In her article, “Disorganized: What Happened to Obama’s Massive Network of Grassroots Activists?” at The New Republic, Lydia DePillis reveals one of the key reasons for the post-election floundering of the activist coalition that was instrumental in electing America’s first African American President. In a nut graph, Depillis explains:

…The biggest problem was built into OFA’s very structure–the structure that Plouffe had wanted and Hildebrand had warned against. Obama’s people had created something both entirely new and entirely old: an Internet version of the top-down political machines built by Richard Daley in Chicago or Boss Tweed in New York. The difference (other than technology) was that this new machine would rely on ideological loyalty, not patronage. And that was a big difference. The old machines survived as top-down organizations because they gave people on the bottom something tangible in return for their participation. By contrast, successful organizations built mainly on shared philosophy tend to be driven by their memberships. Marshall Ganz, the legendary United Farm Workers organizer-turned-Harvard-professor and godfather of the Obama field strategy–he helped orchestrate Camp Obama, a grassroots training program for staff and volunteers–sees the command-and-control nature of OFA as a crucial flaw. “It’s much more an instrument of mobilizing the bottom to serve the top than organizing the bottom to participate in shaping the direction of the top,” he told me.

DePillis adds “…Being part of the DNC has neutered Organizing for America when it comes to pressuring moderate Democrats.” With regard to the battle for health care reform in particular, she cites the examples of ‘outside groups,’ including the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, MoveOn, and Health Care for America Now, which are “running hard-hitting ads that target foot-dragging congressmen,” while OFA’s ads “were gauzy and positive, mentioning no one by name.” As DePillis explains, “The White House couldn’t deal with Max Baucus in good faith if its ground operation was hammering him in Montana.”
DePillis is undoubtedly correct that there are built-in limitations that come with OFA operating as a DNC entity, particularly with an issue that has many complex facets, like health care reform. Activist networks work best with a simple idea, such as electing a particular candidate, or legislation that does one major thing. Perhaps the best test for OFA’s effectiveness will come when all of the Democratic reforms are reconciled into a single bill.
Multi-faceted legislation like the current health care reform packages being proposed, are more likely to experience fragmentation of activist energy. It’s easier to mobilize citizen lobbying around a simple idea, like no disqualifying coverage for prior conditions, than it is to get activists excited about a complex package that includes numerous provisions. It doesn’t mean that big package strategy for health care reform is wrong; It may be the right way to go at this political moment. But it’s reasonable to expect some dilution of grass-roots energy as the complexity of a reform increases.

Behind the high drama of the debate over health care reform, other progressive reforms are gaining momentum, despite being bounced to the back pages. In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has good news for supporters of legislative reforms to address climate change — new data from the Pew Research Center indicates that “public is ready to move forward in this area.” Says Teixeira:

First, the public rejects the idea that the United States should go alone in addressing climate change. By 56-32, they say that the United States “should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change” rather than “set its own standards to address global climate change.”
Second, the public gives 50-39 support to “setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if it may mean higher energy prices” (emphasis added).

Teixeira concludes that “legislators should not rest on their laurels even if they succeed in passing health care reform. The public appetite for change is clearly broader than that.”

We now know that the health care bill that reaches the Senate floor will contain a public option with an opt-out provision. That said, if the bill passes, we don’t know how the opt-out will work in practice.
Matt Ygelsias appears to have the answer to one of my biggest questions about the process:

To opt out you need a bill based by both houses of the state legislature and signed by the governor.

And while Yglesias is the only source I’ve seen reporting this, those kind of mechanics certainly make sense. If those are the conditions for opting-out in the final bill, that probably sets up a scenario in which most states actually do join the program.
It’s important to remember that opting-out, as a policy mechanism, is not a new idea.
Medicaid, for instance, is an opt-out program, but no state has ever chosen to take that step.
Federal highways are also an opt-out program, but we all follow the same speed limits.
At worst, we should expect about as much resistance as we saw with the federal recovery package earlier this year. Despite a lot of hand-wringing from conservatives, ultimately, most states took most of the money.
That doesn’t mean we won’t have to listen to Republicans who are determined to grand stand on the issue. In Utah, they’re already considering legislation to keep their citizens from having access to a public option:

Utah House Speaker Dave Clark (R) told the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News that “we already have a health-care system in Utah that is bottom three in cost for the nation. As I understand the latest version (of health care legislation) — always subject to numerous changes — I would recommend Utah opt out.”
Utah Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack (R) also expressed skepticism; another Republican state representative, Carl Wimmer, said he will introduce a bill in January “that will get us out.”

