They All Want To Be The Yacht Party

You wouldn't think that anyone would look at the dysfunction that is the California legislature and use it as a model, but that's precisely what the national Republicans have done in their party platform, as the eagle-eyed Matt Yglesias discovers:

Page 16 of the Republican Platform endorses a Balanced Budget Amendment “to require a balanced budget except in times of war” and then page 17 says that “because the problem is too much spending, not too few taxes, we support a supermajority requirement in both the House and Senate to guard against tax hikes.”

The next time you see some legislative Republican weeping crocodile tears about the impact of the late budget, understand that they consider it a success, all the way up to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and John McCain. They desire a balanced budget amendment and supermajorities to pass tax increases, so that no matter who holds the seat of power, spending cuts must be used as the only possible answer to any fiscal crisis or economic downturn, with no consequent way to reverse them after the downturn subsides. This is what they want - they think a paralyzed government is the best possible solution. In fact, if they could do away with the government itself - except for the cushy salaries for the lawmakers and their staffs, of course - then it would be absolutely perfect.

In practice, there aren't enough votes to make the desired spending cuts, either, so the only recourse is borrowing. So what the Republican wet dream really looks like is a perpetual mortgaging of the future, spending billions upon billions in taxpayer money for no material benefit.

When we do get the opportunity to overturn this at the ballot box, what has to be made clear is that Republicans want no part of governing. They are hostage-takers, and far from this being a localized problem in California, it's a national strategy to strangle government, and to lock in impossible burdens that constrain Democrats and Republicans alike. There's a name for professional hostage-takers, but I don't think I need to tell you what it is.

The Inside/Outside Strategy On Health Care

I know that the Democratic platform, which will be ratified this week in Denver, is a worthless piece of paper, in many respects. But the movement that led to the language change in the platform - with Democrats asserting a guarantee of health care for everyone - is very much worth considering. Clearly, the movement progressives made it impossible for Democrats to ignore them on this issue:

If one thing came through in the platform hearings, it was that Democrats are united around a commitment that every American man, woman, and child be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive healthcare. In meeting after meeting, people expressed moral outrage with a health care crisis that leaves millions of Americans–including nine million children–without health insurance and millions more struggling to pay rising costs for poor quality care. Half of all personal bankruptcies in America are caused by medical bills. We spend more on health care than any other country, but we’re ranked 47th in life expectancy and 43rd in child mortality. Our nation faces epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases as well as new threats like pandemic flu and bioterrorism. Yet despite all of this, less than four cents of every health care dollar is spent on prevention and public health.

The American people understand that good health is the foundation of individual achievement and economic prosperity. Ensuring quality, affordable health care for every single American is essential to children’s education, workers’ productivity and businesses’ competitiveness. We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health
system workable and affordable. Doing so would end cost-shifting from the uninsured, promote prevention and wellness, stop insurance discrimination, help eliminate health care disparities, and achieve savings through competition, choice, innovation, and higher quality care. While there are different approaches within the Democratic Party about how best to achieve the commitment of covering every American, with everyone in and no one left out, we stand united to achieve this fundamental objective through the legislative process.

As Paul Krugman noted a couple weeks ago, this was put front and center in the platform because the party listened to the desire for change. The middle class is overwhelmingly open to national health care, as they see that the current system is fundamentally broken.

Americans are struggling to pay medical bills and are accumulating medical debt at an increasing rate, according to a survey released today.

"A perfect storm of negative economic trends is battering working families across the United States," said the survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent research on health care [...]

Two-thirds of the working-age population was uninsured, underinsured, reported a medical bill problem or did not get needed health care because of cost in 2007.

More than two in five adults in the 19-to-64 age group reported problems paying medical bills or had accumulated medical debt in 2007, up from one in three in 2005. Their difficulties included not being able to afford medical attention when needed, running up medical debts, dealing with collection agencies about unpaid bills, or having to change their lifestyle to repay medical debts.

It's clear that there's a movement toward revamping the health care system, and it's being achieved with an inside/outside strategy. On the inside, grassroots Dems with an assist from Rep. John Conyers got the health care guarantee in the platform. From the outside, Health Care for America Now has been putting extreme pressure on Congress through an avalanche of phone calls, getting 188 members on the record on whether they support the guarantee. They've also been blasting the insurance industry and their front groups by exposing them and their tactics to block change and reinforce the status quo. There's even been a new-wave resumption of the Harry and Louise ads, with the difference being that they now understand the need for fundamental reform.

