If you want a very detailed examination of the intra-progressive battle over the endgame of health care reform, brew yourself a pot of coffee and sit down for a while with Nate Silver’s post today wherein he poses twenty sharply worded questions to “bill-killer” advocates Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and John Walker of FireDogLake. It becomes immediately apparent that these particular “bill-killers” aren’t just reacting to the loss of the public option as a progressive totem, but have a baleful view of the entire bill as it stands in the Senate. And a particularly large bone of contention appears to be their conviction that an individual mandate will engorge both the profit-margins and the power of private health insurers (a conviction that Nate Silver does not share).
The other important thing to note from this lengthy exchange is that these “bill-killers” are not in fact arguing for the extinction of the current drive for health care reform legislation on grounds that the product is worse than the status quo. They claim, at least, that an effort to reboot the process by killing the Senate bill and then forcing an immediate House-based drive to enact a bill via the budget reconciliation process is a feasible strategy. We’ll never know, of course, if that’s true (the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership certainly don’t think so) unless a progressive revolt against the Senate bill strikes pay-dirt.
But please read the whole thing; if nothing else, it shows that both sides of this argument (and Nate definitely argues back) are more nuanced than you might think.

This item by TDS contributor Robert Creamer is crossposted from the Huffington Post. Creamer is a political organizer and strategist, and author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win
Last Friday, the House passed critical regulatory reform legislation aimed at preventing the recurrence of the kind of financial meltdown that devastated our economy at the end of the Bush administration.
The lobbyists from Wall Street worked hand-in-glove with the Republicans, and a few Democrats, to try to kill the bill. Astoundingly, the Republicans argued that Wall Street should continue to be free to engage in the same reckless speculation that led directly to 10 percent unemployment and required the taxpayers to inject hundreds of billions into the markets so that the geniuses of private finance would not plunge us all into the abyss of another Great Depression.
With no regard for history — and here I mean the events of only 12 months ago — the Republicans and Big Banks have the audacity to contend that the creation of jobs and a growing economy requires the lowest levels of regulation and government involvement possible.
Here’s a news flash: we tried it your way for eight years. The results: the lowest level of job creation of any eight-year period since World War II; all of the country’s economic growth was siphoned off by the top 2 percent of the population and the financial sector; and the economy imploded. Sure — let’s try that again.
The Republicans even had the brazenness to convene a convocation of 100 Wall Street lobbyists last Wednesday to plot how they could completely kill financial regulatory reform. They failed, largely due to the great work of Americans for Regulatory Reform, House Speaker Pelosi, Finance Chair Barney Frank and intensive lobbying from the Obama administration.
They did manage to water down the House bill — but it still represents the most important move to re-regulate the out-of-control financial sector since the Great Depression.
Soon, Chris Dodd’s Senate Banking Committee will report out the Senate’s version of this measure and hopefully a bill will be on the president’s desk early next year.
Financial reform is terrific politics for Democrats.
Americans United for Change released a new poll conducted by Anzalone Liszt Research that found broad support for regulatory reform aimed at reining in Wall Street. Among the key findings:
Overall, 70 percent of voters believe that the country’s financial system needs either major reforms or a total overhaul.

When voters learn about President Obama’s plan, support for specific changes increases dramatically. Once voters hear a description of the president’s financial reform plan that focuses on increasing oversight over big banks, protecting consumers, and cracking down on corporate abuses, support rises by 25 points to 60 percent.
Independents are particularly receptive to the plan. Among independents, the increase in support for the plan following the description was particularly large (31 points), leading them to support the plan by a 19-point margin (56 percent to 37 percent).
But financial regulatory reform, while necessary, is not sufficient to end the domination of the outsized financial sector on the American economy. The next step requires breaking up the giant Wall Street Banks that dominate our economy. Nothing less will do in order to create an even modestly competitive financial market place.

Read more…

Reactions to the President’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize have for the most part been modestly positive, even from Republicans who uttered faint praise in the midst of denunciations of the prize and its recipient.
In the New Republic, TDS Co-Editor William Galston went further than most Democrats or Republicans, callling it “the best speech of Obama’s presidency.”

What struck me most favorably about the speech was Obama’s moral realism–about the world, and about his own role within it. Forcefully, but with dignity and restraint, he distinguished his responsibilities from those of King and Gandhi, who led nonviolently as private citizens. “Evil does exist in the world,” he declared, and as long as it does, war is a moral possibility, sometimes a moral necessity. And not only to defeat evil; “the instruments of war,” he said, “do have a role to play in preserving the peace.”

