The Healthcare-Deficit Connection

Summary: Explaining the real impact of healthcare reform on our deficits to the American voter.

Hale “Bonddad” Stewart had a good post at FiveThirtyEight.com over the weekend exploring the details of the federal budget. It clearly spelled out one factor of government spending that many of us have known about for a long time: the connection between our country’s rapidly inflating healthcare costs and the growing national debt.

As he maps out, mandatory spending (on programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs services) has been steadily increasing over the past forty years while discretionary spending (for things such as national defense, agriculture subsidies, and a wide variety of other government programs) has been steadily decreasing in that time.

I should note that I would generally consider interest on the national debt as mandatory spending, but Stewart does not.


Now, among the mandatory spending programs - which are not covered by PAYGO rules in the House or Senate the same way that discretionary spending is - Social Security expenditures have actually gone down a bit since 1970, while Medicare and Medicaid expenditures are (for the most part) rising fast.


Now Republicans like to trash healthcare reform as something that will increase our debt. In fact, it is quite clear that without healthcare reform, our debt will continue to rise. In fact, it would not be wrong to assume that a balanced budget is impossible without controlling healthcare costs.

Democrats can do themselves a world of good by driving this point home. It needs to be a message that is consistent and constant in order for voters to believe it. If they do, we can kill two birds with one stone: justifying our support for healthcare reform, and letting voters know we are the party of fiscal responsibility.

That’s not to say it will be easy, especially in the age of sound-bite attention spans. The typical voter will struggle to understand the connection between these two issues - after all, there will be new government spending associated with healthcare reform, and the GOP has done a pretty good job characterizing government as incapable of saving money.

Perhaps we can start where Activate left us off last week with the Three Degrees of Separation.

Explaining the connection between healthcare reform and deficit reduction to volunteers shouldn’t be too difficult. Political activists are well engaged and equipped with the ability to see the relationship.

If they explain to fellow voters in their sphere of influence the benefits of healthcare reform on the federal budget, a basic level of understanding will trickle down. From there, they can talk to voters in their spheres of influence about this connection. This second degree of separation probably won’t understand the argument, but at least they’ll know of it.

Assuming your campaign has a volunteer base of at least 1,000 supporters (it will obviously depend on the size of your district) the message could theoretically reach as many as one million voters.

Tell me that wouldn’t help in 2010!

(By the way, the guys at Activate have a great new post up today about healthcare reform on their blog, The New Paradigm in Politics)

CPAC All Over the Place

Summary: Just when it appeared conservatives were coming to a cohesive message, their annual conference produces a strange and wide array of views.

Following the political blogs today, one can’t help but see a lot of coverage of the Conservative Political Action Conference. One thing I couldn’t help but notice is the lack of collective discipline in message.

Politico reported today that “less than an hour before Tiger Woods was set to explain himself in a press conference, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty urged conservative activists to follow the golfer’s wife and ‘take a nine iron and smash the windows out of big government.’”

Then Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) apparently embraced the “Party of No” image…

“…after a year that saw every single House Republican vote against the stimulus bill ... Republicans in Congress are back in the fight, and they are back in the fight on the right…

When it comes to more borrowing, the answer is no. When it comes to more spending, the answer is no. When it comes to some health care summit that is nothing more than a photo-op to pave the way for Obamacare 2.0, the answer is no.”

And Rep. Michele Bachmann accused President Obama of “choosing decline” for America.

Additionally, there was some infighting among the different factions of conservative activists. A Log Cabin Republicans type group, GOProud, got into something of a shouting match with the National Organization for Marriage - an anti-gay marriage group.

Then a lawyer from the Bush Administration who assisted lawmakers in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act made the interesting argument that Obama is killing too many terrorists. His speech received both applause and hissing.

Yet perhaps the strangest thing about the entire event was the warm embrace of the moderate Republican - at least in his history governing Massachusetts - Mitt Romney. Even his likely presidential primary rival, Sarah Palin, appeared to be backing him today.

There are a lot of rules about message in politics - one of them is clarity. For months the GOP had done a very good job explaining themselves with one clear idea: Obama equals massive deficits.

At CPAC, they’ve been all over the place. To the average onlooker, it would be difficult to say what exactly conservatives and Republicans stand for after today.