There is no doubt that enacting a universal health care plan would be immensely popular. Here's Krugman:

I know that’s not what everyone says; some pundits claim that the United States has a uniquely individualistic culture, and that Americans won’t accept any system that makes health care a collective responsibility. Those who say this, however, seem to forget that we already have a program — you may have heard of it — called Medicare. It’s a program that collects money from every worker’s paycheck and uses it to pay the medical bills of everyone 65 and older. And it’s immensely popular.

There’s every reason to believe that a program that extends universal coverage to the nonelderly would soon become equally popular. Consider the case of Massachusetts, which passed a state-level plan for universal coverage two years ago.

The Massachusetts plan has come in for a lot of criticism. It includes individual mandates — that is, people are required to buy coverage, even if they’d prefer to take their chances. And its costs are running much higher than expected, mainly because it turns out that there were more people without insurance than anyone realized.

Yet recent polls show overwhelming support for the plan — support that has grown stronger since it went into effect, despite the new system’s teething troubles. Once a system of universal health coverage exists, it seems, people want to keep it.

Obviously, the biggest barrier to this is making sure John McCain isn't elected. He literally wouldn't insure more than 5% of the currently uninsured with his health care plan, and by charging health care benefits from employers as income, his plan would massively raise taxes on the middle class. But Barack Obama's plan, as currently constructed, wouldn't get us to universality either. And he hasn't been raising the issue in a progressive way on the campaign trail, either. He has talked in the past about supporting single payer, but that was in a different context, one he doesn't see as politically possible right now.

Obama can't argue that he's a centrist on health care with no plans for increased government involvement because he likes to say things like “if I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system." Other campaigns notice him saying those things, and they send the quote to reporters. On the other hand, he can't extract the maximum political advantage from his universal health care plan because he doesn't have a universal health care plan [...]

His plan manages to occupy an uncomfortable middle space where it's neither liberal enough to really fit into the sharp liberal argument nor centrist enough to protect him from attacks of being a traditional liberal. And that's not a point of abstract logic: In the primary, he got slammed for not being liberal enough, and now he's getting slammed for being too liberal. it's almost no surprise that Obama doesn't really seem interested in making health care a defining issue. It's not really worked for him thus far.

So how do we tease out Obama and make sure he leads on health care? Jon Cohn's piece is a nice one, and suggests some tea leaves to read about Obama's priorities.

Does Obama grasp this? There are good reasons to think he does--starting with the fact that the platform language was strong even before the activists introduced their amendments. The original platform, whose principal author was veteran Obama advisor Karen Kornbluh, specified that everybody should have health coverage on a par with what members of Congress have. That's no small matter, since members of Congress get relatively generous coverage. It's the right thing to do: without a promise of sufficient benefits, universal coverage is meaningless. But following through on this promise would require passing a bigger, more expensive reform. If Obama wanted to downplay his commitment to health care, he wouldn't have made this vow so explicit.

The same goes for another potentially controversial element of his health care proposal: Making sure everybody has the option of enrolling in a public insurance plan that looks something like Medicare. A viable public plan would help keep private insurance plans honest, by setting a benchmark for affordability, benefits levels, and responsiveness. And if a public plan proved to be more efficient than private alternatives, it might eventually lure most Americans as enrollees, effectively becoming a single-payer plan by acclamation. That's why liberals love the idea--and conservatives hate it. If Obama were going to back away from some of his primary-race promises on health care, that's another place where he might do so. But the public plan, like the promise of generous benefit levels, was always in the platform--again, even before the amendments in Pittsburgh.

Most striking of all, perhaps, is the sheer amount of attention--and apparent priority--health care gets in the platform. Health care is the first policy issue the document takes up in depth. No other platform in recent memory dealt with health care so prominently--or in such detail. Even in 1992, the last year in which a Democratic nominee seriously proposed universal coverage, the platform relegated health care to lesser status: It appeared ninth in a long list of measures to improve economic security. Priorities like deficit reduction, public investment, and agriculture all came before it.

