If It Isn't On Page A1 Of The Washington Post It Didn't Happen

The spin cycle came out in force over the weekend, as a protest of conservatives on the Washington Mall either attracted 2 million people or 60,000, depending on whether or not you like to lie. This included such delights as a photo from a Promise Keepers rally in 1997 being passed off as one from Saturday.

Despite the falsehoods, the spin did its job, as it landed the teabaggers on Page One, a bit of a contrast to other protest rallies in the recent past.

Behold the media's glaring double standard. Today, the Post puts the "tens of thousands" of Obama-hating tea bagger protesters on A1; makes it the lead story as a matter of fact.

Back in 2002, when more than 100,000 anti-war protesters gathered in the nation's capitol to protest the Bush administration, the same WashPost did its best to ignore them:

The Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

This simply proves again that when right-wing (and mostly white) conservatives get angry, it's big news. When liberals get angry, it's just annoying.

I would add that the anti-war protestors that day in Washington were buttressed by millions more around the nation and the world leading up to the invasion of Iraq, but still...nothing.

60 million Americans voted against Barack Obama in 2008. Of that number at least half viscerally hated him, as you could see from the various McCain/Palin rallies during the campaign. a small tranche of those 30 million-plus people got so worked up that they organized and brought out people to a rally in the capital. That's good news for the newfound ease of organizing thanks to the Internet, but not necessarily descriptive of the level of sentiment over Barack Obama in the country. These are the same people who hated him before the election, and they hate him just as much now, despite his Administration not having done very much of anything to inspire such hatred. Nobody's paid more in taxes, a Bush recession headed to depression has stalled. This is the same gang who would have been out on the Mall if Obama had provided $100,000 and a new puppy dog for every family (socialist puppy dogs!).

I like a protests as much as the next guy, which is to say, a little bit as long as the drum circle is kept to a minimum. However, although imperfect, the best indicator of support, and even intensity of support, on the issues facing the country remains polling. And the latest poll on health care has a number of contradictory points, with alternating support for a public option and support for a bill without one, as well as support for bipartisanship with an acknowledgment that Republicans have no interest in being bipartisan. The large mass of people seem to want their government to come up with this change in the health care market, which they can assess after the fact. Beyond that lies confusion. And so privileging the work of a lot of angry white men rather than offering a complete picture of public opinion is really a form of deception from the Washington Post.

...The teabaggers are a classy lot, too.

A Lesson In What Not To Do

George Steph on how to properly punch hippies:

Here are the five key sets of questions they have to confront, both in the Roosevelt Room and in their consultations with Congress:

1. What is "death with dignity" for the public option? Is it better for the president to sacrifice it himself? Or convince Democratic leaders behind closed doors to come to him? Some will argue for taking the public option issue to the floor, passing it through the House and sacrificing it in conference -- but once you've gone that far, it may be impossible for House Democrats to back down. So, giving it up on the front end in some fashion is likely the preferred option.

2. How do you get the price tag down, likely to about $700 billion? At that cost the most unpopular tax increases will not be necessary. And moderates in both the House and Senate have already signaled that they can live with it at that level. Which leads to question 3:

3. Can you still make a convincing case that the country is on a path to universal coverage? What mix of phase-ins and triggers are necessary to make that case?

I can't take it. (If you're interested, 4 asks if any Republican votes other than Olympia Snowe can be gathered - even the White House knows that answer is no - and 5 queries how to do the speech, possibly with a joint session to Congress.)

Stephanopoulos is very plugged in, and so this could very well be the discussion at the White House. Who apparently have yet to figure out that forcing millions of Americans into buying crappy insurance that can only come from private industry will be so massively unpopular that, if Republicans don't repeal it, Democrats will be forced to themselves. That would be the quickest and easiest way to squander the majority possible, which at times I think is the Washington Democratic establishment's metier.

Number two is arguably scarier. Practically all of the money spent in this health care bill goes to two things - expanding Medicaid and subsidies for individuals to buy insurance. That's it. Reducing the cost of the bill either keeps more people off Medicaid or reduces the subsidies, making forced insurance under an individual mandate unaffordable. There's this notion that bloggers and progressive groups don't care about the poor, but we're not writing the bill, and kowtowing to the lunatic moderates who put a price tag above morality except when talking about war. I have understood that the coverage expansion elements of the bill were crucially important, and the same thinking that artificially lowered the stimulus cost to the detriment of state budgets and public investment would doom the coverage expansion elements.

And after all that, after assuring us that the wise course would be to ditch a public insurance option that would only exist to cut costs, and reducing the coverage expansion funds and subsequently putting the burden of universal coverage on the backs of poor people, Stephanopoulos asks, basically, "How can we lie about this to the public?"

I find it hard to believe that the White House would be so stupid as to think that making the least popular choices to the majority of Americans making under $50,000/year would be just the ticket to increase the President's popularity. Actually, just kidding, I don't find it so hard.

Weathervane

In almost a real-time correction to today's column, Paul Krugman explains the view from 5,000 feet on the public option:

Look, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; Switzerland does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.

One is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.

The second is what the option debate says about Obama.

If progressives had real trust in Obama’s commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn’t command that kind of trust [...]

So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that’s easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.

