Look, part of the reason I get so pissed off at folks like Howard Dean when I think they are doing self-defeating things is because of how crazy the Republicans are. I disagree with Dean about the bill, and I recognize I may very well be wrong and he probably is right about that. But what I refuse to back down from is the idea that is somehow good politics for the former head of the DNC to be trashing a Democratic President on a right-wing television show. It is bad politics, it is bad optics, and it is a sign of an uneven temperament and bad judgment. And we can all agree that it is well established that I know a thing or two about being a hothead and having bad judgment.
Back to the crazy Republicans. I listened to Rush while running some errands, and it was just insane. I felt dizzy after fifteen minutes. He started off on a rant about Reuters publishing a CDC report about 60 million Americans not having insurance at some point this year, and what followed was amazing. First, he said it was suspicious that Reuters was publishing it now, implying there was a media conspiracy to push health care. After the media conspiracy was floated, he then moved on to the fact that these were just estimates. “Estimates!” he sneered, and then launched a broadside about how government and scientists and academia have perverted statistics to pursue a left-wing agenda. After a couple minutes of that, he launched into the CDC again, claiming we couldn’t trust them because they “couldn’t even predict how many people would get swine flu” and “they didn’t even know how to make the vaccine strong enough,” which, of course, was not the CDC’s fault that the company that made a run of the children’s vaccine not up to standard. After that, he then claimed that Obama ordered this report released to pass his bill, and even though he does not like everything in the bill, he will sign it anyway because he knows it is the first step to telling you what to eat and how to live your life. “It’s about control,” Rush said. He then turned back to the CDC report that he had just told us you could not trust, and used those numbers to ask “How many people don’t have insurance because of Obama’s and Pelosi’s policies.” And it went on and on in the same breathless tone.
So I don’t care if Howard Dean trashes the health care bill. But when he starts launching generic broadsides on his President like he did on MSNBC this morning, all I see is some jackass making it more likely folks like Rush will be near the levers of power once again. That terrifies me, and I think some of you forget how many wingnut blogs I expose myself to on a daily basis. These folks are crazy. And I will continue to tell you that when Dean says stupid shit like that, it is unadulterated idiocy and time for someone to have his didy changed, be given a new sippy cup, and to have a little time out.
Period.
Just Some Fuckhead
You coulda stopped right here.
MikeJ
Imagine what it would do to morale on our side and on the republican if we could manage a week of Reagan’s 11th commandment for the good guys.
The Moar You Know
Agreed.
The Democrats seem to have forgotten who the real problem in this country is. Hint: it is not other Democrats.
Had the other side won, the only national health care plan we’d be discussing is how many citizens would be needed to have their blood drained each week to feed the demon that powers Dick Cheney’s pacemaker.
blahblahblah
Frankly, fuck the Democratic Party. They don’t deserve my support. And that’s not saying that by default I must then support Republicans. Both parties are thoroughly corrupt. Citizens need to sweep congress and remove the parties from power.
I’m done with being a member of the Democratic Party.
Bubblegum Tate
Is it sad or merely self-protection that I’m so used to the whole “HCR is a gigantic, media-fueled conspiracy to create a soshulist state where teh LIEbruls control every aspect of your life!” bullshit that it barely even registers with me anymore?
In my more cynical moments, I think that while it would be nice for Democrats to actually be able to accomplish some things, their real usefulness is keeping the right-wing crazies from being able to accomplish any of their agenda.
The Raven
John, how, exactly would you suggest that Dean proceed? By genteel persuasion in back rooms? That’s failed, you know that. So then what? Because the currently-likely Senate bill, and anything that’s going to come out of a conference committee with it, are political suicide for the Dems, as well as cruel, expensive, and wrong-headed. What do you want Dean to do?
arguingwithsignposts
Nym teh kitteh! Green balloon juice. Wolverines! Respect my authoriteh! whatever.
Seriously, help me nym teh kitteh.
IncandenzaH
Maybe Dean is out there spewing crap against the bill, so Lieberman won’t force any more horrid changes? I mean, we all saw what happened with Dean and Weiner started cooing about the Medicare option. Once Lieberman and others of his ilk knows Dean likes something, they try to kill it. Maybe he’s just using reverse psychology… please throw the bill in the briar patch!
(But maybe I shouldn’t say so out loud?)
pbriggsiam
I agree with Howard Dean and disagree with you. Nothing will change in this country for the better if people and our representatives don’t take a stand.
This is a bad bill.
I’m less worried about gaming out the politics of this to a place where Republicans take control. Too many intangibiles would probably prevent this from happening. I think it’s possible that any of us can get too caught up in the political hypotheticals such that we forget to actually stand up for what we believe.
I love your blog and continue to love it. Thank you for putting it out there!
Hunter Gathers
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/___Politics_Today_Stories_Teases/091215_NBC_WSJ_Poll.pdf
Page 11
The tea party movement has a +18 fav/unfav rating in yesterday’s NBC poll. A movement of insane, elderly, uneducated sociopaths is the most positively viewed ‘party’ in the country right now.
A movement that wants the blood of Obama, his wife, and his children has a +18 fav/unfav rating.
Now you know why Howard Dean can go fuck himself.
KCinDC
Really? Then why were you trashing him for doing that before he did what you now are saying is his real sin, criticizing a president ofhis party on TV.
AB
I too thought about the reverse psychology angle. I guess if progressives are unhappy with the bill, they’ll want to pass it just to punch the hippies.
Just Some Fuckhead
As long as we’re reducing everything down to ridiculous binary constructs, I say we support the national socialists because the communists scare the hell out of me.
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts: Tunchlet?
-dms
Ruemara
It has always seemed to me that Democrats can passionately yell about things, but they just can’t govern. Case in point, oh, now. This is why for all the right that they have, they just fail endlessly to bring about any sort of change. Dean is no idol of mine and when he’s acting like this, I’d say it’s rather stupid myself. Keep you dirty laundry out of sight of the enemy and that would include republicans and conservadems. As if this chest beating is going to solve the problems we face.
Rhoda
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/16/health-reform-help-families-2010
DeParle makes a case for a decent bill that isn’t the massive reforms folks thought could happen coming in; but is worth getting done to build upon in the future. The subsidies alone make it worthwhile IMO. 30 Million Americans getting something after having nothing is not anything to sneeze at; coupled with the fact that the House can demand better subsidies and kill the excise tax since Medicare expansion has been trashed.
As for what Dean should have done: He should have started making demands for the House and the conference report bill and demanding every Democrat vote for cloture. He should have started pushing the conservative democrats on moral grounds, the number of uninsured, the help that is needed now. He should have started agitating for all this to kick in sooner and the exchanges to be moved forward if the Public Option and Medicare Expansion was going to be dropped. There are a lot of ways to get to a better bill; but he choose to go the kill the bill craptastic route.
That’s just wrong. And will cripple democrats if they don’t get their act together.
Sentient Puddle
@arguingwithsignposts: I believe we need an open thread for this.
Or at the very least, not this thread. I believe John is posting new health care threads every so often as a sort of fly paper for the insanity.
jlo
Whenever it’s wrong to criticize someone for being wrong then we are totally fucked. Dean should shut up even though he right becuase the nutjobs will use the criticizm as proof that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim? Is that what you are trying to say?
KCinDC
@Hunter Gathers, did you notice this part?
azlib
First of all I think a reform bill will pass. It will be watered down to practically nothing by the time the ConservaDems get finished with it. Caving to Lieberman gives them every reason to press for more changes.
I understand the anger on the left. Obama is managing to trash his base. The problem with that strategy is it will cost the Dems dearly in 2010. Off year elections are base elections. You would think people would understand that. The base is demoralized.
I agree the Republicans are far worse and I think the public understands that. But congressional elections often turn on turning out the base and the Republican base is energized even as it has shrunk.
I fear after next year it will be gridlock in DC as the Republicans continue to obstruct everything.
Carnacki
This is one of those days when I find it best to sit in a corner quietly, open the flask and just focus on making the wife, kids, dog and cats happy and try to forget the rest of the world exists. Some days I like being out there on the street canvassing, or on the blog pushing ideas. This isn’t one of them.
Third Eye Open
@arguingwithsignposts: He looks like someone with an ink’d thumb touched him. In solidarity with our Afghan brothers and sisters, I submit Khost
Noonan
Also too, Walker Texas Ranger has been doing some deep thinking and has (stupid) questions that need answered. This is some serious condensed fail:
licensed to kill time
@arguingwithsignposts:
I love the name Djuna. I would have named my daughter that, but I’d already given the name to my dog so it wouldn’t fly. Later I named a calico kitteh Djuma, so variations work…
Kryptik
@arguingwithsignposts:
Hrm…Cotton? Fizz? Sketch? Bebop?
arguingwithsignposts
@Sentient Puddle:
agreed, which is why i have kept posting this. I don’t pick HER up until Saturday, but it’s a welcomed respite.
jibeaux
@arguingwithsignposts:
Smokey, pronounced Schmokey.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@blahblahblah: Good for you! Let us know when this coalition of magical thinkers gets off the ground, k?
tamied
@arguingwithsignposts: He/she looks like there’s a patch of soot on his/her head. How about Sootie? It would be ironic too for an almost white cat.
John, I know you’ve taken on the responsibility of ‘reading them so we don’t have to’, but listening to RL is way above and beyond. Stop it for your sanity, man!
beltane
I wish more Republicans had spoken out against Bush during his administration. I just don’t see how what Dean did is worse than the insidious concern trolling of the so-called moderate Democrats. Unlike them, he at least did not use Republican talking points.
John Cole
@KCinDC: I didn’t “trash” Dean until this morning. I disagreed with him.
When did you become so delicate? I “attacked” Sanders by quoting him, and now I have been “trashing” Dean?
Robin G.
@Bubblegum Tate:
This.
Tragic though it is, at the end of the day, that trumps everything.
Why oh why
Obama has three more years to remember why he got elected. No need to scream ‘Either you’re with us, or you’re with Rush Limbaugh!!!’ just yet. I’m sure there will be plenty of that in time anyway.
The bill needs to be improved, a lot. This can only increase the Democrats’ chances to get re-elected, by the way.
jibeaux
Killer. New. Tag.
The Moar You Know
@arguingwithsignposts: The little one is adorable, and resembles, to a scary extent, one of my childhood kittehs, Spotty.
Go with Spotty. She looks like a real sweetie.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, I will post the final name along with accompanying photos.
John Cole
@jlo: For fuck’s sake. I just give up.
biblehumper
Oh, please.
The possibility of the Republicans returning to power is no longer something to fear. It’s a boogeyman – it doesn’t exist. Palin and Rush and the rest of them are never going to appeal to more than about a third of the country. We should stop worrying about them. Just ignore them.
The biggest challenge right now is making sure that the corporate whores don’t completely overtake the Democratic party. That’s where our focus should be. And the best way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to make sure the current party leaders don’t demoralize their base. We need people to feel good about voting for the Dems. So, yeah, that’s on Dean, but I think it falls more heavily on Obama, Reid, Pelosi, etc. to make sure that the party is not selling the base down the river.
The more the general public stays tuned in to politics, the more votes Democratic candidates will receive. This is a big reason why 2008 was such a resoundingly successful election. If the Democratic party delivers to its base, gives them something to feel good about, then all of its other problems will go away.
danimal
@AB: I’m almost in tears as I watch the bill unravel. So many progressives think they are playing a game of chicken and the bill will get passed at the last minute after the conservadems blink. It won’t work that way unless President Snowe is merciful. They are chickens who would rather watch the bill die than stick their necks out in support. In an ideal world, President Nelson would take a chance and vote for the bill, but in this world, he’ll use abortion, or the public option, or whatever to scuttle it. We either make an unpleasant deal with these folks, or we let it die. This bill is much better than the status quo, and all the progressive game theory types are going to have quite a hangover if it fails.
Spin Cycle
We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
Why let facts get in the way of good rage fest? When all of your listeners are gullible dittoheads you can make up as you go along.
http://wonkette.com/412800/most-obvious-stupidest-lie-ever-gaining-currency-
among-americas-worst-specimens#comments
BFR
@azlib:
I think it’s pretty close to being toast. Nelson’s not budging on abortion and you can’t give into his demands without asking the progressives to accept a bridge too far.
The only possible way this gets done is if they’re able to convince Snowe to get back in while keeping Lieberman from doing what Lieberman does best. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to convince Snowe to be the 60th vote.
El Cid
We appreciate and admire your sacrifice on our behalf.
Rick Taylor
I agree entirely. It’s a little funny, as it fits the stereotype the media created with the Dean scream.
__
And I know I keep linking Booman, but this post talking more about the progressive revolt against the administration needs to be read in full.
__
stillnotking
Hey, you know what’s really more likely to put people like Rush near the levers of power? The Democrats passing this turd of bill and disappointing their base so much that they stay home in 2010.
