Connoisseurs of political incoherence and hypocrisy really need to check out the interview of RNC chairman Michael Steele on NPR’s Morning Edition today about his latest “Don’t Touch Medicare!” position. In what must have seemed a very long seven minutes for Steele, the Republican chieftain tried to argue that he wants to save Medicare because it’s such a bad program that we can’t afford to “raid” it, though he does support “cuts” and “efficiencies.” “Medicare is what it is,” he said a couple times, despite a certain clack of clarity about “what it is” exactly. Later in the interview, Steele gets belligerant about the suggestion that he has a “nuanced” attitude towards “government-run health care.”
Republicans would be well-advised to just shut up about Medicare. Their efforts to pose as the last-ditch defenders of an entitlement they obviously hate are even less credible than George W. Bush’s claim back in 2005 that he wanted to “protect” Social Security.
UPDATE: ThinkProgress has posted a transcript of Steele’s NPR interview. Enjoy.

We all know that public opinion polls have shown declining levels of support for health care reform. But as Jeremy
Rosner, of the public opinion firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, explains today at HuffPo, polls only explain things in a limited way.
Rosner offers five reasons you should doubt polls showing health reform is in deep trouble:
1. Polls under-emphasize the heavy-weights in policy fights. Many health care interest groups are actually on the side of reform this time around.
2. Polls don’t reflect what happens in safe districts. Most Members of Congress are immune to Town Hall pressures.
3. Polls miss the dynamics of anticipation. Public opinion may well change if health reform is enacted and none of the fabricated concerns about it actually occur.
4. Polls don’t factor in the political balance. Obama got a lot more votes than Clinton did, and has a stronger and more ideologically committed Democratic majority in Congress.
5. Polls miss the role of representatives’ judgment. Members of Congress do come to the vote with a variety of personal feelings and judgments on the substance of health care reform, and that often matters more to them that day-to-day polling.
In other words, says the expert pollster, polls do miss a lot on issues like health care reform. And that’s worth considering when staring at polls while trying to understand what might actually happen in Congress this autumn.

At The New Republic today, TDS Co-Editor William Galston looks at the economic and budget forecasts recently released by the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, and sees tough times ahead:

If the consensus these documents represent is in the ballpark, the country and the Obama administration are in for a rough ride. Consider the following:
After shrinking over 2009, real GDP will grow only anemically in 2010 before that growth accelerates for a few years and then subsides to below 3 percent for the second half of the decade.
Unemployment will remain persistently high, averaging about 10 percent in 2010, when Democrats will be trying to defend their recent congressional gains. It will be close to 9 percent in 2011, but remain well above 7 percent as late as 2012, when President Obama presumably will run for reelection.
After years of economic recovery and growth, budget deficits will remain larger throughout the next decade than most economists (and the administration) consider acceptable, raising debt held by the public to between 67.8 percent (CBO) and 76.5 percent (OMB) of GDP by the end of the decade.

Galston goes on to discuss the implications for budget and tax policies of these sobering forecasts. But what he really reinforces is that progressive governance, as always, will ultimately depend on a revival of economic growth.

It’s a long, long way to 2012, but Public Policy Polling has a new set of data out that measures the favorability of four possible Republican candidates (Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich and Romney) and also matches them against President Obama.
Obama leads all four, but the somewhat surprising thing is that Mike Huckabee comes the closest, trailing the President 47-44. When you look a little deeper, you see that Huck is rated favorably by 24% of self-identified liberals, 40% of moderates, and 61% of conservatives. It’s pretty clear that we’re talking here about the genial and funny Kevin Spacey Lookalike and bass player of 2008, who lashed Wall Street and didn’t talk that much about his history of theocratic views. Since he’s spent a good part of this year participating in the echo chamber of Fox, rebonding with the more exotic precincts of the Christian Right, and comparing Obama’s agenda to that of Lenin and Stalin, it’s reasonable to assume that his standing among non-conservatives is destined to decline. It’s less clear whether he can repair his frayed relationship with economic conservatives, who pretty much decided in 2008 that he was prone to taking Gospel pronouncements about helping the poor a mite too literally.
Meanwhile, the probable front-runner for 2012 at this point, one Mitt Romney, has Huckabee Lite numbers, with favorable ratings from 22% of self-identified liberals, 34% of moderates, and only 49% of conservatives.
The solid winner in favorability among the self-identified conservatives who dominate the Republican nominating process is clearly Sarah Palin, at 68%. And she, unlike Huck or Mitt, has no need to reposition herself to appeal to the Republican base. That’s where she lives, whether it’s in Alaska or some place warmer.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

On Monday, a radical cleric issued a statement rejecting a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine, suggesting that one of the two parties involved in the conflict should be made to find a homeland “elsewhere.”

The “radical cleric,” needless to say, was the Rev. Huck.

