NY Times: "Two Takes on the Health Debate"

Questions for Tom Daschle, "The Selling of the Policy" (Deborah Solomon):

As a former Democratic senator from South Dakota who wrote a best-selling book on health care, “Critical,” and was a shoo-in for the position of secretary of health and human services until unpaid taxes became an issue, do you get the sense that the Republicans have dropped out of the health care debate?
That is the sense I’m getting. I’m incredibly disappointed. Several years ago I worked with George Mitchell and Bob Dole and Howard Baker to create a bipartisan policy center. I was very optimistic last spring when we issued our proposal that this could be bipartisan, but clearly that’s not the way it’s trending.

Do you think President Obama has done a good job of selling health care reform to the general public?
I think we have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative. I don’t think we’ve succeeded at that yet. I think the more we can bring everybody to an understanding about how this in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century — it’s a fight for the disabled, it’s a fight for the sick, it’s a fight for equal rights when it comes to health.

With all of his eloquence, why can’t the president convey that message?
I think in part because the organizational strength of the other side has once again surfaced. The other side has socialism, they have fear of government, they have rationing and all these — Scare phrases. The Democrats need better phrases. We do.

What about Better Care? Medicare to Better Care?
We’ve got to boil it down to those themes that really motivate and have emotional value.

What are you doing now?
In my life generally? I work with my wonderful law firm, Alston & Bird.

You’re not a lawyer, are you?
Exactly, no, I’m not. If I have one regret in life, and I don’t have many, it’s that I didn’t get advanced degrees when I was younger.

You don’t need a law degree; you make your own laws.
I do that, and then I advise clients.

It has been reported that you’re a paid adviser to the insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, which opposes your belief that health care reform needs to have a public option. Why do you work with them?
On the left there are those who say that you should never talk to people who differ with you on a high-profile issue. My question to the left would be, whom would they advise these insurance companies talk to? Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin? That’s the alternative. They can talk to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, or they can talk to me.

It has been reported that your salary from Alston & Bird last year was $2 million.
I don’t know where that came from. I wish it were $2 million.

Why do you wear red glasses?
When I left the Senate, I felt more liberated to do things that I felt were fun to do.

In February, after you confessed to owing $140,000 in back taxes, you withdrew your nomination for a position in the Obama cabinet, as secretary of health and human services. Did the president push you out?
Oh, no. I have to say I was very pleased and grateful for the support that I got from the president on down. He called me a couple of times that day. He said, think about it and then I will accept whatever decision. Then he called me back later after I indicated that it was my final decision, and he just was calling to see how I was doing.

And how were you doing?
It was a difficult time. I can’t deny that. My whole family left work that day or just chose not to go in and they all came over to the house.

What helped you get through that period?
I’ve got this slogan that my family — they grimace when they hear me say it because I say it too often. But I believe that the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror.

The Way We Live Now, "The New Old Guard" (Matt Bai):

For all the shouting that has dominated these town hall meetings on health care lately, they have yielded a few important insights. The first is that the town hall itself has probably reached the end of its usefulness in the Internet age; if you’re looking for thoughtful dialogue, you might as well hold your next meeting on the stern of a Somali pirate ship. The second is that we now have a visual sense of the kind of voter who is militantly opposed to Obama’s health care agenda and, more broadly, to the president himself.

The typical anti-Obama activist tends to be white, male and — perhaps most significant — advanced in age. A poll conducted earlier this month by CNN and Opinion Research showed a rather stark age divide when it came to health care: 57 percent of voters under 50 said they favored the outlines of a Democratic plan, but that number was a full 20 points lower among voters over 65. In three Pew Research Center polls going back to April, senior citizens consistently gave Obama’s job performance lower approval ratings than did than any other age group.

Ideologically speaking, this is not what we are accustomed to seeing. Successful Democratic candidates have long relied on oldsters who grew up worshiping Franklin Roosevelt and who cherished their Medicare and Social Security; one of the best-worn Democratic clichés over the years has been the cry that Republicans were plotting to strip seniors of their pills and pensions. If that advantage is eroding now, then it certainly has something to do with the specifics of the health care argument. Suddenly it’s the Democrats in Washington who are talking about rejiggering Medicare to rein in costs, and now Republicans are the ones expertly exploiting fear among the elderly.

And yet Obama’s problems with the aged didn’t start last month. He struggled to connect with seniors in last year’s Democratic primaries, and though a Pew poll conducted several months before the general election gave Democrats a 12-point partisan advantage among seniors, Obama himself never really won them over. He performed about 8 points lower among the oldest voters than he did among the electorate as a whole; by contrast, the last successful Democrat, Bill Clinton, twice ran the same or better among seniors as he did overall.

Most of the conjecture about this phenomenon during the campaign centered on race, the theory being that a lot of voters born into segregated America simply had a harder time embracing the idea of a black president. No doubt there’s some truth to this. (Perhaps that’s the audience Glenn Beck of Fox News had in mind when he posited recently that Obama loathed all white people, which would have come as a surprise to the president’s white grandparents.) But it’s also impossible to extricate race from your standard generational resistance — to know, in other words, whether some seniors opposed Obama because he was black or because he seemed to embody, with his fist bumps and his failure to cover his heart during the national anthem, the further decline of some Rockwellian cultural ideal. Every young presidential aspirant whose candidacy, like Obama’s, seems largely rooted in generational unrest — John Kennedy in 1960, Gary Hart in 1984 — irritates traditionalists, regardless of ideology or ethnicity. It must be hard for older voters not to experience such transitional campaigns, with their implicit indictments of the past, as a rhetorical hand on the back, pushing them not so gently toward the inevitable exit.

More to the point, though, it’s probably time for us to update our notions of elderly Americans and how their worldviews were formed. We are inclined to imagine our oldest citizens as products of the New Deal, voters whose earliest memories engendered a lasting faith in the goodness of government. But conservative theorists like Karl Rove used to say that time was on the side of Republicans where the elderly were concerned, because Depression-era memories would someday give way to a more complicated historical legacy — and perhaps, in this narrow respect, their grand predictions had some validity. If Obama has little of Bill Clinton’s appeal to old folks, it’s probably because old folks now aren’t the same ones who rode volunteer-driven vans to the polls in 1992.

After all, a 70-year-old American today, born in 1939, probably has no personal memory of F.D.R., but he would have lived through the pain of disappearing manufacturing jobs and family farms, and the rapid deterioration of urban neighborhoods and schools, conditions unabated by government experiments in welfare and public housing. Wooed by Ronald Reagan during their prime earning years, these voters may not be nearly as sympathetic to Obama’s vision of activist government as Democrats might have assumed. For these new senior citizens, even the Social Security and Medicare on which they often rely may be viewed less as instruments of beneficent government than as a partial repayment for decades of taxes.

The good news for Obama and his party, of course, is that they still enjoy an enviable level of support among voters just breaking into the work force and among those now drifting into middle age. And that means that if reigning Democrats can manage to get health care policy right this time, and maybe even add some fundamental energy reforms, they might still be able to cement more hopeful attitudes about government for generations to come, much as Roosevelt did in his day. Today’s younger voters might never be as party-affiliated as their grandparents were, but neither may they turn out to be as cynical about their leaders as their parents often seem to be. If the president has his way (which is to say, if the worst nightmares of Republicans come to pass), those voters may someday live out their retirements in Arizona or Nevada, spinning stories for their grandchildren of the days when Barack Obama was twice elected president, when government managed once again to make things better instead of worse and when politicians still bothered with these things called town halls.

"Daschle Is Dead Wrong About the Public Option"

Mike Lux:

Tom Daschle has been a friend to me for many years, a mentor and some who has done a great deal for me personally. I admire him greatly, and will always be appreciative to him. But I have to break from him on this issue: Tom Daschle is dead wrong on the public option in health care. Dropping it from the health care plan is not a minor issue, and doing it will not help get health care reform passed. In fact, it will almost certainly make the bill die a quick death.

The progressives who have been fighting for health care reform know that the public option is absolutely essential for reform. A public option keeps insurance from continuing to be in charge of everyone's health care, keeps people from being repeatedly screwed by insurance companies. It is the insurance industry that is at the heart of the problems with health care in this country, and giving them legitimate public competition is the best sign cure we have. Health care reform without a public option adds a trillion dollars to the deficit without giving any significant benefit to middle class people being hurt by their insurance carriers.

Beyond the importance of the issue, the politics of once again caving to the insurance industry don't work to get health care reform passed. I work closely with all of the progressive groups pushing for health care reform, the ones who have been putting money and ads and activist power and email lists into the fray. And I think I can say with a fair amount of certainty that they would pull the plug on this bill if there's no public option -- just walk away from the fight, maybe actually actively lobby to kill the bill.

