Interestingly enough, 3% more respondants to the SurveyUSA poll didn't know who Novick is compared to Merkley. That's the same percentage of difference in the margins quoted above.

It's also within the margin of error. One thing I have consistently said from the start is that the primary will help whomever emerges. It helps both of them get some name recognition, and it also allows them to talk about the issues that matter to Dems before getting to the general.

Though it's worth iterating that the candidates better both run with some mind toward the future. With regard to immigration, there's a serious liberal issue here that's not related to the covert bigotry you see in some of the native anti-immgrant folks: labor. The system we have now creates an unprotected, unregulated, and underpaid labor class that drives down wages of citizens.

margin of error. Basically at this point both poll as generic Ds with basically 70% of polled not knowing who either was. What you are seeing is just the margin of error. What really matters for these polls is the possibility of growth. The way to do that is to take an initial reading then read the bio of the d and see where that gets you. I would strongly suspect that thats where Merkley will pull far ahead of novick. the susa poll also doesn't survey likely voters so its value is severely limited in projecting what the results of an election would be if a D had the time to establish themselves and increase their name recognition.

Wait a minute. I'm confused.

In July, the Novick campaign said their name-id was at 46%.

But now, it's only at 29%?

Either some 17% of Oregonians have managed to forget who Steve Novick is - or their original poll was suspect.

Oh yeah, that was the poll that showed grocery-store founder Eileen Brady with 43% name ID.

Never mind.

Interesting... Smith has better favorability marks than either Reid or Pelosi, and proportionately better marks than his Democratic challengers, but this poll shows that he's in "serious trouble?"

Pollyanna is running roughshod on your analysis, dude. Seriously.

These are the numbers to focus on:

Smith holds 80% of the GOP base against Merkley and holds 79% of the GOP base against Novick. By comparison: Merkley holds 67% and Novick holds 66% of the Democratic base.

Unless the Democrats can move those numbers significantly (in the course of a campaign where they will be outspent 2 or 3 to 1), Gordon is going to win by a comfortable margin.

Kari, it seems pretty clear that Novick's poll heavily oversampled the Portland metro area.

The most interesting things about the polling I've seen to date is that Novick seems to do slightly better head-to-head against Smith than does Merkley and that generic Democrats tend to do better than real ones unless the Democrat is named "DeFazio".

Mike: I agree with you about the war. Voters aren't going to trust Democrats to end the war given the fact that the Democrats have generally failed to live up to their campaign promises from 2006. Rightly or wrongly, Gordon probably has as much credibility as either of his Democratic challengers on the war. I don't believe that most voters agree with the Republican position on immigration. The fact that voters see illegal immigration as a problem does not mean that most of them agree with the GOP's "solution".

...some want to crack down on illegal immigration (advantage Republican).

I hope you're wrong on that assumption, Jeff. As Marie Cocco wrote for the WaPo on Friday, "Republicans and a shrill conservative chorus intend to make Hispanic illegal immigrants the Willie Hortons of 2008."

If the Dems can't figure out how to face this issue, this is the sneaker wave that can swamp us in '08.

What I find interesting is that the top Dem candidates seem to be talking a lot about healthcare, but according to the polls, not many people think of that as a top issue. ... Many more libs are against illegal immigration than the Dems realize.

Actually, this is one where it's interesting to dig into the crosstabs.

Conservatives: 42% Immigration 22% Terrorism 10% Economy 9% Iraq

Moderates: 23% Iraq 19% Health Care 14% Terrorism 12% Immigration 10% Economy 10% Education

Liberals: 35% Iraq 19% Environment 13% Health Care 10% Economy 9% Education

It seems to me that the for of the question - which one issue - necessarily drives the answer.

Liberals are so focused on ending the war in Iraq that the rest of the issues get short-shrifted. Conversely, conservatives are so focused on pretending that Iraq isn't an issue - and they don't like health care or education or environment - that they're landing on immigration (and somewhat less, terrorism) as an answer to the question.

I think if you asked people what their top three issues were, you'd see health care jump right to the top - behind Iraq.

Well, this certainly damages the "aura of inevitability" that the Merkley campaign was trying to cultivate. Maybe now we'll get to see some real debates between the two of them, not just pseudo-"joint appearances."

Considering the way the Party Establishment (both State and National) has been throwing their weight around, Merkley should have had a much better showing in this poll. Goes to show that endorsements are nice, but they don't win elections.

