My friend who used to work for Daschle emailed me the following uplifting message about Congressional Democrats:
I love the understatement of medical terms — someone who’s shown up in the Emergency Department raving about messages they’re getting via their fillings has “decompensated”. True, but there’s so much more.
Like the person sitting in the corner of a padded cell picking at imaginary insects on their body, the Democratic caucus has decompensated. The notion that they’ll be able to regroup and do something is about as reasonable as the view that someone in a rubber room will walk out tomorrow and go back to their old job as if nothing happened. And a stern talk from Daddy Obama isn’t going to fix shit.
They don’t even have the excuse that their brain chemistry is broken. They are just feckless cowards, and they deserve everything they’re going to get.
Update. I don’t hate the Senate bill but I respect this sentiment from geg6:
I hated the fucking Senate bill. Hated it with a passion. But even I could see what would happen should it not pass and I was willing to get past my hate and get on board and phone my congressional delegation to urge them to support it and fix it later. I GOT PAST MY DISTASTE FOR GOOD OF THE MANY.
Napoleon
Thanks Doug, now I feel better about everything.
lushboi
Pussies or assholes. Take your pick of orifices.
James in NJ
Here’s the problem with that.
We’re going to get what they deserve.
They’re going to get a nice office, and a big house.
—————————————————————————-
To inject a little levity, I just want to say that over the past two I called Rush Holt (NJ) and got my friends to do the same, and now he’s gone from ‘vote no on the Senate bill’ to ‘<a href=”http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/tally-sheet-where-house-dems-stand-on-how-to-move-health-care-reform-forward.php‘
Cause & Effect? Who knows. But an encouraging sign from a real progressive.
Max
So, I’m listening to the President and he’s been talking about Health Care for the past 10 minutes.
Funny this. Considering he’s giving up and walking away from it.
I win when YOU win – President Obama
The Moar You Know
Gotta throw this one out there.
H.L. Mencken:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
ed
My friend who used to work for Daschle
I hope you remind your friend, at every convenience, that Daschele is a douchebag corporate whore of the highest order.
cfaller96
Words fail.
This will sound arrogant, but when I read stories like this (and TPM’s “overall sense of relief” story on post-Coakley reaction on the Hill), it makes me want to run for Congress and fix this shit myself. My God these guys are cowards and idiots, and they deserve no deference from any of us regular people. Jesus.
DougJ
I hope you remind your friend, at every convenience, that Daschele is a douchebag corporate whore of the highest order.
He knows that. I once wrote that Daschle was an asshole and a whore. He disagreed, saying Daschle was only a whore.
DougJ
This will sound arrogant, but when I read stories like this (and TPM’s “overall sense of relief” story on post-Coakley reaction on the Hill), it makes me want to run for Congress and fix this shit myself. My God these guys are cowards and idiots, and they deserve no deference from any of us regular people. Jesus.
That’s not arrogant at all.
Rock
Cowards are different than crazy. They are afraid they will be voted out if they don’t act like Republicans. If Obama could scare them more, that would do the trick. I’m not saying that he could snap his fingers and something could happen. I’m saying that if he goes beyond a stern talk, something could happen. I think Obama is a generally competent, intelligent guy but this job apparently also requires someone be willing not play by any rules (who cares if legislation is the “job” of the legislative branch — it’s clear those twits won’t do anything left on their own). So the test is this: do Obama and Rahm realize they need to handle this differently now and can they find the leverage to make the caucus pee all over themselves more than the Brown election did?
geg6
I am so done with these people. This is leadership? These are the protectors of our country? This is who we are supposed to trust?
I better never get another fund raising phone call or email from another of these mother fuckers again. Never. They will not only never see another penny from me, they will wish they’ve never heard of me.
I hated the fucking Senate bill. Hated it with a passion. But even I could see what would happen should it not pass and I was willing to get past my hate and get on board and phone my congressional delegation to urge them to support it and fix it later. I GOT PAST MY DISTASTE FOR GOOD OF THE MANY.
Why the fuck can’t they? Isn’t that their job?
Kryptik
@cfaller96:
I’ve been tempted myself, if not for a couple reasons.
1) I’m a horrible public speaker
2) I could never raise the money to conceivably take any sort of political position.
kay
I think they’re looking at a poll
A new USA Today/Gallup poll out today shows 55% of respondents want President Obama and Congressional Democrats to “suspend work on the current health care bill … and consider alternative bills that can receive Republican support.” And 39% want to see Democrats “continue to try” to pass health care.
As depressing as that is, I think that’s what they’re doing.
As you-all know, there is no bill that will receive Republican support. Maybe they can pass stand-alone tort reform, if the Republicans let them.
John S.
Apparently, HCR is the Democratic equivalent of abortion. They like to run on it, but not actually do anything about it.
The fact that they came close to actually losing their favorite bullshit talking point for fundraisers probably has as much to do with this debacle as anything else does.
CT Voter
Well, Dems will get what they deserve, sure, but the rest of the country is still going to be screwed.
Does your friend think they will be this feckless on EVERYTHING?
Balconesfault
So 40% are the diehards who want healthcare to fail (some component of them wanting it to fail only because it would represent a success for Obama, and not because they oppose it in principle).
And 15% are delusional, if they think there is any bill that will receipve Republican support unless it’s stripped down to simply two components –
a) eliminate our ability to sue corporations
b) eliminate states ability to regulate insurance companies
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
” He disagreed, saying Daschle was only a whore.”
However, if we’d had Daschle at HHS instead of Sebilius, we’d probably have HCR in the bag now.
Another reason to hate Geithner. I’d rather have had Daschle at HHS instead of fucking Geithner.
Stroszek
I could care less about beating Republicans at this point. I have a list of Dems that I want to see either primary’d or general’d at any cost.
Landrieu is at the top of this list. That ever-bloating she-pig is the most corrupt, disingenuous gob on the pile.
Next is Bayh. Self-explanatory.
Then Grijalva. It’s called “the Congressional Progressive Caucus,” Willford, “not the Congressional Union-Ball-Licking Caucus.”
Finally Baucus… for doing more than anyone to bring us to this point.
I also want Martha Coakley to lose her health insurance, but that can wait… for now.
cfaller96
Kryptik, oh sure there are obstacles to my candidacy:
1. I’ve been on the internet forever, and I have quite the potty mouth.
2. I live in a red district in a red state (Charleston, SC).
2. I’m not rich, and I don’t have rich friends.
3. I’m incredibly shy and introverted (thus the “being on the internet forever”).
4. My wife would probably kill me.
5. Even if I were to overcome all the previous problems, I imagine the work environment would be akin to working at Dunder-Mifflin…only instead of one Michael Scott, there’d be 434.
David
Those poll results don’t matter, everyone knows the public hates the process. Results matter. If the Democrats can’t pass something with majorities this large, are they really worth anything?
I would be interested in a poll accurately explaining what the bill does and the only other option is to do nothing for decades and see what happens. Otherwise it’s wortheless.
p.a.
Question from ‘Angels on the Head of a Pin’ file: exactly how much of a Democratic majority would it take to pass anything that actually helps the middle class on down? Not talking just HCR. Anything. 65 Senators? 70? And in the House, would a motion in praise of good weather get unanimous Dem. approval without a rider condemning abortion? WWWWWWWTTTTTTTTFFFFFFFFF
Tomlinson
What I said to my rep was “I know this bill is imperfect, but it is the hand you have been played, so I expect you to play it. I sent you to Washington to get things done. If you cannot, my money and my time will go to someone who can. I have voted D all my adult life but I will vote R if I think that that person can be effective. Thanks for your time.”
Tomlinson
And since I live in MA, I rather imagine that a threat to vote R rather sank home. I imagine it is sinking home across this entire land.
kay
@Balconesfault:
I agree with you. I also agree that almost no one knows what’s in the bill. It’s been very effectively demonized.
I do think they look at polls, though. It can’t be a coincidence that every time they say something ridiculous and indefensible on the merits there’s some stupid poll that verifies their “view”.
This happens again and again. Someone should do a study.
Tecumseh
@kay: Maybe that 55% that say they should stop working on health care reform don’t mean it like they don’t want HCR but they meant it as some sort of mercy rule. Like in Little League when one team is crushing another and the parents step in and end the game so one team doesn’t get killed by more points than they’re already getting killed.
madmatt
“I hated the fucking Senate bill. Hated it with a passion. But even I could see what would happen should it not pass and I was willing to get past my hate and get on board and phone my congressional delegation to urge them to support it and fix it later. I GOT PAST MY DISTASTE FOR GOOD OF THE MANY.”
Spoken like somebody who has or can at least afford insurance once it is mandated! I am one of the supposed “many” and other than forcing me to pay for something I can’t afford to use this bill does nothing for me or anybody else…no end to rescissions, no limits on what they can charge, nothing. And thanks to the SC after next years election they’ll just buy their way back to the old system.
eemom
not that it matters anymore, but guess what? Hamsher is NOT on our side!
