One of the best ways to lose your mind is to track the whip counts measuring the line-up of House member votes on health care reform. Right after you read a convincingly optimistic projection that the Democratic package is a done deal, you will find an equally persuasive case that it is doomed. After going round and round with this game for a few days, I have to conclude that nobody in journalism, msm or otherwise, can make a reliable call.
It would not surprise me, however, if Speaker Pelosi or Rep. Clyburn had the real skinny, such as it is. But I wouldn’t read too much into their confident public pronouncements, which could be true or just an effort to crank up a bandwagon psychology. What seems fairly certain, however, is that it is going to be a very close vote. And what’s important to health care reform supporters is that we have work to do — in generating constituent pressure on House members, specifically those who have been called ‘undecided’ — in the broadest sense of the term.
So where do you go? Reid Wilson’s Hotline post, “Advice To Dems: Sell The Bill,” has a useful insight,

A survey conducted across vulnerable Dem districts shows most voters warm to the proposal once they learn more about it, according to a copy of a memo obtained from Capitol Hill and political sources. Included in the poll were 92 districts held by Frontline Dems and Blue Dogs, districts where Dem incumbents would feel the most heat for supporting the legislation.
Dems will target white middle-aged voters, white women under 65 and white married women. Those groups respond most positively when Dems explain what is in the bill, pollsters found.
The poll, conducted by prominent Dem pollster John Anzalone, who conducted some polling for Pres. Obama during the ’08 campaign, shows a plurality of voters currently oppose the health care bill; just 35% of swing voters favor the bill based on what they know about it. But when they hear more about it, 51% of all voters, and 50% of swing voters support the measure…when they hear more about it, 51% of all voters, and 50% of swing voters support the measure.

We knew that the HCR package polls better after respondents actually understand its key provisions. But it does help to know which white voters are most open to it, and pro-reform activists should take note. In terms of messaging, Wilson explains John Anzalone’s observation about his poll:

Dems should focus on provisions of the bill that require coverage even if someone has a pre-existing condition, and on a provision that requires members of Congress to have the same coverage as other Americans, Anzalone writes in the polling memo.
“Not only are they the most popular components of reform among voters overall, but also among key audiences, including seniors. Based on these results, any messaging in support of reform — to any audience — should prominently highlight these components,” Anzalone and pollster Matt Hogan wrote.
And though Dems have taken heat for the process by which health care legislation has progressed this year, expect the party to argue that their efforts to allow a majority vote on the bill were justified. Those who back reform “should avoid process debates,” the pollsters write, but they say Dems can use the argument that no 60-vote requirement is in the Constitution effectively.

It may be late in the game for mass mobilization of constituents. But calls to leaders and activists of the aforementioned constituencies, urging them to more vigorously lobby uncomitted House members, might do some good.
Apropos of my TDS post yesterday on the influence of African American voters in Blue Dog districts, Peter Wallsten and Jean Spencer note in their Wall St. Journal article “Opinions Harden on Health,” that a new WSJ/NBC survey indicates that “majorities of African-Americans and liberal Democrats, as well as a plurality of Latinos, would be less likely to vote for their representative in Congress if he or she voted against the health-care plan.” In this regard it’s encouraging that Dems are reportedly running pro-reform radio ads on Tom Joyner’s nationally syndicated programs in key cities.
Tomorrow will bring more optimistic and pessimistic prognoses for the fate of Democratic HCR. The important challenge for pro-reform Dems is to shrug off positive and negative predictions and do something to generate phone calls, emails and visits to the offices of uncommitted House members.

Given the G.O.P.’s oft-stated intention to “destroy” or otherwise end President Obama’s re-election chances by killing health care reform, you have to wonder if some undecided Democratic House members with a substantial African American population in their districts could be encouraged to vote for HCR. The following House members who have been identified as undecided on HCR by The Hill (see our TDS post here) and other sources have double-digit, or near double-digit percentages of African American constituents:
John Barrow (D-GA) 44.5
Steve Driehaus (Ohio) 36.5
John Spratt (S.C.) 32.3
Tom Perriello (Va.) 24.1
Mike Doyle (Pa.) 22.7
John Tanner (Tenn.) 22.4
Marion Berry (Ark.) 16.6
Russ Carnahan (Mo.) 9.1
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio) 8.7
(percentages come from nationalatlas.gov, via Wikipedia demographic figures for congressional districts)
Democratic candidates for congress count on receiving upwards of 80 percent of votes cast by African Americans in their districts, and in some cases they would be in trouble if this percentage were to significantly decline or if Black voter turnout in their districts were to tank dramatically. Clearly, African American organizations and media in their districts could be an influential force, using some form of the following pitch to their Reps: “If you vote to help the G.O.P. try to end President Obama’s re-election chances, we will do everything we can to substantially reduce your support among African American voters.”
Yes, this is serious hardball. But the damage done by the potential failure of HCR would be very damaging to Dem chances, not only this year, but in ’12 as well.