Obviously, this is meant to be more of a conservative pep rally than an appeal to the less-political voter, but I still was surprised to see such a lack of message discipline from prominent politicians and political groups.

How Democrats Can Claim Fiscal Responsibility for Themselves

Summary: Democrats have an opportunity to turn a core Republican message back on them.

Over the past year or so, Republicans in Washington have been quick to criticize the spending coming out of Congress with the blessing of the Obama Administration.

Knowing full well that most Americans are adverse to deficits (which are now higher than ever before) the GOP is calling Democrats “out of touch” with the average American.

It’s had an impact – Republican Scott Brown won his Senate race in the liberal Mecca of Massachusetts in part by criticizing Washington’s spending habits. Defeats like this, in turn, have made Democrats dispirited.

In many places, it’s already primary season for 2010. So if you’re a Democratic candidate, and you need to motivate the base, what do you say?

For starters, the Republican National Committee has demonstrated itself to be anything but fiscally responsible lately.

Last year, the RNC managed to burn through a whopping $95 million despite the fact that they were only supporting about four competitive races. They ended 2009 with just under $9 million cash-on-hand. These spending habits have caused their donors some concern – especially because of how much better the DNC has been doing – and RNC operatives have been frantically trying to reassure their contributers.

Knowing that they were having money troubles, where did the RNC decide to have its Winter strategy meeting? A beachside resort in Hawaii, with the best food, entertainment, and recreation that money can buy. Literally.

From a segment on last night’s episode of the Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
RNC Meeting in Hawaii
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

With weeks – and in most cases months – before the primaries, it’s not really worth anyone’s time to make this point a panicle one for your campaign message.

But as Democratic candidates are locating activists and donors, this message is a great way to engage them. An email blast to supporters criticizing the Republicans for trying to make fiscal responsibility their issue – when they’ve proven to be so fiscally irresponsible – is a great way to bring in some small contributions right now.

This is a good message for this part of the campaign because it gives the base a reason to fight.

Why the Smarter Candidates Aren’t Always the Better Politicians

Summary: Having the facts on your side is never enough - what Democrats need to know for 2010.

Democrats will be tempted this year to explain the healthcare debate - or eventually the healthcare bill - in terms of economic efficiencies and aggregate improvements.

These will, of course, be the results of such a bill - but the argument may still cost these Democrats their elections.

Dr. David Runciman - a political scientist at Cambridge University - explains why in a piece for the BBC.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.
The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining."…

…As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex.

Now, there are a lot of Democratic candidates out there who are able to connect to voters on the basis of these emotional values rather than objective policy-centered politics. For the most part, they will be fine.

Then there are a lot of Democrats who like to focus on policy specifics. Like Adlai Stevenson, they will hope the voters to understand these ideas if put to them correctly. But that’s not how voters make their decisions, and these Democrats will learn this the hard way come November.

More on Climate Change and Jobs

Summary: Job creation motivates Americans to support renewable energy policy by large margins.

Too bad we missed this for our post yesterday. A new McClatchy-Ipsos poll released yesterday finds that Americans are much more willing to pay to avert climate change if it creates new green jobs.

One sample of respondents was asked if they would support cap-and-trade legislation if it raised their utility bills $10 per month but also created new jobs. Of that sample, 69% said “yes” while only 29% said “no.” Even at an additional $25 per month, respondents said they would support cap-and-trade by a 60% - 36% margin if it created new jobs.

Another sample was not reminded of potential job creation associated with cap-and-trade. When that sample was asked if they’d support the legislation if it raised their utility bills $10 per month, only 50% said they would while 48% said they would not. At an increase of $25 per month, respondents opposed cap-and-trade by a 55% - 43% margin.

This would certainly suggest our conclusion yesterday was correct - Americans are more motivated to support new energy policies that curb global warming if they see the economic benefits associated with such policies. Environmentalism, while certainly important for some Americans, is not as important to the voting population in general as is the economy.

Democrats need to recognize the importance of this when constructing their message going into 2010.

Another interesting find of this survey was that 70% of respondents said they think global warming is real. 61% of those individuals believed it was due to the burning of fossil fuels.

