I’m not convinced that the Romney Etch-A-Sketch thing has legs in the general election. You know the drill: Bill Maher said Etch-A-Sketch once, Michael Moore is fat, if you hear the full context for the quote….rinse, repeat. And of course what the adviser said is 100% true, not just of Romney’s campaign but of everything in our political discourse. Obama passed the American Enterprise Institute’s health care plan and now it will be ruled unconstitutional by the Republicans in the Supreme Court if they decide it’s politically expedient for them to do so. John is right:
I’m really completely uninterested in the actual arguments being made in the ACA case before SCOTUS. It just doesn’t matter what the law is, as these guys have proven time and again that they’ll do whatever they want. I also find it amusing that people think Roberts cares about the impressions created by a divided court. He doesn’t. None of them do. There is no doubt in my mind that Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and Roberts will do whatever they think will help conservatism the most, precedents and outcomes of their actions be dam
You can always find a reason for anything that you want to do if you’re enough of a sociopath. Mclaren probably said it best:
I imagine 500 years ago, the Aztec ruler-to-be assured his subjects “I believe in Tlaloc. I have always believed in Tlaloc. I believe in motherhood, Tlaloc, and infant sacrifice, all the traditional values. When we get a drought, tradition teaches us that we must flay a ritual sacrificial victim alive and perform a sacred dance in his bleeding skin, and I believe in those traditional family values…”
[…]Human rationality did not evolve in order to solve differential equations. That’s an epiphenomenon of little consequence. Human rationality evolved in order to invent ingenious ways of justifying crazy primate behavior to the rest of the tribe of murderous primates.
I don’t have the energy to pretend that people of good will can agree that Burkeans and Rawlsians both have good points blah blah blah blah blah anymore. How about you?
Dave
I mean, what the Romney guy said about the general election is true, and everyone knows it. I mean Jesus, it’s not really even a “gaffe.” Like, everyone runs to the center for the general, ZOMG! what a novel concept, never heard of such a thing!
KG
I still have the energy to believe it. I just don’t know how many people of good will exist anymore.
Steve
Presumably you agree that Romney will try to run as something other than a crazy right-wing MFer in the general election. Presumably you agree that Obama will try to point to the crazy things he said in the primary as evidence that his new persona isn’t sincere. I don’t think people are going to automatically disbelieve everything Romney says, but the Etch-a-Sketch thing certainly doesn’t help.
__
Also too, there’s this strange fetish the pundits have with thinking that you always have to take a candidate’s stated position seriously, even if he said the complete opposite yesterday and every piece of evidence suggests he’s flat-out lying. This is part of what enables these jerks to change positions on a dime. But having said that, I’m not sure actual voters think that way. The people I know are completely open to drawing snap conclusions that someone is lying.
__
In fact, one of the reasons I believe negative campaigns have so much salience is that people are quite skeptical regarding candidates’ promises and affirmative claims, but for some reason they tend to assume that every attack has at least a kernel of truth at its heart. I have no idea why that is.
Zifnab
@Dave: Hard right conservatives are regularly shocked when the mundane becomes public. Romney’s had a serious GOTV problem and I don’t think this will help him.
I’m sure there will be plenty of Republicans sitting in their easy chairs, waxing poetic about how Romney is whats best for the country and his moderate policies are just a thin veneer over a true Reagan-esque red blooded American beating heart. But will they be wearing “I voted” stickers? That I don’t know.
wrb
It does.
It helps Romney. The non-crazies want the pandering required for the primaries to be shaken away.
The crazies will vote against Obama regardless. They can be counted upon.
It is the fact that no one believes Romney means a thing he says to get the nom that is his great strength going into the general.
wrb
fucking squishing of paragraphs
wrb
fucking squishing of paragraphs
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Except that from what I’ve hearing via my limited collection of not-very-political people, this has legs because it is funny and the the joke is easy to tell and easy to visualize without needing much in the way of context or knowlege about politics. Which means it spreads. And you never get a chance to make a first impression. For some non-trivial number of folks who were saying “who is the Romney person anyway?”, they know have an answer: he’s the Etch-A-Sketch guy. I think Romney’s political team may have really screwed the pooch on this one.
burnspbesq
When the Supremes vote 7-2 to uphold the Constitutionality of the ACA, on exactly the same grounds that every lawyer who hangs out here has been predicting for the last six months, I am going to laugh at you and Cole so loudly that you won’t need a phone to hear me all the way from SoCal. You’re both blinded by your prejudices.
