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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: March 2010

Progressives and Poker

This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on March 19, 2010.
There’s been some interesting talk going on this week involving assessment (in the wake of the collapse of progressive resistance to the final health reform bill) of “the Left’s” strategy on health reform, particularly in terms of the ultimate emptiness of threats from progressive House Democrats that they would vote against any bill that didn’t include a “robust” public option.
Glenn Greenwald argues that progressives have once again exposed–and possibly even increased–their “powerlessness” within the Democratic Party. Chris Bowers challenges the premise by arguing that progressives did secure significant changes in the Senate bill, most notably the agreement to “fix” it, which certainly wasn’t the path of least resistance.
Meanwhile, Armando of Talk Left has compared the lack of leverage of progressives over items like the public option to the success of the labor movement in forcing concessions on the “Cadillac tax.” And Nate Silver has responded by arguing that progressive threats didn’t work because they weren’t credible in the first place.
I think everyone in this debate would agree that it’s generally a bad idea in politics to make threats you are entirely unwilling to carry out, but the real division of opinion on on whether such threats should be tempered or in fact intensified. But Nate makes one point that bears repeating: the political value of aggressiveness and posturing can and often does get exaggerated.

It feels good to assert that progressives just need to be tougher — perhaps even to the point of feigning irrationality. These arguments are not necessarily wrong — a reputation for being tougher bargainers would help at the margins — but it misdiagnoses the problem on health care. The progressive bloc failed not because of any reputational deficiency on the part of the progressives but because their bluff was too transparent — they claimed to be willing to wager enormous stakes (health care reform) to win a relatively small pot (the public option). That would have been beyond the capacity of any poker player — or activist — to pull off.

I’ve never much liked the strain of progressive analysis that endlessly promotes “fighting” and “spine” and “cojones” as the answers to every Democratic political problem. Sometimes “brains” or “heart” are more important, and moreover, if politics is reduced to a willingness to project brute force, the bad guys are going to win every time; it’s like getting into a selfishness competition with the Right–we’ll never win. But in any event, however you feel about the Will to Power theory of politics, Nate’s right, people aren’t all stupid, and macho posturing by progressives when it doesn’t make sense isn’t going to convince anybody. Poker playing is a relatively small and overrated part of politics. Real conviction and strategies based on conveying those convictions to friends and potential friends are the best building blocks for successful strategy.


Did progressives suffer a “set-back” or even a “defeat” in the health care campaign? A progressive “movement” activist from the 1960’s, waking up today, would find this view not simply wrong, but literally incomprehensible. Here’s why

In the last days before the HCR bill passed the house last Sunday several influential progressive bloggers put forth a rather startling thesis — that although the health care bill was still worth passing, the compromises that were required to enact it actually made the bill a setback or defeat for progressives rather than a victory. For example:

• Jeff Greenwald in Salon – “…this process highlighted – and worsened – the virtually complete powerlessness of the left and progressives generally in Washington.…no one will ever take progressive threats seriously again in the future”
• Jane Hamsher in Firedoglake- “nobody will take progressives in Congress seriously, nor should they…Whatever Barack Obama wants to do will be the farthest left any piece of legislation gets.”
• McJoan in DailyKos – “Trying to argue that the provisions in this bill signify a progressive victory is from my perspective a negotiating mistake…I’d argue that it’s bad politically and for future policy for progressives to lose sight of the fact that we had some pretty big losses in this one. Who lost? Labor…Women…Latinos.”

