Pollster.com Editor Mark Blumenthal wades through the confusion about recent polling on health care reform attitudes in his post “Health Care Goals: Cost, Coverage or Both?” and makes a key point reform advocates should keep in mind in discerning trends in public opinion on the topic:

…Democratic pollster Mark Mellman attempts to make sense out of some very divergent obtained by national pollsters recently on the question of whether Americans consider controlling costs or expanding access to coverage the more important goal for health care reform. The column is worth reading in full, but I want to add one thought: I’m not a fan of the costs-or-coverage question….

Blumenthal then presents recent data from seven different polls, all of which share one thing in common:

…All of the questions above force respondents to choose between the goals of reducing costs and expanding access to coverage. What if they feel strongly about both goals?
The new USA Today/Gallup results released this week suggest that many Americans do exactly that. Their survey begins with a list of ways health care reform “might affect you personally,” and asks respondents to rate the importance of each. They find:
86% rate “being able to get health insurance regardless of your job status or medical situation” as at least very important (including 43% who consider it extremely important)….83% rate “making your health insurance more affordable” as at least very important (including 40% who consider it extremely important).
Conceptually, both goals involve the issue of costs. Most Americans understand that if they lose their job or attempt to purchase insurance with a pre-existing condition their personal costs will be significantly higher than with ordinary, employer-provided health coverage. So it would not surprise me that many Americans have trouble disentangling the goals of cost and access to coverage.
…The notion that Americans worry mostly rising health care costs or mostly about covering everyone can mislead us about what those Americans who want it really want out of health care reform. It’s not about cost or access to coverage. It’s about both.

Hopefully, members of Congress will take Blumenthal’s reasoning into account, as they try to figure out what their constituents want. As Ed Kilgore pointed out yesterday in his TDS post on “The Less-Information Lobby,” there is nothing wrong with more polling data, especially if it is interpreted with common sense.

CNN Political Editor Mark Preston has a report on the new DNC/Organizing for America health care reform television ad that starts running today. The 30-second ad has a simple message, targeting “fellow Democrats and centrist Republicans” in 8 states: AR, IN, FL, LA, ME, ND, NE, and OH for two weeks, urging them to “support health care reform this year.” According to Preston,

The ad running in the eight states does not mention the senators by name, but it does ask viewers to call Capitol Hill, and provides the telephone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Two of the states, Arkansas and North Dakota, are represented by a pair of Democratic senators, while the six remaining states are represented by centrist Democrats and Republicans. The commercial that is running nationally follows the same script, but it does not ask people to call their senators.

The ad features five Americans describing how their health care problems are being neglected by the current system, and Preston provides the ad’s script, as follows:

“It’s Time”
Woman 1: My son has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He’s four.
Man 1: When I lost my job, I lost my health insurance too.
Woman 2: My health insurance wouldn’t fully cover me when I got sick.
Man 2: My father in-law walks with a limp because he didn’t have health care.
Woman 3: My husband’s job covered us, until he was laid off.
Man 1: It’s time.
Woman 2: It’s time.
Man 2: It’s time.
Woman 1: It’s time for health care reform.
VO: The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform. Join the fight: healthcare.barackobama.com
[State Version]: CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform.

You can watch the ad here. Thus far, most of the hundred or so comments following Preston’s post are less than insightful.

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board.
Political observers follow presidential approval ratings obsessively and often interpret them in terms of the daily drama of this or that issue or trend. But amidst much speculation about the stability of Barack Obama’s base of support, it’s useful to compare his approval ratings in various demographic groups with their support for him last November.
An examination of recent Gallup Poll data shows that Americans’ opinions about the job Barack Obama is doing as president closely mirror the results of the 2008 election. The President’s 58% approval rating in the July 6-12 Gallup Poll is slightly higher than the 53% share of the vote that he received last November, but his approval rating among various demographic groups correlates almost perfectly with his vote share among the same groups.
The following figure shows the relationship between Obama’s 2008 vote share in 24 demographic groups and his current approval rating in the same groups: the correlation between the two is a near perfect .99.
The implication of these results is that when it comes to opinions about the President, little has changed in the past eight months. Despite the continued weakness of the economy and the steady drumbeat of attacks on the President’s policies from the right, the coalition of groups that put him in office last November remains solidly behind him today.