What makes that finding somewhat surprising is that the Copenhagen Conference had not been convened yet when the survey was taking place - and thus, less was being said in defense of largely-accepted climate science - but “Climate-Gate” had already gone viral. But despite the new attention towards climate change this month, these findings are fairly consistent with other polls this year.

Among the other findings:

On Climate Change:

• Hispanics (69%), adults under 35 (54%), African-Americans (52%), parents of children under 18 (50%), and college graduates (49%) are among those most likely to say humans are to blame for the increasing temperatures.

• Those who are more likely to believe global warming is part of natural environmental patterns include retirees (31%) and Republicans (30%).

• Views on global warming vary drastically across party lines. While a majority of Democrats accept that global warming is happening and hold humans accountable for it (58%), a plurality of Republicans (43%) do not believe that the world’s temperatures have been rising slowly over the past 100 years.

On Cap-and-Trade:

• Younger adults, particularly those under 35 (68%), are more like than adults aged 55 and older (38%) to favor a Cap and Trade system.

• Hispanics (73%), African-Americans (64%), and parents (61%) are also more likely offer their support.

• Across partisan lines, two thirds of Democrats (67%) are supportive of such a system, while a majority of Republicans are opposed (59%). Independents are divided on this measure, as they are roughly as likely to be in favor (45%) as they are to be in opposition (41%).

Tomorrow we continue our series “Hollywood Does Politics!”

Palin, Climate Change and Copenhagen: It’s Really About Jobs

Summary: "Palin might complain that global warming believers are killing the economy, but in fact it’s far from the truth."

In an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin criticized the climate change conference in Copenhagen as a political event.

From her op-ed:

In his inaugural address, President Obama President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

The “agenda-driven science” she refers to all has to do with a few leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK - a scandal now known as “Climate-gate”.

According to Palin, Climate-gate “exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.”

Of course, the Huffington Post did a great job documenting just how overblown Climate-gate really is - a small handful of thousands of emails that have been obscenely misinterpreted. Many pro-reformers on the climate change issue are now criticizing the Washington Post for publishing Palin’s op-ed in the first place.

However, Palin does play into current opinions on global warming. The majority of Americans do not believe that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, if it’s even happening at all.

So it should be no surprise that Americans will view the conference in Copenhagen with skepticism.

Even before Palin wrote her op-ed, conservative pundits including Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck were saying that any political deals reached in Copenhagen would lead to a loss of American sovereignty.

What most people - including the conservative pundits - don’t realize is the Copenhagen Conference is part business forum. In a post this morning, Nate Silver - who is blogging from Copenhagen right now - told readers “the conference, at this point, feels more like a trade show than a political event”.

This was confirmed to us this morning by Jacob Davis, a managing partner with the firm Algae Systems - a company that converts carbon dioxide into renewable energy - who is traveling as part of a delegation to Copenhagen this week.

Davis told us that the conference is “much more than just a political event” and business leaders like himself were going there for the purpose of “showcasing American enterprise” to financial groups and other companies as well as foreign political leaders.

Sure, world leaders will be meeting at this Copenhagen conference to discuss a replacement to the Kyoto Treaty, but it’s also a meeting place for entrepreneurial, free market, business leaders who work in the green technology sector. Their work at Copenhagen will be about making money and, more importantly perhaps, creating jobs.

Palin might complain that global warming believers are killing the economy, but in fact it’s far from the truth.

And that’s what needs to be pointed out more. Sure, a lot of Americans deny global warming, so they need to know that green technology can mean economic growth. This is why White House economist Christina Romer has pushed so hard for a home weatherization component to Obama’s new jobs plan.

It’s a winning argument politically too.

According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, 68% of Americans have taken steps to increase energy efficiency in their homes. Whether that means buying energy efficient appliances, weatherizing with energy saving windows, or even switching to fluorescent light bulbs - 2 out of 3 of your neighbors have probably made an effort to save the environment.

At least inadvertently. Of the respondents that have taken such steps, 71% of them said they were motivated by the prospects of saving money rather than by saving the global climate. Only 26% say it was for environmental reasons.


In tough economic times, global warming has taken a back seat to more immediate issues. With concerns about paying higher utility prices and losing jobs, Americans have become adverse to the climate change issue even to the point of denying its man-made nature.

