Adding to what DougJ stated in response to Kos, I’d like to point out I specifically have stated numerous times that I don’t blame progressives or the progressive wing of the party for the mess we are in. I actually think they are right about the policy- as I have said before:
And remember, one of the reasons progressives and liberals are so rightly pissed is that the house bill was no real piece of hard left legislation. It was at best itself a very moderate piece of work, paid for, with no single payer, no government takeover of healthcare ala the NHS, built on the existing insurance infrastructure, and was so moderate that the House bill could have been something Republicans would have passed thirty years ago.
And then it went to the Senate, with the arcane procedural hoops, the ridiculous rules and vote requirements, complete with 60 preening and insufferable egos, all wealthy in their own right and heavily insured, and they took forever passing a bill that basically is so conservative that were the Republicans not all teabagging insane would pass today. Hell, if the Republicans were in power and thought it would get them some votes, we would probably be cheering them for passing the Senate bill, it is so responsible compared to their prescription drug giveaway during the Bush era.
So while I have been testy and angry with progressives, it is because I simply do not see the way forward and have never seen the votes there for reconciliation and the logic of just scrapping everything and starting over and somehow magically getting to a liberal bill, not because I think they are wrong on the policy.
I don’t think the 51 votes are there to “fix” portions of the bill in reconciliation, no one has ever shown me anything convincing that there are 51 votes in the Senate for the public option, and at this point, given the events of the last week, I bet a number of Senate Democrats would be thrilled if the House kills their bill. Pressuring house members to kill the Senate bill without pressuring the Senate to enter reconciliation, with the hopes that it will just happen, or hoping that you kill the Senate bill in the House and there will be a “do-over” and there will all of a sudden be the willpower to start over on HCR, let alone a bill that is more acceptable to the House will be passed in the Senate is what we call MAGICAL FUCKING THINKING. If it puts a knot in a couple progressive activists knickers to hear that, I’m sorry.
While progressives aren’t responsible for how we got here, progressives will have to accept their share of the blame if the Senate bill is killed and nothing else is done on HCR (which we all know will be the case). After all, it isn’t me calling House members and telling them to vote against the bill while failing to pressure the Senate to work with the house. If the Senate bill dies, that is it for HCR. Period.
Unless you still think we will be greeted as liberators.
And also, the point of my original post was that Ed was a bloviating jackass who took a private conversation public for the sole reason of pumping up his ratings. Public spitball fights aren’t helping the policy Ed is “fighting” for, they help his ratings. Nothing else.
Daddy-O
Sure, we’ll be greeted as liberators. With flowers and sweets.
Just like David Addington promised.
Zoogz
And don’t look now, but Take Two is going to happen shortly: financial reform.
Jim
I don’t think anyone who’s been following this is expecting a public option, just some tinkering with subsidies and the excise tax. The votes simply are not there for the PO, but Reid seemed pretty confident that there were 60 for a Medicare Buy-in until Lieberman got scared by the thought of a Democratic success. Actually, I hope they don’t go for the Medicare buy-in. Give it a year. Build it up. Put Harken and Franken and let’s say Kristin Giliibrand out in front of it (she could use an issue and some publicity, I think)
Michael
Ah, to be greeted as liberators – that’s the slinkertwit/phoenix woman/Hamsher position.
Midnight Marauder
…blog war! Blog War! BLOG WAR! BLOG WAR!
Stooleo
Getting HCR passed will be like winning the Super Bowl on a crappy call. It may not be great, but you win. The firebaggers want to concede.
WyldPiratd
People are furious because the Dems act like a bunch of fucking limp-wristed eunuchs. They can’t get shit passed with the majorities they have.
They should be pissed at Obama as well. His leadership has been pathetic—particularly on the issue of healthcare reform. There was not even an ATTEMPT to explain to the American people HOW they would be better off with single-payer, or a public option. Not even an attempt. Then his administration stood idly by while the Rethugs do what they do best–define issues by lying through their teeth. His instincts are not much better…he should have shit-canned Holy Joe Lieberman after Holy Joe shived him during the campaign last year. Furthermore Obama was a motherfucking fool with sticking with the “reach across the aisle” chickenshit for an entire year when the Rethugs have clearly been fucking insane since the Clinton years.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What did you think was possible last April?
jeffreyw
I say add full dental to the bill with a “drill here drill now” campaign to sell it, and we could use the “oil we find to pay for the whole thing”.
joes527
This drives me crazy.
The. Votes. Aren’t. There. In. The. Senate.
Oh. Then we need to bow to the political realities.
The. Votes. Aren’t. There. In. The. House.
THOSE FUCKERS IN THE HOUSE ARE DRAGGING US INTO ARMAGEDDON!!!!!
Why we imagined that the senate was doing anything other than masturbating when they passed a bill THAT NEVER HAD THE VOTES IN THE HOUSE is beyond me.
Midnight Marauder
@WyldPiratd:
And why do you think that is? It surely couldn’t be because there was never any realistic chance of single-payer making it through this Congress in tact, could it? Of all the “phrases/memes that need to DIAF,” this one has to be in the Top 3.
