Giuliani Slips Another Notch

Dan Collins
New York Editor-At-Large of The Huffington Post
November 22, 2009

The Rudy Giuliani brand has deteriorated so much that it’s hard to imagine an elective office for which he might be suited.

But the image of Rudy running for governor did have its fascination. For all his self-promotion as an expert on leadership, his real talent is for bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred, I-am-righteous-and-the-other-side-is-evil-incarnated combat. Giuliani would probably not have been good at running the state, but if there was ever a group that deserved being stuck with him, it’s the New York state legislature.

Now, published reports say he’s given up the idea.

Does he think Albany is too tough for him? It is, of course. New York’s state government is such a mess it would be too tough for Vlad the Impaler. But it’s another sign of Giuliani’s dwindling political presence that he might admit it, even to himself.

If this is the finale of Giuliani’s political life, fine. Good-bye, Rudy. See you on Fox. Good luck with your consulting gig. People must be standing in line to have the guy who thought Bernie Kerik would be a good bet to run the Department of Homeland Security tell them how to manage their businesses.

However, there’s still that Senate seat.

No sooner had Giuliani been reported out of the governor’s contest than the Daily News announced he was eyeing a race against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

True, Gillibrand would be a softer target than Andrew Cuomo. Giuliani v. Cuomo would be prosecutor against prosecutor — one on a career trajectory and the other old, not-really-that-great news.

The only problem with the switch from the voters’ point of view is that instead of running for a job to which he would bring a lot of minuses and a couple of pluses, he’s apparently now eyeing one for which he is totally, completely unsuited.

There are very few people who’ve played politics on the national level with a worse reputation for working well with others.

When it comes to national policy, he’s swung with the wind. In his mayoral era he was liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal ones unless they involved the federal government sending more money the city’s way, and Bloombergian in his willingness to hang out with helpful Democrats from Washington.

Now, he’s a knee-jerk Republican, so in tune with the party line that he even blasted the Obama administration for bringing the trial of the architects of 9/11 to New York. If we had a right to expect consistency from him on anything, it’s the attack on the World Trade Center. But there he was on Fox, completely backtracking on his earlier views about standing up to the terrorists.

Senator Gillibrand is far from the world’s strongest candidate. She’s been constantly criticized for having taken one set of positions on issues like guns and immigration when she was a member of Congress from a conservative upstate district, and switching gears when she was elevated to Hillary Clinton’s old seat.

But she looks like a paragon of consistency compared to Rudy.

Giuliani flirted with a Senate run once before, in 2000, and he was a terrible candidate. He was even worse than he was at running for president in 2008.

He withdrew from the Senate race citing the discovery of prostate cancer.,There was also the problem of his spectacularly collapsing marriage. Nevertheless, everyone who watched his brief, miserable campaign saw a man who actually had no earthly interest in being part of a body of 100 equal legislators.

If Rudy had decided to run for governor, it would have been a signal that he was at least willing to try to re-establish his credentials as an executive, as a leader. Of course he would have had to do it in Albany, which is nobody’s idea of Camelot.

But wouldn’t you have liked to see Giuliani, at his craziest, doing battle with the State Senate?

It turns out he doesn’t have the stomach.

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Why We Can’t Afford to Fail: A Blue Dog for Reform

Rep. Patrick Murphy
U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania
November 7, 2009