In order for Democrats to win on the climate change issue these days, energy efficiency and renewable energy must be framed in terms of economic incentives, not a moral paradigm of environmentalism.

In other words, environmentalists need to make this their primary argument: “going green means saving green.” Or better yet - as lawmakers contemplate job creation (and we all know that we need to create jobs here at home) - “going green means making green.”

Top Stories: 9/22/09

Actually, it's more like "top videos" today...

President Obama appeared on Late Night with David Letterman last night:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Funny or Die has a new video about the woes of the health insurance industry:

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay - following his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal - made his debut on Dancing with the Stars last night:



And a friend of mine sent me this video recently. What's interesting about it is how well Obama and McCain seem to stay on message. It's funny because they're actually doing everything right.

What Should Politicians Be Looking At…on TV?

Summary: A new campaign strategy? Using television to connect politicians to their voters.

There’s a fascinating article on Politco’s new page, Click, discussing what television programs members of Congress watch.

For example, members interviewed reported enjoying shows such as USA’s “Monk”, NBC’s “The Office”, and re-runs of “Seinfeld” among others.


But what was more interesting is the idea of what they should be watching. From the article:

"TV and pop culture provide a quick and easy way to stay in touch with what is happening in America and what is being discussed around the coffee maker and the water cooler," says Pete Snyder, president of New Media Strategies. "When your job is decided every two years by the whims of the electorate, you had better damn well know what they’re all about."

In addition, explaining the often-arcane nuances of policy and legislation to constituents is a key part of a Congressman's job description. Using pop culture to do so can not only help a lawmaker communicate more effectively, it can enhance their profile with the media.

How’s that? Synder gives the example of a good line for trying to explain how complex legislation gets through the committee process could: "I don’t know. It’s more of a mystery than the last episode of 'Lost.'"

"Instant quotability," Synder says. "Your media requests will soar."

Democratic strategist Michael Meehan agrees. He says it's imperative that congressmen watch shows that their constituents are watching. "It's vital for long term survival of their congressional careers for members to stay connected with their constituents," he says. "Pop culture is one of those ways."

Like everything else when developing a political message, targeting is a critical aspect of this strategy. That’s why members of Congress - or at least their staff - should check the ratings of television programs in their districts.

"There are regional and local differences in programming and advertising, so it's important to know and keep that local connection back home. That helps with both politics and policy," [former democratic strategist Jeff Eller] says. "Members would be well served to study the local ratings like they study polls."

At the same time, Snyder says all politicians should familiarize themselves with TVs "eight hundred pound gorillas," such as "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars."

"Any politician worth their salt should know the two finalists on 'Idol' by name – kind of like a pop culture 'price of milk' question on the campaign trail," Snyder says. "Nail it, and you are someone people can relate to. Blow it, and you’re hopelessly out of touch."

He also recommends a full plate of political and media satire, such as the "Daily Show," "Late Night with Conan O’Brien" and "The Colbert Report."

"You can see how everything you’re working on is playing out there and what potential ambushes to avoid," Snyder says. "If you don’t feel you have the time, make your press secretary show you clips and keep you informed."

Not only is this a great article about message strategies, it also reinforces the idea that in order to represent one’s constituents, a member of Congress (or any politician) really needs to live like their constituents. Television can serve as a great tool for appearing to be outside what some consider the isolated culture of Washington.

Is Obama Opposition All About Race?

One unexpected result of Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) outburst during President Obama’s speech last week has been the topic of racial anxiety among Republican - almost entirely white - voters.

Today Politico reports that many Democrats have come to see the opposition to Obama’s presidency as at least somewhat race driven.

This comes not long after the Los Angeles Times reported a growing “problem” Obama had in losing white support. Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com argued that the “problem” was being overblown for the most part, but it does seem to suggest that the divide over the 44th president’s performance is at least partially racial.

Just as they were infuriated by the Department of Homeland Security’s report that right-wing militia groups could spawn domestic terrorism, conservatives are undoubtedly becoming infuriated by the suggestion that their opposition to President Obama’s policies are due to racism. Conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh will undoubtedly say that Democrats are “playing the race card” now.

