The Republicans have opened a full-scale attack against Democratic health care reform proposals, even though there is no single bill yet. Conservatives hope to weaken reform legislation before the bill is shaped and put Dems on the defensive, so media coverage will provide more ink and broadcast time to possible problems with health reforms than to the improvements in health care reforms could produce.
The lynch-pin of conservative strategy to discredit the Democratic health care reform package, in whatever shape it emerges, is to spread two key memes:
1. Democratic reforms will be funded by tax hikes on everyday working people.
2. Democratic reforms will adversely affect the health care coverage of those who like their insurance.
They are also pushing sub-memes, like Democratic reforms=Socialism, or the Democrats will set up “death boards” to deny senior citizens needed care (as if Insurance companies didn’t have faceless bureaucrats who make life and death coverage decisions) among others. But these scare tactics are designed to influence “low-information” voters, not those who care enough to do their own thinking, a much larger group, one hopes. Dems should refute these charges, but focus more on challenging the GOP’s two lead memes. That’s the battlefield that matters most.
The GOP echo chamber is already roaring at full tilt, with Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck, Scarborough, right-wing radio, print and web commentators all on board with the shrill message du jour, which usually features scare-mongering memes. Lacking any credible solutions, they are reduced to knee-jerk bashing of progressive reforms, with the unspoken subtext, “What we got now may not be so great, but the Democratic reforms will make it worse.”
Are Democrats ready for the attacks? In today’s L.A. Times, Peter Wallsten’s “Obama’s grass-roots network is put to the test” provides an update on the activities of Organizing for America. Wallsten explains:

With public skepticism rising over Obama’s plan, which is still being worked out with Congress, Democrats were hoping that the August recess would provide a chance to explain the complex and, in some cases, fear-inducing legislation to a nervous public. But Republicans, talk radio and conservative advocacy groups have seized the moment, drowning out that opportunity through a campaign to disrupt Democratic town hall meetings.

Wallsten points out that the Conservative disinformation campaign is not the only problem:

Beyond the healthcare debate, the network’s troubles suggest that even a well-tuned campaign operation — with its stable of trained organizers, precinct captains and neighborhood coordinators — is not easily transformed into a policymaking force that Obama might rely on to deliver on other issues, such as global warming and immigration legislation.

On the positive side, however, Wallsten adds:

….Organizing for America, which was known as Obama for America during the presidential campaign, is quietly and deliberately building a system of professional field organizers and trained volunteers that has already inspired thousands of community events and reached millions of people…Staffers have been hired so far in 42 states, said the group’s deputy director, Jeremy Bird, and he expects to have paid workers in every state in a matter of weeks.
“We’ve been methodical, dogged and focused,” Bird said. “It’s like in the early days of the campaign, people said we needed to be louder, to have more signs. But we focused on the conversations between people and neighbors, and that’s what worked.”
Organizing for America’s website displays hundreds of upcoming events, ranging from tiny house parties to solicitations to match the conservative presence at town hall meetings. With new online tools, supporters can tell their own healthcare stories to be distributed to lawmakers, and network members can monitor their colleagues’ calls to Capitol Hill…A Democratic National Convention spokesman, Hari Sevugan, argued that the Obama network ultimately would prove more effective than the GOP approach because “grass-roots efforts are won at the doors, with neighbors talking to neighbors, not in front of news cameras with folks screaming at members of a community.”

The big TV networks have a moral obligation to provide more thoughtful coverage about America’s health care crisis and challenge the conservative disinformation/fear mongering campaign designed to discredit pro-Democratic reforms. We know Fox won’t accept the responsibility. But CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC ought to rise to the challlenge. If they don’t step up in the month ahead, it will be very difficult to educate the voters needed to get the attention of undecided members of congress. The TV networks need to hear from the health care reform movement in a big way.
It’s up to reform supporters, however, to come up with the creative ideas and actions that can compell greater media attention. In his August 5 TDS post, James Vega called for mobilizing an impressive turnout of the sick, people with disabilities and those who have had their financial assets decimated by health care costs to attend the health care meetings and sit up front. That’s a fine idea, and more such focused brainstorming is needed.
If we don’t get it a strong health care bill this time, a mass demo definitely should be considered for the next mobilization. A million plus “March on Washington for Health Security,” spotlighting the constituencies noted by Vega, for example, might help shake the rafters in congress.
Progressive philanthropists should spring for a nationwide broadcast of Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” Robert Greenwald’s “Diagnosis: Now!” and any other good documentaries about health care reform. Reform supporters should press local TV networks and stations to show health reform documentaries, and they should also arrange showings in community venues.
Most importantly of all, Democrats must not get hustled into a purely defensive posture. If there was ever a time for Dems to attack the industry and politicians who have obstructed comprehensive, universal health security for America, it has surely arrived.

