I really want to let this go, because I’m a believer in the old maxim to “never argue with an idiot, they just drag you down to their level and then beat you with their experience,” but Jane Hannity is at it again:
I’ve never said you needed more than fifty votes in reconciliation. She’s running around claiming I’m misinforming people, and she is just lying. Jesus christ. I’ve said and done enough legitimately stupid and wrong things in my life that you don’t need to make shit up.
What I have said is quite clear- there never were fifty votes for the public option in the reconciliation process. They just were not there.
Yes, I’m well aware that plenty of Senators ran around saying over and over again they supported the public option. I’m well aware that plenty of Senators signed on to a pledge for the public option once it was clear it was never going to happen. I’m also well aware that a lot of Democratic Senators were on record with strong statements about Bush and Gitmo, and when Obama tried to do something about it, they voted 98-0 against. How on earth is that possible? They all said they wanted to close Gitmo? What gives?
I’m also well aware that there were numerous reports of Senators BEGGING Harry Reid to not make them vote on a public option. They were talking out both sides of their mouth and shit was coming out at each end. I can understand why it is maddening, especially the way they dangled the public option then pulled it away, dangled it and pulled it away, and so forth. It’s why we were very fired up to join with Accountability Now to primary Lincoln (on top of the fact that he would have been a better candidate than Blanche). There are just too many idiot blue-dogs and wavering con artists in the Democratic caucus.
Again, the votes were never there. How many whip counts do we need? Feel free to go over the numbers again in the comments (unless you’d like to do something more fun, like shoot yourself in the face). And then do the House numbers, which at this point in the process were also in serious doubt.
The numbers weren’t there, and while I understand fanfic in the science fiction world, it makes no goddamned sense trying to rewrite history in regards to politics.
And now, you know what happens. This argument will magically shift to poutrage about Rahm and Obama not doing enough for the public option, discussions of the bully pulpit, and other nonsense, and when those arguments are exhausted, without missing a beat we’ll head right back into a discussion about the votes being there for the public option. Because really, this time when they say it, it will be more true than the last 400 times we’ve gone through this tedious bullshit the last year.
West of the Cascades
the name of the jpg is brilliant …
James Hare
We go to Congress with the Senate we have, not the Senate we’d like to have.
cyntax
Letting it go probably would be a good idea, but fanfic was a pretty funny metaphor. So you’ve got that going for you–along with the high blood pressure.
TooManyJens
Did somebody just drop about $9K in the ActBlue jar?
Also, if somebody were writing actual fanfic about HCR, Rahm would be having hatesex with Howard Dean.
ricky
As a wavering buck up I would rather whine. Cheesily.
dmsilev
If anyone starts writing political slash fanfic, I am so going to go Galt.
dms
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
Hamsher is delusional, self-aggrandizing, childish, narcissistic crank. She should only be un-ignored to be mocked for the aforementioned traits.
What does the G stand for? Gaspard? Gilroy?
paradox
[sigh]
TooManyJens
@dmsilev: I hate to tell you this…
JGabriel
(Gets the popcorn out, turns on the intertubez)
Jane: John, you faux-Dem, veal pen troglodyte!
John: Jane, you ignorant, misrepresentin’ slut!
Cool!
I LOVE this show!
.
John Cole
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: Griffin.
General Stuck
Cue exasperated blog marm BTD, 5….4…..3…..
El Tiburon
Fuck it. I’ll wait for the movie version.
Tom Cruise as John Cole; Lady Gaga as Hamsher. Seymour Hoffman as Greenwald.
And a cast of thousands to play the Balloon Juice commenters.
Holla!
Keith G
Ok Cole (or someone), why is Jane playing this very weird game?
Many folks who make their living reading DC tea leaves have said what what you have said about this. It’s not mysterious it is part of the SOP of our House of Lords.
Is she bitter and vindictive? Delusional? Is she feeling so left out that she needs to inflate hits through made up conflict?
Is she important enough to even mention here?
Quicksand
I’m not going to shoot myself in the face, but I think I will punch myself a few times.
Ow!
Ow!
Ow!
WereBear
ShorterJane: It’s all JohnGCole’s fault!
I had no idea.
Martin
Another not-so minor detail she’s omitting, even at the brief moments when it seemed as though 50 might be possible for the public option, there were never 50 votes to support reconciliation during that period. I guess if you could time-warp our senators around, sure, it was possible. But if you can do that, why not just use the equally effective Bernie Sanders Clone Wand and turn all of the Republicans into honest-to-God Soçialists?
Admiral_Komack
Dude, the stupid twit wants to pick a fight.
I guess Grover won’t return her phone calls.
I hope you’re feeling better.
arguingwithsignposts
So if the Cole-Hamsher Blog Wars of 2010 remain heated, what battle would this be? The Battle of Reconciliationville?
The Dangerman
HCR ended up being a clean bill; reconciliation for the public option would have been a bullshit tactic (as in, can you imagine the shit storm that would occur in 10 years).
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
also, too, Post-Obama, people, come on! This is just Veal Pen flapdoodle.
Ailuridae
Please, everyone go to the Alan Colmes link and begin to understand the incredible intellectual dishonesty on Hamsher’s part here. As I knew their positions to be murky at best I immediately went to the Virginia’s Senators to see if they were listed as “yeas”. Amazingly, they were.
Webb: Told the Huffington Post he is open to a public health care option.
Warner: “It’s not a make or break thing–he wants to see a health reform bill that contains costs, and if it includes a public option…he would vote for it.”
Others:
Klobuchar: “I would prefer a public option that would be a competitive option that would allow people to buy into a Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which is a series of private plans.”
I love Amy, but describing being able to pick from several private plans as a public option is almost Orwellian. She’s simply describing the exchange.
And even firebaggers should know that moving things out of committee is a political process that might already represent a compromise (a senator supported a larger bill like the HELP bill but wasn’t in and of itself in favor of the public option)
I’m waiting for any FDL/firebagger to produce anything that tops 45 clear yeas in support of a public option. I’ve been waiting for almost a year. Until someone can I am taking Chris Bowers’ actual in depth reporting on this as definitive. And even some of his yeas, clearly represent compromises whether it be triggered, available separately in each state or not having the ability to negotiate rates.
Nick
What part of “There weren’t even 50 votes” does she not understand?
This was Clinton’s problem with his whole bill, btw, not only did he not have 60 votes for his HCR bill, as there were once 55 Democratic Senators only Bentsen’s seat in Texas was won by Hutchinson, he didn’t even have 50.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Face it, Jane has a crush on you, John. Just go ahead and call her and get it over with.
lawguy
Maybe the votes were there maybe not. But Obama started out by lying about his making what he wanted to be a secret deal with big pharma and then was caught out on it. Now why should I trust anything that his people present?
ruemara
Blog Wars! Nothing but BLOG WARS! Thinly veiled, Prog Wars, ‘cos it’s our thing!
Dude, she totally wants you. Send her flowers and ask her out.
Admiral_Komack
@Keith G:
I’l take “because she’s a fucking idiot” for 500 quatloos, Keith G.
Ella in New Mexico
At the same time Tweety Hamshire is fixating on the past and tilting at windmills, some Koch Brother-funded wingnut group is airing a depressing downer version of Reagan’s “Morning in America” that says that our nation under President Obama “has only gotten worse” and that we need a “smaller, more caring, government.”
Keep it up, Crazy Jane. We’ll all be singing your praises when the Zombie Republicans take over Congress.
Chyron HR
There may be an enthusiasm gap, but at least we’ve closed the “woman who Tweets incoherently” gap.
General Stuck
Janie was my first love
we shared the pains of school
she offered me a balance for awhile
and she gave me innocents
I seemed like less a fool
she always had a line to make me smile
but we seperated early
not an easy thing too do
sometime seem tomorrow’d never come
but we couldn’t keep together
for all the times we tried
we had a sad reunion tonight
Dabs eyes from tearful joy
Ailuridae
@The Dangerman:
Using reconciliation for a public option wouldn’t be subject to the ten year window. The PO was scored as reducing the deficit by the CBO in a somewhat substantial way. The ten year window only applies to deficit increasing proposals like the 2001 and 2003 tax acts.
Before anyone screams “gothca!” the reason to not include the PO in the bill was that if there were votes for it in could have been introduced at any point after the actual passage of PPACA and still have been subject to the 50 vote threshold. Heck, if Jane thinks the politcs of excluding the PO are problematic she should have immediately pushed Feingold or whomever to introduce it separately. She didn’t and we all know why that is. It never had 50 votes.
Interestingly, I think expanding at-cost Medicare to vulnerable groups would have had the votes and she didn’t push for passing that as a standalone measure either.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Let it go! This way madness lies.
And I wonder what the actual point here might be. What if everyone said, “Yes, Obama absolutely screwed up. He personally mismanaged the health care debate and let the public option, maybe even the Holy Grail of single payer, slip out of the grasp of the Democrats and the American people. Now what? What are we supposed to do next? Impeach Obama? Dump him and begin an early Draft Hillary push for 2012?”
Or maybe look forward and work on improving health care. Naw. Too easy.
The horse is dead, but Jane is not only still wailing away on it, she is apparently trying to resurrect the poor dead nag.
David
@lawguy:
Are you serious? It’s to the point we can’t agree on how to count anymore?
Benjamin Cisco
Dude! Quit staring into the abyss already! IT’S STARING BACK!!
Citizen_X
@John Cole: Liar! We all know it’s really Galt.
JGabriel
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Seconded.
.
Nick
@Ailuridae:
It increases the deficit in the current year’s budget, therefore, the ten-year window (or five year, whatever the rules say) would apply.
Martin
@Nick: That was the least of his problems. Moynihan hated Clinton’s proposal and he was the chair of the Finance Cmte. That alone was enough to kill it.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Brachiator: a primary challenge to Obama is an article of faith among as many as dozens who read FDL and MyDD, and probably Eschaton. I don’t know who they think is stupid enough to lead this charge
DarrenG
The two other things that drive me crazy about this episode of the circular firing squad are the the hidden assumption that passage of the ACA somehow precluded adding a public option to the exchanges via subsequent bill, and the constant mis-promotion of the public option as the be-all-end-all of HCR.
If it was really possible to pass a public option via reconciliation and there really were (are?) 50 votes for it, why hasn’t it been passed as a separate bill in the last year?
And I really don’t understand the idea that the only thing that mattered in the whole HCR debate was the presence or absence of a public option. As many pointed out during the debate, the overall impact of even the most generous PO options debated would be incredibly minor at best. The Big Fucking Deal items in HCR never revolved around a PO.
Jane just seems bitter that her Underpants Gnome strategy of 1: Kill the bill. 2: ???. 3: Progressive healthcare for all! didn’t materialize.
arguingwithsignposts
What I don’t understand is why Hamsher is even bothering. Look at the (admittedly it’s compete.com) traffic numbers. Does Hamsher think Cole has an inside line to Rahm’s shower or something?
Nick
@lawguy:
really, for a secret deal, he sure made a big public to do about it.
ruemara
@Chyron HR:
FTMFW!
thefncrow
@The Dangerman: If you’re referring to a sunset provision, a public option passed via reconciliation wouldn’t necessarily have to have a sunset provision.
You could set up the public option and outlay expenditures over the first 10 years to get the system up and running. Once you hit the 10 year mark, the system would have to pay for itself, which it could easily do in the form of collecting premiums and the insurance subsidies that would have otherwise gone to private insurance companies.
You only have to sunset provisions if the item has the impact of increasing the deficit in the years beyond the scope of the reconciliation measure(the 10 year timeline). If the public option becomes self-sufficient by that time, which is something you’d have to actively try not to achieve, there’s no need for a sunset provision.
ItAintEazy
I dunno, the fact that people worked their butt off all these years to elect a 59-41 Senate Democratic Minority® who cravenly turn around and run away from the socilist nightmare that is the public option after all their promises… the thought gives me a major sad.
I also feel the urge to attack some Steelers-loving former (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) Republican rather than face that reality.
anonymous
Jane Hamsher needs to spend less time leveling up her “Manic Progressive” character.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
> And now, you know what happens. This argument
> will magically shift
No it won’t. It will focus exclusively on your completely unproved and unprovable assertion that you, of all people, have absolute supah-sekret balloonbagger knowledge that there were NEVER 50 votes for reconciliation, and there NEVER could be, even as the public record shows otherwise.
As for me, the only thing I know for certain in this case is that you’ve got a damned big mouth and there’s pony on your breath. And President Obama.
cat48
I’m just shooting myself in the face because this is a useless, self-defeating argument to keep having and it seems like that’s the easiest & preferred cudgel to beat wavering Dems in the head with this election season. I’m checking out the Madison rally w/young college kids attending in large numbers. Starting at 7:00……just seems like a more productive way to spend my time this evening as it streams online.
Chyron HR
Firedog News
“John Cole Update: Likes to touch own butthole (in pleasure)”
Nick
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
um, the only time there were 50 votes for reconciliation is AFTER the Senate bill passed the House and only then to get rid of Ben Nelson’s bribe that everyone hated.
Citizen_X
You think all that’s bad and blog-war-y? Well, Peter Daou claims, admiringly, that “a handful of liberal bloggers are bringing down the Obama presidency.” And, of course, Jane is among them. Judean People’s Front Suicide Squad, attack!
thefncrow
@DarrenG: Even if you allow for the idea that “HCR passing will put the whole issue on the shelf for 10 years”, what, exactly, do these geniuses think the result of HCR not passing would have been?
I mean, we had a big dust-up over health care reform back in 1993, and that didn’t pass. That wasn’t something that came back shortly thereafter in a new form. HCR lay dormant until the 2008 election after that debacle.
So even if they were right, that passing some bill now will preclude further action in the near future, it’s pretty obvious that so too would not passing it.
Crusty Dem
@Ailuridae:
This.
I was looking through her #s yesterday (she claims 53 when her link shows 51, but whatever, numbers over 20 are for suckers anyway), and she’s including anyone who’s ever remotely suggested they’d ever even consider a public option. Webb’s “open to” statement to Huff Post being used as proof he’d vote for it is ridiculous. As is using any previous vote/statement suggesting anything of the sort. Will they vote for the whole big fucking bill when it’s placed in front of them??
I suspect they wouldn’t have. You know why? Because if they did, we’d have the public option. It’s really that simple..
DarrenG
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Again, it doesn’t require a crystal ball to tell there were never 50 actual votes for passing a public option through reconciliation.
If there were, it could and would have happened sometime in the last year. It didn’t need to happen as part of ACA, as many here and elsewhere have pointed out.
John Cole
@Citizen_X: How is that possible. They’ve spent the last two years telling me their criticism was having no impact and I should shut up about the circular firing squad.
Nick
@Citizen_X: I don’t disagree with Daou. I think a handful of bloggers are trying to bring down the Obama Presidency.
I call them the Alex Forrests of the blogsphere.
jl
I am in Broder mode, so will try to find a happy centrist consensus.
I wish that Obama (assuming he had not at that point given up on the public option himself) had at least pressured the pledged Congresspeople to follow through on supporting the public option. I think it was a good idea to make the attempt to get as many Congressschmucks as possible on record that they would support a public option. I was with the firebaggers on that one.
But Cole has a good point, there always was a very good chance that high class scum like our current corp (edit, I meant to type ‘crop’ but had a Freudian type and probably started to type ‘corpse’) of Democratic Senators and Houseslime contained a lot of liars, con artists and grifters who would not do what they said they would do. No matter how much pressure ‘the lesser people’ put on them.
I hope this little flamewar dies out, since there are more promising topics of discussion.
Like, frinstance, is the bedbug epidemic a sign of End Times?
Or, if can you really fry an egg on the sidewalk if it’s hot enough.
Or, who was the idiot who persuaded me, I think in a comment on this miserable blog that the 49ers and Raiders would NOT suck this year. Which one of you commenter rats said that? Let’s beat up on that guy. I had some hope for awhile, you know. Now my football heart is breaking, even though I promised my self that I would NEVER HOPE AGAIN that those people would not suck. That is far more important to discuss.
Martin
@lawguy: The deal was pretty simple – he knew Pharma had captured Congress and the only way anything would get done on that front was to do it from the WH.
Honestly, when the whole HCR thing started, one of the primary points of alliance was between Democrats and insurers over the cost of drugs. If they could solve that, the insurers would get on board. Obama didn’t risk handing it to Congress knowing what a bloodbath that was when part D was being handled and went on his own and cut a deal, expecting it would clear the path for insurers to support the effort. And most of the insurers did support the effort, right up until Death Panel August when the tea partiers blew the whole fucking thing up.
Nick
@jl:
I don’t disagree with this, but hasn’t the tax cut debacle proven Obama has zero influence over the Senate? If we were going to force a vote on the public option on the floor, which we had in Finance and it failed, the President is the wrong person to exert pressure, the Senate has no loyalty to him.
LT
“I’ve never said you needed more than fifty votes in reconciliation.”
You need to read that tweet again. It doesn’t say that.
But her “misogynist” remark puts her too far in foul territory to be taken seriously at ll on this, IMO.
General Stuck
Today the wingnuts voted down legislation that would at least cancel government policy for rewarding off shoring of our jobs, and the progs are wanking on the PO, when they aren’t wanking on the too small stimulus.
Left wing blogs are the lost causers of democratic politics.
They have plenty enthusiasm, it’s just running late and back asswards.
jl
@Nick: Perhaps, but I don’t see that the WH ever tries very hard. I may be wrong, though.
If I were President (we all should be so very very lucky…) I would set things up so I could always run against the Congress should my program get blocked in that corrupt cesspit.
MikeJ
@Nick: I wont be ignored, Nick.
DarrenG
@thefncrow:
That’s somewhat my point, and one of the elephants in the room the firebaggers always want to ignore.
That’s the part Grover Norquist got right when he suckered Jane into joining in his efforts to scuttle HCR. If it dies in 2009, it’s going to be at least 2025 before another Congress even thinks about offending the robber barons who run the system.
arguingwithsignposts
@LT: I think you need to read that tweet again.
Hilarious
@dmsilev:
Starts?
Fargus
What I didn’t see anyone mention here is that there was significant doubt about whether the public option would pass the parliamentarian’s muster in the reconciliation process. Even if they managed to get the public option in there and even if there were the votes for it, it was still a good possibility that it would have been stricken from the bill by the parliamentarian on grounds of relevance.
The Raven
Oh, come down from your perch. You sound like someone who can’t admit the other side had a point. First it was, “There weren’t 60 votes.” OK, probably true. But then when it was 50 votes, suddenly those weren’t there, either. Maybe not true. Problem is, Obama and the Senate Democratic leadership fought about as hard for the best health care solution as they fought for respect for US civil liberties during this war–which is to say, not.
Croak!
LT
@Keith G:
She wants better health care in the U.S. And she’s decided to dedicate some time from the seconds of life we have here to help in whatever way she can. She could be doing heroin. Or shooting people in the face. I don’t appreciate her every tactic, but I’m personally thankful she’s trying.
taylormattd
@paradox: I have an idea: instead of sighing, tell her to stop posting bullshit about John mabye?
John Cole
@The Raven: If you have 45 committed votes, that is less than 60 and less than 50 at the same time. Nothing changed, except the liars got called out.
Martin
I don’t believe the public option is fully dead. We’ll see what happens in the Senate and with the filibuster, but part of what we thought would happen with HCR is happening. The for-profits (who traditionally sell in all 50 states) have stopped selling certain kinds of policies as a result of the new requirements. Some markets will now starve for options which will force states to act – either to pool together as the new law permits, or to push for other options. That’s where the public option will start to get new life.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
I’m certain that many of these folk see Hillary Clinton, the Once and Future Inevitable First Woman President, as their savior. They will get especially feverish if Sarah Palin seriously throws a mamma grizzly paw into the ring.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
Sorry, but you understand that incorrectly.
Its here
Text:
(E) a provision shall be considered to be extraneous if it increases, or would increase, net outlays, or if it decreases, or would decrease, revenues during a fiscal year after the fiscal years covered by such reconciliation bill or reconciliation resolution, and such increases or decreases are greater than outlay reductions or revenue increases resulting from other provisions in such title in such year; and
LT
@arguingwithsignposts: Do you honestly need this explained?
Jane wrote “What part of ‘reconciliation only needs 50 votes” do younJohnCole not get?”
Honestly? You need this explained? Jane’s kind of pulling a fast one here, ignoring the fact that Cole said that there weren’t fifty votes and going back to her original argument that the PO could have passed through reconciliation. Kind of a fast one – but she’s not saying that Cole is saying that recon. needed more than fifty votes.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@The Raven:
Quoth the Raven?
General Stuck
The health care system is going to collapse in a few years anyways and the tiny PO that was offered would not have changed that. Serendipity is a funny thing, and often occurs in the most dire of circumstances for what’s possible. When the profit model implodes and explodes at the same time, then will be the political climate to go for what everyone knows, even wingnuts, that only single payer will sustain health care in this huge country over the long run. The wingnuts can’t help themselves, nor their plutocrat masters, for milking the money cow first of every drop of cash they can before the curtain comes down. At least we will have 30 million more insured in the meantime.
Just Some Fuckhead
Psychic John, the PO was negotiated away before the process even started. Yet you claim the unknowable instead of accepting the obvious. Once something gets stuck in that fat head of yours, it ain’t ever finding its way out.
Dennis G.
@Keith G:
This game is mostly about branding and marketing. And in this game, Jane is hyping her brand as the only ‘real’ progressive voice.
The votes for the Public Option were never there and all the long fight accomplished was to delay the vote, demoralize Democrats and slow the legislative process for a progressive agenda to a crawl. Without the fight over the PO, health care could have been passed months earlier and progress would have been made on many other issues. But instead we had to inflate the PO as the most important thing on any agenda (it wasn’t). This game to create strongly branded new media professionals on the left like Jane who have the power to set the agenda is an exercise is foolishness. This pursuit of fantasy has cost us dearly and if the GOP does well in November we can add that to the list of damages.
Yes, Obama made some mistakes in the way HCR was passed, but not nearly as many mistakes as folks like Jane have made. She picked a big fight for self promotion and has proven that she cares little for getting anything done without her blessings.
In many ways she is following the play-book of winger grifter/policy advocates like Grover Norquist. Over the years–with lots and lots of oligarch cash–Grover made himself into THE policy gatekeeper on all things taxes for the conservative movement. Every Republican politician MUST stop by and kiss Grover’s ass every year or they will face Hell.
Jane would like her progressive brand to have the power of Grover’s wingnut brand (they both embrace the same tactics to pursue their somewhat different stated goals and that may be why they enjoy working together). Jane’s ‘progressive’ agenda is about setting her up as a gatekeeper to anoint who can and can not get elected, who can and can not speak as a ‘progressive’ and what can and can not be done. It is an idea bought on discount from the crazy store and Jane has very little tolerance for anybody who points out the gaping flaws in her goals and tactics.
As her world view is all a fantasy one should expect attacks firmly rooted in Candyland as well. It is not a surprise to see her make things up and actively work to rewrite recent history. That she has so many followers is proof that not all the gullible folks in America self-identify as right wingers.
Cheers
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@The Raven:
Yeah, that’s a frog. Ravens caw.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
Oddly enough, I think they all believe that a woman is. I’m not sure who comes out looking bad in that analysis, but someone definitely does.
John Cole
@LT:
There’s a word for that. Begins with an L.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@LT:
How does picking utterly pointless blog fights about a year old legislative process advance the cause of health care reform? How does recruiting a primary challenger–however futile and pathetic that effort may be–against the most progressive member of the Senate do so?
LT
“The votes were not there.”
That makes no sense. Votes aren’t there or not there, they are either worked for or not. You bribe, cajole, threaten, offer your wife or son to, whatever – but you work for the votes. Simply saying “The votes were not there” ignores an awful lot.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: I know there were not 50 votes for the PO in reconciliation. You seem to agree, with your conspiratorial assertion it was negotiated away before the process starts. Explain to me how it could have been “negotiated away,” but the votes were still there?
When did you turn from a funny troll to just a buffoon?
John Cole
@LT: I simply give up. This was after a year and several months of “bribing, cajoling, threatening.” The votes weren’t even there in the house.
You’re just arguing to argue.
I’m off to play CIV V. I’m not wasting any more time on this.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis G.:
lolz
This is Obot nuttiness to the fullest. Yes, the leader of the Democratic party made some mistakes in first endorsing a public option, campaigning on it, then having his COS negotiate it away along with a couple of other really important reforms, then letting Republicans demagogue a nonbill half to death for months on end, then giving up at the last minute and saying we’d pass something piecemeal as we could until Nancy Smash stepped up and made it happen singlehandledly.
But some blogger with funny hair..
LT
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
They don’t. She fails now and then. She gets angry, and irrational in ways that I don’t understand. She also does good stuff, too, so I try to stay reasonable about he whole picture.
But I realize that this, like the threads on most blogs, are for sitting and bitching, so, you know, carry on.
Ailuridae
@DarrenG:
If it was really possible to pass a public option via reconciliation and there really were (are?) 50 votes for it, why hasn’t it been passed as a separate bill in the last year?
That answers itself but for the more dense here – its because as a stand alone provision no public option except, maybe a triggered one, had 50 Senate Votes (and I am pretty sure couldn’t pass the House either).
And I really don’t understand the idea that the only thing that mattered in the whole HCR debate was the presence or absence of a public option. As many pointed out during the debate, the overall impact of even the most generous PO options debated would be incredibly minor at best. The Big Fucking Deal items in HCR never revolved around a PO.
