Politico covered President Bill Clinton’s appearance for Blanche Lincoln and essentially outlined Clinton’s argument for why Arkansans should vote for Blanche Lincoln. Here is the essence of the former President’s argument:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Former President Bill Clinton returned to his home state Friday to help a beleaguered ally and delivered a broadside against some of the most powerful interests in the Democratic Party.

“Some of the most powerful interests in the Democratic Party”? Really? What about a former President, a sitting Senator, the entire national and state party establishment, all of her PAC support, her support from outside groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, and her huge battle chest? Again, we see those with the power claim to be the downtrodden underdogs.

Using unusually vivid language to describe the threat against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Clinton urged the voters who nurtured his career to resist outside forces bent on making an example out of the two-term Democratic incumbent.

He pounded the podium with Lincoln at his side, warning that national liberal and labor groups wanted to make her a “poster child” in the June 8 Senate run-off to send a message about what happens to Democrats who don’t toe the party line.

“This is about using you and manipulating your votes to terrify members of Congress and members of the Senate,” Clinton said in the gym of a small historically black college here.

…

Yet even though he lives in New York now, Clinton, who was governor here for 12 years, sought to prove he still knows how to reach Arkansans. Playing on both local pride and a wariness of outside influence, he suggested voters would be mere pawns for an agenda of party purification if they opposed Lincoln.

“If you want to be used that way, have at it,’ he said to about 200 Democrats at Philander Smith College, speaking without notes for 20 minutes.

Here’s the deal. Bill Halter would not have entered the race if three things didn’t happen in Arkansas. I stress “in Arkansas,” because that is what this race is really about.

Firstly, I have it on good authority that Bill Halter would not be in this race if we (Arkansans) had not begged him to. Quite literally, one of my friends actually got on knees and begged Bill Halter to run for US Senate. Beyond that, we gathered a group of nearly 1000 people, mostly from Arkansas, on facebook through online outreach and held events to let Bill Halter know that there were hundreds of Arkansans who felt strongly enough about him and their abandonment by Blanche Lincoln to fund and volunteer for his campaign.

Secondly, Blanche Lincoln was and still is extremely likely to lose in November. Bill Halter and many Arkansas Democrats realized this. We saw Bill Halter as our best chance to keep the seat Democratic in November. If we want to keep this seat, Bill Halter has to win the primary.

Thirdly, Blanche Lincoln made Arkansas Democrats (as well as Independents) angry. She didn’t do this simply by voting with or against the President or the national Democratic Party. The problem is that she voted against us. That is the problem here. Arkansans would not be voting her out if they didn’t feel like she had put other interests ahead of normal Arkansas working families, not the big businesses and big agri-businesses in Arkansas, but the rest of us. That is just the start.

The best example and most easily seen is her opposition to a public option. People, and you Mr. President, can make this about national groups all you want, but the truth is the opposite. Arkansans overwhelmingly supported a public option (55% to 38%). Blanche Lincoln claimed to support it until she was so far on the fringe, that she pledged to filibuster the entire health care bill over this one issue. At the very same time, highlighting the problem, her website stated that she supported a public option. She did this, I reiterate, as the state and her constituents supported the idea by a +17% margin. That poll was taken after the August town halls.

This isn’t about Blanche Lincoln and the party line. This is about Blanche Lincoln abandoning her constituents, her state party, her most ardent local supporters, and her principles (she previously supported it and her office lied to me personally on the matter) in order to either attempt to save her job (wrong move) and/or to satisfy the out of state insurance companies and other large special interest groups so that they would fund her reelection campaign. She has done this on issue after issue from health care to the environment to financial reform (voted against limiting credit card companies from ripping off their customers). I have heard stories from other Bill Halter supporters (her constituents) about issues ranging from the military to the environment where she lied to their faces before voting against them days later.

The national progressive groups like DailyKos, MoveOn.org, PCCC, and DFA along with the unions came in to support us when we needed them. Since working Arkansans were the ones to convince Bill Halter to run, we needed help to battle an entrenched establishment and an incumbent Senator with a $6,000,000+ battle chest. Sure, we here at Blue Arkansas are progressives and we agree a lot with the national groups, but we also see why Bill Halter is right for the rest of Arkansas. Bill Halter’s work for the free health clinics and the lottery scholarship show that he is willing to take action and fight the establishment and special interests to do what is right for the people of Arkansas. During the time when Blanche Lincoln was abandoning us, Bill Halter was highlighting why we so desperately needed health care reform. While the rest of the establishment in Arkansas was standing against the scholarship lottery, Halter got it passed by letting us decide.

