If the Coakley Loss Brings Us Real Bank Reform, Do We Have To Thank Scott Brown?

You sent questions; we have answers!

1. First, some GREAT news.

2. What Motivated the Massachusetts Rebellion?

3. Who Was the Guy Who Warned Us This Could Happen?

4. How Did the Administration Prepare for the Possibility of a Coakley Loss?

5. What Does This Mean?

6. Know Any People Who Don’t Change Their Minds Every Three Hours?

7. Know Any Other Guy Who Doesn’t Change His Mind Very Much?

1. First, Some GREAT News:

Nancy just sent me this exciting news from The Wall Street Journal. I know it’s not health-care related, but without it our country won't survive.

Legendary Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker has been ignored and shunned by the administration for a year (which must be hard, given that Volcker stands at 6’7”) – but now it looks like his proposals for REAL bank reform are gaining ground. And just in time to save President Obama - and the world! (Here's a great article from December on Volcker's foxy heroism by former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson - your go-to guy for demystifying the banking crisis.)

Is it a coincidence that this will be officially announced less than 48 hours after the Coakley loss? And how smart for Obama to appear - finally! - with the trusted Volcker rather than the patsy Geithner or the toadish Larry Summers?

This is small, but it’s a step away from the precipice we've been hanging over. And it may be an indication that the voters in Massachusetts were crazy like a fox. Because I don’t believe the administration would have provided anything more than window dressing for bank reform without the intense pressure the Massachusetts election created. The Massachusetts election was - in terms of impact - the equivalent of a million-person march on Washington.

Support for linking the new bank reform announcement and the Massachusetts protest vote in Nate Silver's piece and the polling below:

2. What Motivated the Massachusetts Rebellion?

Nate Silver lays it out in an article that I think a lot of you will appreciate. First Silver quotes David Leonhardt’s recent article:

“The current versions of health reform are the product of decades of debate between Republicans and Democrats. The bills are more conservative than Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal. For that matter, they’re more conservative than Richard Nixon’s 1971 plan, which would have had the federal government provide insurance to people who didn’t get it through their job.”

Then Silver expands on that idea:

“Back in 2008, the smart liberal spin on "post-partisanship" -- one which I frankly bought into -- is that it was in part an effort to put a popular, centrist sheen on a relatively liberal agenda. Instead, as Leonhardt points out, what Obama has wound up with is an unpopular, liberal sheen on a relatively centrist agenda.”

This dovetails with polling done by Research 2000 (articles here and here):

“A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that "Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street." A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.

"In a somewhat paradoxical finding, a plurality of voters who switched to the Republican -- 37 percent -- said that Democrats were not being "hard enough" in challenging Republican policies.

"It would be hard to find a clearer indication, it seems, that Tuesday's vote was cast in protest.

"The poll also upends the conventional understanding of health care's role in the election. A plurality of people who switched -- 48 -- or didn't vote -- 43 -- said that they opposed the Senate health care bill. But the poll dug deeper and asked people why they opposed it. Among those Brown voters, 23 percent thought it went "too far" -- but 36 percent thought it didn't go far enough and 41 percent said they weren't sure why they opposed it.”

No doubt a large portion of that 41% of people weren't sure why they opposed it becausesomebody wasn’t using his Presidential bully pulpit to explain it.

3. Who Was The Guy Who Warned Us This Could Happen?

Among others, Capuano. The one who probably would have crushed Brown and who told it like it is on the war and the economy. Besides Capuano's warning, this widely circulated poll also warned of a potential loss; it was apparently ignored both by the White House and the Coakley campaign.

4. How Did the Administration Prepare for the Possibility of a Coakley Loss?

It’s pretty clear from watching the multiple statements on Wednesday that, as some noted earlier, no one had prepared.

Not the White House, not the Senate. At 5:22 p.m. on January 20, The New York Timesreported that the President would “set aside his goal of achieving near-universal health coverage for all Americans in favor of a stripped-down measure with bipartisan support.” At 8:23 p.m. the same evening, The New York Times reported that “President Obama still wants to pass far-reaching health care legislation, in part because many provisions are workable only in the context of a larger overhaul. But he may be willing to settle for less.”

I can actually forgive the President for having to wing it – every President faces a steep learning curve, and this is a terrible situation he inherited. But he’s got to level with us at some point. I’m praying – literally – that he’ll do that in the State of the Union.

5. What Does This Whole Massachusetts Thing Mean for Health Care?

A bunch of you sent me this from The Nation, which suggests that Obama needs to switch course.

Others sent this, from Ezra Klein, which I thought was pretty exciting (and surprising, since I’m not a big fan of Ezra Klein.)

"There is another option.

"Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.

"And that's it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what's already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election."

As they say, tell me more....

6. People Who Don’t Change Their Minds Every Three Hours:

To be honest, I wasn’t really a big fan of the Single Payer movement at the beginning of this “adventure” but I now have to say I think they're real heroes. The dinner they hosted with Eric Massa was really a very moving experience - so many dedicated activists who'd persisted for so long on so little real hope. Wow! They’re doing some important phone-banking next week to support SB 810, which would allow California to go single payer. Here’s a link through which to get in touch with their lead, the legendary Don Bechler.

http://singlepayernow.net/

7. Another Guy Who Doesn’t Change His Mind Very Much:

Dr. James G. Kahn went to Sacramento with medical and nursing students for Lobby Day. It’s quite something to see sleep-deprived medical students find the time to get on buses in the middle of the night to schlep to Sacramento and go meet with Republican senators about single payer!!! Worth clicking on the link.

Closing with an apology again, because Deborah Leveen is re-examining her analysis of the Senate bill in light of recent news. I'm also not sending you articles on the minutiae of the White House's tangling with Congress post-Congress, because it's probably going to change six times before Sunday. I have a ton of "your comments" and "your proposals" to share, too.

For now just a comment from L. at MoveOn, a petition from MoveOn.org, and one fromDemocracy for America, which I think will help move the administration in the right direction. PLEASE MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD!

"Eva, true leadership doesn’t run scared or, as in this case, cut and run. I’m sure that LBJ had more popular agenda items than Civil Rights, Medicare and the War on Poverty but he did the right thing. He was a wheeler-dealer and his tactics were brutal and his language was foul and he wasn’t the best-looking or most well-spoken guy around. But he got things done that had to be done. FDR was loved and he was hated and Eleanor’s social agenda was despised by her critics but together they got things done that had to be done for the common man. Oh yeah, and not to mention that FDR saved merry ole England single-handedly with Lend-Lease."

Many thanks to everyone,

Eva

Notes on the Coakley Failure

First, let’s not get overly sentimental over the loss of Ted Kennedy’s former Massachusetts Senate seat to a Republican. Yes, it's sad that the sandcastle that was Camelot has been washed back into the sea because somebody couldn't remember who Curt Schilling pitched for, but we live in a democracy, not a kingship.

As for Coakley, I’ll be blunt: anyone who’s seen the red-blooded Massachusetts Congressman Michael Capuano tear into New York investment bankers would understand that Coakley should never have been promoted by Massachusetts’ Democratic leadership (and by the Obama administration) in the first place.

These rough economic times require the aggressive statesmanship of Democrats like Capuano, Marcy Kaptur, Alan Grayson and Eric Massa. The times demand the fierce moral questioning and concern for struggling Americans displayed by the nation’s C.O.P. chair, Elizabeth Warren.

Instead, we got a lackluster, mealy-mouthed candidate hand-picked by elite, so-called Democrats and blessed by the White House’s own special “pope of the smackdown”, Rahm Emanuel (who, together with the Coakley campaign manager, made a sick spectacle of themselves on election day blaming each other long before the polls had closed. Classy! And now can we fire Rahm, please?)

Yes, we lost our 60-vote “supermajority.” As Jon Stewart neatly pointed out, it wasn’t doing us any favors. And Republicans now have the critical 41^st vote in the Senate.

And here’s where it gets interesting. When you lose a traditionally Democratic state like Massachusetts, which favored Obama by 26 points in November of 2008, it’s not a wake-up call. It’s a wake-up call delivered by a bucket of ice water. (If Democratic leadership doesn’t get how they’ve turned away the base, they’re in a coma so deep that it doesn’t matter.)

But YOU can make that ice water even more "enlivening" in three simple ways:

1. Many of you emailed me this link last night in the wake of the Coakley loss. It is Credo’s effort to amplify what Howard Dean and others have been saying since last summer. That Democrats should use reconciliation to pass a robust public option. I know there have been a lot of online petitions, but the timing on this one is critical.

2. Use the Impact of the Coakley Loss TODAY.

You think our incumbents Dianne and Nancy and Barbara didn’t watch Coakley’s loss last night and feel a bead of sweat on their tender little brows? Make some calls today (today will have more impact) and tell your Democratic leadership that you will be holding them to traditional Democratic goals (don’t let them get away with calling these “progressive”), which include universal health care, real bank reform, a jobs program, equal access to education, and all sorts of things they don’t want to acknowledge to their corporate owners as actual Democratic goals. Here are some familiar names:

Dianne Feinstein: Phone: (415) 393-0707 Fax: (415) 393-0710

Barbara Boxer: http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/

Nancy Pelosi: http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html

The White House: (make sure to tell them to fire Rahm in your message) http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

3) Stop calling yourself a progressive.