And I don't think he is a progressive. Nor did I at the time. But on health care, where he has positioned himself in the debate is with the most broadly popular provisions. He didn't support capping the employer deduction because people didn't want to see that happen. He put the focus on the insurance companies because they were hated more than anyone in health care reform. And he talked up the public option because it had 76% support.

Now that's waning because of the political pressure to pass a bill, and also because support of reform is waning generally. The popularity factor is coming up against the reality factor. But as long as a public option remains popular, I think Obama will support it. Therefore, progressives wanting to keep the public option in the bill really have to marshal that popular support.

The problem with this is the uncomfortable reality that the public option, as designed in pretty much every bill and as supported by House progressives, which would only impact the individual market and certain small businesses, and wouldn't have the bargaining power necessary to lower its own costs significantly, is indeed inessential in the larger scope of things. Look at this flowchart created to describe how people would get health insurance coverage in the framework offered, and notice the very minor role for the public option:



You can argue that a more robust public option would do better on the cost side, or that people making 4x of poverty should have access to subsidies. But that's what's basically on the table. It maintains a fairly efficient delivery system in the employer market, and might not provide the kind of subsidies needed to expand access to individuals or those without employer coverage. So I agree that the public option has become a weathervane for Barack Obama, to see which way he will blow. However, he knows - and even the people pushing the plan know - that the public option's existence doesn't really change much to the overall structure of reform that has been put out, therefore making it much easier for him to drop it.

Any public option can be improved down the road, of course, and access to it can be expanded. But it's hard for a lot of people to go to the mat over something that doesn't really need to fundamentally exist in the current reform.

A Thousand Or So Words Of Despair On Health Care Reform

I may have dismissed the difficulties in paying for health care and the time frame a little prematurely. To be sure, it's a problem. Not the nature of the revenue ideas themselves - a surtax on the wealthy may work, although I'd prefer to go back to President Obama's idea to lower the charitable deduction, and Matt Yglesias explains why:

When possible, it’s better to raise money by broadening the tax base—curbing loopholes, deductions, and exemptions—than by simply raising the rates. The reason is that higher rates on a narrow base do a lot to encourage people to shift income into loopholes, which both undermines your revenue-raising efforts and also distorts the economy. Both the employer tax exclusion proposals and the itemized deductions proposal fit that good model.

The problem is that we're pretty far down the road on the various bills and we're still trying to figure out how to pay for it, which suggests to me that Congress doesn't want to make any hard choices on it. They have a bunch of ideas, but no real strategy. And they've taken the employer deduction off the table because unions don't want to give back what they already have, which makes sense for them but not necessarily the country.

One related point I'd make on this is that there is, in progressive circles, a tendency to confuse the interests of labor unions and the interests of progressivism. The two things often overlap. But they are not, in fact, the same. And that's okay. But this is very much one of those cases. The employer tax exclusion is regressive. It gives employers more power over workers. It reduces choices, fractures the system and increases health-care costs (which in turn decreases wages). Unions are protecting what they have, and that's their right. But protecting the employer-based health-care system, particularly at the expense of a regulated and integrated alternative, is not a terrifically progressive thing to do.

And without changing the incentives in health care and reversing the dynamic of doctors ordering more, insurance companies trying to pay for less and employers still paying the bulk of the costs in an inefficient way, we're not reforming health care. We're just expanding coverage and heading toward the same fiscal iceberg. Which is important in its own way, but not a full solution.

And meanwhile, as the timing of the bill slips, conservatives get emboldened and start running ads in the districts of key Senators. Blue Dogs and Conservadems get cold feet and start looking for ways to deep-six the bill. The problem in that case is that the answer to the Blue Dogs' entreaties would be more reform, which they don't want either.

The emerging bill "lacks a number of elements essential to preserving what works and fixing what is broken," 40 members of the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate to conservative Democrats wrote in a letter to party leaders. To win their support, they said, any legislation would need to be much more aggressive in reining in the growth of health care.

A public option and capping the employer deduction would go a long way for that, but they're against that, too.

Meanwhile, the White House is making all these deals with stakeholders that may have strings attached that would preserve their revenue streams and fail to rein in health care costs. Take a look at this, for example:

The Wall Street Journal reports: "Industry representatives met at the White House Tuesday with officials to consider specifics of a cost-saving agreement the industry reached last month with health-care negotiators and to discuss other concerns that the pharmaceutical industry has with the larger health-care overhaul being considered by Congress. As a presidential candidate, President Barack Obama endorsed re-importation, an idea the industry opposes. White House officials have told the industry if the larger health care bill passes, the cost savings will be so great that reimportation will be unnecessary, according to Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America." Some of the pharmaceutical companies represented at the Tuesday meeting included Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Amgen Inc., Abbott Laboratories and AstraZeneca.

The Wall Street Journal notes: "Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said he disagrees with any move to drop the reimportation idea. He has pushed to import drugs from Canada, where they are cheaper because of price controls" (Mundy, 7/7).

Are we going to side-deal ourselves to death here? Will we assure medical equipment makers that we will not ensure comparative effectiveness research that would align costs with results instead of the mish-mash we have today? Will we deal with hospitals but leave the full picture of how they rein in costs unanswered? Who will decide the limits to the system, and the tough choices around end-of-life care, now managed by insurers?

