David Perdue-- The Cowardice Of His Convictions

Last July, Teresa Tomlinson, the progressive candidate among the Democrats seeking the nomination to run against Georgia incumbent Trumpist David Perdue, write a guest post for us about political courage, Crippling Political Fear. It was more about Democrats than Republicans. “It’s fear,” she wrote, “that cripples the Democratic Party. Fear of our policies, fear of who we are, and fear of the Republicans. Yes, fear is what has politically cost us in the last many election cycles. One cannot lead if one is afraid. The thing about leadership is that people want their leaders to be brave. They care less about what you think on the issues than whether you have the moxie to fight for them and the strength of conviction to tell them what you really think.”

I suggest you read her entire essay at the link above but she conclude “The key to winning is that you don’t aim to win, you aim to lead. If you lead, the winning takes care of itself-- or at least you move the needle so profoundly you set up the next winner, as did Stacey Abrams in Georgia with her heroic non-loss in Georgia. She was who she was and voters responded to that. That’s not fear, that’s winning.”

The video above, though, is not about a fearful Democratic politician afraid of his own position. It’s about a fearful Republican politician, Senator David Perdue, afraid of his own position. When 39 Senate Republicans signed onto an anti-Roe v Wade amicus brief to the Supreme Court last week, Perdue, though an anti-Choice fanatic, was one of the only Republicans who wouldn’t.

Odd finding Perdue’s name on a short list of mainstream conservatives like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski instead of with the neo-fascists like James Inhofe, Tom Cotton, John Cornyn and Moscow Mitch. But, like electorally vulnerable Cory Gardner (CO), Martha McSally (AZ) and Dan Sullivan (AZ), Perdue was too chickenshit to vote his convictions.

“David Perdue is not fooling anybody,” Tomlinson told us on Friday. “Georgians are not so easily fooled by his decision not to sign onto the Republican amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Senator Perdue has stated time and again that he is ‘unwavering’ in his belief that women can’t be trusted to make the most intimate medical decisions affecting their lives and their reproductive health. He has confirmed dozens and dozens of federal judges who are committed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Though he purports to be a ‘small government’ conservative, he firmly believes that the government can invade a woman’s private, personal decisions related to abortion, and he believes that women have fewer rights to their own bodily autonomy than a man.”

Let’s help Teresa get rid of this political coward. She’s, by far, the best-suited of the Democrats competing to do that. And the Congress Needs More Progressive Women thermometer on the right is how you can contribute to her grassroots campaign. “Mr. Perdue,” she said, “we see your political duplicity, your election year cynicism. You have shown us the cowardice of your convictions. The people are tired of leaders who won’t level with them. That’s not leadership. You don’t trust women, and we don’t trust you in the U.S. Senate.” You can read more about Teresa’s record on her campaign website here and find out where she stands on a wide range of issues. The contrast between Teresa and Perdue on women’s reproductive freedom couldn’t be starker. Teresa:

• I believe that women’s reproductive rights are basic human rights.
• I believe that bodily autonomy is an essential component of the freedom and equality guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
• I believe that politicians should stay out of the private and highly individualized medical considerations of a woman’s reproductive health.
• I reject the notion that a pregnancy creates an independent “person” under the law. Indeed, a woman is the sole fiduciary of her body and any pregnancy she carries.
• I support the fundamental right to abortion enshrined by Roe v. Wade and will only vote for the confirmation of federal judges who commit to adhere to the bedrock judicial principle of stare decisis.
• I support the repeal of policies, including the Hyde Amendment, which prohibit abortion coverage for women who get their reproductive care through government-administered healthcare programs.

What Americans Really Want To Know Is, Who Will Protect Us From Trump

To a normal person, the case for reelection Trump is making-- "I'll protect you"-- is patently absurd. But normal people won't be voting for Donald Trump anyway, even if they did in 2016. Ron Brownstein asserted yesterday that amid all the meandering and asides, the belittling taunts and geysers of grievance in his insane 2 hour CPAC speech, Trump may have synthesized the essence of his reelection strategy in just those three words: "I'll protect you."

With that concise phrase, Trump revealed volumes about his view of the electorate and the coalition that he hopes will carry him to a second term. The comment underscored his determination to convince his followers of a two-stage proposition: First, that they are 'under siege,' as he put it, by an array of forces that he presented as either hostile to their interests or contemptuous of their values, and second, that only he can shield them from those threats.

