Violence Against Members of Congress?

Let's hope this isn't actually what it looks like . . . the attempted murder of a congressman's brother.

In general, I think the portrayal of Tea Party protesters has been a bit exaggerated. From what I've seen, most of the people who attend the rallies just seem like run-of-the-mill partisan activists. A lot of the rhetoric that I've heard is outrageous, but most of it isn't bigoted or overtly threatening.

Of course, I don't work on the Hill, and many of the staffers with whom I've spoken have had to endure at least a few menacing telephone calls.

I realized that some Tea Party protesters have said and done things that are appalling. But I really do think that there is a way to condemn these few without asserting that the entire movement is composed of bigots and terrorists. Many of the protesters who I've seen strike me as frustrated partisans, who simply want to voice their disapproval with a Democratic government they regard as their ideological adversary.

In my view, they should be allowed to protest as loudly and fervently as they wish to, as long as their actions aren't directly causing or inciting violence. Writing something mean on a sign isn't the same as cutting someone's gas line. Protesters at anti-war rallies routinely wrote vicious, hateful, and even threatening things about President Bush. However, these rallies rarely provoked actual violence - and, unsurprisingly, they were rarely condemned by Democratic members of Congress.

This doesn't excuse any real act of violence or genuine threat of violence. But freedom of speech is essential, even if that speech strikes you as nasty and vitriolic.

What I'd really like to see is a bit more willingness on the part of Republicans to discourage violence and lawless conduct, and a bit more willingness on the part of Democrats to tolerate the anger displayed by members of the Tea Party movement.

They're allowed to be angry and say mean things and draw pictures of guns. They're not allowed to throw bricks through windows and cut people's gas lines.

Update: House Republican Eric Cantor says that someone shot a bullet through the window of his district office in Richmond, VA.

Cantor blames the Democratic leadership, arguing that they have used threats of violence against Democratic lawmakers to "fan the flames" of violence against Republican lawmakers.

This is getting very meta, isn't it?

I assume that the Democrats will soon respond that Cantor's wild accusations about the role that the Democratic leadership played in stirring up violence against Republican members could easily incite more violence against Democratic members . . . .

Belated Thoughts on the Health Care Summit

FactCheck has a rundown of some of the more egregious errors and distortions here.

I think the president came off looking pretty bad in his dust up with John McCain. I was particularly taken aback by this response:

We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we're going to help the American people at this point. And the latter debate is the one I think they care about a little bit more.

I don't know whether the "American people" concerned about product more than process at this point, but the president's snarky dismissal of McCain's point set me on edge.

One of the reasons that I voted for Senator Obama was because he seemed to actually care about the process. Transparency was one of the central planks in his platform. He continually railed against special-interests and backroom deal-making. He called for honesty and integrity in politics. And he eschewed the Machiavellian tactics of the Clinton campaign.

For him to now play the world-wise pragmatist is a bit disconcerting. Process is, in my view, just as essential as product.

And McCain is right -- there was no justification for provisions like the "Cornhusker Kickback" or any of the myriad of exemptions and special privileges that Democratic lawmakers carved out for their individual states.

But it's not just the sweetheat deals. I also have to agree with Ross Douthat here:

I look at liberal commentators and see a group that’s intent on being on-side against Republicans, and that’s willing to downplay significant weaknesses in major legislation (be it the stimulus, cap-and-trade, or now health care) in the quest to get things done.

I understand the frustration that most progressives feel. This has been a long, drawn-out debate, and many of the Republican attacks have been unjustified and unsportsmanlike. John Boehner's remarks toward the end of the Summit -- which seemed to begin magnanimously, but quickly descended into fear-mongering -- perfectly illustrate why so many on the left want to see health care reform forced through in reconciliation.

But I fear that, while Republicans appear to be balking at everything, Democrats remain single-mindedly focused on passing something -- regardless of whether it's good policy. Both parties deserve immense criticism here. The Republican antics are despicable, but the response from Democrats has been shameful . . . and politically troubling to those of us who actually care about how things get done.

It's just as dangerous to be overzealous as obstructionist.

Krugman Gets Nostalgic

Paul Krugman has a good column today railing against secret holds -- a procedure that enables a small number of Senators to temporarily (and anonymously) block a motion from reaching the floor.

No one really seems to be too fond of holds . . . until they're in the minority:

What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate’s business relies on unanimous consent: it’s difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.

Krugman's point is well-taken. But, of course, he couldn't resist throwing in some partisan hackery:

Readers may recall that in 1995 Mr. Gingrich, then speaker of the House, cut off the federal government’s funding and forced a temporary government shutdown. It was ugly and extreme, but at least Mr. Gingrich had specific demands: he wanted Bill Clinton to agree to sharp cuts in Medicare.

Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.

This seems a little unfair. The key feature of the Republican alternative health care proposal is tort reform, and the CBO examined this aspect of the Republican proposal in detail:

[I]mplementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services. (Those estimates take into account the fact that because many states have already implemented some of the changes in the package, a significant fraction of the potential cost savings has already been realized.)

Enacting a typical set of proposals would reduce federal budget deficits by roughly $54 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee of Taxation. That figure includes savings of roughly $41 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, as well as an increase in tax revenues of roughly $13 billion from a reduction in private health care costs that would lead to higher taxable wages. [My emphasis]

These aren't huge savings, but if Democrats were really interested in bipartisan compromise, why did they exclude any meaningful tort reform provisions from the final version of their bill? There doesn't seem to be any good reason for this. A clear majority of American support caps on medical malpractice lawsuits, and these caps would reduce the deficit and curb health care inflation.

Refusing to incorporate the Republicans' central idea into the health care bill -- even when that idea is popular and sensible -- seems just as petty as anything the Republicans have done.

Update: Ruth Marcus has a wonderful op-ed on this subject:

[A] summit aspiring to be more than show would require Obama to deliver his promised break from politics as usual. A cardinal rule of political negotiation is never to give something for nothing. But what if the president were to offer Republicans an inducement -- say tort reform? He has pointed to defensive medicine as one contributor to rising health costs. If "that's a real issue," as Obama told doctors last June, why not add it to the existing Democratic plans?

I can see them in the White House now, snickering. Would this kind of preemptive strike entice Republicans to cooperate? Not en masse, but enough such flexibility might pick off a few. It would show a Democratic Party willing to stand up to its own special interests for the public good, and a Republican Party -- assuming it balks -- unwilling to compromise.

If you're going to serve chicken soup, Mr. President, you might as well ladle some meat into the bowl.

Ezra Klein scoffs:

Indeed, one of the notable elements of this process is that at no time has a Republican or a group of Republicans released a specific list of policies that Democrats could add to the bill to ensure their vote. Concessions might be good for PR purposes -- unilateral bipartisanship and all that -- but that's all they seem able to do in this process.

This makes almost no sense. Maybe Democrats could, uh, look at the Republican alternative health care proposal to get some sense of the specific policies that they endorse? Or maybe they could listen to what Mitch McConnell said on Meet the Press. It's pretty clear what the Republicans want: tort reform and interstate competition.

There is no question that most Republicans are being deliberately defiant. And it's probably true that many Republican senators will not vote for a health care reform bill, even if clear concessions are made. But the majority doesn't need many Republicans. They need one or two.

Making sensible concessions could easily sway some more moderate Republicans.

Sullivan and Public Policy Polling

Today, Andrew Sullivan linked to this survey from Public Policy Polling, which seems to show that 52 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election for President Obama. I've written to Sullivan before criticizing the results of another survey from Public Policy Polling.

A few points:

First, Public Policy Polling isn't exactly an independent polling agency. Josh Krausharr of Politico writes:

Though there’s little to indicate the firm’s Democratic affiliation on its website — clients are listed, but without partisan identification — [pollster Tom Jensen] said PPP makes no secret of its politics.

This certainly doesn't mean that Public Policy Polling is doing anything nefarious. But shouldn't this conflict of interest be noted? What if the situation were reversed, and a Republican Party-affiliated pollster found that 52 percent of Democrats believed that the Republican National Committee manipulated the election results?

Second, Public Policy Polling often gets results that are out of line with other mainstream pollsters.

For example, in the very same survey that Sullivan links to, Public Policy Polling reports that only 77 percent of African-Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing. Gallup currently puts the figure at 95 percent for this demographic group (with a monthly average of approximately 92 percent, and a comparable yearly average).

Third, only 33 percent of the 1066 respondents in this survey identified themselves as Republicans. Thus, the sample size for Republicans is about 352, and the sampling error around 52 percent is +/- 5 percentage points. Public Policy Polling notes that "[o]ter factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify." So, the overall margin of error around the 52 percent figure could potentially be quite high.