A woman from Bucks County recently lost her job as a copy editor, and the small business her husband works for is unable to afford coverage for their employees. She tried shopping around on her own for a plan but was turned down by insurance companies because of a pre-existing condition she recently discovered: she is pregnant.
Instead of celebrating the news, she and her husband are terrified about how they will afford all of her pre-natal and maternity care bills without any health care coverage. I support health insurance reform because, in a great nation like ours, this should never happen.
Over the past eight months, I’ve spoken and met with thousands of constituents – doctors, patients, small business owners, folks with insurance and those without – about this bill. After hearing their thoughts and after careful consideration of the bill, I am proud to support this historic and crucial piece of legislation.
First, this bill prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition. What does this mean? If your job offers insurance, you can get coverage regardless of your health status. But if you lose your job, aren’t offered coverage through work, or are unemployed and need to buy your own insurance, you can be denied coverage because you’re pregnant or have high blood pressure, cancer, or diabetes. An insurer can charge higher rates because of those conditions, or for a host of other reasons, including being female or a victim of domestic violence. Reform would put a stop to this.
Many folks who have insurance report that they are happy with it, but too often that coverage is taken away just when it is needed most. Today, an insurer can look for any excuse to kick you off your plan if you become “too expensive.” For example, an insurer could comb through your records, find a bout of acne that you forgot to report, and terminate your plan. Reform eliminates this practice, known as rescission, giving Americans security knowing their coverage cannot be taken away.
What about folks on Medicare? AARP has endorsed the bill, stating that after careful consideration, they are confident that this bill expands and protects benefits provided for seniors and retirees.
Opponents of reform have aimed their worst scare tactics at seniors, claiming that the bill includes everything from death panels to euthanasia. In fact, reform provides the help that Medicare needs to continue providing health care for seniors today and for generations to come. We will finally close the Medicare “donut hole” that leaves seniors paying thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. Seniors will have access to lower cost drugs, too, as the government will be allowed to negotiate with manufacturers to get better deals on medications. And, seniors will have free preventive care services to help them stay healthy and active.
Finally, as a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, I believe this is an opportunity our nation cannot afford to miss. Everyone has heard the statistics on our health care spending, but I believe a few bear repeating. The American people and their government spend a staggering amount of money on health care – over 17% of our country’s entire economic output. Small businesses have seen their health care costs rise 130% in the last decade, cutting into profits and stifling their ability to grow and hire new workers. And premiums for American families have more than doubled in that time, rising four times faster than wages.
This bill lowers health insurance costs for families, individuals, and small businesses and puts our spending on a fiscally sustainable path. As the MIT economist Jonathan Gruber pointed out, premiums will be lower for families and individuals, not just for those who qualify for federal subsidies, but even for those who do not. According to Mr. Gruber, a family making $93,000 would make too much to qualify for financial assistance, but their premiums would still be $1260 – or 12% – less than under current law.
Further, the bill meets a fundamental requirement I stated at the beginning of this debate: that the bill does not add a dime to our federal deficit. In fact, H.R. 3962 actually goes beyond deficit-neutrality, reducing the deficit by $129 billion. Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, which will see millions of new paying customers, have committed to contribute hundreds of billions in savings toward the cost of reform. And a large portion of the bill is paid for with a surcharge on income over one million dollars, a provision which would impact 1/3 of one percent of households.
It has been 64 years since President Truman declared before Congress that “[m]illions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health…[t]he time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.” It has been 16 years since Congress’ last attempt to attain those goals. Since then, over 700,000 people have died because they lacked access to affordable health care coverage. Every day, 500 Pennsylvanians – and 14,000 people across America – lose their health insurance. We simply cannot afford to fail again.
For these reasons, I stand with the AARP, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association in strong support of this crucial, fiscally responsible and long-overdue legislation.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-patrick-murphy/why-we-cant-afford-to-fai_b_349592.html&cp

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Fox calls NY-23 race for Democrat Owens

A major defeat for conservative activists, as their chosen candidate comes close but falls short
By Alex Koppelman

AP photos
Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate running in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, and Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party congressional candidate

What had been a major victory for conservative activists ended up in a stunning defeat as Tuesday night crept in to Wednesday morning and Fox News declared Democrat Bill Owens the winner of a closely watched special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district.

Owens was actually an afterthought for much of the race, overshadowed by civil war amongst his opponents. Conservative activists banded together, with help from prominent Republicans like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, to push Republican Dede Scozzafava out of the race over the weekend, leaving their favorite, third-party candidate Doug Hoffman as the GOP’s pick.

Going in to the election, Hoffman was the favorite to win the seat, which has been in Republican hands for more than a century. But somehow, perhaps with the help of an endorsement and a little campaigning from Scozzafava, Owens managed to pull out a victory.

The thing to watch for now is the reaction of the GOP and its base. A Hoffman victory might have given the most conservative wing of the party even more clout, if not a virtual veto over 2010 candidates deemed too liberal. This result — the right winning the intra-party battle, but not the war — might give the Republican establishment more room to push back.

Update: Hoffman has reportedly called Owens and conceded.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/11/03/ny_23?source=newsletter

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

END OF TUNNEL, MEET LIGHT.