So after her quickly infamous Facebook post about health reform creating “death panels” that would threaten the life of her son, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is now urging reform opponents to avoid “tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment.”
That’s nice, though tactical tips-from-the-coach hardly amount to a heart-felt repudiation of goon squad activity. But I have a much better idea for Ms. Palin: stop making up (or borrowing from Michele Bachmann) scary stuff about health reform, and maybe fewer people will behave hysterically.
This could be difficult for Palin, with her deep roots in the Right-to-Life movement, where Nazi analogies are thrown around very casually. But “civility” in politics isn’t just a tactic; it’s an attitude which begins with the assumption that one’s opponents are well-meaning Americans, not cartoon character villains.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Of all the back-and-forth recriminations about the ongling shriekfests at congressional “town hall meetings,” the most maddening is that offered on Friday by the oh-so-eloquent wordsmith Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. According to Noonan, arrogant Democrats are insisting on health care reform despite its obvious absurdity at a time like this, thereby “terrifying” citizens into protests against the outrage. And it’s all a tragic accident due to a quirk of last year’s Democratic primaries:

When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.

Noonan seems to be unaware that health care was a priority initiative for every major Democratic presidential candidate throughout the last two election cycles. And far from being a strange preoccupation this year, Obama and congressional Democrats have emphasized health care reform not in the face of economic concerns, but because of them, given the highly damaging economic effects of ever-rising health care costs and steadily eroding coverage.
But this basic misstatement of the landscape by Noonan is nothing compared to her assumption that screaming crowds of protestors at town hall meetings are purely representative of a justifiably frightened public:

[Y]ou can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

How does Noonan know this? Has she gone out with a clipboard and determined these crowds are composed of a cross-section of the American citizenry? “Astroturfing” aside, is she really unaware of the overlap between these protests and the vastly unrepresentative “tea party movement?” When similar crowds of “passionate” people fearing “loss” expressed rage during the campaign about Obama’s “redistributionist” tax proposals, should he have just conceded the election to McCain? You’d guess so, since Noonan’s prescription for Obama is to stop scaring these poor, oppressed people and give up on health reform.
Peggy Noonan is not that stupid. If Obama were promoting something she supported, there’s zero chance she would be asking him to surrender in the face of intimidation by small groups of people who may well just be “passionate” because they never wanted him elected in the first place.

In his Robert Reich’s Blog, via TomPaine.com, the former Secretary of Labor has a richly-deserved smackdown for the “astroturfer” protests dogging health care meetings now being held in congressional districts. As Reich describes the protests:

This isn’t grass roots. It’s Astroturf. The vans carry the logo “Americans for Prosperity,” one of the Washington front groups orchestrating the fight against universal health. They’re using Congress’s August recess to heckle Democratic representatives when they meet with their constituents, stage erszatz local anti-universal health rallies, and fill home-town media with carefully-crafted, market-tested messages demonizing healthcare reform.
The Republican party’s fingerprints are all over this. FreedomWorks, another group now Astroturfing its way around America, is chaired by former House Republican Leader Dick Armey. Texas Republican Pete Sessions, who chairs the National Republican Campaign Committee, says the days of civil town halls are “now over.” Key Republican funders are forking out big bucks. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose ties to the GOP are legion, announced in June it would “develop a sweeping national advocacy campaign encompassing advertising, education, political activities, new media and grassroots organizing” to battle universal health and other Democratic initiatives.

Reich says the protests are more about political opportunism than genuine convictions about health care policy:

Republicans have no other strategy. They can’t attack Obama personally because he’s just too popular. They’ve been incapable of coming up with their own plan for healthcare reform. The biggest healthcare interest groups — the AMA, private insurers, and Big Pharma — have publicly backed the major healthcare initiatives coming from congressional Democrats (although, I suspect, are quietly supporting the Republicans’ Astroturf blitz). Their “tea parties” in April were a flop. Their poll numbers are awful. Their major loudmouths — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannnity, and Dick Cheney — are not exactly attractive to most Americans. Their biggest nightmare, Sarah Pallin, is already on the campaign trail for 2012.

Despite all the bluster and publicity, Reich believes the astroturfers are doomed insofar as stopping health care reform altogether. But there is cause for concern about their effect on weaker-willed Democratic members of congress:

But this Republican strategy will fail. 2010 will not be 1994. There’s too much momentum behind universal health care right now to stop it. Yet the Republicans’ fake grass-roots campaign may cause some Democratic lawmakers to become even more nervous about universal health care than they already are, or at least give them an excuse to duck when it comes time to vote in September. The result will be a watered-down set of reforms that still leave millions of Americans uninsured and don’t slow healthcare costs. This is why Obama has to fight for this so hard over the August recess, why he has to be far more specific about what he wants in the bill, and why he can’t afford any more diversions — like the beer summit, or economic advisors who seem to open the door to middle-class tax increases.

if President Obama can stay on point, find more ways to tap his speechmaking skills in service to health care reform and mobilize the network of activists that helped to elect him, the astroturfers will find their rightful place as a minor footnote in the story of the successful struggle to bring genuine health security to America.

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.

Some of you may recall that there was a big brouhaha back in May over a Gallup poll that purported to show a big sudden shift towards the “pro-life” position on abortion. Conservatives made a lot of hay over it, even as lots of us started at the numbers and suggested the poll was almost certainly an outlier.
So now there’s a new Gallup poll out on abortion, and lo and behold, May’s pro-life tilt has disappeared. The purported 51%-42% majority for the pro-life position in May is now down to a statistically insignificant 47%-46% plurality–about where the balance was back in 2001. Moreover, the hard-core pro-life position holding that abortion should be illegal “in all circumstances” is back down to 18%, just two percentage points above the average for 1988-2008.
But Gallup’s analysis of the new poll tries to minimize the outlier status of the May survey by comparing the results of both to much earlier findings:

The average figures for Americans’ preferred abortion label across 18 Gallup surveys conducted from 1995 to 2008 are 49% for the “pro-choice” position and 42% for the “pro-life” position — a seven-point advantage for the “pro-choice” side. Both of Gallup’s 2009 surveys show more Americans identifying as “pro-life” than as “pro-choice” (although the one-point advantage for “pro-life” in the July 2009 survey is not statistically significant.)

So a drop in the pro-life plurality from 9 points to 1 point somehow confirms a shift towards the pro-life position, even though (as can be confirmed by a glance at the chart supplied by Gallup) the numbers have been remarkably steady–except for that May poll–since 1997.
Gallup also tries to establish a pro-life “tilt” by comparing the ratios of those favoring “legal in all circumstances” and “illegal in all circumstances” positions, and concluding that the plurality for “legal” versus “illegal” postures has declined from 12% from 1988-2008 to 3% in the latest survey. The analysis doesn’t note that support for “legal under some circumstances” has remained a largely steady majority from 1975 til now.
In other words, there’s a lot of sophistry going on in this stubborn claim that attitudes on abortion have recently shifted towards the “ban abortion” position. “Pro-choice” and “Pro-life” aren’t defined in any of these Gallup surveys, even though many Americans who support legalized abortion consider themselves “personally opposed,” or “personally” pro-life. The “legal under some cirumstances” position includes people who may favor tiny or even theoretical restrictions on abortion rights, and people who only support small exceptions to an abortion ban in cases of rape, incest, or threats to the life of the woman involved.
As John Sides, Nate Silver and Alan Abramowitz, among others, established during the debate in May, public opinion on abortion has shown a steady majority in favor of the status quo (legalized abortion with some restrictions) for decades. Gallup’s efforts to show otherwise, based on dubious self-identification among ill-defined, confusing categories and sideways squints at the data, haven’t changed the underlying realities.

It’s highly ironic but true that if health care reform eventually goes down to defeat in Congress, it will be in no small part due to opposition from supporters of a single-payer approach.
But I’m not talking about progressive supporters of, say, HR 676, the legislation to create Canadian-style government-provided national health insurance. No, it’s current beneficiaries of Medicare who are the big problem. As Matt Yglesias points out today, traditional Medicare is nothing but a single-payer system limited to seniors. It is far more generous than anything today’s uninsured would receive under “Obamacare.” It is certainly more “socialistic” than anything that would be provided by any of the legislation moving through Congress. But as polls show, seniors are the demographic category least likely to support health reform.
Why? Well, begin with the fact that seniors were also the demographic category least likely to vote for Barack Obama last November. They are generally well-insured (again, mainly through Medicare). And they have been the subject of a very intense misinformation campaign by health reform opponents, who have made scary claims about the impact of reform ranging from big cuts in Medicare to a national drive for euthanasia.
And let’s face it: there is an element of “I’ve got mine” thinking going on. As Michael Cohen pointed out recently, the entire health reform debate has encouraged Americans to do a personal cost-benefit analyis towards reform, and if they don’t immediately “do better,” they are not inclined to support change. Ironically, the element of the population already served by “government-dominated health care” may not be much interested in sharing those benefits with others.
In one-on-one communications with seniors, it’s probably worth making the point that health reform opponents are often people who if left to their own devices would privatize or abolish Medicare: not exactly the people you’d want to trust. But in the end, boosting support for reform among seniors may come down to an effort to convince them that it won’t hurt them, but will help their country.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist