One of the things I find most fascinating about Barack Obama is ability to do extremely difficult things while being criticized (especially from the left) for not doing them better. I didn’t think we’d see a black man elected president in my lifetime, but if you recall, a huge amount of the discussion in August and September wasn’t about the fact the fact that he was ahead of McCain in the polls but about why he wasn’t ahead by more. Likewise, I had thought there was no way anyone was going to beat Hillary, but from May on, the focus was on how he wasn’t winning more decisively — “limping towards victory” was a phrase that I recall. And then he managed to get a good-sized stimulus passed; well, the story was that it wasn’t big enough (I agree that it wasn’t big enough, personally). Now, we’re closer to some kind of health care reform than we’ve ever been before and Obama is portrayed as an ineffectual sell-out.
Is it always like this with Democratic presidents or is it peculiar to Obama? The only one I followed closely was Clinton and it was certainly like this with Clinton (not entirely unjustifiably, in my opinion).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pushing for a public option. I think I’m for Obama taking the lead on it too if that will help. But I don’t see the value in the “he’s another Carter”, “Hillary would have been better”, “he’s too distant” stuff.
MikeJ
He should say to dems, “Why do you have to say that there’s always someone who can do it better than I can?”
DougJ
“Why do you have to say that there’s always someone who can do it better than I can?”
Given the Hillary comparisons, I maybe should have used that title instead.
BR
I see that in analysis of Obama as well. It’s partly because of his non-confrontational style. He’s rarely the one out there boasting about anything. He rarely sends his team out there to boast about anything. Even when they do (say, on stimulus funding), it’s rarely made personal (“we are awesome because we passed the stimulus to turn the economy around”).
It seems (as a beltway outsider) that Washington is dominated by those who have the biggest egos and who make the biggest claims. They seem to only give credit if credit is taken, rather than on the merits.
cincyanon
First “Little Triggers” then “Miracle Man”, there must be an Elvis fan in the house. Or, an odd coincidence.
Michael
They call him “No Drama Obama” for a reason.
Frankly, I find him a bit dry, his aspirations less lofty and more oriented to a practical.
Speaking for me, that’s a good thing. I find him tranformational in that regard, aiming for competence and consensus on broad policies.
The reason why this is so freakin’ difficult is because we’ve had 30 years of ideological warfare where one side of the war decided to try and run government by claiming that government endeavors are failures.
freelancer
@DougJ:
Welcome to the Circular Firing Squad. Democrats each have their own pet project they want the rest of the tent to prioritize. When actions of half-measures slowly get us in the right direction, the whole party locates their inner concern-troll.
It’s like herding cats, and that’s exactly where we’re headed in this country.
Keith
I have little sympathy is because Bush was able to ram whatever he wanted through Congress with a smaller majority. If Obama can’t pass at least one big issue through without bending over first, then I’m left with buyer’s remorse at not getting HRC.
MikeJ
When the ex first daughter wedding rumors restart you can use, “I don’t want to go to Chelsea.”
liberal
But if there’s no public option, it is a sellout.
Similarly, he continued the Bush giveaway to the banks, appointed Geithner to head Treasury, is doubling down in Afghanistan.
Doesn’t make him worse than Bush, but that’s a pretty low standard.
Whispers
Carter gets a bad rap. The economic problems he faced were not of his creation, and would have doomed any President who faced them.
LiberalTarian
I always feel better when I see him speak. I admit a big part of the reason is that I want him to punish the GOP, and he isn’t willing to. I’m sure he has good reasons, but one thing the hero is supposed to do is give the bad guy what’s coming to him.
Yeah, I know. Life isn’t a movie, and the good guys have lots of little victories all the time. The Beck’s of this world really don’t win that often, and who knows what it takes to satisfy a progressive crowd that’s found its appetite for red meat.
Sigh.
MikeJ
Because it worked so well for her last time.
Ambergris
The progressive blogosphere might be a little overwhelmed by the progress they have made. The public option would have been out of the discussion before 2006. Howard Dean’s plan of 2004 didn’t have one, Tom Daschle never had a public option in mind. Bill Clinton’s plan didn’t have one. Even universal single-payer doesn’t put you on the third rail anymore. And as Michael says (nr. 4) we’ve just had 30 years of ideological warfare behind us. In a few years, a strong public option might be conventional wisdom. The progressives want it right now, of course, and we’re really almost there.
Leelee for Obama
The meritocracy meme is a bait-and-switch perpetrated by the aristos on the serfs. Most of them don’t merit the positions they have, and they find Obama’s and Bill Clinton’s rise to the top as flagrant upptiness of men who should bow to their historical betters. It’s not all race, it’s class, too. Most of the born poor Repubs who have made it had long since been selling themselves as born-in-a-log-cabin types. Lincoln must have been producing enough electricity by spinning in his grave to power Springfield.
Leelee for Obama
@freelancer: I saw what you did there.
General Winfield Stuck
I don’t remember it being quite this way with Clinton in the 90’s , of course we didn’t have much internet or blogs and the digital age of communication was just getting going.
We also didn’t have such bitter intra party fights during a primary either. Those are factors, but I believe the bulk of it is the residual gloves off mentality from Bush/Cheney. The bully way they did shit, too many dems and media are primed for it and Obama not doing bidness the same way comes across as not bold, macho, or resolute enough to get shit done.
It’s kind of nut,s because no other presnit has assumed such powers as Bush, though in some ways FDR did, but still not to the bushie level. And also the GOP congress and rank and file were all in too. With FDR, he got pushback from his own party when he needed to be reigned in some.
The point is, Obama is just acting like a presnit should under our system of govement, with restrained powers, in a 3 part system. And I for one, am so grateful, even though I want dem bills to get passed.
low-tech cyclist
I can’t speak for the left in general, but he does seem to be captive to the Dem tendency to negotiate with oneself – that is, to give away too much before the actual horse-trading gets underway.
One reason Obama didn’t get a bigger stimulus (or a more effective one, less dependent on tax cuts) is that he never pushed for a bigger, more effective bill in the first place. He wound up getting roughly what he asked for, but I sure wish he’d asked for a much larger stimulus bill upfront. You can always let Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe extract concessions in order to pass your bill.
Same thing with health care. Too much vacillation has already entered into his (and his spokespersons’) statements about the public option. If he doesn’t look serious about fighting for it, then Ben Nelson will assume he can insist on its absence, and then go on to fight for lower subsidies for the working poor who are required to buy insurance.
