June 09, 2009

6/9: Give Me A Public Option, Or Give Me Death!

The debate over health care reform is heating up in the blogosphere, and the focal point has become the inclusion of a public health insurance option. Liberal bloggers are pressing hard for a public option that's strong enough to "negotiate deep discounts with providers [and] muscle its way into networks." Ex-Labor Sec. Robert Reich is urging his readers to "let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do."

The netroots are very suspicious of efforts to weaken the public insurance option in order to win GOP support. They're pointing to Finance Cmte ranking member Charles Grassley's (R-IA) weekend Twitter slap at Pres. Obama as evidence that Dems shouldn't consider Grassley a reliable negotiating partner. Joan McCarter complains that Grassley "isn't approaching health care reform in good faith" and that "bipartisanship in his mind means the usual, Dems capitulating on a public option." She continues: "[Finance Cmte chair Max] Baucus [D-MT] needs to realize that he's got no partner in Chuck Grassley when it comes to meaningful, effective health care reform. He needs to worry more about crafting a proposal that the HELP Committee and the majority of House Dems, not to mention the President, will sign off on. That was the whole point of structuring this so the bill can pass through reconciliation."

Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are strongly opposed to the inclusion of a public health insurance option, which they consider a precursor to "a complete federal government takeover." Influential righty blogger Michelle Malkin is urging her readers to participate in an "an Obamacare poster contest" in order to "inform the public of the consequences of Obamacare."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, Kilgore, BooMan) and conservative bloggers (Geraghty, Krikorian) are offering their thoughts on today's VA GOV Dem primary.
• Prominent liberal bloggers are eager to support Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) should he decide to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA). Markos Moulitsas announces that he "can't wait to hop aboard that bandwagon," while Chris Bowers has already signed up to volunteer for Sestak.
• Liberal bloggers (Hamsher, Waldman, Greenwald, Dayen) are pleased that an amendment allowing the WH to suppress the release of detainee abuse photos was reportedly stripped from the supplemental war spending bill. However, the amendment's authors -- Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- are threatening to "employ all the legislative means available" to block the House from overturning their amendment.
• National Review blogger Ed Whelan apologized (twice) to the pseudonymous blogger Publius for disclosing his identity, and various bloggers (Benen, A.L., Sullivan, Cole, Riehl) are praising Whelan for doing so. However, some conservative bloggers (Mirengoff, Goldberg) contend that Whelan has nothing to apologize for.

HEALTH CARE REFORM: Some Things Are Not Negotiable

Liberal bloggers are stepping up their calls for a public insurance option:

• Bowers: "Here is a message that progressive organizations and media outlets need to start sending to all Democratic party committees and members of Congress: We are done attacking Republicans until you pass a public option for health care. Until a public option is passed, I don't want to hear about the latest hate and idiocy spewing from [Rush] Limbaugh, or [Tom] Tancredo, or [Sarah] Palin, or [Newt] Gingrich, or whoever. And to tell you the truth, I don't want to attack them for it, either. Because, right now, Republicans are not the obstacle to progressive governance. Instead, Democrats who refuse to support a public option are the obstacle."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "The health care debate is going to get really ugly and intense. The insurance industry and its lobbyists will do anything and everything to prevent real reform. Obama is going to really have to step up if we're going to get the change he promised. Without a public option to keep the insurance industry, there will be no change."
• TAPPED's Reich: "This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle."

Liberal bloggers (McCarter, Green, Sudbay) are also blasting the Third Way think tank after someone leaked a draft of the organization's policy paper on health care reform, which advocates an "alternative" to "an overly intrusive public plan."

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers (Hinderaker, Klein) continue to criticize the Dems' health care reform proposals, while Malkin urges her readers to participate in an "an Obamacare poster contest" designed to "inform the public of the consequences of Obamacare."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: When Do Newspaper Endorsements Matter?

Ed Kilgore:

"Thinking back to Nate [Silver]'s Iowa 2004 analogy, it's worth remembering that the startling end-game in that contest involved not only a surge for the ultimate winner, John Kerry, but another surge by near-winner John Edwards, from even further back in the pack, that seemed to be fed by an endorsement of the North Carolinian by the Des Moines Register. With all due respect for the Register's atavistic dominance of Iowa media, its endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2008 didn't, to use a familiar phrase, seem to amount to a hill of beans.

But just to toss a theory out, perhaps newspaper endorsements do matter, or at least reinforce trends, when late-deciding voters are casting about for another candidate in reaction to unsavory front-runner rasslin': [Howard] Dean and [Dick] Gephardt in Iowa 2004, and [Terry] McAuliffe and [Jim] Moran in Virginia 2009. If that's the case, then obviously Creigh Deeds could be benefitting from the dynamics that helped both Kerry and Edwards in Iowa in 2004, punctuated by a major media endorsement."

LEST WE FORGET: New Homely Doll To Improve Self-Image Of Young Girls

From The Onion:

"EL SEGUNDO, CA -- Executives at Mattel Inc. held a press conference Monday to unveil the toy company's latest product, Plain Pamela, a homely doll designed to boost the confidence of girls ages 7 to 12. The pale, unsightly plaything, which has a plastic torso scaled to the proportions of a 5-foot-4, 179-pound woman in her mid-30s, is being touted as the first toy expressly intended to raise the sense of physical and emotional self-worth in preteen females.

'While we still value our classic Barbie franchise, we understand the need for dolls that offer an alternative body image,' Mattel CEO Robert Eckert said. 'And that's why we've created Plain Pamela. She's drab, she's dumpy, she's nothing to write home about, and she's going to make the girls of America feel like beauty queens.'

Added Eckert, 'Relatively speaking.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at June 9, 2009 01:16 PM