Driving out of Nashville yesterday, I surfed the radio, looking for something other than bad music or right-wing political commentary, and happened on a syndicated BBC show discussing the death of the great Swedish filmaker Ingmar Bergman (his Winter Light, the tale of a Luthern minister losing his faith, is one of my very favorite movies). Some film critic came on, and suggeseted that Bergman’s period of popularity peaked in the 1960s because his bleak and emotional themes tapped anxieties spurred by the nuclear arms race, the war in Vietnam, and battles over gender and sexual issues.
Hmmm. A disastrous war. Nuclear fears. Culture wars. Sounds like it’s high time for a Bergman revival.
I soon tired of the next BBC story, having to do with horse carts creating traffic congestion in Bogota, and started listening to sports talk stations. Despite the efforts of hosts to get callers talking about the death of–no, not Ingmar Bergman–former pro coaching genius Bill Walsh, most of the gabbing revolved around the perennial sagas of Barry Bonds’ ascent towards the major league home run record, and Michael Vick’s descent towards disgrace and perhaps the slammer (the latter story is on the front pages of the Atlanta newspapers just about every day). As you may know, public reactions to both controversies have largely broken along racial lines, much like the O.J. Simpson case.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the longstanding racial disparity in assessments of George W. Bush’s presidency is steadily being healed, with black and white Americans coming together in disdain for the man. In this one sense, and perhaps only in this one sense, he’s redeeming his pledge to be a “uniter, not a divider.”

The DLC meeting in Nashville didn’t get a lot of press, but Richard Locker of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal did a pretty good general review of the event, and Southern Political Report’s Tom Baxter wrote extensively about President Clinton’s speech.
Speaking of that speech, I happened to be sitting next to Dr. Drew Westen during the Clinton address, and afterwards he noted Clinton’s particular ability to measure any given audience’s interest-level in policy detail. The audience in Nashville had a very high tolerance level for wonkitude. (BTW, I interviewed Westen after the event, and will be posting it here soon).
One of the underlying buzz elements of this conference was the possibiilty that some of the governors speaking in Nashville might be “auditioning” in this and similar forums for the vice-presidential nomination–most notably Governors Sebelius, Schweitzer and Bredesen, who often appear on Veep “lists” along with New Mexico’s Bill Richardson (assuming he’s not at the top of the ticket) and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.
Bredesen delivered a speech that was put together in a very interesting way. He bagan by talking about Tonnessee’s frontier heritage, segueing to his and his wife’s “twentieth-century pioneers” move to Tennessee from the northeast in the 1970s. He then discussed “barnraising” as part of the frontier legacy, and described the process wherein parts of a barn were built on the ground separately, and then literally “raised” into place. . Suddenly, but very smoothly, he started talking about incremental health care reform using the metaphor, suggesting that piecemeal reforms that addressed costs, improved quality, and covered kids, could be “raised” quickly into a universal system.
Given the complex and sometimes soporific nature of most discussions of incremental health care reform, it struck me as a brave and interesting effort to give the subject some vision and poetry. But you definitely had to hear the whole thing.
On the other hand, Bredesen’s stock was probably not improved by Rep. Jim Cooper’s introductory remarks. Trying to emphasize Bredesen’s popularity in Tennessee, Cooper noted that the Governor won all 95 counties in his re-election bid, “even though he’d just cut 400,000 people from Medicaid coverage.”
To borrow the punch line from a profane old joke about several men in a church who are competing with ever-more-lurid accounts of their pre-salvation depravity: “Don’t b’lieve I’d a told that, brother!”