Of course, many social psychologists can easily explain what’s happening. Studies show that the image of a black man can evoke subconscious fears, anxieties, etc. in whites. Therefore, it wouldn’t be to far-fetched to assume that the unprecedented intensity of opposition coming from Tea-Baggers, birthers, and other hard-line anti-Obama conservatives is due to a little racial undercurrent.

Joe Wilson served as the perfect example. As a white Southerner (the South has by far the saddest record of race relations) he gave evidence to that theory when he made an unprecedented outburst (screaming “you lie!” of all things) during a presidential address to Congress.

But can Democrats admit it openly?

So far, it’s been liberal pundits and Democratic activists that have been ready to call their conservative counterparts out on the issue of race - politicians have known better.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we relayed an article from the New York Times explaining how then President-Elect Obama had been “an omnipresent icebreaker” for racial anxiety.

But Obama took a bit of a hit in the polls earlier this summer when he said that the Cambridge, MA police had acted “stupidly” in their arrest of an African-American Harvard professor. There was a huge racial divide on that subject - blacks supporting the professor, white’s supporting the arresting officer - and Obama’s mismanaged reaction resulted in a small (even just temporary) drop in the polls.

So far, neither the Obama Administration nor the Democratic Party will speak directly to the question of race in this debate. And that’s exactly what they want to do. Affirming the speculations of race-driven opposition will only hurt Obama among moderate whites while denying the speculations would hurt his position with progressives and minorities.

So the opposition to this president is (very likely) partially driven by racial anxiety. Unfortunately we can’t really admit it.

How Can the Democrats Still Win On Healthcare?

Since we first posted on the disruptive town hall meetings back on Tuesday, the healthcare debate has only become more surreal - with arguments becoming more absurd and dialogue actually exploding into fist fights.

For the past few years, healthcare has really been a major selling-point for Democrats - it helped them retake Congress in 2006 and expand their majority - and win the White House - in 2008.

But now we’re looking forward to 2010 and suddenly healthcare seems to be a weak selling point. Polls show that Americans still want healthcare reform - including a public option - but they don’t believe Democrats can pull it off.


The big reason has been the deficit.

Recent polls find that the ideas of the Democratic healthcare bills are still popular - for example, voters support a public option. Yet they also believe that the current legislation making its way through Congress will increase the size of the deficit - and they aren’t willing to support it if it does that.

Then there is the issue of quality.

In recent weeks, we’ve heard more and more absurd claims about what would happen to the quality of healthcare under a Democratic-led reform package. Former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin posted this on Facebook last week:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Liberals love to point to such claims and laugh about how preposterous they are. In their defense, of course, these arguments are preposterous - the non-partisan watchdog FactCheck.org recently called such euthanasia claims flat-out “false.”

But they’re doing the job. A recent New York Times poll finds that 69% of Americans are worried that the current healthcare reform bills would result in a loss of quality for them personally if passed.

And as the New York Times pollsters put it “over all, the poll portrays a nation torn by conflicting impulses and confusion.”

"In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system."

And when we look at the Republican arguments closer (increased deficits, loss of quality) and the impact they’re having (fear and confusion) we see a familiar trend: these are exactly the same circumstances that brought healthcare reform to fail in 1994.

By the way, it was the 1994 elections that gave rise to 12 years of GOP power in Congress. If the Democrats fail on healthcare reform again, they seriously risk losing a high number of seats in Congress.

So how can the Democrats still win on this issue?

So far, the Democrats have done a poor job addressing the points that Republicans are raising.

First they must address the issue of deficits. President Obama has repeatedly said that the bill he signs must be budget-neutral - in other words, it cannot increase the size of the federal deficit.

In fact, many Democrats occasionally point out that healthcare costs are a huge part of the deficit as it stands - and they’re right. To bring a little Econ 101 into the discussion, a public option would create a positive shift in the supply curve for health insurance - subsequently lowering prices.


And lower prices mean lower costs for the government. Currently the government faces the major challenge of paying for Medicare and Medicaid while healthcare costs are so high. Because these are nondiscretionary entitlement programs, the government must pay for them - and the most they can do to reduce the deficit here is to pay lower costs.

