However, his recent tango with the birthers movement made his ratings take a nose dive and, well, CNN showed him the door as a result.

So that’s why this interview with Jon Stewart isn’t necessarily puzzling, but it is a bit sad. Just 9 short months into this presidency and Dobbs actually thinks that Obama is continuing Bush’s policies? Sure, there are a few things he hasn’t changed, but it’s hard for me to believe that Dobbs doesn’t appreciate that these things aren’t simply going to happen overnight…especially with two wars and a massive economic crisis happening…especially since Dobbs himself says he’s an incrementalist. (ahem!)

In short, where is this paranoia (that must have fueled Dobbs’ birther flirtation) coming from?

In any event, take a gander…

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

I’ll ask the question that Stewart asks in the interview…do independents think that our country and our standing is that fragile? Because if Bush didn’t destroy it in the last 8 years, why do indies all of a sudden think that Obama’s going to do it by passing health care reform and rebuilding our infrastructure?

What say you?

You’ll never see what happened last Tuesday looking through a two-party microscope! Nope. You need an independent historyscope to get this one!

I had the pleasure of hearing independent strategist Jackie Salit give her analysis of the November elections on Sunday night on her regular national conference call which is attended by around 150 activists around the country every six weeks.

Jackie is a long-time independent activist based in New York City, the president of the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (aka IndependentVoting.org), the executive editor of the Neo-Independent Magazine, and the campaign manager of Mike Bloomberg’s Independence Party campaign. She’s someone I follow very closely — and so should you if you care about independent politics.

A statement released by the campaign via email on Wednesday after the election said: This year, the IP delivered 13% of the total votes cast – the largest percentage ever by a minor party for a cross-endorsed mayoral candidate.

The Hankster (my blog) and Donklephant (where I am a guest blogger), in addition to The Independent View (NYC IP activist Michael Drucker’s blog) and the NY Daily News’ Brawl for the Hall blog seemed to be the only media outlets that even referenced this astounding result from the election. And then today, I caught Maine’s independent mayoral candidate Alex Hammers’ post on The Moderate Voice “Independents are a Sleeping Giant“, and a note by Robert Steele on his Public Intelligence Blog.

In the CUIP conference call, Jackie emphasized that, far from being the “margin of victory” for Bloomberg’s win as an independent in NYC, the vote on the IP line was the foundation of the campaign. At a time when the votes of both major parties Dems and Repubs went down, the 15 year old grassroots Independence Party doubled its vote.

It is indeed wonderous that no other media picked this up.

But if your framework is a bipartisan — indeed partisan — system, you don’t pay a lot of attention to the margins, no pun intended! You don’t see what’s happening on the horizon. You’re not looking to the future — you’re looking to the past and how pollsters have been able to parse the vote based on prior elections. Polls are supposed to be predictive. They’re interesting, and we all follow them. But predictive?

You’d have to have a 6-billion-person polling operation to figure that one out. And still, you’d get it wrong because what the NYC mayoral race points to is the power that independents have as an organized force. It’s something like what the unions used to call “strength in numbers” when we still sang Solidarity Forever and meant solidarity forever for everyone.

Old-fashioned as it may be, independents in NYC have banded together, we have talked with each other, we have made endless phone calls night after night year after year, we have fought back against a stupid and vicious state party chair, we have constituted 5 county committees under state law that are directed by a collective 94-person executive committee, and have inched our way forward into NYC politics as players.

We just led New Yorkers to elect our first independent mayor.

In my book this is something that ordinary people can be proud of. And that ordinary people — nonpartisans — all over the country can learn from and emulate.

And indeed they are. Take Joelle Riddle in Durango CO, a former chairwoman of the La Plata County Democratic Party who won her post in 2006 with party support and decided to go independent in August, would have to run as a write-in candidate after inadvertently missing a deadline to change her registration.

“I seek to remedy this burden that falls unequally on small political parties and independent or unaffiliated candidates, unfairly discriminating against them and not affording them the same privileges as the major political parties,” she wrote in a statement announcing her decision Tuesday.

Partisan politics isn’t the future of our country, but the search for an independent alternative might be.

You/we independents can do it. If we’re organized.