Perhaps more importantly, Public Policy Polling uses Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology to conduct its telephone interviews. As Brian Schaffner of Pollster points out, the use of IVR technology in polling is still quite controversial.

Schaffner explains:

[O]ne of the reasons for concerns with IVR polling is that citizens with only a cell phone cannot be reached by these pollsters and these citizens now comprise at least one-fifth of the population. Yet, while the cell-only problem may generally be an issue for IVR technology (and for live interview pollsters who aren't calling cell phones), it is less of a problem for polling on elections, and particularly in low turnout elections.

. . .

Where these polls may run into greater challenges is when they attempt to make inferences about the American public rather than registered (or likely) voters.

I think Sullivan should really consider some of these points before he links to another survey from Public Policy Polling without providing any context.

Update: The NYT will not publish the results of IVR polls.

Are Black Republicans 'Sellouts'?

CNN's Roland Martin defends black Republicans against charges that they are traitors to their race:

As someone who has voted for Democrats, Republicans and independents, I’m focused on the issues.

. . .

Listening to one another and making a determination on what a person is saying, as opposed to depending on labels, is vital. So I would hope that black voters in Texas actually listen to Michael Williams, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, as he campaigns as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He deserves an audience, just like anyone else.

It's a shame that CNN is getting destroyed in the ratings by its partisan rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. CNN really is the superior cable news network, and it has the most sensible commentators.

Carrie Prejean

I'm ashamed of myself for watching this, but it's kind of fascinating.

I hate to be so mean, but Carrie Prejean has to be among the dumbest people I've ever seen on television.

Pulling for Daggett

I realize that, barring an act of divine intervention, Chis Daggett is not going to win the New Jersey gubernatorial race. But I really do hope that he garners a reasonably large share of the vote.

Daggett is clearly the best candidate. He's also the only one who could introduce any real reform. I agree with this Star-Ledger endorsement of Daggett (follow-up here):

The lamentable fact is that the two parties are, themselves, little more than narrow special interests. Their competition for short-term political and/or monetary gain has jeopardized the state’s long-term economic health and left it with a tarnished national reputation. Where the major parties have differed, their differences have been inconsequential. Where they’ve been the same, their similarities have been destructive.

They have contributed equally to gross overspending in Trenton by consistently pandering to the pay, pension and retirement policies demanded by powerful public employee unions. Democrats have financed the spree with tax hikes, Republicans with borrowed money, and both with pension-fund raids.

How do we now signal them that this has got to stop if not by rejecting their anointed candidates? How if not by electing Chris Daggett?

I would also second David Frum's comments:

I interviewed Daggett this past weekend, and I can attest – this independent too is a much more attractive candidate than his official Republican rival.

His proposals for balancing the state’s books are detailed and workable. He’d extend the state’s 7% sales to cover services as well as goods. He’d end the hodge-podge of property tax rebates. He’d then use the money gained to finance an across-the-board property tax cut and also reductions in corporate income taxes. (A fuller statement of the plan can be read here.)

Daggett emphasizes New Jersey’s most important environmental issue: the preservation of open spaces from urban sprawl. He’d use state funds to buy and preserve open land. He favors major ethics reform to try to clean up New Jersey’s notoriously corrupt political culture.

Like most New Jersey Republicans, he is unexcited by social issues, accepting the status quo on abortion, guns, and gay rights. (On that last, he says he’ll leave the issue to the legislature. If they pass same-sex marriage, he’ll sign it.) And make no mistake: Daggett has been a Republican almost all his life. A protégé of former Governor Thomas Kean, he was appointed as state Environmental Protection Agency administrator by Ronald Reagan.

Daggett would make a very good governor.

Sometimes the two-party system can be so frustrating . . . .

Update: Chris Christie is the projected winner. It doesn't look like Daggett made much of a dent in the end.

Kind of depressing.

Update II: In hindsight, maybe I should've voted for Gary Stein for governor. Check out his awesome ballot statement (pdf).

The Morality of Grayson

I've never been a big fan of Matt Yglesias -- and I've never understood why Andrew Sullivan apparently finds him so fair-minded that he named an award after him.

Anyway, I'm glad that Sullivan finally called out Yglesias for his strained justification of Alan Grayson's vicious ad hominem against Republicans on the floor of Congress.

Yglesias's defense amounts to: "'So what?' Republicans engage in this kind of abusive rhetoric all the time. That's the real issue."

This seems to be the same moral logic that I used in grade school, when I tried to convince my mother she should overlook my cookie-stealing habit because what I had done was relatively less offensive than some of the things my friends had done.

They were the real problem children, after all . . . .

Update: There is another aspect of this controversy that's been bothering me. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Grayson called congressional Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals."

Grayson said:

What I mean is they [Republicans] have got no plan. It's been 24 hours since I said that. Where is the Republican plan? We're all waiting to see something that will take care of the pre-existing conditions, to take care of the 40 million Americans who have no coverage at all.

I've been hearing a lot lately that health care reform has been stalled by Republican "obstructionists." But are Democrats really waiting for the Republican plan, or is Grayson just posturing?

Right now, there are three bills floating around in committee: the House tri-committee bill, the Senate Finance Committee bill, and the Senate HELP Committee bill.

One major sticking point here is the public option, but there are many other points of contention (Ezra Klein offers a good summary of the main disagreements here). In the Senate, the Finance Committee bill (the "Baucus Plan") does not include a public option, while the HELP Committee bill does.

It's true that the virtually all Republicans (with the possible exception of Olympia Snowe) have refused to support either of the bills in the Senate, but the House Blue Dog Coalition is also largely opposed to a public option. More importantly, Blue Dogs seem to strongly favor the deficit-neutral Baucus Plan. The Democratic leadership, on the other hand, seems to be leaning toward the HELP Committee bill.

If the Democrats could unite on a single plan -- and perhaps convince Snowe to come on board -- they could easily pass health care reform. The problem is that they can't.

It's not Republican "obstructionists" who are holding up health care reform at this point. Most Democrats have already abandoned all hope for a bipartisan compromise.

The central conflict is now within the Democratic party.

A Letter to Andrew Sullivan, Ctd.

Andrew Sullivan posted my second letter questioning the results of this survey. (I previously posted about this here.)

. . . And this is why I love him.

A Letter to Andrew Sullivan

9/23/09

Andrew,

I'm not sure you should take the results of this survey at face value (as you seemed to here). The sample size for the poll is 621, and the margin of error is +/- 3.9%. But only 35% of the respondents are Republican. That means that the margin of error for this subgroup is closer to +/- 6.65%. The pollster also notes that "other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify."

If you look at some of the other cross-tabulations, they're very difficult to believe. For example, according the poll, 22% those between the ages of 18 and 29 believe President Obama is the Anti-Christ. This compared to only 5% of those age 30 to 45; 9% of those age 46 to 65; and 7% of those over the age of 65.

Since when are younger people more predisposed to believe President Obama is the Anti-Christ? This contradicts every polling trend we've seen.

Anyway, I just think it's worth mentioning that conspiratorial thinking may not be as prevalent among Republicans as this poll leads us to believe.

Best,

Jeremy Biggs

Polling New Jersey Republicans

I've been reading a lot about polling and survey design lately, so I thought I'd comment on this article from The Huffington Post, which seems a bit misleading.

The author, Rachel Weiner, cites the results of a recent poll of New Jersey residents, which suggest that one-third of New Jersey Republicans do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States. The results also indicate that 14 percent of New Jersey Republicans believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ.

Let's break this down a bit.

The sample size for the poll was 500, which means that the margin of error is +/- 4.5%. The pollster also notes that "[o]ther factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify." Thus, nonresponse bias may have contributed an even greater degree of uncertainty.

It's important to point out that this was a poll of "likely New Jersey voters." The sample contained only 165 Republicans, putting the margin of error closer to +/- 7.5% for this group. (For those of you who are interested, here is a good margin of error calculator.)

When we begin to break a small sample size down into different subgroups, the results are subject to a significantly higher degree of uncertainty -- in this case, with the additional caveat about nonresponse bias.

Interestingly, The Huffington Post failed to note that, according to this same poll, roughly one-third of New Jersey Democrats believe that President Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And 6 percent of Democrats believe that we should eliminate public education as well as the entire federal government.

We need to be very careful how we interpret results like these from polls with such small sample sizes. You can't simply look at the cross-tabulations and assume that the margin of error remains constant. It doesn't.