Aside from his effort to articulate a realistic “just war” philosophy, Obama’s speech, says Galston, also struck a nicely nuanced note about a subject many feel he has shirked since taking office, the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy:

He went on to describe the kind of peace America seeks: “Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting. It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.”
But all too often, Obama continued, their principles are ignored. In some countries, leaders falsely suggest that human rights are merely aspects of the West, foreign to and imposed on non-Western cultures. In America, realists and idealists contend endlessly against one another.
“I reject this choice,” the president declared. “I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders, or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true: only when Europe became free did it finally find peace.” These truths have practical implications for the conduct of American foreign policy. “Even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries,” Obama promised, “America will be a voice for those aspirations that are universal.”

It was certainly an unusual speech for a politician and a head of state; you could no more imagine George W. Bush giving it than you could imagine Bush receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in the first place. But Galston views it as potentially a harbinger of the future direction of Obama’s foreign policy, and a “better balance between private engagement and public firmness, and between carrots and sticks,” in terms of diplomatic relations with repressive regimes.

With so much attention riveted on the reaction of a handful of senators to the latest attempted compromise on health care reform, it’s easy to forget that House Democrats will have something to say on the subject if and when a bill finally gets out of the upper chamber. Moreover, there were some rumors circulating earlier this week that Speaker Nancy Pelosi intended to bring a Senate-passed bill directly to the House floor for an up-or-down vote, avoiding the normal House-Senate conference to work out differences (and on a bill this complex, there will be many).
But now leaders of the House Progressive Caucus–most notably co-chair Raul Grijalva of AZ–are serving notice that they and other House Democrats may demand a conference. That’s not terribly surprising in itself. After all, most Progressive Caucus members have already had to back down from earlier promises to vote against any health reform bill that didn’t include a “robust” public option, defined as one that made payments according to Medicare rates. From their point of view, they’ve made if anything more concessions than anyone should have expected. Blithely accepting a bill that does not contain a public option (in the normal meaning of the term), without a conference, undoubtedly seems like far too much to ask.
Still, the necessity of a conference adds weeks and a lot of public controversy to the timetable for enactment of health care reform, on top of the time that Republican delaying tactics will consume. So everyone should buckle up for a long ride into 2010.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, where it first appeared. It is a response to E.J. Dionne’s review of Alan Wolfe’s The Future of Liberalism.
These are perplexing times for American liberals. Last November’s euphoria has given way to frustration and even doubt. This was inevitable, to an extent, because governing is always harder than campaigning. Mario Cuomo’s dictum that we campaign in poetry but govern in prose applies with special force to a president whose eloquence on the campaign trail so effectively aroused enthusiasm and raised expectations.
But some critics have gone farther, charging that liberalism is undermining itself because, as Alan Wolfe puts it, “all too often, liberal politicians lack the courage of liberalism.” This diagnosis leads to a prescription: We must “get liberals to once again believe in liberalism.” This is a version of the 12 Angry Men/Mr. Smith Goes to Washington theory, prominent to this day in Hollywood–a leader willing to confidently deliver an unvarnished liberal message will sweep away all before him. (The remake would star Warren Beatty.)
Reviewing Wolfe’s new book The Future of Liberalism in these pages, E.J. Dionne rejects the author’s shortage-of-courage thesis but focuses on a related phenomenon–namely, liberal ambivalence–about radicalism, populism, social democracy, globalization, individualism, and much else [See “Liberalism Lost and Found,” Issue #14]. While it’s hard to object in principle to Dionne’s suggestion that liberals should “face their own contradictions squarely,” it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi as a bumper-sticker (except perhaps among former Marxists). More to the point, it’s inadequate analytically. Today’s liberals face political difficulties not because they’re gutless or conflicted but because many of the things they believe (rightly, in my view) go against the grain of beliefs that are deeply entrenched in our political culture.
