Healthcare!

Watching it live. What an amazing accomplishment!

And here is photo of when it happened, just a few seconds ago.

216 votes.

Predictions

In the light of the game changing election of Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts, I think it is time to lay down some political predictions, in order of my certainty.

#1 It is a safe bet that Scott Brown (R-MA) will be running for president in 2012, and right now I would even give him the odds for the nomination. Check out his killer ad. This is George Bush in 2000 stuff. He is Mitt Romney without all the Mitt Romney. But we'll see if Republicans can contort around his support for Massachusetts "commie" healthcare, or his nude Cosmo photo shoot! (Link Possibly NSFW) I am betting they can.

#2 Heathcare reform is deeply damaged, and just a few feet from the finish line. The only question now is if it can survive. Since Democrats are too meek to confront the insane abuse of the filibuster, this Village Voice headline gets it right on, "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate." Democrats are going to wait patiently for Brown to come to Washington. Then they are going to try and get "bi-partisan support" for something, which will of course fail, and then who knows what will happen. If history is a guide, no more reform attempts until after 2020 at least.

#3 Obama will become far more aggressive. He has been sounding more like he was during the campaign in the past few weeks. Perhaps a loss will wake him up to start moving things faster. What has he got to loose?

#4 Obama will become far weaker and turn over the white house keys to Olympia Snowe, causing him to loose to Scott Brown as bad as Martha Coakley did. The alternate to #3. I hope not.


In other words, the glass is half empty and I think it has sprung a leak...

Please Pass Healthcare Reform

Heathcare reform in the Senate passed a major, and perhaps the largest remaining hurdle late last night with a 60 vote filibuster-busting vote. I think this is great news, and it means we might have a signed bill by the end of the week.

But recently with the demise of the public option or medicare buy-in the Left has now split in half with people like Keith Oberman and Howard Dean et. all. sounding like Health care reform was only about the public option the whole time, and that this will be a "bail out" to the insurance companies. Never mind that this bill is more liberal than Dean's own plan than he ran on in 2003-04! And if the deal with the devil means increasing insurance companies profits by 1% a year for the next 10 years to insure 10's of Millions of Americans, well count me in.

So this isn't a "perfect" bill, but the history of our modern social programs is an ugly one. Social Security excluded agricultural labor, temporary workers, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers (also known as women, minorities and the poor) when it was enacted in 1935. Very progressive. This healthcare bill will get us an exchange, with required transparency, subsides for those who can not afford it, much tighter regulations, and price controls. I will let Ezra Klein add to that. Further, it creates a framework for a government run national option to be inserted into the exchanges later on, which is worth fighting for.

And if this fails in 2009 we will have the exact same healthcare system I thought we all hated for another 20 years. It happened in 1975, it happened in 1992, and it would certainly happen this time. Democrats are going to loose seats in 2012. There will be more Joe Lieberman's, and there are currently lots of Joe Lieberman's in our highly dysfunctional "60 vote" Senate already! Obama won't be president forever, and odds are his successor with be a Republican. Meanwhile the Insurance industry will continue to live happily unregulated, and America's health care system will continue to become more and more expensive and inaccessible.

The death of this bill would be tragic. People need healthcare in this country, and the current system is literally killing us.



EDIT: And speaking of money, here are some estimated costs for insurance, and total risk for families, under the current system compared the the new bill. And this ignores those who today would be denied coverage, whos risk goes until bankruptcy.

Supervillians

This isn't my original thought, but I really think the Republican party is relying on the belief that those people currently held in Guantanamo bay are literally supervillians with super powers. Flight, X-ray vision, super strength etc. Thus we need to hold them in Guantanamo because it is made of adamantium and as Steve Benen says, "surrounded by sharks with frickn' lasers on their heads."

No, we made Guantanamo from spare parts anyone could find at the Home Depot. And if someone escaped they would escape to Cuba, perhaps one of the safest/sympathetic places they find themselves! Of course the reason they are in cuba on a military base isn't to keep detainees out of America, it was created preciously to keep them out of the American court system.