Just watched Bill Clinton’s speech at the annual meeting, and as always, was amazed at his ability to combine passion and wonkiness, and at how revered he remains in this and most other Democratic audiences.
Listening to him, I couldn’t help but think: is there any chance that when George W. Bush is seven years past his presidency, much of anyone would want to hear him speak? Hard to imagine.
The speech itself combined a very direct defense of the DLC from its current critics, and then a powerful talk focusing on globalization, energy, and health care. His accustomed rap on the accomplishments of his administration vis a vis that of his successor has been expanded and refined. And in defending the DLC, he basically suggested that the challenges faces the country, and Democrats, right now are not completely dissimilar from those of 1992, when the DLC had a lot to do with formulating his campaign platform and his initial agenda in office. He also did a good job of maintaining his role as ex-president, only referring to his wife in passing on very specific issues.
I’ll have more to say about his speech, and the entire event, a bit later.

I’m blogging from somewhere inside the massive Opryland complex in Nashville, where I’m attending the Democratic Leadership Council’s annual meeting, styled as the “National Conversation.”
At the moment, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is delivering a smart and very funny speech on renewable energy. Here a sample. After discussing the long history of our “four billion barrel problem” with oil dependence, he said:

[Last year] George W. Bush looked straight into the teleprompter, and read Karl’s five words: “We are addicted to oil.”
I’ll be damned! Who knew?

Two other governors–Phil Bredesen and Kathleen Sebelius–have already spoken, and Martin O’Malley’s up next.
The meeting actually began yesterday, with twenty separate workshops. The three I participated in–on election reform, “values voter” trends, and new social media, were SRO, and had some unexpected twists. In the first, a farily routine if fact-filled series of presentations of redistricting reform and state-level public financing of campaigns veered into a discussion of out-of-the-box ways to deal with uncompetitive legislative seats and disengaged voters, including cumulative voting, multi-post districts, and Instant Runoff Voting (Oregon, I learned, recently authorized IRV as an option for local governments, and is building a positive precedent for the innovation).
In the “values” discussion (which began with an analysis of some of the recent trends in public opinion on hot-button cultural issues). Tennessee Senator Roy Herron delivered what I can only describe as a sermon on Republican moral perfidy. At one point, he got into rhyming couplets worthy of Jesse Jackson at his best.
And in the social media workshop, which focused on YouTube, MySpace, and FaceBook, I was a bit surprised to discover how hep many state legislators and mayors seem to be about the political and civic implications of these innovations. Some, of course, seem to be relying on their kids as “new media” consultants. I got a good round of applause for suggesting that the era of politics dominated by paid broadcast media may be coming to an end.
Now most of the very limited national coverage of this event has revolved around the non-presence of presidential candidates (though a rather famous husband of one of them is showing up later today). You can read Noam Scheiber’s piece on this that appeared in the New York Times on Saturday, and the DLC’s response, and judge for yourself if presidential cattle calls are an accurate measure of an organization’s political relevance.
But as someone who used to be involved in planning these events, I do know that for at least the last ten years, they’ve been focused on state and local elected officials, no matter who else materializes at the podium, and by that measure, the 350 or so attending is the DLC’s biggest crowd ever.
Last week Markos Moulitsas, who it’s safe to say has some personal issues with the DLC, said this meeting was going to be nothing more than “a cocktail party for Liebercrats.” Well, I have to report that the only person I’ve heard mention the name of the junior senator from Connecticut was a reporter. And most of the rhetoric about Iraq, Bush, and Republicans generally wouldn’t at all sound out of place at YearlyKos. In a lunch break during yesterdays workshops, Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, spoke, and his presentation of the need for passionate, principled partisanship from Democrats had the crowd cheering.
But you can’t take the politics out of politics, eh?
I’ll do a post later today after President Clinton’s speech.