And there we are. What this is really about is Democracy with a big ‘D.’

No one is manipulating us Mr. President, we begged Bill Halter to enter the race. It is in our best interests to elect him. If that happens to send a shock wave through the rest of the Washington D.C. establishment, all the better. They could use a good shock every now and then to keep them on their toes. Isn’t that exactly why we have a Democracy, to have the ability to challenge the already powerful in a peaceful and cyclic way?

Lincoln, smiling broadly after Clinton’s effusive endorsement, picked up where the former president left off, pleading with Arkansans not to take out their frustrations with the political status quo on her.

“My vote in Washington has never been for sale and yours shouldn’t be either,” she said.

And just as Clinton did, Lincoln suggested she was an undeserving victim of a general sense of electoral discontent– and that voters ought not to let such emotions dictate their votes.

“I was raised to learn that you do not use anger and hatred to try and solve your problems,” she said.

With all due respect Senator, we are not resorting to anger or hatred to solve our problem. We are resorting to the ballot box, something I thought all Americans understood. The seat isn’t yours, it is ours. We get to say who keeps it. By the look of things, if we want a Democrat in that seat, it will have to be Bill Halter. And that way, we will also have someone who is representing us and not the special interests.

I had a conversation with Senator Blanche Lincoln a few weeks ago. She surprisingly showed up to the end of the year University of Arkansas Young Democrats meeting in Fayetteville. Tons of candidates where there including many from Democratic primaries and even judicial candidates. Each gave a 10-15 second speech, just saying their name and what they were running for. Other than that, it was a meet and greet. However, Blanche Lincoln was not expected to attend. When she came in, she gave a good five minute speech as to why we should support her campaign. It was a nice off the cuff speech. After that, she wondered the room talking to individuals.

We had a pleasant conversation, although not without disagreement. I introduced myself by my full name and asked if she had heard of me. Since I was one of the admins of the Facebook group that attempted to draft Bill Halter into the race, I thought she might have been aware of our efforts. However, she did not recognize me. So, I fessed up and told her who I was and that I was a blogger from Blue Arkansas, a progressive leaning blog. I told her that we had already endorsed several candidates including Bill Halter. She asked me what issues we were pushing for on our blog. I listed a few, but emphasized that we were really formed around the health care debate and our support for a public option or Medicare buy-in. We then began to discuss the viability of a Medicare buy-in.

She said that she opposes a Medicare buy-in because she thinks it would cost more to buy a policy through Medicare than to get insurance from an insurance company. I was struck by this comment. No where in the public record did I remember Blanche Lincoln opposing a Medicare buy-in. Based on my memory, Joe Lieberman alone was the one who caused it to be taken out of the Senate bill. When I said this to her, she seemed confused herself and reiterated that she did not support a Medicare buy-in because of the cost an individual would have to pay for the policy compared to a private insurance policy.

Having recovered from my shock at hearing her oppose the Medicare buy-in, I asked her how that could be true. I told her that Medicare has a 3% overhead (no profits) while insurance companies make 15-20% of their premiums go to profits and overhead. She didn’t really have an answer for me. I also suggested that even if she were correct, that a Medicare policy would cost more, the quality of the policy would likely be better. She actually agreed with me there for an instant, agreeing that people who have Medicare generally like the quality of the policy. She then said that it was the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), not her, that argued that the Medicare buy-in would be more expensive, still not addressing the point that it would be a better policy. However, when looking at the CBO’s report, they simply mention it at the end of their report as a POSSIBILITY, not a probability. So, the claim the the CBO said it WOULD happen is incorrect. They simply said it might happen. Senator Lincoln’s argument that it WOULD happen is her own. This view also ignores all of the benefits such a plan would have.

From the CBO report, page 40:

An advantage of this option is that it would provide
health insurance coverage to some people who without it
would have been uninsured. In addition, the option
would reduce the cost of insurance for some individuals
who otherwise would have had private nongroup coverage.
Another advantage of the option is that the buy-in
program would provide better insurance coverage for
many individuals than would private nongroup policies
because it would not include any restrictions on coverage
for preexisting conditions. Providing such insurance coverage
for so-called near-elderly individuals who otherwise
would have been uninsured could lead to improvements
in their health—for example, through better management
of chronic diseases. (CBO did not estimate the
potential budgetary effect of such improvements in
health status, although better health could reduce Medicare’s
spending for those individuals after they turned 65.
However, such improvements in health status might also
reduce the number of people who died before turning 65,
which would increase outlays for Medicare. Little information
is available on the net effect of those countervailing
factors.)

A disadvantage of this option is that the ability to buy
Medicare coverage at age 62 would encourage some people
to retire earlier than they otherwise would have. Some
of those early retirees could face financial hardship in
later years because many people underestimate the financial
resources needed for retirement. In addition, because
the cost of the coverage would not be subsidized, many
low-income near-elderly people would continue to be
uninsured. A potential problem with this option is that
the amount of adverse selection that the program experienced
could be greater than anticipated, which would put
upward pressure on premiums and in turn reduce participation.
(The potential for adverse selection would be limited
in that the program would be offered only to individuals
ages 62 to 64, who are more similar to each other in
their health status and attitudes toward insurance than
are individuals in the general population.)

I actually suggested to her, that they could subsidize a Medicare buy-in, just as the government is subsidizing private health insurance and it would help such a problem. I also suggested that they could open up the Medicare buy-in to those with employers, which would prevent such POTENTIAL problems from occurring. However, she dismissed the ideas without giving reasons. At which point, I realized I was taking up quite a bit of her time and thanked her for the conversation, allowing her to move to others in the room.

After looking over the CBO report, it seems that the CBO was actually very positive about the idea. The only real draw back, according to the CBO, was that it might cost a slight reduction in revenues on the order of 1 billion over ten years. That is a drop in the bucket of the 700+ billion dollar health care reform bill. She seemed to ignore all the positives the CBO mentioned, including that the increased competition with the private industry would drive down prices for those who DON’T buy into Medicare.

I realized that this conversation was new information at the time, but did not realize its potential importance until seeing a poll of primary voters and their preferences for a Medicare buy-in yesterday.

DFA/Research 2000 – Arkansas Democratic Primary Voters

QUESTION: Do you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the opportunity to voluntarily buy into a system like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?

	FAVOR	OPPOSE	NOT SURE
ALL	77%	11%	12%
MEN	74%	13%	13%
WOMEN	80%	9%	11%
LINCOLN	78%	10%	12%
HALTER	87%	6%	7%

Are Lincoln voters, nearly 80% of which support a Medicare buy-in aware that their senator opposes it? Was she really in league with Joe Lieberman when he prevented it from being in the final bill? According to our conversation, she did not support it at the time either. Maybe she just let Lieberman take the fall.

Watch this:

No doubt about it, the votes are there to pass the public option in the U.S. Senate through reconciliation. Judging from the looks of things, a vote is coming on the Senate version of health care reform in the House next week. Whether the votes are there or not is a good question, and I admit that I don’t have the answer, though Pelosi seems to think they are. Here’s to hoping. If that bill passes and goes to the President, the next step (and it will be a step taking by the grassroots against the wishes of the political establishment) is to pass some kind of public option, most likely a Medicare buy-in of some sort. The chance to do so is there, and the fierce will to do this we’ve seen all across the country IS NOT going away.

Let’s see what happens with health care next week. I have to say though, things are looking up.

This is encouraging. Buried in a piece listing the candidates that have filed across Arkansas so far is this little nugget:

Cook said the top issues of his campaign will be “the economy, balancing the budget and jobs — trying to get jobs back here to Arkansas.”

Health care also will be an important issue in the campaign, Cook said.
“I’d like to have a better look at a public option of some type,” he said.

This sounds promising. So far, Chad Causey has run from the public option and his boss’s vote on health care reform. Ben Ponder, while striking a nice populist tone, hasn’t exactly been rushing to embrace it, at least so far. I have no idea where the other guys-Wooldridge, Bryles, and whoever else are.

Now I’m still not picking my guy just yet, but I must admit, I’m narrowing it down a ways, and Cook, to this point just another name in the race, is now firmly on my radar.

Almost forgot:Credit goes to reader Arrow for pointing this out to me!

