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"Conservatives are blowing it" on health care. So argues Marc Ambinder. Republicans are turning town halls into general "anti-Obama venting sessions," he twittered on Sunday. All that shouting-down was turning people off. "[T]his trend favors the left." It certainly wasn't going to cause the Blue Dogs, whose votes are crucial to reform, to vote against it.
Ambinder elaborated on Sunday's instant analysis today:
At this same hour last week, several of the President's top political advisers were meeting in a White House conference room to discuss the appearance, over the first weekend in August, of a coordinated effort to scare Democratic lawmakers who planned to attend town hall meetings into a state of panic. A week later, and the Atlantic's tricorder readings are picking up much calmer electromagnetic energy from the White House. ... Democrats are beginning to notice that opponents of health care reform have discredited themselves. They ramped up much too quickly. When smaller, conservative groups Astroturfed, they inevitably brought to the meetings the type of Republican activist who was itching for a fight and who would use the format to vent frustrations at President Obama himself. ...[T]the loudest voices tended to be the craziest, the most extreme, the least sensible, and the most easy to mock. ...
A coherent, organized effort would have recognized that the moment the media began to take sides was the moment that the entire enterprise could be damaged. The media, being a collection of different megaphones, reported on the town hall meetings in one of two ways, both damaging to Republicans. Either they credulously reported the louder, angrier voices (inherently damaging to Republicans in this case) or they reported on the political architecture of the town hall meetings, which plays down the substance of the protests.
Remember, the target audience for Republicans is Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. They won't panic unless they perceive organic anxiety. The White House's goal was to prevent the Blue Dogs from panicking. The swing constituents in these congressional districts aren't angry Republicans, and the Blue Dogs know this. They're political independents for whom the sanctity of the process is important. .... Unrestrained, these town hall meetings are going to turn off the type of voters Republicans most need to pressure Blue Dog Democrats -- independents who don't have red genes or blue genes.
These are good points--possibilities, at least. They're the possibilities you'd want to emphasize if you were, say, a Democratic aide talking to Marc Ambinder. But are they the most important possibilities? For example, anti-Obama activists indeed seemed uncouth and even thuggish in some early townhall MSM coverage. But how many people watch the MSM in the middle of August? (And anyway, Obama has now shown that these meetings aren't that uncivil!)
The bigger picture is whether support for health care, already too weak, builds over August or shrinks, no? Does Ambinder really think it's going to build simply because GOPs ramped up too quickly and got too loud last week? Doesn't the latter criticism, however valid, have the half-life of either a twitter item or Rahm Emanuel's attention span, whichever is shorter?
Ambinder seems to be operating on the premise that all Obama needs to do is convince a finite number of Blue Dogs to vote with him and a "comprehensive" health reform will pass--the way a few more delegates once enabled him to lock up the nomination. But lawmaking isn't that cleanly mathematical. When the general public sours on a bill, it affects more than a few swing votes. Unpopular bills have a way of magically bogging down in Congress even if a majority technically favors them and regardless of what happens with Senators and Congressman whose votes were once considered "crucial." (There were crucial swing Senators on Clinton's health care reform too, at one point. And on "comprehensive" immigration reform in 2007.) The White House aides whose temperature Ambinder's taking certainly have an interest in making it all seem like simply a battle for the Blue Dogs, because that seems more like a battle they can win.
If Ambinder were any easier to spin, he'd be a dreidl. ... Update: See also Patrick Ruffini. ...
P.S.: Ambinder says the GOP effort was not "coherent, organized." Doesn't that undercut the left talking point that it was secretly, centrally controlled by sophisticated DC corporate lobbyists? ...
P.P.S.: A more interesting, though equally spinnish, Ambinder post makes some subtle points about the real views of Obama health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's brother).
a) For example:
Hospice care costs more than hospital care in most circumstances, Emanuel found -- and so the end-of-life counseling that a doctor provides has little to do with saving money.
But if that's true, then why doesn't Obama calm everyone down by ostentatiously dropping the end-of-life- oriented parts of the bills? ...
b) I knew it was all Michael Sandel's fault! On Ezekiel Emanuel's "communitarian" world view:
Emanuel sketches out a "civic Republicanism" telos -- that is -- our health care decisions as a society should be yoked to a system that "promote[s] the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic." He notes that such a system would deny "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens."
Emanuel is setting up a contrast: our health care system today treats everyone equally -- as if they ought to have equal access to every possible procedure or treatment. To most of us, the status quo seems intuitively right. Everyone is equal -- equal under God -- Emanuel doesn't say this, but he might as well -- and therefore it would be evil to make distinctions. What Emanuel is arguing, here, is that this liberalism substitutes one goal -- equality -- for another -- a healthy society -- and that substitution may be responsible for the limited choices that policy-makers confront. [E.A]
Well, if you put it that way ... I'm for equality! For a health care system that "treats everyone equally," even if it's expensive. Against a system that would deny "services ... to individuals" who won't ever achieve "full and active participation .. in public deliberations."
Like I said, Sarah Palin had a point. ...
P.P.P.S.: Who said social equality would always be cheap? ... 8:59 P.M.