Via Jason Zengerle at TNR’s The Plank, we learn that Fred Thompson on Fox News last night said he’d decided to delay his announcement as a presidential candidate until September because: “August is kind of a down month, not much going on, so it wouldn’t make sense to do it in August.”
That may be true in Washington, but not so much in, say, Iowa, where August features the State Republican Party’s big Straw Poll (which Thompson apparently won’t contest), not to mention the Iowa State Fair, where presidential candidates will be so thick on the ground that you won’t be able to stir them with a stick. Indeed, Thompson’s “not much going on” dismissal of the opportunity to eat corn dogs and deep-fried twinkies and admire the Butter Cow sculpture is a good sign that he has decided to skip Iowa altogether.
More generally, Thompson’s “what happens in August stays in August” attitude is another example of the strangely retro feel of his campaign. Among most political practitioners these days, it’s become a truism that New Media have largely reshaped the political calendar in ways that have sharply reduced “down time.” That was one of the big lessons learned from the Swift Boat saga of August 2004, which caught the Kerry campaign off guard in part because they assumed no one was paying attention. And you can even go back to 1998, when legal developments in the Lewinsky scandal broke in mid-August, at a time when most Washington bigfoot journalists were vacationing in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. (The sudden demand for punditry led me to half-joke at the time that anyone in Washington with a law degree had a chance to go on television and pontificate, during “Open Mike Night At Monica Beach,” the colloquial name for the media stakeout area near the federal court building. When President Clinton himself traveled to Martha’s Vineyard after his grand jury testimony, it looked like a Journalists’ Relief Mission).
Maybe ol’ Fred and his handlers are smarter than they look right now, and his dissing of the Dog Days really just represents his own shrewd timetable. But I dunno. Also at the New Republic site today is an absolutely devastating piece by Jonathan Chait summarizing Thompson’s handling of allegations (soon shown to be true) that he did some lobbying work for a pro-choice outfit back during the first Bush administration. Chait concludes from the general indifference of conservatives to this news that they’ve picked Fred as their savior. We’ll see. But Thompson’s reputation for laziness won’t be improved by his decision to take August off while his rivals dutifully press the flesh and munch pork chops on a stick in Iowa. Maybe like George W. Bush he’s just a late bloomer.

(Note: This is a cross-post from a piece I did today for TPMCafe.com, in response to Josh Marshall’s suggestion that Bush’s defiance of Congress on the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal may make impeachment talk a lot more serious, even for people like him who’ve never liked the idea. I guess this is High Controversy Day at TDS, based on this item and the earlier staff post encouraging Court-packing).
Citing the Clinton precedent, M.J. Rosenberg writes:
“[I]mpeachment is no longer the political nuclear bomb it once was, especially if one knows in advance that conviction and removal from office is unlikely to occur. Accordingly, impeachment proceedings are essentially the best means of getting information to the public which is otherwise unavailable.”
I’m glad M.J. is beginning with the premise that actual impeachment and removal of Bush ain’t happening, at least based on the current dynamics. I do not share his optimism about impeachment proceedings serving as a “lever” to bring Bush to heel, given everything we know about the man. Nor do I really understand Josh’s suggestion that initiating a pre-doomed impeachment effort will somehow serve as a legal precedent reducing the impact of Bush’s scofflaw behavior.
So the fundamental question remains whether Democrats want to take up the “I-word” as a political exercise. And other questions quickly follow.
From the Clinton experience, we know that public opinion turned decisively against the impeachment effort once it became obvious the Senate wasn’t going to convict him (which wasn’t entirely obvious at the beginning of the saga), for the simple reason that the whole thing looked like a waste of time. So what will happen to the current, surprisingly strong public support for impeachment if the extreme unlikelihood of a successful outcome is conceded from the get-go?
A second question, which everyone understands, is what to do about Dick Cheney. A dual or sequential impeachment effort is entirely without precedent, and every single problem with a late-term impeachment would get vastly more complicated.
A third question is the scope of impeachment articles. Josh seems to assume that Bush’s defiance of Congress and his quasi-imperial notions of executive privilege are the trigger. But many Democrats would be outraged if the administration’s behavior before and after the invasion of Iraq were not included; others might well argue that the abandonment of New Orleans was an impeachable offense. With a presidency this bad, where do you draw the line?
And a fourth question is how to impose party discipline during an impeachment fight. Like it or not, it’s a certainty that a sizable number of Democrats in both Houses of Congress will be reluctant to “go there,” some simply because of the Clinton experience.
[More after the jump}.

