Some (slightly) positive news for a Monday morning:
Q: What are people in your district saying about the health care law?
A: What has struck me decisively is how the public mood has switched from sort of the 30,000 foot policy debate of last August and has pivoted to very practical implementation-related questions today. The anger has been replaced with both curiosity and the need-to-know information. So instead of people talking about socialized medicine and how we’re going to be just like Great Britain, at town hall meetings this August it’s, “I’m 62 and I run a small business and I’ve got a pre-existing condition and is there going to be some kind of gap coverage for us between now and when we qualify for Medicare? Does the [insurance] plan my kid had to go off of because they were 21 and now they’re 24, [will the new law allow me to] get her back on the plan until she’s 26?” The policy debate is over for the public. We’re now in the implementation phase. How will that work? When will that work? How much? Do I qualify? Very practical kinds of questions.
Q: What else would you like to fix in the health care bill and what on your wish list is most likely to happen?
A: I think we really need to let it marinate a bit. I think one of the problems the opposition to health care reform has is that they so overstated the case. They were so into histrionics and intemperate charges in some cases – you know death panels and euthanasia – and that the world as we knew it was going to come to an end if we passed this legislation. Well when it didn’t, it forced people to take a second look at health care reform and I think that’s going on all across the country and you’re seeing that reflected in national polling.
Q: Are your colleagues who supported the health care bill worried it will be a major factor in their races?
A: Most of my colleagues are experiencing what I am describing to you. They are pleasantly surprised that health care isn’t going to get you. Health care alone is not going to get you. It’s on a palette of other things that you have to either positively assert or you have to defend. And everyone has their own narrative going into this election cycle in terms of what they’re going to say or defend or whatever. Health care is on that palette but it’s not going to be the dispositive issue the other side was hoping for just a few months ago and the press was saying it would be.
Of course, it can be difficult to be heard over this:
“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck said. “America today begins to turn back to God.”
cleek
Beck sure thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he…
Kay
@cleek:
I have some sympathy for the Democrats. It’s tough to hold the floor discussing insurance when the other side is telling them God wants you to vote Republican.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
And lo, the right-wing howler monkeys ceased to howl over healthcare, and lo did they howl over a Manhattan community center, and so it came to pass that the spell was broken, and the people saw that healthcare was good, and so the people howled against swimming pools and basketball courts, and so it was.
jwb
@Kay: And if people believe that God is choosing to speak through a self-proclaimed political entertainer, they are really beyond hope.
Zifnab
I don’t know if this represents an honest change in politics so much as it represents a change in the composition of town hall participants.
burnspbesq
Yes, but Connolly represents a part of Virginia where no Real Murkins live (he is, for example, eemom’s Congresscritter), so he may not be a representative sample.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Check out Ross Douthat’s s column in NYT.
Shorter Ross,
I iz in your NYT fluffing Glenn Beck.
TJ
Only anecdotal, but HIR is neutral around here, as far as the election. Too many rate increases this year and the HIR implementation is still too far out and nebulous to matter.
Butch
Two well placed meteors, one for Beck and one for Palin. That’s all I ask.
jwb
@schrodinger’s cat: “Check out Ross Douthat’s s column in NYT.” And ruin this otherwise fine morning. Why would I want to do that?
jwb
@Butch: The fact that they haven’t yet hit has to be taken as evidence that God does not exist.
zattarra
I think this is my favorite part of the interview:
I read that answer as “you idiots didn’t know what you were talking about last year but we gave you what you wanted because you were so insistant. Now you get shit in the way of improvements to tri-care and it’s your own fault. Next time learn what you really want you morons.”
Dork
@Butch: While Beck is shaking hands with Limbaugh, and Palin is in a three-way with Bachman and Liz Cheney.
General Stuck
Beck’s Gawd cannot compete with American commerce.
jwb
@General Stuck: I thought Beck’s Gawd was commerce.
Kay
@jwb:
It sounded like the newer evangelicals to me, so less like Jerry Falwell and more like Joel Osteen. Less like a sermon and more like a management seminar, but I’ve only heard Osteen once.
General Stuck
@jwb: Beck worships a false profit.
WereBear
It was all bullshit anyway. Now that there are other fish to fry, the “passionate grassroots advocates” are recovering from The Beckoning.