The answer to this likely revolves around class and “us” versus “them” thinking that defines so many of the critics of Obama from the left. Jane Hamsher doesn’t have a lot of conversations about bamboo flooring and the irresponsible use of cork with the working poor so she can look at a bill that is nearly 50% an expansion of Medicaid and call it a sell out to insurance companies. And because she likely counts many doctors among that cork and bamboo crowd neither her nor her reporters will ever get at the actual costs driving health care (compensation to doctors and profits for provides which are often one and the same) and instead focus on an admittedly unnecessary middleman (insurance companies) that simply can’t be driving cost increases. Its almost the left-wing hysteric equivalent to the right wing lie that tort reform would drive down health care costs. Its no less intellectually honest, that’s for sure.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Brachiator: I’d say the nomination is hers for the taking, in 2016, but Hillary surely isn’t dumb enough to challenge Obama in ’12. Nader would do it, I can’t think of anyone else who could get a headline out of it, and would do it.
@Dennis G.:
The PO that we’re fighting about, the one that made it past the House, was pretty much a POS. It’s talked about, in retrospect, as if it were the Medicare buy-in or something like it. I still would’ve rather had it in, camel’s nose under the tent and whatnot, but it had been watered down to nothing. The fact that the Blue Dogs were so scared of it says more about them than the bill, as it was or as it could have been.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Oh wait, you can read minds and tell us who was for and against the public option but you can’t look at clear events and the statements of those involved in the process and recognize it was negotiated away ahead of time?
mcd410x
This is the kind of thing that turns people off politics.
Good thing no one pays attention to the toobz. ;o)
Ed Marshall
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Negotiated what away, to who? Who the hell did Obama need to negotiate with if he had fifty votes? Why didn’t fifty senators send a fucking bill to his desk with a public option if they wanted it?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@LT:
well, sure, that’s the point. What does Hamsher do, besides sit and bitch? what has she done? what has she accomplished? You say she “fails now and again”. Could you point me to a few of her successes. Or, you know, one?
General Stuck
ever consider writing a fiction novel for idiots.
the passed bill was not piecemeal, it was comprehensive, and really only lacked a PO. And I love Nancy, but it was Obama who got everyone in the same room and jerked a knot in congress’s ass, Nancy was certainly instrumental in making it happen, but not all by herself.
And Cole was wrong, you were always a buffoon. You heard it here first.
arguingwithsignposts
After all the shit Obama has faced from both the left and the right over the past two years, i’d question the sanity of any left-of-center politician who wants that job.
Ailuridae
@Crusty Dem:
The firebagger version of an affirmative yes on the public option is almost like a state school frat boy’s version of consent.
@The Raven:
Nope. On this blog, in these comments, as long as there has been a HCR discussion time and again the point has been distinguished by now front-pager Kay and many others including myself. The public option as a stand alone provision never had 50 votes and topped out at 45. That much is plain as fucking day. Any bill with a public option wouldn’t get to 60 votes (it looks to have topped out at 57-58) and that those 12-13 votes were people compromising their opposition/ambivalence about a public option to get a larger bill done.
You
LT
@John Cole:
I’m not, really. I guess I disagree on when the bribing stops.
Tom Hilton
Also, too? The Senate bill (the original one) did end up getting (and needing) 60 votes. That threshhold always had to be met by some version of the bill (hence the “counting to 60” comments). The use of reconciliation to pass a Senate-crafted bill was always a complete fantasy, because too many essential components of reform aren’t allowed under the reconciliation process.
What did end up passing with fewer than 60 votes was the bill reconciling the Senate and House versions, and that had to be very carefully (and narrowly) tailored to comply with the reconciliation process. And as you say, there were never 50 votes for the public option.
(Too, also? The single-minded fixation on the public option, which if it passed at all was never going to be all that strong, precluded efforts to strengthen other aspects of the bill that could actually have yielded more beneficial results. The public option fight was always more about getting a symbolic victory for ‘progressives’ than about real world consequences.)
Ailuridae
@LT:
Her subsequent advocacy for a Medicare buy in or stand-alone public option has been really inspring. Oh, wait. That never happened.
Jay in Oregon
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Who was saying something about hatesex earlier?
David
When it comes to the numbers, the online person I trust the most is Nate Silver. And in his multiple posts on the public option, he never put the whip count above a generous mid-40s.
Keith G
@LT:
Really? She seems at times to act like she’s smoking PCP.
She gets all revved up and attacks people who don’t need to be attacked. And I do not fucking understand her all or nothing view of HCR. We never were going to get all and since I am in a fairly precarious situation (healthwise) the nothing option could actually kill me. Her antics were leading down a road quite quite unhelpful for my health, so I am less enamored of her actions than you are.
LT
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
The fact that you could ask that, and that many others would too, says a lot. How about starting FDL and raising a shit load of money for Dems? How about her hiring Marcy wheeler? Or TBogg, if you into that sort of thing. does fighting off breast cancer three times count? Nah. I’ll just be accused of playing the cancer card.
tbogg
Could you guys write something that will draw Megan McArdle into this? I could use a fish in a barrel right about now.
Ailuridae
@LT:
That makes no sense. Votes aren’t there or not there, they are either worked for or not. You bribe, cajole, threaten, offer your wife or son to, whatever – but you work for the votes. Simply saying “The votes were not there” ignores an awful lot.
How do you think they got to 57-58 votes for the bill that included the public option when the public option itself only had support from, most optimistically, 45 Senators. How do you think they got support up to 59 votes for the far more progressive (and simpler) Medicare expansion for those over 50? Fuck, how do you think they got Evan fucking Bayh to vote for 40B a year into Medicaid?
There was plenty of evidence of arm twisting and plenty of people within their caucus voting for a bill far to the left of what they preferred.
The Raven
@John Cole: or perhaps more votes could have been gathered. It’s debatable. Did the administration fight any harder on this issue than they have on wartime civil liberties? Or home loan modification?
Meantime, we corvids are very pleased that you hominids are fighting among yourselves.
General Stuck
@tbogg:
the barrel would have to be filled with Evian and we’re short on cash right now.
LT
Did I get that TBogg drop-in right at the right moment, or what?
It proves I’m right about everything.
BTD
@General Stuck:
Sorry dude. Beyond bored now.
Have fun Cole. the Balloonists and FDLers obviously eat this shit up.
DarrenG
@The Raven:
Ah, the good old Clap Louder/Green Lantern theory of politics.
“If we/he/they had only exerted enough will, we’d all have ponies who shit Percosets now.”
Ailuridae
@tbogg:
Could you do something about your employer being a dishonest hack?
joe from Lowell
The most important thing to Protest People is their self image as Protest People. I can understand that.
But anyone who refers to followers of a political organization founded by Dick Armeny and funded by the Koch brothers “anti-corporate” needs to eat with a cork on the end of her fork like Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Stop running around shouting “Oklahoma!” over and over again, you delusional drama queen. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
joe from Lowell
@LT:
Oh, gee, a political moneyman. No wonder she gets to appear on TV.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@LT:
Of course it doesn’t. That’s just idiotic. We are talking very specifically about politics and the effectiveness of her tactics. You should be embarrassed for bringing it into this discussion.
“starting FDL”. And? Marcy Wheeler and Tbogg both had an internet presence before they joined FDL. SO the one almost concrete thing you have is fund-raising. It’s not nothing, but it’s pretty indirect and passive for someone you were trying to paint as an effective activist.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@DarrenG: I would rather have a cow that gives up chocolate milk laced with vicodin
eemom
@tbogg:
c’mon, TBogg, come clean with us. What’s a brilliant guy like you doing in a cess-lake like that??
Ooooh, I forgot. You CAN’T answer that. If you say something other than “Jane is the Lord My God, and I shall have no other Gods before She,” she’ll ban your ass from your own blog.
Or, she might dispatch a mob of her love-crazed zombies to San Diego to eat your entrails for breakfast.
Kerry Reid
@David:
That’s because Obama made a secret deal with Big Math.
Peter
@LT:
Either I’m stupid or you’re not making any goddamn sense. How does that NOT imply that John was saying that Reconciliation requires more than fifty votes? Especially in light of her previous statements?
BR
You know, the thing about this that always bugs me the most is that Hamsher is setting herself and FDL up as the ultimate “progressive” authority – the bastion of the most liberal views out there.
I feel a bit like Al Giordano does about it. He often points out that his ideal system of government is Anarcho-syndicalism, which is most definitely to the left of Hamsher’s ideal firebagger OLIGARHY or whatever it is she wants. I’m more in the deindustrialist camp, seeing industrial society as inherently harmful to the natural world and needing to be consciously and carefully deindustrialized.
Anyway, I guess we realize that just because we want a pony doesn’t mean Rahmbama is giving you one anytime soon. So complaining that you didn’t get one and saying you’re the only true pony-lover out there is pointless.
Nick
@jl:
Well in the last few days the WH applied pressure to Mary Landrieu to release her hold on Lew for OMB, she was like “nah”
My grandfather used to tell me “When you try and fail, always be proud of the effort, no one else will even notice it”
Brien Jackson
@Just Some Fuckhead:
How was the public option negotiated away before the process even started if the House passed a bill that included a public option?
