New York Times calls out four Trump lies in one day

There seems to be a common thread in the New York Times' campaign coverage today. First, the lead story:

Donald Trump Clung to ‘Birther’ Lie for Years, and Still Isn’t Apologetic

It was not true in 2011, when Donald J. Trump mischievously began to question President Obama’s birthplace aloud in television interviews. “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said at the time.

It was not true in 2012, when he took to Twitter to declare that “an ‘extremely credible source’” had called his office to inform him that Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was “a fraud.”

 It was not true in 2014, when Mr. Trump invited hackers to “please hack Obama’s college records (destroyed?) and check ‘place of birth.’” It was never true, any of it. Mr. Obama’s citizenship was never in question. No credible evidence ever suggested otherwise.

Just what has a single mother of three lost in Wisconsin's Medicaid "expansion"?

Today's New York Times has an illuminating contrast of how one-party rule is changing life in the "twinned cities" of Duluth, MN (Democratic) and Superior, WI (Republican). The article's finale focuses on how the Affordable Care Act affects people in Minnesota, which runs its own exchange and is implementing "an expansion of the state’s already far-reaching Medicaid system," and Wisconsin, which declined to run its own exchange and has just won federal approval for a conditional Medicaid expansion, which will offer Medicaid to childless adults earning less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) while at the same time ending existing Medicaid coverage for adults who earn more than 100% FPL*, pushing them onto the exchanges**.

Times reporter Monica Davey found a single mother of three in Superior, WI in the latter category, newly booted off Medicaid because she earns over 100% FPL. Her situation is doubly ironic, in that she works for a nonprofit that serving homeless people -- including helping them sign up for Medicaid -- but is herself a Republican and supporter of Scott Brown Walker. That is perhaps why she has not fully checked out her own options -- which have indeed been worsened by Walker's some win/some lose Medicaid shift, but not as badly as she may think.  The Times article did not delve very deeply into her options  -- so we'll fill in the gap below. Here's the situation:

What subsidy cliff? Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker defend the Affordable Care Act

I spent my last post peering over the edge at various points of the Affordable Care Act's subsidy cliff -- the income cutoff beyond which shoppers for health insurance are ineligible for subsidies.  I was prompted by a New York Times article spotlighting  who stand to lose most by this cutoff: middle aged and older, with incomes just over the line. In brief: if you're 27 and single, premium subsidies fade out gradually. If you earn one dollar more than the subsidizable limit, it may cost you $100 per year. If you're 55 and looking to cover a family of four, however, that extra dollar may cost you almost $9000 in subsidies.

While I had a couple of quibbles with the Times article, I thought it was fair.  The subsidy cliff is a real design flaw. A pair of 55 year-olds covering a 23 year-old son or daughter in New Jersey with an income of $79k shouldn't have to pay $1300/month for rather crappy insurance, which is what they would pay in Essex County, NJ.

I was somewhat taken aback, then, to discover that the fiery Dean Baker and the more mild-mannered Jared Bernstein both took rather furious issue with the Times article (by Katie Thomas, Reed Abelson, and Jo Craven McGinty). Baker's rhetoric is harsher than Bernstein's, but I think he does have a point. Bernstein's rebuttal strikes me as more of a reflex partisan pushback.* Take his opening salvo:

Do tell, NYT, of Israel's place at the US policymaking table

The New York Times editorial board does not like Benjamin Netanyahu, and hopes for success in the United States' upcoming round of negotiations with Iran. Yet they go rather easy on Netanyahu in response to his UN speech yesterday urging the U.S. and allies to regard Iran's seemingly conciliatory new president, Hassan Rouhani, as a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The Times editorialists note that the Iranians "were not happy that Mr. Obama, meeting Mr. Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, took a harsher tone toward Iran than he did when he spoke by phone with Mr. Rouhani last week"  -- but imply that Iran ought to be able to understand such posturing. The language in which they explain the political dynamic at work in both countries is revealing in what it assumes about U.S. politics:

Giving Ryan undue credit for Wyden-Ryan

I had a faint expression of interest in response to a letter I sent the Times a week-plus ago, responding to Steven Rattner's call for some form of healthcare rationing. Frankly I can see now why they didn't run it, as I concerned myself with a tangential point, while several letters the Times did publish went for the heart of Rattner's argument (and are well worth reading). Still, mine had some political relevance, as it took Rattner to task for giving Ryan credit for cost control mechanisms he dropped from his 2013 budget.  Here it is:

A fair look at Obama, cont.