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Lehanism's Biggest Failure? Here's a thought: What if Obama said, to the health care protesters and worried seniors, "I understand your concerns" instead of letting his press secretary and party allies sneer at them (for being "well-dressed" or thugs or dupes who don't know "the facts," etc.)? Isn't that more the Obama Way, as opposed to the Lehanist "fight club" way? Obama might even fire Orszag order up a few changes in the proposed legislation to alleviate some of the seniors' worries. ... P.S.: We can always control long term costs in the long term--i.e. later--just as Orszag's curve-bending schemes, even if they pass intact, could always be repealed by a new Congress and President. These are all things that will happen at least ten years from now! They aren't worth blowing universal health care over. ... P.P.S.: Hillary Clinton's plan, if I recall, did not make the mistake of making a big deal of long-term medical cost control. Maybe if she were still in the Senate she'd be making that point. ...
Backfill: Marc Ambinder may want some of his twitters back one day. ... 10:32 P.M.
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Change in Blog Dress Code: Effective immediately, readers are requested not to read kausfiles in a suit. We are trying for a more artistic atmosphere. This ban also applies to the fancier kind of pajamas--you know, the ones with the piping. Thank you for your cooperation. 10:16 P.M.
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Sarah Palin had a point! [via JTlol] 1:30 A..M.
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Chuck Lane: House health bill's free end-care "consultations"--not so innocent! A subsidized and scripted "nudge" toward a DNR order from a white-coated authority figure. ... 1:28 A.M.
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WaPo: "[B]arely one-third of seniors support a health-care overhaul, several polls found." Why? They like Medicare as it is, they're scared of Obama's changes, and Obama has conspicuously failed to reassure them. ... But the Post's Ceci Connolly seems (at least at one point) to assume, Beltway-style, that seniors' fears must be due to the $563 billion in Medicare savings over the next decade, as opposed to Orszagist curve-bending after that. ...
P.S: Connolly reports the White House is considering "reaching out to skeptical seniors" through a ''myth-busting' Web site." That'll do it! Game over! ... Even assuming a web site could have a big impact, "myth-busting" sites don't tamp down paranoia,in my experience. They stoke it. If an answer is only 85% satisfying, the other 15% suddenly seems very significant. Take Obama's recent attempt to reassure Karen Tumulty on the "rationing" question:
[T]his is my point, I think that there's this perception that you either have rationing that is very stringent and sort of makes you wait for months before you can get your cancer treated or you can never get your knee replaced, right, all the horror stories you hear from the British model or the Canadian system that people who are opposed to reform always trot out. Or, alternatively, you just have this bloated system in which we don't even try to make it rational, we just sort of live with what we have. And what I'm trying to suggest is, is that there's this huge space in between where we could make the system much more efficient, much more cost-effective, make people much healthier, and still not have to resort to some of the rationing that people are fearful of. ..
So we don't go all the way to Britain. We go halfway to Britain! ... Obama can't bring himself to say we won't ration. But we won't resort to "some" of the rationing. ... Reassuring! ... 1:26 A.M.
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For @jayrosen_nyu: What was so bad about the L.A. Times' "wikitorial"? How was it "arrogant"? My impression is they shut it down because they got hacked, not because it wasn't a potentially interesting experiment. ... Update: Rosen's response. ... Who's arrogant again? ...
P.S.: Actual kf Twitter feed is here. ...1:25 A.M.
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Monday, March 9, 2009
When I read the headline "Limbaugh: Kennedy Will Be Dead By the Time Health Care Bill Passes," I just sort of assumed that Limbaugh had said something like "Kennedy will be dead by the time the health care bill passes." Those talk radio hosts always have to generate controversy. etc. Here's what he actually said:
We have a banking and a credit crisis. Obama and his team had a show gathering to focus on the problem, but they have done little, if anything, to so much as start fixing it. Any leader would keep focused on fixing that mess, but that's not the stuff that makes approval numbers rise, because there really isn't much he can do except shift people's attitudes about it.
So he's moved on to health care. This is highly visible, it's news leading, gets a great focus, plus it has the great liberal lion Teddy Kennedy pushing it. Before it's all over it will be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill. So when you have the banking and the credit problem still unfixed and with health care still unfixed, they'll move on to another caring story: alternate energy -- I don't know; your guess is as good as mine.
Not quite the same thing, is it? Limbaugh's not saying, "Nyah, nyah, the bill will take so long to pass that Kennedy will be dead." I'm not sure he's even saying Kennedy will die--couldn't you have a "memorial" to him while he's alive? He's mainly arguing that Obama will try to boost his approval by playing to emotions and "caring," and that he and his allies will use sympathy for the illness of the "great liberal lion" to generate support for a health care bill (as they undoubtedly will). ... I don't agree with Limbaugh's argument--I think Obama wants to actually pass health care, not just distract attention from his failure to solve the banking crisis. But the statement isn't really disrespectful of Kennedy. If anything, it's the other way around.
Shame on me for believing a HuffPo headline.