Trishka... As you know, there was a long discussion about Novick and health care on this thread over the weekend.

You're the second person to paraphrase Steve that way, but it doesn't seem to square with what's on his website - which is not that it's "not politically viable" but rather that "there are legitimate concerns that switching to a single payer system immediately would be disruptive"

The political answer suggests that he'd be the 51st vote if there were 50 others. The latter answers suggests that he wouldn't be the 51st vote, because he'd have substantive concerns.

Personally, I agree with Steve almost exactly here. If we were founding a new civilization, single-payer would be the way to go. But we're not - we're reforming the system that exists in America in 2007.

I find it interesting that so many of his supporters are confused about his position and think it's further left and more radical than it really is.

This is a rich and fascinating discussion. Nice to see people digging into the numbers.

Sal,

Interesting... Smith has better favorability marks than either Reid or Pelosi, and proportionately better marks than his Democratic challengers, but this poll shows that he's in "serious trouble?"

I think you're comparing apples and oranges. The Smith numbers are constituents, but national approval numbers on Pelosi and Reid are irrelevant unless you have district polling on Pelosi and Nevada polling on Reid.

He's in serious trouble because he's dropped 13% in less than a year and 16% more of the electorate is agin' him or looking than is for him. I don't actually think this is a partisan take: I think any political hack would agree that these numbers show pretty serious weakness for a sitting incumbent. Now, that doesn't mean the Dems will seize the day and turn the voter discontent their direction; clearly, with two-thirds of Dems unfamiliar with them, it's way to early to speculate on that.

Mike,

The fact remains, that of the hundreds of middle class liberals I know and talk to, not ONE is interested in the Dems amnesty plan. Not a single one. To us, it is simply a matter of "law and order."

Just to be clear, that amnesty plan was Bush's. Two comments: I personally think you're dead wrong on the issue, but I also think your view is worth worrying about. The reason you're dead wrong is because the issue absolutely isn't "law and order." We have had a de facto law allowing illegals in the country on a wink-and-nod guest-worker program. It has been bad for the immigrants and bad for workers. This posture issues from the pro-business wing of the GOP, not the Democratic Party.

I'm worried because I think folks like you won't penalize the people responsible--you'll penalize the responsible people trying to fix the problem. As a matter of governance, you have to deal with ten million people. If part of the electorate is going to stop up their ears and ignore the realities of this until you parrot back some unenforceable hard line, we're going to continue to have confused immigration policy.

That's why I think liberals should approach it from the point of view of American workers. Truth is, I don't think we'll ever win your vote, but we can appeal to people who want to get paid a reasonable wage and find it hard to do in parts of rural America because of an illegal workforce. Chuck Butcher could tell us something about that.

And for that reason, I hope Kari's right about the immigration-issue folks. Even so, it's best not to be cavalier.

You can take this for what it is, but I think you might be wrong on how liberals feel about illegal immigration.

Interesting. I haven't actually said how anyone feels about immigration, only that the fact that people agree that there is a problem does not necessarily mean that a majority favors the so-called "solution" that groups like OFIR are offering.

I don't like illegal immigration. Does that mean that I believe that children should be kept out of schools or that people should be kept out of our hospitals as groups like OFIR propose?

Do most Americans agree that the solution to illegal immigration is to limit legal immigration to less than 1 percent of what it is today, as OFIR proposes?

Those are the hard line Republican positions on immigration.

They are, with due respect, ignorant positions that are devoid of any of the basic decency that have contributed to the greatness of Oregon and America. I doubt if more than 20-30 percent of the people of this state, or of the American people agree with them.

The problem on this issue is that most of the politicians, even those who are of good conscience are afraid to step in front of "a moving train".

The first major thing that Tom McCall did in politics was to fight for the rights of migrant workers. Could a politician from either party win a nomination by taking up that fight today?

Perhaps not. But it is a fight that is well worth having.

"Interesting... Smith has better favorability marks than either Reid or Pelosi, and proportionately better marks than his Democratic challengers, but this poll shows that he's in "serious trouble?""

Any polling showing an incumbent below 50% shows an incumbent in trouble. The further away from the election that you are when he dips below 50%, the more vulnerable. The further below 50%, the more vulnerable.

And a 30% definitie re-elect is absolutely for shit...and as was noted, is DOWN from already bad numbers this summer.

This is a great poll for Novick, not so great for Merkley (since I'm sure they were hoping to not have a race any more at this point and it seems they have nearly the opposite), and just AWFUL for Smith.