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
October 24, 2009

There are still about a thousand things that could go all haywire at this point, but the public option is beginning to feel very real:

Democratic leaders in the Senate and House have concluded that a government-run insurance plan is the cheapest way to expand health coverage, and they sought Friday to rally support for the idea, prospects for which have gone in a few short weeks from bleak to bright.
The shift in momentum is so dramatic that many lawmakers now predict that President Obama will sign a final bill that includes some form of government-sponsored insurance for people who do not receive coverage through the workplace. Even Democrats with strong reservations about expanding government’s role in the health-care system say they are reconsidering the approach in hopes of making low-cost plans broadly available.

I don’t love the opt-out, and I don’t love the fact that it’ll take several years before everyone can choose the public option, but things are looking good right now for a system that can be expanded and shaped to more closely resemble single-payer.

And I write about my optimism with great caution.

Adding… Thanks AHIP!

Reid’s original inclination was to leave the public option out of a final bill he is writing from measures passed by the finance and health committees. But his liberal colleagues began urging him two weeks ago to reconsider, after insurance industry forecasts that premiums would rise sharply under the Finance Committee bill, which lacked a public option. The report had the effect of prodding Democrats to look for better ways to control costs, and the public option — strongly opposed by the insurance industry — reemerged as a possible solution.
Because a government-run plan would be dedicated to holding down costs and would lack a profit motive, congressional budget analysts predict that it could reduce the cost of expanding coverage to people who don’t have it by as much as $100 billion over the next decade.

http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/10/end_of_tunnel_m.html

Copyright 2009 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog

Dick Cheney’s losing his old black magic

Mr. Secret Bunker says Obama is “afraid” to commit to an Afghan policy. Wingnuts clap, the world yawns

JOAN WALSH
salon.com
THURSDAY, OCT 22, 2009

Ooooh, Dick Cheney’s back, just in time for Halloween! In a Wednesday speech at Frank Gaffney’s far-right Center for Security Policy , Cheney blasted President Obama for being “afraid” to make a decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan, insisting the White House “must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.” Cheney had the audacity to say the Obama team merely implemented the Bush-Cheney strategy when they sent 21,000 more American soldiers to Afghanistan in March.

Where do I begin? How does a man who spent much of his vice presidency hiding in a secret bunker get off accusing the president of being “afraid?” How does a guy who got five deferments from service in Vietnam, because he famously had “other priorities,” call someone else a coward? (Still, Chickenhawk Cheney had no problem sending other people’s children off to die in needless wars.) How does a guy who dropped the ball on the Afghan war, letting Osama bin Laden escape and the Taliban retrench, blame someone else for “dithering” on Afghanistan?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/10/22/cheney/

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Letterman didn’t pay hush money. Neither should Obama

Letterman refused to pay his alleged blackmailer. Obama should say no to Big Pharma, the insurers and the AMA

Robert Reich
salon.com
October 19, 2009

Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the American Medical Association the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of healthcare reform, as long as they were paid off.

But now that it’s time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and it’s going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin).

So the President has to do what Letterman did: Refuse to pay.

Big Pharma is on the road to getting its deal: not only 25 to 30 million more paying customers, but also a continued ban on Medicare using its bargaining clout to reduce drug prices, a bar on genetic drug manufacturers introducing similar biologic drugs until the originals have been on the market at least twelve years, and no public insurance option to negotiate low drug prices. (Big Pharma did agree to $80 billion of cost cuts over the next ten years, to be sure, but its hush money payoffs far exceeded that sum.)

Big insurance is well on the way to getting what it wants: 25 to 30 million more paying customers (many of them young and healthy), a requirement that almost all businesses “pay or play,” and no competition from a public option.

Doctors (that is, the American Medical Association) are on the way to getting what they want: Instead of a temporary patch on scheduled decreases in Medicare reimbursements to them, a permanent fix that would change the reimbursement formula altogether and reward them $240 billion over the next ten years.

But when they all get paid off, who will do the paying? Middle-class Americans who are already in a financial squeeze — whose wages are lower, adjusted for inflation, than they were thirty years ago, and whose jobs are disappearing. They’ll face still higher premiums, co-payments, and deductibles; and they’ll pay higher drug prices, Medicare premiums, and taxes to cover the rest.