That is not a reason to abandon liberalism. As Wolfe, Dionne, and Paul Starr have shown, the liberal tradition is responsible for much of what is best in modern America, and it charts the most promising path to future reforms. It is, however, a reason to proceed in full awareness of the obstacles in its path and to acknowledge that along the way we will often have to accept much less than we want. This means that liberals in high places may have to be less full-throated than either Wolfe or Dionne might prefer. But as the late Ted Kennedy so shrewdly recognized, a series of modest victories can add up to major changes.
Last year’s electoral sweep, to begin, was a victory for the Democratic Party, but not necessarily for liberalism. Self-described conservatives outnumber liberals by nearly two to one, and the liberal share of the population has risen only marginally, from 19 to 21 percent, during the past decade. And while 72 percent of Republicans consider themselves conservative, only 37 percent of Democrats consider themselves liberal, versus 39 percent moderate and 22 percent conservative. Republicans are ideologically homogeneous; Democrats represent a diverse coalition. If liberals hope to pass major legislation, they must negotiate and compromise with members of their own party whose outlooks differ from their own.
This is a current reality, unlikely to change anytime soon. Other challenges to liberalism have roots deeper in our history. One centers on the role of government. The early American liberalism of the founding era embodied a handful of basic ideas: among them, fear of tyranny and of concentrated power; mistrust of human nature, which needed to be checked and channeled through institutions and rules; and a preference for government that was limited in scope, though not purely laissez-faire by any means.
From this parsimonious beginning, the federal government grew by fits and starts. The Whigs successfully advocated investment in the public goods needed for economic growth, a strategy that arch-Whig Abraham Lincoln continued as president through measures like the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. The post Civil War expansion of industrial corporations created a thrust toward government as a countervailing power that could limit monopolies and impose regulations in the public interest. Three generations after Andrew Jackson strangled the Bank of the United States, repeated financial crises led to the creation of a much more powerful central bank, empowered to curb dangerous market-based instability. A generation after that, an economic crisis that overwhelmed the capacities of individuals, civil society, and state governments led to new national institutions and policies to provide some measure of security against disaster. In the wake of World War II, the overlapping demands of national defense and global leadership produced a large standing army and a new array of security-oriented institutions. The war also sparked demands to move the historic commitment to equal rights from an abstract norm to concrete practice, which involved the national government in a new system of enforcement. And rising public concern over the externalities of economic growth–especially its impact on the economy–led to new national institutions, laws, and regulations.
Each of these expansions of national power seemed justified, and often compelled, by changing circumstances. In the aggregate, though, the federal government became more expensive and intrusive; it assumed more responsibility that it could easily discharge; and it presumed a level of competence that it often lacked. After the mid-1960s, trust in government declined steadily, reaching an historic low in the month before Barack Obama’s election. It has not improved appreciably since.
This is the central conundrum of modern liberal governance: While state power has grown, America’s anti-statist public culture has persisted. Our national default setting, from which we deviate only under extreme pressure, is suspicion of state power. Half a century ago, this took the benign form so pithily characterized by political scientists Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, that Americans were “ideologically conservative” but “operationally liberal.” Today, after policy failures at home and abroad, many American object to larger government, not (only) on ideological grounds, but also because they doubt its competence and integrity. While the American people accept many liberal aims (including fundamental health reform), they mistrust the means by which liberals typically pursue them. As Obama is discovering, change we can believe in requires a government we can trust, which most Americans don’t think we now have.