-NH

First, the numbers…

The bigger news here? Independents are swinging wildly in favor of the generic Republicans.

There’s about a year to go before the 2010 elections, but this shift does not bode well for Dems. I still don’t think that Repubs can regain any majorities, but if we start seeing more Independents breaking right, it could be a very bad night for the donkeys.

More as it develops…

As we head to Election Day 2009, everyone is talking about the Yankees and the Phillies. And a few people are talking about the Mayoral race in NYC, where independent candidate Mike Bloomberg is poised to become the first independent mayor of New York, running on the Independence Party (Column C) and Republican lines. But not Karl Rove. Kind of a big omission, don’t you think? Check out Jon Noltie’s Examiner article. However, other independent and Independence-backed candidates in New Jersey, New York and Virginia are soaking up the ink. See today’s news for independent voters below:

• Tuesday’s Elections and the Democratic Agenda (By KARL ROVE, Wall Street Journal) A year ago, Democrats crowed that Mr. Obama had reshaped the political landscape to their advantage. Voters have lived under Democratic rule for nine months, and many of them, especially independents, don’t like what they’re seeing.
• Strength of independent candidates indicates GOP missing opportunity (Columbus Republican Examiner, by Jon Noltie) In 2 of the 3 most watched electoral races this year, the GOP stands a good chance of losing due to the strength of independent candidates, in addition to not even fielding a candidate in the New York City mayoral race.
• Dividing And Conquering In State Races (John Zogby, Forbes)
• Quinnipiac Sees a Different New Jersey Race Than Rasmussen, PPP (National Review)
• Corzine Up 5 Points In New Jersey Gov Race, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Governor Tops Christie On ‘Honesty’ Score (Quinnipiac) Corzine leads 79 – 8 percent among Democratic likely voters, with 10 percent for Daggett. Christie leads 79 – 7 percent among Republicans, with 9 percent for Daggett, and 45 – 30 percent among independent voters, with 20 percent for Daggett.
• NJ Gov Poll: Corzine Takes 5-Point Lead (RealClearPolitics)
• Daggett: Republican urged him to quit gov’s race (The Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer)

More news for independent voters at The Hankster

Commentary by Jackie Salit

NOTE To Donklephant Readers: This article by independent strategist Jackie Salit came across my desk and I thought it was too good not to share in full with you. -Nancy

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And it is this shift by independents – who repositioned themselves from center-right to center-left – that gave the Republican right the political equivalent of cardiac arrest.

In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama. Over the span of 15 years, the largely white, center-right independent movement re-aligned itself with Black America and progressive-minded voters.

This did not happen out of the blue. It did not happen by magic. It happened because the progressive wing of the independent movement did the painstaking and often controversial work of bringing the Perot movement and the Fulani movement together at the grassroots. The Fulani movement refers to the country’s leading African American independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, who exposed the black community to independent politics and introduced the independent movement to an alliance with Black America.

No doubt the dramatics that the right wing brought to the Town Hall meetings this summer were intended for the television cameras. But the organizers, strategists and radio personalities who orchestrated the theatrics had a particular audience in mind: Independents. If they could tarnish Obama’s image with indies, they could damage the black and independent alliance and re-establish the Republican Party as an influential force amongst independents. Some of that could be accomplished, they felt, by claiming Obama’s health plan would drive up the national debt – a concern that animated the early Perot movement. Some Republican strategists felt that if they simply branded Obama a socialist, it would scare independents away – not from the health care plan (everyone recognizes a plan of some kind will get passed) but away from the center-left coalition that elected him.

If indies are feeling somewhat disillusioned with President Obama over the health care reform fight, it has more to do with fears that he is being overly influenced by the partisans in Congress. Since independents voted for him to be a more independent president, it’s easy to see how some felt disappointed by his handling of the Republican onslaught. Obama’s independent appeal was based on his challenge to the prevailing culture of Clintonian opportunism in the Democratic Party and partisanship inside the Beltway. Put another way, the independent vote for Obama was an effort to define a new kind of progressivism, one that was not synonymous with Democratic Party control.

After years of hard work and organizing, independents have become a sought-after partner in American politics. They elected President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, arguably the country’s two most independent and pragmatically progressive elected officials. No wonder the Republican Party right wants a clawback.