While that may not be enough to balance the budget, it will be a significant start. Democrats must convey one rather important point: without such cost-cutting reform, it will be impossible to balance the federal budget.

They also need to better address the fear of a loss of quality. The Democrats should stress that their plan would foster competition, thereby increasing the prevalence of preventative care - and that would, in turn, increase quality of healthcare.

Many have been making another important point that should be stressed on this note: while Americans are paying more for healthcare than any other country, we aren’t exactly healthier. Several developed countries with government options as well as countries with strictly nationalized health plans have significantly longer life expectancy rates than the U.S.

Of course, there will always be claims about forced euthanasia and the heartless bureaucrats of “Obama’s ‘death panel’” - but by turning attention to such outrageous arguments, Democrats can actually help Republicans continue to marginalize themselves.

Just look at some of the claims Republicans have made in the past week that liberal activists can point to…

From Minnesota Family Research Council president Tom Prichard:

“Some may ask what does God have to do with our health care system. For one, He’s created the government as an institution in society to do certain things. When we reject His design for government, in a sense, we’re rejecting Him.

In Obama’s worldview, our trust is in government not in God. A denial of how God designed and created our economic and social systems to actually work in the real world. The result? The abysmal failure of government control of health care in socialist models.”

Another right-wing activist group, Americans for Truth, recently sent out an email alert asking “Will ObamaCare Turn into Taxpayer-funded ‘Tranny-Care’?” - suggesting that the public option will be used (maybe or maybe not primarily) for sexual reassignment surgery.

Or we can look to more image-based attacks from the right. Rush Limbaugh recently stirred up controversy when he compared the Obama healthcare logo - featuring a caduceus - to Nazi images.


Some are already picking up on the importance of pointing out such radical attacks. In today’s edition of USA Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote a criticism of the methods used by reform opponents:

“…it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.”

And liberal bloggers can be some of the best sources of counter-attack - citing on-the-ground accounts of conservative bullying. Wisconsin’s Blogging Blue posted this threat sent to the SEIU after some its union members got in a scuffle with conservative activists last week:

"You socialist f—s have the nerve to say stop the violence at the town hall meetings when they weren’t violent until you p—ies showed up because your n—– leader obama said to?????? When we have ours in Racine, Wi, I want you there. I want one of your little b—– to put his hands on this Marine. I want one of you to look or talk to me wrong. I’ll be the last thing your ignorant faux body guards will remember for a very long time. You can f—ing guarantee that."

As the blogger jokingly writes: “nothing says ‘honest debate’ like foul language, threats of violence, and racial epithets.”

Still others are exposing conservative “grassroots” activists as astroturfers and GOP operatives. TalkingPointsMemo.com posted this local news report from Wisconsin over the weekend:



As we said on Tuesday, only time will tell if conservative activists can build momentum towards defeating healthcare with their antics - but some suggest that it could backfire.

If Democrats begin to address the claims that are scarring and confusing Americans while keeping up the pressure on activists - exposing them as either fringe radicals or astroturfers - chances are it very well could.


UPDATE: The White House is catching on. A new page at WhiteHouse.com directly addresses conservative criticisms of the reform plans with YouTube videos of the president's policy staff debunking the myths in the debate. Below is one of the several examples posted there:

Getting Inside the Heads of the GOP

Since the November elections we have been looking at the discord and confusion within the Republican Party. With the 2010 elections coming to the forefronts of our minds, the GOP doesn’t seem to have made much ground.

So what are they thinking?

Following his departure from the GOP last week, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) made his points about the direction of his old party.

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Immediately following him was an interesting conversation between host David Gregory, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, and former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie. It was a good chance to hear the thoughts from within the Republican Party.

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And an online follow-up.

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Obviously there is a lot of confusion, but despite a scrambling opposition, Democrats should be worried about one particular message the GOP has discovered - "checks and balances".

It seems that some new push-poll data conducted by Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies has found it to be an effective argument for GOP campaigns. “Our latest national survey provides strong evidence that voters are concerned that they have given too much power to one political party and that Republicans can provide a check and balance,” said pollster Glen Bolger.

They may not have it all figured out, but the GOP is coming closer to a cohesive message for the 2010 elections. Democrats should make a note of it.