On Tuesday, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR-04) had one'a them big town halls that've been all the rage lately. No big headlines emerged, but I got three distinct impressions from the event:
1. The enthusiasm gap was not in evidence.
Certainly there were teabaggers, and they got a few questions in. But there were definitely vocal contingents for HR 676, the public option, etc. And while there were a few moments from the wingnut script (someone shouted “LIAR!” when DeFazio said you could keep your health plan if you like it, and there were boos when he insisted that Medicare isn't falling apart), their hearts just didn't seem in it the way they were in some of the earlier footage on the TV machine.
Maybe it's just the district (though IIRC Springfield is redder than Eugene), but given the way all the town halls earlier this month seemed utterly dominated by the teabaggers and LaRouchies, I'd say we've improved our ground game considerably.
2. DeFazio probably won't take the FDL pledge. BUT …
Despite his known progressive leanings, he wouldn't commit himself to voting against a bill that's missing the public option. Squirming a bit, he explained that he doesn't want to make promises when there isn't an actual concrete bill to argue over yet. But he did talk about something he's been fighting to introduce into the bill, which is to take away the insurance companies' exemption from the Sherman Antitrust Act. And at one point he made it clear that the public option is especially important if we don't get that antitrust bit done.
While, for strategic purposes, I would prefer it if he'd commit to voting down a crappy bill, he definitely seems to understand the reason why the public option is so important. It's there to impose some actual competition on the overwhelmingly oligopolized health insurance market. And he's right, another important step in that direction would be to forbid collusion just as we do for every other industry[1]; if we can't make them compete with a government program, we can at least make them compete with each other for once. I don't think that'd be enough, but the point is really moot since nixing the antitrust exemption has never really been on the table. So I'm pretty confident DeFazio will vote against the bill if it doesn't have the public option; after all, it'd be the fourth time in a year that he voted against the Dem leadership on a high-stakes bill for progressive reasons[2].
Bottom line: He might need some pressure if push comes to shove, but he's in our corner.
[1] Yes, I know. Except Major League Baseball.
[2] The first three were the bailouts, the stimulus, and cap-and-trade. The first two were protest votes, to be sure, but Waxman-Markey only barely passed …
3. People likey the populist rhetoric, and they no likey the deficits.
I suppose this is just U.S. Politics 101, but I hadn't really seen it up close before. The biggest applause lines were always when DeFazio invoked the people vs. some big interest, like when he bagged on TARP or decried the way our student loan program is a giveaway to banks. But he also got a lot of pushback whenever he talked about government spending — people had a hard time swallowing his description of what was good about the stimulus and short-term deficits. So big banks are evil, but so is big government.
I think this is worth dwelling on because, as I've said before, this could be a potent line of attack against Dems. In fact, unless the Dems implode (always worth worrying about), it seems like the only good way for the GOP to mount a comeback in the near future. We have a serious soft spot in our leadership's continued support of Goldman Sachs and other crooks, and a younger, more marketable Ron Paul could find himself a groundswell of cross-party support. And a wave of neo-Pauls could well comprise the next Gingrich Revolution.
And the worst part? We'd actually !@#$^#$%@ deserve it.
So I guess the point of this little side rant is this: Get your shit together, elected Dems, and start fighting Wall Street for real, or they'll drag you right down with 'em.