Read more…

It’s entirely possible that I’m the only person registered to attend both the DLC’s National Conversation in Nashville this weekend, and the YearlyKos gathering in Chicago next week. I plan to blog from and about both events, and maybe even conduct a couple of interviews.
Since this site is devoted to an ecumenical spirit among all types of Democrats, I will dwell more on the points of unity than on the usual factional differences. And I will be alert to the truly strategic discussions as they emerge amidst the inevitable focus on 2008.

Despite congressional Democrats’ efforts to draw sharp lines between Ds and Rs on Iraq, the intra-Democratic debate on Iraq rages on, as illustrated by several sharp candidate exchanges during Monday’s CNN/YouTube debate. And it’s as good a time as any to take stock of where that debate stands, and where it might soon go.
One issue that used to divide Democrats–the advisability and winnability of the Iraq misadventure–has obviously been resolved, assuming you exclude Joe Lieberman from the discussion.
A second issue–whether to impose a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq–has also largely been resolved, given broad Democratic support for language establishing a deadline in the suppmemental appropriations bill that Bush vetoed earlier this year, though some antiwar Democrats opposed it as insufficiently mandatory. The exact deadline date, however, still hangs fire, particularly in the presidential contest, mainly because of Bill Richardson’s efforts to distinguish himself by halfing the withdrawal timetable. During Monday’s debates, Richardson’s “six months and out” position gave Joe Biden the opening he sought to angrily claim that it’s logistically impossible to withdraw that quickly without dire danger for U.S. troops and/or civilians.
The third issue, which is steadily emerging as a dividing line among Democrats even though most Americans probably haven’t heard or thought much about it, is the question of residual troops commitments to Iraq once “combat brigades” (defined rather hazily) are withdrawn. Many antiwar activists, especially in the blogosphere, have made this a virtual litmus test, arguing that any sizeable residual military force in Iraq represents a continuation of the war, not a post-war safeguard. Among the presidential candidates, Biden, Clinton and Obama have embraced Iraq plans that include a significant residual force. Richardson, Dodd and Kucinich have explicitly opposed residuals. Edwards, best I can tell, hasn’t completely ruled it out or in, though it appears he would oppose the kind of robust residual force that Hillary Clinton is talking about, and would probably limit it to embassy security. (For an unusually explicit pro-residual argument, contemplating a lengthy if smaller troop commitment, check out PPI president Will Marshall’s post today at the DLC’s new-and-improved Ideas Primary site).
And the fourth issue, which flared up sharply during the spring, and is almost certain to return in the fall, is the question of whether congressional Democrats should take the dramatic step of cutting off funding for the war to force the administration to start withdrawing troops. As was nicely articulated by Dennis Kucinich in the Monday debate, this is the one step that Democrats, theoretically at least, could take in Congress that does not require Republican support. Ironically, this issue is highly emotional precisely because it is essentially tactical. The reluctance of Democratic congressional leaders to pursue a funding cutoff to the bitter end reflects, in the eyes of many netroots activists in particular, the timidity or even cowardice that “DC Democrats” have exhibited throughout the Bush administration.
There’s still another tactical-but-contentious issue lurking in the background of all the intra-Democratic debates over Iraq: the fear that Democrats will enable Republicans to blur partisan differences on the war, reducing its salience in the 2008 elections. This is clearly the thinking behind Harry Reid’s determined efforts to oppose any bipartisan resolution in the Senate endorsing the Iraq Study Group approach, which many observers believe Bush himself will ultimately embrace, however insincerely.
And finally, there’s significant disagreement among Democrats about how, exactly, to judge public opinion on Iraq. Pollsters have not done much to shed light on the insider “residuals” debate, and public opinion on the impact of a protracted funding cutoff debate remains murky, though support for that strategy has clearly grown this year as Bush’s intransigence on Iraq has become more obvious.
Moreover, as Chris Cillizza points out today in a fascinating glimpse at the internals of the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, support for “immediate” as opposed to “gradual” withdrawal from Iraq among Democrats doesn’t follow any predictable pattern of ideological self-identification, age, or candidate preference (though region does seem to have an impact, with support for immediate withdrawal strongest in the West and weakest in the South). Most notably, the Post found that those favoring immediate withdrawal are a larger percentage of Hillary Clinton’s base of support than of Barack Obama’s. This finding alone is one that will almost certainly contribute to an escalation of efforts by Clinton’s rivals to make Democratic differences over Iraq front and center in the nomination fight. Where that leaves the ultimate nominee going into the general election is a question that all Democrats should begin to ponder.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