We’ve had a Federal judiciary for 221 years. Over that entire period, how many cases can you and Cole point to that have been decided based entirely on partisan political considerations without regard to legal principles? Hint: the correct answer is less than two. That’s the definition of “outlier.”
The three hardest words for anyone to say are “I was wrong.” You and Cole should start practicing now, so that you have it down by June when the opinion comes out.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Except that from what I’ve hearing via my limited collection of not-very-political people, this has legs because it is funny and the the joke is easy to tell and easy to visualize without needing much in the way of context or knowlege about politics. Which means it spreads. And you never get a chance to make a first impression. For some non-trivial number of folks who were saying “who is the Romney person anyway?”, they know have an answer: he’s the Etch-A-Sketch guy. I think Romney’s political team may have really screwed the pooch on this one.
Bruce S
Burkeans and Rawlsians may well both have good points, but that’s hardly a description of the substance of political “discourse” in this country at this time. The question here is to what degree is the right wing of the Supreme Court operating as a purely political instrument of a “conservative” movement that’s not about conserving anything, so much as an amalgam of cultural resentments, defense of prerogatives of the economic elite. The answer to that one tends to be depressingly affirmative. Edmund Burke sided with the American colonists against England. It’s hard to imagine any partisans among the GOP making an equivalent leap in a parallel situation. I don’t see Burke as a dogmatic or purely reactive figure. Not one of my “heroes” but he doesn’t deserve the calumny of being associated with the cranks who make most of the noise among the contemporary American Right.
Bruce S
Burkeans and Rawlsians may well both have good points, but that’s hardly a description of the substance of political “discourse” in this country at this time. The question here is to what degree is the right wing of the Supreme Court operating as a purely political instrument for a “conservative” movement that’s not about conserving anything, so much as an amalgam of cultural resentments, defense of prerogatives of the economic elite. The answer to that one tends to be depressingly affirmative. Edmund Burke sided with the American colonists against England. It’s hard to imagine any partisans among the GOP making an equivalent leap in a parallel situation. I don’t see Burke as a dogmatic or purely reactive figure. Not one of my “heroes” but he doesn’t deserve the calumny of being associated with the cranks who make most of the noise among the contemporary American Right.
c u n d gulag
I’m sorry to generalize, but:
“People of good will” are Liberals and Progressives.
People of ill will, are Conservatives.
How can people who are racists, misogynists, xenophobes, and homophobes, EVER be considered “people of good will?”
David Koch
Maybe even the liburel Doug can substitute for Halperin when he’s on vacation
john f
Miles Davis reference in the title; very Cool.
john f
Miles Davis reference in the title; very Cool.
Bruce S
Burkeans and Rawlsians may well both have good points, but that’s hardly a description of the substance of political “discourse” in this country at this time. The question here is to what degree is the right wing of the Supreme Court operating as a purely political instrument for a “conservative” movement that’s not about conserving anything, so much as an amalgam of cultural resentments, defense of prerogatives of the economic elite. The answer to that one tends to be depressingly affirmative. Edmund Burke sided with the American colonists against England. It’s hard to imagine any partisans among the GOP making an equivalent leap in a parallel situation. I don’t see Burke as a dogmatic or purely reactive figure. Not one of my “heroes” but he doesn’t deserve the calumny of being associated with the cranks who make most of the noise among the contemporary American Right.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Sorry about the double post. Bloghost, please delete #10. Thanks!
Satanicpanic
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I second this. This is an easy one and it plays to people’s cynicism. It will be up there with Al Gore is boring or GWB is a dumbass.
Clark Stooksbury
I love it when the title is an obscure reference that i get.
Bill Arnold
@burnspbesq:
If you have a foreign credit card (and probably willingness to break some law), there is some sweet money to be made at intrade.com, which is pricing odds of the individual mandate being ruled unconstitutional by midnight ET 31 Dec 2012 at 38/100.
Spaghetti Lee
I don’t have the energy to pretend that people of good will can agree that Burkeans and Rawlsians both have good points blah blah blah blah blah anymore. How about you?
Well, this ain’t the first time you’ve said that. My advice is go out and do something positive and stop worrying about what the twats on the Sunday morning shows think.
gnomedad
That’s a mite overstated; it’s of enormous consequence. Where’s the lizard-caused climate change?
