Editor’s Note: This item by Mike Lux was originally published at OpenLeft on August 2; it represents an important point of view in the intraparty debate over health care reform strategy.
Given the rules and politics of the Senate, we always knew that to get true health care reform passed, we would need for four things to happen:
1. The outside-of-government pro-reform community would have overcome their modest policy differences and bigger power/personality struggles in order to pull together for a strong progressive plan.
2. President Obama would have to lay out an aggressive timeline, and keep nudging it along on Capitol Hill; and also put out some big and progressive policy goals, and then actually fight for them.
3. Speaker Pelosi would have to work the Blue Dogs hard to get enough of their votes without selling out progressives by giving too much away.
4. The progressive wing of the House would have to hang tough and push back hard on attempts to weaken the legislation.
Well, you know what? After all the pushing and shoving, threats and counter-threats, deals and counter-deals, after all the negotiating back and forth: so far, so good. There is no reason to be overly optimistic, because we have a very long way to go, and the mountains to climb before we get there are huge and treacherous. But reform is still alive, because so far all four of those things are happening. Us reformers may yet get out-gunned and beaten. Pelosi and/or Obama, desperate for some kind of win, may yet give up and fold to the insurance companies. Progressives in the House might yet allow themselves to get picked off one by one to vote for a bad deal, and progressives outside of government might run out of money or steam, or start squabbling too much amongst themselves before the deal is done. But so far, give credit where credit is due. Health care reform that actually takes power away from insurance companies and gives them competition, that actually makes coverage affordable for all Americans- it’s still alive. Everyone who needed to step up has stepped up. Praise is due you for what you’ve all done so far.
The last phase of this battle will be brutal, but if all of the above keep doing their job, we’ve got a shot at this thing. Let’s all keep fighting the good fight.

Most of the talk about 2010 in national political circles is vague and abstract at this point, and involves estimates of trends and waves. But there are actual contests developing, particularly on the financial front, where candidates are struggling to show viability in one of the most difficult fundraising environments in living memory.
Southern Political Report has a useful summary up today of early fundraising numbers for southern gubernatorial races (omitting Alabama, where no public reporting is required until January of next year). The numbers that jump off the page are for the Republican primary grudge match in Texas, where incumbent Rick Perry and challenger Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison have a combined $22 million cash on hand. It’s also notable than in Florida Democrat Alex Sink seems to be currently outraising Republican Bill McCollum. And there are several multi-candidate primary fields (especially Republicans in GA, TN and SC) where dollars may soon separate contenders from pretenders. Two GOP gubernatorial candidates who had grass-roots right-wingers all astir at last weekend’s RedState gathering, Nikki Haley of SC and Karen Handel of GA, aren’t doing very well on the money front. Aside from the fact that they are women in a male-dominated party, they have the dubious distinction of being closely associated with term-limited incumbents.
This serves as a reminder that while national politics will have an effect on state races in 2010, few contests will really represent some sort of referendum on the Obama administration. States have their own very difficult issues, and the Republicans who currently govern FL, GA, SC, AL, and TX have their own problems with accountability for hard times. And as always, the ability to fund and create effective campaigns will matter more than it should.