In his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ on the web pages of the Center for American Progress, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira reports that public support of the Global Warming Bill is on track as the legislation makes its way to the desk of President Obama. According to Teixeira, a consensus has emerged in support of the “broad goal and approach” of the legislation, otherwise known as “The American Clean Energy and Security Act:”

…75 percent of respondents in a mid-June ABC News/Washington Post poll said the federal government should “regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars, and factories in an effort to reduce global warming.” Just 21 percent disagreed. Moreover, when those who agreed that the federal government should regulate greenhouse gases were asked if they would still support this if it raised the price of the things they buy, 80 percent of that group still said yes.

Teixeira noted “majority support (52-42)” for a “cap-and-trade approach” to limiting greenhouse gas in the poll, while acknowledging that the complexity of the proposal may confuse some of the poll respondents. Nonetheless, Teixeira explains that there is a strong consensus for pro-active legislation, with the U.S. in the lead:

…The public believes it is necessary to move ahead on the climate change bill, even if the rest of the world is not moving at the same time. Almost three-fifths (59 percent) said the United States should take action on global warming even if other countries such as China and India are doing less to address the issue, compared to 38 percent who thought either we should take action only if these countries take equally aggressive action (20 percent) or we should do nothing (18 percent).

The legislation will face some challenges ahead as it moves through the congressional process. But President Obama can rest assured that he will have plenty of support when he signs the Global Warming Bill.

Robert Creamer’s HuffPo post, “How Progressives Can Deliver on the Promise of Change in 2009 — Seven Rules for Success,” is a good read for Democrats mulling over the “So what do we do now” options. Creamer, author of ‘Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, ‘ one of the more well-regarded political strategy books of recent years, makes some bold challenges, including:

…We must always present our case in populist terms. We represent the interests of average people — not the elites that benefit from the status quo. The other side will try to argue that we favor a “government takeover” of health care that allows “Washington Bureaucrats” or some other elite to control our lives. If we spend all of our time talking about “insurance exchanges” and the arcana of health care policy we will lose.
We must frame the debate for what it is — a battle between the private health insurance companies and their multi-million dollar CEO’s on the one hand, and the interests of average Americans on the other. Populist frames are necessary for each one of our fights. Populism always trumps policy-speak.

Not a bad strategy slogan. And here’s a piece of Creamer’s carpe diem:

7). This historic window for progressive change will close if we don’t act, just as surely as a hole in the line disappears in football if a running back doesn’t burst through.
Mike Lux’s book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be surveys the history of progressive change in our country. He finds that it is not randomly spread. It occurs in clumps – during “big change moments.”
We are blessed to live in one of those big change moments. But, Lux finds, the lengths of those moments have varied enormously depending mainly on how well Progressives execute.
…For the next year, every Progressive in America needs to realize that he or she has an opportunity to make history that simply isn’t available to most people at most times. That means that all of us have a responsibility to all of the Progressives that have gone before us — and to our kids and grandkids — to make the very most of this precious opportunity.
More than anything else people want meaning in life. They want to do something of lasting importance. At this very moment we have that opportunity. It is up to each of us to seize it.
…But — just as in last year’s election — the critical ingredient that will allow us to be successful is the mobilization of millions of Americans. It simply won’t happen without us.
Some people are lucky enough to be able to say: “I was there at Selma.” For many, it was the proudest moment of their lives. Their eyes well up when they speak of it. It changed the course of history.
We all have the opportunity to be present at another one of those moments. To be there, each of us has to empty the stands — march into the arena – and help make history…It’s simple as this: If we don’t take advantage of this historic moment we may not have another for many years to come. If we do, we will help lay the foundation for a period of unparalleled possibility and hope.