At 538.com, Tom Schaller points out a reasonably obvious but oft-forgotten reason for the steady erosion of President Obama’s approval ratings over the last few months: he’s trying to do a lot, and trying to do a lot depletes political capital more rapidly than trying to do very little:

Big change is costly, and not just in actual dollars from the Treasury, but in terms of how much of his capital reserves a president is willing to spend to get what he wants. Obama is not plugging for school uniforms, folks. He’s re-regulating Wall Street, trying to stimulate the economy by pumping nearly $1 trillion into it, and attempting to tackle the policy problem too many of his predecessors never could: reforming our messy, complicated health care system. Accordingly, he’s paying the price for even trying.

To put it another way, what would you prefer if you are a Democrat: that the President keep his approval ratings above 60 without working to implement the agenda he campaigned on, or lose some points and mybe get something done that won’t have to be done later or left undone entirely?
No gain without pain, folks.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston was first published at The New Republic. We offer it as part of the ongoing debate over President Obama’s political strategy.
While the attention of politicians, pundits, and the people is focused on the increasingly bitter debate over health insurance reform, economic developments will have a more profound effect on the well-being of the nation and the fortunes of the Obama administration. Only an economy that provides a steady stream of new jobs and raises personal income can yield enough revenue to restore public confidence and finance the government we need.
As the economy struggles to stabilize, we find ourselves in a deep hole–even deeper than we knew. For the first time since the Great Depression, Floyd Norris reports that we have endured a decade with no private sector employment growth. In July 1999, there were 109 million Americans with jobs in the private sector; the comparable figure for July 2009 was … 109 million. By contrast, at the depth of the 1981-82 recession, private sector job creation over the previous decade still averaged about 1.5 percent per year. Until the current downturn, Norris finds, the long-term annual growth rate for private sector jobs had not gone below 1 percent for nearly half a century.
Some parts of the private sector did much worse. Manufacturing employment, which stood at 18.4 million in July of 1999, plunged to 11.8 million–a 36 percent loss.
What can we expect over the next few years? Although there are many imponderables, a few things seem clear. Household debt, which peaked in 2007 around 130 percent of disposable income (almost twice the 1985 level), must come down substantially. Household wealth, which has taken a $14 trillion hit over the past 18 months, must be rebuilt. To do this, the savings rate, which dipped below zero in the middle of this decade, will have to rise substantially, and consumer spending, which propelled economic growth for much of the past two decades, will constitute a lower share of GDP. We will have to grow the old-fashioned way, through productive investment in innovation and human beings rather than with money borrowed for current consumption. The economic gears are likely to grind for some time before they shift. Growth and job generation will probably be slower than in recent decades until we complete the transition to a post-consumer economy.
There’s no consensus on this point, however. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Justin Lahart argues that employment is likely to recover more rapidly from this recession than it did in the previous two downturns. His reason: So many of the lost jobs have been in the service sector, which has a more pressing need than manufacturers to rehire workers as demand recovers. Moreover, the historical record suggests that the economy bounces back faster from steep recessions than from shallower ones. In the previous edition of the WSJ, Zachary Karabell suggested just the reverse: Larger companies benefit from their ability to focus on where the growth is or is likely to be. “As these companies profit from global expansion and greater efficiency,” he says, “they have little or no reason to rehire fired workers, or to expand their work force in a U. S. that is barely growing.”
Lahart and Karabell could both be right, of course–Lahart in the short term, Karabell in the long run. And in fact, a number of economists are raising their estimates for the next two or three quarters while predicting slow growth (2 percent or so) after that.
This is not a happy forecast, either for the country or for the Obama administration. It would mean stubbornly high unemployment, meager increases in disposable income, and continued revenue shortfalls at every level of government–hardly the formula for a contented citizenry in 2012, or for a comfortable reelection campaign.
In this challenging context, the president would be well advised to focus more on the economy over the next three years, and to persuade average Americans that the economy is as central to his concerns as is it to theirs. That means taking what he can get on health care and climate change and clearing the decks well before the end of the year. It means going on the road to highlight the job-creating results of the stimulus bill, with events each week for as long as it takes to make the sale. And it means crafting proposals design to stimulate new hiring, not just in the long run, but as soon as possible. A revenue-neutral swap of lower payroll taxes in return for broadening the base of the income tax code could command support even among some Republicans.
A jobless recovery helped undermine George H. W. Bush’s reelection prospects in 1992. Its continuation weakened support for Bill Clinton’s economic program and contributed to the Democratic Party’s rout in 1994. If President Obama’s political team is as good at governing as it was at campaigning, it will get on the jobs case–starting now.

