Longer Ben Nelson

You may have seen the widely quoted quote from Sen. Ben Nelson (D):

Nelson’s problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game,” Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a “deal breaker.”

So, the immediate reaction from liberal pundits and bloggers is that Ben Nelson is clearly the insurance companies' bitch. If harm to their private plans is a 'deal breaker,' it means that their profits are his key motivation.

I think it's slightly more complicated than that. Nelson is most likely right: A public plan (positing that it is well funded and well constructed) is likely to outperform what the insurance companies can provide with their strict adherence to the bottom line and their relative size.

But what Nelson is really doing here is puncturing a convenient fiction that the left brings to the debate: That by introducing a public plan but preserving consumer choice, the magic of market forces and competition will keep both the public plan and private plans lean and cost effective. The reality that Nelson points out is that if we actually do the public plan right, it will simply replace the ubiquitous private plans, effectively socializing health care (and, importantly to Ben Nelson--whose"(D)" stands for "Douchenozzle"--harming the profits of the insurance industry).

Nelson is just honestly pointing out that we face a more clear cut choice than "third-way" dems like to admit: We should either muddle on with private industry failing to provide adequate health care insurance, or we should just go ahead and socialize it all.

Nelson is on the wrong side of that debate, but at least he calls it like he sees it.

Arlen Specter switches parties! But...

... as much as this seems tactically great right now for the Dems, I am skeptical about the actual end results. Let's just say that in no way will Specter be one of the better sort of Democratic Senator.

Also, for the laboristas, he has this to say:

[M]y position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change...

Wouldn't want to rush things

In a post entitled The System Works, TNR's Josh Patashnik writes:

You could make a similar observation about the institutional design of Congress and the 2006 election. There was a huge wave of discontent with the ruling party. The body designed to be most in tune with popular opinion (the House of Representatives) flipped to the opposition by a wide margin. The body designed to be slightly more insulated from momentary shifts in public sentiment (the Senate) flipped just barely, and perhaps thanks only to one ill-chosen word from George Allen. As dissatisfaction with the GOP has persisted, the party's prospects have become even bleaker, and now it stands a pretty good chance of losing the presidency too. (And if it doesn't, it will be because the two parties responded to the situation rationally in the manner Matt describes.)

All in all, it's a fairly elegant, and yet not impetuous, means of transferring power as public opinion changes. It makes you appreciate the wisdom of the system the Framers devised--something to keep in mind next time someone tells you the U.S. would be better off with parliamentary-style government.

A yes, "fairly elegant, and yet not impetuous."*

While we were busy being elegant and restrained in our transfer of power, we only:

* allowed Al-Queda to attack
* launched two wars
* dismantled constitutional protections
* turned the Supreme Court sharply right

But hey, thanks TNR, I will keep our stately dignity in mind the next time someone suggests any variant on our system whatsoever.


--
* Grammar Snark Says: .... as if elegance usually goes hand in hand with impetuousness. And yet not in this case!

Hillary on the NCAA Men's Basketball Champions

"In a move that's sure to be seen as controversial, Hillary has contacted the NCAA Board of Directors to argue that Memphis is actually better qualified to be National Champion."

Bill Richardson as the "electable" candidate?

DLC types love to tell Dems that they should play for middle-of-the-road independents instead of taking firm progressive stances. Well, according to David Weigel, it looks like those independents love them some Bill Richardson:

That's been going on for a while. Pollster.com, which tracks the primaries and averages all the surveys, has noticed Mr Richardson gaining everywhere. In Iowa he's gone from negligible numbers to the low teens, near Mr Obama. In New Hampshire he's moving past Mr Edwards into third place.

But the internal numbers in that Smith-featured poll are fascinating: Mr Richardson's making the biggest gains with independents. In South Carolina only 1% of Democrats support Mr Richardson, but 9% of independents do. In New Hampshire it's 6% of Democrats and, again, 9% of independents. The Iowa poll's the real blockbuster: Mr Richardson has an outright lead with 25% of the independent vote. That's what's pushing him into the first tier.

The Iowa and New Hampshire numbers matter; those are both states where independents can show up to the caucus or primary and signal their intention to vote Democratic. When I reported from New Hampshire in June, Ray Buckley, the state's Democratic chairman, crowed that two-thirds of independents are planning to vote in his party's primary. Nearly half (44%) of New Hampshire voters are registered independent. If Mr Buckley is right, there'll be as many independents voting in Mr Richardson's race as there will be Democrats.