KCinDC
I agree with you that there aren’t 51 votes for the public option, but you don’t think there are 51 votes (50 plus Biden) for doing *anything* through reconciliation? I certainly hope that’s not true, because if it is I don’t think there’s much hope that the House can pass the Senate bill. If we can’t pass a few decent fixes even when we’re ignoring Lieberman, Nelson, and whoever the seven other most obnoxious Democrats are, then things truly are hopeless.
freelancer
@Midnight Marauder:
From what I’ve seen of “The Ed Show” he might as well be posting on FDL’s frontpage. (No offense to TBogg and Ackermann.)
It’s like liberal contributors of the media (the few that there are make their cogent points on Maddow, Olbermann, and Moyers) are out there, and Along Comes Ed shows up in Clown Shoes with Cymbals and hyperbole and “The Democratic Party will forcefeed you ground up mice and 10W-30 motor oil because they’re a bunch of traitorous poopyheads! BETRAYED!”
Dusts himself off, and goes “Heh, I showed them! I’m a patriot! Where’s mah pony?”
and the rest of the country, the educated left included, goes, “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
Jim
BALLOONJUICERINES! ! ! ! !
@Midnight Marauder:
I actually think if Sanders and the House Progressive Caucus had introduced bills on single payer a year ago things might be different now. Or not. I don’t have a time machine so it’s a moot point
John Cole
@KCinDC: No, I don’t think there are 51 votes for that right now, either. I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised, but I think if the House votes the Senate bill down, it is over. Period.
They are spooked and running for the hills, and the last thing any of them want to do is discuss HCR for a couple more months.
Ed Marshall
@Jim:
Holy shit, do you know how long single payer bills have been floating in and out of the congress?
Brian J
Isn’t he the same guy who said, in response to the White House party crashers, “What if one of them was a ninja?”? If so, doesn’t that say it all?
John Cole
@Jim: Unless, I am mistaken, I think Sanders has introduced a single payer bill every year for years.
Velvet Elvis
Hopefully we can ping-pong the Senate bill with the understanding in the house that the funding mechanisms get cleaned up via reconciliation. I don’t see a PO getting passed through reconciliation, but cleaning up the funding measures could happen.
SenyorDave
I didn’t expect magic from Obama, but I expected that occasionally he would TAKE A GODDAMN STAND ON THINGS. The coolness is starting to get to me. At this point I truly believe, barring a major uptick in job creation in the next six months, that the Republicans will sweep the mid-terms bigtime.
I am one of those people who was in favor of most of the bailouts (I think we would have 13%-15% unemployment without it, especially if they let the auto companies go belly-up), wanted a bigger stimulus, and understand that its hard to work miracles with two wars going on.
That being said, I don’t understand Obama’s reluctance to try to sell HCR. Use part of SOTU to emphasize the non-cancellation, the extension of health care coverage so people don’t go bankrupt. If it doesn’t pass now, I think there is no chance he will get it through, and most likely will be a one-termer.
The Republicans hate him, they will say anything, they will always hate him, most of them would gladly see the US crash and burn. They are not responsible. I still fear what will happen to this country if the GOP has control in 2012.
Jules
Pass.The.Bill.Now.
If they don’t pass the bill before the House it will be over for HCR in the near future because Republicans don’t see an upside to it and Democrats are scared little bunnies.
Cedwyn
spin all you want, cole, but it’s too late. Kos has wrought his mighty powers and you are now, officially, an idiot.
ROFL
@ joes527
bicameral ego contest
Guster
John: The 50 votes: http://washingtonindependent.com/59440/senate-public-option-scoreboard
Then you’d need to twist the arm of one of the following: Begich, Bayh, Baucus, Carper, Conrad, or Nelson.
Edit: (Not that I think it’s necessarily still possible–or even on anyone’s wish list–now. But it wasn’t a big stretch a few months back.)
Jim
@John Cole: I meant as a part of a broader, party wide strategy to make SP a part of the debate in this go ’round. To shift that architectural feature that has become such a cliché
Velvet Elvis
@John
I think John Conyers has introduced a single payer bill every year for decades.
cd
Harry Reid is getting voted out no matter who is “really” to blame.
danimal
If we don’t get everything we want in this bill, then we still have potent issues to continue the fight after the bill passes.
rootless_e
I didn’t expect magic from Obama, but I expected that occasionally he would TAKE A GODDAMN STAND ON THINGS.
http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/one-year-later-did-obama-win-iraq-war.html
I don’t think you people want a stand, you want a lot of noise and shouting.
WyldPiratd
MAurauder at 11.
Nice of you to chop off the public option in the part you quoted.
The broader issue is that Obama didn’t do much of shit to sell HCR at all. It was almost as if he couldn’t be bothered. Instead, he turned it over to the spineless shitbag Dems in the Senate who preceded top piss away six-months playing pattycake with the disingenuous Rethugs.
Obama–when it comes to selling HCR–got punked like the fat nerd kid in school getting depantsed every day.
Eric U.
there have been 5 Democratic Presidents since I was born. Of those 5, only Kennedy didn’t get the “treatment” from his fellow dems. Carter was a better President than any of the Republicans that have been in power since I was born. And yet he’s widely considered to be a failure. So is Johnson, even though he pushed through a revolutionary package of legislation.