We’ve been talking about this stuff for awhile; this isn’t a new thing.
drew42
Comparisons to Clinton, Carter, etc. are unnecessary. But I’m all for complaining loudly, non-stop, that he’s not doing enough, even if what he’s accomplished to date has been impressive.
It’s the only way we have a chance of getting what we need. Isn’t this democracy in action?
After all, the other side is complaining loudly, non-stop, that he’s doing too much.
Shawn in ShowMe
Self-defeatism has the the Democratic motto ever since the Reagan Revolution. Whoever we vote into office must be an ineffective sell-out, by definition. If Hillary would have won, hardcore Obama supporters would have pointed out all the ways she was just like Bush, single payer advocates would be whining about broken promises, etc.
Leelee for Obama
Sloth
This meme really has to die.
Healthcare reform is about access, affordability and reliability.
Insuring people not currently insured, driving down prices, and making sure that you can count on it being there. All failures in our current system.
If a healthcare reform proposal hits those three points, it’s healthcare reform, and it’s not a sellout.
And, BTW, a public option can fail on *all three* of them. It’s not some kind of magic bullet.
How healthcare reform gets done is completely irrelevant. That it gets done effectively is all that matters.
liberal
@Ambergris:
A plan with an individual mandate and no public option is (a) bad policy, (b) terrible politics.
General Winfield Stuck
And this nonsense is exactly what I was talking about.
chiggins
…a huge amount of the discussion in August and September wasn’t about the fact the fact that he was ahead of McCain in the polls but about why he wasn’t ahead by more
Um, I had this discussion with lots of people, but it wasn’t about why Obama wasn’t better at it, it was amazement and horror that America could watch the Couric/Palin interviews and still not go 80/20 Obama.
It’s like you’re saying, “I find it interesting that people talked about how Obama failed to beat Alan Keyes by a larger percentage.” That wasn’t the conversation at all. The conversation was, “What in the fuck is going on in Illinois that Alan Keyes is getting double-digit support?”
Matt
Sully refers to his political style as a rope-a-dope and I agree. By being practical and always thinking 3 moves ahead he will get more big things done than anyone in a generation. (Well, good big things – Bush did big things but they were all disasters). Slow and steady wins the race if you really want to make changes.
I think that he’s had this all gamed out. I don’t think leaving the August recess to the crazies was an accident. They’ve used up their “normal” crazy stuff. How far deeper into the lunatic fringe will they have to go to even move the needle now?
El Cid
Hey, if you don’t have much to say, it’s always a good time to bitch and moan about ‘the left’.
Funkhauser
I laugh at the “almost makes me wish for HRC” lines.
HRC had all the leg-up she needed, and she went out and hired bums like Mark Penn because they were loyal. That campaign was a little short of a trainwreck. She lost.
What makes you think she could run the White House better than Obama, given the records we have of the way their campaigns were run? (And let’s not even get to their respective Senate records, and Hillary’s experience with That Vote.)
We have no evidence to suggest that Hillary would have been in a better position at this point.
And finally, stuff Max Baucus.
liberal
@Sloth:
A healthcare reform plan with an individual mandate and no public option is a gigantic clusterfuck.
slag
@Keith:
Because she has proven that she stands up for her principles? Like on her Iraq vote?
liberal
@General Winfield Stuck:
(yawn) And who’s asking you?
gwangung
This.
Stamp it on top of your pointy little heads and remember it.
Cauze, like it or not, that’s what the right wing was doing in 2000-06. Democracy is ACTIVE engagement. So we need to be active. And we need to be engaged. Sitting on our asses and kicking back is not an option.
Davebo
His temperament is what made me support him over Hillary. As we (or at least I) saw during the primaries, and even as SOC, Hillary could loose her temper when frustrated.
I guess what I’m saying is that we always knew that getting meaningful healthcare reform passed was going to be difficult despite congressional majorities.
I don’t believe Hillary would have stood a chance.
liberal
@Funkhauser:
Agreed. One can critique Obama’s actions without bringing HRC into it.
Mike P
@Keith: For better or for worse, the current GOP is much, much better than the current Democratic Party at holding it’s members together (both in Congress and at the grassroots level). Yes, Nancy Pelosi can get things through the house (with great difficulty), but nobody’s afraid of Harry Reid. What are the ramifications of bucking Reid? There aren’t any. That’s why we have Nelson not giving a shit (more or less) and doing what he wants.
On the other hand, Tom DeLay, dick he may have been, enforced shit. You got in line or you got your walking papers. This sounds awful to say, but Democrats are far more willing to tolerate internal dissent even if it keeps things from passing because they actually believe in the merits of debate. I don’t think the modern right has the same hangup. Democrats want to reach a consensus because they think it legitimizes whatever it is they’re working toward; Republicans just want to win. Full stop.
Think about the fact that you have Obama getting hit by folks like Atrois and Jane Hamasher on the left and then he has the Blue Dogs on the right in his own party. There are competing interest at play and everyone’s having their say (not that everything that’s being said gets equal weight).
Look at the right…they basically cast out David Frum for saying non-crazy things, or, in other words, for saying things that didn’t jibe with the party line.
I think we’ve also gotten caught up in the notion that if a plan, like health care, doesn’t have our specific issue in it, it’s a failure. I would go pretty far to say that if Obama signs a bill without a public option but that makes sure nobody can get dropped from their provider for losing a job, that makes sure you can get insurance even if you have a pre-existing condition, and that does cut down the number of Americans uninsured, it will be viewed as a success. We all want something more than what’s being offered (most of us liberals/Democrats would have liked single payer), but of course, politics is the art of the possible, not the art of fuck off if you don’t do things my way (that is, unless you’re a Republican ;-)
General Winfield Stuck
Pointing out nonsense does not require a question in these parts.
valdivia
@General Winfield Stuck:
this exactly. As I wrote to a friend the other day apparently the left wants its own Imperial Presidency. Obama will not do it so people get upset.
Remember back in Feb when we were told unless Obama nationalized all the banks we were all going to die. I guess that did not happen after all and people seem to just love to complain and get upset about *speculation*–he will, he won’t he is a sellout, etc.
At the end of the year when we have both health care and climate change bills are the people tearing their hair out accept they were wrong? I am not going to hold my breath. But they should.
Davebo
Oops, SOS, not SOC.
Brachiator
Obama seems to be getting extra heat. The irony is that while the GOP has no ideas at all, the ideas coming from the Democratic Congress are at best half-baked, and yet Obama is being held totally to account.
