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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: September 2009

Hamsher: Two Dozen Blue Dogs Have Supported ‘Public Option’

Jane Hamsher’s Firedoglake post “24 Blue Dogs Have Said They Support a Public Option” offers at least some hope that a healthy percentage of conservative/moderate Democrats in congress are open to supporting a progressive health care bill, if other concerns are adequately addressed. Hamsher does a good job of explaining the expressions of support made by each of the 24 Blue Dog House members, and includes Nate Silver’s estimates of support/opposition for the public option in each of their districts. Hamsher adds:

Those who should be on the list but aren’t: Dennis Cardoza (73-20), John Tanner (56-35), Alan Boyd (52-38), John Barrow (51-41) , Joe Donnelly (56-35) and Heath Shuler (51-39), who all quite likely have majority district support for a public option. Many others have plurality district support. Because come 2010, they will all have to explain it to their constituents.

Hamsher challenges previous estimates that only a dozen Blue Dogs have expressed support for a public option, but warns, “The fact that a Blue Dog has supported a public option in the past does not mean that they will support one now — their principles tend to be lobbyist-flexible.” With Hamsher and other bloggers on their case, those who waffle are not likely to get a free ride.
Update: Thanks, Bernie for the spelling correction


Some Revolution

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In political circles, Republicans and Democrats alike have begun comparing the 2010 election with the “revolution” that handed both the House and the Senate to the GOP in 1994. But how applicable is that analogy, really?
On the surface, the comparison is plausible. In 1994, as now, a charismatic outsider took office amid general unhappiness with the record of his Republican predecessor. Then, as now, the president decided to make health care reform a signature issue despite widespread concerns about the economy, taxes, and federal budget deficits. And, as now, Republicans responded with an abrasive political strategy that energized their conservative base, at a time when Democrats were seemingly divided between centrists and liberals discouraged by the new president’s perceived centrist path.
It’s impossible, however, to draw concrete conclusions from such superficial observations. A more disconcerting parallel for Democrats might be the scope of their recent winning streak. In the elections leading up to both 1994 and 2010, Democratic victories, particularly in the House, left the party somewhat over-exposed. In 1994, 46 of the 258 House Democrats were in districts carried by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. The numbers are comparable today, where 49 of the 257 House Democrats are in districts carried by John McCain, with only 34 Republicans in districts carried by Barack Obama. Similarly, if you apply the Partisan Voting Index, (PVI), which compares a district’s prior presidential results to national averages, you find that there are 66 Democrats in districts with a Republican PVI and only 15 Republicans in districts with a Democratic PVI–a similar situation to the 79 Democrats in Republican districts in 1994. Clearly, two straight “wave” elections have eliminated most of the low-hanging fruit for Democrats in the House, and created some ripe targets for the GOP.
But that’s where the fear-inducing similarities end. The Republicans’ 1994 victory in the House was also enabled by a large number of Democratic retirements: Twenty-two of the 54 seats the GOP picked up that year were open. By comparison, the authoritative (and subscription-only) Cook Political Report counts only four open, Democrat-held House seats in territory that is even vaguely competitive. That low number of open seats is significant because it limits the number of seats Republicans can win; if there is a similar wave of retirements in the offing for 2010, the signs have yet to materialize.
The 1994 parallels appear even more tendentious in the Senate. In 1994, Democrats lost eight of the 22 seats they defended, six of which were open. Republicans had only 13 seats to defend, and three of them were open. In 2010, however, the situation lopsidedly favors Democrats. Republicans have to defend 19 of their seats, seven of which are open. Meanwhile, Democrats have to defend 19 seats, only three of which are open. For Republicans to take the Senate, Democrats would have to lose eleven seats without picking off a single Republican. There’s no modern precedent for a tsunami that large.
Another disconnect between 1994 and 2010 involves patterns of demography and ideology. The 1994 election was the high-water mark of the great ideological sorting that occurred between the two parties. That made the environment particularly harsh for southern Democrats, as well as those in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain West, where many ancestral attachments to the Donkey Party came unmoored.
In the South, this sorting-out was reinforced by the decennial reapportionment and redistricting process, during which both Republicans and civil rights activists promoted a regime of “packing” and “bleaching” districts–that is, the electoral consolidation of African-American voters. While this had a salutary effect on African-American representation in the House of Representatives, the overall effect was to weaken Democrats. This dynamic was best illustrated by my home state of Georgia, whose House delegation changed from 9-1 Democratic going into the 1992 election to 8-3 Republican after 1994.
Nothing similar to those handicaps exists today. The ideological filtering of the parties is long over; any genuine conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans left in the electorate clearly have reasons for retaining their loyalties, which will be difficult to erode. Moreover, whether or not you buy the “realignment” theories that Democrats were excited about after the 2008 elections, there is not a single discernible long-term trend that favors the Republican Party. Bush-era Republican hopes of making permanent inroads among Hispanics and women were thoroughly dashed in 2006 and 2008. Moreover, as Alan Abramowitz recently pointed out, the percentage of the electorate that is nonwhite–which is rejecting Republicans by overwhelming margins–has roughly doubled since 1994.
Still, there is one short-term demographic factor that Democrats should be alarmed about in 2010. Older voters almost always make up a larger percentage of those who go to the polls during midterm elections than they do in presidential election years. And older white voters, who contributed mightily to the Democrats’ midterm victory in 2006, are famously skeptical of Barack Obama. Indeed, they skewed away from him in 2008, even before Republicans devoted so many resources turning them against health care reform with tales of big Medicare cuts and death panels. So the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman may have been correct when he predicted that, “[e]ven if Obama and Democrats are just as popular next November as they were last November, they might stand to lose five to ten seats in the House based on the altered composition of the midterm electorate alone.”
That’s bad, but it’s certainly not political reversal on the scale of 1994. Unlike Bill Clinton at the same time in his presidency, Obama’s approval ratings seem to have recently stabilized in the low-fifties; not great, but not that bad in a polarized country, either. And as both Abramowitz and Ron Brownstein have pointed out, in group after group of the electorate, he remains as popular as he was when he was elected. A cyclical turnover of ten House seats, which seems to be the most likely scenario in 2010, would not a revolution make.


