As long as Tim has broken the bad news embargo, I thought I’d pipe in with something that drives me nuts. I like Howard Dean fine, but what does this even mean?
If we were Republicans this bill would be done.
He’s referring to the health care bill of course, but in what universe would Republicans be trying to pass a bill like this in the first place? I know, I know, it’s a big give away to insurance companies, the Republicans did Medicare Part D blah blah blah. Seriously, though, here on planet earth, the Republicans would not be trying to pass a bill that provides $100 billion a year in subsidies for lower income Americans to buy health insurance.
I’m not saying that makes it a good bill, but it does make it the kind of bill Republican wouldn’t try to pass. Talking about what a great job the Republicans would do passing a bill like this one is like talking about what a great job Genghis Khan would do running the Peace Corps.
I’ve been hearing this for years, Democrats need to run their party the way the Republicans run theirs. Liberals need their own Fox News.
It’s bullshit. It’s been 80 years since Republicans had the kind of Congressional majorities that Democrats have right now. They had a good run in presidential elections, but that was mostly based on nasty tricks and Lee Greenwood songs. That’s no way to build an actual governing coalition. And if it’s true that Washington is wired for Republican control, that’s more a function of think tanks and media than of overwhelming electoral supremacy.
The modern Republican party has never been a real majority party and it probably never will be. Democrats have been for stretches and have a chance to be again right now.
IIt’s a big mistake to confuse what Bush “accomplished” with what Obama is attempting to do right now. Democrats may be fuck-ups, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a lot easier to burn down a house then it is to build one.
Egypt Steve
It’s pretty clear what he means. He’s not saying that Health Care per se would be a Rethug priority. He means the Rethugs are willing and able to do what it takes to ram their hi-priority bills down the throats of all opposition.
DougJ
He means the Rethugs are willing and able to do what it takes to ram their hi-priority bills down the throats of all opposition.
That’s because wealthy business interests don’t oppose their bills.
Cyrus
I read the link without watching the video at it, but I’m pretty sure he was just talking about playing hardball in Congress. Holding votes open, turning an exterminator loose, etc. Not compromising with yourself and then again with the right-wingers and then again with the centrists.
DaBomb
Sigh…
DougJ
I read the link without watching the video at it, but I’m pretty sure he was just talking about playing hardball in Congress.
(1) It’s easier to play hard ball when you don’t have people like Chamber of Commerce coming at you.
(2) Part of the reason Democrats can have large majorities is they tolerate more dissent (for better or for worse).
arguingwithsignposts
And again, “Green Balloon Juice!” what do you ppl not understand?
Martin
@DougJ:
No, they would find a way. They’d build a submarine base in Nebraska to get Ben Nelson, but they’d get him.
Kristin
Yeah, he’s not saying anything remotely like if Genghis Khan was running the Peace Corps; he’s saying if Genghis Khan was doing his thing, he’d be KICKING ASS. In other words, if the repubs had something they wanted, they’d have bullied it through. Which, I don’t know how you can argue with the basic premise there: those bastards can commit, and march in lockstep, and ram what they want down our throats, like nobody’s business. He’s calling out the dems for their sad-sack behavior through this entire process.
Jim
@Egypt Steve: @DougJ:
both of those, and, there is simply nothing comparable to the Blue Dogs in teh GOP caucuses (cauci?) and hasn’t been since Chaffee and Jeffords (Specter I don’t count, cause he switched on his own self-interest, and it still surprises me a bit. Snowe, I can’t see any other explanation, is just dumb, living in a fantasy cartoon in which she is the Keeper of the Flame of True Republicanism).
wasabi gasp
Republicans could pass a Death Panels And Liver For Dinner bill.
Anya
There you go again DougJ trying to be all rational. Don’t you know Obama is a major failure becuase he is not Bush with his cowboy ways nor is he LBJ, threatening congress with death or whatever LJB did.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Dear God, I’ve have to start shooting some fuckers.
@arguingwithsignposts: You’re not saying it like you really mean it.
/RePervert
Jim
@Kristin:
I don’t totally disagree, but where do we get tough, and how? A primary against Ben Nelson? Sign me up, but who? There’s a Dem who wants to run against Blanche Lincoln, but he’s just as hard right as she is (I’m still willing). The LBJ model is no longer operative, for a lot of reasons.
DougJ
In other words, if the repubs had something they wanted, they’d have bullied it through.
If it was the kind of thing they wanted, bullying it through would be different. They weren’t able to get immigration reform through.
They’re able to get tax-cuts and wars through. I’ll grant they’re able to bully them through. And, yes, they got Medicare Part D through. Democrats could get stuff like that through too if they wanted (I think this HCR bill, flawed though it may be, is not that similar to Medicare Part D in that it is not aimed primarily at the elderly).
jwb
@DougJ: Yes, and I agree with the implicit consequent: a good way for the Dems to lose their majority is not to tolerate that dissent. Yet they do also have to show that they can govern with the presence of that dissent within their coalition. That part is, for me, still an open question.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: I think you need to start talking about football or something.
Will
Guess where Matt Welch gets his health care?
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french-health-care
FRANCE.
At least he’s honest about his abject hypocrisy. Even if he doesn’t really know that’s what it is.
mr. whipple
“BLOW UP THE BILL. BLOW UP THE BILL!”
Gosh, I don’t know if it’s wingnut or a ‘progressive’.
cmorenc
I get exactly what Dean means: if the GOP was in the majority in the US House and Senate, then WHATEVER the GOP leadership decided was really, really an important enough priority (like tax cuts for upper-income folks), they would do whatever it takes to railroad it through in a manner that the late LBJ (when he was Democratic Senate majority leader) would understand – a mixture of carrots and really nasty-barbed sticks. A troublemaker like Joe Lieberman who didn’t respond to positive incentives, would quickly find his office moved to a broom closet, and his ability to get anything done, even the smallest constituent services done for voters in his state, whittled down to absolutely nothing.
OF COURSE health-care legislation of the kind originally envisioned by Ted Kennedy et. al. would never have been a GOP priority. The ONLY reason Bush prodded GOP congressional leadership to push a senior drug benefit through Congress was to attempt to preempt, shape favorably to corporate interests, and take credit for something he foresaw would be a likely priority (and very popular accomplishment) the dems would pass very soon after they regained the majority. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em logic. This was NOT a popular idea among the GOP conservative activist base and more solidly conservative GOP members of congress, but the difference is that Bush set Delay and McConnell to convincing and whipping everyone in line by whatever means, fair or foul, it took. Obama and Reid simply don’t seem to have the iron-willed ruthlessness to cut Lieberman’s dick and balls off and find thousands of ways to make him suffer, instead of catering to him.
Damp Raptor
The Republicans would have never let the bill get bogged down in a gang of six that included three members of the opposition who never had any interest in negotiating in good faith.
Also, a little dissent is good, but the Democratic Party still technically has a platform. Those who stray should face consequences.
mr. whipple
Nor Social Security ‘reform’. The easy stuff they got done. It’s really not hard to get people to take tax cuts.
jwb
Hmm. Edit function appears but won’t permit me to edit. That’s a novel twist. I’m sure it’s Rahm’s fault.
arguingwithsignposts
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
@jwb:
GREEN – FUCKING – BALLOON – JUICE!!!!11!!11
Don’t make me get out of this double-wet suit and dildo apparatus and kick your ass. ;)
DougJ
I get exactly what Dean means: if the GOP was in the majority in the US House and Senate, then WHATEVER the GOP leadership decided was really, really an important enough priority (like tax cuts for upper-income folks), they would do whatever it takes to railroad it through in a manner that the late LBJ (when he was Democratic Senate majority leader) would understand – a mixture of carrots and really nasty-barbed sticks.
Just like they did with Social Security privatization and immigration reform. Remember the way Bill Frist whipped those votes?
cat
And this is so known to every one. That’s why the people screw themselves and vote for the scumbags who support these business interests?
How exactly do you plan to make more voters aware and win this fight against these business interests that screw people?
By not picking a fight with them?
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Shall we start a rumble about the BCS? Or music? or food?
Anya
@jwb: I had the same problem.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@DougJ:
Exactly, although that was a President vs. The Base situation. Social Security reform might be a closer target to this; it’s been a GOP goal since, well, the bill was signed into law, which is about as long as we’ve been chasing Universal Health Coverage. (ON EDIT: And I see you noted it, as well, in a later comment.)
People attribute nigh-magical powers to the GOP, when in point of fact it’s fairly easy to get people to vote in one guy. And they forget Bush’s margins were damned thin for both elections. And they failed in most everything save tax cuts and wars. And even there, because they went through Reconcilation, the tax cuts sunset soon — really useful Overton window shifting, hunh?