Yesterday, I wrote a post speculating about why polls show that Americans broadly approve of Obama's economic policies yet give him poor marks for his handling of the economy. Short answer: he's being punished for not executing, or not fighting hard enough. Today, the New York Times devotes its lead editorial to the same apparent anomaly, and comes to a similar conclusion:

He has wasted far too much time trying to puzzle out how he can shave policies down far enough to get the Republicans to cooperate. The answer has long been clear: He can’t. Since he was elected, the Republicans have openly said they would not work with him, and a year ago, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said explicitly that the Republicans’ goal was simply to deny Mr. Obama a second term. The new Times poll showed that Americans do not believe bipartisanship is achievable. Six in 10 Democrats want the president to challenge Republicans more. He should not worry about voters thinking he is being mean. What he should worry about is that he is not showing them that he is fighting all out for their interests.

Collective bargaining run amok?

The New York Times editorial board lent strong support to the Wisconsin public employees' unions in their struggle to prevent Governor Scott Walker from stripping them of their collective bargaining rights.  The Times editorial board's opinions, needless to say, do not control news coverage at the Times. So it is that a massive Times expose of widespread, systemic Catholic Church-level patient abuse (physical, sexual and emotional) at New York State's group homes for the developmentally disabled laid much of the blame squarely on the state's Civil Service Employees Association -- and/or the work rules under which the union operates:

The Times reviewed 399 disciplinary cases involving 233 state workers who were accused of one of seven serious offenses, including physical abuse and neglect, since 2008. In each of the cases examined, the agency had substantiated the charges, and the worker had been previously disciplined at least once.

In 25 percent of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the state employees were transferred to other homes.

The state initiated termination proceedings in 129 of the cases reviewed but succeeded in just 30 of them, in large part because the workers’ union, the Civil Service Employees Association, aggressively resisted firings in almost every case. A few employees resigned, even though the state sought only suspensions.

In the remainder of the cases, employees accused of abuse — whether beating the disabled, using racial slurs or neglecting their care — either were suspended, were fined or had their vacation time reduced.

The union offered a defense of their defense of these employees that sounds reasonable at first blush:

New York Times Overreacts to Strife at G-20

Looks like the Times overreacted to the lack of substantive agreement at the G-20 with its print headline this morning:

Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage

From the Times' online report later this morning:

SEOUL, South Korea — Leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed on Friday to curb “persistently large imbalances” in saving and spending but deferred until next year tough decisions on how to identify and fix them.

The agreement, the culmination of a two-day summit meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging powers, fell short of initial American demands for numerical targets on trade surpluses and deficits. But it reflected a consensus that longstanding economic patterns — in particular, the United States consuming too much, and China too little — were no longer sustainable...

The G-20 leaders largely endorsed an approach to imbalances that finance ministers, including Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, hammered out last month at a meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, but added a timetable.

Say it ain't so, O...

From today's Times:

"It is absolutely critical that you go out and vote," Mr. Obama said here in Philadelphia. "This election is not just going to set the stage for the next two years. It's going to set the stage for the next 10, the next 20."

God in heaven, I hope that's not true.

The well-tempered Presidential anecdote

Okay, who planted this little anecdote in the Times narrative of Obama's decision-making process re McChrystal?

The press secretary, Robert Gibbs, walked a copy of it to the president in the private quarters. After scanning the first few paragraphs — a sarcastic, profanity-laced description of General McChrystal’s disgust at having to dine with a French minister to brief him about the war — Mr. Obama had read enough, a senior administration official said. He ordered his political and national security aides to convene immediately in the Oval Office.

Dissing the French, dissing the job, retorting like a teen to his aide, not a word about any Administration official....highlighting this perfectly emphasizes Obama's keynote:

Journalistic Judgment

Andrew Sullivan approves of this headline:

Patricia Lesko's bid for Ann Arbor mayor gaining support, despite false campaign messages

No MSM-style equivocation - but a clear factual statement that a candidate has been lying, complete with evidence of her fabrications. Why can't the NYT do this?

It's true that if Times reporters want to highlight manifest lying or absurd posturing they have to do so with a bit more subtlety.  As Isabel Kershner does today, writing of the latest Israeli culture war, a Supreme Court ruling that ultraorthodox Ashkenazi cannot self-segregate their children in a Sephardic majority school:

But on Thursday, most ultra-Orthodox were united in protest against what they see as the state’s meddling in their religious affairs and in their conviction that the religious law of the Torah — or at least their interpretation of it — transcends that of any Israeli court.

Men in black coats and hats filled an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, blocking main roads and hailing those going to prison as if they were holy martyrs.

As if!  The article, notwithstanding, is scrupulously fair and factual. (As, it would seem, is the AnnArbor.com article by Ryan Stanton. The comments are many and on balance verify his reporting.)

Reconciliation explanation fail, cont.

Recently Jonathan Chait called out The New York Times for failing to spell out that the Democrats are not trying to pass their whole health care bill through reconciliation, but rather to use reconciliation to "patch" the Senate bill:

Now that they've lost the ability to break a filibuster, Democrats plan to have the House pass the Senate bill, and then use reconciliation to enact changes to the Senate bill demanded by the House. These changes -- higher subsidy levels, different kinds of taxes to pay for them, nixing the Nebraska Medicaid deal -- mainly involve taxes and spending. In other words, they're exactly the kinds of policies that are well-suited for reconciliation.

It's not just The Hill that misses the distinction, but the whole political media. Here's Sunday's New York Times:

Many Democrats in Congress said they doubted that it was feasible to pass a major health care bill with a parliamentary tool called reconciliation, which is used to speed adoption of budget and tax legislation. Reconciliation requires only 51 votes for passage in the Senate, but entails procedural and political risks.

Again, using reconciliation to patch up the Senate bill is a totally different thing than using it to pass an entire health care bill. I can understand why Republicans would treat them as identical -- they're spinning for partisan purposes. Reporters covering this issue have no good excuse.

Today, it's The Wall Street Journal that fails in this basic bit of exposition in its report on Obama's health care proposal:

Annals of unpublished letters: NYT flags global payment proposal in Massachusetts

Today the Times editorial board, lauding the "Massachusetts experiment in near universal care," flags the recent proposal to move the state to a "global payment system":

Now the state seems poised to tackle costs — with an approach that is far more ambitious than anything currently being contemplated on Capitol Hill.

A special commission has just recommended that the state try, within five years, to move its entire health care system away from reliance on fee-for-service medicine, in which doctors are paid more for each additional test or procedure they provide.

In its place, the commission wants a system in which groups of doctors and hospitals would receive fixed sums to deliver whatever care a patient needed over the course of a year. The hope is that doctors would be motivated to deliver only the most appropriate care, not needless and excessively costly care, with safeguards to ensure that they do not skimp on quality.

On July 20, a certain frustrated letter writer sent this to the editorial board as well as to the letters editor:

While exhorting Congress to do more in pending healthcare reform legislation to control costs, the Times editorial board might have noted the truly radical core proposal of Massachusetts' Special Commission on the Healthcare Payment System: abandoning fee-for-service in favor a "global payment" system that pays by the patient, rather than by the treatment, and rewards good performance. At the core of this system would be development of Accountable Care Organizations that accept responsibility for the full spectrum of each patient's care.

This proposal goes to the heart of what the editorial board itself has identified as the central driver of healthcare inflation: providers' incentives to prescribe expensive -- and often unnecessary or unproven -- treatments. The reform, if adopted, will not be easy. The Commission envisions a five-year phase in period to develop a global payment system that "will include adjustments for clinical risk, socio-economic status, geography (if appropriate), core access and quality incentive measures, and other factors." But such reform, if adopted, would be truly fundamental.

Footnote: on a quick read, it appears that Medicare Advantage providers are paid by the patient rather than by the procedure -- and have not reduced healthcare costs. Why not? More on this later....

What's happening to newspapers (and books?): two short tales

1. This evening, after various permutations I won't bore you with, I found myself at the kitchen table in front of a bowl cherries and a propped-up front section of today's New York Times. In my hand was my Blackberry. And therein was I reading...a story from tomorrow's Times.

2. Several weeks ago, in a Times Magazine story, I came across a reference to a chart I've seen before, showing variations by U.S. region in the average cost of treating the same disease. I thought, where's the link? Then I thought, oh, yeah -- this is the dead version. Not "the dead tree version" -- no ecological metaphor. Just a text that had no live windows to other sources.

On the other side of the coin, I worry that my capacity to read books is dimming. Maybe it's late-onset ADD, or simply a more permissible version of staring at the tube all evening, but I'm voting with my eyes, spending evenings jumping off blogs (and where Iran's concerned, twitters) into long and short articles and government documents.

Then too, my comfort reading on a Blackberry, and others' with a Kindle, makes me wonder whether books as we know them (usually, blocks of text ranging from say 50,000--500,000 words) will dissolve into a less differentiated documentland. As it is, you can already access almost anything that's past copyright from Google. This spring/summer, I've read Gatsby and most of The Scarlet Letter on my Blackberry.

All this leaves aside, for the moment, the thorny question of how authors and journalists can resume getting paid for their valuable work. I assume that commerce will eventually find a way. Meanwhile a paperless world, while arriving more slowly than some visionaries may have forecast, is I think arriving.

Did Obama read Atul Gawande? - part 3

UPDATE: Orzag hones in on doctors' incentives

First Peter Orzag, then Obama, and now the New York Times editorial board are making a manifesto of Atul Gawande's powerful demonstration that a major driver of healthcare inflation is doctors' financial incentive to prescribe unnecessary procedures (and often invest in the providers, such as medical imaging centers).

Adopting Gawande's tale of two healthcare markets, Orzag wrote in his blog on June 8, We need to reform the health care system so that it rewards the right kind of innovation – the Mayos, not the McAllens. Yesterday the Times picked up the thread

A glaring example of profligate physician behavior was described by Atul Gawande in the June 1 issue of The New Yorker. (His article has become must reading at the White House.) Dr. Gawande, a Harvard-affiliated surgeon and author, traveled to McAllen, Texas, to find out why Medicare spends more per beneficiary there than in any other city except Miami.

None of the usual rationalizations put forth by doctors held up. The population, though poor, is not sicker than average; the quality of care people get is not superior. Malpractice suits have practically disappeared due to a tough state malpractice law, leaving no rationale for defensive medicine. The reason for McAllen’s soaring costs, some doctors finally admitted, is over-treatment. Doctors perform extra tests, surgeries and other procedures to increase their incomes.

and drew the conclusion:

There is disturbing evidence that many do a lot more than is medically useful — and often reap financial benefits from over-treating their patients. No doubt a vast majority of doctors strive to do the best for their patients. But many are influenced by fee-for-service financial incentives and some are unabashed profiteers.

To be fair, doctors are victims as well as perpatrators of our healthcare system dysfunction. They waste insane amounts of time and resources fighting with insurance companies to get paid. And they're driven by the constant hair-trigger threat of malpractice lawsuits (and malpractice insurance profiteering) to order unnecessary tests and procedures. You might say that defensive medicine, and the "entrepreneurial spirit" that Gawande found infecting some medical communities, are the yin and yang of wasteful healthcare spending in the U.S.

Gawande may be emerging as the Jacob Riis of 21st centure healthcare. And perhaps, when we're ready, of cruel and unusual punishment as well.

New York Times seconds Obama's "central front in the war on terror"

What's the chief reason Obama wants to extricate U.S. troops from Iraq? He wants to concentrate more troops and money and energy on the fight against al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Compare the New York Times' front page June 30 account of the renewed danger we face from a reinvigorated al Qaeda, grown strong in the tribal badlands of Pakistan, with Obama's diagnosis of our chief strategic priority on March 19. Laid side by side, the two documents offer a powerful case in support of Obama's claim that judgment and analytical power -- the ability to gather and process facts -- are more important than experience in a given field.

According to the Times exposé, U.S. efforts against al Qaeda's revival in Pakistan have failed because of failure to put meaningful pressure on Musharref, diversion of trained CIA operatives to Iraq, and continuous infighting within U.S. intelligence agencies. The upshot:

The story of how Al Qaeda, Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terror camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago....

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq....

“The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.

“The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

Here's Obama in Fayetteville, NC on March 19:

Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaeda, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe-haven in Pakistan – a thousand miles from Iraq.

The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America's enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new tactics on a battlefield so far from their base of operations? That is why my presidency will shift our focus. Rather than fight a war that does not need to be fought, we need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is the area where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants still hide. This is where extremism poses its greatest threat. Yet in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have pursued flawed strategies that are too distant from the needs of the people, and too timid in pursuit of our common enemies.

It may not dominate the evening news, but in Afghanistan, last year was the most deadly since 2001. Suicide attacks are up. Casualties are up. Corruption and drug trafficking are rampant. Neither the government nor the legal economy can meet the needs of the Afghan people.

It is not too late to prevail in Afghanistan. But we cannot prevail until we reduce our commitment in Iraq, which will allow us to do what I called for last August – providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our efforts in Afghanistan. This increased commitment in turn can be used to leverage greater assistance – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies. It will also allow us to invest more in training Afghan security forces, including more joint NATO operations with the Afghan Army, and a national police training plan that is effectively coordinated and resourced.

A stepped up military commitment must be backed by a long-term investment in the Afghan people. We will start with an additional $1 billion in non military assistance each year – aid that is focused on reaching ordinary Afghans. We need to improve daily life by supporting education, basic infrastructure and human services. We have to counter the opium trade by supporting alternative livelihoods for Afghan farmers. And we must call on more support from friends and allies, and better coordination under a strong international coordinator.

To succeed in Afghanistan, we also need to fundamentally rethink our Pakistan policy. For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither. The core leadership of al Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. The Taliban are able to strike inside Afghanistan and then return to the mountains of the Pakistani border. Throughout Pakistan, domestic unrest has been rising. The full democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people have been too long denied. A child growing up in Pakistan, more often than not, is taught to see America as a source of hate – not hope.

This is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy on President Musharraf. Pakistan is our ally, but we do our own security and our ally no favors by supporting its President while we are seen to be ignoring the interests of the people. Our counter-terrorism assistance must be conditioned on Pakistani action to root out the al Qaeda sanctuary. And any U.S. aid not directly needed for the fight against al Qaeda or to invest in the Pakistani people should be conditioned on the full restoration of Pakistan's democracy and rule of law.

The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That's the promise that America must stand for.

And for his sake and ours, we cannot tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists who threaten America's homeland and Pakistan's stability. If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan's border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly – if tacitly – acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft. And remember that the same three individuals who now criticize me for supporting a targeted strike on the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, are the same three individuals that supported an invasion of Iraq – a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Can Obama execute the multi-level campaign in two countries described above? That remains to be seen. Has he accurately identified the central danger facing the U.S. and its allies in the struggle with Islamic extremism -- and the military, political and social tasks we need to undertake? As well as can be done in a political campaign.

Related post:
Breaking the Commander-in-Chief Chokehold: Obama maps a strategy

The first black president, 1990

Thanks to the The New York Times' wayback machine! Here's Obama at 28, not quite post-racial, but quite recognizable:

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

By FOX BUTTERFIELD, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: February 6, 1990

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

''The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress,'' Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ''It's encouraging.

''But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance,'' he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment....[snip]

On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: ''I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.''

Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a ''forum for debate,'' bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

The voice is the same, the themes familiar. We've made a lot of progress, but we have a long way to go. It's not about me. Leadership is listening. Ready for change.

I was struck, too, by the almost surreal strangeness of Obama's bio--coming to it cold, in three laconic sentences. Father a Kenyan finance minister? Mother an anthropologist in Indonesia? Born in Hawaii? Who is this that comes out of the wilderness?

His plans at that point were as off-the-beaten-path as his past:

A President's Future (sic!)

The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.

He knew where he was headed. Here's hoping that this was our first look at "A President's Past."

The Gray Lady's Fainting Spell

The New York Times editorial board is shocked, shocked that some Obama supporters say they would sit out the general if Hillary is the nominee, and that some Republicans would rather lose the White House than see McCain win. "That is not the way democracy is supposed to work," they intone.

This is a head-scratcher. Does the Times board think that lockstep party unity is "the way democracy is supposed to work"?

Reality check: many Americans of all political stripes have long said they would not vote for Hillary under any circumstances; the Dem primaries are drawing record turnouts; every second debate has been a lovefest; Democratic voters as a body seem ecstatic with the choice between two strong candidates; and in the runup to Super Tuesday, huge numbers of voters were undecided almost down to the wire. Americans as a whole seem euphoric about the way democracy is working this season.

True that there's a real risk now that Hillary and Obama will damage each other as competition grinds on. Billary may be tempted to get Rovian again, and Obama has been increasingly explicit and specific in arguing that Hillary is part of the country's metapolitical problem and therefore can't build the kind of working majority that he can. But as dday has pointed out, this has been a relatively restrained primary battle so far.

Why is the Times wringing its hands over the animosities inevitably stirred by a competitive race? Is their craving for a Hillary cakewalk stronger than Hillary's own?

Related posts:
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama and Hillary: March 2003
When Hillary went MIA on Iraq
Return of the Clintonian Repressed
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

The New York Times reports that in a community meeting in Iowa, Rudolph Giuliani, asked whether waterboarding is torture, responded: “It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.”

Thank you, Rudy, for clarifying how President Bush can keep repeating "we do not torture" in the face of massive documentation that for the past six years the U.S. has explicitly authorized and systematically implemented "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- including the simulated drowning universally understood to be denoted by the term "waterboarding" and long prosecuted by the U.S. as a war crime. Now the logic is clear: if we do it, it's not torture.