The Dish

Sager sums up a study (pdf):

Contrary to the stories you see floating around every once in a while, no one’s pinned down a biological basis for what makes one a Republican versus a Democrat. In fact, according to a new study, there’s no evidence whatsoever of a Republican or a Democratic “gene,” so to speak. What this new study does find, however, is something a bit more nuanced: evidence that there’s a genetic basis for partisan intensity, as opposed to affiliation. Science might not yet be able to tell you why you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but it might be able to tell you a little bit about why you are so much of one.

Stuart Staniford digs through Chinese transportation data. The above graph shows total passenger-kilometers by mode of transportation:

[If] present trends continue, the Chinese expressway system will likely grow larger than the US interstate highway system within the next couple of years, and Chinese car ownership will exceed US car ownership by somewhere in the neighborhood of 2017.

A reader writes:

Jim Webb "caves" to what? Democracy? I support the President's health care reform efforts as much as you do, but come on! They just had an election in Massachusetts. You don't think it should be respected? I'm not saying that the Democrats should give up on health care reform but I am saying that, whatever they do, they ought to do it after Senator-Elect Brown has been seated.

The nobleness of the goal of health care reform has blinded a lot of progressives to the fact that the average voter was becoming repulsed by the (even by Washington standards) grotesque process of getting something passed. While progressives were rationalizing that behavior, Americans were getting sickened by it. (Hence tonight's result in Massachusetts.) Ramming a bill through before Senator-Elect Brown can be seated would confirm Americans' worst beliefs about the Democratic congress — a confirmation they would be unlikely to forget by November.

It's great that you're so passionate about health care reform — every American ought to be. But the Democrats shouldn't drive the Party (not to mention our democracy) off a cliff in order to achieve it. Some things are plainly, demonstrably wrong. Acting as if the voices of the people of Massachusetts don't matter (even if you believe their judgment is terribly flawed) is one of those things.

He's right about this:

Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country.   The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.   People are angry, and they're frustrated.  Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years.

He is refusing to countenance trying to ram the Senate bill through before Brown takes his seat. Now, if Brown wants to keep his seat, would it not behoove him to make an alliance with a president very popular in his home state? Could the two of them come up with a Plan B? From every crisis, an opportunity.

Erroll Southers withdraws his nomination to lead the TSA, saying he was "obstructed by political ideology." Ezra fumes. Goldblog thinks Southers got off easy.

A reader writes:

My brother has been an addict for about half of his life; he started using drugs in high school and eventually did – and dealt – anything he had access to.  My mother believes he was self medicating.  Mental illnesses run on our father's side of the family.  Sometime in his late teens to early twenties, he began dealing and using meth.  Since our mother was/is his codependent, she slowly developed a satellite, also codependent, relationship with me – I provided emotional support for her as she financially supported him.  As part of that role, I was manipulated into moving back home.

It was horrific.  I will never be able to say that sentence enough to mentally acknowledge to myself the reality of what my family went through. 

My brother verbally abused me every time he was down.  He threatened to kill me frequently.  He physically intimidated everyone and threw my father out of a chair.  At halfway to the worst point, he date raped his girlfriend.  I was the only witness, as I was in the next room.  I went and got my father, who knocked on the door and asked what was going on (they had barricaded themselves in his bedroom.)  My brother and his girlfriend left the house silently.  I selfishly wonder why she never pressed charges.  I will have to live with the sound of her begging him for rest of my life.  I hope she has come to terms with worse.  At rock bottom, few years later, he broke into the house and chased my mother out of it with a steak knife while screaming he was going to kill her.  Finally, he was arrested by the DEA.

Megan proposes something constructive:

Raise the Medicare tax by half a percentage point, and eliminate the tax-deductibiity of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles. Then make the federal government the insurer of last resort. Any medical expenses more than 15% or 20% of household income, get picked up by Uncle Sam.

Maybe Obama could get McCain to sign on. Yeah, right. But why not Scott Brown? I think Obama should form an alliance with this allegedly moderate Northeastern Republican. But actually paying for a benefit through taxes has long since been demonized by the GOP. They prefer to borrrow.

Larison has some sharp analysis of the Brown win.

Democrats have convinced themselves for years that the public overwhelmingly favors “health care reform,” which they pretty readily identify with their own ideas on what that reform should be, and now Republicans have convinced themselves that the public will not stand for passage of a health care bill. My guess is that both have been wrong in different ways, but the GOP is probably misreading the situation even worse than the Democrats. Republicans are betting heavily that a bill that is passed this year but which will not take effect for several more years is going to precipitate a massive public backlash in their favor. Democrats are assuming that the voters who handed them 14 Senate and 50+ House seats over the last two elections are not going to throw them out of power for doing more or less what they said they would do. Whose bet seems smarter?

Reihan highlights a few paragraphs from another Larison post, and Daniel compares the election to NY-23.

An Obama supporter vents:

But no, Hillary would have been worse.

Here's Ross's recommendation to Obama, uncomfortably close to my own:

Obama ought to closet himself with every potential swing-vote Senator and congressman, hat in hand, to figure out if there’s some kind of Plan B on health care that could get passed in the next six months. There are plenty of ideas that the White House could draw on in this quest (risk pools, Medicaid expansions, anything from this Tyler Cowen list, etc.), and the final result could be sold, accurately, as an incremental alternative to the bloat of the current legislation. Then Obama could spend next year saying “message received, America” on health care, even as he picks fights with the G.O.P. on financial reform and a few other issues and waits for the economy to start adding jobs again. The goal would be to reassure a public that still likes him and still distrusts Republicans, but that clearly wants the Democrats to slow down, spend less, and face a few more curbs on their authority.

One option would be to recruit Scott Brown for the healthcare effort. Brown supports universal healthcare in Massachusetts, after all. I'd add a real challenge to the GOP on deficits, but this is roughly the comeback I'd recommend.