That’s because these payoffs make it next to impossible to contain the wildly escalating costs of healthcare. And 25 to 30 million additional Americans will be covered.

The only thing in the emerging bills that’s related to cost containment is a proposed excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans, priced over a certain threshold amount (the threshold is now up for grabs). But because the costs of healthcare are likely to rise faster than inflation, whatever the threshold, the middle class will get socked again.

So Obama has to forcefully weigh in with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as the two try to cobble together passable bills for each chamber — demanding real cost containment.

The three big means of containing costs: (1) A true public option (better yet, one that allows anyone now holding private insurance to opt into; (2) authority for Medicare to negotiate low drug prices; and (3) lower Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors (in other words, no “doctor fix”).

In addition, the so-called “medical exchanges” in the emerging bills (as well as the public option, which hopefully will be included) should give preference to pre-paid heathcare plans, like Kaiser Permanente, whose doctors are on salary and have every incentive to keep people healthy rather than charge for more services and tests.

But if Obama doesn’t weigh in forcefully and say “no” to the hush money for Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA, America’s middle class will get walloped. And if the walloping starts before 2012, Sarah Palin or some other right wing-nut populist will wallop Obama. And after she or he wallops Obama, America will get walloped even worse.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/19/obama_hush_money/

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Faux News

Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, and Zaid Jilani
The Progress Report
October 16, 2009

In recent days, a war of words has erupted between Fox News and the White House. It began last week when White House communications director Anita Dunn told Time magazine, “[Fox News] is opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Last weekend, she told CNN, “Fox News operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” This set off a blustering reaction from Fox, whose senior vice president Michael Clemente responded, “It’s astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part.” Fox News host Glenn Beck went further, comparing the White House effort to call out Fox News’s partisanship to Richard Nixon’s attacks on the press and compiling of an enemies list. The truth is, Fox engages in practices that a legitimate news network would never do, regularly promoting GOP talking points and misinforming its audience on key policy debates.

A GOP TALKING POINTS MACHINE: While Fox infamously maintains that it is “fair and balanced,” the fact is that the network often does little more than shovel out Republican Party talking points. For example, its “news” anchors regularly parrot the “where are the jobs?” mantra of the GOP. In July, House Republicans, one after another, took to the floor to engage in political theater by repeatedly asking that question. Numerous Fox hosts, especially America’s Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer, have echoed that talking point time and time again, failing to mention that they borrowed it from the GOP. Another example of the network aligning itself directly with the Republican agenda was its endless promotion of the conservative “tea party” demonstrations. The network even went as far as to “[provide] attendance and organizing information” for the right-wing demonstrations — hardly the behavior of an objective network. As Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart recently pointed out, the network gave wall-to-wall coverage of the anti-tax, anti-government demonstrations, yet completely ignored a similarly-sized demonstration in favor of gay rights. Indeed, Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes has proudly boasted that his network aiming to be “the voice of opposition.”

A NETWORK OF DISINFORMATION: Fox repeatedly deceives its audience. A 2003 study found that 80 percent of those who primarily relied on Fox News believed falsehoods about why the U.S. invaded Iraq. In June 2007, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Fox covered the war less than CNN and MSNBC, and yet, its anchors now claim the network was “very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq.” A poll conducted last August found that 72 percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the false claim that health reform will provide insurance to undocumented immigrants, 79 percent believe it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions (it won’t), and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to put the elderly to death. This isn’t to say that the network always misinforms people. In a recent exchange with Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Fox host Shepard Smith rightly corrected the senator and disproved his own network’s talking point that a public option would mean a “government takeover” of the entire health care system. As Smith pointed out, the public option is simply a government-run health insurance plan that people can choose. This left the Barrasso flummoxed and clearly surprised that a Fox anchor would ever challenge Republican disinformation.

