September 10, 2009

9/10: A House Divided

Most liberal bloggers were impressed by Pres. Obama's health care address, calling it "a great speech" that made "a strong case for reform". That said, several lefty bloggers criticized Obama for not pushing more strongly for a public option. Righty bloggers, on the other hand, universally panned Obama's speech, accusing him of employing "tired rhetoric" and "lying through his teeth".

Bloggers are also buzzing about Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-SC) verbal outburst, in which he shouted "You lie!" after Obama claimed that the Dem health plans wouldn't cover illegal immigrants. Liberal bloggers are accusing Wilson of having "brought the town hall freak show into the House chamber itself" and are urging readers to donate money to Wilson's Dem opponent. The netroots are also portraying the incident as evidence of "just how crazy the remaining Republicans, especially in the House, have become." Conservative bloggers, in contrast, are mostly defending Wilson, calling him a "great American hero" who "had the courage to stand up and draw attention to what was going on".

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Lewison, Bowers) are frustrated by Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-ME) strong statements against a public health insurance option.
• LGBT bloggers (Sudbay, Sullivan) are accusing VA GOV candidate Bob McDonnell (R) of being anti-gay. Conservative bloggers (Geraghty, Mirengoff) are complaining that the Washington Post is trying to damage McDonnell's candidacy.
• Conservative bloggers (Lane, Ace, Morrissey, Reynolds) are portraying Obama's science advisor, John Holdren, as a radical.

OBAMA: Rising To The Occasion

Some liberal bloggers were very impressed by Obama's speech:

• Oliver Willis: "I swear man. Every time. Like, every single time. They pile on, they write him off and then he does his thing and gives a great speech that hits the points just about right. They said he was throwing the public option overboard, then he put 7 paragraphs of it in the speech. They said he was going to give his liberal base the cold shoulder, then he smacked the GOP around. They said he wasn't emotional enough, then talked about Ted Kennedy, average Americans and the moral urgency of health care reform."
• Open Left's Mike Lux: "As one who has been unhappy about a fair amount of Obama's communications strategy on health care up until now, I came away from tonight's speech a very happy man. He took a very big gamble, but I think he will get a great a pay-off from it."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "I feared, going into tonight, that the president might be more cautious and understated in his pitch. He wasn't. Obama went big, sold the plan, and actually explained how this would work. It was as strong as I've seen him on health care -- which means he came through with the right speech at the right time (Biggest Speech Of His Career, Part VII)."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "Tonight's speech was one of Obama's very best -- and he's delivered some good ones. [...] There have been many blows to liberal morale over the past few months that have been dragging down his health care numbers. Hopefully, this speech will turn that around."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "As Marc Ambinder outlined this afternoon, this was a difficult speech because it was going for a bit of a two-fer. On the one hand, Obama needed to appeal to liberals -- both the 60 or so members of the House who have threatened to vote against a watered-down bill, and the much broader, activist community who has grown wary of what they perceive as a Clintonian president who is too willing to compromise. On the other hand, he needed to appeal to independent voters and their brethren, among whom Obama's approval ratings and sentiment toward his health care package have fallen significantly. [...] I think Obama accomplished both of those things -- with some margin to spare."

Other liberal bloggers were more measured in their praise:

• digby: "Obama's speech was effective, I think. I don't know if it will change public opinion and there is no doubt the Republicans are going to dig in their heels even more, but all the Democrats should feel at least somewhat relieved that Obama was able to make a strong case for reform."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "I'd say the speech probably helped. It won't affect Republican votes much, but it will probably move public opinion a few notches and make it easier for centrist Dems to stick together and overcome a GOP filibuster. Basically, I'd say the odds of healthcare passing this year have gone up from 65% to about 75%."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "I thought President Obama did a solid job laying out the essential elements of his reform, rebuking the liars and laying out some beginnings of an elevating vision of just what this whole effort is about."

OBAMA II: R.I.P. Public Option?

Some liberal bloggers were angry that Obama didn't demand that the health care bill include a public option:

• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "President Obama kept the public option alive tonight, but probably only enough to pretend it has some negotiating value with those who oppose it. He said nothing he hasn't said before, and the fact that he still won't nail this down will only feed the impression by progressives that they're being played."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "The wavering on the public option would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. Really -- his insistence that he supports it but might also support removing it reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit parodying wavering and waffling Democrats. [...] I felt like I was listening to a parsed screed by President Rahm Emanuel, not a call to arms from the Barack Obama who actually ran for president. There was lots of passionate talk about the problem, and little courage to demand a serious solution."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "This simply stinks. I have no words for how bad the public option section of the speech is. I SHOULD pretend that he is strongly defending it. He is not. He is letting you know he could not give a sh*t about it. It is all on the Progressive Block now."
• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "Not so good: weak defense of public option. [Obama] did a good job of defining it as the center by calling single payer the 'left,' but by arguing that it wouldn't really do that much, 'Let me be clear, only an option for those who do not have insurance, less than 5% of Americans will sign up,' isn't much of a strong defense of the public option."
• The Huffington Post's Cenk Uygur: "Great rhetorical flourishes, but did anyone hear him say that he was definitely going to fight for the public option? No. [...] If you think it's enough for Obama to say he wants the public option, you're not right. He has to go to battle for it -- and in the end, there is no way around it -- he has to insist it's in the bill when the Republicans, the lobbyists and health care industry fight him tooth and nail on it."