David Corn is on to something, in his Politics Daily column, “Could Financial Protection Bill Be a Secret Weapon for Democrats in 2010?” Corn sees Congressional Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to establish a ‘Consumer Financial Protection Agency’ as a potential winner for Dems. He explains where her proposal is now:

…After the subprime crisis led to a global meltdown, her proposal picked up momentum, eventually becoming a centerpiece of President Obama’s financial reform package. In the fall, the House passed a mostly strong version of the CFPA. Now, it’s being considered by the Senate — where Big Finance lobbyists and Republicans are trying to strangle this watchdog in the crib. On Monday, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is scheduled to release his financial reform package, and observers, including Warren, are waiting to see if it will contain a muscular and independent CFPA.
For weeks, Dodd has been negotiating with Republicans, who have objected to setting up the CFPA as a stand-alone agency (they favor shoving it into an existing department), and they do not fancy allowing this new outfit to enforce the safeguards it will establish. That is, they want it to be toothless. These Republicans are in league with an army of banking lobbyists working feverishly to destroy the CFPA. (Warren says that a trade association head recently told her that the financial industry has retained 54 lobbying firms to block the CFPA — and a 55th to coordinate the maneuvers of the others.)…Whatever Dodd unveils next week, GOPers are likely to denounce it and plot to smother the CFPA. (Can you say filibuster?)

Given anger about high unemployment and the bailouts, Corn points out that “voters will be looking for targets…And there are more incumbents with D’s after their names.” He adds,

There may not be much the Democrats can do to escape an electoral tide of anger. But if they can show that the Republicans are protecting the Wall Street players who drove the economy into a ditch, that certainly can’t hurt. To have any shot at this, though, the Dems have to cut through all the political clutter and make a clear case…If the GOPers stand in the way of creating a tough CFPA, the Democrats, led by Obama, ought to go crazy on this. Unlike, say, credit default swaps, this is not complicated. The president will merely have to say something like this: “It’s a simple choice. Which side are you on? The banks or hard-working American families? Congressional Democrats and I are trying to create an agency that will protect you from the sleazy practices of banks and credit card companies. The Republicans are working behind closed doors with the lobbyists. Who do you want to win?”

Corn adds that, to make it work, the President must hang tough for a strong CFPA and embrace Warren’s statement that she would rather see “no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor” than a limp CFPA. It’s critically important for Dem candidates to be seen in November as advocates for strong consumer protection against continued abuse by financial corporations.
I think Corn is dead right, if only because many voters unfairly blame Obama and the Democrats for the banking bailouts. Giving Dems cred as champions of consumers against the financial industry’s rapacious practices could help re-target the blame. Even if Dems don’t win a strong bill, Corn points out that “losing a well-defined fight over the CFPA could be a winner for them, if it shows voters that the D’s are battling for them and the R’s are fronting for the banks.”
After HCR is secured, Dem candidates must focus more intensely on job creation. But being seen as champions of a strong CFPA could also help Dems win swing voters, as well as re-energize our base.

A coalition of corporate groups will spend between 4 and 10 million dollars in the weeks ahead to stop the Democratic health care reform package. As John D. McKinnon and Brody Williams explain in their Wall St. Journal article this morning,

The business coalition, Employers for a Healthy Economy, said it would run between $4 million and $10 million of ads targeting the districts of several dozen Democratic lawmakers, carrying the message that the bill would cause job losses. The ads are being funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade associations that represent a broad swath of industry, from health insurers and manufacturers to construction, retail and distribution companies.
The burst of TV advertising adds to the total of more than $200 million spent on ads last year, making the health-care debate the largest single advocacy campaign ever, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks issue advertising. Both sides in the debate spent about equally on ads last year, according to Evan Tracey, the nonpartisan group’s president.

Sobering numbers for health care reform supporters. Their opponents plan to flood the airwaves with attacks against reform. And the ads will be targeted, as the authors report:

One group opposing the legislation, Americans for Prosperity, is targeting about 21 House districts around the country with $350,000 in TV and radio ads, as well as with rallies at lawmakers’ district offices. Still another conservative group, the American Future Fund, said this week it had launched TV ads targeting 18 congressional districts.