A HYPOCRITICAL NETWORK: While Fox claims to be outraged over the White House pointing out that certain news networks are blatantly partisan, the fact is that it was singing a different tune under the Bush administration. In May 2008, White House counselor Ed Gillespie sent a scathing public letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, claiming that the network was guilty of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between the “news” and “opinion,” a charge not unlike the one the Obama White House has leveled against Fox News. Rather than attacking the White House for calling out the press as it is doing now, Fox’s hosts supported the Bush White House. Fox contributor Laura Ingraham even went as far as to say, “Why would the White House agree to do an interview with [NBC correspondent] Richard Engel?…I mean, why really bother at this point?” Then-Fox host E.D. Hill heartily agreed, “NBC News basically panders to the left and is, in essence, in the pocket for Barack Obama. Why go on a venue like that to begin with?” Gillespie has changed his mind now that Fox, and not NBC, is the target of White House scorn. Beck asked him about the White House effort to “blackball Fox,” adding, “You don’t see Republicans doing that to NBC, do you?” “No, and sometimes I question why,” replied Gillespie. “It is beyond me, frankly.”

Copyright 2009 thinkprogress.org

Betting against America

Praying the country will slip into chaos, to make Obama look bad, is not a good place for a political party to be

Garrison Keillor
salon.com
Oct. 14, 2009

Evidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize — I thought Philip Roth should’ve gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair — but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December and stand on the balcony of the Grand Hotel and wave to the crowd along Karl Johans Gate, and, face it, Mr. Obama is going to draw a bigger crowd than Mr. Cheney would have. When a man has shot somebody in the face with a shotgun, people are going to be reluctant to line up en masse in his presence lest he get excited again. As for Mr. Cheney’s boss, he was an unlikely pick for the Peace Prize after it was revealed by a White House speechwriter in a recent memoir that Mr. Bush once said, “I whupped Gary Bauer’s ass.” Boasting about ass-whupping is not the mark of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The correct word is “whipping.”

Going to Oslo in December and sitting through a black-tie banquet with a bunch of wooden-faced Norwegians and eating herring and delivering a speech larded with bromides about international cooperation and no jokes is not what I’d consider a whee of a good time, frankly. Oslo is rather dark and murky in December. The sun rises during the first coffee break and sets right after lunch and this does not make for a festive mood. Bell-bottoms were not invented in Norway, nor was the mambo, or the convertible. This isn’t Carnival in Rio.

Some conservative pundit suggested that the president should’ve declined the prize, but it is not gracious to reject a compliment, one should accept it with becoming modesty, as Mr. Obama did, that’s what your mother brought you up to do. The prize isn’t about you, it’s about Peace, or Literature, or Homecoming, or Champion Hog, or Male Vocalist of the Year, so walk up there and smile for the cameras, say thank you and sit down.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear among Republicans is 68 percent envy and 32 percent sour grapes. Here is an idealistic, articulate young president who is enormously popular everywhere in the world except in the states of the Confederacy, and here sit the 28 percent of the American people who still thought Mr. Bush was doing a heckuva job at the end, gnashing their teeth, hoping and praying for something horrible to happen such as an infestation of locusts or the disappearance of the sun, something to make the president look bad, which is not a good place for a political party to be, hoping for the country to slide into chaos. When you bet against America, you are choosing long odds.

A person can run down the list of all that’s wrong with this country, including the lobbyists who cross back and forth from public service to influence-peddling like alligators on the golf course, or the bankers who lost their minds in the great mortgage mania, but the country has a history of rising to challenges and turning away from demagogues and doing what needs to be done. Because we are a passionately patriotic people, infused with a love of our history and our land, and so we have limited patience for fools, such as the ones who now dominate the right.

Conservatism is a powerful strain in American life that ordinarily passes as common sense. Save for a rainy day. Don’t foul the nest. Don’t burn your bridges. Don’t sacrifice the future for short-term profit. But when it contradicts itself and becomes weighted down with bigotry and cynicism, then it doesn’t hold water anymore.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” And conservatives tried to keep functioning through the Bush administration but the contradictions wore them down, and last fall, when the federal government wrote a blank check to stave off collapse of the financial sector, conservative principles came crashing to the ground, and now all they have in common is that they don’t like President Obama. OK, but resentment of an American president being honored by the Norwegians is not a good point from which to build a Republican revival. Petulant fury isn’t a winning hand in politics. Get over it.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of “77 Love Sonnets,” published by Common Good Books.)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/10/14/nobel_peace_prize/

© 2009 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

25 BLUE DOGS ENDORSE THE PUBLIC OPTION

Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
September 29, 2009

This is very encouraging news. Hopefully this will lend political cover for the rest of the Dogs who are hesitant to vote in favor of something that enjoys, you know, overwhelming public support.