I recall that after Obama had won the primary, Pelosi and Reid sent out all kinds of signals that they expected Obama to play along with the Democrats in Congress, including capitulations that the Congress had made to the GOP.
Now he is being faulted for not providing steady leadership.
I’m beginning to think that Obama should not only abandon the fig leaf of bipartisanship, but also the idea that the Congress is good for anything other than rubber-stamping policies that come out of the White House.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I think some of the netroots impatience with Obama may be due to a lack of confidence that the current era of Dems controlling Congress and the WH is going to be anything other than a very short window of opportunity, and once it is closed, then whatever we got in that span of time, that’s all we are going to get, for at least another 30 years.
Obama doesn’t seem to act as if he is in much of a hurry the way you would expect him to if he thought that way. My guess is that he looks at the last big burst of progressive legislation circa 1964-1965, looks at the Nixonland era that followed it and only came to a close circa 2006-2008, and sees a connection between the two. So instead he is going to be the doctor who slips the needle into the patient real smooth and slow like, rather than just jabbing it in fast and hard the way that LBJ did, and hopefully we won’t get the sort of backlash that crippled the Dems from 1966 on, for the next 40 years.
Of course if he is thinking along those lines, then he’d better be paying attention to the Afghanistan = Vietnam analogies too.
slag
If someone can explain to me how health insurance reform that includes a mandate but not a public option isn’t just a new form of insurance company subsidy, I’ll be happy to hear it.
jl
As I have commented before, if he is using the rope-a-dope strategy on the wingnuts and the cynical GOP and Blue Dogs, then he could still come out looking quasi 3-D chess master.
They have given themselves enough rope all summer, and majority for public option has not budged.
For that to be true, it would require a speech tomorrow that mows down the lies and argues for a clear plan in simple and persuasive terms, rallying his supporters, and unleasing the Bidenator and similar agressive advocates, who are forceful, well-informed, sufficiently quick-witted,and self-confident enough to shut down liars and fools. And Obama will tell people to go shove it after all the BidenGaffes.
But if Obama is running a scam, well, not much hope for constructive change this round. Will need to elect some better people in midterms.
Andrew
I do think he’s been too disconnected, but he’s not another Carter and Hillary would not have been better. I think he needs to speak more forcefully in favor of a public option. It’s sound policy and offers a greater reward politically than passing a shitty bill.
Davis X. Machina
Is it always like this with Democratic presidents or is it peculiar to Obama?
In our hearts we’re still madly for Adlai. A sizeable moiety of Democrats don’t like politics, or politicians. They’ve just found out that Obama’s a politician. The lukewarm support for Kerry was a function of him being much more obviously a politician.
The focus on the presidency to the exclusion of Congress is partly explained thereby. There’s an overwhelming desire on the part of many modern Democrats to make Congress — or the part of it not composed of former Cleveland mayors — just go away. It’s too full of politicians. And politics.
This all puts a premium on electing iconic figures like Obama, a paladin who can finally deliver the dream of politics-without-politicians. Carter worked this role to perfection. The Wes Clark boom falls into this context.
The frustration of getting this close to the achievement of a dream, of finally getting immaculately conceived politics, and having it slip away, is always greater than never getting close to it at all.
The Democratic party, the web-present, activist parts of it anyways, would not have nominated the FDR of 1931 for the top of the ticket. Party hack. Been in politics forever. Process guy. Deal-maker. Slippery.
BillCinSD
But a program without a public option/single payer is pretty much assured to fail the second and third, which is why it is the line in the sand issue
Zifnab
Well, you’ve got the “Single Payer or Die!” crowd, that seems shocked to discover the existence of the conservative Democrat in it’s House and Senate majorities.
And you’ve got the guys who have been burned oh so many times before that simply watching the sausage makers in Congress at work causes them pain.
But I think we’re seeing a lot more of them in ’08 than we did in ’92 because we have watched the Republicans really step up their dirty tricks over the last 16 years. After stolen elections and unitary executives and constant race/class/liberal baiting, the guys on the left don’t want to see conciliatory reform, they want to see busted heads. Clinton’s triangulation was welcomed after Reagen/Bush in a way that just doesn’t exist now that you’ve got netroots and hard left progressives who feel they have a real stake in the party again. People want to see Bush/Cheney in jail not just beaten in the polls. They want to see Iraq AND Afghanistan done with once and for all. They want the kind of strong arm politics they got to see Republicans receive.
Shawn in ShowMe
And here’s another detail that’s drastically different from 1964. Harry Reid doesn’t have 1/10th the credibility of Hubert Humphrey.
geg6
To be honest, Doug, I don’t know. Understand that although I am over 50, I’ve never really been old enough to know what it is like to have a strong Democratic president. Yes, I remember JFK and LBJ, but I turned 6 years old during the assassination and funeral and was only 10 in 1968. My political awakening (if you can call it that as I’d been politically aware as a child) came during Watergate. And then came Carter and then Clinton. But neither Carter or Clinton were what I’d call “strong” progressives. Carter started the catering to the mushy middle and Clinton made it an art form. So you’d have to ask someone who remembers FDR and Truman to answer this question because they would have seen 3 or 4 REAL, PROGRESSIVE Democrats holding the office.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Will Rogers wasn’t joking. I think it has to do with a vague (and sometimes not-so-vague) distrust of authority that goes along with a little-l liberal mindset. We never really trust our own guys to do the right thing, so we’re constantly leaning on them.
cleek
personally, i don’t think he’s ineffectual or a sell-out. but i do think he’s:
a) well to the center of where the majority of the Dem base wishes he was
b) a natural compromiser.
c) not terribly interested in the day-to-day screeching of pundits and armchair politicos.
so while we’re over here freaking out, he’s trying to get something done. we’ll probably hate the end result because it wasn’t lefty enough and we’ll hate how he got there because he didn’t play it the way we wanted him to.
i only hope that once our blood pressure comes back down, and the dust settles in Congress, that what we got was worth it.
Sloth
Bullshit, to put it politely. And exactly the kind of pie-in-the-sky, I-want-my-pony-NOW!, impractical bullshit that we do not need.
Any healthcare plan that meets access, affordability and reliability is reform, and is a HUGE step forward.
If that is handled by a public option, insurance companies, or by teleporting in martians to handle the paperwork – it just doesn’t matter.
Access, affordability and reliability. That’s it.
