Progressive political blogs are abuzz with the fallout from the vote expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. You can read about it all over the pro-democratic blogosphere.
But Glenn Greenwald has the most persuasive argument that Dems who voted against the FISA expansion need fear no political repercussions. As Greenwald explains in his Salon post “Attention Democrats: GOP fear-mongering does not work“:

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I’m about to do a series of posts about the YearlyKos conference in Chicago this weekend (having chosen against weekend blogging, which hardly anyone was going to read).
It was quite an event, aside from the presidential forum on Saturday. The most frequent comment I heard, uttered by confirmed Kossacks and more mainstream types alike, was that the conference reflected the maturing of the netroots from an anguished collection of self-conscious outsiders into an accepted constituency group (overlapping with many others) of the Democratic Party. The focus was less on intra-party disputes than on the question of how to win in 2008. And the atmosphere was more ecumenical and less left-triumphalist than I expected. These are all relative terms, and I’m not suggesting all or even most of the participants have lost their edge, for good or for ill. But the whole thing felt like a normal and healthy Democratic gathering–with about 800 laptops. (I’ll mention a few stranger moments as I go along).
As indicated in my Friday post, the first thing I attended in Chicago was a panel on public opinion. If you read the previous staff post about Democracy Corps’ latest strategy memo, you’ll get a sense of what Stan Greenberg had to say: the basic dynamics of public opinion going into 2008 are actually better than those Democrats enjoyed two years ago. Indeed, said Greenberg, the deterioration of Bush’s approval ratings and the intensification of “wrong track” sentiment has accelerated more since 2006 than it did between 2004 and 2006. All seven of the targeted Republican Senators up in 2008 have terrible “re-elect” numbers. And given the very strong position of the “Class of 2006” of House Democrats, and the persistent vulnerability of many Republicans, additional House gains look plausible as well.
On the same panel, Mark Blumenthal, a.k.a., the Mystery Pollster, focused on the Democratic presidential nominating contest, and stressed the exceptional volatility of public opinion in the pre-primary period, with John Kerry’s astonishing rise in 2004 being just one of many historical examples. One particularly interesting nugget he offered was the hypothesis that Iowa and New Hampshire’s impact represents an inchoate feeling that voters there have paid greater attention to the candidates than those in “later” states, and essentially serve a vetting process for the rest of the country.
In the Q&A after this panel, one audience member asked about the disconnect between Hillary Clinton’s popularity among rank and file Democrats, and her lack of support in the blogosphere. Chris Bowers jumped on the question with encyclopedic thoroughness, going through the demographic characteristics of progressive bloggers (disproportionately white, male, upper-income, self-identified liberal, and secular) and concluding: “If the Democratic electorate looked like the blogosphere, Hillary Clinton would be in big trouble.”

A new DCorps strategy memo by James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Ana Iparrraguirre, “2008 House Battle Moves Into Republican Territory,” discusses DCorps second battleground survey of the 70 most competitive congressional districts. The authors see class of ’06 Dems holding solid leads and Republican House members lagging by an average of 5 percent — for a net Democratic gain of 20 seats as a realistic goal. “There really could be another wave election,” say the authors.
As for the Senate. MyDD’s Todd Beeton has an interesting post, “How Realistic Is A 60 Seat Majority?” Beeton reports that MoveOn’s Washington Director Tom Mattzie sees a path to a 60-seat fillibuster-proof majority. Want a little icing on the cake? David Brooks, never unduly optimistic about Democratic prospects, said on the Chris Matthews show that the GOP is in such bad shape that Dems could run congress for a decade.

I’m in Chicago for the next three days, at the YearlyKos gathering of bloggers and other netroots folk. It’s quite an assemblage, with a massive, complex schedule of workshops, panels and roundtables, requiring a color-coded schedule that requires several moments to figure out. The big national news will be the appearance of presidential candidates at a forum tomorrow. But most of the candidates are also holding smaller, break-out sessions. When I registered, Obama’s and Edwards’ had already closed out.
I’ve just entered a panel discussion called Public Opinion Matters, featuring TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg, independent pollster Joel Wright, OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers, MoveOn.org’s Tom Mattzie, and Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal (a.k.a. The Mystery Pollster). It was (or at least seemed like) a mile walk up various escalators at McCormick Place to the appropriate meeting room, but there is a great view of Lake Michigan for those who tire of poll numbers.
I’ll file a report a bit later.