Obama Approval Ratings in Key Swing States Suggest Ad-Buys

Bruce Drake, contibuting editor of Politics Daily‘s ‘Poll Watch,’ has an interesting post up, “Latest Round-Up of Obama Approval Rating by State.” Drake provides recent polling figures for the President’s approval in general in selected states, and also with respect to his health care proposals, where applicable. Of course, these numbers could change dramatically after a health care bill is enacted and comparing different polls is always an “apples and oranges” exercise. But they may of some interest in terms of where to invest in ads — particularly when we look at his swing state performance. According to Drake’s round-up, here are Obama’s most recent lead and lag margins in some key swing states, with presidential approval/disapproval (“strongly disapprove” + “somewhat disapprove”) figures first, followed by approval/disapproval margins for his health care proposals.

CO +3, -13; IA -1, na; MO -12, -19; NV -7, -7; NH 0, na; NJ +6, -11; NC -5, -12; OH -2, n.a.; VA -2, -5.

Several m.o.e.-range numbers there. Most of the figures come from Rasmussen polls, with the exceptions of Obama health care policy approval numbers for CO, NJ and NC, which come from Pew Research Center. Charles Franklin has noted a pro-McCain “house effect” at Rasmussen, which may translate into a pro-GOP edge in these numbers. And given the all-out GOP anti-Obama propaganda campaign underway and all of the confusion about different health care proposals, it appears the President is doing OK in these swing states, with the exception of MO, where Drake notes 48 percent of respondents “strongly disapprove” of his health care proposals. In CO, MO and NC, some more health care ads and stronger pro-reform publicity and education should be helpful.


Pragmatic Choices for the Democratic Party

This item by Mike Lux is cross-posted from The Huffington Post.
A fascinating article was in the WaPo yesterday morning about Democrats having more trouble raising money than they expected. I haven’t had the chance to really look closely at the numbers to compare how flat the big dollar fundraising was as opposed to the small grassroots donations but, according to the article, “The vast majority of those declines were accounted for by the absence of large donors who, strategists say, have shut their checkbooks in part because Democrats have heightened their attacks on the conduct of major financial firms and set their sights on rewriting the laws that regulate their behavior.” It also said that:

Other Democrats and their aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party strategy, said that rhetoric toward big business has grown so antagonistic that it has become increasingly difficult to raise money on Wall Street, particularly after the controversy about bonuses and executive compensation.

