Dierdre Walsh has a CNN.com report, “‘Blue Dog’ Democrats may block health care bill,” quoting a Blue Dog House leader Mike Ross (D-AR) on the Democrats’ health care reform legislation

“We remain opposed to the current bill, and we continue to meet several times a day to decide how we’re going to proceed and what amendments we will be offering as Blue Dogs on the committees.”…Asked whether the Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce are considering voting as a group against the bill if it remains unchanged, Ross replied, “absolutely.”

According to Walsh, the Blue Dogs are concerned about inadequate cost containment in the bill, as well as new mandates on small businesses in the bill and a failure to fix inequitable health care costs for rural physicians and hospitals. As the bill reads now, small businesses with payrolls less than $250K would be exempt from penalties for not providing health insurance, and presumably, their employees could access the “public option.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee takes up the bill today. Walsh reports that Dems have a 36-23 edge over Republicans on the committee, although 8 of the Dems are Blue Dogs. If 7 Dems vote with the Republicans, it could stop the bill from advancing.
Perhaps the $250K penalty cut-off could be raised to $350K to win the support of some of the Blue Dogs and the bill could be lightly tweaked to accommodate other of their concerns. Meanwhile, however, Nate Silver has a FiveThirtyEight.com post “Blue Dog Districts Need Health Care More than Most” which ought to make Blue Dogs think a little more carefully before jumping on the GOP’s obstructionist bandwagon. Silver notes an interesting statistic regarding the 48 congressional districts represented by Democrats that voted for John McCain:

The median Congressional District has an uninsured population of 14.6 percent, according to Gallup’s data (the average is slightly higher at 15.5 percent). Of the 48 McCainocrat districts, 31 (roughly two-thirds) have an above-median number of uninsured.

Silver then lists the 31 districts, identifies their representatives and ‘Blue Dog’ status and the percentage of residents of each district who are uninsured. Silver’s conclusion:

The bottom line is that the health care bill, among other things, is designed to help out the poor and the uninsured, and somehow or another will tax the rich in order to do so. I can understand if, say, Jason Altmire from PA-4 wants to vote against the health care bill. His district is suburban and pretty well off, and almost everyone there has health insurance. But Mike Ross of the Arkansas 4th, where almost 22 percent of the population is uninsured? This is a bill designed to help districts like his. And the same goes for most of the other Blue Dogs. A lot of the time, these guys are stuck in a tough spot between their party and their constituents. Here, those interests are mostly aligned. If a lot of the people on the top half of this list are voting against health care, first check the lobbying numbers, and then check to see if they’re still in office four years hence.

Blue Dogs will understandibly seek modifications in the bill that address their constituents’ concerns. But they would do well to give Silver’s post a thoughtful read before voting to maintain the status quo.

One of the hardiest lines of argument in American politics, going back for decades now, is that public opinion research, or more colloquially, “the polls,” are a threat to good government, accountability, principled leadership, or even democracy itself. Few insults carry as much wallop as the claim that a politician or a political party is “poll-driven.” And in sharp distinction from most anti-information campaigns in public life, hostility to polls is not a populist preoccupation, but an elite phenomenon.
Last week Conor Clarke offered a vintage summary of the no-polls position at The Atlantic Monthly. Clarke’s fundamental contention is this:

News organizations are supposed to provide information that holds government accountable and helps the citizenry make informed decisions on Election Day. Polls turn that mission on its head: they inform people and government of what the people already think. It’s time to do away with them.

Note Clarke’s planted axiom about the purpose of “news” as a one-way transmittal belt of information to the citizenry. Under this construction, government feedback from the public is limited to the “informed decisions” made on election day. This is not terribly different from George W. Bush’s taunting remark in 2005 that he didn’t need to pay attention to critics of his administration because he had already faced his “accountability moment” in November of 2004.
Putting that dubious idea aside, Clarke goes on to make three more specific arguments for “getting rid of polls:” they reinforce the “tyranny of the majority; they misstate actual public preferences (particularly when, as in the case of polling on “cap and trade” proposals; they public has no idea what they are being asked about); and they influence public opinion as much as they reflect it.
In a response to Clarke at the academic site The Monkey Cage, John Sides goes through these three arguments methodically, and doesn’t leave a lot standing. He is particularly acerbic about the argument that polls misstate actual public opinion:

[P]eople tell pollsters one thing, but then do another. Sure: some people do, sometimes. Some say they go to church, and don’t. Some say they voted, and didn’t. All that tells us is to be cautious in interpreting polls….
So what do we do? We triangulate using different polls, perhaps taken at different points or with different question wordings. We supplement polls with other data — such as voter files or aggregate turnout statistics. Polls can tell us some things that other data cannot, and vice versa.

