I don't understand why Obama and his staff don't get it--they are falling between two stools in their attempt to appeal to a mushy middle. People don't want a peacemaker, at this point. They either want him out, or they want vengeance, or they want help. If I were Obama and his team I'd pick a side, any side, but I'd prefer he'd "dance with the ones that brung him" and grasp that you can't please everyone so you might as well please your friends. [my emphasis]

... even when Obama was pretending to draw back from the negotiations he was, or should have understood himself to be, at the center of the negotiations. And because the Republican side was really using the entire debate as a form of refighting the election campaign he (and his advisors) should have realized it was a zero sum game. If the President and his plan wins the Republicans have to be understood to have lost. If the Republicans win--on any level, no matter how small (van Jones?) the Democrats lose. They lose face, and they lose their historic chance to fix the broken system.

Obama may have figured this out too late. Frankly, I doubt he's figured it out at all. ... But whether or not Obama has figured out that "face" and "authority" are not things you can delegate to Congress the moment is fast approaching when reality hits face. And its not going to be pretty. [my emphasis]

Yes, without a Robust Public Option we are indeed heading into a destructive death spiral in which the poor, the unemployed, the working class are forced to pay large sums they don't have to insurance companies for "junk insurance" with high deductibles. In addition, the taxpayer will be socked with the task of a) monitoring and punishing the bewildered newly mandated insurance payer, b) paying the minimal subsidies, and c) debating how much care poor people should be entitled to. This has been a simple answer to simple question. This is why "the left" has been so fussy about the Public Option. This is why we are so angry that Obama allowed the Public Discussion to fall so far from real life and real language. People need health care. They need air. And they need water. It must be accessible, or it must be provided. Failure to do so kills people.

1. The exceptionally traumatic experience of the Great War of 1914-18, now known as the First World War.
2. A major misjudgment of "the nature of the Nazi regime and Hitler's strategic ambitions".
3. France's inflexibility in military policy, more particularly its rigid conviction that in no circumstances should it initiate an attack on a major power and its lack of military capacity to do so (it was scarcely so scrupulous with colonies) - in this regard France's allowing Germany to re-ccupy the Rhineland in 1936 was "an irreperable blow to French prestige".
4. British strategic overreach with its worldwide empire, which among other things created incentives for Britain to avoid European war - "Britain's mainfest strategic overstretch was a major factor in Hitelr's judgment of British willingness to use force against him."
5. France's strategic dependence on Britain.
6. Misgivings especially in Britain over the mistakes of the Versailles Treaty that ended the Great War, among them being rejection of the principle of self-determination for Germans in Austria and the Sudentenland (in Czechoslovakia); as noted above, up until the seizure of rump Czechoslovakia in early 1939, Hitler Germany's military conquests could be seen as efforts to reunite the core German lands and population.
7. Overestimation of the power of strategic bombing and overestimation of Germany's air force capacity (thanks in no small part to the reports of Hitler's admirer Charles Lindberg); such threat inflation is scarcely unknown today, and not just in the Iraq War - it was a chronic feature of American Cold War policies.
8. Public opinion in Britain and France was opposed to war; neither the publics nor the governments were looking for excuses to go to war, they were trying to avoid another European war, in itself an healthy instinct.
9. American isolationism, which minimized American involvement in European power politics.
10. Fear of Communism and the USSR.

The last but by no means least factor contributing to appeasement was distrust of the Soviet Union and fear of Communism. The alternative to appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s was the formation of the kind of grand alliance that crushed Nazi Germany 1945. This alternative, however, was never more than theoretical until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and declared war on the United States the following December. Domestic politics precluded war or military alliance with threatened states in Europe as voluntary policy choices for the United States. But this was not the case for the Soviet Union, which Hitler both reviled and targeted for German racial expansion. Stalin clearly understood Nazi Germany for the deadly foe it was, and in 1934 the Soviet Union entered an alliance with France as a means of checking German expansionism. Russia and France had been close allies against Imperial Germany, and the Soviet Union in the 1930s constituted the only great power east of Germany. It fielded the largest standing army in Europe and possessed war production potential second only to that of the United States. The same logic that underlay the Anglo-French-Russian alliance of World War I against Imperial Germany applied to stopping Hitler from plunging Europe into another world war, and this logic should have been glaringly apparent after Hitler removed any doubt over his trustworthiness and territorial intentions by invading what remained of Czechoslovakia after Munich.

O'Hanlon, a well-connected, ultra-hawkish Democrat who backed the war in Iraq, said that the chances that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will lead congressional opposition to the war in Afghanistan in 2009-2010 are zero. "Congress will not pull the rug out from under Barack Obama, before the mid-term elections," he asserted, calling the very idea "unthinkable" and "political suicide."

O'Hanlon, who had just returned from Afghanistan, acknowledged that McChrystal is "fully aware that, right now, America is not winning this war." But he gently scolded Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs, for saying that the war is "deteriorating." If Mullen goes around saying that in public, even after the addition of 21,000 US troops in 2009, he makes it harder to convince Americans that the war is winnable. O'Hanlon strongly favors adding yet more troops, but he didn't provide numbers on how many forces the US will need ultimately. If the United States can turn things around, "In four to five years we will be able to substantially downsize." [my emphasis]

Sadly, like Richard Holbrooke, who two weeks ago told a Washington audience that he can't define victory, none of the panelists bothered to explain what victory might look like either - only that it will take a decade or more to get there.

A key point of the Heritage Foundation presenters ... is that it is critical for the White House to shore up declining political support for the war -- which is already opposed by a majority of Americans, who've told pollsters the war isn't worth fighting. So the White House is caught between two bad options: if it continues to gloss over problems like the fraudulent election, it will develop a Vietnam-like credibility gap as the truth becomes clear. But if Obama tells the truth, an American public already soured on a hopeless war against a vaguely defined enemy ten thousand miles away, with rising US casualties and the prospect of spending hundreds of billions of dollars, is very likely to decide that it's long past time to get out.

Here's the reality: First, if we leave Afghanistan, the Taliban may or may not take over. Most of the Afghan population hates the Taliban, and the non-Pashtun minorities won't roll over and accept a Taliban victory even if we aren't there to fight alongside them. Second, even if the Taliban do take over, or set up a statelet in the south (consolidating areas already under their control), they may or may not invite Al Qaeda to join them. Al Qaeda already has a base, in Pakistan, and so far they've been unable to use that base to attack much of anything outside the war zone. Besides, the Taliban isn't the same thing as Al Qaeda, and they may find it politic not to re-ally with Osama bin Laden's terrorist band. And third, Taliban-style Islam and Al Qaeda-style terrorism is fast losing support among Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, and there's zero evidence that the re-establishment of a Taliban state in Afghanistan would do much, if anything, to excite Muslims. In fact, it's easier to make the argument that radical Muslim extremists are energized by the US presence in Afghanistan and the concomitant jihad, and that a US withdrawal from Afghanistan would calm passions, not inflame them.

Those facts didn't prevent the team at Heritage -- like the team at Brookings two days ago -- from issuing dire warnings about cataclysms to come if the US doesn't prevail. [my emphasis]

General [David] Barno, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2003-2005, stressed in his presentation the importance of domestic US propaganda for the war, saying that a key to the success of the US enterprise in Afghanistan is to "rebuild popular support" for a sustained US effort. Barno's main argument was that the Taliban's strategy is to "run out the clock" -- yes, he used a football analogy! In other words, the Taliban expect that US political support for the war will force a US withdrawal before we can "succeed." (I wanted to ask him if he was aware that precisely the same analogy was used in Vietnam, that the Viet Cong and Hanoi wanted to outlast the US invasion. How ironic.) Okay so far, I guess: but then Barno moved dangerously close to the Republican right's line that anyone who doesn't support the stay-the-quagmire policy is committing treason. "The idea of an exit strategy," said Barno, "plays into the hands of the Taliban strategy." That, to me, is an outrageous affront, as if differing political views about the war are "playing into the hands of the Taliban." Barno should be ashamed oh himself! But he's not. He really believes this crap.

Needless to say, it was the far right, the neoconservatives, and the Reaganauts who spent billions of dollars to support the Islamist nutcases in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Today, they're very upset about acid-in-the-face, burka-imposing, Koran-thumping Talibans. But a generation ago, these very same acid-in-the-face, burka-imposing, Koran-thumping thugs were our anti-Soviet freedom fighters. No apologies were heard at Heritage.

Comic relief at the Heritage Foundation event was provided by David Isby, a self-described "military expert" and apparent loony right-winger. His two gems: (1) "We need a relationship with Afghanistan like that we have with Israel." And (2) "Every mosque in Afghanistan on Friday preaches propaganda for the enemy." Leaving aside his idiotic comment No, 1, and taking up the second idiotic comment, Isby seems to believe that the problem in Afghanistan is that the people who live there are Muslims. He proposed some cockamamie idea about how America could help reinvent Islam in Afghanistan -- a proposal that, if the Taliban got ahold of it, would adorn every recruiting poster they print. (I know that they don't actually produce recruiting posters. It's a metaphor.)

Labor leaders drew a line in the sand today, saying a health care reform bill must include three specific elements -- including a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or "public option" -- in order to win their support. ...

Every day people are drowning from the cost of health care," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.

Richard Trumka, who will replace Sweeney as president in a couple of weeks, said there are "three absolute musts" for health care: the public option, an employer mandate, and no taxes on employer-provided health care.

"That means we won't support the bill if it doesn't have the public option in it," Trumka said.

He alluded to his earlier assertion that lawmakers will pay a political price if they do not support the public option.

