There's been some reluctance on the part of Team Obama to hit Palin but it looks like they've settled on a strategy that mirrors their strategy against Clinton in the primary; not that she's a Washington insider but that she's a typical (and "skilled") politician, representing the same old same old politics.

On Thursday, David Axelrod launched the first shot in his response to Palin's speech:

"We respect her. She's a skilled politician, as she proved last night. She's deft at going on the attack," Axelrod told reporters here before taking off for Harrisburg Thursday morning. "For someone who makes the point that she's not from Washington, she looked very much like she'd fit in very well there when you see how she brings these attacks, they all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington."

Axelrod argued that "there wasn't one thing that she [Palin] said about Obama or what he's proposing that's true" and talked specifically about the Illinois senator's plans for tax cuts. He said Obama's tax cuts would benefit more people than McCain's proposals.

Yesterday, Barack Obama himself ratcheted up the message against Palin, specifically on the subject of earmarks:

"Don't be fooled," Obama told the crowd surrounding him in a large barn. "John McCain's party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge" for nearly eight years.

"I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said. "She's a skillful politician. But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

Glad to see they're making her the focus of some of the attacks.

Update [2008-9-7 13:47:40 by Josh Orton]: And today on Meet the Press, Biden called on Palin to finally come out of hiding:

Joe Biden is accusing the McCain campaign of sequestering Sarah Palin, his counterpart on the Republican ticket, and challenged her Sunday to sit for network interviews.

“She's a smart, tough politician,” Biden told Tom Brokaw in a “Meet the Press” interview live from Wilmington, Del. “So I think she's going to be formidable. Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done. Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record.”

The Associated Press may believe that the map is shrinking, but the Republican National Committee apparently doesn't. Here's The New York Times today:

In one indication of how Mr. McCain defines the battleground and the message he will emphasize to counter the Democratic strategy, the Republican National Committee recently bought television time in 14 states for an advertisement calling Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats "ready to tax, ready to spend, but not ready to lead."

That advertisement will be shown in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia (all Republican states in 2004 that Mr. Obama is contesting aggressively this time) and Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, (Democratic states four years ago that Mr. McCain is trying to win over).

[...]

For their part, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin chose to remain in solid Republican territory. Thousands of enthusiastic supporters greeted them at an airport rally in Colorado Springs, where the crowd waved a sea of flags and chanted "Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin."

It's certainly the case that some red states like Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Ohio have been among the swingiest of the swing states in the last couple presidential elections, but the same cannot be said of Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- all of which were relatively close while not closely contested -- or even Missouri, which has recently been contested early but not late in campaigns. The fact, then, that these states are in the mix of Republican ad buys -- as well as the fact that the Obama campaign is apparently considering buying time in states like Arizona and West Virginia even as it scales back in Georgia, and that Barack Obama himself campaigned in Montana and Missouri during the Democratic National Convention -- belies the notion that the map in 2008 looks just like the map from 2004 and 2000.

At present, we still have an expanded map that is cutting into traditionally red areas of the country. That may change, and I would not be surprised to see some of the redder states currently being contested being eased out of the rotation of both ad buys and candidate visits going forward. But for now, a significantly larger number of normally Republican states are seeing action than has been the case in the last couple of elections.

Update [2008-9-7 2:45:55 by Jonathan Singer]: Note the good omens out of Virginia...

The fact that John Ensign has been unable as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to keep up with Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in terms of fundraising, recruiting and just about everything else is having real ramifications at this point in the election cycle. Take a look, for instance, at what the cash-strapped NRSC is doing these days.

Republicans' Senate campaign arm called off television ads Tuesday that were to air in New Mexico in the run-up to Election Day, an indication that it's leaving the GOP candidate there to fend for himself as the party braces for losses.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee's decision to cancel the New Mexico spots reflects its priorities during a tough year for the GOP, with the party lagging badly in fundraising and resigned to losing seats in the Senate.

Remember, despite the fact that Democratic Congressman Tom Udall is leading in the fundraising race and in the polls, the seat in New Mexico is a Republican seat and has been for the last 36 years, so the GOP is writing off the race two months out from election day is rather remarkable. It looks like we should be seeing not only more and better Democrats in Congress, but also more and better Udalls in the Senate as well.

I'm at the San Jose Convention Center at the annual SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West leadership conference. You thought unity was the theme of the Democratic convention? This conference gave it a serious run for its money. When I was at the SEIU convention in Puerto Rico, my fellow bloggers and I wrote briefly about the conflict brewing between the international and this 150,000 strong California-based healthcare worker local but since then it has escalated and UHW-W intends to fight back.

On August 25 SEIU President Andy Stern announced a trusteeship hearing on whether SEIU should appoint a trustee to "take charge and control of the affairs of SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West and a trusteeship imposed over UHW-W." The hearing is to be held Sept. 26 & 27 somewhere in Northern California.

The timing is curious, coming on the heels of allegations of corruption on the part of Tyrone Freeman, head of another California healthcare workers local and a Stern appointee; it also came mere days before UHW-W's leadership conference and I can tell you from being here, if the international wants a fight, they found one.

The conference was attended by more than 2000 elected UHW-W workplace leaders and the sense of purpose and resolve among them is palpable. They are motivated, they are unified and as one woman addressing the convention put it:

The giant is awake and we are pissed.

The membership here unanimously passed a resolution vowing to fight the trusteeship:

Let it be resolved that we will fight to ensure that UHW members maintain full control of our union and oppose any attempts to unlawfully trustee our local and place it under the watch of appointed leaders from Washington, DC for purely political reasons; and

Let is be further resolved that UHW will fight to keep our members united in one statewide healthcare workers union and will use all available means, including mobilizing our 150,000 members to support our union and directing our President and Officers to take all appropriate actions including deploying the necessary resources, staff, and other means to carry out this resolution.

A good 4000 or so also marched through downtown San Jose and then held a rally, waving signs reading "We built this union and it's ours" and "Our union, our voice." They feel that Stern, with his threat of a trusteeship, wants to weaken their power by trying to divide their membership. No one here intends to let that happen.

In the short term, that fight entails deploying members to DC to meet with all 53 members of California's congressional delegation. How many of the 53 will actually meet with UHW's members is unclear, of course, but they intend to try. In addition, leadership here repeatedly rallied the crowd of 2000 to take off work on Sept. 26 & 27 to attend the trusteeship hearing and bring 10 co-workers with them. They want to overwhelm the international with 20,000 plus to let them know they're not going down without a fight. There is a sense from people I've spoken to that the trusteeship is probably inevitable; they're calling the hearing a "kangaroo court." But at the same time members are saying quite simply "We won't go", referring to their refusal to be taken from their union without their say.

In the longer term, what UHW-W hopes to achieve is 1. to build one statewide healthcare workers union in California; and 2. to, as they put it, "reform SEIU into a democratic union with leadership accountable to its members." At the heart of this conflict, it's really union democracy that people are fighting to preserve.

Robert at calitics nails why this matters for all of us.

Whatever the outcome, there is a strong commitment to democracy among the 2,000 members here - democracy in the workplace, democracy in their union, democracy in their nation. Despite the internal politics that is an extremely positive sign. The labor movement has been at the forefront of social democratic politics in this country for over 100 years. When labor is strong, progressive politics are strong. Which makes the SEIU's efforts to trustee UHW all the more disappointing, as we need unions to be laser-focused on this election and on the policy battles that will begin as soon as the dust settles in November.

On a more local level, it also matters to us here in California because UHW-W has literally been one of the most reliable and most generous progressive partners in our fights here in California. In its attempt to undermine UHW-W's leadership, the International is actually undermining the progressive movement in California as well.

For a more complete rundown of the conflict you can read SEIU-UHW shop steward Shayne Silva's piece over at Open Left.

(Disclaimer: SEIU-UHW flew me up to San Jose to cover their leadership conference.)