The major problem we are running into with health care is that the political class is so obsessed with allowing everyone to keep what they have, and not putting enough emphasis on the system's unsustainable course, that they risk wringing all the benefit for real people out of the bill, and at that point, it can tip over and die.

This isn't terribly surprising: it's not obvious what health-care reform will do for the average American. I could give you a long answer about delivery system reforms and so forth because it's my job to know these things. But it would have to be a long answer. The basic structure of health-care reform has been specifically built to avoid changing people's existing arrangements. The hope was that Americans would be convinced that their health-care coverage wouldn't change for the worse. But that's also made it hard to explain why it will get better.

One of the president's health-care reform principles is that everyone must be able to keep what he or she currently has. But that means we're not really going to change, or improve, what they have. And that means they're not getting much in the way that's new. Higher taxes aren't buying them obvious benefits. Instead, they seem to be paying the health-care bills of poorer Americans.

If support for the overall effort were more robust, the polling on the tax exclusion would matter less. People are willing to pay for things they want to buy. But though they might abstractly favor health-care reform, it doesn't seem directly related to their lives.

This is the problem of liberalism since the Great Society - people don't feel like they're getting anything for their payments to government, because Democrats have stopped pushing for anything tangible for everyone. A reform constructed to expand coverage for the poor without something tangible for everyone - like a public option to bring down premium costs and not wed people to their job for the health benefits - just will not pass. It has no shot. Because the public needs convincing that they have something at stake in this reform.

Whittling It Down To Nothing

Unlike in 1994, when The New Republic allowed an abominable article by Betsy McCaughey to codify the Villager mindset on health care, this year they have one of the brightest wonks in the business, Jon Cohn, driving their coverage. And this article about the pitfalls of a "just pass any bill" strategy is required reading.

Notwithstanding the predictable fits-and-starts of the legislative process, it seems likely that Obama will have a bill to sign by year's end, thereby accomplishing what the Clintons famously could not. But then what? Having crafted a bill that can pass Congress, will Obama be signing a bill that people actually like? It's a question best answered by examining another episode of the past--one that, although a mere footnote in political history, is fraught with warnings for today's reformers.

The episode is the fight over the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, which President Reagan signed in 1988. Its purpose was to plug some of the emerging gaps in the Medicare program: If you stayed in the hospital too long, Medicare just stopped paying the bills. The Act extended hospital coverage indefinitely, capped out-of-pocket spending for beneficiaries, and offered partial coverage of prescription drugs, among other things.

Or at least that's what the law was supposed to do. After the bill passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support, a backlash developed, memorably culminating in a "riot" of angry seniors who chased a beleaguered Dan Rostenkowski--then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--into his car after a Chicago meeting. Less than two years after passage, before the bill's implementation, Congress voted to repeal the act, again with sweeping margins.

Basically, the program only provided a catastrophic care benefit to a small amount of seniors who faced extended hospital stays, and because of a desire to keep the bill revenue-neutral, all seniors paid for the program in premiums and surcharges. Those charges were modest, but people got the perception that they were paying more for nothing. As Cohn explains, the parallels are eerie.

Fast forward two decades, take a closer look at what's happening on Capitol Hill, and you may notice some familiar storylines. In order to make sure reform can pay for itself, lawmakers are talking about slowing down implementation, so that the program is not fully on line until 2014. They're also talking about offering fewer subsidies to help people obtain insurance. In a nod to centrists who don't like the idea of too much government, there's a strong push to gut or even eliminate proposals for the public insurance plan, which was supposed to provide security for individuals and competition for private insurers [...]

Put aside, for a moment, the policy merits of these moves. The politics are lousy. Obama would be in danger of producing legislation that seems to offer little up-front benefit, particularly for the electorally vital middle class. And if some of these people end up paying even modestly higher taxes to help finance reform they're not likely to be happy about it. It's hard to imagine such legislation provoking a backlash that could produce total repeal. It's not so hard to imagine such legislation creating bad political feelings, the kind that linger around until the next Election Day and pave the way for legislative retrenchment later on.

Let's bring back the policy merits: they too are lousy. Smaller subsidies along with an individual mandate will strain individual budgets, and a lack of a check on the insurance companies with no public option and a weak national insurance exchange will allow that strain to worsen with ever-expanding premiums. Slowing implementation just keeps in place a broken system causing 18,000 Americans to die every year.

Whatever mash of policies that come out of Washington, in health care - unlike some other legislation - practically the entire population will be intimately familiar with the consequences. It would be nearly impossible to distort the benefits or demonize the negative effects. It will be what it will be. And so designing a policy based on bipartisanship rather than effectiveness is a complete folly. Democrats and the White House have basically put forward this health care reform as a signature accomplishment. If they design something where the benefits aren't readily apparent, and people's premiums remain high, the public will get the message.

If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi muscle health reform through Congress, if President Barack Obama signs a bill in the Rose Garden and hands the pen to an ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy, if health reform, in other words, passes with fanfare and attention, Democrats own it. This will not be a quiet accomplishment. They will have told the American people that on this historic day, under this historic administration, they have begun to bend the curve and and tame the insurers and guarantee coverage and generally fix this huge problem that so many before have promised action on but so few have succeeded in tackling.