(can’t link).
Whatever. She’s comedy relief at this point.
Mary
@madmatt: geg6 detailed her issues with the Senate bill with great precision for weeks and is intimately familiar with the details of the Senate bill. For you to put her down is offensive.
If you can’t afford insurance, you will be subsidized under the Senate bill.
Rock
If Dems go by that poll then they aren’t even good at being politicians (never mind being legislators or public servants which we know that they don’t care about).
Voters are swayed by simple arguments. If the bill fails we have:
1) Republicans get to say they stopped Obama from wasting your tax dollars on poor people.
2) Voters will know the Democrats failed (doesn’t matter what, voters just know who lost and losers aren’t popular).
If a Bill passes:
1) Dems get to say you can have affordable health care if you lose your job.
2) They will have won. Winners are popular.
Moreover, most of these idiots have already voted for some form of HCR. They cannot run on “that thing I said I would do and almost did, I stopped doing cause you didn’t like it”.
kay
@Tecumseh:
Hah!
Mercy.
It’s a definite possibility.
David
@madmatt: You are 100% wrong about the bill. There are limits to what they can charge, rescission is ended, pre-existing conditions are eliminated and there are subsidies to make sure it’s affordable.
Mary
@eemom: OK. The statement about Cass Sunstein’s children convinces me that she is a psychotic paranoid. I had been giving her more credit. My mistake. Hilarious.
ed
However, if we’d had Daschle at HHS instead of Sebilius, we’d probably have HCR in the bag now.
Huh? How would a Daschle Bill differ from the one we currently have? Apart from more fucking handouts to the motherfucking Medical Industrial Complex, I mean.
sparky
@David: no, sorry, but you the one who is wrong. as i detailed in another thread, i have read some of the relevant text of the Senate bill and the first two of those contentions are wrong. i don’t know about #3 because i haven’t looked at it yet.
John Cole
@eemom: The Republicans aren’t the only nihilists.
I’m sure Joe Beese and Cornerstone and others will come in and tell us this makes total sense.
Mary
@Mary: I didn’t mean to suggest that it’s hilarious that anyone is a psychotic paranoid. I actually don’t think that’s a laughing matter.
Napoleon
@sparky:
David is right on this one.
Notorious P.A.T.
Hey, when you’re good at ONE thing, stick with it.
El Cid
“All the children of Cass Sunstein”? Sounds like the foundations of a supernatural western movie.
Midnight Marauder
@John Cole:
Joe Beese. What a fucking ponce, that guy. His cameos here are almost as annoying as Paul L.’s inanity.
Almost.
Notorious P.A.T.
What percentage want Obama to work on building a perpetual motion machine or dehydrated water? Hey, gotta respect the will of the public, right?
Chuck
@Max:
How did you link the big number like that?
cfaller96
Jane Hamsher’s taking the Taylor Marsh route- if she can’t get her way, then she’ll take everyone else down with her (and ruin her reputation/career in the process).
As a progressive myself, my advice is not to call progressive Reps at all. Don’t waste your time, because they will vote for the thing if they have to. Better to call Speaker Pelosi to ask her to schedule a vote for the Senate bill regardless of what her whip count is.
eemom
@Mary:
it’s not, of course, but you don’t need to worry wrt Jane. AFAIK, under the DSM-IV code, she’s just a garden variety narcissist. Albeit a particularly obnoxious one.
Joe
Perhaps it is time to abandon the representative democracy form of government, and go for a direct democracy, ancient Athens-style. Bypass the aholes completely – cut out the middleman and they can’t fuck the nation over anymore in order to reward their cronies with vast amounts of wealth. Use the net to connect the citizenry in large virtual assemblies. It will be tricky to work out a system that is not too slow and unwieldy, but can it be any worse than what we have now?
Leo
@Joe: Oh holy Christ no.
The Moar You Know
@Joe: How many of the people that you work with would you want holding the power of life and death over you? If that number is less than 50%, well…that’s how it can be a lot worse than it is now.
