On this 40th Earth Day, as President Obama prepares to nominate a new Supreme Court justice, environmentalists are perusing the records of prospective nominees.
Retiring Justice Stevens replaced the most ardent champion of the environment in the High Court’s history, Justice William O. Douglas, so environmentalists can’t be blamed for thinking of this seat as one that ought to be filled by someone who won’t allow corporate profits to trump environmental concerns. The records of all of the prospective nominees don’t reveal a lot about their environmental concerns per se — no one on the latest ‘short lists’ jumps out as a great champion of the environment. But perhaps the next best indicator is their decision-making with respect to the exercise of corporate power over the public interest.
Justice Douglas’s commitment to the environment would be impossible to match for any nominee. As the longest-serving justice in the history of the High Court, Justice Douglas ruled in favor of the environment at every opportunity. Nominated by FDR, he was also the youngest justice ever to be sworn in — at the age of forty. He reportedly hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. In his dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), he argued that “inanimate objects,” including trees have legal standing in lawsuits. An excerpt:

Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole — a creature of ecclesiastical law — is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases…. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes — fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.

It was the leadership of Justice Douglas that saved the Buffalo River in Arkansas and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. He also swayed the High Court to preserve the Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky, which is Holy Ground to folks from that part of the country. A trail in the Gorge is named in his honor, as is The William O. Douglas Wilderness, adjoining Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, along with Douglas Falls in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. There is a lot more that can be said about the visionary leadership of Douglas on behalf of the environment, but environmentalists would be happy with a justice with half his phenomenal commitment to mother earth.
Here’s hoping the President will keep William O. Douglas in mind when he nominates his choice to fill the seat once occupied by the justice who did more than any other to protect America’s natural heritage.

The last week has claimed the lives of two giants of the Civil Rights struggle, Rev. Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Height, who died early this morning. Both made outstanding contributions to the African American freedom struggle. But Dorothy Height, who had the longer life, leaves a tremendous void in the hearts of civil rights activists.
For progressives, Height, who headed the National Council of Negro Women for four decades, was the consummate activist-leader and certainly the preeminent role model for leaders who want to comport themselves with dignity, humility and energetic dedication to a great cause. MLK, along with FDR, and every subsequent Democratic President sought and valued her counsel and wisdom.
As a lower-level functionary in a civil rights organization, I once sat in as a note taker more than anything else, in a conference call joined by a half-dozen nationally-known civil rights leaders. The topic will remain confidential, out of respect for the participants’ privacy. What I remember many years later is the sudden, hushed silence that came when it was Height’s turn to speak. The unspoken subtext in that silence was, ‘OK everyone has had their say, now let’s all pipe down and hear what wisdom has to say.’ Height did not disappoint. In clear, measured terms she summarized the various arguments’ pros and cons and recommended the course of action that was adopted without argument. I got the impression that all of the participants regarded her as their best thinker.
The Washington Post report on Height’s death featured a couple of wonderful quotes by Height worth sharing and remembering, both of which have some applications for Democratic strategy :

“If the times aren’t ripe, you have to ripen the times.”

and,

Stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.

Height never married or raised a family. Her life was given to serve the disadvantaged and forgotten. I know of no modern-day leaders who command the same kind of universal respect and admiration as did Height, who leaves behind a powerful example of selfless, dignified leadership for a more decent society.

Conservative pundit Michael Barone writes in the Washington Examiner about Tuesday’s Democratic victory in FL-19, attributing Ted Deutch’s win over Republican Ed Lynch to the fact that “few districts have larger Jewish percentages than Florida 19,” as well as to Lynch’s weak, underfunded campaign. Barone sees Deutch’s victory as further confirmation that the Obama Administration’s policy toward Israel has not hurt the Democrats’ credibility with American Jews. Barone reached the same conclusion after analyzing voting patterns in the Jan. 19 MA Senate election. (See also the TDS March 24 post on the topic).
It’s good to know that Jewish voters remain a strongly pro-Democratic constituency. Dems would be in big trouble if they began to tilt Republican in this cycle. But what is more interesting about Barone’s op-ed is his description of the geographic distribution of Jewish voters in the context of the November elections. According to Barone, co-author with Richard E. Cohen of The Almanac of American Politics 2010:

What are the implications for the November elections? Jewish voters are very unevenly distributed throughout the United States, as this estimate of Jewish populations by state indicates. About 2.2% of Americans are Jewish—a decline in percentage over the years; in the 1940s about 4% of the nation’s voters were Jewish. The Jewish percentage is higher than the national average in only nine states and the District of Columbia; it’s identical to the national average in Illinois. Some 54% of American Jews live in just three states (New York, California, Florida); 78% live in eight states (those three plus New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland). Four of these states have potentially seriously contested Senate races (California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois). The Jewish percentages of the population in these states are 3.3%, 3.7%, 2.3% and 2.2%. The Jewish percentages of the electorate would likely be somewhat higher in each case; the 2008 exit poll shows them at 4%, 4%, 4% and 3%.
…In what districts do Jewish voters comprise a large critical mass—say, about 20% of the electorate? My list, based on long observation, would include the following: CA 27, CA 28, CA 30, CA 36, CT 4, FL 18, FL 19, FL 20, FL 22, IL 9, IL 10, MD 3, MD 8, MA 4, MA 8, MI 9, NV 1, NJ 5, NJ 8, NJ 9, NJ 11, NY 3, NY 4, NY 5, NY 7, NY 8, NY 9, NY 14, NY 15, NY 17, NY 18, NY 19, OH 11, PA 2, PA 6, PA 7, PA 13. Only a few of these districts are represented by Republicans (FL 18, IL 10, NJ 5, NJ 11, NY 3, PA 6), of which the only one in play is IL 10, where incumbent Mark Kirk is running for the Senate. Of the Democratic seats, I see only a few which look like they might be seriously contested (CT 4, FL 22, MI 9, NY 4, NY 19, PA 7).

Barone concludes that, overall, the Jewish vote “will not be a major factor in the large majority of seriously contested Senate and House races.” However, what is important for Dems in this critical election year is that Jewish voter turnout continues at relatively high levels, particularly in the more hotly-contested districts, where a little extra targeted campaigning might make a big difference.

Democratic state senator Ted Deutch on Tuesday won the first U.S. House race since the enactment of the Democratic HCR bill, beating a Republican candidate who tried to exploit backlash against the act in FL-19. Deutch bested Republican Ed Lynch, by a margin of 62-35 percent of the vote.
Republicans quickly point out that FL-19 is a heavily Democratic district. Dems enjoy a 2-1 edge in voter registration, and the district voted nearly 2-1 for Obama in 2008. Still, Republicans were hoping for an upset to add to Brown’s win of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in MA. Lynch wrongly perceived that massive opposition of the district’s seniors (About 40 percent of district voters) to the health care bill would help him upset front-runner Deutch. it didn’t happen.
As Congressman-elect Deutch said,

We’ve heard for months that tonight … is a referendum on health care, it’s a referendum on the (President Barack Obama) administration, it’s a referendum on what direction this country is going…’Let me tell you something, what we learned today is that in Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida, the Democratic Party is alive and well.

The 19th district has a Cook Partisan Voting Index score of D +15. interestingly, the District has only 6.1 percent African American residents, with 12.7 Hispanics. It appears that Democrat Deutch did very well with white seniors, who some pundits see as a big problem for Dems in November. Deutch will finish the remaining eight months of his predecessor’s (who resigned) term, then will run again in November for a full term.

In this week’s ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has some bad news for JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has been whining about the Obama administration’s proposal to help prevent future financial crises by strengthening regulation of the financial sector. As Teixeira explains:

The public by an overwhelming 77-15 margin said in an early March ABC poll that banks have not yet done enough to make amends for their role in the financial crisis. The same poll asked the public whether banks and other financial institutions owe it to the country to help Americans struggling with the economy. Once again, an overwhelming majority (69-26) said it is banks’ responsibility to help out.

Clearly, stronger financial sector regulation is a great issue for the Administration, and one which could give Dems another important legislative victory, while making dissenting Republicans look like apologists for the worst practices of the banking/financial industry.

