On the even of the Supreme Court Ruling on the Affordable Care Act, Jonathan Cohn has a New Republic article calling attention to the impressive track record of the legislation — even though some of it’s key provisions have not yet kicked in. Cohn explains:

…Already more than two million young adults have gotten health insurance through their parents’ policies…Millions of Americans have consumer protections that, for those unlucky to need them, have made a real difference in their lives.
Of course, it won’t be until 2014 that we see the really big changes in health insurance coverage –the expansion of Medicaid to include everybody with income below 300 percent of the poverty line, the creation of a marketplace with subsidies where individuals and small businesses can get affordable insurance without discrimination. Undoubtedly this helps explain the public’s ambivalence.

As for cost-containment, there are some compelling indications the ACA is working well:

The Affordable Care Act isn’t simply about making insurance more widely available. It’s also about re-engineering the health care industry, so that it operates more efficiently–providing treatment that is higher quality, less expensive, or both. Its primary means for doing so is a series of changes to the way Medicare pays for treatment. The idea, as Sarah Kliff explains in the Washington Post, is to move from a system that rewards volume (i.e., the number of procedures performed) to a system that rewards value (i.e., the quality of care provided).
…Medicare is actually saving money….Maybe the clearest sign of change is on the bottom line: Medicare spending has been coming in lower than projections…. Paul Ginsburg and Chapin White, two widely respected experts from the relentlessly non-partisan Center on the Study of Health System Change argue that slow growth explains only part of the change. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, they suggested the Affordable Care Act–and the incentives its putting in place–are a major reason Medicare is starting to save money.
Harvard’s David Cutler, another highly respected economist, has been saying this was possible for a long time. “It is absolutely not just the recession,” Cutler, who was an original architect of what became the Affordable Care Act, said via e-mail. “The ACA is having an impact, as are changes like greater cost sharing. There is a real question as to whether we are entering an era of low cost growth.”
…More than five million seniors and people with disabilities have saved more than $3 billion on prescription drug costs, according to the Department of Health and Human Services….Highmark, a nonprofit insurer in Pennsylvania, is getting into the business of providing care directly through clinics of integrated medical professionals. Historically, such systems have provided some of the lowest cost, highest quality care in the country.

Cohn concedes that “it is far too soon to know the full impact” of the law, and adds “For now, though, popular health care remains a dream–even as successful health care reform starts, slowly but surely, to become reality.” With such a promising beginning, an adverse Supreme Court ruling would be a national tragedy that does more damage to the health of Americans than any decision in the high court’s history.

Ira Glasser, former executive director of the ACLU, asks a good question in the title of his HuffPo article, “What Are Conservatives Trying to Conserve?” Glasser references Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine article, noting that “demographic changes in the United States will before too long spell doom to the political influence and hegemony of conservatives,” and adds that there is a parallel dynamic at work against the continuation of conservative policies:

…Chait’s emphasis on demographic shifts is powerful and mainly on target, but there is a broader historical context to his analysis that complements, extends and better explains the hysteria dominating the current rhetoric of the Republican party. In other words, there is content to all of this.

Glasser explains that the march of modernity, driven by a range human rights movements he cites, had a far-reaching effect on the social transformation of recent decades, and is still having a powerful impact:

The explosion of rights between 1954 and 1973 radically altered the rules of the game and, perhaps more importantly, the perceptions of those who lost their privileges (many of whom had little else)…To a very demonstrable extent, I think, the conservative movement of the last 30 years…may be seen as a panic response to a crumbling world and to the rights expansions of the ’60s that struck like a tsunami, washing away all the prior governing arrangements. …
…What conservatives were desperately trying to conserve was not the values at America’s origin (the Bill of Rights was, after all, ratified in 1791), but rather the privileges and powers of 19th century and early 20th century America. This is what has fueled the reactionary politics of the past three decades, and it is what we are seeing now in the Republican base and its candidates.
…It is true that demographic changes affect this struggle. But demographic changes did not cause the struggle, nor do they lie at its roots. It is also true, I think, that the views represented by the likes of Rick Santorum are fading, and that his screams against the changes he cannot prevent are like a death rattle. That doesn’t mean they can’t do damage, doesn’t mean they can’t temporarily prevail. But they know their time is passing and that the next generation will not react with shock to the changes that shock Santorum, because they will not experience them as changes, because they will have gotten used to them, because they grew up with them…The vision of life that Rick Santorum clings to will end, or diminish to a point where it is not politically viable. Chait is right that the Republican right wing knows this; he is right that they see this as their last shot (it may not be; I wouldn’t celebrate victory quite yet)
…This is about more than demographics: it is about fundamental social change and the reaction to it. And the fundamental changes at stake and at issue are mostly about rights, the rights won by submerged and subordinate groups roughly between 1954 and 1973, and the privileges and powers lost or limited, or perceived to be lost, by those who benefited, however unjustly, from the subordination of others.