Martin
The Supreme Court really has become the perfect Rorschach test, hasn’t it? The right sees nothing but activist judges and the left sees nothing but conservative water carriers.
We really don’t do well without transparency, do we?
Chyron HR
@burnspbesq:
You forgot to preemptively declare VICTORY!!
Violet
If Romney loses this election, Santorum is Next In Line.
__
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I agree and I’m having the same experience with some non-political folks I know. It’s pithy, it’s funny, it’s memorable and it’s accurate. It’s got legs.
HRA
Ah but but but that etch a sketch thingy will keep giving free ads because you know anything negative about it gets reasoned as it being what all politicians do anyway.
You are welcome.
Anoniminous
I can still pretend to believe people of good will can agree that Burkeans and Rawlsians both have good points. I can no longer pretend people of good will and Right Wingers are intersecting Categories.
Citizen_X
I may think Mclaren is crazy sometimes, but he/she is usually pretty smart. Smart enough to know that this
Is bullshit. It’s argument from design. Human rationality, like high intelligence in, say, ravens or elephants, evolved because it helped the species survive. What uses it gets put to is another matter. It can be used for good or venal purposes, and to rationalize the completely irrational. Which I think was Mclaren’s deeper point.
/pedant
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This. The attack ads practically write themselves. First, you show Romney contradicting himself several times. One of the cases where he’s said opposite things on consecutive days would be good. So would be some of the issues where he backtracks between the primary and the general. Then you have his campaign guy giving the Etch-A-Sketch line. Finally you bring in the point that Romney is a shameless opportunist who will say anything to get elected, so voters have no idea which Mitt Romney they’ll actually get.
taodon
Is it possible that the Romney campaign put forth this whole Etch-A-Sketch meme in order to circumvent the tactic during the general? That way, it’s much easier to dismiss it as “that’s already been said and isn’t a big deal.”
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@burnspbesq:
Ha! that river runs both ways, so I have memoniced this thread for future reference.
James E. Powell
@burnspbesq:
It would not surprise me, even a little, if the supreme court rules 7-2 to uphold ACA, with Roberts writing the opinion of the court. I think 6-3 is a more likely outcome; Scalia, Alito, and Thomas will not be able to resist the opportunity to bloviate in dissents when they know that everyone will be reading the opinions.
At the same time, I completely understand and would never laugh at anyone who expected or feared otherwise. After Bush v. Gore, the one thing we know is that the right-wing core of this court is more than willing to play an active and outcome-determining role in national elections.
lamh35
So I finally heard Obama’s “open mic” incident with Russia’s PM, and I guess I don’t get the “gaffe” of it all. Nor do I get why anyone thinks it’s a bigger deal outside of the usual RW, RNC, GOP critters?
I know it’s not like Obama to say much off mic, but I don’t believe it was planned. It will go away, because this week is all about the HCR SCOTUS case. There is no oxygen left for this “gaffe” to make any news.
Plus it wasn’t anything that would bother anyone but voters who won’t be voting for POTUS anyway and just use any reason to confirm why they don’t like POTUS.
Plus it wasn’t anything that would bother anyone but voters who won’t be voting for POTUS anyway and just use any reason to confirm why they don’t like POTUS.
It’s nothing like the Romney “etch-a-sketch” gaffe because this is one case of “flexibility” but it’s just the truth reasonable people expect that Obama has to get re-elected before he has any idea what he can negotiate with.
There is no point negotiated some sort of anything when if GOP gets elected, the will probably not want to uphold Obama’s deal anyway.
Citizen_X
Hint: you’re breathing it.
Arm The Homeless
One of the issues at hand that I really don’t hear talked about what difference–if any–it makes that the ACA allows for states to ‘opt-out’ if their exchanges meet all of the requirements (universality, price/coverage levels etc.)
Do any of the legal eagles here want to comment on how they think that aspect will play out?
Lev
I think it will be helpful in that it internalizes some level of skepticism in voters about Romney–they just know not to trust him.
What Obama’s team will need to do in the general election is to paint Mitt Romney as hard-right, out of touch, and rich. The latter two shouldn’t be too hard. Romney is certain to try to move to the center for the general election, but by this point he’s said so much wingnutty things that all Obama has to do is run a clip of Romney talking about self-deportation or how he doesn’t care about the poor, every day. Call ’em “Mitt’s Etch-A-Sketch Moments.” Done.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
All the supreme court has to do, is find one loose thread from the ACA, and pull on it, to require further legislation to fix in our broken legislature. And that violates the delicate matrix of that law’s workability. It doesn’t have to be the mandate.
eemom
Oh man. What a masterpiece of either idiocy or trollery.