I am going to write today not from my populist blogger perspective, but from my intensely pragmatic Democratic strategist perspective. This is a complicated and important issue that Democrats, individual candidates, and we as a party, will have to wrestle with in the coming years.
Until we pass a public-financing bill for elections (a topic I will come back to), it is a very tough thing for a congressional candidate to not get the money they have raised in the past from big business. Wall Street is the wealthiest and most generous industry in cultivating politicians, so their withholding of dollars is a particularly hard hit, but other business special interests are going to be withdrawing or threatening to withdraw their campaign cash as well. If a public option is passed, insurance execs will be pissed, so a lot of their money goes away. If a serious climate change bill were passed, a lot of energy industry money goes bye-bye. It’s a serious problem for Democrats, and it’s what makes real change in Washington so damn hard.
I have raised a ton of money for Democratic candidates over the years, and I have worked on a ton of campaigns desperate for cash, so I would never minimize how hard it is to walk away from all this money. But tough as it is, the alternative in my very pragmatic view is quite a bit worse for Democratic prospects. The alternative is to downplay our rhetoric about change, and downplay our efforts to make real change — because let’s face it, it’s not mostly the rhetoric these business interests are worried about, it’s the policy.
That path leads us to mushy rhetoric that doesn’t address the real anger voters have at Wall Street and insurance companies. And it leads to policy choices that avoid dealing with the really deep and fundamentally important problems in our society. If we fail to take on the power and profits of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, the smartest economists who most accurately diagnosed the problems that created the financial collapse last year say we are in for another major financial collapse in the not too distant future. If we fail to deal with these big banks after the bailouts they were given, the anger about those bailouts will boil over with voters in a hundred different ways.
Or take health care. The poll I referenced in my last post is absolutely stunning, and should strike terror in the hearts of any Democrat who is thinking of voting for an individual mandate without a public option: voters oppose a mandate on its own 64-34, but support a mandate with a chance of a public option or private insurance 60-37. And I think those numbers understate the sentiment. If you pass a mandate to buy insurance without creating real competition for private insurers, you know they will raise their rates and continue to screw people, and voters are going to be very angry.
The problem with the big money in politics is that politicians will start doing things that voters don’t like in order to get those checks. It leads to weak messaging and twisted policymaking, doing things that make no sense to average voters.
The ultimate answer is public financing of campaigns, ending this terrible dependence on special interest big money. It would make it so much easier for Democrats to do the smart thing politically and the right thing in terms of policy, to really make the transformative changes this country has to make. In the meantime, I am convinced that if we have to choose between losing that money from the bankers and the insurance execs, and doing the most sensible thing politically and policy-wise in every other way, the hard, cold, pragmatic path is the latter. We can find other ways to raise the money we need and win elections.


WATCH OUT DEMOCRATS: the success of the conservative undercover “sting” operation against ACORN is going to unleash a wave of copycat attacks. Common sense can prevent them from succeeding.

Democrats should psychologically prepare themselves for a wave of undercover “sting” operations designed to elicit damaging video or audio from the staff or volunteers of Democratic organizations. In today’s warped media environment, a single, entirely unrepresentative video clip obtained from one individual in one local office can discredit and damage a national organization with hundreds of branches and thousands of staff.
In the case of ACORN, some local offices threw the undercover videographers out. Others called the authorities. Others essentially laughed in their face. All that didn’t matter a bit. One damaging video clip and the entire organization was profoundly damaged.
Democrats should count on the success of this sting operation stimulating a large number of imitators. The targets will not only be official Democratic organizations but pro-Democratic groups and supporters.
Common sense can prevent 99% of these sting operations from succeeding. All con artists – which is what the conservative “sting” videographers really were — rely on the tendency of people to be polite and avoid friction whenever they can. We are not usually aware of it, but most of us tend to “go along” with what other people say rather than disagree with them. A skillful con-man (or con-woman) can manipulate these responses with ease to get people to agree to things they would never ordinarily endorse – just think of the way time-share salesmen or dubious door-to-door charity solicitors get people to buy condos or make donations. After the sting is over, the mark always kicks himself or herself and says “geez, why the hell did I do that.”
The trick to resisting this kind of manipulation boils down to two simple rules: be mentally prepared for it and be ready to politely but firmly resist pressure to do or say things in order to “just go along.”
Here are a few specific tips:

• Do not “play around” with unfamiliar people who initiate conversations regarding activities that are illegal or morally wrong. Remarks like “oh come on, don’t be so uptight, we’re all just kidding around here” can easily be edited out of a video, leaving only what appears to be damaging evidence of inappropriate behavior.
• If something seems funny or odd, alert your superiors and co-workers. Get other people to observe.
• Use your own cell phone to record yourself rejecting attempts to elicit damaging admissions e.g. “I’m here with two new walk-in volunteers who are asking for our help in committing an illegal act. I’m telling them that we don’t do that kind of thing here.”
• Make notes after an event that seems suspicious.