P.S.: The whole Begala-Carville coordinated campaign against Limbaugh seems misguided when Obama is supposed to be leading the nation out of crisis (see Warren Buffett's comments, below). Quite apart from whether it's a good idea to take one of your smarter opponents and build him up, the campaign seems petty, partisan and poll-driven--not designed to produce any kind of national pulling-together. If Begala weren't around I'd suspect Chris Lehane of thinking it up. ... 8:11 P.M.
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008
You have to wonder, can the good Bill Gates is doing with his Foundation ever match the suffering caused by Vista? ...
P.S.:
October, 2001 --Windows XP launches. One month later, economic expansion begins..
January, 2007--Windows Vista launches. Ten months later, economy plunges into recession.
Coincidence? I'm not so sure! ...10:25 P.M.
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UAW Offers Concessions in Bailout Effort: The key paragraph--
At the meeting, the union did not discuss wage and benefit concessions for active employees, said Jeff Everett, a local Chrysler president.
One problem with the Wagner Act is that surviving in a modern economy requires fast decision-making, but negotiations with unions take time (and energy). Like pulling teeth takes time (and energy). You sometimes wonder whether boosters of Wagner Act unionism are familiar with the concept of "too little too late." ... Update: AP reports that UAW leaders did vote to "let the Detroit leadership begin renegotiating elements of landmark contracts signed with the automakers last year, a move that could lead to wage concessions." UAW President Ron Gettelfinger "stopped short of saying the union would reopen contract talks with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. but said it would be willing to return to the bargaining table to change some terms." But "any modifications would still have to be ratified by local union members." [E.A.] ... Gettelfinger blamed a "perception problem" for (in AP's words) "a negative view of the union." The union is buying TV ads to counteract it. ... 3:44 P.M.
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A Knack for Diplomacy: What attitude do the Hillary people bring to the State Department? I didn't think her spokesman Phillipe Reines could top his obnoxious and nonsensical response to the Gerth and Van Natta report that Hillary had secretly eavesdropped on her enemies ( “We don’t comment on books that are utter and complete failures”). But he's come close with his spin on the legal argument--a seeming winner*** if you actually believe the Constitution's language--that Hillary is barred from becoming Secretary of State by the Emoluments Clause:
This is a Harvard Law grad nominating a Yale Law grad here, so all parties involved have been cognizant of this issue from the outset,” [E.A.]
Well all right then! No clinging to guns and God in this administration! ... I'm sure they spent a lot of time on the Emoluments Clause at Harvard and Yale.
Why do Hillary's people think this smug, sneering approach** is productive? Because of its success in winning them the nomination? Think how well it will work in the India-Pakistan crisis! ...
**--The technical term is "Lehanism," coined after its most conspicuous practitioner used it to put Al Gore and Wesley Clark in the White House. ....
Update: Eugene Volokh cites two law professors who agree that the Emoluments Clause means trouble for Hillary. Volokh himself thinks the wording is "ambiguous," but he didn't go to Harvard or Yale so ignore him. ... [via Plank]
***--Text originally said "slam dunk" rather than "seeming winner." Prof. Volokh convinced me that it isn't a slam dunk. You shouldn't call anything a "slam dunk" anymore anyway. ...12:23 A.M.
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Tuesday, December 2, 2008
From the NYT account of the GOP runoff win in Georgia:
Many voters interviewed Tuesday said the balance of power in the Senate had been an important factor in their choice of a candidate.
"If you can’t have a little back-and-forth arguing between the parties, then the party in power will make mistakes,” said Ron Zukowski, a computer expert in Atlanta who voted for Mr. Chambliss. “This was my chance to say no, and I said no.”
Hmm. Didn't Mike Kinsley say that "almost no one" thinks like that? I think he did! (He was arguing voters don't choose dividied government, not that they don't choose undivided-but-still-filibusterable government. But it's the same mindset.) ...
P.S.: What's at stake: It's important that Democrats fail to achieve a filibuster-proof Senate. Chambliss' victory assures this. But what's most important is that Nate Silver turn out to be wrong about something, anything, however small. Otherwise he will have to be worshipped as a god. Was he wrong about Georgia? Here's the best I could find in a quick search:
"We think when it's all said and done Martin will lose by around 10 points."--Silver's blog partner Sean Quinn, as the returns came in. The actual margin is looking more like 14 points.
"The question is, will more Chambliss voters drop off or will more Martin voters drop off? That's the unknown. In wave years I'd tend to bet with the wave party, but I'm nowhere near ready to conclude Martin will win."--Quinn again.
[I]f the polls going into December 2nd say that Saxby Chambliss is going to win the runoff by 7 points, you shouldn't be a but surprised if Jim Martin actually wins instead. And you also shouldn't be surprised if Chambliss wins by 20."--Silver on Nov. 13. Final polls had Chamblis ahead by 4-7 points.
Not wrong enough! Eyes turn to Minnesota, where Silver has a hostage to fortune in the form of his confident prediction (in a TV talk with Arianna Huffington) regarding Al Franken:
[H]e`ll pick up votes in this recount.
Also his Nov. 23 projection "Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes," Unfortunately, it is still possible Franken will win the recount by 27 votes. ...11:46 P.M.
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