In an interview with Vermont Public Radio yesterday, former DNC chairman Dean matter-of-factly explained that the reform advertised is not necessarily the reform that will result from the bill. He explained that by gutting the major points of contention, politicians have also removed the need for a major piece of legislation.

"There are some good things in this bill, but they're small, and let's have a small bill for this $32 billion. Doesn't sound like a small amount, but compared to a trillion dollars - 27 percent of which is going to go to the insurance companies' pockets, it's a small price to pay to help community health care centers and prevention and wellness programs."

Greg Sargent of the Plum Line points out that the progressive divide over the bill seems to split into "operatives and wonks," saying:

At risk of overgeneralizing, operatives tend to see such fights as political wars that are either are or aren't worth fighting and dying in. Wonks tend to see them as chapters in a longer tale of ever-evolving social policy. That might go some ways towards explaining the divide, even if the substantive differences between the two camps are real and serious.

The gist of the wonk argument is that this is all part of the Democrats' master plan, a small victory in a much longer battle to be waged. But I'm more inclined to side with Gregg Levine at FiredogLake, when he writes:

Failure to pass health care legislation, even terrible legislation, will be a great loss for the Obama administration and for Democrats in Congress. But passing a bill as bad as the Senate's eventual endpoint could be a bigger defeat for the Democratic majority we really want-one that takes progressive action on behalf of the voters.

Because, as I see it, a bill without the competitive force of a public option, or the opportunity for millions to buy into Medicare, without cheaper pharmaceuticals or meaningful controls on premiums, without bans on benefit caps or loophole-free safeguards against rescission, but with an individual mandate, will do nothing for the 30 million uninsured that advocates of the bill like to talk about helping-but it will do plenty for the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Or, in the words of my blog amigo Nezua:

They fugazi if they think imma be forced to buy crappy insurance.

Reid Assures Snowe That Public Option, Medicare Buy-In Are Dead [TPM]
Howard Dean: "Kill The Senate Bill" [The Plum Line]
Dean On Health Care: "Kill The Senate Bill" [VPR]
Kill The Bill? Operatives Say Yes, Wonks Say No [The Plum Line]
Why Liberals Should Back the Health Care Bill [Political Wire]
Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill [FiveThirtyEight]
user
Kill Bill? Latest Flips by Lieberman, Nelson Predictable; Require Hard-Line Response [Firedoglake]

The meeting in question took place at a high school in Reston, VA, where Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Howard Dean "were constantly berated by booing and screaming," says Politico's Erika Lovely. At one point Moran accused outsiders of attending the meeting solely to disrupt it, telling the crowd,

I'm sorry but I can't even hear the governor and I'm sitting next to him. There are hundreds of people in this gymnasium who can't hear him because of a handful of people. These folks are not from the 8th District, they don't really belong here, and I'm going to ask them to leave.

Terry was one of the worst offenders. Having told the media he planned "to make a ruckus," he first performed his baby-and-old-lady-stabbing skit outside the meeting. Once inside, he refused to stop shouting epithets like "baby killer," even when Moran offered him five minutes to ask a question at the beginning of the Q&A. Finally, the crowd started chanting, "Kick him out" — and Moran did.

Terry is currently locked in a battle, not just with evil Democrats who want to kill old people, but with Troy Newman, his former "son in the [antiabortion] movement." According to Robin Abcarian of the LA Times, Newman and Terry are fighting it out for rights to the Operation Rescue name, and the revenue stream that comes with it. Terry founded Operation Rescue, and accuses Newman of "stealing another man's heritage" for trademarking the name in 2006. Newman and his supporters, meanwhile, fault Terry for divorcing his wife to marry a younger woman, misappropriating funds, and agreeing to an injunction that barred him from protesting outside of clinics. Newman says,

Randall is articulate and convincing. But so are used-car salesmen and cult leaders. He is not a true believer but a charlatan, and a manipulator. . . . He shows up at a national event, makes a flamboyant speech, gets everyone within earshot rattled and then passes the collection plate and moves on.

We're not sure if skits involving killer doctors count as "articulate and convincing," but then, the statement comes from the man who invented "truth trucks" with pictures of dead fetuses plastered all over them. Other anti-choicers are distancing themselves from both men. Marvin Olafsky, editor of Christian magazine the World, says,

Operation Rescue is largely a blast from the past, and fairly marginalized in the pro-life movement now. About 20 years ago, the Operation Rescue activities were probably creating more support for abortion overall, and as the pro-life movement recognized that, the emphasis became one of offering compassionate help to women in a crisis. The group as a whole, and particularly Randy Terry, never made that leap.

