Playing With Fire

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I guess the day of pundits’ clucking about “angry liberals” is over. They’ve finally noticed the Raging Right.

Of course, going back several years now Dave Neiwert, Jeff Feldman and others have documented that speech coming from the American Right is far more eliminationist and violent than speech from the Left.

Sure, every time some adolescent punk at an anti-war rally held up a picture of George Bush dismembered, Michelle Malkin would feature it on her blog and shriek about “unhinged” liberals. But even during the darkest times of the Bush years it was extremely unusual to see a major leftie bloggers call for the death of or violence toward any rightie politician, including Bush. And if any national liberal spokesperson or elected Democrat in Washington ever suggested, even as a “joke,” that a member of the opposing party should meet a violent end I can’t remember it. (I have argued in the past that “joking” about the violent demise of someone you don’t like is not a joke.)

But as Paul Krugman said in his column today,

What has been really striking has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party’s leaders. John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that the passage of health reform was “Armageddon.” The Republican National Committee put out a fund-raising appeal that included a picture of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, surrounded by flames, while the committee’s chairman declared that it was time to put Ms. Pelosi on “the firing line.” And Sarah Palin put out a map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight.

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.

A big reason why it’s irresponsible to suggest — even as a “joke” — that someone should be killed or physically harmed is that there are people who can easily be incited to do terrible things. Eugene Robinson wrote,

When tea party leaders talk about the threat of “socialism” and call for “a new revolution” and vow to “take our country back,” they can say they are simply using vivid metaphors. But they cannot plausibly claim to be unaware that there are people — perhaps on the fringe of the movement, but close enough — who give every sign of taking these incendiary words literally.

And does anyone doubt that the movement attracts the kind of people who take these words literally?

Of course, we expect this sort of thing from Fox News. And, sure enough, the Faux Nooz website is asking people to send in graphics showing what Nancy Pelosi should do next. The results are pretty ugly.

You might remember, six or seven years ago, Moveon held a video contest asking people to make videos critical of the Bush Administration, with a chance the winner would be shown on national television. People were allowed to upload their videos directly for public viewing without going through a moderation filter. A couple of videos were uploaded that portrayed President Bush as Hitler, and the Right had a screeching fit about it. And Moveon took them down immediately. But I swear to this day righties complain that Moveon made a video (One more time: Moveon didn’t make the videos) that compared Bush to Hitler. Yes, I know — IOIYAR.

But back to the bad behavior by Republicans in Congress. See Timothy Egan, “House of Anger.”

Unfairly or not, the defining images of opposition to health care reform may end up being those rage-filled partisans with spittle on their lips. Whether the outbursts came from inside Congress — the “baby killer” shout of Rep. Randy Neugebauer, and his colleagues who cheered on hecklers — or outside, where protesters hurled vile names against elected representatives, they are powerful and lasting scenes of a democracy gasping for dignity.

Now, ask yourself a question: can you imagine Ronald Reagan anywhere in those pictures? Or anywhere in those politics? Reagan was all about sunny optimism, and at times bipartisan bonhomie. In him, the American people saw their better half.

I say again, Reagan’s genius was that he could make hate speech seem wholesome and virtuous. He could appeal to racist voters with his stories about inner city “Cadillac Queens” and hold up a response to the AIDS virus because some people needed to be taught “lessons,” and everyone still remembers him as “sunny.”

But Reagan was elected when “movement conservatism” was on the upswing, liberalism was routed, and a white, tax-free and God-fearing Utopia seemed just around the corner.

But that was 30 years ago. Now you’ve got a generation of “conservative” politicians who are accustomed to leading America around by the nose with rhetorical bullying, demagoguery and fear mongering, without actually having to govern, which they don’t know how to do. But the old tricks aren’t working, so they have to escalate. It’s all they do know how to do.

See also Josh Marshall, Scott Lemieux, Jeff Feldman.

Nobody Shot at Eric Cantor, and Other Wingnut News

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Wingnut Weenie Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor claimed today his Richmond office had been shot at, and he had the chutzpah to accuse Democrats of fanning flames of animosity and stirring up violence.

But local law enforcement says nobody shot at Cantor’s office.

The Richmond Police Department is investigating an act of vandalism at the Reagan Building, 25 E. Main St., Richmond, Virginia. A first floor window was struck by a bullet at approximately 1 a.m. on Tuesday, March 23. The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Congressman Eric Cantor, was unoccupied at the time.

