to begin an impeachment inquiry...

Barr: We're getting into the heart of a Presidential campaign. Anything that Congress would do at this point would be seen as totally political, and probably from their standpoint be counter-productive, because the other side would rally around the President, and possibly hurt the other side in the election.

Me: I have one final question. Do you feel that the impeachment of President Clinton, in effect, poisoned the well of the practice of impeachment, and always made it a political act, so that the current executive can always count on the fact that it would be seen as political to call for accountability in this fashion?

Barr: Impeachment is always going to be somewhat political, you are never going to get away from that. One of the things that I learned, and what I wrote about in my book, is that when I filed in November of 1997, the very first inquiry of impeachment, none of us knew anything about Monica Lewinsky. That didn't come up until three or four months later. The basis of which I believed it was necessary and appropriate had nothing to do with that, it had to do with national security matters, improper campaign donations from foreign sources and so forth. But even had we moved in that direction, the Republicans didn't want to, that would have been seen as political. You're never going to get away from that. That's why it's so important in any impeachment to lay your groundwork, marshal your evidence, have those Congressional hearings first, rather than reaching your conclusion first.

Audio is coming in a moment, I'll update.

UPDATE: Audio (it'll show as soon as it's processed):



I think the intellectual bankruptcy of this argument speaks for itself, so I won't say much. Barr believes that the Clinton impeachment did nothing to strengthen the rule of law vis a vis the executive branch, but he thinks he was right to do it because having public officials adhere to the rule of law is important. He thinks that the impeachment he managed was important and necessary, but wouldn't currently do it with Bush because it would be seen as political. He talks about adherence to the Constitution but quite literally makes a timeline excuse for implementing a Constitutional check. And then he endorses the concept of fishing expeditions. I appreciate Barr's work on FISA and other matters, but this was self-protective blather, and mindless blather at that. To me it was instructive. But I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

How The Media Learned To Bend Over Backwards

OK, so welcome to the main exhibit hall, where we just had a debate between Markos and Harold Ford. (who defended the Congressional vote on FISA by basically saying that the Constitution doesn't poll very well. I'll elaborate later.)

Right now I'm in the front row of Digby's panel on the media, with Rick Perlstein, Paul Krugman, and Atrios. Not a bad group.

Digby dedicated this panel to Molly Ivins, who called for "sustained outrage" on the part of the citizenry against the instruments of power, admonishing the media for its too-cozy respect for authority. Now we're on to Rick Perlstein, who is giving a little history lesson on how the media went awry. Back in the early 1960s, footage of civil rights marchers having hoses turned on them galvanized public opinion against repression and bigotry. But in 1968, when the Chicago police beat up antiwar protesters half to death, the public opinion was the opposite, "Right on for the cops," etc. There was a popular bumper sticker in the country at the time, reading "I Support Mayor Daley and His Police." The press, who considered themselves guardians of the public interest, started to consider whether or not they were prejudiced, elitist, not rooted in the heartland of America, biased toward young people and minorities. And it basically all went to shit from there.

This is going to be good. I'll update...

...Now we're on to the media's liberal guilt, and Spiro Agnew's series of speeches (written by William Safire) on the "nattering nabobs of negativism" and how the media is trying to tell ordinary Americans what to think. We're 40 years on and these pundits still are haunted by this. Old narratives die hard.

Paul Krugman is up. He says he was never told to stop writing what he was writing in the run-up to war through much of the Bush years, but he was told that he was making management nervous. In 2005, he was indirectly told to lay up a bit, and that "the election solved some things." He said that a lot of these failures of the media aren't exactly political. They go beyond politics. "It is better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right." The example is how nobody who was actually right about the war is allowed to comment about it, but that's also true with the housing bubble, etc. "There's something wrong with you if you actually figure this out too early." There's a narrow range of being counter-intuitive. It's acceptable, for example, to say "Bush is actually better on the environment than you think."

Send Karl Rove To Jail

I'm watching the premiere of Meet The Bloggers, a brand-new Web-only issues and answers chat show, at the main hall at Netroots Nation. Marcy Wheeler, Baratunde from Jack and Jill Politics and Liliana from Alternet are discussing the case of Karl Rove blowing off the House Judiciary Committee and politicizing the Justice Department. I saw Don Siegelman today, and we all know this story, but to hear Gov. Siegelman say it himself is absolutely stunning. As he said, "If this can happen to me, someone with power and authority, this can happen to you and your family." This is about perverting the system of justice and restoring fundamental rights and the rule of law.