I’d say the quoting of mclaren points to the latter, but who even knows anymore.
Johannes
@burnspbesq: Burns, I am an attorney, and had a First Amendment case go up to the Supreme Court (I lost for what it’s worth), and I’m nowhere near as sure as you are. I dont think the Court is nakedly partisan, but I do think it’s become nakedly ends-directed. For me Citizens United wasn’t enough to base that on, but viewed along with Iqbal and Twombly, where the Court effectively redrafted (in a pro business way) the standard for dismissal under the Congress-enacted Federal Rules, despite the fact that the rule to be “interpreted” had not been amended for fifty years…I have my doubts.
dedc79
So in place of all yours and Cole’s gloom and doom, how about a reminder of the consequences of presidential elections? Two Reagan, One Bush Sr and Two Bush Jr elections gave us the five current godawful Supreme Court justices who ruled on Citizens United and may well strike down the ACA.
Another Obama victory in 2010 and we might have a chance to replace one or more of them.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
I think what makes this gaffe especially damaging is that it has escaped from the polito-sphere and is loose in the realm of late night comedy monologues, jokes around the water cooler at work, etc. That is how you reach low-info voters. Attack ads are things that the apolitical folks very much prefer to tune out as far as possible, so they are hard to reach with things that explicitly political, but really good comedy flies under the radar.
That is what really did in Sarah Palin, that she turned herself into a joke, and you didn’t have to be a political person to get the joke. The worst thing a politician can do is to turn themselves into a joke that ordinary non-political people find funny, because once it is out there, there is almost no way to reach those folks to get that toothpaste back into the tube.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@eemom:
Got to go with eemom on the mclaren quoting, as some kind of magical mystery tour of the surreal.
Now I will get 10,000 words of General Fake Name Crack Pot is the tool of the Obama devil. It is never boring here, no matter the state of unreality.
Violet
@dedc79:
Is it wrong to hope that the most conservative Supremes leave the court while Obama is president? Perhaps Dick Cheney will shoot Scalia in the face.
kay
@Arm The Homeless:
I agree. The base aren’t going to care about Romney’s (alleged) lack of conservatism. They’d crawl over broken glass to beat Obama.
Flip flop (or Etch a Sketch) isn’t about principled adherence to past statements or policy. It has nothing to do with that, and it isn’t directed at the base.
It means “liar” and it’s nice, because Romney really is a liar.
They’re going to make “liar” his middle name, or try to.
Heliopause
I’m not sure of the point you’re driving at. Something along the lines of, conservatives and the Village Establishment can’t be reasoned with. Am I in the ballpark?
Since I’m not sure of your point, I’ll pick at this which you quoted approvingly:
“I imagine 500 years ago, the Aztec ruler-to-be assured his subjects ‘I believe in Tlaloc…’ Human rationality evolved in order to invent ingenious ways of justifying crazy primate behavior to the rest of the tribe of murderous primates.”
That is, human rationality (I’ll leave aside the question of whether we’re talking about the same thing when using this term and assume that we are) evolved as a cognitive skill set for use in perpetuating a dominant power structure. This simply can’t be true, as power structures of the type given as an example above didn’t exist when the human brain evolved. Human rationality evolved in a different context than Holocene hierarchical societies and it would be more proper to say that we haven’t yet discovered the correct language of reason that might work with conservatives. Indeed, we might never, since we’ve managed to nearly eradicate the social context in which this faculty evolved and thus will find it difficult or impossible to recreate it experimentally.
Where this leaves us in terms of pragmatically addressing current issues I don’t know, but I will say that if you somehow managed to rediscover this lost language and figured out how to apply it you’d go down in history as bigger than Jesus.
Arm The Homeless
@kay:I have no doubt the faithful will make the pilgrimage. I think that he suffers from not getting the fundie mobilization, even with what he makes up with hyper-Mormon turnout.
I am far more concerned of what happens early in 2013 as the sting continues to linger. I suspect there will be some idiotic 10th amendment argument over a modern-day ‘nullification’. That’s when peoples’ feelings will get hurt, and that’s when the overt calls for force come in. Cynical enough?