Personally, I think that the reason Richardson is climbing with independents is that people are tired... Richardson's most attractive quality is that he exudes non-partisan compentence. However, Weigel offers up another possibility:

Mr Richardson has the most extreme Iraq pullout plan in the race—all troops out of the country, no permanent bases. A lot of those non-Democrats and ex-Republicans who ditched Bush in 2006 like the sound of that.

First impressions of the Democratic debate

Any of you watch the debate? Post your thoughts in the comments.

This was the first one I've seen, and it was eye opening.

The YouTube format was actually pretty cool. Pretty much anything other than YouTube that uses the word "YouTube," including the friggin iPhone, seems like a gimmick, but user-video questions had some advantages.

Joe Biden is trying very hard to come off as the hard-eyed realist, but, for me at least, it's not working. I still think he's a little bit of a clown

Hillary kicks ass. She's doing a great job. I don't want to vote for her, but I have to acknowledge that her performance--in the past few weeks up through tonight's debate--has been very good. She sounds like a hawk, and I think she is a hawk, and I'd really prefer that somebody else be president. But right now it seems like she'll be president.

Bill Richardson lacks the polish I would hope he had, but based on limited information, he's still my pick for the one who would make the best president. I like his answers. I like that he seems fundamentally honest in his answers, but maybe that's why he doesn't seem so polished.

Ah, Dennis Kucinich. I love that little guy. He he is loudly and articulately spouting pure sanity from the podium, mixed in with some terrible, terrible gimmickry. I guess he feels like the gimmicks are necessary to break out of his fringe-candidate status. But it seems to me it's exactly those gimmicks that are hurting him. I mean seriously, text "peace" to 73223? What is that supposed to....

... whoops, sorry to trail off. I was busy texting.

John Edwards kicks ass, but he just doesn't have a chance, I think.

Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel... I like both these guys, but,... meh... they aren't adding anything to the debate.

Obama... I don't know what to say. i still think he's all style and no substance. I'm willing to see the substance if it comes, but, where is it?

I give you the next president of the United States

There's a lot I don't know yet about Bill Richardson, but what I do know I like. So far, he's the only candidate in the entire field who I think would almost certainly make a very good president.

This ad campaign hasn't changed my mind about that:

I don't know jack about Mike Huckabee

I titled the post this way to deter anyone from thinking that I'm about to become a "Huckabee Democrat." It's a sad state of affairs, but my starting assumption about any politician is that she will say anything, anything, to get elected. It is, in fact, his job to do so.

Policy does matter, however, and the rhetoric that politicians use to get elected ends up shaping the policy, often more than the politicians might have hoped.

Firstly, the rhetoric constrains the winner of the political contest, at least a little, as the winner may have future contests and needs to avoid flagrant hypocrisy to win down the road.

Second, and probably more significantly, the rhetoric can take on a life of its own and move the center of the debate in one direction or another. This latter effect can immediately undercut a politician's favoured course (example: Bush and the Dubai ports deal), but can also ripple down through the years, shaping entire political platforms (example: Barry Goldwater).

Thus, it is heartening to see a Republican candidate for president staking out these sorts of positions, no matter what his motivations may be:

Here is a piece of Salon's profile, as quoted by Yglesias (with our patent-pending Bellman bolding):

"If I really know what it means to follow Jesus, it means no kid goes hungry tonight," he said, at one stop in Iowa. "It means no wife gets the daylights beat out of her by some alcoholic abusive husband. It means no kid lives in a neighborhood where he is scared to death of some child predator that is going to pick him up and carry him off. It means not one single elderly person has to make the choice between food or medicine." Unlike former Sen. Rick Santorum or Sen. Sam Brownback, Huckabee does not spend time pounding the pulpit over baby murder and sodomy. He's a self-styled "compassionate conservative," a poll-tested concept that worked once before. But while President Bush discarded the slogan like a prom queen's sash, Huckabee wants to convince America that he is the real deal.

Leading off with poverty? That's the starting position of the so-called "Religious Left." Taken seriously, it implies all sorts of positions that are far closer to my left-wing nutjob socialism than the policies pursued by any Republicans in my lifetime.

