Progressive Breakfast: Is 'Hopenhagen' Now Hopelesshagen?

As President Obama flies  to Copenhagen later today to join dozens of other heads of state at the climate change talks there, The New York Times joins other media outlets in concluding that "continued bickering among delegations would seem to be making the likelihood of a significant breakthrough increasingly slim."

Nonetheless, Reuters quotes administration officials that they believe Obama can use his stature to salvage meaningful agreements from the talks.

"The president is hopeful that his presence can help... and hopeful that, again, we leave Copenhagen with a strong operational agreement even as we work toward something even stronger in the future," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

But that was before Politico's Glenn Thrush reported that China won't agree to the kind of "operational agreement" that the U.S. was hoping for and would instead only commit to a "short, noncommittal collective statement."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the U.S. would participate in the $100 billion global fund to help less-developed countries with green energy initiatives, but that is contingent on China committing to monitoring of its greenhouse emissions efforts that so far China has refused to allow.

Nick Bering on Open Left writes about how he and 50 members of Friends of the Earth were frozen out of the Copenhagen conference even though they had valid credentials, because "we were considered a security threat." That dispute was partially resolved, but not a much more important issue:

One of the key roles Friends of the Earth has played at the conference has been to advocate for climate justice and the interests of the poor countries that have done the least to cause the climate crisis but will feel some of its strongest impacts. Negotiators from those countries are tremendously under-resourced here.  For example, I've worked with negotiators who have no media officers (I do media work) to help them communicate their position. They are totally outgunned by the massive delegations of the rich countries, and now thanks to the UN's decision to exclude us, they will have even less support inside the Bella Center to fight for a fair agreement. An agreement that already feels so far out of reach. It's really frustrating, and shameful.

Bill McKibben writes for Mother Jones that one of the first substantive declarations of the Copenhagen talks didn't even happen in Copenhagen, but in Paris, where Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy after receiving a phone call from President Obama.

"That was enough to persuade [Zenwali] to sign off on, in essence, the American deal. Two degrees. (Never mind that the IPCC had made clear that two degrees more heating means four degrees in Africa, which means better find some habit to replace eating.) $10 billion in "fast-start" financing. (Given the 4 billion people in the developing world, that's $2.50 apiece; sorry about that global warming, but enjoy this fries-and-a-Coke.) This is how power works. The US president doesn't want to put political capital on the line to push the US Senate, so the leader of the African negotiating bloc gets the word, and the deal gets cut. It's wonderfully naked, and the extra bonus up-yours was cutting the deal along the Champs Elysees."

White House proposals for  clean energy tax credits are highlighted by The Christian Science Monitor: "The step, which, it's hoped, will spur private investment for $15 billion in total spending for manufacturing, was announced today by Vice President Joe Biden, who was hosting chief executives as part of an unveiling of a new framework to aid US manufacturing. He characterized it as an investment in the nation's future. ... US manufacturing groups such as the Alliance for American Manufacturing applauded the step, citing a 'flood of subsidized competition from Asia and Europe seeking to capitalize on new demand for clean energy products in the United States.'"

Health Care: Thin Line Between Compromise And Compromised

Senate democrats are struggling today to salvage something from the wreckage that used to be health care reform. Politico reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last night was still hoping to get some sort of bill passed, perhaps as late as Christmas Eve. But Republicans are continuing their obstruction campaign, and Sen. Ben Nelson is still refusing to commit to a compromise with pro-choice lawmakers on abortion language.

"Liberal groups and labor unions have pulled back from calls to kill the Senate healthcare bill," says The Hill. "House Democrats and liberal interest groups are hoping to win a few concessions in conference, which is expected to wrap up in time for Obama to tout the completed bill during his first State of the Union address in January."

Make that "some" liberals. One day after former governor and Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean encouraged members of the Senate to "kill" the health care bill, Keith Olbermann followed suit Wednesday night on his MSNBC show, taking particular aim at the fact that the bill as it now stands requires the purchase of a product in which "you have no control over how much you will pay for the product" and "the government will have virtually no control over how much the company will charge for the product" — and you will have to pay a fine if you don't. His shot at President Obama: "Mr. President, the line between "compromise" and "compromised" is an incredibly fine one."