After reading a dozen or so bios of potential nominees to replace Justice Stevens, I’m much impressed by the talent pool of prospective justices said to be under consideration by President Obama. I know the available internet bios probably leave out more than they include, but they do provide a sense of what these individuals are about.
There are no names on the ‘short lists” I’ve read that I would oppose, unlike the Bush appointees, all of whom should have been Borked, IMHO. Glen Greenwald and others have made a case for concern about putative front-runner Elena Kagan. On the one hand, Kagan reportedly did an outstanding job of representing the Obama Administration in the Citizens United v. FEC case, even though the high court’s reactionary majority ruled the wrong way. That’s important in a nation where corporate power is not only unchecked, but growing.
Greenwald argues, however, that it’s very hard to figure out what Kagan stands for, other than mastery of the law. There is no question that she has a brilliant legal mind, and her academic credentials, like all of the short-listers are very impressive. But published evidence in her bios of the “empathy” President Obama has said is an important quality to look for in judicial nominees is a little thin. No doubt, she has more empathy than she has shown thus far, since she clerked with Justice Marshall and the President knows her character.
Most of my progressive friends, especially the lawyers, are hoping that Judge Diane Wood will get the nod instead of Kagan. More than Kagan, Wood has a record that indicates her beliefs in the context of the law. Like several other judges on the short list, Wood’s record indicates fairly strong empathy for the disadvantaged, if not a great passion for the underdog. The same can be said for other judges said to be under consideration. True, neither Justice Douglas or Brennan displayed all that much empathy before their years of service on the high court, but they nonetheless set the progressive standard I would like to see more of among the Supremes.
Other names of the growing list of possible Obama appointees include: Rueben Castillo; Merrick B. Garland; Pamela Karlan; Harold Koh; Martha Minnow; Janet Napolitano; Deval Patrick; Leah Ward Sears; Cass Sunstein; Sidney Thomas; and Elizabeth Warren.
I have confidence that whoever the President nominates will have impeccable legal credentials and solid progressive values. In terms of measuring up to a high “empathy standard,” however, one name on the short list stands out, after reading the bios: Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.
After considering the impressive but very dry legal achievements chronicled in the bios of the others, Granholm’s bio provides a strong impression of a public servant who cares deeply about working people and their struggles for a decent life, and that this concern would be at the center of her decision-making. As Michigan Governor, for example, Granholm not only signed into law, but also proposed the “No Worker Left Behind” act which provides two years of free training/community college for unemployed and displaced workers, which has benefited more than 100 thousands in her state. She fought tenaciously against budget cuts for homeless shelters and mental health agencies, challenging her foes to not turn their backs on ‘the least of these.”
While her legal gravitas and experience may not match the lofty achievements of Kagan, Wood or some of the others, Granholm has some impressive legal creds of her own, including a Harvard J.D., an appeals court clerkship and four years as Michigan A.G. In addition, she has lead an energetic, well-rounded life, with varied working experience. Of course it’s much easier to convey such an impression, when your operative base is a political career, instead of a purely legal one, as is the case for all of the sitting justices. But it would be good to have at least one Supreme Court Justice who has been actively engaged in creating changes to improve the lives of people. Any of the Obama short-listers would merit support from progressives. But this is one I would cheer.

For Dems seeking an alternative to the pervasive doom-and gloom mid-term speculation, John Harwood takes an even-handed look iat the upcomming election in his Sunday New York Times edition of ‘The Caucus.’ First Harwood feeds the ‘Dems are doomed’ meme, noting,

As if Republicans did not have enough cause for optimism this year, the pollster Neil Newhouse offers this lesson from history: Since John F. Kennedy occupied the White House, presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent have seen their parties lose an average of 41 House seats in midterm elections.
This year, a gain that large would return the House to Republican control. President Obama’s most recent Gallup Poll rating: 45 percent.

Harwood goes on to add that none of the previous nine Presidents experienced an increase in their approval ratings between January and October in their first midterm election years. But Bush II actually broke the first mid-term jinx in 2002, helped by the World Trade Center bombings, which elevated ‘national security’ to the leading priority of swing voters.
What I like about Harwood’s article is that he gives a fair hearing to the view that, while history is important for predicting political outcomes, it isn’t everything. Harwood cites a litany of busted political rules, including the political realignment of the South, the presidency is for whites only and the Republican “lock” on California. Harwood quotes Alan Abramowitz, who has contributed to TDS, to good effect: “As soon as a political scientist comes up with a sweeping generality about American politics, it will immediately be falsified.” Political rules were made to be broken, and 2010 should be no exception.
Indeed, President Obama’s improbable rise from an obscure state senator/law professor to the most powerful elective office on earth in less than five years ought to give political prognosticators pause in uttering cocksure predictions about electoral outcomes. Perhaps more to the point, Obama’s rise to power was based on a very creative and well-executed outside-the-box strategy, as much as his personal gifts.
This view won’t change the betting on the GOP at Intrade or Vegas, but it does allow a little room for a more encouraging outcome than is currently being parroted by pundits. Further, as Harwood notes,

Though the unemployment rate remains stuck around 10 percent, the economy in March enjoyed its strongest job growth in three years. The stock market has been booming. Democratic candidates hope that continued good news between now and November will begin alleviating the sour mood of voters.
…Ray C. Fair, an economist at Yale and a student of the relationship between economic conditions and political outcomes, argued that history shows voters take account of third-quarter performance, too. His model of 2010 economic performance projects that Democrats will draw 51.63 percent of the two-party vote for the House…That translates to roughly 224 seats — enough for Democrats to retain control of the House.

