[Originally ran June 15, 2009 -- see note at bottom]

In the debate about healthcare reform, why are the loudest voices in the room the ones who seemingly are against all reform? Where are the champions of the progressive ideas? I've asked this question (at great length) before, and while President Obama has started to (half-heartedly) speak up for "the public option," so far nobody else seems to be defending the idea at all. To say this is a disappointment is an understatement. Part of the problem is that the senator all Democrats are deferring to on the issue is Teddy Kennedy. Who has his own problems with healthcare right now, which precludes his being a leading and forceful voice to the public on the issue.

Or does it?

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[Originally ran June 9, 2009 -- see note at bottom]

The debate over what, exactly, "healthcare reform" means is about to hit fever pitch (so to speak), and instead of diving into the legislative details of what seems to be emerging from congressional Democrats, I would like to make a broad suggestion in how they should be framing the issue correctly. Some may call this approach naive, but I truly believe that rather than fighting for one species of reform over the other, Democrats need to first adequately define the core principle they are fighting for. Their "values" on healthcare reform, to put it another way. And while it may not be achievable this time around, I think the goal Democrats should loudly proclaim they are attempting is a very simple one: nobody should ever go bankrupt because they get sick.

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As the Republican Party sinks slowly in the South....

That line has nothing to do, really, with President Barack Obama's second hundred days in office, but, after re-reading three months of my own columns, it was the one thing I wrote which jumped out at me as a good overview of the zeitgeist of the period.

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There has been a relentless drumbeat behind the scenes here at CW.com, in the form of emails I get from readers astonished that I have no presence on Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever...). So I figured today was the day to address these publicly. Mostly because this will be the last "live" column for a few days (more on that at the end), so the comment thread will have many days to remain open before I get a chance to read it.

The question, letting my natural hamminess speak (hamminess... let... ham...let?), I put it to you thusly: "To tweet, or not to tweet?" That is today's question.

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The term "silly season" is a lot older than I thought, reaching back into the 1800s. It refers to late summer, when governments go on massive taxpayer-funded vacations all over the world. Silly trivia: the "silly season" is known, for reasons obscure, as "cucumber season" in many other languages (you just can't make this stuff up).

Here in America, of course, we take our silly pretty seriously. August, in recent political history, was when the infamous "swift boat" ads ran, which contributed to the destruction of John Kerry's campaign for president. Kerry contributed to this as well, mostly by staying on vacation and not responding to the attacks, which (in retrospect) looks pretty... well... silly.

But this year's season could produce a bumper crop of silly. The silly, it seems, is just bustin' out all over. And it's only the beginning of August, when our elected representatives all take off work for five weeks. Who knows how silly things are going to be by the end of the month?

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Is yelling a smart political tactic? That's an abstract sort of question, but it's going to become more and more concrete in the next few weeks, because there appears to be a coordinated effort to use the tactic of shouting everyone down to disrupt "town hall" events by Democratic members of Congress in their home districts during the August recess. My question is whether this tactic is going to be effective or whether it has the possibility of backfiring.

Of course, since the ones doing the yelling are interested not in doing anything constructive, but rather obstructing legislation they don't approve of (healthcare reform), yelling may be more effective than one would normally assume. But the real question is how they will be portrayed in the mainstream media -- as forehead-vein-throbbing lunatics, or as passionate fighters for their cause. Because not a whole lot of people actually show up to town hall meetings with politicians, and most Americans only become aware of such events if the media covers them (such coverage is usually relegated to local media, and is usually pretty boring). But people screaming at politicians may rise to the level of the national media, which means the way the media portray the screamers will be key. And the mainstream media, of late, has not exactly been doing a shining job of separating lunacy from political discourse (see: "birthers"). So it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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It's the beginning of a new month, which means it is time again to take a look at President Obama's poll numbers. The news this month for Obama fans is not particularly good, as Obama has definitely ended his "honeymoon" period (which virtually all first-term presidents go through). The downward trend to his numbers was expected, but the increase in the curve downward is slightly worrisome at this point -- but not yet what I would call a cause for alarm.

After we take a look at Obama's numbers, we'll also compare him to George W. Bush's first term poll numbers, continuing our series of comparing Obama to past presidents. We really should have started with Bush, to keep things in order, but we looked at Clinton's numbers first because the data were easier to format into charts.

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I thought about titling today's column "Sausage Making, Interrupted" in (dis-)honor of the House of Representatives scarpering off on a five-week vacation without finishing their work on healthcare reform (the Senate, it should be noted, is reportedly planning on doing exactly the same thing next week, to their equal shame). Then I thought I'd riff on the old doctor joke: "The operation was a success... the patient died on the table, though." But when I sat down to write, I decided I was sick of the entire process. Meaning there was only one sane and healthy thing to do.

Hold a contest!

We haven't run a really good contest in a while, so I thought we'd open up the betting on what the outcome of the healthcare reform push will likely be, rather than write yet another column of seething frustration at the lack of progress from our belovéd Congresscritters.

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For a while now, I've been using the metaphor of a baseball game to describe the progress of healthcare reform legislation trundling its way through Congress. And I have to caution everyone, we are still in the middle innings of this "game" (no disrespect intended, I know it's a serious subject -- I'm just talking metaphorically here) Which means that, no matter what the bills look like when they come out of the recalcitrant House and Senate committees, there will still be a lot of fighting before this is all over. I say this not to discourage healthcare reform advocates, but to keep everyone focused on how far we have to go.

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California voters may soon get a chance to weigh in on whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed by the state. If enacted, this may help the state's budget by providing revenue from a brand new source, while also freeing up money that previously went to enforcement efforts against marijuana growing. Of course, marijuana would still be illegal under federal law, but this may be a turning point in the legalization movement -- the point where politicians desperate for tax revenues see dollar signs instead of prison bars when looking at the cannabis plant.

And make no mistake -- this is not medical marijuana we are talking about. From the wire service report:

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