On name ID: my suggestion is that the two methods were not the same. One system rates simply on having heard of the person; another takes only those who can rate the person after saying they know them. Both are used in respected polling houses. The key in either case is to compare within the survey as opposed to externally. In other words, maybe Novick's Q rating is 46, maybe it's 29. But you can safely compare those ratings to Merkley's, because they were done in exactly the same way with exactly the same respondents.

And what the results say in both cases is that Novick is at worst as well known as Merkley.

Welcome to the party, backbeat12! We're having a blast.

BB -- I don't understand. I was talking about how Novick's supporters seem to misunderstand his position.

Trishka wrote: do you know what kari? when i said that i had heard steve say it, it was because I HEARD STEVE SAY IT. at a house party. at my house.

Well, OK. I believe you! I guess that's what's so confusing. Would Steve Novick vote for a single-payer plan on the floor of the Senate? Or not?

I suspect he wouldn't. And I know his supporters think he would. Personally, I'm curious.

Again, if it's true, I think his stand is bold and courageous - not mushy or wishy-washy. I'd just like to see some clarity.

Now we see that Schumer himself doesn't even stand up for The Constitution (he and Feinstein are traitors).

I wouldn't call him a traitor, but incompetent comes to mind. If the Dems vote against Mukasey, Bush will put in a recess appointment who couldn't possibly pass--and who'd be worse than Mukasey. But he was Schumer's candidate--how did he note know Mukasey was pro-torture? That's the amazing thing.

And before everyone goes ga-ga over Frohnmayer, keep in mind that he's just anti-war and anti-Bush--sort of like Ron Paul. And like Ron Paul, those positions don't make you progressive. Just not insane. Frohnmayer is NOT the horse progs wanna back.

Great discussion on the root causes of illegal immigration, Jeff.

It's truly bizarre that anyone would decide to penalize the Dems for trying to fix a problem created and sustained by the Republican corporate interests since Reagan at least.

As usual, the problem on our side is that we're nuanced in an age were sound bites are assumed to sell better. Despite Bush's amnesty attempt, the Republicans are trying to position themselves as the saviors, and every Democrat who is running for any office in '08 had better have a clear, consistent, and PITHY reply when this question comes up.

Oh, and can the rabid Merkley/Novick partisans take it someplace else? I'd be happy to break bread with either of those guys, and so would most of you. Cut the crap--it's tedious and hurts both candidates in the long run. The real race is against Mr. Smith, remember?

Kari said:

Well, OK. I believe you! I guess that's what's so confusing. Would Steve Novick vote for a single-payer plan on the floor of the Senate? Or not?

Again, if it's true, I think his stand is bold and courageous - not mushy or wishy-washy. I'd just like to see some clarity.

Here's some clarity for you Kari. Steve said, at the Sunriver Summit, that not only would he vote for a single-payer system, he'd sign on as a co-sponsor if there was one. (You can check the video, I just did. He starts talking about health care at 19 min, 45 seconds.) The cheers were, to say the least, enthusiastic.

That said, my comments (here and here) in the previous thread hold.

A single-payer system would be the best thing for us, but Edwards' plan is more likely to succeed in the Congress and would lessen the fallout of radically overhauling a system as large as our medical system all at once. Steve recognizes this, and he's said so on numerous occasions.

Jeff I know I’m in a small minority on the immigration issue, but I find some of your comments, like “we can appeal to people who want to get paid a reasonable wage and find it hard to do in parts of rural America because of an illegal workforce” as xenophobic as the “law and order” appeals.

I’ll concede that the recent large influx of low-skilled labor from Mexico and Central America has had some small negative effect on the wages of low-skilled resident American (though not as much a technological change or women entering the work-force has had). I’ll concede that immigration has slightly hurt the wages of high-school drop-outs and other low-skilled workers. But immigration has helped the rest of us by reducing the costs of things we buy or by making the services and things we co-produce with immigrants more cost competitive. I do not think the solution is to “protect” our unskilled workers from foreign competition, whether that foreign competition is in another country (trade) or moves here. We need them and we should send a message to the students in our educational system that skills count a lot in today’s world. Life will not be easy or fun if you have few skills.

I think we should care for our poor, and low-skilled, in other ways, not by immigration control.

As for the politics of the immigration issue, I also concede that they are highly important, very volatile, and lacking a moral or economic high ground that is popular.