Let me state as succinctly as possible the problem I have with your attitude: it assumes that voters are idiots. It assumes that a party can substitute rah-rah cheerleading and the Eleventh Commandment for actual policy results, that no one will notice how badly they’re getting screwed as long as Howard Dean doesn’t point it out to them. Unfortunately for the Democrats, that is not the case, and as long as we are discussing political realities, the political reality is that Obama and the Democratic Congress will be judged on their performance next November.
You want to keep Republicans away from the levers of power? Then give people a reason to vote for Democrats.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@arguingwithsignposts: You could try “Kitteh”. That’s what we do: Kitten, Little Cat, Asshole Cat, Damned Cat, Pretty Cat, etc. Saves time, since I’m pretty sure the cats really don’t give a shit what we call them, as long as we feed them when they require.
Califlander
John, do you think the President and his advisers bear any responsibility for that? Or is the alienation of the Democratic base entirely unconnected to the actions of the administration?
CT Voter
The problem isn’t Democrats–it’s what passes for Republicans these days. And if Democratic supporters don’t think there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans, we are well and truly screwed.
I’m starting to wonder whether the stereotype about Democrats not being able to govern has more than just a kernel of truth in it.
The Populist
John,
I looked at this bill and I am now firmly on the side that is against it. Like you I am a former GOP’er.
As it stands they will force people to buy insurance with no price protections, no guarantee that the insurance companies won’t price people out and no real reform I can see.
Lieberman and his ilk are winning here and I wrote a letter to Obama explaining (not that he will read it, but I felt like it and sent one to Reid’s office as well) that if he signs it, he is dooming himself to being what GHW Bush called a one termer.
I dunno. If I am Obama, I stand up for choice. Who can argue with that outside of the whack job right? Choice, not forcing people into the programs and giving kids and young adults coverage is what I THOUGHT was the reform mandate. As it stands, it’s not much of a bill once the likes of the blue dogs and Lieberidiot destroyed it with their egomaniacal stances.
Joe Lieberman is in this for himself and not the people. His wife WORKS in the industry.
I say scrap it and take the hit and work on jobs programs now. Unless we get choice, it’s not reform.
cleek
screw the Democratic Party! screw them and their corporate sell-out ways! they’re just as bad!
it’s amazing how quickly Dems have forgotten the lesson of Nov 7, 2000.
Zifnab
At the moment, it feels to a lot of people in the general public that the government isn’t on our side. Again.
Having Howard Dean stand up and oppose the conservative Dem policies – and to a much greater degree having Bernie Sanders out on the Senate Floor passionately opposing the death of the public plan – gives liberals some acknowledgment that there are people in high office that aren’t ready to just get rolled on this.
The Senate is way too much of a good ole boys club, and – frankly – Whitehouse and Brown and Rockafellar should be out on cable news busting Nelson and Lieberman’s balls too. Saying, “Oh I’m so disappointed, but hey it’s the best we could do” is horseshit.
Lieberman has been wall to wall defending his bullshit hold ups, and we absolutely should have DNC and Progressive Bloc Democrats calling for his head. But when President Obama steps in the middle of the shit storm, he calls it down on himself.
As for the “irrationality” of taking the Tea Bagger approach, I’ll point you towards this much. The Tea Baggers have made their caucus far more right wing than even John McCain and John Cornyn are comfortable with. It’s December of 2009, and if ever there’s a time to call out your elected representatives and make a bunch of election year threats, this is it.
If you want to see some real election year defeat, tell all the radicalized liberals to sit down and shut up some more. Nothing will get me to the polls like a bunch of useless moderate lumps chanting, “Compromise! Mediocrity! This is as good as it gets! 2010!”
jibeaux
@Robin G.:
There is a lot to this, and if that was all she wrote, well, it’d be something. But instead we seem to be locked into a cycle of “What fresh hell is this? Their policies suck and they are personally insane! Get a new party in here!” / vote in Democrats / “What the fuck, these people don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. My office party planning committee gets more accomplished than these clowns. We have actual problems, didn’t you see how the last guys trashed the place? Get a new party in here!” / vote in Republicans. Repeat.
The Populist
@stillnotking:
Amen, it’s a flaming turd with so many traps for dems it’s pitiful. Americans are with the Dems on choice and true reform. Get some cajones and ignore the blue dogs.
Thank god Bernie Sanders said what needed to be said yesterday.
Man I am angry.
You Don't Say
@Ruemara: Yes, the party of Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act fails endlessly to bring about any sort of change.
cleek
the self-proclaimed “Democratic base” is a bunch of babies, whiners and petulant little brats who have no understanding of how politics works, or even that the number 58 is less than the number 60.
Cage match of teh crazy
Spontaneous Political Comedy:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/17/greenpeace-chamber-crime/
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/17/tea-party-plane/
licensed to kill time
@John Cole:
By Grabthar’s Hammer, no! You must save us John Cole! Never give up, never surrender!
Tonal Crow
Once again, what’s wrong with progressives pressuring their elected officials to make legislation more progressive? Or is pressuring politicians something that only teabaggers and DINOs are allowed to do?
pbriggsiam
How about a little humor in this post? Keep it from getting too hot on the issue (our kitties were part of a CNN video segment with Jeanne Moos – 37 seconds in).
Joe Lieberman must pay…. makes me laugh just thinkin’ about it.
inkadu
Meh.
I haven’t seen Dean’s comments this morning, but I’m not inclined to get hot and bothered. We have not seen a media debate from the left. People just naturally assume that the left’s position is actually the milquetoast pre-compromised package that was put forth almost a year ago. It’s not.
Progressives and Democrats have slightly different goals. Pure Democrats will be happy to pass crappy bills that do little to change things as long as it keeps people voting and campaign contributions rolling. Progressives want to actually change things. There’s a natural tension there, and there always will be.
I think Progressives have been really hands off on this process, trusting Obama and Reid to get this done. It’s a natural reaction after a historic election — you expect your team to do its job. We could have gotten the same exact bill in the end, but progressives were effectively frozen out of negotiations — witness the Baucus committee — and now they’re mad and think their own side has shafted them. And I think they’re right.
Welcome to the Democratic Party.
danimal
@cleek: History repeating itself. I just can’t believe it. I thought we had learned.
The most likely response to health care failing is a concerted move to the right by the administration. Maybe progressives prefer to bitch than to govern.
jlo
Wow! I just made John Cole give up. Is there a prize for that?
gbear
@blahblahblah:
How much more perfectly could you have fit yourself into John’s definition of what’s wrong with liberals?
The answer is none. None more.
JD Rhoades
Amen, John. Amen.
Jim
@danimal:
What the danimal said. This is a bad bill if it’s the end of the process. It’s not so bad if it’s a first step. There is, I suppose, some slim hope of using reconciliation to push through the Good Stuff next year, though I’m not optimistic. I don’t think we can look for boldness as long as boldness depends on Dianne Feinstein, Tom Carper and Bill Nelson. But if we pass this, and Al Franken and Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer start clamoring for a full medicare buy-in program, and that starts sounding good to middle aged people who vote, we can get somewhere. And Democrats look like a party that can get things done.
Zifnab
@cleek:
He who rigs the SCOTUS, wins the election?
Oh! Oh! I know! “Be as wishy-washy moderate as humanly possible and give up at the first sign of a fight, and for the love of god distance yourself from anything that might make conservatives angry!”
Al Gore should have won that election by a country mile. Instead he ran away from Clinton, he covered up his green credentials, and he catered hard to moderates that didn’t exist.
The Populist
If this bill fails to pass here is what I suggest the Dems do in the meantime:
1) Isolate the blue dogs and remove Lieberjerk from his chairmanship. Fuck him and if he wants to whine he was mistreated then the Dems point out he’s not even a damn Dem to begin with. Assclown.
2) Grow a set and start going back into job creation mode. Pass infrastructure bills and if the GOP get in the way scream it from the mountain tops ala Alan Grayson: The GOP hate Americans or else they’d be helping and not hindering job creation bills.
3) Hit the tv circuit and remind everybody why health care failed. Lieberman, blue dogs and the right only care about profits over people.
Gee, seems that could be done. And oh yes, fire Harry Reid and replace him with somebody stronger.
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Mo. As I said before, my students said you will regret naming your kitten Snowball come July…
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe we can get Lieberman on board by agreeing to invade Iran. Whatever it takes, I always sez.
jibeaux
@Tonal Crow:
There’s nothing wrong with it. But I kind of doubt Lieberman or Nelson really give a flying fuck what dKos thinks. So the question is, if it doesn’t work, what in the end is most important? It’s the repeated assertions that the status quo would be better that are headbangingly awful, not any desire to push for a better bill while remaining willing to accept a mixed bag.
Califlander
arguingwithsignposts, if a comet is a snowball with smudges of soot and rock, wouldn’t that describe your new kitteh’s appearance, as well?
Hunter Gathers
@KCinDC:
Yes I did. The teabaggers have, from the beginning, been accurately described as the far right ‘finge’ of the Conservative movement. This is no secret. Remember the summer of teabagger town halls? They got the most coverage of any political movement during those 2 months of madness in my lifetime. And the public is still unaware of their insanity. The media’s complete and total failure to inform the public about these psychopaths might end up being the final nail in the coffin of Our Great American Experiment, Democracy. Mob rule is not pretty. And 40+% of the country seems just fine with mob rule.
That is why I fight.
That is why I will go to the mat for Obama anytime, anywhere.
I would take a bullet for him in a heartbeat.
He’s not perfect, by any means.
It’s him, or the teabaggers, literally.
Cat Lady
@arguingwithsignposts:
Pyewacket? or Queenie? Both from one of my favorite Christmas movies evah. Magic, cool blondes, Jack Lemmon and kittehs!
pbriggsiam
We need some humor in here. I posted an embed on my blog of CNN’s Jeanne Moos’ story on “Roasting Joe Lieberman”.
We need to laugh a little, no?
Zifnab
@cleek:
Shit. You’re right. 58 < 60. In that case, bring on Crapcare. By all means, let’s not let the horrible be the enemy of the mediocre.
arguingwithsignposts
@John Cole:
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Is there a transcript somewhere of Dean “trashing” the President? According to Dean his comments on Morning Joe were misinterpreted and that he meant to say that he vigorously supports the President. I just read his WaPo piece and there are no takedowns of the President in it. I’ve been reading some “trashing” in recent days, but it’s all been from the White House and in the direction of Dean and “the left”.
The Populist
@cleek:
Yet bills got passed when it was a narrow margin of GOP over Dems.
The problem isn’t a whiny base, it’s a spineless bunch of Dems who won’t stand up for the people.
anie
@arguingwithsignposts: Thanks! I need a break from despair and insanity today. I might go with Damn Spot. That way when you are telling him to go out…
Either that or a a nice literary character – Macbeth, Mr. Rochester, Faust, etc.
aimai
Look, if Obama and the Dems want to make democratic voters happy they can do that. A blow out in 2010 happens *because they are refusing to offer the Democratic Base* what they call in tv shows ” fan service”–that is, what the base wants. And they are refusing to do it not because they have to, because of Lieberman et al, but because they don’t want to go all the way to where the base wants them to go *or even halfway there* to please the dirty fucking hippies.
When Obama started to talk about reforming Health Care, and then switched to reforming some parts of the Health Insurance system, he seemed to get it:
people want affordability
portability
security
cost controls
high quality
all of those things can be achieved more directly by means other than the ones the Senate has come up with. Most of those things will not be in the final bill. Most people won’t see any benefit. The millions who are permitted to be forced to buy subsidized junk insurance will be treated to a permanent attack on them as “welfare queens” and also be reduced to penury when they try to access their health care.
How is it Dean’s fault that he is pointing out what is going to be critically obvious to the Dems after they pass this bill? JC do you really think that if Dean keeps his mouth shut and touts this bill that the average angry voter who sees *other people* standing up and complaining is going to say “ok, fine, its really ok to me that I’m forced to buy junk insurance for eight percent of my annual salary?”
Give people what they want, don’t harangue them for being whiny idiots for wanting health care security. Its kind of a losing strategy electorally speaking.
And, btw, if the Democrats want to run *now* before the populace with hints of how great this bill is going to be it might have been a better strategy not to let people see the bill molded, and shaved, right before their eyes minute to minute. No one, not even the Senators, has the faintest idea what is in this bill or rather what will be in it at the end of the last mutilations forced by lieberman. I don’t mean any republican talkign points here, I just mean that the “really good amendments” which we keep being promised keep being shot down. And the “really good” changes that will occur in conference? those are also totally fantasies.
aimai
KCinDC
@John Cole, I agree with you about Dean’s comments on Obama. What boggled me is your saying here that now you’re okay with people trashing the health care bill when you’ve been devoting endless threads to complaining about anyone who dares to do anything more than STFU and accept whatever Lieberman’s latest demand is.