This item, by TDS Co-Editor William Galston, was first published at The New Republic on July 31.
Over the past three election cycles, congressional Democrats have rebuilt an arithmetic majority. By the end of this year, they will demonstrate whether they constitute a governing majority. Now, as in the early 1990s, the acid test is health insurance reform. And now, as then, the failure to act as a governing majority will jeopardize, and could erase, their arithmetic majority.
Despite the waning of their post-Civil War southern bastion, Democrats remain ideologically diverse–far more so than Republicans. A recent Gallup survey showed that about two-fifths of rank-and-file Democrats regard themselves as liberal, another two-fifths as moderate, and the remaining fifth as conservative. To be sure, the ideological center of gravity among House and Senate Democrats is more liberal than at the grassroots. Still, congressional Democrats include in their ranks many who consider themselves moderate or even conservative, and whose election since 2004 has made a major contribution to the new majority.
As Michael Tomasky pointed out this week in a carefully researched piece, most of the 49 House Democrats hailing from districts John McCain carried are not as vulnerable as that bare fact might suggest. But that’s only part of the story. Twenty-six out of the 35 House Democratic freshmen (not all of whom identify with the Blue Dogs) won seats previously occupied by Republicans and are more vulnerable than established incumbents. For that reason, they demanded and won a delay in the House vote until after the August recess, giving them a chance to consult closely with their constituents. As for the Blue Dogs themselves, they tend to represent districts that are more rural and small town; small business comprise a greater than average share of their economic base. Citizens in these districts also tend to be more skeptical about the efficacy and integrity of government than those from (say) Nancy Pelosi or Charlie Rangel’s districts. Moderate Democrats understand the people in their districts, they represent their interests and values, and more often than not, they agree with the people they represent. The stances they adopt and the votes they cast represent conviction as well as calculation, much like their liberal counterparts.
This is not to say that they’re right and liberals are wrong. It is to say that if health insurance reform is to succeed, it must represent a blend of, and balance among, the diverse points of view within the Democratic coalition. The White House chief of staff seems to understand this, reportedly playing a key role in bringing Henry Waxman and the Blue Dogs back to the table after previous efforts had collapsed in acrimony. But the White House shouldn’t have to do all the heavy lifting; it’s up to the Democratic leadership and chairs of major committees to show some leadership as well. After all, they are supposed to be acting on the behalf of the party as a whole, not just on the basis of their own preferences. Henry Waxman drafted a bill with minimal input from moderate Democrats, in effect daring them to oppose the finished product. But that is not a good way for committee chairs to proceed, as John Dingell, the ex-chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee pointed out this week. And because the Senate bill will probably need 60 votes to pass, a process that includes all the moderate Democrats (and some less ideologically entrenched Republicans as well) is essential.
The stakes are very high, substantively and politically. The past four decades have witnessed a series of missed opportunities to reform our health care system. In the early 1970s, President Nixon proposed a comprehensive, employer-based health insurance plan, complete with employer mandates and subsidies for small business. But not even Senator Kennedy could persuade Democrats to go along with an approach that would have left room for private insurers. Since then, unattainable aspirations have consistently trumped practical possibilities.
Will history repeat itself? We’ll know by December. But one thing is clear: If we are to avoid yet another round of what health care expert Henry Aaron has analogized to Charlie Brown and the football, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate will have to persuade their colleagues not to make the best the enemy of the possible once more. In all probability, the public option (if there is one) in a bill that can pass will not be nearly as robust as liberals would like, subsidies for middle income families will not be as large, more small businesses will be exempt from the employer mandate (if there is one), the wealthy will be taxed less, and insurance plans above a defined threshold will be taxed in some way. Will Democrats hoping for something better torpedo such a bill? If so, we will have missed what may be our best chance in this generation to achieve near-universal coverage while restricting the ability of insurance companies to cherry-pick insurees and deny coverage arbitrarily. Millions of citizens would pay the price. And so would the party that once again failed to act as a governing majority.

Ron Brownstein’s weekly column on Thursday looked closely at the contours of the President’s approval ratings (as measured by the Allstate/National Journal “Heartland Monitor”). And it confirmed what Alan Abramowitz was saying here at TDS back on July 14: Barack Obama’s support levels in various demographic groups largely reflects where they were the day he was elected president.
Looking at six groups that backed Obama in 2008, and five that did not, Brownstein shows that some groups in both categories continue to give Obama a positive job rating at levels higher than last November: college-educated white women (+6), Latinos (+6), non-college educated white women (+8) and seniors (+7). The only category with whom he has significantly less support than on election day is African-Americans, but there support levels have declined from 95% to 88%, hardly a catastrophe.
Brownstein does see some peril for Obama in trends among white men, where tepid support levels coincide with “pessimism about the country’s direction bordering on alienation,” and an upsurge of anti-government attitudes.
He quotes TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira as warning that the condition of the economy is central to non-college-educated white voters. If it doesn’t show improvement soon, “the potential for an anti-government backlash is very real. You could see his support really crater out among these non-college whites.” But to those who predict a 1994-style conservative surge fed by these voters, Brownstein reminds us:

Working-class white voters still represented just over half of all voters in the early 1990s. Now they constitute just below 40 percent of voters, while minority voters, who still back Obama overwhelmingly, have doubled their share of the electorate to about one-fourth. (College-educated whites have held steady at about one-third of all voters.)

In any event, it’s reasonably clear that Obama’s 2008 coalition is intact. It remains to be seen if that will be enough, along with Democratic majorities in Congress, to enable him to show some legislative successes by the end of his first year in office.