Creamer urges progressives to get active with groups working for reforms and offers other pointers for making the most of the current political environment. As always, his insights provoke thought and inspire action

In his op-ed article “An Army Untapped,” WaPo columnist and American Prospect Co-Editor Harold Meyerson challenges President Obama and progressive groups to mobilize their supporters in service to health care reform. Says Meyerson:

Though most Americans support the provision of universal coverage and a public plan, a mass movement for health-care reform doesn’t exist. And the efforts of the administration and of the groups promoting universal coverage aren’t likely to conjure it up.
The problem begins with the administration’s inability — or disinclination — to use its greatest political asset, the list of 13 million supporters that the Obama presidential campaign amassed last year. In 2008, that list was the wonder of the political world, enabling Barack Obama to run the best-funded campaign in history and to activate more volunteers than any candidate ever had.
This year, however, the administration has asked far less of that list and received, not surprisingly, far less in return.

Meyerson cites some pretty tame initiatives on the part of the Administration and the DNC, such as urging his supporters to “create a conversation within their communities” and “collect health insurance horror stories and put them on line” and participating in a “day of service” focused on health care projects — which Meyerson describes as “All very commendable, and about as likely to affect the outcome of the health-care deliberations as the phases of the moon.”
Further, Meyerson adds,

Even when the battle for health care finally comes down to a single bill, the plans to activate Obama supporters are conceptually modest. “We can’t target individual members of Congress,” says one DNC official. “To tell people to target certain Democrats puts the party in a weird position.” Not even 13 million supporters, apparently, can instill party discipline into a political culture that scarcely knows the meaning of the term.

In his blog ‘The Plum Line,” Greg Sargent is a little more encouraged by the health care reform mobilizing efforts of Organizing for America and other activist groups. On related topics, see also J.P. Green’s July 6 TDS post noting the distinction between party discipline invoked by voters, instead of leaders and Ed Kilgore’s post yesterday emphasizing the need for party unity on cloture votes, while leaving room for debate on policy.
Meyerson does commend nongovernmental groups like SEIU and MoveOn.org for a stronger effort, including ads challenging timid Democrats to provide a stronger voice for universal health care. But he says “…They are no substitute for campaigns to build the one thing that would ensure enactment of such a plan — a mass movement. They are the fruits of a legislative strategy, not a movement-building strategy.” Meyerson adds,

Major progressive legislation in America is seldom enacted absent a mass movement clamoring for change. The New Deal’s legislative triumphs were the product not merely of Franklin Roosevelt’s political genius but of the political pressure built up by general strikes and wild-eyed campaigns for social insurance. The great civil rights legislation of the 1960s was the product not merely of Lyndon Johnson’s legendary political skills but also of the blood and sweat of a generation of demonstrators in the Jim Crow South.
…The administration’s willingness to limit the potential of its army of supporters and the progressive groups’ unwillingness to try to create a movement (say, for single-payer health care) that goes beyond the administration’s goals have all but ensured that legislators will feel no major pressure for systemic change as Congress crafts national policy. If Obama doesn’t want to use his mega-list to pursue his mega-goal, supporters of universal coverage might ask him, as Abraham Lincoln once asked the notoriously inactive Gen. George McClellan, to borrow his army as long as he isn’t using it.

A tough critique, and a bold challenge — one Democrats may soon have to accept, if the goal of a health care system that serves the people is to become a reality.

Despite the conservative cultural warriors’ campaign to prevent the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, she enjoys a level of popular support “among the highest recorded for recent Supreme Court nominees,” according to TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira. As Teixeira explains in his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘ at the Center for American Progress web pages,

In a just-released ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of the public says Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court should be confirmed by the Senate, compared to just 25 percent who think she shouldn’t be confirmed….