Davis X. Machina
. Palin and Rush and the rest of them are never going to appeal to more than about a third of the country. It’s a boogeyman – it doesn’t exist.
Organized, energetic minorities roll apathetic majorities all the time, even in democracies, and especially in mid-term and off-year elections.
The entire Republican playbook entails winning by 50.5% in an election with low turnout, a turnout depressed by fair means or foul. 2010 is shaping up to be a textbook opportunity to do the only thing that they’re good at, and in the optimum environment to do it in.
inkadu
@You Don’t Say:
I’m sure this will be commented on at least three times before I hit Submit, but you do realize those accomplishments take you up to the Johnson administration?
Califlander
If they’re not really the Democratic base, then there’s no need to worry about pissing them off. 2010 will turn out right as rain. Same for 2012.
If they are, then don’t you think the President ought to focus some energy on making them appreciate the bill he’s working to get passed? Or do you think he’s done enough to make the liberals happy, and can now safely devote all his attention to pleasing Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson?
Just Some Fuckhead
@jlo:
Maybe when he’s done exposing himself to the wingnut blogs……………………….
danimal
@Jim: The whole dynamic changes if the bill passes. The focus for this congress and the next congress will be on fixing the bill. I firmly believe that some of the prima donnas will quietly support items they have been fighting against once the kleig lights are turned off. There is hope, but progressives can’t retreat into cynicism while on the precipice of victory. If we do, Joe Lieberman smirks eternally.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: Lord Help Us
Hunter Gathers says:
That is why I fight.
That is why I will go to the mat for Obama anytime, anywhere.
I would take a bullet for him in a heartbeat.
Believers of Barack would do well to consider Obama’s abandoned blood-aunt Zeituni Onyango and Obama’s abandoned blood-brother Onyango.
Personally, I believe that Barack spends most of his time thinking about Barack, and not about us. As Michelle was collecting $300,000/yr for that job that disappeared when she left, and Barack was a Senator with all of the perks, Onyango said:
“No-one knows who I am. I live here on less than a dollar a month.”
Faith is a very powerful thing, but it should be tempered with reason. Teabaggingly yours.
Kryptik
All I have left to say right now is that, for all worries about bad politics or whatnot, I just want someone who can actually push back from the left side of things and actually get some goddamn coverage.
The whole damn HCR crap has been surrounded by bad politics on all sides. So why is it progressives who get raped up the ass and then told “Shut the Fuck Up, Dirty Fucking Hippy” while all concessions are made to people who obviously aren’t going to fucking vote for anything.
I’m sick of the moving goalposts, and I’m sick of being told ‘don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’ when all that’s being asked for by many at this rate is to stop the bleeding.
I’m firmly, firmly, firmly convinced at this rate that nothing’s going to come of it, again because all goddamn concessions are made to Lieberman, Nelson, etc., etc., with nothing ever getting fucking done because a new ‘principled objection’ being made a week later, usually by Lieberman over something he JUST supported until someone actually said ‘This might be a good idea, lets do it’.
I guess I’m going full Manic Progressive at this rate, but that’s because no matter the choice of ‘support the bill full throated now’ or ‘kill the bill’, what we get wont be anywhere near what we have now, because it’s going to get further compromised to nothingness, and it’s not Howard Dean making the compromises.
John
I don’t see that Nelson is going to be able to kill the bill over abortion. He’s got to know that if he pushes too far, Reid will just give up on him, and go find out what Snowe wants. He keeps on pushing because he wants to get the best deal he possibly can. But, at the moment, it’s unclear if there’s anything in the bill that Snowe actually opposes. Nelson’s going to have to stop before the point where it becomes easier for Reid to figure out what Snowe wants, because he wants to be the 60th vote, not the 61st.
jibeaux
@Zifnab:
Sigh. There are a hundred things Gore could have done better. It was a bad SCOTUS decision. But losing Florida by a three digit number of votes when a five digit number of people voted for Nader is a fucking tough fact to duck. Like the Titanic, there are any number of factors which if you changed, the result would change. Nader is, indisputably, one of them.
Here’s the thing about all this hand-wringing. The people who don’t really care about reform kind of hold the cards. Bernie Sanders is an honest-to-God soshulist. He wants a single payer system and believes, genuinely, that private health insurance has no place in health care delivery. But he is, in the end, going to vote for this, because getting closer to the goal is better than not getting closer to the goal. The folks who don’t care that much whether it passes or not, because they are concerned about their re-election and there are pluses and minuses to both for these guys — do not have much to lose. They are willing to hold the whole thing hostage to extract a few more concessions, they are willing to walk away from the thing if they don’t get what they want. If you actually deeply want things to change, you don’t have that luxury. You are not in an equal bargaining position. Bernie Sanders is not getting one single bone thrown his way, and he’s going to vote for the thing despite the fact that he has fundamental differences with the delivery method of the entire freaking thing. A soshulist, elected in the United States of America has a better grip on political reality than much of the blogosphere. This is just weird.
Tom Hilton
@pbriggsiam:
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier:
“Taking a stand” is the left’s equivalent of all that inane wingnut rhetoric about showing Resolve and Standing Up To The Terrorists. It sounds all good and strong and noble and shit, and it means exactly nothing.
Edit: And for the slow learners, let me make it clear: politics isn’t about “taking a stand”; politics is about getting things done.
Just Some Fuckhead
Only because some of you seem to be getting confused about how the Senate works: it only takes 51 votes to pass a good health care bill with a public option. All the other shit is just theater.
Davis X. Machina
No mandate, no affordability. You can’t simultaneously deny the insurance companies the ability to cherry-pick whom they cover, thereby expecting them to cover more, and sicker, people, and charge less.
Rick Taylor
And continuing on the subject of Republican insanity, via Booman, every single Republican in the House voted to default on the national debt. No I sure don’t want Republicans back in charge either.
Tom Hilton
@pbriggsiam:
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier:
“Taking a stand” is the left’s equivalent of all that inane wingnut rhetoric about showing Resolve and Standing Up To The Terrorists. It sounds all good and strong and noble and shit, and it means exactly nothing.
And for the slow learners, let me make it clear: politics isn’t about “taking a stand”; politics is about getting things done.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Danimal
A very flawed bill is gonna pass but it’s gonna pass. All we’re really discussing at this point is the depth of progressive butthurt. The progressives who don’t take their ball and go home will have a new raison d’etre over the next seven years — lowering the cost of coverage. And they can only do that by helping to elect like-minded Democrats.
The progressives who will continue to work (begrudgingly) are the only ones with any chance of reasoning with the Poutrage Lobby going forward. The Obamabots, even though they’re working toward the same goals, will be dead to them.
The Populist
@Brick Oven Bill:
And your point, rube? He doesn’t know these people. I have cousins and uncles I do not EVEN KNOW. So am I to be responsible for them using your logic.
I love when righties like you preach personal responsibility until it’s somebody you don’t agree with. Idiot.
danimal
@Just Some Fuckhead: Has anyone actually documented that we have 51 votes? All the reconciliation supporters assume they are there, but I haven’t heard any actual congressional vote-counters make that claim.
bystander
John, I’ve decided I have a choice. I can be an armchair political strategist, or I can be a citizen. I don’t have the time or the energy to do both. I choose to be a citizen because that’s where my interests lie. I am a progressive because I am too well educated to be anything other than a child of the Enlightenment. Although I ditched my natal religion decades ago, I will probably never be free of its “collectivist” precepts, ergo, I care about others. I am an unaffiliated voter because I have a deep and abiding skepticism of groups in general, and political parties in particular. I want politicians coming to me. Not the other way around.
I could worry about an electorate that voted GWB to the presidency, twice. But, the public demonstrated its ability to elect Obama. In this economic crisis – which is still ongoing as the greater majority of the public recognizes daily – the Republicans have offered zip. I have to trust that my fellow citizens have a deep and abiding suspicion of Republican goals based on their experience. I can’t rescue those who would chose to deny what is directly under their nose. If I’m going to trust anyone other than myself, then I have to trust my fellow travelers, or trust no one, because trusting politicians is a mugs game.
Dean is absolutely correct on the merits with regard to this travesty, otherwise known as the Senate’s version of health care reform. The voting public deserves an opportunity to understand that on the merits. Would you really deny citizens access to Dean’s analysis? If the Democrats are poised to fuck the public over to the benefit of their party’s campaign contributions, isn’t the public entitled to know?
John Cole
Stop being an idiot. When was the last socialist President? When was the last Communist President? Oh, never.
When, on the other hand, was the last Republican President? January. What a ridiculous binary construct.
And Ray Lewis is an accomplice to murder.
drillfork
The Republicans play to their base by conjuring up boogeymen who will take away their guns, deny our American autonomy and perform mandatory abortions. Then they make their paranoid supporters think that tax cuts for the rich is all the economy needs. All the while they strive to conceal that they’re bought and paid for by the oil industry, insurance companies, pharma and other corporate interests.
The Democrats play to their base with flowery rhetoric. They make their mostly well-meaning supporters think that they’re actually interested in enacting progressive legislation. All the while they strive to conceal that they’re bought and paid for by the oil industry, insurance companies, pharma and other corporate interests.
Obama’s biggest donor in ’08 was Goldman Sachs. Watch what happens to insurance stocks once HCR passes. Just follow the money, because nothing happens in America without the powerful profiting from it.
It’s a nice little scam they got going…
The Populist
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes but if they pull their usual shit, 2012 will bring out the masses yet again to slap them back down to minority status.
I am tempted to let the right win some seats in 2010 because HOPEFULLY it will show them to be the idiots we all know them to be.
eastriver
Calm down, JC, ya big bedwetter.
jibeaux
Ooh, Another new proposed tag: We Are All arguingwithsignposts Now
Here’s the thing about all this hand-wringing. The people who don’t really care about reform kind of hold the cards. Bernie Sanders is an honest-to-goodness soshulist. He wants a single payer system and believes, genuinely, that private health insurance has no place in health care delivery. But he is, in the end, going to vote for this, because getting closer to the goal is better than not getting closer to the goal. The folks who don’t care that much whether it passes or not, because they are concerned about their re-election and there are pluses and minuses to both for these guys—do not have much to lose. They are willing to hold the whole thing hostage to extract a few more concessions, they are willing to walk away from the thing if they don’t get what they want or their ego stroked the right way or whatever it is they’re actually looking for. If you actually deeply want things to change, you don’t have that luxury, you don’t have that bargaining position. Bernie Sanders is not getting one single bone thrown his way, and he’s going to vote for the thing despite the fact that he has fundamental differences with the delivery method of the entire freaking thing that are far greater differences than what many liberals would consider acceptable — because he has a grip on the political reality of that.
Kryptik
@John:
Do you really think that Snowe’s going to be at all more placable than Nelson will be? She’s been pulling the same kind of goalpost moving Lieberman, Nelson, Collins, and the rest have.
@Tom Hilton:
It is…but the constant caving and concession hasn’t exactly gotten things done either. There has to be a point where you can send some sort of ultimatum and stop the bleed.
Noonan
@danimal: Agreed. Also what Ezra said:
biblehumper
@Davis X. Machina:
True, which is why Dems and Obama need to make sure that they don’t disappoint the base. You can’t make everybody happy, but you’ve got to give the left at least a little to feel good about.
Frankly, I’d be much more willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the healthcare issue if he hadn’t been so disappointing on the war-on-terror/civil rights issue.
Just Some Fuckhead
@danimal:
I’m not advocating for reconciliation. I’m tellin’ ya a simple majority is all it takes to pass legislation. And one of those votes can be the Vice-President’s.
MikeBoyScout
No it is not.
If Dean or anyone else were spewing nonsense like “Death Panels” or as Sen Franken would say ‘making up their own facts’, you would have a point.
But that is not what is happening.
The current hullabaloo is not a bunch of tea bagging whack-a-doodle claims, but very detailed analysis and calm but passionate claims.
No one should be driven by what WINGNUTS might do, because you really can never set the bar low enuf for wingnutia.
The Ace Tomato Company
Yes, let’s kill an imperfect bill which can be improved over time, so we can start again from square one, but with even less chance of success. Meanwhile, 30 million uninsured Americans will get fucked.
Indeed, they can wait while we argue over matters of principle.
Tell that to my co-worker out here in Switzerland. She’s 22 and was over here as a student while working part time at my office. She’s just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Because she doesn’t have US health insurance (she has it here in Switzerland), she cannot return to the home to receive treatment: nobody will insure her because she has a preexisting condition.
Her mother has come out a few times, but she herself is ill (and her father passed away) and also needs to take care of her grandmother.
Because we have the greatest health system in the world, she gets to die here in Geneva alone and away from her family.
The current health care bill may have its flaws, but if we had it, this poor woman wouldn’t have to die alone.