This won’t be easy, but the fact that Corporate-owned “Democrats” keep unfairly moving the goalposts to the right has been part of the problem in promoting our policies. The biggest issues facing this country can be remedied by programs that should not be described as “progressive” because they are in a tradition of solidly Democratic goals.

Please bear in mind that most Democrats don't even know what "progressivism" is - so calling our goals progressive automatically complicates those issues. (I can recite the first act of King Lear verbatim, but I had to look up "progressivism" - so just imagine how "progressive" goals sounds to Democrats with less time on their hands.) And by calling the public option “progressive”, the corporate-owned Democrats were able to cast the centrist compromise of the public option to the left of center. (Remember that even Republicans Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon supported a public health insurance option at various times in their careers, so there's nothing terribly "progressive", radical or leftist about it.)

Many thanks as always for hanging in there so long.

Some Paintings from Haiti

In response to your many emails expressing support for Haiti, and detailing your contributions to Partners In Health: THANK YOU.

Some had inquired if I had a personal connection to Haiti.

I'd initially gone to Haiti as a novice illustrator in 1994 for The New Yorker and The New York Observer, assigned to sketch the Aristide inauguration and Ray Kelly's oversight of the police. While there, an experienced British reporter introduced me to the family of Stivenson Magloire, the well-known Haitian painter who had just been brutally murdered, and I embarked on an illustrated report of his life.

It was a remarkable time to be in Haiti - but what time isn't? I encountered for the first time two CIA operatives (truly not the kind of thing I usually did), and I was surrounded by journalists from around the world, by scores of hard-working U.S. soldiers. But most of all by the remarkable Haitian people, who struck me as beautiful, strong.... and completely unfathomable for their ability to create such joyous art amid such poverty.

Even the Haitian markets were filled with life and color:

The Haitians would paint on anything - beautiful, bold paintings of roosters on walls and garage doors. Paintings of the sea on aluminum fencing. People who didn't have enough to eat somehow found money for paints and brushes, guitars and improvised drums.

But Stivenson Magloire was the rare recognized artist, whose paintings had made him some money and allowed him to live a middle-class existence. Why had he been murdered, and who had murdered him? To this date, it remains unclear.

For years afterward, I felt that I'd failed Stivenson's family by failing to get his story published. (The New Yorker bought it and "killed" the illustrated story, eventually using a sketch I made of a scene at the National Palace for a Tracy Kidder article - see top - and The New York Observer published a page of fevered black and white drawings I'd made of Kelly's police work.)

But Stivenson's story remained untold. I had sat with his mother, the famous painter Louisianne St. Fleurant, who accepted her son's very recent death with grace and equanimity, and who had generously told me his story. And I had failed to do anything with the story after The New Yorker canceled it. I might have gone to another publication. But I just gave up.

I stopped working as an illustrator some time after that, and went into the banking sector, where I worked as a marketing writer. A half-decade or so later, I confided to a journalist friend my feelings of having let down the artist's family - and Stivenson's memory. My journalist friend told me, "Of course you feel that way. I still feel haunted by Haiti."

The problem with Haiti was not that ordinary Haitian people didn't need assistance - but that Americans like myself were so blinded and shamed by the Haitians' joyous refusal to give up in the face of such persistent poverty that we often didn't know how to respond. It seemed too big of a challenge - even though it was a challenge that ordinary Haitian people unashamedly met every day by surviving and leading honest lives.

Unlike Americans, ordinary Haitians did not necessarily view poverty as a sin.

On my travels through Haiti, I witnessed much celebration, and also witnessed a few incidents of political violence. And yet as a white person, I was protected and treated with respect I hadn't earned by the Haitian people, who were in their own fevered state with the return of Aristide. It was truly like walking through someone else's dream.

The urgency of the current crisis gives us another chance - maybe a last chance - to do right. I sincerely believe the U.S. and other nations can join to rebuild Haiti into a stronger, more efficient country that provides for all of its people. I'm glad that former Presidents Clinton and Bush think so, too. This could be, for all the tragedy the earthquake has wrought, a turning point for the people of Haiti.

(The watercolors below are of the studio window of the late artist Stivenson Magloire; and of Stivenson in his convertible next to one of his paintings.)

An ironic note on the last caption above: "...he was killed because he was too sensible." I had mistranslated this from the French. What his friend had meant was that Stivenson was killed because he was too sensitive, too emotional, and had over-reacted to the initial theft of his paintings. This over-reaction had then created a conflict wherein Stivenson, an Aristide supporter, was murdered by thugs, some of whom were motivated by politics, and some by jealousy. ("C'etait un mort politique et de jalousie," his friend had told me.) Over a decade later, I still find it hard to wrap my head around the idea of his murder.