The Daily Musing | By Sahil Kapur

Got to admit it's gettin better... (my new home)

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:52:00 +0000

As of Monday I'll have the great fortune of joining Raw Story's enterprising team of journalists as a DC investigative reporter. www.RawStory.com. Bookmark it :)

This weekend completes exactly six months of post-college vacationing, interning, traveling, freelancing and job-hopping for me. Since graduating from Claremont McKenna College in May of this year, I've worked as a reporting and editorial intern for the Huffington Post, a research associate for the Frontier Group, a campaign fellow for U.S. PIRG, a part-time blog editor for HuffPost, and a freelance writer for The Guardian, Campus Progress and a couple other zines.

The internships weren't sustainable, and the prior jobs just not quite right. But this one's perfect for me -- the position and the organization -- and despite some unsettling phases, the worst job market since the 1930s (including the worst journalism market probably ever) has treated me surprisingly well. While my primary focus from hereon will be providing my best investigative reporting content for Raw Story, I'll continue writing op-eds about issues I care about, mostly for my two favorites -- HuffPost and The Guardian.

Unfortunately that means my blogging here will probably become more sporadic, but be sure to check back now and then as I'll be posting links often.

Abortion: health care reform's poison pill?

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Jean Hannah Edelstein says I'm underplaying the abortion folly:

This step forward for healthcare threatens to be a significant step back for American women, whose rights, the vote confirmed, are still regarded as a political bargaining chip. []

Commenting on the outcome of the vote, Sahil Kapur writes that the inclusion of an amendment restricting coverage for abortions makes the passage of Obama's healthcare bill a "bittersweet victory" – a profound understatement. Authored by congressman Bart Stupak, who is regarded an anti-choice Democrat, the amendment is designed to prevent women from having any recourse to public funding to pay for the termination of a pregnancy that is not necessitated by rape, incest or endangerment to the women's life. This isn't bittersweet. It's outrageous.

Suffice it to say you won't find any argument from me in favor of Stupak's amendment (or any anti-choice provision, for that matter). It's unjust, unfair and serves only to make it tougher for women to navigate the nightmarish health care system. But it's more than likely that the bill would've failed without it, and now that that's passed we could be confronted with the big question: should health care reform die over this?

I just don't see Blue Dogs and red state Dems (like this guy) risking supporting something that could be seen as pro-choice. It's too hot an issue for them, and they fear nothing more than evangelicals and Republicans painting them as latte-drinking baby-killers when they're up for reelection. And, they not so keen on the bill even with the anti-abortion amendment -- somebody told them it's "liberal" and to them that means run for cover.

The issue does cut both ways -- 41 pro-choice House members have explicitly said they won't tolerate the anti-choice measure. And they're right to be indignant. But these people tend to be more reasonable. Will this really motivate them to kill health care reform and condemn tens of thousands year after year to continue going bankrupt and/or dying, while premiums continue to skyrocket, benefits decline, small businesses get shafted, and the middle class continues to shrink?

Or maybe there's a middle ground -- some way to keep the status quo on abortion, which Obama and Dems want to do -- but it's very dicey. The bill will create health care exchanges inclusive of private insurers, and the exchanges ban abortion coverage. And, those receiving federal subsidies for health care (lower-income folks) also won't have the option. The poorest are already screwed because Medicaid doesn't cover it, nor will its expansion (a bitter irony because these are the ones most in need of terminating unwanted pregnancies). So, how do you fix that while protecting the anti-choice records of conservaDems?

There could be a way, but unless the reforms are complete restructured (which I highly doubt will fly at this point) the policy wonk in me has no answer.

Ezra Klein is disingenuous

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:12:00 +0000

In the best possible way:

Lieberman says he cannot support the public option because he is worried about the national debt. But the public option, in its current form, shows some hope of reducing the deficit, and has no mechanism for increasing it. Any such mechanism would need to be added later, and would be subject to the filibuster.
Lieberman isn't much of a liberal, but he's not a stupid man. I'd really like to hear his explanation for how the public option increases the deficit. Maybe he sees something I don't.

(Emphasis mine.) Ezra's doing what good journalists do -- making no logical jumps, assuming lawmakers are honest until a smoking gun proves otherwise, and searching for a good-faith rationale for Lieberman's irrational conclusion. But he's too way smart not to know what's really going on: that Lieberman simply isn't being sincere.

For one, Lieberman's initial rationale of opposition against the public option was that it didn't have the votes to pass, so let's not try to do too much. Remember that? Then, since he realized toying with a filibuster threat would win him the limelight, which we all know he loves, he's vigorously pursued it. He glowingly told Connecticut reporters last week: "I feel relevant." So now his attitude is he's going to oppose a public option, or at least continue threatening to do so, and gin up whatever rationale allows him to make the case -- even if his explanations, such as they've been, make no sense.

