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Lucy's Football

By Fester:

Ian Welsh has the outline of the Senate Finance Committee’s health insurance plan. The shorter version of the short version is that it sucks. Here is the short version of the plan:

1) Lower the medicaid coverage rate from 150% to 100% of the Federal poverty line, 133% for kids and pregnant women (once you have the baby, too bad for you)

2) Subsidies stop at 300% of the poverty line (was 400%)

3) No Public Option mentioned

4) Insurance exchanges at the State level

5) Must buy insurance unless it costs more than 15% of your income

6) A fine if you don’t buy insurance unless you’re below the Federal poverty line

For the most part, as Walker discusses, this is actually identical to or slightly worse than the plan put forward by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Yes, worse than the insurance industry’s plan. Remarkable. Baucus is really earning his campaign donations these days…. Without a public option, the insurance companies will have no check on their prices, let alone pressure to actually reduce them. Because people will be forced to buy bad insurance, they’ll hate the plan, and because “reform” has been passed, we’ll have to wait another 10 or 12 years for another shot....

Tim at Balloon Juice is very curious why Obama is not actively selling a strong public option proposal.

Watching Democrats try to fix health care I see a photo negative of the Bush years. Here is an issue with obvious urgency. Setting aside our shameful infant mortality rate, uninsured rate and other statistics, medical bills are by far the leading cause of personal bankruptcies. Insurer misconducy wrecks lives every day in every city in America. The right options are obvious and relatively few in number. Huge majorities support doing the right thing.

Even self-interest is similarly one sided. Remember how much Republicans invested in realigning the destroying Social Security? Imagine if they had an issue that would realign the country in their favor and instead of huge majorities violently hating it, most Americans strongly supported what they wanted to do. Republican strategists would give two of their first three kids for a shot at an issue with this much going for it....

I hear that Obama supports the public option. That would mean more if it felt even a little more urgent than his idea that we should have a college football playoff series.

Belaboring the obvious, people who care about what they’re doing normally enter negotiations with some firm goal in mind. Most would agree that it is moronic to make negotiating itself the point.

Many others, including Steve have noted that if a major and effective health financing reform bill passed with either a pathway to de facto single payer for baseline care or at least a strong public option, major fundraising avenues will be closed off to some of the current veto points in the Senate and the House. I think that is part of the problem with the Democrats.

However, I would like to get a little more cynical for a moment. What if healthcare reform is to Democrats what abortion and anti-feminism is to Republicans in that both are seem by significant portions of their respective bases as high salience issues that are best served by never fully addressing? Gotta keep the activists in line and ready to donate and phone bank for two more incremental steps in the 'right' direction instead of attempting to systemically change the constraints of power and the political process.

Tim is right that an effective public plan option would be a system changer that would effectively tilt the political playing field to Democrats for at least a generation or two in much the same way that Social Security and Medicare are high salience, high effectiveness boundary conditions for Democrats to lean on. However the Democrats who would benefit from these changes are not neccessarily the Democrats who are currently in power or more importantly, currently occupying critical blocking positions. So reform that can shave off several points of GDP on health expenditures, improve coverage and re-align US politics is not a winning solution for the key set of stakeholders; instead their winning solution is to do just enough to avoid overwhelming political costs and pressure.

Specter is in trouble... (again)

By Fester:

My great fear of not having Senator Specter's career circling the toilet to write about when I have nothing else to write will not be realized.

Rasmussen reports a race where the fundamental dynamics are working against Senator Specter in the Democratic Primary:

1* Suppose the Democratic Primary for the 2010 United States Senate were held today. Would you vote for Arlen Specter or Joe Sestak?
51% Specter
32% Sestak
4% Some other candidate
13% Not sure

Sure Senator Specter is up by 19 in this poll, which is a significant improvement from being down by half a dozen in the last polling on the Republican Primary before he flipped caucuses, but this is a weak position compared to Joe Lieberman in 2006. The Pennsylvania Democratic Primary is about ten months out. Two months out, Ned Lamont was trailing Senator Lieberman by fifteen points in the Democratic Primary that Mr. Lamont went on to win. Several weeks out, Rep. Toomey was trailing by fifteen points in the 2004 Republican Primary. He closed the gap by thirteen points by primary day. A well funded and well run campaign by a competent candidate who only has to make up two points per month against an incumbent with 100% name ID and little passionate support is in very good shape.

Option Space and Suicide Seats

By Fester:

Over at 2 Political Junkies, there is some fun and very well justified slagging of Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA-18) truthiness on repeating a disproven GOP talking point on the costs of cap and trade. One of the commenters asks the reasonable question about the probability of a serious Democratic challenger against Murphy in 2010. I think the probability of a serious challenger is low for a variety of reasons:

I doubt that there will be a strong challenger in 2010 --- the district last cycle went for McCain by a good margin and has a single session PVI of about R+9. That is a tough seat for a Dem to win.