Did the democrats know it was astroturfed? They should have.
jwb
@Kay: It’s just that Beck changes hats on a dime. As an entertainer, that’s expected; as a God-man, not so much. What it really says is that his followers also see and evaluate religion primarily as entertainment rather than for its religious content, and that’s even worse than seeing and evaluating politics and news as entertainment, which is bad enough. It leads to a tremendously cynical world view, and a cynicism that doesn’t recognize itself and indeed believes itself pious—it’s really difficult to see how you break through that. It’s wellnigh hopeless.
jwb
@General Stuck: Actually, he seems to be doing pretty well on the profit side. Prophetic, not so much.
morzer
@jwb:
Give it time, and Beck will start selling indulgences.
John S.
@General Stuck:
Beware of false profits who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves.
General Stuck
@John S.: So Beck IS the False Profit. you are correct
jwb
@WereBear: “Did the democrats know it was astroturfed? They should have.”
How could they not? It’s not exactly a secret. Knowledge of how the teabaggers work has never really been an issue for anyone but the media who pretend, for reasons of their own, not to know. The problem has been how do the Dems make an effective issue of the fact. I would say that they have lacked a story, or in media parlance, a narrative but also a moral to make that knowledge intuitively meaningful, so that the fact of astroturfing means something more than what it is. Astroturfing, if it is not stopped, is paving the road to a dystopic future: it’s possible that the story about the Kochs and various other rightwing groups can form the backbone of this story; it can certainly help define the moral. In any case, from a messaging standpoint, the Dems would do well to go back and study up on melodramatic structures; the problem with melodrama, however, is that it allows no shades of gray.
jwb
@General Stuck: Beck as false profit: I’ll buy this formulation.
WereBear
@jwb: As far as melodrama structure goes (and I agree with you, you are absolutely right,) there’s a classic from childhood that is particularly effective:
Who is that man behind the curtain?
jwb
@morzer: I think that’s what people believe they are buying when they buy his gold.
Kryptik
I seriously can’t be the only one that’s depressed that we’re actually having a debate over whether Glenn Beck is the true inheritor of MLK’s legacy. No matter how ginned up or manufactured, the fact that it’s being discussed with merit in the news just…christ.
How is it that demonstrating at Park51 is the only thing that’s made me feel good about politics as of late? And that’s only because of having the luck to be there when there were no significant number of protesters to stand against the days I’ve been there.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: I can selling you a finger bone of Ronald Reagan; it provides protection against facts and makes ketchup a nutritious vegetable.
RSA
Beck has said this more than once; is anyone else tempted to edit it?
“America today begins to turn [its] back to God.”
Culture of Truth
“Are you there God? It’s Me, America”
jwb
@WereBear: Yes, revelation of truth is a structure the Dems could use; it also usefully allies with religious language. On the other hand, revelation remains black and white: reality becomes an illusion that disguises truth, and that truth is usually something simple that requires only looking behind the curtain to see. Yet, even in respect, the way forward is not exactly easy: what happens if we pull back the curtain and the professor does not say “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” but simply goes on playing the wizard. What if Dorothy decides she prefers to believe in a Wizard she knows to be an illusion because the Wizard offers clarity and a colorfully entertaining world, whereas recognizing the professor only leaves her laboring in the gray world of Kansas?
Butch
@Dork: That one mental image there….yiiii.
JAHILL10
@Omnes Omnibus: Har! And don’t forget, it makes cutting taxes reduce the deficit!
kay
@jwb:
I have a cynical view of that rally. I’ve seen this before. Republicans consistently introduce “values” as a divisive issue close to elections. I don’t think the Tea Party-Glenn Beck Production is any more complicated than that. Same shit, different day.
I’m less interested in understanding the true nature of the “conservative soul” and more interested in watching conservative actions, which don’t align with the “healing” rhetoric they’re now employing.
They’ve whipsawed the faithful (and the rest of the country) through 2 years of hate and now that we’re approaching Labor Day it’s time to roll out yet another incarnation of compassionate conservatism. I think it’s pure political bullshit, and doesn’t deserve a thoughtful analysis.
WereBear
@jwb: That’s the crux of it, surely: most people prefer a lovely illusion.
Which is what the Armies of Dicks are selling to them.
But they also have to grapple with reality, like it or not, every day, and few are allowed to stay in Oz perpetually. If the story has a moral warning, they often heed it.
At least; often enough to make a difference.
Chad N Freude
@Kryptik: I don’t think there’s any debate going on. Beck is latching on to anything that might be useful in legitimizing his program (not the right word, since it has no specifics, but the only one I can think of). On any given anniversary, he’ll claim inheritance of the associated historic legacy.