Read more…

At the New Republic today, TDS Co-Editor William Galston notes that President Obama has begun a crucial pivot towards an emphasis on job creation in his speech at the Brookings Institution.

But he’s just beginning. To complete the pivot and make 2010 the year of jobs, two other things must happen. First, the White House must fully integrate the jobs focus into the president’s schedule. Some equivalent of the Allentown visit should occur at least weekly, and it wouldn’t hurt to see the president in a hard hat, cheering on projects that wouldn’t have gotten started without government action.
Second, the legislative agenda for 2010 must reflect and reinforce the renewed focus on job creation. That means postponing items that the American people are bound to regard as diversionary as long as unemployment remains high. While action on items such as climate change and immigration is worthy in principle, the time is not right. If the president and congressional leaders try to force the pace, they are likely to fail—and pay a heavy political price in November.

There’s a lot of uncertainty about where the unemployment rate is likely to go during the next year, with or without a major new administration initiative. But a presidential focus on job creation that’s frequent and visible enough that no one will miss it could be an important political asset no matter what happens.

This item by Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of TDS’ Board of Advisors, is cross-posted from Pollster.com.
In his recent post, Mark Blumenthal provides an excellent discussion of some of the possible explanations for the differences between the results of Rasmussen polls and the results of other national polls regarding President Obama’s approval rating. What needs to be emphasized, however, is that regardless of the explanation for these differences, whether they stem from Rasmussen’s use of a likely voter sample, their use of four response options instead of the usual two, or their IVR methodology, the frequency of their polling on this question means that Rasmussen’s results have a very disproportionate impact on the overall polling average on the presidential approval question. As of this writing (December 4th), the overall average for net presidential approval (approval – disapproval) on pollster.com is +0.7%. The average without Rasmussen is +7.1%. No other polling organization has nearly this large an impact on the overall average.
A similar impact is seen on the generic ballot question reflecting, again, both the divergence between Rasmussen’s results and those of other polls and the frequency of Rasmussen’s polling on this question. The overall average Democratic lead on pollster.com is 0.7%. However, with Rasmussen removed that lead jumps to 6.7%. Again, no other polling organization has this large an impact on the overall average.
According to Rasmussen, Republicans currently enjoy a 7 point lead on the generic ballot question among likely voters. Democracy Corps, the only other polling organization currently using a likely voter sample, gives Democrats a 2 point lead on this question. To underscore the significance of this difference, an analysis of the relationship between popular vote share and seat share in the House of Representatives indicates that a 7 point Republican margin of victory in the national popular vote next November would result in a GOP pickup of 62 seats in the House, giving them a majority of 239 to 196 over the Democrats in the new Congress. This would represent an even more dramatic shift in power than the 1994 midterm election that brought Republicans back to power in Congress. In contrast, a 2 point Democratic margin in the national popular vote would be expected to produce a GOP pickup of only 24 seats, leaving Democrats with a comfortable 234 to 201 seat majority.
One of the biggest problems in trying to compare Rasmussen’s results with those of most other polls is that Rasmussen is almost alone in using a likely voter sample to measure both presidential approval and the generic ballot. Moreover, Rasmussen has been less than totally open about their method of identifying likely voters at this early stage of the 2010 campaign, making any evaluation of their results even more difficult. However, there is one question on which a more direct comparison of Rasmussen’s results with those of other national polls is possible–party identification. Although the way Rasmussen asks the party identification question is somewhat different, reflecting its IVR methodology, Rasmussen’s party identification results, like almost all other national polls, are based on a sample of adult citizens. Despite this fact, in recent months Rasmussen’s results have diverged rather dramatically from those of most other national polls by showing a substantially smaller Democratic advantage in party identification. For example, for the month of November, Rasmussen reported a Democratic advantage of only 3 percentage points compared with an average for all other national polls of almost 11 percentage points.
Rasmussen’s party identification results have only a small impact on the overall average on this question because they only report party identification once a month. However, Rasmussen’s disproportionately Republican adult sample does raise questions about many of their other results, including those using likely voter samples, because the likely voters are a subsample of the initial adult sample. If Rasmussen is starting off with a disproportionately Republican sample of adult citizens, then their likely voter sample is almost certain to also include a disproportionate share of Republican identifiers. Of course, there is no way of knowing for certain whether Rasmussen’s results are more or less accurate than those of other polling organizations. All we can say with some confidence is that their results are different and that this difference is not just attributable to their use of a likely voter sample.

The big development on health care reform that began to emerge from Senate negotiations over the weekend was the idea of replacing the (relatively weak) public option in the bill pending for floor action with a national menu of private plans that would be made available though the federal Office of Personnel Management or perhaps the Federal Health Benefit Plan. This would, as the popular slogan goes, give Americans (at least those eligible for the exchanges, and who live in those states that didn’t “opt out” of such an option) the same kind of health insurance available to members of Congress, without, of course, any prior guarantees about the price or the quality of coverage.
The initial reactions to this idea are interesting and illustrative of many of the underlying dynamics of the health care reform debate among progressives. The “father of the public option,” Yale’s Jacob Hacker, has rejected any “public option” that isn’t actually public in its insurance offering:

A bill that forces people to take private insurance but doesn’t create competition or a public benchmark is a prescription for unaffordable coverage, runaway costs, and political backlash. The “middle ground” is nowhere to stand if it’s going to crumble beneath you.

