A moment of stunned silence around the Cole household as I agree completely with Ross Douthat:
If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first, poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.
You have to assume that on some level Congress understands this — which is why you also have to assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.
If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.
What he said.
El Cid
Industry hacks first. And “deal-makers” would be no where on the list.
Va Highlander
Yep. I agree with you both – which I suppose leaves me only half-stunned.
** Atanarjuat **
Does this mean that the New York Times was right in hiring Douthat to replace Bill Kristol?
I guess that means Marc Ambinder’s the likely runner-up for a future NY Times columnist. He’s also right occasionally, too.
Ugh.
All that being said, if the Health Care Reform bill is defeated, of course President Obama will get all the blame — and not just by the opposition. The loyal Democratic Party stalwarts will be in full CYA mode and spin like crazy about how Obama offered no leadership, vision, or how he seemed to send mixed signals during the debate (all of this has already been put out there, so it would only be amplified into a, “see, I told you so!”).
-A
MattF
I think the way to get Democrats to line up in favor of health care is to scare the shit out of them wrt the consequences of not succeeding. Fortunately, the Republican party is well on its way to doing just that. The only sure thing, though, is that it’s going to be ugly.
Trinity
@El Cid: What he said.
DougJ
Yes and no. If health care dies in the Senate, arcane parliamentary rules (the filibuster) and unanimous Republican opposition will be the main reasons why. And in general, I oppose “let’s blame the only sane people in the room for not being perfect” type rhetoric. So at some level, I think blaming Democrats is bullshit.
That said, if the focus shifts from blaming Obama to blaming Congress, I think Congress is less likely to punt.
Persia
Holy shit, the world’s gone upside-down.
T. O'Hara
There’s a surprise. Why not blame the voters:
Napoleon
Although I largely agree with Ross D. I would not give Obama a complete pass. He has shown a stunning lack of leadership.
Ash Can
I saw that excerpt from Douthat’s column this AM on DKos, and my reaction was the same: “Well, whaddya know — he’s right.”
Although I wouldn’t overplay the Obama-defeated angle if the legislature fails to send a bill to Obama’s desk, or fails to send one that he agrees to sign. If Congress drops the ball, the announcement out of the White House will be, “They couldn’t get it done, so it’s up to us.” And then we’d see the admin’s true colors on health care reform.
By putting the responsibility of health care reform on Congress first, Obama has reserved the ultimate bully pulpit for himself. Whether or not he uses it (if necessary), or how, remains of course to be seen. I’m sure he’s hoping it doesn’t come to that. In the meantime, I’m reserving my judgment until the onus is truly upon him, and no one else.
El Cid
There’s more than one option for FAIL: if the “centrist” nitwits have their way, the insurance industry is getting ready to throw a gigantic decade long party for just having gotten a new ‘bonanza’ in which there are no real reforms and restrictions on their behavior and profiteering, ordinary consumers get an entire truckload of costly new deductibles and premiums shit upon their heads, while the government agrees to subsidize many millions entering into insurance WITHOUT EVEN BEING ABLE TO REGULATE IT AS MUCH AS BEFORE.
There are two great failures we risk here: One is that no reform is passed; but the second, entirely ignored by the ‘centrist’ fetishizing, Wall Street worshiping establishment, is that yes, this can be written as an industry give-away.
It’s a great bait & switch: while the teabaggers are out there shouting about Nazis & death panels, and the establishmentarians are pontificating on whether or not the Democrats are turning the U.S. into soc_ialist Yurrop too fast and against the wishes of the majority, insurance companies have been laughingly hiring right wing and ‘centrist’ Democrats to take the potentially biggest reform of one of the worst aspects of the U.S. economic and social system in 40 years into a gigantic industry give-away which will make ordinary people deeply despise Democrats.
And if we let either option happen (failure VS industry give-away) as opposed to some sane reform, it’s entirely our fault.
You think ‘centrist’ Democrats who despise anything liberal and seek only to kiss the ass of industry care whether or not this leads to electoral disaster for their party on the long term? Bullshit. Which of them gave a fuck that they lost the House for a dozen years 1994 – 2006 and only the GOP’s fuckups and rapacious destruction let them back in?
Just look below. How the hell do you think the average voter is going to react if they’re told that the reason they now must pay over 1/3 of their health care costs is what the Democrats passed as ‘health care reform’? “Oh yeah, before you had a 20% deductible but now it’s 35%!” You think they’re going to give a shit when you say ‘Um, but, um, ‘centrist’ Democrats said it was better!’
***********************************
Health-care reform: Medical insurers poised to reap a healthy ‘bonanza’
Lobbying efforts win health-care concessions
By Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger | Tribune Newspapers | August 24, 2009
WASHINGTON – — Demonized by Democrats and ostensibly threatened with more government regulation, medical insurance executives have lobbied so successfully in Washington and the home districts of key lawmakers that they are poised to reap a financial windfall from the health-care overhaul.
“It’s a bonanza,” said Robert Laszewski, who tracks reform legislation as president of consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates.
Some insurance company leaders profess concern about the unpredictable course of President Barack Obama’s massive health-care initiative and point to concessions granted. But Laszewski said the industry’s reaction to early negotiations boils down to one word: “Hallelujah!”
Like major drug companies and other health-care stakeholders, the insurers lobbied early and hard for concessions from Democrats eager to pass landmark legislation that would provide medical coverage for all citizens.
The half-dozen leading proposals in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, guaranteeing insurers tens of millions of new customers, many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies’ premiums. At the same time, these proposals would limit government’s potential role as competitor and regulator…
…Undermining support for the public option wasn’t the insurance lobbyists’ only score this summer.
In May, the Senate Finance Committee discussed requiring that insurers reimburse at least 76 percent of policyholders’ medical costs under their most affordable plans. Now, the committee is considering setting that rate as low as 65 percent, meaning insurers would be required to cover just two-thirds of patients’ health-care bills.
Today, most group health plans cover at least 80 percent of a policyholder’s medical bills, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Industry officials say that the change is necessary for insurers to provide flexible, affordable insurance plans.
donovong
Stopped clock and all that.
Jennifer
Well, it will be Obama’s fault to this extent: where is he on encouraging that huge grassroots army of his to get on the phone to Baucus et al and let them know that if they fuck up healthcare, this term will be their last?
That having been said, I really think he had no option other than to allow the legislation to originate in Congress; anyone who saw what happened to Clinton would do the same, plus even though it’s not HIS plan, it’s being touted as NaziObamaCare by the nutters – who knows how unhinged they would be by now if he had followed a process similar to the one the Clintons tried? I think a recognition on his part that about half of the people who didn’t vote for him also favor reform left him no choice but to toss it to Congress to get it started. But he’s not going to be able to just leave it there if he expects it to get done – he’s going to have to twist some arms to get some of these jokers to face up to reality – reality being that neither Obama nor some of those blocking reform in the Senate are going to be re-elected if they don’t produce something that actually works as a reform. And that something had better not be a mandate to buy private insurance with no public option, or they’re going to have a mutiny on their hands.
AllenS
Obama is a poor salesman. He has a habit of saying one thing, and then doing the opposite. Pull out of Iraq? Close Gitmo? I could go on. Democrats are noticing this, and are increasingly wary. Obama takes six months before choosing a dog, then demands his policies be implimented at once. The Democrats are also noticing that this deficit spending is not selling well with the population.
Robin G.
Too bad that this isn’t a sexy enough storyline for the MSM.
I’m not ready to call reform dead yet, though — but I think there’s a real danger of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Barry
What gets me is that, if it fails, it’s a significant blow to a Democratic administration, which *includes a Democratic Congress*. Back in 1993, the Senate barons didn’t seem to think this through; now, they should be aware that it’s quite possible for 2010 to be a bad election for the Democratic Party. If the GOP picks up a couple of seats, and is remoralized, the Democratic Senators will have had their clout trimmed.
Do they not see it, or are the insurance company dollars blinding them?
General Winfield Stuck
There is another boogyman in the mix that is easy to overlook. The poll that O’hara cites is Quinnapiac, which has mostly brought outlier numbers, but still is in the ballpark for spending anxiety by independents and moderate dems.
I would lay a sizeable chunk of the blame on the bailouts made necessary by GOP governance in general and Bush’s failure to regulate the finance industry and the resulting orgy of greed that made necessary the huge chunks of taxpayer cash spent to avoid a depression. Doesn’t matter that the bailouts were begun under Bush, but is something that has stuck in the nations craw. I know it has mine, just not enough to abandon or pooh pooh more spending on the imperative reform of our collapsing health care system.
It will double down the irony, if reform is defeated by GOP blanket opposition, that may very well bring on more bailouts in a few years to prevent a meltdown of HC delivery systems, this time for the insurance industry and big Pharma.
arguingwithsignposts
SOT, but this morning I was reminded of how the entire GOP/Glibertarian IGMFU philosophy is summed up by Inspector Javert from Les Miserables (musical version), encapsulated by the song “Stars.”
To the topic at hand, the Quinnipiac poll is a bit misleading. If I understand most of the wonkery re: the health bills before congress, they are all deficit neutral or just about. Am I mistaken in that? $1 trillion over 10 years is about $100 billion/year. That’s about 1/5 of the dept. of defense budget, 1/7th the size of the wall street bailout.
So Q asked a question that isn’t really at issue, and the results only muddy the waters. OTOH, SUSA reports that 77 percent of Americans favor a public option (via DKos, where I’m too rushed at the moment to grab the link).