And if, 10 years down the road, the plight of the middle class has worsened and cost growth hasn't slowed and the only real difference is that more tax dollars go towards low-income subsidies, Democrats will be blamed for that. Their arguments will have less credibility. Republicans will run ads about "the last time a Democrat told you he could reform American health care." [...] If Democrats pass a bill that gets the policy wrong, they run a real risk of losing trust on what's arguably their core issue. This is high-stakes stuff.

It's not that I disagree with Digby at all - now is a rare chance to enact universal health care, and we should not shy away from it because it doesn't meet every single proper contour. But there are undeniable consequences to a bad policy. And, I would add, needless consequences. For once, the most popular policies line up with what will likely be the most cost-effective ones that provide the greatest tangible benefits. I suspect that the CBO will score a public option that uses Medicare rates, like the one in the House, in such a way that proves it would save both the federal budget and ordinary Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. Heck, the studies have already been done. The same with adding subsidies, which would attract more people into compliance with the system and lower the hidden cost of treating the uninsured.

Considering the fact that Democrats need only 50 votes to enact this reform, a fact that even the White House acknowledges, and considering the statistical fact of 60 Democratic Senators, there is absolutely no reason to build the policy around bipartisan support in Washington, but bipartisan support in the COUNTRY. Not only will there be massive goodwill for enacting decent health care reform, but a massive political backlash if that reform is wanting. Bernie Sanders has this absolutely right.

Look, the Democrats said give us 60 votes so we can come up with something. They gave it to us! I'm not a Democrat, I'm an Independent, but I caucus with the Democrats. They gave us 60 votes. So how many do we need? Seventy? Eighty? I understand that there are some Democrats, without ascribing motives, who are not comfortable voting for a strong public plan period. But I think it is not asking too much that they vote against the Republican filibuster [...]

Look, I like Chuck Grassley. But people in the country are not sitting around saying, "We need a good bipartisan bill! That's what we need!'" They're saying we need good, universal coverage for every American, man, woman, and child. And it needs to be affordable. If Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe and these other nice people I know decide to vote against it, that's fine. People in America aren't sitting up nights worrying how they'll vote. The goal should not be bipartisanship. It's passing something that is strong and good.

There is good reason for short-term political optics to pass whatever can be passed. But limiting the possible, and sacrificing the long-term benefits of the policy, makes no sense. The Democratic leadership seems to have forgotten how to pressure its caucus, or at least the moderate members. They can withhold re-election funding. They can change committee assignments. They can deny legislation written by particular Senators to come to the floor. They can impose all sorts of hardships, and the threats can be wildly larger than the exchange - just vote against a Republican filibuster. Then you can vote against the bill if you like.

Capitulating to that moderate axis will mean a poor bill that will lose the support of the public. When life and death is at stake, we cannot afford an outcome, nor do we need to.

...a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

"Only 26 percent of likely voters in Massachusetts believe health care reform has been a success and just 21 percent believe reform has made health care more affordable, according to newly released poll results," The State House News Service/Boston Herald reports. "The Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely Massachusetts voters, taken in April, also found only 10 percent said the quality of health care is getting better under the reform law rules here."

Simply put, the poor can't afford the premiums and the subsidies are too low. Also, Massachusetts is too small a state to really impact costs. So an overhyped reform gets a negative connotation.

The Magic Deficit/PAYGO Yo-Yo

We're told that, in public polls, people are truly and significantly worried about the federal budget deficit. We're usually told that by the same people who want to use the deficit to foreclose on options for progressive governance, something they never do when a Republican is at the helm. And in fact, the signal-to-noise ratio, as it were, on the deficit is pretty much in line with who sits in the White House. Check out these charts:

If public worries about the nation’s fiscal health were perfectly related to the nation’s actual fiscal health, these two charts should be nearly mirror images of each other.

That is, when the deficit represents a higher percentage of G.D.P. (i.e., the red bars pointing downward get longer), you should see more people naming the federal budget as the country’s most pressing issue (i.e., the blue bars going upward should also get longer). Though, of course, you can’t have a negative percent of people complaining about the budget when the country is running a surplus.

In any case, the two measures do look somewhat related, but there are clearly other factors at work.

Americans were concerned about the budget deficit during the 1930s. Nobody particularly likes budget deficits. They sound icky. But harping from fiscal scolds on the deficit clearly impacts the debate, as does proper wording of the polling question.

At any rate, whether people really give a crap about the deficit or whether they are just reacting to selective hyping, this expression of "concern" has produced at least one tangible policy on Capital Hill - a push for "PAYGO," mandating that every new spending program have an offsets of spending cuts or tax increases. I'm somewhat ambivalent on PAYGO; it could force new revenue into the system, or it could stop progressive priorities because the same fiscal scolds demanding "discipline" refuse to cut worthless programs like outdated weapons systems that would pay for the new spending. These suspicions aong liberals are bubbling to the surface:

Most critics cite concerns that the budget ax would fall hardest on the programs needed by their most needy and vulnerable constituents, and not their frustration with Blue Dogs.

“I certainly don’t think anyone should vote against it for that reason,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “If they want to use it as a bargaining chip, that’s a different story.”

That’s what Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) did last week. He proposed a deal at the Democratic Caucus meeting: He’d vote for the pay-as-you-go spending bill, he told the Blue Dogs, if “each and every one” of them would support a government-run healthcare plan for the country.

“I was being playful but somewhat serious,” Rothman said.