Delia
@Leelee for Obama:
France 1789. And to be fair, in both cases the revolutions started out as liberal constitutional affairs to remedy extreme circumstances. In France it was sort of one damn thing after another as the country lurched from crisis to crisis. In Russia, there was the February Revolution. Then the German High Command, seeking a way to take out one of their enemies in the Great War, sent Lenin and his pals from Switzerland to St. Petersburg in a sealed train. And that, coupled with one damn thing after another led to the October Revolution, which is the Bolshevik one.
Mike P
@Shawn in ShowMe: Exactly. Here’s a thought experiment…raise your hand if you could envision Harry Reid convincingly doing what you see in this linked picture.
Sloth
See Switzerland, the Netherlands or Germany. Is it a “subsidy”? Depends on how we limit their ability to derive profit from the affair.
Doesn’t matter to me, and I *hate* the health insurance companies.
Lettuce
“He’s another Carter.”
Yeah, well, I’ve got a real close friend who’s a Social Security judge, and he’d agree with you.
I don’t know why that is (although I think I know in my friends case), if I’d’ve been Carter I’d’ve thought I’d done more than I could be expected to do… Especially versus my allies. But what the heck.
But, hey, don’t ya l know that I think that walking on water won’t make him a miracle man.
slag
@Sloth: What you don’t seem to understand is that, based on what we’ve seen of all the plans out there, the public option appears to be the best way to achieve access, affordability, and reliability. And some of us think you’re being pie-in-the-sky impractical by assuming you can achieve those things without a public option.
Comprendez?
El Cid
Just for reference sake, there still are 4 (basic) possible outcomes to the current health care / insurance reform initiative:
(1) No reform is passed.
(2) Reform is passed, and its effects are not strongly noticeable by the vast majority of Americans.
(3) Reform is passed, and its effects are both noticeable and helpful to and/or approved of by the vast majority of Americans.
(4) Reform is passed, and its effects are both noticeable and is harmful to and / or disapproved of by the vast majority of Americans.
I suppose, being a member of the whiny fringe left, I’m still really fearful that there is an imminent yet not yet overwhelming possibility of (4) given the Baucus, um, ‘plan’, and my other main concern is to get Obama and the Democrats to choose (3) over (2) and both (3) and (2) over (1), but not (1) over (4).
That’s really it. There’s not really any complicated ‘left’ dynamic or inability to understand Obama’s position or any other such silly argument.
My preferences also coincide with what I see as the political fortunes of the Democrats, which are the only party we have that can possibly (though certainly not inevitably) implement decent programs as opposed to Republican nation-killing programs.
If Democrats pass ‘reform’ (4) that make the vast majority worse off or which they hate, they will suffer awful electoral consequences, no matter how many Democratic spokespeople tell them ‘well we had to do something rather than nothing,’ or how many insurance companies say that the best compromise was reached, or how many noted pundits say that Democrats did The Right and Serious Thing.
If Democrats pass nothing (1) then there could also be electoral consequences, but far less negative than being hated, but it would demoralize much of their most eager supporters. And I really don’t know what to say about (2), except maybe I guess Republicans could do their standard crazy dance and just make shit up.
If Democrats do (3), then they get positive electoral benefits and the country is run better and the people I know have better lives.
So far as I’ve seen, there don’t seem to be any really decent suggestions as far as how to keep both generalized costs (i.e., societal expenditure on health care, which if inefficient is a tremendous waste of both individual and public resources) as well as premiums and procedure expenditures down more effectively than a public choice health insurance plan.
On the other hand, industry lobbyists see many of the so-called ‘reforms’ as an industry-favoring ‘bonanza’ of basically deregulation in the name of regulation — i.e., the possibility of limiting insurance company cost outlays to 65% of your medical costs.
I could be wrong in the particulars, but I’d be convinced by policy arguments, not by bullshit arguments based on metaphors like ‘going too far’ or ‘perfect the enemy of the good’ or ‘compromise’ or other irrelevant bullshit. Whatever the mix of shit implemented, if it improves the lives of the vast majority (including known and / or likely future general effects), I can deal with it. If it’s an industry bill which pisses off huge sectors of the public and costs them more, then lose it.
So, that’s my perspective from the crazy ultra extra fringe left.
EnderWiggin
Great post. I have recently decided to calm down and assume he’s got this.
OT: DougJ I assume you can find a use for this.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Little_Rock_integration_protest.jpg
Luthe
I think the reason we’re all complaining about Obama is not that he isn’t getting enough done, but that he’s not being loud enough in his push-back against the wingnuts. I know the MSM has a love affair with the right, but that’s no excuse for not trying to get WH people on the air rebutting the Republican talking points. If the media won’t do its job, the WH should do it for them by pointing out things like the Republican’s lack of a health care bill.
We Dems may be a fractured mess, but we should at least have enough backbone to tell the Republicans to STFU.
Brachiator
By the way,
We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Swiss-topple-US-as-most-rb-3920054269.html?x=0&.v=2
On the other hand, Sotomayor has taken her seat on the Supreme Court:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090908/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_sotomayor
I liked this little touch:
I am so happy that President Obama got to choose a Court pick, and not John McCain. For me, this puts a lot of the anti-Obama noise into a clear perspective.
Sloth
Yes, totally. Nonetheless, it demonstrably can be done.
And, demonstrably, a public option can be an utter disaster.
My point is that saying it’s a failure if there is no public option is absolutey ridiculous. Show me a plan, then let’s talk about failure. Let’s not use some sort of purity test to determine whether something is good or bad.
Had enough of those with Bush and that didn’t work so well, did it?
DonkeyKong
To be short and pithy, me thinks progressives have embraced the “Friedman Unit” when it comes to Obama a little to tightly.
We’ve got 8 years to turn this ship around kids, pace yourselves.
Napoleon
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Bingo, that is it exactly.
MikeJ
Harry Reid is majority leader because the majority wanted him. Senate Democrats have the leadership that they want. You’ve got 56 other people to be pissed at too.
Emma
@slag: Sloth gave you three examples of countries with good health care and no public option. Care to tell me in detail why it won’t work in the US? No snark. You said that “based on what we’ve seen out there, the public option appears to be the best way.” Me, I would kill for the kind of coverage they have in the Netherlands. So why would it be so bad?
Maus
“But I don’t see the value in the “he’s another Carter”, “Hillary would have been better”, “he’s too distant” stuff.”
I can’t think of a single liberal (progressive) who has stated “he’s another Carter”. We’re not mad at him for his great achievements, we’re mad at him for having so much intelligence/potential and being unwilling to publically take on the status quo.
Maus
I mean, it’s less his actions as a part of the executive branch than his ability to work with the legislative, Reid and Pelosi are fairly terrible.
chiggins
Is it always like this with Democratic presidents or is it peculiar to Obama? The only one I followed closely was Clinton and it was certainly like this with Clinton (not entirely unjustifiably, in my opinion).
Kinda seems like the inevitable result of 40 years of the ratchet effect.
Lotta people got told, again, to hold off on doing what they think is right, and working for what they really want, and to stand united against the really, really crazy people. And they did.
Now those folks, again, are watching the folks they united behind sell ’em out to Baucus and Grassley, while being told they’re fucking stupid for being critical of the Blue Dogs.
And, like Mike P mentioned at 34, after watching Bush and Delay tell their centrists to kiss their asses while they passed a trillion dollars in tax cuts and started whatever goddam war they damn well pleased, it’s a little galling. Ya know?
Cat
@Mike P:
This. When you have a party that is a very wide cross section of ideologies or people not afraid of pushing their own agenda’s you get a lot of internal strife.
Not to mention anyone who doesn’t follow lockstep with the republican party gets forced into the democratic party or caucusing with the democrats because of the nature of congress. This leads to the illusion of the “circular firing squad” when you really just have the fringes of the democratic caucus criticizing Obama because he’s the head of their caucus not actually their leader.
I’m not sure the democratic party would be able to govern if they adopted the republican party model of kicking out the progressives and the centrist corporatist (blue dogs) for not toeing the line. Besides, I thought that was the appeal of the democratic party was that they didn’t focus on winning as much as they focused on staying true to their ‘ideals’. Well, as much as a politician can stay true to their ideals that are in conflict with their corporate campaign contributors.
Shawn in ShowMe
You won’t see anybody who’s dug in their heels on the public option engaging this point in any substantive way. It’s the public option or nothing! Because shut up, that’s why!
General Winfield Stuck
Sigh
62across
I agree with this absolutely, I just think the action needs to be better directed. Instead of “Obama’s not doing enough” or “Obama’s the problem”, we need to actively work to drive the conversation in public. Obama has made it clear that reform will come best if it is driven by clear public desire. So write letters, call your Congresscritter and outnumber the tea baggers at public events. The loudest voices will get the attention, so make noise and Obama will have a wind behind him.
Corner Stone
@Sloth:
Ahh, but you have neglected one part of the call to Bullshit.
I believe the contention had two parts: individual mandate AND no PO.
There is simply no way possible you can argue in good faith that if we have an individual mandate with no opposing PO in the mix it’s somehow a good thing in the USofA.
Jacob Davies
I put on Obama the things that are his – the repeated trial-ballooning of no-public-option bills because they would be easier to pass, even though they wouldn’t be as good, and (I think) a partial failure to get up and sell this the way it has to be sold – with campaign-type events that keep his name, face, and message on the front page of the newspapers and the evening news.
But I lay 90% of the blame for the current state of affairs on the Blue Dogs & the Democratic Party apparatus that fails to keep them in line. The Blue Dogs are free-riding on the backs of progressive Democrats. Their power to make legislation and draw campaign donations is entirely a result of the Democratic majorities that are elected with progressive legislation in mind. Without California & New York voters that outnumber his constituents about 30:1, Baucus wouldn’t have the chairmanship that is giving him so much control. And yet he is perfectly willing to fuck us all over because it might not affect his own re-election chances. (And I’m dubious about that.)
Obama himself can’t do all that much about that except behind-the-scenes threats to withdraw campaigning support, which doesn’t cut much ice with people not up for election for another 4-6 years. What is required is for the Blue Dogs to understand that their power from their position as a member of the majority party will disappear if Democrats are defeated en masse because they pass a shitty healthcare bill. I don’t understand why this threat is not apparent to them. All they have to do is look at their powerless Republican counterparts and imagine being back in those seats if there is crappy base turnout in 2010 because of the failure to pass a health bill. You don’t have to personally lose an election to wind up back in the cheap seats.
Zifnab
@Mike P:
What? Stooping, cowering, and shrinking in fear? Absolutely!
Brick Oven Bill
Jimmy Carter could:
1. Live under water; and
2. Speak without a teleprompter.
These impressive feats explain why President Carter’s poll numbers were so much higher than President Obama’s at this point in his Presidency. Jimmy wore a very uncool sweater though. He cannot hold a candle to President Obama in this regard.
Behold DougJ’s miracle man. A good sense of situational awareness this President has.
Corner Stone
@Ambergris:
I see this time and again but I still don’t understand why people keep trotting it out there. How is this relevant to our current environment? The world’s changed a little in the last few years in case no one has noticed.
Corner Stone
@Brick Oven Bill: I agree with you BoB – you’d think a man with BO’s money would at least have found a good tailor first.
El Cid
I don’t know how to reconcile the reality that there really are real, genuine, and deadly serious policy differences which lead to vastly different consequences with the complaint that there is too much disagreement over what policies to pursue.
jwb
@Keith: And it would have been so much better with HRC in charge? No, I can pretty much guarantee that you’d just be having buyer’s remorse for BHO instead. Because no matter which Democrat was elected, it’s clear that the GOP was going to give free rein to the crazy, and among other things the crazy is excellent at gumming up the works.
Sloth
Eh? Why not? You are going to need to regulate, sure. But there’s nothing magical about the PO, and you are still going to be determing “fair” prices and “fair” access rules with a PO. Same problem.
Bob Cesca
@Keith:
Ram whatever he wanted through Congress? What — like Social Security? Immigration? A much larger tax cut than was actually passed?
Despite his suddenly “envied” message discipline, he really wasn’t a legislative juggernaut. George W. Bush tricked a shell-shocked Congress into supporting two wars and the Patriot Act. That was about it.
Whoever started up this revisionist admiration for Bush’s “success” in dealing with Congress needs a refresher course on recent history.
Brachiator
@slag:
I understand that many so-called progressives view single-payer as the holy grail. And I lean toward a public option myself. But to assert that everyone knows that a public option will automatically lead to the best health care reform is simply flat out wrong.
There are any number of countries with good universal health care systems that do not rely on a public option.