I have written before about the Green Lantern school of foreign policy. Perhaps this is the Magneto school of detention policy. Watch this (violent) video from X-Men 2 if you don't know what I am talking about. And as if to drive the point home, the RNC has released this web ad, copying the famous "Daisy" ad used against Goldwater in 1964. Who knew that the prisoners in Guantanamo were so dangerous, that they actually have the ability to from a nuclear weapon inside their own bodies, using only the power of their mind. That is the reason we can't have them on US soil!

It all makes sense now.

Democrat Party

Atrios once said that he enjoyed the right-wing pet name for the Democratic party, the "Democrat party" because it acted as a filter. Those who insist on dropping the "ic" from the end, in what I assume is meant as some sort of insult, are simply highlighting their own impolite motives and thus, shouldn't be taken seriously anymore.

Now, behold: GOP, RNC to rebrand Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party." The Onion couldn't have done better.

Note that is happening at an extraordinary special session next week, and is 1/3 of the agenda. The other parts are resolutions "rejecting earmarks" and commending themselves for opposing “bailouts and reckless spending bills.”

Torture

I have not written much about the codified torture regimes that have been practiced by the United States in the past few years because well, it bothers me too much. Now with the torture memos and legal opinions public it is clear that everything that was guessed at was in fact - true. The punishment of those "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib was only because a) they got caught and b) they were not torturing "right." Meaning they didn't put a neck brace on their victim before they slammed them into a wall.

The administration at the very top ordered and organized a system of torture to get the info they wanted, like a link between Sadam and 9/11. Not to prevent a ticking-time-bomb "24" type scenario that always gets thrown around. And of course, that is what torture does and has always done - generate false confessions. But some how, our government took the SERE program, which uses the knowledge we learned from our enemies about how to generate false confessions to prevent false confessions in military situations, and applied it to our prisoners. Which generated false confessions, and false intelligence.

And the wording and language used to make torture OK is really something amazing. So, with out saying more, here is someone singing the passage on waterboarding.




EDIT: Andrew Sullivan who has been a very vocal critic of torture policies, writes a powerful condemnation of the entire ideology of power and torture that the Bush administration created.

No Middle Ground

What has struck me in the post election debates is the clear lack of any middle ground between Republican and Democratic law makers. Krugman writes for me:

"You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.

Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground."

When you have the new leader of the Republican National Committee believing that, "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job," well what can you say?

And last night, Jim DeMint tried to eliminate virtually all spending form the stimulus bill and instead do this (PDF):

• Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
• Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
• Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
• Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
• Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
• Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage
• interest and charitable contributions.
• Lower top marginal income rates – the one paid by most of the small businesses that create new jobs – from 35 percent to 25 percent.
• Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
  
• Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.
  

He claims doing this will create 18 million jobs in 10 years - which isn't even very good! The US economy needs to add 1.6 million jobs a year just to keep up with a growing work force, and his would be 1.8. But that doesn't matter because DeMint's bill would be the worse possible bill to pass. The entire point of a stimulus is for the Government to spend money because the private sector has stopped, and because the Government still has the power to borrow. If you want a wonkish paper about what does and doesn't work, check out this PDF from economy.com. The short version is this table on the right, where the number is the dollar result of $1 spent. So the DeMint amendment is utterly backwards from what works, yet he really believes that his way is best.

But here is the rub, in the senate, only 4 Republicans voted No on this amendment. Four. Out of 40 voting (Gregg (NH) didn't vote because he is becoming the Secretary of Commerce).

So if there is a middle ground it is in those four: Collins (ME), Snowe (ME), Specter (PA), and Voinovich (OH). And the house is another story, with their famous Zero vote last week.

There is not much to work with here is there?

President Obama

I have been blown away by watching todays inaugural coverage. The Library threw a nice party and we watched the swearing in on the big TV and had snacks, and then I had on streaming coverage all day on my computer. Obama speech was great not just because of the words, but because he seems so aware of when and where he is saying them. He wasn't aiming for the history books, rather he had a serious message that he needed to tell directly to the American public, and the world. Time to step up, time to get serious.