The goal for activists is to continue with an inside/outside strategy, one that keeps the current broken system in the minds of the public to overcome their fear of the unknown, pressures Obama and Congress to act, and build support everywhere. I do think it's possible, more than at any time since 1992.

Hopeful But Vigilant

Just because I've been digging in the mud for a little while here, I'd like to take note of something substantive Obama's Democratic platform, which is by and large a stunningly good document, much better than I expected, and more surprising to boot. Steve Clemons likes it:

I don't agree with all of it, and I'll nitpick here and there another time as everyone will -- but the broad parameters of this document are uplifting, feel real, and from a distance as well as up close, the prescriptions drafted here are clearly about rebuilding a "high-trust world" at home and abroad in contrast to the "high-fear world" that Bush and Cheney have wrought and which John McCain (regrettably) seems fixated on perpetuating [...]

I have read through much of the platform -- but not all. Some of the key zingers are a focus on technology and taking back the government and getting more democracy per se via technology. There is a focus on service, on faith-based efforts -- a focus on citizen stakeholding.

And what I love most about the platform is that it started with a focus on what we need to do in America as Americans -- and not necessarily on the wars and conflicts in which war are embroiled abroad. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars do demand our attention - as do many other international challenges -- but the defining challenges are here and should be addressed. The platform starts with these, and that is refreshing.

Here's a copy. These things aren't really useful in and of themselves, but in this early stage they do show Obama's worldview and how he will focus his attention on governing. And in that respect, I have to say that it's very refreshing. My favorite part is about the Constitution and civil liberties, which offers a toehold that we can use to demand major reform. I will quote at length:

As we combat terrorism, we must not sacrifice the American values we are fighting to protect. In recent years, we’ve seen an Administration put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The Democratic Party rejects this dichotomy. We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation’s founding commitment to liberty under law.

We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live.

We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. And we will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears.

We believe that our Constitution, our courts, our institutions, and our traditions work.

In its operations overseas, while claiming to spread freedom throughout the world, the current Administration has tragically helped give rise to a new generation of potential adversaries who threaten to make America less secure. We will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools to hunt down and take out terrorists without undermining our Constitution, our freedom, and our privacy.

To build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.

We recognize what leaders on the front lines of the struggle against terrorism have long known: to win this fight, we must maintain the moral high ground. When millions around the world see America living up to its highest ideals, we win friends and allies in this struggle for our safety and our lives, and our enemies lose ground.

For our Judiciary, we will select and confirm judges who are men and women of unquestionable talent and character, who firmly respect the rule of law, who listen to and are respectful of different points of view, and who represent the diversity of America. We support the appointment of judges who respect our system of checks and balances and the separation of power among the Executive Branch, Congress, and the Judiciary–and who understand that the Constitution protects not only the powerful, but also the disadvantaged and the powerless.

Our Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the foundation of our democracy. It makes freedom and self-governance possible, and helps to protect our security. The Democratic Party will restore our Constitution to its proper place in our government and return our Nation to our best traditions–including our commitment to government by law.

If we could be assured that these principles would be reflected in policy, we could all go back to sleep. But we can't. Obama caved on FISA and the Democratic leadership in Congress is just as bad. But this is on paper now, and the only way it becomes vital is by throwing it in every legislator's face to start a movement for major Constitutional reform. Ronit Aviva Sancis, one of the leaders of the "Get FISA Right" movement, has a good response to this on the subject of wiretapping, which I think can be broadened out to the whole document.

After eight long years of a complete disregard for civil rights and liberties that freaked out the otherwise unflappable Molly Ivins, reading these sections on civil liberties was inspiring. It's an unmistakable commitment to return to the rule of law. The draft platform makes use of the comprehensive approach Get FISA Right took on the issue of Constitutional rights and the theory of unchecked unitary executive power, which is the appropriate response to the wholesale attack on our liberties.

However, there are a few unanswered questions.

Although the draft language on wiretapping says all the right things, it leaves the door open for those - including various Democratic Senators - who claim that under the FISA Amendments Act wiretapping is under judicial oversight and in keeping with the Constitution. It's also unclear as to whether or not this constitutes a pledge to reform the flawed FISA Amendments Act passed this July.

The platform does include the "comprehensive review" of government surveillance programs Sen. Obama promised us. Sen. Obama said that such a review would lead to taking "any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future"; presumably review will lead to reform, but reform isn't specified in the platform.