There's a lot of activity around this today. Gov. Siegelman put up a site called ContemptForRove.com, to send a petition to legislators to not let up on their emasculation by this Administration.

Recently, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Karl Rove, demanding his testimony about his own role in the politicization of the Department of Justice and politically motivated prosecutions of Democratic leaders, including me.

Karl Rove refused to even show up for the hearing, claiming that Congress has no power to compel senior White House officials from testifying. That's outrageous. Yet again, Karl Rove has showed his callous disregard for the law and for Congress' constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government.

It's time for Congress to act: Forward an email to your Member of Congress below, urging him or her to support a contempt resolution against Karl Rove. If Karl Rove won't respond to a legitimate Congressional subpoena, it's time to turn up the heat.

And Brave New Films has come out with SendKarlRoveToJail.com.



To paraphrase Baratunde Thurston, there are 2.3 million people in prison in this country, but Karl Rove can blow off Congress and have relative impunity. If anyone deserves jail, it's him.

What's The Obama Angle?

This is just dumb.

Sen. Barack Obama’s support of a recent overhaul of domestic spy laws that rankled many on the left still has them rankled if the opening session at the annual Netroots Nation convention taking place in Austin, Texas, is any indication.

One of the first questions at a session on ground organizing run by Parag Mehta of the Democratic National Committee was about what Obama supporters should tell voters they meet while canvassing who are angry about his vote. Mehta inquired how many of the dozens of people in the room felt the same way–almost every hand in the room shot up.

Mehta offered a suggested line. Tell them “it was a bad bill but there were things in the bill worth fighting for,” he said.

This is a textbook example of a news outlet going to an event with the story already written. Nobody likes Obama's support of the FISA bill but the idea that it should be the lede of talking about this convention is just nuts. There's this real desire to create a split between Obama and his so-called base. First of all, we're not necessarily his base. Second of all, we're going to criticize and praise in maybe equal amounts and make our assessments. Third, this isn't the Borg, you have a couple thousand people here with their own perspectives. At a convention about the progressive movement and all of the great ideas that we're trying to push into the mainstream, to turn this into "Obama v. Netroots" tosses out about 95% of the equation.

This narrative needs to be thrown out.

Greetings From The Fuck Panel

Hey, so hello from Netroots Nation in Austin. I'm sitting in Digby's panel on language and rudeness and horrible vituperativeness on the Internets. So I'll try and liveblog it a little bit for you, just to bring it to the comfort of your living room or office.

...The idea of the panel is about the role of language inside the blogosphere. Digby just mentioned about how blogging is taken a bit more seriously than it was in earlier days when it was an extended conversation. And so the language is a bit more professionalized. However, as we all know, she doesn't hold back.

...Atrios just brought up the ultimate bit of rudeness in the last decade... Tom Friedman's "Suck. On. This." quote. "If Tom Friedman can say suck on this to Charlie Rose, I can say fuck every now and again." If the ideas and policies we've been subjected to over the last several years are truly offensive and repulsive, then why exactly should the words be so horrifying?

More in a minute...

...also on the panel are Jesse and Amanda from Pandagon, the Rude Pundit, and Kevin Drum, so a mix across the "fuck" spectrum. Jesse just mentioned how people mistake profanity for anger, but sometimes it's standing in for bemusement. When you see something so offensive, you can use it as a shorthand.

...Atrios said that when people on the right or in the traditional media throw a hissy fit about language, it's really about removing authority and critiquing on the margins instead of addressing the substance of the arguments. That's not to say that they are right, and we ought to censor ourselves (there are other means of marginalization). But it's well-known that there's an element that talks about bloggers by saying "they say nasty things on the Internets" to avoid the real issue.

...Here's a pretty good point to throw out there by Digby. Somehow bad language has been associated with the left. Never mind that John McCain has been quoted in public making some, shall we say, untoward comments. But it doesn't get reported, by and large. But the left ends up tarred with the brush of vulgarity. As she says, "I think the response to that is to own it and say it even more." Kevin Drum says it about a public/private argument, that when you swear in private it's somehow OK, but in public it's deeply horrifying. Think of the Jesse Jackson weeklong brouhaha. They actually got an extension in the news cycle because they found another word to hype. A word.

Day One Thoughts

This is going to be random and disconnected and based on what I remember, which given my state of 4 hours of sleep might not be much.