Nick
@LT:
and when that fails?
FlipYrWhig
Greenwald is tedious and dogmatic, but at least I can tell he actually believes in something larger than himself. Even Jon Aravosis, whom before I knew of Hamsher I considered the most self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing person on the leftish side of the blogosphere, has an underlying cause. Can someone answer for me this: what does Hamsher believe in, other than that Hamsher is right in all cases?
eemom
@BR:
“Pond scum,” is how the good man most pithily described Jane and her fellow “bastions” of progressivism.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Which, of course, is why it passed the House and got a vote in the Senate Finance Committee.
See this is why hippies get punched.
Angry Black Lady
Every time I see one of her tweets or read one of her blog posts, it makes me bananas. Her commenters are positively unhinged. They have their heads so far up her ass, they can see her large intestine.
“Oh Jane. I can’t wait until you pick the next progressive president for us to rally behind. Maybe you should run! I don’t know what to do without you telling me. Hold me. I’m scared.”
Bunch of fucking cry babies. And what’s worse, they are veering into the same racist bullshit territory as the fucking teabaggers are. If I see one more person refer to Obama as “presnint,” I’m setting some shit directly on fire.
Somebody please kill me in the face.
taylormattd
@tbogg: Ask Jane to include McMegan in her next enraged tweet.
shep
Good thing no one at The White House would do such a thing. Then we’d never know what actually happened to Congressional support for the PO.
PeakVT
Perhaps this makes me a bad Balloon Juice commenter, but I haven’t been following this inter-blog spat. Can anyone give me a reason to do so?
Nick
@David:
47 was the final number after Scott Brown won;
12 Democrats either opposed or were leaning opposed;
Lieberman
Ben Nelson
Lincoln
Pryor
Bayh
Landrieu
Carper
Baucus
Conrad
Warner
Bill Nelson
Begich
BR
@Angry Black Lady:
This.
And they don’t just do subtle racism – anyone remember Hamsher’s blackface post?
FlipYrWhig
@BR:
Yes, exactly, and the proof of credibility and authority is… what? Making demands loudly? Show me the progressivism. I don’t get it.
All I see is an implicit theory that unless you’re fighting hard for something you’re part of the problem; but there’s also no right way for an insider to fight hard, because he or she will always be tainted by the system; so there’s no way anyone can ever be fighting hard enough to satisfy the test; and hence there’s never any way to prove that any politician really is progressive; therefore… what?
Politicians aren’t as far to the left as people who think of themselves on the left want them to be. True. How do you change that? You can make a ruckus about it, sure. But at some point I think you need to say that some small step _is a victory_, and thus your ruckus made it possible; but you’re not entirely satisfied, so you’ll keep on plugging. I don’t see where it leads to raise a ruckus for the specific purposes of saying that nothing will ever be sufficient and that every apparent small step is only further thralldom to the powers that be.
If that’s all you got, what’s the point, exactly? It’s like campaigning for apathy, or rallying for despair.
Allison W.
@Angry Black Lady:
Got Dang! that was hilarious.
General Stuck
@BR:
I’m more in the DIE WINGNUT DIE caucus.
FlipYrWhig
@Nick: You left off Webb, who was very skeptical throughout.
Crusty Dem
@tbogg:
Well, since it’s McMegan, the fish must be a southern bluefin tuna, the barrel has to be made of a rare Brazilian rosewood, and the water must contain just the right amount of Himalayan pink salt to keep the tuna in perfect condition. And none of it can be taxed, because that’s teh evel socialism, and elitist, and bad…
I did leave you a comment begging for a destruction of this McMegan article last week (how to survive a layoff). Nothing.
I blame Christine O’Donnell, but still..
Ailuridae
@Nick:
Absolutely no reason, whatsoever to leave Webb off that list from any statement he ever made. Same with Klobuchar unless you believe she didn’t understand the difference between the public option and the exchange (unlikley).
I’d count Baucus as a yea before either of them.
joe from Lowell
@General Stuck:
Ditto, which is why I don’t have any respect for people who whine that “We need to stop the Republicans!” isn’t a good enough reason to vote.
Stopping the movement conservative agenda is the most important cause in the political world. These people would have three Operation Iraqi Freedom-type wars going at the same time if given the chance. They’d repeal Social Security and Medicare, abolish the EPA, and cut off federal funding to poor public schools before lunch if they got the chance. They were freaking torturing people last time they had the reins.
But preventing all of that isn’t supposed to be a good enough to reason to go to the polls?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@FlipYrWhig: and if you’re talking about reconciliation, McCaskill and Johnson, whom I wouldn’t trust to have my back in any political fight, and Dianne Feinstein and Robert Byrd, to whom comity and process, respectively are/were sacrosanct
FlipYrWhig
@BR: It all comes down to what you do when you find that the world isn’t the way you’d like it to be. If you’re going to demand that it change, you should have some semblance of a theory about how that demand might ever be met, and by whom. That’s why (my understanding of) the whole community-organizing thing involves figuring out together what the problem is, and also how that problem might be fixed. I think way too many blog lefties have a praxis problem.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: I am not a hippie. Punch me at your own peril. I’d be happy to meet you halfway between here and NY and give Big Jew Media Nick a free swing. Sound like something you’d be interested in?
Where is the PO that the house passed and that got a vote in the Senate Finance Committee and that Senate leadership whipped AGAINST in reconciliation? Where is that PO?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Huh.
joe from Lowell
Just in case he goes back and changes it, “Just Some Fuckhead” just called Nick “Big Jew Media Nick.”
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead:
So now you admit it wasn’t “negotiated away” before the process started, it was whipped against at the end of the process (after the House already narrowly passed a reconciliation bill without one)
Keep your story straight, you look like a moron.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: I thought Byrd eventually was persuaded, but my memory is hazy, and it might have been that he was persuaded to do the overarching bill through reconciliation but not the public option piece. I also remember Feingold having process misgivings.
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Where is the PO that the house passed and that got a vote in the Senate Finance Committee and that Senate leadership whipped AGAINST in reconciliation? Where is that PO?
Why don’t you call Saint Russ and ask him why he won’t introduce it now as a stand alone provision? Psst – because it never had the votes.
Nick
@joe from Lowell:
Yes, because a while back I pointed out that major media outlets in New York are rabidly pro-Israel and won’t run or allow stories to be written that even remotely present Israel in a negative light.
FlipYrWhig
@joe from Lowell: Because I remember the backstory, I assume that’s actually JSF calling Nick anti-semitic, not JSF _being_ anti-semitic towards Nick.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig:
Byrd was convinced only after the House agreed to pass the Senate bill, Feingold too.
Ailuridae
So surprise JSF finds Jane so appealing.
Paula
@BR:
The hilarious thing is that no one — from DKos right on down to the true DFHs @ ZNet — can dump on Giordano. He does what he says in terms of organizing people on the ground in various movements here and in Latin America, and being directly involved in producing alternative news and media. And he’s trying to teach others to do it.
Everyone else is too busy blogging angrily, I take it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: Nick sez Jews control the media which is why all the news is pro-Israeli.
FlipYrWhig
@Ailuridae: This is turning into the policy-wonk version of MIHOP vs. LIHOP: for some people, it’s either that Obama didn’t try hard enough to stop the demise of the PO, or that he pulled the strings on the whole operation to kill the PO.
Just Some Fuckhead
@joe from Lowell: Why would I change something I wrote, clown?
Karen
Jane Hamsher and My DD can STFU or DIAF.
Obama learned a lot of lessons from when Clinton failed and succeeded by cobbling together a compromise.
Is that the word that makes Hamsher vomit? Compromise?
Obama is all about compromise and consensus so each side gains something. The GOP/tea party’s idea of compromise is that they get their way which makes me wonder….
You know how boxers throw the fight or baseball players throw the game?
The Queen of the Firebaggers was in bed with Grover Nordquist before. Can this be the equivalent of Jane Hamsher, My DD, etc. trying to throw the Presidency, Congress and Senate? If not, she’s sure doing a good job of throwing a bomb on the Democratic Party.
Ailuridae
@FlipYrWhig:
MIHOP versus LIHOP to save everyone a google. Warning its a reference to 9/11 truther stuff and is, unsurprisingly apt for the Public Option conspiracy theories around here.
MattR
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: I can’t keep straight all the idiotic things that commenters here have said, but I am pretty sure Nick was arguing a couple months ago that the Jews control the media.
(EDIT: ah, I see that I got that one right though I was late to the party.)
Nick
@Karen:
I don’t think there’s any question Jane Hamsher and Jerome Armstrong want Democrats out of power, because they didn’t get control of it the first time, they figure once out of power, they can try to gain influence again. They know the longer these Democrats stay in power, the longer they’re marginalized.
