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Sarah Palin's Popularity Grows, Poll Finds

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/N1KPD38S4wU/-Late-afternoon-early-evening-open-thread

What you missed on Sunday Kos ....

• In What's your endgame, Ben Nelson, David Waldman looked at the procedural corner into which the recalcitrant senator from Nebraska has painted himself through his insistence that the Senate bill contain the same anti-abortion language as the Stupak amendment in the House measure.
• In Storms of my Grandchildren, DarkSyde reviewed famed climate scientist James Hansen's new book, which the reviewer unequivocally declared "hands down the best, most informative, brilliantly written book on general climate science I've ever read." Hansen was around answering questions in comments, so the post became an interactive interview with Kossacks as well.
• In The Audacity to Win, SusanG looked at the campaign book that seems destined to become the definitive account of the historic 2008 election, a tome turned out by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe that should be greeted as manna by political junkies.
• In 2010: An Early Snapshot of the Electoral Landscape, Steve Singiser examined the trends that seem to be at work as the midterms approach, with inertia, previous wave elections and a disgruntled Democratic base apparently converging.
• In The Legacy of the Cold War Arms Race, Plutonium Page interviewed renowned nuclear arms expert David Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy. Explored in the detailed, far-ranging discussion were the concerns about the old superpower armament build-up, Reagan's nuclear abolitionism, Doomsday machines and much, much more.

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Zikerria’s story is all too common. Transgender people face tremendous discrimination in the workplace. According to a recent survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, 47% of transgender people report being fired, or denied a job or promotion, just because of who they are. Few protections exist for transgender people who experience employment discrimination. In 38 states, there is no law protecting transgender people from being fired because of who they are. Federal law similarly offers no job protection for transgender people. In Florida, while no law explicitly addresses discrimination based on gender identity, administrative agencies in Florida have ruled that transgender people are protected by the Florida Human Rights Act’s prohibitions on sex and disability discrimination. The Competitive Workforce Bill, which would add gender identity and sexual orientation to the Florida Civil Rights Act, was introduced in the Florida legislature on November 20.

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http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=f98f265992714dfe7ab91ba9662cc20d

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/koTp3QTvXwE/-Not-all-reform-opponents-are-teabaggers

Think everybody who opposes health care reform is a teabagging conservative outraged that government is going too far? Well, think again. Nate Silver looks at a recent poll probing this very topic:

It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.

So one in four reform opponents want to see a more progressive plan. The implication of that is huge. As Nate showed, just 35% of the public opposes the current reform plan because they think it goes too far. 31% support the current reform because they want health care reform, 20% are undecided, 12% oppose it because it doesn't go far enough, and 3% support the current reform bill even though they don't want reform because they think this is about as good a deal as they can get.

When you look at the landscape as Nate has, you have 43% of the public who wants progressive reform, 38% who doesn't, and the rest are undecided. It's still close on the overall question of health care reform, but despite all the noisemaking from the right, it's still the left that is carrying the day. That's something members of Congress should keep in mind as they finish up with the health care reform bill.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/SpfOmkeEKXU/-OPM-Exchange-within-Exchange-Unlikely-to-Control-Costs

Details are still sketchy on the latest compromise, which is not a public option at all but as Ezra calls it, "a private option with a public filter." It would set up another exchange of national non-profit plans offered through OPM, and what it won't do, as Jon Walker explains, is control costs.

What exchanges don’t do is systematically control cost. The 8 million-person federal employee health benefit (FEHB) exchange has premiums and premium growth rates basically identical to any large employer. As a serious cost control mechanism, they are basically a failure. In fact, the proven cost control failure of the FEHB run by OPM was one of Jacob Hacker’s best arguments for the need for a public option.

The Senate bill already creates exchanges which are meant to give be the same benefit as being part of the FEHB. In fact, it creates potentially over 100 exchanges. There will be an individual market exchange and small business market (SHOP) exchange in each state. It also allows for smaller regional exchanges within states, and the creation of multi-state exchanges.

The potential benefits of creating another exchange in addition to these exchanges (or inside these exchanges) seems dubious. The new OPM exchange sounds like it might be better regulated (like all the exchanges should have been from the get go), and the OPM does at least have experience running this type of program. With people able to buy insurance completely outside any exchange, in the state-based exchange, possibly the regional exchanges, and now the OPM exchange, I don’t see how you get enough people to choose the OPM-run program to give it the customer base it needs to demand concessions from the private insurance companies.