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election.

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

The independent movement went left in 2008, after many years of grassroots organizing to link it to progressive leadership. Now the right wants to peel it back. Obama, presumably, wants to hold on to the partnership, but must also privilege his own party, which turns independents off and makes them more susceptible to Republican attacks. Meanwhile, independents are working hard at the grassroots to hold our own.

Jackie Salit is the president of IndependentVoting.org and the campaign coordinator for New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign on the Independence Party line.

Independent Voters

• On healthcare and other hot issues: Follow the independents–The number of voters not tied to Democrats or Republicans is expanding fast. Both parties need to adjust. (By the Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board) Were the 2010 elections to occur today, 43 percent of independents say they would vote Republican (in a generic congressional ballot), while 38 percent would vote Democratic, the Pew Research Center finds. That’s quite a shift from 2006, when independents favored Democrats over Republicans, 44 to 33 percent.

Open Primaries

• South Dakota Democrats Will Allow Independent Voters to Vote in their Primaries (Ballot Access News)
• Re-enfranchising New Yorkers (by Richard Flanagan, Gotham Gazette) Voters overwhelmingly rejected Macchiarola’s plan for nonpartisan elections, 70 percent to 30 percent. But only 13 percent of registered voters bothered to show up for the off-year election of 2003, and many had ties to the unions, interest groups and political clubs that benefit from the status quo and know how to pull the levers of the current system to their advantage. They were loathe to expand the electorate and risk the surrender of power.

Independent Gov Races

In an unsettled political environment where voters are exercising independent options, independent candidates like NJ gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett pick up support….

• Poll: New Jersey gubernatorial race a virtual tie (From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart)
• Daggett gets little help from ballot position (Press of Atlantic City) New Jersey laws reserving the top two spots on any ballot for the two major-party candidates. Last month, Daggett – along with Libertarian Party candidate Kenneth Kaplan – took the step of filing suit against the practice.
• Daggett for guv? Why not? (By ALEX GECAN, For The Trentonian)

Bloomberg 09

NYC Dem machine targets independent run by Mike Bloomberg with 2 darts: money (the Mayor is very wealthy…) and term limits (which the Dem-controlled City Council extended….) Good luck with that! Meanwhile, it’s the NYC Independence and the Working Families Parties that are supplying the spark in this year’s city-wide elections. In a city of 5-1 Dem registration, that’s not good news for clubhouse politics…

• Bloomberg’s Line Dance (BY ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Daily News/Daily Politics)
• Voters Like Mayor, but Not His Path to 3rd Run (By MICHAEL BARBARO, NY Times)
• New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg received the endorsement of the Hotel and Motel Trades Council (From msnbc’s First Read with Chuck Todd)
• After term limit tiff, Bloomberg still gets hotel endorsement (ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, NY Daily News/Brawl for the Hall) The only union with a major field operation that remains unpledged is 1199, which voted for Thompson during the WFP endorsement process. Neutrality is not out of the question for 1199, a union source said.

For more news headlines for independent voters, see The Hankster

Gallup has some numbers that might surprise.

Basically, the folks who decide the elections (the indys) are starting to consider the Republicans more and Dems better pay attention. Because the only reason they made such historic gains in 2006 is because the DNC targeted districts that wanted more moderate leadership and took seats from the GOP.

More from Gallup:

The last time Republicans were this close to Democrats in terms of total party support — during the second quarter of 2005 — George W. Bush was in the early months of his second term as president. But the Bush administration suffered a series of setbacks that year, including ongoing difficulty in stabilizing Iraq, a slow response to Hurricane Katrina, and the ultimately withdrawn nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, to name a few. Rising gas prices and a struggling economy only added to the problems plaguing the Bush administration during Bush’s second term in office.

Still, Dems don’t have to worry about a President’s approval rating dragging them down. At least not yet.

More numbers…

Bush’s job approval rating sank over the course of 2005, from 52% at the start of the year to 43% by late December, including several sub-40% ratings in the fall. By the end of 2006, it had fallen to 35%, and it never again exceeded 38%.

