Two interesting developments, one symbolic and one substantive, that represent a far more visibly progressive effort on health care from Ron Wyden this week. The symbolic but paradigm shifting sign was Wyden's signature on a letter to Majority Leader Reid signed by 30 Senators, "urging" a public option as part of any bill leaving the Senate:
Thirty U.S. Senators signed a letter today urging the inclusion of a public option in any health reform legislation that will be considered on the Senate floor. An additional 14 Senators at least have expressed support for the public option through a resolution, letter, or by voting for a strong public option during committee markups.
The Senators’ letter expresses concern that “absent a competitive and continuous public insurance option – health reform legislation will not produce nationwide access and ongoing cost containment.” It continues on to state that “the number one goal of health reform must be to look out for the best interests of the American people – patients and taxpayers alike – not the profit margins of insurance companies.”
Why is this a marked shift in language for Wyden? It's the difference between being "open to" something, as Wyden has stressed repeatedly this year about the PO, accepting it like a rainstorm when you're caught without an umbrella--and being FOR it, asking for its inclusion, and emphasizing its importance. Those are all things that to my knowledge, Wyden has not explicitly done in this campaign for reform, so that he's saying them now is--while tardy--significant.
Significant, but tangibly effective? That's an open question, although surely at this stage when the option appears to be more on the wax as far as the likelihood of inclusion in a bill, every positive voice helps and builds additional momentum for what one would hope is a 60-vote stand on cloture and then 50+ votes for a bill with some kind of PO.
Of course, "what kind of PO" becomes the next set of goalposts, if "whether a PO" is a question now looking more answerable with a yes in the Senate. From my reading it seems the co-op Conrad con never got the slightest bit of traction, so that's probably out. The trigger is apparently the default carrot for "bipartisan" legislation, hoping to snare Olympia Snowe to the side of the good guys, although it's not even clear that will make the nut for her vote. And so Chuck Schumer's "level playing field" plan that basically makes public insurance play by private rules is the current "most worrisome" version likely to be the Senate's offering.
...which makes the newest variant, the "opt-out" concept (not the opt-in idea of Conrad's, yet another DOA stinker) where a federal public option is established but states are left with the option to ban their use, a very interesting prospect. I am a strong subscriber to the idea that this can work as a classic "camel's nose" attempt to build universal compliance through the presentation of an "option" that is nonetheless a federal fait accompli. I don't think you'd see many states really take that step, to taketh away what the federal government giveth, and have to face their electorate afterwards.
Steps away from the Finance Committee markup, SEIU Chief Andy Stern ducked into a private meeting Thursday with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Stern told Pulse colleague Manu Raju that he was working with the senators and "trying to improve [the bill] as we speak."
On Sen. Tom Carper's proposal to allow states to opt into a government plan, Stern said states should be allowed to opt out of the government plan.
"I'm in the fourth way option," Stern said. "If Alabama doesn't want a public option, they should consider that question. I don't think the citizens of Alabama will want out. ... I think we need a public option. I don't think it needs to be triggered. The question is if there are certain state legislators who think it's not appropriate for their state, they should have a right in some fashion to deal with it."
It's not a direct line established by Politico between Stern's meeting with Wyden, his espousal of opt-out, and that meeting having been about developing that idea. But it's a logical hypothesis, at least. I'll see if I can get a confirm that Wyden is willing to cop to his development and support for an opt-out. If so, you'll see the tone of the coverage on Wyden's efforts for reform change at Loaded Orygun. It's a long way from signing letters with the likes of Nelson and Lieberman to delay a bill, to signing one urging a PO--and it's almost as long a journey going from being "open" to a PO to pushing for one (if the strong version is indeed what they're cooking up for it, which is the point--that with the argument that any hesistant Dem Senator can cover his ass at home with the theoretical opt-out, the bill that gets passed can be much stronger). That would be the path towards real reform for everyone, and I would hail it.
Over on HuffPo today, in a posting headlined Schumer: A 60 Seat Majority is Possible, Sam Stein quotes Chuckie as follows:
"We have had tremendous success recruiting," said Schumer. "And our candidates are proving to be even better than we thought. They are just a stellar group of people. They are smart, they tend to be non-ideological they tend to be mainstream and middle of the road. They are just what the doctor ordered in terms of winning elections." (My bold)
Just as I suspected - I do have a sense of Schumer.