Perhaps some of you would like to explain to her why killing something which is flawed, but a vast improvement, is such a good idea.
PS – Presidential candidate Dean supported something almost identical to the current health bill. Man, do I feel good about not supporting this dipshit in 2004…
fraught
This is bizarro health care reform. So many Progressives screaming about the terrible bill with out saying anything about what’s in it. What the fuck IS in it besides mandates? Is this what they’re saying? That the Democrats want to pass a bill which ONLY requires people to buy outlandishly inflated insurance plans which are worse than they were before the bill is passed but they don’t even have the votes to pass it because the Publicans want to stop a bill which ONLY benefits insurance companies and represents a huge buyout for the insurance companies which, naturally, the Publicrats are opposed to or maybe they’re not and Krugman is for unless he’s not. And so, what the fuck is in the bill in the first place which Olberman, Dean, Arianna (Swerving right again) don’t even want to talk about because it’s so terrible? And why are they saying that Obama and Lieberman are going to get gay married?
jl
I think we can and should separate the issues of whether 1) it is a good idea to kill the Senate bill and 2) what the heck Obama thinks he is doing, and whether he has failed, or betrayed us.
My answers are
1) No, need to wait until we see what the conference committee does. For something this important, and that might have big political consequences, it is irresponsible to kill the chances of some reform until we see the final proposal.
2) Who knows?
I do think that the Senate bill has reforms that are too weak, and too gradually imposed. Therefore it has become a big gamble in terms of good policy and 2010 electoral politics. But it is not the final product. Personally, I will apply the ‘MA stink test’ to the conference bill, if it gets that far. The MA system has mandates, and weak reforms, but 79% of the MA population like the improved access to coverage enough to want to preserve it rather than junk it. And 75% of the doctors want to preserve rather than junk it. If the final conference bill can promise that much, then it will be big win.
As for Obama, it is impossible to know what game he is playing. I think that 10.5 months is way to early to judge his administration.
I am severly displeased with Obama on one score: he is NOT doing some things I think he explicitly promised to do during the campaign. He is not mobilizing popular support and building and expanding the grassroots movement that elected him. He is not keeping the any kind of Democratic electoral house in order. He is not pursuing open government, and encouraging the mass of the population to become engaged and put popular pressure on their legislators. He is not pursuing a scientific and evidence based approach to problem solving.
On that score, he is only keeping one promise: the postpartisan approach to politics. But that has become a kind of meaningless tic. Polls have shown evidence that the voters uderstand the pospartisan approach is not producing the results they want. I heard a news report last night that the majority of voters want Obama to produce results rather than keep up with the postpartisan act.
That last, as applied to health care reform, grates me because I know something about the evidence for that. Obama has pursued desultry, fragmented, isolated pitches that play to incaccurate stereotypes susceptable to falling into well worn ideological ruts.
His weird on-again off-again, easily stereotyped, attacks on the insurance industry are an example. I saw no n-dimensional chess there at all. And I, like Klein, also think that the health insurance industry in the US should not even continue to exist in its current form, so I am no friend of the insurance companies.
Is it true as FDL and Greenwald allege, that Obama is scared of big industry money going to the GOP, and pursuing some industry triangulation policy to direct big money to the Dems and keep it away from the GOP. Who knows?
I do know one thing, that if that story is even plausible, Obama is failing to keep the promises he made during the campaign about change.
But, as I said before, we need to quit trying to figure out Obama. I hope some blogs or organizations can see past Obama and work on a better Congress.
The best outcome would be a grassroots movement that leaves Obama as a timid little transitional figure, who did not understand that you either need to get a new act or get a new audience.
Problem is that the movement that might do that is the is the fake grassroots teabaggers and their GOP puppetmasters, which would be a disaster. In my opinion, even gains that make good Congresional action harder would be a disaster.
Health care disintegration, global warming, and foolish wars are doing their dirty work 24/7, and wait for no man. Delay might be deadly.
Davis X. Machina
For argument’s sake, let’s say Nelson (NE), Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, Conrad, Baucus, Johnson, Dorgan, Bayh, Carper all vote no. All Republicans vote nay. Sanders votes aye.
Biden breaks the tie.
If it were that simple, why wasn’t it done months ago?
Mark S.
I believe this country is doomed if the GOP as it is currently constituted ever gets back into power, so I’m still firmly in the Democrat camp. This bill, however, is such a piece of crap that I think we’d be better off without it. It’s a ten percent tithe to our insurance company overlords, and we are still going to be paying a fifth of our GDP to health care.
If all they can do is pass some insurance regulation on things like rescission, I’d be willing to kick this down the road. The key is to lay the groundwork that our current system is the worst and other countries do it much better and cheaper.
Hunter Gathers
@drillfork:
Sachs gave about a million.The Univeristy of California gave a million and a half.
By your logic, the University of California is secrectly running the White House.
We are all Matt Taibbi now.
Jim
Hell, they’ve been trying to figure out what Hamletta of Maine from the beginning. Didn’t they offer her the trigger she wanted and she got scared of actually being responsible for something and ran away? I’m sure someone here has a better handle on her than I do, but at this point I’m wondering if she doesn’t just get pissed off at Nelson and side with the Dems just as a fuck you to him.
inkadu
@Davis X. Machina: When you mentioned motivated minorities, you reminded me of what Dean’s real forte is. He is really good about motivating “The democratic wing” of the party, and he is really good about GROWING the party in all 50 states — that was his deal, and its why he was elected DNC by a majority of Democrats who were suffering from feigned-enthusiasm fatigue for Kerry.
If Dean is saying this is a bad bill, I he deserves a lot more than a STFU.
And do people supporting the bill? They don’t even seem to know what’s in it, since their defense invariably includes provisions of questionable existence… and, after all this time and effort, it might be fair to say they can’t even think straight about it any more.
chiggins
@Davis X. Machina:
There’s already a mechanism in place for legally demanding a piece of people’s income to provide a service. If the private sector can do a job better then the Gov’t can in-house, there’s mechanisms for the Gov’t to hire those companies to do it.
Fuck mandates.
Ruemara
@biblehumper:
HAHAHAHAHAH! OH LORD THAT’S GOOD FUNNY!
Seriously, you will see a REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in 2010 if this keeps up. And I can’t stand republicans, but even I see the fatigue over the wrangle and the general sense that Obama is a failure that is permeating throughout both the left and independent electorate. All of this hollering by the supposed base, is just making things worse.
Rick Taylor
And continuing on John’s point and repeating a question I’ve asked before, what the hell has happened to the Republican party in this country? Every once in a while this question comes up, and people say, oh they’ve always been this crazy, but it doesn’t seem that way to me. There’s always been crazy elements of course, but they weren’t running the show. They’ve turned from a party to one I’ve generally disagreed with and opposed, especially on foreign policy, to one that is bug fuck insane that I’m scared to have anywhere near the levers of power in this country. Calling for a spending freeze in the middle of a historic recession? Rallying behind a VP pick who seriously cited her state’s proximity to Russia as giving her foreign policy experience? It’s just become the norm, but every once in a while I have to look back and wonder, what the fuck happened?
Noonan
The one good thing you can say about the optics of Dean bashing HCR from the left is that suddenly Nelson, Bayh, the Maine sisters all are feeling better about voting for something that the liberals don’t like. Dean is handing them a great talking point.
GReynoldsCT00
@arguingwithsignposts:
Spot!
Brick Oven Bill
Zeituni Onyango says:
“Before, we were family. But right now, there is a lot of politics…”
Keep Believing, The Populist, because there is Hope. I have seen the poster.
Obama cares about you. He really does.
Stooleo
The kitten should be named Leroy Jenkins.
Davis X. Machina
You’re right. Go pass single payer. I’ll wait.
TOMC
Dean is right! What’s worse; GOP’s “Kill Everything” or Obama’s “Pass Anything”?
max
That terrifies me, and I think some of you forget how many wingnut blogs I expose myself to on a daily basis. These folks are crazy.
Yes. And the Democrats, like they were so many members of Al-Anon, keep just going along with it. We live in a police state, and the economy has just been set up for another round of gutting. Things will be getting worse. This situation is time-bombed.
If Obama keeps following the R agenda as closely as he has (recall that the R’s are running against Bush, in effect), we’ll wind up with another R Congress and President in short order, but in the interval, things will have been made worse. That is what happened with Clinton, and this is worst.
Pass the health care bill because we’re so screwed it doesn’t matter, but these guys need to straighten up fast, or a progressive revolt will be irrelevant.
max
[‘Tell me how to get them to stop trying to shadow Fox (as it heads off to the right) without criticizing them, and I’ll go for it.’]
Tom Hilton
@biblehumper:
Yeah, that’s exactly right! Why don’t they give the left at least a little to feel good about?
[/disgusted sarcasm]
The Ace Tomato Company
From Matt Yglesias on Dean’s hypocracy:
Lee Fang has a good post at Tapped noting that one of Dean’s tactics in this effort is to start changing his mind about other elements of the bill. Now Dean says the bill “isn’t health care reform. It’s not even insurance reform.” Except when the Senate Finance Committee released its bill, Dean said the lack of a public option was a big problem, but did concede that “it will reform insurance. That’s a good thing to do.” And as Fang notes, the insurance reforms have gotten stronger:
Here’s the problem: The regulations in the current Senate reform bill are actually stronger than the SFC regulations Dean endorsed previously. The current reform bill has a medical loss ratio mandate of 85 percent — and the SFC Dean praised had no requirement for how much of each premium dollar should go to health care, only reporting standards. In the current bill, parents can keep dependent children on their coverage longer, up to age 27. In the SFC bill, there was no such provision.
The biggest kicker is community rating. In the quote from Tuesday night, Dean attacked the current bill for having a mere 3-to-1 age discrimination ratio. However, the SFC regulations which he praised earlier this year had a much weaker 4-to-1 ratio. The bill has been vastly improved in terms of regulations, but Dean still says the regulations are so terrible, “it’s not even insurance reform.” This argument to kill the bill simply rings hollow.
More broadly, as Ezra Klein noted some months ago, back in 2004 Dean campaigned on a health care plan that was broadly similar to, but definitely worse than, this current deal.
The Dean 2004 plan would provide a choice of subsidized private health insurance plans to basically all employed people, but not really do anything for the self-employed. And it didn’t contain any fleshed-out proposals for delivery system reform, for reforming insurance regulation s, or do much of anything to address long-term costs. And for all that, it was a good plan. I liked it at the time, and if it was the best bill that could pass congress in 2009 I would be happy to support it. But luckily for us, a better bill looks to have a good chance of passing.
Howard Dean, the Lieberman of the left…
lizzy
Maybe they just need to be reminded what the alternative was…… McCain/Palin. It’s kinda like you hate getting old but look what the alternative is!
Tax Analyst
@John Cole said:
For fuck’s sake. I just give up.
licensed to kill time then said:
licensed – John Cole can’t give up. This is all part of his penance for voting for Dubyah (twice, as I recall).
And you all thought Sisyphus had it tough.
maus
the problem with passing the bill is not so much that it will embolden the republicans,who are ALREADY energized and mocking us, it will embolden the democrats and give them anything but the shame they deserve.
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
Who cares what Gore should have done or how he might have done it? Obama catered hard to the moderates and independents who did exist and beat the snot out of McCain.
Progressives are along for the ride. They are not the base, certainly not the decision-makers, especially since they haven’t demonstrated the slightest practical ability to transform their whiny wish lists into effective policy.
Is Howard Dean auditioning to become the Ralph Nader of the Democratic Party?
Actually, it’s more about crafting good bills and wrangling votes. It’s tougher now that Republicans appear to have decided to become the permanent opposition.
Citizen Alan
@cleek: @Hunter Gathers:
So that’s it then. The Overton Window has moved so far to the right that we “literally” have no choice except between “just barely to the left of center, if that” and “outright fascism.” Progressives should simply accept that their political movement is dead and that their ideas have no validity. Swell. Let’s pass this turd of a bill then so we can go ahead and abolish Social Security in time for the 2012 elections.
Cat G
If Dean is going to be the mouthpiece of disaffected Dems, well, god bless him. I don’t consider myself a lefty, but I’m getting pretty tired of Admin mouthpieces (Rahm leaks, press secretary, etc) badmouthing “liberals” as being unwilling to compromise. Who the hell is Joe Liebermann that he’s got the power to call the shots on this. He’s a weaselly, backstabber who demonstrably will take just about any position in order to kill ANY meaningful reform. Strip him of his chairmanship and all the perks (office space, prestige, extra staff, etc). And do the same to Ben Nelson or any other Senator who will support a fillibuster. If they want to vote against the bill, fine, but if you want the perks of the party you do NOT threaten to fillibuster the Party & your President. And as for the smart, tough infighter that was the scouting report on Rahm Emmanuel…well all I see is a foul-mouthed wannabe..who looks like he’s willing to trade with the enemy for a sack of shit and who thinks he can call it gold and we’re gonna believe him. White House kisses and tea isn’t gonna get it done. Somebody needs to kick some serious a$$, and if Dean’s willing to stand up and push back, well, he’s got my vote.