There have been a lot of interesting stories running across the wires in the world of progressive culture this week.  Unfortunately I don't have time to really analyze each of them in-depth, but I thought I'd point them out here:

• Michael Wolff profiles Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal, in Vanity Fair. As such, he is a constant thorn in the side of progressives, and this is a valuable look behind the scenes.


• David Moberg has a great piece on Working America in The Nation.  Working America is the AFL-CIO's "community affiliate".  Essentially it's a large (2.5-million-member) list of non-union members who sympathize with the union's position on a number of bread-and-butter issues, and it gives the union the ability to extend its electoral might outside the boundaries of its membership.  What's more, Working America has also started enlisting its members in support of labor organzing drives, picket lines, and the like.


• Over at Build the Echo, Tracy van Slyke talks about digg moving to the left, and progressive new media activism inspired by The Young Turks. Progressive media creators, especially vloggers and podcasters: read this post!  Disclosure: van Slyke's organization, The Media Consortium, is a client of my company.


• Again at Build the Echo, Jessica Clark highlights this great video (another good example of progressive new media activism) about Obama's Challenge:
  
  
  
      That Amazon discount code, again, is: RGVTUIQY.  You can also buy the book at Powells.


• Global Labor Strategies has a challenging, thought-provoking post about the big-picture problems facing the labor movement, both in the US and abroad.  They argue that service sector organizing and EFCA won't cut it, given the ways corporations are reorganizing globally.  It's a fascinating piece, and well worth consideration.


• The UFT announces the opening of a labor-friendly charter school in New York City, by Green Dot Public Schools.  Given the way charter schools often pit public education advocates against teachers unions, and especially in light of all the hey made about the tiff between the DC city council and DC teachers' unions, I think this is an important development.  It's not a revolutionary one - Green Dot operates a number of schools in LA already - but something we should be keeping an eye on nonetheless.  It is one more bit of evidence that these two progressive cultural institutions don't need to be at odds.

... and I'm sure there's plenty more out there.  If there's anything I missed, feel free to drop it in the comments!  I've got a YouTube video to post on Facebook...

Update: Earlier I made the mistake of saying the Vanity Fair profile was of Roger Ailes, when in fact it is of Rupert Murdoch. Sorry about the slip up! Interestingly, one of the choice bits from that profile is that Murdoch said he initially liked Ailes because Ailes was more Murdoch than Murdoch himself, or something like that.

Census data for 2007 health coverage in America was released just over a week ago, and by now, a pretty clear picture of the meaning behind the numbers is beginning to emerge. The reigning consensus is that public health care really works.

First, the raw numbers:

After climbing steadily for six years, the number of Americans without health insurance dropped by more than a million in 2007, to 45.7 million, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

Of course, depending on how you slice the numbers, various trends appear among different groups. For example, women across different demographics are still losing out:

• Women who work part-time:  For women who work part-time (i.e. less than 35 hours per week for all jobs), uninsurance rates continue to increase.  Twenty percent of women who work part-time were uninsured in 2007, compared to just 13 percent of women working full-time.
• Young Women:  For the last five years, uninsurance has increased among young women ages 18-24.  Overall, about 18 percent of women are uninsured, but the proportion of uninsured women in this age group is significantly higher, at over 26 percent.
• Poor Women:  In spite of the increase in public coverage, the proportion of uninsured women living below the federal poverty level (those whose income was $10,200 or less in 2007) continued its steady increase from 2006 to 2007.  Over forty percent of women at this income level were uninsured last year, more than twice the rate for women overall.
• Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander Women:  For these women, rates of uninsurance increased from 17.2 to 18.5 percent from 2006 to 2007.

The most striking slice of data, however, is the percentage of people with private insurance vs. the percentage of people with public insurance:

According to the new census data, in 2007 the percentage of people with private coverage dropped from 67.9% to 67.5%, while the number of Americans with government-provided health coverage increased from 27.0% to 27.8%. The number of children with private insurance also fell by 0.4%, and 1.2% more children received coverage through public programs.

In other words, even as the number of people covered with private health insurance continued to drop (at about the same rate we've been seeing for the last few years), with primarily state insurance programs picking up the slack, more people overall were insured.

