If you know anyone who is buying the wingnut snake oil being termed “climategate,’ direct them post-haste to Lee Fang’s post, “A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured ‘Climategate’ ” in ‘The Wonk Room’ at Think Progress web pages. Fang not only demolishes the allegation that global warming is a myth; he also shows quite clearly how the wingnuts distort and manipulate facts to smear scientists and policy makers who are raising concerns about global warming. An excerpt:

…Polluter-funded climate skeptics, along with their allies in conservative media and the Republican Party, sifted through the e-mails, and quickly cherry picked quotes to falsely accuse climate scientists of concocting climate change science out of whole cloth. The skeptics also propelled the story, dubbed “Climategate,” to the cover of the New York Times and newspapers across the globe. According to a Nexis news search, the Climategate story has been reported at least 325 times in the American press alone.
…As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?

Fang then describes how the media was manipulated to serve the wingnut scam:

The methods for the right-wing political hit machine were honed during the Clinton years. Columnist and language-guru William Safire, a former aide to actual Watergate crook President Nixon, attached “-gate” to any minor post-Nixon incident as a “rhetorical legerdemain” intended “to establish moral equivalence.” (See phony manufactured scandals “Travelgate,” “Whitewatergate,” etc.) A right-wing echo chamber — including the Rev. Moon-funded Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, and the constellation of various conservative front groups and think tanks — would then blare the scandal incessantly, regardless of the truth. But the more troubling aspect of this gimmick is the increasing willingness for traditional media outlets, from the Evening News to the Washington Post, to largely reprint unfounded right-wing smears without context or critical reporting.
One of the most successful coups for right-wing hit men was the “SwiftBoat” campaign, a well financed effort orchestrated by lobbyists and Bush allies to smear Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war record. But “Climategate” is no different, with many of the same conservatives actors playing their respective roles…

The rest of Fang’s post is a richly-linked, detailed chronology of the media campaign to puff up “climategate” and discredit scientists who are doing serious work on the issue — required reading for anyone who cares about the crisis of global warming.

Following up on Ed’s post on the Ipsos-McClatchey poll below, Jonathan Chait’s “More Polling On Health Care Reform’s Popularity” at The New Republic, flags Mark Blumenthal’s analysis of a new CNN/ORC poll. As Blumenthal explains:

Immediately after their favor-or-oppose question about the recently passed health reform bill, CNN’s pollsters asked a new follow-up question that others have not. They found that while a third of all adults (34 percent) say they oppose the bill because “its approach toward health care is too liberal,” 10 percent oppose it because it is “not liberal enough.”

With 46 percent supporting the House health care reform bill, that 10 percent means 56 percent of Americans now “favor either the House-passed version of health care reform or something further to the left,” according to Texas Tech professor Alan Reifman, quoted in Chait’s post. Hopefully the Senate ‘Group of Ten’ now negotiating a consensus is paying attention.

Alan I. Abramowitz has a post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball that should be required reading for Democratic Senate Leadership. Abramowitz, senior editor at the Crystal Ball and a TDS contributor, makes a tight case that the time has come for Democrats to change Senate rules, so America will no longer be held hostage by the filibuster. First, he sets the stage, reviewing Democratic prospects for overcoming the filibuster under current rules

…While Democrats have a good chance of retaining control of the Senate in the next two election cycles, their majority is almost certain to be reduced.
In 2010 Republicans will be defending 19 of the 38 seats that are up for election so their opportunities for gains will be limited. In 2012, however, Republicans will have a much better chance to recoup some of the losses that they suffered in the 2006 and 2008 elections because Democrats will have to defend 24 of the 33 seats that will be up for election.
The results of the 2010 and 2012 Senate elections will depend on the national political climate when those elections take place. In the long run, however, Democrats will probably find it very difficult to maintain anything close to a 60-seat majority in the Senate. Since the end of World War II, Senate majorities of 60 or larger have been unusual and the current 60-seat Democratic majority represents a sharp break with the recent pattern of relatively small majorities. While Democrats now enjoy an edge in party identification in the electorate, their advantage among regular voters is fairly small. Moreover, at least 22 of the 60 Democratic Senate seats would appear to be highly vulnerable. Democrats currently hold 11 Senate seats in states that were carried by the Republican Party in all three presidential elections since 2000 as well as 11 seats in states that were carried by the Republicans in two of these three elections. In contrast, Republicans hold only two seats in states that were carried by the Democratic Party in all three presidential elections and only two additional seats in states that were carried by the Democrats in two of these elections.