While anti-abortion advocates' "compassionate help to women in a crisis" can mean misinformation and pressure, at least some within the anti-choice movement are repudiating Terry's ridiculous antics. His fellow attendees at the Town Hall meeting also seem to have lost patience with him, if cries of "kick him out" are any indication. These meetings are supposed to be public discussions where misunderstandings (like, say, belief in "death panels") can be corrected and concerns aired. For Terry and others to willfully disrupt them is antidemocratic, and hurts anyone who genuinely wants to make a decision based on the issues. At the Reston meeting, Dean said,

A lot of this debate is about change. And the one thing any doctor can tell you about change is that never make real changes until the pain of staying the same exceed the fear of change. I think the pain has exceeded the fear of change.

Many Americans are at that point with health care reform. Let's hope that those who still fear change more than the pain of the current system get a chance to hear real information — not baseless claims and stupid skits.

Abortion Foes Turn On Each Other Over The Operation Rescue Name [LA Times]
Health Care Town Meeting And Randall Terry [Feminist Looking Glass]
Jim Moran, Howard Dean Face Town Hall Skeptics [Politico]
Randall Terry Kicked Out Of Healthcare Town Hall [Salon]

Earlier: Anti-Abortion Advocates Block Healthcare Reform, Pretend To Stab Old Ladies
Fake Blood, Baby Dolls, & Judge Sotomayor: Anti-Choice Activist Turns Hearing Into Comeback Tour

First off, Dean thinks that bipartisanship on health care reform is bullshit.

I think it's a very good thing [that the Democrats might not get bipartisan support for their bill]. I think the Republicans have correctly diagnosed that the way to stop Obama is to stop the health-care bill. They're determined not to have a bill. In the long run, we're going to have to do this on our own.

In other words, since the Republicans have now announced their intention to kill the bill for political reasons regardless of what it contains, fuck 'em. They had their chance.

Besides which, if Obama wants to take credit for it in 3 years when he's running for reelection — let alone the House and Senate members who are up for reelection next year — they've got to be able to have something to show to their constituents that they, and they alone, are responsible for. And Dean's got the best idea this underinsured freelancer's heard all year.

Put in guaranteed issue and community rating at once, so people cannot be turned down for insurance in the private sector, nor can they have their insurance taken away because of an illness. He'll get huge credit for that and there's no budgetary cost.

It's so rare that constituents' personal interests and legislators' political interests align so nicely.

Dean's got another suggestion that I would have loved when I was just a tiny bit younger.

You say the federal government should provide free coverage to everyone under 30. That's pretty radical.
It's incredibly cheap. Statistically, only two expensive things happen to people under 30: one is a malignancy and the other is an accident. Everything else is mostly preventive maintenance and it's very inexpensive. But this is not what's going to be passed.

Sigh. Guess that's what we get for not voting as much as the oldies.

Anyway, although Dean doesn't use the word "market failure" to counter all the Republican arguments about how the free market ought to be allowed to "work" in the case of the health insurance market, he's got a pretty good handle on why it never will.

Everybody talks about preventive medicine, but almost nobody does it because there's no payback. A private practitioner invests money in preventive care and the hospital benefits. They're not connected. Second, pay people - particularly primary-care providers - for taking good care of patients without rewarding doctors for doing more and more and more. That's what the system is currently based on. The more you do, the more you get paid, which is an incentive for inefficiency.

In other words, the market that functions the most efficiently in terms of cost-incentives functions the worst in terms of caring for people's health. That's because the health insurance market has become the de facto health care market, rather than an addition to it.

In a speech to Campus Progress, Dean offers a potential — but politically untenable, which is why he's so beloved — solution to the market failure problem. Bonus: it's one the government has already implemented in other industries and which, until relatively recently, was the model the health insurance companies were often forced to abide by on the state level until they successfully lobbied for full privatization.

If you ever want to save costs, it can never happen in the private sector. ... Switzerland and Netherlands treat their private insurers like regulated utilities. Our private insurers are not going to want to do that.

No kidding! Providing health care to their insurance customers might cut into insurance companies' profit margins... and they wouldn't want to do that.

Howard Dean On The Politics Of Health-Care Reform [Times]
The Ever-Quotable Howard Dean [The New Republic]

Related: GOP Focuses Effort To Kill Health Bills [Washington Post]

In a new interview with Esquire scribe John H. Richardson to promote his new book Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Health Care Reform, Dean places the blame for our fucked-up health insurance system on the private sector and its government enablers.

For starters, Dean takes on the idea that the marketplace is more efficient than government in providing health care.

ESQ: Boil it down, if you would. Why isn't it working even if you do have insurance?

HD: Because it's too expensive. The private sector can't manage costs. Health care is one of the few places - defense is another - that the government works more efficiently and more effectively than the private sector. That's just a fact.

ESQ: Why is that?

HD: Because there is no feedback in the private health-care system. When I was practicing medicine, nobody with substernal chest pain ever got off my examining table and said, "The guy down the street does it for $2,000 cheaper, I'll see you later." That's why we've had 40 years of costs that increase between two and three times the rate of inflation every single year. It's breaking our economic system.

In effect, Dean is arguing that because there's no competition at the provider-level, the "health care" market already isn't a true market. Republicans have argued that the solution to that problem is more provider information and programs like Health Savings Accounts that force people to keep track of health expenses (as though health insurance companies aren't price-setting); Dean is suggesting that health care, like national defense, is a social good that will never properly be accounted for by the market because its intrinsic value is borne by too broad a segment of the population. Market failures — like the poor valuation of social goods like defense and education — are accounted for in economic philosophy by having government provide them to people by spreading the costs as widely as the benefits.

Dean then ascribes the business opposition to the public option to one of two things: political ideology; and lack of foresight.

Then there are lots of businesses that aren't particularly ideological but genuinely believe that if they keep doing the same thing, they'll somehow get a different outcome. That's human nature. They think they can manage health-care costs even though it's been 40 years since any of them ever have. That's why I think Obama's plan is so great: If you like what you have, you can keep it.

Dean, obviously, believes that both businesses and their employees will end up preferring the public option — and that despite Republican fears of that, that's not a terrible thing.

He also thinks that the polls back him up that most Americans agree with him — and that the Senate should stop fucking things up.

ESQ: But still, even you say you expect 65 million people to enroll in the public option, and a study by a health-care company put the number at 117 million. That's a lot of people.

HD: It is.

ESQ: But isn't that a threat to the insurance companies? Especially at a time when we want to keep businesses healthy and people employed?

HD: This is one of the many problems the Senate is now having. They are focused on anything but the American people. But the insurance companies will be fine. It won't happen overnight, and they'll make plenty of money. But this is not a matter of making the insurance companies happy. This is a matter of making the 72 percent of the people who want a public option happy, including the 50 percent of Republicans who want a public option.

ESQ: Fifty percent of Republicans want a public option?

HD: Yeah. That's in a Kaiser poll and in a New York Times/CBS poll last week. The Senate is in the process of self-destructing. They are talking about managing health-care reform to make sure that a relatively small sliver of American industry is satisfied at the expense of 72 percent of their constituents. That's unbelievable.

Can you tell the man doesn't have to worry about getting a bunch of Senators re-elected any more?

Dean also takes on Republican tropes that the public option will result in rationing and "a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor" — which is a hilariously ironic thing to say to any American who's ever dealt with a health insurance company.

But we ration in America today. If you are one of the 47 million people who don't have insurance at all or if you're someone who has a lousy plan because you can't afford a good one, that's rationing by price. I'll tell you who rations. It's the private insurance groups. This ridiculous nonsense that the right-wingers are talking about, that public insurance will put a bureaucrat between you and the doctor - that goes on every day in the system we have. But only in the private sector. It doesn't happen in the public sector. I have never had, in my 10 years of practicing medicine, a Medicare bureaucrat call me up and say, "You can't do this and you can't do that." But that used to happen every day with the private insurance companies. You'd beg to have your patient have this drug or that procedure.

In fact, Dean cites the insurance companies' bureaucracy — and CEO salaries — as one of the reasons they're so economically inefficient.

I'm going to use Medicare as an example because it is a public plan. About 4 percent of every dollar that goes into Medicare is spent on administration. In the private sector, that number is between 12 percent and 50 percent. That's because of return on equity, very high CEO salaries, advertising, and general administration. But you don't have return on equity in a public plan, and there doesn't have to be advertising, and the people who run it aren't going to be making $20 million a year. They are probably making less than $200,000 a year. And that's before you get to cost controls.

Return on equity is a fancy way of saying that most health insurance companies are public companies, and so there are profit-pressures and dividend-pressures and stock-price-pressures for them to contend with before they get around to providing people health care — which, in fact, isn't their mission: it's to insure their customers.

In somewhat-related news, the health care reform bill will likely be the center of this year's abortion debate: NARAL President Nancy Keenan says they're aware that anti-abortion Senators plan on introducing a range of anti-abortion amendments to restrict women's access to insurance coverage for (at the least) abortion services; and 19 House Democrats (full listing here) have sent a poorly-worded letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking her to keep abortion out of the health care reform altogether. Since that reform comprises both public and private coverage, it could mean they've asked their own party to restrict or prohibit private insurance companies from covering abortion services. Fab.

Howard Dean: Private Health Care Is Breaking Our Economy [Esquire]
NARAL Pres Nancy Keenan On Health Reform And Abortion Rights [American Prospect]
Anti-Choice Dems Trying To Keep Abortion Out Of Health Care Reform [Feministing]

• Sarah Palin gave an unsurprising speech at a "anti abortion banquet" last night, opining that women should carry their unwanted pregnancies to term, embryos should get rights and President Barack Obama sucks. [Associated Press]

• Great news: Michael Steele has decided Palin is a party leader; hopefully this will fuck up her chances in 2012. [MSNBCEveryone is making money off Palin, including me. [Politico]
• Except for Wayne Anthony Ross, Palin's Crazytown pick for Attorney General, who was rejected while Palin was off proclaiming her opposition to a woman's right to choose. [Huffington Post]
• The press and the blogosphere are combing through the memos about the various ways in which people were tortured under the Bush Administration. [NY Times]
• There may be no prosecutions of those torturers, however. [Associated Press]
• Instead, President Obama is going to focus on high-speed rail. Hint: if it wasn't still cheaper and faster to fly or take a bus than a train, probably more people would take trains. Can I get a DOT appointment now? [NY Times]
• Currently, Obama is in Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas. No beefcake shots have been made available to the press at this time. [ABC News]
• Hottie statistician Nate Silver thinks we should just let Texas secede from the Union. [FiveThirtyEight]
• Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal thinks Cheney should shut the fuck up. [Politico]
• Defense Secretary Bob Gates isn't exactly keen to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. [Associated Press]
• Obama's car czar Steven Rattner is under investigation for possibly participating in a kickback scheme with New York state's pension fund. I suspect he and Bill Richardson will have plenty to talk about. [Politico]
• Americans are in love with Michelle Obama. [Marist]
• Apparently Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel have kissed and made up. However Dean's still not going to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. [The Hill]

Barack Obama made it all official with Kansas Govenor Kathleen Sebelius this weekend, nominating her to head the Department of Health and Human Services after having once sent her packing back to Kansas when he couldn't find a Cabinet spot for her last autumn. Unlike some of Obama's prior nominees, she's apparently paid all her taxes, hasn't hired illegal immigrants in any capacity, didn't take kickbacks from government contracts, isn't a Republican mole and hasn't lobbied in and for China. Basically, he's nominated the last Cylon, and Howard Dean is having a sad panda day. But it's okay because the anti-abortion people are all up in arms because Sebelius, a Democrat, isn't anti-abortion and once had the audacity to meet with an abortion provider who won a meeting with her in an auction. Kansas' Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts are supporting her, however, partly because she's from Kansas and partly because it means that she'll likely have a more difficult time winning Brownback's Senate seat after he retires and a Republican might actually hold it.

Not that it might actually be an issue, as Kentucky Senator and general crazypants Jim Bunning is now threatening to resign his Senate seat and allow Kentucky's Democratic governor to appoint his replacement — giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, by the way — if the Republicans don't stop pissing in his Corn Flakes and trying to get him to retire and shit. Of course, that would mean New York Senator Kirsten Gilibrand would have to survive her rocky tenure, too, and it's pretty fucking rocky so far. Then again, if the Accountability Now PAC has its way, Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and plenty of Democratic House members will be out on their asses in a couple of years for not hewing closely enough to the party line that the PAC and its lobbyists and advocates have determined should be the party line for the sake of the country, because, you know, majority rule be damned if everything isn't done their way.

• Once upon a time in a universe far, far away, a group of supposely intelligent women decided that Barack Obama wasn't sexy enough for them. And thus the world was denied his image in a Harvard Law beefcake calendar. I guess we'll always have People. [Politico]
• Obama has told people he wants Lieberman to continue to caucus with the Dems, something Lieberman is swearing that he won't do if Democrats take his committee assignment away. Let the whiny bitch go, please. "No drama Obama" doesn't have to mean rolling over for Lieberman. [Huffington Post]
• Speaking of the Senate, the difference between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in the Minnesota Senate race is down to 204 votes. One more reason to cut the dead weight, Harry Reid. [MSNBC]

• There's a fake guy who claims to be the one who told Fox News that Sarah Palin didn't know about NAFTA. He claims to be best buds with Randy Scheunemann and "added" that she didn't know the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas, Sunnis and Shi'ites or the IRA and ETA. [Politico, Fake Martin Eisenstadt]
• None of that will delay the start of Palin's comeback tour, which begins this week at the Republican Governor's Association in Miami. [Washington Post]
• She's headed there once she's done sorting through her massive wardrobe to find the clothes the RNC desperately needs back. You know, the clothes she never wore that lived in the belly of the campaign plane after the convention. Those clothes. [Associated Press]
• Howard Dean is going to leave the DNC. [Washington Post]
• Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe is going to run for Governor of Virginia. [Politico]
• And everyone in the world is calling Obama on the phone, including Russian Putin-puppet President Dmitry Medvedev. No wonder he always has the thing up to his ear when he's getting out of a car lately! [Washington Post]

MEGAN: Hey, how is Austin?
SPENCER: It's filled with liberals, positive reinforcement, beef products, Johnny Dash-themed dive bars, extremely cheap beer, and bloggers with pulverizing hangovers.
MEGAN: HuffPo has been Twittering it.
SPENCER: I have met a lot of FDL commenters, who rule; Brandon Friedman of VetVoice gave Wesley Clark a terrorist fist jab at the keynote; I was told to pipe down because I was telling off-color stories during Howard Dean's keynote.
MEGAN: I get told that a lot, too, but really? Howard Dean is that important to listen to?
SPENCER: yeah, Nico asked me if I'd be on the HuffPo twitter feed, but that would require unlocking my Twitter and inviting people I don't know to see it, and there's a lot of stuff that I really don't want to make public on there.
MEGAN: I know, because you never accepted even me as one of your Twitter friends. I'm trying not to be mad about it.
SPENCER: I didn't? I'll put you on. Anyway we should probably talk about the news and shit.
MEGAN: Yeah, probably. So, at an ad conference, someone asked Arianna to play Karl Rove and run plays against Obama. Arianna's not that creative, but hearing her say aloud what we all know is going on at RNC HQ is sort of freaky.

Barack Obama may be Muslim, we're not sure, but he is definitely a Muslim sympathizer. He is the candidate of Hamas. He wants to negotiate with terrorists. He does, basically, not really care for America.

Also, she said "Hawai'i barely counts" as growing up in America and Michelle is "angry and bitter."
SPENCER: The first piece of Obama literature I saw when I got here was a doorknob flyer that read COMMITTED CHRISTIAN.
MEGAN: Which is part of the current messaging that this committed agnostic (no, it's not an oxymoron) doesn't really love, but whatevs.
SPENCER: Arianna's probably right that the sotto voce campaign will move away from the statement "Obama is a Muslim" to "We can't be sure that Obama isn't a Muslim". At this point, it's a safer play to make that sort of epistemic claim — there's absolutely no way Obama could disprove it, it's not the sort of statement that admits of the facts, as they taught me in epistemology class.
MEGAN: Hasn't it already?
SPENCER: It has? My prediction has come true already? See, that's why I'm an A-list blogger.
MEGAN: Indeed! I mean, it's (not to bring up old wounds here) but totally where Clinton went, "I have no reason to doubt it" and "not that I know" and such.
SPENCER: Let's. Not. Talk. About. That.
SPENCER: There is sooooooo much relief-slash-jubilation that the primary is over here — at our FDL caucus yesterday, a review of the last year on the blog tread delicately on the subject of the Great Interfamilial Unpleasantness.
MEGAN: I'm glad at least some bitches are hugging it out after the whole Ricki Lieberman thing that left a bad taste in my mouth. So, moving on to something everyone can be pissed about, there's a new anti-Michelle ad.
SPENCER: YES LET'S. It actually ends with these women pledging allegiance, and what's up with that Reagan quote at the end? "Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction?" is that like, a threat?
MEGAN: Yes, the Pledge of Allegiance, the vaguely martial music and the use of all women in the add is rather pointed. All in all, still shit but far better done than the North Carolina ad.
SPENCER: Did you see the NYT/CBS poll about Michelle Obama? Her negatives are stunning, or, rather, the racial discrepancy in views of Michelle is stunning

There was even racial dissension over Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle: She was viewed favorably by 58 percent of black voters, compared with 24 percent of white voters.

MEGAN: Yeah, that would be what freaks me out a little more, that and the whole "where are the feminists that are so opposed to sexism in the media" doing right now?
SPENCER: What accounts for this, Megan?
MEGAN: Oh, God, where to start? I mean, mean girls, the legitimacy of female anger, fear of strong women, envy... Did I ever tell you I have actually met people that have never met a black person until they were an adult. And I'm not talking until they were 18 and went off to college, I'm talking as a legitimate adult. They still exist. They aren't few in number. I mean, I think we've seen this reflected in Crappy Hour comments before:

Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.

I think this is also horrifying and telling:

Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)

Seventy percent of blacks have encountered at least one incident of racial discrimination. And I'm one of the 26 percent, as once when I broke up a party as an RA in college, I was called a "racist Jewish bitch." And I still know that's nothing by comparison.
SPENCER: Can I tell a story here? I once had this girlfriend who grew up in a mostly-white area, and I took her to my mom's house in Flatbush for the first time. Flatbush is majority-black but rather internally diverse — lots of immigrants from West Africa, the Caribbean (Haiti esp) as well as African-American; and it also contains Russians and Jews. As we were driving down Foster Ave, my GF took a look at the people on the street and said, "So, does your mom's house have a blackyard?". True story
MEGAN: Whoa. Um, how long until you broke up with her?
SPENCER: You were called a Jew?
MEGAN: Yes. A racist Jew because as an RA, I was breaking up a loud frat party 4 doors down from my apartment during finals week and it happened to be the one African-American fraternity on campus. And, obviously, I was just doing it because I hated them and not because I had a 17 page paper to finish and a 25 page paper to finish by the next day and it was finals week and because they were heard by the head of housing. But, yes, Jewish.
SPENCER: So, seriously, where's the organized defense of Michelle Obama? She's an extremely accomplished woman and while she may not have been the professional powerhouse that HRC was by 1992, I don't understand why organized feminism doesn't evidently identify with her. that was badly expressed — I'm hungover — but you get what i'm saying i hope.
MEGAN: No, I think it was said pretty well, it's close to how I've said it. Where's Geraldine Ferraro decrying the attacks by the media on her working status? Where's Gloria Steinem's impassioned defense of righteous anger and women? Did we all just admit that sexism triumphed and go home? Is it only sexism if it's Hillary?
SPENCER: A couple months ago, my friend Ann Friedman of TAP and Feministing wrote a really prescient piece called "Solidarity Politics" about this sort of thing

Let's make this election about the issues, everyone says — and rightfully so. Our presidential nominee should be chosen primarily on the issues. But most of us don't separate issues from identity as cleanly as we'd like to believe. When it comes down to it, everyone is an "identity politics" voter. The problem is that phrase, as commonly used by right-wingers and some on the left who are tone-deaf on issues of race and gender, has the effect of cutting down the political choices and involvement of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians.

MEGAN: I have to say, please introduce me to Ann sometime and I promise not to fan girl out. I almost always really love her stuff — thoughtful, well-written, etc.
SPENCER: and Ann is right about this, but the character assassination of Michelle Obama demonstrates that the argument needs to be taken a step further — recognizing that cross-cutting identities within the context of identity politics is fucking up people's expectations too
MEGAN: I took the best class ever in college in Microsociology (mind-blowing topic) and one of the things that stuck with me was the professor's assertion that we are a collection of equally accurate but not equally relevant identities and roles.
SPENCER: You were saying in the car yesterday that there's a cohort within the feminist movement that's increasingly indistinguishable from an HRC machine and how bad that is for the movement as a whole — it was a really good point that you should tease out for the benefit of CH readers.
MEGAN: Like, because you're white, you'd never call me your white friend, or because we know a zillion bloggers, you'd never call me your blogger friend. I'd never introduce myself to your friends as Pam's sister or Butch's daughter or Greg's ex-girlfriend.
SPENCER: Or George Costanza's father's lawyer.
MEGAN: Yes, exactly. And so I feel like, for many people and sadly probably too many women, the identity that more people associate with Michelle Obama right now is that she's black. Not that she's a woman, or a lawyer, a wife, a mother or anything else. And that's why the Obama campaign is trying to play up the prominence of those roles.
SPENCER: It's depressing that a core mission of the Obama campaign is to teach white America that black people are, like, people.
MEGAN: Or like people, commas deliberately excluded.

Then there was the NPR comparison of Hillary to Glenn Close's bunny boiling psycho in Fatal Attraction and the Times mocking of Clinton's cackle. Of course, as the Times points out, Clinton's campaign had flaws that had nothing to do with her gender, and there have been many, perhaps just as many, attacks on Obama's race as there have been on Hillary's gender (see yesterday's baby mama drama).

Keith Olbermann denied that the coverage of Clinton was sexist overall. There were "individual, sexist, mistakes,” Olbermann admitted, but there was also “constant reflection and analysis at MSNBC, and I must say there was constant good faith in trying to make certain Senator Clinton was not treated unfairly.”

It's impossible to say whether or not Olbermann is right, whether the coverage of Clinton did not affect the eventual outcome of the primary. But the mere fact that Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, told the Times that the media treatment of Hillary shows that the U.S. is in need of a “national discussion” on sexism shows that if nothing else, sexism has wended its way back into the American limelight.

Media and Critics Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage [NYT]

Earlier: No Matter What Happens, HIllary Has Helped Start A Conversation
Unfair & Unbalanced

• Fabulous CNN reporter Richard Quest (my pretend British boyfriend), was picked up early this morning in Central Park and charged with possessing meth. Oh, Richard. You already overcame the hazards of British dentistry once, why would you risk your teeth again? [NY Times]
  
• In what is rapidly becoming a roll call of disappointment, journalists call out Snuffleupagus and Charlie Gibson for their shoddy debate performance. Isn't it elitist to care if the debate was less than substantive, guys? [The Nation]
  
• Speaking of things that are bound to disappoint others, Bill Clinton's former Labor Secretary Robert Reich endorsed Obama today. For those people counting, that's now five former Clinton Cabinet secretaries (Reich, Richardson, Peña, Daley and Mineta) supporting Obama and 2 openly supporting Clinton (Albright and Cisneros). You may hate the Bushies, but, damn, do they understand loyalty better than the Clintonistas. [Robert Reich's Blog via NY Magazine, HuffPo, WaPo, HuffPo and HillaryClinton.com]

• Dean's disappointed that the superdelegates can't make up their damn minds already. [CNN]
• And women everywhere ought to be disappointed that the Supreme Court ruled last year that we only get 6 months to notice pay discrimination if we want to ever sue for it, or that Congress has, to date, neglected to pass a little law needed to stop that bullshit. [Nation, ACLU]
• Girls in the wacky polygamist "she bleeds, she breeds" cult are too scared of disappointing God to refuse marriage or sex, not that they're old enough to legally consent anyway. [MSNBC]
• Oh, and wonder how the culties paid for all of their ranch-y-ness? With your tax dollars, courtesy of the Pentagon and the cult's own defense supply company, to the tune of $1.7 million over the last 10 years. Bet you're that much more disappointed about paying your taxes this week. [CNN]
• Clinton's undoubtedly disappointed that the latest national polls show Obama beating her by a handy margin, and the latest Pennsylvania polls show them almost neck and neck heading into the weekend. [Newsweek, Rasmussen]
• Screw it, the only person not disappointed right now is my dad, who's just happy that Obama likes beer just as much as Hillary. I, however, think they both got it wrong and that it's time for a glass of wine. [Chicago Tribune, Post-Tribune]

Benazir Bhutto has joined some guy who sold nuclear weapons secrets to North Korea in house arrest in Pakistan and, um, Howard Dean decreed Jews worthy of admittance to Heaven. (Mazel Tov, guys!) And with just two little months before the campaigning begins, for real...

Well, Obama is handing out glow necklaces in Iowa, while Meghan McCain and Cate Edwards campaign for their dads in New Hamsphire.