Some liberal members have reminded Blue Dogs that they didn’t object to going deeper into debt to pay for tax cuts or to fund the Iraq war, hindering efforts to fulfill what many saw as the mandate from the 2006 election — ending the war [...]

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) says CBC members are worried about the deficit, too. But they also feel that their districts bear the brunt of budget cuts.

“We get hurt at every turn,” Cleaver said. “We get fewer earmarks because they say we’re in safe districts. With pay-go, the programs that get cut the most are the ones our districts need the most.”

PAYGO worked decently enough during the Clinton Administration, but the Blue Dogs running things today seem to have it out for those programs that benefit the most vulnerable elements of society. In addition, we had a surplus in the 1990s and a robust economy, so hard choices rarely needed to be made.

PAYGO as a rule doesn't bother me and can even be positive. It's how it's used that bugs:

Something that pure budget analysis doesn’t get at on this subject is just the pure politics of it. A lot of people look around and see a world in which we had PAYGO rules in the 1990s and we declining budget deficits and then a small surplus. Then we had a Republican President and suddenly hugely expensive tax cuts—tax cuts that all Republicans and many Democrats voted for—didn’t need to be paid for. We also had a hugely expensive war that all Republicans and many Democrats voted for that didn’t need to be paid for. And PAYGO rules were suspended. Now there are progressive majorities and PAYGO is magically coming back. And aspirations for universal health care are being constrained by the need to pay.

Now, I think it’s a good thing that the administration has committed to pay for its health care proposals. But ultimately it takes two to tango here. And somehow we’ve gotten into a dynamic where not only Republicans, but also a certain number of moderate Democrats, seem to believe that conservative ideas don’t need to be paid for but progressive ideas do. That’s not a sustainable situation.

Exactly. And the same dynamic can be applied to public opinion on the deficit. When a Republican is in power, practically nobody talks about runaway spending and the public concern about it goes down; when a Democrat succeeds, all of a sudden everyone goes wild about the deficit and public concern expands. It's a sham.

Look To The Data And Frame Accordingly

So here we go with another blogosphere-level talk about framing, this time applied to the health care debate. Frank Luntz has dispatched his memo, and Celinda Lake dispatched hers, and then every winger parrots the Luntz points, and then liberals get all indignant about it, and finally George Lakoff comes in and tells everyone that Democrats are nurturant parents and Republicans monsters.

Where exactly do we get with this exercise? Luntz' talking points date from 1993 and actually much further back than that. We've been having these arguments since Harry Truman proposed national health care in the 1940s. Each side thinks they can outsmart the public into accepting their views, but I really think political insiders make too much of this. In the 40s and 50s, doctors were more plentiful and the greed baked into the current system not as obvious. Now everyone who interfaces with the health care system winds up unhappy about one aspect or another. They hate the insurance companies and like their doctors. You can try and leverage that any way you want, but masking over this essential truism will never fly. That's why I actually think that progressives have been smart to foreground the idea of a public health insurance plan over everything else, even though the cost containment and how to fund the overall plan are far greater obstacles to success. According to Lake's poll, 70% of the public supports a public option, and they are completely resistant to attacks. That's because current insurance options suck, and everybody knows it. They also generally like the President, and will support who he supports, and that (at this point) includes a public plan.

In the end, public opinion actually does strengthen with experience. It's easier to fool people about something abstract, but there's nothing abstract about health care. People understand the devil they know; it cannot possibly be worse than the devil they don't know. You can put rings around the rhetoric and make it look pretty, but in the end, people will support you if you relate to their lives.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

I'd like to know what triggered this, whether the White House simply demanded it or the Pakistani government realized the threat or what.

Pakistan declared war on its homegrown Islamic extremists Thursday in a dramatic move that could trigger a wider conflagration.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in a late-night televised address to the nation, said Pakistan would launch a full-scale offensive against Pakistani Taliban guerrillas who've seized control of the vast Swat valley, which is about 100 miles north of the capital.

Pakistan will no longer "bow our heads before the terrorists," Gilani said in an 11 p.m. address as he called on citizens to rally behind the armed forces. He said that the government had tried peaceful negotiation with Taliban entrenched in the Swat valley, but the strategy hadn't worked.

Pakistan had "reached a stage where the government believes that decisive steps have to be taken," he said, and the army's job now was to "eliminate the militants and the terrorists."

This is very strange and I wouldn't take it at surface value. Especially because it appears to be a snap decision. After all, the country was clearly unprepared for the civilian exodus from Swat, suggesting that they never planned for it entirely.

Obviously the visit of Asif Ali Zardari to Washington could have sparked this. However, according to McClatchy some officials in DC still haven't seen army regiments pulled off of the border with India - so far just the paramilitary forces are leading the effort. I think the push from the Administration has been to forsake the illusion of a security need on the Indian border and put those troops into the fight. But for Pakistan to do that would unwind 60 years of history - they have always considered that the main threat. It's more likely that public opinion allowed Pakistan to move at this time.

The government's call to arms only seemed possible because of a seismic shift in public opinion against the militants, which only took place in the past few weeks after a deal with the Taliban in Swat went badly sour.

"After a long time, the people see a ray of hope," said analyst Khadim Hussain, of the Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, an independent research organization in Islamabad. "For the first time, the majority of the population, the people in the conflict zone, and the military, are thinking along the same lines."