Lincoln’s team decided to lash back at Bill Halter’s sudden surge today, and their line of attack more or less fell flat. There argument? He’s not really a progressive:

On his first day as a U.S. Senate candidate, Bill Halter has dodged and weaved on the very issue that his supporters are angry with U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln about, government-funded health care known as the public option.

But he cannot conceal the direct fund raising messages from the Washington-based liberal groups that are generating out-of-state cash for his campaign against Senator Lincoln. They claim he will be a champion for the public option. Compared to Senator Lincoln’s steady hand through months of turbulent health care debate last year, Halter has failed to fully answer numerous questions today about whether he favors a robust public option.

“Who does he think he’s fooling?” asked Lincoln’s campaign manager Steve Patterson. “Bill is going to find he can’t have it both ways. Either he is with the majority of Arkansans and opposed to the public option, like Senator Lincoln, or he is with the national liberal establishment that is angry with her right now.”

This line of attack is so laughable that having Halter in a general election contest is looking better and better. Kos takes this nonsense apart expertly, the bottom line being that Halter has been absolutely consistent in his support for a medicare-like public option that people can buy into, and as Kos points out he’s been better at selling this idea than the Democrats have as a whole.

And while we’re at it, if the Lincoln campaign wants to talk about consistency, perhaps we should remind them about Lincoln voicing support for the public option on her website while opposing it on the Senate floor.

A large group of organizations is mobilizing today to get 1,000,000 people to call congress and let them know that we want them to pass health care reform. Over 400,000 have done their civic duty so far today (as of 11:20 CST). (Over 500,000 as of 12:13 CST)

I signed up and gave a call to both Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. I told both that they should support passing Health Care Reform through reconciliation and told Pryor that he should support adding the Public Option back into the bill through reconciliation.

A neat little flash app shows you how many people are currently calling from each state:

Arkansas is showing about 2-4 people calling at a time. I think we can do better than that!

Arkansans have a greater influence on these votes since we have a lower population to senator ratio and because both of our senators are possible swing votes. Please make an effort to call today.

Sign in here – they will give you all the info you need:
http://pol.moveon.org/virtualmarch10/action.html?rc=vm.fb.11

You might also use their tools for posting it on facebook and twitter to spread the word.

Update:
Seems like word is getting around now as we are up to 2-8 Arkansans calling at a time. Try sending an email, updating your facebook and twitter status, or sending a message to your facebook friends. (Over 680,000 at 1:45 CST)

Update 2:
They hit 1,000,000 people! This was supposed to be a two day event, but they got there in one. I suspect they will keep it going through tomorrow. Maybe they can get 2,000,000 by tomorrow evening.

While Arkansas was not asked these questions, the pattern is clear:

http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/poll_national_20100220/

* In Nevada, only 34% support the Senate bill, while 56% support the public option.

* In Illinois, only 37% support the Senate bill, while 68% support the public option.

* In Washington State, only 38% support the Senate bill, while 65% support the public option.

* In Missouri, only 33% support the Senate bill, while 57% support the public option.

* In Virginia, only 36% support the Senate bill, while 61% support the public option.

* In Iowa, only 35% support the Senate bill, while 62% support the public option.

*In Minnesota, only 35% support the Senate bill, while 62% support the public option.

* In Colorado, only 32% support the Senate bill, while 58% support the public option.

Consistently, swing states show that the removal of the public option from the Senate bill has been disasterous for public support of the health care reform effort, despite “centrist” claims otherwise. Fortunately, that can be remedied through reconciliation. While Senator Lincoln has declared herself against the popular public option, Senator Pryor needs to hear from us that we want him to support passing health care reform through the reconciliation process and that the public option should be a part of that.

Call Pryor Now:
(202) 224-2353

Update:
Openleft is keeping a count on Senators for passing the public option through reconciliation. So far, there are 24 yes votes, 8 maybe votes, and 5 no votes with many yet to comment. Mark Pryor is listed as a MAYBE vote. That means we can have a major impact on this one.

Finally, after letting the House and Senate muck things up for a year, President Obama has stepped forward with a health care proposal to reconcile the difference between the House and Senate bills, which you can read here.

Now, the bad news. The bill doesn’t include a public option, at least not as of yet. Harry Reid, however, is willing to craft a public option that will pass through the reconciliation process (being a budgetary process, reconciliation requires some special legislative mojo). That’s why it’s so important to pressure Senator Pryor now!