In this response Sides hits on the real problem with poll-haters: the idea that suppressing or delegitimizing one form of information (and that’s all polls are, after all) will somehow create a data-free political realm in which “pure” or “real” or “principled” decisions are made. Willful ignorance will somehow guarantee honor.
As Sides suggests, the real problem isn’t polling, but how the information derived from polling is interpreted and combined with other data–from election returns to weekly and monthly economic indicators–to influence political behavior. And that’s true of the variety of polls themselves. We’re all tempted to cite poll results that favor our predetermined positions. But the use of questionable polls for purposes of spin (e.g., the ever-increasing dependence of conservatives on Rasmussen’s outlier issue polling) is, as Sides says, an issue of interpretation rather than of some inherent flaw in polling:

Clarke is right about this: we are awash in polls. The imperative for journalists and others is to become more discerning interpreters. The imperative for citizens is to become more discerning consumers. When conducted and interpreted intelligently, we learn much more from polls than we would otherwise. And our politics is better for it.

So instead of fighting against the dissemination of polls like Odysseus lashing himself to the mast to keep himself from heeding the Sirens, political observers would be better advised to listen more carefully and process the information more thoughtfully. The desire for less information is a habit no one as smart as Conor Clarke should ever indulge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN Political Editor Mark Preston has a report on the new DNC/Organizing for America health care reform television ad that starts running today. The 30-second ad has a simple message, targeting “fellow Democrats and centrist Republicans” in 8 states: AR, IN, FL, LA, ME, ND, NE, and OH for two weeks, urging them to “support health care reform this year.” According to Preston,

The ad running in the eight states does not mention the senators by name, but it does ask viewers to call Capitol Hill, and provides the telephone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Two of the states, Arkansas and North Dakota, are represented by a pair of Democratic senators, while the six remaining states are represented by centrist Democrats and Republicans. The commercial that is running nationally follows the same script, but it does not ask people to call their senators.

The ad features five Americans describing how their health care problems are being neglected by the current system, and Preston provides the ad’s script, as follows:

“It’s Time”
Woman 1: My son has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He’s four.
Man 1: When I lost my job, I lost my health insurance too.
Woman 2: My health insurance wouldn’t fully cover me when I got sick.
Man 2: My father in-law walks with a limp because he didn’t have health care.
Woman 3: My husband’s job covered us, until he was laid off.
Man 1: It’s time.
Woman 2: It’s time.
Man 2: It’s time.
Woman 1: It’s time for health care reform.
VO: The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform. Join the fight: healthcare.barackobama.com
[State Version]: CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform.

You can watch the ad here. Thus far, most of the hundred or so comments following Preston’s post are less than insightful.

Early in a campaign cycle, fundraising statistics can sometimes speak volumes about how a particular contest is likely to develop, and even which candidates will decide in the end against running. Politico’s Josh Kraushaar has a rundown today on the big fundraising “stories” for 2010.
A few stand out. Senate candidate Charlie Crist of Florida may be profoundly unpopular with conservatives in his party, but he’s crushing primary rival Marco Rubio on the fundraising front. Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning is still turning in some of the most anemic fundraising numbers in the country. Joe Sestak has more than four million dollars in the bank for his yet-to-be-officially-announced primary challenge to party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter. And Republicans who are marking down a Senate seat in Delaware as a likely gain next year might want to notice how little money their supposed candidate, Rep. Mike Castle, is raising, often a sign of an impending retirement rather than a big race.

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board.
Political observers follow presidential approval ratings obsessively and often interpret them in terms of the daily drama of this or that issue or trend. But amidst much speculation about the stability of Barack Obama’s base of support, it’s useful to compare his approval ratings in various demographic groups with their support for him last November.
An examination of recent Gallup Poll data shows that Americans’ opinions about the job Barack Obama is doing as president closely mirror the results of the 2008 election. The President’s 58% approval rating in the July 6-12 Gallup Poll is slightly higher than the 53% share of the vote that he received last November, but his approval rating among various demographic groups correlates almost perfectly with his vote share among the same groups.
The following figure shows the relationship between Obama’s 2008 vote share in 24 demographic groups and his current approval rating in the same groups: the correlation between the two is a near perfect .99.
The implication of these results is that when it comes to opinions about the President, little has changed in the past eight months. Despite the continued weakness of the economy and the steady drumbeat of attacks on the President’s policies from the right, the coalition of groups that put him in office last November remains solidly behind him today.