A Richmond Police detective was assigned to the case. A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman.

So, someone in downtown Richmond fired a gun into the air, and by chance the bullet came down and hit a window to a room that Cantor sometimes uses. David Kurtz said, “unless someone was trying to hit Cantor’s office with a bank shot off a cloud, neither Cantor nor the building were the target of this bullet.”

I just flipped on the television and saw that a package containing unidentified white powder was delivered to an office of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). No one was harmed.

David Frum, who has been outspoken in criticizing Republicans for their obstructionism, has been dumped by the American Enterprise Institute.

Four Days Later

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The Senate Dems defeated all of the GOP junk amendments intended to derail the reconciliation package. Senate Republicans have been using every procedural trick they can find to slow down the Senate from doing anything. However, someone discovered a provision that didn’t fit the reconciliation rules. So it has to go back to the House. However, the fixes are minor, and at this point it seems unlikely that the House Dems would balk at making the changes.

From reading their sites, I’m not sure some righties understand that the former Senate bill remains law even if the reconciliation package were to be defeated. I get the impression they think defeating the reconciliation bill (which, among other things, repeals Ben Nelson’s “cornhusker kickback” that provided extra money for Medicaid recipients in Nebraska) will make the whole thing go away. It won’t.

Some rightie sites (and a few leftie ones) are touting the “discovery” that states may opt out of the mandate, which (some say) undercuts any arguments that the mandate is unconstitutional.

The provision (which I remember reading about some time back) is that a state can choose to opt out of the federal program entirely (not just the mandate specifically) IF it comes up with an alternative program that provides its citizens with the same access to coverage at the same rates, and with the same consumer protections. You and I know that’s not going to happen. And since the mandate is essential to keeping down the cost of insurance premiums for everyone, cutting the mandate alone would put a state afoul of the law. But I’d say it was a smart move on someone’s part to insert that into the bill.

[Update: See also E.J. Dionne, “Health Care and the New Nullifiers.”]

More troubling are the threats of violence and acts of vandalism aimed at House members and their families. But many of us speculated we’d see violence from the Right if the Democrats actually got serious about enacting progressive change.

And, of course, nothing has changed yet. All we’ve done so far is put a process in motion that will bring about change eventually.

I thought of that yesterday when I tried to get a Lipitor prescription refilled. I got into a new group plan through the Freelancer’s Union last year that saves me considerable money on premiums over my old individual insurance, which I simply could not afford. However, the group plan (through the infamous Anthem Blue Cross) is much less generous about actually paying for stuff. There’s always some reason prescriptions cost more than the $10 co-pay, for example, although the extra amount I’m required to pay varies from month to month.

But yesterday I was told I’d have to pay $95 to get a monthly supply of Lipitor. I told the pharmacist they could keep it. My arteries will just have to harden until I can get better insurance. (But, Anthem Blue Cross, isn’t the Lipitor cheaper than paying to treat heart disease? You’d think they’d encourage me to take the Lipitor instead of penalizing me.)

But mine is a minor problem compared to that of Robert Hollister, who has stage 4 cancer and who is falling through the cracks in the reform bill. He lost his job, and in September his insurance will expire. The HCR bill provides for subsidies for high-risk pools so that people like Hollister can get affordable insurance. However, there is a three-month waiting period, and even then he can’t apply until he has been without insurance for six months. Without chemotherapy, he doesn’t expect to live that long.

Such provisions are put in to protect insurance companies — they’re to discourage people from dropping their existing insurance companies in favor of the subsidized insurance. But where’s the protection for Robert Hollister?

HCR: Bump and Grind

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The bump is a bump in the polls. Current polling says that a small majority of Americans are now in favor of the health care reform bill. So much for the Republican argument that “we have to stop this thing because the people don’t want it.” Nate Silver explains why he thinks the bump will fade a bit but not go away completely.

The Grind is the continued effort by Republicans to derail it. Part of the deal the Senate Dems made with the House Dems was to pass the reconciliation package unaltered. So Republicans are trying to load it up with junk and daring the Dems to note vote for it, like a provision to prohibit sex offenders from purchasing viagra. If Dems don’t include that, see, it must be because they sympathize with sex offenders.

Are challenges to the constitutionality of the mandate a real threat? Zachary Roth at TPM says could be, James Rosen of McClatchy Newspapers says probably not.

