Every single one of you at some point before you arrived in Congress and after you arrived in Congress have met constituents with heart-breaking stories. And you’ve looked them in the eye and you’ve said, we’re going to do something about it — that’s why I want to go to Congress.

. . . Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise.

The president, I think, spoke to the kernel of idealism that once took root in every hardened incumbent before he or she ever served in public office. It’s one thing to wax poetic about the historic proportions of the bill that’s scheduled for an up or down vote tomorrow on the House floor,  and Obama did plenty of that, to be sure. But the president balanced ambitious political cheerleading with an appeal to the most intimate type of promise a campaigning politician makes to a constituent, and then Obama balanced that again with an appeal to each representative’s conscience.

I know this is a tough vote. I’ve talked to many of you individually. And I have to say that if you honestly believe in your heart of hearts, in your conscience, that this is not an improvement over the status quo; if despite all the information that’s out there that says that without serious reform efforts like this one people’s premiums are going to double over the next five or 10 years, that folks are going to keep on getting letters from their insurance companies saying that their premium just went up 40 or 50 percent; if you think that somehow it’s okay that we have millions of hardworking Americans who can’t get health care and that it’s all right, it’s acceptable, in the wealthiest nation on Earth that there are children with chronic illnesses that can’t get the care that they need — if you think that the system is working for ordinary Americans rather than the insurance companies, then you should vote no on this bill. If you can honestly say that, then you shouldn’t support it. You’re here to represent your constituencies and if you think your constituencies honestly wouldn’t be helped, you shouldn’t vote for this.

The president also stated flat out “Now, I can’t guarantee that this is good politics.” And he singled out Betsy Markey and John Boccieri as representatives who have looked at this measure from every angle and evaluated the politics as well as the policy and decided to vote with the majority caucus in favor of reform. Betsy Markey may well be a one-term representative. I hope it’s not so, but Colorado’s 4th District may in fact be more comfortable with Markey’s predecessor, archconservative culture warrior Marilyn Musgrave, than with Markey. But Markey also gets what this bill is about, and she gets it that she can’t vote no on this bill and then come home to her district with her head held high.

In the end, the president had to reach the people for whom a yes vote tomorrow really won’t be good politics and convince them (or effectively remind them) that voting yes is the right thing to do, even if every political survival bone in their bodies is screaming and shaking to vote no. This has been his agenda for the past week, culminating in his trip to the Hill today. We’ll know tomorrow whether he’s succeeded or not.

The caucus electorate is a very exotic one. These are people who tend to be dedicated members of their political party, uh, party regulars, party loyalists. In the Democratic party they tend to be more liberal than the Democratic party generally. In the Republican party they tend to be more conservative than the Republican party generally.

And that’s when it dawned on me that, probably, the same can be said for protestors. By and large, people who take time to picket a government office or set up on a street corner with political signage do not reflect mainstream Americans.

Health Care Reform Protestors (image via Wikimedia Commons)

This is purely anecdotal conjecture, but Loevy’s observation about the caucus goer confirms for me the veracity of my statement about protestors. And I’m glad that it does, because the whole realization explains for me, at least in part, the vitriol and malevolence we’re seeing today in protests surrounding health care reform.

Most Americans are not as angry and mean as some of the protestors we see on the cable news, just like most Americans do not attend party caucuses. Most Americans likely also have strong feelings, one way or another, about health care reform. Most Americans, I am hopeful, still believe there’s room for respectful discussion, or even respectful argument, without such demonization of differing view points. But the protest crowd, like the caucus electorate, is a very exotic one, and more extreme in its beliefs than the party generally.

Welcome, Ari, to the Colorado Progressive community!

First off, I’d like to thank Betsy Markey (again), who was specifically targeted at the end of this ad in local markets, for not caving to the Chamber’s predictable, distorted, anti humanitarian efforts to defeat health care reform.

Second, I’d like to point out that not all Chambers of Commerce are in agreement with the US Chamber of Commerce. Consider this:

[A] delegation from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers to voice strong support for cap and trade legislation and the core principles of the Senate’s health care bill. The delegation included United Airlines, Pacific Gas & Electric, and several small businesses. “The San Francisco business community has a different perspective on some key issues that are currently being considered in Congress,” said San Francisco Chamber vice president Rob Black, explaining why he’d chosen to circumvent the US Chamber’s lobbyists. “We wanted to be able to communicate with [Pelosi] directly the San Francisco businesses community’s perspectives on both those issues.”