Unions, Health Care for America Now, the AARP and other pro-reform groups will struggle to match that investment, which may end up being substantially more than $10 million, if my hunch is right. That’s quite a change from last summer when insurers were running ads supporting bipartisan reform.
Next week tea party organizers plan to flood the halls of Congress with 1,000 protestors, no doubt attracting 24-7 coverage from Fox TV, wingnut radio and whatever msm outlets get hustled into providing over-coverage. It would be good if progressive supporters of HCR were ready with an impressive counter-protest, bearing signs with messages like the three in TDS’s “Noteworthy” box above, plus some version of E. J. Dionne’s soundbite, like “Don’t let a phony argument about process derail needed reform.” Also needed are messages and creative ads making a positive pitch about the good changes reforms will secure.
Of course the quality of the ad campaigns may determine their impact, as much or more than money and saturation. Democrats have the advantage of reasonable policy, but Republicans have the edge in message discipline and air wave media resources. It will require some creative media strategy to neutralize the GOP media campaign over the next two weeks. This DNC ad is an excellent start.

The big hurdle ahead in enacting health care reform is House approval of the Senate HCR bill, which the Administration hopes to pass by March 18. Says OpenLeft‘s Chris Bowers, who tracks the House and Senate tallies: “The vote count is not a rosy one right now.”
538.com‘s Nate Silver believes that “the Senate should fairly easily have 50 votes for reconciliation” and agrees that the House vote is the more problematic challenge:

The math on holding those 217 House votes was never very easy for Nancy Pelosi and its not clear that it’s gotten any easier. If everyone voted the same way today that they did in November, the bill would pass 217-215. However, two previous yes votes — Bart Stupak and the Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao — are almost certainly to be lost, whereas nobody who voted against the bill before has yet affirmed that they’ll switch to vote for it. That makes the starting point 215-217 against.
…My head says yes — Pelosi will squeak this through — while my gut frankly says no…I’d hesitate to call the bill a favorite to pass.

Bowers has a list of about two dozen House members thought to be possible swing voters, broken down into three categories:

…The 431 current members of the House voted 217-214 in favor of the health reform bill in November. Here are the key switches, and wavering Representatives, so far:
* November “yes” votes presumed to be “no” because of the Stupak bloc (9): Cao (LA-02); Costello (IL-12); Dahlkemper (PA-03); Driehaus (OH-03); Kanjorski (PA-11); Kaptur (OH-09); Murtha (PA-12)[deceased]; Oberstar (MN-08); Ortiz (TX-27); Stupak (MI-01)
* November “no” votes publically wavering now (13): Altmire (PA-04), Baird (WA-03); Boucher (VA-09); Boyd (FL-02); Gordon (TN-06); Kosmas (FL-24); Markey (CO-04); McMahon (NY-13); Minnick (ID-01); S. Murphy (NY-20); Glen Nye (VA-02); Ross (AR-04); Tanner (TN-08)
* November “yes” votes publically wavering now (3): Arcuri (NY-24), Grijalva (AZ-07); Schrader (OR-05)
That’s a pretty tight squeeze. The House leadership will need virtually all of the wavering “no” votes from November listed above to vote yes this time around. And the only way to appeal to that group is through the reconciliation fix bill, since the Senate bill must be passed as is in order for President Obama to sign it into law.

Reasons for the March 18 deadline include the President’s upcoming international trip and the onset of “March Madness,” regarded as a constituent distraction. This will likely be the pivotal vote in enacting a decent health care bill, and we can imagine the lobbying pressure the insurance industry will be putting on these House members in the weeks ahead. Much depends on them hearing from progressive constituents and organizations in impressive numbers.

Read more…

Now that President Obama has defined the legislative path forward for HCR (text of his remarks here), and Dems are lining up in support of the consensus, the glaring weakness of the Republicans’ strategy is coming into focus. With benefit of hindsight, it now seems terribly obvious that Republicans hurt their cause with their “throw it out and start over” message.
First, few Americans want to ditch all the work that’s been done and go through the whole yammering process all over again. People are simply growing tired of the health reform debate and it’s hard for a sane person not to agree with President Obama’s point that everything has been said and everyone has had their chance to say it. Clearly, they overestimated the public’s tolerance for never-ending debate.
Second, “let’s start over” is such a transparently partisan notion. ‘Let’s just trash all the Democrats’ efforts, and start over again so we Republicans, who just got one new, pivotal Senate vote, can dominate the deliberations.” No one with a triple-digit I.Q. could possibly believe that idea comes from a genuine bipartisan spirit.
You have to wonder what deluded world the authors of that strategy inhabit. Did they really think the Democrats would roll and say, “OK, you guys are right. let’s start all over again.” No. But it’s equally-dumb to believe that voters would think, “Gee, those reasonable, bipartisan Republicans have a point, we really should start over.”
Instead of “start over,” Republicans might have gotten more support by fighting hard for a few key measures, even if they lost. Then, at least, they would not look quite so obstructionist and negative. Their portfolio of ideas was admittedly limited, but they had a couple of measures they could have been positive about. Instead they went whole hog negative and amped up ‘the party of no’ meme.
Consider an alternate reality. What would be happening now if a few Republicans negotiated in good faith and could credibly claim they had a significant impact on the reforms? The Republican Party could then share some of the credit. Now President Obama and the Dems will get bipartisan cred for including a few Republican ideas of their choosing, while Mitch McConnell and his chorus of whining parrots will be reduced to dissing both majority rule and the enacted legislation, undoubtedly threatening to repeal it (more negativity) at some future date.
Assuming Dems have the votes to enact the legislation pretty soon, perhaps we have just been provided with an instructive lesson about the limitations of message discipline: When a party’s message is that lame, message discipline is not so great.