Also, Ian Welsh responds to Nate Silver's 20 reasons to support the health care reform bill with his own 20 reasons to oppose it..

Markos Moulitsas sees something positive in the progressive divide on whether to support the  Senate bill or kill it:

In short, there appears to be a divide between those who think the insurance industry will play nice, even with little incentive to do so, and people like me who don't. They believe that government will enforce the new regulations, people like me have seen entire industries employ armies of lawyers and lobbyists with the sole intent of undermining and avoiding such regulations. I'm a half-empty guy, others are half-full. Regardless, this is a fantastic debate. For critics who bemoaned the lack of policy discussed on blogs, this year has certainly proven that when we do have the opportunity to impact policy (i.e. a Democratic-run government), we certainly can get into the weeds on policy.

Chris Bowers, however, looks at four possible scenarios for health care reform at this point and concludes that the debate has created a no-win political situation for Democrats and progressives in 2010.

If you oppose the bill at least partially because you believe it will result in negative political consequences for Democrats, well, you are probably correct in that assessment.  However, don't delude yourself into thinking that defeating it somehow makes for a better political outcome.  It won't, because there is no good political outcome at this point. This is about picking your poison, not about finding a happy ending.

Is the budget reconciliation process the answer for salvaging a decent health care bill? FireDogLake's Jon Walker doesn't buy the argument that health care reformers can't achieve significant changes through reconciliation: "Expanding Medicaid, Medicare buy-in, the public option, closing the Medicare doughnut hole, taxes, affordability tax credits, cost control reforms for Medicare and Medicaid, and more can all be done with reconciliation. These are all the most difficult parts of reform."

Sixty million people without health insurance at some point since January 2008: That's the latest measure of the toll the status quo on health care is taking on the American public, according to the Centers for Disease Control. That's roughly one in five Americans, Reuters reports.

Bernanke Fight Not Over

The Senate Banking Committee votes to send the nomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to the full Senate, but his nomination still faces determined opposition from both the left and the right.

David Sirota applauds the decision of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., to vote against the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve Board chairman at today's Senate Banking Committee meeting. Merkley joins a growing list of senators opposing the nomination. Merkley said in a statement that Bernanke "failed to recognize or remedy the factors that paved the road to this dark and difficult recession.  Following our economic collapse, it is also apparent that he has not changed his overall approach to prioritizing Wall Street over American families."

This is excellent news from Merkley," Sirota writes, and "proof positive that the progressive campaign to stop Bernanke's renomination ... is working."

At a news conference Wednesday, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont joined economist William K. Black and Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage in urging the committee to not go forward with the Bernanke vote until Bernanke comes clean on the commitments he and the Fed made to prop up the banking system during the financial crisis. In his prepared statement, Sanders reacted to Time magazine's designation of Bernanke as "Person of the Year":

What I find most interesting is that Time Magazine acknowledges… "Bernanke was as clueless as [Alan] Greenspan about the coming storm. He dismissed warnings of a housing bubble, he insisted that economic fundamentals remain strong" … in March 2007, he [Bernanke] assured Congress that "the problems of the problems of the sub-prime market seems likely to remain strong. ... Does anyone seriously believe that with a record like that, that this should be a man that’s reappointed as chairman of the Fed?”

Borosage likens the Time designation to "celebrating an arsonist for his heroism in putting out the fire that he helped to start."

House Passes Jobs Bill

McClatchy says the vote was a step toward giving support to 35 states that face a combined deficit of $31.5 billion. "The White House is signaling that it wants to send more money to the states. Without offering any specifics, President Barack Obama mentioned the idea last week in an economic speech, and state officials are eager to hear what the White House has in mind. On Capitol Hill, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California is urging Congress to finalize a bill quickly, before state legislatures begin their work in 2010."

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future