During this time, an increasing number of Americans began to align themselves with the Democratic Party. The Democratic advantage in leaned party ID grew to as large as 14 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2006 and again in the first quarter of 2008 — the largest gap in favor of either party since Gallup began regularly measuring leaned party identification in 1991. Democrats maintained a double-digit lead for 11 of 12 quarters between the second quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2009. This solid edge in party support helped propel the Democratic Party to major victories in the 2006 and 2008 federal elections.

No doubt the GOP will be hard pressed to gain seats next Fall, but could they gain a few?

I welcome your thoughts.

“What is your preference for the outcome of next year’s congressional elections–a Congress controlled by Republicans or a Congress controlled by Democrats?”

Obviously we live in a 2-party system, so that would be the question. But that doesn’t have to be the question, and it ought not be the question. Imagine a poll that asked voters “What is your preference for the outcome of the next year’s congressional elections–a Congress controlled by hacks and partisan shills for the major parties, or people who care about the future of the country?”

Another question in this survey asks:

“When it comes to the partisanship going on in Washington, do you feel this is mainly due to an unwillingness of the Republicans to compromise and find a middle ground to work with the Democrats, or that this is due to an unwillingness of the Democrats to compromise and find a middle ground to work with the Republicans, or do you feel that it is equally the fault of both parties?”

Skipping past the fact that whose fault it is simply doesn’t make a difference, the answers from voters were interesting:  Since February, those who think it’s the Repubs’ fault has gone down from 29% to 22%; those who believe the Dems are at fault has stayed practically even going from 14% to 15% in that time span; and those who think it’s the fault of both parties? You guessed it — starting with a majority of 56% in Feb., it’s now 61%. Voters identifying as Strictly Independent, or Independent/ leaning Democrat or Republican made up 43% of the survey respondents.

Here are my picks for the week’s news for indies:

• Poll Reflects Afghan War Doubts-Obama Slips on Foreign Policy, but Gains on Health-Care and Economic Fronts (By JONATHAN WEISMAN, Wall Street Journal) As the 2010 election cycle heats up, independent voters now favor Republican control of Congress by four percentage points.
• NBC/WSJ: OBAMA HEALTH #S INCH UP (From NBC’s Mark Murray)
• Job One-The only way Obama can pull his presidency back from the brink. (John B. Judis, The New Republic)
• ANALYSIS-ACORN scandal not seen rubbing off on Obama (Reuters)
• The Most Important Number in Politics Today (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post/The Fix)
• Obama’s Leadership Qualities Stand Out to Americans (by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup) Democrats’ views have barely changed (90% in April vs. 88% today), while Republicans’ (38% vs. 21%) and independents’ (63% vs. 50%) ratings are down more than 10 points each.
• Obama Policies Turn Off Independents (By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers/US News & World Report)
• Regulating King Kong and Crackpot Theory in Talk/Talk with Fred Newman and Jackie Salit, at independentvoting.org. Also check out the letter that independentvoting has sent to Obama asking him to appoint independents to the FEC.

Read more news for independents at The Hankster

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Nancy

If you want to call it “fickle” to leave the two-party system behind in favor creating a new political culture, call me fickle!

• 2010: Fight for fickle kids (By: Eamon Javers, Politico) Stanford University political science professor Morris Fiorina is convinced that both political parties haven’t yet grasped the scale of the change that’s happening in society. Republicans, he said, made the mistake of assuming that the divisions they exploited in the 2000-2004 elections were much deeper and more durable than they actually were — and were shocked by vote swings in 2006 and 2008 that would have seemed inconceivable in 2004. Not to mention, he said, “the emergence of Obama out of nowhere.”

PENNSYLVANIA

Independent-turned-Democrat Joe Sestak plans to challenge veteran Republican-turned Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

• Senate candidates from opposite sides use same strategy against Specter (By Reid Wilson, The Hill) Whether it is the outlier result of a single poll or the harbinger of inroads to come, Toomey actually leads Specter by a 46-42 percent margin among independent voters in a Quinnipiac University survey. The poll was conducted July 14-19.
• Sestak ready to announce he’ll take on Specter (By Thomas Fitzgerald, Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Sestak Fires Back: Dem. Specter Makes Republican Swift Boat Attacks On Dem. Military Veterans (By Brian Beutler, TPM, July 9, 2009)

NEW JERSEY

Gov race: Dem Corzine vs. Repub Christie vs. independent Daggett

• NJ Gov: Internal (D) Poll Shows Corzine Down 7 (RealClearPolitics)
• Christie maintains lead over Corzine in poll (By Cynthia Burton, Philadelphia Inquirer) independent candidate Chris Daggett took 4 percent

NEW YORK

Special elections in NY are nonpartisan and therefore allow everyone to vote regardless of registration. They favor insurgents and independent candidates.