‘Tis a shame that no photograph of Jim Bunning’s flipped bird has yet emerged, although the photo on this web page captures the spirit of his attitude, and should do adequately for his legacy and Wikipedia page, where you can also read about his ‘foundation.’ Somewhere, however, in the darker corners of the G.O.P., where strategy is made, Frank Luntz, Ed Rollins and the smarter Republicans should be offering prayers of gratitude that Bunning’s bird escaped the cameras, for it would be hard to imagine a better symbolic representation of G.O.P. obstructionism.
That, however, shouldn’t stop cartoonists from doing their job. Have at it, guys. (They’re just getting started: See here, here and, best so far, here.)
Common sense suggests that Republicans should feel a little uneasy about Bunning punishing unemployed Americans with obstructionist theatrics. But this is not a good year for common sense in the G.O.P., where principled opposition to childish behavior is pretty-much non-existent. Michael Kieschnick puts it well in his HuiffPo post, “Republicans Use Jim Bunning to Say Tough S**t to America“:

…It is one thing to act in such a despicable manner, and quite another to be backed up by one’s colleagues. Surely one of the Republican leaders would have escorted Sen. Bunning off the floor so that a vote could be held. Surely a senior Senator of the same party might have made clear that such behavior is simply unacceptable in the Senate.
But no. No Republican has condemned Sen. Bunning. Indeed, Sen. Cornyn of Texas, in charge of electing more Republicans to the Senate, went out of his way to praise his colleague and said he understood.
Perhaps Sen. Bunning is just a bitter, deluded, old man, who used to be a great baseball pitcher. But he is also the public face of the Republican Senators. The party of no has now simply become the cruder party of tough shit and a raised middle finger.

Perhaps Bunning is running for president of tea party America, where expressions of mindless contempt are celebrated — even when directed toward the working people they claim to represent.

In yet another insightful op-ed article, this one entitled “The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich kicks off an important discussion on a topic, otherwise much-ignored by the traditional media. Here’s Rich on the reaction of conservatives to the February 18th suicide bombing by Andrew Joseph Stack III, the anti-tax terrorist who flew a plane into the IRS office building in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18:

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, even rationalized Stack’s crime. “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened,” he said, “but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.” No one in King’s caucus condemned these remarks. Then again, what King euphemized as “the incident” took out just 1 of the 200 workers in the Austin building: Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran nearing his I.R.S. retirement…

Sound familiar? Rich continues,

…Had Stack the devastating weaponry and timing to match the death toll of 168 inflicted by Timothy McVeigh on a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, maybe a few of the congressman’s peers would have cried foul.
It is not glib or inaccurate to invoke Oklahoma City in this context, because the acrid stench of 1995 is back in the air. Two days before Stack’s suicide mission, The Times published David Barstow’s chilling, months-long investigation of the Tea Party movement. Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history. The Patriot movement. “The New World Order,” with its shadowy conspiracies hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Sandpoint, Idaho. White supremacists. Militias.
Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

Rich goes on to explain that most pro-terrorists hate the Republican Party almost as much as they hate the Democrats, because they are essentially anarchists. Nor would it be fair to imply that all anti-government activists are pro-terrorist. Says Rich: “They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington — a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.”
But Rich does quote a GOP presidential aspirant, former MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, who recently urged an audience to emulate Tiger Woods’s wife and “take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country.” Rich adds:

Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it. Last year Michele Bachmann, the redoubtable Tea Party hero and Minnesota congresswoman, set the pace by announcing that she wanted “people in Minnesota armed and dangerous” to oppose Obama administration climate change initiatives. In Texas, the Tea Party favorite for governor, Debra Medina, is positioning herself to the right of the incumbent, Rick Perry — no mean feat given that Perry has suggested that Texas could secede from the union. A state sovereignty zealot, Medina reminded those at a rally that “the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

The wholesale government-bashing that became epidemic during the Reagan Administration took root in the conservative fringe until it warped and found tragic expression in Oklahoma City in in 1995. Back then conservatives roundly denounced McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism. It would have been good for conservatives to denounce with due fervor the domestic terrorist attempt at mass murder that ocurred on Feb 18th.