Nawaz Sharif just spoke out against the Taliban occupation of Swat, giving the blessing for this offensive.

If the public opinion really has moved, that would really change the dynamic in Pakistan. However, a large humanitarian crisis numbering in the hundreds of thousands seems to be the consequence of this as well. Juan Cole has more.

Republicans, Lawyers For Charles Manson And Mimes Lag Behind Obama In Latest Polls

I am going to try really hard the next couple years not to get too carried away over this or that opinion poll. However, as an early look at how the Republican grand strategy of obstructionism is working out, I think the consensus view of public opinion shows that they've flopped. Barack Obama is still quite popular, and the only erosion of his support is among conservative Republicans who weren't likely to stick with him the moment he began setting policy contrary to their worldview.



The trust in Obama from the public and the trust in Republicans almost couldn't be further apart. Legalizing pot is way more popular than all conservative leaders. And why not? Legalizing pot is a not-so-crazy idea. Whereas...

Republicans continue to dig themselves a deep hole. They strategized that they could virulently oppose a popular President in a time of crisis and not take the political hit. Bereft of any moderating force, they are spiraling into insanity, to the extent of actually gaming out a civil war scenario. This has basically put them far outside the political mainstream, and hearkening back to 1993 isn't going to change that. They are playing a day-to-day game when the public is thinking long-term.

I'm not sure Obama has capitalized on this by being particularly visionary or staking out the kind of bold agenda that is necessary (though it can be argued that doing what's needed is visionary in this day and age). But you can't argue with success.

People Don't Care Yet

Those who read this site understand the effects of a budget crisis - on teachers, firefighters, cops, state employees, public health clinics, practically everything that regular citizens interface with on an almost daily basis. I write about the real-world consequences often. However, it's very easy to be oblivious to these facts, especially when daily life is so understandably difficult that just getting through it is a struggle. It's hard to know for sure, but this SacBee article is probably pretty accurate.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is to deliver his State of the State message Thursday in hopes of galvanizing public opinion to pressure lawmakers to agree on a budget to keep California's government from going broke.

But his challenge comes as many Californians are too busy and too worried about effects of the larger national economic calamity to be consumed with details of budget wrangling in Sacramento.

Sacramento lobbyists, state worker unions and advocates for health, education and welfare may think of little more than the state's financial mess. Yet the Capitol isn't being overwhelmed by calls or letters from average Californians demanding a budget [...]

"Certainly voters are aware of the (state budget) problem," said California Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. "But it hasn't really reached their own pocketbooks or own lives in a direct way. You're just waiting for the train wreck to happen.

"At the point when the state stops paying its bills or starts issuing IOUs to creditors, that's when this will really hit the fan."

I wouldn't discount this. People have a hard time connecting the specific hardships they face to a specific failure of the state legislature - many couldn't tell you the responsibilities between the state and the feds. In fact, as economic anxiety increases, people retreat more into self-preservation mode and neglect the larger issues at play.

There are a variety of reasons for this. No public demystification of the process is certainly one. Without a responsible media detailing the consequences instead of the "pox on all of their houses" attitude that is neither informative or true, I wouldn't expect citizens to comprehend this very well. The state party and individual lawmakers have a communications role to play in this as well - just because it isn't election time doesn't mean it's not a time for effective communication to people outside the base on what is happening and why. The veil of secrecy around Sacramento disheartens people who might otherwise believe that their knowledge of it would make a difference. In addition, the relatively few members of the legislature (40 Senators for a population of 38 million is bigger than a Congressional district) further dislocates and alienates the population from their government.

As DiCamillo says, when those expecting a tax refund get an IOU, when the state files for bankruptcy (a very real possibility), there will be some recognition. And the dynamic of the state will change, perhaps quite drastically. People will want to find answers, maybe a scapegoat. Hopefully, people are thinking about that moment. It will either be an opportunity or a prelude to a nightmare.

D-Day Asks, The Environmental Coalition Offers

Wow, when I wrote this brief yesterday about the dangers of clean coal, I honestly had no idea that an entire campaign was being readied by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, the Sierra Club, The League of Conservation Voters, the NRDC and several other enviro groups, in a coalition they call The Reality Campaign. Their first TV ad is sharp and to the point.



There are some solid quotes in their press release:

"The reality is that there's not a single home or business in America today powered by clean coal," said Brian Hardwick of the Alliance for Climate Protection. "If coal really wants to be part of America's energy future, the industry can start by making a real commitment to eliminating their pollution that is a leading cause of global warming."

Hardwick continued: "It is high time for the coal industry to come clean and admit to the American people that today clean coal is not a reality. No matter how much they say it in their advertising, coal can't truly be clean until the plants can capture global warming pollution. With so much at stake, we can't afford to hang our hats on an illusion."

While the single-issue enviro groups haven't been entirely effective, on coal they have started to get it, with the Sierra Club's legal team winning a major recent ruling at the EPA making it virtually impossible for them to approve new coal-fired power plants. This ad campaign goes after the court of public opinion, and pushes back on the pervasive use of "clean coal." The coal industry sponsored every single debate on CNN this election season. We can no longer allow these poisonous, PR-friendly phrases to be injected into the discourse without serious pushback.

You can sign up to help The Reality Campaign at their website.