All that being said, if I had to guess who’ll get the “blame” for the lack of health care reform, I’d guess it would be primarily the GOP and Congressional Dems. The GOP because they’re the party of “no,” and these little tea-bagger outbursts are doing them no favors with the general populace. Congressional Dems because, well, they’re congressional dems and come across as vacillating, spineless sell-outs.
Obama can always say “I tried to do something, but congress wouldn’t go along.” Clinton won a second term despite his health care loss.
A lot depends on the economy going into 2012, but I doubt this loss will hurt Obama as much as it does the congresscritters if people continue to be raped by the private, for-profit insurance cos.
General Winfield Stuck
@AllenS:
Concern troll is concerned. Obama is pulling out of Iraq roughly on schedule, and still has 6 months or so to meet his one year promise to close Gitmo.
And most dems still support spending to overhaul health care and we are all bothered by the spending necessary to clean up GOP and Bush’s incompetence.
arguingwithsignposts
@AllenS:
To be fair, Obama is pushing to close Gitmo by the end of the year. Congress has pretty much stymied him on that front as well (see, “we don’t want terrorists in our states”).
GReynoldsCT00
@El Cid:
What you said… and I think it’s the reality here
Bulworth
Damn. Where did Ross come up with this? He’s almost spot-on.
El Cid
@GReynoldsCT00: Thankfully it’s not “reality” yet except the extent to which it is an urgent and imminent threat.
Failure on health care reform would be awful; making it worse for consumers while enriching insurers with fewer regulations, lower payouts, and government subsidies would lead to an absolute slaughter of Democrats and liberalism in general, Bush Jr. era fuckups notwithstanding — and like it or not it would be deserved.
And ‘centrist’ Democrats wouldn’t give a shit. They don’t care about the party and liberalism more than they can throw it, which they would if given the chance.
Jason
@** Atanarjuat **: Yeah, I’m also glad JC has dug through the NYT 2003 archives – probably zipped in a handy file entitled “shit_that_was_glaringly_obvious” – to moderate his opinion on Douthat’s fine, long tenure in commentating.
My guess is that Ross’ fridge is filled with cartons of milk from 1993, which he dutifully attempts to return to Safeway every Sunday, informing the Customer Service representative: “This doesn’t smell right to me.”
Phaedrus
Obama is the leader of the Democratic party. The buck stops with him.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Dems are uncomfortable with a true majority, because their followers begin to wonder why their priorities are not being addressed. Dems like it better when they can blame the opposition for their continued failures.
Apart from a different venier on foreign affairs, and health care (as opposed to SS privitization) I’m finding it hard to differentiate the actual workings of this administration from the last.
GReynoldsCT00
@El Cid:
I’m scared that’s it’s already here; they’ve already thrown so much money at this that they’re going to keep the upper hand. I have zero faith in any of our politicians these days.
jwb
@El Cid: Yes, this is the great danger of passing bad legislation, and I do not want to downplay it. However, not passing something has the very real political danger of putting the dems out of power. Normally, I’d say the dems should get what they deserve—if they can’t pass something decent, they should be creamed at the polls; but really these are not normal times. Given that the GOP is now run by the batshit crazy brigade, I think horrible legislation is actually a less bad option to letting the crazies get their hands on power.
On the other hand, the erosion, even collapse of support for Obama on the left seems to have caught the administration’s attention, and today, at least, I’m feeling that whatever eventually passes won’t be a complete and utter sellout to industry.
Shalimar
I mostly blame Emanuel (the guy who basically chose many of the blue dogs when he was recruiting House challengers as head of the DCCC) and his complete lack of morals. I do think he is the power behind the scenes in this desire to gut anything that isn’t beneficial to insurance and drug companies out of the bill in exchange for those industries switching more political support from Republicans to Democrats.. You can say blue dogs are better tacticians than liberals on this, but there is circumstantial evidence that Emanuel is backing the former and undermining the latter. It’s a major handicap when your party leader (at least by extension) is cutting you off at the knees.
corporal waldo
Just when you think for sure that someone is a complete douchebag idiot….
General Winfield Stuck
Somebody left the door open and let in the winger trolls.
We’re gonna need more snark.
A lot more snark/
Mike P
@AllenS: Pulling out of Iraq and closing Gitmo are still on schedule, FYI.
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
@** Atanarjuat **:
Does this mean that the New York Times was right in hiring Douthat to replace Bill Kristol?
Well, Douthat’s been right once. Which means he’s been right once more than Kristol ever was. So in that limited sense, you are correct.
@arguingwithsignposts:
To be fair, Obama is pushing to close Gitmo by the end of the year. Congress has pretty much stymied him on that front as well (see, “we don’t want terrorists in our states”).
Yes, but there’s been no meaningful pushback on this from Obama, and it would be easy. Some high-flown rhetoric about the glory of our justice system, innocent until proven guilty, protecting our freedoms means protecting them for everyone, blah blah blah, would at least be an attempt to steer the conversation in the right direction.
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
Again, see Clinton: 1996.
And if the alternative is any of the current crop of GOP front-runners (a big assumption given how they seem to be falling), progressives will go back to BO rather than give the country another turn on the “fuck everything up” merry-go-round. I think.
Balconesfault
Chuck Schumer was winning me over again on MTP yesterday. I’ve been seriously po’d at him since the Mukasey thing, but he was tone perfect in exposing Orrin Hatch’s opposition to reform, and brushing off Schuster’s silly trolling.
Short Schumer. Yes, the Republicans have excluded themselves from the dialogue. Yes, we’re taking this thing forward. Yes, every tactic is on the table.
Shalimar
@jwb: Given that the GOP is now run by the batshit crazy brigade, I think horrible legislation is actually a less bad option to letting the crazies get their hands on power.
I agree that would be bad in the short run, but I’m not so sure in the long run. Last time the crazies were in charge is how they got so incredibly unpopular now. Another 2-4 years with power could destroy them permanently and split conservatives in this country into a sane party and the current batch. Which would make them unelectable nationally.
El Cid
@jwb: No, no, I understand the political consequences of not passing health care reform. I get that.
What I’m saying is that it is also possible to pass something so awful that the political consequences will be worse.
If you make people’s lives worse and make them pay a lot more money to insurance companies while those companies begin to make profits that make their former record profits look small, the Democratic Party would be wiped out.
You’ll note that I am not concluding that an industry-favoring deregulatory / give-away bill is inevitable: I think it is an imminent threat, one which is not just vaguely possible but could very well end up being what happens.
It is very possible to avoid this — but unfortunately it will require much more response and loud noises and organizing and fundraising by the decent types who are trying to improve health care and keep Democrats from being electorally slaughtered despite the ‘wise’ interests of the idiot asshole ‘centrists’.
arguingwithsignposts
@Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice:
Um, I seem to remember him speaking in some sort of nationally televised setting (press conference or speech, can’t remember) about how strong our super-max prisons are, etc.
There was pushback, but it’s been lost in all the other GWB cleanup they’ve been having to do.
Not saying that as a blanket defense of all Obama has done in the GWoT arena, but just to be a little more even-keeled about it.
jwb
@Shalimar: That’s what the leftists said in Weimar Germany, too. As you may recall, that turned out real well.
Phaedrus
@arguingwithsignposts
another reflexive – if you say something bad about Obama, the boogie man Republican’s will come and eat your children. I’m so tired of the politics of fear keeping us from even asking that our elected officials respond to our interests.
Address the real issue – what changes has Obama made to the direction of our country?
General Winfield Stuck
I do think it is true to a large extent, that if dems can’t get a decent bill passed, then the wingnuts will have a powerful argument that we control the process by having all levers of power, including a filibuster proof majority.
And that is how it should be. If this fails, in the end, democrats will have no one to blame but their cowardly selves. No way to get around that, IMHO.
Brick Oven Bill
The reason the Democratic Party cannot function is because it consists mainly of people who are biologically predisposed to fighting with each other to stand right next to the baggage claim thing, that belt that moves all the suitcases past the people waiting to pickup their luggage after they get off the airplane.
In the end these people push each other and push each other, and often times miss their bag.
The typical Republican, however, is biologically predisposed to cooperation, and when waiting for his luggage, agrees with his fellow passengers to all stand back a few feet from the baggage claim thing, and when one person’s bag approaches, that particular person then steps up to the moving belt, gets his bag, and then steps back. This works good for everybody.
I attribute this to developmental biology, namely some populations had discipline, teamwork, and self control imposed on their DNA by evolving in the presence of metal. These two luggage strategies can be observed by everyone. In action.
Luggage strategy Exhibit ‘A’ is Atlanta or New York (Democrat cities, crowd the luggage thing), Exhibit ‘B’ is any overwhelmingly white area, say North Dakota (Republican, or Blue Dog areas, children are scolded for standing next to the luggage thing).
You can also observe this in the demographics between NFL offensive lines (advantage: discipline, teamwork, self-control) and defensive lines (advantage: strength, speed, sensation). Efficient legislature requires discipline, teamwork, and self-control. The Democrats suck because of science.
El Cid
@Phaedrus:
I find myself now mainly worrying about whether enough is being done correctly rather than ‘oh my god what lunatic nation-destroying attack upon us will be unleashed by our President and his cronies today’.
Jason
@DougJ:
Obama has been pre-blamed for everything within the realm of political possibility and then well beyond, and America Hates Congress. I think both the WH and Congress are capably contained in the same frame of shallow non-blog journalism. I’m not sure I could recognize a “shift” in the journalistic representation of the debate, short of “Town Hall Protests Blame Xenu:”
NEW ANGER AT PUBLIC MEETINGS
—————————————————
Tea Party Protests Target “War on Christmas”
———
Will single-payer plan mandate secular greetings at hospitals?
————
“I don’t want government-baked ‘Death Cookies’ for Santa”
—
Heat Miser mum
John D.