Remember: if you represent a Democratic group or organization, in the age of YouTube and cell phone video you’re basically on camera all the time.


VA, NJ Races Tightening Up

Even as Republicans crow about perceptions of the Obama administration running aground, and look forward with growing conviction to big, 1994-style gains in 2010, an interesting thing is happening in the two big statewide races that are actually being conducted right now, in VA and NJ. After months in which Republican gubernatorial candidates Bob McDonnell (VA) and Chris Christie (NJ) held commanding leads over their Democratic rivals, both races appear to be tightening up considerably.
In VA, the last couple of major polls, from the Washington Post and Insider Advantage, showed Creigh Deeds shrinking McDonnell’s lead to four percentage points. As Margie Omero explains at Pollster.com, Deeds’ improved standing reflects ads he’s recently run in Northern Virginia linking McDonnell’s abrasively right-wing master’s thesis to his record as a public official, particularly in terms of hostility to legalized abortion. Omero goes on to suggest that Deeds can make even more hay in NoVa by focusing more on McDonnell’s expressed hostility to working women. In any event, McDonnell no longer has momentum in his favor.
In NJ, Christie’s favorability ratings have steadily worsened as he became better known, and now Democracy Corps has a new poll out showing his lead over incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine down to a single point (40%-39%, with indie candidate Chris Daggett at 11%). Republicans are probably also nervous about the general pattern of NJ statewide races in recent years, where the increasingly Democratic partisan leanings of the state seem to eventually erase early GOP leads.


Transparency In Czars

As J.P. Green noted earlier, Senators Rockefeller and Schumer are gearing up for a big push on the public option in the Senate Finance Committee markup of health care reform. But it ain’t happening today. Tim Noah, liveblogging the session at Slate, reports that the Committee started out late today, ended early for the weekend (as is traditional), and won’t reconvene until next Tuesday, in observance of Yom Kippur.
There was, however, time for some additional dumb Republican amendments to be offered and discussed, none dumber that Sen. Jon Ensign’s amendment, entitled, no kidding, the Transparency In Czars Amendment. Here’s Noah:

[I]t could also be called the Who Does Nancy-Ann DeParle Think She Is? amendment. DeParle is the White House health reform director. Under the amendment, she couldn’t keep her job unless the Senate confirmed her. There ensues an unedifying argument between Democrats and Republicans about whether DeParle really is a czar. (Don’t they mean czarina?) The amendment fails on a party line vote. Once again, swing-voting Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, votes for an idiotic partisan Republican amendment.

Ensign, you may recall, is in a bit of hot water for some of his recent extracurricular activities, and is trying to head off a 2012 primary challenge by using the spotlight on the Senate Finance Committee to identify himself with hard-right conservative activism. Hard to say what Snowe is up to; she may be sucking up to her Republican colleagues as a prelude to parting company with them on the ultimate vote, or she may just be acting like a partisan Republican generally.


TDS Strategy Memo – Part II — Dems must develop a deeply committed and highly organized group of volunteers specifically dedicated to representing and advocating a core message

This item by James Vega is the second part of a three-part TDS Strategy Memo originally published during the week of September 14, 2009. A PDF version of the entire memo is available here)
Democrats must face the unpleasant reality that that from now on any significant local or national political meeting anywhere in America is going to be attended by conservative activists who are mobilized and directed there through a pyramid of online social networks. At the apex of this pyramid is Freedomworks and directly below it is a second tier of a dozen other lobbying organizations.
Immediately after the April 15th Tea Parties it appeared that the local activists who had been mobilized might attempt to form permanent “bottom-up” grass-roots committees in communities across the country. Instead, the rather different framework that has emerged is a kind of permanent “on-call” cadre of activists across the country – individuals who are willing to download talking points and slogans from the online social networks and be directed to local meetings in their area or to national protests in Washington D.C.
The simple but unpleasant fact is that in every one of these local political town halls or other community meetings that is not contested, the conservative point of view will dominate. Therefore Democrats have no choice but to build their own version of this kind of online social organization — a “Democratic Activist Corps” or corps of “Democratic Minutemen” – dedicated activists with a similar “on-call” capability.
At first glance this would appear to be the responsibility of Organizing for America, but in fact, for two reasons, that organization is actually not well suited to manage this task.