To be very clear, unlike some other, more extreme critics, all three of these commentators did indeed agree that the bill needed to be passed and none advocated its rejection. But, as the quotes show, they were also united in the view that the compromises embodied in the final bill made it represent a major defeat for progressives.
A progressive Rip Van Winkle from the social movements of the 60’s, suddenly waking up today, would be profoundly bewildered by this perspective. He or she would not be at all surprised to hear that a progressive reform had been “diluted”, “sold-out” “watered down” or “compromised” in the process of passing a bill in Congress. But what he or she would find utterly baffling were the implicit assumptions that underlay the argument.
1. That it was possible to directly identify the broad progressive campaign for universal and affordable health care with the quality of any one specific piece of legislation.
2. That the major measure of progressive “influence” on the struggle for a social reform like universal and affordable health care could properly be defined as how far an initial bill proposed in Congress could be pushed in a progressive direction, a view that essentially identifies all progressive “influence” with bargaining power inside the halls of Congress.
3. That progressives could reasonably expect to achieve a genuinely significant social reform without having first built a vibrant and genuine grass-roots social movement deeply committed to that reform.
In fact, it would actually take the newly awakened 60’s progressive several re-readings of the various commentaries to fully convince himself that these actually were the implicit assumptions underlying the debate. On all three topics, the 60’s movement progressive would start off with almost directly opposite assumptions.


A New Season of Hope

Mike Lux does a particularly good job of putting the enactment of health care reform in historic perspective in his HuffPo post, “The Big Change Moment:” First, the overview:

…For all the ups and downs of this process, for all the compromises we had to make to get here, when you see the tens of millions of dollars insurance companies were pouring into lies to defeat this bill, and see John Lewis called a nigger, and Barney Frank called a fag, and see all supporters of this bill called Stalinist, it makes you pretty confident you’re on the right side of history.

Lux acknowledges what we didn’t win:

Is this the change we have been looking for? Only partly. Insurers and other big corporations remain far too powerful, and we will have to keep working hard to improve health care policy in America. We need a public option to provide Americans better choice in their health care system; we need for the federal government to be able to negotiate with the big pharmaceutical companies; we need the insurance anti-trust exemption to get repealed, and for the federal government to do more to regulate insurance rate increases; we need to repeal the Hyde Amendment. Many other changes and improvements will be important to keep fighting for in the years to come.

And what we did:

Yet for all those things we still need, we have won an enormous amount in this bill. You know the list of things we accomplished- universal coverage, an end to pre-existing condition clauses and lifetime caps, more people eligible for Medicaid, more young people able to stay on their parents’ insurance policies, an end to the Medicare drug donut hole, and more. These are bigger changes than we have seen in health care policy since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, and maybe even bigger that them, since this means almost every American will have insurance. Most importantly, health care will be a right instead of a privilege.

And how it sows seeds of hope and a vision for an even better future:

That is progressive change, and big change. That builds the narrative in this country that we are all in this together, that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, that we are a beloved community. Flawed as this bill is, as many improvements as will be needed, this is a very big deal. It gets us over this massive hurdle that nothing big can be done to change health care, or in general. It sets the stage of another of those Big Change Moments I wrote about in my book, The Progressive Revolution: those eras where big change was possible and really happened. It gives us hope again that this era may join the 1860s, early 1900s, 1930s and 1960s as a time when the country truly was able to move forward more than just a little bit at a time.

Lux warns of the perils and pitfalls that lie ahead, then he spells out the challenges going forward:

…Maybe this bill can help build hope and courage for doing the next things that need to be done. We still have millions of new jobs to create, big banks to be better regulated and broken up, climate change and immigration reform and the Employee Free Choice act to pass. We have a very big and very important agenda in front of us, and with health care done, that gives some momentum to moving forward.

And he gives today’s Democratic leaders their due:

…Readers of mine know I have been very critical of Obama at times on how he managed this health care fight, but I am enormously grateful that he brushed past all the advice to give up, and that he hung tough. And Speaker Pelosi, who argued passionately to keep pushing for comprehensive reform, and then delivered the votes twice in tough, tough circumstances, gets enormous credit as well…To not walk away, to stand and fight for big change even when the going gets very tough and the politics are dicey (at best): that is the measure of great leadership. Hopefully, this result gives everyone in the Democratic Party the courage to keep going to give us another Big Change Moment.