I do hope the DNC-DSCC-DCCC political ad-makers have their act together, because they are being presented a truckload of amazing material. Just in the last 24 hours we have a Republican U.S. Senator dissing the unemployed and three top conservative media personalities mocking the uninsured.
Ed Kilgore wrote earlier about Republican Sen. Jim Bunning screaming ‘tough shit” in response to an appeal for compassion for the jobless. Bunning is not running for re-election, due to his inept fund-raising skills, but he nonetheless makes an excellent poster boy for ‘GOP Obstructionist of the Week,’ although his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConell is always a finalist.
Now we got GOP media superstars Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham making merriment from the hardships of people who can’t afford health insurance. Here’s a little bite from Media Matters for America‘s story, “Let them eat applesauce: Right-wing media mock the uninsured“:

…The O’Reilly Factor, radio host Laura Ingraham said she “liked the dueling sob stories, OK? One Democrat was trying to outdo the next on the sob story about how rotten our health care system is. Louise Slaughter won the Olympics of sob stories by saying one of her constituents had to wear her sister’s dentures. OK? It got so bad with the health care system.” She later added, “You had Harry Reid on the cleft palate with his — I mean, the whole thing was ridiculous.”

If Ingraham was trying to replace Ann Coulter as the new Marie Antoinette of the Republican party, she may have pulled it off. The article also quotes Limbaugh, “”What’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth? Aren’t the Democrats big into recycling?” and Beck’s “I’ve read the Constitution before. I didn’t see that you had a right to teeth.” The article quotes other conservative media personalities in a similar vein.
It seems that the tea party movement has emboldened Republicans to more venomously articulate their contempt for the poor and disadvantaged. The cameras are rolling, and one hopes the Democratic ad-makers are collecting the product.

After watching a couple of hours of the health care reform summit today, I’d have to call it a big step towards enacting a credible bill. There were no major Democratic gaffes and the Republicans were unable to make a very persuasive case against the bill. Indeed, their incessant repetiton of the “my district hates this bill” put-down must have sounded a little scripted and unconvincing to viewers who were trying to make up their mind about the legislation, based on the best evidence presented by both parties.
President Obama looked large and in charge, calling everyone by their first names, while they all had to answer him as “Mr. President,” as he responded to most of the comments made by the Republicans and generally had the last word. This was a highly creative and effective use of the bully pulpit, which amplified the president’s image as a manager and a thoughtful leader who is sincerely trying to work some of the opposition’s ideas into the legislation. Again and again, he appealed to the Republicans to identify areas of agreement, which many Democrats noted, while few Republicans responded positively. President Obama’s performance will probably lend some cred to the public’s perception of the bill.
It was President Obama’s show. But other Dems acquitted themselves well enough. The Republicans did their best to appear as level-headed conservatives, not unduly influenced by tea party theatrics, and most pulled it off. Even the exchanges about resorting to budget reconciliation were impressively devoid of shrill demagoguery.
The civility of the exchanges is more a net plus for Dems because, as Chris Bowers notes in his OpenLeft post, “The largely positive impact of a boring health care summit,”

…makes charges of “communism” or “obstruction” seem a lot less credible. It looks like well informed people are discussing substantive legislation, rather than throwing bombs at each other…All in all, the summit is a huge net positive for the possibility of passing health reform this year. Democrats were losing the rhetorical battle on this bill, and a boring summit largely helps them.

A commenter called ‘workingclassdemocrat’ responds to Bowers, echoing,

I think summit deflated the fierceness of the GOP attacks. If nothing else, there haven’t been many “death panel” moments. That alone means the discussion is closer to reality. I think the time taken for this discussion and the buildup to it have allowed many on the left to reflect upon the benefit of choosing between this bill or nothing. Given the pressure of the media, the health industry, and the lack of pressure by the White House, something near to the Senate Bill is probably the reality.

The hysterical rhetoric about ‘socialism’ and Democratic reforms leading to economic disaster will probably sound a little less credible to open-minded voters, who the Republicans hope to win in November. No one can now say their views didn’t get a fair hearing, and the President addressed all of the critiques with calm, respectful authority. Hard to see any downside for the Dems.