First, Organizing for America cannot avoid following a very broad, “big tent” approach because of the huge, extremely heterogeneous group of people in its database. In order to avoid schisms and conflict among its members, it must stick to the most elementary and widely shared views. This is reflected in the rather bland slogans it recommends e.g. “Health Insurance Reform Now: Let’s Get It Done!”, “Stand up for Reform”, “Standing Together for Health Insurance Reform”
Second, because it is directly connected to the DNC and the Obama administration, OFA has to conduct itself in a way that does not reflect negatively on Obama. This makes it necessarily very cautious and highly averse to direct conflict and confrontation. This is reflected it its preference for organizing what are essentially non-confrontational “pep rallies” of its supporters rather than directing them to directly engage and challenge opponents of reform.

Given the huge, ten million member e-mail base of OFA, these choices are not necessarily wrong. OFA is metaphorically speaking a political oil tanker, only able to move and turn only very gradually and cautiously. But as a result of these two characteristics it is impractical to expect an organization like OFA to be able to successfully direct a Democratic counterpart to a fierce and combative organization like Freedomworks that has complete freedom of action. It is therefore preferable to organize a “Democratic Activist” or “Democratic Minutemen” network outside the formal structure of government or the DNC, just as Freedomworks and the other conservative online activist groups have done.
Although the issue agenda of such an organization will be the same as the official Democratic organizations, to be effective its ethos must more closely resemble that of a passionate social movement and its staff must be composed of people with the background and perspective of union or civil rights organizers – men and women with both the passion and the experience to tackle a bitter, well-financed and determined adversary.
Freedomworks has a 14 person Washington staff, six full-time field coordinators or state directors and an annual budget of 8 million dollars. Its economic model is based on obtaining contributions from the industries that derive benefits from its grass-roots organizing activities. To effectively compete with this, Democratic organizations like unions, environmental and other social issue groups, professional associations and similar pro-democratic forces will need to contribute substantial in-kind resources — of staff time, office space, supplies and technical support — to a Democratic Activist Corps of this kind. Even with significant in-kind support, however, a core of paid, full-time employees and a significant operating budget will still be needed.
The key demographic target for an “on call” activist network of this kind will be mid-sized, second and third tier cities and towns. The major American cities and urban areas already have more than sufficient pro-democratic organizations and social networks to mobilize activists when necessary for meetings, marches, demonstrations and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, modern conservatism is disproportionately concentrated in small towns, urban fringes and rural areas – so much so that in many cases any effective competition is simply impractical. It is in the mid-sized cities and towns across America where significant numbers of Democrats live but where there are relatively weak pro-Democratic organizations and institutions that an online social network of committed Democratic activists could make a substantial difference.
The April 15th tea party movement claimed that they held events in over 1,000 cities and towns and Nate Silver documented events in around six or eight hundred. Because of the more concentrated geographic distribution of the Democratic coalition this project can aim to achieve lower numerical targets. The project should, however, set clear timetables for creating “on-call” networks in first 50, then 100, and ultimately about 200 smaller U.S. cities and medium-sized towns. If possible, at least the first two and preferably all three of these goals should be achieved before the 2010 elections.
Also, by next spring, some of these Democratic minutemen will also need to receive a certain amount of training in non-violent methods because by that time it is virtually certain that there will be young right-wing “skinheads” and other quasi-military groups openly participating in anti-Obama demonstrations. The strategy of intimidation and physical aggression employed by such groups can best be defeated by disciplined non-violent tactics.


Public Option Needs 2-3 Votes to Advance

For some reason the MSM doesn’t do such a hot job of telling you what you really want to know about how the votes on the public option in health care reform are lining up in the Senate Finance Committee. For that you turn to Open Left‘s Chris Bowers, who usually has the most sober assessment. Here’s Bowers on a key vote, which may happen today:

All 10 Republicans on the Finance Committee, including Olympia Snowe, are expected to vote against both public option amendments. Eight Democrats are highly likely to be yes votes: Bingaman (NM), Cantwell (WA), Kerry (MA), Menendez (NJ), Schumer (NY), Stabenow (MI), Rockefeller (WV), and Wyden (OR). It took a lot of organizing to even get that far, given the reluctance of Bingaman, Cantwell, Kerry and Wyden at times.
The other five members of the committee are difficult to predict, given that they have been all over the map on the public option this year. To pass a public option through the committee, four of the following five will need to vote in favor:
1. Baucus (MT). Should be a yes given his stated and past support for the public option. However, he could be a no to defend the draft of the bill he released, and out of a continuing belief that the public option can’t pass the Senate.
2. Carper (DE): Has said that he opposes a non-trigger public option. I expect him to vote that way, even though he is from a pretty blue state.
3. Conrad (ND): Has assiduously avoided taking a position on the public option, instead stating over and over again that there are not 60 votes for it. Well, now we finally will learn if Conrad was just talking about himself all along. As chairman of the Budget committee that will merge the Senate Finance and HELP bills, how Conrad votes will be huge. I am suspicious Conrad might vote “yes” to save face and seem like a good-faith negotiator on the co-op.
4. Lincoln (AR): Blanche Lincoln appears to have recently flipped from supporting the public option to opposing it. She really has been all over the map during this entire debate. I think about the best we can hope for is that she votes yes on the public option in committee, and yes on the cloture vote, but then no on the floor vote.
5. Nelson (FL): Perhaps more silent on the public option than any member of the Senate. He has, however, called public option supporters idiots, and said that he believes a public option can’t pass. I am not confident on this vote.

Bowers sees a 3-2 toss-up among these five as the most likely outcome, so today is a really big deal for public option advocates. On MSNBC last night, Senator Shumer said that the Senate Finance Committee may be the crucial hurdle of the legislative battle to enact health care reform with a public option, because centrist Dems are stronger in this committee than on other committees or on a floor vote.
Here’s where an organized, disciplined network of progressive citizen lobbyists could really help. Press a button and activate progressives and other public option supporters to deluge the key Senators in MT, DE, ND, AR and FL with phone calls, faxes, emails and personal visits to district offices, urging them to step up and vote for the public option. There should also be a role for out-of-state progressives who want to get involved, such as a phone bank to mobilize supporters in the targeted states. Unions, MoveOn and other organizations do this on a smaller scale from time to time. But there ought to be a larger-scale effort, perhaps a coalition, funded appropriately.
To give the MSM it’s due, the WSJ has a handy chart depicting the differences between the health care reform proposals of: Sen. Baucus; the Senate HELP Committee; the House Democratic Bill; the House Republican Outline; and President Obama. Also recommended is Ezra Klein’s informative WaPo interview with Sen. Kent Conrad


That Socialist, Ken Burns

Patrick Goldstein’s L.A. Times post “Is Ken Burns a Secret Propagandist for Socialism?” presages what will probably be an outrage du jour for the Beck-Limbaugh-Hannity-etc. neo-McCarthyites. Goldstein believes the loony right will seize on the new Burns documentary series, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” as the new exhibit ‘A; revealing the cultural left’s effort to sneak socialist values into American life. As Goldstein explains, refering to James Poniewozik’s Time magazine column on the topic:

The series is actually an ingenious refutation of the popular conservative belief that big government is evil, outmoded and unnecessarily involved in ruling our lives.
Noting that the original impetus for establishing national parks came from naturalists like John Muir who were horrified to see how Niagara Falls was nearly destroyed by the greed and hucksterism of free market- loving charlatans, Poniewozik writes: “With America frothing over the role of government — Should it save banks? Should it expand health coverage? — ‘The National Parks’ makes a simple case for an idea that is wildly controversial in the year of the tea party: That we need government to do things the private sector can’t or won’t.”
In other words, the entire origin of the national park system, whose most passionate backer was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, is based on a firm belief in — Glenn Beck, cover your ears, please — government intervention to regulate an out-of-control free-enterprise system. In fact, one of the more dramatic moments in Burns’ documentary involves the battle to create a park in the Great Smoky Mountains, while logging companies bankrolled anti-park ads and were “frantically cutting the old-growth forests to extract everything they could before the land was closed to them.”

Goldstein and Poniewozik make a good point. Burns’s documentary is right on time, because it serves up a potent, inarguable reminder that big business often does have rapacious and exploitative tendencies, which in this case would leave our wilderness areas denuded of hardwoods and clean rivers. It’s not such a huge leap from there to acknowledging that health care for profit often has a similar tendency, and maybe government could help contain it. Goldstein also posts a little preview clip of the series, and some interesting pro and con comments follow his post.