Add onto the fact that if a Dem was to win that seat in 2010, they are going to be severely squeezed in 2012 as Harrisburg has to collapse the five Western PA Districts (3,4,12,14,18) into four districts. Smashing together either 4 and 18 or 18 and 12 with moderate adjustments to everyone else is the most likely incumbent protection redistricting plan possible. So the Dem challenger would be looking forward to one hell of a tough race in a neutral(ish) political environment year and then a fight to the death in the 2012 redistricting.

My political memory is a bit short for this question. Is there a decline in "serious" challengers in the '10 cycle because the shadow of the future and the probability of re-election of a successful challenger declines because redistricting rescrambles the rules in the next cycle?

My theory on this is that as states redistrict, uncertainty increases; uncertainty on whether or not Town Y is included in a district and with it a net 20,000 opposite party registrants or is my house included in a new district by a line that is fifty eight feet wide and fourteen miles long or am I facing an incumbent of the same party in a mashed-up district? I think that these incentives are strongest in states where there is a highly probable loss of districts (which include Pennsylvania) as states that are adding districts opens up the option space while fewer districts restricts option space.

What's the value of Sestak?

By Fester:

It is looking more and more official that Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Montgomery County) will be launching an official primary challenge against Sen. Specter (D-PA, this week).  I'm trying to figure out if it is worth supporting Sestak with time and money or just the possibility of a vote. 

Logistically, Sestak is an attractive candidate.  He has a demonstrated capacity to win elections, he has a high probability of winning the general election against any known or probable Republican candidate and he can win in a district that is slightly more conservative than the state as a whole.  He'll be able to bring significant resources into the race with an initial $3 million dollar war chest which is several orders of magnitude greater than that of 2006 Democratic primary challengers.  He is a credible candidate and can build a credible campaign.  But is logistics sufficient for support?

Sestak is slightly right of center House Democrat, and a bit right of where one would expect a generic Democrat representing his particular district.  Sestak will not be significantly more liberal than Specter has been in the past few weeks if he was a Senator from Pennsylvania.  Senator Specter as a Democrat will be a bit to the right of the median Senate Democrat and to the right of the "generic" Democrat that Pennsylvania would normally support.  Given past history, the same would be said of Rep. Sestak. 

So the more basic question is a transactional political question; would working or supporting Sestak increase the probability of one or two high salience outcomes to be adapted than the counter-factual of no primary threat to Specter?  I think Specter's best defense is to find a 80% compromise for the EFCA which gets union neutrality in the primary and that will be a positive result from a primary challenge.  However EFCA is not in my top two or three things that I want to see changed, so the salience vector is weak. 

Right now, I'll give Sestak a chance to make his case, but I think I am reasonably indifferent to either candidate.  I know that I strongly prefer either over Toomey, but I don't think either meet the donate and door knock threshold. 

The Repellant Conservative ID

By Fester:

Last year during the primary, I argued that Democrats and liberals benefit when the conservative movement's ideological ID is on full public display.  There is minimal pay-off for Democrats to gather into a defensive crouch and fear the freepified ID as the political reality of the second part of this decade and the probable realities of the future is very different than the political and demographic realities of the 80s and 90s when the ID was a powerful and effective political force:

In the past couple of years, one of the most reliable indicators of a winning Democratic issue is when the conservative movement ID is at the forefront of the public debate. It is ugly, repulsive and oozing with pus, and it alienates marginally attached Republican voters and winnable for the GOP Independent and Democratic voters....

It is the same analysis that would have led one to conclude that caving in on Schiavo was a good idea....

It is the same analysis that would have led one to cower as the economic Id of the GOP was on full display during the privatize and destroy Social Security debate....

Kevin Drum is looking at the National Review's Corner reaction to the Obama speech this morning, and is making a political error of grievious magnitude: See? Barack Obama's just another race hustler. I suspect that the "official" conservative reaction in columns and op-eds will be more restrained, but the longer that race stays front and center in the campaign, the more time the real conservative id will have to ooze into the forefront. Obama can't be looking forward to that. [my emphasis] In the past couple of years, one of the most reliable indicators of a winning Democratic issue is when the conservative movement ID is at the forefront of the public debate. It is ugly, repulsive and oozing with pus, and it alienates marginally attached Republican voters and winnable for the GOP Independent and Democratic voters. We want more of the conservative Id in the forefront of the conversation. It is the same analysis that would have led one to conclude that caving in on Schiavo was a good idea. Instead the American public reacted harshly against this massive federal inteferernce into a painful and personal decision process. It is the same analysis that would have led one to cower as the economic Id of the GOP was on full display during the privatize and destroy Social Security debate. Contrasting this Hobbesian vision with a collective security provided by the common effort led to a rapid squandering of any political capital that Bush may have thought he possessed for overt actions. It is the same analysis that has made anti-immigration rhetoric the tough new thing from both the GOP and the DLC wing of the Democratic Party despite knowing that this rhetoric will piss off a massive and growing swing voting bloc.... The conservative Id is ineffective and counterproductive to advancing the GOP's political fortunes, and it is not something that should inspire fear in Democrats. Instead it should be welcomed as a golden opportunity to create a sharp and sustained politics of contrast that works.