Rudy Giuliani’s loud if not very specific comments on health care policy yesterday pretty clearly signify an ever-greater polarization of the two parties on this subject, and perhaps a hightening of the issue’s importance in the 2008 presidential campaign. Giuliani’s hard-right position on health care also reinforces my earlier argument that Democrats need to make up their minds where to draw the lines between Ds and Rs on health care.
Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn skillfully dissects RudyCare, and demolishes it as a serious effort towards universal health care. It’s really just a restatement of George W. Bush’s thoroughly discredited “thinking” on the subject, accompanied by massive demagoguery aimed at tapping conservative hatred of Michael Moore and of “Old Europe.”
The Progressive Policy Institute’s Dave Kendall has a piece up at the DLC’s Ideas Primary site going a bit further, stressing the Giuliani-Bush approach’s atavistic, Social Darwinist demands for individual health care purchasing.
So why is the supposed “centrist” Rudy Giuliani embracing this position, which he would undoubtedly have mocked as mayor of New York? Aside from the obvious fact that he wants to burnish his credentials for economic conservatism in order to obscure his less-than-conservative credentials on cultural issues, Rudy may be preparing a major Assault From the Right on Mitt Romney over the health care plan the Mittster signed in Massachussets, which heavily depends on “socialist” collective purchasing schemes. This could get tricky for Giuliani, complicating his efforts to get an endorsement from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed a health care plan similar to Romney’s. More generally, it would create the interesting spectacle of the two leading GOP “moderates” battling to outflank each other on the Right on different sets of issues.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d repeat that the GOP’s lurch to the Radical Right on health care forces Democrats to make a fundamental choice: Do we accept the universal/non-universal or government/private distinctions GOPers are seeking to make between their health care plans and ours? Or do we focus on exposing the GOP’s fundamental hostility to even the status quo’s efforts to encourage pooled purchasing and community rating?
The answer may depend on whether Mitt Romney or someone else is the Republican nominee, but it’s not too early to begin thinking about it now.

Good News for Democrats, as well as America’s kids. The U.S. House of Reps. has passed legislation providing health care coverage for 4+ million uninsured children in low-income families. The legislation which passed by a vote of 225-204 (10 Dems opposed, 5 Republicans supporting), also prevents cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and is partly financed by a 45 cent per pack increase in the federal cigarette tax (NYT coverage here).
Of course President Bush has threatened a veto, should similar legislation pass the Senate, which will provide a clear demonstration of which party gets it that health security — especially for all American children — is a cornerstone of true national security. Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-MD) said it well: “If America is the greatest country in the world, then all of our children should have health insurance.”
Despite Bush’s threatened veto, the principles undergirding the legislation enjoy the support of the American people, explains Ruy Teixeira, in his recent post on the topic at The Century Foundation‘s web pages:

The public, on the other hand, seems very supportive of expanding health coverage for children and even thinks that we should make such coverage universal. A June Democracy Corps poll last month found that almost half the public—47 percent—chose “expand health coverage to every child in the U.S. through the existing State Children’s Health Insurance Program” as one of the top two priorities that Congress should focus on in the coming year. They chose this more than they chose any other option, including immigration reform (36 percent), promoting alternative energy and energy conservation (29 percent), reforming the alternative minimum tax (29 percent), reforming lobbying (15 percent), and putting labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (15 percent).
One objection that has been made to the proposed bills is that increased cigarette taxes would provide some of the funding for the program expansion. Would that faze the public? Not according to a May 2007 CNN poll. Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of the public surveyed said they would favor “a national health insurance program for all children under the age of 18, even if this would require higher taxes,” compared to just 25 percent who dissented.

Back in January, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined by a group of children of House members, called the House to order, “in the name of America’s children.” Predictably, the GOP accused her of grandstanding. Apparently she meant business.