@Phaedrus: Actually, Howard Dean is the leader of the Democratic Party. Pesident Obama is the leader of the USA. Try to keep it straight.
Obama has no legal right to dictate to the US Congress. It’s why our founders set up the separation of powers. He can make his wishes known, as he has, and apply various pressures, but he CAN NOT TELL THEM what they must do.
If legislation fails to pass, it is not Obama’s failure, it is Congress’.
Carnacki
A moment of stunned silence around the Cole household …
Even Tunch?
Jason
@Jason: Formatting Fail.
tc125231
Tjis is a stupid and simplistic post. Since, unlike RD, it’s not a self-interested sop to his funding sponsors, one wonders what possessed you.
Yesterday Yglesias posted on John Shimkus and the party of no.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/rep-john-shinkus-says-gop-should-just-say-no.php
Arguably, there are multiple components to this mess:
–Timidity by Reid and the Democratic Senators
–Lack of GOP interest in anything except their own short-term advantage
–Lack of c aclear plan by OBama, and late, and confused advocacy for a somewhat undefined program.
–Media laziness, and its focus on the 10% wingnuts at meetings
That’s why this country is is in so much trouble –EVERYTHING is screwed up at once. Nonetheless, the GOP is a much bigger problem than the Democrats. They should go the way of the Luddites and be replaced by a useful opposition party.
Gee whiz –don’t be an asshole. RD and Brooks have the slot down to a science.
El Cid
The real difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that lizard people hollow earth worlds in collision one time I touched a lady but pizzas should not be cooked until tough.
Balconesfault
@arguingwithsignposts:
I would like to see the Administration declare that any state which considers itself threatened by dangerous people being placed in their Supermax Prisons will be put on a list for rapid decommissioning of their Supermax’s … and any state wanting a new Supermax can have one with some Gitmo detainees within 18 months.
T. O'Hara
The bailouts are a problem. But are they all Bush’s fault? Is it because he didn’t make any real effort to regulate the sub-prime mortgage mess? (What? He did?)
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
Oh, well, at least the Democrats were leading the charge to rein in those problems. (What? They weren’t?)
Balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
Nope – Republicans stand back from the belt because they know there are other Republicans around, and if they accidentally touch the wrong bag they might get a gun pulled on them.
joes527
The only bit that misses the mark is the “loyal democrats” as the distant third.
Is mere loyalty to a party really the ideal that is being missed here? If loyalty was the goal, then we should switch back to the the republicans, because they have the “My Party Über Alles” shtick down pat.
I believe that the critical ingredient missing from democrats isn’t loyalty to party, but vision and commitment to govern in the interest of the people.
jwb
@El Cid: No, I get that passing horrible legislation is a definite possibility. What I’m wondering is whether even the most horrendous legislation would be worse than having the crazies in charge. (It all depends on how serious you believe the crazy problem is; personally, I think it is frightening.) And, truthfully, if it’s really horrible legislation the full magnitude of its awfulness is unlikely to be manifest for about a decade, enough time for the GOP to get a handle on its crazy. In the meantime, I think the Dems would get through to 2012 by passing anything because they would look moderately competent at governing, even if, you know, they aren’t.
El Cid
FANNIE MAE FREDDY MAC CRA JIMMY CARTER ACORN
General Winfield Stuck
@Brick Oven Bill:
BoB Streams of Unconsciousness,
Our Hemingway on Acid.
Balconesfault
@T. O’Hara:
Hmm … check the date. September 11, 2003.
OK, not the 9/11 thing … but the 2003 thing. Who controlled the House in 2003? Who controlled the Senate? Was there some big Democratic led filibuster of this proposal that I don’t remember hearing about? Because we all know that Trent Lott was so sympathetic to Democratic concerns during that time period.
El Cid
A bill passed which actually makes it worse for average people — fewer regulations on insurance companies, massively higher deductibles for patients, government subsidies — will wipe out the Democratic Party and hand power directly to the crazies. It doesn’t matter if all of the effects won’t kick in immediately — people will know what’s coming.
And it would be kind of hard to convince anyone that ‘the crazies’ would treat them worse. By that point, it would be Reagan all over again and people would be willing to give the Republicans a chance again.
General Winfield Stuck
@T. O’Hara:
The need for them is, for the most part. Obama’s methodology in delivering them is surely open to criticizism.
Phaedrus
@42 el Cid
– ducking the question
@44 John D
– To ignore that the president is influential in setting the course, discourse of his party – and instead pick nits about titles – seems disengenius (however do you spell that ?)
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
The typical Republican, however, is biologically predisposed to cooperation mindless obedience to their corporate overlords.
fix0red.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
The typical Republican, however, is biologically predisposed to
cooperationmindless obedience to their corporate overlords.fix0red.
arguingwithsignposts
@arguingwithsignposts:
FYWP! Imagine the word “cooperation” struck through in the previous comment.
Zifnab
@joes527:
Or at least loyalty to the constituency. Some of these Blue Dogs are living in communities with the highest uninsured rates in the country. When you’re coming from an industrialized district in Michigan suffering massive layoffs (and corresponding drops in insurance coverage) you would think that the local representative might want to see about protecting his area’s health interests. When you’re out in Arkansas where Walmart owns everything and no one has coverage, you’d think a public option would appeal not only to the cheap-ass corporation, but all the folks suffering from the cheap-ass-ed-ness.
Nate Silver has gone over this a few times. The folks most at risk from a failed insurance policy are the folks opposing it most strongly. Because progressives aren’t going to turn out in huge numbers to support a House Rep or Senator that can’t get the party’s highest priority legislation through a Legislative and Executive system dominated by Democrats. And the conservatives are going to be more than happy to tear the guts out of a Dem they all recognize as weak.
Bob In Pacifica
Sometimes it seems like politics in these here United States is only professional wrestling. At some point before the public is allowed in on the show these guys are backstage and they are going over their flying dropkicks and their various chokeholds. And then this guy will jump off the turnbuckle and that guy will bleed. That guy will look ineffectual and will eventually pin down the guy who hit him over the head with the folding chair.
This guy, who’s been playing the bad guy, will suddenly become the good guy.
The plotlines are all written out beforehand and our job in this pasteboard democracy is to be involved in the cheering or booing. “Boooo! Look at that weak Obama! He’s getting pushed around like Carter!” “Yea! Did you see Pelosi’s chokehold on legislation? But she had to have known that the CIA was playing dirty back when Dubya wore the belt.”
Who owns the referee? Who’s running the show?
Zifnab
@General Winfield Stuck:
*snicker*
This from a guy who will argue to his dying breath against evolution and global warming.
I love to watch conservatives get all “sciency”. Nothing comes off as more ignorant than an uneducated loon tossing off a bunch of polysyllabic words he picked up while screaming at PBS for stealing his tax dollars.
vacuumslayer
Yup, that’s pretty much it. *sigh*
El Cid
@Phaedrus: I didn’t duck the question. I answered it. Fuck off. If you want to play who’s more super-leftist then I can play it ’til you’re dead. But this bullshit is a waste of my time.
Jason
@El Cid: Word. That whole line of argument is completely uninteresting. “Hey let’s parse structural problems by blaming/exonerating this one dude! ‘Cos the bucks stop thereabouts”
handy
@T. O’Hara: You should just come out and say it…poor black people were “as responsible as anybody” for causing the mortgage crisis. It fits in very well with your thesis.
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
The mere fact that we’re having this discussion about health care reform is a significant change, imho. I don’t recall this discussion ever coming up during the last 8 years (see GOP obstinance on expanding SCHIP). LIddy Ledbetter Act. Sonya Sotomayor is a Supreme Court Justice. Stimulus package. TRYING to close Gitmo. FOIA executive order. Stem Cell Research approval.
“changes in direction” are both small and large. He’s done some good, he’s done some poorly. He has moved quickly on some, and slowly on others (DADT, for instance). I don’t like the way he’s moving in Afghanistan, for instance. Or the reticence to prosecute bush officials for war crimes (or at least something).
The ship of state is not a dinghy you can turn with the whip of a wrist, either.
People seem to think anyone who defends Obama from black-and-white pronouncements that he’s a failure after 7 months on the job are automatically labeled Obamabots (for some reason the same applies to Jon Stewart, but I’m not sure why).
Nothing is ever that simple.
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
@arguingwithsignposts:
You’re right about the press conference; I forgot. It’s just that extreme leftist civil liberties absolutist that I am, I would have preferred the pushback to take the approach that there is no proof, and in many cases no admissible evidence or no evidence period that those poor cocksuckers enjoying their Cuban holiday are actually terrorists.
“Sentence first, trial later” is for the Red Queen, not the supposedly most free country on earth.
jwb
@El Cid: I’m not sure. Once legislation is enacted, I think people tend to take a wait-and-see attitude. And you can count on the fact that if the legislation is good for industry, industry will dump a boatload of money making sure the initial optics of the legislation look good. So, again, I think passing anything will get the Dems through 2012 (probably with the usual losses in 2010, slight gain in 2012).
But, really, it sucks that we are even having this conversation when in a rational world we would be talking about, you know, what would be the best way to reform our health care industry.
T. O'Hara
Not really (or not much). The bottom line is 1.042 trillion in spending, 219 billion in cuts, 583 billion in new taxes for a total deficit addition of 239 billion (over ten years, or 24 billion each year).
But other estimates are that far more employers will adopt the public option, and if so, the costs will skyrocket. HSI claims to have a better model. (But Steve Parente was a McCain campaign worker, so he must be an evilmonger.) HSI Networks’ Steve Parente on independent study results that show that health-care reform will cost more than $4 trillion. If right, the deficit will increase more than 300 billion each year.