We have a responsibility to drill down to the specifics and make sure that those who violated these liberties for the last eight years are held accountable - otherwise they'll simply pop up again and again.

Make no mistake - there's a big difference between Obama and McCain on these matters. And there's a blueprint for a just world, dedicated to the rule of law and the restoration of our democracy, right there in the Democratic platform. The follow-through, however, is very important. That's where a bottom-up movement can nudge things in the right direction. It's a question of values, and we have to make sure the party in power stands behind them.

The Difference On Choice

There's actually quite a bit of cause for cheer with the Democratic Party platform, so let this be the first in a series.

Via Dylan Matthews, it looks like the forces of Jim Wallis didn't manage to overcome the Democratic platform this year. Here's the plank on reproductive health:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empowers people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

As Matthews notes, that's even stronger than the language of recent years, when the mantra was "safe, legal and rare." There's that bit about "reducing the need for abortions" but I would imagine that most reproductive rights advocates would strongly support that as it's constructed.

Contrast this with John McCain's retrograde position on choice, which is as reactionary as anyone on the theocon right;

The campaign website of the same man who, eight years ago, said Roe shouldn't be overturned now says, "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench." He sent heartfelt words to the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention: "I am pro-life," he told them, "because I know what it is like to live without human rights, where human life is accorded no inherent value. (NOTE: John McCain NEVER talks about his POW service -ed.) And I know that I have a personal obligation to advocate human rights wherever they are denied ... when we fail to respect the inherent dignity of all human life, born or unborn. " McCain's advisers have said that he will not fight to soften the Republican platform on abortion, and McCain himself has said that it would be "difficult" to choose a pro-choice running mate [...]

During his political career, McCain has participated in 130 reproductive health-related votes on Capitol Hill; of these, he voted with the anti-abortion camp in 125. McCain has consistently backed rights for the unborn, voting to cover fetuses under the State Children's Health Insurance Program and supporting the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which allowed a "child in utero" to be recognized as a legal victim of a crime. He has voted in favor of the global gag rule, which prevents U.S. funds from going to international family-planning clinics that use their own money to perform abortions, offer information about abortion, or take a pro-choice stand. And he has voted to appoint half a dozen anti-abortion judges to the federal bench, as well as Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. During the Bork hearings, McCain attacked the Court's creation of a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade: "Whether one is pro-or anti-abortion," McCain said in an October 1987 hearing, "it is difficult to argue that the Court's opinion is not constitutionally suspect."

Some of these votes were, politically speaking, no-brainers for anyone vaguely in the pro-life camp. But McCain also joined efforts supported only by the radical wing of his party. He voted, for instance, with only one-fifth of the Senate to remove family-planning grants from a 1988 spending bill and with only 18 senators that same year against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening interference outside abortion clinics. Many solidly pro-life Republicans--Mitch McConnell, Kit Bond, John Danforth--voted in favor of the bill, called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). "We tried to get as many co-sponsors as we could, and we postured the thing as anti-vigilante violence," recalls Judy Appelbaum, a Washington lawyer who was counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy at the time and the lead Hill staffer on the bill. "We argued that, even if you oppose abortion, you should not condone these actions." According to Appelbaum, law enforcement officials, newspaper editorialists, health care providers, and law-and-order politicians all supported the bill. "There were a number of very anti-choice senators who voted for FACE," she says, "and [McCain] wasn't one of them." Instead, McCain joined senators like Orrin Hatch and Jesse Helms in opposition.

Despite a 25-year voting record on the issue, McCain has publicly sought to shade his statements and give everybody the impression that he's some kind of moderate on women's health. It's completely untrue, and this not only encompasses the 0 ratings from Planned Parenthood and NARAL, but his opposition to the Title X family-planning program, which offers free birth control and breast cancer screenings for low-income women. He's voted for abstinence-only education, against teen-pregnancy prevention programs, for parental notification laws for contraception programs, against mandating that health insurers cover birth control, for the "global gag rule" and for defunding United Nations agencies that provide family planning services for the poor.

McCain has tried in the past to limit his public statements on choice, but the record is very clear. The statements from those who know him best is clear. He's not just a hard-core conservative but a particularly brutish one, seeking nothing less than the control over women's bodies and women's health. This is a very important set of information to make public and widespread.