I didn't know this was going to be published, I have no idea who the author was, and I first heard about it when it showed up in the Lefty Blogs wire. I don't think there's any new knowledge being dropped since we covered the big exdpenditures from the June report (still waiting on Q2 numbers for the Senate race that I know of; should know after the 15th), and so it's a little apropos of nothing, beyond the diarist's discovery that Chuck Schumer's DSCC laid out a lot of money to beat Jim Neal and Steve Novick with Kay Hagan and Jeff Merkley, respectively. They're not the same kind of candidate, and many consider Neal to have been far less competitive--but their discovery makes the same point we did at the time, and continue to make: why is the DSCC spending so much of our money to defeat other Democrats? For instance, wouldn't that $800,000 dropped on behalf of Merkley be really helpful right now?
In the North Carolina and Oregon Democratic US Senate primaries this year, two great progressive candidates ran for the nomination: Jim Neal (NC) and Steve Novick (OR). The DSCC, who is not supposed to pick sides in a primary, appears to have secretly funded their preferred candidates anyway (Kay Hagan (NC) and Jeff Merkley (OR)).
If the DSCC leaders personally had a preference, that’s fine. BUT IT IS NOT OK TO FUNNEL MONEY TO ONE CANDIDATE OVER ANOTHER IN A DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY!!!! That's unfairly taking sides and deliberately influencing an election, and that is not what the Democratic Party is about.
The diarist, who goes by the poetic handle of spnj889, shows exceptional acumen by quoting my story on the financials from the June reports at length, specifically the part where Chuck Schumer pays Jeff Merkley's light bill so Merkley has the money to buy expensive air time for his commercials attacking Novick.
Again, I don't think they had quite the same race in NC--but the point is that it doesn't matter. It would have been just as wrong for Schumer to funnel a bunch of money to Novick, because they suddenly felt with exposure he could really win. (Oh, to wish). It isn't any more right to spend money to defeat the less progressive Democrat, than it is to spend it defeating a less progressive one. It's using Democratic donor money to beat Democrats. Not good for the party, not good for the movements in each state. Leave them alone.
The anger at Schumer putting his thumb on various scales before primaries is not limited to Oregon, it would appear. I just happened across this diary. Just sayin', is all.
While we're certain to elicit cries that this reportage represents mere Surreptitious Succor for Smith, something else seems to be motivating Congressional Quarterly and Oregonian political reporter Jeff Mapes--twice--besides lingering bitterness over Oregon's Senate primary.
No, the noteworthy reaction is based on the release of May's expenditures in the federal races, which you can peruse here (click on the "June Monthly" link; watch out for the file size--it's 1000+ pages). Folks who want the details can read on beyond the quotes below, and there's a good lively diary at LO already on the subject (which I'm now poaching attention from; sorry Larry). But here's the professional analysis, dry from CQ and with a little more local color from Mapes. From CQ's Greg Giroux, a pretty good reporter himself:
The DSCC reported $409,000 in “independent expenditures” to produce and air a television advertisement opposing Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, whose November opponent is state House Speaker Jeff Merkley. Party committees can make unlimited independent expenditures, so long as the spending is done independently of candidates’ campaigns.
The DSCC also reported $279,000 in “coordinated expenditures,” which are limited by law but can be made in concert with candidates’ campaigns. The largest share of these funds went to assist Merkley, whom the DSCC preferred in the May 20 primary election over Steve Novick, a lawyer and liberal activist who lost by 3 percentage points. The DSCC also used coordinated funds in May to boost the campaigns of North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan, a state senator who is her party’s nominee against Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole ; Kentucky Democrat Bruce Lunsford, a businessman who is challenging Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ; and Landrieu, whose Republican opponent is state Treasurer John Kennedy.
Note who else got the money; we'll compare Merkley's situation to theirs, and what was done for each. But last above the fold is Mapes, including a flattered Steve Novick:
[T]he level of direct support was remarkable. All told, the committee spent $386,000 in coordinated expenditures with Merkley, which doesn't count the advertising the DSCC produced and paid for on its own. It helped give him resources Novick couldn't match.
I called up Novick, wondering if he thought he could have won if the DSCC had stayed out of the state. He said he was now backing Merkley, but he couldn't resist saying:
"I'm very proud, and I think my supporters will be extremely proud, that it took that kind of humongous effort to beat us. They clearly gambled that Jeff Merkley had a better chance to beat Gordon Smith and they had better be right...If they're not, a lot of Oregon Democrats will justly be mad at them."
We're headed into the final weekend, and Jeff Merkley is doing everything humanly possible with every kitchen appliance he has to beat Steve Novick for the nomination. The three prongs of his support base--the DSCC network, the legislature and the beholden unions--have all come into play on his behalf over the last couple days, most urgently just now.