It’s hard to imagine a better way to begin Spring 2010 — a new season of hope.


Explaining the Democratic “No” Votes

Amidst the understandable relief among Democrats at the passage of health care reform by the House, there’s been relatively little talk about the Democrats who still voted “no.” But 34 of them did, and fortunately, Nate Silver of 538.com took a close look at factors that might have explained the residual defections.
Nate concludes that Obama’s 2008 share of the vote in each Members’ district, their general ideology, and their views on abortion, were the variables most highly correlated with a “no” vote. Variables that didn’t make as much difference include the competitiveness of the Members’ own races, the number of unisured in their districts, and campaign contributions by insurance industry lobbyists.
It’s not that surprising that all 12 House Democrats representing districts where Obama won less than 40% of the vote in 2008 voted “no,” or that 61 of the 63 representing districts where Obama won over 60% voted “yea.” But 13 of the 30 from districts where Obama won more than 40% but less than a majority voted “no.”
Despite Bart Stupak’s decision to support the bill at the last minute, it’s significant that 24 of the 34 “no” votes in the House were Members who voted for the original Stupak Amendment. Putting it another way, supporters of the Stupak Amendment split 37-24 in favor of the bill, while opponents split 182-10.
Ideologically, Nate uses the Poole-Rosenthal system to break down Democrats, and shows that “roughly the 110 most liberal Democrats voted for the health care bill.” That’s pretty amazing when you consider the unhappiness over the bill expressed by so many self-conscious progressives once the public option dropped out. Those categorized as “mainline Democrats” in the Poole-Rosenthal typology went for the bill 48-2, and “mainline-moderates” voted for it 44-7. In the most rightward category–“moderate-conservative”–Members split right down the middle, 25-25.
All the other variables don’t quite have the salience of Obama vote share, ideology, or abortion position. That should be at least mildly comforting to those Democrats who feared that pure political self-protection or insurance industry money were the major motivating factors for those voting “no.” And it’s very clear that the Democratic Left’s decision to support the bill despite concerns over its composition was absolutely crucial.


Party Discipline — Grassroots Style

Yesterday’s edition of the Savannah Morning News has an interesting and instructive article by Patrick Rodgers about U.S. Rep. John Barrow (D-GA12) catching hell from African American community leaders in a conference phone call just before the Saturday vote on health care reform. An excerpt:

This past Saturday afternoon, Congressman John Barrow held a conference call with more than 50 African American faith and community leaders from Savannah and Augusta. The call, which lasted nearly an hour, was to discuss his planned vote against healthcare reform the following day…Several callers said they would pray for him to change his mind and told him stories of their own struggles with the current healthcare system.

Barrow, whose district includes 44 percent African Americans, held fast to his opposition, citing the Blue Dog litany of concerns, and adding, according to Rodgers, “I’m not against the bill, but I can’t vote on a concept. I have to vote on specific legislation,” Barrow told the group. “I want the good that’s in this to pass, but I’m not willing to accept the collateral damage.” Apparently, it fell a little flat:

Most of those in attendance were unwilling to accept his reasoning…”You’re voting to hurt people by doing nothing,” said one caller who explained how she lost her benefits after leaving her last job, and hadn’t been able to afford to get them back since opening a small business.
Savannah City Council members Mary Osborne and Van Johnson were part of the call as well.
“You’ve got districts suffering from persistent poverty,” Alderman Johnson told Barrow. “Unless you have another plan, we need you to support this.”…”Do you expect us to support you in the next general election?” one caller asked about 45 minutes into the conversation.

Although they weren’t able to flip his vote, Barrow may pay a high price for his intransigence. The Democratic Party is not rigged like the G.O.P. to invoke party discipline for those who buck the Party’s majority and leadership on major legislation. But the African American community leaders of GA-12 have provided an instructive example of how progressives can pick up the slack. Barrow will be lucky if he doesn’t draw a formidable primary opponent.