"We're going to tell our members the truth, who stood with them," he said. [my emphasis]

Reducing the cost of the bill either keeps more people off Medicaid or reduces the subsidies, making forced insurance under an individual mandate unaffordable. You would have to pull back from subsidies at 400% of the federal poverty level to something like 200%, and probably not expand Medicaid at all (the House bills call for expansion to 133% FPL, the Senate HELP bill ups it to 150%). There’s this notion that bloggers and progressive groups don’t care about the poor, but we’re not writing the bill, and kowtowing to the lunatic moderates who put a price tag above morality except when talking about war. I have understood from the start that the coverage expansion elements of the bill were crucially important, and the same thinking that artificially lowered the stimulus cost to the detriment of state budgets and public investment would doom the coverage expansion elements.

Furthermore, insurance companies have sought to reduce the percentage of premiums they would have to spend on health care, and how much of that cost they would push off to customers (Insurers would have to pick up at least 76% of care in the House bills, but 65% in the Senate Finance draft, according to reports). While the public option remains crucial, these coverage expansion policies and insurance regulation also must be demanded as the minimum requirement for liberal support of the bill. [my emphasis]

Stephanopoulos is very plugged in, and so this could very well be the discussion at the White House. Who apparently have yet to figure out that forcing millions of Americans into buying crappy insurance that can only come from private industry will be so massively unpopular that, if Republicans don’t repeal it, Democrats will be forced to themselves. That would be the quickest and easiest way possible to squander the majority, which at times I think is the Washington Democratic establishment’s metier. [my emphasis]

Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess. And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said. ...

On health care, Obama’s willingness to forgo the public option is sure to anger his party’s liberal base. But some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers if they argue they would rather have no health care law than an incremental one. The confrontation would allow Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.

“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.” [my emphasis]

The most important difference between America's Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right has discipline. Obama and progressive supporters of health care were outmaneuvered in August -- not because the right had any better idea for solving the health care mess but because the rights' attack on the Democrats' idea was far more disciplined than was the Democrats' ability to sell it.

I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was no single idea. Obama never sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile, congressional Dems were so creative and undisciplined before the August recess they came up with a kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence served as an open invitation to the Republican right to focus with great precision on convincing the public of their own demonic version of what the Democrats were up to -- that it would take away their Medicare, require "death panels," raise their taxes, and lead to a government takeover of medicine, and so on. The Obama White House -- a veritable idea factory brimming with ingenuity -- thereafter proved unable to come up with a single, convincing narrative to counteract this right-wing hokum. ...

You want to know why the left has ideas and the right has discipline? Because people who like ideas and dislike authority tend to identify with the Democratic left, while people who feel threatened by new ideas and more comfortable in a disciplined and ordered world tend to identify with the Republican right. Democrats and progressives let a thousand flowers bloom. Republicans and the right issue directives. This has been the yin and yang of American politics and culture. But it means that the Democratic left's new ideas often fall victim to its own notorious lack of organization and to the right's highly-organized fear mongering. [my emphasis]

The most dangerous deficit that the United States faces is not the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It is the Democrats' demagogy deficit.

While the right was rejecting its gloomy elitism and embracing the mass society and populist politics, liberalism was moving in the other direction. Liberal intellectuals, shocked by McCarthyism and the rejection by the voters of the urbane Adlai Stevenson for Dwight Eisenhower, concluded that the American people themselves were the problem. In "The Age of Reform" and other works, the influential liberal historian Richard Hofstadter argued that the Progressive and Populist movements, far from being the precursors of New Deal liberalism, were reactionary movements by downwardly mobile professionals or farmers suffering from "status anxiety." Seymour Martin Lipset and other sociologists and historians including Daniel Bell and Peter Viereck argued that many members of the working class had "authoritarian personalities" and that populism here as in Europe could lead to fascism. Although more accurate historians and pollsters demolished their caricature of working-class Americans as proto-Nazis suffering from "status anxiety," the damage had been done. The New Left of the 1970s and 1980s, clashing with socially conservative blue-collar "hard-hats," were if anything even more hostile to the white working class, and sought allies instead among blacks, immigrants and various "social movements," most of them staffed and run by members of the college-educated upper middle class.

Whereas progressives and populists alike had been able to invoke the people against the interests, the mid-century liberals and many of their successors on the center-left to this day fear the people even more than they fear the interests. They worry that if liberals rile up the crowd against Wall Street, the rampaging mob, like the torch-bearing Transylvanian villagers in the old Universal Pictures Frankenstein movies, might turn on the universities or carry out political pogroms against minorities.

The ultimate responsibility for this sorry state of affairs belongs with the president, who vacillates between speaking out boldly for a “public option,” and permitting his aides and appointees to undermine his message by confiding their plans to sell out. His worst tendency, to exalt bipartisan compromise above progressive policy, has left him at the mercy of senatorial frauds like Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who pretended to negotiate over details while denouncing the president for seeking to terminate America’s grandmothers. He assigned far too much responsibility for health care reform to aides who exacerbate that weakness—and in particular to Rahm Emanuel, the current chief of staff and former congressman from Chicago.

Every mistake made by the Obama White House in the pursuit of health care reform can be traced to the political style and ideological prejudices of Mr. Emanuel, who has sought to intimidate progressives and empower conservatives, always in the name of winning elections and “getting things done.” [my emphasis]