First, the grotesque display of wanton disregard for state autonomy shown by DSCC Chair Senator Chuck Schumer, whose response to a campaign labeled locally as "tone deaf," "disappointingly negative," and generally lacking in charisma or promise, was to double and triple down his money.
Having dropped 100K into the campaign as seed money to get it started, as much as $300,000 more has poured in since, musch of it late in the form of ads that swipe at Gordon Smith but then only mention Jeff Merkley. Here's one:
Having soaked up three weeks' worth of generally empty airtime, Jeff Merkley's ad campaign seemed to have brought him the first good news in a while--according to the latest Survey USA poll, he'd pulled into something of a tie with Steve Novick for the Democratic nomination.
That's always nice; it was nice to know Steve had established an early base and solidifed it while Merkley caught up. As we said at the time, he'll have to spend a lot of money on TV to try and get up to speed--and that's apparently what he did.
But he's still nominally behind, and in what is looking like a freaking goldmine of votes in Multnomah County (more on those data, you bet!), Merkley might be in danger of suffering a loss on a much grander scale of total votes than he projected in his 50%+1 model. If 58% of the new vote is young, and Merkley partisans are as willing to accept some parts of the SUSA poll as others--Merkley is in a world of hurt: Novick crushed him in the crosstabs for 18-34 ages, 35% to 11%.
I suspect the closer you get to 18, the better Steve does--and the better proportion of the new registrants are 30 and under. It's like someone left Bus Project seeds in every neighborhood, and our infamous winter of discontented weather germinated a huge sprout of democracy.
This, it turns out, was not a surprise to Chuck Schumer and the DSCC back East, They've been keeping an eye on their money...I mean, their candidate, and certainly they can't be popping Cristal. The relatively good polling news notwithstanding, this is so NOT where any of them expected Jeff to be heading into the home stretch. Fighting the tide to organize through a clearly more energized campaign doesn't just happen, and I don't know where they're doing their work, but it's not where a whole shitload of voters are.
(Ready once again to preserve defeat from the clutches of victory, it's...Chuck Schumer.
- promoted by torridjoe)
I had somedoubts about Sen. Ron Wyden's Healthy Americans Act when it was first proposed and when an ad came out that seemed as if it vastly overpromised any likely benefits it had, I was even more skeptical.
People kept telling me that it had support from a dozen senators (of both parties!) as if that was some major endorsement. Then, yesterday, I saw this story in The Hill:
With all the news rolling in about the latest endorsements for Democratic U.S. Senate primary contenders Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley, one can only wonder what the old-guard establishment types like Chuck Schumer, the AFL-CIO honchos and Ted Kulongoski will say to Novick on Wednesday, May 7.
“It is unconscionable that Judge Mukasey would even have to think about whether waterboarding and other torture techniques should be used by the United States,” Merkley said. “Oregonians hoped that the departure of Alberto Gonzales would put the question of torture finally to rest.”
Jim Rassmann, a former Army Green Beret and co-chair of Veterans for Merkley expressed his outrage at Mukasey’s equivocation. “Any Senator who votes for this nomination should be drummed out of office,” he said. “The U.S. should be an example in the world. But this administration, backed by supporters like Gordon Smith, has damaged our reputation around the world almost beyond repair. Confirmation of Mr. Mukasey would be a continuing disaster.” {emph mine}
(I have to say honestly it's not altogether prudent for Merkley OR Novick to take on Chuck Schumer just now, but there is some merit in seeking an alternative way to display your disagreement (as both men should and I presume do), perhaps by refusing money from his PAC. Schumer's vote through committee and (again, one presumes) Yea vote on the floor are pathetic pass-through capitulations. But Merkley can't bite the hand that almost literally feeds him, and Novick wants to avoid being the high draft pick who calls out the coach before he even has a contract.
This move obviously would hurt Merkley more, but it's getting to the point where somebody, sometime has to stand on principle for once. What's happening with Mukasey is simply absurd and appalling. Novick has called on Democrats generally not to cave, can't say as I've seen something from Merkley yet (could be wrong). Reid has said Mukasey will get a no vote from him; will they filibuster?
Heh--sorry for piggybacking on your thread, Darrel. - promoted by torridjoe)
Maybe it's just me, but if I was a Senate candidate who believed that waterboarding was torture and that Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey didn't satisfy my conscience that he would not only consider it as such but that he would vigorously investigate and prosecute any allegations of torture by whatever methods used to interrogate prisoners who are (or have been) in US custody, I just might not take calls from Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chairman Sen. Chuck "Yea!" Schumer, even if he'd promised me bags of cash.
RSS Feed: http://www.loadedorygun.net/rss/rss2.xml
- promoted by torridjoe)