What they don’t realize is if Democrats fall from power, they become even more marginalized. That’ll be the one bright spot if Dems lose Congress.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
watching Countdown, Arnold Schwarzenagger, whom I have always despised, is kicking the ass of big oil
Verily, there is some good in everyone, as Paul and Michael sang
The Raven
@DarrenG: I don’t know about will, but it would have been nice if our leaders had tried.
The Raven
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
That’s crows. We ravens (aside from having a very broad range of vocalizations, probably more than most great apes), have a distinctive territorial croak. In fact, “croak” may be derived from that sound. Quoth the OED:
Just Some Fuckhead
Ooops, it was the worst thing evah when JSF said it but now that it’s Nick, crickets.
You people really suck. I mean really.
Go team us!
Nick
@The Raven:
you know, I think they did try, and that’s why it sat around for eight months before it passed, but regardless, you can’t say Obama didn’t try to push tax cuts, and you can’t see Democrats in Congress didn’t try w/ the 9/11 health bill, they got no credit. They forced the Republicans to vote against DADT, DREAM Act (which DEMOCRATS got blasted for by Jon Stewart) as well as campaign finance and, just today, outsourcing, no one gave them credit, why would they bother trying and failing if no one will give them credit?
I hear this bullshit all the time “It would nice if they tried,” well when they do, they still get slapped around, so why should they?
Ailuridae
@The Raven:
So they added 12-13 non-supporters for the final Senate vote on a plan with a public option and 14 Senate votes for a plan with a Medicare buy-in and they did it without trying or exerting any influence? What brought those votes to the table? Oh, wait, wait I know. I’ve heard this before. Much like Obama gave away everything before HCR negotiations even started, these ConservaDems gave away everything to add the public option (which none of them supported) without getting anything or receiving any pressure from anyone.
At least it is a consistent world view. Completely divorced from reality but consistent.
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Not as much as you do, you classist fuck.
Still waiting for that call from you to Saint Russ….
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: Um, I defended you.
Paula
@FlipYrWhig: LOL
joe from Lowell
@FlipYrWhig:
Ah, I see. A cheap race card.
FlipYrWhig
@Ailuridae: It comes from believing that using carrots to win cooperation is also bad. You’re only supposed to use sticks. So you’re supposed to fight for everything, 100%, no compromise, but if your view isn’t a majority and you have to get new people on board, you can only do that by threatening them. Everything else is being a wuss, or a veal, or an Obot, or whatever the local parlance is.
joe from Lowell
@Just Some Fuckhead: Because it makes you look like an idiot, and I’m doing you the favor of assuming you have a sense of shame, or a shred of self-awareness?
I won’t make that mistake again.
Ailuridae
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s acting all hurt because I didn;t know that he was accusing Nick of anti-Semitism and not just extending how horribleness to other areas. Because you know “Big Jew Media Nick” is so clear.
But I deleted it once I saw your post and now Mr “Ha ha, you’re a bartender. What a fucking loser!” has his fee fees hurt.
morzer
Cole: Hey Hamsher, lend me your brain.
Hamsher: Why?
Cole: I’m building an idiot.
joe from Lowell
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I haven’t seen him say it. I saw you accuse him of saying it, but you’re not much of a source.
wmd
Jane may be trying to hustle donations for Russ Feingold. At least this comment to a recent post seems to indicate it isn’t just dday.
Sly
There’s also the teeny tiny issue of a Public Option being germane to the reconciliation rules, which the Senate parliamentarian, Alan Frumin, decides.
If Jane thinks that no one in the Democratic caucus asked Frumin what he thought about a whole range of issues regarding the reconciliation package (when they certainly did) and his response did not shape the package that had developed, then she’s an idiot. The only thing that Frumin declared non-germane was language about Pell Grants that the House added at the last minute. This has very little to do with whether or not Reid had 50+ votes, and everything to do with getting things into the reconciliation bill that would overcome Republican objections (and they objected to everything).
But Rahmbama could have used the power of his immense bully pulpits to convince the parliamentarian not to do his job, so it really is all the President’s fault.
Nick
@Sly:
I don’t think Jane believes Democrats would do that, because in her mind, they never intended on passing a public option in the first place and it was all just a show put on for her.
eemom
@wmd:
Jane usually isn’t that subtle when she’s trying to, um, “hustle” for something. You know, to leave it up to a poor little grammatically challenged commenter to get her message across.
The flashing neon GIVE IT HERE NOW!! on the FP is kind of more her style, wouldn’t you say?
I’m sure she appreciates you defending her honor, though. Maybe you’ll get to sit next to Phoenix Woman at the Ladies In Waiting table.
Ailuridae
@Sly:
But its not germane to at least one point, right? If it was passable as part of a larger bill via reconciliation it has to be passable as a stand alone provision as part of reconciliation right? So any objection that a firebagger would make that it was wrong to vote for PPACA in reconciliation if it didn’t include the public option is wholly without merit, right?
If there were 50 votes for a PO and it could be included as a larger bill in reconciliation than it makes no sense to risk PPACA not passing, right? Pretty simple strategy – pass the House fixes to the Senate bill. If you have the votes pass the PO through reconciliation as the next available order of business.
Kiril
I think what I have a problem with is that I see the Affordable Care Act as a starting point, not and end. I think of it as something that first we implement, and then add to over time. In ten years, I actually think there will be a public option, and no one will even think about trying to repeal it.
What I also can’t get is, it’s only been two years. It seems like a long time now, but we still have six years to go. I remember Bill Clinton’s first term, and at this point in his presidency, people weren’t too jazzed about him either, and there were a million imaginary “controversies” swirling around. But by the time he left office, if I’m not mistaken, there was a general consensus that he would easily win a third term if it were legal, and he retired as the most popular retiring President in the post-war period.
It’s only been two years. The problems aren’t solved, but they are absolutely better, except for the the economy, obviously, and the civil rights issues related to the War on Terror (TM), which frankly does surprise me.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Dude we had this “argument” already. He did not “campaign on the public option.” This little detail was cussed and discussed at length earlier this year on these pages. I am not going redo the homework and look up the references for you again. Do it yourself.
Karen
@Nick:
And you’re right about the NY Metro area. But then again, and I say this from my own experience, the NY Jews tend to be liberal aka “self hating.”
When 9/11 happened, that suddenly made people (including in my family so don’t go accusing ME of antisemitism JSF) ultra religious that hadn’t been previously. But most of the “rich” Jews who “control the media” are Republicans. But considering Murdoch isn’t Jewish and he has the most control, that blows the “Jews control the media” theory out of the water.
Republicans control the media because they have all the money and most of them are not only Christian but ultra Christians. They’re controlling the anti-Muslim narrative and they’re the Christian zionists.
They’re the ones who are pro Israel, not pro Jewish. The conservative Jews hitched their wagon to them in the belief their goals were the same. And they are. Both want all Israel for the Jews. It’s just that only one group want the Jews to remain among the living.
Karen
@Kiril:
But Clinton didn’t have PUMA and grudges about him not waiting his turn. Clinton didn’t take over a raped economy with a war going on. And Clinton is white, which gave him a longer honeymoon. Obama is being graded on a negative curve.
You think all that shit with the heckling State of the Union, the upsurge in gun and ammo sales and Birther and “take my country back” would have occurred under Clinton?
NobodySpecial
Heh, the narrative continues in new form.
We can never believe there were 50 votes for the PO because politicians lie.
Yet at the same time, we are told that the tax cut reform can never happen because politicians say they are against it, and they would never lie about that.
Third Way politics never fails; it is only failed.
Sly
@Ailuridae:
If you’re referring to the Byrd Rule, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
With the exception that you can’t have more than one reconciliation measure in a given year.
tomvox1
The woman has some real psychological issues and cannot let it (anything?) go:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/28/hectoring-the-base-its-not-about-gotv-its-about-laying-the-blame/#comment-123561
She’s definitely a rageaholic and needs a new enemy (preferably one who would normally be somewhat simpatico for maximum adrenaline) to get her high at regular intervals. Not a great characteristic for a “leader” of anything but would have made a good lieutenant for Mao, Pol Pot or Lenin in their purges of the insufficiently revolutionary. Let’s hope she never gets her hands on anything like real power. Yipes.
Nick
@Karen: Case in point…Anthony Weiner’s district, went 68%-30% for Gore, then 55%-45% for Kerry and Obama, and the borders didn’t change much, only losing Park Slope, which would’ve made the district 57%-43% Kerry, 58%-42% Obama.
The truth is Lieberman helped there, he’s a God in South Brooklyn, but 9/11 turned a lot of Jews, working class Italian and Irish voters VERY conservative.