General Winfield Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
I am personally pleased that we are no longer torturing people. But remain pained at even having to say that.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Bob In Pacifica:
A couple of weeks ago, John put up a post titled “Bring on the Brawndo”. WTF is Brawndo, I sez to my self?
My daughter and I watched “Idiocracy” this weekend… twice. It was a fortuitous time to watch it, I think, coming hot on the heels of the town hall/health care madness. All I can really say is “Ow, My Balls!”
vacuumslayer
@arguingwithsignposts: Really nicely-put.
joes527
@Zifnab:
THAT sounds like a respectable goal.
But I guess I was the only one that was jarred by Douthat’s implication that party loyalty was the thing that was missing here. It is an understandable sentiment coming from a republican, since they believe that shit.
But somehow I think that democrats should be striving for something more than the good of the democratic party.
Brick Oven Bill
Balconesfault #51 is Exhibit ‘C’ re: metal imposed discipline through thousands of years of developmental biology through hundreds of generations of weeding. Armed (metallic) societies are thus polite, disciplined societies. These populations stand back from the luggage thing. And can more effectively pass legislation.
Germans have been criticized for being ‘easily led’ throughout history. They are also prominent in the field of metallurgy, and lean towards socialist policies. It all makes sense when you think about it.
Zimbabweans have never been accused of being easily led, and produce very little metal, other than mineral leases, the proceeds of which are hoarded by strongmen, who push their way to the front of the luggage line.
You can observe this for yourself at the airport.
El Cid
@jwb: I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re arguing. Are you suggesting that if a reform plan is passed which badly screws people over, that people will take a ‘wait & see’ attitude and that ‘we’ (?) should wait and see whether or not industry advertising can change that view?
I hate Republicans, but I’ll be god-damned if even I would vote for Democrats again if they passed a health care plan which literally would bankrupt millions of Americans while de-regulating and subsidizing insurance companies. I’m sorry. I don’t know what point you’re making but I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with it.
What the hell would I say to people if that’s what we allowed to happen? Yeah, you’ve just been awfully screwed over by the Democrats but I urge you to imagine that you’d be treated even worse by the Republicans who opposed the legislation that in reality screwed you over? What?
Phaedrus
@67 El Cid
– it’s a simple question, I’m not trying to play gotcha… Aside from health care, what has Obama done differently from Bush?
I recognize he’s only been in office 7 months, but he’s had ample opportunities to prove that his approach to government is different from the previous administration – and he’s failed every time, often in direct opposition to his campaign rhetoric.
More transparency, release of documents, open government meetings, DODT, prisoner detention, habeas rights, lobbyists influencing reform, banking bailouts but nothing for us.
I’m not trolling, I’m really looking for something other than – “yeah, but the Republicans would have blown up the world”.
T. O'Hara
The Democrat marketing has been much better, but the GOP never owned any part of the sub-prime mortgage program.
Phaedrus
@70 –
You mention Obama’s “some small, some large” changes – name some of the large, please.
Was Obama elected with the understanding that he would, over time, effect a some small changes because the ship of state is so large – or did he promise sweeping changes to the way Washington worked?
I have no problem with people defending Obama, but do it – cite the reasons (beyond the ominous shadow of Republicans) that he was a good choice.
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
Yes you are, and I suspect with some sort of agenda. You have taken the axiom of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and shot it full of steroids.
joes527
@General Winfield Stuck:
Other than the fact that “we” are the “good guys,” what do you base your belief on?
When BushCo was mid-atrocity, the public line was “We don’t torture.” I LIKE Obama, and like to think of him as a better man than Bush, but assuming that he can’t possibly be doing bad stuff behind our backs is naive in the extreme. That is EXACTLY how Bush got by for so long.
What institutions and procedures have verifyably changed that lead you to conclude that we no longer torture?
cleek
err… a huge portion of the bailouts were actually delivered by Bush.
arguingwithsignposts
@T. O’Hara:
$200 billion to the deficit over 10 years is a rounding error.
You’re linking to a report on FOX Business News? And you expect me to accept that over a CBO estimate?
As for the $4 trillion number, I guess that’s only $1 trillion more than the last president got us on the hook for in the effort to kill the muslims. I’d much rather spend it on keeping Americans well.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
B.O.B. must be cribbing from Stormfronters again. That shit about how “white” airports are more orderly than Atlanta and New York is so racist, I can practically hear the crackling of the burning cross as I read it.
B.O.B., please regale us again with your stories about how black people are less civilized than white people because their cultures didn’t have iron until way later, archaeological evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. It’s fun to hear Master Race horseshit filtered through layers of pseudoscience, and outside of 19th century racial theorists and Third Reich archives, it’s hard to get ahold of the stuff. Are you cribbing off Julius Evola, by any chance? I’ve never read him, but I’m told he’s a good post-Nazi source of pseudointellectual racist blather. Even more sweeping and ridiculous than Dinesh D’Souza, supposedly.
T. O'Hara
Racist! (Ha, beat you to it!)
But how about rich white people in Congress? Barney Frank was “as responsible as anybody”:
wasabi gasp
You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, so stop choking your chicken.
cleek
he has driven the GOP deep into Crazyland. i think that’s going to have a huge impact in next year’s election, when normal people start looking at the GOP (which will still be screaming about tyranny and Nazism) and recoiling in horror.
General Winfield Stuck
@T. O’Hara:
The GOP has led the charge of deregulation of the financial markets that led to CDS swaps and the whole other slew of risky get rich quick schemes that caused the meltdown.
And what few regulations that survived were ignored by Bush regulators that just added fuel to the fire. Yes, Fanny Mae and Mac share some of the blame for too many SPM’s. But the private GOP mentality dominated financial markets sent them into orbit.
Phaedrus
@82
– I get tired of that to “perfect and good” thing. It is the argument for people backed against the wall and can’t really come up with a good argument.
Yeah, I’m going to eat this shit, because that shit over there is REALLY shitty – why would you turn your nose up at shit? Don’t hold the “perfect the hostage of the good”.
As long as you’re willing to eat shit, that’s what you’ll get fed.
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
And as long as you keep waiting for the perfect, you’re going to be sadly disappointed.
For instance, I want single payer, but I know there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to get it this time around, no matter how much I write or call or hold my breath until I’m blue in the face. Does that suck? Yes it does. But I’ll be damned if I’ll take the “bad” when there’s a slight possibility we could get “good” instead.
General Winfield Stuck
@cleek:
I didn’t say they weren’t . As I understood it, some 350 bil were delivered by Bush and the other half of roughly 350 bill by Obama. I don’t know enough about the subject to criticize anyone on it, but was just saying others could.
Brick Oven Bill
The behavior at the airport is observable by anyone Scruffy McSnufflepuss. I attribute this behavior, and the failure of the Democratic Party to execute their agenda, to evolutionary forces that imposed societal discipline, namely the Iron and Bronze Ages.
Being open minded on the issue, I welcome your theory.
Bill H
@General Winfield Stuck:
“I will remove one brigade per month, starting the month that I am inaugurated, until all of our troops are home. I have consulted with military people and this is feasible. I will do it.”
He repeated this many times during the campaign. GWB removed one brigade before leaving office, not one single soldier has been removed since then other than normal rotation. We are still at the 135,000 that were in place when he was inaugurated.
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
Sounds like your whole world is shit. My condolences.
Tell us, who would you recommend in the dem party that would do better as presnit?
kid bitzer
sorry, john: i think douthat is full of it.
this whole column is an attempt to make people ignore the republican party’s outrageous behavior.
it’s an attempt to rebut joe klein’s completely accurate point that the republicans have turned into a bunch of nihilists who are destroying the country.
so the dynamic that douthat is feeding goes this way: republicans do horrible things and say even worse things; they block every bit of forward progress on the nation’s agenda and tell endless lies to confuse the republic; they gin up racial hatred and try to spark violent armed conflicts at public rallies–
and douthat wags his finger at the democrats.
the only thing vaguely clever in douthat’s column is the concern-troll dodge of pretending to deflect blame from obama.
that’s a sop to obama’s base–“you see? i’m not blaming your guy, really–i’m blaming the *democrats*.”
well that’s crap. he’s not trying to rescue obama’s reputation. he’s trying to rescue the republicans’ reputation. this is just standard misdirection: “don’t look at what the republicans are doing! blame it on the democrats!”
look: douthat, like brooks, is nothing more than a republican hack. republican party, right or wrong, no matter what it does.
and this column is just another proof of his hackery.
El Cid
Why would it bother anyone if people began choosing the cheaper, more efficient “public option” over private insurers? Yeah, the government program would grow, but so would incomes and economic stability.
Fulcanelli
@Zifnab: “Nothing comes off as more ignorant than an uneducated loon tossing off a bunch of polysyllabic words he picked up while screaming at PBS for stealing his tax dollars.”
There’s been an awful lot of competition in the ignorance sweepstakes for a quite while now, but that was a good one Z.
All this heath insurance reform chaos has done is reveal even more just how “broad minded” (read: deeply in the pockets of business interests) our so-called “Liberal Democratic” congress is, and how predisposed susceptible so-called “Conservatives” are to lies and propaganda when it comes from the “right” source.
Both situations are dangerous and depressing, but what’s more alarming is that no one seems to be able to reach a consensus on what to do about either condition and I don’t think we have all the time in the world to figure it out anymore.
Phaedrus
@92
I’d prefer single payer as well, but I’m willing to settle just you.
Look, I voted for Obama – even after he caved on the FISA thing – because he spoke of big change, that I agreed with.