Obama As Grand Strategist

Ron Brownstein’s post, “Obama And The Supertanker” at The National Journal takes a look at the President’s overall philosophy and strategy of change and offers some illuminating observations about his leadership style. Brownstein begins by noting Obama’s consistent advocacy of “comprehensive, big bang” health care reform in response to his chief of staff’s more cautious incremental recommendations:

…Emanuel said he has intermittently provided Obama his assessment of “the equities” in more- and less-ambitious approaches, especially “given everything [else] we’re trying to do.” He continued, “This is what I’m supposed to do as chief of staff. But he has… always said, ‘This is what needs to be done,’ and he has said he is willing to pay the political price to get it done.”
…Win or lose, Obama has pursued health care reform as tenaciously as any president has pursued any domestic initiative in decades. Health care has now been his presidency’s central domestic focus for a full year. That’s about as long as it took to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, originally introduced by John F. Kennedy and driven home by Lyndon Johnson. Rarely since World War II has a president devoted so much time, at so much political cost, to shouldering a single priority through Congress. It’s reasonable to debate whether Obama should have invested so heavily in health care. But it’s difficult to quibble with Emanuel’s assessment that once the president placed that bet, “He has shown fortitude, stamina, and strength.”

Brownstein sees Obama as a big-picture thinker, whose

…aim is to establish a long-term political direction — one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for sustainable, broadly shared growth. Everything else — the legislative tactics, even most individual policies — is negotiable. He wants to chart the course for the supertanker, not to steer it around each wave or decide which crates are loaded into its hull.
Obama’s core health care goals have been to establish the principle that Americans are entitled to insurance and to build a framework for controlling costs by incentivizing providers to work more efficiently. He has been unwavering about that destination but flexible and eclectic in his route. He has cut deals with traditional adversaries, such as the drug industry, and confronted allies to demand an independent Medicare reform commission. But Obama has also waged unconditional war on the insurance industry. He has negotiated and jousted with Senate Republicans. He has deferred (excessively at times) to congressional Democratic leaders but has also muscled them at key moments. He has pursued the liberal priority of expanded coverage through a centrist plan that largely tracks the Republican alternative to Clinton’s 1993 proposal.

Browstein quotes Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek, who argues that Team Obama embraces both a “consensual and confrontational” leadership style, “bringing everybody to the table [for] rational, pragmatic decision-making,” followed by “wrenching confrontation” — such as that embraced by “the most consequential presidents,’ including Lincoln and FDR.
Brownstein believes that Obama “…will continue to seek broad coalitions on some issues (education, energy, immigration) while accepting, even welcoming, greater partisan conflict on others (financial reform)…” But overall, says Brownstein, “The constant is Obama’s determination to turn the supertanker — and his Reagan-like willingness to bet his party’s future on his ability to sell the country on the ambitious course he has set.”
It appears we have a President who is also a strategic thinker, and today the results look very good indeed.


The (Republican) Constitutional Challenge To Health Reform

Today we learn that a coalition of State Attorneys General–12 so far–plan to launch a constitutional challenge to the just-passed-but-not-yet-signed Senate health reform bill on grounds that imposing an individual mandate to buy health insurance is not justified by the powers Congress enjoys under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly enough, the media reports I’ve seen on this story do not mention that eleven of the twelve AGs in question are Republicans. The one Democrat, Drew Edmondson of OK, is running for governor in this very conservative state.
FWIW, few constitutional experts find any merit for a Commerce Clause challenge to health reform. But the proposed suit is probably part of a longstanding conservative legal effort to slowly chip away at the expansive view of the Commerce Clause, which has been the basis for a variety of important congressional actions, including the Civil Rights Act.
While the challenge is unlikely to get anywhere, it is worth remembering that there wasn’t much if any precedent for the decision in Bush v. Gore, either.