Robin G.
@Citizen Alan:
Wishing it was otherwise doesn’t make it so. We have to accept a certain level of pragmatism here, and the reality of the situation is yes, it’s an either/or right now. We can’t pretend it’s not.
Citizen Alan
@cleek:
I’m confused. I thought we established last night that 54 equals or exceeds 60, because the 2005 GOP was just as unable to totally destroy Social Security as the Democrats presently are incapable of passing half-way decent health care reform.
Just Some Fuckhead
We only need 51 votes to pass a good health care bill with a strong public option in the Senate. Because of Senate rules dating back to 1975, no one has to actually poop themselves filibustering for weeks on end. 41 senators merely have to signal they “intend” to fiibuster.
Here’s how Republicans planned to circumvent the filibuster when it was inconvenient to them. (You may remember it as the nuclear option and you may also remember they would have absolutely done it if not for the intervention of the “gang of 6”):
In 2005, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees by something called the “nuclear option.” It is actually a series of steps designed to bypass the two-thirds vote requirement to change rules: (cite)
1.The Senate moves to vote on a controversial nominee.
2.At least 41 Senators call for filibuster.
3.The Senate Majority Leader raises a point of order, saying debate has gone on long enough and that a vote must be taken within a certain time frame. (Current Senate rules requires a cloture vote at this point.)
4.The Vice President — acting as presiding officer — sustains the point of order.
5.A Democratic Senator appeals the decision.
6.A Republican Senator moves to table the motion on the floor (the appeal).
7.This vote – to table the appeal – is procedural and cannot be subjected to a filibuster; it requires only a majority vote (in case of a tie, the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote).
8.With debate ended, the Senate would vote on the issue at hand; this vote requires only a majority of those voting. The filibuster has effectively been closed with a majority vote instead of a three-fifths vote.
MBunge
Al Gore should have won that election by a country mile. Instead he ran away from Clinton, he covered up his green credentials, and he catered hard to moderates that didn’t exist.
Citizen Alan
@danimal:
Looks to me like the most likely response by the administration to health care passing is agreeing to an entitlement reform commission that will gut Social Security just in time for 2012.
licensed to kill time
@Tax Analyst:
I think John “giving up” is about as likely as the “just shoot me now” request ever being carried out.
We are all Sisyphean sieves now.
greylocks
Progressives are not a “wing” of the Democratic Party. They ARE the Democratic Party. The wing are so-called “centrists” who are DINOs.
The problem is that the DINOs run the party, and they really do think that the progressives are some far-left fringe group.
That’s why Dean has to yell. They don’t listen to us. Obama has stopped listening to us. He forgot who elected him and why. Until we start getting taken seriously, we need to keep yelling – and withholding donations – because nothing else get through to these corporate-donation whores.
And screw the optics. This minority “centrist” wing that runs the party is going to keep screwing us over until we stop them. Being nice to them and giving into them hasn’t worked any better than it does with Republicans.
inkadu
Some advice for the future: Progressives were completely shut out of negotiations with the promise that we could get something passed quickly and painlessly while creating political sturm and drang that would drag down the presidency. If progressives had been given ownership of the bill from the beginning, they’d be behind the bill right now — even as it stands.
Yes, politics is about getting things done. But part of getting things done is throwing tantrums. The “trust-me” strategy Obama had for the first year is over. The progressives are going to start flexing their muscles after this.
Cat G
@jl: That’s an excellent, thoughtful analysis. Thank you.
Nazgul35
An alternative viewpoint on the usefulness of a leftwing freak out.
Davis X. Machina
Progressives are not a “wing” of the Democratic Party. They ARE the Democratic Party. The wing are so-called “centrists” who are DINOs.
Black people, and brown people, and women, and people of limited means, especially when they also fall into the first three categories, who pay, or can afford to pay, very little time to the things that give people on these boards apoplexy are the Democratic party.
geg6
@Zifnab:
This.
Fair Economist
58 > 50. Passing a public option or medicare buy-in through reconciliation will be fairly easy. Then they can pass this bill. Reconciliation is NOT that hard; Republicans used it for tax cuts, medicare D, and for crying out loud OIL DRILLING.
If this bill fails, we *will* get a reconciled public option. Obama has to have something called “health care reform” signed. He doesn’t want a public option, but he will take it if he has to.
Tax Analyst
Well, I was gonna edit my previous comment and reduce the amount of needling and shit I was giving John since it appears he’s getting a bountiful ration of it already, but I got a message that told me I didn’t have permission or authority or some-such-thing to edit that comment.
Well, we all know he’s a big boy anyway. Anyone who can read all those loonatic right-wing blogs has got to have a pretty durable protective layer somewhere or other.
Anyway, for what it’s worth (not much, apparently), I think we need to pass the flawed bill and then work to get Congress to improve on it in the future. Otherwise I think our grandkids may still be arguing for an initial HCR bill. I have little to say on it other than that.
Looking forward to the debate thread about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
You Don't Say
@inkadu: And that makes them meaningless? You want to do without SS, Medicare and Civil Rights because it was accomplished before your time? That makes the statement that the Dems fails endlessly at reform true?
Tonal Crow
@jibeaux:
I’m not discussing dKos (which is far beyond my ability to keep up with), but, rather, John’s criticism of Dean’s pushback on Obama. I think Dean’s right on target with that: Obama needs to understand that pissing on his base will ruin his 2012 chances.
Hunter Gathers
@Citizen Alan:
Expanding acess to health care (with subsidies to boot) has always been a liberal cause. And ‘progressives’ want to kill the only chance to do that since 1994. If it dies now, HCR is tabled for the next 20 years. Conrad/Gregg’s ‘entitlement reform’ requires super majorities in both houses of Congress, which will never, ever happen. Social Security is not, was never, and is never, going to be ‘abolished’. The cap (people stop paying after making about $144 grand, not sure what actual number is) is going to be raised and people who don’t need it, like say John McCain and my own grandmother, won’t get it anymore.
This whole ‘Obama is going to gut entitlements’ conspiracy is strait out of the teabagger playbook.
Jim
Don’t forget the media in that enablers-anon meeting. For the last twenty years, implicit in all media coverage has been the assumption that the Republican base is batcrap crazy, but the elected Republicans are just pretending to be crazy to appeal to their base, and it’s up to Democrats to find proposals that the Republicans can agree to while still appealing to their crazy base.
Tax Analyst
@#142 – licensed to kill time said:
@Tax Analyst:
Funny you should mention that – I thought I felt a boulder on my shoulder just a moment ago.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Citizen Alan
Since outright fascism appears to be the official platform of the GOP these days, yep.
I imagine some will feel that way. And I suspect others will try to get more liberal Democrats elected to the Senate.
Quiddity
Anybody remember the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988?
The wonks said it was good policy. They were right.
But the politics was a different story. Seniors started to see (or expect to see) increases in what they had to pay. They revolted. Representative Dan Rostenkowski was literally pushed around.
I’d like to hear a political defense of the current Senate health care bill from John Cole, et al.
Do you think the mandates, sans cost controls, are not a political problem?
Wile E. Quixote
I would like one of the members of the “progressives can eat shit” crowd, say John Cole, who seems to be their leader, tell me at what point this bill will no longer be worth supporting. If Stupak, Pitts and Nelson get their way and sneak in their end run around Roe v. Wade will you still be waving your foam fingers and telling us all that this bill is worth supporting because 30 million currently uninsured Americans will be getting insurance (not health care, that’s something totally different, a fact which the “progressives can eat shit” crowd never seems to address).
At what point will this bill no longer be worth supporting for you guys? Is there anything you aren’t willing to give up on, anything that you’re not willing to compromise? If Tom Coburn says he’ll vote for the bill if it prohibits any subsidized plan from covering female contraception will you welcome him on board and charge onwards, telling everyone that it doesn’t matter if reproductive rights are flushed down the toilet, at least someone who doesn’t have health insurance (not health care, remember, they’re not the same thing) who doesn’t have it now will now have it.
As the Senate bill is written there are no meaningful cost controls, no meaningful restrictions upon rescission (section 2712 which deals with rescission is so loosely written that you could run an armored division through it), annual caps and no meaningful restrictions upon medical loss ratios. All this bill does is take a bunch of our tax dollars and give them to the insurance industry and force lots and lots of people to buy insurance of dubious quality (Newsflash: Just because you have health insurance doesn’t mean that doctors are required to accept it. Sorry if I keep harping on this, but the “progressives can eat shit” crowd doesn’t understand that “health insurance” does not necessarily equal “health care”.) or else they’ll be penalized by the government.
It seems that all that you’re asking from the Senate is that they pass something, anything labeled “health care reform”. It doesn’t matter if this “reform” actually, you know, reforms anything or even if the “reform” makes things worse by enriching health insurance companies without demanding any real accountability or screws over women to appease religious bigots.
Chuck Butcher
Haliburton
Blackwater
Haliburton
Blackwater
Hailburtonblackwaterhaliburtonblackwaterhaliburtonblackwater.
These massive fuckups are now gone, no longer…oh. They are now so important not shit can be done about them. They are so important because of taxpayer dollars.
HealthInc and mandates dwarfs that.
I forgot just how Republican so-called Democrats actually are. We have to have a win no matter how shitty. We cannot say, “no choice, no mandates.” We cannot Lieberize what shouldn’t have been Lieberized.
I am a whiny titty baby and Howard Dean is worse than Joe Lieberman while HealthInc’s wet dream is off-limits because…black President? Democrat President? Who the fuck are you talking to?
I remember, I see all the original Iraq war critics doing sooooo well now. No, they were whiny titty babies who didn’t go along. Oh yeah…that was an “R” Admin, sorry I forgot – it’s different then. We have a “D” behind a name and that makes allllll the difference in the world. We must expand the wealth and reach of the Health Insurers with taxpayer money because … well we can call that reform and it does have a “D” involved.
Well, there are only a handful of us whiny titty babies and we really don’t count so our being missing or sledgehammering so-called Democrats certainly won’t amount to shit. This majority has amounted to………. well please youself with what’s coming down the drain of your expectations. Soon we’ll find out what exactly any of you mean by Democrat. Excuse the fuck out of me. Liebercrat.
jl
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think the Dems should just do Senate reconciliation whenever possible or outright kill the filibuster.
The GOP has made it clear they are prepared to do away with it, honestly or dishonestly, pro forma or de facto, when they are in the majority.
I think being very nice and polite and bending over backwards to preserve arbitrary Senate procedures that the GOP has already shown in word and deed that it is ready to eliminate or subvert whenever advantageous is another example of Obama’s loser post-partisan strategy. I believe that Obama has the influence to push the Senate Democrats to play rougher than they have.
The GOP and their corporate flacks are already working the media refs on the filibuster and Senate reconciliation to push commentary against whatever the Democrats need to do to accomplish something.
No one likes a chump or a hypocrite, especially when the result is to rob them of their money and their future, which is what is happening now. Right now, I think voters are deciding that Obama is either an ineffectual chump, or a crummy little hypocrite who is doing little to help them with ordinary peoples’ problems like a lousy healthcare system or no jobs, and the polls show this.
BombIranForChrist
John, man, I am still very torn on this issue, but I think I have to disagree with you (slightly). I think Dean is definitely straddling the line, but I think it’s important that Obama and others develop a very clear understanding that they can’t just write off the left for the next 3 years.
There are many folks on the left who want it all or they will go home, but I think there are more folks like me who are 100% comfortable with compromise, when the compromise is in good faith and it largely solves the problem being addressed.
For example, I really, really, really wish we would get out of Afghanistan right the fuck now, but Obama made his decision, and I am OK with it … I don’t like it … at all … but I think I understand what he is trying to do, and I think it may work.
Not so on this current health plan. Mandate + Weak Sauce on Cost Controls + Weak Regulation = Bad Bill that Should Be Killed.
Maybe, maybe maybe, if Obama had been tougher with the banks or tougher with the ratings agencies or Goldman Sachs, etc. etc., I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but now there is no chance. A pattern has been established. Only someone willfully ignorant can pretend to believe that Obama’s actions lean anywhere but pro-industry. It’s written across all the decisions he makes.
Jennifer
Lest we forget, the House passed a bill. This thing died in the Senate. Obama has influence, but not systemic power, over the Senate.
My disgust with the Senate right now has reached critical mass. They’re dead to me. I don’t care if they don’t get reelected and we lose the majority. At this point, I’m wondering if that even matters. I’d rather have good, honest, open enemies rather than back-stabbing friends.