That dark and martial message shows that Trump continues to prioritize energizing his core supporters-- blue-collar, older, and nonurban whites uneasy about demographic, cultural, and economic change-- even at the price of further alienating voters dismayed or disgusted by his behavior as president. It also shows that, even as an incumbent... [rather than touting] the usual path of presidents seeking reelection... the economic progress since his inauguration-- the message that most Republican strategists believe represents his best opportunity to recapture white-collar suburbanites in particular. But Trump showed far more passion in warning against all the dangers he described as massing against his supporters. The speech demonstrated yet again that he’s more comfortable positioning himself as the lone sentry manning the watch at 'midnight in America' than as the optimist who has delivered 'morning in America,' as Ronald Reagan memorably put it.

This positioning may help explain the reports that Trump has not lobbied too hard to prevent the Republican-controlled Senate from joining the Democratic House in rejecting his emergency declaration to transfer federal funds to his proposed border wall. It’s difficult to imagine a way for him to more dramatically portray himself as the solitary figure standing up for his voters than vetoing a resolution, passed by both chambers, opposing his declaration-- over the border wall, no less. “It actually suits him better to have a presidential veto against even his own party, because it supports this line, ‘You can’t count on the Democrats, you can’t count on even the Republicans, but you can count on me,’” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which studies public attitudes primarily on social and cultural issues.

Trump tried to send that message with both the substance and the style of his CPAC speech. He offered a rare example of a president using profanity during public remarks when he insisted that congressional Democrats are using “bullshit” charges against him. For Trump, breaking such rules of presidential decorum offers another opportunity to tell his supporters that he will barrel through any norm, and shatter any convention, to protect them. “When he does that type of thing,” said the longtime Republican strategist John Brabender, “it enhances the type of supporter he is truly talking to.”

This video that played on a loop at CPAC pretty much sums up the GOP messaging for 2020. [Trigger warning: feh!]



Brownstein continued that his CPAC speech was a preview of the 2020 campaign, closely echoing the central arguments of the American far right from Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace to Pat Buchanan [to Sean Hannity, Seb Gorka and Stephen Miller]. And like them, "he portrayed his preponderantly white followers as caught between disdainful elites and dangerous minorities. Trump lambasted 'the failed ruling class' that he claimed has betrayed working Americans with free-trade deals. He described college campuses as biased against conservatives, and he insisted that 'Hollywood discriminates against our people.' And as he has done since his first day as a national candidate, Trump warned darkly of immigrants coming to steal Americans’ jobs or menace them with crime. Amid all these domestic threats coiled a serpentine network of international dangers, from trading competitors such as China targeting U.S. industries to Central American nations encouraging migrant caravans so they could 'give us some very bad people. People with big, long crime records.' The new twist in Trump’s CPAC speech was how directly he tried to connect the Democratic Party with the shadowy forces that he tells his supporters are threatening them. At one point, he declared that there are 'people in Congress right now … that hate our country.' Later, he insisted, 'Democratic lawmakers are now embracing socialism.' Both charges send the underlying message: Trump’s opponents are not only misguided, but also fundamentally un-American."

As he summoned all these dangers, Trump simultaneously portrayed himself as the one force that could block them. As Jones described it, Trump offered himself to his supporters as “a kind of wall,” a resolute barrier against the forces of social and economic change. Perhaps the single most telling moment of the speech came when he offered his pledge to “protect” his supporters: Trump insisted that gun owners are “under siege” from liberals determined to undermine the Second Amendment, before quickly adding, “but I’ll protect you.” That rhetoric echoed his declaration of “I alone can fix it” during his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican convention. At CPAC, a few moments later, Trump added an exclamation point: “We will defend the American way of life.”

Trump didn’t define “the American way of life” in his speech, but he’s left little doubt that he identifies it with the attributes of his own followers: overwhelmingly white and Christian and mostly living outside major cities. (Trump generated a big round of applause at CPAC with a passing attack on “sanctuary cities.”) “It is really clear in a lot of Trump’s most visceral rhetoric [that] it’s not the whole country he is speaking to,” Jones said. “He is speaking to his base, and he has no intention of speaking to the entire country.

“That is another [presidential] norm that he’s broken: really not ever getting to an inclusive ‘we,’” Jones added. “His ‘we’s’ are always ‘what my base supports.’”