He has had the opportunity to deliver on the change in many ways, and has failed almost every time. Pointing that out is not asking for perfection.
Why do you guys excuse broken campaign promises so glibly? Did you really elect Obama with the understanding that he would continue the practice of signing statements to avoid legislation he disliked? Are you really so blase about Obama’s argument that he can pre-emtively detain you or me if he likes, and will do so even a court finds us guilty of nothing?
Is pointing out that this administration is turning out to be a continuation of the last asking for perfection?
joes527
@arguingwithsignposts: OK. I can buy that argument.
Now specifically, are you saying that mandates and subsidies, along with eased coverage requirements for insurers and no public option falls into the “good” column?
I’d like to see single payer. Some sort of mixed system with a public option could be good enough to be justified.
Once we drop below that we are just grading different flavours of shit.
Balconesfault
@T. O’Hara: But other estimates are that far more employers will adopt the public option, and if so, the costs will skyrocket.
But if employers adopt the public option:
a) the tax deductions that Government gives these businesses for doing so will fall, and more corporate tax revenue will be collected
b) salaries will likely rise as companies pay employees more in lieu of providing insurance … and government will collect more money thanks to that increased income (not to mention
jwb
@El Cid: No, I’m just saying (1) that really bad legislation is to my mind preferable to having the crazies in charge (admittedly, the point is debatable and it depends on how crazy you think the crazy in fact is);
(2) that if bad legislation is passed, the vast majority of people won’t immediately react negatively to it:
(a) because the vast majority of people will take a wait-and-see attitude;
(b) because the plan will be phased in;
(c) because the industry will make sure the initial optics look good;
(d) and so the vast majority people will not conclude that it is crappy legislation until sometime after 2012;
(3) that even bad legislation will therefore get the dems through the 2012 election (and keep the crazy at bay).
My analysis above has nothing to do with my personal views on health care reform—I, too, would be very upset if the legislation turned out to be a complete sell-out to industry; what the analysis does say about my views, I guess, is that I fear the politics of crazy more than I do health care legislation written by the industry because legislation can be undone but if the crazy gets in charge—not so much.
General Winfield Stuck
@Bill H:
As of July 9 this year there were 128,000 US troops in Iraq. I fairly sure I heard Adm. Mullen say Sunday that the number was 120,000 currently.
Phaedrus
@96
– My world is fine, thanks, it’s Washington that seems full of shit. I thought Obama would change that a little. It hasn’t come to pass – but trying to get people to admit that, when the facts are all in front of them, is harder than I thought.
Hey, maybe Obama is playing eleven layer chess and I’m just a checkers player. But my spidey sense says that he really didn’t believe all that stuff he said to get elected and I’ve been rolled, again.
Cris
That’s a pretty good expression of the reason why, when I left the Republican party in 1993, I wasn’t willing to formally join the Democrats.
El Cid
@jwb:
If I were a Republican, I would be so deeply praying that other Democrats looked at things like this, because I would have the strongest election issue ever handed to me on a silver platter right before the 2010 elections.
jwb
@Phaedrus: In politics as in life, it’s rarely a case of the good choice; rather it’s almost always the least bad choice. Certainly, by the time of the presidential election, Obama was a better choice than McCain, who disqualified himself immediately by unleashing Gov. Ignoramus on the world and has done nothing subsequently to show that he would have been a better choice. In terms of the Democratic primary, it’s harder to say. But I can almost guarantee you that we’d be having this same conversation no matter which Democrat was sitting in the White House.
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
Your just wrong dude. That is all that can be said about this sweepingly dumb remark. But you keep clutching them pearls. somebody has to, I suppose. And just think of Hillary 2012 when your low.
Shalimar
@jwb: It’s been awhile since I studied the history of Weimar Germany, but I don’t think the situations are analogous. As much as we like comparing Republicans to Nazis, the economic situation in this country isn’t anwhere near as bad and our right-wing crazies are nowhere near as violent. That isn’t to say they aren’t dangerous, just that your analogy vastly misrepresents the situation we are in.
@John D.: Actually, Howard Dean is the leader of the Democratic Party. Pesident Obama is the leader of the USA. Try to keep it straight.
One of the first things Obama did back in December was replace Dean with Tim Kaine. So no, Howard Dean is not the leader of the Democratic Party. The current President almost always picks and controls the chairman of his party. Kaine is a figurehead, the chairmanship isn’t even his main job. He answers to the White House, only a fool would say otherwise.
jwb
@kid bitzer: I’m glad to see someone else thinks that Douthat’s column today is full of shit (and GOP talking points).
steve s
You don’t make something plural by adding an ‘s.
Miss T
Even Michael Steele said, “You’ve got the votes. Just do it.”
Phaedrus
@110
– “Your just wrong dude”. Sorry, I stand corrected. /snark. I’m open to evidence…
@109
– why do you keep going back to the election? I voted for Obama – said that already.
But not much has changed. We can make up scary scenarios where a Republican blew up the world if we didn’t elect Obama, but how is that kind of fear mongering helpful?
we’re a hundred posts in to this thread and no one has pointed out a major difference between Obama and Bush (aside from healthcare) – is that what you voted for, Bush with healthcare?
General Winfield Stuck
@joes527:
What do you base your belief on that he may be? He could also be boffing white women in his off time and smoking crack in the cloak room.
When did he quit beating his wife is what your implying. I didn’t say it was impossible he could be, but no evidence exists that he is, except that Bush did it, which is pretty lame, IMO.
kid bitzer
thanks, jwb.
you have to *assume* that douthat is lying. only ambinder would give him the benefit of the doubt.
and in this case, once you realize that his column is written from the stance of a republican operative, it all makes sense:
he bashes the democratic party for problems created by the republicans, all the while pretending to go easy on obama.
he sets up the dynamic as a false either/or: who you gonna blame? obama, or the congressional democrats? that way you never notice the real cause of the problems.
sure, there’s grounds for frustration with the democrats in congress, and with obama. that’s why douthat knew he would have a target ripe for manipulation.
but the real problem here are the zombie republicans who would rather ruin their country than allow the democrats to improve it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Brick Oven Bill:
“The behavior at the airport is observable by anyone Scruffy McSnufflepuss. I attribute this behavior, and the failure of the Democratic Party to execute their agenda, to evolutionary forces that imposed societal discipline, namely the Iron and Bronze Ages.
Being open minded on the issue, I welcome your theory.”
First of all, it’s a joke to compare the behavior at some regional airport to the behavior at crowded major transit centers. You might as well apply racial theory to an explanation for why North Dakota has less traffic than NYC. It’s absurd on its face. Crowded airports will have less order than airports with fewer people.
Leaving aside that huge discrepancy, there’s also the question of why you race towards your demonstrably inaccurate theories of archaeology. Africa had iron-working in 1500 BC, which was a thousand years before most of Europe had it. African civilizations continued to use iron thereafter, which also directly contradicts your ridiculous hypotheses.
My guess as to why some airports would be more unruly than others would be that it has to do with overcrowding and difficulties in managing affairs in larger airports. My guess as to what this has to do with the Democratic Party is that it’s about as ridiculous a point as saying that the Republican Party is insane and callous because drunken rednecks like monster truck rallies and WWE matches. Just like Europeans’ ancestors enjoyed gladiatorial fights, jousting tournaments, and other senseless bloodshed. In other words, I can make racist bullshit up just as easily as you can.
But why extend theories back to ancient history? There’s no basis for it. It’s clearly pulled out of your ass. Stop burning the cross and explain why your absurd, historically inaccurate hypotheses are the basis for anything other than ridicule.
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
Apparently you can’t read or just have a problem absorbing stuff that doesn’t fit your meme of Obama fail To say Obama hasn’t improved things even “a little” is simply absurd. In case you missed it, read the below comment.
@arguingwithsignposts:
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
What El Cid said.
I see the same nightmare train coming down the tracks. We will get mandates without cost controls, in fact the insurance companies will be given a green light to gouge us all and inflate their profits even more, with “now we have to cover everybody” as their excuse.
The net effect on most peoples lives will be that they have to spend an even higher fraction of their wages on crappy healthcare than they do now, and then the whispers and emails will start circulating that it is all the fault of “those people”, that paying for the shiftless lazy people on welfare is why “hard working” Americans are even poorer than before, why the middle class is being reamed. It will be the Wall St. bailout redux.
And Democrats will be the ones to blame. Honestly, who would be motivated to donate and work for Democratic congresspeople at that point? Progressives? Middle class voters? Anybody? The result will be some combination of 1994 and/or 1966 at the polls.
handy
I think part of the problem is that the Democrats don’t have a real opposition party that pressures them (I originally was going to add “from the Left”, however I think any principled, reasoned opposition at this point would be helpful).
The biggest weakness I see in Obama wrt HCR is his largely tepid leadership on it. He should have been out there defining exactly what his vision is on this. T. O’Hara through out some cost numbers above–others have thrown out costs. I would want Obama to address people’s fears about cost. I also think he needs to do a better job at defining “Public Option” and how that will work with people’s health care now. You know, real consequential stuff.
jwb
@Shalimar: The crazy may or may not be as dangerous here. Our crazy appears to be older and lazier, so that’s something in our favor; and we haven’t been raised on Wagnerian apocalyptic visions (the Rapture is a distinctly right wing phenomenon as opposed to Wagner’s more ubiquitous place in Weimar culture). However, the left in Weimar Germany did more or less follow the political strategy of letting the “idiot” people experience the crazy (rather than compromising and working with the, yes, corporate political center) under the theory that once they experienced the crazy the people would see the truth and become alienated from it. It didn’t work out that way then, and I’m just not convinced it would work out that way here either. And that crazy would not even need to go full Nazi here or anything for it to be a horrible result for leftist political causes. It’s really a go-for-broke strategy and if you aren’t prepared to lose everything, you have no business advocating for it.
