Kenosha News

WASHINGTON -- They might have the WH and Congress, but progressives - gathered this week for a four-day conference billed as "America's Future Now!" - aren't universally pleased with the Obama administration.

As a coalition of liberal groups announced their union today behind an unprecedented $82M grassroots and advertising campaign to push for health care reform, some consternation remains in the Democratic base about if Pres. Obama is pursuing a sweeping enough package. Others expressed dismay with his decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

During the question and answer portion of a panel about "The progressive movement in the Age of Obama," held at the Omni Shoreham and featuring Organizing for America director Mitch Stewart and Change to Win chair Anna Burger, among others, Burger was interrupted by a female audience member who barked from the darkened ballroom: "Why not single-payer?"

"It would be great to have single-payer, but I don't think that's going to happen this year," she said, adding that whatever plan is ultimately adopted, Democrats seem to be moving toward a public option plan that allows people to opt out of the system, will make a difference in people's lives.

A few minutes later, Deepak Bhargava, with the Center for Community Change, interjected, "I think many of us think the single payer system would be the best system," he said, drawing enthusiastic applause from many activists in the room.

But then he pivoted. "It is a step on the path," he said.

A step isn't enough for everyone. After eight years of assailing Pres. Bush's leadership, progressives are regrouping in an effort to leverage their newfound fortune - a WH in Dem hands and a Senate just one-vote shy of a filibuster-proof majority. They even had to change the past name of the annual confab from "Take Back America."

Some today sounded a broad caution that progressives shouldn't quiet their call for change just because Obama is at the helm or Congress is dominated by members of the president's party.

The best gift the left can give Obama, said MoveOn.org's Ilyse Hogue, is a "vibrant, vocal progressive movement."

While Roger Hickey of Campaign for America's future suggested that an "inside and outside strategy" modeled on the civil rights era efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pres. Johnson in the 60s, will help the Democrats shepherd their policy plans through Congress, Hogue suggested the entire movement shouldn't fall in line behind consensus proposals if they don't go far enough or Democrats just because they're Democrats. She named Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), in particular, as one whose stance on the Employee Free Choice Act remains in question.

"With all respect to Roger, I think our job is not to be inside or outside," she said. "It's to take the doors off the hinges and smash the walls down."

Progressives have reason so far to be pleased with Obama. From his public support for "card check," as EFCA is called, to his signature of a new equal pay law, he is making good on several campaign promises. But health care - and the shape of the plan he ultimately endorses - could create a fault line in the movement of people who worked so intensely to elect a one-term junior senator from IL.

Much of the focus of this week's conference seems to be creating unanimity behind shared goals - even if not all can be achieved. A video of Obama addressing the group in '06 and '07 was played for the crowd.

"It's going to be because of you that we take our country back," he said, at a past conference. The clip was set to upbeat music.

And several participants mentioned Obama's background as a community organizer. The message to attendees, of course, was that he knows what you do, he's done it himself, and he knows how critical it is to getting approval for his agenda.

But during that same question and answer session, a male audience member yelled, "Afghanistan!" apropos of nothing being discussed.

So for some on the left, the president isn't fulfilling all of his campaign promises and is starting to disappoint. Others suggest any divide is overstated. Hogue, for one, said that the media loves to fan the flames of "hot Dem on Dem action," as she called it.

"The famous firing squad in a circle, I don't think we're anywhere near that," said Helen Brunner, a DC resident attending the conference.

Change to Win's Burger put it differently. "Are there days when I wake up and think, could he have done more or could he be further out there? Absolutely." She said there will be more days like that, but noted still that Obama is a "transformational" president.

"We have to make him successful," she said. "We have to make him the best that he can be."

As for that massive push for health care reform, the groups supporting the effort include Health Care for America Now, the AFL-CIO and Change To Win, the Children's Defense Fund, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, Rock the Vote, National Women's Law Center, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Democracy for America. The money will be used for grassroots organizing (troops are already on the ground in 46 states) and a sizeable advertising campaign.

During a lunchtime press conference, Howard Dean, recent past chair of the DNC and a doctor, said that it's more important to have a public plan than a bipartisan plan. "Bipartisan," he said, "is not an end in and of itself."

He said that Republicans haven't helped Obama with the stimulus package nor do they seem poised to offer an assist with approving his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation's highest court.

"If they're in there to shill for the insurance companies, I think we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said, suggesting that it be accomplished via budget reconciliation.

Dean added: "The American people voted for real change. They knew exactly what he was proposing when he was on the campaign trail."

(JENNIFER SKALKA)

Just last week, Denver Post and Reason.com columnist David Harsanyi asked, "Is The Abortion Debate Changing?" Based on a recent Gallup Poll, which found that a majority of Americans considered themselves "pro-life" for the first time since the question started being asked in 1995, Harsanyi suggested "that Americans are getting past the politics and into the morality of the issue" after decades of legalized abortion. And, he argued, the morality of abortion is a lot more complicated than most pro- or anti-abortion slogans let on.

Earlier today, in response to killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, Jacob Sullum asked why anti-abortion activists rushed to condemn the death of a man who by their own accounts was slaughtering innocents. Jacob understands why the activists might say that, but argues that it's really a tactical response: That they need to distance themselves from murderous extremists.

So what do Reason readers think? Will the killing of George Tiller push more Americans to identify as pro-life? Or will it push voters in the other direction? Does it matter that Tiller was known for doing late-term abortions, which are statistically rare but gruesome?

You go back to that Gallup Poll and one thing sticks out on the basic question of whether abortion should be legal under some circumstances: Since 1976, the percentage answering yes has been around 50 percent or higher (there are a few years where it dipped into the high 40s). That is, it's been pretty stable at or around a majority number.

And the percentage of people saying abortion should be illegal under all circumstances has rarely cracked the 20 percent figure (though it has again in recent years). Similarly, the percentage saying abortion should be legal under all circumstances, which peaked at 34 percent in the early 1990s, has always been a minority position (which currently stands at 22 percent and has been dropping lately).

I suspect that as abortion becomes rarer (as Reason's Ron Bailey pointed out in 2006, abortion has been getting rarer since the 1990s and also occurs earlier in pregnancies than before), it's quite possible that the either/or positions might change, but that their movement will have little effect on the middle position of abortion staying legal under some circumstances. Even those, such as Harsanyi, who is plainly troubled by the logic of abortion, generally concede that prohibition would cause more problems than it would fix ("I also believe a government ban on abortion would only criminalize the procedure and do little to mitigate the number of abortions.").

Back in 2003, on the occasion of Roe v. Wade's 30th anniversary, I argued that regarding abortion the country had reached a consensus that

has little to do with morality per se, much less with enforcing a single standard of morality. It's about a workable, pragmatic compromise that allows people to live their lives on their own terms and peaceably argue for their point of view....

This isn't to say that the debate about abortion is "over"-or that laws governing the specifics of abortion won't continue to change over time in ways that bother ardent pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike. But taking a longer view, it does seem as if the extremes of the abortion debate - extremes that included incendiary language (including calls for the murder of abortion providers) - have largely subsided in the wake of a widely accepted consensus. Part of this is surely due to the massive increases in reproduction technologies that allow women far more control over all aspects of their bodies (even as some of those technologies challenge conventional definitions of human life).

That isn't an outcome that is particularly satisfying to activists on either side of the issue or to people who want something approaching rational analysis in public policy. But it's still where we're at and it's unlikely the Tiller case will do much to move things one way or the other. The one thing that would likely change it would be if there was a massive shift toward later-term abortions, which seems unlikely based on long-term trendlines and technological innovations.