So the Republicans ought to hold the high-fives for a while, particularly if the economy takes a better-than-expected uptick between now and November.

Senior voters are getting lots of love from both major parties this year, leading up to the November elections. First, they are a large portion of the mid-term turnout — in the 2006 mid-terms, 29 percent of the electorate in House of Reps races were over 60, according to CNN’s exit polling.
Secondly, many are skeptical about the landmark HCR Act. As Jeffrey Young’s post “AARP, Dems lobby older voters on healthcare law before midterms” at The Hill explains further, “A Gallup poll released two weeks ago found just 36 percent of people 65 or older thought the healthcare law is a “good thing,” compared to 54 percent who said it is a “bad thing.”
The Republicans are focusing on one of the Act’s Medicare-related provisions as a political fulcrum, as Young explains:

Republican criticisms of Democrats using nearly $500 billion in Medicare spending cuts to finance new coverage for the uninsured fueled seniors’ anxiety…The most obvious potential short-term drawback for seniors is the possibility of cutbacks in the Medicare Advantage program…Republican proponents of the private Medicare Advantage plans, as well as the insurance companies that provide them, maintain that slashing the subsidies will result in many plans exiting the market, reducing benefits or raising premiums. The Congressional Budget Office partly backs up this contention, concluding that 1.5 million fewer people will be covered by Medicare Advantage plans by 2019.

Despite the daunting poll figures, defenders of the legislation have some selling points, as Young points out:

To counter the anti-healthcare reform message, Obama and his allies are highlighting the new or improved benefits under the law…“I want seniors to know, despite some of the stuff that’s been said out there, these reforms don’t cut into your guaranteed benefits,” Obama said last week. “What they do is eliminate co-payments and deductibles for preventive care, like checkups and mammograms. You will be getting those for free now.”
Perhaps the biggest selling point for Medicare beneficiaries is the gradual phasing-out of the so-called doughnut hole coverage gap that is currently part of the Medicare Part D drug benefit; this year, beneficiaries who fall into the gap will receive a $250 rebate…In addition, advocates of the law are trumpeting enhanced prevention and wellness benefits such as a free annual physical and expanded access to home-and community-based medical and assisted-living services.

If the aforementioned Gallup poll is right, at least ten percent of over-65 seniors can be described as ‘persuadable,’ which is not a lot to work with. There are no data yet that provide a clear conclusion about the “intensity” of the opposition to the HCR act among the over-60’s, but surely some of those who now disapprove of the legislation could be turned around with persuasive appeals. The white house, Democrats and the AARP are trying to make that happen, and Young’s post provides a good account of the strategy to date.
(Update/Question: Might a strategy that targets ‘younger’ seniors, say 60-65, based on the assumption that some may still have some dormant late 1960’s attitude remaining, produce good results?)
At the same time, however, Dems have to bring their “A” game to the mid-term campaign in mobilizing more sympathetic constituencies. As Ed Kilgore noted in his TDS post, “Seniors, Obama and 2010” back in September, “Democratic success in 2010 will depend on either better performances among seniors than in 2008, or better turnout–or even higher Democratic percentages–elsewhere….Democrats need a 2010 strategy that takes it for granted that disproportionate white senior turnout could be a big problem. Stronger-than-usual turnout among young and minority voters is obviously one way to deal with it, and that will take some serious work.”

Eric Boehlert’s post “Post-Hutaree: How Glenn Beck and Fox News spread the militia message” at Media Matters for America merits a read, not only by progressives, but also by moderates, and even conservatives, who draw the line at supporting violence. Boehlert reports:

Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama’s election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News’ Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement’s hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style “patriots” who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.
On TV and the radio, Beck rarely bothers to mention the militia movement by name. Instead, he’s simply co-opted their rhetoric as his own. He’s acted as a crucial transmitter, warning about Obama fronting his own private “army,” and urging followers to “start food storage.”
Not to mention these previous militia moments:
Beck asserts: “The second American revolution is being playing out right now”
Beck says “what is ahead may loosen the bonds of society,” may end with “a French Revolution”
Beck: “There is a coup going on … it has been done through the guise of an election”
Beck: “You can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede”
Beck: “[I]f we don’t have some common sense, we’re facing the destruction of our country… it’s coming”
The truth is that the daylight separating the radical, anti-government militia movement from self-styled mainstream conservatives is growing dimmer by the day. Like the fact-free Obama birthers, the militia remains a radical subset that today’s right wing refuses to part ways with. That sad fact was highlighted when scores of far-right media voices initially downplayed the Hutaree arrests last week, or even defended the militia members and — disturbingly reminiscent of Waco — cast the FBI and the federal government as the over-reaching bad guys.
And at Fox News, it’s not just Beck. The cable “news” channel’s militia-flavored message (beware gun-toting IRS agents!) has been as simple as it’s been relentless: Obama is destroying this country and he’s doing it intentionally. It’s not that people disagree with Obama and don’t like what they call his “liberal” policies as applied to the economy and health care reform, etc. Instead, the conflict is much more dire. Obama is not just misguided in this political and legislative agenda. Instead, Obama is the incarnation of evil (the Antichrist?), and his driving hatred for America, as well as for democracy, runs so deep that he ran for president in order to destroy the United States from within.

I’m old enough to remember a time when leading conservatives were champions of the police and law enforcement. Those days appear to be over, as Boehlert explains:

Blogger Pamela Geller complained that the FBI raids were “nuts.” Glenn Beck’s radio guest host Chris Baker decried the Hutaree arrests as “nothing more than attack on faith and free speech.” And Washington Times columnist and frequent Fox News talker Monica Crowley likened Hutaree members to proud patriots, as she squarely placed the blame on the government for squelching the militia’s right to dissent…Keep in mind that both Geller and Crowley conveniently forgot to inform readers that the militia members had been arraigned on charges of plotting to kill cops. Apparently that fact no longer moves the needle in today’s right-wing media, which has severed its traditional ties with the law-and-order movement and instead today pledges its allegiance to whoever hates the government — and Democrats — the most.

Boehlert also provides a graphic of the “Tea Party Patriots” website, “the official home of the American tea party movement,” which claims the Hutaree militia with the headline “FBI Raids Tea party Compound.”
Somewhere there must be some conservatives who are repulsed by the glorification of allegedly would-be cop-killers. Even Elizabeth Hasslebeck, house conservative of the popular daytime chat show “The View,” condemned Sarah Palin’s Facebook graphic putting the districts of progressive members of congress in a gunsight crosshairs. If you don’t think this sort of thing encourages violence, consider this report from today’s New York Times about the arrest of Charles A. Wilson, who allegedly threatened to kill Senator Patty Murray for her support of HCR:

“I hope you realize, there’s a target on your back now,” Mr. Wilson said in a recorded voice mail message on March 22, according to the criminal complaint. “There are many people out there that want you dead.” He added, “It takes only one piece of lead. Kill the [expletive] senator! Kill the [expletive] senator! I’ll donate the lead…Not only do I say ‘kill the bill.’ I say, kill the [expletive] senator too, ’” Mr. Wilson said in another message, according to the complaint. “Kill the bill. Kill the senator, too.”

Media Matters for America reports that 80 or more sponsors have dropped Glen Beck, after he called President Obama a “racist” who harbors “deep-seated hatred for white people.” According to MMA‘s “So who’s still advertising on Beck? April 6 edition..,” the list of Beck’s current sponsors includes:

American Petroleum Institute
Wholesale Direct Metals
Pajama Jeans
NoMask.com
Citizens 4 Healthcare
Rosland Capital
Easy Water
Quietus
Hydroxatone
Tax Masters
Weekly Standard
Dish Network
Lear Capital
IAmNotAshamed.org
Foundation For A Better Life
Merit Financial
IRSTaxAgreements.com
Wall Street Journal
Goldline International
Lifelock
Nutrisystem

One would think that companies like the Wall St. Journal and Dish Network could lose a lot of customers by supporting inflammatory hate TV. Perhaps they assume progressives don’t watch Beck/Fox, so they probably wouldn’t think to take their business elsewhere.

I’ve been a little wary of Drew Westen’s argument that the failures of Democrats in politics derive from over-reliance on reason-based appeals, while the Republicans win their victories by connecting with voters’ emotions. I felt he may have over-stated his case, since I know lots of people who make elegant rational arguments for or against politicians based on positions on the issues.
But Westen makes a very strong case for the persuasive power of emotion over reason in politics in his CNN commentary “Why Obama won the health care battle.” This time, Westen, author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” applies his theory to explain the course of the HCR struggle, and it fits impressively.