And — most critically of all — the GOP’s “don’t give a damn” antics are what led them to a sorry state of courting teabaggers, losing guys like Cole, and the like. So I’m really struggling to see where there’s a lot of good, quality long-term structural doctrine I want to take from the GOP in this last decade.
cmorenc
@DougJ
The REAL REASON Bush and the GOP Congressional leadership talked the talk on immigration reform (and getting tough on illegals) but never really walked the walk is because the corporate/business part of the GOP coalition never really wanted to upset the status quo, whereby a part of their business model implicitly depends on being able to rely on immigrant labor without too many questions asked or consequences. Up to a point, the strident harshness of the nativist anti-immigrant part of the GOP actually worked in the business faction’s favor by instilling fear in illegals of keeping anything other than as low and discrete a profile as possible, not making too much trouble or protest about the conditions of their employment.
mr. whipple
“Obama and Reid simply don’t seem to have the iron-willed ruthlessness to cut Lieberman’s dick and balls off and find thousands of ways to make him suffer, instead of catering to him.”
The bottom line is that as long as the Dems need 60, they need Lieberman. It sucks, but that’s simple math. So as far as I can tell, people can either bitch about Joe or make snarky but stupid posts like “Who Elected Olympia Snowe President?”.
Kryptik
@jwb:
Do you think Suh should’ve gotten the Heisman over Ingram?
Silver Owl
If you’re a white conservative dude blowing corporate dick and you want something for another rich white conservative dude you’d be going hogwild to pass it.
Since it’s about not about rich white conservative dudes the republicans aren’t doing shit. That really does sum up the republican party. Pink penis and big bank account. Orgasm city.
freelancer (itouch)
@Martin:
Nobody tellz Martin about teh secret Oglalla Seawolf Base!
Anya
Did any of you check DailyKos today? My lord it is a mad house, diary after a diary is talking about what a sellout Obama is. I couldn’t figure out what stage of grief they are in, they fluctuate from anger and depression.
arguingwithsignposts
also, a previous semi-laughing thread. Also, a rescue thread.
Look, if everyone wants to spend the night bitching about health care, when there’s not a damn thing that we can do about it, that’s fine. But, dammit, it’s depressing. I’ve got enough on my plate that I’m going to see you all in the morning or something if that’s all that’s going on. Just sayin’
CalD
It’s actually not such a huge give-away to insurance companies, according to 538.
stickler
Anya:
You asked about the “LBJ Treatment” upthread. Here’s a picture of what it looked like:
Johnson with Sen. Green, 1957.
Johnson also occasionally held meetings with Senators while seated on the porcelain throne. (God, what a mental image that brings up.)
AND YET! Even though he had more Democrats in Congress than anybody since FDR, and he was the Wizard who could get damn near anything through the Senate … LBJ didn’t try for national health insurance. He stopped with Medicare/Medicaid. We should all keep that in mind before we call for Obama’s impeachment.
Jim
and to sell the wars, they had 9/11, which also saved them enough of a majority to push through the second round of tax cuts in ’03, for which they still needed Ben Nelson, Zell Miller, and Cheney’s tie breaker in the the Senate (I checked). Besides having unions, the big city machines and a generally stronger party system (and Barry Goldwater), LBJ had the Kennedy assassination as his parallel to 9/11. The slow sad deaths of as many people every six weeks as were killed in 9/11 just doesn’t have the same effect as the endless video of that plane hitting the towers. Unfortunately.
mai naem
I think you are being just slightly disingenuous with this post. The GOP got a whole lot more done with 54 Republicans. The GOP would never never have let a man who spoke at the other party’s convention be the chair of the DHS. Never. Criticize Dean all you want but he was right on Iraq and said it loud and proud before it became fashionable to be against the war. He was right about the color coding terrah warnings. He was right about Saddam’s capture. And BTW the fact that Dean is considered the left of the Dem. Party shows exactly how pathetic the party has become. Go back and look at the history of Vt. Dean was the anti-Bernie Sanders in Vt. Dean had to deal with gay marriage/civil unions pretty much before any other major official in the country.
gwangung
Isn’t there a twitter thread?
Joe Beese
$100 billion, disproportionately taxed from the middle class, given directly to the insurance companies to provide shitty overpriced coverage, subject to whatever loopholes will be inserted in legislation that they’ve literally written themselves.
Yeah, that’s a real sweet deal you got there.
DougJ
The GOP got a whole lot more done with 54 Republicans.
I repeat: the way that Bill Frist guided immigration reform through the Senate was a thing of beauty.
stickler
Still, I don’t understand why in blue Hell a “filibuster” now means “Joe Lieberman mumbles something to MSNBC” instead of “Joe Lieberman stands in the well of the Senate for 26 hours with a catheter installed, reading from the Hartford telephone book” like it used to.
It’s one thing to expect 60 votes to end a “filibuster.” It’s another for that “filibuster” to be utterly and completely free — just say the magic word and you get to stop everything the Senate is doing. Hey Presto!
Ol’ Strom Thurmond at least had to do it the old-school way; so should the GOP.
Jim
I’ve been trying to remember all day, when Bill Clinton lost harder on a more modest bill in a less severe economic and political climate, was there this much outrage?
arguingwithsignposts
@Joe Beese:
Like there isn’t another 24 hours at least (knowing how the Senate operates) to ruminate on this shit. GIVE IT A REST, PEOPLE!!!! Let’s breathe for a few moments.
Jim
Still, I don’t understand why in blue Hell a “filibuster” now means “Joe Lieberman mumbles something to MSNBC” instead of “Joe Lieberman stands in the well of the Senate for 26 hours with a catheter installed, reading from the Hartford telephone book” like it used to.
Makes a helluva lot more sense than the poor clerk having to read out Bernie Sanders’ amendment
jwb
@Kryptik: Well, I only saw Suh play in the game against UT, but he certainly had by far the best performance in a game on the final weekend. I think Ingram won primarily because voters thought he was a “safe” pick (since he plays for the no. 1 team).
MikeJ
@DougJ: I prefer the way they gutted social security. Rammed it right down our throats, they did.
mai naem
@stickler: LBJ passed the civil rights legislation with the Dixiecrats so sitting there saying that he had a bigger majority is not exactly giving one an accurate picture. And while Republicans weren’t wingnuts like today, they weren’t exactly Lincolnian Republicans either. Sorry, LBJ didn’t pass national healthcare. Apparently dealing with a major war, unrest at home, assassination of major political figures, passing the War on Poverty stuff, medicare, medicaid,head start and civil rights laws apparently leaves enough time to pass national healthcare.
Anya
@stickler: I am totally in agreement with you on this. I find it ridiculous that people don’t see that. What they also fail to learn is the lesson that Senator Kennedy learned, he killed HCR with Nixon because it was not what he wanted, the same fucking thing the purist on the left are suggesting now. If this passes it can be perfected later but let us have these reforms now.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Do you think the BoB filter can be adapted to turning all comments about health care into comments about pie?
Jess
This. Despite the garbled syntax.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Hey, DougJ put up a new HCR-free thread!
williamc
I’m a bit surprised at the tone this argument has taken on in left blogistan; it feels like the primary back in 2008, or the run-up to iraq back in 2003, with well-intentioned wonks who live in dc calmly explaining to the rest of us angry DFH’s in the real world that we need to get in line on this lest we damage our political chances in the future (except I don’t think that I have disagreed with JMM at TPM on politics, like ever, like I do on eating this sh!t sandwich bill). I don’t understand where the vitriol towards those of us who do see the horrible politics of this bill is coming from. If you mandate that everyone has insurance, and you force people to buy it from private companies with no other recourse, all the while shoveling gobs of our money to them to “subsidize” insurance for the poor, you will wind up with people who will hate the insurance companies more than they do now (which i would love to see happen) and make more little right wing fukcwads who think they are being soaked in taxation to pay for poor people to get free stuff. I get that we need to give the uninsured a handup, and no one out-bleeds this lib’s heart, but this is going to backfire.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Jim:
Yeah, actually. Not as obvious — slower news cycle, no blogosphere — but there was a lot of piss-a-tude, even some “I’ll never vote for him after he failed us here!” Tons of “analysis” about how his declining approval ratings and failure to pass meant…well, all the stuff it always means for our side.
You saw how that worked out, right? The worst thing about the failure was that it seems to have convinced Clinton to slide even more towards the center, and might have emboldened the GOP. People who are screaming for this bill’s failure in order to save the Democratic Party and Health Care’s short-term chances seem to not have read their Santayana.
DougJ
Hey, DougJ put up a new HCR-free thread!
I did about 15 minutes ago.
DougJ
@Jess
Sorry for the typo — I fixed it.
Sasha
I think you cannot stress enough that Republicans never do anything that big business opposes. Who they manage to whip, are the vanishingly few, not rabidly crazy Republicans who, from time to time, get a little confused and think that maybe they should represent the needs of their districts.
What we could learn from Republicans is that they do not tear their guy down because it works against them. They fund primary challenges and they punish those vote against the leadership but they don’t ever undermine their top guy.
It is really hard for me to imagine that Kos et al, really think that this line of attack will help achieve liberal policy goals. By all means, primary the hell out of the conseravdems. One need only look at the new and improved Specter to see the value in that but these attacks against Obama defy common sense.
SteveinSC
@stickler: This was Olbermann’s point tonight. Make the assholes stand up and try to deny health care to the country. Let the responsibility and consequences be on Lieberman and the reupkes. With Olbermann, Schulz (sp?) and Maddow running scenes of sick people at health care clinics against images of Joe Lieberman and the Repulicans denying them help, I’ll take that kind of hardball any day. Harry Reid is a ball-less pansy and stupid too.
Jim
@williamc:
You make a compelling case, and if more people who opposed the bill did this instead of jumping from the couch to the chandelier to scream about how OBAMA SOLD US OUT!!!, maybe we could discuss it. The need to project all of the many, many things wrong with our political system–from the influence of corporate money, the uselessness and worse of the political media to the myriad unconstitutional absurdities of the Senate–into Obama and Rahm’s Nefarious Adventure obscures the fact that there are real problems with this bill, and the still fairly long road between this moment and passage or failure.
pkanalyst
Dean is saying that Republicans get what they want no matter how many they have playing for their team. He’s right about that. The Senate wouldn’t pass UHC with 90 Dems. The Republicans could pass a bill requiring poor people to commit suicide with 50 in their caucus and a Republican VP.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
Sincerely,
Social Security Reform
Jess
@DougJ:
Hey, don’t apologize–you’re talking to the typo queen here!
mr. whipple
“And while Republicans weren’t wingnuts like today, they weren’t exactly Lincolnian Republicans either.”
Voting Rights Act of 1965:
“For weeks the bickering continued. The White House needed Dirksen and his Republicans to support cloture to end debate, but Dirksen found it more difficult than expected to bring Republicans to support cloture. The battle over voting rights legislation become a test of Dirksen’s ability to lead the Republicans, some of whom supported a rival, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa. Despite being hospitalized three times in the Spring of 1965, Dirksen worked relentlessly. “This involves more than you,” Dirksen told one of his colleagues. “It’s the party. Don’t’ drop me in the mud.” [Quoted in MacNeil, Dirksen, p. 259]
Dirksen had to disarm and satisfy Republican conservatives who opposed the expansion of federal authority into realms typically reserved to the states and localities. In his effort to forge a majority, he tailored the legislative language to limit the ban on poll taxes to those states actually using them to prevent voter registration. Senate liberals, including Illinois’s other Senator, Paul Douglas, blasted Dirksen for watering down the bill, but President Johnson understood the political realities and instructed Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to go along with Dirksen to get a cloture vote.
By late May, Dirksen found the votes. He told Mansfield to proceed, and on May 21 a petition for a cloture motion was filed. The motion for cloture was adopted by a 70-30 roll-call vote on May 25. The very next day, Dirksen again exhorted his colleagues to pass the voting rights bill, and by this time approval was well-assured. It passed on a 77-19 roll-call vote”
http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_votingrights_contents.htm
williamc
well Jim, you have to understand those “Obama sold us out folks”. think about it: whats kos’ track record the past 10 years on being right vs. being wrong on a major political issue; name one huge thing he’s gotten wrong since GWB became President in 2000, besides thinking Kerry was going to win in 2004? he raised money, organized, and turned his website into a base for lefty activism, and all the work they’ve put in all year on this, Organizing for America hosting town hall meeting all year to rally them for a robust public option, OFA having them make calls to Congressfolks, getting emails from the President asking that you write your Congressman, friends, and neighbors to demand a public option in insurance reform, and he gives a speech in September highlighting what he would like in a plan, and here it is in december, and after a hard-fought House win, the Senate is raping insurance reform and half of the party has turned on a dime because they have blood in their shoes and want this race to end and the other half, the fighting half apparently, know that if we take a dive on this, the “centrists” know that we are puss!es and will roll over every time because lives are at stake and they know we know that they don’t care…
mr. whipple
Civil Rights Act of 1964:
“Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the thirty-seven years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure. The clerk proceeded to call the roll at 11:00 a.m. At 11:15 a.m., Republican Senator John Williams of Delaware replied “aye” to the question. It was the 67th vote; cloture had passed by a vote of 71 to 29. The final count showed 44 Democrats and 27 Republicans voting for cloture with 23 Democrats – 20 from the South — and only 6 Republicans opposed.
The formal Senate vote on the bill took place on June 19th. It passed overwhelmingly, 73-27. Majority Leader Mansfield said of Dirksen, “This is his finest hour. The Senate, the whole country is in debt to the Senator from Illinois.”
Editorial opinion saluted Dirksen. For example, the Chicago Defender, the largest black-owned daily in the world, which had pilloried Dirksen for weeks, changed its tune and praised him “for the grand manner of his generalship behind the passage of the best civil rights measures that have ever been enacted into law since Reconstruction.” Bill O’Connell, the Peoria Journal Star’s political writer, suggested that Dirksen might join the Republican ticket in the Fall as the vice presidential candidate partly because of his performance on the civil rights bill.”
http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_cloturespeech.htm
Emma
If we could harness all the hyperventilating going on in the blogosphere we could be independent from Saudi oil in three months.
And in the meantime, we don’t even know what the bill will have in it.
hal
So the GOP is the model of success then? Just don’t look at the past 2 election cycles, or the utter failure of the Republican ideology with the majority of Americans. A party reduced to catering only to it’s largely southern white base is what Dems should base their tactics on.
It is also funny to here an argument that essentially comes down to the inability to form a united front to get anything done, while the circular firing squad lines up to shoot down Obama, and plan the undoubtedly Phoenix like resurrection of newer, better, HCR. Just come back in 50 years.
williamc
@Emma
you’ve nailed what’s so funny about the tone this is taking on; we all have no idea what’s in the bill that Reid sent CBO and we’re waiting to see scored. We are alienating friends and longtime acquaintances and moving into battle formations on conjecture.
Ain’t that America…
mo
i think this is an inaccurate and unfair comparison for many reasons. probably the largest because it’s just not true. (ie, social security and immigration reform, as mentioned above. But also war is just a very different beast – besides following in the footsteps of 9/11, the president really has the power to set the agenda here in a way that is not true of domestic legislation. He’s able to make obstruction by Congress one of “refusing to fund the troops” or something along those lines.)
But this argument also misses a fundamental fact about the Senate and the political landscape of this country – there are simply more consistently red states than blue ones. I just did a quick count of the number of states Obama won and those Bush won in 2000 and got 27 vs 31 (won’t put money on those numbers, but they’re roughly right). While Obama won much more easily than Bush in 2000, Bush won states with 62% of the votes in the Senate and Obama won states with only 54% of the votes. The Senate will always be skewed rightward because our smaller, more rural states are, on average, over-represented. Obama is simply limited in his leverage over a Ben Nelson – and better look like he’s not strong-arming him or what better way for Nelson to curry favor with the folks back home.
Jim
s, Organizing for America hosting town hall meeting all year to rally them for a robust public option, OFA having them make calls to Congressfolks, getting emails from the President asking that you write your Congressman, friends, and neighbors to demand a public option in insurance reform, and he gives a speech in September highlighting what he would like in a plan, and here it is in december, and after a hard-fought House win, the Senate is raping insurance reform
Which gets me to “The Senate (specifically Lieberman, Nelson, Bayh, Conrad, Lincoln, Pryor, Landrieu, and Snowe) really sucks”, but doesn’t get me to “OBAMA SOLD US OUT”.
As to the question of burning the bill to save the Cause, I don’t think it’s right for reasons external to HRC, mostly the economy and the media narrative. The question of mandates and subsidies is still a problem, and I have little confidence in the conference possibilities, because Lieberman is always going to be there to torpedo anything better than what the Senate sends back to the house (and if he weren’t, one of the others would). But when the economy is a little stronger, when the Beltway narrative is “Obama takes a step forward” rather than “Obama dealt huge loss by his own party”, I think it will be easier to build on this bill than to start again. And if this bill goes, I think you can forget about any hope of using reconciliation for anything. Does anyone really see DiFi and Tom Carper supporting a bold move to get health care past the sixty threshold?
Jody
Egypt Steve nailed it right at the getgo. He means that the GOP had a knack for ramming thru legislation in line with the party’s goals.