Goo-Goos To Paterson: Don’t Call 38th AD Special Election (Liz Benjamin, Daily News/Daily Politics)

For more independent news, see The Hankster, where the independents are…

Continued look at who independent voters are/are not and Obama’s poll numbers…

• A reminder: Most ‘independent’ voters aren’t (LA Times/Top of the Ticket)
• Sick and Tired of Republicans and Democrats? New Parties Say They Offer Alternatives (By James King, Phoenix News Times)
• Pa.’s Sestak plans Tuesday announcement (USA Today)
• Poll: Pennsylvania ranks 20th most Democratic state in the nation (Erik Westervelt, Phildadelphia Opinion Polls Examiner)
• Political Party Affiliation: 30 States Blue, 4 Red in ‘09 So Far (by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup)
• Zogby/O’Leary Poll Reveals Majority of Voters Will Oppose Senators Who Vote to Confirm an Anti-Second Amendment Supreme Court Nominee (Press Release)  NOTE: Included here because the Zogby/O’Leary poll purports to speak for independents…
• Obama’s Ratings Slide Across the Board – The Economy, Health Care Reform and Gates Grease the Skids (Pew Research)

SCHWARZENEGGER/OPEN PRIMARIES

Calif Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger is determined to leave a legacy of reform — particularly open primaries, which would give more power to voters

• Schwarzenegger is unpopular but undaunted (George Skelton, Capitol Journal, LA Times)
• A State of Confusion editorial: State needs fixes to avoid a repeat (Sac Bee) As for the Legislature itself, an open primary in place of the partisan nominating system we have now might help elect more moderate lawmakers and lead to a more consensus-oriented body.

For more independent news, see The Hankster, where the independents are.

Now that the House has left for summer recess, with the Senate leaving in a week, it’s a perfect time to look back and see what may have gone wrong in the Democrats’ plan to pass a major health care reform package before this week had passed. Most people tend to focus on the policy and the intrigue of ‘the fight’, but I think the failure to pass this bill is more a tactical one rather than mistaken policy or lack of potential votes.

Polling on the issue has been fairly  consistent. A majority do want health care reform this year, but while a majority is willing to pay more in taxes for better coverage, they care more about lowering costs than expanding coverage. A large majority support a public option that competes with private insurance, but an even larger majority are actually satisfied with their current coverage. This creates a situation where people are wary that government coverage may lead to rationing and will lose the relatively free choice they currently enjoy in their health care options now.

Much of the debate has circled around how to try and pay for this health care reform, so it doesn’t lead to more debt. I suggested one way to help pay for some of it, but I am not aware of the idea of taxing the consumption of unhealthy things as a source of funding being discussed as an option (although polling shows the public supports the idea). The idea of taxing the wealthy is still popular and will probably be included in the final bill to pay for part of it. A big wrench was tossed in the gears when the CBO announced that the cost savings touted by Democratic leaders really didn’t exist.

Perhaps as much attention has been given to a coalition of conservative and moderate (or centrist if you prefer) democrats who hold the swing votes to push this piece of legislation over the hump into passage. They’ve been leveraging this situation to push for modifications that lowered costs and squeezed more savings from the system itself before adding taxes on the wealthy or taxing more high cost benefits. The latter idea has hit a brick wall, since some labor unions have extremely good benefit packages that they have negotiated for over the years that would fall into the category of taxable benefits in some of the proposals.

The tipping point for this legislation stands here, at the junction between the more liberal Democratic Party leadership, the so called Blue Dog Democrats and the independent and moderate Republican constituents they need to get reelected. If I had to point out one thing that has had the most detrimental effect on the march towards passage, it would be the misplaced attempted strong-arm tactics against these Democratic swing votes.