It’s ironic that the expansion of ‘freedom’ conservatives claim to cherish will likely become the source of their demise as a dominant political force. With favorable demographic tail winds, the freedom movements of the 21st century will have increasing influence — and that’s good for Democrats.

by Jeremy Rosner, Kristi Lowe, and Amanda Oefelein of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Matt Bennett, Mieke Eoyang, and Michelle Diggles of Third Way, Third Way and National Security Academy
March 21, 2012
Executive Summary
November’s presidential election will feature something not seen in American politics in more than forty years: a Democratic candidate who enjoys some of his strongest ratings on national security. Swing voters in a new set of focus group are generally impressed with the job President Obama is doing in keeping the country safe. Yet his success has not erased old doubts or stereotypes about his party on these issues.
Obama’s strong image comes in large part from the success of the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden, along with a string of other security-related accomplishments. The Democratic Party, by contrast, continues to carry image liabilities on national security that stretch back a half century. But while there is a gap between Obama and his party on national security, there is a mirror gap for Republicans. The record of President George W. Bush has dented their strong brand on national security and leaves real doubts about what Republicans would do if they once again controlled the White House.
Key Findings
A new Third Way-Greenberg Quinlan Rosner report outlines key findings encouraging Democrats to welcome the debate on national security and highlighting ways Democrats can use Obama’s success to improve the party’s brand and make real gains during this election year.
Methodology
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, in conjunction with Third Way, conducted four focus groups: two in Cincinnati, OH on January 26; and two in Tampa, FL on February 2. The groups were composed of moderate/conservative Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans. This research is inherently qualitative in nature, and so these results are suggestive rather than definitive; yet general consistency in responses across the four groups gives us confidence in the findings presented here.

Mike Hall and Jennifer Kauffman have a post up at the AFL-CIO Now blog, “Tea Party Joins Fight Against Georgia Anti-Picketing Bill,” indicating that the GA GOP leaders may have brilliantly alienated their most favored constituency. As Kauffman and Hall explain:

Here’s something we don’t see every day. The tea party and unions and other progressive groups have come together in Georgia to fight a proposed Draconian law that would make union and other picketing a serious crime.
The bill, SB 469 introduced by state Sen. Don Balfour (R), clamps down on free speech and workers’ rights.The bill would allow protestors to be charged twice for the same act of peaceful protest–once with conspiracy to commit, which would be charged as a high and aggravated misdemeanor and carry a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail, and then with criminal trespass, which would carry a $1,000 fine and also up to a year in jail.
The bill would cover action by unions, environmental, civil rights, pro-and anti-choice groups and just about every conceivable group that would engage in picketing protests.

The bill, SB 469, which has passed the GA state senate, was the target of a Saturday “We Are Georgia” rally at the state capitol, which drew over 2,000 protesters. As the Atlanta Tea Party/Tea Party Patriots Georgia put it, in urging their members to turn out and support unions and other progressive protesters on this one, “This is not a right or left issue, it is a right or wrong issue. We may not agree with all of the politics…but we will defend their right to speak and protest, because this is America. If we destroy the First Amendment, we cease to be a free nation.”
Having already ticked off farmers and Latinos with their immigrant-harrassment legislation, Georgia’s Republican leaders are now exploring new and creative ways to anger their base.