I feel very lucky today, to have been able to hear him speak twice, and shake his hand once. I never blogged this, but here is the video from my cell phone of him coming down the line. I said something silly like "congratulations, thanks for coming" which doesn't make sense since it was last February, but thats ok. Perhaps it was just a few months premature!



So, amazing day, and I hope this is just the start of a string of amazing days. Its not just change, it is something happening when for so long, nothing has happened. Noting has changed.

Not any more, we have arrived!

This Land

An American revival.



Note that they are signing the original "lefty" 1944 version by Woody Guthrie. Also, from Wikipedia, I didn't know that Woody Guthrie wrote this song in response to "God Bless America" (sung here by Beyonce at the same event), which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent.

The best URL ever

change.gov

Rahm Emanuel

From Mathew Yglesias, a point that so far the best prediction for the Obama White House comes from the TV show about the White House, The West Wing:

• 1998: Josh Lyman is modeled after Rahm Emanuel.
• 2004: Matt Santos is modeled after Barack Obama
• 2006: Matt Santos wins the presidency, and appoints Josh Lyman his Chief of Staff

And what happend:

• 2008: Barack Obama wins the presidency, and appoints Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff.

Or in pictures:
As for the Emanuel pick it self, I don't know enough about him to know much, but it seems to fall between people bemoaning Obama picking a highly divisive, Clinton era politico thus giving up his "change" message and those who think it is a good move because it means Obama means business and he is going to hire tough people to enforce his agenda. In my understanding of Obama, I think the second is more accurate. Obama is not, and has never been, a hugs-all-around bipartisan guy. He is someone who always will listen to the opposite side of view, and then come back with a rebuttal strengthened by that conversation. From what I have seen of Emanuel, he will be a very effective Cheif of staff.

Here is Emanuel on the Daily Show a few years ago. I think he intimidated John Stewart!

Rahm Emanuel (p3)
by stewartslams

Good times. Or as this post declares in reference to his harsh style, "Change you can motherf*cking believe in."

FL 2000 = MN 2008

AP calls MN for Norm Coleman AP un-calls MN for Norm Coleman.

Ug, with all the amazement and emotion last night this race is a real downer. Normally, if Franken loses, OK. It was a hard race to win. But possibly lose by under 1,000 votes? That would be really painful. And the recount wont even start for a few weeks, and we might not know anything until December. Staying up late last night, listening to WCCO radio (last news org in the room), watching TV, and manically hitting "refresh" on CNN/CBS/FiveThirtyEight.com/DailyKos results map/MN Sec. of State results page - I had dejavu of watching Florida go insane in 2000.

Lets hope that doesn't happen again here.

Speechless

Hard to grasp, but Barack Obama just sailed to victory.

Obama is 44

It is 8:30 and Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.

Thank you Ohio.

Now lets make it a landslide....

Election Day links

Here is what you need to know! Updated

FiveThirtyEight.com: Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls
RealClearPolitics chart
Polster.com map
Intrade.com odds of an Obama win
Video: Chuck Todd's guide to election night on MSNBC

Looking good.

ADDED:
TPM: Obama's Routes To Victory
Talking Points Memo/Google election night score board. LIVE RESULTS
TPM interactive poll closing time map
Daily Kos interactive poll closing map LIVE RESULTS
Josh Marshall's guide to election night

NEW: Really Cool thing from the New York Times. What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind? It gathers words submitted by voters (neutral, Obama, and McCain) and scrolls them across the screen with their size in proportion to the polarity. As of 1:30 Obama supporters are optimistic, nervous, and hopeful. McCain supporters are scared, hopeful, and and worried.

Hope

Is change coming to your neighborhood?

2000 vs 2004 vs 2008

For comparison, here is 2000 vs 2004 vs 2008. Gore over-performed the polls by about 2.5%, while Kerry under performed by 1%. Obama would have to under perform by 6% to lose at this point.