I'm not a mind-reader, but those paying attention can quite easily piece this one together. And that's how I know Ezra knows this -- he's as incisive about all of this as anyone.

Why Republicans fear health care refrom

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:09:00 +0000

A little more on this.

While I've long thought climate change will be a tougher issue for Democrats than health care -- and I still do, overall -- there is one thing about health care reform that makes it politically trickier than every other issue: it threatens to really hurt the Republican Party like nothing else. Why?

It would improve the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans -- which Democrats would get the credit for while Republicans would be seen as obstructionists. But then, one might ask, why don't Republicans just get behind it? Well, that would destroy the core Republican philosophy -- that government can't do anything right.

And that's why Republicans are so afraid of the health care issue -- unless they want to adapt their ideology as per the realities of the modern era (which they don't quite have the leadership to do), they're forced to defend the unsustainable status quo and oppose anything that might improve the system -- seeing as how the improvement would come from government. No other issue on the table quite matches up to the level of positive influence the government can have on people's daily lives with the flick of a presidential pen.

So naturally the solution is to call Democrats communists and Nazis, to say they want to kill your babies and give your money to illegal immigrants, to endorse the comparison of Democratic health care reform to dead carcasses from World War II -- anything to avoid an actual debate about the issue on merits.

Health bill faces serious hurdles in the Senate

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:58:00 +0000

As huge as the House vote was, the Senate fight never looked pretty. Here are some obstacles the health care bill faces in the Senate:

1) Abortion. This is turning out to be more of an explosive issue than it initially seemed. Stupak's amendment was a huge blow to reproductive justice (although it may have made the difference between the bill's passage and failure). But the blowback is real -- some pro-choice Democrats are literally threatening to kill the bill, and many women are furious over this, which isn't really unreasonable. Conservative Democrats will not let up on this, and they tend to be less hot on the bill as a whole. This is not good.

2) Timing. Time is not on the side of reform. Once a bill is out there, it hardly ever is. It's currently stuck in the CBO while it ascertains cost figures, and that stalemate could remain for weeks. Harry Reid has backed out of the end-of-the-year deadline. The longer this drags on, the more it'll be subject to the whims and reflexive demands of senators facing re-election, and the less of a roll good policy and common sense will place. It'll also give more time for Republicans to come up with their kill strategy.

3) Lieberman. He's still threatening to filibuster the public option. He loves and cherishes this attention. It doesn't matter that by being this stubborn, he might wind up significantly weakening the most important bill America has considered in half a century. He isn't likely to kill this thing on his lonesome but he'll sure muddy the waters and hike up the tension.

4) How to pay for it. The House bill taxes people who make over $500,000 a year. The Senate doesn't like that idea, and prefers to put an excise tax on "Cadillac" health care plans. Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership might need to figure this one before it reaches conference committee.

More to come.

The House passes historic health care bill

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:54:00 +0000

Here's my column today at The Guardian, taking in all the drama and mayhem on the health care front from the weekend. A teaser:

The bill isn't perfect, but it's a winner. If signed into law, it would considerably ease the burden on those fraught by healthcare system. The Congressional Budget Office declares it will drive down premiums through cost-containment mechanisms, extend coverage to 96% of legal American residents, ban insurance companies from denying care to sick patients and reduce the federal deficit. It would also create a public insurance option, a critical provision that expands choice and competition in the marketplace. Getting this done in such a hostile climate was a political masterstroke by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Barack Obama. []

After Saturday's storm of controversy over the real meaning of the word "freedom" settled, it was the Democratic notion – the freedom to live with one's basic health needs secure – which trumped the apparent Republican notion – the freedom to remain uninsured, get sick, go bankrupt and die.

Read the whole thing here.

Guardian on Obama, one year on

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:46:00 +0000

Excellent editorial by The Guardian about Obama:

But healthcare reform, like other issues, demands a clear judgment: is Mr Obama betraying in power the principles on which he ran for it? Or is this president a shrewd and pragmatic leader? []

These are significant blips, but none in themselves constitute a reason for losing faith. Most of what is going wrong now – the banking crisis, the war in Afghanistan, the stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, failure over climate change – was going wrong a year ago. Some things, such as the atmosphere in talks between the US and Russia have changed, and could well result in an agreement on strategic arms which will replace the Start-1 agreement next month. But even if the current talks with Iran are doomed to failure, who would be foolhardy enough to damn the new era of constructive engagement which Mr Obama has brought in? The failures are manifest. It is easy to see how the realities of power betray the hopes of a year ago. It is harder to stick with the vision, but that is what we should all do.