The following article, by Mike Lux, Co-founder and CEO, Progressive Strategies, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
Throughout American history, some of our greatest political thinkers have understood that at the end of the day, democracy works better than elites running things because regular people instinctively get the truth of what is going on in the real world — on Main Street — more than out-of-touch elites. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine got this; so did Abe Lincoln, who believed in a government of, by, and for the people; so did the reformers and organizers of the 20th Century like Saul Alinsky and Walter Reuther. They all knew that the people might get things wrong some of the time, but that ultimately it was better to trust and empower regular folks because the elites generally messed up a lot more of the time than democracy did.
When I read the great memos and reams of data that Stan Greenberg and James Carville at Democracy Corps put out, and read focus group and polling reports from other pollsters I respect, I am reminded of that truth once again. It is striking how much better regular folks understand than most of the elites in this country what is really going on with this economy. They aren’t following the moment to moment blips in the job or GDP numbers so much as they know deep in their guts that the American middle class is in real danger, that it is on a long downhill decline, and that there need to be big fundamental changes. This has big implications for the 2012 election.
The swing voters swing because they go back and forth on whom to blame more — Wall Street and big business or the government — and what then to do about it. They think both sides of that equation are bad: that Wall Street screwed up the economy, and that government can’t succeed because it is bought off by Wall Street and other wealthy special interests. They think both political parties are bad. And they for the most part aren’t feeling like the economy is getting much better or that, as President Obama put it in his State of the Union, “America is back!” They are pessimists (at least in the short term), populists, alienated from the establishment. That is why I continue to fear a more upbeat message on how the economy really is getting better from the Obama team will cause him to lose. Stan and James reminded me recently of the last ad we ran in the 1992 Clinton campaign, the single most effective ad we ran that fall. I wish I could find the video for you, but I haven’t been able to. It was a 15-second ad that had a clip of George Bush talking about how the economy really was getting better and jobs were starting to pick up again (both of which were technically true), and then the screen just cut to lettering and a voice saying “How ya doing?” People responded strongly to it, feeling in their gut that the economy the last four years had not been getting better, and that Bush was out of touch for saying so. It turned a race that had been tightening into an easy six-point win.
My concern isn’t just, as I have written about before, that the Obama team doesn’t brag too much about economic improvements that most voters aren’t feeling yet. My bigger worry is that Obama, other Democrats, and the broad progressive movement will just miss the moment we are in: middle-class voters have a deep understanding that something is profoundly wrong with the direction our economy has been heading for the last 30 years. They understand, far better than most elites, the underlying trends that are grinding middle-class families into the dirt, and are making it harder and harder for poor people and young people to climb the ladder into the middle class. They are cynical about politicians bragging about job growth because they know that most new jobs don’t pay what the ones that were lost used to, or are temp jobs that will be gone all too fast. They know that wage growth is flat, housing prices are down, and the costs of necessities — gas, groceries, health care — keep going up. They worry about being able to retire with enough money to live on, about taking care of their elderly parents and grandparents, and about sending their kids to college with tuition rates skyrocketing.

Read more…

The House GOP leadership’s budget proposals are not only DOA, but highly unpopular with the public, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot.’ As Teixeira explains:

…The new Ryan budget will look very much like last year’s that called for ending Medicare as we know it, cutting a wide variety of social programs from Medicaid to education, and preserving tax cuts for the affluent. The other is that the public won’t like it because of these very similarities.
Take the Medicare provision first. The Kaiser Foundation recently asked the public whether “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government guaranteeing seniors health insurance and making sure that everyone gets the same defined set of benefits” or “Medicare should be changed to a system in which the government would guarantee each senior a fixed amount of money to put toward health insurance. Seniors would purchase that coverage either from traditional Medicare or from a list of private health plans.” By an overwhelming 70-25 margin the public chose the former option, which is traditional Medicare, over the Ryan plan’s premium support model.