Last night’s Democratic presidential debate, sponsored by YouTube and CNN, has become an instant legend, with the most frequent comment being that future debates will never be the same. In case you missed it, the debate was organized around thirty-nine YouTube videos posing questions (culled from over 3,000 submissions) to particular or all candidates, with moderator Anderson Cooper occasionally supplying follow-ups.
The most obviously different thing about the format was that the questions were not framed in the ostensibly objective voice of journalism. While a few questioners adopted the Concerned Citizen tone of pre-selected Real People at campaign events, most took a very personal approach. There was lots of humor (singing questions, faux rednecks, and one representative of the “snowman community”) and drama (a man sitting in front of the burial flags of three family members, a cancer victim removing her wig, a question sent from a refugee camp in Darfur). And more generally, the questioners were as complicated as the electorate itself, reflecting very different political perspectives (frustrated base voter, disengaged cynic, earnest swing voter) and levels of knowledge.
You do have to wonder, however, if the positive reaction to the debate among journalists and bloggers is mainly about its sheer entertainment value, particularly for political junkie viewers who have come to loath candidate debates. I mean, it’s nice if this debate was a lot more fun to watch, and maybe that will eventually help engage voters, but it’s not necessarily grounds for widespread civic celebration. Moreoever, the apparent spontaneity of the event was partially artificial, given CNN’s role in selecting and ordering questions. And as in all recent debates, the need to spread questions among the candidates produced some serious distortions and reduced opportunities for candidate interaction. (I’m sure I’m not the only Democrat who’s fed up with the endless whining for equal time by Mike Gravel, whose Potemkin Village campaign is entirely composed of his opportunities to be the Angry Man of the debates).
With these reservations, however, the YouTube format did have some important and arguably positive effects on the informational value of the debate. For one thing, the personalization of the questions made them harder to dodge or deflect. One of the most dramatic moments of the debate came when John Edwards had to explain his position of “personally” opposing gay marriage on religious grounds while supporting civil unions. I’ve heard him do this many times, very fluidly. But last night, his answer was preceded by videos of two lesbians plaintively asking if the candidates would let them get married, and then an African-American minister specificially asking Edwards if religion is ever a legitimate reason for tolerating discrimination. Whatever you think of Edwards’ response–and some observers thought it was very effective–it was telling that the Joe DiMaggio of Trial Lawyers visibly struggled with the question.
More generally, the video questions, whether earnest or humorous, inevitably made it more noticable when candidates utilized their decades of “flag-and-bridge” training to quickly shift into their pre-ordained campaign messages. In traditional debates, the dynamic is often one of the men-in-suits on the stage trying to outwit the men-in-suits asking questions; it sounds and feels quite different when the questions are framed by wary citizens seeking a straight answer. For the same reason, candidate use of insider and legislative language was more jarring and unappealing in this format, which I’m sure the handlers of Senators Biden and Dodd noticed to their chagrin.
Yet another unusual feature of the debate was CNN’s decision to let each campaign screen its own YouTube video. Some simply cut-and-pasted campaign ads; others tried hard to get edgy, reflecting different levels of commitment to the New Social Media trend. (HRC’s campaign actually posted a video on YouTube during the debate, featuring her exchange with Obama over presidential negotiations with famous dictators).
One of the imponderables is whether the format leads to different assessments of candidate performances by junkies and pundits on the one hand and actual voters on the other. I’ve certainly read enough Drew Westen by now to understand that the College Debate Model of “scoring” candidate interactions may have little to do with their actual impact. And we got a glimpse of that disconnect last night. Immediately after the debate ended, and even before the self-congratulatory talk about CNN’s genius in partnering with YouTube, CNN’s commentators highlighted the Clinton-Obama negotiations exchange as the Big Moment (reflecting the belief that it showed HRC’s savvy and Obama’s inexperience, a big campaign talking point for Hillaryland). Seconds later, a CNN analyst called the debate’s real story “Gladys Knight and the Pips,” reflecting HRC’s total domination. Then next thing you knew, a CNN-sponsored focus group of undecided Democrats in New Hampshire declared Obama the overall debate winner.
MSM perceptions, of course, do influence public perceptions, so we may have to wait a while to see who was right. And we’ll also have to wait til September to watch the Republican candidates deal with the same format.
But for now, it looks like the Medium was the Message last night, with the candidates learning another lesson in the difficulty of holding onto the stage in the New Media era.