And like Ron Paul, those positions don't make you progressive. Just not insane. Frohnmayer is NOT the horse progs wanna back.

Jeff, have you ever heard Frohnmayer speak? Ever spoken to him personally? He sounds a bit like Ron Paul on the impeachment issue, but the similarity ends there.

The Oregon electorate, so far as I can tell, is generally socially moderate-to-liberal, and moderate to conservative on fiscal issues. More than any other candidate in this race, that describes John Frohnmayer.

He's taken stronger positions than the Democrats on holding the Bush administration accountable, health care as a right, restoring funding for higher education and stronger positions than the Republican in terms of fiscal responsibility. In terms of Oregon policy, he has an innovative solution to restoring local revenues that were lost with the decline of the timber industry and getting our counties off of welfare.

Seriously, go watch the man on the stump the next time he's in your area. At the very least, you should know what the guy is about before commenting on him.

"Traitors"??

Wow. Nobody can quite snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like some Democrats. How quickly we forget the 2006 elections where we won back the Senate.

Jeff, to say Mukasey is "pro torture" is a bit over the top, don't you think? He's unwilling to condemn a procedure as illegal that he knows very well the US military and the CIA have been already using.

That may be reason enough for you to think he should not be confirmed, but this doesn't exactly make him into a John Yoo.

Paul,

One of the reasons why people elected Democrats in 2006 was because they promised to stand up to abuses that this administration has taken part in, including torture.

And let's be clear on this: Water boarding is not "a procedure". It's torture. And if it weren't illegal, then why did the United States prosecute Japanese soldiers for torturing American prisoners by water boarding them.

If the top law enforcement official in the country is not willing to defend the laws of this land, then they are not fit for office, and the Senate should block confirmation until the President appoints someone who is.

This is not a partisan issue. It is a constitutional issue. I, for one, am sick to death of partisan apologists who somehow believe that it is good for the party to STFU when it comes to matters of conscience and who we are as a people.

I may not know much, but I am pretty damned sure that triangulating on the torture issue is one of the surest paths to a electoral defeat for Democrats in 2008.

Jeff,

I'm not sure I agree that Dems can't afford to ignore (illegal) immigration. Possibly we can't afford not to ignore it. What would be the position that wouldn't tear us apart? This poll doesn't tell us what the cost might be in losses among Democratic base voters of efforts to gain that 20% of NAV's. It also doesn't tell us if that 20% are the fifth of NAV's already most inclined to vote R, or if they are folks like Mike.

There are some basic issues of intellectual honesty here as well. Going back to the 1980s, in honesty we need to recognize that part of the opposition to employer sanctions was argued by pro-worker, pro-civil rights people who understood that one consequence of employer sanctions would be de facto racial/ethnic discrimination against Latino/a citizens and legal permanent residents and immigrants. Now it's more popular among some white liberals to try to meet the grassroots concern with the blame the employers/Republicans line, but it's just not true historically. The Reagan amnesty came out of an alliance & compromise among a complex array of forces straddling both parties, a relatively conservative version of which is reflect in the Wyden-Smith alliance to create a new guest-worker program with very poor protection of workers' rights to organize unions, which is quite unpopular among important Democratic constituencies.

Conversely, it is intellectually dishonest to give the label "amnesty" to the onerous and partial provisions allowing a difficult and highly protracted path to legal status ultimately allowing permanent residence or citizenship in the Bush proposal. It's nothing of the sort. Actually it cuts back or cuts off principles of family immigration that have been built into the law since the 1965 reforms that repealed the racist (including anti-Southern and Eastern European and anti-semitic) immigration restriction law of 1924.

If I understand Mike, and numbers of other apparently strongly motivated people who express similar policy preferences at times on this blog, though not necessarily the narrow focus on breaking the law he stresses, a position they regard as equivocating or half-assed or not serious is as likely to piss them off as placate them. Consider Mike's use of "amnesty." Where's the room for compromise? Isn't his message that there is none?

Mike doesn't regard himself as a xenophobe or a racist. I don't know him so I can't judge, lots of racists think they're not, but I do take at face value that he doesn't intend to be one.

The thing is that people on the wrong end of movements that exclude people tend to be less interested in intentions than effects. In this case, that includes not only people illegally resident in the U.S. but members of their communities and families who are legal residents and citizens.