Big Picture On Torture

There's quite a remarkable hearing going on today in a House subcommittee. David Addington and John Yoo are voluntarily testifying about the torture practices of the Bush Administration. Thanks to time zones, I didn't get to tune in until the end of the first round of questioning, but I'm getting the feel of it from reports by Spencer Ackerman and at the liveblog on Daily Kos.

It seems like both of them are being evasive but for completely different reasons. Addington ought to be held in contempt of Congress for just plain contemptuousness. As Scott Horton noted on Pacifica's coverage, he clearly believes himself to be smarter than all the Representatives in the room, and he has no problem bullying them around the way he reportedly bullies everyone in the executive branch. He also doesn't mind lying about his role in designing torture tactics after a personal trip to Guantanamo. He essentially said, according to Horton, that the world is very dangerous and the threat is not yet over, implying that Congress had better back down with all the questioning and recognize that absolutely anything can be done in the name of protecting the country. Here's an example:

Addington, naturally, is being legalistic and careful. Can president violate statutes during wartime? "As a general proposition, no, ... but facts matter for a lawyer." Which facts would justify the president violating such a statute? Addington says he won't answer. He's combative, and good. Could self-defense be such a case? "I haven't expressed an opinion... I haven't researched the statute." Says on FISA, "there is a serious constitutional question that Congress might... try to block the president's power."

The President's power, that is, to allow prisoners to be sodomized with a broomstick. The President's power to murder prisoners in US custody. The President's power to hide prisoners from the Red Cross in violation of international law. The President's power, and the power of those around them, to commit war crimes. For your protection. In your name.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Now Yoo, on the other hand, seems afraid for his life and livelihood. He is trying not to answer any question too fully, is stretching out every answer to run out the clock on the questioners, is debating the meaning of words like "implemented," and is consulting with two lawyers on practically every question. He's trying to explain away the Convention Against Torture and generally throw up enough mud to resist any real answer. He's constantly citing Justice Department guidelines that restrict his testimony, too. Over and over he makes the claim that he was simply a lawyer providing legal advice. Of course, at the Nuremberg trials the precedent was set that lawyers whose advice was used to commit war crimes are culpable in those activities. If the policy is to go to the very limit, and the lawyer sets the limit, then he is creating the policy. Yoo can't wiggle off the hook... at least in an international court of law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gave some debatable measure of immunity to most of this crowd for their crimes.

The subcommittee is being very thorough and not taking a lot of bullshit. As the facts about physical and psychological abuse slowly come to light, not only at Abu Ghraib but across all US detention sites, and as we learn more about those who directed the policies that led to this torture, abuse and murder, the policymakers have become more unbridled in investigating these crimes. The grilling of William Haynes - almost made a federal judge for life - at the Senate Armed Services Committee last week showed an unusually strident Carl Levin and his compatriots angered by Haynes' activities. After the Supreme Court asserted in Boumediene that prisoners captured at Guantanamo have the ability to challenge their crimes, we've seen the DC appeals court overrule the Administration on their designation of "enemy combatants," where other prisoners have begun to use their habeas rights to challenge their detentions. The Bush-Cheney policies on interrogation and torture have been discredited by the law and by Congress, and the notion of a "few bad apples" has been totally rejected. As Jerrold Nadler said today:

"It does not go too far to say the reputation of our nation as the leading exponent of human rights and human dignity have been besmirched by this administration [...] I know I speak for many of colleagues when I say that the more we find out about what was done and how it was justified, the more appalled we have become."

None of this, of course, matters to Addington and Yoo, who instead value their radical agenda of executive power and aren't too concerned about the courts and the Congress' opinion. In fact, they're already winning this battle where it counts.

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

The findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll put the United States alongside countries like Russia, Egypt and the Ukraine and lagging far behind allies like Great Britain, Spain and France in how its citizens view torture.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believed all torture should be prohibited; the average in all 19 countries polled was 57 percent.

The Jack Bauer-ization of the torture question, the mainstreaming of cruel and unusual punishment, the ability for the right to demagogue this issue for six years, means that so much of this bipartisan condemnation is coming a little too late. It's nice to hear, but Addington's bullying view has ruled the day for so long that I don't know if we can even get back to a sense of normalcy.

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years.

The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians.

It would also outlaw secret detentions, used since 2001 by the Central Intelligence Agency, and prohibit the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture or cruel treatment. The C.I.A. has allowed terrorism suspects to be taken to such countries.

Among the signers is George P. Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. “It’s a good time to step back, take a deep breath and set a standard,” Mr. Shultz said in an interview.

That would have been a good time in October 2001, before war fever made everybody in Washington a little crazy, and the White House was allowed to take the policies they always wanted to implement off the shelf, using the SERE program designed for our soldiers to resist enemy torture and reverse-engineering it to torture others. We knew in 2001 that torture was ineffective, counter-productive, prone to generating bad intelligence, and would create more terrorists than it would stop terrorist attacks. It's not some grand display of honor to speak out about it now. It's actually more like cowardice.

I appreciate the work of this subcommittee, and after this embarrassment of a President's term ends I would hope that there is a grand inquest into these high crimes. But don't bet on it. And the court of public opinion, the space has already been given to the fearmongers and jingoists to connect torture with saving American lives. The truth, of course, is the opposite.