Of course, they also had a compliant opposition party, and clearly defined goals, odious tho they may be.
Jim
DENNIS PHOENICINICH IN ’12, BABY!!!
Gus
That Republicans are good at lockstep discipline. No Bluedogs in the Republican caucus.
Elie
@Kristin:
Point of clarification:
Ramming something down is easiest when it isnt something complex with a lot of moving parts and related constituencies. The Republicants, do simple stuff — start wars, cut taxes, stop services of various kinds. Those things are relatively easy to cram down…
Conversely, doing health care is very very complicated with a lot of different constituencies affected and a lot of Hoo HA about who will control this and such and what will be covered and freak-me-out HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO COST??, who will have benefits and what kind of benefits for how long, etc. Just not something they ever care about..
So lets not waste time with those invalid comparisons. There is no comparison — ever.
dadanarchist
This – not Obama, not Rahm, not even Joe freaking Lieberman – is the ultimate, fundamental problem.
I’d conjecture that there will be some sort of constitutional crisis in the next 20 years.
williamc
I don’t think anyone really wants to tank the bill, I think some are just wise to how this game is being rigged against us: we aren’t supposed to support anything or it won’t happen…so, we’re being told to shut up about this sucky bill, take a public pantsing from Liberman (when we are in the majority in this party and worked our ASSES off to get these people a majority!), pass a more expensive bill that will probably curb a woman’s right to choose to get Ben Nelson’s vote, one that probably won’t cut the deficit by billions of dollars in its outyears (to satiate the “centrists”, but how could it, if the subsidies have to keep growing because of population growth and the natural rise in insurance premiums and the lack of competition). and it’s not just the kossacks; its the folks at OpenLeft, and FDL; you know, the progressive activists that man the campaigns, register voters, and fund raise for the “better Dems” on our side before and during election seasons.
oh, and btw, I still stand with the President and with the Democrats because we have a two party system and I understand Republicanism better than most, being in Georgia; being ruled by morans, street preachers, and hog farmers just means that the poor get poorer the rich get richer and since their cousin’s the Governor or Senator, or Judge, all these troubles must be the Darkies’ fault!
Comrade Luke
You see the problem here, right?
Jim
If I do blame Obama, personally, for anything wrt to this political moment, it’s that he sat on his hands in CT in ’06. I’m not saying it would’ve been a magic bullet if we had managed to dump Lieberman, but I really think we’d be looking at a much different political environment.
mo
I think this is another important difference – conservatives simply have a more ingrained “respect for authority” (when it’s authority they accept) and a greater tendency to fall in line with their primary leader. I just can’t see that ever happening with the messy alliances of, and the rage-against-the-machine streaks among, the left – and thank god for that. But it has its drawbacks in “getting things done,” especially when the base loses its perspective and starts hyperventilating…
[Also, above I meant to say “The Senate will always be skewed rightward because our smaller, more rural states are over-represented and are, on average, more conservative.]
williamc
and not to put words into Dr. Dean’s mouth, but I assume what he meant was, the Republican’s don’t just use rhetoric to keep their members in line, there is a price to pay for not following the rest of the caucus (namely loss of seniority/committee chairmanships), whereas the Dems let you campaign against their Presidential candidate and when they win, they give the guy a prize for McCain loosing!
I think he’s calling the Senate Dems chumps, because thats what they are…
Darryl
I agree, whatever the conservatives wanted, they absolutely would have passed, doing whatever it takes to ram their agenda through the senate.
That is why we now have a privatized social security. And drilling in ANWR. And a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage…
Seriously, some people need a refresher course on recent political history.
daveNYC
Part of the problem is that the bill didn’t start off great, every change has been for the worse, and we don’t even know if there will be no new changes. It’s like Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back (or even better, in the Robot Chicken skit).
If this is the final bill, then go ahead and pass it; but at the rate they’re going, this thing is going to end up including a wetsuit and butt plug mandate.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@williamc:
No.
You’re being told you can bitch, but at the end of the day we need to vote together, because we will all assuredly hang separately if we don’t pass a bill. Yes, even if it sucks.
So?
Hurting Holy Joe neither shines my shoes nor saves people’s lives. Keep Your Eye On the Prize.
That game — and be assured, it’s a game — is not played out yet. Half the issue is that people are taking politicians who are known…dissemblers and rabble-rousers at their word.
Also: seen any CBO scores on this Senate bill yet? So how do you know how much more it costs? That’s similar to the “I don’t care what the CBO sez” foolishness Lieberman’s pulling now, and does your points no good.
Possibly. But like with many things in this debate, I’m more invested in the analysis of people who’ve been working for years to study this from a Progressive perspective, folks like Ezra.
And, again, we’ve not seen scores, and frankly this plan will change. Being pissed off now about it…man, I dunno. For me, if it helps people, I’ll take the goddamned deal, and look to revise it later. That’s the way every damned piece of Progressive legislation has worked since Social security.
Will
There are a lot of folks right now on the left (like Kos) who seem to think the point of this whole exercise was to never have to pay another dime to private health insurance. Anyone who believed that was going to happen was setting themselves up for a ridiculously avoidable disappointment.
Darryl
“oh, and btw, I still stand with the President and with the Democrats because we have a two party system and I understand Republicanism better than most, being in Georgia; being ruled by morans, street preachers, and hog farmers just means that the poor get poorer the rich get richer and since their cousin’s the Governor or Senator, or Judge, all these troubles must be the Darkies’ fault!”
I have a co-worker who recently moved here from Alabama. Turns out it wasn’t the Darkies. It’s the illegals. I have heard, over the past few weeks, no exaggeration, how the health care crisis is all the illegals’ fault, the housing crisis was caused by the government forcing banks to give illegals loans, Social Security is in trouble because there are several illegals withdrawing Social Security money for every white american paying into the system,…
Being an idiot doesn’t automatically make you a Conservative Republican, but it sure looks like it helps.
Elie
@williamc:
You do make a good argument but at the end of the day, if you have the say so over what is yes or no, can you truly shut this down and scrap it, knowing 30 million plus are going to have nothing and some x million others are about there due to the economy.
Do you feel confident saying that you can bring it back to this again in what, ten years, twenty years or when again? How many millions can you live with not having anything, even imperfect?
Your argument means something to me and is articulately stated. I am a nurse and I have watched a lot of shit go down with people sweating out their conditions which are not trivial. These are not ideological things the suffering out there…not theoretical.
I hear and understand and sympathize/empathize about all the legwork done by Kos and others to bring options along for po. We knew though that we had wolves at the bosom of this process in the Congress. Wolves don’t bargain and the context they place on everything is whether you can get away with just your leg and arm mangled, able to fight another day or whether you just get eaten and hope for the next life.
We have not been here as a progressive movement for a long long time. We just have not had to work this hard for something in a long time. We have forgotten what it takes I think and the long deep dark pain involved and back in Selma and other places, the lives lost for causes they would never see happen. People buried children for the cause – children. Young idealists from Philly had their bodies pulled out of swamps for the cause. This is easy by comparison but harder in other ways I guess.
We must hang together in this…and that will be difficult as there are many now who would wish us divided and at each others throats. The egos now are huge and they pull critical mass from other key objectives. Our goals have to not only be whatever our ideals pronounce, but to also stick together as best we can to emerge from this unified in purpose as progressives and to have each others backs in our long term ideals. If we do that, we can weather this.
Shell Goddamnit
you will wind up with people who will hate the insurance companies more than they do now (which i would love to see happen) and make more little right wing fukcwads who think they are being soaked in taxation to pay for
poorunwhite people to get free stuff. I get that we need to give the uninsured a handup, and no one out-bleeds this lib’s heart, but this is going to backfire.this. yes.
with one small change…
Citizen Alan
Jesus-fucking-Christ, do all you good people mooing about Republicans being unable to “reform” Social Security not understand that 54 is significantly less than 60, especially where the Senate is concerned?
If Bush had come out of the 2004 election with a clear majority of electoral votes, 60 Senators, a huge majority in the House, and approval ratings for Democratic leaders hovering around 15%, there is no question that Social Security privatization would have passed. Hell, we’d have been lucky not to get Chief Justice Alberto Gonzales and a radioactive hole where Tehran used to be.
It’s one thing to say that the Democratic coalition is so fragile that it is incapable of advancing a progressive agenda in the face of a filibuster. I’ve known since Election Day that the filthy pig Lieberman would fuck us if it ever came down to a filibuster. But please stop insulting our intelligence by pretending the GOP isn’t vastly more capable of advancing its agenda when ascendant than the Democrats. If they’d had 60 Senate votes and one of them hinted at supporting a filibuster, that Senator would have faced scorched earth. We aren’t even permitted to complain about a “Democrat” who actively campaigned for John McCain because it would be too “partisan.”
