Earlier this week Holly wrote a really interesting piece about the electoral parallels between now and 1993—and the fact that the GOP is hoping for a dramatic Democratic defeat in next year's midterms, similar to what happened in 1994. Holly points out several flaws in the analogy: Republicans have more baggage going into next year's elections than they did in' 94, congressional Republicans have exceptionally low approval ratings, the GOP lacks strong national leadership, and there's damaging infighting between conservatives and moderates. But I'd like to add another difference to the list: health-care reform.

D.C. loves nothing more than insider intrigue about closed-door meetings. Exhibit A: TPM's Brian Beutler is stirring the pot with his reporting that last week's White House health-care meeting between the president and Senators Reid and Schumer was more acrimonious than we've been led to believe. Days after the meeting Reid announced the inclusion of a public option in his health-care bill, amid speculation that the White House still favored a trigger option. Beutler writes that in the days leading up to the meeting, relations between Reid and the administration inched toward the breaking point. His sources describe "the back and forth between Senate health-care principals and the White House as a "sort of stare-down where the two sides were saying, 'you be the face of pulling it out.' Reid wants Obama to do it to give cover to his caucus. Obama wants Reid to do it so he's not the bad guy on the public option and can still walk away with a win with reform, with bipartisanship, and with a card for everybody running for reelection." He also reports that Schumer was the one tasked with pitching Reid's opt-out-option strategy to the president. When he did, Beutler's source says,"Obama was less than responsive and asked questions that suggested he preferred an option that could get the trigger and bipartisan support." 

In true D.C. fashion, however, my sources paint a different picture. Senior Democratic sources close to the discussions tell me that the White House meeting was all about Olympia Snowe and how to secure her vote. It's no secret that the president is eager to call reform a bipartisan effort, and Snowe holds the one last candle of hope. But by the time Reid and Schumer entered the White House, Snowe was no longer the topic du jour for them. They were operating on a different calculus.

Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent notes something I've been thinking, and meaning to blog about for weeks, namely that the Virginia governor's race is not a referendum on the president. As much as pundits want to draw national conclusions for an off-cycle race like this one—political reporters, myself included, can't resist the allure of "what does it all mean?" analysis—the Virginia race doesn't tell us all that much about the presidency. Sargent looks closely at the numbers from a recent Washington Post poll, and finds the following:

• Seventy percent of likely voters say Obama is “not a factor” in their choice. Only 15% say opposition to Obama is a factor, while 14% say support for him is a factor.
• Seventy-one percent say it makes “no difference” if the governor is from the same political party as the president. More people say it’s good to have a governor from the same party, 16%-13%.
• Obama’s approval rating in Virginia is 54%, in line with many national polls.

America's conservatives are probably feeling pretty chuffed today after reading Gallup's recent polling on political ideology. The data confirm Gallup's June finding that conservatism is the dominant ideology in the country right now. About 40 percent of respondents identified themselves as conservative, while 36 percent called themselves moderate and 20 percent liberal. The last time the conservative number was so high was in 2003 and 2004. The reason today's numbers are important is that they've jumped up 3 points after holding steady at 37 percent from 2006 to 2008. Considering the size of the sample and the lack of movement in the past few years, that jump is significant.

Although the numbers don't look great for Democrats, they're not exactly a reason for popping champagne at the RNC. According to Jeff Jones, managing editor of the Gallup poll, the number of people identifying as conservative rose similarly when Bill Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993. In 1992, conservatives made up 36 percent of the electorate. That number popped up to 39 percent in 1993. It dropped back to 38 percent in 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress, and reached its contemporary nadir—36 percent—the following year.

Olympia Snowe's Tuesday vote in favor of Max Baucus's health care plan inspired much chatter about her "bucking the party" and whether the GOP will retaliate and strip her of her coveted seniority. But the polling data Ben Smith uncovered yesterday, got me thinking about a different tension in politics: an old three-way conflict between representing your party, representing your constituents and plain old intellectual leadership. Although Snowe's moves are easily characterized as a shift away from her party's powerbrokers, they could also be seen as a genuine attempt to represent the folks who elected her to office.