Cat G
@MBunge: Oh, for fuck’s sakes, some people have no memory. And what’s sooo magic abt 50%? Bill Clinton won 49.2% of the vote. Dole won 40.7%, Ross Perot got abt 8%. In ’92, Clinton won with 43%, Bush had abt 37% and Perot abt 19%. HINT – it’s the Electoral College that matter and Clinton had 379 in ’96 and 370 in ’92. Clinton’s results were better in ’96. But, yeah, pretty ancient history.
jibeaux
@Quiddity:
They are political problem because people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. The weak public option available to maybe 5% of the public that wasn’t even tied to Medicare rates was a lot more symbolic than it was any measure of cost control. The mandates ARE cost control. There is no getting the highly-desirable tradeoffs of no prexisting conditions exclusions and no rescissions without the mandates. That said, no version of the bill has been what I would call aggressive on cost control. It isn’t insurance company profits that are driving up costs. It is the fact that we are paying too damn much, in too many pieces, too many times over, for everydamn thing from drugs to a hospital stay to a visit with a primary care doc, and the system has no incentives to change any of that. See Atul Gawande’s very interesting argument, though, that the bill has tremendous value in exploring different models of cost control a la agriculture reform lo these many years ago.
KCinDC
I should have known that Dean wasn’t that crazy. Apparently this latest brouhaha is based on a misunderstanding.
The Ace Tomato Company
At what point will this bill no longer be worth supporting for you guys?
When the bill doesn’t offer a chance at reasonably priced insurance to 30 million Americans and cannot reject them for pre-existing conditions.
It’s still a quantum leap forward from what we have now and can always be worked on in the future. Do you really want to tell the families of the 45,000 or so Americans who die each year due to lack of insurance, that you killed their best chance in generations because it didn’t have everything you wanted RIGHT NOW?
For just one moment, will people stop and see the bigger picture? However flawed it may be, IT’S STILL GOING TO HELP MILLIONS.
If we’re willing to throw them under the bus for politics, then your moral compass is seriously fucked.
I wonder how many people who are adamantly opposed to this bill do this from the comfort of their well-insured asses. It’s not everyone, but I venture to say that covers most of the people on this blog.
Savage Henry
This very same Rush Limbaugh had no problem with the government illegally listening to our phone calls and reading our e-mails.
Sheesh.
MJ
Serious question: Do the progressives (Dean, Hampshire, Aravosis, Kos, Huffington, KO, et al) who are waging war on Obama seriously thing that the African-American electorate, the most loyal voting bloc in the Democratic Party, will countenance anyone, or any portion of the party that tries to primary the first African-American president from the left?
Do they think that Latinos, who remember that Obama is the first President to put a Wise Latina on the Supreme Court, will turn their backs on the first President to give more than lip service to comprehensive immigration reform?
If they do, they’ve lost their frackin minds and should prepare themselves for the coming civil war within the democratic party and they should prepare themselves to bow down to Fat Rush and the new Jean Benet Palinite overlords.
mike in dc
I’d just point out that SEIU and the AFL-CIO have now come out against “Liebercare”. It’s not just Dean having a conniption fit over this piece o’crap. Look, why not let the progs take a shot at forcing this thing into reconciliation? Much easier to add the non-financial industry regs in a later bill, and get it past the filibuster threats–particularly if we can pick up a couple more seats in 2010 by successfully getting something real done. If the whole base puts its foot down right now, Obama et al will be forced to pivot to deal with the revolt–he can’t just say “go pound sand, this is what the deal is”, because there will be political repercussions. The holdouts can be petulant all they want, all the leadership has to say is “look, we tried to make a deal, but you guys asked for so much that the base forced our hand here…it’s gotta go to reconciliation now.”
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
My memory’s a little hazy, but I seem to recollect that the race was pretty close until McCain picked a crazy person to be his running mate and then shut his campaign down and started it right back up again over the course of a weekend. The events of the past few weeks have forced me to reconsider whether what I once thought to be Obama’s political genius might instead have merely been the good fortune to have incompetent opponents (see also Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser not understanding about winner-take-all primaries).
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if he did, so long as he actually stayed in the party. Nader’s true crime, IMO, was running as a Green. If he’d run for president as a Democrat in 2000, I think he’d have probably actually forced Gore to the left which would have eliminated the “Republicrat” critique that was the basis of the entire third-party movement.
Ya think? If the Repukes pick up 1 more Senate seat, they can essentially shut down the government for months. I’m predicting a loss of 3 to 5 Senate seats as a result of this fiasco. Get ready for a new definition of gridlock over the second half of Obama’s term.
Wile E. Quixote
@Brick Oven Bill
Waitaminnit. I thought we were supposed to get pissed off about Barack’s aunt because she was an illegal alien and Barack was keeping her in the states! Damnit, how can I learn the teabagger poutrage playbook when you keep changing the plays? I mean I thought I had this down, we hike the ball, you mention Barack Obama’s aunt being an illegal alien, I go long into the stands and tackle the guy selling peanuts and then we all scream at the refs and tell them that they should give us 69 1/2 points for that play.
Oh, and what the fuck is this “blood-aunt” and “blood-brother” shit? Is this some new teabagger way of describing family relationships? “Hi, I’d like you to meet Bill, my blood-brother, Jane, my blood-sister, Joan, my blood-aunt, Jack, my blood-first-cousin-once-removed, Amy, my blood-stepsister, John, my blood-foster-brother, Walt, my blood-good-friend-of-my-Dad’s-kind-of-like-an-uncle, my blood-godparents, Andy and Rachel and Fred, my blood-next-door-neighbor.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@mike in dc:
This. I told Mrs. Fuckhead last night this was gonna happen. Look for AARP to throw in against it next.
MBunge
@MBunge: Oh, for fuck’s sakes, some people have no memory. And what’s sooo magic abt 50%?
Martin
Dean isn’t right. If he was, he wouldn’t be disengaging from Obama. Dean drew his line in the sand and cares more about his line than making progress.
I expect it’ll be short lived with him, but Dean got his emotions up in this.
Cat G
You know, the thing that makes me absolutely CRAZY abt this situation is that the Senate has the votes and the tools to get a good bill, what they don’t have is the will. If the Dems had 49 votes and were using every trick in the book then I’d be the first to be cheering ’em on and sending money. The Republicans understand they are at War with the Dems & the President. The Senate Dems just don’t get it. They have the votes and the power to get it done, and they are living in the past. And if they can’t figure out how to use the power that we worked REAL hard to give ’em…well, then they’ve just seen their high water mark.
For structural reasons, it will take the R’s a long time to gain majorities, and I’ll work to keep the R’s out of power. But damn, a generation of gridlock. I’ll donate & vote for Obama, but I’m donating to anybody who runs against Harry Reid, who’s an effing eunuch.
Where’s LBJ when you really need him.
tavella
I wanted to renote this comment from Booman:
The administration have indulged themselves in a shitload of hippy-punching, starting with making Warren the first face in the inauguration — tell me, do you think that got them any traction with the right wing, as opposed to the bitter sick feeling it left in the hearts of a whole lot of liberals?
They’ve been acting like it’s free; it’s not. Eventually the hippies stop trusting you, and that’s what this bill requires: a whole damn lot of trust that even though it’s pretty vile it’s still better than the alternative. I support it, barely (though if more abortion restrictions stay in, no longer.) But I can’t blame people more untrusting than me.
Da Bomb
Yet again, for the millionth and a half time, THIS IS NOT THE FINAL BILL. So all of this is just asinine.
And not one commenter by the way responded to what Midnight Marauder said on the other thread about how the WHite House strategy all along was to get these bills out into conference and meld them together. President Obama expected there to be major differences between the bills. But there is one thing he emphsized in that conference call July before all of this started:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/barack_obama_on_health-care_re.html
Ezra is just one of several bloggers who participated in that conference call. So did Booman and the bloggers from Jack and Jill Politics.
Hence why some of us have been beating the drum that this isn’t the final bill.
mike in dc
So, what happens if the House improves the bill by putting a few things back in that the holdouts in the Senate wanted out? Can they threaten a filibuster then, or do the rules require an up/down vote on the reconciled version?
If the latter, then it probably makes a lot of sense for progressives to direct every bit of pressure they can at the House to stand firm during negotiations.
Cat
@Tom Hilton:
Politics is about wielding power and gaining power, Governing is about getting things done. You can govern using politics and occasionally politics actually turns into governance. The problem is many people equate the two because they want to be politicians and end up governing by accident and so have no clue on how to govern.
Its almost impossible to be a good governor and to rise to power in our system as its infested with politicians who have very little skill at governance.
cfaller96
John Cole:
Exactly, John- you’re terrified of seeing Republicans come back into power. In order to avoid that, Progressives have some things they want, otherwise they won’t turn out…and you don’t want that, do you?
So…if it’s soooooooooo important for you to keep Republicans out of power, shouldn’t you be working to make sure that the Progressive base is tended to and happy and eager to turn out in 2010? Shouldn’t your energy and time be spent making sure Progressives will help you achieve priority #1 (i.e. keep Republicans out of power)?
MBunge
I wanted to renote this comment from Booman:
What the administration is facing is a consequence of the left having to eat too much shit on a whole host of issues from military commissions, a failure to root out and punish the crimes and practices of the Bush administration, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, a too-friendly bailout of Wall Street, and now a health care bill that bears little resemblance to what Obama promised us in the campaign.
Yeah, well the fact that the left defines that stuff as eating shit is part of the problem. I mean, Obama is doing in Afghanistan exactly what he said he was going to do during the campaign, and it’s pretty much a WATB thing to bitch about the bailout without also thanking Obama (and sadly Bush) for preventing us falling into the financial abyss.
Mike
KCinDC
@mike in dc, unfortunately the bill emerging from conference can still be filibustered.
terry chay
There is a lot of statement about how the bill is a big corporate giveaway, etc. but there is little proof of fact that this is the case, it’s mostly just rhetoric and I see a lot of angry people buying this B.S.
No doubt the insurance companies will make more money, but how much more? Their profits are pretty small (a few percent) and there are requirements in the bill tying their pricing to the cost of care. The reason they make more money is simply because the volume will be increased. It sucks, but the existing structure is the only game in town for now and the next decade.
As for mandates, the answer is simply either you are for cost control or you are against mandates. You cannot have cost control without mandates. Medicare is still too expensive to be sustainable for another generation, but to the extent that it is a better deal than anything else out there, it is because of the collective buying power created by its mandate. Any objection to mandates is actually an objection to the fact that 4% of the money is going to be wasted enriching private insurance industry. That’s going to happen even if there was a public option. If anything, as I’ve pointed out before, the biggest problem is the mandates are largely toothless.
The bill was never about cost control. If you are going to deal cost control, you’re going to have to deal with the health care system as a whole, not just the 7% waste that is eaten up by the entire health insurance industry—that only gives you two years! If you are going to deal with cost control, you have to deal with it in a future bill. I know this will happen because our current health care system is unsustainable.
The simple fact is here the bill is about changing our conception of health care from a private good to a public right. We did it with seniors and now it’s time to do it with the rest of America. It is also a $800 billion progressive social program. After 8 years (and much more) or regressive policies, this is the best thing to be hopeful for in a generation or more.
…
As for Howard Dean, his last job was as the head of the Democratic National Committee. This is not to indict him with an ad hominem, but to point out that he sees the bill politically, but not necessarily big-picture. The man was instrumental in having a Democratic president today and a Democratic congress in numbers that the Republicans could only dream of during their “permanent majority.” Seeing an idiot like Joe Lieberman outmaneuvering the people he helped electing (as well as seeing a number of them using Lieberman as a proxy, or, like Baucus enabling him through idiocy) must be frustrating politically. I believe he’s taking it personally and seeing things politically. The reason why I like Howard Dean is even when I use the words “personal” and “politically” I don’t mean a personal political calculation—in this way he’s the anti-Lieberman.
The only valid arguments against the bill coming from the Left are about politics. These people as a proxy for a larger problem: Lieberman for self-serving blue-dog politicians, the insurance industry for corrupt sociopathic corporations, and Rush Limbaugh for the collective mind freak that is the today’s Republican Party. The passion it instills is all about taking it personally.
I’m not. My enemy is not Joe Lieberman, or the insurance industry, or even idiots like Rush Limbaugh. They’re just the reality of the world we live in—the political terrain. My enemy is the social injustice that starts with the greatest nation on earth not providing basic health care to its citizens.
The big picture is we’re talking about insuring 40 million Americans right now. The big picture is we’re talking about changing the attitudes of Americans to health care for now in a way that can’t be reversed. The big picture is that if you want deal with the impending health care crisis, that begins here, starting with this bill.
Sometimes, I think that the fact that this bill doesn’t do enough, has major problems, and inspires passionate (and sometimes illogical) debate is the sign of a good bill—bills without such traits (like No Child Left Behind or the PATRIOT Act) are suspect. All of our greatest legislative acts did too little initially, were rife with problems, and engendered large passions: minimum wage, social security, civil rights, medicare, and, someday, this bill.