In case you’ve missed it, George W. Bush has picked a major fight with Democrats, many Republicans, virtually all of the governors, and most health care advocacy groups from left to right, over health care policy.
The context is the about-to-expire SCHIP program, the ten-year-old initiative, which has enjoyed strong bipartisan support, that helps states provide health coverage to children whose parents don’t qualify for the restrictive low-income Medicaid program. SCHIP is currently struggling to meet its original goals; more than 3 million eligible kids aren’t being covered, and thanks to rising health care costs, the current level of federal SCHIP funding is certain to create a serious erosion of past coverage.
The Senate Finance Committee has reported, on a 17-4 vote (with ranking Republicans Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch strongly in support) a SCHIP reauthorization bill that strikes a compromise between the funding levels supported by most Democrats, and those necessary just to maintain current coverage. The cost of the bill would be paid for by a substantial increase in the federal tobacco tax.
And now Bush has clearly signalled he’d veto this bill, not, as you might expect, on grounds of its cost, but on “philosophical grounds,” because he views SCHIP as a threat to private insurance coverage and sort of a Trojan Horse for “government-run health care.” Instead, he’s demanding congressional action on his own proposal to replace the employer tax break for health insurance with an individual deduction for purchase of health insurance in the chaotic and expensive individual market.
This, my friends, offers Democrats a heaven-sent opportunity to wedge Republican on health care and expose the extraordinary radicalism of Bush’s (and by extension, that of many of the GOP candidates seeking to replace him) approach to health care. The government/private distinction Bush is trying to draw here is completely specious. The vast majority of those covered by SCHIP (and for that matter, by Medicaid) are actually participating in private health plans that contract with the states. The government’s role is simply to finance and organize coverage. Since Bush’s own plan would obviously continue the federal role in financing coverage for those without employer-sponsored coverage, the real “philosophical difference”‘ is over government’s role in creating an insurance pool that holds down premiums, prevents discrimination, and spreads the cost of health risks.
But it gets worse. Bush’s proposal is for a tax deduction for health insurance purchasing, which is highly regressive to begin with (since deductions have a greater value to those in higher tax brackets) and useless to poorer families with little or no tax liability. Since the proposal is explicitly designed to undermine employer-sponsored health insurance, it represents a radical attack on the very idea of pooled purchasing, and would send the U.S. health care system back towards the 1950s, when individual plans, and/or non-insured direct payment of health care costs, was the norm. With the exception of Mitt Romney, who appears reluctant to talk about the Massachussets coverage expansion initiative he signed, the Republican presidential candidates have generally embraced the same sort of “thinking” tilting towards tax-driven individual insurance purchasing.
Will Democrats effectively expose this retrograde GOP approach to health care? They should, but some will be tempted to reinforce Bush’s government/private distinction, to the extent that they support a single-payer system that would radically reduce or eliminate the public role of private insurers and/or providers. It’s a classic dilemma: do you hold the GOP responsible for the evils of the status quo, and propose a decisive break with it, or focus on the GOP’s intentions to make a decisive break with the status quo in precisely the wrong direction?
The entire subject may well offer a fateful decision for both parties.