And the country with what is widely regarded as having the best health care system, France, is being hit with health care budget deficits that threaten the integrity of their system.
freelancer
@Leelee for Obama:
Someone needs to spend more time with Paul Begala
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE0mKpShJSU
El Cid
@Brachiator: And it’s entirely possible that as a manipulative strategy a bill could be presented that combines a weak and ineffective public option of some sort along with industry-favoring ‘regulations’. Or the opposite of both. Or one approach done well and the other badly, or all of it confusing and hard to determine what it will do.
No matter the name of the approach, in the end it matters whom it helps, how well it works, or conversely, whom it hurts and how badly it works.
Shawn in ShowMe
What? Stooping, cowering, and shrinking in fear? Absolutely!
I can too. But I don’t see what this has to do with Hubert Humphrey since the senator being intimidated is a 90 year-old Theodore Green. I think even BOB could have struck the fear of God in him.
Mike P
@Zifnab: I see what you did there.
geg6
@Emma:
I’d be fine with those types of health insurance. But understand that, at least in Switzerland, no health insurance company is allowed to be for profit. What do you think the chances are that the health insurance industry will go along with being turned into non-profits?
Xecky Gilchrist
@Brachiator: There are any number of countries with good universal health care systems that do not rely on a public option.
Now this has all been a very interesting discussion, and I thank you all for it. I have to admit I don’t understand the healthcare reform issues all that clearly and it’s interesting to see the different approaches that could conceivably solve our problems.
I’ve been calling my Blue Dog representative once a week to agitate (politely) for him to support a no-triggers, no co-op, no-bullshit public option because I had thought that was the only way to fix the system. Now I’m not as sure – BUT does it seem to you all that the approach I’ve taken is useful as a way of pushing his staffers’ perception of his constituency to the left? Maybe resulting in his voting for something not totally corrupt even though he’s a Blue Dog?
gwangung
Yes, indeed.
It’s a fuckin’ democracy folks, and if we aren’t being AT LEAST as noisy and as firm in public as the “anti-death squad” crazies, then THE BLAME IS ON US BECAUSE WE LET THEM MUDDY THE WATER.
If Obama ain’t going where we want him to go, then say where we do want to go.
Tonal Crow
I agree — but(1) Obama’s rhetoric has been way too abstract and impersonal — and thus unconvincing to the masses; and (2) He’s been giving away way too much to the GOP and the Blue Dogs. When it comes to getting stuff enacted, he doesn’t seem to understand the, um, power of audacity. He should have begun with Medicare for all, then — and only if necessary — negotiated back to complete reform with a true public option available on day 1. Instead, he took Medicare for all off the table immediately, and waffled on the public option.
I used to think that he was playing rope-a-dope. Now I’m not sure that he isn’t being rope-a-doped.
slag
@Emma: First of all, I didn’t say it wouldn’t work in the US. But I think it’s important that, if we do it, we call it what it is: an insurance company subsidy. When you’re mandating that people get insurance and then give them taxpayer money to give to insurance companies, you’re subsidizing those companies. From an ideological standpoint, I have some objection to that. It’s true that it’s not an insurmountable objection but it’s an objection nonetheless.
As regards the value of the public option, specifically, it appears to be the one thing put forth in all the plans out there that would have a meaningful impact on reducing healthcare costs. I don’t know how we can achieve affordability without cost reduction. It’s that simple. And while some systemic changes in the healthcare delivery mechanism are required (something I haven’t seen addressed to my satisfaction yet), we also need to reduce administrative costs long-term.
Honestly, I don’t know how the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany control their costs. But I know that just insuring everybody ain’t gonna do it. And what I’ve seen of the regulatory structure in this country has not exactly inspired confidence. Aren’t we still reeling from a near economic collapse? Call me a crazy lefty, but I want to see no more businesses that are “too big to fail”. And that includes insurance companies.
So, yes, I think that it’s pie-in-the-sky to suggest that imposing greater dependence on insurance companies will help us out here. I’m probably just naive that way.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Sloth:
Agreed, but if the House and Senate are at loggerheads and the House blinks first, it looks like we will get the 1st (Access) and perhaps the 3rd (reliability) but at the cost of getting nowhere or actually making the situation worse with regard to the 2nd (affordability). The question then becomes: (A) how and when do we fix affordability? and (B) what is the political fallout from not doing so now? And does that political fallout (i.e. the GOP takes back Congress and/or the WH) make it impossible to solve the affordability crisis? In others words, do we get something with all of the flaws of Medicare D and the Dems get stuck with no credit for trying and all the blame for doing.
gwangung
You know, I cannot see how this can possibly hurt. If it isn’t a no-trigger public, they’re gonna have to explain how their alternative works as well, and you can do the sniff test to see how well it works.
Push to the left. See what they come up with. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, give them hell.
jwb
@General Winfield Stuck: So basically, we progressives are disappointed that BHO refuses to act like GWB? Yeah, I get that vibe a lot. The funny thing is that BHO is governing almost exactly like he said he would when he ran, and it was clear to me already last summer that I was likely to feel real disappointment much of the time. Which is no reason, of course, not to push for what you think is right.
J.D. Rhoades
I’m left with buyer’s remorse at not getting HRC.
Why do you assume HRC would be getting any less resistance and getting more done towards a progressive agenda? These are the people who invented “triangulation” after all.
Zifnab
@Sloth:
Regulating the PO is easy. You call up your Secretary of HHS and say, “Why don’t we cover dysentery and stage three lymphoma?” or “Why are the deductibles so high?” The HHS director writes up a report, and if you feel you want to change the policy, you tell them to do it. Auditing the PO under open government rules is routine and consistent. Government salary caps keep down excessive compensation so you don’t even need to think about the $1 billion / year CEO. And if people in the organization act inappropriately, you fire them.
Regulating hundreds of different private insurance firms is significantly harder. You need another bureaucracy to contently audit and investigate them. If the company does well, they get all the credit and can demand deregulation. If the company does poorly, you get part of the blame for failing to regulate enough. The government can get sued. The CEOs don’t have to listen to recommendations and can pay themselves whatever they want. Any new big changes need to go through Congress. And if a company decides to act like a pack of asses, you get to sit there and take it.
Put a PO into the public square and suddenly businesses can’t just ignore your regulations or recommendations. The PO sets the standard and the clients follow the best policy. So if you find a loophole around rescission, by the time you enrage people enough to trigger a Congressional hearing, you’ve already put your client base at a massive risk.
