One of the longest-running themes in a certain sort of mainstream journalism is the claim that the internet has enabled a vast rise in unregulated hate speech, particularly of the antisemitic variety. Almost invariably, such claims focus on comment threads in which crazy people lurk in obnoxious obscurity.
Last week Washington Post columnist (and former George W. Bush speechwriter) Mike Gerson penned a particularly strange and sweeping version of this claim, suggesting that “cyber-bigots” pose a threat similar to that of–yes, you guessed it–the Nazis, whose pioneering use of radio for hate speech is supposedly the precedent and analog for today’s comment-thread lurkers.
When fellow Post-man Ezra Klein posted a pretty obvious response noting that a more reasonable analog for yesterday’s radio-enabled hate talk is today’s radio-(and cable TV-)enabled hate talk, Gerson had a public meltdown. Writing in a Post blog, Gerson went directly after Klein as an a member of the President’s “unpaid policy staff” (a strange complaint coming from someone who became famous as a paid presidential staffer), called his observations “ignorant,” and then insulted his ethical sensibilities. But as Jonathan Chait notes today in a tart smackdown, Gerson’s big trump card was the fatuous claim that Holocaust Museum shooter James Van Brunn was a creature of the internet.
On a separate front, Spencer Ackerman performed his own smackdown of Gerson for the man’s audacity in lecturing liberal Jews about how to deal with antisemitism.
Since Gerson is a Christian, and so am I, allow me to offer my own advice: it would be more seemly, and for that matter, ethical, if you didn’t dismiss the obvious, huge-audience haters in your own political community, and your own more conventional media, before going all Confessing Church on the incredibly marginal internet ranters that you apparently associate with the Left. You know, Matthew 7:3: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

A lot of progressives are focused on today’s events in the Senate Finance Committee as a sort of Battle of Armageddon on health care reform, since the Committee will formally vote on a Rockefeller-Schumer amendment to add a public option to the Baucus proposal, which currently lacks one. You can follow the action via Tim Noah’s liveblog at Slate.
But as Chris Bowers keeps pointing out at OpenLeft, the Finance markup isn’t the last, or even the best, opportunity for a public option to emerge in the Senate debate. That will happen when the Finance and HELP Committee versions of health care reform are merged under the direction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with our without the benefit of budget reconciliation rules. There’s another possible shot at a public option in a House-Senate conference committee, but it’s unlikely the Senate will be any friendlier to the idea later rather than sooner.
Now that’s all she wrote to a lot of progressives; either the public option is attached to the bill, or health care reform legislation has failed and isn’t worth pursuing, since it merely represents gigantic subsidies to private health insurers. If you are in that camp, you might want to force yourself to read Jonathan Cohn’s piece today on health reform without a public option in The Netherlands.
Cohn’s basic point is that aggressive government regulation of private health insurers can accomplish a lot of the same things as competition from a public option, particularly in terms of limiting out-of-pocket consumer costs and preventing discriminatory treatment of the sick and/or poor. Moreover, such regulations are often politically popular, even among rank-and-file Republicans. So it might be a good idea, during the Senate Finance Committee and later in the process, to focus a bit on the regulatory questions that will determine the ground rules for any new competitive system of health insurance, whether or not a “robust” public option is one of the players.

President Obama’s approval rating on health care has improved “across multiple polls” as a result of his September 9 speech, the unveiling of Sen. Baucus’s health care reform bill and “progressive pushback,” according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira. In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’, Teixeira cites,

…a consistent pattern of increased support exists for Obama’s handling of health care and for the health care plans before Congress. This pattern can be seen in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, where Obama’s approval rating on health care increased by 4 points and support for health care legislation rose by 3 points.

Teixeira notes that an overwhelming majority – 89 percent — agreed that “requiring that health insurance companies cover people with pre-existing medical conditions” must be included in health care legislation (63 percent) or that they would prefer that it be included (26 percent). In addition, 63 percent of poll respondents felt either that “requiring that all but the smallest employers provide health coverage for their employees, or pay a percentage of their payroll to help fund coverage for the uninsured” should be part of reform legislation (26 percent), with another 37 percent saying they would prefer that it be included. In terms of the ‘public option,’ Teixeira adds,

And 53 percent felt either that “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies” must be included in legislation (26 percent) or that they would prefer that it be included (27 percent).

And further,

In the same poll there is a very interesting finding that highlights how fed up people are with the current system. The public, by a 45-39 margin, said “it would be better to pass Barack Obama’s health care plan and make its changes to the health care system” rather than it would be better “to not pass this plan and keep the current health care system.”

Conservatives have done everything they can to kill health reform, but the tide is turning, and public is increasingly ready for change.

A lot of the political implications of the health care reform fight depend heavily on what happens between now and the end of this congressional session. But one “victim,” as Andy Barr puts it in Politico today, is pretty clear regardless of the ultimate outcome: Mitt Romney.

Three years ago, Romney was heralded for his innovative effort to institute near-universal health care in his state. But now that the issue has emerged as a partisan fault line and the Massachusetts plan has provided some guidance for Democratic reform efforts, Romney finds himself bruised and on the defensive as the GOP rallies around opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans.

Some of the flack aimed at Romney has to do with the perceived consequences of the Massachusetts health reform initiative, particularly in terms of costs. Here’s Mike Huckabee’s vicious little swipe on that point:

“It’s going to bankrupt their entire budget,” former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee said of Romney’s health care program in his address to the [Values Voters] summit. “The only thing inexpensive about the Massachusetts health care bill is that there you can get a $50 abortion.”

Nice, eh? But the broader problem for Romney is that it’s hard to attack current health reform plans as a “government takeover of health care,” and individual or employer mandates as the extinction of freedom, without applying similar rhetoric to Romney’s initiative. And while Romney didn’t talk much about his health care record during his 2008 presidential run, he hasn’t repudiated it, either–if for no other reason, because he’s trying to shake a reputation as an opportunistic flip-flopper. With Republicans treating health care reform as an outrage similar in audacity to the Sack of Rome, there’s just no way a good bit of this hate won’t rub off on the Mittster, particularly in the crucible of another presidential campaign.
You have to figure many Republicans are privately unhappy with this situation. Ever since the last election day, the CW in Washington has been that Romney is the best option the GOP has for 2012, particularly after Jon Huntsman all but took himself out of the running by joining the Obama administration as ambassador to China. Romney ran a reasonably viable if flawed campaign in 2008, and wound up as the candidate of most conservatives leery of John McCain. He was a good do-be party man during the general election campaign, and according to one leading account, might have become the Veep nominee and kept Sarah Palin in obscurity had not John McCain forgotten how many houses he owned and made a Richie Rich ticket impracticable. He’s got endless money, a credible record as a blue-state governor, and the intangible advantage of being considered competent and sane even by most Democrats.
But it’s difficult to see how he overcomes responsibility for a state health care initiative that in important ways looks and sounds a lot like what Democrats are trying to enact nationally, now that hard-core shrieking opposition to health care reform has become an absolute litmus test for conservative orthodoxy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.