Linda Featheringill
Gee. I thought that the health care reform bill was going to destroy us completely. You mean it isn’t? Wow.
Chad N Freude
@Linda Featheringill: This blog has no room for sarcasm.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
“Something that is beyond man is happening”
Woman?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Linda Featheringill: Who can worry about healthcare reform when roving bands of dangerous children lurk within every shadow? It seems like only twenty years ago a person could walk past a school without the threat of being dragged screaming into a darkened classroom, never to be seen again.
Ah, the good ol’ days!
Chad N Freude
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: The line sounds like something from a pretentious, big-budget sci-fi movie.
El Cid
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: There are some things Man was just not meant to know.
NonyNony
@jwb:
I disagree with this. Beck may view what he’s doing as entertainment – I actually think he does to some degree – but I don’t think that his followers do. What his followers are buying is not entertainment but rather validation. They want to be told that their world view is the correct world view, and they’re willing to pay for that privilege. I don’t think they see it as entertainment at all – rather they’ve found someone who is telling them that the world works the way that they have always thought it worked and that thrill of validation keeps them enthralled.
I will note that the successful mega-Church pastors sell the same thing as Beck – validation. You don’t build a church like, say, Rod Parsley’s World Harvest Church by challenging the congregation to do difficult things. You build it by telling people what they want to hear. And since religion in the US is a free market enterprise, if they don’t like what they’re hearing from you there’s always someone, somewhere who is willing to do it for them and take their money.
LA Confidential Pantload
Something that is beyond man is happening
And you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Chad N Freude
Well, Kay, I just looked at TPM and found the fair-and-balanced response to your optimistic quotes on health care. The whole front page of TPM at the moment is simply mind-boggling, e.g.,
The Republic of Stupidity
@kay:
Yeah… but it sure do deserve a firm boot to the groin, donnit?
kay
@Chad N Freude:
I like TPM and I read it every day but they run that way, don’t you think?
Towards less positive, bordering on terrified of the ‘other shoe dropping’?
There’s something white-knuckle about that site.
“What’s the next horrible thing that might happen!?”
Linda Featheringill
@Chad N Freude:
Hi, Shoddie. How are you this morning? :-)
kay
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I’m having trouble being generous with the conservative 180 on gay marriage, too.
I keep flashing back to 2004 in Ohio when I realized they were putting ballot initiatives up to target a specific group of people.
Political reality is often a more productive area for me than any anguished parsing of what they feel and think.
What do they do? Shit like that.
El Cid
@Chad N Freude: When will Americans finally do something about the Luxembourg menace taking over all our ice cream shops? Will no one notice it until it’s all too late and it’s the Luxembourgers choosing every flavor?
Chad N Freude
@kay: I think that’s because horrible things keep happening.
Ahasuerus
Apropos of catchy lies, here’s a column entitled Buzzwords for Blowhards in the Guardian (yeah, I know) about how “Rightwingers are brilliant at creating snappy-but-misleading nicknames – like fun-size chocolate bars and the Ground Zero mosque”. Nothing that hasn’t been discussed here already, but it’s interesting to see a foreign perspective on this American manifestation of the Big Lie. It has some wonderful pejoratives; my favourite is “perpetually furious rightwing weevil”. And the comments are – interesting.
kay
@Chad N Freude:
Oh, they do. True. But there’s an anticipatory air about TPM that I think is very human, where they’re wanting to know ahead of time “how bad will it be”?
debbie
Reading about the people attending the rally, and about Beck’s followers in general, you can’t help but notice how un-Christianlike these self-proclaimed Christians behave. WWJD?
Chad N Freude
@Linda Featheringill: Shoddie??? Who is this Shoddie person?
And I’m in unaccustomed good humor this morning. Don’t worry, this is always a temporary condition, and I have medication for it. Thank you for asking.
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: And have you noticed the insidious invasion of Italian gelato shops? We’re doomed!
Sentient Puddle
@kay: You sure you’re not confusing TPM for HuffPo?
kay
@Sentient Puddle:
No. I like and read TPM. I like it a lot.
I think they’re earnestly and honestly (and factually) hand-wringing, rather than making stuff up, so that’s the difference.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chad N Freude: I am in the heart of custard country here in Madison and we even have gelato shops. It’s horrible; I mean we have options, custard, Babcock ice cream, gelato… Eek.
Kryptik
@Chad N Freude:
Then why are the news channels and outlets covering it like a major event and wondering if it was truly in the spirit of MLK despite sharing none of his message! I mean, christ, did any of these nitwits covering it actually listen to his rhetoric leading up to it?