It's just another mechanism to provide private plans, rather than a public option, and for all the "deficit hawks" who oppose the public option, won't actually work to bring down costs. This is perhaps an intriguing idea for a substitute for the exchange, but not for the public option.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/yK4AUuo5CZQ/-Elephant-Chokes-On-Teabag

It's from Rasmussen, so shake out a gigantic grain of salt and consider this:

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Of course Republicans will try to spin this as 41% to 36%, at which point we can point to New York's 23rd District.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/zG5rzyRa6Sg/-PA-Sen:-Barney-Frank-bucks-establishment,-endorses-Sestak

The value of individual endorsements, with a few narrow exceptions, is generally overstated. And the bigger the election being contested, the smaller the value of such endorsements.

The only thing bigger than a Senate election is a presidential one, so in practical terms, Rep. Barney Frank endorsing Joe Sestak should win the challenger to Sen. Arlen Specter's seat few votes.

Yet Frank may be the first elected Congressional Democrat to endorse Sestak, which is significant. Republicans have been riven for months between the establishment, and teabagger insurgents like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sarah Palin. For a party once known for its monolithic unity, DeMint in particular has proven troublesome. The Senator, who recently declared he'd rather have 30 ideologically pure conservatives in the Senate than 60 Republicans who didn't "believe" anything, has given a credibility boost to teabagger insurgents in places like NY-23 (Doug Hoffman), Florida (Marco Rubio), and is now flirting with backing GOP Rep. Mark Kirk's opponent in Illinois. DeMint is credited with chasing Arlen Specter out of the GOP by cornering him on the floor of the Senate to tell him he'd be backing Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania GOP primary.

Yet for all their troubles in maintaining their united front on the floor of Congress, elected Democrats have remained united on electoral matters. Note how no one came to Ned Lamont's aid during the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, even though he Lieberman was already a cancer inside the Democratic Party. Even corrupt Democrats get a pass, which cost us William Jefferson's seat in New Orleans, and could've proved troublesome in Al Wynn's Maryland district until the voters solved the problem by electing Donna Edwards instead.

So for the Democrats, it is significant for Franks to endorse a primary challenger. He is the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, one of the most powerful, and he's bucked his establishment to back an insurgent candidate against an entrenched, White House-backing incumbent. Elected Democrats could certainly use some internal pressure for party unity. Gay marriage failed in New York because promised "yes" votes from Republicans failed to materialize. And why did they chicken out? They were all afraid of being Scozzafava'd. DeMint's support of Doug Hoffman may have cost Republicans the seat, but it preserved marriage discrimination - a tradeoff they would make any day of the week.

We need a little bit of that enforced party unity, and any help we can get from within the caucus helps build credibility for primary insurgents. We need more Barney Franks, particularly one in the Senate, to help provide some much needed tension between elected officials who care about the kind of work Congress does, and a party establishment that is issue agnostic, and cares only about whether an incumbent has an "R" or "D" after their name.

"Joe Sestak is a true Democrat who cares about the working families that have been hit hardest by the failed economic policies of the Bush Administration," Frank said. "He'll be a reliable vote for Pennsylvania's next generation instead of having the same loyal Bush Republican we've seen over the past generation. I have to say I don't think it did our profession any good for someone to announce that he switched parties purely so he could survive."

That certainly applies in this Pennsylvania Senate race, but Specter isn't the only suspect Democrat inside our caucus. Far too many are making common cause with Republicans while pretending to be Democrats. A few more primary challenges might convince recalcitrant Democrats to support their party's top priorities, and a culture that encourages such challenges, even if it angers the DSCC and DCCC, would certainly be welcome, and clearly help Democrats advance their now-stymied policy goals.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/VGc-D11UyZQ/-Midday-Open-Thread

• According to a White House press release:

  In advance of his Wednesday meeting with business and environmental leaders at the White House regarding the Copenhagen conference, the President will meet with former Vice President Al Gore this afternoon in the Oval Office. This meeting is closed press.

• It's the sixty-eighth anniversary of "a date that will live in infamy."
• Super-duper-max:

  Officials in the Obama administration said they anticipate that if all goes as planned, the federal government will purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Northwest Illinois by late winter, and begin preparations to house terror suspects currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. The administration then plans to get the prison to a security level “beyond supermax,” sources told The Washington Post.

• No surprise here -- the Chamber of Commerce and other friends of the environment aren't happy that the Obama administration plans to "formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant."
• Tired of seeing NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson on Fox News? So is NPR:

  According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

  At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

  ... never mind NPR's ethics guidelines, which state:

  They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.