Likewise if faced with an alliance of deep-dyed racialists, people with unsystematic cultural prejudices, and people who want to look away from those forces and wish that the issue were as simple as breaking the law, they aren't likely to care about the niceties with which Mike eases his conscience. The friend of my enemy is my enemy sort of reasoning applies -- which of course Mike, or if not him, a lot of his allies, applies or apply to "libs".

Mike, you may not be a personally confrontational racist in terms of your interactions with individuals of whatever identity. But when you talk to other anti-immigration folks, do disagree with others who want to cut off very poor people & their children from all relationships to society, because of their immigration status? Who cut off their noses to spite their faces by trying to increase the vulnerability of illegally resident immigrants, which will only drive their wages lower? Who cast racial and ethnic aspersions against Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and other Central American immigrants, regardless of their legal status, like the egregious racist (& Australian immigrant) Peter Brimelow? Who want to change 220 years of U.S. law to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S.? Who make up lurid fantasies of an invasion conspiracy? Who exaggerate the number of illegally resident immigrants by a factor of three or four?

Do you agree with those in the polls you cite who want to try to "round up" and deport over ten million people? If so, don't you understand that to do that would require what would amount to a military or paramilitary assault, often violent, on ethnic communities in which citizens, legally resident immigrants and illegally resident immigrants live together, that would engender and inflame racism?

If you don't argue with them, or if you support those views yourself, your positions have racist consequences, whether or not you are psychologically a racist at the micro interpersonal level.

A third form of intellectual dishonesty is the neoliberal "consumer benefit" argument put forward by Dave Porter, which seeks to divorce American workers' identities as workers from their identities as consumers. The fact of the matter is that U.S. workers are drowning, keeping up "middle class" consumption lifestyles with an increasing elaborate and fragile debt structure shot through our economy, combined with family and soul-destroying overwork. When that Rube Goldberg machine comes crashing down, a huge chunk of people here will no more benefit from marginally lower consumer prices than do the exploited workers in developing countries, in maquiladoras and in U.S. sweatshops who can't afford the goods they make.

The issue isn't just immigration, it's the whole mindset and ideology that treats maximizing overall return to investment in the whole economy regardless of distribution as an unquestionable good. It isn't. It's the mindset that says that it is okay to manipulate interest rates and money supply to create more unemployment, lest workers have the negotiating power to claim more of the fruits of their own increasing productivity. It isn't.

The keys to the immigration issue include fair trade, i.e. not selling out U.S. workers in trade agreements in return for overseas elites selling out peasants to benefit U.S. farmers. Even more important is changing the global labor rights regime, including in the U.S., to greatly increase the power of workers everywhere to negotiate the terms of their own employment. Decent labor standards, based on local living wages (not local legal minima, but actual living wages) for decent hours of work (not 12 or 16 hour days, every day) are not "protectionism." They are the foundation stone of a humane and sustainable economy in which people work to live, not live to work.

There is a reason why the U.S. labor movement, for almost the first time in its history, has rejected Nativist anti-immigrant politics. It's because historically, such scapegoating has failed. Anti-Chinese agitation and legistlation on the West Coast didn't prevent exploitation of other workers. Keeping black folks down in the South only rendered white workers subject to class-based disfranchisement themselves and to exploited dirt poverty as tenant farmers and low-wage industrial workers. The unions have the right approach, which is to try to organize all comers. It was the abandonment of Nativism to organize immigrant industrial workers in the 1930s, and the somewhat more grudging opening of unions to black people then and during World War II, that turned the U.S. working class into a consumer "middle class" increasingly able to provide their children with better education (though that was largely dependent on public subsidies now being hollowed out by the neoliberalism).

An injury to one is an injury to all. That includes immigrants, regardless of their residency legal status.

Chris, fantastic comment. Thanks.

Mike,

In reply, I'll give one example of low-skilled immigrants reducing costs and making items we both produce and consume cost less. It's a general example. I am not knowledgeable on what specific low-skilled jobs immigrants fill, but consider the following. Let's say our low-skilled immigrants (legal or illegal) have sufficient skills to work as roofers (please correct me if this takes lots of skill). By using these immigrant roofers a contractor can save $500 (I'm making this up as an example) on the construction cost of a new house. This has a number of effects. It cut the cost of that specific house to the buying consumer. It benefits other consumers by keeping the costs of other houses down since they have to compete with houses built by the contractor using immigrant roofers. And for the other construction workers who helped build the specific house (like plumbers, electricians, framers, etc), it made their specific product, that house, more cost competitive. Do you get the idea?

So many comments! Here we go:

Dave, on immigration. I've actually learned a lot listening to Chuck Butcher on this issue. He points out that his construction crew has a hard time competing with crews that use illegal immigrants as laborers. Where they can compete, it's at a rate that makes it hard for his crew to support their families. Add agriculture, meat processing, and other dangerous, low-wage jobs, and it does drive down wages in certain sectors. My beef isn't with the illegal immigrants. If our situations were reversed, I'd do the same thing. My beef is with a policy that simultaneously uses disenfranchised labor while damaging legal workers who have to live and raise families here. We need a system that doesn't exploit or impoverish.

Sal: The Oregon electorate, so far as I can tell, is generally socially moderate-to-liberal, and moderate to conservative on fiscal issues.

Yeah, exactly what I said: he's not a progressive. He is aiming to split the electorate and progressives have been attracted to him because of his uber-prog stance on impeaching Bush. I just want to dissuade them from thinking he's going to be much change from Smith--if he is a more principled steward of the constitution. That doesn't make him bad, just not progressive.

Paul: Jeff, to say Mukasey is "pro torture" is a bit over the top, don't you think? He's unwilling to condemn a procedure as illegal that he knows very well the US military and the CIA have been already using.

Paul, waterboarding is considered internationally as torture. If Mukasey is unwilling to condemn that illegal procedure, then how is "pro-torture" over the top? It seems like a pretty fair description. I'll turn it back on you: have you become a victim of a culture that has consistently downplayed the moral and legal outrage of the crime? If Mukasey isn't "pro-torture," whom would that term describe?

Whew.

Paul G.,

Really I don't understand your position on Mukasey's position. Your defense of him seems every bit as unreasonable as President Bush's lame defense of Mukasey's refusal to say that a clearly illegal form of torture is just that.

The claim of Schumer & others is that they believe Mukasey when he says that he will not sign off on illegal torture. If that's really true, he should be able to say that waterboarding constitutes such torture, because it does.

Your apparent argument that somehow it is okay for him to take into consideration the fact that parts of the U.S. government and security apparatus almost certainly have conducted such torture and related violations of human rights, such as "rendition" kidnapping, now apparently extended to wives and children of accused terrorist suspects, is really incomprehensible to me. If he's doing that now, why would he stop once in office? And if he's doing that in office, it renders his claim that he will oppose any "illegal" torture a sophistical nullity, because it means that he is actually going to kowtow to demands to rule the torture the adminstration is conducting "legal," despite past U.S. prosecution of the same acts by other countries and its clear illegality under international law. Which is exactly what John Yoo did, isn't it?

The presidential claim to be above the law in matters he asserts without warrant to fall under his commander-in-chief powers are outlandish and violate his oath of office. Mukasey's unwillingness to repudiate those doctrines mean he will violate his too, or at least that we have no reason to think he won't.

You may be right that "traitor" may be too strong a word for Mr. Bush, but only insofar as it implies betrayal to an outside enemy.

The problem is that the more accurate "renegade oath-breaking betrayer of the constitution and rule of law" is so much harder to say, even if one leaves out the "lying sack of horse excrement" piece.

Colin wrote Here's some clarity for you Kari. Steve said, at the Sunriver Summit, that not only would he vote for a single-payer system, he'd sign on as a co-sponsor if there was one. (You can check the video, I just did. He starts talking about health care at 19 min, 45 seconds.) The cheers were, to say the least, enthusiastic.

Thanks, Colin. I just watched the video again. It confirms what I already thought I knew about Steve's non-position on health care. I knew I saw that somewhere. I'm right back to being confused.

So, it contradicts what's on his vaunted issues page:

However, since there are legitimate concerns that switching to a single payer system immediately would be disruptive (for one thing, it would throw an awful lot of insurance company employees out of work)

Would he really co-sponsor a bill that he says would be disruptive to our economy?

That sounds funny to me.

Chris,

Now, I do not think I am "intellectually dishonest." Really!!! Nor do I "seek to divorce American workers' identities as workers from their identities as consumers." I'll acknowledge American workers' identities as workers, if you will acknowledge their identity as consumers. Trying to protect the wages of some of them raises costs to all the rest of us consumers. We are all both workers and consumers.

I'll concede that some American workers get hurt by immigration and free trade. But both closing ourselves off from global economic forces or overly restricting immigrants would be bad for us and our economy in the long run. We need to deal with those who get hurt with other policies.

