Ask and ye shall receive

As a follow-up to my post from last week regarding polling on the question of whether the GOP is purposely sabotaging economic recovery in order to defeat President Obama next year, I thought I’d bring my dear readers’ attentions to the results of two new polls released today that cover similar territory.  I had mentioned that the Suffolk University poll from last week was just crying out for additional data to help discern a trend or not, and it appears we have some further data to work with now.

First off, a Washington Post/ABC News poll of 1,004 adults, with a 3.5% margin of error asked the following question:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your point of view? Statement A: (President Obama is making a good faith effort to deal with the country's economic problems, but the Republicans in Congress are playing politics by blocking his proposals and programs.) Or Statement B: (President Obama has not provided leadership on the economy, and he is just blaming the Republicans in Congress as an excuse for not doing his job.)

Compare the wording to that of last week’s Suffolk University poll:

Do you think the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected?

The WaPo/ABC poll is not as clear with respondents about the political intent of any perceived economic sabotage on the GOP’s part – referring to “playing politics” rather than “to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected” – but the underlying message is essentially the same: do you think the GOP is purposely making the economy worse for political purposes?  The results:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your point of view? Statement A: (President Obama is making a good faith effort to deal with the country's economic problems, but the Republicans in Congress are playing politics by blocking his proposals and programs.) Or Statement B: (President Obama has not provided leadership on the economy, and he is just blaming the Republicans in Congress as an excuse for not doing his job.)

Obama making a good effort: 50
Obama has not provided leadership: 44
Both (vol.): 2
Neither (vol.): 2
No opinion: 1

And once again, the results of the Suffolk poll:

Do you think the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected?

Yes 49
No 39
Undecided 12

Okay then!  Seems like there could be something more to this meme now.  Greg Sargent pulls out the internals of the WaPo poll, providing more points of interest:

The toplines: Americans agree with the first statement over the second one, 50-44. According to numbers sent my way by the Post polling team, this is more pronounced among moderates and independents:

* Independents favor statement one over statement two by 54-40.

* Moderates favor statement one over statement two by 57-37.

The overall number is lower, at 50 percent, because a hilariously meager nine percent of Republicans believe this to be the case.

Who likes to have their side accused of “playing politics” with anything?  It just sounds offensive when we’re talking about real peoples’ lives and the overall economy, no wonder only 9% of Republicans agree with statement #1.

Our third poll of the day, which Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler argues constitutes a “trend,” (I would agree) is one commissioned by the liberal blog DailyKos:

Also on Monday, liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas publicized the top lines of a PPP poll he commissioned, which closely mimic the the Post/ABC survey: “50% think GOP intentionally stalling economy, incl 51% of Indies, & 15% of GOPers. Details Tuesday.”

So here we have three polls showing broadly similar results to similarly-worded questions (although the exact wording of the DailyKos poll will be out tomorrow) and which also show that a majority of independents ascribe to some version of the notion that the GOP is deliberately sabotaging the economy.  As we are all surely aware now, the vast and growing “middle” of the electorate is where the true electoral battleground lies for 2012 (and virtually every modern election) so it would appear that President Obama has the upper hand with this crucial slice of the populace, no?  Steve Benen, echoing Greg Sargent, notes the inherent danger of the polls’ findings for the President:

Though in theory, it should, this won’t necessarily give President Obama a boost. The degree of national cynicism is so intense, many Americans may simply assume Republicans are sabotaging the national economy, but take their frustrations out on the president anyway. As Greg noted, “The number who see Obama as a strong leader is now upside down (48-51), suggesting yet again that even if Americans understand that Republicans are deliberately blocking Obama’s policies, they may conclude that his failure to get around them just shows he’s weak or ineffectual.”

Voters’ understanding of the political process is severely limited, and many Americans likely fail to appreciate the role Congress must play in policymaking. There are no doubt plenty of voters thinking, “Sure, Republicans are sabotaging the economy, but why can’t Obama just go around them?” unaware of the fact that, on a grand scale, this isn’t an option. (emphasis added)

Indeed, President Obama’s failure to “get around” Congress is the true reason why he’s embarked on his “jobs tour” the past couple months – taking his message directly to the people of America, urging them to contact their Congressmember and tell them to act on jobs and the economy.  In a broad sense, it appears the efforts are paying off, according to Josh Marshall.  Furthermore, the amount of braying from the GOP about “class warfare” from the President has increased proportionally as his jobs message has caught on.  Witness Rep. Eric Cantor’s aborted speech about “income inequality” (note: he canceled the speech when it was revealed that Occupy protesters planned to respond to him by exercising their free speech rights) and Rep. Paul Ryan’s speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation largely predicated on the notion that America needs to preserve its heritage of economic mobility through surprise! not raising taxes on the wealthiest among us.  (Note: he’s wrong about our economic mobility rates compared to other countries.) 