Chad N Freude
@Guster: Scoreboard
KCinDC
@John Cole, if there’s no fix of any kind, then I don’t see how you’re going to get the votes in the House. And like @joes527, I don’t understand why you view the Senate as some sort of natural phenomenon, where if there aren’t votes then that’s that, whereas the House is made up of human beings who can be persuaded and blamed.
joes527
How was this _ever_ supposed to work. I mean, rewind Massachusetts, and give it to the dems. I don’t see how we would be in any better place than we are now.
There is no way in hell that any change at all to the bill would have drawn 60 votes in the senate. The exact same bill that they passed wouldn’t draw 60 again if they had to vote on it again. They had to openly bribe one senator to get it over the line the first time, and that bribe had left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
So, what has changed in a week? It was never going to pass another cloture vote before Massachusetts. Why does it matter that it won’t pass another cloture vote now?
rootless_e
@WyldPiratd:
Ever heard of Google?
Results 1 – 10 of about 2,730,000 for town halls health care obama.
Velvet Elvis
It was almost as if he believed in the separation of powers and didn’t want to be a Bush style “unitary executive” and left the constitutional role of legislating to the legislative branch.
Imagine that. You elect a constitutional law professor as president and he behaves constitutionally.
Jim
Obama On Letterman, Sunday Shows In Media Blitz
| 09/15/09 01:25 PM |
NEW YORK — President Barack Obama is visiting David Letterman on Monday, part of a media blitz to sell his health care plan.
CBS says it would make the first visit ever by a sitting president to Letterman’s “Late Show.” Obama has appeared on Letterman’s show five times before, the last during the campaign in September 2008.
The president is scheduled to visit Sunday morning talk shows this weekend on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. That’s a highly unusual schedule, even for a president eager to get his message across throughout the media.
John Cole
@Guster:
It isn’t that simple- those are the 50 possible votes when 60 votes are required, and they are saying that knowing they will not be forced to vote for it. You would need to get to 60 under normal Senate rules, so you are now ten votes short.
In reconciliation, the number actually drops to 48, because Byrd and Feingold are against reconciliation for this.
Additionally, that list is from September, so you are now down to 49 in a normal vote and 47 in reconciliation, because Kirk is gone and Brown is in his place.
Look- let’s put it this way. We know no one in DC can keep a secret. If Harry Reid and others in the Senate leadership thought they had a trump card for reconciliation, don’t you think we would have heard at least ONCE in any of the hundreds of blogs and newspapers revolving around the beltway that Harry had the votes? Just one whisper?
debbie
What a freakin’ bunch of babies. They screamed bloody murder when Bush & Co. legislated unitarily, but now they want Obama to do just that?
KCinDC
@John Cole, what whispers have you heard that Pelosi has the votes to pass the Senate bill with no fix?
Napoleon
@Ed Marshall:
One of the first bills introduced every year is Dingells health care bill that is single payer that he has introduced every year he has been in congress which is since the late 50s and guess what, it is the exact same bill his dad introduced when he was in congress from the same seat since I think FDR.
John Cole
@KCinDC: None. I don’t think she has the votes. Which is why I support efforts to pressure House Dems.
Brian J
@Velvet Elvis:
Possibly besides that, wasn’t there the idea that one of the big causes of failure last time was that Clinton didn’t defer to congress enough?
Regardless, I’m not entirely sure of what people expect Obama to say. The reform options on the table aren’t exactly new. Pretty much everything he talked about during his campaign and/or has been discussed over and over again by health experts is included. Is he supposed to get bogged down into a discussion of the incentives in fee-for-service? The details certainly matter, but only after a certain point. It’s one thing to say that he didn’t appear to support the legislation enough or do enough to help Democrats who were supporting it convince other Democrats, but it’s another to say that he didn’t release a list of things he’d support and wouldn’t support, if for no other reason than such a list is unnecessary. There doesn’t appear to be that much of a divide besides “do nothing” and “try stuff to see what works.” He’s clearly in the latter camp, which is all that matters.
Jim
Delaware is the new Massachusetts, and Beau Biden not running for the Senate is the new death of the Democratic Party. And Tweety has a Democrat from NJ (Pascrell?) coming on to troll HCR.
Guster
@John Cole: Reid did ‘warn conservative dems that reconciliation is an option.’ Here: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/reid-outlines-bill-for-caucus-warns-conservative-dems-that-reconciliation-is-still-an-option.php?ref=fpblg
And Feingold recently came out for reconciliation. (And yeah, my ‘plus one’ was because of Brown. We only needed 50, not 51, because of Biden.)
And you’re raising the bar a bit. I mean, fair enough if you won’t take Senators at their word–you’re probably right–but I’m not sure what you would find convincing. And I know I’m naive, but I like to think that this White House can exert some pressure on the half-dozen leaners.
Of course, the entire dynamic is different now. But that wasn’t all rainbow ponies and caramel fountains.
JR
DougJ said:
John said:
I submit these are contradictory positions: A solid vote for progressive issues is, in this context, required to be a solid vote for the public option.
So which one of you is wrong? :)
WyldPiratd
rootless_e at 34, yeah, I seem to remember ump-teen millions of them that Rethugs had with angry shouting white folks on Medicare who are too fucking stupid to realize the “gubmint” they hate runs Medicare.
