Dems need to seize outrage over Medicare cuts

Earlier today, during his weekly press conference, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic Whip, indicated that his caucus may be willing to compromise on cuts to Medicare in exchange for concessions on the debt ceiling. Any public support for cutting Medicare, even a little, is particularly tone deaf right now. Indeed, the Democrats – especially those in the House – need to shift public attention to Medicare by better and more succinctly expressing their outrage at the plans by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to eliminate Medicare. Above all, they need to emphasize that they will do all in their power to prevent it. This is a seize-able moment, much like health care reform two years ago was for the GOP, because of the intensity of public opposition to the GOP budget.

Why any Congressional Democrat is not fitting some variation of “the Republicans’ Medicare-destroying budget” into their daily talking points is beyond me. Instead, as usual, the Democrats appear to be showing up to this knife fight over the budget with a stack of library books. They are getting lost in nuance and, to be fair, facts. No, if the Ryan budget were passed it would not actually end Medicare. But the Affordable Care Act was never going to institute death panels, either. Yet, the town halls of the summer 2009 were reverberating with screams about death panels. Similarly, with some media savvy and message discipline, the town halls of summer 2011 can be about angry seniors showing up en masse to rail against the Republican Plan to End Medicare. To do the opposite, and be publicly open to compromising on Medicare is blatantly ignorant of both the present reality and the massive political opportunity that the Ryan budge t presents – particularly in states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio: crucial in 2012 and full of Medicare eligible seniors.

Kathleen Hochul knows this. She is the Democrat running in the special election in New York’s 26^th Congressional district. A Democrat running in a normally Republican district, Hochul has seized on the opposition to Paul Ryan and John Boehner’s plans to destroy Medicare – and will likely win tonight as a result.

PPP released a series of polls this morning clearly demonstrating that for four Democratic Senators whose seats are necessary to maintain control next year – Brown (OH), McCaskill (MO), Tester (MT), and Klobuchar (MN), any support for cutting Medicare makes voters in their states overwhelmingly less likely to vote for them. It is in their best interests and that of their Democratic colleagues if party leaders take a hint if Hochul wins tonight – that opposition to any cuts to Medicare should be the key selling point of the Democrats right now.

It will take some astroturfing that’s never been our strongest ability, but reminding the voters that we want to save Medicare while they want to end it, while encouraging public outrage, should be the Dems’ mission for this summer.

Laying a New Foundation

PHILADELPHIA – President Obama’s televised address to Congress next week is a big deal, and it is my fervent hope that The White House rises to the occasion. These sorts of appearances before a joint session are rare, underscoring the importance of what President Obama will have to say on Wednesday. And this particular address comes not only at a critical point for our country, but at a pivotal moment for the Democratic Party. After a resounding, once-in-a-generation rout of the Republican Party last November, the Democratic Party, true to its form, has managed to mangle its message and give the Republicans a clear, albeit illogical, path from the wilderness back to relevance. The GOP is steering the national debate, and in the process, again preventing health care from reaching millions of Americans.


Additionally, however, is the toll the internal divisions of the Democratic Party are hurting both the president and the Democrats. If health care fails, we can surely blame it on the Republicans, but there truly is nobody to blame except for moderate Democrats – people like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Max Baucus.


But the divisions within the party that have long existed but went on seeming hiatus for the Obama presidential honeymoon, are back in forms beyond the moderate Dems in the Senate. A big reason that the President’s poll numbers have recently plummeted is a significant drop in job approval from liberal voters and young voters, alike. Liberals and young people (often coterminous) are frustrated with the Administration’s eagerness to compromise on health care, irritated by the apparent desire to achieve bipartisanship over progress and tiring of the failure to withdraw more troops from Iraq or pass bills such as a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”


The President should take a cue from the late Speaker Tip O’Neill and remember to “dance with the one that brung ya.” He needs to articulate a plan for health insurance reform – and later for the rest of the “Change” we were promised – and unite the Democratic supermajority in the Senate and the Democratic House behind it. If he can get certain Republicans like Olympia Snowe on board for some it, great. But if not, so be it; He needs to accomplish something, with or without the Republican Party. And his Democratic base will be much more satisfied and eager to go work for candidates in 2010 if he does it without.


Obama is inclined towards compromise and bipartisanship and breaking down the divisions that have torn us apart in the past. That was central to his campaign in 2008, but it’s simply not realistic and it’s important for him to govern in the world in which we live, not an ideal world. This Republican Party and these Republican voters are not looking to compromise or unite; they are looking to destroy and divide. And they are utterly effective at both of those.