digby had a different take: "[D]espite the fact that he hedged, his long discussion of the necessity of the public plan is good news for progressives. It's still alive anyway and I can't honestly say that would be the case if the progressives hadn't decided to make a stand. (Of course we're still talking triggers or co-ops, but that's nothing new)"

Open Left's Chris Bowers makes a similar point: "President Obama specifically mentioned the bloc of House Progressives threatening to oppose health care reform without a public option as the major group that needs to be negotiated with. [...] For a group that was last in line to meet with President Obama about anything this year, that is quite a step up in visibility and power for the Progressive Caucus. Negotiating power over the President's agenda has no longer been ceded entirely to Blue Dogs and Senate Gangs of Conservadems and Maine Republicans. Not only is that a clear victory for our efforts to increase Progressive power in Congress, but it is also a big victory for President Obama's agenda. By validating the power of the CPC in sucha major forum, President Obama has now given himself some space to work on the left."

OBAMA III: Pants On Fire

Not surprisingly, conservative bloggers were very critical of Obama's speech:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "If Obama just intended to fire up his left wing, then this speech was a success. If he intended on selling ObamaCare to the majority of Americans who oppose it, Obama's speech was an unmitigated disaster."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "The more I think about it, the more I think President Obama offered a terrible speech. Time and again, Obama's response to criticism is to say 'this is a lie.' And he pretty much leaves his assertion at that, and hopes that the audience trusts him more than the opposition."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Much of [the speech] was laughable. We're going to pay for the plan by cutting waste. Do it for Ted, blah, blah. Obama needed a game changer here. Although his delivery was good, it was tired rhetoric. Grade: D-"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "We were treated to a vainglorious, pompous ass playing politics with healthcare while accuses everyone else of playing politics. And he spent the whole hour lying through his teeth. [...] Whatever the President did not accomplish tonight, he waved around the cadaver named Ted Kennedy as a distraction. It is a good thing Ted Kennedy drank as much as he did, because his corpse held up well as Obama dragged it through the aisles of the House of Representatives like Achilles dragging Hector across the plains of Troy."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "More or less, the same arguments he made tonight he's been making for months. He said that we have to act now, that his plan will help everybody get covered, that it will curb insurance industry absuses, that it won't add to the deficit, that it isn't a government takeover, that his Medicare cuts won't mean reduced benefits, and that he won't increase taxes. The American people have been hearing this for months, and they haven't been buying it, so I don't see why that will change with one speech."
• NRO's Yuval Levin: "[I]t is striking how partisan this speech was -- both in its offense and its defense. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course. But it's telling. It suggests the White House and the Democratic leaders have decided that the Democrats must go it alone, and therefore needed a pep talk to give them the courage to push against public unease and Republican opposition. This speech may well serve them on that front. But it is hard to imagine that it will persuade independent voters who are worried about the plan, and that kind of persuasion is what moderate Democrats needed."
• The Atlantic's Megan McArdle: "In the end, I think this speech satisfied no one. There's a little information for the wonks, but not nearly enough. There's a little stirring rhetoric for the non-wonks, but again, not nearly enough. Journalists seem to have liked it. But if journalists were any reliable key to the sentiment of the American people, we'd already have national healthcare, and national second homes in Maine."

WILSON: Bringing Teabag Tactics Into The House?

Liberal bloggers are blasting Wilson for his verbal outburst:

• Marshall: "[This] was in a way an inevitable moment -- when they brought the town hall freak show into the House chamber itself."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "So, we had the President acting like a statesman and continuing to offer to work with Republicans (even as he did call out some of their lies.) And, we had a Republican member of Congress screaming like an idiot."
• Oliver Willis: "Congressman Joe Wilson, by yelling 'Liar' at the President Of The United States during a joint session of congress, should be censured by the House of Representatives. The GOP brought teabag tactics into our House."
• Balloon Juice's DougJ: "I've never seen anything like this -- or like the death panel outburst -- before at a presidential address. [...] There is no question, at this point, that the defining feature of today's politics is the complete craziness of the Republican party. I think it's time to start finding ways around the filibuster. Forty nuts from a party of lunatics should not be allowed to obstruct what is, whether one agrees with it or not, a serious Democratic agenda.
• Daily Kos' Jed Lewison: "It's long past time for [Republicans] to get a grip. After nine months of their teabagging antics, it's time for them to grow up and show some decency and civility."

