Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is due to release a proposal Wednesday for reforming the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, giving a boost to President Barack Obama’s top domestic policy goal.

Or maybe not.

Baucus has been working with two fellow Democrats and three Republicans — the so-called Gang of Six– to produce a bipartisan healthcare compromise. None of the other healthcare reform bills introduced so far have had Republican support.

The question is whether the Baucus effort will win over some Republicans. So far even the Republicans negotiating with him have shied away from pledging to vote for the measure.

Opposition to healthcare reform, and other government initiatives, has become increasingly bitter in recent months.

Town hall meetings produced outpourings of anger. Representative Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at Obama as he addressed a joint session of Congress. The president’s decision to speak to students on the first day of school prompted some to keep their children home.

The Washington Post reported on the issue Wednesday, saying around the Capitol the previous day “at any given moment, someone was expressing outrage — or counter-outrage.”

Former President Jimmy Carter told NBC News much of the anger was racially motivated.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,” Carter said in portions of an interviewed aired Wednesday on the “Today” show.

Carter, who sat down with NBC ahead of his 85th birthday Oct. 1, said the country had come a long way in its racial attitudes, but the “racisim inclination still exists.”

“I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply,” said Carter, a Georgia native.

The White House has generally tiptoed around the race issue, but Carter’s comments pushed the debate into public view.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz told NBC the anger was not racially motivated, but rather a fear of the future and concern their children will be worse off than they are.

“The anger is not directed just towards Barack Obama. It’s directed towards members of Congress, it’s directed towards the Senate, it’s directed towards the media, towards unions, towards institutions that we feel have failed us,” Luntz said.

But Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociologist, said it was clear racism was a factor, citing those who challenge Obama’s birthplace or objected to the president speaking to schoolchildren.

“How much evidence do you need,” he said. “It amazes me that white Americans are incapable of acknowledging what is before our faces.”

Obama meets with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Wednesday. Talks are likely to focus on the slowly recovering global economy, trade issues provoked by U.S. “buy American” rules and the environment.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Baucus speaks to reporters after Gang of Six meeting Tuesday); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Harper and other Canadian officials outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington Wednesday)

NEW YORK - One thing seems certain in the race for the White House — the debate that the campaigns have sparked on sexism, racism and ageism in the United States is nowhere near resolved.

The media’s handling of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain – each running a groundbreaking campaign — has drawn attention to the way women, blacks and older people are seen in America, according to a panel of experts that met on Tuesday at the Paley Center for Media.

 ”I think it’s time for journalists to stop and look back at what they did and not say, ‘Well, we’re not covering Hillary Clinton any more so gender is no longer an issue,’” said panelist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’d say to reporters, ‘Let’s think about all of those kinds of questions about gender and then let’s ask the same kinds of questions about race,’” she said. She also added age to the list.

If elected, Obama would be the nation’s first black president and McCain would be the oldest to take office. Clinton would have been the first woman. Discussion about bias and stereotyping has been extensive, especially since Clinton dropped out of the race and her loss disappointed many female supporters.

The panel on “Bias, Punditry and the Press in the 2008 Election,” which also included political columnists Courtney Martin of The American Prospect Online, Patricia Williams of The Nation and Juan Gonzalez of New York’s Daily News, noted what panelists saw as sexism toward Clinton.

Examples included the extensive coverage of her laugh, praise for certain of her speeches as “charming” and criticism that she was “strident” — none of which would have been leveled against a male candidate, they said.  That doesn’t even include rude and insulting remarks that can be found on the Internet, where people are more free to be harsh in their tone thanks to the Web’s anonymity, they said.

“It is so insulting, it is so unacceptable and, to think that in this country which claims to be the bastion of democracy and freedom and tries to take this around the world, that there is no accountablity for dissing a woman, I find that really appalling,” said panelist Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent. 
      
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.   

Photo credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook (Obama)

Photo credit: Reuters/Lee Celano (McCain)

Photo credit: Reuters/Ana Martinez (Clinton)