Kiril
And now that I’ve read the rest of the comments, why bash Obama now? Why not spend the next two years building support for a public option and add it to the Affordable Care Act early in Obama’s second term? The public option is only dead if Republicans take over and supporters give up.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
No, very often politicians pretend to be conservative and then vote liberal, yeah, that happens all the time.
Nick
@Kiril:
Because
A.) It will get done
or
B.) Progressives will discover that while they support the public option, there isn’t a movement that cares enough to fight for it.
And either way, the professional left loses.
Nick
By the way, Adam Green is on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show and, although I’m sympathetic to his cause, he says the left would’ve been fine if Obama had gone to Maine and Connecticut, screamed about the public option, and Snowe and Lieberman voted no anyway.
Does anyone REALLY think that’s true? I mean how much credit is he getting for fighting for tax cuts while the Senate dithers? Granted even Greenwald pointed out that he’s pleased with it, but only when pushed about it, otherwise he’s moved on to the next issue to bash him about.
Left Coast Tom
@Kiril:
Which was the basis for my challenge, in another thread, that a Single Payer advocate work to put Single Payer on the ballot in some reasonably blue state, GET SOME ACTUAL SUPPORT SO IT PASSES, then come back. After all, I voted for Single Payer when it was on the ballot in CA, and less than 25% of the voters joined me.
Why can’t some of the necessary improvements to health care reform be pushed forward through ballot measures in blue states? Not all of them can, and not all flavors of them can (e.g.: P.O. could, “Medicare Buy-In” as P.O. could not), but assuming the goal is progressive change certainly there’s something more constructive that could be done with all this energy.
Nick
@Left Coast Tom:
At the time when single payer advocates were screaming and raving, I pointed out that Canada’s system started in Saskatchewan first (by Kiefer Sutherland’s grandfather) and then spread to the rest of the country.
If Vermont or California or Massachusetts or Minnesota established a single payer system first, it would help spread it elsewhere…after all, we DID get MassCare, didn’t we?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Nick:
So they want a fight, not results.
Nick
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
I think they want both, which is why it’s not worth fighting if it doesn’t yield results. The fight doesn’t get rewarded without the result, the result doesn’t get rewarded without the fight.
I believe Green said that because he knows the public option wasn’t possible and doesn’t want to admit it.
Kerry Reid
@Angry Black Lady:
I thought “Rahmbama” was really special — can’t imagine why anyone would take offense at the notion that the first black president is the puppet of the evil Jewish guy. Nice to see she learned from the Blackface Lieberman gambit.
Alice Blue
This Grateful Dead lyric keeps coming into my head:
Alice Blue
This Grateful Dead lyric keeps coming into my head:
Alice Blue
This Grateful Dead lyric keeps coming into my head:
Alice Blue
This Grateful Dead lyric keeps popping up in my head:
“What in the world ever became of sweet Jane
She lost her sparkle, you know she isn’t the same
Livin’ on reds, vitamin C and cocaine
All a friend can say is ain’t it a shame”
Crap. Sorry about the multiple post. I have no idea how I did that.
morzer
@Alice Blue:
Nice use of repetition to underscore your experience, Alice.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@The Raven:
You corvids are high maintenance.
mapaghimagisk
@BTD:
I guess I’m neither then. I’d hug you both, but I’m worried I’d get hate froth on my new shirt.
The Moar You Know
@LT: And what a card it is. Been dealing with a coworker who’s been playing that card for months now. What kind of pizza shall we have for the office party? CANCER CARD. What kind of redesign should we do for the front lobby? CANCER CARD. Hey, we’re going to have an important all-hands meeting! HEY, I’VE BEEN CLEAR OF CANCER FOR A YEAR NOW, CAN’T MAKE IT, I’M HAVING MY CELEBRATION TONIGHT. But hey, the meeting’s at 10am! I KNOW, BUT…YOU KNOW…I HAD CANCER.
I wish she would die. I’m fucking serious. And fuck you for white knighting and pulling out the cancer card for Jane, who you will never even meet and who will never fuck you if you happen to be so lucky as to actually be in the same room as her. She will let you kiss her ass, though…because she had cancer.
Fucking asshole.
60th Street
Dammit! 200+ comments late to this party, but…
I’m old enough to remember when Jane got an assload of House members to draw a bloody line in the sand on the public option ON PAPER and they all still voted for the final bill.
If that’s any indication of congressmembers saying one thing, about as emphatically as it gets, and doing another, what does it say about the weaker-kneed Dems who only smiled and nodded in the public option’s direction and the bona fide certainty of it passing via reconciliation?
Not much.
And, the Democrats included a public option in the reconciliation instructions for the 2010 budget, so anyone could have pushed a standalone public option bill at any point this year and passed it via reconciliation. So why didn’t they? Because they had the 50 votes?
morzer
@LT:
Her cancer survival is hardly a political achievement, surely?
Just Some Fuckhead
Stay classy, steely-eyed realists.
LiberalTarian
Eh, I feel sorry for her. Jane Hamsher, I mean. John’s right–she lost her shit. She traded ideology for pragmatism, and lost a lot of her influence. Sure, people who are blithe followers still (apparently) flock to the site, but people with a little more independence have simply moved on.
Arguing with her is useless John. There are no facts to discuss, no sensible argument to be had, since she lives in her own reality, where Tinkerbell revives because the audience claps real hard.
Malron
John,
I surmise in my typical conspiracy theorist fashion that this entire skirmish is designed to distract from any good news that may arise out of Obama’s organizing rallies, like the one held in Madison today where UWM officials estimate 26,000 showed up. And not just 26,000 rubbernecking spectators, mind you: 26,000 community organizers that will be knocking on doors, making phone calls and helping remind voters how important this midterm election is. Obama closed with “change is not a spectator sport,” which should be the mantra for all of us as we wind down the final days before November 2nd.
Or, Jane is suffering a nervous breakdown.
ronathan richardson
Here’s the real point: 53 senators may have supported some form of “public option” at some point, but the lowest common denominator of all of them would have been a pathetically weak plan that would make nobody happy. And that’s even if they did support a public option–they probably didn’t know what a public option was when they said they supported it, a la Joe Lieberman who fully backed off when the true debate started.
What is her argument anyway, that our community organizer, most liberal voting record in the senate, college professor of a president is a secret conservative?
Comrade Kevin
@The Moar You Know:
You really are a vile person.
Nick
@LT:
My teabagger great aunt fought off breast cancer, ovarian cancer and two heart attacks, one she suffered while having a double mastectomy. This month, I will run in Race for a Cure with her name on my shirt because she’s getting too old to run with us.
She’s still a hateful, evil, spiteful woman when it comes to politics.
Karen
@Left Coast Tom:
If Single Payer option failed in CA, there’s no chance it would succeed in the flyover states, the Midwest, The South, etc. I think that some liberals in the East (New England and NY come to mind) and California either forget that the majority of the country will vote for a Centrist Democrat or Blue Dog before they’d elect a Kucinch or an Independent socialist like Sanders.
Hell, I lived on Long Island and went to a SUNY outside of Rochester and from what I remember (this was 22 years ago), Upstate NY and Downstate NY are night and day. Central NY as well.
Look at how “liberal” everyone says Obama is when he’s really a Centrist. Like Hillary Clinton is a Centrist. Both are based in IL.
Virginia would have been lost if Webb hadn’t won. Kaine and Warner were the Democratic Governors and they’re considered to be too Conservadem.
The Hamsher and My DDites also need to remember that in a bad economy, people are just looking for someone to blame and that’s also when people get more conservative.
I live outside of DC so I’m hoping I can go to the Rally for Sanity but I’ll bet I know who won’t show up. Has FDL and My DD been trashing Stewart and Colbert?
Sly
@60th Street:
Question: What possible consequences could there be for elected officials when they break a promise they made to a blogger?
Answer: None.
What’s truly perplexing is why a House member even bothered to promise anything in the first place. “I better sign on the line which is dotted, or else some indeterminable but no doubt infinitesimally small number of my constituents might think bad things about me but still vote for me anyway.”
asiangrrlMN
@Angry Black Lady: Right there with you. I see racism on the far left as well as the far right. Most people of color who voted for Obama are satisfied with the job he’s done, but apparently, we’re not ‘the base’ or progressive enough. The far right and the far left at least have that in common.
@Keith G: I agree with you. Hamsher might have started out with that ideal, but she quickly morphed into the person who rather hold out for party purity than anything else. I would say she was actively against better healthcare when she rallied to kill the bill and told lies doing it. She’s for a perfect mythical bill that does not exist except in her own mind. Hamsher is strictly for Hamsher.
Cole, do not listen to the ones telling you to call her up and ask her out. As I’ve said repeatedly, you can do so much better.
Chris G.
People alleging that there were 50 votes for a standalone public option should list those 50 senators. Then, if there really were 50 firm votes for a standalone public option, go yell at those senators for not passing it instead of wasting time yelling at other bloggers.