Get a Grip

Just over a month ago, Jon Chait of TNR predicted that conservatives would “freak out” if and when health reform legislation was indeed enacted. Aside from the fact that many of them have been drinking their own kool-aid about the allegedly totalitarian implications of a health care system that would maintain America’s uniquely capitalist orientation towards health services, conservatives spent far too much time and energy celebrating the death of reform to accept its resurrection.
I don’t believe in spending too much time on schadenfreude, but it has been interesting to see the absolute shock with which some conservatives and tea party activists have reacted to last night’s vote. My favorite reaction is this from Newt Gingrich, posted on the Human Events site:

This will not stand.
No one should be confused about the outcome of Sunday’s vote
This is not the end of the fight it is the beginning of the fight.
The American people spoke decisively against a big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system
In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity
Speaker Pelosi knew the country was against the bill. That is why she kept her members trapped in Washington and forced a vote on Sunday.
She knew if she let the members go home their constituents would convince them to vote no.
The Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine combined the radicalism of Alinsky, the corruption of Springfield and the machine power politics of Chicago.
Sunday was a pressured, bought, intimidated vote worthy of Hugo Chavez but unworthy of the United States of America.
It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak.

Hugo Chavez! Saul Alinsky! A six-adjective sentence (“big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system”)! The end of civilization as we know it!
This is the same Newt Gingrich, mind you, who led a Republican-controlled Congress over the brink in 1995 and 1996 in the pursuit of extremely unpopular policies, arguing he had a mandate from the electorate to carry out a conservative revolution. And this is the same Newt Gingrich who increased the power of the Speaker’s Office to levels not seen since the days of “Czar” Reed, all but abolishing the seniority system and making loyalty to the Speaker and the Caucus’ agenda the only criterion for advancement. As for “intimidation”: wonder what Gingrich thought of those Republicans who placed photos of defeated 1994 Democrats on the seats of wavering Democratic Members yesterday?
Gingrich’s crocodile tears for Bart Stupak are even more ludicrous. Stupak made himself a national celebrity by creating a symbolic fight over essentially inconsequential language differences in the House and Senate provisions on abortion. Yesterday he accepted a symbolic victory that was equally inconsequential, and folded his tent. I can’t imagine how Obama, Pelosi and Reed were guilty of “ruthlessness and inhumanity” by accepting his face-saving deal.
Newt was almost certainly playing for the galleries where his heart really lives these days: among potential 2012 caucus-goers in Iowa, a right-tilting crowd if ever there was one. And speaking of Iowa Republicans, Rep. Steve King outdid Gingrich in his remarks to a crowd of Tea Party protestors outside the Capitol last night:

“You are the awesome American people,” said King. “If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they’d be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that! Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!”

It’s interesting how King alternates between a threat of violence and a threat to leave this godless socialist country behind and take the “real Americans” with him.
Let’s hope Republicans get a grip over the next few days.


Contemplating the Magnitude

Step back a minute, take a deep breath and tune out all of the spin and yammering to consider the magnitude of what has been achieved with the House vote on HCR: For starters, America will very soon be a country where no insurance company can deny health coverage to a child because of prior illness or condition. That alone is a truly monumental reform, which honest opponents of the bill will acknowledge.
Every family in America can now breathe a little freer with that knowledge, and great credit is due to the President his staff, Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer, as well as the courageous House members who risked their careers to do the right thing. There’s more, much more, that can be said about the positive impact of this bill, as well as the problems associated with it. But for now, the immediate health security it will provide for millions of children is a very great accomplishment for America, and not incidentally, the Democratic party.


Will Dems Opposing HCR Lose Support in November?