Phaedrus
@119
I do stand corrected. Yes, I did miss that, skipped right over it in righteous outrage.
Some very good points. Supreme court choice could have been much worse (could have been better, but here I agree in not letting the perfect stand in the way of the good).
I totally spaced the Ledbetter thing.
I am still appalled at Obama’s position on GWOT – but I’ll soften my rhetoric a bit on Obama and the Dem’s epic FAIL. These are good things.
arguingwithsignposts
@joes527:
Now specifically, are you saying that mandates and subsidies, along with eased coverage requirements for insurers and no public option falls into the “good” column?
No.
I’ve said before in BJ comments that a reform bill without a strong public option (“kick-ass” public option, imho) is no reform, but lipstick on a pig of a failed “free market” system.
joes527
@General Winfield Stuck:
I didn’t believe we would invade Iraq. I mean, Sadam was an asshole, and he was dancing right on the edge, but he was sticking to the edge and not going past. When push came to shove he destroyed his own missiles while the US was massing forces. There was no way we could justify an invasion.
I didn’t believe we would torture. No, really. If there is one thing that binds us together, it is the belief that we are the good guys. There is no way we can look in the national mirror and have any reaction other than to heave if WE crossed that line from light into dark.
I was so fucking wrong.
I have no reason to think that we are torturing folks today other than the fact that we tortured folks when it suited us in the past. Unless and until there are INSTITUTIONAL blocks to prevent it from happening again, I’m not going to assume that it isn’t happening.
Absolutely. But the thing to remember is that isn’t an empty accusation. The US government HAS been shown to be a wife beater (torturer) in the past. That being the case, “When did he quit beating his wife” is a critical question.
jwb
@Phaedrus: I guess it’s just not clear what you want. Do you want a defense of Obama? I don’t think you are going to get that, though it was clear to me throughout the election that he was planning on governing as a centrist and that he was going to move left (and away from institutional and corporate interests) only to the extent that We, the People made him. I can’t say that anything he has done so far, especially the places he’s chosen to continue Bush’s policies, has been a surprise. He basically telegraphed what he was going to do when he chose to vote for the surveillance bill last summer. We can be disappointed by it, which I am, but as I said I fully expected it so I have difficulty getting worked up about it (though it makes me very happy that people like Glenn Greenwald do get worked up about it and thereby put pressure on the administration to defend and change those policies).
Health care reform is still an open question and I’m not willing to defend or attack his management of it until we see the ultimate results. It’s possible he completely bungled it; it’s possible that he played it brilliantly (got exactly what he wanted) and yet it will disappoint us; it’s possible that the resulting legislation will be a pleasant surprise. But really we won’t know until the legislation is complete.
serge
Motherfuck…do I really have to agree with Ross Douchebag? I think someone (we) should remove Harry Reid, put Chuck Schumer (whom I don’t care for*) in his place and ram everything we want down the Republicans’ throats. They did it to us, year after year. Let’s accomplish something!
* I think Hillary Clinton would have made a fine, kick-ass Senate majority leader.
InflatableCommenter
For most of thirty or forty years, the two party system in this country has been systematically abused, especially by the right, but to some degree by all of the participants.
Why would we expect that today, one of the two parties would magically appear as a strong, healthy and totally effective organization under these circumstances?
That ain’t gonna happen. And meanwhile the other party is on the edge of essentially destroying itself in an orgy of dysfunction, which could concievable give rise to a third party or some other aberration, and more churn in the near and mid-term future.
The recent electoral gains by Democrats are not a cure for the abuses of the last 3 or four decades. They are just a reaction to the right’s collapse of effectiveness on the part of the electorate. The Democratic party has a lot of work to do. Hopefully once we get this healthcare thing taken care of this year, we can spend a lot of the next couple years doing that reconstructive work.
General Winfield Stuck
@joes527:
There have been instances throughout our history were certain military or intelligence folks have crossed a line on their own, some where maybe even higher ups have looked the other way and people were tortured. It may have even happened under a dem presnit that some suspected terrorist was renditioned and ended up getting his nuts electrified.
What Bush et al did was far worse, he institutionalized torture, beyond just merely doing it. They created an infrastructure of methodology, locations, transportation, etc…. etc…../
I am fairly confident this has been taken down and we are not torturing people from orders of POTUS, unless he is violating his own EO’s That said, anything is possible, but I am even more confident that many eyes and ears are watching, and if it happens we will eventually know. Do you think Obama would be so stupid as to try, aside from the fact he opposes it on basic moral grounds.
The Dodo may live. Has every place on earth been checked?
NR
@Miss T: Didn’t Chuck Grassley also say something like “If the Dems hadn’t sat down with me, health care reform would have passed already?”
The Dems have nobody to blame but themselves.
JPK
@T. O’Hara: This is rich — pretending the whole mess is not completely and entirely Bush’s fault along with his Republican hacks in complete charge of the country. Good luck with that.
ruemara
I just read him and had to check for raining frogs, because I completely agreed with Douchehat. Just try to shake it, maybe have a hot soak. Even an insane man can have startling moments of clarity.
ricky
What amazes me is not the willingness of many Americans to believe the lies perpetrated about health care legislation.
It is that any Democrat in Congress would believe that the voters who have fallen for these lies could be persuaded to vote for any Democratic Congressional incumbent in the future.
Phaedrus
@jwb
I’m a greenwald fan, as you can probably guess. I assumed everyone agreed that rule of law and civil liberties were the bedrock upon which America was built, and that we would fight for them. I was wrong. I thought that liberals, at least, would really scream if they were taken away. I was mostly wrong.
You made some good points, a liberal administration is measurably better than than a conservative one. But I see this (except for the supreme court nominee) as fiddling while Rome burns.
The idea that POTUS says he can detain citizens premptively, indefinitely, and in defiance of any judicial process – well that just crowds out any talk of single payer, etc., for me. I look at the kind of America that sets up for my children, and whether or not that America has health care really doesn’t seem to matter so much.
But, after looking more deeply into some of the progressive leaning changes that the Dems are enacting, and hypothesizing about some of the disastrous policies we’ve avoided by NOT having the Reps – I can understand your stance. I don’t agree with it, I think it is misguided, but I begin to understand it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
Except for women, african americans, and native americans, you’d have that right.
I generally like Greenwald, but he does venture into chicken little territory on occasion. How come we don’t call people who idolize him “Greenwaldobots”?
T. O'Hara
If you just ignore the part played by the sub-prime mortgages and GSEs doing the bankrolling, you could blame almost all of it on the GOP. But the Democrats owned the GSEs and successfully resisted regulation of them.
feebog
@ Comrade Winfield Struck
I kinda doubt that the poor Lebanese schulb who was kidnapped and flown to the U.S. to stand trial for a minor case of bribary last April would agree with your assessment. If the Obama administration is still OK with rendition, then we all have reason to doubt that “we don’t torture” under the new administration.
John D.
@Phaedrus: When your thesis is “Obama leads the Democrats, so any failure of the Democrats can be laid at his feet.”, pointing out that he is NOT the leader of the Democrats is hardly picking a nit. Pointing out that he has no actual power to pass legislation is hardly picking a nit. Pointing out that you’re a blithering idiot is just a bonus.
Phaedrus
@arguingwithsignposts
Each group you’ve mentioned has come, with time, to achieve equality of rights under federal law. That differs in degree from removing some basic rights altogether.
Obama has been caught in quite a few lies now with respect to civil rights and how he would like to govern. His stance on detention and torture are not much above those of dictators that are widely spat upon in public debate. The only difference is that these practices are not, yet, applied to our populace. I’m not being hyperbolic here, or slippery slope-ish, read the powers he claims to posses, and look at the torture that is currently going on in Bagram (our new Guantanamo).
I was in Spain for a number of years, when the old people still remembered Franco. They’d say things like, “sure he was a horrendous dictator, but you could drop a bank note on the ground and it would be there the next day”. Obama claims horrid dictatorial powers, but at least he got health care passed.
Benjamin Franklin had some ideas about the importance of liberty, do you think he’d agree that it was worth giving some of it up in exchange for health care.
I really thought the choice was between restoring rights and not (Dem vs Rep), and I’m more than upset to find myself hoodwinked, and appalled that I’m in such the minority.
What I’m asking for is that every time we talk about Obama, we do it with the knowledge that he sold us out. That he took dictatorial power for himself and trashed the constitution. When people talk about the good that Obama has done, it should be in the form of an excuse. “Yes, he undid many of the protections that our forefathers fought and died for… but he did give us health care”.
That would make me feel more comfortable debating whether we get single payer, public option, or nothing.
PS greenwaldobots… when has he lied/been hypocritical and we’ve ignored it? That’s the litmus test. I like the name, though.
Phaedrus
@138
– if you think the President does not influence what and how legislation is shaped in congress, then you really don’t seem to have a handle on how things work.
AJ
Dead on! And my question is, “Where the hell is DNC Chairman Tim Kaine”?
When was the last time you saw Kaine in any forum on health care or other legislation affecting his party?
I’ll bet you can’t remember, but I’ll bet you can remember when you last saw Michael Steele of the Repukes!
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
See, this is what I call a false dichotomy. I would prefer to fight the stance obama’s administration has taken on pre-emptive detention AND push to get universal health coverage (if not single-payer).
See, it differs in degree, but not in kind.
True, women didn’t get brought here on ships in shackles and get beaten, sold, and treated as 3/5ths of a person in the constitution. Sure, they didn’t face endless broken treaties, harsh treatment and relocation to crappy land. They just didn’t get the vote until the 1920s.