Emphasis mine. The earlier bold is a question many of his supporters have been asking for months, and the different views about what comprises the "realities of power" are what's dividing those who have grown disillusioned with Obama's presidency and those who are happy with it. I recommend reading the full editorial.

Teabaggers, right-wing radicalism, and the GOP

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:26:00 +0000

Paul Krugman puts Thursday's right-wing hatefest in historical context:

...with the rise of Ronald Reagan, [sic] Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right. Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.
Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. []
Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

Emphasis mine. There's something important to be said about fringe elements in politics. With the rise of right-wing radicalism in the Obama era, a favored defense tactic of conservatives is to say that it happens on the left, too. Yes, there are some cranks on the left, too. 9/11 Truthers are a great example. But the Democratic party never, never stands in solidarity with them. They've never (to their credit) given any hint of credence to the cranks on their side. Not the case with Republicans.

Try this exercise. Can you name me a single Democratic lawmaker who has supported the Truther movement? Now, how many Republican lawmakers can you name who have opposed the deranged "birther" movement? Case in point.

Democrats as a whole are so self-conscious and timid about the very notion of being liberal they try and avoid association with anything left of the mainstream (see: supporting the Iraq war, continuing to fund the Iraq war after retaking Congress, supporting Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, voting to de-fund ACORN, voting to censure MoveOn for the Petrayus ad with a pun, and so on).

Most Republicans, however, are at this stage seemingly unable to disassociate themselves with right-wing insanity -- like the birthers, the teabaggers, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and so on. Sure, radicalism is present on both sides of the spectrum, but while the party on the left actively marginalizes its craziness, the party on the right actively inflames its craziness. That's quite a huge distinction.

On a certain level, it seems to me that the cynicism that guides much of the right's politics is creeping in to their relationship with the truth. When Republicans are in power, people need to "watch what they say" and those who opposed the Leader's foreign policy are "anti-American". But now that Democrats are in power, anything goes: Hitler images, dead carcasses from World War II, comparing Obama and Pelosi to socialists, communists, fascists, terrorists, the Joker, etc. etc. etc. And not only does the mainstream Republican Party tolerate it, they have as of Thursday officially merged with these people.

If that's not a terrifying abdication of a critical responsibility leaders are required to uphold, I'm not sure what is.

Dennis Kucinich votes Nay on House health bill

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:55:00 +0000

I was going to write about Dennis Kucinich's Nay vote on the health care bill but Marc Cooper took the keyboard right out of my hands, so to speak:

Frankly, I agree with much of his [Kucinich's] analysis but with none of his conclusions.

The health care bill passed by the House is, indeed, a compromised, incomplete and less than satisfactory piece of legislation that was produced by a compromised, dysfunctional and less than responsive political system. That is for sure. []

If Saturday's vote on the House floor was a late night parlor game or a student debating society exercise, Kucinich's position would have been a lot of fun to assume. Unfortunately, it was a vote on the House floor and the lives and futures of real people were at stake. []

When I was 19 years old and inspired by the wonder of Paris '68, I put up a poster in my dinky student apartment that read "Demand the Impossible!" That's still not a bad principle to live by. But the second half of the formula was missing from the poster and from the head of yours truly who had not yet lived long enough to fill in the blank. It should have read: "Always Demand the Impossible and along the way vote for and achieve what is possible."

While trying to achieve the great, it's helpful to remember not to block what's good. I respect and admire Kucinich's unwavering commitment to his ideals, and his belief that in the long-term principles aren't worth compromising -- no doubt we need more people like him in politics. But we live in a country with a corrupted, change-averse political system wherein the best opportunities (if not the only ones) for progress come as incrementalist steps forward. And Kucinich knows this as well as anyone else.

If he only and always settles for nothing less than revolutionary, transformative sweeps, he's quite likely to, by the end of his career, have the exact opposite impact of what he set out to do.

PS -- I have a column out tomorrow taking in all the drama and mayhem of the House health care vote. Stay tuned. I also live-tweeted it while it was happening.

House health care bill guts abortion coverage

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Ezra Klein notes:

Because of the limits placed on the exchanges, most of the participants will have some form of premium credit or affordable subsidy. That means most will be ineligible for abortion coverage. The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate "abortion plans" is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.

There's a bitter irony to this: those who are most likely to want to seek an abortion are those who tend not to have the luxury of great finances. That is, the women whose abortion coverage would be snubbed by this amendment are exactly the ones who need it most. Which sort of eviscerates the whole benefit of it for families and for society.