Here is another bit of the Salon profile, as quoted by Ezra Klein:

[Huckabee] has refused to take the predictable path by talking tough on crime to deflect the DuMond criticism. Instead, he campaigns on a compassionate approach to wrongdoers, especially those whose crimes are the result of drug or alcohol addiction. At Philly's Finest, he condemned the "revenge-based corrections system," sounding every bit the sort of squishy liberal that the Bill O'Reillys of the world long ago scared into the shadows. "We lock up a lot of people we are mad at rather than the ones we are really afraid of," he said. "We incarcerate more people than anybody on earth." As governor, Huckabee pushed for drug treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent offenders. He pushed for faith-based prison programs, and was critical of governors who "gladly pull the switch" on death penalty cases, an apparent knock on President Bush, who was criticized as governor of Texas for being cavalier about capital punishment.

This is the exactly the kind of position, written into platform after platform of the Democratic party, that makes me a Democrat. However, our Dem Congressfolk and Presidents haven't acted on this position--or even tried very hard to shape the debate--for some time. Our highly-paid inside-the-beltway consultants tell us that hammering on this sort of thing will lose us votes rather than gain them.

And they might be right. But at some point somebody has to actually fight to fix the clusterfrak that is our prison-industrial complex. And if that person turns out to be a Republican, that person might just gain more votes than he loses for doing so. He might just get mine.

At the very least, I'm happy to see anyone out there pushing on my side of the envelope.

On the "mistake" and other nonsense

Nothing has changed for Hillary, and John Edwards is seizing on that to try to get a little traction:

When Edwards spoke a few minutes later, he seemed to aim his rhetorical barrels right at Clinton, emphasizing repeatedly how he was, indeed, wrong to have voted for authorization of the war. “I should have never given George Bush authorization,” he said. Arguing that America needs a president who can is “honest, open, and moral” he said that after 6 years of Bush not taking responsibility for the war, it was no longer acceptable to dance around the issue as he implied Hillary was doing.

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias--who claims he is saying something nice about Hillary--says that Hillary isn't avoiding admitting a mistake. Instead, she just thinks it wasn't a mistake. Is that really being nice, or is he actually being a dick?

Lastly, one of my favorite politicians weighs in on Iraq:

Dennis Kucinich got his licks in, trashing all the other candidates. “It must be hard for these politicians to say they were misled, tricked and deceived by George w. Bush,” referring to their positions on the war in Iraq. “Here’s one who wasn’t. I organized 125 Democrats in Congress to oppose the war and I saw all the same information these other candidates did.”

Lest the "realists" amongst us get bent out of shape, I don't think Kucinich can win, but I don't think his candidacy hurts anybody either. He's one of my favorites not only because of his honorable positions, but also for stuff like this:

He then ended his talk by saying he was the only candidate who had no strings attached to him. Then he lifted his arms up to his shoulders and slowly twirled around on stage repeating: “No strings. No strings. No strings.”

Why do I hate Mark Penn?

I'm not sure exactly. I suppose he symbolizes, to me, what's wrong with the Democratic party at the highest levels. And I sure hope that Hillary (who I think would make a good president) will fire his ass before he turns her into John Kerry.

I've been calling Penn some bad names in email, saying things too harsh to post on the blog. So I was pleased to see TDH handle it more appropriately and more hilariously:

Why won’t Hillary Clinton call her vote on the war resolution “a mistake?” We don’t have the slightest idea—nor do we really understand why some voters care so much. (The notion that she should “apologize” strikes us as utterly silly.) But in Patrick Healy’s Monday report, he quoted a major Clinton adviser explaining the thinking behind Clinton’s stance. We groaned, then said: “It figures:”

HEALY (2/12/07): Some advisers believe the issue of her vote will fade with time; even so, they emphasize that she is taking a principled position of responsibility for it.

Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist, said in an interview: ''It's important for all Democrats to keep the word 'mistake' firmly on the Republicans and on President Bush. Senator Clinton has been very clear that we, as a party, should keep the focus on Bush—these were his mistakes. Ultimately that's very important, not just for her, but for the entire Democratic party.”

We don’t know if that is the real explanation. But only Penn could ever come up with this sort of tortured reasoning. Only Penn would advise a client: Don’t speak English for the next several years.