Daschle has the political equation wrong: it's possible you might not be able to beat the mighty insurance industry if you fight them on this issue, but you are dead as doornails before the fight even starts if you don't take them on. And I happen to believe insurers can be beaten, since Democrats need only 50 votes in the Senate rather than 60. A popular President with a great political apparatus and about 13,000,000 email addresses, and energized grassroots knowing they have the fight of their lives to work on: it ought to be enough to deliver 83% of Democratic Senators.

I speak from personal experience in thus issue. In 1993-94, the Clinton White House created a bill that ended up getting no passion from grassroots health care activists or the groups we were hoping would lobby it through. The people who didn't like it were able to defeat it easily because the worked harder to beat it that our side did to fight for it. If Democrats walk away from the public option, that is exactly what will happen again.

This kind of politics -- trying to avoid a fight with the big special interests by walking away from the most important piece of the puzzle -- is exactly what has gotten Democrats into political trouble time and again over the last 40 years. It's what I call in my book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, the culture of caution. It's what President Obama campaigned against when he ran, saying he would take on the special interests and bring change to Washington. So far on health care, he has held up his end of the bargain. So have the Progressive Caucus in the House, and Senators like Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold, who have all said they would vote no on a health care bill with no public option.

The Democrats in the Senate need to stay on board with the President's plan, and resist this siren call of avoid a fight with the insurance industry. Avoiding that fight doesn't get you a health care bill, folks -- it makes health care reform DOA.

The general public is overwhelmingly in favor of a public option. Stand and fight for them. Let's change the culture of caution to a big change moment that will be written about in the history books, where we took on the insurance lobby and beat them to finally deliver national health care reform legislation.

Barack Obama

Tom Daschle: What IS his position on the public option?

I don't know where that came from. We've been pushing back on that all day. I didn't say that. I have said emphatically I support a public plan. A Medicare-for-all public plan. Any federal plan. For all the reasons that have been made for years. It's important for cost, for choice, for competition, for popularity. I strongly support it.

What I did say is that I'm willing to compromise on most things to bring the package across the line. The plan we agreed to yesterday was that states could offer public plans with a federal fall back. That's not my first, second, or third choice. But given the concessions my colleagues made on universal coverage and an employer mandate and everything else, that's the essence of compromise.

-from Ezra Klein's interview today with Daschle.

Howie P.S.: I wish Tom was thinking of ways to move the numbers inside the Beltway in the direction of the numbers outside the Beltway.

"Obama, you better not listen to Daschle and ditch the public option"

icebergslim:

Yes, former Senator Tom Daschle is for removing the public option. So, what does he want? A watered down version and thrown to the states.

OBAMA, YOU BETTER NOT LISTEN TO THIS.

In an attempt at bipartisanship, three former majority leaders of the U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole, offered their solution today to the biggest obstacle to achieving health care reform -- a public option.

"While I feel very strongly that consumers should have the choice of a national, Medicare-like plan, my colleagues do not. . . But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it's time to find consensus here," Daschle said.

"We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreements on one single issue," he said.

In a blow to President Obama and many of his Democratic allies in the health care fight, the plan recommends that there be no federal public option, but rather state or regional public-sponsored networks that would compete with private health plans, according to the summary released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center. read more here.....

Again, I understand bi-partisanship, but how can you gain it when the other party says, "NO" to practically everything. Do we expect them, the Republican Party, to be any different?

HELL NO.

Don't cave in Obama. You see these poll numbers and the PUBLIC WANTS A PUBLIC OPTION. Too bad and so VERY SAD for insurance companies who have taken advantage of the American Public for far too long. The same industry that have hand-tied doctors from doing their jobs for the public good. So, what if some of these companies GO DOWN. I still say, if the insurance companies were RIGHT TO THE PUBLIC, there would be no issue for any of this. But we all know, THEY WERE NOT.

The health care bill will not be won with bi-partisanship but a reconciliation vote. 51 votes and put this puppy to BED.

Barack Obama

Health care and stimulation: Looking back and forward (with video)

John Nichols (The Nation):

With the exit of the atrocious Tom Daschle as President Obama's nominee to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, there is now much talk about nominating former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean for the position.

Dean is appealing. He is a physician with record of working at the state level to expand access to healthcare for children and low-income families. His 2004 presidential candidacy rallied opposition to the Bush-Cheney administration at a critical point and laid the communications and grassroots-political groundwork for Barack Obama's successful 2008 drive -- as did Dean's leadership of the DNC. And Dean is an independent player, who has tangled with the likes of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the past, and could be counted on to do so as a high-profile member of a "team of rivals" Cabinet.

But supporters of real health-care reform should remember that Dean long ago distanced himself from advocates for a single-payer system. Commentator John McClaughry -- a critical observer of his fellow Vermonter -- noted in a 2005 column for The Wall Street Journal that upon assuming the governorship in the early 1990s, "Gov. Dean quickly distanced himself from the single-payer idea he had supported, favoring instead something called 'regulated multipayer.' Translation: Hillarycare."

Dean's statements about healthcare reform continue to stir concern among single-payer advocates, including the doctors who are involved with a group the Vermonter should have aligned himself with, Physicians for a National Health Care Plan.

The point here is not to condemn Dean, who this writer has interviewed often and generally written about positively.

Rather, it is to suggest that those who are serious about reform should go into the discussion with regard to who will be Obama's point person on healthcare reform with eyes wide open.

There are prominent players in Congress--Washington's Jim McDermott, a physician and a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee; Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin, a popular member of the House with close ties to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and experience on the healthcare subcommittee of the Commerce Committee--who have long records of advocating on behalf of a single-payer system. Both McDermott and Baldwin are able political players, with smart, flexible approaches; they understand the value of incremental reform. But they also know that the ultimate goal should be a single-payer system, not a regulatory mess of government spending and corporate profiteering along the lines proposed in the mid-1990s by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and supported at the time by Dean. (While the Clinton's were advancing their doomed plan, McDermott was the lead sponsor of a single-payer bill that attracted more support than did the White House scheme.)

While it certainly makes sense to consider Dean--and while he would be a dramatically better HHS Secretary than Daschle -- it also makes sense to consider others, including those who have been stalwarts in the fight for real reform.

The opening for fundamental reform of a badly broken healthcare system exists. The next HHS Secretary should be someone who believes in making the most of that opening to achieve the long-deferred goal of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman: the creation of a national healthcare system that provides quality care for all Americans.

Howie P.S.: Expanding on Nichol's unkind view of Daschle, here's "Ethical Malpractice" (Marie Cocco). Cocco's wrath splashes onto Obama, as well. Katie Couric (CBS News) presses Obama and he admits (on Daschle) "I Messed Up"--text and video (05:27). He then takes the opportunity to explain the content of his stimulus package. The Seattle P-I has a sympathetic news story about that: "Obama's stimulus plan to boost economy begins at home," with a warm, fuzzy photo:
"Chayan Trujillo, 3, Crystal Bravo, 5, Monica Sanchez-Alonso, 4, Esrah Al-Sheblawy, 4, and Tanya Alcatar, 4, draw in their journals during afternoon class Tuesday at the Highline Head Start program in Burien. The president’s stimulus plan includes a cash infusion for the early-learning programs Head Start and Early Head Start."

Peter Wallsten (LA Times, with video) surveys the damage and the cleanup efforts with ""Obama moves to regain ground after 'self-induced injury'. Ruth Marcus (WaPo) looks at the lobbyist issue: "The Scarlet Lobbyist." A Wall Street Journal story addresses another stimulus issue: "Obama Risks Flap on 'Buy American'." The Columbia Journalism Review prods the press with ""The Daschle Dilemma.

Barack Obama

AP: "Daschle Withdraws as Nominee for Health Post" (with video) (Updated)

UPDATE: Andrea Mitchell reports on her conversation with Daschle this morning--video from MSNBC (03:51).

AP, with video (04:45) from MSNBC:

Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary.

That's according to a joint White House statement from President Barack Obama and his former nominee.

Obama said Tuesday he accepted the withdrawal "with sadness and regret."

Daschle has been battling for his nomination since it was disclosed he failed to pay more than $120,000 in taxes.

He said he's withdrawing because he's not a leader who has the full faith of Congress and will be a distraction.

Barack Obama

"Obama's Choice for Chief Performance Officer Withdraws Name" (with video)

WaPo, with video from MSNBC (06:18):

Nancy Killefer, the management consultant and former Treasury official who had been picked by President Obama to serve as the country's chief performance officer, has withdrawn from consideration for the post, White House officials confirmed this morning.