Four members of Congress who are not winning any popularity contests this week are House Blue Dogs Bart Gordon of TN, Baron Hill of IN, Mike Ross of AR, and Zack Space of OH.
These members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, as you may have heard, have agreed to vote for a Democratic health reform plan, giving it enough votes to get to the floor and probably to secure passage there, in exhange for a number of concessions. Said concessions drove a group of progressive House Democrats to fury and very nearly to open rebellion.
But it’s not like the four Blue Dogs are getting any love from hard-core critics of Obama’s health care efforts. At Redstate, one of the leading conservative blogging sites, head honcho Erick Erickson’s post on the deal had this calm title: “The Four Blue Dog Democrats Who Sold Out America.” The subtitle was also pretty even-handed: “Judas only needed 30 pieces of silver to sell out Christ. How much did these four need to sell out their country? ”
When he wasn’t comparing Blue Dogs to Judas–and presumably, the existing health care system to Jesus Christ– for agreeing reluctantly to support their own party, Erickson was fulminating about Republican Senator Lamar Alexander’s treachery in deciding to support Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and–horror of horrors!–introducing a bill to ban mountain-top coal mining.
Everybody’s a critic.

Just over a month ago we featured a Democracy Corps analysis from TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Andrew Baumann about the case that needed to be made to create a “sustainable majority” for health care reform.
To recapitulate, DCorps set up five criteria for winning the “health care swing vote:”
1. Voters need to hear clearly what changes health care reform will bring.
2. Build a narrative around taking power away from the insurance companies and giving it to people.
3. The president and reform advocates have to explain concretely the changes that will mean lower costs.
4. Show all voters and seniors that there are benefits for them, including prescription drugs.
5. All of these points should be made with the dominant framework that continuing the status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable.
Today Nate Silver of 538.com used these five criteriato grade the Democratic reform effort so far.
You don’t have to share his harsh assessment–and it is harsh–to agree the public case for health care reform has yet to be made.

This item is a guest post from Michael A. Cohen, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America.”
Earlier this week the New York Times offered a bewildering story about the current state of political thought about health care among House Democrats.
First comes word that Nancy Pelosi wants to raise the possible surtax on wealthy Americans to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for joint filers, “so the new levy could be described as a tax on millionaires.”
Next come some reasons why the millionaire’s tax may not see the light of day:

The Senate, however, has shown little interest in such a tax to pay for the legislation. And House Democrats, especially more junior members elected in 2006 and 2008 from Republican-leaning districts, are reluctant to vote for a big tax increase if it is unlikely to be included in the final bill.
Such a vote, they argue, would provide easy fodder for opponents seeking to paint them as tax-and-spend liberals. Those concerns prompted Ms. Pelosi over the weekend to warn the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, that she might have to delay the House vote on the bill until September unless she had a clearer idea of the Senate’s plans.

At the same time prominent Blue Dog Democrats are demanding that Obama slow down the health care train and are demanding a ‘bipartisan’ solution even though Republicans have shown little indication that thy are interested in a compromise bill.
But in a number of key ways, Democrats seem to be missing the political forest for the trees, focusing on all that could go wrong with health care and ignoring the opportunities for political gain.
First of all, Jim Demint is right: health care reform could represent a Waterloo moment for Obama . . . and for Democrats. If it doesn’t pass, not only will the Democratic brand lie in tatters, but one would imagine that voters would really start to question whether the federal government can accomplish anything. And if that happens every Democrat – whether they voted for a tax increase to pay for health care reform or against it – will pay the price. So if moderate Democrats think they’ve found some political high ground; think again. If health care reform fails and you’re going to get swept away with the same tide as your Democratic brethren. And the more vulnerable a seat you are in the worse the wave will be.
Second if health care reform passes, that’s a very good thing for Democrats. This is sort of stating the obvious, but it’s a fact that seems to elude many congressional Democrats. Yes, they might get branded as tax and spenders, but you know what the retort is, ‘I passed a health care reform that expanded care to millions of Americans.’ There is a reason, after all, that Republicans are fighting this bill tooth and nail. They understand that if Democrats get credit for passing a new entitlement that provides health care security for millions of Americans a) Democrats will get the credit and b) any hope they might have of unwinding the welfare state will be dashed. For the foreseeable future, Republicans will be playing politics on Democratic turf.
In fact, one of the most fascinating and depressing elements of the current health care debate for Democrats is failure even refusal to place any political benefit on passage of major health care reform – an issue that polls as among the most important domestic priorities for Americans. Barack Obama and the current Democratic Congress was elected to bring “change” to Washington – they weren’t elected to maintain the status quo or even worse, serve as an impediment to reform. Passage of health care legislation will bring with it real political benefits and will go a long way toward improving the image of the party as a whole.
And when it comes to the tax and spend issue if individual Democrats can’t find a way to win an election in which they’ve raised taxes on the wealthiest American to pay for health care for millions of working-class Americans – against a candidate of the deeply unpopular Republican Party – then they have no business being in politics in the first place.
Third, health care reform will please rank and file Democrats. Now I understand that for a lot of moderate House Democrats, their focus is on independents. But one would think that at a time when the Democratic brand is particularly strong, when significantly more Americans self-identify as Democrats than Republicans (35% to 21% according to an April Washington Post poll) and when Barack Obama has brought a significant number of new people into the party that keeping them happy would be high on a Congressional Democrats priority list. In 1994 one of the developments that did the most damage to Democratic incumbents in mid-term elections was diminished turnout from the party’s base of supporters. Do you think if Democrats pass a major health care bill that those same base voters – who are of particular importance in a generally low turnout mid-term election – will come out to the polls in significant numbers? Instead of worrying about GOP attacks maybe Democrats in tough seats should be worrying about how to keep their most loyal supporters happy.
Ed recently linked to Nathan Newman’s analysis of the 1994 congressional elections and one of his key conclusions is worth quoting in full here:

Clinton’s failure to deliver on health care and a real improvement in the economy for such lower-paid workers disillusioned them. The Democrats demonstrated how limited their party is in delivering benefits to working Americans, so they saw little difference in the parties and voted on cultural divisions rather than economic divisions.

Might be a lesson there for Democrats today.
Fourth, passing health care will benefit their constituents directly. This is actually what I would call a Blue Dog special. As Nate Silver pointed out a few days ago, 31 of the 48 House districts in which the seat is held by a Democrat – but McCain carried in the general election – have an above average number of uninsured Americans. Take for example Dan Boren, who has been one of the most prominent Blue Dogs calling for a delay in reform. Nearly 26% of his constituents don’t have coverage. Mike Ross is another prominent centrist Dem and in his district 22% of the population is uninsured. Again, if a Democrat can’t find a way to finesse a vote that expands coverage for more than 20% of their constituents into a good campaign narrative perhaps its time to find another line of work.
Finally, if the economy stinks in 2010, Democrats are going to be in trouble so they might as well pass a big health care bill that gives them a political chit to play. This one sort of speaks for itself. If the economy is in the toilet would Democrats rather go to voters and say ‘I held the line on taxes’ or ‘I made sure the deficit didn’t grow any bigger’ but vote for me? Or would they prefer to say ‘the economy stinks, but now for the first time in history every American has access to health care coverage . . . and my opponent voted against it.’
But also consider the flip side; if the economy is showing improvement by the Fall of 2010 then Democrats will not only enjoy a political advantage but they’ll be able to run for re-election on having passed health care as well. The political windfall could be enormous.
In the end, the political calculus on health care isn’t even close – passage of a health care reform package that improves access to care will bring far more political benefit for Democrats than if such a bill defeated. And to some extent Jim Demint and Bill Kristol’s ill-timed comments this week made clear the stakes for Democrats – and the opportunity. Pass health care and reap the benefits.

This item by Mike Lux is a cross-post from OpenLeft, representing an important point of view on health care reform and party loyalty.
It was good to see President Obama shifting toward a more directly confrontational tone with the insurance industry today in his weekly radio/YouTube address on health care. One of the biggest mistakes Clinton made in the last fight was shying away from directly taking on the insurance companies standing in the way until it was too late. It is only this kind of directly populist message that will carry us home.
It was also very exciting to see Obama be very clear and the strongest yet about how much he wants the public option.
We have reached a crucial moment, perhaps the crucial moment. All those folks pushing for delay (with the possible exception of Ron Wyden) are pushing for delay because they don’t want to take on the insurance industry, and they want to slow the momentum of the Obama approach, especially the public option. Now is when Democrats and all of us progressive activists on the outside need to get very tough and very specific. Conservative Democratic Senators need to understand that they need to vote for cloture even if they can’t bring themselves to vote for the bill itself, that to break with Obama and the party on this is the ultimate disloyalty. They need to understand that the White House, and Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will cut them off at the knees on all future requests. They need to understand that progressives will recruit primary candidates against anyone who stops health care reform, and that progressive donors will stop giving to anyone who helps the Republicans on a filibuster fight.
This is the biggest issue for Barack Obama, and his ability to get anything else significant done will die if health care dies. This is the ultimate measure of whether you are part of the team, and the consequences of defeat on health care need to be made clear- yes, crystal clear- to everyone. All of us in this fight- from Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, to all of us who are progressive activists- need to ratchet up the pressure even more than the insurance company lobbyists. This is our hill to die on.