I recently wrote that the abortion issue isn't worth derailing reform over, that Democrats should let the abortion thing go, given how divisive it is and how important passing this bill is. And I stand by the point I made, but did they really have to take it this far? Couldn't they have created certain tax-credit mechanisms for abortion-health funding, through which they could credibly argue that it's not government money being used for abortions -- but the individual's own money?

Given how the Democrats operate -- specifically, their tendency to compromise rather than fight back against the nonsensical ideas of their opponents (including the ones on their own side) -- it's quite likely that they gave away more than they needed to and didn't search for innovative ways to retain the purpose of what they wanted. The final vote will give a hint, I suppose, so I'll hold my judgment till then. The closer it is, the more inclined I'll be to give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt.

On a side note, it's quite distressing that in one of the most advanced countries on earth, an issue like abortion could even come close to destroying an effort that would provide tens of millions will health care coverage, lower costs, end wretched anti-consumer practices, and take a huge stride toward fixing a badly broken system that's screwing the country over. Even more distressing is that this anti-choice, federal impingement on a woman's basic right to her body comes from exactly the people who love to lecture the rest of us about individual liberties and limited government intervention in our personal lives.

Lieberman's cat-and-mouse game on health care

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:31:00 +0000

First we hear scattered reports that Reid took care of Lieberman, that Lieberman would no longer filibuster the health care vote. Then the two offices deny it. What's going on?

I think there are surely some back-room deals going on between Reid and Lieberman about how to get Lieberman on board, at least to bypass the filibuster. Ultimately, Lieberman probably will support cloture -- as ineffectual as senate Democrats can be at party discipline, I can't imagine them tolerating one of their own caucusing members -- whom they gratuitously gave a committee chairmanship to after he snubbed them again and again -- killing their biggest legislative initiative in about half a century.

Plus, I don't think Lieberman actually opposes the public option personally. He's just determined to play cat-and-mouse and keep the spotlight shining on him for as long as possible, so he won't tolerate the press saying he's already let up. He probably just wants to claim a solid pound of flesh on this bill, perhaps for his home-state giant Aetna. And I'm sure he's told Reid to keep it shut for now if he wants his support.

I wouldn't make too much of this. Lieberman may not vote for this thing but I just don't see him being the lone guy who kills it before it reaches a vote.

You're either conservative or you're smart

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:03:00 +0000

An amusing moment on MSNBC a bit earlier this afternoon:

David Schuster: "Conservatives … want somebody who’s conservative, but don’t they want somebody who understands the issues and can articulate them?"

Pat Buchanan: "You can’t have everything, David."

Draw your own conclusions.

So what if a public option leads to single-payer?

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I'm a little late, but this is from my Huffington Post column Friday:

If the public option leads to a single-payer system, it'll be because private health insurance couldn't offer as good a product to consumers -- that government-run insurance turned out more affordable, of higher quality, and better overall. It'll be because consumers preferred government-run health insurance to private insurance. Isn't that their choice? Isn't the main purpose of business enterprises to effectively serve consumers?

The public option puts consumers in the driver's seat, letting them decide whether to trust corporations or government with their health insurance. People should have that choice -- just as they do between public and private universities or between FedEx and the Post Office. It's very likely that private insurers will continue to coexist alongside a public option -- many two-tier systems prove this works. But if private insurers don't survive, it's because they were ripping off customers or operating inefficiently. Quite simply, if they fail, they deserve to fail.

In other words, wherever the public option leads -- single-payer or not -- it's up to the consumer.

Read the whole column here.

I'll add one thing: the main reason the public option is such an uphill climb is because Democrats are weak negotiators, much unlike Republicans. The public strongly wants this provision. In fact, what progressives really want is a single-payer system, but the Democratic opening bid was a half-baked version of that -- a public option. So, the natural middle ground between that and the Republican demand -- absolutely no reform of any kind -- is either a diluted public option like the opt-out, or the ineffectual trigger, or nothing of the sort.

On the radio talking health care reform

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:36:00 +0000

Here's my radio clip this morning talking health care reform with Simi Sara on Talk1410 AM in Canada. (Click here to download the mp3.)

Public option roars back to life

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:25:00 +0000

From my Guardian column today:

The political tides in the US are turning rapidly in favour of a public health insurance option. As the year's dramatic healthcare saga – comprising Democratic infighting, progressive activism, an insolent Republican party, surly teabaggers and lobbyist-directed mobs – approaches its finale, the public option has been revitalised, looking likelier than ever to survive.

