Hopefully, most TDS readers saw at least a news clip or two of President Obama’s successful town hall meeting in Montana on Friday. For those who didn’t, the next best thing is to read Mike Lupica’s column in today’s Daily News. Lupica leads with the view of a woman who watched the town hall in an airplane hangar in Belgrade, Montana:

“Yes, there were a few protesters en route. But the Montanans who were excited to hear the President far outnumbered the fringe groups.”…Then she said this about Obama: “He was smart, fair, funny.”

Lupica adds,

…This wasn’t an occasion when people with legitimate concerns and legitimate points to make were overwhelmed by the wing nuts and screamers who take their marching orders from right-wing radio and television and the Internet…Those idiots come to these town hall meetings more to be seen than heard, and think creating chaos makes them great Americans.

Lupica, known to most of his readers as a tell-it-straight sports writer, doesn’t mince words:

Those people have been convinced by the current culture that we are dying to hear from them, and the louder the better. People who think that all they need to star in their own reality series is a couple of TV crews…We hear that all of this is democracy in action. It’s not. It’s boom-box democracy, people thinking that if they somehow make enough noise on this subject, they can make Obama into a one-term President…The most violent opposition isn’t directed at his ideas about health care reform. It is directed at him. It is about him. They couldn’t make enough of a majority to beat the Harvard-educated black guy out of the White House, so they will beat him on an issue where they see him as being most vulnerable.
…With that kind of zealotry, screaming about government programs as if Medicare isn’t one. It is why so many of them, all these wild-eyed red faces in the crowd, look completely certifiable, screaming about how Obama wants to kill Grandma, as if he’s suddenly turned into Jack Kevorkian.
…They couldn’t win the fight last November, when he laid out John McCain and Palin and a whole party with one election, so they try to do it now, with lies and rather amazing distortions. They want everybody to believe that if Obama gets his way, he’ll eventually be in charge of insurance and doctors and whether you use CVS or Duane Reade. He’s a Socialist selling socialized medicine. He’ll kill Grandma. Come on. The notion that this is all honest dissent is just one more lie.
Even in Montana, the Swift Boaters who would line up against any health care plan endorsed by Barack Obama ran one television ad 115 times over a day and a half before the President arrived.

The President himself, quoted by Lupica, summed it up well:

“Every time we are in sight of health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they’ve got,” the President said outside Bozeman. “They use their influence and run their ads. They use their political allies to scare the American people.”

Yes, we know, some protestors are sincere and fair-minded, even when not well-informed. But the health care swiftboaters being mobilized to preserve the status quo need to be called out, and this morning Mike Lupica did just that. You can watch President Obama’s Saturday town hall meeting on health care reform in Grand Junction, CO on Saturday, on C-SPAN right here.

UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

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.

Don’t be shocked. But apparently not all of the Town Hall Meetings being held across the country can be likened to episodes of the Jerry Springer Show, as John Stanton reports in his Roll Call article “Democrats Orchestrate Town-Hall Counterpunch.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Thursday argued that despite extensive media coverage of the protests at some lawmakers’ town halls, “I hate to break it to you: I don’t think all the town halls are as you’re seeing them on TV. … While I appreciate that you all have decided that every town-hall meeting ends in pushing, shoving and yelling, I don’t think many, well, I don’t know how many town halls you all have been to. They’re not completely indicative of what’s going on in America.”
The DNC released a statement arguing that “outside the echo chamber of 24-hour cable news, Americans all across the country are attending town halls, holding coffee shop conversations and engaging in respectful, honest debates about the best way to achieve health insurance reform.”
The DNC release pointed to events in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, Indiana, Ohio, Washington state and other areas that have not featured the kind of ugly protests that have been the focus on national news reports…Similarly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (Calif.) office Thursday afternoon released a similar “fact sheet” detailing events where no protests occurred.

At The Atlantic‘s ‘Politics Blog’, Chris Good adds:

…Freshman Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who unseated a Republican in typically conservative upstate New York to enter Congress this year, held a town-hall with 200 constituents that “felt Lincoln-esque in its nature,” according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle; Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) thought the audience members were “respectful” at a recent event, despite sometimes contentious debate; opponents of health care reform filled up “about half the seats” at a town-hall hosted by Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA), according to a post on Daily Kos, but no disruptions occurred; “this is democracy,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) said after an event in her district that drew opponents and supporters of reform alike.
The liberal group Americans United for Change (part of the liberal interest-group coalition backing the Democratic/Obama health care reform initiative), likewise blasted out a similar list of peaceful town-halls via e-mail, including a video link to local news coverage of one in Charlottesville, Virginia, where freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D) was backed up by a predominantly pro-reform crowd…The group forwarded a Philadelphia Inquirer story, highlighting how a health care town-hall hosted by Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) had gone similarly well.
“About 650 people – diverse in age, race, and occupation, but nearly all supporters of a health-care overhaul – last night crowded into a Center City church for a town meeting with U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak (D., Pa.) that, in sharp contrast to recent gatherings across the country, was overwhelmingly civil.,” the Inquirer reporters wrote.
Some of these examples are taken from strong Democratic districts; some are taken from swing districts and states recently represented by Republicans. The message is less that everyone is behind President Obama’s plan, and more that town-halls aren’t all messy, ugly disruptions–that while the media loves to talk about the frenzied unpleasantness, that’s not what’s going on everywhere, and August isn’t really just a big anti-health-care-reform bloodbath.
The new Democratic message is: civil discourse is happening around health care, and in that regard the White House is making progress on reform, with a healthy, national discussion. It’s not as sensational as a roomful of screamers, but if you read the papers, you’ll see it.

Stanton’s article cites polls indicating sympathy with the town hall protesters, after respondents viewed protests, and that is a concern. Wonder how they would have responded after watching the more numerous town hall meetings, like the one in Charlottesville, which were conducted with civility. Guess they weren’t deemed poll-worthy.

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.

The Gallup poll that came out Thursday has been widely described as indicating that the health care protests are “working.” This is based on the fact that 34% say the protests make them more sympathetic to the protestors’ viewpoints while only 21% say the protests make them less sympathetic.
But both Nate Silver and David Axelrod point out that this particular question really doesn’t prove much of anything – people who are already in agreement with the protesters views will naturally tend to express sympathy for demonstrations that support their views. As Silver says:

Polls of this nature, however, are notoriously slippery. If there were some protest in favor of a policy that I supported — like expanded stem-cell research — I’d probably tell a pollster that the protest had in fact made me more sympathetic to the cause, even though my mind on the issue was already 100 percent made up and was not going to be swayed. The real question, then, is how many minds are being changed on the issue. And it may not be all that many. Three relevant polls have come out on this subject in August: a Rasmussen poll found some further erosion in support for the bills pending before Congress, but a Gallup poll did not find any further decline in Obama’s approval on health care since mid-July. Nor did a CNN poll find any decline in support for the Democrats’ health package, although that poll is now about a week old.

Let’s face it, we’re all desperate to try to make use of any data that happen to come our way, but there really isn’t a lot one can deduce from this particular question.
The really interesting data in the poll comes when Gallup asks if the following behaviors during a town meeting are better described as “democracy in action” or “an abuse of democracy.”

• “making angry attacks on a health care bill and what it might do”
• “booing when members of congress make statements that the opponents disagree with”
• “Shouting down supporters when they speak in favor of a health care bill

On the first two questions Democrats and Republicans respond in predictably partisan ways – Dems calling them “abuse” while Republicans call them “democracy” Independents, however, lean strongly toward calling them “democracy in action” in the first case (55%-37%) and marginally in the second case (47%-42%).
From a fiercely partisan perspective, this might seem a disappointment, but realistically it’s entirely reasonable. I mean, come on, let’s be realistic – of course making angry attacks on a bill you disagree with is OK in a democracy, as is booing (within bounds).
But the absolutely critical fact shown in the Gallup poll is how the respondents viewed the third behavior, “Shouting down supporters when they speak in favor of a health care bill”.

59% of the American people said it was an “abuse of democracy” compared with only 33% who called it “democracy in action”
54% of independents called it an “abuse of democracy”, compared with only 38% who said it was “democracy in action”

And here’s the real eye-popper:

58% of REPUBLICANS called it an “abuse of democracy” compared to only 38% who called it “democracy in action”

In short, what this poll is showing is that the vast majority of the American people very strongly and profoundly disapprove of the “shout them down – intimidate them” type of tactics the Astroturf firms were circulating and recommending when the town halls started. In fact, it is already possible to see a subtle dialing down of the overtly” bully-boy” approach in the most recent town halls.
So for Dems the key strategic information here is that they should focus their criticism very specifically on the “shouting down” or “bullying” type of tactics and pin that strategy very specifically on the Astroturf firms.
Here’s an example of how this can be expressed:

“It is absolutely healthy and vital that ordinary Americans get the chance to express their views about health care reform – and to express those views as clearly and passionately as they wish. Staunch opponents of health care reform must be given the opportunity to make their voices heard as well as supporters.”
“But when “inside the beltway” Washington lobbying groups opposing health care reform start circulating instructions to “shout down” elected officials when they try to speak and to disrupt town hall meetings before people can express their views, that’s not OK. Those are tactics that have no place in a democracy.”
“The beltway lobbying firms should clearly and explicitly disavow these tactics and directly criticize the people who employ them – not only in a few face-saving press releases but in all of their communications with their supporters. If they don’t, the sincere grass-roots protesters should consider whether these are the kind of organizations with which they want to be associated.”.

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.

Political junkies naturally like to project current trends in public opinion as far into the future as they can, joined by hacks and spinmeisters when the trends seem positive for their cause. So it’s no surprise that Republicans are already debating how big a win they’ll have in 2010. And more than ten weeks before the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, you’d think the GOP had already banked victories in both states.
If only to confound those who think every political sparrow that falls to the ground is about national politics, it’s interesting ro report that a new poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps shows often-left-for-dead Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey beginning to significantly close the gap with Republican nominee Chris Christie. As voters get closer to an actual decision between candidates instead of a resolution on how they feel about life under the Corzine administration, Christie’s lead has dropped to five percentage points in a three-way race involving independent candidate Chris Daggett, and six points in a two-way race. Christie’s negatives are definitely moving up, which also augers a tightening race.
I’m not predicting that Corzine will win, but it is important to remember that late, counter-intuitive trends in political campaigns happen all the time, and those who count their electoral chickens before they hatch may be eating crow on when voters weigh in.

Last week I challenged a particularly nasty commentary by David Paul Kuhn that alleged that Democrats were even nuttier than the Republicans who believe the ‘birther” narrative because many Dems believe that George W Bush had “advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks”. Here’s what I said:

There are two different ways that a survey respondent could interpret the Rasmussen question about Bush’s possible “advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks” – one of which is entirely rational and, in fact, undeniably true.
Gee whiz, come on. Doesn’t everyone still remember the warnings Bush received about the potential use of airplanes as terrorist weapons in the summer of 2001 – warnings Condi Rice admitted did not get followed up? Don’t we all remember the CIA memos saying that “something big” was in the works in September? Don’t we all remember the 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarkes’ dramatic statement that “We failed the American people”
These were not hallucinations or the product of fevered, paranoid Democratic brains. They were component elements of the undeniable fact that there were indeed significant advance warnings that a terrorist attack was in the works for the fall of 2001 – a fact that was the central subject of the 9/11 commission hearings, 10 or 15 books and hundreds of articles.
One would have to throw out every single academic study of the past 30 or 40 years about the effects of question wording on survey response not to recognize that, for many survey respondents who remembered the 9/11 Commission Report and other media coverage, the phrase “advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks” could be cognitively processed as meaning:
“The Bush administration had substantial advance knowledge from U.S. intelligence sources that a terrorist attack on the U.S. was being predicted as imminent in the fall of 2001”
Rather than interpreting the question as saying:
“The Bush Administration had specific and detailed advance knowledge about a particular group of 19 Saudi Arabian terrorists armed with box cutters and trained to fly commercial jet aircraft who planned to hijack four U.S. airliners at 9:45 in the morning on September 11th 2001 and attempt to crash two of them into the New York World Trade Center”

This week, in his blog, Brendan Nyhan offers essentially the same criticism of the Rasmussen question. As he says:

The problem, as Media Matters points out, is that the wording of the Rasmussen poll (“Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?”) almost surely conflates people who believe Bush intentionally allowed an attack to occur with those who think the administration was negligent in its attention to the potential threat from Al Qaeda. Even National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg conceded this point in a column published soon after the poll was released.

But then he goes on to say the following:

Another, lesser-known poll used less ambiguous wording and found similar results. A July 2006 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll asked the following question:

There are also accusations being made following the 9/11 terrorist attack. One of these is: People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East….

In short, using a more appropriate comparison poll, the primary conclusion stands — both party’s bases are disturbingly receptive to wild conspiracy theories.

Nyhan is clearly right that this question is better than the previous one. But – when viewed in light of the academic literature about how ordinary respondents actually cognitively process poll questions – the fact is that it is still insufficient to support his conclusion.

Read more…

Andrea Fuller reports at The New York Times blog, ‘The Caucus’ on “tele-town halls,” a creative alternative to allowing town hall meetings on health insurance reform to devolve into shouting matches with shrill reactionaries. Fuller explains:

The conference-call style of town halls is nothing new, nor has its use been restricted to Democrats. But for some lawmakers back in their districts this month to talk about health care, the tele-town hall is shaping up as a refreshing option to forums that make possible confrontations with protesters….
…Thousands of participants can join tele-town halls. Representatives provide call-in numbers and access codes to their constituents through robo-calls, Web sites and newsletters. Members of Congress say the phone sessions are a more convenient way to reach constituents, especially elderly and disabled constituents who might not attend an in-person event.
“You can talk to thousands of people all over the state all at once in a format that allows everyone to be heard,” said Jon Summers, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. “What we’ve seen with other town halls is the dialogue that people are used to isn’t being allowed to occur.”

Fuller reports that Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) has scheduled two tele-town hall meetings for August. Shuler aide Douglas Abrahms said he expects the tele-town halls to “catch on quickly.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who conducted a tele-town hall meeting in July with 30,000 participants (OK, mostly listeners), is setting up another one. “You can talk to thousands of people all over the state all at once in a format that allows everyone to be heard,” explains Reid aide Jon Summers.
The tele-town hall meeting strategy allows progressives to manage the environment in a way that encourages civil discussion of concerns, instead of discordant yelling contests. Predictably, the Republicans are attacking the tele-town halls as anti-democratic, primarily because there is no way to disrupt them. But tele-town hall advocates could respond that the comparison between the live and tele-town hall meetings as educational forums is like the difference between ‘shock jock’ radio and NPR.
Some Democratic members of congress may be able to handle the live town hall meetings to their advantage, assuming they can have some control over the environment, by demonstrating their maturity and sobriety in comparison to the screaming GOP shills. And it may be that the astroturfers’ protests will peak too soon, or even better, start to turn off increasing numbers of people. For many Dems, however, the tele-town hall meeting approach is a creative alternative to the Republicans’ obstruction campaign.