Framing the Debate postscript

Not much from me here, but a great article from Nate Silver on the polling data that supports my position that the Administration is botching the framing of the healthcare debate. I am particularly proud of the fact that he comes to pretty much the same conclusions that I did: That Obama and the democrats have failed so far in selling this to the public, that they need to emphasize what it's going to do for Americans in general, and that Obama can probably only do so much at this point without over exposing himself.

Silver is a better writer than me though, and he's got data. So it's worth a read :-)

The best or worst side of American democracy?

An article today by Nate Silver discusses Arlen Specter's voting patterns and the question of self interest in the actions of senators related to the danger of possible primary challengers. The article isn't long, so go ahead and read it.

The basic question (or comment i guess) that Silver poses is whether Arlen Specter's party switching and predicatable voting patterns (siding with Republicans when he has a republican challenger and with Democrats when hes up against a democrat) are necessarily a bad thing. The money quote is, "Arlen Specter is either just about the best reflection or the worst reflection on the state of our Democracy -- it's just hard to say which one."

I guess I'll leave the obvious comment aside that one would hope that senators act in the interests of voters as opposed to following the political winds, but i do wonder if there is a problem here at a deeper level of democracy. If the point is to give the voters what they want as a representative, Specter has seemed to do a pretty good job of it; he's been in office for a long time and sits on fairly important committees. He keeps getting reelected as well, and the way he's done it seems to be to protect his right and left flanks with votes for a short period of time (we'll see if his new found liberalism sticks around after his primary challenger is wiped from the field). This voting on both sides of the issue, however, makes Specter a fairly moderate voice in the Senate, something that has gotten rarer over the past few years (especially when he was still in the republican party). Some might say that there are already too many moderate democrats in the senate, but I tend to prefer moderation to the extremes on both ends. He's also seemed to have chosen the right side of a lot of issues over the years for his constituents, regardless of his party affiliation. He doesn't seem to pander to either side too much (unless we count his voting pattern itself as pandering). He's not wedded to a specific ideology, except maybe getting Arlen Specter reelected.

So I guess the question stands: is Arlen Specter a good or bad example?

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