While most state policymakers will probably wait to see the final content of the bill before they start drafting laws, these statements from the Utah legislators highlight an important point.
The debate in Washington is about to go on the road — every state lawmaker in the country is going to get asked what they think about a public option.
Update: There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to speed limits. But states still do what is required of them to receive money from the Highway Trust Fund.

I’ll just share three interesting revelations scattered among the fallout from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement yesterday of the compromise Senate health reform package.
First, in his op-ed in today’s WaPo, “Health Reform’s Chevy Tax,” Harold Meyerson sheds fresh light on the numbers involved in the tax on the so-called ‘Cadillac benefits”:

The Senate’s tax would initially apply to all individual policies costing more than $8,000 a year, or $21,000 for a family. Those thresholds are to be indexed to the overall consumer price index (CPI) plus 1 percent. Problem is, medical costs and health insurance premiums increase a good deal more than the overall CPI. Since 2000, they have risen three to four times faster — which means, more policies will be subject to the tax with each passing year. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has calculated that in 2013, when the reforms kick in, the tax will apply to 19 percent of individual plans and 14 percent of family plans, but that by 2019 it will sock 34 percent of individual plans and 31 percent of family plans.
Last time I looked, a third of American motorists were not driving Cadillacs…Unfortunately, that excise tax targets a lot of Chevy plans as well.

Meyerson adds that the assumption that workers will get higher wages to help pay for the taxes is not warranted by recent experience, and he supports the surtax on incomes over $500,000 funding proposal championed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others as a more credible progressive alternative.
I do hope Andrew Sullivan is right in his ‘The Daily Dish’ post “The Lethal Politics Of The Opt-Out Public Option” in The Atlantic Online. Sullivan writes:

…Imagine for a moment that the opt-out public option passes and becomes law (I give it a 65 percent chance at this point). Then what happens? Well, there has to be a debate in every state in which Republicans, where they hold a majority or the governorship, will presumably decide to deny their own voters the option to get a cheaper health insurance plan. When others in other states can get such a plan, will there not be pressure on the GOP to help their own base? Won’t Bill O’Reilly’s gaffe – when he said what he believed rather than what Roger Ailes wants him to say – be salient? Won’t many people – many Republican voters – actually ask: why can’t I have what they’re having?
This is why this is lethal. The argument against new entitlements requires a macro-level perspective. You have to argue that…you just need to rely on the wonderful private sector to deliver the goods in a more market-friendly way. This is always a tough sell because it requires voters to put abstract concerns over practical short-term gains. It’s why conservatism always has a tough time in welfare state democracies…Imagine Republicans in state legislatures having to argue and posture against an affordable health insurance plan for the folks, as O’Reilly calls them, while evil liberals provide it elsewhere…I can see a public option becoming the equivalent of Medicare in the public psyche if it works as it should. Try running against Medicare…it has the potential to make “liberalism’ popular again; it has easily demonized opponents – the health insurance industry; and it forces Republicans not to rail against socialism in the abstract but to oppose actual benefits for the working poor in reality.

If Sullivan is right, the opt-out concession to win moderates could end up being more of a problem for Republicans than an unadulterated ‘robust’ public option.
Lastly, anyone seeking a convincing explanation for Sen. Lieberman’s opposition to the public option for health care reform, despite strong support for it in recent polls, need not look much further than Charles Lemos’s MyDD post “The Worries of Joe Lieberman ,” in which he explains:

“I want to be able to vote for a health bill, but my top concern is the deficit.” So says Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a state that is home to 72 insurance headquarters, the largest concentration of that industry in the nation. Connecticut has three times the US average of insurance jobs as a percent of total state employment. In 2004, the insurance industry in Connecticut was a $12.2 billion dollar industry. Two years later, it hit $14.6 billion. That’s a CAGR of 9.4 percent.
Sixteen of those 72 insurance companies provide health or medical service insurance. Those 16 insurance companies employ over 22,000 employees and have annual payroll of over $2.3 billion. The total annual state insurance industry payroll exceeds $6 billion. 5.5 percent of the state’s gross domestic product comes from the insurance industry. But no Joe Lieberman isn’t worried about their profits, he’s worried about adding to the deficit.