Along with the San Francisco Chamber–one of the ten largest Chamber affiliates—ever more businesses and trade groups are distancing themselves from the Chamber’s partisan tactics. Earlier this month, a Microsoft representative publicly repudiated the Chamber’s position on climate change, writing that the Chamber “has never spoken for nor done work on behalf of Microsoft regarding climate change legislation.” And business groups that together count more members than the US Chamber does–groups that include the US Womens Chamber of Commerce, the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce–have signed a pledge in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which the US Chamber opposes.

Prominent business groups aren’t the only ones divided by health care reform. Increasing factionalism is evident among Democrats, where uber-liberals like Jane Hamsher are determined in their attempts to derail reform for not being progressive enough.*

Also, consider this:

The National Catholic Reporter is joining American nuns and the Catholic Health Association in breaking with the Bishops and endorsing the health reform bill, offering the observation that “the bishops have to be clear that some of their talking points might lead honest observers to question their competence — or worse.”

If health care reform efforts have value in addition to improving health insurance coverage and health access for millions of Americans–and reducing the national deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years–it’s that the issue appears to be forcing socially progressive announcements among groups that would probably rather not spar with their partner organizations if they didn’t have to. But the thing about sweeping legislation is that various members of various interest groups will speak up, and that’s clearly been the case within the Chamber and various offshoots of the Catholic Church. Looking ahead, these rifts may only widen as socially progressive, people-first legislation is introduced in America. The same goes for financial regulation, environmental policy, education reform, what have you.

*Hamsher is deeply concerned about abortion restrictions, and I think her position is defensible if one’s only consideration in weighing the bill’s merits has to do with access to abortion. Generally, however, I think it’s pretty indefensible to judge such a broad bill through such a narrow lens.

This bill will be the single largest deficit reduction bill in 27 years.   It will most likely be the single largest deficit reduction measure I vote for as a Member of Congress.

That’s why I’m voting for this bill.  There are things that this bill does immediately that I could not, in good conscience, oppose: it ends denial of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and prevents health insurance companies from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.

Some of the other hightlights of what this bill will do are:

• It allows people who are 26 and younger to stay on their parents health care plans.  As a mother of three children under the age of 26, that is an important issue for me.
• It closes the donut hole in Medicare Part D, which will lead to lower drug costs for seniors and guarantees that Medicare benefits will not be cut, all by saving money from withing the Medicare program by weeding out waste, fraud and abuse.
• It eliminates annual and lifetime limits on all insurance coverage and guarantees that insurers cover preventitive care for afflictions like cander and diabetes.
• Additionally, more than 30 million new people will benefit from health insurance coverage withing the next ten years.  Out of pocket costs for premiums and medical expenses will finally be made affordable for individuals and families.  There are strong private health insurance options covered by this bill, with state exchanges and more benefit plan options.

Quite simply, this is a better bill than the legislation I opposed last fall and it does more to contain costs while providing increased health insurance coverage.

Emphasis mine. Good on you, Betsy Markey, for legislating with your conscience. The people of Colorado’s 4th District are well served.

Even beyond the aggravation of the campaign phone calls, though, I start to wonder why I bother to participate in Democratic politics.

After all, if I’d wanted a health-care plan that consisted of “trying to hold on until you’re 65 and eligible for Medicare,” I’d have voted for Republicans.

If I’d wanted the United States to be involved in two shooting wars in the Middle East, I’d have voted Republican.

If I wanted to give billions of dollars to prop up Wall Street and then see huge bonuses given to the same people who got us into this financial mess, I’d vote for Republicans.

If I wanted U.S. intelligence activities (performed in our name and with our money) to continue to operate without meaningful congressional oversight, I’d vote Republican.

If I wanted accused terrorists to be tried as warriors before military tribunals as if they were soldiers, instead of in civilian courts like the criminals they are, I’d vote Republican.

If I wanted the USA Patriot Act extended rather than repealed, I’d vote for Republicans.

If I wanted theocrats in Texas to require that the American history textbooks used in public schools focus on John Calvin (who wasn’t even an American) and ignore Thomas Jefferson, I’d vote Republican.

It does force one to recognize, ultimately, how close to center the Democrat establishment has hewn since Barack Obama’s watershed election. Quillen’s commentary also–albeit incidentally–highlights the slowness of substantive institutional change in our nation’s politics.

