With the exception of a few years of living in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990s, I've lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the rest of the time. In all that time, I cannot recall a general election for the U.S. Senate or Congress being this close. It's Massachusetts for God's sake, one of the bluest states in the union. Sure, there was a lot of national attention paid to GOP Gov. Bill Weld's 1996 attempt to unseat U.S. Senator John Kerry (Kerry prevailed with 52 percent), as there was when Republican Mitt Romney took on Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994 (Kennedy won 58 percent of the vote). But those races weren't nearly as close as is this current contest between Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general, and Republican Scott Brown, a state senator.
Amid all manner of nasty political ads which air once every five seconds on radio and TV (I adore politics and even I'm sick of them, never want to hear the word "lockstep" again) and the tongue-clucking about Coakley's assertion that Brown supporter Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan (in Red Sox Nation of all places!), this once sleepy campaign where the Democrat (any Democrat, didn't matter who) was considered a shoe-in, so much so that Coakley didn't really campaign much last month, is now too close to call. And it's serving as a proxy for all things Obama and is considered to hold the key to the health care vote. If Coakley, once the presumptive favorite, doesn't prevail, pundits everywhere are saying this is bad news for the president who visited Boston yesterday to try to help boost the campaign.
I still can't believe it. Take a gander at the political reporters from all the big media outlets on TV who have to do live stand-ups outside in this New England January chill, in front of cars coated in salt and sand. They seem surprised and almost giddy, to have something this volatile to report. I was astounded to see the front page of the New York Times today feature a woman who'd been holding a Brown sign in Marlborough, MA who I drove by twice on Saturday while driving my youngest kid to hockey.
Here are the covers of the two biggest papers in Massachusetts, indicating that the stakes are indeed high for tomorrow's vote from the Boston Herald (where I used to work and for whom I used to blog) and the Boston Globe.
Just when you thought that the news about federal bailout recipient AIG couldn’t get any more pathetic – you remember AIG, the company of which the federal government/American taxpayers own nearly 80 percent – the Washington Post comes along and likens them to Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. (Okay, so the Post didn’t exactly make that comparison. That’s all me and my own editorializing.) Here’s what the Post said today about the latest AIG antics:
“When word spread earlier this year that American International Group had paid more than $165 million in retention bonuses at the division that had precipitated the company's downfall, outrage erupted, with employees getting death threats and President Obama urging that every legal avenue be pursued to block the payments.
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo threatened to publicize the recipients' names, prompting executives at AIG Financial Products to hastily agree to return about $45 million in bonuses by the end of the year.
But as the final days of 2009 tick away, a majority of that money remains unpaid. Only about $19 million has been given back, according to a report by the special inspector general for the government's bailout program.
. . . Dozens of employees have hired lawyers, bracing for a fight if AIG or government officials try to block the payments.”
Now, if it hadn’t been for the infusion of $180 billion in the form of a federally funded capital and loan rescue package, there would be no money for bonuses because the company would've gone bust and those employees now demanding the money would be out looking for work. And these AIG folks are supposedly "bracing for a fight" with lawyers to argue that that’s their money? Sure the funds might’ve been contractually agreed upon BEFORE the economy collapsed and AIG was left teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, but the moment the company accepted a federal bailout, all the rules changed.
In the face of double-digit unemployment, the fact that these folks have the temerity to argue that they’re right to take this action is akin to saying that Mr. Potter was right to keep the Bailey Building & Loan money because, well, you know what they say about possession and the law.
While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid attempts to muster enough votes to back a public option in a Senate health insurance reform bill (as White House officials cast doubt on the likelihood of a bill including a public health insurance option passing), one group of constituents is amping up its public relations efforts to make sure their needs are represented in whatever health insurance reform bill becomes a law: Women.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on Mommy Tracked urging women to pay close attention to this debate because issues that go to the heart of health care for women are at stake. Women who've had C-sections or can still get pregnant or plan to utilize maternity care services in the future, I wrote, are denied health insurance in some states or are forced to pay higher premiums than men, unless they get sterilized.
But the discrimination against women goes further than that. According to CNN and the National Women's Law Center, women who have been victims of rape or domestic abuse can and are denied health insurance in some parts of the country.
One woman told her story this week to CNN. She was raped by two men, took anti-HIV meds as her doctor recommended, then her health insurance company dropped her. The woman, ironically, works in the health insurance industry.
The advocacy group National Women's Law Center is currently running a pro-health insurance reform ad entitled, "A Woman is Not a Pre-Existing Condition." It's pretty powerful stuff.
Remember in September when Arizona Senator Jon Kyl said during a debate about the Senate Finance Committee's insurance reform package that he didn't want to mandate that health insurance policies include maternity care because he didn't need it and it would make health insurance policies too expensive? (Maternity care, by the way, was utilized by his mother, his wife and his daughter.) That, that attitude right there, is treating women like a "pre-existing condition." It's no wonder women are peeved.
This week's Pop Culture and Politics column at Mommy Tracked is all about the health insurance reform debate on Capitol Hill and why it's an important issue for folks to follow. I provide several reasons, including the little anecdote about the Arizona senator who argued against a measure that would've made his insurance company include maternity care as part of a basic insurance package because HE doesn't need it. (This is a senator who is married, has children and whose adult daughter has a child. Yeah, I think the women in his life needed it.) Oh, and the fact that when women who've had C-sections seek to find new insurance policies, in some cases and in some places around the nation, they're told that they have a "pre-existing condition" and denied coverage.
I don't take a specific stance on what health insurance reform bill -- if any -- deserves support, however I do urge the Mommy Tracked readers to "citizen up" and pay closer attention to what's going on and, if they don't like something, tell 'em to speak the heck up about it to their congressman or woman, and senators.
As I detailed which bills are where in the legislative process -- there are several competing health insuracne reform bills in the House and Senate -- I recommended that, if folks were confused about how this whole bill-to-law process works, they should refresh themselves by watching that "I'm Just a Bill" School House Rock video we watched as kids. Couldn't hurt.
Remember the recent MoveOn.org-funded video favoring a public option in the health care insurance reform debate? The sarcastic one that featured Will Farrell, Mad Men's Jon Hamm and House's Olivia Wilde, among other celebs? The one that mocked "overpaid" health insurance executives who they said would have to give up some of their profits (which would cut into their funds for mini-zoos in their backyards) in order to pay for a government-financed health insurance option?
Well now FunnyOrDie is being politically even-handed in running a response video entitled, "Listen to Overpaid Celebrities" which spoofs the original video and sarcastically asserts reasons why a public option could be harmful to American taxpayers.
Between these two videos (see the original Farrell one below) do you think they're helping illuminate any points in this health care debate or just muddying the issue?
Will Farrell, Jon Hamm (Mad Men), Masi Oka (Heroes), Olivia Wilde (House), Jordana Spiro (My Boys) and other celebs have made a razor-sharp, satirical public service announcement spoof where they pretend to be shilling for insurance company executives, saying that they need to be protected from any potential federal public health insurance option that the president is pitching.
They're rather pointed in their commentary, particularly when they say that the insurance company execs need to hold onto their billions of dollars of profits so they can afford mini-zoos for exotic animals in their backyards, multiple homes and private planes. In one quip, an actor says, "If my kid falls off his bike and breaks his leg, he should have to pay that money out of pocket, out of his allowance." Another adds, "How else is he going to learn not to fall off that bike?"
In skewering insurance companies which reject a health care claim because of something like a typo, Farrell said, "If you spell something wrong, do you really deserve surgery? I don't think so."
The ad, which is on the Funny or Die web site, is funded by the liberal group MoveOn.org.
On the speech last night that President Obama gave to a joint session of Congress, I'm going to quote the Washington Post'sTom Shales:
"Obama came across like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: a bright-eyed young idealist up against entrenched power, old ideas and obstructionism.
It was also a chance for Obama to go on national television and look presidential again, asserting himself in ways that helped make up for the past few months of perceived defensiveness, of appearing to kowtow to other powers, and of seeming to do more following than leading."
I think the comparison to Stewart is apt. As an event of pure political theater, Obama was blunt, eager, tough and idealistic and seemed to grab the debate by the lapels and provide overarching themes with which most reasonable people -- Republican or Democrat -- would agree. Who thinks you should be banned from obtaining health coverage because you have a pre-existing condition? Who thinks American families should be bankrupted by their health care bills? Who thinks it's morally right for folks to be unceremoniously dropped by their health insurance company -- even though they diligently paid their premiums and deductibles -- when someone covered by their health insurance policy gets sick, or whose medical bills exceed a cap the insurance company has placed upon the family? I doubt you're going to find folks willing to say that all of those things are okay with them. (And if you do, it'll likely be someone named Mr. Potter, who had a run-in with Jimmy Stewart in another film, It's a Wonderful Life.)
When the president spoke of not adding "a dime to the deficit" with this new health care reform proposal, that he'd ask for a provision to be included in a bill to implement cuts if the promised millions in savings didn't materialize as he believed they would, those are sentiments around which most folks can rally.
The problem is, that's what they are, notions. We have no idea if they're going to eventually be true, no matter how much the president may want them to be because, lest we forget, he's not the one who makes laws. That's Congress' messy, messy, horse-trading job. What if the not "a dime to the deficit" has to be sacrificed in some deal to secure a bill's passage? Then Obama will have made a promise that Democratic senators and congressmen and women couldn't keep.
I went to the US Senate and House web sites and found links to two seemingly prominent versions of health care reform bills -- HR 3200 at 1,017 pages, the Senate bill passed by the Senate Committee on Health at 839 pages -- and haven't yet plowed through them.
Simply put, I'm left wondering what health care reform would really look like beyond the sweeping statements; the outcome of such reform would be very personal because it involves my family's health care. While some people may have liked the sound of the things the president is saying in general about the overhaul of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty implementation people, those for and against reform, get wary.
When President Obama last night said "significant details need to be worked out," laughter could be heard, only the president wasn't laughing. What's that old adage, the devil is in the details?
I have a special request for the news media, plus every group or web site that now loosely qualifies as the "news" media: Please cease and desist with the Michelle Obama-wore-shorts-and-oh-boy-what-a-scandal stories. You aren't fooling anyone when you cover the "faux controversy" and try to convince us that you don't understand what all the uproar is all about, yet you're still reporting on it and then soliciting viewers'/readers' opinions on whether it's appropriate for a First Lady to wear shorts.
Michelle Obama is a healthy, active, youthful woman in her forties. It's summer time. She's got young kids. It's damned hot. Give her a break. Who cares that she wore shorts? This is so a non-issue.
Health Care Battle
On to REAL news stories . . . Now that White House sources have indicated that government-run health insurance option may hit the cutting room floor and (possibly) be replaced by subsidized, non-profit health care co-ops in an attempt to move a health care bill forward, President Obama (whose approval ratings have taken a precipitous fall amid the intense health care legislation debates) still has a fight on his hands . . . with fellow Democrats. Liberal Democrats want the government-run health insurance option to remain viable, while conservative "blue dog" Democrats, worried about costs and government "take over" of health care, seem to cotton to the co-op idea. If the Dems can't reach an agreement amongst themselves, there will be no health care reform at all and Obama will be handed a major defeat.
I'll be interested in reading the compromise legislation before it goes to a House-Senate conference committee, if it makes it that far. Then we'll get a better idea of what this'll really mean.
Jenny Sanford Sounds Off
It was serendipitous to discover this week that the new issue of Vogueincludes an interview with Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina's Governor Mark "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" Sanford, looking fabulous and sounding strong. My new pop culture and politics column is about political wives whose husbands have conducted illicit affairs that inevitably devolved into full-blown public scandals, while the spouses and their children proved to be collateral damage.
My essay points to CBS's new fall show, The Good Wife-- starring Julianna Margulies as a devoted political wife whose husband resigned from office and is in jail after he frequented prostitutes and was accused of abusing the power of his office -- which seeks to offer viewers a peek behind the curtains of the homes of these wives (Sanford, Edwards, Spitzer) and show what damage has truly been wrought. Seeing Jenny Sanford pictured in Vogue and spouting off lines that make it sound like she's so unbelievably together, was a step toward reclaiming her life, and the lives of other devastated wives of pols. More power to her.
Me thinks that our secretary of state must've been on the receiving end of a whole mess o'sexist commentary thus far in her tenure, and constantly feel one-upped by her suck-all-the-oxygen-out-of-the-room spouse who got international accolades for helping to negotiate with the North Koreans for the freedom for two U.S. journalists last week. That's the only explanation I have (except maybe sleep deprivation) for Hillary Clinton ditching her normally professionally cool responses to difficult questions and telling a college student from Congo, in a matter of speaking, that she didn't like her question. One problem: The questioner didn't intend to insult Hillary Clinton. The translator screwed up. Whoops.
Hillary Dance Party
I always feel badly for U.S. officials when they venture abroad, play along with local customs and show courtesy to their hosts. How many presidents have donned un-western-like clothing and gotten mocked for wearing the duds by the folks back home?
So when an international host invites you to dance, what are you supposed to say, "No thank you. The late night comedians and folks on the internet will torture me about my dancing. Forever. I'll pass."
Of course not. You dance. And then be a good sport and suffer through the ridicule. Like Hillary Clinton has to at the hands of Conan O'Brien's staff about her dancing during her trip to Africa:
Testy Health Care Town Meetings
The recent spate of health care/health insurance town meetings between congressmen and senators and their constituents have gotten fairly heated haven't they? Some have devolved into circuses where no one gets heard and no one communicates and it all becomes white noise as tempers flare.
As I've watched this unfold, I've seen two sides getting fired up and becoming unable or unwilling to actually listen to the concerns of the other side, with the exception of Barack Obama himself, who seems game to field and handle pointed questions without shutting people down. (However people haven't been as nasty to him personally as they have been to U.S. congressmen and senators.)
The pro-Obama administration folks have tended to parrot the president's lines, like the ones spoken today at Obama's town meeting in New Hampshire: "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan." Obama said he doesn't want government bureaucrats OR insurance company bureaucrats "meddling" and getting involved in medical decisions made between you and your doctor. He said there won't be "death panels" run by the government to decide if a frail or sick senior should be provided health care. Obama has repeatedly told the story of his mother spending the last weeks of her life fighting with the health insurance company over her cancer treatments. He's also fond of saying, "No one in America should go broke because they got sick." The White House has created a web site which officials said seeks to clarify some of the misinformation voters have been given about the various health care reform bills. (Full disclosure: I haven't read the health care reform bills, though I think I might and then post what I find.)
All of those things seem to be common points of interest on which both conservatives and liberals could, essentially, agree. Keep all bureaucrats out of medical decisions. Pick your own health plan and your doctor. You shouldn't be driven into bankruptcy if someone in your family is sick. All good.
However there's a divergence from all of those common points when it comes down to actual legislation. People, many of them conservative-leaning, have been doing some research into the bills and have become nervous. They fear panels of government officials making decisions related to their health. (I imagine someone from my state's notoriously unfriendly Registry of Motor Vehicles handling my or my children's health claims and I shudder.) They don't want a single, government-run health care plan, which Sen. Arlen Specter today said he'll consider as senators discuss competing pieces of health insurance legislation. People are justifiably leery about how much this is going to cost, particularly during a recession.
Then, at town meetings across the country where there have been people posing well reasoned questions about the plans, there've also been screaming nutcases. The media give a lot of the coverage to the nutcases and eventually everyone who questions the plan is lumped under the category of an unruly mob. It's at this point when we realize that when it comes to health care and making life-and-death decisions, people take things very personally.
Democratic proponents of the health care overhaul haven't made things better by labeling the voters who are getting riled up at town meetings "un-American," like several of the people at Senator Specter's meeting with constituents today. There's a way to express your skepticism, disapproval and ask tough questions without being a jack ass.
Having partisans like Ann Coulter and James Carville chattering on Good Morning Americaabout these emotional town halls certainly doesn't help bestow calm or promote rational discussion. But rational discussion can be quite boring, mind-numbing at times, and doesn't make for good TV which thrives on drama and conflict. I'd love to see leaders from both sides of the aisle, step up and seek the calm, boring middle ground here, tamp down the fury and the name calling and bore us all to death with reasonable and open discussions. For as long as it takes, without rushing. But I guess that's just too much to ask for.
Or we could just call Jon Stewart for his read on the situation. While he is a liberal, he's funny.