The fervor that Trump stirs among his supporters with such exclusionary rhetoric is palpable at each of his rallies—and was visible again at CPAC last weekend. But the circle he draws around “the American way of life” has never been inclusive enough to attract a majority of the country. Both Election Day exit polls and postelection analysis of state voter files indicate that the groups that feel most excluded from his definition—young people, minorities, college-educated white women—not only gave Democrats larger-than-usual margins last November, but also turned out in unusually high numbers. The veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told me the evidence from 2018 suggests that in 2020, at least 10 million more people might vote than in the 2016 presidential election—most of them from constituencies hostile to Trump.

Trump, and the GOP leadership more broadly, continue to behave as if those newly activated Americans are not also hearing everything Trump does to stoke his core supporters. But last weekend’s speech encapsulated almost everything that people critical of or even ambivalent about Trump dislike about him. Each time Trump breaks a boundary, he hardens the discontent, in particular among many well-educated middle-class voters who are doing fine economically but who view him as unfit for the Oval Office in morals and temperament. “There is a group of voters who voted for Trump holding their nose, who hoped he would be a different person and would be like other presidents-- a figure of decorum and dignity and respect,” Garin said. “And he was anything but [that] … at that speech.” In PRRI polling last fall, 88 percent of African Americans, 75 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of white voters with a four-year college degree or more agreed that he has damaged the dignity of the presidency.

Trump’s disjointed, angry, boastful, vulgar, and divisive speech at CPAC was the clearest indication yet that he remains almost entirely uninterested in reaching out to the groups resisting him... Trump last weekend showed clearly that his own instinct is always to reprise the strategy that elected him in 2016: Maximize turnout among his core groups of non-college-educated, evangelical, and rural whites, even if that further inflames the groups most alienated from him.

In that way, Trump’s unstinting promises to “protect” his supporters against a changing America may expose him to greater risk from an electorate that will likely look slightly younger and more diverse in 2020 than it did four years ago. “It is a trade-off without a doubt,” Brabender said. “But it is a calculated risk by a president who feels that the trade-off is worth it. In fairness, it was the same trade-off four years ago, and it paid off. The question is whether you can do the same thing this time, when the electorate is going to change a little bit.” After last weekend, there’s less doubt that Trump is determined to find out.

Democrats are entering this race with a clear advantage. I sure hope they don't blow it with the one front-runner who would be a better foil for Trump than Hillary was: Status Quo Joe. Who warned in 1993 of "predators on our streets" who were "beyond the pale" and said they must be cordoned off from the rest of society because the justice system did not know how to rehabilitate them?" It wasn't Trump. But right now Democratic base voters don't know about the real Joe Biden, just the one Obama picked as a ticket-balancer. There's no doubt that if he's the nominee, his record will be the best way the GOP could ever hope to depress turnout among the Democratic base. Neither Trump nor Biden has any understanding of why this is important to voters:

Austerity Regime Leads To Breakdown In Social Cohesion

Didn't David Cameron looked pissed off having been dragged back to gritty, sweltering, seething, burning London from his lovely £10,000/week 18th Century Tuscan holiday villa near Montevarchi! His answer to the rioters who have spread from Tottenham to almost every corner of London and up to Birmingham and Liverpool is one dimensional: he's going to go all Bashar al-Assad on them. Tonight the police on the streets of London will increase from 6,000 to 16,000.

As he said he's recalling Parliament-- no doubt to force Labour to embrace his harsh plans for repression-- he muttered something about rebuilding the burning communities... but nothing about the roots causes of the three days of rioting. It surely went beyond one instance of police brutality in the extra-judicial murder of community activist Mark Duggan. That was a spark in Tottenham-- a spark that set off hours of peaceful-- if unreported-- protest. But the conflagration that followed, there and beyond, has much more to do with a breakdown of social cohesion in the U.K. There's a hopelessness brought on by Cameron's enthusiastic buy-in to world capital's insistence on an Austerity Regime. Cameron was the first major embraceor of the concept, a concept that the GOP feels will serve their nefarious purposes here in the U.S. as well, regardless of how disastrously it has failed-- in every way-- in the U.K.

From the closure of youth clubs and youth projects to staggering unemployment and cutbacks in life-or-death public services, the poor in England see themselves as victims of the banksters and the political hacks, like Cameron, who the banksters control. Who remembers Janis Joplin singing "If you ain't got nothin', you ain't got nothin' to lose" (Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson)? Probably next to no one who's taken to the streets in London in the last few nights. I'm guess they just have the sentiments expressed in the song coursing through their body as a human emotion.