When confronted with a powerful enemy, do not fight them head on but try to find their weakest spot to initiate their collapse. This is the weak overcoming the strong.

-Sun Tzu, from The Thirty-Six Strategems

An illustrative example of this fell into our lap yesterday, with moderate Democrat Ben Nelson, of Nebraska (where I live), lambasting ads leveled at him by Howard Dean’s Democracy for America (DFA). I was pretty surprised at how poorly executed the ads are, but the same tired attacks are being leveled at Nelson, that are being leveled against other swing votes across the country, are what make the ads so ridiculous.

We begin with the perennial attack you can level at any politician regarding who donates to their campaigns. Pretending that you know that he’s doing what he’s doing because of who his donors are, rather than the distinct possibility that he’s doing it because many of his constituents (including myself) asking him to slow down passage of the bill, look for more cost savings and make sure we don’t rush this, is plain idiocy. Nobody can read his mind, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that the guy is any more corrupt than any other politician. I would be pushing for many of the same modifications if I was in the senate, and I (unfortunately) don’t get millions of dollars given to me each year by anyone.

Then there is the time pressure argument, that we need to pass this legislation now. I can’t disagree with this sentiment more. If anything we should slow down further still, with more and more coming out as to mistaken estimates of cost savings and details of proposals being made more clear. There is no artificial timetable you can set on something like this, it needs to take however long it takes to be reviewed in great detail.

Regardless of what you believe, this sort of push only works when you have a majority of the public with you. It would work if he was in a weak position, but he’s not. This is Sun Tzu 101 stuff here… you don’t mount a full frontal attack on an enemy in a fortified position unless you have vastly superior forces. Like it or not, the Blue Dogs have the high ground right now.

The groups that are pushing for this with these tactics need to look in the mirror to lay blame when they look back and wonder why they weren’t able to get some of the things they wanted when this finally moves to passage. A public plan pegged on Medicare, with that panel slowing the rate of cost growth, would have saved us an amazing amount of money over the years, and I think the Blue Dogs and Moderates would have been convinced to support that with more work on cost savings and less political pressure. The pressure from liberal groups force them to fight back very publicly, so they don’t look like they are towing the liberal line to the independent and moderate republican supporters they need to get reelected.

Sun Tzu would have advised these groups to use the same tactic that PHARMA used once they saw that a health care bill of some kind was going to pass whether they wanted it to or not. The choice was to go in early, get a seat at the table and get a better deal by offering concessions from the start, or fight a losing battle later on and get stuck with a much worse deal. These groups demonizing Blue Dogs and moderates are doing precisely opposite what they should have done. They should have realized the situation early and negotiated a way for them to show their constituents that they fought for cost savings, like the Medicare panel, which instead took months of fighting to accomplish.

Sun Tzu would have told these groups that they should ‘remove the firewood from under the pot’. Instead of fighting the Blue Dogs head on, they could have weakened their resistance by working with them from the start, rather than turning a soft ally into a potential enemy with these tactics.

While you could point out any number of mistakes these organizations have made in the last few months, perhaps the most glaring is their belief that they could use the momentum from the 2008 election to push their dream bills through to passage. Their sometimes misplaced tactics haven’t helped their cause either, pulling silly publicity stunts and waging a terribly mismanaged media push. The real meat of it was their misconstrued overall strategy of shoving this legislation through, over the opposition of nearly all republicans and a good chunk of moderate Democrats.

This was just plain foolish. They had to know that they would have a hard time getting moderate Dems to vote their way on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or card check if you prefer). They couldn’t have been so blind as to think the Blue Dogs would just roll over on their health care plan, with it costing so much… right?

Some polling has shown a bit of a shift, but numbers have been relatively steady on the issue of the secret ballot being favored over card check, and how wary the public is when it comes to expansion of government into health care. With the debt rocketing into the sky at an historic pace, and promised cost savings being debunked by the CBO, rather than work with the swing votes in the Senate to find a compromise these groups, and liberal organizations like them, have chosen perhaps the most ineffective strategy they could take.

Demonize the moderates.