Obama should have been out somewhere every goddamned week explaining the benefits of HCR. There is a reason it hasn’t passed since TR, there is a lot of moneyed interests that are against HCR. Obama was a fool to put so little time in message management and selling his headlining issue.
He is going to pay a big price for his lackadaisical effort. The price will be in bigtime losses in Congress and probably one term.
It’s going to take a lot to convince me to vote for the ineffectual goddamned Dems or Obama. I’m most likely going to sit it out. Our system is broken and like a substance abuser, it is going to have to bottom out before it reforms.
John Cole
@Cedwyn: Being called an idiot in the comments section of any blog, let alone the GOS, is like being called a redneck by a rodeo clown.
Midnight Marauder
@WyldPiratd:
Probably because it didn’t have anything to do with the point I was making. But go on, keep assigning nefarious intent when there’s none present. Whatever makes you feel better.
While the frustration is understandable (to a degee), comments like that overlook the fact that the man was doing speeches all throughout the summer pushing HCR. Comments like that disregard his speech before the Joint Session of Congress that provided a nice turnaround in poll numbers and narratives coming out of all that summer madness. Comments like “he turned it over to the spineless shitbag Dems in the Senate” make you sound like a moron who doesn’t know how the legislative process works in this country.
Could he have done more to be involved from the beginning? Sure, he could have done more often unnamed things that would have made some folks feel better. But don’t act like he didn’t tell everyone from the beginning that he would get more actively involved at the end of the process:
Obviously, there’s no official conference period happening any more, but the White House has said since the summer that once things reached this point, that would be where you could see their involvement. Well, that moment is now, the State of the Union is in 2 days, and it would behoove a great many of us to actually listen to what the man says this time around to save us all a great deal of gnashing of the teeth and nonsensical bullshit flying around the intertubes the rest of the week.
But the point that I’m making is look at the disconnect of your logic. In one sentence, Obama abdicated responsibility of getting HCR done to the Senate. And as a result, in the next sentence, you say that he got punked. Well, of course he did if you’re operating under the rules of Bizarro World. This is not to say that things could not have been planned out better; it’s to say that your assigning of blame here seems woefully misguided and disdainful of the rest of the reality of the situation.
Triscula
How would that work exactly? How does a president “shit-can” a senator? Lieberman would have been a pain in the ass regardless of anything that had been done to him. He’d still have a vote, right? Senate leadership and the administration figured it made more sense to try to keep him happy in the hopes that he might be supportive when they need him. If they had done otherwise then they could have guaranteed that he wouldn’t be there. It was a reasonable gamble and it made no difference in the outcome anyway. Other than stripping the guy of his committee seats I can’t figure what you mean by “shit-can”. He’d still have a vote and he’d still have filibustered.
Well, unless you’ve got some other solution to the Landrieu, Nelson, Baucus and Lieberman problem then I don’t know what other option existed. Conservative Dems from conservative states were balking and that required reaching out to others in the Senate, namely moderate Republicans.
It sure would be nice if we could paint this all with an angry and simplistic brush, and I say that with all sincerity. I’m angry too. But let’s try to remember the complexities at work here and maybe, just maybe, start talking about solutions to the issues that are really fucking us up: A) how to convince conservative voters in red states to vote for more progressive Dems, and B) The filibuster needs to undergo a dramatic change.
rootless_e
@WyldPiratd:
In the real world, Obama traveled the nation giving speeches, town halls, interviews. The press covered the wingnuts and the “progressives”, always anxious to take cues from Chuck Todd, believed that was all there was.
arguingwithsignposts
@WyldPiratd:
I see others above me in the thread have corrected this wild assed claim that has no basis in reality. I’m glad they did.
You know, I keep hearing a lot about the “bully pulpit” the president has, but when it’s 535-to-1, that “bully pulpit” ain’t so bully. If he goes on the teevee too often, the networks and pundits bitch about “overexposure.” If he doesn’t go out there enough, they bitch about him being “elusive.”
I don’t know why anyone would want that job except to make off with some cash and secret service protection. Geez.
And I may be tarnishing my Obot credentials, but I wish the administration would just jettison that whole “bipartisanship” meme and start telling the republicans to STFU.
KCinDC
@John Cole, let me see if I understand: You don’t think Pelosi has the votes (to pass the Senate bill), so you support pressuring House Dems. You don’t think Reid has the votes (to fix it in reconciliation), so you oppose pressuring Senate Dems. Can you see how some of us might view that as a mite inconsistent?
Violet
@WyldPiratd:
Agree, except maybe once a week was overkill. But he sure didn’t do enough to get the message out about why it’s important, how it can help businesses, save jobs, save money, etc. And most importantly, why, even if you have health care you should care.
Kathleen Sebelius (sp?) on The Daily Show a week ago or so, had the clearest explanation for why it matters that I’ve heard: Because even if you have gold plated health insurance now you can be dropped if you get sick; if this bill passes, you can’t.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@danimal:
Elkins Act passed in 1903, Hepburn Act, passed in 1906. First you regulate access and fairness, then when almost everybody who is a customer has a vested interest in bringing costs down (an entirely predictable consequence of step 1) you regulate costs.
Yes, I know I’m just being a pest. It’s what I do best.
arguingwithsignposts
Link
snarkout
John, are people talking past each other? The main objection people always had to reconciliation is that you couldn’t do important parts of the bill — a ban on discrimination for prior condition (1) and lifetime benefits caps, e.g. — through reconciliation. The current Only Sane Way Out of This, which everyone is seemingly going to reject because their feelings are hurt (2), is to pass the Senate bill and then fix some of the dollars-and-cents issues (the excise tax, the Nebraska exemption, the subsidies) via reconciliation. You don’t think there are 50 votes for “let’s up the subsidies to 150% of the poverty level”? If that’s the case, line ’em up. I want Blanche Lincoln on the record about this before she loses her job.
The thing that kills me is that everyone has already taken the hard votes. The damage is done. If they pass the framework to make our health care system not cost three times what Canada’s does while bankrupting people who get cancer after getting laid off, at least they’ll have died on a hill for something.
1. If the Democrats weren’t the goddamned Washington Generals, they would have been talking about this 24/7 for the last 9 months, as it’s the most important part of the bill that people can understand.
2. Or, if they’re in the Senate, because they’re ruled by douchebags.
Citizen Alan
@Jules:
We’ll get HCR one way or another —
CarterObama won’t be able to bear the humiliation of failing on exactly the same issue that beat Hillary back in ’94. If the Senate bill fails in the House,CarterObama will just invite the Republican Senate leadership into the Oval Office and beg them to fuck him up the ass by agreeing to anything — anything — just to have a bill he can sign in a big ceremony with a bunch of expensive pens. Look out tort reform, here we come.flounder
John, I call it “playing Alamo.”
Obama really is closer to getting something done. There was a discussion at TPM of why we never heard threats of a filibuster in association with Clinton’s healthcare push, and someone who was involved at the time said it all blew up before it got anywhere near the stage where anyone even had to say the word.
I think that even if we got the Senate Bill no reconciliation we would break the wall of inaction surrounding health care and additional meddling would be guaranteed. I think that would be a positive coming out of what on the whole I might say is a rather flawed bill.
Guster
@snarkout: Amen! I need a cigarette.
Midnight Marauder
@Violet:
Wow, it’s a good thing President Obama wasn’t traveling the country during the summer saying the same things at town halls and on his too frequent (according to our Village Overlords) television appearances.
arguingwithsignposts
Here’s a whitehouse.gov search for “health care” including everything the admin has been saying on the topic (with a few results about Haiti, obviously).
The results come about every other day. They’ve been messaging the hell out of this. I don’t know what more they could be doing.
Jim
@KCinDC:
The Speaker and the leadership has more influence over individual members than party does in the Senate, and as people are talking about LIeberman, Pelosi is more willing to use her power than Reid. Partly that’s a personal difference, but Reid also has a much different constituency in the Senate.
jwb
@John Cole: I think there probably are the votes to fix the things labor wants and I’d be very surprised indeed if the Senate bill passes the House without that fix lined up. Whether that’s enough to get it through the House, that’s a different question (and for whatever reason I think the abortion language is still likely to be the final sticking point—can they get it through the House without Stupak and allies?).
Brian J
@Citizen Alan:
Do you think if they passed anything and called it The Tort Reform Bill of 2010, it’d make a difference? Knowing how some in the media act, all we’d have to do is insist that it represented actual tort reform and the issue would be off the table, at least for a while.
John Cole
@KCinDC: I support pressuring the Senate, of course.
But there are two different things at play here. I think the many of the Senators don’t actually give a shit. I think pressuring them is probably pointless.
I think the House Dems think they are just playing power politics. And I’m afraid they are going to kill the bill thinking we will come back to it, and we just won’t.
Uriel
Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone could help me out with something:
You remember that time when Obama was giving some sort of major address to Congress, and Joe Wilson jumped up and was all like “You lie!” like some woman on Springer just said he was her baby daddy, and all the democrats we’re like “Hurrumph! We shall show our extreme displeasure by using the words “extreme displeasure” on Chris and Kieth’s shows for a day or two before we forget all about it” and the republicans were running around high fiving each other and slapping each other on the ass, all going “You the man now dawg. Way to go Joe! Or should I Mister Vice President Joe!” and Joe was all like “Shucks guys, twern’t ‘nohin. I was just being all spontaneous like. Wink. Heh heh. Oh wait, did just say wink? Wait no, I wanted to say that first part and then actually wink. Hey, let me do that again….” But no one cared about him at that point, and everybody made you-tubes and yelled and yelled at each other on the internet for a little while then moved on to how funny is is when people get hit in the nuts?
So yeah, about that major address before both houses that was televised on most of the major networks- what was it about again?
I keep thinking it was about clearing up some misconceptions about some issue facing the American people, taking the Republicans to task for sowing them, and trying to get the Senate to get its shit together and act on some legislation or another. But for the life of me, I can’t remember what.
Any help guys?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@John Cole:
Senators and House Reps have different electoral strategies that are working at cross-purposes. For most House Reps, every election is a base election, because their smaller districts are more polarized between rural and urban districts. Most Senators on the other hand represent states with a more even balance of urban and rural areas than your average Congressional district in the very same state, such that playing the middle of the field (i.e. the indys and moderates) is the key factor in getting re-elected to the Senate. So Senators care more about what the mushy middle thinks, and House Reps care more about what the base thinks. When the mushy middle and the base are headed in dramatically different directions evaluating a big piece of legislation, the Senate and House will be on a collision course with each other.
Citizen Alan
@Velvet Elvis:
Oh, what rubbish. The unitary executive theory was the idea that while the nation is at war (even against something as nebulous as “terror”), there are no constitutional restraints on any exercise of presidential power so long as that exercise can plausibly be described as fitting in with the President’s commander-in-chief function. That doesn’t mean that a President is acting like a unitary executive simply by taking bold steps to encourage Congress to pass legislation that advanced his policy aims. If Obama had announced that he wasn’t even going to wait for Congress to pass a bill, that health care was a matter of national security, and that accordingly, he was going to order the Department of Health and Human Services to create a public option paid for out of black book accounts, that would be a “Bush style unitary executive.”
I can think of about 50 “alleged terrorists” who will never see the light of day because habeas corpus doesn’t apply to them who would beg to differ.
Nellcote
I’d like to know what more Prez. Obma should have done to push HCR when the media got bored. Remember when the big question was if he’s overexposed? They were having fits when it looked like the SOTU might have conflicted with the season premier of Lost! And I’ve noticed that when the Prez. gives speeches or town halls these days, the cable nets can barely stop to cover them.
It’s easy enough to say well, people should just go on the internet. Which is true but also extremely time consuming. And there are still places (with people in them!) where the internet is just not available or with only dialup which precludes watching any video.
WyldPiratd
You folks keep on figuratively sucking Obama’s cock all you want.
And as a selective answer to some of the horseshit flung my way here:
Not much could have been done about Lieberman other than kicking him off of his committee chairs. At might have given pause to some of the other centrist Democrats if there had been some consequences for fucking up what is good for the country. The Rethugs got nearly everything they wanted passed by instilling fear.
Furthermore, the consensus is that the Dems did a shitty sales job on HCR. Obama is a Dem–the Head Dem. He is accountable or should be.
But he won’t be to you full-time Obama-fluffers here.
Joe Beese
@ citizen alan
Funny how the President’s profound respect for the law doesn’t extend to upholding his obligations under the Geneva Convention.
Jim
@WyldPiratd: I bet you’re a lot of fun at parties.
Midnight Marauder
@WyldPiratd:
I, for one, am stunned that you would drop your demonstrably false line of attack when people call you out for just that very reason, and then switch it up to general namecalling and invective.
I mean, I am just completely flabbergasted by this turn of events…
@Joe Beese:
…As much as I am by this.
AhabTRuler
Oh, couldn’t that be said of most of us? Those of us who weren’t blacking out and throwing up on the credenza would be boring the shit of some stoned dudes on the porch.
jwb
@Nellcote: “I’d like to know what more Prez. Obma should have done to push HCR when the media got bored. Remember when the big question was if he’s overexposed? ” Well, a big clue should have been who was promoting that meme that Obama was overexposed. Never take advice from your opponents; in fact, you generally do better doing the opposite of what they say. Obama is very effective when he is in front of the media; of course, the right wants him to STFU—if I was in the right I would too—so they say he’s “overexposed.” It’s still hard to believe that the Obama administration fell for that line.
flounder
@Nellcote,
I would say the same thing is true about the economy. After the stimulus passed, all Obama could have really done is flew around the country and did townhalls. The media would love to nail him for being overexposed, and Republicans freak out every time he hops on an airplane because it wastes so much money, so I’m sure more politicking would have been counterproductive and the message would have been lost under the memes.
Nellcote
@jwb:
It was the media that was pushing the meme. They didn’t like loosing the ad revenue.
AhabTRuler
That was why the bitched about the press conferences and speeches, but IIRC, the “overexposed” meme was applied more to the David Lettermen stuff, &c. The popular stuff.
rootless_e
@WyldPiratd:
Ah, your incorrect statements are factesque so we should agree.
MTiffany
No, what’s putting our knickers in a twist is not that you’re mocking us because we believe that with enough “MAGICAL FUCKING THINKING” we can kill the Senate HCR bill and then we’ll get a magic do-over on HCR which becomes a hard-left left-wing wet-dream with single payer and a real social safety net.
It’s that we think that the Senate’s HCR bill is worse than nothing and that even if people are going to die if it doesn’t pass, it’s still better to kill the bill than to pass it. The status quo is preferable to the Senate’s version of the HCR bill. Our justification is that even if the Senate HCR bill passes, the people that would have died without the passage of the bill – most of them – are still going to die anyway, but now we all (ALL OF US!) have to – by force of law – subsidize the unreformed, corrupt health care industry which killed them!
If you’re going to mock and chide us for holding a position, could you at least try not to lie about the position that we actually hold?
Mnemosyne
@MTiffany:
MTiffany, given the enormous amount of misinformation I’ve seen people show up with just here at Balloon-Juice, you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical of people who insist that the Senate bill is a completely bad bill. I’ve had people tell me that they’re personally going to have to pay the excise tax when they don’t have employer-based insurance and the tax is on the insurance company, not the insured. I’ve had people tell me that the language against rescission is toothless but somehow “forget” to look at the parts of the bill where the teeth are. I keep asking people to explain the functional difference between letting people buy into the federal employees’ health insurance system and HHS running a public option and I get crickets.