According to a recent survey, 57.4% of Maine voters are in favor of a government administered option while 37.2% are opposed. A whopping 73.6% of Maine residents support stricter regulation of insurance companies, and 58% approve of the job Obama is doing. An earlier Daily Kos / Research 2000 poll had similar results. That poll found that more Maine residents identify as Democrat than Republican, but a plurality identify as independent. It also found the state is divided on marriage equality, with the results (47 pro; 49 anti) within the margin of error.

Levi Johnston, the lad most famous for knocking up his high-school sweetheart—who also happened to be Sarah Palin's daughter—is making the most of his fame. He's been made news twice this week already. On Tuesday, we were chattering about his amusing role in a new commercial for nuts. Today, the blogosphere lit up with news of his nude shoot for Playgirl, titillating girls and gay men alike. Apparently Levi has become a work-out machine, toning the love handles he exposed in GQ in preparation for moment in the female erotica spotlight. If he wasn't a liberal pin-up boy before, he certainly is now. Surely Levi's 15 minutes are almost up. And yet there he is again, trending high on Google, and cluttering up gossip blogs. So why the fixation with this unemployed, hockey-playing, high-school dropout?

Of course, his appeal is partly explained by his looks. The dude is hot. But he also comes across as remarkably normal given his circumstances. His starring turns in GQ and Vanity Fair showed a kid managing to remain relatively down-to-earth amid his swirling fame and personal tumult. Sure he has an agent and talks about landing acting gigs, but one imagines him doing so with the same unaffected nonchalance with which he pops a pistachio, or talks about shooting moose. He seems playful, as though he's not taking this whole caper too seriously. He'll chat about his life as long as people want to listen. And therein lies the secret to his success: Johnston can pan the one of the most criticized women in the world without sounding salacious, nasty, or misogynist. He's not a screeching critic. He's just a guy bitching about the in-laws. It's an entirely unique position in the Palin-sphere. And people love it.

Photo by Pete Souza/WH

When President Obama received his copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan assessment last month, one of the first questions posed to the White House was how long it would take Obama to decide whether he’d send additional troops into the region. “Weeks,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. The decision, he said, was “not immediate and not imminent.” It’s a talking point that the White House has repeated over and over since then: Obama wanted time to digest McChrystal’s report and to weigh his options. A month later, Obama is still deliberating. Tomorrow he’ll convene the third of five planned Afghan strategy sessions in the White House’s Situation Room with top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. McChrystal, as he did last week, will participate via videoconference. A fourth meeting is planned for Friday. According to the White House, Obama’s decision is still “weeks” away, but how much time does the president really have?

Over the weekend, Jim Jones, Obama’s national-security adviser, pointedly told CNN’s John King that time is on the president's side. “Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of failing,” Jones said. That may be true, but it’s the growing pressure from Congress and the public that the White House really has to worry about.

The president and first lady leave the stage after making their pitch. Photo: Charles Dharapak—AP.

After weeks of railing against the price tag of health-care reform, Senate Republicans managed to bond over pumping up the budget for one aspect of health-care reform yesterday: abstinence-only education. Proposed by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the amendment reinstates $50 million in funding for abstinence-only education that President Obama had previously removed in his budget proposal earlier this year. Committee Republicans were joined by Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad in voting up the measure, which passed 12-11.

I've been trying to think of a measured way to riff on this, but instead I'll be frank. It's an absolute waste of money. This is the sort of thing Republicans usually wail about—the federal government propping up a program where there is no evidence that said program works. Indeed, there's a mounting body of evidence that abstinence-only education is a categorical failure. Just this past Sunday, the Austin American Statesman reported that school districts in Texas are abandoning abstinence-only education. "More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birthrate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once," the Statesman reports. Many of the schools are shifting to so-called "abstinence-plus" programs, which teach abstinence within a comprehensive sex-education program.