And I’m sure the native americans would have some bones to pick with you about that “equality” language, even today.
I guess they should all just ignore the things that were done to them by those sainted founding fathers and be glad that they all got to be full citizens in due time thanks to that “rule of law and civil rights” thing you’re holding up.
Oh, and I forgot about the Japanese internment camps (FDR!). What’s that you say about “removing some basic rights altogether”?
Look, I ain’t bringing this up to disabuse you of the notion that rule of law and civil rights are not important. They are. And we should bitch and moan whenever any president, democrat or republican, tries to chip away at those rights.
But that’s not the ONLY issue out there. And progressives should be fighting on multiple fronts to secure a better future for the Americans who will come after us.
But only seven months into this administration and you’re already throwing in the towel.
What I’m asking for is that you withhold judgment on the “sold us out” thing until all the evidence is in. Right now, all the evidence is not in. There are still three and a half years for these policies to be undone (at least). Right now, it doesn’t look so good. But that doesn’t mean it can’t change.
Will it? Who knows. I hope so. If not, then I’ll be right there next to you declaiming the tragedy that was the Obama administration. Right now, I’m not there.
And yeah, I think that Greenwald gets a little too histrionic in this area at times. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know.
joes527
@General Winfield Stuck: What part of “the government has a proven track record of torturing people while publicly denying it” is equivalent to hunting the dodo?
The last administration clearly stated: WE DON’T TORTURE.
The current administration clearly states: WE DON’T TORTURE.
So why assume that there is a difference?
8 years ago I would have called insinuations that the US government had secret torture sites a product of wild eyed lunatics.
Today I call it paying attention.
I really believe in my heart that Barry O is a better person than Darth Cheney, but looking folks in their eye and reading their soul has a clear track record of leading to disaster.
Government of laws and all…
Robertdsc-iphone
Using Douthat’s example, I guess the Republicans are even worse failures because so many conservative planks were not sucessfully addressed during the Bush years. And with a compliant Congress to boot!
General Winfield Stuck
@feebog:
Utter bullshit. Rendition has a long history of use when avenues of extradition are not feasible.
It has been used by every presnit, dem and repub. You can argue against it’s use or appropriateness in certain cases, but to automatically assign it to being like Bush extraordinarily rendition for the sole purpose to torture for terrorist info is not fair or right.
When we hear of Obama doing it secretly in the manner of Bush as a terror fighting tool, then get back to me. Otherwise, your fretting falls under the same category that since both Obama and Bush have been president it is cause to be suspicious.
General Winfield Stuck
@joes527:
That’s right, since Bush was a lying asshat, We must assume Obama is too. Regardless of all the evidence to the contrary on the torture issue.
I’m not assuming anything. I am saying I will not spend a second of my time worrying that Obama is torturing people when all the evidence to the contrary. Such as Executive Orders, AND NO REPORTS THAT HE IS TORTURING PEOPLE.
But you can join the rolls of the pearl clutching worryworts, or launch your own investigation. We will be waiting on pins and needles for your findings> Geesh/
Phaedrus
@arguingwithsignposts
Democrats (with very rare exception) no longer care about the same civil rights violations that they screamed about under Bush. Why is that? The same offenses are occurring. Obama has the same torture standards that Bush had when he left office. You actually cited the fact the Obama is trying to close Guantanamo as a plus – but he’s just transferring the operation to Bagram (with even less oversight) and making more damaging arguments than Bush did.
So this HAS become a dichotomy. At least with Bush in office we had one party calling him out on his war crimes. Now the left has pretty much told everyone to STFU if you want health care and all the other goodies Obama promises.
I’m not sure what you’re point is by harping on the dis-enfranchised in America’s past. That we overcame it? I understand that culturally we don’t all have the same rights, but I’m talking legally. Under federal law, all those groups are equal citizens with equal rights. But currently we have basic rights being stripped from us, and your point is… I guess that we can get them back over time? And your plan is… to let them go right now, get health care, and THEN try and find a politician who will restore them?
See, by concentrating on health care, we are sucking the oxygen out of the civil rights debate. By not starting every reference to Obama recounting the lies he’s told and the rights he’s taken away, we’re tacitly ignoring and condoning that behavior.
Example. Contrast “Saddam Hussein provided Iraq with gender equality, public health assistance and an education system that was unrivaled in the Middle East”, with “Saddam Hussain, admittedly a ruthless dictator, did provided Iraq with gender equality, public health assistance and an education system that was unrivaled in the Middle East”
Now, I don’t think Obama is in any way a dictator like Saddam Hussein, but you see the difference in tone? The recognition that someone is a bad person, the forced acknowledgment that, while he might have accomplished some good, we all disagree with his method of doing it.
And what evidence are you waiting for before you decide Obama sold us out on civil rights? He’s been given repeated chances to repudiate the Bush doctrine, both on the ground and in court, and has failed every time, even going Bush one further in some cases. The one place he differed was with extraordinary rendition, he claims he’s stopped it, but I don’t believe that for a second.
You say progressives should be fighting on multiple fronts – and I am. I’ve called my congressman in support of single payer, would settle for public option – but if Obama’s legacy is institutionalizing indefinite detention, etc., then I will consider it an epic FAIL no matter how good my health care is.
Phaedrus
@146
– we’re seven months in and there have already been reports of torture at Guantanamo and Bagram…
– Obama has lied plenty, about transparency, signing statements, his stance on indefinite detention without habeas rights… I think this is what is so disturbing to me. If he was willing to go back on his campaign rhetoric in those, important areas – then what the fuck else is going on in that Whitehouse? A person who is willing to trample the constitution should not be trusted.
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
I’m tired of your PUMXA concern bullshit Phaedrus. Provide a link to your claims or shut the fuck up. Obama can’t guarantee there won’t be isolated instances where a soldier or CIA dood crosses the line. There is no evidence that ANY torture is or has occured under directive from the WH. Any government employee or contractor that does so is subject to punishment under Obama’s EO banning said torture.
From what I remember there is one inmate claiming mistreatment lately at GITMO. But if you have reliable evidence more is going on that isn’t rogue occurrences, then let’s see em. Otherwise, you are just ranting horseshit.
Phaedrus
@149
– Obamaniac at it’s best.
1. Obama doesn’t torture
2. Any torture under Obama’s regime is rogue
3. Anyway, is was just “mistreatment”
4. Yeah we tortured one guy – but it has to be more than that for it to REALLY be torture
5. I don’t personally know about any torture, so therefore torture isn’t happening
This is a page right out of the Bush apologist book. It’s not torture when MY guy does it.
Phaedrus
crap where did my links go?
Guantanamo torture
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637099,00.html
Bagram new Guantanamo
http://washingtonindependent.com/38335/obama-bungles-bagram
General Winfield Stuck
@Phaedrus:
Fuck off
ruemara
@Phaedrus:
Not to get picky, but the torture this man is talking about happened in between Jan 20th and May 16th of this year, when he was released. How is this equivalent to “under Obama, we still torture”? This can hardly be seen as a doctrine of torture for national security and most certainly be seen as sociopaths doing torture, eeking out a few more jollies until the new boss can deal with them with more focus. By equating the two you’re not really doing your argument any favors
Sleeper
@Phaedrus:
Totally agree. “The perfect should not be the enemy of the good” is a complete straw man. It’s not “the perfect vs. the good,” it’s “the good vs. the bad.” Lefty critics of Obama aren’t demanding ideological purity (if they were, they’d demanding single-payer or nothing), they just want a good deal rather than a bad deal. If we have to negotiate with these clowns, there’s no reason why we should get less than half of what we want, when we have the numbers that we have. The public option is good, co-ops or nothing (and the GOP has already signaled that they won’t vote for co-ops either) is bad.
Since negotiation will tempt a mere handful of GOP votes anyway, giving up two-thirds of the bill to cater to their whims is a goddamned waste of time. But part of the reason they’re in such a good position politically is because of Democrats, in and out of office, who yell at the critical left to go easy on Obama and stop making trouble for him.
Isn’t that our job?
arguingwithsignposts
@Phaedrus:
My point was that America never has been perfect, and we’ve fucked people over before. The founding fathers were giant hypocrites, and to talk about “the rule of law and civil liberties” as if they have always been something like what you have in your mind’s eye is the equivalent of believing the world was made 6,000 years ago.
See japanese-americans, detention of during WWII.
You say “we” are having basic rights stripped from us. So far you’ve discussed prisoners who are foreign nationals. Maybe I missed all the rights u.s. citizens are being stripped of. Care to illuminate those?
Listen, I’m only going to say this one more fucking time: Health care reform and claims of executive privilege/detention/civil rights issues ARE NOT DIRECTLY LINKED except in the minds of absolutists like yourself.
Did you not read the last two paragraphs of what I wrote?
You keep trying to paint everything as linked to Obama’s civil liberties failings. You’re straining at a gnat, and not making any points.
At this point in time, health care is sucking the oxygen out of every debate because AMERICANS ARE DYING AND LOSING THEIR FUTURES and we’ve been putzing around on this issue for 60 years!
If you think I’m going to start every sentence with “Obama the fucking liar who sold us down the river …”, you can think we’re condoning whatever the hell you want, because it’s obvious you’ve made up your mind and no amount of reason is going to change it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
When are you and your fellow dead enders going to give up the fight? Hillary lost fair and square. Get over it.