Publius is looking at the upcoming Supreme Court fight and is making the same type of analysis now:

it’s worth remembering that the nature of the conservative opposition will primarily be a function of intra-GOP politics.  In other words, organized conservative criticism isn’t really intended for a national audience – it’s intended primarily for social conservatives within the party.  And that’s a good thing for Democrats.The social conservative wing of the GOP has extremely intense preferences on judges....

Republican politicians and activist organizations that rely on social conservatives are going to have to put on a good show.  And that's the problem.Specifically, these intra-party dynamics will force the party to put on its least persuasive and most alienating face to the public during the Court fights....

Instead, the opposition seems like it will have a distinctly 2004 tone ...

And it will certainly reinforce the GOP’s current image problems as a regional, slightly creepy fundamentalist party.

The Conservative ID is a winner for liberals.   The more it is highlighted as the defining characteristics of a good Republican, the fewer Republicans, "good" or not, there will be as people who the base considers "squishes" will leave. 

Ahh, the wonders of a positive feedback loop...

Republican Death Watch - MSM Edition

Commentary By Ron Beasley

We here at Hoggers have with a certain amount of schradenfreude have been covering the ever tightening Republican death spiral with our Republican Death Watch series.  Well the mainstream media has noticed and today NBC's Chuck Todd says Yes, it's that bad for the GOP.  He points out that there are a lot of debates going on in the Republican Party......

There are a number of ugly debates going on inside the Republican Party right now.

There is the debate over whether or not there is even something wrong; there’s the debate over whether or not RNC chair Michael Steele should be trusted with making financial decisions for the party; there’s the debate over whether or not the party should come up with an alternative to being just a party for conservatives; and there’s the debate over whether or not all of this is just an over-reaction.

......but none of the current debates will get the Republicans out of the wilderness.

The debate inside the GOP over the next few years should be about how to change the party. And if done right, this can be a healthy process.

At the moment it is unhealthy. There are too many voices like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney automatically ruling out ideas. To attack folks right now for critiquing the party seems only to undermine the party. 

As we noted here the loudest voices in the party are like suicide bombers who would rather lose than even consider change,  Todd sees the same thing:

The problem is the loudest folks in the party believe the answer to the GOP’s problems is to win the debate or win the argument, not to step back and examine what’s not working. No one is having a debate about whether Ronald Reagan’s mantra is still right, the idea of whether government is part of the problem or part of the solution. I happen to believe this single issue is what divides the establishment wing of the party from the grassroots conservatives whom turn to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for their news and commentary.

What can you do when the lunatics are in charge of the asylum?  Obama and the Democrats could be vulnerable in 2010 and 2012.  But vulnerable to who?  Certainly not the current Republican Party that looks more like a Saturday Night Live parody than a contender.

Ridge is out

By Fester:

Tom Ridge has declined to run for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania's Senate seat.  I am not too surprised by this announcement as why would it be a good move for him to run?  Let's get back to that in a minute.  First, here is the announcement from PA2010:

“After careful consideration and many conversations with friends and family and the leadership of my party, I have decided not to seek the Republican nomination for Senate.

“I am enormously grateful for the confidence my party expressed in me, the encouragement and kindness of my fellow citizens in Pennsylvania and the valuable counsel I received from so many of my party colleagues. The 2010 race has significant implications for my party, and that required thoughtful reflection....

If Ridge was to enter the race, he would face a bruising primary as his policy positions of being a moderate, pro-choice Republican are unacceptable to a significant faction of the state's Republican base.  He may have been able to get away with this four years, and especially eight years ago as the Republican base still contained a strong contingent of pro-choice voters in the Philadelphia suburbs.  However those voters have become Democrats.  Toomey would still run hard at him, and Ridge would be in for the fight of his life. 

And once he won the primary, he would be facing either another pro-choice moderate Republican in Specter or a successful southeastern PA suburban Democrat in Sestak who had consolidated union support behind him for the general election.  Given current partisan trends in Pennsylvania, the best Republican candidate is facing a tough fight against a mediocre Democratic candidate.  Ridge as a pro-choice Republican who beat down the anti-taxers in the form of Toomey would have no door knockers or phone bankers.  His only hope would be to either run the rubber chicken big donor circuit ten times a week for a thirty million dollar ad campaign or to do a complete 180 degree spin on lifelong policy positions to attract the door knockers of the Republican base. 