By dragging the country, a very different country now, back towards reactionary Thatcherism, Cameron has opened up dangerous social and economic faultlines that bode ill for a country he is ill-prepared to govern. The Tories insist England has entered "an age of economic austerity, rising individualism, and a reduction in the Christian ethic of ‘love thy neighbour'." For all Governor Perry's pious and inappropriate invocations last weekend as he was about to toss his hat into the Republican presidential nomination ring, this is precisely what we can expect to see coming our way. Republicans-- who, after all, have more guns than England could ever imagine, welcome it even more gladly than they welcomed the S&P downgrade and yesterday's stock market meltdown. Push-back in this country is taking a peaceful approach so far-- tonight in Wisconsin, yesterday outside the offices of right-wing Congresswoman Nan Hayworth (R-NY).

[Elaine] Epstein said she showed up at an afternoon rally Monday outside Rep. Nan Hayworth's office here to protest the congresswoman's support for a Republican budget proposal she says puts Medicare in jeopardy.

"People under 55, she just threw them under the bus," Epstein, a retiree from Somers, said. "She didn't say that, but I'm reading between the lines. I'm afraid for my children and grandchildren."

"I'm really concerned that Nan Hayworth and her Republican colleagues believe we should be balancing the budget on the backs of the people who can least afford it," said Mel Tanzman of Mohegan Lake.

Chanting "Jobs, Not Cuts," protesters targeted the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.

"We want them held accountable for what they voted for, which in the case of Nan Hayworth is she wanted to make Medicare into a voucher system," said Joe Mayhew, a member of the Working Families Party and political and legislative coordinator for the Communication Workers of America Local 1103. "That's the Republican plan."

After 8 years of Bush's bumbling incompetence, it looked like experience was no longer required for the presidency. So now we're stuck with a weak, inexperienced, untested, vacillating leader here in America, likely to have to face challenges far above anything he's prepared for-- and with nowhere to turn to except, like Cameron, the smiling, salivating forces of repression.

Rhetorically Speaking Obama Knocks One Out Of The Ball Park-- And Now For The Hondelling

President Obama:

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.

Our collective failure to meet this challenge-- year after year, decade after decade-- has led us to a breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can’t afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are
still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.

...The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals:

It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses,
and our government. It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge-- not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals. And it’s a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans-- and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some
arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of
America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies-- because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

That’s what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan-- more security and stability.

Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job
or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange-- a
marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how
everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves.

...This is the plan I’m proposing. It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight-- Democrats and Republicans. And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks
ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old
tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are
sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed-- the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.

If you're reading this right after President Obama's speech, you're reading as I'm driving. I'm on my way to the Air America studios in Burbank where I'll be one of the guests trying to figure out the implications of the speech (from 7 to 8, PT). First, for the sephardim (and other non-Ashkenazi) among us, you need to grok the concept of hondelling-- because that's the whole ball game from here on:


Substantively, the president's two main points tonight were to hold down costs-- and end unfair practices like prior conditions and recission-- for those who already have health insurance and to come up with a way to offer affordable coverage to those who don’t. Ideologically and politically there aren't half a dozen Republicans in Congress, despite Sarah Palin's misleading OpEd in today's Wall Street Journal who care at all about the second goal and there aren't many more who-- along with Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats would prioritize the first goal over the interests of the Medical-Industrial Complex and Insurance Industry that has bumped well over a billion dollars into lobbying and thinly-veiled bribes over the past four and a half congressional terms alone! There's a lot of nervousness that Obama is insisting on reforms that are aimed at cutting back drastically on the unsustainable-- if not suicidal-- growth in the cost of health care (which has doubled in the same period that those industries mentioned above have spent all that money on Congress). There is no indication whatsoever that without drastic measures that growth rate will slow or even not continue to increase.