Call his office:

(202) 224-2353

Tell him to support health care reform and the public option through reconciliation.

It’s time to start calling Senator Mark Pryor’s office and to keep calling through the week.  The goal is simple-get him to support reconciliation for health care reform.  Here’s his number:

(202) 224-2353

Don’t know what to say?  It’s simple.  Just speak from the heart.  If you have a health care story of your own, and most of us do by now, share it.  Tell his staff that you want Pryor to support the budget reconciliation effort on health care reform so that the bill can’t be fillibustered, and while you’re at it tell him the importance of having a public option to guarantee competition, and that it’s not right to have an individual mandate that forces us all to buy insurance without a public option to keep the costs down.  Make it clear that you will remember this vote and tell them it’s a matter of siding with us or with the big insurance companies.

We have a window of opportunity here.  It looked as if health care reform was dead after the election in Massachusetts.  Now we’re finally doing what we should have done in the first place, passing the bill through reconciliation over the howls of Republicans, big insurance companies, and Blue Dogs like Blanche Lincoln.  (Can you imagine the look on her face if we get Pryor to issue a statement of support?)  Remember, people in need are counting on all of us to keep the pressure on and get this done.  Their lives are literally depending on it, and that’s why we can’t give up.

So call Senator Pryor.  Tell him to stand with us and the people of Arkansas.

Harry Reid is officially open to passing health care through reconciliation, with a public option.  But for that to happen, we have to get to fifty votes.  We can officially scratch off th forty one Republicans, plus Lieberman and  Ben Nelson.  I’d wager Mary Landreu is on that list as well.  And of course we all realize by now that Blanche Lincoln is a lost cause.  So, assuming all other Democrats vote as a block, we’d have fifty five votes.  But we can’t afford to risk losing any.  That’s why we’ve got to push for Mark Pryor to get onboard.

As I said, we all know we’re not going to get anywhere with Lincoln, so let’s not waste our breath on her.  Instead, let’s focus on our other senator, the one that’s kept his head down and stayed out of this mess for the most part.  Now I will be the first to say that Pryor is of about the same stripe Lincoln is, though to different degrees.  Pryor is more conservative on the abortion issue than Lincoln, but in other areas he hasn’t demonstrated a willingness to lurch near as far to the right.  Granted, that’s because he isn’t up for reelection in 2014, but hey, we’ll work with what they give us, right?

So let’s put some pressure on our junior senator to get this bill passed, with a public option.  There is a good chance that it won’t pay off, but we should still try as the people depending on reform are counting on us.  Pryor has been generally supportive of health care reform so far, so there is some hope that we’ll get through.  As such, we have to make an effort.  And if he won’t stand with us, we’ll be prepared to find someone else who will in 2014.

So, starting Monday and going through the week, let’s try to get Pryor onboard with the effort.  Here’s his D.C. office’s number:

(202) 224-2353

In a statement, Blanche Lincoln joined Ben Nelson (NE) and Evan Bayh opposing the use of reconciliation to pass a fix to the Senate health care reform bill.

This is really the only way a health care bill could possibly be passed at this point. So, after voting for passage, Lincoln wishes to prevent even the current bill from passing.

The Hill

Democrats have been considering a number of options on how to pass their health care bill since losing their filibuster-proof majority in Massachusetts’s special election last Tuesday.

One of the emerging options would be for the House to pass a “sidecar” bill making fixes to the Senate’s original health care bill, and then sending the fixes to the Senate to pass under reconciliation, which would require a simple, 51-vote majority [fixed].

This option requiring only 51 votes (reconciliation), is the only way a comprehensive health care bill will pass since Democrats would never be able to have another vote and get one Republican to sign on. It is simply fantasy to suggest otherwise. Of course, the current bill passed by the Senate has too many problems that need fixing still. That is why the House refuses to pass it until the Senate agrees to fix the bill. However, that would require another 60 vote threshold that the Senate cannot make. Therefore, the only way to fix the bill is to pass it through reconciliation.

The Hill

“I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes,” she said in a statement. “I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans.”

Arkansas wants a Public Option and Blanche Lincoln keeps putting words in Arkansans’ mouths. A public option could pass the reconciliation process, as it only requires 51 votes or 50 votes and Joe Biden’s tiebreaking vote. A Medicare expansion would likely have this much support as well. For more on this, see my post.