Imagine if you found out FedEx only delivered one in three shipments on time? Why wouldn’t you switch to the USPS? Imagine if UPS doubled it’s rates and cut half it’s locations? Who would be delivering your next package?
The PO is a kind of regulation that a full-blown Insurance IRS couldn’t provide.
slag
@Brachiator:
Yes. Because one must be a “so-called” progressive to want single-payer healthcare in this country. I know many who don’t even call themselves progressive that would prefer the same thing. But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?
bedtimeforbonzo
I am a loyal Democrat, but not blindly loyal.
So forgive me if I have been hard President Obama.
I think Obama himself set the bar high for his presidency with a campaign that gave off an aura of grandeur and promoted hope.
I am thinking of the conquering-hero type tour of Europe. I am thinking of his outdoor acceptance speech in Soldier Field with the fake Roman columns. I am thinking of the “Yes, We Can” chants. I am thinking of the ballyhooed assemblage of his “team of rivals.”
What’s that expression?
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
So excuse me if I don’t cry me a river for expecting great things from my president.
JK
Doug,
Regarding your question, several things come to mind.
First, Obama has actually backtracked on a number of national security and civil liberties issues. This has been extremely well documented by Glenn Greenwald. This a legitimate reason for some Obama supporters to feel pissed off.
Second, I think many progressives and liberals are shell-shocked by the level of venom and vitriol in the attacks coming from wingnuts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin. I think some Obama supporters didn’t expect so much ferocity from the wingnuts so early in his term.
Third, I think liberals and progressives may have expected a longer honeymoon from the MSM or that at the very least the MSM would do a better job serving as honest brokers.
The MSM has obviously internalized the criticism from dummies like Bernard Goldberg and other wingnuts. The MSM is trying to overcompensate for the perception that they were cheerleaders for Obama by going after him full throttle on every bullshit allegation or minor misstep.
I bet that if you polled the White House press corps today, a significant majority would agree with Mark Halperin’s assertion:
“Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.
‘It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war,’ Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. ‘It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.’”
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=C5D8C5D4-18FE-70B2-A8220008CD2D5EA4
I think it’s very demoralizing for Obama supporters to see the MSM giving credence to every stupid charge made by wingnuts.
Fourth, I think Obama’s personality causes some unease among his supporters. There are many times when he simply comes across as Mr Spock – extremely cerebral but possessing zero passion. I think Bill Maher spoke for many Obama supporters when he said he’d like to see Obama show the same degree of resolve and tenacity as George W. Bush.
Sloth
There’s nothing wrong with profit. I know that’s a radical position to take, in some circles.
There’s no need to set “profit” limits on insurance companies. We shouldn’t care about that, really, we need to set cost limits. We say, you need to offer the following package for the following amount (this pricing exercise is exactly what you are going to do with a PO).
Any profit you make is your own problem.
And none of this evil rescission and lifetime caps crap, guys.
Probably, they won’t make money on that package – but they can make money selling “gold plated” packages, or access to hospitals with topless nurses and hot and cold running jello. Whatever works.
None of our business. That basic access point is our business.
Now maybe, just maybe, they figure a way to make money on the basic package. They get all clever like because they are motivated by PROFIT and they drive down costs and now they are making money on the basic package. Great! Now either some other insurance company does the same and undercuts them or you adjust your basic package prices. Either way. But you want them motivated to drop those costs and profit is the way to do it.
Right now, their profit motive is skewed. It is way easier to not insure sick people, not insure the aged, etc – so they just do that rather than work to drive costs down. So you have an access problem. And a reliability problem.
But in any scenario, you are going to subsidize the low income people. That’s just the way it is – and this is they key part of the debate.
Who gets the subsidy is irrelevant. The final cost and access numbers are all the matters (and reliability.)
The last point in favor of the PO is the ability to negotiate lower prices by sheer dint of size. We can easily handle that by allowing them group negotiation privileges, or by negotitating for medicare/medicaid and passing that pricing along. But here again, you have to wonder if these guys with a profit motive (properly aligned, mind) won’t be able to do a better job. Entirely possible.
Da Bomb
@Maus: I can’t think of any notable names, but I have seen it amongst liberals who comment on other liberal blogs. President Obama has been called spinesless and similar to Carter, Hoover, and a scam artist. So I have to disagree with you there. Also I don’t have a problem with people constructively criticising the president, but I have a problem with the uinconstructive, tantrum throwing criticisms. It’s non-productive.
@freelancer: @Sloth: @Brachiator: @valdivia: As always I agree with you guys. And Emma too.
hal
Someone needs to set up a website called “What Obama Needs to do is…”
There will be 8 million different comments from 8 million separate posters, all offering different, “obvious” solutions to all the worlds problems!
als
Exactly my thoughts. But here’s the problem–I think a lot of people WERE drinking the Kool-Aid–and it was some Krazy Kool-Aid of their own making. Obama promised change, and hope, sure. But he never said he was anything other than a smart, bipartisan pragmatist. Which is, incidentally, why I voted for him. I want somebody who can get stuff done, even if it’s not the perfect, but merely, improved stuff.
Midnight Marauder
@Sloth:
It sounds like you’re putting a lot of faith in these fuckers to do the right thing in this scenario. Call me crazy, but that’s the last thing I want to bank on.
Elie
Keith:
Man, with all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about.
The fact that the economy is still half way afloat and that we are not in a full out depression is a huge accomplishment. That Obama did not do it with your ideologically approved personnel strapped into the chairs matters little to most of us still fairly ok (I totally acknowledge that we have a ways to go on the economy employment, etc so don’t go there)’
Also, last I looked the Clintons were not successful in passing health care reform. Instead, they gave us Welfare Reform, putting the “welfare queens” back to work, NAFTA and the repeal of financial oversight (Glass-Steagal). Yeah, we want THAT again —( I do think that overall Clinton did well, but if we are to parse even many of our most successful Presidents, we get into trouble on the little details of their tenure.
Its been 9 months after a huge financial crisis and the collapse of the markets. We are pulling out of Iraq, (though Afghanistan IS a problem, we have better relations internationally, and to you its FAIL..
amazing
General Winfield Stuck
@jwb:
Another straw man. There is a difference in pushing for what you think is right and expecting BHO to ramrod things thru as though he were King. From your comment, which seems very reasonable and fair, I was not speaking to you.
I have my doubts about some of O’s tactics, but who the fuck am I to get overly judgmental about the style of a black dude who got himself elected president in this country.