Lemos goes on to add that Lieberman’s crocky tears about the deficit are somewhat belied by his blank check support for war ops in Afghanistan, now over $230 billion over the last 8 years, coupled with the fact that the CBO projects more than $100 billion in savings as a result of the publlic option over the next 10 years. As Lemos puts it “I can see a return on investment in healthcare, it’s harder to see one on Afghanistan.”

2010 Congressional Battleground: Stable and Within Normal Historical Range
Overview
With Charlie Cook and Republican leaders raising the prospect of Democrats losing control of the Congress in 2010, we thought it important to expand the Democracy Corps congressional battleground early to determine whether a loss of 41 seats was in the offing based on current polling. A new survey from Democracy Corps conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research across the 75 most competitive congressional districts suggests potential losses for the Democrats well within the normal historical range. Their losses will be offset by some further Republican losses and are unlikely to approach what it would take for Republicans to regain congressional control.
Moreover, the vote and incumbent job approval in the most contested Democratic districts are stable – without sign of a broad deterioration. This should give some perspective.
To be sure, there are serious trends that put some Democrats at risk, particularly a pervasive anti-incumbent mood across all of the Democratic seats; however, this is present in the Republican-controlled districts as well. Voters in both the Democratic- and Republican-held vulnerable seats are unsure if they will reward their members with reelection next November.
Limiting Republican gains is the continuing crash of the Republican Party across these districts. This development is part of the reason that Republicans are having trouble capitalizing on the anti-incumbent mood. It also explains why they will have trouble replicating what the Democrats did in 2006 and 2008, when the Democratic Party emerged with a surprising image advantage across the Republican-leaning districts they picked up.
This memo is based on a survey of 2,000 likely voters in the 55 most competitive Democratic-held districts and the 20 most marginal Republican-held districts conducted for Democracy Corps by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research October 6-11, 2009.
“Analysis: Anti-incumbent mood persists across marginal districts” after the jump

Read more…

TDS co-editor Bill Galston sees signs of trouble in the latest opinion polls. Here’s his take in a New Republic commentary:

The current state of American politics presents a paradox. On the one hand, survey after survey testifies to the rock-bottom standing of the Republican Party. Fewer Americans identify with the party than in the past, and fewer trust it to deal with the country’s problems. On the other hand, there are hard-to-ignore signs of a conservative resurgence. A 15,000 person Gallup survey out today shows that 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative (up from 37 percent at the time of Obama’s election), while only 20 percent regard themselves as liberal (down from 22 percent). Far more independents (35 percent) consider themselves conservative than was the case a year ago (only 29 percent).
These findings would be less compelling if they were not linked to conservative shifts on specific issues–but they are, and the Gallup organization enumerates a considerable list. Among them: increasing opposition to government regulation of business and gun ownership; an uneasy feeling about the influence of labor unions; increasing support for immigration restrictions and government promotion of traditional values; and diminished support for strong action on climate change. The percentage of Americans who believe that government is trying to do too much stands at its highest level (57 percent) in many years. Trust in government is near all-time lows, and Americans believe that 50 cents of every federal tax dollar is wasted–the highest level ever.

Read the rest of his commentary here:

We’re one week out from Election Day in New Jersey and Virginia.
No matter how the governors’ races in those two states turn out, plenty of pundits will argue that the outcomes are a referendum on the Obama Presidency.
At least with Virginia, we’ve got an excellent data point to show that this argument is demonstrably false.
Greg Sargent has looked at the internals of the new Washington Post poll (which puts McDonnell ahead by 11 points) and pulls out one key stat:

Seventy percent of likely voters say Obama is “not a factor” in ther choice. Only 15% say opposition to Obama is a factor, while 14%, say support for him is a factor.

The real issue in the race is the lack of enthusiasm for Deeds’ campaign among those who voted for the president last year. As Marc Ambinder points out, it isn’t so much a gap as it is a chasm.
That said, it’s important to keep in mind that we’ve always had a historic hurdle to cross this year.
For instance, the last time that the party of presidential power won one of the two governors races in an off-year was 1985.