I agree with much of the rest of you critique of our current economic situation.

Jeff,

There are at least two aspects to being an illegal immigrant in play here. I think I probably agree with you on one and disagree on the other. First, illegal immigrants often work outside our laws. They not only cross the border illegal (to their benefit) but often work in parts of our economy outside our usual laws (unions, worker comp, minimum wage, etc) which hurts them and others. We probably agree this should end. All workers should be under our laws. But, second, to the extent they are just willing to work for less than resident Americans under all our usual laws, it is to our general benefit (see my answer to Mike above) to let them. If Chuck Butcher's construction crews can not compete, my sympathies will depend upon which aspects are in play. If only the latter, he and his crew need to get some other higher paying skills (and I would support public educational programs to help) and get out of the construction business.

"If the Dems vote against Mukasey, Bush will put in a recess appointment who couldn't possibly pass--and who'd be worse than Mukasey."

I would assume it would actually BE Mukasey, given Bush's threats. So why not do the right thing and vote no? That's the moral failing in what the Democrats are doing: they're using what BUSH may or may not do, to inform what they should be doing--when what they SHOULD be doing is fairly obvious to most of the country.

The REAL race may be against Smith, but the CURRENT race is for the right to face him. And there's not a whisker of space between the main Democratic contenders right now.

LT, I didn't say Frohnmayer was bad; I said he was not progressive. Mostly people who read BlueOregon are progressive--anyway, that was our intention. Since some of them will think he's a progressive because he's antiwar and anti-Bush, I'm putting out there that I think they should look again. Apparently you agree. I'm a good Dem and yes, I hope to hell everyone gives him the cold shoulder--he will only benefit Gordon Smith and he has zero chance of being the next Senator from Oregon.

Dave, I think we agree on the central issues, and you're right--I do disagree that workers should have to work without the protection of US law. To me, exploitation is exploitation, no matter one's citizenship. I'd happily pay more for a basket of apples.

Jeff -- you didn't answer my question. Have you seen Frohnmayer speak or spoken to him in person? If not, how much can you really claim to know about the man, his positions, or his motives?

Regurgitating the Merkley camp line about electability doesn't change the fact that Frohnmayer continues to draw the largest crowds of any candidate thus far on the campaign trail -- this, despite the fact that he can't rely on party infrastructure to bring people in.

As to whether or not he's "progressive"...

As I said, go see the man speak and make up your own mind.

From what I've seen, he fits the category of independent thinker and has positions that are more firmly in the mainstream of Oregon voters than any candidate in the race.

As to whether or not he can win...

He has higher name recognition than either Democratic challenger. He will draw more heavily from Republicans and independents than either Democratic challenger.

One BO editor I've spoken with said that Frohnmayer was described to him as one of the best fundraisers and campaigners a colleague had ever seen. I've seen all four candidates on stump. John is easily the best public speaker in the race. He connects to people much better than either Merkley or Novick.

So, I guess all of that is a long way of saying that I recognize the odds against any candidate who chooses not to throw in with the coalitions of special interests that control party politics in this state. But if anyone can do it, it would be a guy like John.

Mike,

Sorry, I do not think of our immigrants who may have crossed the border illegally as "criminal enterprises." That does sound nefarious. I like them here. I am glad they came. And I think they make a contribution to our society. I know these thought put me in a minority. I think we need to embrace the economic forces that are sweeping the world (such as these immigrants) because in the long run we have no other choice. Billions of low-skilled agricultural workers, peasants really, all over the globe are transitioning in to a market economy. We cannot seal ourselves off from the world. If we expect to keep our incomes and standards of living higher than theirs we need to change and adapt... that is recognizing and developing the new skills that will earn more in this new economy. Clinging to traditional patterns of work won't cut it. I am for helping our people make these transitions, not for protecting their current jobs. This may be "callous," but I view it as necessary and in our long term common good.

Trishka,

Rep. John Conyers, Jr. has introduced HR 676 "United States National Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act)", which is supported by most of the organized single-payer movement (Healthcare for All, Physicians for a National Health Plan, AFL-CIO and a number of its major international unions & regional and local bodies, others).

The reference to Medicare seems to be partly political due to popular approval of the program, and partly because the current Medicare payroll taxes & employer contributions would become part of the funding base.

(211)(c)(1) IN GENERAL- There are appropriated to the USNHI Trust Fund amounts sufficient to carry out this Act from the following sources:

(D) Instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions.

