Winning Progressive

(By NCrissie B)

President Obama began losing progressive supporters when he invited evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, the story goes. He lost more support when he didn’t get a big enough stimulus bill, and yet more when he didn’t put single-payer on the table for health care reform. And when he backed away from the public option, progressives abandoned him en masse. There went the 2010 midterms, and maybe even his 2012 chances. Turns out his book should have been titled “The Audacity of Nope.”

It’s a depressing story, but fortunately it’s just that: a story.

In fact President Obama’s approval ratings among progressives have stayed above 90% except for a brief period in the summer of 2011. Only during the ugly debt ceiling showdown did more than 10% of Americans say the president was “not liberal enough.” Different polls ask the question differently and get different numbers, yet Gallup found President Obama with 79% approval among self-described liberal Democrats even at his low ebb last September. And both Gallup and CNN found Democrats had closed the voter enthusiasm gap by the start of this month.

Yet the media message of disgruntled Democrats has held on, and at least some truly are disappointed with the progress President Obama and Democrats have made since 2009. The president has not been perfect, nor were the bills that survived Republican filibusters in the Senate. But we made more progress than many of us realize.

“What has President Obama accomplished in the last three years?”

That’s the title question of this handy wallet card that I got in the mail last week. Here’s what it says:

CHANGE IS … President Obama’s Commitment to American Women and Their Families

President Obama, the father of two girls, believes that women’s issues are America’s issues.

• Equal Pay for Equal Work: Signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that ensured women get paid the same as men for the same work.
• Improving Women’s Health: Starting in 2012, new health insurance plans will be required to cover women’s preventative services such as mammograms, domestic violence screenings and contraception, without charge.
• Protecting Women’s Right to Choose: Reversed the Global Gag Rule which banned government from providing aid to international family planning groups. Stood up to Republicans trying to roll back a woman’s right to choose and defund Planned Parenthood.

CHANGE IS … President Obama’s Record on Health Care

On March 23, 2010, President Obama passed the landmark Affordable Care Act to restore health care as a basic cornerstone of middle class security in America.

• Ending Insurance Company Abuses: Prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions or cancelling coverage when someone gets sick.
• Keeping Premiums Low: Insurance companies must justify rate hikes; provide rebates if they don’t spend at least 80% of consumers’ premiums on care instead of overhead, marketing and profits.
• Expanding Access to Care: 32 million more Americans are able to afford insurance for the first time and nearly all Americans – 95% of those under the age of 65 – will have insurance.
• Closing the Medicare Prescription Drug “Donut Hole”: Over 2.6 million seniors have saved an average of $550 each on their prescription drugs and, by 2020, the Medicare “donut hole” will be completely closed.

CHANGE IS … Putting Americans Back to Work and Rebuilding a Fair Economy for the Middle Class

From day one, President Obama took immediate action to address the crisis of middle class security slipping away for millions of families.

• Job Creation: An economic recovery program supported as many as 3.6 million jobs by cutting taxes, investing in clean energy, roads and bridges, keeping teachers in classrooms, and protecting unemployment benefits.
• Saved the auto industry from collapse, preventing the loss of more than 1.4 million jobs.
• The private sector has created nearly 3 million jobs during 21 straight months of private sector job growth – but our work is not done. That’s why the President is fighting for The American Jobs Act which would put even more people back to work now and put even more money in people’s pockets.

CHANGE IS … Creating an Economy Built to Last

President Obama believes Americans should be able to earn enough to raise a family, send their kids to school, own a home, and put enough away to retire.

• Out-Educating the Rest of the World: Made college education affordable to hundreds of thousands more students by ending billions of dollars in subsidies to banks and using savings to double funding for Pell grants.
• Out-Innovating the Rest of the World: Made substantial investments in clean energy manufacturing to create the jobs of the future here in America and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
• Everyone Plays by the Same Rules: Passed Wall Street reform to protect American families from unfair lending practices, rein in excesses on Wall Street and prevent future crises.
• Everyone Does Their Fair Share: Called for closing tax loopholes to ensure millionaires and billionaires don’t pay less in taxes than the middle class.

CHANGE IS … Ending the War in Iraq and Honoring Our Veterans

President Obama kept his word: He brought the war in Iraq to a responsible end and brought home our troops.

• Committed to Iraq’s Security: The U.S. transitioned full security responsibility to the Iraqi people; remains committed to Iraq’s long-term security; will continue to develop a strong and enduring partnership.
• Refocusing on Al Qaeda: Refocused our security priorities toward dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda and its affiliates. In bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice, the President showed America’s resolve and our ability to unite to face the greatest threats to our nation.
• Honoring the Service of Veterans and Their Families: Our troops and their families get the help earned, enacting new tax credits to encourage businesses to hire unemployed and disabled veterans.

The message of his work hasn’t always pushed through the media noise, but President Obama has built an impressive list of accomplishments. It’s not complete and, as we’ll see in my next post, many of our most difficult challenges lie ahead. But when I look at what President Obama and Democrats have done … I see reason to hope.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

Reader Kate M., who occasionally questions what she finds to be an overly favorable view of President Obama here at Winning Progressive, recently pointed us in the direction of Glenn Greenwald’s article in Salon entitled “Obama’s ‘Bad Negotiating’ is Actually Shrewd Negotiating.” Greenwald’s thesis is basically that President Obama is not a true progressive but, instead, is purposely selling out progressive values and policies in order to win reelection.  Greenwald’s thesis is well summed up by the title of the article when it was republished at AlterNet – Why Do We Assume Obama’s Actually Trying to Enact a Progressive Agenda?

Here at Winning Progressive we typically do not like to get into debates with other bloggers as we’d prefer to spend our time urging people to communicate the progressive message to outside the bubble of the blogging world.  But Greenwald’s approach is so detrimental to the progressive movement that it is worth responding to.

At the outset, we should note that there are certainly areas where Winning Progressive has been disappointed with the Obama Administration.  Civil liberties is one, as there needs to be a far larger break with the policies of the Bush Administration.  Education reform is another, as the Administration has, unfortunately, drunk the charter school kool aid far too much.  And, yes, we would have liked to see a bigger stimulus package, a public option, and a much more aggressive approach to stemming the foreclosure crisis.

But Greenwald’s effort to translate those significant disappointments into a much broader claim that President Obama does not share progressive goals and, instead, is purposely selling us out in order to win re-election misses the mark in a number of ways.

First, Greenwald ignores the many progressive victories that the Obama Administration has managed to steer through a largely dysfunctional political system, even in the face of historically unprecedented Republican obstructionism and opposition from most of the media.  We have compiled a partial  list of those victories here, but the basic point is that it strains credulity to suggest that an Administration that ended DADT, is expanding health insurance access to 32 million more Americans and ending abusive health insurance industry practices, increased student loans by $65 billion by ending unnecessary subsidies to banks that provided such loans, increased fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, and has proposed air pollution regulations that will save more tens of thousands of lives per year is not progressive.  Many of these policies could be improved, but progressive change is always a long hard battle, and the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have made significant forward progress on a number of issues that are critical to progressives.

Second, Greenwald attributes bad motives to Obama Administration decisions that could just as easily be explained by tactical disagreements.  The reality of the situation is that while there have been some significant disappointments with President Obama, the alternative of the tea party Republicans is far worse.  With those Republicans in control of the House and aiming for the Presidency and the Senate in 2012, a critical goal for progressivism is making sure that Republicans do not get full control.  And there are two competing strategies for achieving that goal.  One is to give no ground and offer a bold agenda that won’t be passed in the next two years but that will help draw clear distinctions for voters in 2012.  The other is to give a little on some core issues both to ensure that Republicans do not cause even further damage now and to help the public realize that the Democrats are the reasonable ones who are serious about governing.  Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages and while I tend to lean toward the former approach, I readily acknowledge the legitimacy of the latter approach (within limits) as a valid progressive strategy.  It is a shame that Greenwald does not also.

Third, and most importantly, Greenwald ignores the role that the progressive base has to play in building political support for progressive policies.  One of the biggest problems with the purist progressive critique of President Obama is that it treats him as if he can single-handedly change the political dynamic in this country.  The President can and should certainly play a role in doing so, but such change also requires the active and organized effort of all of us progressives to take the progressive message to the voters and build a ground swell of support for our positions.  Having progressives focus large majorities of their efforts on criticizing our President for accepting compromises that are short of what we want does little to build such political support.  Instead, we progressives who would like to see the President go further should focus our energies on building the political support needed for the President to do so.  Winning Progressive attempts to play a role in building such support by highlighting positive things about progressive policies and victories, and by encouraging our readers to share a positive progressive vision with their friends, neighbors, colleagues, and elected officials.  Unfortunately, purist critics of President Obama, such as Greenwald, appear to focus almost all of their efforts on tearing our President down, rather than on building up our political brand.

None of this is to say that we should not criticize President Obama and push him to do more.  But the danger of the Greenwald approach is that by focusing so much on disappointments from Obama, we threaten to reduce turnout among Democratic partisans and to leave average voters with the perception that the person they most associate with progressive politics has no base of support.  The result of such impacts is to throw elections to Republicans, just as occurred in November 2010.   What purist progressives like Greenwald seem to miss is that criticism should be done constructively, that progressives need to do their jobs of building political support for progressive policies, and that we also need to praise the President when he does the right thing.  The Winning Progressive blog is all about getting progressives involved in taking those steps.  It would be great if Greenwald and his followers would join us in this critical endeavor.

One year ago today, progressives won a major victory when the historic health care reform bill was signed into law by President Obama.  While the legislation was far from perfect, it provides tens of millions of Americans with the security of knowing that they will have access to affordable health insurance and that they will be protected from abusive insurance industry practices.  In addition, the health care reform law takes significant steps toward fixing our nation’s broken health insurance system, which covers too few people, costs far too much, and gets inadequate results.

Health care reform is, of course, under attack from conservatives who would rather side with insurance companies than with the American people.  In order to fend off these attacks, it is critical that progressives make their voices heard in support of the health care reform legislation that was passed last year.  So, we are asking that all of our readers take a few minute to celebrate health care reform’s first birthday by writing a letter to your local newspaper editor to explain what health care reform means to you and to our country.

If you write a letter, please share it with us via e-mail, as we may publish some of the best letters next week here at Winning Progressive.

Here are links for submitting letters to the editor for national papers, and to newspapers in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,  Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

To learn more about the provisions in the health care reform legislation, here is a handy description from the Kaiser Family Foundation of all of the key provisions and a timeline of when they go into effect.

And here are links to previous Winning Progressive posts on health care reform:

Reforming the Broken Health Care System

Protecting Consumers From Abusive Health Insurance Industry Practices

Expanding Health Insurance Coverage to 32 Million Americans

Health Care Reform Benefits That Went Into Effect on January 2, 2011

Closing the Medicare Doughnut Hole

Health Care Reform Benefits for Small Businesses

One thing that the progressive movement does not do very well is to celebrate its victories.  Because progressive change typically comes in a series of steps, rather than all at once, we often get so focused on taking the next step that we do not take time to reflect on good things as we achieve them.  By not celebrating our victories, we often create the false impression that progressives are losing, which can discourage our supporters, make undecided voters less likely to support us, and make elected officials less likely to fight for our causes.

In an effort to avoid such impacts and help spread the word that progressives have won and continue to win numerous significant victories that have helped advance the causes of fairness, justice, and equality in America and the world, we like to highlight progressive victories here at Winning Progressive.  This past week there were at least four such victories worth celebrating:

* Defeating Repeal of Health Care Reform – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 51 to 47 to reject a Republicans legislative effort to repeal health care reform.  Repeal would have allowed the health insurance industry to return to abusive practices such as pre-existing condition exclusions and retroactive policy cancellations,  foreclose the expansion of affordable coverage to 32 million more Americans, increase the deficit, and return us to a broken health insurance system.  By turning back repeal, Senate Democrats have allowed the American people to continue to enjoy the significant benefits of health care reform.  If you have a Democratic Senator, call him or her and thank them for voting against repeal.

* Signing the New START Treaty – Also on Wednesday, President Obama signed the New START Treaty, which reduces deployed nuclear weapons by 1/3 and ensures that we are able to continue nuclear weapons inspections in Russia in order to verify reductions and help keep nuclear materials out of the hands of rogue nations or terrorists.  New START was ratified in the Senate in December only after Democrats overcame significant Republican obstructionism.

* Civil Unions Authorized in Illinois - Earlier this week, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation that made Illinois the sixth state to allow same-sex civil unions (five others allow for same-sex marriage).  If you live in Illinois, contact Governor Pat Quinn and the members of the Illinois House and Senate who got the civil unions legislation enacted.

* Republicans Give Up on “Forcible Rape” Provision – Earlier this week, Republicans (and one Democratic House member) proposed to redefine the rape exception to the ban on federal abortion coverage to extend to only “forcible rape.”   Such a redefinition would mean that victims of statutory rape or incest would be foreclosed from receiving federal aid for getting an abortion.  After a large pushback from Democrats and progressives, however, Republicans backed down on Thursday and returned to the broader rape exclusion under current law.

If you know of other progressive victories at the federal, state, or local levels that we should be celebrating, e-mail us to let us know.

One of the most powerful moments of President Obama’s State of the Union Address earlier this week was when he spoke passionately about the need for us to support the men and women who serve our nation in the military, their families, and our veterans, stating: 

Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us – by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation.

What made this statement even better is that,  in contrast to the empty pro-troop rhetoric spouted by conservatives, the record shows that President Obama and progressives truly fight for our troops by enacting policies that support and reward them for their service.   

A great example of progressives backing up pro-troop rhetoric with real world action was seen earlier this week when President Obama, joined by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, announced the official launch of the Administration’s Strengthening Our Military Families initiative.  The initiative is the result of a May 2010 Presidential Study Directive, which ordered all federal government agencies to work together to create a coordinated approach for supporting military families.  The resulting plan identified four areas where all government agencies will work together to benefit military families:

* Enhancing the well-being and psychological health of the military family.

* Ensuring excellence in military children’s education and their development.

* Developing career and educational opportunities for military spouses.

* Increasing child care availability and quality for the Armed Forces.

Just a few examples of steps that will be taken include:

* The DOD, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services will work together to improve mental health services and accelerate suicide prevention efforts

* The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by last year’s Wall Street reform legislation, will have an Office of Service Members Affairs, to help curb predatory lending practices targeting military families, which is a major problem as we’ve previously explained

* The Department of Education will make supporting military families one of the supplemental priorities for its discretionary grant programs

You can learn more about the initiative at the Defense Department’s website about it. 

The Strengthening Our Military Families initiative is far from the only example of progressives taking the lead in working to meet the needs of our troops, military families, and veterans.  For example, as we have discussed previously, a recently released 2010 Congressional Report Card from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America ranked the voting records of members of the U.S. House and Senate on issues such as full and advanced funding for the Veterans Administration health care system (so that the VA does not always have to stand by nervously to see if they are going to get enough funding), supporting improvements to the post-9/11 GI Bill, modernizing the VA claims system, and providing unemployment benefits to combat veterans just returning from war.   All of the Senators earning an A+ or A ranking are Democrats, while almost all of the Senators who earned a D or lower grade are Republicans.  On the House side, most of the representatives earning an A+ or A are Democrats, while most of the D or lower grades went to Republicans.   Similar results can be seen in IAVA’s 2008 report, IAVA’s 2006 report, and a recent ranking from the Disabled American Veterans.

In short, the record is clear that, when it comes to supporting our troops, military families, and veterans, Democrats offer real action.  If you’d like to help push back on the conservative canard to the contrary, write a letter to your local newspaper editor thanking President Obama for his Stengthening Our Military Families initiative and the other steps that Democrats have taken to support our troops, military families, and veterans.

Here are links for submitting letters to the editor for national papers, and to newspapers in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,  Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Reader Mark M. writes to let us know that his following letter to the editor was published in both the Athens (Ohio) News and Athens Messenger.  Two things we especially like about this letter is that it frames the health care reforms as benefiting everyone in America, and it specifically names the local Democratic Congressperson (who, unfortunately, lost re-election) who voted for the legislation, and the two area Republicans who may vote next week to repeal it.

Thanks to the Dems in Congress for improving our health-care system

To the Editor:

Taking care of the sick and elderly is one of the most humane and decent functions of our society. The health-care reform legislation of 2010 passed by the Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Obama makes it easier for our nation to take care of our sick and elderly. Since we will all be elderly and sick someday, this law helps everyone in America.

Thank you, Charlie Wilson and the other Democrats in Congress, for taking a stand for all of us by voting to improve our health-care system. These improvements will prove very popular, and Republicans attack it at their political peril (in Appalachian Ohio, that means you, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gibbs).

This week, the following sections of the law go into effect:

• Health Insurance Companies Are Required to Spend Your Premiums on Providing Benefits: The new law requires that 85 percent of premiums for large plans (and 80 percent for medium- and small-sized plans) go toward providing health care, rather than more marketing and profits.
• Closing the Medicare Doughnut Hole:Under the Medicare prescription drug coverage program, which was established in 2005, millions of Americans are required to pay monthly premiums all year around, but lose coverage after incurring $2,700 in prescription expenses in a year. Coverage does not restart until the senior has spent $6,154. For seniors on fixed or limited incomes faced with significant prescription drug needs, this doughnut hole in coverage can pose a significant economic burden. Drug companies are now required to provide a 50-percent discount on the cost of drugs while seniors are in the doughnut hole. That discount will continue until 2020, when the doughnut hole will be entirely eliminated.
• Eliminating Medicare Preventive Services Co-Pays: In an effort to improve health and reduce long-term health-care costs, Medicare co-pays have now been eliminated for preventive services identified by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, including diabetes and cancer screenings, tobacco-use cessation counseling, and healthy diet counseling. Deductibles for colorectal cancer screening have also been eliminated.
• Saving Taxpayer Money: End of the unnecessary subsidy to privately run Medicare Advantage insurance plans, which receive 14 percent more taxpayer money than similar Medicare plans run by the government. This subsidy begins to be eliminated this year.

If you get a letter to the editor published, let us know and we may post it here.