Sasha
I wonder if much of this debate comes down to whether one holds the Senate or the President primarily responsible for the current situation.
For me, hands down, it’s the Senate. It seems really clear to me that Democratic senators, even those that are on the right side of this issue, care more about their own prerogatives then they do about legislating. They can’t even agree that it’s unacceptable for a Democratic Senator to filibuster Democratic legislation.
And some of these guys (and gals) are just sociopaths or narcissists. I don’t see any other explanation.
CDT
Don’t be obtuse. He means that Republicans would have enforced party discipline and passed a bill some time ago. Undeniably true.
mcc
Isn’t it this bill? You know, the one linked from the front of democrats.senate.gov? Also, isn’t this its CBO score right here?
Darryl
If if’s and butts were candy and nuts….
But this isn’t true at all.
I suggest doing less spitting and criticising, Alan, and more learning and thinking.
Anne Laurie
@Jim:
That’s exactly why I never mistook Obama for a “progressive”, much less a lefty. All the ‘My mentor Senator Lieberman is a good man and well intentioned’ talk should’ve made it clear that Obama was, at best, a centrist at heart. Better than the Rethug alternative, for sure, but never someone who’d step outside the safety zone.
DougJ
He means that Republicans would have enforced party discipline and passed a bill some time ago. Undeniably true.
For God’s sake, I’ll lay off my own examples, and note that they couldn’t even pass a drilling in ANWR bill! Come on.
Jim
Well, Obama was hardly the only national Dem to stay out of CT, and a great many did worse than nothing. I still think Bill Clinton saved Holy Joe’s ass. How ironic that poor old John Kerry (whom I like and admire, a lot) was the only prominent Dem who seemed to get what was going on there.
inkadu
@SteveinSC:
We need it. I live in Connecticut and ads asking us citizens of the nutmeg state to “Thank Joe Lieberman for Defending Health Care From a Government Take Over” have replaced commercials for juice machines. Watching the steady parade of anti-reform ads on television and the complete lack of commercial response makes me sick. It’s a grim reminder of how important money is, and how those with money have a powerful voice, and how those without it are never heard from.
Jim
John Bolton, Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown. There were a few defeats for Bush, especially after 2004. Not nearly enough. But given the scope of the legislation, SS privatization is I think the best comparable example. 9/11 makes it difficult to really compare the foreign policy examples.
Ecks
It is now apparently received wisdom here that a mandate is a big handout to insurance companies. For gawds sakes people, read your Ezra. Seriously!
Mandates are part of cost containment. It is only counter-intuitive until you think about it a little. We’re going to ban insurance companies from discriminating against pre-existing conditions, capping how much they cover people, and force them to spend 90% of their income on covering people. So without a mandate, what happens? All the young healthy people realize that they don’t need to pay for health care now, and if they ever have an accident or get sick, they can just buy insurance then (they can’t be bared for pre-existing conditions now, right), so they all game the system by not buying insurance.
So who is left paying for it? The sick people. So that means all of the cost of providing medical care is loaded onto the sick people, while the rest of the population doesn’t have insurance – that’s what we have now, and the upshot is that insurance is unaffordable because everyone buying it is drawing huge amounts of money out of the pool to provide their medical care.
The only way to make premiums affordable is to make EVERYONE buy it, starting from before they get sick. And if that sounds draconian to you, then you aren’t paying enough attention because this is how it works in every fricking other Western country. I’m Canadian, if I tried telling revenue Canada “I’m not going to pay all the tax you want me to, because I’m not sick, so I don’t need to help you fund health care yet,” they would put my sorry ass in jail.
And if you’re worried that the insurance companies will get rich off this – well yes, they’ll probably make some money, but they won’t be able to exploit us too much because the bill requires they spend 90% of their income on providing health care… plus the exchanges will provide a better marketplace that will actually allow us to make more informed choices between them, introducing real competition where there hasn’t really been any before.
So can we please please PLEASE drop this dumb-ass meme that the mandate is just a give-away to insurance companies. It isn’t, it is a necessary component that makes the whole system work. As I said before, go and read your Ezra!
Martin
@mcc:
No, that’s the one before the compromise. We’re not sure exactly what changed with the compromise nor the CBO score. With Medicare buy-in, I would have bet on that score going down (bill gets cheaper). Not sure without it.
Citizen Alan
@Darryl:
So, Darryl, the fact that House Whip Roy Blunt stated (according to your unattributed quote) that he did not wish to pursue the contentious issue of Social Security privatization in 2005 automatically means that there’s no chance the Republicans would have been much more bold on the topic if they’d had 60 Senate votes plus a much larger House margin plus a genuine (as opposed to fictitious) mandate from the 2004 Presidential election plus a divided-to-the-point of civil war opposition party. Right.
By the way, “Angry Moron”? And I’m the one who’s “spitting and criticizing”? Usually, I try very hard to remember that most people are nicer (or at least least less belligerent) in real life than they are on the Internet. But in this case, I’m going to make an exception, Darryl, because right now, I think you are probably an even bigger sack of shit in real life than you appear in your comments.
So allow me to spit this little suggestion in your direction: why don’t you go fuck yourself with a rusty kitchen knife, you ignorant dolt.
inkadu
On the Lieberman issue, I think it’s perfectly fair to say to the caucus that it needs to start putting the screws on Lieberman and others. You do not support a Republican filibuster fucking period. Yes, vote for the bill, but start threatening serious retaliation against the backstabbers. This is no way to run a caucus.
Christ, what Lieberman did was even more unforgivable then just supporting a filibuster. He pretended to negotiate to continuously water down the bill, giving his support then taking it away again. That behavior is inexcusable.
We have to start playing hardball with our internal party politics. That’s what Dean means.
rachel
@Will: You have a very good point there.
And then there are the people wailing about how they’re healthy now and shouldn’t be forced to buy insurance even though the proto-bill makes provisions to subsidize the poor. Those people really piss me off because the thought does not enter their brains for a second that if they get T-boned at an intersection and wind up in ICU they–and their whole extended family–are on the hook for the entire Goddamn bill.
mcc
@Martin: The Nov. 18 bill contained the public option but no medicare buy in.
I have not so far seen anything indicating that Reid has sent a bill reflecting the current “compromise” (“we drop the public option in exchange for Lieberman’s vote”) to the CBO, or even actually written text for it. Did you see something indicating he had? I’d be curious to see that.
rachel
@Ecks:
Quoted with emphasis because it hasn’t been said this clearly often enough.
Joel
Nate Silver.
I haven’t seen him this riled up since the days when sportswriters derided OPS.
Citizen Alan
@Ecks:
Ecks, I and many others fully supported the mandate when we thought we might get at least something meaningful in return. As far as I can tell, the provisions which purport to ban preexisting conditions and recissions are virtually toothless. The provision that insurance companies spend at least 90% of premiums on payments will soon be stripped from the bill (if it hasn’t already) based on the CBO score. And the enemies of reform are still not finished eviscerating the bill (abortion amendments and subsidy reductions are still on the horizon).
I don’t mind the idea of requiring healthy individuals to pay for insurance provided that said insurance is heavily regulated as it is in Switzerland, Germany and other nations which have a universal mandate for private insurance. Requiring healthy people to by overpriced crappy insurance policies from an industry that is dangerously unregulated and which has virtually no incentive to keep premiums low, on the other hand, strikes me as possibly the dumbest idea in history, at least for a politician who claims that he wants to get reelected in three years. And that’s before the constitutionality of the universal mandate is judged by the extremely conservative Supreme Court.
Four years ago, Karl Rove was gloating about the permanent Republican majority. I am astounded that the leadership of the Democratic party seems bent on bringing that dream true.
The Original Francis
If we were Republicans this bill would be done.
We’re not sociopaths, and the Republican model of governance in the Senate lead directly to the current Democratic majority that has us within sight of the greatest advance in civil rights since LBJ.
If we rule like them, we become them, and then people will vote for them. Why vote for a DINO when you can elect the real thing?
Jim
I don’t object to mandates. I get that they’re necessary. If they were coupled with a public option, or even better with a Medicare buy-in with no age restriction, I’d actually be excited about them, even if it included supplementals/private insurance as the British system (as I understand it) has. What troubles me is that the subsidies are pegged to teh official gov’t stats on poverty, which in my view are un-related to real world expenses..
dr. bloor
@Citizen Alan:
Darryl’s got a serious case of “You Silly Little Children,” and is best ignored. Or, perhaps you might like some pie.
John Cole
Shut up, daydream believer.
Fulcanelli
Maybe the Dems need to hire Frank Luntz to whip up some of his catchy buzz phrases like “Death Tax” to positively frame certain aspects of this bill that might piss people off before they understand what’s really in it and why.
Regardless of what’s in the bill, a “mandate” forcing people buy insurance sounds like a big fucking oak club with a live power drill sticking out of it that was custom made to club Obama and the Dems like a baby harp seal with ass-rabies in the mid-term elections.
Almost half of this country is dumb as a fucking post and waiting to rapture. A ‘mandate’, even if justified is gonna be political cyanide for the Dems in 2010.
Ecks
@Citizen Alan: I get the rage, I do. The gutting of all the gut stuff is appalling. But here’s the thing: Reform just does not work without mandates. Without them premiums will be high and the whole project fails.
Take an imaginary world which has only John, Tim, Doug, Laurie, and 100 commenters. We’re all nice and healthy, except one day John doesn’t switch the channel fast enough when Joementum comes on teevee, and comes down with a nasty case of cooties, cost to fix = $100,000 for the year. None of us have that kind of coin in our bank accounts so John is hosed.
In a world with good insurance, we all pay $1,000 a year, there’s 104 of us, so that’s $104,000, enough to cover whoever gets the cooties, and 4 grand left for the insurance company to pay its clerks for collecting all those checks, and, you know, those executive chairs don’t upholster themselves in baby seal skin all on their own.
In the current world the insurance company collects $900 from us all, but when John gets sick they pay half his bill, stick him with the rest, and if it looks like it’ll be an ongoing condition they ditch him from coverage, and he’s screwed again. Not good.
So you stop them from doing that (and that stuff may get gutted, but I’ll believe it when I hear it from the wonks like Ezra, and I’m not hearing that yet), and now you have the opposite problem. I’m healthy. I know I can go and buy insurance if I do get sick, so I pay nothing. You do the same, so do the rest of the commenters, and John winds up the only guy on the rolls. It costs $100 k to treat him, and where is that money going to come from? He’s the only person to pay in, so his insurance is going to cost $104 k, which he can’t afford… So even if the insurance company wiggles out of its “spend 90%” rule, the whole system is still fucked, and John dies or goes bankrupt or something anyway.
That’s why we need health mandates.
inkadu
@Citizen Alan: I’m with you, Alan. Don’t feel like we’re getting half a loaf with this mandate. I feel like we’re getting half a gun — just the gunpowder and the hammer.
This bill is a step forward; but it’s a step forward in a particular direction — towards government regulated private insurance. The path to reform will be a expensive, slow, painful, and uneven.There is almost nothing to “build on” in this bill, in the sense that the next steps get easier. All we will do from this point on is add regulations; regulations that can be scaled back to encourage “free-market” competition any time Republican get into power, or loosely enforced by folks who just worked for the insurance companies or will be working from them soon. Regulation of private industry in this country has always been a joke. If that’s the approach we have to take on health insurance, the prospects don’t look good.
The United States has just agreed to make sure that it’s still the most expensive and unfair health care system in the developed world; it will be better for its victims, but this will only accelerate the collapse of the health care system.
The polling guy asked, “Do you want to wait until there is a full-blown meltdown to reform the system?” Well, no. But the main reason I see the mandated provision working is that it will FORCE a melt down. And maybe this is good, because we should be covering people, and if the system is failing, we might as well save some lives while we’re at it and making everyone a stake holder in the system.
(Also, just on an ethical outrage level, why do I have to send a portion of my money to an insurance industry lobbyist who will work against my own interest? The money I send to my mandated insurance provider will be sent to work against my own interest. If you’re a mandated industry, your ability to lobby should be strictly curtailed. But as non-profits, they are free to do whatever the hell they want.)
mcd410x
Cole, your tweets are starting to worry. You need, nay, must chill, dude … we’ve still got the conference committee to go!! We’re only up to the senate sumbitch!! How long has it been since politics was this much fun?!?
God, usually we get to twiddle our thumbs while the GOP fucks us over!
It’s ok. No one is dying here. (Except those without insurance, of course).
mcc
The word doesn’t appear anywhere in the bill
The “mandate” is what it is called by its opponents
Ecks
Eh, I apparently don’t have permission to edit my own comment.
So I’ll just add: yes, this could have been sold a lot better to the low info voters, but no it might not end up mattering much anyway, as something very similar seems to work pretty smoothly in Massachusetts… People tend to feel like they need health insurance anyway, not a terribly hard sell. The tea party people will go insane over it, but what’s new there.
And yeah, Suh got jobbed at the Heisman, and I say that as a Mizzou fan with no love for Nebraska.
inkadu
@Ecks: Hey, Ecks. We’re not stupid here, I hope. I think we understand the reason why mandates make sense. The big question is:
Will mandates bring premiums down to the levels that people can actually afford them?
I think it boils down to how the community rating works. If everyone who is not insured by their employer can get on the same community rated plan, we’re probably OK. But I’m not optimistic thats the way it’s going to work.
Politically, as I said above, this plan puts the entire country into a full nelson over the pile of shit that is our health care system and screams, “Bad dog! Bad dog!” The hope of progressives is that it will create a political will to take the next steps, the fear is that it will be such a disaster that nobody trusts Democrats with healthcare reform (or government) ever again.
I wish someone could clue us into the history of the German system; how did they go from private-to-public? What is a viable pathway for this?
Comrade Luke
@Joel:
That Silver post kills me. He essentially agrees with every criticism of the bill, but says we should go foward because Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln might sign off on it.
And please, don’t say I’m exaggerating:
Now that’s change, people!
inkadu
@Ecks: The Massachussets model might function because there is one party actually in charge of the process. With Republicans monkey-wrenching reform at every opportunity, things might not go so smoothly on the national level.
Fulcanelli
@mcc: But we both know once the bill is passed the GOP is gonna howl about how real ‘muricans are being forced by the gub’mint revinooers to buy insurance, and it’s gonna be toxic for the Dems at least until it gets up and rolling; Their worst fears are confirmed.
wasabi gasp
If Lieberman had wheels he’d be Hitler on roller skates.
inkadu
@wasabi gasp: And he’d always be skating in reverse direction while singing, “I’m doing what I think is right,” to the tune of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”
Citizen Alan
@Ecks:
I understand how the mandate works Ecks, and as I said, I’m not opposed in principle. It’s just I’m convinced that all those things you fear might be gutted are definitely going to be gutted, and in their absence, we’re going to get a system exactly like the one I quoted above except that the insurance company will collect a lot more than $900, the government will make sure everyone pays, and every time the insurance company does ditch someone, he’ll blame the Democratic party for the fact that he got screwed. Not good. Much worse, in fact.
Col. Klink
He means that if the GOP had to bully us into a war everyone on planet earth hated, they’d do just that and you’d like it damn it. Oh and if you don’t like it and clap louder, traitor!
Citizen Alan
@inkadu:
Actually, I disagree very strongly with this. I think we’re moving away from the idea of closely regulating private insurance and towards the idea of forcing private insurance into the lives of every American, whether he wants it or can afford it. My greatest fear is that we are introducing into the health insurance arena the idea of becoming too big to fail.
The Tim Channel
The Republicans never had anywhere close to sixty senators and they were able to dump all manner of horseshit on the American public. John A, over at AmericaBlog had a post on this very subject just the other day. Obama isn’t leading. He’s being led around. Sorry waste of brilliant talent IMHO.
Let’s never forget that Dean was bashed by the press when he ran for president. His crime? Over enthusiasm. I’d vote for him in a second if given the chance.
Enjoy.
Citizen Alan
@inkadu:
Well, for starters, make socialism conversationally acceptable.:)
reality-based
@cmorenc:
word.
You, sir or madam, have won my Internets tonight.
ruemara
@Jim:
Bill Clinton didn’t have the temerity to be black, too. Slightly disingenuous, Clinton didn’t have the temerity to give a great speech, connect with people and be so charismatic, yet so corporatist.
oh wait…
Ecks
Hey guys, sorry for the over-explain.
I hear the criticism that the bill is destined for such a gutting that it becomes a mockery of itself… The Ezra counterpoint to this is that if you look at the history of big legislation killing bills never brings them back later, and definitely not stronger (every time HCR has been defeated before it’s been a decade plus until it’s tried again, and the new version is always less ambitious than the old one). On the other hand, most of the big things that happened started as crippled and compromised versions that then built up.