Chad N Freude
@Kryptik: They’re not promoting debate, they’re covering — unquestioningly — a spectacle. It’s clear that they pay no attention to the content of what Beck says.
Svensker
@Omnes Omnibus:
Custard? You mean like vanilla pudding?
Linda Featheringill
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Oh, my. I probably should ignore you but here goes.
We are talking about high schools, right?
1. At what locality? Nice, prosperous, happy suburbs or poverty-ridden and perhaps gang-infested inner cities?
2. I never said these students were a danger to outsiders. They are dangerous to each other.
3. What kind of danger? Stabbing, beating up, forced oral sex, and gang rape. And an occasional shooting.
Now, what was the question again?
Omnes Omnibus
@Svensker: No. Thicker, richer ice cream.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Linda Featheringill: Your contended that kids are more dangerous today than they were 20 years ago. Here’s the quote:
Official statistics, as provided by several comments in the other thread, show that this is false. It’s not simply incorrect, it’s the exact opposite of reality: crime and violence have fallen significantly.
You trotted out this lie and suggested that this “fact” was a reason we should consider overbearing school surveillance to be acceptable. Spreading lies to support a surveillance state is what I expect from wingnuts, not supposed lefties.
It’s funny that you found time to respond to my mocking snark in this thread, but couldn’t be bothered to respond to anybody providing you links to the facts and statistics in the other thread. You know, the thread where you said:
At least three people provided those numbers, so feel free to retract your idiotic statement now.
Linda Featheringill
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I scanned through the thread twice and did not see these statistics or links to them. However, I might be getting dyslexic.
If you have a link to some pertinent information, why don’t you post it [or re-post it, as the case may be].
Also:
Assuming that this information does show a decrease of in-the-school-yard violence, how does that correlate with increased surveillance of the students?
Three-nineteen
@Linda Featheringill:
I know someone who had to break up an attempted rape in his high school hallway in the middle of the school day. After that, his parents moved so they could get him into a better school. It was my father, who went to high school in the early 1960’s.
Really, if you are going to continue this line of debate you need to marshal up some facts. Everyone has anecdotal evidence and “feelings’. You still haven’t come up with anything to back up your claim.
Maude
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Brings to mind the book and movie, Blackboard Jungle.
Kid’s aren’t more dangerous than they were long ago, but we have media out there, loving them some drama.
Linda Featheringill
@Maude:
You may have a point.
To all teenagers everywhere: I may have offended you. I certainly did connect all of you to the actions of a few and that is not good. I sincerely offer you my apology.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Linda Featheringill: What, googling “teen crime rate by year” is too complicated for you?
Here you go again, though I suspect I’m being trolled here. That the teen crime has fallen dramatically over the last twenty years is well known.
When you thought crime was rampant and increasing, you thought that maybe surveillance was a good idea. Now that you know crime has actually dropped, you want to credit the drop to increased surveillance. Ooooooooooookay.
But seriously, I don’t think we went from 42 murders on school grounds in ’92 to a single murder in ’08 and ’09 because teachers are snooping more. Such an extreme drop in crime would certainly have multiple causes.
Linda Featheringill
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I think you want a fight but I am not going to fight.
You got a retraction, well, actually an apology to the kids.
I am gone. Have a nice day.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Linda Featheringill: You think I care if kids are offended?
You waltzed in here and plopped down a big fat stinking lie. You straight up requested that people provide evidence against your lie, then ignored it when people provided it.
Sorry if I’m not being gentle enough when I point out the steaming pile of bullshit you left on that thread.
Come on. Assuming you’re not actually a right wing troll, doesn’t it bother you at all that you’re making assumptions about school based on a fact that turned out to be utterly, completely, and absolutely wrong in every way? Doesn’t that give you the slightest pause? Make you think you might want to spend ten second on Google before shooting your mouth off?
You’re spreading right wing propaganda. The only question is whether you’re a believer or a useful idiot.
Svensker
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s so interesting. I wonder what parts of the country have “frozen custard”? I’ve lived in Seattle, LA, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and New York and never heard it used.
Sheila
Were I to believe in the kind of “God” Beck believes in, I’d have to say It was fairly stupid to create so few people on the globe — you know, white, plump, misinformed, hysterical, with bad hair — capable of “turning back” to It.
Mnemosyne
BTW, Beckapalooza has inspired Fred Clark at Slacktivist to start writing about the politics of resentment — as usual, it’s terrific stuff.