Sleeper
@Phaedrus:
I would disagree with your language here a little. It’s not so much that Obama has seized extraconstitutional power, but he’s enshrined too much of what Bush seized by being so slow to undo it, despite his campaign promises. Obama has reversed a few things done by Bush, and in some cases has even exceeded Bush (pre-emptive detentions???). I have slightly more hope that he’ll eventually, at some point, give up some of the illegal authority that Bush accrued by presidential will. Slightly more. Not a lot. It’s just the inertia of his office. Even if he wanted to, I’m sure he’s got too many people around him advising him not to show weakness.
Sleeper
@John D.:
By that reasoning, Vice President Cheney had no influence over government whatsoever, since the Constitution says all he does is preside over the Senate. And yet he seemed to be running the country for at least the first four years of Bush’s presidency.
To deny that a president can shape the direction of the legislative process by exerting his political will, taking to the bully pulpit, pressuring legislators…you can’t possibly mean that, do you?
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
Here you go. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/obama-administr.html
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
I don’t care about the legacy Bush lawsuits. They are headed to the Supreme Court eventually and will be decided there. This is how it should be and my guess is what Obama is doing by kicking the can down the road.
He released the Bybee memos that were the Holy Grail of basically what happened. And now has appointed a SP to find out how.
Until there is evidence that Obama is actually torturing people per Bush, your whiny concern trollery is nothing more than that.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
There are PUMAs, who looked at every supporter of Obama and saw a sexist, and then there are anti-PUMAs, who look at every critic of Obama and see a PUMA. Both kinds of people are absurd. Let me ask you, is there ANY criticism of Obama that you would consider justified?
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
That’s significantly more than just filing stuff that Bush’s people left lying around on the table. That’s preserving for themselves the right to do as he did. And Obama didn’t appoint anyone, Holder did, after months of pressure from the White House to just drop everything and forget it. “Looking forward, not back” and all that. Come on.
And dismissing Obama’s critics as concern trolls might make you feel better, but you’re about as far off-base as you can be. I want to pull Obama further to the left, not encourage him to stay in the mushy center like you seem content to do. I don’t give a damn about the man, I care about what he does.
But you seem dedicated to shutting down any and all criticism of Barack Obama, so, I suppose we’re at an impasse.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
There are a lot of people here who are Obama supporters and voice their concerns about his strategy on healthcare, including me. I personally think he made a big mistake in appointing Geithner and Summers to do the bailout. Others have told me they are the best minds to do this, but I never trusted them.
It is different that people like you and Phardreious come around with a list of failures followed by he’s bad as Bush, or other critiques that are frankly either trivial or premature.
In your case, I remember well the nonsense you brought during the primary and nothing has changed. You are just as sour and obviously focused on what Obama is doing wrong, without the slightest intent of looking at what he’s done right. There is a balance sheet to dem criticism of Obama, and all I hear from your ilk is the wrong which is Ok, but don’t come around bullshitting that your just holding his feet to the fire out of some sense of civic duty.
I don’t believe it, and likely never will. Carry on.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
No. You are at an impasse. I am a dem who basically supports his president. And the balance sheet of good and bad is solidly in the good at this point.
You never got over the primaries and are stuck there in a bowl of sour grapes. You have an agenda in my opinion and it is not for hoping Obama succeeds.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
uh…are you confusing me with someone else? I don’t think I was even posting on Balloon Juice that far back, and if I was, I certainly was not a Clinton fanatic. I stopped supporting her after her campaign blew up post-Super Tuesday and she started spouting that hardworking white people crap. Never gave her a dime, actually banned from Talk Left for trying to engage the PUMAs over there. Whereas I did give money and time to support Obama in the general.
So….what the hell are you talking about?
Phaedrus
@155
You say “we” are having basic rights stripped from us. So far you’ve discussed prisoners who are foreign nationals. Maybe I missed all the rights u.s. citizens are being stripped of. Care to illuminate those?
(don’t know if you’re quote will come through – I seem to screw that up)
Yeah – the indefinite detention thing, and all the others, are applicable to enemy combatants. Bush proved (via the Brooklyn kid) that he can call a US citizen an enemy combatant and lock him away and torture him.
About the multi-tasking thing… who, in congress, is leading the charge to investigate and put an end to torture. It’s obvious who’s working on health care, but who is working on civil rights… crickets… it’s not being done. Oh, there’s hand wringing every time an ACLU FOI request exposes more misconduct, but, with very few exceptions our elected officials are trying to duck this. My own crappy senator Wyden, on the friggin intelligence committee, won’t even address this except obliquely. So the idea that these are being worked on together is fiction. Look, once it gets generally set that the President can do these things (and it’s ossiffying every day under Obama) it’s going to be hell getting it to stop.
The argument you make about civil rights can be turned right back on health care – Americans have more access to health care, currently, than ever before (I think, ready to be informed if I’m wrong) – so what’s the big deal?
Phaedrus
@164
I am a dem who basically supports his president
I’m a citizen who basically supports the constitution. I support politicians when the earn it, and criticize them when they err. See the difference?
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
If you say you weren’t one of the dead ender trolls, then I will take it that I mixed you up with someone. My apologies on that then. But it doesn’t change the basic premise of what I said. And where did you get the idea that Obama was anything but a moderate pragmatist? He has never proposed that he was anything else. And thus far he has done pretty much what he said he was going to do, though not everything after just 7 months of a 4 year term. And not without errors in tactics. I have not heard you say a single positive thing, and again I don’t care about old lawsuits, I care about what HE does as presnit.
Phaedrus
@168
And thus far he has done pretty much what he said he was going to do
Here we disagree.
Have we had transparency in policy meetings?
Has he stopped using the signing statement?
Are there lobbyists working for his administration?
Have we done away with the legal black holes at Gitmo and Bagram?
Has there been a willingness to release government documents?
Indefinite detention (pretty sure he spoke against that)?
These are off the top of my head. DADT.
You seem offended that sleeper and I haven’t said anything nice about Obama. How shallow. That’s not our job, as citizens, our job is to hold his feet to the fire. You aren’t doing that, and your giving away the store.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
Accepted. I hated those fucking assholes just as much as you do, believe me.
I mostly realized this during the campaign (I am sure that in hindsight I am glossing over some of my more embarrassing starry-eyed moments…) but I also believed, and still hope for, Obama being conducive and receptive to principled, consistent pressure from the left. I understand that there’s something inherent about the man that makes compromise and consensus his first and strongest impulse in approaching government, and that’s fine. It’s not my preference, but that’s fine. What I object to with regards to health care is what I see as his undue deference to the right (and I include the Blue Dogs in that) and a corresponding short-shrifting of the left. This isn’t unique to Obama, Clinton was great at it too. I was hoping that Obama, being the mediator, would be more open to giving the left at least a fair shake. But I don’t see that happening. When the Blue Dogs demand to kill the public option, they’re being fiscally prudent. But when the progressives demand to include it, they’re being obstructionist. Obama could kill this narrative if he wanted to, but I don’t think he sees any need to assuage the left (the old “Where else you gonna go?” routine). He’s more concerned about soothing the Blue Dogs, and he’ll do that at our expense. So the left HAS to kick and scream and make demands on him if they want to be heard in this debate.
As far as expanding executive powers and reversing Bush’s mistakes, I think Obama has been pursuing this with decidely insufficient vigor, shall we say. Closing Guantanamo is nice, but the point is to stop the practices altogether, not just to close that specific facility. If he’s going to be doing similar things in Bagram, I don’t see the improvement. He has made it clear as crystal that he has no desire, none, to investigate the Bush years; all of the heavy lifting there has come from Holder, and even then, we’re just going to give Yoo a pass and only look into those who exceeded even those despicable standards.
He’s made a few improvements, here and there. I guess I was hoping for more systemic improvement, not just tweaks in the right direction. You’re right, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m more disappointed than surprised. Maybe he needs a dramatic slap in the face to wake him up that the GOP is not going to help him out on anything. For the life of me, I have no idea why he’s letting Baucus and his mini-Finance Committee run the whole show here, unless he just can’t assert himself.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
I have said from the very beginning, and even before the health care debate started that there was never a chance in hell the wingers would vote for a PO, or for that matter any reform, unless it provided some corporate welfare and kept the government out of the picture with a PO.
What Obama is doing is trying to blunt the cries of foul from the right by trying with bi-partisanship. And I don’t think any dem in DC has thought otherwise, including Obama.
The die was cast well before the first committee meeting that if real reform with a PO was going to pass, dems would have to do it by themselves, most likely with a recon process, or 50 senate votes. plus the VP.
By trying to deal with wingers, Obama has caused some slippage of support from the left, which will be temporary if dems get a decent bill thru. For the long term he keeps his promise to try an include the GOP, and nothing is lost long term from the left, if a bill gets passed.
And the thing with the RP simple majority, it is frought with arcane senate rule landmines, that will almost assuredly cause what gets thru (see Byrd Rule) as being less than desired, but a shell of a PO should make it, that can be expanded later. Foot in the door wise.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
If I was reasonably confident that Obama’s goal along was to do this, and play the GOP’s game and then push a public option through, I would be fine with that. But it just feels to me like he has no interest in the PO, that it was his plan all along to drop it, and that does bother me. I don’t know if this is because he has no interest in it, or (more likely to me) Emanuel and Daschle have convinced him to ditch it and spin it away by making co-ops the new PO. It annoys the hell out of me that too many Democrats are afraid to stand up and say, “Yes, this is a good idea, and I’ll stake my career on it.” They’re all desperate to hide behind a bipartisanship vote in case the political winds blow against it next year, so desperate that they’ll gut the bill of any meaningful reform so long as they can get a few GOP votes. They seem unwilling to recognize that gutting the bill will ensure its uselessness and bring hell down on them anyway, and the GOP isn’t going to vote for it anyway. Such a waste of time.