Nazgul35
I actually think the freak out gives Obama and the Senate leadership some room to maneuver on this bill.
The more pissed off we are the bigger impact it will have on them (remember Social Security reform?).
There is no way we can get the public option passed or the medicare buy in, but we could get those elements of the bill that would help control costs (a trigger with Snowe and Collins?) and the other very important features of the bill (ending rescission, ending pre-existing conditions).
There are an awful lot of Americans out there who need help now on those two issues.
Perhaps our freak out (as long as it isn’t Teabaggerish) could help make this a better bill than it is and shut up Nelson and Lieberman once and for all…
The greater the push-back, the better I say. But I do agree with John that we have to be careful how that is done (and since it seems the repost about dean was false…)
Wile E. Quixote
@Ace Tomato Company
Health Insurance != Health Care. Just because you have health insurance doesn’t mean you have health care, as lots of people with policies from United Health, who can’t find doctors willing to deal with United Health are finding out. So just because those people have health insurance doesn’t mean that they’ll be any better off than they are today, and there are still plenty of ways for insurers to game the system so that they can avoid covering all of those people with the expensive pre-existing conditions, such as say, refusing to have any nephrologists in their network, so that people with kidney disease can’t get the care they need. Sure, they accepted you with your pre-existing condition, but isn’t it a bitch that any of the specialists who could treat it are out of plan and not fully covered. Sucks to be you. Or perhaps they claim “fraud or intentional misdirection” because you forgot to tell them that you had acne as a teenager and throw your ass off the plan retroactively canceling your policy and gambling that you’ll be dead before your case can ever come to a hearing.
So, do you want to tell those families, “Oh, by the way, we’re forcing you to buy this insurance from these companies, but if they choose to screw you over there really isn’t fuck-all anyone can do about it. So there’s a good chance that you’ll end up paying premiums to these companies and dying anyways.” Talk about throwing people under the bus.
I’d also like to know when and how this clusterfuck is going to be improved. Seriously, I keep hearing these incredibly retarded analogies comparing this to the civil rights bill of 1957 or the Constitution, or whatever. But if this Senate is not willing to pass a bill that makes the insurance companies accountable then what chance is there that a future Senate is going to be willing to?
Citizen Alan
@The Ace Tomato Company:
Well speaking only for myself (and I am unanimous in that, as Mrs. Slocombe would say), I simply don’t believe that the uninsured are going to realize the benefits you think they will. The reason uninsured are more likely to die is because the uninsured generally cannot afford to pay for medical treatment without insurance so they just don’t go to the doctor. Even those who gain access to insurance under the bill will still face crippling co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses plus ever increasing premiums for those who are not fully subsidized by the bill. Since poor people can be forced into bankruptcy over a $40,000 medical bill just as easily as a $1,000,000 medical bill, I still think far too many people will avoid medical treatment and suffer the associated penalties even with the dubious insurance benefits provided by this terrible, terrible bill.
Now balance those meager pluses against a massive tax-payer funded giveaway to a group of generally conservative corporations, the likelihood that future Republican congresses will slash the subsidies (assuming they don’t repeal the bill entirely), the increasing likelihood of fracturing the Democratic coalition for years to come, and the even greater likelihood of turning an entire generation irrevocably against the Democratic party.
I’m sorry, but there’s just not enough Dijon mustard in the world to make this shit sandwich seem palatable to me.
Fair Economist
@mike in dc:
Bills can be filibustered after conference committee. Conference can’t add in any of the good things the moderates oppose because the bill would still go down in flames. Conference committee will have the same obstacles Reid does, and can’t do anything good.
In olden times, opposing critical party vote meant facing deleterious consequences. In those times, conference could sometimes force improvements – essentially pressure from the other House was placed on resistors. Now, however, that a Dem Senator can oppose the party platform and his own recent statements without the slightest whiff of consequences, that process is not going to be operational.
mike in dc
Wow, so basically a US Senator gets two filibuster opportunities per piece of legislation? Plus one more opportunity to block, if they happen to sit on a committee drafting the legislation, plus of course two opportunities to vote no on the bill itself, plus whatever pressure they can put on the Senate negotiating group. That’s up to 6 chances to block passage.
That.Seems.Broken.To.Me.
Citizen Alan
@MBunge:
Um, Gore did get 50+% of the vote for all the good it did him. Clinton won the electoral college decisively in both of his elections. Furthermore, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the impeachment vastly increased Clinton’s popularity. IIRC, polls taken in 2000 indicated that if Clinton could have run for a third term, he would have beaten Bush handily, and one of the biggest critique’s of Gore’s campaign was that he stubbornly refused to run as a continuation of the Clinton administration.
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Shorter: McCain and Hillary Clinton were stupid. Obama wasn’t. Worked for me then. Works for me now.
RE: It’s tougher now that Republicans appear to have decided to become the permanent opposition.
Yawn. Let ’em try it. Funny how people forget how Bush/Cheney essentially ran an imperial governmenment via signing statements, recess appointments and all kinds of intentional disregard for process, procedure and the Constitution.
The Democrats greatest weapon against the Republicans continues to be the economy — although they don’t seem to realize this. If the Republicans try to play “shut ’em down” while offering their standard do-nothing nostrums of tax cuts and deregulation, they can kiss their political asses goodbye.
The Democrats, so used to being complacent wusses under Bush and addle brained cowards under Obama, don’t realize that they have far more winning strategies than do the Republicans. Howard Dean’s pointless tantrum is a case in point of their obtuseness.
Wile E. Quixote
@MJ
I’m sorry, but when has President Obama done anything about immigration reform? I must have missed the comprehensive immigration bill that passed in the last 10 months. Or the administration’s push for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Or the many speeches where President Obama laid it on the line and promised to use every bit of political capital at his disposal to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Or did this happen in some alternate universe?
At this point the Obama administration is all about lip service, they give one kind of lip service to progressives and quite another to Wall Street. After watching the last 11 months I’d rather have the latter than the former.
MJ
My somewhat disjointed rant cont’d:
The thing that pisses me off so much about liberals is that we have we have no freaking game face. We have no ability to play an inside outside game because none of us is willing to give anyone on our side the benefit of the freaking doubt.
Some of us are so emotionally invested in our issues that we can’t see the forest for the damn trees here. We are so used to losing that we don’t know what it feels like to win, and are not willing to calm the frack down long enough to develop a decent long term strategy.
Folks who mindlessly repeat the meme that Obama has “sat on the sideline” and done nothing to fight for the left are forgetting Obama’s style is not to fight in public, but to fight very discretely behind the scenes. If you want the emotional satisfaction of a public fist fight (a la Hillary Clinton), then he’s not your guy. But if you want to win in the long run, then you’re much better off with Obama.
The bottom line question the left needs to resolve is whether we trust our President to bring us long term gains, or whether we’d prefer to tie his hands so that we can get a bit of short term satisfaction.
Argh!!! As someone who has benefited from the ARRA Cobra extension, and who has a pre-existing condition, I need some version of this bill to pass so that we can move on to trying to make it better through smaller bits of legislation. No one loves this bill, but we will get no where if we commit fratricide and take down Obama, seemingly the last rational person left in –Babylon– D.C.. The teabaggers are at the gate folks. They would happily turn this country into a Christianist Republic dedicated to dismantling all that is left of the social services safety net. Those are the freaking stakes folks. Obama has made mistakes in his approach with this HCR process, but we have to allow him to sign this damn thiung so that we can move on to the rest of his agenda.
“Teaching him a lesson” by handing him this type of defeat and “killing the bill” will not make him a better president. It will just hobble his administration and leave us in total gridlock for the next three years. The stakes are far too high, both domestically and internationally right now, for us to engage in this level of short term navel gazing, bullshit.
Califlander
@cfaller96:
This.
You want to keep the Republicans out of power, boys and girls? Then stop making the liberals eat shit.
Chuck Butcher
The proposal is that increasing the wealth and power of the system which has resulted in our current mess will help “millions.” I forgot, millions make money because of Halliburton and Blackwater and other war related industries. It was a good idea, it had no outcomes that we really don’t like and that are really bad. The proposal that Civil Rights and Social Security didn’t go far enough in the beginning fail to take into any account that they didn’t contain the poison pill of enabling their opponents. There was no Civil Rights provision to subsidize the KKK. Go from there if you can. The ends justify the means is no less attractive from the GOP than it is from the Democrats (or what passes for Democrat around here).
I await with bated breath what will finally be one straw too much for you. Will it be the abortion ban? Will it be the non-existant “exchanges” or what exactly will finally be too much? Maybe a requirement that insurance CEO’s be required to take 50% of all premiums as salary? Judging from the tenor of this bullshit, nothing will be too much, it will be Democratic and Obama will sign it and that’s good enough. You haven’t got Ben Nelson yet, you know. Really. You also don’t have 40 labeled Republicans, that’s important? Nah, I’m an enemy of the good in favor of the perfect and so’s Howard.
Unfortunately this health care fiasco will define what’s left of this session of Congress and from the looks of it, what you’re going to defend. Have a fucking blast, the gymnastics are going to be impressive.
As for Martin’s analysis, he’s the guy who told you about Corporate Profits and acted as though he’d said something.
Sasha
Those “spineless” Dems managed to put together a decent bill with a public option/Medicare buy-in. The majority of the House and all the Democrats in the Senate were pretty much on board. They did their part.
No, the problem is that one man has this entire thing by the balls because Reid was wrong about having the votes secured in the Senate to invoke cloture.
There is virtually *nothing* the Democrats can do to force Lieberman to vote with the caucus. He is almost certainly not going to seek reelection in 2012, so you cannot threaten him with non-support, and punishing him by removing him from his chairmanship will guarantee that there will not ever by a successful vote for cloture unless the Democrats miraculously pick up more seats in the Senate. What’s watering down health care reform isn’t “a spineless bunch of Dems” that actually did stand up for the people, but one Independent who simply cannot be reasoned with. If you want to be angry at someone, he’s your man.
You want a public option/buy-in? Let the current bill go into conference and reinsert it, then focus your anger and energy at the obstructionist GOP that refuses to vote for a bill with virtually every compromise they asked for in it: Threaten to mobilize every erg of your outrage at unseating those (R) senators in 2010 if they don’t follow the will of the people, and pound away at Snowe and other “moderate” Republicans. Otherwise, pass it as is and then fight like hell to get a public option/Medicare buy-in through reconciliation in 2011, making it into a 2010 campaign issue to energize the progressives.
Just don’t friggin’ blame this Mongol clusterfuck on people who don’t deserve it while making threats to punish them. That’s just Liebermanesque in its dumbness.
cleek
@Citizen Alan:
fuck Mr Overton.
the problem is that 58 < 60. and we don’t even have 58 because Kennedy isn’t voting anymore. and if they don’t hurry, Byrd won’t be around either.
cyntax
@Da Bomb:
Wait, standing up and throwing a hissy fit has gotten Lieberman everything he’s wanted. Why shouldn’t anyone who doesn’t like where this is going do the same?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Re: the moral argument for the “current bill”, that even with its problems it will save lives.
Let me repost a question that I’ve yet to get an answer to. Gay activists sought a gay marriage law in DC. The Roman Catholic church threatened to cease cooperating with DC on charitable programs for the poor if the law was passed. A potential consequence was that poor people could be hurt or even die as a result. Were gay activists morally obligated to cease their quest for a gay marriage law because people could be hurt or killed as an indirect result? More generally, are we morally obligated to support or oppose a law based on whether people might be hurt as an indirect result?
Citizen Alan
@MBunge:
WRT Afghanistan, I don’t begrudge him that too much. I disagree with the escalation simply because, frankly, I no longer see any achievable goals there. I realize that he planned to escalate from the beginning, and a year ago, I agreed with him. But that was before (a) Karzai basically stole the election, and (b) Karzai was revealed to be the brother of the country’s top opium dealer. A trillion dollars is a bit much to pay for an anarcho-terrorist narco-state.
I also agreed that Obama needed to take bold action with the banks back in January. I just think handing them a wad of cash with no strings attached based on the advice of a former Goldman Sachs exec was unwise. His lack of forethought on the bailout is the source of a lot of his subsequent problems with the banking industry, plus for what we paid to bail the banksters out, we could have easily just paid off every delinquent mortgage in the country which would have probably done more to free up credit. (Or not — the banking sector is so fracked right now, I pretty much assume every single person on Wall Street is a crook, right down to the janitors at the NYSE.)
danimal
@Citizen Alan:
Cite, please.