Damn, Greenwald's Good

Here, Glenzilla eviscerates the talking point that an ad in a newspaper was suddenly going to turn every American backyard into a Gathering of Eagles. Turns out that nobody liked the war before Gen. Petraeus and Bush opened their mouths, and nobody likes it after, either, regardless of what the chattering class says.

In their world, the Republicans are always ascendent, Bush is always the Strong Leader, Democrats are always the sorry losers captive to their destructive Leftist extremists, and Americans are aching to support the War. They have been predicting endlessly that, any day now, all of this will be true again.

They actually thought that a newspaper ad was going to transform deeply entrenched views about the Republicans and the War because their friends Ed Gillispie and Tony Snow and Sean Hannity told them it would. The Rise of Petraeus the Good and the unmasking of the Evil MoveOn Left was going to change everything, back to its rightful place. It changed nothing, including the media itself, which will seize on some other event a few weeks from now to declare yet again the latest surging comeback for the President, the war and the right-wing faction which has followed him.

The biggest reason I feel confident about Democratic chances in 2008 is that nobody believes a word that Republicans say anymore. It's another one of the legacies of Bush.

Getting Real About Iraq

I would guess that public opinion on Iraq among the troops mirrors society as a whole, and so I always greet stories that try to pinpoint troop morale with a skeptical eye. Still, it's clear that when war defenders make blanket statements about morale being sky-high in Iraq, this angers some because it gives the impression of the military being used as a political prop. And clearly, the stresses of multiple deployments and returning to the same village to clear it of terrorists time and again can be an enervating exercise, particuarly for our National Guard that didn't really sign up for this kind of work, which may be why you get standing ovations when you call for troop withdrawals in front of them (Nicolas Sarkozy called for a troop withdrawal from Iraq as well today, which will maybe temper these statements from the likes of Kruathammer that Old Europe is somehow becoming more conservative, defined as "in agreement with the Bush Administration on everything.")

Really the only public opinion that matters is Iraqi public opinion, and while anecdotally all you hear from surge supporters is that the Iraqis want us to stay, the data suggests something far different:

We learn in this report that a whopping 6 percent of Iraqis have "a great deal" of confidence in US and British forces. An additional 12 percent have "quite a lot." 30 Percent say they have "not very much." And 52 percent say "none at all." The Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, local political leaders, the national government, and the local militia are all more popular than the American military. A clear majority thinks the US government, rather than the Iraqi government, is controlling the country. 46 percent of Iraqis "strongly oppose" the presence of American troops in Iraq and 32 percent are somewhat opposed. 69 percent say the American presence is making things worse. More Iraqis see Iran as having a positive influence on their country than see the US that way. For that matter, more Iraqis see Saudi Arabia as having a positive influence. More Iraqis see Russia as having a positive influence. 51 percent say attacks on coalition forces are acceptable. More people blame US forces (31 percent) or President Bush (9 percent) for violence in Iraq than blame al-Qaeda (18 percent) or Iran (7 pecent).

I don't say, of course, that the Iraqi public is correct about all of this, but that's what they think. Under the circumstances, I just don't see how a counterinsurgency mission could possibly succeed. If we had just recently invaded the country and were facing initial skepticism then, sure, maybe better policies would win people over. But we're talking about the reverse. The initial reception we got was open-minded. That was years ago. Now the US military is very, very, very much disliked in Iraq and it ought to leave and go places (home, Kuwait, Germany, Turkey) where it's welcome.

Long ago "winning hearts and minds" was simply written off as a goal and thought as a de facto product of improving security. But these numbers suggest that it matters little who is providing for the Iraqis so long as it's being done under occupation, and anyway security is not really improving, in the consensus of Kevin Drum, who has really taken a hard look at the data. The Sunni revolt in Al Anbar started before the surge, and once Al Qaeda in Iraq is dismantled there's no reason to suggest that they will be folded into the political infrastructure of society; in fact we may be arming them to eventually turn on the Shiites and expand the civil war. Death toll figures are down from their peaks but up compared to last summer, and considering the consistent pattern of drops in fatalities in the summer heat, it cannot be said that the surge has made a major difference there. Indeed throughout the country, regions are getting more insecure, as fighters from Baghdad fan out into the countryside. And problems with the Iraqi police, the crumbling infrastructure, political rivalries such as those in the south (an internecine Shiite civil war) and in Kirkuk (where Sunni Arabs and Kurds are battling for control of the important oil city), and the still-robust insurgency persist. And this is a key point:

Reports of progress are considerably undermined by the apparently growing consensus that the U.S. will need to keep a significant military presence in Iraq for the better part of the next decade. This is hard to square with genuine confidence that the surge is reducing violence significantly. Link.

Great work by Kevin in tracking all of this down and following the facts wherever they take him. What we have is a lot of happy talk turning an inch of daylight into a mile of military progress. And it's just not there. The same with troop morale. And the same with the viewpoints of the Iraqi people. We are being spun - and since some Republican spinmeisters are attempting to pull off a lobbyist-administered coup of the Prime Minister I suppose that's apt.

I don't think the American people are totally buying it, but in the media there's this sense that you're not serious unless you acknowledge progress on any or all of these fronts. This is the bullying of war-defending groupthink instead of a sober look at reality. So if that denotes high seriousness, call me a dirty fucking hippie.