• Do you really need 225,000 square feet to house "My Pet Goat"?
• This is scary:

  An internal Secret Service document used for training purposes indicates 91 security breaches since 1980 ... An official who had access to the report said most, but not all of the 91 breaches involved the president.

• Suddenly, winning a Pulitzer doesn't seem as impressive as it once did.
• Here's something that shouldn't surprise anyone:

  Children of military parents deployed to serve abroad have a greater number of emotional or behavioral difficulties than children of civilians, according to a new study.

• Meow:

  Politically, [Tim] Kaine regretted that Creigh Deeds did not win the gubernatorial race. He said he would have run again if he could, “and I probably could have won pretty easily.”

• The first ever Netroots Nation Holiday Bazaar on-line auction ENDS tomorrow!  The Bazaar features all hand-made items crafted by community members!  From knitting to baking, woodworking to painting, quilting to candle-making, we have something for everyone. Bidding is open from now until tomorrow night, December 8, at 10:00 pm (Eastern). So go check out the goods and get your holiday shopping done a little early. - mcjoan

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After years of denial, suppression, and delay, the United States government has finally officially recognized that greenhouse gases are dangerous pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The Obama administration has slowly worked on the decision, first sent to the White House by the Environmental Protection Agency in March, then opened for months of public comment through the summer. Less than an hour after the United Nations Climate Change Conference completed its opening day in Copenhagen, Denmark, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson made the “significant climate announcement” at 1:15 pm that global warming pollution endangers the health and welfare of the American public:

This administration will not ignore science or the law any longer, nor will we avoid the responsibility we owe to our children and our grandchildren. Today, I’m proud to announce that EPA has finalized its endangerment finding on greenhouse gas pollution and is now authorized and obligated to make reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

In 1992, the United States signed an international treaty to “prevent dangerous human-induced interference with the climate system” from greenhouse gases. Seventeen years later, after the continued accumulation of greenhouse gases have decimated the world’s glaciers and Arctic ice cap, acidified the oceans, intensified hurricanes and droughts, increased smog and wildfires, and driven species to extinction, the Barack Obama administration is recognizing its legal obligation to begin regulating this deadly threat.

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An odd exchange on Fox News a short time ago. I know. That never happens, right? But this one has me really confused. Genuinely.

The host was Alisyn Camerota, and she was doing a panel on health care reform where Bob Beckel was playing the liberal going up against Kate Obenshain of the conservative Young America's Foundation.

The discussion turned to abortion restrictions in the health care reform bill, and of course Obenshain is opposed to any federal funds going to abortions, even indirectly via insurance policies subsidized by federal dollars.

At which point Camerota asks her, "If there is no federal money used to subsidize abortions for low-income women, doesn't that mean there will be more low-income babies, and do any of these amendments talk about the health care for them then?"

Obenshain sort of does a double take and stumbles through an answer to the question. She is clearly put off her game, or confused, or maybe horrified. I was mostly confused. But the more I ponder it, the more I wonder if I shouldn't just be horrified.

It was as if the Fox host were trying to play devil's advocate and in her mind the counterargument to opposing federal funding for abortions is that you'll end up having more low-income babies whose health care will cost the federal government even more than the abortions would.

Does that sort of crude cost-benefit analysis enter into anyone's thinking when supporting federal funding for abortions? Who thinks this way? Is that a reflection of how the Fox host views the "pro-abortion" position? Or how she views the budget hawk position?

The jury is still out for me on what exactly she meant. But I'm curious what you think. Take a look and decide for yourself.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/SQDJ93mrRi8/-Medicare-Buy-In-Gaining-Traction-in-Public-Option-Negotiations

There's a new wrinkle in the public option negotiations that IS very encouraging. Ezra:

Sources who have been briefed on the negotiations say that Medicare buy-in is attracting the most interest. Expanding Medicaid is running into more problems, though there's some appeal because, unlike increasing subsidies, expanding Medicaid actually saves you money. There's also ongoing discussion about tightening regulations on insurers, but I don't know the precise menu of options being considered.

Sam Stein adds:

The proposal would lower the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 55, though an age limit of 60 has also been suggested. Crucial details -- such as the timing of the implementation of such a reform -- were not provided due to the sensitivity and ongoing nature of the deliberations. A high-ranking Democratic source off the Hill confirmed that such discussions are taking place.