Yglesias: "Personally, I sort of liked Rep Joe Wilson's idea of introducing British-style heckling to the halls of congress; totally disrespectful and out of step with American tradition, true, but their tradition is better. Unfortunately, Wilson was also lying about the point at issue and will thereby set back the cause of heckling by decades."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "[T]here was something clarifying about a Southern good ol' boy yelling 'Liar' at the president over illegal immigration. That's what the GOP now is: the worst aspects of the old Democratic party combined with a nihilism that is only eclipsed by its catastrophic governance for the past eight years. Defeating these morons and actually creating a discourse for reform is what we elected Obama to do. But they still insist on doing it to themselves, don't they? That's the silver lining."

Many liberal bloggers are arguing that congressional GOPers made themselves look bad with their behavior:

• Sudbay: "While there's a lot of talk about bipartisanship among the D.C. political punditry, there's not much acknowledgement of just how crazy the remaining Republicans, especially in the House, have become. Last night, the whole world saw it."
• Daily Kos' Jake McIntyre: "Today is the day that even the most apolitical Americans realized that the Democrats, despite their faults, are the only adult party."
• BooMan: "The Republicans brought their townhall antics to the well of the House of Representatives, which won't win them any sympathy from swing voters."

WILSON II: Great American Hero?

Most conservative bloggers are defending Wilson's outburst:

• Erickson: "Joe Wilson: Great American Hero! [...] Joe Wilson has been identified as the Republican who yelled out that Barack Obama was a liar. He gets a drink on me!"
• Hawkins: "I applaud Joe Wilson for yelling 'you liar' at Barack Obama. Yes, it was rude, but Obama was lying through his teeth and he has been doing it for over a month. If that's what it takes to draw attention to the fact when so much of the mainstream media simply refuses to report it, so be it. The Democrats, as a block, pulled those kind of shenanigans when Bush was President; so why should we get upset because one Republican told the God's honest truth? I'm glad Joe Wilson had the courage to stand up and draw attention to what was going on."
• Michelle Malkin: "Sure, members of Congress should leave the heckling to town hall protesters. But it was Obama who said himself in the speech: 'If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out.' That's what Joe Wilson was doing, wasn't it?"
• Geraghty: "Rep. Joe Wilson is very rude. He is also, according to the Congressional Research Service, very correct."
• Glenn Reynolds: "I'm finding it hard to get excited about this. It was a breach of decorum and civility. But someone who says 'get in their face' and 'punch back twice as hard' has little standing to bring that up. If you want to benefit from traditions of civility, you should respect them, and that has hardly been a hallmark of this administration, which has gone out of its way to try to demonize and shout down opponents."

Other conservative bloggers were a bit harder on Wilson:

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "[I]t's plain wrong for people to heckle the President -- whoever it is -- when he is addressing a Joint Session of Congress. There's plenty of time and opportunity for the GOP to make its points without resorting to tactics that are beneath the dignity of the setting."
• Klein: "Whatever the case, two wrongs don't make a right. By shouting as he did, Wilson made the undecided viewier more likely to side with Obama, it portrayed Republicans as being childish, and distracted from legitimate criticism of the speech."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "[A] a congressman shouldn't shout at the president during a joint session speech. We're not the House of Commons, sorry."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Not The First, And Certainly Not The Last

Yglesias:

"I thought this line from last night's speech was great speechwriting, but not terribly accurate: 'I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.'

The problem is that at other points during the speech the president was at pains to reassure people that, actually, under his plans very little would change. That's nice and it's politically smart. Most people mostly don't want their health insurance to change very much. But the flipside of that is that while what Obama proposed would ameliorate many problems with the current system and solve a few of them, it would fundamentally leave a lot of the dysfunction of the current system in place. The nature of your health insurance would still be very closely tied to your job, the system would still pay doctors for just doing stuff rather than for curing things, Medicare will still be on a path toward bankruptcy, Medicaid quality would still be extraordinarily hit-or-miss, etc., etc., etc. This means that whether reform passes or fails, we're almost certainly going to need to revisit this issue again in 5-10 years in a pretty big way."

LEST WE FORGET: It Could Always Be Worse...

From FMyLife.com:

• Today, I was going to propose to my girlfriend on my boat at the lake. As we were looking at the mountains all around us, she playfully pushed me off the side into the water. As I got back on the boat, I realized that not only was my cellphone dead, but the ring had fallen into the deep water. FML.
• Today, I was pulled over for speeding. After a few minutes of conversing, he told me he didn't need to give me a ticket. He then asked for a date. I politely declined. After staring at me for a very long moment, he said "I think I'm going to have to give you that ticket after all." FML.
• Today, I was puked on for the third time in three years at our annual choir concert. What makes it so significant? The fact that the same guy pukes on me every year from stage fright. We're arranged alphabetically, and he's always in the row RIGHT above me. FML.
• Today, my girlfriend called me from her parents' house where she is visiting. They were BBQing outside when out of the blue her childhood friend Adam showed up at the door for the BBQ. She asked her parents why he was there, and her dad replied that he "wants her to know that she has options." FML.
• Today, I found out I have an option on my phone to postpone the sending of my text messages. I thought it would be cute to send my boyfriend texts saying, " I love you and sweet dreams" every night at midnight for a month. He broke up with me and I can't figure out how to stop the texts. FML.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at September 10, 2009 01:00 PM