Nor are Ryan’s Medicaid proposals expected to get much traction from public opinion, says Teixeira:

The new Ryan budget will also likely call for ending Medicaid as we know it, where the federal government guarantees coverage and sets minimum standards for benefits and eligibility, and replacing it with a system where the federal government gives states a fixed amount of money and each state decides who to cover and what services to pay for. Last year, when this was first proposed, Kaiser asked people about the Ryan budget approach and received a 60-35 negative verdict.,

Not much support for gutting Social Security to avoid cutting military spending, either:

Rep. Ryan claims, of course, that these changes are necessary to reduce the budget deficit and avoid any decrease in military spending or, especially, any rise in tax rates for the wealthy. But he gets our priorities exactly backwards as far as the public is concerned. In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, the public overwhelmingly favored cutting military spending (52 percent) over cutting Social Security (13 percent) or Medicare (15 percent).

Ryan and GOP leaders adamantly oppose tax hikes on the wealthy. But the public sees things a little differently, explains Teixeira:

And when it comes to taxing the rich, the public says bring it on! In the same poll, by a lopsided 67-29 margin the public thought taxes on households earning $1 million or more a year should be increased to help deal with the budget deficit.

It appears that Rep. Ryan has delivered another fatally-flawed budget, doomed again by his characteristic ideological excess. As Teixeira concludes, “The new Ryan budget: dead on arrival in the court of public opinion.”

In his WaPo post “Hey, reporters! Watch out for polling outliers,” Jonathan Bernstein sounds a cautionary note, which should resonate with political writers across the spectrum. As Bernstein explains:

…A couple of high-profile polls last week showed drops in Obama’s approval rating, including a New York Times/CBS survey that had him dropping to 41 percent approval. Yet several other polls showed Obama staying in the same general range as before, or even gaining; overall, it was clear that the NYT/CBS poll was an outlier.

Bernstein goes on to recount how a panel on “This Week” used the poll to launch into a discussion about President Obama tanking in the low forties, “ignoring that other polls last week had him at 46, 47, 47, 48, 50 and 50 percent approval.” Bernstein responds:

This is really sloppy work. It’s one thing to have overreacted to the Times poll when it was released on Monday — that’s bad enough — but there’s no excuse for missing all the other polls by the end of the week…Hey, reporters and pundits! Always, always, use the excellent polling averages provided by Pollster (currently 47.7 percent approval) and/or Real Clear Politics (currently 47.5 percent). Both of them have convenient charts showing current trends, and lists of recent polls so that one can see at a glance how a particular survey fits in with the overall pattern…We’re going to be hit with a gazillion general-election polls in the coming months, which means that about one-twentieth of that gazillion is going to be an outlier even if everyone is doing their best work…

End of Political Journalism 101 refresher course. As Bernstein concludes, “Be prepared for those outliers, and be ready to discount them rapidly. Anything else is just bad reporting.”

At The American Prospect, Paul Waldman addresses a question one hears with increasing frequency these days, “Are Conservatives Getting Crazier?” Waldman quotes from Rick Perlstein’s Rolling Stone article on the topic that, “What’s changed is that loony conservatives are now the Republican mainstream, the dominant force in the GOP,” and adds:

You can still make the case that conservatives are crazier now, because the key factor isn’t the craziness of the craziest idea circulating among them–say, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and successfully engineered a massive conspiracy to cover it up, as opposed to the idea that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent–it’s how widely those ideas are held, and by whom. The conspiracy theories and hate-driven beliefs find purchase not just on the fringe, but among elected lawmakers, influential media figures, and in many cases, a majority of Republican voters.
…Many conservatives never stopped believing that women who make their own sexual decisions are dirty sluts, but since so many Republicans won office in 2010, that belief translated into a torrent of legislation. In 2011, a record 92 pieces of state legislation restricting abortion rights were enacted, along with measures to restrict access to contraception and renew the failure that is abstinence-only sex education…in the Republican party of today, looniness practically operates on a ratchet, moving only in one direction…There are almost no moderates left in the party to push back.

Waldman is skeptical that even a humiliating defeat for the right in November will lead to the restoration of sanity and moderation in the GOP. “…Who is going to successfully argue that the party needs to turn its back on its nuttiest elements? All the moderates who have retired in disgust or been purged in primaries? They’re gone, and the Republicans who are left couldn’t care less what they have to say.”
When it comes to deciding whether the GOP has finally had its fill of self-destructive lunacy, the only prudent response is to spread your bets.