I’ve heard so many bad-faith arguments about the “awfulness” of the bill that I’ve been able to debunk all by myself just using the Google that, frankly, I don’t think the people arguing against the bill are doing so in good faith.
Rommie
I didn’t want King Obama, successor to King George W.
I didn’t want the King of Sweden either. TheRock Obama can show up once in a while, just not all the time!
MTiffany
@Mnemosyne:
I didn’t say it was a completely bad bill. What I was trying to get at is that some of us that want to kill the bill want to kill it because the parts of it that are bad do so much bad that it far outweighs any of the good things that the bill does. And, if this bill passes, there will be no revisiting of the issue to fix any of the bad parts.
Even though there are ‘good’ parts of the bill, the net result of passing the bill is bad. The status quo is better.
Quiddity
John wrote
But I thought the 51 votes are for the union exception to the Senate bill’s excise tax. Nothing more.
mclaren
Meanwhile, Democrats are preparing to abandon the pre-existing conditions ban:
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/democrats-dropping-ban-preexisting-conditions/
Explain again how this atrocity of a Senate bill differs in any meaningful way from the current health care catacylsm.
No, don’t bother — I’ll explain:
Prediction #1: The Senate bill wil pass with modifications that make it much muchMuch worse;
Prediction #2: Under the new health care “reform,” more Americans will find themselves unable to obtain health insurance than before;
Prediction #3: Under the new health care “reform,” more Americans will get thrown out for pre-existing conditions or suffer recission than was the case before;
Prediction #4: Under the new health care “reform,” insurance premiums as well as health care costs will zoom higher on a rocket sled to the stars at such a stupefying rate that the past cost increases will seem trivial by comparison.
Mnemosyne
@MTiffany:
Better for you, maybe. It’s definitely better for me, because my employer offers really great insurance. But it’s not about what’s best for me.
Again, I’m not really getting what the dealbreaker is. I know a lot of people want the insurance companies dismantled immediately and are pissed off that they won’t be, but that’s an emotional reaction. People are upset about the mandate, but they don’t seem to understand that you can’t ban discriminating against people for having pre-existing conditions unless you have a large enough pool of healthy people to support the unhealthy ones with pre-existing conditions. If it’s the abortion provision, well, at least it’s slightly less odious than the Stupak amendment. Since the Hyde Amendment bans using public funds for abortions, there is going to be some kind of abortion restriction on publicly-funded healthcare until we can get that piece of crap repealed.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Sorry, but anything that originates from John Aravosis needs backup. His history of misreading and misinterpreting supposedly horrible things coming from the administration requires some additional proof. I trust Mark Halperin more than I trust Aravosis.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: This entire fracas comes from Aravosis deciding that the word “children” was significant in an otherwise anodyne list of things that would be sought in some form of stripped-down bill. Rather than being a shorthand for the kind of thing that makes people upset about insurance companies — remember the news item about the baby who was deemed too obese to cover? — Aravosis decided it must mean that the pre-existing conditions provision was being scaled back, because he’s either a dumbass, illiterate, a trouble-maker, or all three. I left Pandagon after years of steady readership because Pam Spaulding is in cahoots with Aravosis and uses her multiple platforms to spread his bullshit further. That pains me, because I’ve been posting there since long before Amanda, but Pam Spaulding poisons it, because she’s Aravosis Junior.
Well, I guess there wasn’t a reason to bring that up at this particular moment, but I’m just generally pissed off that my friends are so stupid. Can you start a blog? Can I hang out there? :P
sparky
a couple of things:
not everyone to the left of here is Jane. there are plenty of other people (like me) who were inclined initially to give “reform” the benefit of the doubt but don’t like what has emerged from the Senate at all. throwing us all in the firebagger bin is, well, an overreaction.
second, i think you all are making a mistake thinking once the horrendous Senate bill is passed, that everyone is going to see how great it is. i think just the opposite is the case. as i said, just wait till the IRS starts dunning people for not having insurance that they can’t afford, and people still get denied care/claims etc. or the insurers petition HHS for higher profit margins. to me, THAT is the real magical thinking afoot here.
third, the other reason some of us are implacably opposed to this result is that it is a fundamental, unprecedented, ceding of federal power to private industry. there really is nothing like this in the past, AFAIK. it will never, ever, be retrieved for the common weal. it is another step towards legitimating the US as an overt oligarchy.
incidentally, it’s not that we don’t understand the insurance arguments; they are irrelevant because the point is that the private sector should not be engaging in a government function (not the same thing as contracting with the government).
pps: i think the whole firebagger thing is itself an overreaction. so someone makes a stupid move for publicity/tactical reasons. isn’t the better thing to simply say that’s a mistake? (can’t claim to know the details here cuz i don’t read FDL, but i can say that rejecting someone allied with you because you don’t like their rhetoric seems rather juvenile. or fussy.
FlipYrWhig
@sparky:
Also, just wait for FEMA to start rounding up dissidents in concentration camps. Because that’s as likely to happen.
sparky
oh, and i forgot: the point about Obama not pushing HCR is simple. if you notice all the dates cited in support on this thread, they are all in/after august, by which time the teabaggers etc had long since seized control of the microphone. Obama should have been out in front of people earlier in the spring. instead he was cutting a deal in secret with pharma.
i’m not gonna pretend i know what he was thinking but he certainly screwed up.
if you want to defend him, fine. but don’t pretend that he was always out banging the drum, because, as we saw with HCR and as we now see with FIRE “reform” he doesn’t say anything until the house is already engulfed in a teabagger blaze. a leader is supposed to lead, not follow.
sparky
@FlipYrWhig: um, hello, what do you think the enforcement mechanism is?
this is from MSN money but you can find the same thing anywhere else.
do you pay ANY attention to what you support?
sparky
oops–blockquote fail
and the other day i posted the sections that REQUIRE the insurers to make 20/25% on policies, unless they can petition HHS for more. really.
as i said, it’s not me engaging in magical thinking; it’s the people who somehow think this bill will be loved by the average voter who are dreaming. just like the average voter loved giving free money to wall street.
MTiffany
@sparky:
Yeah, but the people doing the overreacting don’t really need to concern themselves with the reasons behind our opinions. That would take reading what people actually write. That they disagree with us is reason enough to scornfully dismiss us.
FlipYrWhig
@sparky: You mean the thread where you pointed to provisions that were limited to the phase-in of the new system and acted like they were permanent? That was awesome.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
If only Ed Schultz were more like John Cole, then HCR would pass. Yeah, that makes sense.
I think Ed should do a show on how Barry (and Tim, and Larry, and all the other centrist titans populating this “liberal” administration) are right on track, and we should all become little Evan Bayhs. Because we all know Teh Left is the real problem here.
All the little BJ sheep make me laugh.
FlipYrWhig
@MTiffany: HCR opponents don’t get to play the “woebetide us we are so scorned” card. It’s a whole commentariat based on nothing but scorn. OK, self-righteousness, intellectual masturbation, and scorn.
MikeBoyScout
sparky,
thanks for the good comments, especially the ‘we’re not all firebaggers’.
My $0.02:
F! Scotty Cosmo Brown’s victory of Martha “I need a vacation!” Coakley. The base is po-d cuz we’re >50% done with our largest majority and we’ve accomplished nada on the big issues.
IMHO, the bipartisan Horsesh*t should have stopped the day Obama signed the stimulus bill.
Guess this is why I’m neither a world renowned blogger, Villager idiot or million dollar politico consultant.
Sleeper
@Velvet Elvis:
Wow, so President Obama is willing to flush his presidency down the drain because afterwards, the balance of power between the three branches will be restored. Seriously. That’s your argument?
Comrade Kevin
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Anyone who repeatedly refers to Obama as “Barry” deserves to go straight into the ignored category.
johnny walker
Fuckin’ hell. I mean we had overwhelming public support for the PO, but forget about that. 51, 60, 37.. same difference. President is powerless. It’s all the end in the same as long as the Dems are powerless to pass legislation and only fools think otherwise. I mean hey, I can count to Feingold and subtract Bayh and Landrieu as well as anyone else, but anyone acting on calculations that don’t fit the Doom-Mold is clearly guilty of MAGICAL FUCKING THINKING.
“Pressuring house members to kill the Senate bill without pressuring the Senate to enter reconciliation”
That’s the sort’ve thing I can see someone writing, as long as I know that person is prone to hyperbole, bluster and hip-shot reactions. I’ve yet to see compelling evidence (read: any whatsoever) that those pushing the lower chamber are ambivalent towards the upper.
Whatevever dude. Hope the shoulder is well. ps Fuck Favre amirite?
mclaren
@Nellcote:
Here are 9 suggestions;
[1] The President could have gotten on TV and called on the American public to march on Washington to demonstrate in favor of health care.
[2] The President could have called on all Democrats to sit down in the halls of congress to shut everything down until health care passed, and he could have sent out the FBI and the capitol police to make sure the demonstraters didn’t get harrassed.
[3] The President could have gone on TV and publicly read out the names and addresses of the senators blocking health and asked the American people to phone their offices and write them letters and show up on their doorsteps until they changed their mind.
[4] The President could have threatened to veto every single piece of legislation unless a public option health care was passed by both houses of congress.
[5] The President could have held up resolutions funding the U.S. military in a “nuclear option” unless public option health care passed. No public option health care? Fine, no Pentagon funding.
[6] The President could have threatened to unliterally and immediately withdraw the U.S. army from both Afghanistan and Iraq unless the Republicans stopped filibustering health care.
[7] The President could have forced the Republicans to filibuster — actually, really stand in the well of the Senate and speak out loud for hours, days, week, months, if necessary.
[8] The President could have called on the public to mass in the visitors’ gallery of the house and senate and shout and heckle the senators who were holding up health care, then pelt the recalcitrant senators like Joe Liberman and Olympia Snowe with rotten vegetables until they pass health care.
[9] The President could have gotten medieval on the Republicans’ asses. He could’ve done to them what the Republicans did to the Democrats for the last 8 years — if the Republicans want to hold a hearing, shut down the mics, turn off the lights. The Republicans want to speak, they’re not permitted, The Republicans want to go home to tend to their districts? Sorry, you stay in Washington until a bill gets passed — a bill with the public option. The Republicans want to take time off to raise funds? Nope, not until they pass an HCR bill with the public option.
Beginning to get the idea now…?