Yesterday’s staff post on the Sotomayor hearings noted in an update that the apparent Republican decision to focus on the Ricci case and affirmative action was a rather edgy strategy given the risk of alienating proud Latino supporters of the woman conservatives are mocking as the “wise Latina.”
The hazard of this strategy was emphasized today in a quote from NDN’s Simon Rosenberg that appeared in a long Dan Balz WaPo article about the Sotomayor hearings:

If during the next few weeks the Republicans appear to be playing politics with race rather than raising legitimate issues about Sotomayor’s judicial approach, it could reinforce the deep impression that the Republican Party’s anachronistic and intolerant approach to race and diversity is making them less capable of leading a very different and more racially diverse America of the early 21st century.

Simon’s an astute observer of Latino political opinion, and he’s right: if Republicans really are wary of the impression of appearing to be some sort of white identity politics party, they sure are playing with fire if they make the Sotomayor hearings about affirmative action. It would be smarter for them to stay in the dog-whistle territory of abstractions about “judicial activism,” which the unhappy Cultural Right will understand as a reference to Roe v. Wade, instead of blundering into a debate over race and diversity that will raise temperatures in a way that is almost guaranteed to increase the already formidable Latino solidarity with Sotomayor, and hostility to the GOP.

In his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ on the web pages of the Center for American Progress, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira reports that public support of the Global Warming Bill is on track as the legislation makes its way to the desk of President Obama. According to Teixeira, a consensus has emerged in support of the “broad goal and approach” of the legislation, otherwise known as “The American Clean Energy and Security Act:”

…75 percent of respondents in a mid-June ABC News/Washington Post poll said the federal government should “regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars, and factories in an effort to reduce global warming.” Just 21 percent disagreed. Moreover, when those who agreed that the federal government should regulate greenhouse gases were asked if they would still support this if it raised the price of the things they buy, 80 percent of that group still said yes.

Teixeira noted “majority support (52-42)” for a “cap-and-trade approach” to limiting greenhouse gas in the poll, while acknowledging that the complexity of the proposal may confuse some of the poll respondents. Nonetheless, Teixeira explains that there is a strong consensus for pro-active legislation, with the U.S. in the lead:

…The public believes it is necessary to move ahead on the climate change bill, even if the rest of the world is not moving at the same time. Almost three-fifths (59 percent) said the United States should take action on global warming even if other countries such as China and India are doing less to address the issue, compared to 38 percent who thought either we should take action only if these countries take equally aggressive action (20 percent) or we should do nothing (18 percent).

The legislation will face some challenges ahead as it moves through the congressional process. But President Obama can rest assured that he will have plenty of support when he signs the Global Warming Bill.

Oh, so now we understand why Sarah Palin needed to quit her job as governor of Alaska: she had a higher calling to educate those of us in the Lower 48 about energy policy, beginning with her op-ed in the Washington Post today.
Jon Chait of The New Republic offers the most succinct analysis of Palin’s effort:

Her subject matter is the House bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Palin argues against it by ignoring the entire question of carbon dioxide emissions and instead arguing that expensive energy is bad and cheap energy is good.

That’s pretty much it. You’d never know from Palin’s piece that there’s any controversy about carbon or climate change; it’s all about domestic energy supplies, and hey, we’ve got plenty if the “bureaucrats” and “liberals” would just get out of the way! Westerners “literally sit on mountains of oil and gas.” There’s also lots of coal, which is getting mighty clean these days, and you can build a nuclear power plant most anywhere! Experts–meaning the people of Alaska–get it even if “liberals” don’t:

Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

The op-ed is a pretty good example of what Peggy Noonan was talking about the other day in her extraordinary Wall Street Journal jeremiad aimed at Palin:

She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

And that’s what is annoying about Palin today. On one of the premier soap-boxes in the world, on a subject she supposedly knows well, and at a time when she could really use some evidence of thoughtfulness, she pens this silly cardboard attack on people and positions that don’t actually exist, while ignoring the actual case for cap-and-trade, other than the juvenile jibe of calling it “cap-and-tax.”
I sure hope that this isn’t what Palin has in store for us in the months ahead.