Officials in the White House refused to say why she has withdrawn her name, but they said more details will come later in the day.

Shortly after her appointment, the Associated Press reported that Killefer had a tax lien placed on her house by the D.C. government because of a failure to pay unemployment taxes on household help. Since then, administration officials refused to answer questions about the tax error, which she resolved five months after the lien was filed, the wire service said.

Killefer was nominated by Obama in early January to be deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, which requires Senate confirmation, and appointed at the same time to a new White House post, chief performance officer for the entire federal government.

Obama had said Killefer would work on "identifying where there are areas that we can make big change that lasts beyond the economic recovery plan and save taxpayer money over the long term." It was not immediately clear who would replace her.

The White House has been struggling this week to explain how two of its Cabinet nominees -- former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner -- failed to pay back taxes. A third senior official with tax problems may have proved too much for the White House, which had prided itself on carefully vetting nominees, to stomach.

Killefer is a senior director at McKinsey & Company, an international management consulting firm with private- and public-sector clients. From1997 to 2000, served as assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer and chief operating officer at the Treasury Department.

At McKinsey -- where she worked before joining Treasury, and after her stint there -- she has consulted with the retail, hotel and pharmaceutical industries on management, marketing and efficiency issues.

Killefer also chaired the IRS Oversight Board from 2001 to 2005 and has served on the board of the Partnership for Public Service since 2006.

She has drawn wide praise from colleagues.

"She's a very talented person and we have a lot of important issues that she was going to be charged with addressing," Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service said this morning. "My hope is that the Obama administration works with great dispatch and works to find someone with her caliber, who will give as much prioritization to the matter as the president was giving these issues."

When Obama named Killefer to the post in early January, Stier said she was a top pick because she had excelled both in the private and governmental sectors.

"The translation to government is a challenging one," Stier said then. "What Nancy brings is a wealth of experience of working in the government on management issues. That combination of expertise from the public and private sectors will be what she needs to draw on to do a very challenging job."

During the presidential campaign, Obama proposed the creation of a "SWAT team" composed of "top-performing and highly-trained government professionals" that would work with government agency leaders and the Office of Management and Budget to eliminate government waste and improve efficiency.

"The CPO will work with federal agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress," according to the campaign proposal. "The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets."

Howie P.S.: Last night, when the focus was still just on Daschle, Tweety had to talk football before allowing his guests to wonder if Daschle was another "indispensable" nominee, like Geithner, who deserved "special treatment." On Countdown, the theme was is Daschle an "exception to change?"

Barack Obama

White House considers Daschle issue a "very serious" matter; BREAKING: Sims to HUD

AP:

Trying to salvage his nomination, Tom Daschle apologized Monday for delinquent tax payments as President Barack Obama and a top Senate chairman stood by him as the choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

Following a weekend of revelations about taxes and potential ethical conflicts, Daschle expressed remorse to the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that will decide his fate, saying he was "deeply embarrassed and disappointed" about failing to pay more than $120,000 in back taxes — a lapse he said was "unintentional."

Obama, speaking to reporters, said he was "absolutely" supporting his Cabinet choice. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate panel, said he backed Daschle's confirmation. The expressions of support came hours before Daschle was scheduled to meet with the committee.

In a letter to the Finance Committee that was released Monday, Daschle sought to explain how he overlooked taxes on additional income for consulting work and the use of a car service. He also deducted more in charitable contributions than he should have.

He recently filed amended tax returns for 2005-07 to report $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest.

"I am deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns," said Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader. "I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them."

Uncertain is whether the tax issue will stall or derail Daschle's nomination.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reiterated Obama's support for Daschle during a press briefing Monday afternoon.

"Nobody's perfect. It was a serious mistake, one that he caught and remedied," Gibbs said. "We still think he's the best person to do health care reform and shepherd a very complicated process through Congress to achieve savings and cut costs for the American people."

Baucus, in a statement, called Daschle "an invaluable and expert partner" in the effort toward "meaningful health care reform," and said he backs Daschle's nomination. The two men have had tussles in the past over Baucus' handling of former President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cut proposals, the Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003 and trade legislation.

Daschle was an early supporter of Obama's presidential bid and several of Daschle's former Capitol Hill staffers went to work for Obama after Daschle, then a South Dakota senator, lost his re-election bid in 2004.

Daschle filed the amended tax returns after Obama announced he intended to nominate him as secretary of Health and Human Services.