It would allow HMOs that deliver services themselves such as Kaiser to receive its facilities benefits, provided that they converted to non-profit status if they are for-profit. Likewise for-profit provider practices would need to convert to non-profits to be eligible, with federal compensation for facilities and materials that would become property of the non-profit. Insurance companies, including HMOs that do not provide direct health services, would be prohibited from offering competing benefits.

The conversion of private practices to non-profits might generate additional opposition beyond the insurance companies and the ideological opposition to universal government funded health insurance.

The V.A. would remain separate for 10 years after which integration into USNHI would be evaluated. The Indian Health Service would remain separate for 5 years after which it would be integrated. I think individual Native Americans would be eligible for a national health card under the law as soon as it went into effect. The bill doesn't mention military health services. Medicaid & SCHIP would be folded into USNHI and it appears that monies for supplemental benefits provided by states would go back to the states.

It has 85 co-sponsors, the only one from the PNW is Jim McDermott of Washington. I don't know of a counterpart Senate bill that Novick could co-sponsor.

I don't have time to go into it further now, except to say that it is simple at the consumer end & quite comprehensive in what's covered, and to note that it does not address the issue of displaced insurance workers.

Mike,

You evaded my questions on the topic of racial and ethnic consequences in my post above, by focusing on my failure to include the word "illegal" before immigration. You also claimed I was the one who introduced "race" into the debate.

The facts of the matter are that 1) race was introduced into the debate by racist and ethnocentric arguments by important "immigration reformers," not me, 2) that if you are not personally a racist in your daily interactions or your motives, you are allied with persons who are, even if you wish it weren't so, and don't apparently don't want to talk about that or whether you try at all to change the racialism and cultural hostility that characterizes a major portion of anti-immigration rhetoric.

Further, you also dodged the question of racially & ethnically disparate human consequences, affecting not only illegally resident persons but citizens and legal residents in their communities and families. It is not quite clear to me if the only measure you seek to encourage "self-deportation" is denial of work, or if you also support measures such as excluding children from public schools, public health clinics etc. But as far as I am concerned not only are such proposals extremely callous in general, but failure to consider the racially & ethnically disparate consequences of such measures amounts to a form of racism or hostile ethnocentrism. And so would keeping silent about that within a group or movement if it were going on.

For me that poses a major problem not only for talking with you but for addressing the concern Jeff originally raised.

Actually I do not believe that you are only concerned with legality. Suppose for the sake of argument a policy of completely open immigration were put into place. That would resolve the illegality issue, but I am almost certain that you would regard it as much worse than the current situation.

Likewise I strongly suspect that if, for the sake of argument, I proposed a very large-scale "guest-worker" program, say 10 million people a year, without any path to citizenship, you would still object. Concern with economic displacement of citizen and legal resident workers ultimately is about scale of migration and wage effects of job market competition, not legality of status.

Race and racism are realities in the debate coming from the "reformer" side, and if you are unwilling to talk about that reality, but insist that pointing it out amounts merely to name-calling, we aren't going to get very far. It's a piece of the problem.

Mike,

A number of the positions you have now clarified are quite unusual. But you know you haven't really been very clear about the policies you do support. Also, you started out being pretty cavalier yourself in throwing out generalizations about "libs."

I still maintain that whether or not Pat Buchanan "speaks for you," race and racism are part of the mix of what this issue is about and that if you make it a precondition that we not talk about the whole thing, we're not going anywhere.

Please note that in a number of places where you say I was putting words into your mouth, I was asking questions based on widely articulated views of anti-immigrationists & anti-illegal immigrationists. They may be extremists but they are at least a substantial minority and may be a majority. My comments were on if you believed those things. I am glad that in a number of cases you don't.

I still also have a question about whether you feel any responsibility at all to advocate to folks who advocate harsher enforcement against illegal immigration in ethnocentric, xenophobic or racist terms that they look at it differently.

In other words, if I take you at your word that you aren't motivated by racism or xenophobia, do you oppose them? If I take you at your word that you don't advocate your positions in racist, ethnocentric or xenophobic terms, do you try to influence others who share your policy goals to reject those terms?

Or do you sit silent about those things for reasons of unity in seeking stronger action against illegal immigration?

As long as the immigration restriction movement is substantially framed by such terms, and operates by frequently by trying to mobilize people in those terms, I am going to oppose it, because it is being used as a vehicle to expand the power of the worst forces in our society.