It’s almost impossible to create things ex-nihilo in the current system. It just does. not. happen. With almost everything you have to start with a small barely functional excuse for the idea and then work up. It’s and ugly frustrating process at the best of times, and when you throw in a two party system where both are fully owned subsidiaries of their corporate donors, and one of them is certifiably batshit insane, yeah it gets worse.
but we don’t have a choice of the right bill here, we have a case of one that might just about maybe be good enough, maybe…. vs. a present system that is inhumanly cruel and fucked. But people like Rockefeller are still behind it, Ezra is still behind it, Nate Silver… I don’t follow all the details and wrinkles, I can’t. There’s too much, and it’s too complex. So I’m stuck trusting the people who are smart and have spent their careers following it, and can talk compellingly about it. They’re saying it’s still good… so I believe them.
Raoul
This is how I see it: if I have a family of four and make 60K a year I would be forced to shell 12K or more a year for crap insurance; if not I will need to send an additional 3K to the government for nothing. How is this good?
rachel
@Citizen Alan:
Too late. Health insurance became “too big to fail” during the last century. We didn’t deal with them when they were small enough, so now we’re stuck with fitting them into the solution somehow.
jenniebee
I see your point, DougJ, but I think it misses the point. First, the measure of a good politician isn’t that he has the right positions or that she’s a good public speaker and her naughty monkey pumps give Starbursts! The measure of a good politician is that he gets his objectives enacted. And by that metric, Republicans are damned good politicians and Democrats suck ass. We aren’t somehow better because we aren’t all committed to a well-defined, thematically coherent agenda that can be explained during an elevator ride (or maybe we are, and our elevator spiel is nothing more than “have you seen the way the other guy fucks things up?” If that’s the best we can do though, the GOP may be the party of No, but the Dems are the party of I Got Nuthin’) Dems will talk your ear off about individual programs and initiatives, but we never explain (and rarely think about) what makes them hang all together. Why are we for cap and trade and also for NAFTA? Why are we both for gay marriage and gun control? Why, for that matter, do we support single-payer health care and abortion of healthy fetuses?
Libertarians have a set of defining principles that guide this decision-making process, and modern American conservatism has co-opted the libertarian rationale and added a pastiche of Christian authoritarianism to it. Whatever, however you want to define it, they’ve got a driving principle, and we have programs. And that means that every time we sit down to talk about a program, we don’t have a common set of principles to evaluate it against and, if necessary, to abandon the program in order to preserve. And it’s killing us politically that, in the end, our position tends to be that whatever state a program might be in, we need it for its own sake and an imperfect program is better than no program at all because where would we be if we didn’t have our programs? This is a losing proposition, and it’s lost us most of the good that might have come out of HCR. There haven’t been “negotiations” about HCR and there aren’t going to be negotiations or compromise or any other hallmark of government, you know, working, and it’s all for the simple reason that if two people sit down to talk about a goal and one of them is willing to walk away and the other isn’t, it isn’t a negotiation, it’s begging. And beggars make rotten, rotten politicians.
rachel
@Raoul: Where are you getting your numbers? Is there a calculator on the Internet somewhere?
chiggins
I like Howard Dean fine, but what does this even mean?
That’s funny! I was just thinking the same thing about the word Democrat! Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?
rachel
@Ecks:
So the Canadian healthcare system didn’t spring fully formed from the forehead of Tommy Douglas?
Recall
If they had that they could have just made a bill to remove the governent restrictions on Medicare. You know, the ones that keep it from covering people under 65.
rachel
Slightly OT:
I’ve been staying away from the GOS recently because lately it seems to have been taken over by the teabaggers of the left, but this diary and the responses to it have provided me with some (sometimes bitter) amusement.
inkadu
@Citizen Alan: I know what you mean, Alan. When I say a “step in the direction of” I mean the likely next step if there is to be one. Yeah, the obvious first step is forcing private insurance into everyone’s life. But once that happens, everyone “owns” private insurance. Remember how paranoid everyone was about losing their shitty private plan? Well, now the entire country is going to have a shitty private plan. And the government steps will all be based around regulating it.
But I’m still behind it. It’s a step forward onto hot coals, but I’m praying we can run fast enough not to burn our feet.
I think that is my last metaphor for the evening. Dancing Queen!
Chuck Butcher
You cannot think of a bill where the Republicans would try to give a shit load of money to corporate interests? I’ll be go to hell.
MNPundit
No, but surely we need to enforce a little discipline. The chairmanships thing makes sense. If you screw with the party that’s fine, but you’re sure as hell not going to be in a leadership position.
Personally I am now nihilistic enough to be cruel like the GOP, and don’t really care about lying anymore. It works for the GOP and they never get called on it. So let’s just lie about it while making decent policy.
Noonan
Thanks, DougJ. This has been the rub all along. Talking about reconciliation and comparing HCR to Bush’s tax cuts is completely delusional. The difference between how the two parties operate comes down to what the two parties are trying to do. What they want to accomplish. The special interests are in favor of tax cuts. They aren’t in favor of the progressive agenda. And that’s all the difference in the world when it comes to passing major legislation.
Raoul
Rache: The 3K number is the penalty provision for lack of insurance (individual mandate); 12k is an estimate (probably low) for the average cost for insurance for a family of four-I believe they would receive no subsidy.
kuvasz
DOUG J
Don’t be fucking obtuse like some junior high school kid. You know exactly what Dean was referring to and the contents of the bill were unimportant but the method of getting it passed was. Dean was talking process not content, you fucking moron.
NobodySpecial
@Ecks:
Ezra, maybe. Maybe. Nate Silver? Not one chance in hell he’s followed it his whole life or has any particular expertise in the subject.
This bill as envisioned by the Senate means as much to me as a bill celebrating Raging Ass Monkey Day, except they’re throwing in money for bunches of people that don’t include me. Oh, wait, and I get to pay for it. So on that level, I guess it’s no worse than a Defense Appropriations Bill.
But on another level, it’s a pretty good rejection of people like me. Evidently we’re not good enough for actual health insurance. And it can be protested by Silver, Cole, DougJ, or any other person on this board, but that’s the end result. Oh, yeah, and all the brave lil’ soldiers who voted this kludge? I still get to pay for their healthcare. Yay.
NobodySpecial
@kuvasz:
You’re a fucking moron. I await your inevitable bounce and flounce.
rachel
@Raoul: So where did you find these numbers? Whose estimate is it? Link, please.
sparky
can we PLEASE stop with the useless comparisons to medicare medicaid and social security? NONE of those programs envisioned a private-for-profit intermediary.
if anyone here REALLY thinks that the medical-industrial complex is going to give up profits via regulation they are deluded. i’m sorry, but it’s so.
want a current example? ok, fine. UK: 50% tax on banker bonuses. US? not even a peep from the US gov’t about it, even as a trial balloon.
doesn’t anyone understand the depth of capture here? the whole argument we are having revolves around the importance of having insurance companies do what the public sector could do more efficiently.
no i am NOT saying that is doable at this time. i AM saying that the poverty of thinking is breathtaking–we are not even discussing whether or not we should have health insurers as the primary means of health care provision for a “national” program.
o, one other thing makes me crazy, too. ANYONE who wants health care now can get it. they just have to pay for it and of course, they can’t. so spare me the drivel about people will magically have health care, because they will have to pay premiums set by the people who charge them too much now. doesn’t anyone see how crazy it is to think this is going to end well?
Jack
The base argument, again and again, seems to be “…but, but, the corporations back up the Republicans.”
Sure, they do. They also back up the Dems, on those issues where the Dems are more friendly.
So, while “centrists” rain calumny down on the DFH and hippies bash their heads into centrist walls, pretty much everyone appears to accept as a given that “the corporations” get what they want, and the politicians to give it to them.
Which (especially when people with the same goals but different methods and red lines stop belittling each other and really look) ought to piss nearly everyone off.
A lot.
A whole fucking lot.
Those corporate feudalisms get what they want from nearly everyone in the federal superstructure. Yep, including Mr. Hope and Change. Especially from Mr. Hope and Change.
He’s not our friend, not if we’re actually in the same camp.
He’s the problem, same as Lieberman, Thune, McCain, Clinton, Boehner and almost every other one of the rat bastards.
They have nothing to fear.
Nothing.
What are we going to do about it, really? Scribble blog notes? Call someone who agrees with us 90% of the time a “manic-progressive” and maybe fracture our camp into warring factions a little more?
You want to know why we have eight hour days, vacation time and overtime? Why child labor is no longer ubiquitous? Why women can vote? Why black people are no longer segregated, or slaves? Why Roosevelt had to twist arms to get SS and other social insurance?
Because we and our forebears scared the ever loving shit the fuck out of them, is why. Outside of the process. In the mines. In the streets. In Lawrence and Spokane. In the mills and on the timber routes. In Birmingham and at thousands of union and suffrage rallies.
You want to know how these things were undone, in part or whole? How we got “flex time” and the repeal of Glass-Steagall? How we got DADT and DOMA? How we’ve got to the point where we debate where to put our torture camps, and not why we have them in the first place?