El Cid
Human rationality may have evolved as a byproduct of the accidental leap in brain capacity which created language.
les
@burnspbesq:
Well, this comment has at least your usual quota of arrogance and condescension, with a dash of assholishness. But you’ve really upped the stupid quotient, as you strain to omniscience. You’ve reviewed the law, arguments and political context of every single Supremes decision ever, and are ready to pronounce on them?
Guys like you give the rest of us lawyers a bad name.
dedc79
@Violet: Violet, I’m thinking maybe Cheney tries to pull Scalia’s heart out of his chest with his bare hand (a la Temple of Doom) after the current transplant rejects his evil blood.
Redshift
@Arm The Homeless: Nah, just about right, unless you mean calls for force at the state level, in which case I think you’re too cynical. The thing is, endorsing the use of force has turned out badly for conservatives most of the time (at least in the long run; it can be awfully unpleasant for a while), in large measure because their tendency to overestimate how many people agree with them.
The American people really don’t like random groups taking up arms, and despite what Palin thinks, “nullification” state governments don’t have any authority over the National Guard. So at most, bad stuff happens or just threatens to happen, and the leaders look back and find out they’re not leading a mass movement, they’re just the ones who were dumb enough to listen when the other guys said “you call for action, we’ll be right behind you!”
El Cid
@burnspbesq: There’s no logical or empirical conflict against making a decision for purely “partisan” (more like ideological or state-society relationship) reasons while citing any strongly or weakly convincing legal principle.
Thomas Jefferson thought the court’s assertion that it’s the Supreme Authority who gets to decide which laws are and aren’t within Constitutional authority was despotism.
The fact that his view didn’t win out doesn’t make him nuts or some sort of legal or Constitutional lightweight.
TenguPhule
I have long since decided the only good Republican is a dead one. And even then you can never be sure.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Considering how easy “flip-flop” stuck to Kerry, I think Mitt will have trouble living it down. It’ll be just one more thing that costs him some of the middle votes.
Anoniminous
@El Cid:
Evidence for language pre-dates evidence for rationality since ancient Egyptians were carving hieroglyphics (well preserved stupid shit) on their temples long before the (rational) Rhind mathematical papyrus was written (~1650 BC) or even the (rationalizing) Wisdom literature (~2,000 BC.)
Pseudonym
The problem with “etch-a-sketch” is that it feeds right into the image of Romney that people want to believe. They want to think he was just kidding when he said all those moderately liberal or severely conservative things. They think he’s a sleaze-ball, but he might be their sleaze-ball, and at minimum, isn’t it better to be on his side? Moderates and liberals might be left with the impression that he’s a very successful businessman, a governor who accomplished big things, and cares more about getting things done than sticking to some pure ideology. The last thing Democrats should be doing is telling voters that Mitt’s a blank slate for them to project their hopes upon.
pragmatism
@El Cid: if you’re smarter than everyone, the only authority you can appeal to is yourself.
OzoneR
thing is, Republicans can weather things Democrats can’t. The media gives them the benefit of the doubt
El Cid
@Anoniminous: No, I mean quite literally, the capacity for rationality — reasonableness. There are serious reasons to think that consciousness is the emergence of the language capacity in the human brain.
But rationality need not be in written form to exist. The painting of cave figures on walls involved rational activities, including quite refined techniques of producing dyes and paints, and that’s only the technological manifestations of rational human behavior.
Jay
Have there been any “Red Ships of Bain” jokes yet?
Goulet!
Pseudonym
Also, too, I don’t know the best way to counter this, but I think it probably has to do with selling the country out to the rich. Corporations are making higher profits than ever; income is more skewed towards the upper brackets than it has been for almost a century; deregulation and tax cuts caused the recession that we’re barely coming out of. Romney wants to jump right back in. Put his face next to videos of the Bush economic team saying the exact same things about the supply-side trickle-down effect of tax cuts. Tell people that he wants to sell off their Medicare to the highest bidder via the Ryan plan. At least that’s the only idea I have at the moment.
Steve
@OzoneR: I don’t think the media gives Romney the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think the media likes Romney at all. The only thing that would motivate them to fluff Romney is their desire for a competitive race.
Thoughtcrime
Who would be shaking and turning the knobs of a President Etch-A-Sketch?
I see an ad there.