Meanwhile, the Democrats are terrible at marketing. The Republican Party managed to sell effectively sell a horrendous war by making it seem necessary for our survival. They might have, again, destroyed hope of health insurance reform by making it seem like a sure roadblock to our survival. They get everyone on the same page, using understandable (if wrong) concepts such as “death panels.” The Democrats, on the other hand, are barely in the same book and using concepts such as “access and affordability for every American while not restricting the choice and free market growth of any person or company.” It’s time for a winning sales pitch.


President Obama needs to make an unprecedented sales pitch on Wednesday. He needs to sell both the men and women sitting in front of him and the millions watching on television. (And Twittering it, for that matter.) By the time the speech concludes on Wednesday, it needs to be readily apparent that the situation is different than it is today. He needs to give the sort of address that historians look back on as a turning point. Fortunately, that is precisely what President Obama is best at.


This turning point is for not only the health care debate, but as I said earlier, the political atmosphere and the country itself. The President needs to lay a “New Foundation.” For the first several months of his administration, he has used this phrase with some regularity and it has not yet caught on as his trademark, as his “New Deal” or “Great Society.” Decades later, people fondly point to both of those sets of programs even if they cannot name a single element of either the “New Deal” or “Great Society.” They were bold, beneficial and transformative.


We need not simply such a program in the United States at this moment, but such a feeling. The sense that we are truly beginning anew. That the President has watched the bitterness brewing over the past decades displayed at town hall meetings and on cable television over this past summer and he has said, “enough.” That the President has heard too many horror stories about our health care system, seen too many die from lack of coverage and he has said, “enough.” That he has watched as his party’s noble goal has been morphed into a caricature of a death squad, and he has said, “enough.” Enough already.


It is time to lay a New Foundation. And it can begin on Wednesday night.

Harry and Louise and Hate

The "vicious" and devastating attacks on health care reform in 1993 would seem like a dream-come-true today. The enduring symbol of the anti-HillaryCare movement has been the "Harry and Louise" ads of that year, known by people who have never seen the ads but know the names. In 1993, the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) paid to produce a commercial criticizing the Clinton plan as too bureaucratic and urging viewers to call their Members of Congress. The HIAA, now called America's Health Insurance Plans, is a legitimate (and extremely well-funded) interest group. They have a necessary role in any debate about health insurance reform. Their attacks in 1993 were, at least, rooted in some semblance of policy. Harry and Louise - who today are airing ads in support of President Obama's plan - are polite and sweet as pecan pie. That's not true of the attackers in 2009.

Today, the attacks on health care are senseless, baseless, and about as "evil" as Sarah Palin believes health care reform to be. In 2009, there are no major health care lobbying groups against reform that are airing TV commercials urging viewers to call their Representative or Senator. There are ultra-right wing groups, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, former half-term governors of Alaska, and Kool-Aid dispenseries that are getting their followers to threaten their Representative or Senator and scream at him during town hall meetings.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've met a number of these opponents of health insurance reform in person. They actually oppose it, but I'm not convinced that nearly any of these avowed health care opponents really knows why. Sure, they think that President Obama wants to socialize our health care system, that he wants to replace your doctor with the postmaster, and that he wants to set up a special Congressional committee to kill your grandmother, but they don't actually oppose the health insurance reform as proposed. They don't know anything about the health insurance reform as proposed. They just want to oppose something, anything. And that's instinctual and hard to overcome. The health care debate of 1993 was before the disaterous Republican Revolution of 1994. It was before the advent of Fox News. It was before the Lewinsky saga and the fear-based administration of George W. Bush. Now it is assumed that if one party proposes something, the other party will vigorously oppose it, no matter what it is. And that really isn't all that terrible. Let a vigorous debate take place in the public arena and may the best proposal win.

But this isn't a debate, it's a shouting match and a contest of fear tactics. The right-wing is spewing lies, hate and a whole lot of crazy. We can't fight crazy with facts; that has never worked. But we cannot let this fail. It's about more than the harm it would do to the Obama administration. He has health insurance and so does everyone who works for him. But nearly 50 million Americans do not, and we cannot let them down. And as more and more Americans declare bankruptcy because of health costs and as more and more businesses close because of an inability to pay for private health insurance, we can't afford to let our recession worsen as we neglect an industry that is 1/6 of the economy.

This fight is too important to let a bunch of crazy people with 6th grade educations bring it down. They might be controlling town hall meetings in community centers, but we control the United States government, so I like our odds. And we won the election - on a platform of health insurance reform.