This morning Nate Silver did a thorough district by district analysis showing clearly that it isn't their constituents that Blue Dogs fear to anger by supporting the public option. Their constituents-- or most of them-- want that kind of meaningful health care reform. It's the Blue Dogs campaign donors who want to kill it. Silver finds a "relationship between support for the public option and the poverty rate. Kentucky and Nebraska, for instance, each gave Barack Obama 41 percent of their vote. But in Kentucky, the public option is supported (barely) at 46-45, whereas in Nebraska it's opposed 39-47. What's the difference? Kentucky is much poorer than Nebraska-- 17.0 percent of its residents are impoverished, versus 11.5 percent in the Cornhusker state. Likewise, Nevada gave Barack Obama 55 percent of its vote, whereas Cooper's TN-5 gave him 56. But in Nevada, the public option is supported 52-40, whereas in TN-5, the margin is much larger: 61-28 in favor. TN-5's poverty rate is about 50 percent higher than Nevada's."

Republicans barely even make believe they give a damn about poor voters; few Republicans court them or win their votes and Republican policy is, at best, unfriendly towards their and their families' aspirations. Blue Dogs would rather not, but they generally have to count on these voters and they do pay attention to them-- though usually only every other autumn. Going back to that Palin OpEd referenced above, it is clear that the Republican Party is still as eager to terminate Medicare as it is to end Social Security and phase out the minimum wage. Get them started and we'll wind up with an electorate based on property qualifications for white male voters and everyone else will have to count on the good will of those who, like father, know best.

Palin's protestations are nothing more than classic conservative fear-mongering against the march of progress towards equality and away from elitism. GOP trolls like David Vitter follow her but few serious legislators take her seriously, although many are delighted that she can rile up the hysterical low info base that now calls the shots for the GOP. "Common sense," her ghost writer claims, "tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals 'will provide more stability and security to every American.'" Let's look at a fact check of Palin's and the GOP's fear and smear tactics against health care reform:

DEATH PANELS

The conservative-leaning Associated Press looked into this outlandish claim by the clueless ex-governor and found it to be devoid of anything resembling veracity. Back on August 11th they reported that "nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes. Here are some questions and answers on the controversy: Q: Does the health care legislation bill promote ‘mercy killing,’ or euthanasia? A: No. Q: Then what's all the fuss about? A: A provision in the House bill written by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort. The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.”

Three days later the NY Times said much the same thing more succinctly: “The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored ‘death panels’ to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.” Well, not exactly from nowhere. They were invented by propaganda specialists from the Insurance Industry and put into the public forum by a worthless, money-hungry shill, one Sarah Palin. FactCheck.org agreed that Republicans were blatantly lying and doing so for partisan gain at the expense of American families.

On former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio show, former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey said that the House’s proposed health care bill contained a provision that would institute mandatory counseling sessions telling seniors how ‘to do what’s in society’s best interest … and cut your life short.’ House Minority Leader John Boehner made a slightly more measured statement, warning that the same provision ‘may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.’ In truth, that section of the bill would require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment. It would not require doctors to counsel that their patients refuse medical intervention. … McCaughey misrepresents the content of page 425 of the bill. That section would require Medicare to pay for some end-of-life planning counseling sessions with a health care practitioner. … At least two Republican leaders have echoed this end-of-life distortion. On July 23, Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, released a statement, along with Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, saying that the bill would encourage euthanasia.

Both conservative Republican Senator Johnny Isakson (GA), who called her "nuts," and Politifact pointed the finger of Truth right at Palin: "Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, urged her supporters to oppose Democratic plans for health care reform on her Facebook page. ... We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's 'level of productivity in society' to determine whether they are 'worthy' of health care. Palin's claim sounds a little like another statement making the rounds, which says that health care reform would mandate counseling for seniors on how to end their lives sooner. We rated this claim Pants on Fire! The truth is that the health bill allows Medicare, for the first time, to pay for doctors' appointments for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians. These types of appointments are completely optional, and AARP supports the measure. ... But that's not what Palin said. She said that the Democratic plan will ration care and "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." Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress. We rate her statement Pants on Fire!"

Her state's own senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, like Isakson a conservative Republican, cringed at Palin's lies and fear-mongering: "It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels. Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn't (in the bill). There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill.”

Extremist Republican hacks like Palin and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan have done more than just fallen back on tried right-wing methods of spreading fear and misinformation. They've also come up with proposals to roll back gains working families have made since the Great Depression. Doubling down on the fear and confusion they've helped incite, these reactionaries are now angling towards privatizing or abolishing Medicare. Obama's speech tonight was not for die hard obstructionists in Congress and not for misguided dittoheads and KKK sympathisizers who kept their children home from school Tuesday. But what Obama has to face up to is that even the so-called "moderate" Republicans-- all one of them-- oppose, when push comes to shove, meaningful and effective health care reform:

Does The Democratic Party Stand For Something Beyond Just A Career Vehicle For A Bunch Of Mostly Slimy Political Hacks?