The single most frustrating aspect of the health reform debate is the tendency of journalists to report claims about the substance of this or that proposal as presumptively of equal validity, facts aside. Aside from its effect on this particular issue, “he said she said” journalism creates a general incentive to lies, gross exaggerations, and polarization, since outlandish claims will get equal time with reality-based analysis.
That’s why it’s very helpful to have people out there who are doing some serious, credible and sustained truth-squadding. As you may know, an outfit called Politifact has been conspicuously trying to play this role on health care reform, assessing arguments on a scale that ranges from “true” to “false” to “pants on fire.”
At the acadmic site Monkeycage, John Sides usefully looks at Politifact’s overall ratings of arguments for and against Democratic health reform proposals of late, and makes it clear which side has been playing fast and loose with the facts. He charts it up nicely, and then observes:

As you can see, and as Politifact editor Bill Adair has noted, the claims of Republicans and opponents of health care are much more likely to be false than true. Overall, 76% of their claims (16 of 21) are either “false ” or “pants on fire.”
They are also more likely to be false than are claims of Democrats and supporters of reform. Overall, 28% (5 of 18) of Democrats’ claims are “false.”
Finally, Obama has been more truthful than either Republicans/opponents or other Democrats/supporters: 22% of his claims have been “false” (2 of 9); more than half have been “mostly true” or “true.”

This probably comes as no surprise to progressives who have been following the debate and the increasingly crazy claims being made about “Obamacare,” but it’s good to see it validating by someone with no stake in the outcome.

Since the recession has dramatically reduced the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, you’d think that hostility to immigrants would have somewhat declined. And maybe it has, in terms of Americans generally.
But as Daphne Eviatar explains today in the Washington Independent, immigrants seem to be a preoccupation among town hall protesters against health care reform:

As the heat gets turned up on the health care reform debate, anti-immigrant activists are using the issue to whip up fear and anger toward immigrants, portraying them as a costly and burdensome drain on any taxpayer-supported U.S. health care system. Angry questions about illegal immigrants getting health care at town hall meetings across the country have put many lawmakers on the defensive.
At his town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, for example, Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter had to assure protesters that illegal immigrants would not be covered. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has gone out of her way to make that point as well. Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) faced similar shouted questions at his town hall forum on Wednesday, and repeatedly emphasized that illegal immigrants are not covered by the House bill. President Obama has also made the point, although it’s not clear that the anti-reform activists have heard it.

Perhaps this is an indication that anger about levels of immigration, and about benefits obtained by immigrants, has become a semi-permanent feature of the conservative political landscape, complicating Republican efforts to improve their performance among Latino voters, among others.
Or maybe it’s yet another indication that the town hall protesters aren’t terribly representative of conservatives, much less the population as a whole.

As yesterday’s staff post reflected, the experience of organized and angry crowds of health reform opponents during summer recess “town hall” meetings is raising some legitimate questions about the value of such events. If participants don’t represent the actual views of people in a given district, what’s the point in giving them opportunities to vent their spleen and gain media attention?
Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect notes today that this is not an unprecedented problem. He cites the widespread protests by seniors against the passage of “catastrophic health coverage” by in 1988 Congress as precedent; the led to the repeal of that legislation just a year later:

The bill had put most of the cost on a small group of wealthy seniors, and after passage, a a direct-mail organization stoked backlash over the funding structure, convincing many seniors they would pay the same $800 surtax as the wealthiest. It is remembered today mostly for the televised scene of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, then chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and, like Dingell, a baron whose authority had gone unquestioned, besieged by angry seniors blocking his car as he tried to exit a similar town meeting.

Schmitt goes on to cite some of the refinements in “astroturfing” since 1989, and concludes that alternatives to the traditional “town meeting” would be helpful to foster genuine representative-constituent communications and public engagement.

At times of big, transformational change, citizens must have a way into the policy-making process, but it can’t be one that’s dominated by the loudest, most disruptive, or best-funded voices. Technology means that people can acquire the text of legislation for themselves, can research members’ voting records, can organize themselves to be heard in a hundred new ways. But it doesn’t make it any easier for a member of Congress to figure out what they think, whether their views are based on misinformation or deeply held beliefs, or how intense their views are.

There are, as Schmitt mentions, some good models out there for more deliberative interaction between the public and its representantives, and better ways to assess genuine public opinion while improving knowledge of substantive issues. Supressing angry voices isn’t right, but neither is listening to no one else.

With the extraordinary number of polls made public these days (particularly late in election cycles), it’s often hard to keep straight which polls are more credible than others, and what to look for in assessing relative accuracy. That’s why so many observers tend to just pay attention to the polls that provide the results they prefer.
But the irreplaceable Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com has begun posting something of a primer on polling methodology that would be good to closely read and then keep close at hand.
His first installment covers the basics of polling techniques and sample selection, and includes a fairly extended discussion of the Rasmussen techniques that have been so controversial of late. It’s a great place to start a beginner or refresher course.