For many months now, we’ve been hearing the GOP threat that Democrats will pay dearly for supporting the health care reform package. Now might be a good time to ask conversely whether any House Dems who voted against the bill will lose support in November.
Most of the 34 Dems who crossed over to support the Republicans in the key vote should be safe, just because of the power of incumbency, which is strong even for members of the party in power in mid-term elections. One exception might be GA Democratic Rep. John Barrow, whose 12th congressional district, which stretches from Savannah to Augusta, includes 44 percent African American voters. Presidential nominee Obama cut an ad for Barrow in his last campaign, so Barrow’s negative HCR vote may alienate some of his district’s stronger supporters of President Obama and/or HCR. Barrow did defeat an African American primary challenger in 2008, but other Black leaders in his district must be wondering if they could unhorse Barrow in the Democratic primary.
Rep. Artur Davis (AL), the only African American congressman to oppose the HCR package, on the other hand, won’t be vulnerable to a primary challenge because he is running for Governor of Alabama. Davis won three of his terms by landslides and one with no opposition. Clearly, he sees his vote against HCR as a net asset for his gubernatorial campaign. He may be right, although even in AL, his HCR vote could hurt with state progressives in a close election.
Race would not be the only consideration, however, in assessing constituent disapproval of the votes against health care reform. A few of the 34 nay voters, including Heath Shuler (NC) and Stephen Lynch (MA) have substantial liberal enclaves/constituencies in their districts, which could make a difference as stay-at-homes in a close election.
Here is The Hill’s list of the 34 Dems who voted no on health care reform:

Rep. John Adler (N.J.)
Rep. Jason Altmire (Pa.)
Rep. Michael Arcuri (N.Y.)
Rep. John Barrow (Ga.)
Rep. Marion Berry (Ark.)
Rep. Dan Boren (Ind.)
Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.)
Rep. Bobby Bright (Ala.)
Rep. Ben Chandler (Ky.)
Rep. Travis Childers (Miss.)
Rep. Artur Davis (Ala.)
Rep. Lincoln Davis (Tenn.)
Rep. Chet Edwards (Texas)
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.)
Rep. Tim Holden (Pa.)
Rep. Larry Kissell (N.C.)
Rep. Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Rep. Dan Lipinski (Ill.)
Rep. Stephen Lynch (Mass.)
Rep. Jim Marshall (Ga.)
Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah)
Rep. Mike McIntyre (N.C.)
Rep. Mike McMahon (N.Y.)
Rep. Charlie Melancon (La.)
Rep. Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Rep. Glenn Nye (Va.)
Rep. Collin Peterson (Minn.)
Rep. Mike Ross (Ark.)
Rep. Heath Shuler (N.C.)
Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.)
Rep. Zack Space (Ohio)
Rep. John Tanner (Tenn.)
Rep. Gene Taylor (Miss.)
Rep. Harry Teague (N.M.)

In addition to the power of incumbency, what these Dems have going for them is that it is late for primary challengers to start new campaigns, if they haven’t already. Some of the 34 will also likely be getting lots of love in the form of dough from insurance companies and the like.
I’m sure that some of the Dem nay voters acted on principle, though all probably saw their votes as a matter of political survival. Sad, however, that they chose to be part of the fear-driven past, rather than the hopeful future. They risked hurting their party, as well as the health of their constituents. As E.J. Dionne, Jr. put it in his WaPo column:

To understand how large a victory this is, consider what defeat would have meant. In light of the president’s decision to gamble all of his standing to get this bill passed, its failure would have crippled his presidency. The Democratic Congress would have become a laughing stock, incapable of winning on an issue that has been central to its identity since the days of Harry Truman.

For Dems there’s always the thorny problem of primary challenges usually helping the Republicans. Of course, Boehner and company will praise the 34 Dems to the hilt, and then do everything they can to replace them with Republicans, where possible. All of those who are running this year are banking to some extent on most HCR supporters forgiving and forgetting by November, which could be a dicey bet. And President Obama may have a Lincolnesque capacity for political forgiveness, but Rahm Emmanuel most emphatically does not.
It may not be fair to pigeon-hole all of these Dems as DINO’s, since they vote with their party most of the time. That’s life in the big tent. Still, progressive Dems can’t be blamed for asking, if they are not with us on such a central legislative reform, one which could save many lives and one which could have decided the President’s re-election chances, then who are they?