Incidentally, when will 100 House Republicans co-sponsor a bill banning “dogs” from serving in Congress?

http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/09/25_blue_dogs_en.html

Copyright 2009 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog

The public knows the GOP is fibbing

Only Republicans really buy the anti-healthcare reform lies. So why are some Dems settling for such an awful bill?

Gene Lyons
salon.com
Thursday, Sep 24, 2009

“I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist. In my country, you’d be considered a conservative.” — President Obama, Sept. 20, 2009

There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can’t afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from “conservatives” whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people’s sex lives understands that.

The current cruel, wasteful system is indefensible. Surely that’s why almost three-quarters of physicians polled by the New England Journal of Medicine favor genuine reform. About 63 percent of doctors surveyed nationwide support a public option; 10 percent would prefer a single-payer system, basically Medicare for everybody.

For all the hullabaloo, it appears alarmist rhetoric hasn’t scared ordinary people as much as it has cable TV anchors. A Bloomberg poll asked which right-wing objections people found legitimate, and which were “scare tactics.” Basically, voters rejected GOP rhetoric almost 2-to-1. About 63 percent think Sarah Palin’s “death panels” are a distortion, versus 30 percent who fear them. It’s 61 to 33 percent on the claim that health reform means government-paid abortions, 58 to 37 percent on the false claim that illegal aliens will get subsidized insurance, etc.

In short, hardcore opposition is mainly confined to the Republican “base,” itself increasingly confined to the South. Why has Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, started making conciliatory noises? Consider these remarkable statistics from a Research 2000 poll: Voters in the Northeast overwhelmingly dislike congressional Republicans. The party’s favorability rating there is a minuscule 7, yes 7, percent. Moreover, it’s a paltry 13 percent in the Midwest; 14 percent in the West. Only in the South is the GOP politically relevant, with a 50 to 37 percent advantage over Democrats.

Hence the odds of Obama’s signing what the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait correctly calls “one of the towering social reforms in American history” appear excellent. Ending the game of health insurance roulette that keeps workers unsure their coverage will actually exist when they need it, and fearful of losing their jobs lest illness or injury lead to bankruptcy, would be a significant moral achievement.

Chait, however, also thinks progressives should shut up and accept a deeply flawed bill. He fails to grasp why some suspect Democrats could be slow-walking into political disaster. See, that’s where the self-interest side of the argument comes in. Because the widely publicized bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., not only won’t get Republican votes, it would also do little to restrain galloping cost increases. That’s why insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists love it.

Instead, Baucus’ bill would force millions of working Americans currently without coverage to spend up to 13 percent of their annual income on private health insurance policies they can’t afford.

Have these abstemious “centrists” on the Senate Finance Committee been hitting the medical marijuana stash? A surer way to stoke a right-wing populist rebellion can’t be imagined. Like Politics Daily’s David Corn, “I feel as if I’m watching a cheesy horror flick and some poor unsuspecting person is about to open the wrong door — and you want to scream, ‘Hey, don’t open that door!’”

Democratic bloggers boast about how brilliantly Obama schooled George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ “This Week.” The host wondered whether a government mandate requiring people to buy health insurance wasn’t a steep tax increase. Obama argued semantics. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.”

No, Mr. President, it’s not. Technically speaking. But it’s thousands of bucks out of the pockets of people who’ve already decided they can’t afford insurance. Sure, some are improvident deadbeats willing to take their chances, visit the emergency room as necessary, and stick everybody else with the bill. But most just can’t find the money.

See, the argument from self-interest starts with the realization that Americans already spend almost twice as much per capita for healthcare as the citizens of any other country. And that most of the difference goes to outsize corporate profits. Insurance and pharmaceutical executives aren’t wicked, but corporations can be as amoral as sharks.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean insists that the bill simply must include a competitive public insurance plan: “Because it’s the only thing that works … If controlling costs, which is part of the president’s agenda, is going to happen, you have to have a public option. If you want to get some people insured by 2010, which I think is essential for the future of the Democratic Party, you have to have a public option.”

Is that because Dean’s a left-wing ideologue?

No, it’s because he’s a doctor.

© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association