Frank
No one outside of the blogosphere pays attention to Firebaggers.
The best revenge is to give her the attention she deserves.
Which is plonk.
Angry Black Lady
this is what i want to know. i’ve followed GG for years, and while i’m annoyed at whateverthehell he’s doing considering the political climate right now (i mean, really? can’t you just shut the FU for 5 weeks? — i’d like to maintain control of my own uterus, thanks!), i think he truly believes what he writes. same for aravosis.
hamsher is just a hamster running on a wheel that is no longer turning. and she’s getting dehydrated and that’s affecting her thought processes.
Angry Black Lady
@asiangrrlMN: exactly.
what bothers me most about her is that she is the quintessential outraged feminist/political blogger: white, rich, and myopic.
she already HAS health insurance (i reckon.) i bet a lot of her commenters do, too. they are outraged on behalf of the unwashed colored masses but i would bet she doesn’t really know anything about how they live. if she did, she wouldn’t have advocated for killing the bill since the bill, you know, helps people and shit.
and if she weren’t so damn myopic, she would recognize that the culture warriors are back, and if they gain control of this country, we are all fucked. if she has any daughters, or nieces, or whatever, i wonder what she’ll say when they come to her and say “gee, i really wish i could make a choice about whether to keep creepy uncle joe’s baby in my womb.”
i just want them to shut up. like seriously shut the fuck up. YOU’RE NOT HELPING, ASSHATS!
i’ve delurked here because you people seem sensible.
Lit3Bolt
Scene 23.
It’s morning again, in the same hotel room. Jane is on the bed, slowly awakening. She comes fully awake, confusedly touching her injuries and the vomit in her hair from the night before. She slowly gets up and shuffles to the bathroom, where she again reads the tattoo on her upper chest in the bathroom mirror.
JOHN G COLE PREVENTED THE PUBLIC OPTION FROM OCCURRING.
She slowly examines the rest of her tattoos, touching each one again, then examines the new one on her left arm.
PICK USELESS FIGHTS WITH HIM UNTIL YOU WIN THE INTERWEBS.
Jane slowly nods, a confused yet determined look on her face. This feels comfortable, and familiar.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Angry Black Lady: I think it also has to do with so many of these people only get egnaged in politics since Iraq or Clenis-gate or whatever. They have no sense of how things really happen in politics. IT’s the “LBJ would’ve just…’ comments make my blood boil. People really believe he just grabbed each Senator by the lapels, slammed them up against a wall and the Civil Rights Acts and the Great Society programs passed in a week and a half.
eco2geek
@asiangrrlMN:
For example, Ann “I’m a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don’t you ever forget it” Coulter. :-)
Brachiator
@Lit3Bolt:
Oh, very, very, good. At this point, with all the useless threshing over the health care vote, I can easily imagine something like this happening.
Guy One: Dude, did you vote in the November mid-terms?
Guy Two (sheepishly): No, Dude. I was up all day and night blogging about Obama’s failure to get the public option. Who won?
Guy One: Nobody that you would have wanted to win.
Steve V
One of my earliest experiences with this blog was a huge flame war between JC and Jane back when John was on the “other side.” It was pretty nasty. I’ve always wondered if that early hostility between them was patched up or just simmering.
Steve V
Whoop, here it is. Man, those were the good old days, when people would at least argue with each other in person.
mnpundit
You know, that there is some sort of holy difference between reconciliation and a non-reconciliation vote in the minds of Senators really really REALLY makes me just want to dissolve the whole body.
I’m more inclined to treat Senators like dogs that need to be housebroken than human beings these days, but I lack the money for them to care what I think.
The Raven
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: You corvids are high maintenance.
We have good memories, too.
I don’t think anyone in this discussion can blame the other side for holding on to an issue without looking very silly. And taking what seems to have been a minor copy error as an excuse for a full-court press, putting words in the other side’s mouth, and imputing motives when you don’t know them, these things are ugly. Aren’t any of you, oh, just a bit ashamed? Jane Hamsher became John Cole’s enemy when he was a conservative and slammed her very hard. She made a policy criticism of Cole which contained a minor error, corrected the error, defended her position a few times, and moved on. These attacks on her: they are ugly. This is an area of policy where there is room for disagreement, and not making space for it: that is ugly, too.
And I am going to fly away for a while and hope that I see more sense here the next time I drop by.
kdaug
This makes me angry. Grrr.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@The Raven:
Hey, not so fast. I am not getting sucked into the black hole of Cole-Hamsher feuding. My position is, she is funny, not ha ha, and John has better things to do. But the last time he listened to me was never, so … I guess the feud must go on.
Lesley
Can we get a pic of Tunch around here?
Is Jane on the Whitehouse payroll for tweeting?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@The Raven:
Okay, keep it low and slow.
asiangrrlMN
@Angry Black Lady: What you have written in this comment is exactly what has been on my mind concerning Hamsher and her ilk. Them that has can be mighty pure when it comes to demanding all or nothing. It really bothered me during the healthcare debates, and it continues to bother me now. I am glad you de-lurked. Please continue to comment.
@eco2geek: Oh, no you didn’t! I’m serious. Cole could do way better than Hamsher.
Malron
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
A thousand times this. I’d also like to cosign the convo asiangrrrl and Angry Black Lady are having in this thread.
Ailuridae
@Angry Black Lady:
Welcome! I haven’t read your blog but anyone that starts off commenting on this blog with:
what bothers me most about her is that she is the quintessential outraged feminist/political blogger: white, rich, and myopic.
is likely someone I want to read. Comment more please.
chaseyourtail
Hamsher is scummy. Who knew?
Blue Gal / Fran Langum
The only Democrat who might possibly primary Obama on National Security / police state issues is
Dennis Kucinich.
Last I read, he and Jane were, um, not speaking? Can anyone name a bridge she hasn’t set a match to? Her ability to make enemies on purpose astounds me.
Angry Black Lady
@Ailuridae-
Thanks! And I will! And you may regret it, because I’m mouthy.
I just read FDL’s rip on Obama’s Rolling Stone article and on NPR’s comparison of LBJ and jesus h. biscuits, I really want to set all of those people on fire.
What the hell is wrong with them? Honestly. I want to know. Do they think they’re helping? And what’s with this “hippie punching” shit. Do they think they are the ONLY Democrats or Progressives in the country and therefore the “Presnint” needs to answer specifically to them?
Yes, I disagree with Obama’s foreign policy and all the state secrets shenanigans and the killing people without due process, but honestly? Who gives a fuck right now. In my view, the bigger issues are the make up of the Supreme Court, and social issues (Lily Ledbetter Act, gay marriage, DADT, keeping the government out of my ladyhole.) It’s like they think that the PO is dead, when it’s really only mostly dead. Just shove a fucking chocolate nugget in its mouth and it will be revived. Obama said it was the BEGINNING of healthcare. GODDAMNIT. I hate these people.
AND, he has two more years, but these assholes seem to want to fuck everything up for the next two years, to make sure nothing gets done, and then what… float Nader as a candidate in 2012? Kucinich? Ninja, please. I love Kucinich’s politics, but this country is not going to elect a dude who believes in aliens and who is married to a woman with a tongue ring. Get real.
Also, there are people who NEED HELP NOW. and HCR helps certain people now. Maybe not you. Maybe not that lady over there. But a lot of people.
I created an account at FDL so I could yell at some people, but I figured it would be better for my blood pressure to yell over here.
I also made the mistake of reading Hamsher’s twitter feed. I’m sorry, but I cannot respect any writer who uses text speak. “UR 2 stupid 2 know that there were enuf votes 4 PO. LOL.”
fuck off.
/end rant
chaseyourtail
@Angry Black Lady: I don’t know you, but I love you! Oh, and please stick around cuz you rock!!
gimmeabreak
I that @Angry Black Lady needs to stay and also visit us over at Rumproast. We are also sensible.
Anon.
Look, if we’re 98 Senators short of sane action on Guantanamo, the *minimum* conclusion is that the Senate is worthless and needs to be eliminated yesterday.
Anon.
Actually, I think most people think that’s hot.
Angry Black Lady
@BR: ah, it was YOU who reminded me of the hamsher blackface incident. after refreshing my memory about it, i had to finger rant and tell those assmonkey whiners to shut the hell up.
thanks for the inspiration!
Angry Black Lady
@Anon.: most normal people maybe, but not the idiots. and there are more idiots than there are not.
i used to have a tongue ring, but i took it out when i started my first job as a lawyer. apparently, it’s not “professional” or some such shit.
Angry Black Lady
@gimmeabreak: i went over to rumproast because somebody linked the awesome sauce quiz, and i tried to register, but it wouldn’t let me!
do i need a secret code? a handshake? will you accept beer?