Democrats own healthcare reform, and will have to face the glory or perils of its eventual impacts. A bill without a real public option will amount to little more than a ceremonial band-aid on a system in need of reconstructive surgery, as costs would continue to swell and tens of millions would remain uninsured.

Read the full piece here.

UPDATE: A pretty impressive performance from Harry Reid on introducing and explaining this opt-out inclusive bill. Certainly a forceful pushback against Republicans and particularly Olympia Snowe, who for a while looked like she was going to call all the shots. Is he guaranteed to get 60 votes? No. But how else will he find out? If he doesn't, health care reform still lives. This is what Democrats need to do more of -- take a stance and fight for it.

UPDATE II: A commenter writes (emphasis mine):

They should absolutely go all out, no hold barred. Show the American people that they truly are socialists who love fascist control of all things by the government. The backlash is coming, and it will be a thing of beauty as the media types scamper for cover when the lights come back on.

I swear, I didn't plant that.

Online media neuters Superfreakonomics

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:19:00 +0000

Journalists, bloggers and experts have thoroughly picked it apart. In my article today at Campus Progress, I examine its aftermath, and what it signifies:

Obscured by the well-warranted attacks on the legitimacy of Superfreakonomics’ assertions is the fact that in the tome’s aftermath, America quietly saw a huge victory for democracy and common sense—all courtesy of online media.

What’s most inspiring about this book’s public demise is that it reveals the opportunities for regular people to influence the direction of a society—through blogs, social networks, and online media. Today, each of us has an unprecedented capacity to debunk errant nonsense and spread the truth, building a more educated populace and as a result helping actualize democratic values in practice, rather than merely in theory.

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: A commenter writes:

The problem with evolution and climate change is that they are both theories and have yet to be proven. Basing massive policy that would cause further increases in energy costs based on a theory is short-sighted. Climate change has been talked about for 200 years yet has been tied to nothing that we as humans have created..

If you're OK being the guy who equates the legitimacy of climate change to the legitimacy of evolution, I'm happy to take your criticism.

UPDATE II: Another commenter writes:

Calling the #2 (NYT) nonfiction hardcover dead on arrival is a bit puzzling. I understand that you’re probably just saying “For ME, it is dead on arrival.”

But you may as well say, “I’ve made up my mind. Further study only complicates the issue and makes my head hurt.”

“The science is settled” is a great vehicle for setting your opinions in stone. It’s the easiest way to deal with the question. Absolutely no further thought is necessary. Congrats on your retirement.

Obviously the book will sell, as controversy always does. I know people who have bought the book just because of all the drama. My point was that its argument, that climate change is merely an overblown theory, has been pretty thoroughly gutted by online media. It's hard to argue otherwise. As such, it won't have much of an impact on the climate debate, even though it'll certainly sell lots of copies. Maybe that's good enough for Levitt and Dubner. As for the science -- it strikes me as more intellectually feeble, if not outright disingenuous, to hide behind the notion that we're still debating the issue so we shouldn't do anything about it, particularly when the scientific consensus is staggering in favor of immediate action.

Public disillusioned with Democrats? Or just disillusioned with politics in general...

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:24:00 +0000

RealClearPolitics has an unflattering report for Obama and Democrats:

A poll of opinion polls shows Americans' attitudes are changing rapidly.

They are less and less thrilled about the country's direction and Congress, according to Tom Bevan, executive editor of national polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. He says independent voters are shifting away from the polices of the Obama administration and Democrats.

A couple of points here. I don't doubt that favorable ratings for Obama and congressional Democrats are falling. But while the report, which focuses on the woes of Democrats, might lead one to believe the momentum is swinging back in favor of Republicans, this is simply not the case. Republican support has also dwindled -- which is quite rare for an out-of-power party -- and is down to a decade-long low.

I'm not especially thrilled with the performance of Obama and the Democratic Congress either (though I believe the general direction they're moving in is the right one). But that in no way means I'm ready to throw my support behind the Republican party -- far from it. And the evidence shows the public generally agrees with that assessment. The grievances today are all too real, and some entity will implicitly bear the brunt of it.

"What do these phenomena have in common? In two words: disillusionment and disgust," says Lara Brown, Villanova University political science professor.

Registered and likely voters, in particular, are disillusioned and disgusted with both parties and their candidates, who seem to over-promise, under-deliver, ask for too much and take advantage of their positions, explains Brown.

Sounds about right. The declining support for Democrats is a symptom of the generally rising disillusionment among Americans toward their government, not toward the relative performance of one party over another. It's also a natural hazard of being in power, meaning that the governing party will viscerally be blamed if a problem that exists today isn't solved tomorrow -- regardless of how that problem came to be, whose fault it was, and whether the party in power is making some progress in solving it.