And if he was to win the general election, what fun would it be to be a Senator where the GOP's aspirational hope is to get to forty two or forty three seats in this term, and potentially get to fifty by 2013.  More likely he will join the Snowe-Collins axis of 'unpure Republicans' in a Senate with a Republican caucus of less than forty.  What fun is that? 

Not too much fun for the next four years of his life.  He has a good job and some influence, why throw that away in an uphill fight?  So I am not too surprised that he declined to run. 

Ideology or reality --- Ideology pays better

By Fester:

If one believes conservative propaganda, the government can do nothing right, or at least nothing right at a cost lower than private providers.

So why are conservatives up in arms about the public health option. If reality coincides with conservative ideology, people will look at the government plan (probably structured somewhat similar to Medicare) laugh at it or at least laugh at their friend who went into the plan, and take their own money and subsidy and buy into a private, individual policy. In this scenario, the individual in the private market will get better care, cheaper rates and less run-around and hassle from some faceless bureaucrat at the other end of the phone line when there is a disputed charge or treatment. Private markets are always better in conservatopia!

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb) is giving away the game as he has announced that he will oppose any public health option that competes with private insurance companies:

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.”

Oh my god! The government can out-compete the private sector on one of the government's core competency --- writing checks in response to well defined criteria. Pass the smelling salts --- conservative ideology fail.

The Lewin Group, health care consultants, recently estimated that public plans that can maximize quasi-monosopy power can reduce premiums for the average consumer by 22% mainly due to a 17 point reduction in administrative overhead costs. Using a politically more palatable compromise in which the government does not actively seek to negotiate better pricing leads to a nine percent reduction in consumer costs, again, primarily due to superior administrative overhead costs. And given political pressures from voters complaining to their Senators and Reps about a shitty health care experience in a public health plan option, the political incentive is to make sure things run rather smoothly. We see that incentive in place with Social Security checks --- constiuent service interests and complaint lines make sure the process is reasonably smooth.

Opposition to a public health plan option is either idiotically ideological or an attempt at insurance industry political capture and fund-raising.

Ridge's Supporters?

By Fester:
I am interested in the Quinnipiac Poll that shows Tom Ridge (R-Pa) in a competetive race against Arlen Specter, but I am not interested in the top line result. I am interested in the assumption that Governor Ridge can make it out of a Republican primary as a pro-choice moderate? He benefited from the economic boom of the 90s when governors were able to cut taxes while expanding services without any tough choices to be made.

I’m not too well connected with the local GOP, but my impression is that Governor Ridge is not firmly loved by the rump of the GOP in Pennsylvania. One of Gov. Ridge’s base areas (suburban Philly) with large numbers of pro-choice Republicans defected to the Democrats and re-registered in 2006 and 2008. Does Governor Ridge face the same political problem as Senator Specter --- his late 90s base is no longer Republican and there has been a significant rightward shift in the relevant primary electorate?

Wither the Opposition?

By BJ Bjornson

Fester and Ron have already covered the defection of Senator Specter to the Democrats.  The only thing I could add is that in the battle of which party's base is driving its leadership further to the extreme fringe, the Republicans have taken a major lead.  The progressive base of the Democratic Party hates their "Blue Dogs", but they have the sense not to drive away the ones in conservative districts.

With today's op-ed in the New York Times, Olympia Snowe has created some speculation regarding how long she and fellow Maine moderate Republican Senator Collins might remain in the Party of Limbaugh themselves, particularly given the latter's efforts to kick out John McCain as well.

Of course, the situation for Snowe is quite different from that of Specter.  As of the moment, she's in no danger of losing her party's nomination to a far-right ideologue in a blue and trending bluer state, (a truly bone-headed maneuver by the Republican base.   At least when the Democratic base looked to purge a "moderate" from their midst, they picked a Senator from solidly blue Connecticut).

However, the Republicans, who are facing irrelevance in the House, are now staring that same irrelevance in the face in the Senate, which means that the true balance of power, which had previously went to moderate Republicans like Specter, Snowe and Collins, now goes to the afore-mentioned "Blue Dogs", who become to some extent the true opposition party to the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Under such circumstances, and particularly if the Republicans continue their death spiral towards a more and more ideologically pure and irrelevant party, the temptation for someone like Snowe and Collins, who were already slightly to the left of Specter, to "cross the floor" in Westminsterian-speak, in order to remain relevant to the decision-making process becomes very strong indeed.

Such an alignment probably wouldn't last long-term, but it could run for several election cycles, and wouldn't that be interesting?