Hacker’s piece is a reminder of the irony that many supposedly tight-fisted moderates and conservatives are opposed to the one element of health reform–a publicly run insurance plan that could force down premiums for private plans–most likely to reduce public and private costs. For Hacker, it’s the use of Medicare’s structure for operating a “fallback” or “guaranteed issue” plan that represents a new line in the sand now that the use of Medicare rates has been dropped (even in the House).
Meanwhile, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explains the genesis of the non-public national option in a progressive-centrist negotiating team put together by Harry Reid, and suggests it may be a first step towards deal-making that extends beyond the public option issue and encompasses other goals important to progressives (e.g., subsidy levels, degree of insurance regulation, and phase-in periods for the whole system).
Looks like another wild and confusing week on the health care front.

It’s reasonably safe to say that the President’s Afghanistan speech on Tuesday night did not exactly get rave reviews from opinion-leaders. Many progressives are flatly opposed to his approach, and others are troubled by the similarity of his rationale for a “surge” to that made by George W. Bush in Iraq. Even some who support his strategy for Afghanistan were underwhelmed by his explanation of it. Meanwhile, most conservatives savaged him for identifying a rough timetable for withdrawal of troops, or for failing to “admit” he was taking a course in Afghanistan that he opposed for Iraq (as though the two countries were the same).
In any event, it’s good news for the White House that the public seemed to have liked his speech more than the “experts.” A USAToday Gallup poll released today shows that Americans favor Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan by a 51%-41% margin–pretty impressive given the previous measurements of public opinion that showed consistent majorities opposing new troops and generally getting tired of that war. Interestingly, 56% of self-identified Republicans and 58% of self-identified Democrats support Obama’s strategy (indies split 45% positive and 44% negative), undoubtedly the first time in his administration that the president has achieved strongly bipartisan support.
The most lopsided finding in the poll was that respondents opposed the idea of a “war surtax” by a 68%-24% margin. No wonder Obama didn’t embrace it in his speech.
In any event, the President, as intended, seems to have bought some time for his approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s not to say that he won’t have some strong resistance in and out of Congress from elements of both parties–progressives because they disagree strongly with his decision to continue and (at least temporarily) escalate the war, conservatives because they wish him ill. But it appears the president’s speech served its purpose, and found its audience.
UPDATE: New polls from CNN and even Rasmussen also show a pretty good positive impact from Obama’s speech. According to CNN, the new troop commitment to Afghanistan is supported by a 62%-36% margin (even though a narrow majority opposes the war itself). Interestingly enough, the poll also shows 66% favoring “Obama’s plan” to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by 2011. Rasmussen has respondents favoring the new troop commitment by a margin of 53%-30%, but the numbers for overall support for “Obama’s new plan for Afghanistan” are 37% support and 38% oppose.

Given the election results in VA and NJ earlier this month, and the steady din of conservative propaganda suggesting that the public is ready for some sort of coup d’etat, you’d think public opinion research would show a radical worsening of the President’s approval ratings in recent month, particularly among those independents who are all supposedly signing up for tea parties.
At pollster.com, Charles Franklin takes a long look at polls for the last three months that break down public opinion by partisan self-identification, and reaches a very different conclusion:

There have been several articles in the last week about independents deserting the Dems. A good bit of that was spurred by the huge Rep margins among independents in VA (66-33) and NJ (60-30-9) governors races. There are also some indications on policy issues that independents are not supporting Democratic positions.
But support for Obama has not plummeted among independents, and that needs to be clarified before it becomes erroneous conventional wisdom. It especially makes no sense to compare independent support in January with independent support now, and conclude there has been a collapse of support. The pattern this fall, since Sept 1, has been quite stable among independents. Depending on which polls you use, a shade up or a shade down, but overall, not a huge trend either way over the past 3 months.

In fact, says Franklin, Obama’s approval ratings among Americans other than conservative Republicans are pretty stable. And despite all the talk about vicious infighting among Democrats, no variety of Democrat seems to be changing its mind about Obama:

There is no evidence that any group of Dems, especially liberal Dems are unhappy with Obama’s performance. Critical is that moderate and even conservative Dems have not moved away since August. Angry conservative Reps are indeed very unhappy with Obama, at almost the same level of disgust as Dems felt for Bush, but they too have reached a plateau at a steady 10% approval. The small number of moderate Reps have also plateaued (I’d discount small moves in the last week of the aggregation.)
So the point is simple: Claims of abandonment of Obama by independents (or lib-Dems or con-Dems) are substantially exaggerated over the past three months. Significant decline from May through August, yes indeed among Inds and Reps, but that trend halted in August.

In other words, a lot of the talk about Obama’s descent into a public opinion slough of despond is just the usual spin.