Democrats clash: Reid wants opt-out public option, Obama wants to weaken it

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:57:00 +0000

HuffPost's Sam Stein and Ryan Grim have done some riveting reporting on the inner turmoils of the Democratic Party with regard to the public option.

The big bombshell is that while Reid has stepped up his efforts to pass an opt-out public plan through the Senate, Obama seems to be trying to kill it in favor of a "trigger" (which we can bet will never get pulled). I don't agree with him here but I can sort of see where Obama's coming from. After everything that's happened, he desperately needs some form of health care reform to pass. So he's willing to compromise something huge, which he knows will make a massive difference and which his own party-members are fighting for, for the purposes of ensuring some kind of a signing ceremony.

It bears pointing out that time and time again, Obama's posturing and approach to governance reflects that of a highly cautious president who prefers to err on the side of less change, not more -- instinctively succumbing to the political fears of going a step further, no matter how substantively vital that step may be.

Granted, his leadership is effective in a number of ways, and he deserves credit for the fact that even the weakest ostensible health care bill at this point would be an improvement over the current system. That's more than I think any other 2008 president candidate on the Democratic and especially Republican side would have accomplished. But anybody who claims he's in any way left of center (on health care and virtually all other issues) is clearly thinking with their feelings rather than with reason and evidence. Those who say he's a "socialist" are simply delusional, or suffer some other kind of neurological disorder.

To take this situation as proof: the public option is extremely popular with the general public. Polls in the last few months show its support between 65 and 77 percent. One poll found that even a majority of Republicans wanted it (when they were told what it actually is, and not what the GOP portrays it to be). Another found that the populace would rather have a partisan Democratic bill with a public option than a bipartisan bill without a public option.

So, how can anybody claim with a straight face that this is some sort of left-wing, liberal idea? It's about as mainstream as public schools or the Post Office. When you look at data from pretty much every noted polling organization in the nation, it becomes clear that anybody who doesn't back this is way out in right-field on the U.S. political spectrum.

Don't let abortion sink health care reform

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:20:00 +0000

The Associated Press reports:

House Democrats are at an impasse over whether their remake of the nation's health care system would effectively allow federal funding of abortion.
More than two dozen anti-abortion Democrats believe it would, and while their opposition is unlikely to stall the legislation in the end, they are at odds with Democratic leaders just weeks ahead of anticipated floor action on the bill.

Lawmakers on the other side say they've compromised as far as they can to address the anti-abortion lawmakers' concerns by specifying that people receiving government subsidies to buy health insurance couldn't use that money for abortions.

With wholehearted apologies to women in America, my advice for the Democratic leadership on health care reform would be to let the abortion thing go. Of course, I find it absurd, ridiculous and unfair to skimp on funding for this one procedure, but it's a poison pill for Democrats representing rural and socially conservative regions.

There are activists who otherwise couldn't care less about health care reform that are marching and organizing to oppose the whole effort simply because there's funding for abortions (just as there is for other major procedures). Conservative Democrats who want to support this are already treading a fine line against their red-state constituents and the wrath of the right-wing establishment, and this will just further complicate things.

This is like giving up a $5000 around-the-world flight ticket because it isn't in First Class. The Business Class lounge will suffice. Instead of squabbling over this, Dems' time would be better spent fighting the real fight (i.e. the public option).

Naturally, Democrats should continue to fight against the dwindling numbers of pro-lifers determined to impose their morally ambiguous view of when life begins on everyone else, but this isn't the right battleground to do it. Health care reform is much bigger than abortion, and Democrats are at the 1-Yard Line. Let conservative Democrats make it to the end-zone without panicking. Don't screw it up for this.

Out of office? Then you can speak the truth

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Former Republican senator Chuck Hagel isn't thrilled with his party's attitude toward health care reform. Here's The Hill:

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) chided some of his former colleagues who have suggested that halting healthcare reform would be politically beneficial to the GOP.

"If your attitude is wrong, if your intention is to use healthcare to destroy the other party, or to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, then it's very unlikely you're going to find much consensus from people who want to use healthcare," Hagel said earlier this month in a speech at the University of Michigan, video of which was only made available recently.

"As some Republican senators have said publicly -- that if we kill Obama on this, and we destroy this, and we defeat his, that will drive a stake through his political heart on this administration," the former senator, who retired at the end of his term in January, added. "I just find that about as irresponsible of a thing as I can think of."

Hagel joins a number of other former Republicans who are speaking out against the current rendition of the GOP, particularly on their role in health care reform. These include past leaders Bill Frist and Bob Dole.