The Democratic Party of founder Thomas Jefferson certainly did (ergo: the Declaration of Independence, vociferously and violently opposed by conservatives). The Democratic Party transformed by William Jennings Bryan certainly did ("We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them 'You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold'"). The Democratic Party of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt certainly did. The DLC and Blue Dog conservatives-- predominantly reactionary southerners-- have a very different vision of the Democratic party than the progressives who have made it mean something hopeful to millions of Americans. With Blue Dogs and DLC scumbags endeavoring almost as hard as their Republican allies to maintain the status quo, derail health care reform, turn back the clock on women's choice, deny equality to gay men and women, ignore the dual looming climate change/energy crisis and, most important, keep the corrupt corporate money flowing in their direction, I thought it might be a good time to re-familairize ourselves with something Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a great Democrat, said when I was just a schoolboy, working for him (as an elevator operator in his NYC campaign headquarters):

In this entire century the Democratic Party has never been invested with power on the basis of a program which promised to keep things as they were. We have won when we pledged to meet the new challenges of each succeeding year. We have triumphed not in spite of controversy but because of it; not because we avoided problems but because we faced them. We have won not because we bent and diluted our principles, but because we stood fast to the ideals which represent the most noble and generous portion of the American spirit.

What a slap in the face to corporate shills and other conservative Democrats! It isn't just seeing how bribe-besotted DLCers like Evan Bayh (IN), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE) and Mary Landrieu (LA), and equally corrupt and even more conservative Blue Dogs like Mike Ross (AR), Jim Cooper (TN), Bobby Bright (AL), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), John Barrow (GA) and Heath Shuler (NC), are selling out the fundamental principles and values of the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys that brought RFK's quote to mind. It was also a post written yesterday by Digby at Hullabaloo that reminded me of his words.

Following up on dday's post below, can I just ask if those of you who are older than 35 or so are getting that strange familiar feeling? You know the one, where the media are suddenly hostile to the president, the Democrats are running for the hills and the country is confused and doesn't know what to think? The one where cable news gets obsessed with manufactured wingnut shitstorms designed to distract and diminish the president's stature and sap his political capital just when he needs it the most? We've seen this movie before, haven't we?

...Obama's "problem," as it is for all Democratic presidents, is that he is allegedly "out of step" with the people --- like Matthews and his firefighter brothers, and that cop in Cambridge and Rush and other Real Americans who are upset about how "liberal" he's being with his tax 'n spend health reform and the horrible deficits and his defense of loudmouthed black professors who are no better than they ought to be. You can feel the Big Money, the right wing noise and the Village all starting to find their collective voice and take control.

You can blame Obama for walking into the lion's maw, as I'm hearing many of his allies do today-- liberals always blamed Clinton for failing to be perfect too. But believe me, there's no way to avoid this stuff when the frenzy begins. Once they smell blood they always find something.

Yes, they do-- and they always have. Let me string some quotes together from Mike Lux's inspiring book, The Progressive Revolution as he wraps up a discussion of how Democrats have tried to deal with conservative fear mongering-- some with caution (some might say cowardice) and some with Hope.

The entire history of American political debtae can, in some sense, be described as the argument between the hope of progressives for a better future vs. the fear of conservatives who want to protect the way things are now... [They rant about how they] fear the democratic mob. Fear of the freed slave. Fear of a liberated woman destroying the traditional family. Fear of freethinkers destroying traditional religion. Fear of communism. Fear of gays and lesbians. Fear of hippies, "free love," and the drug culture. Fear of the immigrant. In a bizarre twist Social Darwinism gave us fear of the weak, and in the modern version of Social Darwinism, Reagan gave us fear of the poor on welfare. Post 9/11, you can now add in the ever-potent fear of terrorism.

The Republican conservatives' fear-mongering on behalf of the elites and the status quo has been met with cautious conservatism-- very comfortable conservatism in most cases-- by careerist Blue Dogs. That's the Democratic Party at its worst and when it's least effective as a vehicle for the goals and aspirations of our country's working families. The opposite is Hope. And it's too early to tell if Hope, for a man whose first appointment was corrupt, reptilian Wall Street shill Rahm Emanuel, was more than a smart campaign slogan.