The following commentary by leading Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from The Huffington Post:
The Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid — and a majority of Members of the Senate — support the inclusion of public health insurance option in the Senate’s health care reform bill. The debate over where the Senate of the United States stands on this question is now settled. The Senate — like the American people, the House of Representatives and the president — supports a public option.
What is not settled is whether the majority will be allowed to have an up or down vote on a health care bill that includes a public option.
The question is: will any of the Democratic Senators join with the Republicans to prevent an up or down vote on a bill containing a public option — one that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people?
Will any of those Democratic Senators allow themselves to be used by the insurance industry to stifle the will of the majority of Americans who want to end that industry’s stranglehold over the American health care system?
Sixty members of the Senate caucus with Democrats — 58 Democrats and two independents (Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders). These 60 members share in the benefits of being part of the majority party, including committee chairmanships. Together they control enough votes to end a Republican filibuster aimed at blocking health insurance reform, and allow an up or down vote that this critical bill deserves. This should be a no-brainer. To their credit, many Democrats who are not strong supporters of the public option have in fact indicated that they would not stand in the way of an up or down vote. Yet several Democratic Senators have not yet committed to vote with the Democratic leadership and support a vote to proceed.
Remember that to pass a bill in the Senate you only need 51 votes — or 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of the vice president. We do not need every Democrat to pass a bill. But every one of them must vote to end debate on a bill to allow an up or down vote to take place, since ending debate in the Senate requires 60 votes.
If some Democrats disagree with the content of the bill — or oppose a public option — so be it. They should vote no on final passage. But they should never side with the Republicans on a procedural vote to prevent an up or down, majority vote on the substance of the issue.
Frankly, if a Democrat votes against the party on a procedural vote and empowers the Republicans to block a vote on the party’s top domestic priority, the caucus should strip that Senator of all of the power that comes from being part of the majority party — including committee chairmanships.
It is one thing to oppose the substance of a bill. It’s another to oppose the party leadership on a procedural motion and block the will of the majority. That kind of breach of party discipline makes it impossible for a majority party to govern. On procedural votes members of a majority party have to stick together or they might as well not be in the majority — they hand the reins over to the minority.
In this case they would also be thwarting the will of the voters who — very intentionally — ended Republican control of Congress and put Democrats in the majority so they could make change.
By voting with Republicans on a procedural vote, a Democrat would, in effect, be handing the gavel back to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. They would be allowing the minority Republicans and their insurance industry allies to set the parameters for the kind of change is even allowed to come to a vote in Congress.
That would be true on any issue. But it is especially true of the party’s marquee issue, health care reform. By joining with the Republicans and preventing its leadership from calling an up or down vote on health care reform, a Democratic Senator would be engaging in a traitorous act. Not only would he or she be preventing implementation of a critical party priority. That Senator would also be politically endangering many of the swing seats held by House and Senate Members who are up for re-election next year.
That’s right — it is the swing district Democrats that would be endangered by the failure to pass President Obama’s health insurance reform. Look at what happened after the 1993 failure of the Clinton health plan that was also the centerpiece of his presidency. In 1994, Democrats lost 54 seats. Of those, 36 were incumbents. It wasn’t the members from strong Democratic districts, who had fought hard for health care reform, who lost. It was mainly members from swing districts, rural districts and southern districts.
The Clinton health care bill never came to a vote in the House, but only 11 of the 36 incumbents who lost had co-sponsored the bill. Many of the 25 others had opposed the Clinton health care plan. Didn’t matter; they were the biggest political victims of the failure of health care reform.
History shows that when the popularity and job performance rating of an incumbent President drops, the odds of swing Democrats being elected to Congress drop as well.
And it wasn’t just that swing voters lost faith in Democrats. Base Democratic voters failed to turn out. Republican base voters — smelling Democratic blood in the waters — turned out in record numbers.
The fact is that just as a rising political tide lifts all boats, when the political tide recedes those in the shallowest political water are most likely to be left aground.
Failure to take action on health care would be the most likely way to end the majority status for Democrats. Such a failure would massively damage the political standing of the president and the Democrat brand. That, in turn, would sink swing district Democrats. The Republicans know this. That’s why they are fighting so hard to prevent the passage of health insurance reform. Any Democratic Senator who helps them is endangering fellow Democrats.
That is particularly true since polls show that the policy question at issue, the public option, is uniformly popular in swing, frontline and Blue Dog districts. The firm of Anzelone Liszt recently released the results of a poll it conducted in 91 Blue Dog, Rural Caucus and frontline districts. The poll found that 54% of the voters in these battleground districts support the choice of a public option.
In fact, throughout the country, giving consumers the choice of a public option is one of the most popular elements of the overall health insurance reform bill.
But what is more important is that Democrats in swing districts need a public option to convince voters to favor a health insurance mandate. Anzeloni and Liszt make clear in their polling report that in swing districts: “It’s wrong to think about the public option in isolation from other elements of reform. Forcing an individual mandate without a public option is a clear political loser (34% Favor / 60% Oppose), and only becomes more palatable when a public option is offered in competition with the private sector (50% Favor / 46% Oppose).”
Turns out that a public option provides a political inoculation against backlash to a mandate. That’s because people have no stomach for being herded into the arms of private insurance industry like sheep to the slaughter. They want to know that if the government is going to require them to get health insurance, that it also provides the choice of a not-for-profit public plan — that they are not left at the mercy of private insurance CEO’s.
It is fine for each Democrat in the Senate to vigorously advocate his or her own position on health care. But once the majority of the Senate has made up its mind, no Democrat should be allowed to side with the Republicans to block the majority will — to block the Congress and the President from taking action. Not only would that be terrible for the country — it threatens the majority status of the Democratic Party.
If a Democratic Senator votes to prevent his party from having an up or down vote on its top domestic priority, he is endangering the political lives of his swing district colleagues. That would be unforgivable.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on amazon.com.