Anoniminous
@El Cid:
Bonobos have a limited vocabulary in the wild but have been taught to talk in the Lab and demonstrate facility with a several thousand word vocabulary. They exhibit “consciousness” in the Lab so their wild relatives must have, to a large overlap, the same degree of “consciousness,” suggesting the species has “consciousness” without a complex language.
OzoneR
@Steve:
that’s enough for them to give him the benefit of the doubt
Thoughtcrime
@kay:
Not just a liar. Romney’s the CEO that lied to your face about how you have a great future at your company. Right before he fired you. After you trained your offshore replacements, of course.
Ruckus
I don’t have the energy to pretend that people of good will can agree that Burkeans and Rawlsians both have good points blah blah blah blah blah anymore. How about you?
I barely have the energy to get through the day anymore let alone fight idiot conservatives for oxygen. Because they sure aren’t fighting for
goodany ideals. All I hear is code words yelled that they pick up from the shit stirers in the media and conservoblogs. I’ll bet the average conservative has no idea what they really stand for other than some code word. Because I sure don’t. They sure are against a lot of stuff though.a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@les: You forgot sanctimonious.
El Cid
@Anoniminous: That’s true, but partly that’s because we appear to keep using the same terms to discuss fundamentally different things, because it sounds to many people that making a distinction would somehow involve insults or disrespect.
There is very strong reason to comfortably separate the phenomenon we refer to as “language” with regard to human language and the phenonomena we refer to as “language” with regard to chimpanzee or ape communication as utterly different phenomena, in the sense that there are occasionally changes in scale or quantity which really are changes in quality / type.
Something happened, and if we weren’t us, and we were observing bonobo chimps, and some of them ‘suddenly’ (maybe we’re aliens with really long lifetimes) experience a small genomic change which leads to a nearly instantaneous growth of brain capacity (because lots of huge phenotypic changes are based on small genomic changes and interpretations) and the emergence of what we as humans experience as human language, something which every single human with sufficient healthful circumstance develops, we would see this as something enormously different from what had gone before.
For that matter, we can talk all we want about current chimpanzee communication and what it shows us; if one day the fictional genetic manipulator suddenly changed a set of chimps to heritably pass on an advance in certain brain (and, what the heck, vocal) capacity which led to a phenomenon dramatically akin to human language, we would not for one second remain confused as to whether or not something had changed.
I think it’s a very intriguing argument that if you see human self-awareness and consciousness as different from that found anywhere or at least nearly anywhere else, and if you see human language as different from that found anywhere or at leas nearly anywhere else, then it is indistinguishable from language.
Steve
@burnspbesq:
You could make a pretty reasonable case that Marbury v. Madison was decided based upon partisan political considerations, and that all the rest was fluff. Setting aside that specific example, I feel very secure in saying that the correct answer is at least two.
(For the curious: Marbury v. Madison was decided following the election of 1800, in which the Federalists had been completely displaced from power in both the Executive and Legislative branches. With the judiciary as the Federalists’ only bastion of power, the all-Federalist majority wrote an opinion that just happened to recognize the broad power of the Federalist-dominated courts to overturn legislative enactments of the opposing party. At the same time, John Marshall and his Federalist cohorts found a clever loophole to avoid ordering the Jefferson Administration to provide the specific relief sought by the petitioner – thus leaving Jefferson no opportunity to disobey the Supreme Court and undermine the power of the institution the Federalists had just elevated as their last and best hope. Now that was just an exercise, but I’m not sure it’s very far off!)
patrick II
@Arm The Homeless:
I am not a legal eagle, but it is one of the most important parts of the ACA from the progressive viewpoint. Bernie Sanders stuck that language in at the end and he hopes at least a couple of states take advantage of it to create single payer systems. If those are shown to be economical, other states might follow, and eventually a majority of the states. Kind of like the nudge theory of single payer health care.
If it works I think I prefer single payer evolved that way from practical outcome rather than mandated at the beginning. The efficiency and the clear choice of state voters will give it impetus.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@burnspbesq:
When they don’t, will shut you the fuck up forever? The way you didn’t the last 50 times you were completely wrong.
Surly Duff
The problem is not whether it has legs, it is how the opposition will continually search for an “Etch-A-Sketch” moment for Obama.
Countdown to the first question asked, “Is this Obama’s ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ moment?” My money is on Wolf Blitzer asking this question every day until the election.