Abramowitz explains further that the “small state bias” favors Republicans since Dems are disproportionately concentrated in major urban areas in the large states. Dems do currently hold 11 of 24 seats of the 12 small states, Abramowitz notes, but this is likely to diminish in the next elections. He then concludes:

A reduced Democratic majority will make it almost impossible to invoke cloture. This leaves progressive Democrats with two options: try to build bipartisan coalitions or change the Senate’s rules. Bipartisanship is very popular with many Washington political insiders. However, given the deep ideological divide that separates the two parties, bipartisanship is simply not a viable option in today’s Senate. In a Senate with a narrow Democratic majority, the swing vote on cloture would not be moderate Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe. It would be someone like conservative Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. In order to gain enough Republican votes to invoke cloture, progressive Democrats would have to abandon many of their key policy commitments.
A reduced Democratic majority would leave only one viable option for progressives to save their policy agenda: change the Senate’s rules to end the filibuster. Short of a constitutional amendment, nothing can be done about the small state, Republican bias of the Senate. But the Senate’s rules can be changed by a simple majority vote. All it takes is the political will to drag the Senate kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Clearly this is a challenge that must be met by reform-minded Democrats sooner, than later — or we may not get another chance for decades.

It appears that Democrat Kasim Reed has won a narrow victory over ‘Independent’ Mary Norwood in the Atlanta mayoral race. Reed holds a 750 vote lead with all the votes in, except for about 645 provisional ballots that remain uncounted.
Much of the vote was along racial lines, with some crossover votes favoring Norwood, who is white. She hired numerous African American campaign workers and had offices in the Black community. But AJC columnist Jay Bookman attributes Reed’s margin to his record of ‘competence’ as a state senator and assemblyman, in comparison to Norwood’s somewhat lackluster record as a city council member.
(UPDATE 12/3: Cameron McWhirter reports in The Atlanta Constitution that “More than 56 percent of Reed’s votes came from predominantly black districts. About 15.6 percent of his votes came from predominantly white districts. The rest came from mixed districts. The reverse was true for Norwood. Sixty-two percent of her vote came from white districts and 14.5 percent of her vote came from black districts. These percentages roughly mirror the November general election, but Norwood’s turnout dropped slightly in black districts.”)
There will be a recount, since Reed’s margin of victory was less than one percent, and Norwood has said she will request it. It is possible that Norwood could emerge with more votes, but not likely.
Norwood’s party affiliation has been a topic of much speculation during the campaign. The head of the GA Democratic Party called her a “duplicitous Republican.” Apparently it’s not quite that simple, according to CBS’s Atlanta affiliate:

CBS Atlanta checked Norwood’s voting record at the Secretary of State’s office. In Georgia, voters do not register with any party at the polls. Since 1990, Norwood has chosen the Republican ballot in primaries 12 times. She’s chosen the Democratic ballot just six times, mostly in recent years.

In one of her ads, Norwood states “I voted for Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, the Independent.” Norwood also stated that “I did go to a Republican convention once, and I disliked it so much, I have never been to another one for either party.” But when asked in a press conference if she had ever voted for George W. Bush, she reportedly responded that she couldn’t remember. Had she been more forthcoming in answering that question either way, might the outcome have been different?
Some credit the “unexpectedly heavy turnout” for Reed’s win, which has to be a disappointment for Republicans. If Norwood had won, they would have trumpeted it as a loss for Dems, if not quite a win for the GOP. Those looking for a clear trend may have to wait for Houston’s Dec. 12 mayoral election, which features some of the same dynamics as the Atlanta race.

The knee-jerk cynics, Obamaphobes and comedians have gotten lots of play lately, dissing the President for what they see as his lack of accomplishments during his first year. But over at SLATE.com, Jacob Weisberg takes a more thoughtful look at Obama’s first year and sees something very different:

This conventional wisdom about Obama’s first year isn’t just premature—it’s sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn’t an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It’s a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

Regarding health care reform in particular:

…Democrats have been trying to pass national health insurance for 60 years. Past presidents who tried to make it happen and failed include Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Through the summer, Obama caught flak for letting Congress lead the process, as opposed to setting out his own proposal. Now his political strategy is being vindicated. The bill he signs may be flawed in any number of ways—weak on cost control, too tied to the employer-based system, and inadequate in terms of consumer choice. But given the vastness of the enterprise and the political obstacles, passing an imperfect behemoth and improving it later is probably the only way to succeed where his predecessors failed.
We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a “public option,” limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it’s easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government’s role since the New Deal. If Obama governs for four or eight years and accomplishes nothing else, he may be judged the most consequential domestic president since LBJ. He will also undermine the view that Ronald Reagan permanently reversed a 50-year tide of American liberalism.