Lowering the floor for Medicare is one of several ideas being discussed as a way to pacify progressives upset over the potential elimination of a public option for insurance coverage, one of the sources added. Senate Democrats held discussions this past weekend about replacing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's version of a public plan with one that would be non-profit-based. The alternative proposal would be offered in state exchanges, run by private insurers but monitored by the Office of Personnel Management.

That's actually pretty significant, given that about 10 percent of the population is aged 55-64, so something like 30 million people would be put into a public option. Many progressives have been arguing for years that Medicare expansion is the smartest, most efficient way to start expanding coverage. It would also provide real impetus for the Congress to deal with Medicare solvency in an honest way, not through the prism of "entitlement reform" meant to erode the program, and to put it on a solid funding track.

Would this be an acceptable substitute for a real public option? It doesn't reform the healthcare system by providing real competition to private insurers. But it would provide a model to grow on, bringing with it the possibility of eventually getting to Medicare for all, the model that many progressives have been advocating for years. Incremental? Yes, but whatever we're going to get out of this Congress will be just that. At any rate, it's good to see an actual progressive policy in the mix in these negotiations.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/GFnt6DGG8i4/-Playing-to-win

Two weeks ago, we started tracking voter intensity in our weekly poll, asking people how likely they were to vote in the 2010 congressional elections. The results were striking: Democrats said they were far less likely to vote next November than Republicans.

Last week's results were basically unchanged: 56% of Democrats said they were likely to vote, compared to 82% of Republicans. Three times as many Democrats (37%) as Republicans (13%) said they were unlikely to vote.

Surprisingly, there's been a persistent line of argument in response to these numbers, dismissing them as unimportant -- or even as good news. That argument goes like this: Yes, Democrats are less motivated than Republicans, but there are so many more Democrats than Republicans that it doesn't matter.

This pushback is wrong, as I'll show below, but there are some nuggets of truth contained within it. It is absolutely true that there are more Democrats than Republicans. It is also absolutely true that this fact means Democrats can still win large victories even with lower voter intensity than Republicans. But it is equally true that when the intensity gap grows large enough, then Democrats are poised for trouble, and that's where we are now.

Let's look at the math, using our poll's weighting for partisan split, which is that 31% of adults are Democrats and 22% are Republicans. Looking just at people who are Democrat or Republican, that gives Democrats nearly a 3:2 advantage, just shy of 60%. If you do the math, you'll see that 49% of the people in this group who say they will vote are Democrats and 51% are Republicans. (Last week, Democrats had a slight advantage.)

The point that people make is that concern about the intensity numbers is misplaced, because the actual partisan turnout is currently likely to be roughly even.

This pushback is right on one point: our polling numbers suggest equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans will turn out to vote in 2010.

The problem here is the assessment that such an outcome is acceptable. Democrats currently control 60 seats in the U.S. Senate and nearly 60% of the seats in the House. Returning to a 50/50 scenario -- or even close to a 50/50 scenario -- would represent a historic shift in power, even more significant than the one that took place in 1994.

Yes, we'd be tied -- or close to it -- but right now, not only do we have a supermajority, we're up against the craziest, looniest Republican Party in decades, if not ever. An electoral tie with these guys would be a fail of epic proportions. Democrats should be slaughtering the Republican Party. Instead, Democrats are on track to tie the Republican Party.

If you think it's okay to tie this Republican Party, then I suggest you ought to consider raising your standards.

We can't play for a tie, especially not against these clowns. We've got to play to win. And if there's any Democratic political operatives in DC that don't get that, they should get out of the game now, because if they don't, they're going to get rolled over like it's 1994.

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http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/n-i8u6uieGs/-Politico-fishing-for-buyers-remorse-story

Politico reporter Daniel Libit sends me this query:

Working on a story with another reporter about the increasing similarity between Barack Obama’s policies and Hillary Clinton’s primary platform and whether Democrats might have viewed the primary differently if they knew then what they know now. Would love to get your thoughts on the state of buyer’s remorse. Might you be able to send me something before day’s out?

My response:

My god, what a stupid premise.

Of course Obama and Clinton had similar platforms. They're both mainstream Democrats! But for a publication addicted to Drudge headlines, what could be better than a screaming headline proclaiming that Democrats had "buyer's remorse", even if that sentiment was wholly manufactured by Politico reporters?

Update from fasteddie9318 in the comments:

Soon to be appearing in a Politico article near you:

Progressives, as might be expected, are not pleased with Obama's shift toward Clintonian principles. Influential liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas commented "My god, what a stupid [decision on Obama's part]."

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