Via Open Left

Presidential Predictions

I wouldn't be a good blogger with out wildly guessing at the outcome of the election right? In 2004 there was no blog, but fair to say I guessed really really wrong. I thought that "momentum" in the polls was going to some how push Kerry over the top in the intervening hours between the last poll and election day. But look at the graph showing the aggregate race four years ago:


You can see that last minute surge that gave me hope, but looking at the big picture it was futile. Much of what is called "momentum" in polling (and the stock market) is really just a random, statistical walk one way or the other. Polling that happened yesterday does not affect polling done today! So, lets look at where things are right now nationally including the McCain "momentum" that he has been talking about all month:


On the state by state level, it looks even worse for McCain. If you assume that McCain wins all of the states labeled "toss up" and wins all the "lean democratic" states (less than +8 for Obama) on the pollster.com web page, you get this:




McCain is still losing! He would have to flip either VA (+8.1) or PA (+10.7) or NH (+11) to win. This is the more likely outcome:



The only ones on that list I am not sure about are Missouri, where it will be very very close, and North Carolina and Florida where turn-out will be key. If it is a big Obama win, you can add: Indiana, Georgia, North Dakota, Montana, and even McCain's home state of Arizona to places where it will be close.

One thing about these maps is that we will probably know very early on election night if McCain has any chance. If Obama wins any set of two big east cost states from within Florida, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, it will be numerically over right away. If Obama wins North Carolina, it will be effectively over.

The rest of the night will be looking at house and senate races, along with Prop 8 in CA. I am hopeful about Bachman loosing to Tinklenberg but not betting on it. Incumbents are hard to beat even if they are as crazy awful as Bachman. And Franken's odds are now not looking good either after a breif surge of support. The best hope both Tinklenberg and Franken have is that Obama's coat tails will be large enough to pull them over the top on election day!

Final debate

The final debate is over, and John McCain has left diminished and defeated. He landed all his punches. He emptied his clip of attacks one after another, but in a disjointed sneer that left every hit with out muscle or real impact. Obama wasn't looking to win. He is up by massive, nearly insurmountably margin in national and state polling, so he got to go on TV and line-by-line calmly dispute McCains repetition of Ayers, ACORN, tax-hikes, and many other attacks (notably Rev. Wright was absent, but replaced with John Lewis). And with every attack, McCain got more and more angry. Watching him was painful at times, some one said, "it was like watching a class in anger management."

In this debate, McCain threw everything he had and came away a smaller, angrier man to Obama's presidential stature.

Obama remained steady, as he has been for this entire campaign. People are going to expect great things from him, and the next president really has a massive challenge laid out before him. But I think we are at the point where people en-mass are deciding that they want Barack Obama solving those problems. They like the way he thinks, they like the way he talks, and they fundamentally like his ideas more.

At this point, there is nothing McCain can do to win the election. It is completely out of his hands. He has been defeated at all three debates, his running mate is a drag on the ticket, he is being outspent 3:1 on ads, he has none of the ground game that brought Bush two victories while Obama has one of the best ever, and tonight he just shot off just about every attack he could find on the darkest corers of the internet and still came up resoundingly short. It was once a wild hope for me that Obama could be president, but I assured myself that could never happen. I thought his name was to unknown in a world of big fish. He would be to timid in his campaign and fail. I thought that good judgment could only get you so far, that good ideas would just be shouted down by simple rhetoric. But he has done it.

The photo above was taken on July 27th, 2004 during Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention.

Election day is on November 4th.

20 days from today.

Why Bush won

I found the Living Room Candidate from the Museum of the Moving image that is an archive of presidential advertisements and found it really interesting to go back and see what the campaign narratives looked like in hindsight.

George Bush's ad's in 2000 were all really good, hopeful, and clear. Gore's are all really bad complicated, and yes - painfully boring.

And the swift boat ads of 2004 really are amazingly brutal. It is crazy that Kerry didn't come at them sooner.

Take a look at 2008 as a whole and see what you think this election will look like.