This data neatly punctures some pretty widespread conservative arguments against public health care. On the one hand, as Ezra Klein notes, we've seen the proliferation of low-cost private health options meant to spur "free market competition" like health savings accounts. Yet, even with these new <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">scams</span> products on the market, the private health care system continues to let more and more people drop through the cracks. On the other hand, as various forms of public health insurance pick up the slack and then some, more and more people are realizing public health care isn't the nightmare conservatives make it out to be. It indeed can be well run and provide adequate coverage, a far cry from the bureaucratic hell conservatives make it out to be.

Of course, the health care crisis isn't necessarily on its way towards solving itself. One of the main problems with America's health care system still remains: Cost. Health care costs are still projected to rise dramatically, and without a change in our system - which allows private health care to insure profitable patients and drop them onto public plans when they become liabilities - those costs will continue to rise.

Still, these numbers and the problems we still face point towards a way out. Major social change occurs in crisis, when problems are so bad and so self-evident that people become receptive to major shifts in policy. Social change is also helped along by people's individual life experiences - people are more likely to push for change, or at the very least not work against it, when they are somewhat familiar with coming changes.

With health care in America, we have both. The crisis is still very real. Millions are uninsured, even more are under-insured, and individuals and businesses (especially small business) are feeling the pinch of skyrocketing costs in uncertain economic times. People are bombarded with stories every day of private insurance putting profits before people, of folks curtailing needed medical care because they can't afford it (or sometimes can't even afford to drive to the doctor). And more and more people are being dropped by their private insurance. Yet, we also have familiarity, as more and more join public insurance plans and get comfortable with a new system.

The fact that people in America both understand the crisis (82% want a "major overhaul" of the health care system) and are flocking to public plans in greater numbers makes me very optimistic we will see real health care reform in 2009. All signs point to the fact that people are ready for change, and that conservative fear-based arguments against public health care will be less effective than ever.

Late on this today, but - as always - worth the wait.  Enjoy.

• "I yearn to wake up one day and not be afraid to learn what my government has done in my name," says campaignmonitor in What Will This Election Say About Us?
• Project Vote returns with How To Keep People From Voting: Make The System As Complicated As Possible.
• Words McCain never mentioned: Afghanistan, Climate, Torture, Pakistan, Abortion, Osama...
• Thezzyzx has Some Optimism, Post RNC.
• JoelSHirschhorn goes after contractors and More Republican Wasteful Spending.
• Andrewalker08: I'm Feeling A Little Uppity...
• Stopping a Scalia Fan Running for Judge in Brooklyn. (mole333)
• George Bush Had 8 Years Executive Experience and Look Where That Got Us! (bacalove)
• Odinseye2k previews the GA-Sen: The Coming Air War, Part Two.
• The Nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (auronrenouille)
• Rob in Vermont discovers Mixed Messages at the RNC. (decatur)

I just want to put this out there to have for matching up with polls that come out, that people might want to hotlist to refer to in the future (these are through the CNN website):

In terms of the Age Demographic:

         18-29     30-44     45-64     65+

2000     17        33        36        14    
2004     17        29        38        16
2006     12        24        44        19



         18-29     30-44     45-59    60+
 
2000     17        33        28       22
2004     17        29        30       24
2006     12        24        34       29

And in terms of Voter ID:

               06     04     00

Democratic     38     37     39      
Republican     36     37     35
Independent    26     26     27

I'd adjust any poll that's put out to reflect the '04 exit polling before I bet on its findings. It might turn out to be much better in '08 for Democrats and younger voters, but that's a conservative prediction. VNC screwed up in '02 (though I do recall some sort of reconstruction of the exit polling being done), so I don't have those numbers-- my guess is that it was a strong Republican year with age demographics within the trend.

The aging of the voter population is something to note in particular. Readers here know I think alot of the book Millenial Makeoever, but one thing it doesn't take into account is that people are living longer and voting more often as they age (or at least becoming a larger slice of the pie).