If you read nothing else today, be sure it’s David Leonhardt’s column in the New York Times:

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Update: Tea Party could hurt GOP in the midterms.

Update: Thanks to alert reader Bob for this.

Good Point

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Rep. rush Holt (D-NJ) writes,

I’m reminded of one of the last times we voted on a Sunday: March 20, 2005, when Republicans forced an extraordinary vote to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo.

To know what a real government takeover looks like, one should revisit that resolution.

Yep, that’s what a real government takeover of health care looks like.

The Republican strategy seems to be to go after the mandate as unconstitutional, according to the Republican definition of “unconstitutional,” which is “any law we don’t like.”

The Morning After

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You know what I forgot last night? The dancing banana.

Righties are certain that America is doomed. They are more certain that the “Democrat” party is doomed in November. All they have to do is run against Obamacare, they say, and The People will flock to the polls to vote for Republicans.

Here are the terrible hardships that health care reform will place on the American people in the next six months, or between now and the November elections.

For people who already are in group insurance plans through their employers:

  • They are protected from being dumped by their insurers if they get sick.
  • Lifetime limits on coverage are suspended.
  • People can keep their children on their policies through the age of 26.
  • Insurers cannot refuse to insure children because of “pre-existing conditions.”
  • Policy premiums will not change on account of HCR.

Medicare recipients:

  • Get a free annual checkup.
  • Can skip co-pays and deductibles on many preventive care services.
  • Seniors who have fallen into the Medicare D “doughnut hole” will get a $250 rebate check in a few weeks.

The above are what Republicans will be running against. They’re going to continue to raise the alarm about provisions going into effect down the road, but the way they’ve been going on one might have expected tanks in the street today.

I’ve been reading reactions on comment threads here and there, and lots of people expect their health care premiums to double or triple right away and their taxes to go up to pay for the “entitlement.” Will they notice when these things don’t happen? Some of them won’t, of course, like the tea baggers who keep screaming about phantom tax increases. But a substantial percentage of people who are queasy about what’s going to happen next will be reassured when the sky doesn’t fall.

I also saw comments from people who claimed to be small business owners who believed the bill requires them to insure their employees and feared this would put them out of business. But the law has no such requirement. All they will get are dreadful tax credits to insure their employees if they choose to.

On top of that, there will be some immediate help for people who don’t have insurance now. Medicaid is expanded, some small business owners will get a tax credit to offset the cost of insuring employees, and some state high-risk pools will receive subsidies that should enable them to offer coverage to the “pre-existing condtion” crowd at lower rates. Combined with all the young folks who will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance awhile longer, by November there should be more insured people in America. How many I can’t say, but more.

One never went broke betting on the ignorance of the American public, but there’s one other dynamic you can count on — the “Greater Asshole” rule of public demonstrations. The rule is that in the eternal struggle between public demonstrators and The Establishment, public sympathy turns against whichever side is the Greater Asshole. Well, all this past weekend the Right pretty much went off the asshole scale. I doubt they’re going to let up.

It’s too early to make predictions about November, but in the near future I expect some movement upward in public support for President Obama, Democrats in Congress and health care reform.

Let It Be

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I understand that the official HCR vote will be this evening, some time after 8 o’clock, and that President Obama will sign it into law asap. The Senate still has to pass the revision package, but I think that can be later. The Senate bill itself will have passed.

Today’s Vote

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I’ve been out since early this morning and just got back to find that Dems are still trying to pull together the 216 votes. Like it or not, they need some of the Stupak gang. Apparently he said yes, but then he said no.

I literally cannot watch this. I will check in later to see how it’s going. In the meantime, talk among yourselves and post any news you hear.

Update: Stupak switches to yes. I think this means the thing will pass.

Wingnuts Threaten Congress

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Josh Marshall writes that “crowds of anti-Reform/Tea Party activists” are going through the halls of the Longworth office building “shouting slogans and epithets at Democratic members of Congress.” Also, “We’re now getting reports that other protestors yelled ‘nigger’ at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).” And they think government is oppressing them.

Think Progress reports that protesters outside the Capitol Building are carrying signs threatening gun violence if health care reform passes.

I’d say they are behaving like baboons, but that would be an insult to baboons.

Update: Think Progress reports that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MD) was spit on by a protester. Several reports say they called Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) a “faggot.” Class to the end.