Also, see the catastrophe that the State of California is facing for some of the more
hilarioushorrific consequences of direct citizen involvement in government. If there’s one thing I’d get rid of in this state by any means necessary, it’s the California initiative process.maus
@Joe:
Unapologetically, proudly ignorant teabaggers having unfettered access? Sorry, that does not sound better in any way.
sparky
@Napoleon: tell you what–you show me the language in the Senate bill supporting those assertions. i am willing to admit error *if* you show me the actual language. i am not going to take it on your say-so because i have now spent a fair amount of time searching and reading the text and have seen *nothing* to support those contentions. doesn’t mean you aren’t correct, but i’d have to see the text. sorry.
ps: section # is fine.
mistermix
@DougJ: And he has become, unfortunately, a bit of a douchebag. Those red glasses would lead to a punchout in any bar in Aberdeen, SD.
But he is still not an asshole.
Tecumseh
@Joe: We sort of have that in California and it’s a disaster on top of a mess. The voters have consistently voted for more services while also consistently voting for less taxes and then get angry when the State Assembly and Governor can’t figure out how to balance it all together. We then try and recall everybody and curse out everybody else for voting in bad legislators while also praising the one’s we voted in. We also have a tendency to spend hours upon hours whining about the lameness of ballot measures but then get angry when somebody suggests we reform the whole thing.
tigrismus
I don’t understand this at all; Romney-lite gets elected by a pretty slim majority against an unpopular machine-candidate who didn’t even campaign on a day when the weather was shitty, so what? Even if one could assume that was the only reason those voters turned out and voted for Brown, does it make ANY sense to let fewer than 110k voters in one state that already HAS mandatory health care decide this issue? WTF?
ed
–I hope you remind your friend, at every convenience, that Daschele is a douchebag corporate whore of the highest order.
–He knows that.
I hope you remind him anyway. At every convenience.
Uriel
@John Cole: No- I belive they’ll politely inform you you it doesn’t matter because they’re completely powerless to have any impact on Democratic Politics at all, ever, being reduced as they are to nothing more than a wraith-like existence of forever observing that which they can never effect, so go blame the moderates, yeah this is change we can believe in, Rahm/LIEberman 2012, blar har har.
How you can be eternally powerless and beyond blame, yet simultaneously the one true power behind the throne and the only reason anyone wins elections anywhere, ever, is something I’ve never figured out, but apparently somehow both the wing-nuts and the some parts of progresso-sphere have managed to square that circle. Maybe that’s the point of commonality behind reaching out to the teabaggers.
(And everyone please note, I emphasized some. So, no, I’m most likely not talking about you.)
mistermix
@ed: The day that Daschle withdrew from the HHS nomination was a huge blow to healthcare reform. There is no other person in Obama’s administration who would have been able to herd the Senate cats the way Daschle would. Just as whores graduate to becoming madams because they know the business, Daschle knows the Senate.
What did we get instead? Fucking Max Baucus. That went well, didn’t it?
It’s no coincidence that the last President who got a major agenda through the Senate — LBJ — was majority leader before he became VP/President. He knew how the Senate circle-jerk worked. So does Daschle. Rahm doesn’t.
DanF
Every two years I have to vote for some Blue Dog bastard that I don’t REALLY want to vote for; they’re just the better of two awful choices. The least thing these Blue Dog bastards can do for me is return the favor.
willf
Even if every member of the CPC caved and supported the senate bill, it still wouldn’t pass, because Stupak and his gang of mouth-breathing women haters don’t think that the senate language stomps on poor pregnant girls hard enough.
So, where are all the panicky enraged rants yelling at Stupak to get with it? Why shriek about the progressives standing in the way of the bill passing when the anti-women idjits like Stupak will kill it anyway?
Some in the “pass anything, NOW!” crowd seem to have so much fun yelling at their activist counterparts that they forget to direct their fire where it really needs to go.
SiubhanDuinne
@cfaller96: @Kryptik: @cfaller96:
I would vote for you.
ETA: cfaller96, apparently I would vote for you twice!
Ruckus
@cfaller96:
I had the same thought.
I’m a liberal. Public speaking is no problem.
I even understand that we usually get much less than what we want/need but we have to keep trying/fighting.
I understand in the club that is the us congress standing and fighting for the issues usually gets you marginalized in the club. But it doesn’t get you kicked out of the club.
I understand how to keep my pants zipped up.
Now we come to the problem. I am not rich. I am not even middle class any more. (Thanks economy!) And therefore I have nothing that anyone wants to buy. And now that it’s OK for corporations to actually buy politicians, oh the shit pile I’m in.
I’m not religious. At All.
I live in a district with a pretty progressive rep so don’t want to step on that.
So that leaves the senate. All of the above makes this even harder and less likely.
Plus when I was 12 I decided that I couldn’t be a politician because I could not see how to be smarmy enough.