There is a reason why politicians tone down the partisan their rhetoric after winning primaries, and why many are now saying that 2010 might not be so bad for Republicans after all. Attacking representatives who speak for those of us who worry about liberal overreach and a need for fiscal sanity helps nobody but the Republican party. Democrats may have the majority, and 60 votes in the Senate, but liberals do not… and this will not change any time soon.

Realizing this and working with the center, rather than attacking us, will allow these organizations to make progress on their legislative goals, keep their solid majority and stem the tide of independents that are now beginning to peel their support off. The silver lining of all of this, from my more centrist perspective, is this is leading to even more people leaving both parties. With over 40% of the population now identifying as independents, it is just a matter of time before something happens that turns the independent groundswell into a movement.

Past the constant calls for saving money by eliminating wasteful spending, which never seem to materialize into actual legislation, we need to find new forms of income to pay for this bill. They seem to be failing at convincing enough senators to support taxing benefits and the more affluent, so what else is left?

For the most part, we pay for our governmental services through income taxes (both individual and corporate), property taxes and consumption taxes. Property taxes are used for other things and rightfully shouldn’t be on the table here. The two proposals that were trotted out for discussion by the Democratic leadership were both taxes on types of income. What remains are consumption taxes.

In a way, consumption taxes are the most fair. For instance it makes perfect sense to tax gasoline and tires to pay for roads, as those driving on those roads need those things to do so. So doesn’t it make sense to tax those behaviors that create high health care costs? The American people seem to think so.

Kaiser Family Foundation poll

A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, from back in April, found that reforming health care is one of the public’s highest priorities, that a majority of Democrats and Independents believe that we need reform now and that a majority support taxing unhealthy behaviors as an acceptable way to pay for some of these reforms. When asked it they would support raising taxes on “items that are thought to be unhealthy, such as soda, alcohol, junk food and cigarettes,” 61% approved (39% strongly favoring, with 22% somewhat favoring the idea). I’m a huge fan of proposals that kill two (or more) birds with one stone, and I think this is a textbook example of such.

To fund a health care program, it makes much more sense to tax behaviors that lead to health problems than it does to tax income in general. By doing so we can, in one fell swoop, put more of the costs of the system in the hands of those who are causing the most problems, lower the consumption of these products AND help pay for universal health care. We already have taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and items deemed luxuries like jewelry, hotel stays and amusement parks. So why not extend similar taxes to the most unhealthy ‘food’ items in the market? (I put food in quotes because one could argue that high fat and sugar content items like pop, potato chips and many fast food items can hardly be described as food)

First on the cutting block is alcohol, with 68% of respondents strongly or somewhat favoring raising taxes on it to help pay for health care reform. Smoking is more demonized in our country, but alcohol related health costs actually outweigh those related to smoking. The Marin Institute lists several alcohol related health care costs, among them $175.9 billion on alcohol related problems, also saying that they bring about “$184.6 billion dollars per year in health care, business and criminal justice costs, and cause more than 100,000 deaths.” This being the case, I see it as nothing but reasonable to levy a higher tax on alcohol, possibly in relation to which forms of it result in the worst outcomes, that is equal to the cost to society it incurs.

Still with a few hundred billion dollars to go, we come to tobacco. I was a bit surprised that a higher cigarette tax was supported by fewer than the increased alcohol tax, but this may be because tobacco products are already taxed at a high rate. Florida alone loses $20 billion dollars when you compare the taxes it collects to the money it pays out, amounting to nearly $7,000 per smoker. A study released by the CDC in 2002 showed that “For each of the approximately 22 billion packs sold in the U.S. in 1999, $3.45 was spent on medical care attributable to smoking, and $3.73 in productivity losses were incurred, for a total cost of $7.18 per pack.” These numbers are sure to have risen since then, and with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 billion packs of cigarettes sold in the US last year, it seems more than fair to tack on at least another few dollars per pack.

Whether or not this fills the gap entirely, we also should look at taxing the most unhealthy food items. A study at University of Victoria (British Colombia) found that all income groups would benefit, although more so near the top of the economic spectrum, from a tax on junk foods that sent money towards health care programs. I would suggest that this disparity would be less pronounced in the US, where many people near the bottom of the economic spectrum have much more to gain from such an arrangement, given that it will help pay for health insurance that many of them currently do not have.