And, when asked about Sotomayor’s race/ethnicity, as a factor in her decision-making, the majority is not buying the meme that she is biased, as Teixeira notes:

…Just 22 percent of Americans think Sotomayor’s racial and ethnic background plays a negative role in her decisions as a judge, compared to 52 percent who think her background plays no role and 16 percent who think it plays a good role.

Regarding her views on abortion, Teixeira adds that “the public is clearly not terribly frightened by conservatives’ allegations that Sotomayor might be pro choice.”

By a 60-to-34-percent margin, they say if Sotomayor was on the Court they would want her to vote to uphold the landmark Roe v. Wade case that established abortion rights in the country. This is consistent with other recent poll findings that show, if anything, increased opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade. In 2006, 62 percent in a CNN poll said they would not like to see the Supreme Court overturn its Roe v. Wade decision; in their most recent reading, in May of this year, CNN found 68 percent opposed to a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Teixeira, whose forthcoming Progressive Studies program report, “The Coming End of the Culture Wars,” will be released later this month, concludes that “…It just doesn’t seem like the culture wars line of attack is working for the conservatives…who are losing one of the chief weapons in their political arsenal.”

Don’t read Battochio’s post, “Diagrams on Conservatism: Visualize the Insanity” at Vagabond Scholar (flagged by Digby), if you don’t want to be caught smirking, chuckling or laughing out loud at the office. What Battochio does is channel a little bit of The Rude Pundit‘s bluntness through an erudite filter, and comes up with a perceptive, sharp-tongued exploration of the values that undergird modern conservatism. Here’s a sample:

Modern conservatism can be summed up many ways, from “You’re on your own” to “Good luck” to “Screw you, I’ve got mine” to “Screw you, I don’t have mine, but you ain’t getting anything either.” It’s a twisted worldview, impractical and even unrealistic, generally self-serving, sometimes self-destructive, but almost always destructive to others. Rather than recognizing and trying to minimize unnecessary suffering, as an ideology it seeks to justify cruelty and callousness. Movement conservatives seldom feel responsible for their own actions or the horrible consequences of their policies. It’s unquestioned dogma for them that they represent the “natural” order, that unearned privilege within their group is proof of merit or God’s favor, and the real problem with America is the uppity heretics who question all that and don’t mind their place.

Battochio breaks Conservative movements down and offers this consideration of libertarians:

For “mistaken,” it’s hard for me not to think of libertarians, and all other conservatives who have nice-sounding, self-serving theories that aren’t fully thought out, are divorced from empirical data, and show little understanding of basic human nature…They epitomize confirmation bias, and tend to ignore data and major events disproving their ideas. Their crackpot theories can be harmless – as long as they’re not in power and acting on them. (I’d say the smartest libertarians realize their approach’s limitations, view libertarianism itself mostly as a cautionary check, and are “thoughtful.” Meanwhile, the full-blown Randians are typically callous, ignorant or worse.)

And this on “movement conservatism,”

…which is in authoritarian in nature and has been a major strain in America since at least Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy. It got a major boost under Reagan, went into overdrive with his many myth-making acolytes, and achieved a perfect storm of belligerent idiocy and ruthless incompetence in the astonishingly arrogant George W. Bush administration. The base exemplifies its unreflective, displaced anger…the conservative base is a toxic mix of callousness, ignorance, spite and zealotry.

Battochio provides some amusing charts, with overlapping circles, diamonds and ovals featuring terms like “cloistered,” “devious,” “Spiteful, “ignorant” and “assholes.” He’s also got a funny, link-rich round-up of conservative pundits and how they fit into his schema. Battochio points out that the decline of rational conservatives has coarsened the debate between Americans across the political spectrum, and progressives would be better off being challenged by more thoughtful, articulate conservative adversaries now in increasingly short supply.