Not too shabby for openers. Further:

…There’s mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression…Pundits and policymakers will argue…for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama’s decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter…

Then there is Obama’s course-altering leadership in foreign affairs:

…He has put America on a new footing with the rest of the world. In a series of foreign trips and speeches, which critics deride as trips and speeches, he replaced George W. Bush’s unilateral, moralistic militarism with an approach that is multilateral, pragmatic, and conciliatory. Obama has already significantly reoriented policy toward Iran, China, Russia, Iraq, Israel, and the Islamic world. Next week, after a much-disparaged period of review, he will announce a new strategy in Afghanistan. No, the results do not yet merit his Nobel Peace Prize. But not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodeled America’s global role.

Weisberg concedes that President Obama has “wisely deferred some smaller, politically hazardous battles,” including the closing of Guantanamo, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and Israel’s West Bank settlements, focusing instead on “his most urgent priorities—preventing a depression, remaking America’s global image, and winning universal health insurance.” As Weisberg concludes, what President since FDR has accomplished more in year one?

Jonathan Chait’s post “Popularity Contest” at The New Republic gives GOP myth-mongers (especially Krauthammer) a proper shredding, and provides progressive bloggers with an excellent template for doing the same in the bargain.
Chait riffs on an ad placed in TNR by conservative American Future Fund (AFF) urging moderate Democrats to ditch health care reform, with the headline “THE LOSERS OF 1994 … THANKS TO HEALTH CARE!” and featuring photos of Dems who lost their seats in that year. Says Chait, who deliciously bites the advertising hand that feeds him:

I hesitate to impugn the intellectual integrity of any of the good folks who purchase space in this magazine in order to share their concerns about public policy. Yet I cannot help but wonder if AFF has truly proffered this advice in good faith…Democrats did not lose their seats in 1994 because they enacted health care reform. They failed to enact, or even vote on, health care reform. So it’s hard to see why…letting health care reform die an ignominious death is an attractive strategy for the majority party.

Chait concedes that “narrow, but stable majorities disapprove” of President Obama’s health care plan, but “The problem with this gauge is that it lumps together Obama’s critics from the right with those from the left” and health care reform in general “actually remains quite popular.” Further, says Chait:

…One recent poll asks whether the Democratic plans create too much government involvement, the right amount, or not enough. Too much gets 42 percent, the right amount 34 percent, and not enough 21 percent. Another question shows that only 28 percent of Americans think the bill goes too far in expanding coverage to the uninsured, 33 percent say it expands coverage the right amount, and 35 percent say it does not go far enough. In both cases, majorities of the public either support Obama’s approach or wish it went further.
Moreover, a clear majority of Americans say that they want the Democrats to pass a health care bill with a public option, even if this means it would get no GOP votes–a striking result, given the misty-eyed sentiment Americans generally display toward bipartisanship in all its forms.

“Vulnerable congressional Democrats may have individual interests in establishing their moderate bona fides by challenging their party leadership,” argues Chait. “But they have a far stronger collective interest in passing a bill.”
Chait quotes a Wall St. Journal editorial, which says “Democrats know this legislation is … possible only because of temporary liberal majorities,” then counters “…Obama out-polled his opponent by eight-and-a-half million votes, a margin that exceeded Bush’s 2000 popular-vote edge by, oh, roughly nine million votes.”
Chait then asks, “Shouldn’t Obama’s actual election count for more than two low-turnout gubernatorial races? Oh no. The off-year elections prove Obama’s presidency is a fluke.” Chait also quotes WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer:

2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression.,,The return to the norm is happening now.

Chait responds,

Got that? The normal state of affairs is an odd-year, low-turnout election occurring in just two states, which have voted against the incumbent party for the past 20 years, with no national candidates on the ballot, and with double-digit unemployment. That’s a perfectly calibrated measure of public preference on national issues. But Obama’s election was an accident.
…But, if Americans were recoiling at Obama’s liberalism, rather than lashing out at the poor economy, you’d expect to see the Democratic Party losing favor and the GOP regaining it. In fact, the opposite remains true. (A recent poll had the Dems’ favorable rating at 53-41, and the Republicans’ at 36-54.) Given the circumstances, the striking fact about the political landscape is how little has changed since November 2008.
..But 2009 isn’t a debacle, and it won’t be unless Democrats get bluffed into making it one.

All of which adds up to a gratifying example of a conservative organization purchasing space for a propaganda screed in a magazine, which elicits a response in the same magazine that leaves their pitch more discredited than before.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot at the Center for American Progress web pages,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira cites a new bipartisan poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner/Public Opinion Strategies, conducted for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health, which addresses “the neglected prevention aspect of health care reform…providing people with information and resources and creating policies that help people make healthier decisions.” According to Teixeira:

This poll finds 71 percent of Americans backing more investment in prevention versus just 23 percent who are opposed….Reflecting this strong support, investing in prevention ranked just behind the massively popular prohibition against insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions in a list of health care reforms given to respondents. Prevention was given an average priority rating of 7.7 on a 10-point scale, compared to 7.9 for the coverage denial prohibition.