Put all of these together, and you might piece together enough to get over the hump. At the very least we could make it easier to pass one of the income tax ideas by lowering the amounts they’d have to raise through it.

One might argue that this would cause people to consume less of these products, thereby reducing the income from the levies. My response would be that we should then increase the taxes to keep up with the costs. This would hopefully create a cycle where more people would consume less, making the purchase of such products even more expensive, driving more out and lowering costs to treat those people over the long run. Herein lies the killing two birds with one stone situation.

One might also argue that this is a regressive tax. In effect it will be that way, at least at first. It is the lower end of the spectrum that spends a larger amount of their overall income on food. They also tend to eat less healthy foods. However, nobody forces them to choose to purchase these particular food items. Nobody should force them to quit, but if they want to continue to lead an unhealthy lifestyle, the rest of society should not be forced to subsidize it.

If people want to smoke, drink or eat themselves to death, then they can make a down payment on the hundreds of thousands of dollars the government will pay to take care of many of them during the last months of their lives. If we can save some of them from that fate by enacting the proposals mentioned above, thats even better.

While I have my doubts about this latest revelation, the obvious question remains: what Democrat would want her support? Especially since many Republicans aren’t too keen on being linked to her either.

I mean…really?

From Washington Times:

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP’s base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and “energy independence.”

“I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation,” she said over lunch in her downtown office, 40 miles from her now-famous hometown of Wasilla — population 7,000 — where she began her political career.

“People are so tired of the partisan stuff — even my own son is not a Republican,” said Mrs. Palin, who stunned the political world earlier this month with her decision to step down as governor July 26 with 18 months left in her term.

Does she seriously think she has that much pull with Americans? Sure, the base Republicans love her, but that’s 20% of the electorate. Everybody else is scared that somehow, someway she’ll find her way into Congress or (gulp) the Oval Office.

I don’t know, it just seems like she has a very inflated sense of self and doesn’t really appreciate that her fame is not about her ideas and is instead all about the novelty of a historic VP pick that McCain made because he was desperate.

More as it develops…

With the President’s approval dropping and party ID numbers slipping…should Dems be worried?

More at True/Slant.

He’s not below 50% yet, but between these numbers and Gallup’s, the trend is clear.

Here’s more…

President Barack Obama’s first five months in office have seen his job approval remain stable overall – currently at a politically healthy 57 – 33 percent, but his disapproval has risen 8 – 10 points among several key demographic groups even as the national mood has improved somewhat in recent months, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Approval among independent voters is 52 – 37 percent, compared to 57 – 30 percent in a June 4 survey [...]. The survey of more than 3,000 voters also finds that voters feel 32 – 30 percent that things in the nation have gotten better since President Obama was inaugurated. Independent voters say 32 – 27 percent that things are worse, with 40 percent saying things are the same.

Also, Rasmussen shows similar overall approval numbers, which usually fall in line with the number of independents who give the President a thumbs up…

Overall, 53% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove.

So what does this mean from a political survival standpoint…

First, the White House should be on notice, especially when it comes to the upcoming health care fight. In a post-Bush world, Obama can’t afford to play partisan games and shut the other side out of the debate. He has to be inclusive and at least think about developing a plan that appeases moderate members on both sides. That’s nearly impossible in the House since most of those Republicans are from very red districts, but in the Senate he can afford to lose folks like Snowe, Grassley, Collins and even the newly Democratic Specter. He needs those folks on board and publicly supporting him, otherwise independents will continue to leave.

Second, he has to reign in Pelosi. She has been running the show in the House and her partisan ways have been spread a lot of ill will. I’m not exactly sure why she doesn’t realize that her President promised bi-partisanship, but she better soon or risk facing a big turnaround in 2010. Now, this happened to Clinton and he was still a two termer, but Obama is becoming a more polarizing figure and it could hurt him more for the 2012 run.

Last, he should be very careful with this new supermajority and only use it when the public’s approval is firmly behind him. Otherwise, Independents will simply label Obama the liberal Bush and that’s a meme that will stick.

So those are my thoughts. What are yours?