(Hagel, to his credit, criticized his party even while he was in office and they were in the majority, disillusioned by much of its wayward ways, especially on the issue of the Iraq war. That's a rare commodity in politics, considering how many insiders keep their mouth shut on corruptions they know about while receiving a paycheck and write mea culpas later to sell their memoirs.)

Former Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist decried the GOP for calling the Dem health care bill "socialized medicine":

So first of all, what the Obama administration is doing is not socialized medicine. You hear a lot of people on the extreme say that socialized medicine is going to come in and control everything. Socialized medicine is where the government owns the hospitals. They own the doctors and they decide how much people are getting paid. And that’s not what’s in these bills.

He also said he'd vote for it:

Were he still in the Senate, "I would end up voting for it," he said. "As leader, I would take heat for it. ... That's what leadership is all about."

Bob Dole, also a former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican nominee for president, publicly said health care reform was going to pass and that the GOP was being reflexively opposed to it simply for partisan reasons:

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) told reporters on Wednesday that opposition to the president's health care package was driven, in part, by knee-jerk partisanship and he urged Congressional Republicans to consider backing a version of reform.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/bob-dole-health-care-will_n_312837.html

Here's Jebb Bush, criticizing the Republican party more broadly, essentially saying it's disintegrating and needs to get its act together:

Bush said he believes the Republican Party needs to cater its message to include everyone in America, and become more than the "old white guy party."
"We just can't be the party of no.

Republicans need to offer, based on their own principles, solutions to these problems," he said.

(I'm sure I'm missing some others, and I'll update if I remember or come by them.)

It's easy to speak your mind when you're no longer carrying water for a partisan agenda. But this raises an interesting question: how many current GOPers in the House or Senate (or even insiders and strategists) will come out 10 years from now and admit that all their pageantry about "socialism", "communism", "fascism", "Nazism" and so on was flatly irresponsible, if not despicable?

I'll bet quite a few memoirs and public appearances down the road will spill the beans and tell everyone what is already so transparently evident to those of us paying attention. And I'm sure some of these GOPers will, after leaving office, criticize members of the future crop of Republicans who seem likely to continue these antics.

I think Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Michael Steele (and much of the rest) already know it and couldn't honestly defend what they're doing. But the trouble is, all too many Beltway insiders view politics purely as a chess game, where their job is simply to beat the other team and not to save lives or improve those of their constituents.

Obama and Democrats neuter opponents of health reform

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:18:00 +0000

“It's smoke in mirrors. It's bogus. And it's all too familiar,“ declared President Obama, slamming the insurance industry’s last-ditch effort to derail health care reform, as well as Republicans for trying to capitalize on it. He was referring primarily to the insurance industry’s self-serving report last week, which was filled with indefensible claims about the approved Finance Committee bill. Reformers immediately pounced on its flaws, and naysayers were left speechless.

With the doctors, hospitals and drug companies on board, the insurance lobby is the last major industry obstacle left. And while it has succeeded in slicing substantial flesh from the body of the bill, its last stab at gutting the whole effort has backfired, prompting Obama to go for the kill.

“They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads,” said Obama, in Saturday's unusually cutting address to the nation. “They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, 'Take one of these, and call us in a decade.' Well, not this time.”

Obama and Democratic leaders also went after the insurance industry’s federal antitrust exemption -- a gratuitous gift to insurers in the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which freed them up to engage in dodgy market practices that are otherwise illegal. Harry Reid threatened to repeal the exemption, calling it “anticompetitive and damaging to the American economy.” Nancy Pelosi doubled down, warning the industry that there is “tremendous interest” in the idea. Indeed, it is generating enthusiasm among an increasing number of lawmakers and activists.

Washington Post's Ezra Klein, an influential voice on health care, deemed McCarran-Ferguson “obsolete, and potentially damaging,” arguing that the conditions that justified the Act no longer apply in today's vastly different political and economic landscape. Conservatives have questioned why Democrats are raising the issue so late in the game, but the final bill is far from crystallized, and the case for revoking the 1945 is compelling.

All in all, Obama’s divide and conquer strategy seems to have worked. The health-industrial complex is neutered, Republicans are losing steam, and the tea-baggers have burned out, leaving reformers with a commanding upper-hand as decision day approaches. Republicans have gone all in with a final attempt to kill it, but positive health care reform of some sort now looks more likely than ever to pass. The question, at this point, is how strong the final product will be.

The central splinter remains whether or not it will include a public insurance option to create real competition for private insurers. Nancy Pelosi guarantees its passage in the House bill. Various Senate Democrats and President Obama, however, seem willing to compromise it. Liberal analysts and activists are divided as to whether a bill without the provision is worth supporting at all.