• Debbie Cook is making a lot of believers, and it's well-deserved. My initial thoughts on her fundraising were that she was doing OK, but her beating Dana Rohrabacher was more of a function of him being incredibly lazy. What I'm being told by Cook's people is, no, he's trying pretty hard and Republicans are stiffing him. He's certainly an abrasive personality and it could be that a lot of people want him to fail. Cook is on the energy panel this morning, which I may look in on for a bit. She and Charlie Brown are the most exciting races in California, and both of them are here and were at the California caucus, which went well.

• The Open Left caucus became a bull session about why we can't get an advantage on the energy issue, why "Drill Now!" is so effective even though everyone knows it's bullshit. I think Matt Stoller hit the nail on the head when he talked about how, in an era of high gas prices, people will gravitate to SOMETHING as long as it looks like leadership, and the Democratic message on energy is so ad hoc and muddled that the leadership isn't there. Even the things they do right, like this "Use It Or Lose It" thing, they don't promote effectively. Apparently there was a vote on that yesterday. Hey, can we get some advance warning, guys??? There is a Democratic message sometimes, but it's not always broadcast effectively.

• Wes Clark and Howard Dean gave solid enough speeches last night at the evening keynote, and it's good to see Clark out from the bunker after his non-gaffe about John McCain, but these are the same stalwarts. I found it very telling and revealing to learn that the Senate had scheduled a Martha's Vineyard retreat for a bunch of big-dollar muckety-mucks and leading candidates this weekend. I really don't think that was unintentional. There is not one sitting member of the US Senate here, and a lot of the candidates have to split their time between here and the big-dollar meeting. Scott Kleeb was here AS HIS BABY WAS BEING DELIVERED last year, and this year he opted to go up and kiss the ring. That's not a slam on Kleeb, it's the bottom line of politics. But there's no question that the calendar sent a message to me. Sometimes this does feel like a treadmill; I commiserated with a couple people over this last night. We know change is not going to be immediate, but I don't know if we're learning the right lessons yet. The movement has come a long way but there's a danger of dislillusionment if we don't crash the gates necessary to wield real political power.

• Austin is a great city. It must have the highest concentration of bars per capita in the United States, based on my stroll to some of the offsite parties last night. Looking forward to getting some barbecue at some point.

• I'll be liveblogging a couple panels today, in particular the media panel with Atrios, Digby, Paul Krugman and Rick Perlstein.

• This is hilarious:

It may be the blogosphere's equivalent of the scarlet letter, and the organizers of Netroots Nation, a gathering of liberal bloggers that is taking place this week, say they will be more than happy to pin it on Fox News.

Planners of the conference want to force representatives of the cable news network to wear credentials identifying them as opinion media rather than providing them with the regular press passes other news outlets will receive.

"Fox News calls itself fair and balanced, but it's not," Josh Orton, political director for Netroots said in an interview. He accused the network, which is popular among conservatives, of misrepresenting itself.

Fox lied and said they were never coming to the convention anyway, apparently they had called in for passes and then abruptly changed their tune.

• OK, gotta run.

Netroots Nation Thursday Check-In

Hey, finally got the Internet toobz untied. I'm sitting in the Open Left caucus right now. So far it's been fun. For putting together a California caucus in 24 hours, it sure turned out well. We had about 100 folks there, and four Congressional candidates - Debbie Cook (CA-46), Charlie Brown (CA-04), Russ Warner (CA-26), and Steve Young (CA-48). We had a pretty good discussion about the 2010 governor's race and the need for eliminating the process crap that makes California ungovernable.

Darcy Burner just introduced herself at the Open Left caucus to a round of applause. It's fun to just run into her at lunch, as I did this afternoon. It really is a community here, people of like minds who strongly believe in moving the country in a progressive direction. It's also a bunch of friends who aren't just here to hang out, but to work together.

Honestly, for maybe the first time in a while I have a strong pull to be offline instead of online. The informal chat sessions here are the best part, and you miss them if your nose is buried in your laptop. And with that, I'm out.

For now.

Netroots Nation

So I'm off in the morning to Austin for Netroots Nation. It should be a lot of fun, and it's always cool to meet the people you read and interact with online every year. I'm not on any panels, but we did manage to throw together a Calitics Caucus to discuss California-related issues. It'll be tomorrow at 3:00 in Room 18B. Details here. And if you want to get your ass beaten in the Pub Quiz, come to that and be on a team other than mine (wow, that was the whitest-sounding trash talk in history).

I'll try to post stuff as time allows, but I've always found that to be a near-impossibility at this convention, so I'm not going to sweat it too hard if I don't check in a bunch. Netroots Nation is for getting offline and talking to people.

So, light posting through the weekend. Cheers!