So where does all of this data leave us now?  Well it would seem that President Obama needs to work closely with the Democrats in Congress to present a focused message (not easy with Democrats, ever) regarding the GOP’s obstructionism.  Pushing the “sabotage” message, in concert with more polling data showing similar results to those presented here, will force the media to cover the sabotage meme more widely and thus put the Republicans on defense on job creation – exactly the situation they hope not to find themselves in heading into a still-very-unsettled GOP presidential primary season and an election year.  President Obama’s rather limited moves last week on student loan reform, homeowner relief and jobs proposals for veterans might represent a good-faith show of effort for those skeptical independents and moderates doubting his leadership, and they could marginally influence his standing with those key constituencies.  But overall, those moves show the Presidency’s economic weakness vis-à-vis Congress, and the relative ineffectiveness of the Executive branch’s sprawling bureaucracy to help improve peoples’ lives in a truly meaningful way.  Coordinated actions between the Executive and Legislative branches are what is needed, but until Obama and the Democrats can find leverage points to force the Congressional GOP’s hands on job creating legislation, it is unlikely the President will be able to do much more than chip away at the margins of the economic problems facing this country, winning message or not.

New layout, and some good reading

I’m experimenting with a new site layout to try and make my blog more reader- and user-friendly (and more orange!)  Please feel free to comment and/or make suggestions about the design in the comments section if you’re so inclined.

While I have a more substantive post in the works concerning my personal suggestions for the upcoming November 2 elections here in California to be posted later this week, I figured I’d throw some great articles/blog posts I’ve been reading out there in case people are interested.

Election Polling: For the past couple months this election season I’ve been closely following DailyKos’ Steve Singiser for his nightly Polling and Political Wrap.  As I’ve noted previously, there is no doubt that DailyKos is a liberal site, but the fact is, Singiser provides an invaluable service in collecting the day’s polling data and providing some analysis of the results in an easy-to-read format.  From what I can tell, Singiser posts the Wrap each evening (aside from weekends) around 7-8PM PST, so if you’re excited about/dreading the elections this year and you’d like to follow the polling action as it develops, I can’t recommend a better source.

Speaking of election polling, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press released a groundbreaking study today documenting the fact that many pollsters rely on a fairly outdated polling methodology that tends not to contact voters whose sole telephone in their home is a cell phone (including yours truly and many other young voters).  This may be skewing polling data in favor of Republicans by 4-6 percentage points according to Pew’s research.  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo picks up the thread:

I would strongly recommend that Democratic enthusiasts not start adjusting the polls they're seeing by a 4-6 point margin. I will, shall we say, believe this one when I see it. It's also important to note that a number of national pollsters are already incorporating cell phones. Where the real vulnerability comes is in state and district polls and robo-pollsters -- like Rasmussen, PPP and SurveyUSA.

Again, in the past the differences usually seemed too small to figure significantly into the prediction equation. But this could be the cycle where that changes.

So yes, we’ll see what happens this election, and if pollsters have to make major alterations to their sampling models going forward.  It may seem trivial, but there’s nothing like polling to set the tone of an election season, and if those polls are incorrect (think Dewey defeats Truman) people could stay home because they think their team will lose, when in fact the opposite may be true.

Honoring our fallen heroes

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr

It was a poignant moment for me, if a bit flustering.  My grandfather and I were sitting at breakfast last Monday morning, Memorial Day, following a cousin's wedding over the weekend, and my grandfather asked me why the news never shows videos of flag-draped caskets returning our fallen soldiers from battle anymore?  His remark was a simple one, that those soldiers deserve to be honored for their sacrifices, and that it seems that everyone has forgotten that we're still at war these days.  I didn't have a good response for him, beyond my wholly unsatisfying initial reaction that most likely the news media didn't see any profits in devoting airtime to returning caskets from our wars overseas.  My grandfather asked me that I do some investigation into the matter, and that I post whatever I found on my blog, since he's a subscriber, and would be interested to see what I dug up.

First, a bit of background.

My grandfather, William G. Moir, or "Fahtie," as we grandchildren know him, is a Navy veteran who served in the Pacific theater in WWII.  Like many veterans, Fahtie has never spoken much about his experience in the war, or at least, he has never volunteered information about his service.  Since my childhood I have always felt as though he was a man who served his country proudly and bravely, but that when he returned to civilian life, he dedicated himself to providing a good life for his family (which later grew to 7 children) and never much sought to relive his experience through retelling it to his offspring.  More likely, Fahtie just never had the time nor inclination to turn his personal war story into a shared family story; working as a traveling salesman, raising many children, putting himself through night school for an MBA from the University of Chicago...it sounds like he had plenty else to do.

But nevertheless, the sheer lack of Fahtie's war story over the course of my childhood created a situation where even his glancing references to his experience, or to topics surrounding the military, elicit a feeling of import, of significance, for me.

And so it was this past Monday morning; Fahtie's seemingly simple question as to why we never see images of the fallen returning home from war struck me to the quick, and I felt...shame.  Shame for our consumerist modern culture that has neither the time nor the attention span to honor those who have sacrificed on our collective behalf; shame for the fact that a solemn event has been politicized in our hyper-partisan world.  I wanted to honor the fact that Fahtie had entrusted me with his feeling of outrage at the lack of honor accorded to our fallen heroes, to somehow find a way to redeem his faith in modern America, and thereby to redeem my own and future generations in his eyes as we collectively move further away from the historical and proper treatment of the war dead...but there was no way to do it.  Our world, our culture as it is constructed today, can never offer the kind of respect and dignity that is deserved by those who sacrificed all, and yet, I believe that we're doing slightly better these days.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Tonight I began searching around online to find out what exactly the story was behind President Obama's decision to allow the media to film returning caskets when they arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.  What began as a simple Google search has taken me far beyond what I initially had imagined.

First, CNN's initial report announcing President Obama's decision from February 2009:

The Pentagon will lift its ban on media coverage of the flag-draped coffins of war victims arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

But the families of the victims will have the final say on whether to allow the coverage, he said. President Obama asked Gates to review the policy, and Gates said he decided after consulting with the armed services and groups representing military families to apply the same policy that is used at Arlington National Cemetery.

"I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected -- the families," he said at a news conference.

The report mentions the controversy surrounding the decision to lift the ban and covers both sides, but further searching revealed a nuanced article from the Columbus Dispatch:

The arrival of war dead at Dover has long pitted free-speech advocates against the government, which had been accused of using the ban to hide the horror of war from the public.

In 2004, Vice President Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, said, "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong."

This year, the Obama administration sought a middle ground. Defense Secretary Robert Gates lifted the ban but said families should decide whether the media cover the homecomings of the fallen: "We ought not presume to make that decision in their place."

The fact that military families are now at least afforded a choice of whether they wish for media to be allowed to cover the arrival of their loved one appears to me to be a step in the right direction, however with the lifting of the ban, the expectations for media coverage appear to have left some families slightly surprised:

So Gloria Crothers of Edgewood, Md., was a little taken aback when just two news crews appeared for the arrival of the bodies of her son, Army Sgt. Michael Heede, and another soldier from Maryland. She wasn't so much disappointed as surprised, she said. "I was told there could be quite a few" news crews.

But a few is the norm, said Maj. Carl Grusnick, an Air Force spokesman. Often the only professional journalist is a lone AP photographer. 

"The feeling is that somewhere there is a hometown, a family, a newspaper for whom the homecoming of the soldier is very important news," said Paul Colford, an AP spokesman. "So we have made the commitment to covering each and every one of those at Dover."

The AP is doing an honorable thing, covering each and every arrival (that they are allowed to) which is as much of a public service as anything else.  Further searching turned up the AP's online archives of all of their images of caskets returning from overseas - they refer to them as "casualty returns." The images are there for commercial purchase and use, but as a rough guide to the procedures and ceremonies around the casualty returns, they are quite poignant.

Continuing from there, the Columbus Dispatch ends its article on a far more upbeat note that I believe sums up exactly why we ought to film the casualty returns in the first place:

Since the media ban was lifted, the military also started paying for families to travel to Dover to welcome their loved ones home. More than 70 percent of families have made the trip.

That's what mattered to Shane Wilhelm of Plymouth, Ohio: being there for the quiet, white-gloved military rite. Wilhelm said it made him feel proud of his 19-year-old son, Army Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm, and of his country.

"It was representative of the United States, that's the way I viewed it," he said. "It shook me to the bone, but it made me feel proud instead of having all that grief. All these people are here all because of my son."

The ritual, the honor afforded to the dead is presumably a key element in a family's grieving process, and if it helped Mr. Wilhelm to be able to attend his son's arrival in person, then that would appear to be a great addition to the military's services to surviving family members.

But all that aside, why aren't we seeing more coverage on TV, as Fahtie asked me to investigate?  A CNN article ominously entitled "Interest in photographing return of war dead to U.S. wanes" gives some insight:

Of those 472 (casualty returns), about 260 -- or 55 percent -- have been open to media coverage, according to statistics from the Mortuary Affairs office. And over the past year, the media attendance has dropped off to a trickle.

"Those numbers reflect that the interest in covering the story diminishes as the story becomes repetitive," said Ralph Begleiter, a former network correspondent and now professor of communications at the University of Delaware....

...Many major news organizations rely on the fact that The Associated Press is covering these events, and will keep the images as they are brought in, but often they are still not used.

"Just because things are covered does not mean the public sees it. Lots and lots of things are covered [by news organizations] but then never actually end up on the air," Begleiter said.

So we see that the majority of families are opting to have their loved ones' arrivals open to media coverage, yet the media isn't covering the arrivals beyond perhaps buying the AP's photos of the event.  My hunch, borne out by the facts over the last 9 years of war, is that there is not a shared sense of loss among the public because there is not a shared burden from the wars we are fighting among the public.  In the days of an all-volunteer military, with the prospects of a draft being negligible (barring catastrophe,) the vast majority of the suffering and the hardships of war will fall on those families whose loved ones chose to serve.  And yet, there are striking reminders of the private tolls endured by families out there in the world if one looks for them.

__________________________________________________________________________________

If it's not apparent, all throughout this article I've been interspersing links to various other websites, photo archives, and news reports, and those various resources out there led me to the conclusion I've finally come to: while our society may be too stratified, too hectic, too narcissistic in the aggregate to honor our returning war dead in the unified way we used to when there were only three major news networks, the sheer volume of information and resources out there far exceed what was possible in the Vietnam era.  Beyond that, there are amazing communities of people who gather online (and in person, naturally) to share stories, remembrances, and to honor the dead, far more than I have represented here.

And just to show that the world is full of "surprises," I would like to make note that at the infamous liberal website DailyKos.com (itself founded by Markos Moulitsas, a military veteran) there is an ongoing series of diary posts entitled "IGTNT" meaning "I got the news today," which honor those who have died serving in our armed forces.  The description of the IGTNT series follows below (note that there are a number of online avatars/usernames sprinkled throughout, which makes for awkward sentences if you're not familiar with the use of avatars):

I Got the News Today is a diary series intended to honor, respect and remind. This series, which was begun by i dunno, is currently maintained by Sandy on Signal, noweasels, monkeybiz, silvercedes, MsWings, greenies, blue jersey mom, Chacounne, Wee Mama, twilight falling, labwitchy, moneysmith, joyful, roses, SisTwo, Avila,a girl in MI and me, SpamNunn.

These diaries are heartbreaking to write, but, we believe, an important service to those Americans who have died, and to our community’s respect for and remembrance of them. If you would like to volunteer, even once a month, please contact Sandy on Signal, monkeybiz, or noweasels.

As you read this diary, please consider that the families and friends of those profiled here also may read it and that many members of our community have served in the Armed Services of the United States of America.  I hope that our comments tonight will demonstrate our respect for the sacrifices of our fallen military and our compassion for their families, whatever our personal or political feelings about the current war or any war happen to be.

While the vast majority of DailyKos users oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this just goes to show that even peaceniks can rally around our troops and honor their sacrifices.  A particularly touching diary post is here, about the recently-identified remains of two WWII pilots who were lost over Germany.

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So ultimately, Fahtie, I don't have a good answer for you.  I've spent quite a few hours working on this blog posting now, and I suppose the topic of how we honor our war dead, and why it is different than before, will be one I will have to investigate further and return to in the future.

The Upside of Scott Brown's Election...