With sky-high political stakes, particularly as the 2010 elections approach, Democrats are unlikely to risk anything that might put the bill in danger, even if that means angering progressives. After months of unrequited advances to Republicans, after months of doggedly courting lone Republican Olympia Snowe, Democrats seem intent on portraying the final product as a bipartisan effort. But Snowe's new posturing this week shows that she's doggedly against a workable public option of any kind.

Although Snowe is unlikely to cast the deciding floor vote, she could serve a uniquely important purpose. On one hand, even a lone Republican supporter might provide the necessary political cover for conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu to get with the program. But on the other hand, Snowe’s state, Maine, is highly supportive of Obama and a public option, leaving it unclear whether her decision will meaningfully influence the electoral dynamics in red states like Nebraska and Louisiana.

Without a change in the Democratic strategy, without more arm-twisting and an openness to reconciliation, the final result will include either a compromised public plan with an opt-out clause for states, a trigger that’s very unlikely to be pulled, or the ineffectual co-operatives. The rest of the picture is more or less clear.

As the clock ticks into the final minutes of the game, the scoreboard shows the Democrats well on their way to victory. The next step is to ensure that none of their diffident players match-fix with Republicans by allowing a filibuster, and then see how far they're willing to go with the playbook. Public option or no public option, America looks poised to undergo the most significant health care transformation since the 1960s.

A Snowe-job for Democrats

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:54:00 +0000

Olympia Snowe's vote on Tuesday's Finance Committee bill was a good thing, right? More votes, more bipartisanship, more likely to get a passable bill. Unfortuantely it's far more complicated. In fact, Snowe's vote has significantly splintered the Democratic party, leaving them with a major choice in the near future. From my Huffington Post column today:

As the long, dramatic saga of reform approaches its final stretch, Snowe's decision has erupted a blizzard of infighting among Democrats regarding how tightly they should hold on to her support.

The main source of tension is that preserving Snowe's vote will likely require sacrificing the public insurance option (or at least debilitating it in some way), a provision that's supported by a majority of the public, but virulently opposed by Republicans and conservative activists. []

On the present course, we'll wind up a bill that looks more like the Finance Committee version -- an improvement on the status quo but one that doesn't face the problem head-on, which would require creating competition for private insurers. Let's see if that changes.

Read the full piece here.

White House sort of supports public plan.. a little

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:55:00 +0000

George Stephanopoulos has a very telling moment with David Axelrod, regarding the spat between the progressive caucus over whether to kill the public option over Olympia Snowe:

Stephanopoulos: Who's going to win this fight -- the House Democrats or Olympia Snowe?

Axelrod: Well, we'll see...

We'll see?? Really? Obama won't even try and put up a fight? This is what discourages progressives, and Democrats seems as though they need to be reminded what team they're on. This is like almost like Lakers coach, whose team clearly has the upper hand, saying "we'll see" when asked whether he thinks his team will win the game. I've asked this before -- how can there be any chance of a public option passing if the president, its ostensible champion, shows no confidence that it will?

Kevin Carter's harrowing photograph

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Via Arianna Huffington, a riveting and harrowing story about a photographer who shocked the world in 1994 with a photograph, won a Pulitzer Prize, and then committed suicide. (More here)

Joe Lieberman's perverse logic on health care

sahilkapur@gmail.com (Sahil Kapur) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Yglesias makes a characteristically insightful point about Lieberman:

If you think the public option isn’t that big a deal and it’s not worth spiking health reform over it, then you ought to think that it’s not worth spiking health reform in order to kill it either. But here’s Joe Lieberman not only expressing opposition to a public option, but saying he might filibuster any health reform package that includes a public option:

The very notion that a senator might entertain the possibility of filibustering against the party he caucuses with -- under the pretense of achieving a "moderate" or "passable" bill, no less -- reflects a perverse irony, if not downright hypocrisy. "I want to see health care reform pass," says Lieberman, "but I think there's a danger that if we try to do too much, we won't get anything."

So he wants a bill to pass, and he claims the reason he opposes a public option is that he's afraid the bill won't pass. Well, Lieberman doesn't get to make that his rationale for opposition seeing as how he's obviously considering being a critical obstacle to its passage. Lieberman joins the likes of Kent Conrad and Max Baucus, who frequently use the axiomatic logic that they oppose a public option because it's not likely to pass, deviously ignoring that they're among the major reasons it can't seem to pass.

It takes an awful amount of cynicism to ignore these ploys of political expediency.