Andrew J. Bacevich ‘s article “Obama’s strategic blind spot” in The L.A. Times takes a sobering look at President Obama’s grand strategy regarding Iraq and fighting terror and calls for an approach based on adherence to key principles. Bacevich, a professor of History and International Relations at Boston University, likens Obama’s strategic myopia to that of Prime Minister Winston Churchill being “fixated with tactical and operational concerns” and unable to wage peace:

The Long War launched by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 has not gone well. Everyone understands that. Yet in the face of disappointment, what passes for advanced thinking recalls the Churchill who devised Gallipoli and godfathered the tank: In Washington and in the field, a preoccupation with tactics and operations have induced strategic blindness.
As President Obama shifts the main U.S. military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan, and as his commanders embrace counterinsurgency as the new American way of war, the big questions go not only unanswered but unasked. Does perpetuating the Long War make political or strategic sense? As we prepare to enter that war’s ninth year, are there no alternatives?

Bacevich urges the President to embrace a less tactical and more strategic approach to exiting Iraq and fighting terrorism:

…Pragmatism devoid of principle will perpetuate the strategic void that Obama inherited. The urgent need is for the administration to articulate a concrete set of organizing precepts — not simply cliches — to frame basic U.S. policy going forward.

He advocates the adoption of five principles of grand strategy:

First…The regime-change approach — invade and occupy to transform — hasn’t worked; simply trying harder in some other venue (Somalia? Sudan?) won’t produce different results. In short, no more Iraqs.
Second, forget the Bush Doctrine of preventive war: no more wars of choice; henceforth only wars of necessity. The United States will use force only as a last resort and even then only when genuinely vital interests are at stake.
Third, no more crusades unless the American people buy in; expecting a relative handful of soldiers to carry the load while the rest of the country binges on consumption is unconscionable. At a minimum, the generation that opts for war should pay for it through higher taxes rather than foisting a burden of debt onto their grandchildren.
Fourth, the key to keeping America safe is to defend it, not to project American muscle to obscure places around the world. It may or may not be true that a “mighty fortress is our God”; had the United States been a mighty fortress on 9/11, however, the 19 hijackers would have gotten nowhere.
Fifth, by all means let the United States promote the spread of freedom and democracy. Yet we’re more likely to enjoy success by modeling freedom rather than trying to impose it. To provide a suitable model, we’ve considerable work to do here at home. Meanwhile, let’s not deny others the prerogative of defining for themselves exactly what it means to be free.

Bacevich concludes by urging President Obama to appoint a “czar for strategy,” calling it a “most crucial portfolio.” (Nixon had Kissinger. Carter had Brzezinski. Bush had, well…Wolfowitz). Bacevich concedes that his list of strategic principles may be short or otherwise inadequate. But his challenge to President Obama to avoid “strategic drift” and think more strategically merits consideration.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains why the “public option” for health care reform is drawing strong support in opinion polls:

…A recent CBS/New York Times poll showed 72 percent favoring “the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan—something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get—that would compete with private health insurance plans,” compared to just 20 percent who were opposed.
Why is support for a public plan running so high? The chief reason is the public’s overriding concern with health care costs. Polls consistently show that people are most dissatisfied about health care costs, both for themselves and for the country as a whole.
This pattern is nicely illustrated by data from a March CNN poll showing 17 percent dissatisfied with the quality of the health care they receive, 26 percent dissatisfied with their health care coverage, 48 percent dissatisfied with their total health care costs, and 77 percent dissatisfied with the country’s total health care costs.

Distrust of private insurers plays a major role in shaping public opinion, as Teixeira notes:

…They have little faith that private insurance companies, left to their own devices, can deal with this problem. In fact, they believe by a wide 59-26 margin that the government—and not private insurance companies—can do a better job holding down health care costs.
…In an April Kaiser Family Foundation survey, the public, by 57-39, said the “better way to encourage health insurance companies to provide the best product for the lowest price” is to have private insurance companies and a public plan compete with one another instead of private insurance companies competing amongst themselves.

In building a health care reform consensus, Dems would do well to base a good part of their pitch on the public option’s advantage in containing costs — which Teixeira terms “both good policy and good politics.”