Because they know we’ll take it.
sparky
@Jack: agreed. though i would also add that the oligarchy has made great strides in bamboozelment. or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the others have been bought off by cocktail party invites and paying that Georgetown mortgage.
oh, and one other change that is indirect, but important. in those days there was no National Security State. John D and JPM and the Pennsy and the SP may have run the country but there was no shadow government that we are told we can’t even talk about.
Ecks
@NobodySpecial: Sorry, I don’t get what your objection is? You demand the right to be without health insurance if you want to?
You realize that universal coverage is, um, the left wing ideal right? Where universal means EVERYONE?
As for liberal principles, they exist, but they tend to be hard to articulate as a simplistic slogan. Nobody ever shouted “Judicious and creative use of government to solve some of the big problems in life, where applicable!!! Biatches!” Or “Balancing individual and collective needs for maximal overall win!”
True story, I was discussing this stuff with a righty a while ago, and he said “that sounds like the greatest good for the greatest number. And we know who said that didn’t we.” Which was revealing, anything smart and socially useful anyone has ever said is no attributed by these guys to Marx.
It did make for an epic smackdown though (“Jeremy Bentham, moron, the English statesman and philosopher”).
Jack
@sparky:
No argument from me. This isn’t the forum for a foray into DeBord or his arguments about entertainment-as-colonization, but it is easier (in our age) to distract/be distracted.
NobodySpecial
@Ecks:
No, I’m simply articulating a reality of this Senate bill: There is nothing in here that compels them to give me a good policy at an affordable price, even with these subsidies. So I will get to choose between not eating and having good insurance (which will be quickly used since not eating has health issues), getting shitty insurance that has no practical value the first time I have to go to the doctor and still fork out the money I don’t have in the first place, or paying a fine. Oh, or opting out, if the government feels kindly enough to exempt me.
This ‘coverage’ isn’t universal. This ‘coverage’ is also going to make people like me make a serious decision about going with insurance or not, with all the typical downsides either way. Considering how many already skimp on car insurance, I find claims of ‘universal’ coverage to be up there in magical unity pony fairyland along with ‘I won’t come in your mouth’ and ‘I’ll respect you in the morning’.
So, in reality, AFAIC, you could pass a bill with a provision to give everyone free health care as soon as Nyarlahotep comes back, and the effect to me is the same. I ain’t got it, I won’t get it, and I’ll probably have to wait until 65 just like I would have had not this Congress started dicking around.
Dervin
There’s a huge difference between “tolerating dissent” and sabotaging one’s own platform. To join a political party is to compromise, you are willing to make sacrifices for the party’s agenda, in return the party gives you power and perks.
slippy
@williamc:
Maybe you’re onto something here. Maybe the idea is to make healthcare so fucking horrible and onerous that the next whack at reform comes in 2 years and it cuts deep to the roots.
The problem I have with this is that I have to assume that Obama is deliberately sacrificing his party in order to get this done. Because ultimately, when my cost for insurance goes up by another 20-30-40 percent next year after already going up 20 percent this year, I’m going to look at the Democrats and say “goddamn you fuckers. Now you’re taxing my fucking benefits.”
itsbenj
Oh come on. You are grossly (and, pretty obviously, willfully) misinterpreting Dean’s statement. He’s talking about politics, not morality. He’s calling the current Dem leadership out for being ineffective, un-inventive, and myopic. The Dems lack strategy, and are simply not playing the same game as the Republicans. And they’re doing it in the exact same way they did when they were out of power. They failed to be ‘obstructionist’ enough when they were a minority, and they’re failing to be sufficiently bullying now. Dean’s making a perfectly valid point, not claiming that Republicans care about getting health care to the poor. He’s saying once they decide they care about something, they actually fight for it.
williamc
After thinking about it overnight, I’m actually pretty peeved at DougJ for this “manic progressive” tag and his attack on Dean. You do realize that you are enabling Glenn Beck and the rightards with their marginalization of progressivism with your petty spite, don’t you?
You people jumping on the train on this Senate bill have to realize how this looks to the rest of us:
2 weeks ago, there was general agreement here that a health care bill without a public option sucked, and after the public pantsing we all took from Liberman and how everyone in the Senate we thought we could trust (minus Bernie Sanders) turned on a dime and began arguing for this monstrosity of a bill that has been “compromised” beyond recognition from the original intent (funny, isn’t compromise all sides giving up something to make a deal? what have the “centrists” given up? they get no public option, no buy-in, and it gives the insurers the ability to water down their plans across state lines, what did we get?). Some of us have fought for years for this, and have spent the last year calling, writing, protesting, begging our government to give us something most of the country wants (the public option according to polls), and as soon as the White House commands that we march together down this road to total corporate control over our health insurance matters, and some of you just moved into line with them, and have started calling those of us who agree with you on everything else except this “manic”.
I can’t find it now, but JMM at TPM posted a letter from a reader way earlier this year about how if Congress can’t manage to pass health reform with a public option when most of the country wants it, you’ll know we’re screwed as nation, and yet here we are, and half of the center-left has decided to go along with it…
Ecks
@NobodySpecial: Hey, this bill is too small and doesn’t do a lot of important stuff. No arguments. The hope is that it will grow better over time, and maybe that sounds implausible, but it’s worked that way with all the big programs before. Social security, medicare, etc, they all started out tiny and limited, and were gradually expanded, and haven’t been killed yet. For what little it’s worth, history is actually on our side here if we can get this thing off the ground in some however shaky form.
So no this version is not universal health care, and it’s way more tortured and complicated than it has to be… But it’s MORE universal than we have now, and it builds the capacity for greater universality in the future by just expanding the “existing” subsidies and exchanges, without having to invent something entirely new ex-nihilo… which is a tough thing for any legislature, and nigh on impossible in the bass ackwards modern American one.
As for your personal situation, it sounds like you would be qualifying for subsidies. They are supposed to be covering the people who are choosing between food and insurance. Either that or the subsidies need to improve some.
NobodySpecial
@Ecks:
I’m accused quite often on these boards of being naive or somesuch, but even I’m not gonna believe that a bill whose particulars are being writ by such loving humanitarians as Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson and Max Baucus is going to let us have good subsidies that will help? Fuck no, they’re the first things that will go – all in the name of ‘controlling costs’, of course.
les
@Raoul:
While I share some of your concerns–and I don’t know where you are, which matters now but could matter less if we can start this fucking process–I’m just opening my own office; looking at about $7K for family of four, pretty standard but older (I’m 61, smoke). This can come down by adding more healthy people, and forcing/regulating less administrative costs, a sane claims process, actual market competition, etc. Maybe none of that survives in this bill; but if we don’t get anything, it won’t come at all.
I think it’s gotta be done. I can’t see any chance that the congress, and particularly the spectacularly fucked up Senate, will get any better for us in any foreseeable future. Gotta have a mandate–even naked, costs will come down for all if healthy people are in the pool; then, chip away–regulate premium dollars to services, strip anti-trust exemptions, force market competition, gradually introduce non-profits/expanded medicare, whatever you can get. But I really think if nothing happens now, the process won’t start before the streets are littered with the sick and dying.
CDT
@DougJ:
I don’t think any of the examples of failed Bush initiatives are comparable. Social Security privatization, for instance, failed because the public hated it. They hated it despite the fact that Bush pushed for it.
Even that, though is a telling comparison: Bush personally invested a lot of effort in pushing for something his base wanted that the public didn’t. Obama hasn’t pushed for something (meaningful public option, for instance) that is dearly wanted by both his base and the public at large. What kind of a president declines to push for things that both the base and the public at large want? i don’t get it.
mcc
In other words, you’re not talking about the bill or any variation of it, you’re talking about an imaginary version of the bill that exists only in your mind. At this point you’re not really part of any discussion anymore and there’s no point in trying to convince you of anything or getting you to support anything.
CMcC
Great post.
You write: “Seriously, though, here on planet earth, the Republicans would not be trying to pass a bill that provides $100 billion a year in subsidies for lower income Americans to buy health insurance.”
Nor would the Repubs even think of passing a bill that regulated the insurance companies in terms of such issues as profit margin, pre-existing conditions, recision, etc., etc.
All the Repubs want is de-regulation — plus tax cuts and wars (fought with borrowed money, volunteers, and mercenaries).
SFAW
Imaginary? I must have missed something. I thought Lieberman and Nelson were co-Preznits on this, since the bill keeps getting cut in order to appease them.
I assume you’re objecting to the use of the word “particulars”, because T.J. and Benjy and Max and Blanche etc. didn’t actually write all the sections and so forth. So, fine, substitute your own word for “particulars”.
But if that’s not what you’re objecting to, then I would guess you haven’t been paying attention.