In his apology letter, Daschle provided a timeline for when the errors were discovered and tax payments made. He explained that the presidential transition team flagged charitable contributions they concluded were deducted in error. When his accountant realized amended tax returns would need to be filed, he suggested addressing another matter that Daschle raised with him earlier in the year: whether the use of a car service provided by a close friend and business associate, Leo Hindery, should be reported as income.

The unreported income for that car service totaled more than $250,000 over three years.

At about the same time, Hindery's company informed Daschle's accountant of a clerical error it made on a form it provided to Daschle that he subsequently reported to the IRS. The error resulted in an additional $88,333 in unreported consulting income for 2007.

"I disclosed this information to the committee voluntarily, and paid the taxes and any interest owed promptly," Daschle wrote. "My mistakes were unintentional."

A financial disclosure form Daschle filed about a week ago shows that he made more than $200,000 in the past two years speaking to members of the health care industry that Obama wants him to reform.

The speaking fees were just a portion of the more than $5.2 million the former senator earned over the last two years as he advised health insurers and hospitals and worked in other industries such as energy and telecommunications, according to a financial statement filed with the Office of Government Ethics.

Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for Daschle, said the money he earned in speaking fees from health care interests do not pose a conflict for the health care reform Obama wants him to lead.

Among the health care interest groups paying Daschle for speeches were America's Health Insurance Plans, $40,000 for two speeches; CSL Behring, $30,000; the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, $16,000; and the Principal Life Insurance Co., $15,000.

Howie P.S.: (Breaking) "Ron Sims to be nominated as HUD's Deputy Secretary."

Barack Obama

Chuck Todd: 'Cabinet accumulating errors" (video)

MSNBC, video (02:19)

Howie P.S.: The bottom line: Todd says Daschle wins if he gets to floor vote. DemFromCT's front-pager on Kos looks at "Tom Daschle, Howard Dean and HHS" and concludes:

Tom Daschle would be an ideal choice for HHS, at least as far as experience,but that's only if he survives this and gets past committee (his errors, particularly regarding the lobbyist blurring, are going to raise tough questions.) And for those same reasons, another wonk with similar policy credentials to Daschle's would need to be a second choice. I'm sure Obama doesn't want to be thinking about second choices, but really, Tom Daschle should not have put the President in this position.

Barack Obama

Tom Daschle's Shout Out to Washington State for Barack Obama (video)

Video (00:56):

Tom Daschle visited Washington state on September 16, 2008 and recorded this brief message on behalf of Barack Obama.

Howie P.S.: Afterwards, I felt like I should have been bolder and asked him a question or two.

Barack Obama

"Seattle Party w/ Senator Tom Daschle /SWYFS"

Cara Kroenke, (Special Events & Fundraising Director, Southwest Youth and Family Services):

As you might be aware Southwest Youth and Family Services (SWYFS) has its major fundraiser on September 16 - a breakfast and auction at Salty's. (www.swyfsbreakfast.com). This year our keynote speaker is Senator Tom Daschle. We are excited about this event, but have just learned that the Senator wants to do another event the night before, also to benefit SWYFS. This event, which will cost $500 per person, will give people an opportunity to meet with the Senator in a more intimate setting, a cocktail party at 7 p.m at a home on Queen Anne Hill.

Of course, you are invited, but, now for the request - I'm wondering if you might give me some names and contact info for others who might be interested in attending. This will benefit an organization that provides important services to kids and families in our community. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Let me know if you want to attend - and if you have anyone you think might be interested in receiving an invitation. I look forward to hearing from you.

P.S. -- Please feel free to forward this on...

Many Thanks.

Cheers!

Cara Kroenke
Special Events & Fundraising Director
Southwest Youth and Family Services
Helping Youth and Families Since 1979

4555 Delridge Way SW
Seattle, WA 98106
206-937-7680 *225
www.swyfsbreakfast.com

Howie P.S.: Tom's brother, Steve Daschle, is the Executive Director of SWYFS.

"Daschle Featured in New Obama South Dakota Ad" (video)

You can view my latest post on the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog here.

Barack Obama

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Tom Daschle:

Daschle said Obama does not have "any interest in being vice president," because "he's going to be our presidential nominee."

"It's really a rare occurrence, maybe the first time in history, that the person who's running No. 2 would offer the person who's running No. 1 the No. 2 position," Daschle said.

Barack Obama