Sounds like a focus that Dems can use to win broad support. “Prevention may not get much press,” says Teixeira. “But it is very popular with the public. Maybe it’s time for the press to start paying attention.”

The ‘glass is half-empty’ crowd might describe what Democrats accomplished with Saturday’s vote on health care reform as “barely enough U.S. Senators agreed to begin debating a health care reform bill some of them hope to actually pass.” WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. acknowleges all of the complaining about the reform bill, but he emphasizes the more optimistic view in his ‘Post-Partisan’ blog, “Can’t we celebrate a little on health care?“:

Something truly momentous happened in the United States Senate last night…Okay, it’s entirely true that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s success in putting together 60 votes to let debate on a health-care bill go forward is only a first step. ..But can we pause to note that a comprehensive health-reform bill has never been this close to passage?…Is it really so hard to remember that for the 15 years since the failure of President Clinton’s reforms, the conventional take was that health-care reform is impossible?

Dionne recommends Rob Brownstein’s post at The Atlantic on cost-containment in health care reform legislation, and adds,

Brownstein’s point is that while the Senate health care bill is not perfect on this front — has any legislative body ever enacted a perfect law? — the bill is winning praise from very tough-minded health-care analysts for how extensive its cost-containment measures are. There is nothing naïve about Brownstein’s post, and he offers a lot of sensible caveats, but he’s right to suggest that this round of legislating may well be “a milestone in the health care journey.”

The praise the Reid compromise has gotten from cost-containment advocates is an important angle for supporters to promote more energetically. As Dionne concludes, “Let’s celebrate the fact that we are dealing with an issue that we have left unattended for far too long.”

In Friday’s HuffPo, TDS contributor Mike Lux takes a step back to put the battle for health care reform into the big picture — how it enables momentum in support of the broader struggle for a more progressive agenda. As Lux writes,

Being into the whole history thing enough to have written a book on it, I tend to take a long view on the big policy battles we fight today…At the end of the day you also have to ask yourself two very big questions. The first is whether the passage of this legislation sets the stage on other issues for better or worse things to come. The second is whether the legislation, even with all of its flaws and compromises, creates a platform to build on in the future…These two questions are equally applicable to the other big fights looming immediately in front of us- climate change, financial reform, immigration, maybe (hopefully) a jobs bill, Employee Free Choice Act. In every single case, progressives are going to have to make difficult decisions re the compromises they will be forced to make. On none of these issues will we be able to get what we want, and some of the tradeoffs will really suck. But as we are debating the policy pros and cons, we also need to keep those two big questions in mind.

Lux draws the painful, but instructive lesson from the Clinton Administration’s failure to enact health care reform:

…When we lost on health care in 1994, and then lost Congress in the elections because our base was so discouraged that they didn’t turn out, it made Clinton and Democrats in general hyper-cautious about trying to do anything big or bold the rest of his Presidency. If we had won on health care, we would have kept Congress, and we would have emboldened Democrats to try other big things. It is one of the most basic laws in politics: victory makes you stronger, and defeat makes you weaker. You can fault Obama for some of his specific policy proposals, and for being too ready to compromise on some things, but one thing he has been willing to do is try to do big things, and if health care goes down, the attempt to do big things will probably will stop- climate change probably is given up on as too hard, financial reform gets weaker, efforts to create more jobs probably is given up on, immigration reform very likely gets shelved. If a health care bill is passed…it will create the possibility of doing other big things.

Lux uses the example of Social Security legislation as a foundational reform that paved the way for strengthening amendments:

…When it was first passed, it was far weaker than today, and had many flaws progressives of today would have been rightfully upset about, but that it was a platform future progressives could build on. I think that’s how we have to view this health care bill, the climate change bill, and at least some other legislation coming down the pike.

A salient point. We want the strongest possible legislation, but a bill’s weaknesses can be corrected later. Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, concludes:

…Where there is some early success, momentum can build into something bigger and more progressive over time: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and LBJ all achieved most of their big historic changes after more than a year in office. We need to create that platform so we can build big change one step at a time. Every one of those steps will be slow and painful and infuriating. I still have hope, though, if we can get the first step of health care done, we can take another step, and then another one, and that we will be able to look back many years from now with pride because we made big change history when our opportunity for it came.

The opportunity is upon us, and ‘big change history’ now calls Democrats everywhere to action.