Politicians tend to think about how the minds and brains of voters work in one of two ways.
The first is to assume that voters come to decisions on issues like health care reform by carefully examining the data and the arguments and then calculating whether one plan or another better fits their rational self-interest. In this view, a campaign is a debate on the issues.
When you hear (or heard) Democratic strategists dismiss polls showing that the majority of Americans opposed the president’s health care plan but support its component parts, this is the model of the mind of the voter they are assuming.
That’s why Democrats tend to lose ground even on issues with strong popular support, like health care reform, which was extremely popular during the 2008 election but steadily lost backing over the course of the first year of the Obama administration until regaining some momentum over the past few weeks.

Westen argues that HCR got serious traction when President Obama and the Democrats embraced the alternative view of “voters is as people who have to be sold on a policy or candidate. They are consumers, not debaters, and they’ll walk out of a store that doesn’t have attentive salespeople.” The winning strategy, according to Westen:

How do you sell reform? You tell a consistent story about what’s wrong with the system, who broke it and how we can fix it. You evoke not only people’s concerns about their interests but their values: fairness, the ability to choose what’s best for themselves and their family, security.
You try to get people as passionate as you are, concerned about the security of their care, angry at insurance companies that have been calling all the shots and hopeful that you know what to do about it. And you choose your words carefully, because words carry emotional connotations, and people may not know exactly what’s in a bill, but they have a general sense of whether they like it.
This is how Republicans tend to think about politics. And it’s how they managed to leave Americans with a bitter taste in their mouths about efforts to reform a health care system that had left virtually all of us one pre-existing condition — or one cancer requiring treatment that exceeded our annual or lifetime “cap” — away from medical bankruptcy, no matter how good we thought our insurance was.

For too long, argues Westen, Dems were over-using emotionally-constipated phrases such as “universal health care” and “health insurance reform” that “don’t exactly make your spine tingle.” Meanwhile Republicans were tapping the power of emotional appeals, like calling HCR “Obamacare” and “a government takeover” of our health care system that would “put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.” Further,

For a year, while the Republicans were telling a great story about “death panels” and the president’s “socialist” agenda (though the president wouldn’t even support the “socialist” option of giving Americans the option of buying into Medicare if they preferred it over private insurance), the White House wasn’t offering a coherent story.
Precisely what problem the plan was intended to fix seemed to shift from week to week (Was it cost? Or the 46 million people without insurance? Or middle-class people losing their coverage?). And as for the plot, we didn’t know until a few weeks ago what the president’s plan even was.
Making matters worse, Obama seemed to lack passion about his signature issue. Everything seemed negotiable, as if what mattered was that the bill passed, not what was in it. And the White House used every word in the book you wouldn’t use if you wanted to “sell” reform.
Instead of emphasizing that people who work for a living ought to be able to take their kids to the doctor when they’re sick — a value statement that makes clear who the bill was designed to help (people who work for a living and still can’t get or afford decent health care, or could lose their insurance if they lost or changed jobs or started a small business) — the White House talked about “bending the cost curve,” another linguistic heart-stopper.

But the tide changed, Westen says, when President Obama began “telling a compelling story”:

….This story actually included the villains: Health insurance companies denying life-saving care to people for profits. In speeches journalists described as his most “passionate” since becoming president, he told the story of a woman who lost her life after she lost her health insurance and of a little boy who lost his mother because she couldn’t pay for her illness. He seized on an insurance rate hike of nearly 40 percent in California to mobilize populist anger.
And for the first time, the president decided to answer the attacks of his opponents, not just with well-reasoned arguments (which he did) but with attitude. When John McCain started posturing at the president’s “bipartisan” summit, the president reminded him that the election was over and who had won. When House Minority Leader John Boehner started rattling off talking points, the president responded with the verbal equivalent of eye rolling and asked whether there was someone who actually wanted to get something done…The president looked strong, resolute and passionate.

Looking ahead, Westen sees a critical choice for the white house:

…He can return to the “why can’t we all just get along?” unilateral bipartisanship that tied him up in knots in his first year, as if Republicans are just Democrats in need of rational arguments.

Or, better,

…Obama can damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead, dare the Republicans to vote no on every effort to fix every problem the country faces and pursue the pragmatic (sometimes partisan, sometimes nonpartisan) leadership the American people want.

And if the President can bring some of the passion he displays so well in his speeches into his press conferences, interviews and televised appeals, he can brighten prospects for the mid-terms, his re-election and the future of his party.