TimO
<blockquoteBut when he starts launching generic broadsides on his President like he did on MSNBC this morning, all I see is some jackass making it more likely folks like Rush will be near the levers of power once again
OOOOORRRR, the President and his Chief of Staff will get the message that there is an entire wing of his party that was told; 1) that the President believed in some sort of Public Option and campaigned on it AND 2) the President told us to “make” him do the things he suggested, ala FDR. and he will realize that he should have given the people what they asked for and what was polling positively for the last 9 months.
All the Rahm backed conserva-dem candidates, lost and all the Progressive candidates won in the last few cycles.
Obama has the whole HCR reform losing Clinton team on board and if that’s who I wanted running things, I would have voted for Hillary.
Chuck Butcher
Let’s start somewhere fucking real, how’s that?
Exchanges – how many insurance companies do business in your State? That is still the State’s deal, not the Fed’s.
Regulations – Enforced by what body? Your fucking lawyer? Good luck with that.
Mandates – enforced by the IRS in the end. That will happen, they will be paid by anyone without the stones to say, “fuck you.” Private and public monies will be paid to health insurance companies expanding their base.
Insurance costs – now that the fed is on the hook? Employers have what out? Yep, you’re really fixing something…
Have any of you ever tried using your State I
Kryptik
@cyntax:
Because Lieberman is a ‘principled Independent’ and we’re all Dirty Fucking Hippies.
geg6
@Citizen Alan:
Yup. That’s what they’ve been signaling for weeks now. But don’t worry! I’m sure whatever fuckup they decide on entitlement reform can be fixed in the magical reconciliation just like health care reform! Or down the road at some point, right? Because that’s how we got Social Security, that program everybody loves, right? And we’ll just keep reforming it until it’s exactly as good as Social Security! It might take years, even decades, but eventually it will be just as awesome as Social Security! Right?
Oh, wait…
David Hunt
Mr. Cole,
I know that its waaaay late to say this, but I just read this post. That said: you managed to sit and listen through 15 minutes of Plush Limp-balls? I’m very impressed. My average time before he says something that makes me turn off the radio in disgust is about 30 seconds. You’re a man of greater endurance than I am. I can only conclude that you have inoculated yourself with all the morons you expose yourself to so that we don’t have to.
Citizen Alan
@terry chay:
I’m sorry but this is just crazy-talk. Requiring millions of people to purchase a product will not reduce the cost of that product. Indeed, if the product is produced by an industry with an antitrust exemption, it will likely do just the opposite, since it will necessarily increase demand without increasing competition among suppliers. Mandates are an essential prerequisite to certain types of reform like bans on preexisting conditions, because otherwise healthy people won’t buy insurance until they have a condition that requires treatment, but mandates alone will do nothing to reduce cost. At present, those people arguing for eliminating the mandate do so because there is simply neither enough reform nor downward cost incentives to compensate for the price-inflating effects of a universal mandate to purchase a product from companies allowed to collude on prices.
In any case, I personally think the Supreme Court will strike down universal mandates as unconstitutional, so I’m not really worried about them except to the extent they destroy our electoral chances for the next 20 years.
MBunge
Furthermore, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the impeachment vastly increased Clinton’s popularity. IIRC, polls taken in 2000 indicated that if Clinton could have run for a third term, he would have beaten Bush handily
Good grief. Those same polls showed less than 50 percent of people viewed Clinton positively “as a person” and large majorities saw him as “untrustworthy” and a whole host of other negative things.
Mike
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I’ll take this as the approximate statement of the blog’s consensus view today.
I just can’t wait to see what the BJ talking point will be on the day when the actual final bill comes out of conference and gets passed on to the president’s desk. Assuming that this bill looks little like whatever is floating by in the Senate today, the comments section here on that day should be really interesting. Let’s all mark our Blackberry calendars to meet back here on that day.
MikeMc
Are we taking Howard Dean seriously? The dude came in fourth in Iowa in ’04. I’d wager that greater than 80% of the population has no idea who he is. Shit man, half of the rest only know him for his yelp. I appreciate that he’s voting for Obama in 2012. I also appreciate that he won’t be actively campaigning. Dude is creepy.
MJ
@Wile E. Quixote:
The Homeland Security Secretary publically stated last month that the White House is committed to begin the push for an immigration overhaul in early 2010.
If you think that the Obama administration is all about “lip service to progressives,” then fine. You don’t have to believe them. But it is disengenous to say that the Obama Administration hasn’t recently addressed this issue in public.
dan
@Rick Taylor: I think this Booman article unintentionally shows exactly why “the left” — scare quotes because the idea of a rabid American Left is just funny to me — is frustrated about Obama:
Here’s what Obama promised: a way to be progressive, but not be an asshole. To deliver Dean’s agenda in the Trojan Horse of a smooth-talking, knowledgeable, and smart technocrat, who is really good a listening to people and convincing them that he actually cares about issues.
Obama decided to entirely forgo that route. He was centrist through and through, and now the “left” has been pushed too far.
The real promise of change is still out there. No major politician of my generation (maybe Paul Wellstone?) has yet tried to be both serious, seriously able to govern and get things done, and be progressive in a meaningful way.
Again, that was Obama’s promise — that we move past hating Palin and Rush and Lieberman and overcome them with a charm offensive. What will finally kill this opportunity is that the “left” wants to bum rush the show. As we have seen this just sets up exactly what the debate has become — the attempt to govern from “the middle” getting shouted down on both sides by the extremes, with the result being mediocrity, or no result at all.
Tom Hilton
@MBunge:
Exactly. It’s never about the genuinely progressive accomplishments; for the congregation at Our Lady of Perpetual Disappointment, it’s always about the absence of unicorns and rainbows.
Citizen Alan
@MJ:
Swell. Let’s check back in June and see what sort of immigration overhaul can get 60 votes in the Senate, what outrageous demands Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu and god knows who else makes in exchange for a vague promise of support, and what the reaction of the Latino community will be when they get treated like gays, women, civil libertarians and health care activists have been so far.
Wile E. Quixote
@MJ
Yeah, I’m sure that they’ll be pushing for that just as hard as they’ve pushed for health care reform. Let’s see, we’ll end up with a proposal that makes it illegal to have a hispanic surname, proposes building a 3,000 foot high wall on our southern border and requires you to purchase goods and services from companies that exploit illegal immigrants.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@dan:
Good lord. That makes progressives sound almost as ineffective as gays when it comes to politics.
Gee, after only 200 years of operating a Republic, do you think some people will figure out that you can’t build an essential coalition by calling your potential allies rotten names?
( silence )
No, we’re Dems. We won’t figure that out.
Califlander
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I think the problem is that we’ve figured out all too clearly that the President either can’t or won’t build a coalition for progressive healthcare, either.
If he had done so, this discussion would all be moot.
Harley Furguson, the Tractorcycle
@MJ:
There has to be some rationale for giving the benefit of the doubt. Starting with his FISA and telecom immunity 180 and Rick Warren at the inauguration Obama really hasn’t given much reason for those on the left to give him the benefit of the doubt.
What benefit did Obama get from Warren giving the invocation? As far as I can see Obama got zero from it and really hacked off some of his strongest supporters. Since I’m not gay it wasn’t completely personal but it was still hurtful.
It’s a given here that the DFHs get bitch slapped every single time, sooner or later even DFHs get tired of turning the other cheek.. Hell, a lot of us aren’t followers of the Christ in the first place, why should we be expected to be more Christ like than the Christians?
MBunge
MBunge
terry chay
@Citizen Alan:
What do you think the public option is but a mandate? Your objection to mandates is that they are private (individual). The reason mandates lower the cost of the product is for the same reason we have Medicare gets the best rates or we have H.M.O.s—the collective bargaining allows them to put the screws to pharmaceuticals, hospitals, etc.
All forms of risk pooling is cost control. This is insurance gospel.
Now one can argue, and I would, that tying the insurance rates to a fixed percentage on top of the costs disincentiveizes the industry to use mandates in this way, and I’ll agree with you that this is a problem. But let’s remember that Medicare is in no way perfect or sustainable either, we’ll need cost controls better than simply risk pooling and fix the bugs and loopholes in this bill.
One can also argue that the private mandates are morally wrong. (From an economic perspective, who nominally pays for the mandate is irrelevant, but economics is not about morals.)
Private mandates are the only ones that are politically doable at this time. I understand the frustration, but we all knew this going in—and yes, a lot of us (a majority of America actually) are for a robust public option. The fact is we actually care about recission, pre-existing conditions, health-care created bankruptcy, and the thousands of people dying every week because of a lack of insurance and Joe Lieberman doesn’t. Because of that, the public option was D.O.A. and I hope the f—ker pays for it in 2012.
It is because we know there is something fishy about a private mandate (you noted that they might be unconstitutional) that we have made these mandates largely toothless: so my hope is people using words like “forced mandates” please because they are sounding irrational.
You seem to be arguing that individual (private) mandates are a bad political calculation. To some extent, I agree with you. My strong suspicion though is that while absolutists like us care about these principles (who pays nominally), the people who actually will be affected by this mandate more about “how much?” than where and to whom.
To the extent that the entire bill doesn’t go into effect until later and the penalties are small, and those affected by the mandate will be the most heavily subsidized, I think the mitigating effects to that political calculation are large. It can always be changed later. The political hay the left is making about “forced mandates” is not much different than the hay the right made about “death panels.” In the latter case we can be angry that people are so misinformed as to believe it; in the former case we can be relieved that people are so apathetic as to not really care.
…
I think what has me a bit miffed is that a lot of commenters here I respect are using absolutist rhetoric not backed by factual discussion. People have presented an overwhelming amount of evidence that the insurance companies, while sociopathic, only account for 7% of the total waste and make 4% profit and that the amount they can milk is fixed in the bill at 10% and what we get in response is a comparison of them to Blackwater. People present an overwhelming amount of evidence that 40 million uninsured will now have access (and the bulk of them will probably buy because of subsidies and mandates) health insurance, and what we get in response is because the insurance they’ll buy will not be perfect and indeed some will not buy it and some will still go bankrupt anyway so none of that counts for dirt.
I spent Thanksgiving at a friend’s house. The family lives by a golf course, and while they’re pretty liberal (of the Midwestern sort), the other guests were as Republican as they come. And yet the only person I couldn’t discuss politics with was the one who was spouting conspiracy theories. There is nothing rational with the argument and everything was about absolutes.
I’m sure (because we talked about health care that day) many of those Republicans would probably disagree with supporting the bill, but none of them would be happy to see health care reform fail.
The right winger, of course, disagrees with me and would happy to see it fail. At some point, some of us have to ask why we share more in common with the right winger than the Republican.
dan
@Califlander: But a real problem — and the usual rejoinder to your comment — is that there is no progressive coalition to be built. That the most progressive Obama could ever be is as progressive as the 60th available vote.
This is wrong, but it is wrong because you can change the dynamic so the 60th vote does not reject in knee-jerk fashion a public option, or an expansion of Medicare. And if you recall that clear majorities supported a public option at the start of this thing, you start to wonder if it is so simple that the 60th vote would never support these things.
Again, changing the dynamic was what Obama promised (not socialism, not ponies — no one, not even Armando, thought that). By changing the dynamic — just as he did during the primaries — he was supposed to open up opportunities for more change than we realized was possible under the “60th vote tyranny.”
Obama hasn’t lived up to it, and has instead proven Ezra/Matt/etc. all too correct: not just that the 60th vote rules, but that their is no way to redefine the terms of the debate in a manner that would allow the 60th vote to be convinced of your position (in say, the way 55 year old Appalachian white men were convinced to vote for a Black President).
The Populist
@Brick Oven Bill:
He cares about me more than any of your heroes. Talk to the hand fool. You think you are one upping anybody here, you’d be mistaken.
The Populist
OH and Bill, you cannot even have an honest discussion so STFU. Obfuscation is not discussion.
You love a party more than your own country and you propagate b.s. from right wing lie sites, so until you can discuss and debate, you are a rube and a fool.
Dick Armey cares deeply about you I bet.
Califlander
@dan: No real disagreement. It may not be possible for Obama to do what we want, and I’m not necessarily faulting him for that — if it can’t be done, it can’t. Failure is not always the fault of the person who did not succeed.
But pretending there’s no failure — or attacking the progressives for recognizing it as a failure — isn’t going to turn it into success.
Right now, and heading into next year’s elections, the President’s problem isn’t just that he failed to deliver the bill the progressives wanted, it’s that he doesn’t appear to have tried all that hard to deliver it. Calling Howard Dean names won’t solve that problem, and telling the disappointed base that they’re stupid, or ungrateful, or immature for being disappointed isn’t going to help.
dan
@Califlander: Agree completely.
Brachiator
@Wile E. Quixote:
Does it matter? I don’t hear people crying about jobs that illegal immigrants have stolen, largely because there aren’t any jobs to steal anymore. Immigration reform, comprehensive or otherwise, is a low priority for anyone except the inveterate NPR crowd.