Image via Wikipedia

...the Democrats in the Senate have finally been freed of having to seek the ever-elusive "60th vote" to pass health care reform.  I had discussed the reconciliation process a few months ago, but it finally seems that Harry Reid is prepared to use a majority vote to pass health care reform, regardless of what the "moderate" Democrats say.  By losing the 60th seat in the Senate, Democrats have been forced to seek other methods to pass legislation than negotiating with their own corporate-owned members (see Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, etc.) and this has led directly to using the reconciliation rule.  So this week a major push has been made by a range of Senate Democrats to include a public option in the reconciliation bill, with Senators from Dianne Feinstein (pretty moderate) to Chuck Schumer (former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2006 and 2008 elections, who is widely regarded for his political acumen) signing on to the letter to Majority Leader Reid.  But hold on a minute, isn't the public option a HUGE LOSER among the public?  Don't Americans want less government intervention?  Well, not really, it turns out.  A poll of Nevada voters released yesterday contains some stunning revelations - 56% of Nevada voters favor "the national government offering everyone the choice of buying into a government administered health insurance plan" versus 38% opposed.  Nevada, if you'll remember, was a major battleground state in the 2008 election; after being solidly Republican for many years (with a strong Libertarian, anti-government streak to boot) President Obama prevailed there in the general election, so Nevada's a pretty good bellwether state through which to gauge the national mood.  The poll also has implications for Harry Reid's reelection prospects, as he is not doing too well in polling in his home state, so a strong move to pass Democratic legislation could in fact help his prospects in Nevada.


We will see what happens, and I'll try to be a bit better about posting timely information, as health care reform continues to provide lots of twists and turns to keep track of.

Money in Washington, or, How the Democrats Became Beholden to Business Interests

Image via Wikipedia

Bill Moyers, who recently announced he will be retiring from weekly television to our collective detriment, shows that his style of intrepid journalism still makes for must-see-TV with his Friday episode of Bill Moyers Journal. Moyers interviews The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner and Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi on the Obama Administration's various capitulations to the wills of monied interests from health care to financial reform. If you would like a succinct and informative look at how things have gone so wrong so quickly in Obama's still-young Administration, I highly recommend you take half an hour and watch the program. Hat tip to CitizenofEarth on DailyKos for drawing my (and others') attention to this episode.
In the Moyers discussion, Taibbi makes the argument that the Democrats, and especially Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, have made a business decision to win the fundraising battle with Republicans by appeasing business interests:

And I think, you know, a lot of what the Democrats are doing, they don't make sense if you look at it from an objective point of view, but if you look at it as a business strategy- if you look at the Democratic Party as a business, and their job is basically to raise campaign funds and to stay in power, what they do makes a lot of sense. They have a consistent strategy which involves negotiating a fine line between sentiment on the left and the interests of the industries that they're out there to protect. And they've always, kind of, taken that fork in the road and gone right down the middle of the line. And they're doing that with this health care bill and that's- it's consistent.

In a sense, a connection can be seen between the health insurance industry's business model and the "business model" of modern politics: the only way to make profits is to deny the people who use your services the services that they have rightfully paid for, with that payment being, in this case, insurance premiums, votes, or public opinion. For instance, the insurance industry can use rescission and other nefarious tactics to deny health care to people when they need it most, and politicians (in this case, Obama and his minions) can use soaring rhetoric and populist talk to sell voters an idea of the politician they will get, and then when the rubber meets the road, they will aggresively capitulate to the monied interests who invested so heavily in their campaign over the will of the voters who voted them into office in the first place. The Democrats can only reap the "profits" of continued campaign financing from Big Business if they deny the will of the voters, since the reforms that voters overwhelmingly support will result in reduced profit margins for Big Business. The calculation it comes down to, as Robert Kuttner accurately places it in the Moyers interview, is that campaign donations from business will outweigh the wills of individual voters who will be turned off by a politician's being beholden to monied interests:

Look, there are two ways, if you're the President of the United States sizing up a situation like this that you can try and create reform. One is to say, well, the interest groups are so powerful that the only thing I can do is I can work with them and move the ball a few yards, get some incremental reform, hope it turns into something better. The other way you can do it is to try to rally the people against the special interests and play on the fact that the insurance industry, the drug industry, are not going to win any popularity contests with the American people. And you, as the president, be the champion of the people against the special interests. That's the course that Obama's chosen not to pursue.

It appears that Obama and his team have misread the situation in this country; they do not understand the deep-seated anger towards the companies and the individual CEOs and executives that have brought us to this point of a failing financial system that has brought the world to its knees, combined with a domestic health care system that is responsible for 22,000 deaths per year due to a lack of insurance and many thousands driven into bankruptcy due to catastrophic medical expenses. American voters can see that the decks are stacked against the little guys/gals, but sadly our political class still believes we can be deceived by positive talk and rhetorical spinup . I hope that Obama wakes up to the fact that he is widely being seen as allied with business interests against American interests, or else his presidency will become a failed one when that is the last thing that this country needs.