Pronin2 of Daily Kos discusses Rachel Maddow’s excellent interview of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) (clip included in post), in which Wyden and Maddow add a sobering note to the overheated debate about the public option — that, according to CBO analysis, it would only be available to about 10 percent of the workforce under Reid’s compromise. Wyden argues that 10 percent is really not a large enough portion of consumers to hold down health care premiums, and it could be even smalller with the states’ opt-out. Says Wyden:

The bottom line is that the public option can’t really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market, because private insurance companies aren’t going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can’t take their business elsewhere.

He also says that the opinion polls showing a healthy majority in favor of the public option would likely be very different if they said something like “Would you support a public option open to a small number of people, not all?”
Wyden will be introducing an amendment to make the public option available to all consumers. Senator Jeff Merkley, also of Oregon, will introduce an amendment to broaden public option converage to include employees of small businesses.
Looking at it from another angle, it really is amazing that in the 21st century as many as 40 U.S. Senators, including even Olympia Snowe, would prefer to see tens of millions of Americans have no health security whatsoever, rather than support a public option — that’s a choice, not a requirement — for just 10 percent of consumers. It’s a sad measure of the moral decline of the Republican Party from the days when at least a few reasonable conservatives walked among them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced the broad outlines of the Senate’s health care reform compromise bill, which includes a public option with no ‘trigger mechanism,’ but which does have an “opt-out” provision for the states. The compromise reflects Reid’s math that his chances for 60 votes are better if he doesn’t try to win the support of Senator Olympia Snowe, whose “trigger mechanism” would have lost the vote of WV Democrat Jay Rockefeller and perhaps others. According to The New York Times report,

Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine…issued a statement saying that she would not support for Mr. Reid’s plan. “I am deeply disappointed with the majority leaders’ decision to include a public option as the focus of the legislation,” she said. Ms. Snowe expressed her long-standing position that a government-run plan should only be “triggered” in states where the health care legislation otherwise fails to provide affordable insurance to enough people.

It’s likely that Snowe’s inflexibility contributed to Reid’s decision — that if he announced in favor of a “trigger mechanism,” she would hang tough for a standard that would make any possibility of a real public option very doubtful, according to many experts. it appears unlikely that she would have been open to a face-saving “hair trigger’ version in which the ‘public option’ would kick in quickly, if insurers fail to offer affordable coverage. In the end, Reid must have concluded that she was more interested in killing the public option, period, than in achieving a compromise that would be acceptable to most Democrats. No doubt Reid also felt a responsibility to voters, who opinion polls indicate favor a real public option by a healthy margin. Making Snowe happy would likely have cost Democrats — and Reid — considerable public support. It appears she overplayed her hand.
According to the L.A. Times report by Noam M. Levey, Reid’s plan has 58 votes, and he feels that he has a good chance to win the two more he needs for victory on a cloture vote. Levey did not identify the two Senators Reid needs to win, But the NYT article says that Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska have “expressed doubts” about the plan.
The plan reportedly also provides for taxing of the so-called “Cadillac” health care plans, although there are no details about definitions yet available. Hopefully Reid won’t draw the line low enough to incur the opposition of unions. Democratic support for Reid’s compromise will turn to some extent on the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis.