The continuing arguments over congressional “town hall meetings” and protests against health reform have largely focused on the relative authenticity of the protests. Are the people chanting against Obama and health reform at these events motivated by spontaneous civic-minded feelings, or were they rounded up and deployed by “astroturfing” p.r. outfits paid by health industry lobbyists? The previous post by James Vega goes into the questions of authenticity in some detail.
But I have a different question: authentic or phony, should these protests matter to Congress? We are talking, after all, about relatively small groups of people vociferously expressing a point of view (yes, some ask “questions” of their representatives, but generally of the loaded and rhetorical sort). Should these expressions be given disproportionate weight, perhaps more than, say, the party or ideology of Members of Congress, their understanding of their districts’ needs, or surveys of public opinion?
The question pretty much answers itself if you don’t start with vague notions, as many conservative commentators have been offering lately, that the protesters somehow represent the heart and soul of America, or Concerned Citizenry, or the Middle Class, or some such other abstraction. It’s particularly amusing to hear those who doubt the significance of the protests being denounced as “elitists.” What could be more “elitist” than the belief that democratic procedures should be trumped by the appearance of a few hundred highly opinionated people at a public event?
I dunno–maybe my jaundiced attitude on this subject was developed when I worked for a United States Senator back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Yes, my boss held public forums pretty regularly, and yes, we carefully toted up calls and cards and letters sent from constituents on various issues of the day. But we were under zero illusion that these expressions of public opinion were necessarily representative of public opinion itself. At public events, the bane of every Member of Congress’ existence in those days were the so-called “Notch Babies,” a cohort of people born between 1917 and 1921 who were convinced they had been denied Social Security benefits that people born just before or after received. “Notch Babies” showed up at every available forum demanding financial reparations. Members and staff patiently listened to, and tried to reason with, these disgruntled citizens, with limited success. But you know what? Legislation to “fix” the “notch” was never enacted.
Elected representatives do have a responsibility to give constituents opportunities to ask them questions and express their own views, as a simple matter of accountability. But those voices should not be confused with the “voice of the people,” measured a bit more scientifically by elections, in which, as you may recall, the candidates clearly preferred by most if not all of the health reform protesters lost. This probably made them feel “disempowered” and perhaps even angry and inclined to answer that email and go out to shake fists at the Democrat Socialist representing them so badly in Congress. That’s all well and good, and any Member of Congress who can’t take heckling now and then is probably in the wrong line of work. But the idea that the chants and signs and head-counts at these highly selective events ought to sway votes on real issues is just wrong.

The current debate between Democrats and Republicans as to whether the teabag/health care reform protests are spontaneous “grass roots” events or totally artificial creations of “Astroturf” lobbying firms is now settling down into a familiar pattern of dueling partisan op-ed page commentaries, sound-bites and press releases. It is therefore an opportune moment to consider a somewhat more nuanced version of this question — exactly how are the local protesters and the lobbying firms really related.
On the one hand, since the April 15th Tea Parties it has been obvious that there is indeed a decentralized network of thousands of local conservative activists distributed across several hundred cities around the country. The 300,000 people that Nate Silver estimated participated in Tea Party events on April 15th are a small percentage of the nation’s total population, but they are a politically significant force because of their wide local distribution. After April 15th there was never any real doubt that these local activists would be ready and willing to mobilize around any of a number of conservative political causes.
Only a minority of these activists are directly paid by lobbying firms or are long-term active volunteers in conservative organizations or the Republican Party. In this very specific and limited sense, many individual protesters can indeed be called “authentic” rather than artificial.
But to properly judge the significance of the teabag/anti-health care protesters of today, it is more instructive to compare them with the student protest movement of the 1960’s. There are actually certain major similarities – and one profound difference.
Let’s look at the student protest movement first:

• On the broadest level the “student movement” of the 1960’s was united by opposition to the war in Vietnam but beyond that it was a kaleidoscopic mixture of outlooks, lifestyles and political perspectives. The student movement included straight traditional liberal “politicos”, extreme radicals and hippy-counterculture protesters whose outlook ranged from highly political to largely non-political. The issues that motivated the participants in the student movement — aside from Vietnam — included civil rights, the environment, legalization of drugs, control over the university itself as well as a vast range of other liberal to radical social and political concerns.
• What gave the “student movement” the powerful sense of solidarity and community that it undeniably had was a distinct social and cultural outlook and a sensibility rooted in the environment and culture of the university and the satellite culture of bookstores, coffee houses, music venues, co-op’s and so on that operated around it. There was a profound sense of shared cultural identity as students, youth and rebels against the dominant culture – a clear perception of “us versus “them”
• The student movement and culture created its own information channels – underground newspapers, alternative magazines and “comix” as well as a universally shared, deeply political music – both folk and rock — and an intense appreciation of the few kindred spirits like the Smothers Brothers who existed in the mainstream media.
• The student movement faced constant and deep divisions over tactics – divisions that evolved over the decade – first between peaceful demonstrations versus sit-ins and then between disruptive protests and more radical actions like “shutting down” the universities and the weathermen’s “days of rage”

In these four particular respects, the current teabag/health care protesters do indeed exhibit certain distinct similarities.

Read more…

At a time when right-wing conspiracy theories about health care reform and the Obama administration are running rampant, there’s a much less visible development that shows, with a particularly ironic twist, how such theories can affect more mundane matters like the appointment of a distinguished academic to relatively obscure White House job.
The academic in question is Harvard professor Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar generally considered to be a “centrist,” and an old friend of President Obama. His appointment to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has been repeatedly stalled by “holds” placed by Republican senators who are reacting to viral lobbying that suggests Sunstein is a gun-hating animal rights fanatic, mostly based on some out-of-context quotes from a 2004 book. Amanda Ripley has the story at The Daily Beast:

Asked about these arguments by senators at his May 12 nomination hearings, however, Sunstein explained that he is a strong believer in the Second Amendment, and he promised that he will not promote litigation on behalf of animals. Nevertheless, shortly after those hearings Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) put a hold on Sunstein’s nomination, citing the very concerns the nominee had addressed in his testimony. Meanwhile, sinister accusations about Sunstein’s radical left-wing agenda were whipping around the blogosphere, fueled by Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck on Fox News.

After a meeting with Sunstein, Chambliss released his hold, but two new ones have been issued, one by John Cornyn (subsequently released) and now a second by an anonymous senator.
The ironic twist in this case, as Ripley explains, is that Sunstein is the author of a well-known and very recent book about partisan and ideological conspiracy theories, entitled Going to Extremes. Sunstein’s hypothesis is that the “echo chamber” effect whereby ideologues associate and listen to like-minded people rather than to others tends to make objectively ludicrous assertions about “the enemy” subjectively credible.
That seems to be the case with the assertion that Obama chose Sunstein in order to help take away everybody’s guns and let Fido go to court. Thanks to the peculiarities of Senate procedures, while allow confirmable appointments to be held up by one senator, right-wing theories about this man they don’t really know anything about could eventually cost him a job for which he is abundantly qualified.

When it comes to the newspaper business, nothing draws attention faster than a discussion of free versus paid content. Journalism is full of those who believe that newspapers made a fatal mistake when they failed to demand a subscription from their readers the day they launched their first websites. But even if that were the case, their critics reply, after a decade of serving up free content, there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
Rupert Murdoch, though, is willing to try.
On an earnings call last week, the News Corp mogul told reporters and analysts:

We intend to charge for our news websites. The Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ.com is the world’s most successful paid news site and we will be using our profitable experience there and the resulting unique skills throughout News Corp to increase our revenues from all our content.

The new business model, he said, would be put in place over the course of the next fiscal year.
That announcement has spurned no small amount of debate already, but missing from much of the discussion is analysis of what Murdoch’s decision will look like in practice.
The Wall Street Journal has found a successful model for charging for subscriptions online. But its readership is fairly unique — made up of people who can afford to pay a premium for important information and then in turn derive value from that information in their own work. On top of that, online editors at WSJ.com make certain stories available to the entirety of the Internet for free, everyday.
Even the Wall Street Journal can’t escape the dominant business of the Internet — the link economy.
That fact makes it even less likely that an institution like the New York Post will be able to put the entirety of its content behind a paywall. There are simply too many other options for a reader who is willing to look for the same news for free somewhere else. Instead of setting up their own paywalls, Murdoch’s competitors are likely to advertise the fact that their content is completely open. And even if the New York Daily News were to start demanding a subscription fee as well, sites like Gawker — which have found a way to thrive using advertising dollars — will happily continue to churn out tabloid content for all its readers without ever asking them to pay a dime.
That’s the dilemma facing almost any news organization that tries to demand its readers pay for the privilege of accessing its website. There will always be competitors capable of producing similar news, who are willing to publish it for free. And many of them won’t be bloggers or news aggreagators. They’ll be traditional journalists who are willing to innovate.
Vivian Schiller is a former head of nytimes.com and the current CEO of National Public Radio. She ended the Time’s famous experiment with charging a premium for its op-ed page and has since overseen a redesign of NPR.com. She says that she is a “staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online.” She is working to position NPR to accept the web traffic of those who try.
Chris Ahearn — the president for media at Reuters — is another believer in free content. He has written that:

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Murdoch says that News Corp will vigorously defend its copyright against those who would excerpt and link to its content, but Ahearn writes that Reuters believes that kind of attention is fair use and welcomes the traffic it drives.
We shouldn’t write off this experiment before it starts, however.
No one has announced that the News Corps subscription service will function just like that of the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch only said that his company will begin to charge for its web content, and we don’t know the form it will take. Even if News Corp can’t escape the link economy, there is an opportunity for the company to offer different kinds of premium content through all of its online properties.
And this is an experiment whose time has come.
Fred Wilson — a venture capitalist who spends a lot of time thinking about the future of news — wrote that he welcomed Murdoch’s announcement.

We can talk until we are blue in the face about whether people will pay for news or not. Talk is cheap. Actions are not. So I’m eager to see the experiments begin.

Until someone actually launches a serious effort to make paid content work across a network, the arguments about the merits of free media are never going to end. This is a time for innovation in journalism, and News Corps will certainly devote smart people and serious resources to making this effort a success.
That success just might not look like what Rupert Murdoch expects.

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.