The remission of culture-war politics was one of the more notable features of the 2008 campaign. But some observers view that development as representing a potentially temporary displacement of cultural issues by concerns over the economic situation and unhappiness with George W. Bush, while others suggest something fundamental is changing in the political environment.
TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira comes down decisively in the latter camp in an important new report for the Center for American Progress entitled “The Coming End of the Culture Wars.” He points to demographic trends as undermining the ability of conservatives to deploy cultural issues successfully in political contests:

First, Millennials—the generation with birth years 1978 to 2000—support gay marriage, take race and gender equality as givens, are tolerant of religious and family diversity, have an open and positive attitude toward immigration, and generally display little interest in fighting over the divisive social issues of the past. The number of voting age Millennials will increase by about 4.5 million a year between now and 2018, and the number of
Millennials who are eligible voters will increase by about 4 million a year….
Second, the culturally conservative white working class has been declining rapidly as a proportion of the electorate for years. Exit polls show that the proportion of white workingclass voters—scoring just 46.3 out of a 100 on the Progressive Studies Program comprehensive 10-item progressive cultural index covering topics ranging from religion, abortion, and homosexuality to race, immigration, and the family—is down 15 points since 1988, while
the proportion of far more culturally progressive white college graduate voters (53.3 on the index) is up 4 points, and the proportion of minority voters (54.7 on the index) is up 11 points….
Other demographic trends that will undermine the culture warriors include the growth of culturally progressive groups such as single women, and college-educated women and professionals, as well as increasing religious diversity. Unaffiliated or secular voters are hugely progressive on cultural issues and it is they—not white evangelical Protestants—who are the fastest-growing “religious” group in the United States.

Teixeira analyzes a wide range of cultural issues from the perspective of demographic trends, and concludes these issues are losing political salience even where public opinion is not significantly changing. On abortion, for example:

Millennials, who wish to see a smaller role for religiously motivated social views—64 percent in the PSP youth survey say “religious faith should focus more on promoting tolerance, social justice, and peace and less on opposing abortion or gay rights”—will further reduce the influence of conservative abortion views on politics. Ditto for Hispanics, whose lack of interest in voting on this basis is well documented.

The point here isn’t, or isn’t just, that the American population is becoming more progressive on cultural issues. It’s that as cultural issues lose political punch, the incentives for conservatives to focus on them decline, further reducing the politicization of culture. And, says Teixeira, “the country will be a better place for it.”

Note: this item is from regular TDS contributor Matt Compton, who is Communications Director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), and represents one in a series of “partner reports” from major Democratic and progressive organizations.
It’s no secret that state governments have been forced to make some tough choices in the current economic climate. But even as lawmakers grapple with budget shortfalls, Democrats in legislatures across the country are making an effort to pass smart, progressive laws on a number of fronts.
At the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, we are launching an effort to catalog that good work in a series of progress reports highlighting important legislative accomplishments at the state level.
For instance, before this year, many believed that the 2009 legislative session would be an unfavorable environment for pursuing equal rights and the legalization of same-sex marriage, but the opposite has proven to be true. Democrats led the charge in states like New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine to legalize gay marriage, and lawmakers in states stretching from Minnesota to Montana to Hawaii introduced bills that would roll back same-sex marriage bans or expand legal recognition for gay couples.
Read the DLCC Equal Rights Progress Report here.
This legislative session will also be remembered as a year when lawmakers devoted significant focus to energy innovation. Hundreds of state-level energy bills were filed in 2009, and Democrats worked to pass significant legislation boosting wind and solar power production. Lawmakers from Iowa to New Mexico to Washington saw their legislation become laws.
Read the DLCC Renewable Energy Progress Report here.
These accomplishments prove that state legislatures have the capacity to act as laboratories of innovation, even in touch economic times. In places where Democrats hold majorities, that means forging a path toward more progressive public policy.
These kinds of reforms are important to note early because transformational state policy initiatives can become models for national action.
Look no further than Massachusetts.