Ed Quillen’s piece today makes no room for incrementalism, and I think that’s an oversight too common among progressives right now. Of course, Democrats lined the National Mall and stood before TV sets on January 20, 2009, and many of us wept. After eight years of global shame, Democratic Americans held their heads high with their president; yet little could we have imagined the storm of obstruction and vitriol preparing to seize the nation’s capitol.

Quillen is right, of course, and he makes each of us scratch our heads and mutter “Damn.” Damn, because one politician is, arguably, never so very different from another politician. Damn, because yesterday’s tired policies become today’s tired policies. Damn, because Washington process, by necessity, given our parliamentary checks and balances, waters down meaningful policy before it ever gets the chance to become meaningful legislation.

And yet incremental changes do take place in Washington and do spread district by district across the nation. To agree too wholeheartedly with Quillen is to forget that, in his first year or so in office, Obama oversaw expansion of children’s health insurance; sent stimulus funding directly to support social safety net institutions such as Medicaid and COBRA; allocated nearly $140 billion in funding for education; signed legislation insisting that, by 2016, all vehicles sold in the U.S. get 35+ miles to the gallon; designated 2 million acres of new federally protected wild lands; signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; began direct efforts to strengthen and update the national infrastructure (highways, rail, Internet, and more); initiated DADT repeal; and a whole lot more.*

Yes, Quillen makes a great point. Guantanamo ought to have been shuttered by now. Health insurance reform ought to have passed by now. Troops ought to have come home–not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan–by now. No Child Left Behind ought to have been completely scrapped by now.

It’s sad that these things haven’t happened, and it’s incredibly frustrating. But make no mistake: incremental change is change. And given the extraordinary leverages afforded minority parties under current congressional rules, incremental change is about all the change we can hope for. Don’t lose sight, Democrats, of the good things that are still happening in politics today.

*List copped almost exclusively from Nathan Newman’s rundown last fall at TPM Cafe.

Democrats, similarly, will likely retain Bennet on the ballot this November, and nothing that happens to today will probably affect that outcome too much. But that should not yet be taken for granted. Clearly, Bennet is the leading fundraiser against a stagnating Andrew Romanoff and enjoys the advantages that accompany incumbency. At the same time, Romanoff is positioning himself as the outsider looking in–a strange twist for the former House Speaker and erstwhile golden boy of Colorado Democratic politics–during a year that poses significant challenges for incumbents, namely the messy health care reform issue that has paralyzed Washington and polarized the nation.

Here’s Giroux on the Romanoff-Bennet caucus stakes:

Political analysts said Romanoff, who badly trails Bennet in fundraising, needs to perform very well at the caucuses to gain traction for the difficult undertaking of unseating a senator in a primary.

“My current assumption is that Romanoff needs to win [the caucuses] … to credibly make the argument that ‘I’m the grass-roots guy,’ ” said independent Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli.

Eric Sondermann, an independent political analyst in Denver, described the caucuses as “a home game for Andrew Romanoff” because he’s concentrated heavily on securing the support of the sliver of Democrats who will participate in them. He expects Romanoff to do well.

“If he does not fare well [Tuesday] in the caucuses, it’s hard to understand what the ongoing rationale for his candidacy is,” Sondermann said.

Katy Atkinson, a Denver-based political consultant, said that the caucuses are far less important for Bennet than for Romanoff because “Bennet has the money to be able to run a primary campaign, and Romanoff needs the momentum that a convention win would give him to help him raise more money.”

Bennet’s campaign is targeting the caucuses to build the full-fledged statewide political organization he lacked after coming to the Senate as an unelected member with no experience in elective office.

So Romanoff is in must-do mode, and Bennet is simply looking to build the momentum and recognition he never needed to win his seat in the first place.  That makes tonight’s outing particularly tough on Romanoff, who, to be honest, has done little to kick up awareness of his candidacy outside a few inside politics circles.

For the sake of argument and variety, and without tendering an endorsement, I urge Democratic caucus goers to step up tonight for Andrew Romanoff, if only to force Michael Bennet to define himself yet more clearly. Bennet is responding well under threat of a primary challenge, with strong support of a public option for health insurance reform and with a slate of new rules introduced to reduce filibuster abuse, and that’s only good news for Colorado.

Additionally, Andrew Romanoff is an effective legislator and a likable politician. If he makes it through these early rounds of primary wrangling, I’m confident that he will bring to the discourse a number of key points and policy ideas that matter to the quality of state and national politics. It’s especially important now for Democrats to energize their politics once more on the validity of clear and constructive policy discussion. Let’s learn as much as we can and then vote on the best candidate.

I mulled the question quickly in my head, considered and dismissed Talking Points Memo and The Washington Monthly’s Political Animal (both good picks, mind you), and settled in to discuss Matthew Yglesias, who now blogs for ThinkProgress and is often referenced in my posts.

Alas, there was no discussion. The question was designed, I surmise, that the HR screener might review the answer at a later date, if at all. I suspect that neither my resume nor my off-the-cuff answers during the screening call precisely answered the criteria the firm was looking to match.

There’s a point to all this, though, and that’s that Matthew Yglesias is probably my favorite blogger writing about politics today because he’s so damn tight.  Take this two-paragraph post from last Sunday. Yglesias identifies the main idea:

It’s nothing new to learn that there are quality-control problems at the Washington Post op-ed page, but Kevin Carey’s demolishing of Lamar Alexander’s op-ed on SAFRA is really something to behold.

Yglesias pays a nod to another blogger’s takedown of a hotly politicized policy issue. As a bonus, Yglesias takes a swipe at a media institution he loves to hate, the WaPo op-ed page. Not bad for a mere 30-odd words.

But that’s just the first sentence. The rest of the first paragraph goes on to skewer the Post’s editorial page editor *and* remind readers that Lamar Alexander is a senator on a soapbox with a malignant agenda and a pack of lies to share.

Therein lies the pivot that makes the rest of the blog post work so well. Yglesias conflates The Post op-ed page with the general unreliability of the contributor. Then, in the second paragraph, Yglesias nails the problem behind the problem.

Meanwhile, I take it that if Lamar Alexander had something false he wanted to tell people about the SAT—like if he wanted to say it was bad test-taking strategy to guess randomly even if you’re able to narrow it down to two options—that Kaplan wouldn’t let him write that in one of their test prep books. Their feeling, as I understand it, is that if they expect people to pay money for test prep books then the information in the books had better be reliable and not just reflect something or other some powerful person happened to want to say.

Emphasis mine. Yglesias argues, and this is pretty much airtight as far as I can tell, that The Washington Post and its parent company The Washington Post Co. are being irresponsible by publishing fallacious op-eds that wouldn’t pass muster as content for sale under the Post’s meal ticket, Kaplan Test Prep, which accounts for over $2 billion a year in Post Co. revenue and keeps the newspaper branch afloat.

All that in a mere two paragraphs. I wish I could have accomplished as much in so little space here.

I should say something pithy here, but I’m too discouraged.

February 24, 2010: Governor Bill Ritter signs a raft of new tax bills into law, including the controversial HB 1193, which forces online retailers to inform consumers of the state taxes owed on purchases made or shipped from Colorado.

March 1: New tax laws take effect.

March 8: Amazon dumps Colorado associates.

March 8: Rasmussen reports McInnis 6 points ahead of HIckenlooper in CO gubernatorial race.

March 8-10: Howls of protest, on all sides of the Amazon sales tax issue. One. Two. Three. Four. More.

There are a couple crucial factors to consider in all this. First, the notion of collecting state taxes on purchases made online is not in itself novel. New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island have adopted similar legislation. Virginia appears poised to do the same.

Two very salient political dynamics motivate the statehouses to challenge the online status quo: State budgets are busting, and brick-and-mortar businesses are crying foul that online businesses don’t have to play by the same taxation rules as everyone else.

Where the argument could have been made that the Colorado legislature was a) improving state services by collecting taxes that are already due and b) leveling the playing field for all Colorado businesses, Amazon’s response Monday undermines both those points. By dumping Colorado affiliates, the state won’t see its taxes and the state business sector as a whole loses out, because consumers will still buy goods online, but those goods will come from vendors in other states.

Enter the governors race, and issues like this one get even thornier. Hickenlooper will campaign on jobs creation, but he’s stuck in the unfortunate position of losing (potentially) Frontier Airlines under his watch and making no comment on the Ritter tax laws, which hurt his position as a member of the (current) majority party. McInnis and Co. are wise to stomp on these issues.

Unfortunately, the state is losing face, state businesses are losing revenues, and John Hickenlooper is losing ground (for now). Not a happy situation in Colorado.

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