And thank for citing the obvious that he has been mostly true to what he promised on the big issues thus far. There are things not done yet he promised, and for those affected they have every right to complain loudly and push for action. What I object to is people expecting him to just order by dictate the other branches of govment to do it or else, or claims of failure for stuff he didn’t promise,
There is only one way to recover from a disaster of Imperial Presnitzy, as valdivia says. And that is not to have another.
And one last thing. Although HCR is still pending, I would say for a first 8 months Obama has done pretty damn good at getting shit passed. Pretty damn good for skinny black dude.
jaquestraw
We already have universal healthcare you just have to wait until 65 to get it.Why would you want to screw that up more now the boomers are there.The focus should be on them and getting them through the next 20 30 years.Most of us will be dead in 20 30 years anyway.
hal
Ram whatever he wanted through Congress? What—like Social Security? Immigration? A much larger tax cut than was actually passed?
Despite his suddenly “envied” message discipline, he really wasn’t a legislative juggernaut. George W. Bush tricked a shell-shocked Congress into supporting two wars and the Patriot Act. That was about it.
Whoever started up this revisionist admiration for Bush’s “success” in dealing with Congress needs a refresher course on recent history.
I’ve noticed this narrative out there a lot now. Bush got everything he wanted, and the Dems and the rest of America just rolled over and played dead. Except that he didn’t achieve much of anything not related to 9/11 or the Iraq war. Bush is regarded as a failure as a President, and the Dems were able to ride this failure to much success in 2006-2008. But now because Obama cannot command the Dems to do exactly as he wanted, he is a failure.
MikeJ
WTF? I really don’t understand. Is somebody supposed to run on a platform other than hope? And “aura of grandeur”? Huh?
I’m all for criticizing Obama from the left. It’s the only way to move the Overton window. I just thought we could do better than authentic frontier gibberish.
RareSanity
I like to consider myself a level headed person. As such, I think that my “disappointment” with Obama not showing “strong” leadership is more a function of my disdain for Reid and Pelosi and a complete lack of confidence in their abilities to lead.
I am, therefore, “disappointed” that Obama is not stepping into that leadership vacuum. I’m not disappointed in the man himself, he never presented himself as a strong arm leader.
I don’t know if there is some larger plan that I can’t see the forest for trees so to speak. All I’m saying is that if the only “hope” for anything substantive to happen over the next months and years depends on Reid and Pelosi, than that is not much hope at all.
Reid and Pelosi want to be weak. They don’t want to be accountable if something goes wrong. That’s what has happened with every piece of legislation during the Bush years, and it’s happening now. They want someone else to take the heat if whatever it is blows up. How else do you explain them agreeing to “authorize the President to use force in Iraq” instead of, “we, the Congress of the United States of America, issue a declaration that the United States is in a state of war with the government of Iraq”?
I think this may be where a lot of of the criticism comes from even if the people criticizing may not be aware of it.
General Winfield Stuck
And one more thing
I like my democracy messy. So as to know it’s working right.
slag
@Shawn in ShowMe:
You could say that. Or you could read the posts that have addressed that point in a somewhat substantive way.
I, for one, don’t know much about the business regulatory structures of the Netherlands, Germany, or Switzerland, but if I had to guess, I would say they’re much stronger than they are here. And that’s the big issue, isn’t it? Confidence in the US regulatory system. I guess some of us are feeling a little free-market shy at the moment. Shocking, I know.
Elie
JK —
I think that Obama is tenacious and remarkably resilitent given the nature of the opposition he faces not only from the MSM and the crazy right, but his own party…
It takes no special skill to be tenacious. Mentally ill folks are pretty tenacious in their delusions, and that is what characterized Bush.
True tenacity is knowing what needs to be done and doing it the right way, not the way that people who THINK they know what to do would want it.
Many on the left are hung up on the steps to the end point, to the appearance of success rather than either understanding the reality or trying to learn something.
We have a current structure and resources within that structure that will have to be used in any new healthcare solution. Many folks can’t figure out that you can’t trash what you are later going to have to use. Oh, but that is so dry and practical…We want to witness a revolution from the comfort of our living room couches! Drama! Light! Action! Competence is so boring! Where is the dude with the Che Guevarra beret? So sexy!
Brachiator
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I think it very appropriate to pressure your Blue Dog representative to support a public option, especially since some Blue Dogs want to err on the side of doing nothing, or supporting the Republicans (which is the same thing as doing nothing).
At minimum the goals are accessibility, portability, cost control, quality, universal coverage. Any member of Congress who argues for the status quo is an obstacle to any meaningful reform.
By the by, Wikipedia has a couple of good articles which summarize the major issues concerning single-payer systems and universal health care in general:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_health_care
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
Included are good, brief, summaries of how various industrialized nations handle health care.
Sloth
None whatsoever.
And yet, we are depending on that, with H.R. 3200 or any other PO plan that stops short of medicare for all. Total and complete free choice for all citizens to choose a public option. Effectively, nationalizing health insurance.
And that looks like a political non-starter. I’d love to see it. But I doubt we will. Short of that, you’re regulating the insurance industry. No way around it.
Does that mean it can’t work? Nope, it can. It has elsewhere.
Does a public option make something automatically work? Nope, it can fail. It has elsewhere. A public option can easily become the high risk only pool, acutally *enhancing* insurance company profits by letting them dish off the expensive patients to the PO. Is that better?
shoutingattherain
This is the first Democratic pres to be elected and serve in the Age of the Blogosphere. The complaints about “not doing enough” have always been there. The difference is now little guys like myself (and millions of others)have a place to publish them. Same bitching, much larger soapbox, much more noticable.
gizmo
One of the big challenges Obama faces is that from 2000-2008 we lived through 8 years of the most awful governance imaginable. So there is an enormous amount of pent-up energy for real, dramatic change. But from what I’ve seen so far we’re getting chickenshit incrementalism designed to please everyone. I hope that at some point in his term Obama wakes up and realizes that we didn’t elect him to be a caretaker President– he is expected to be a transformational ass-kicker.
gwangung
It’s probably the EASIEST way to push for what we want and HARDER for Congress critters to wimp out and hide corporate handouts in the details.
Bill H
Health care reform? What planet are you living on? What health care reform? Even Obama isn’t calling it that any more. He is calling it “health insurance reform” because that is what it is. He campaigned on health care reform, and then he tried to pass of health insurance reform as if it were health care reform, but even he had to back off and admit that the best we can do is change health insurance, and we may not even be able to do that very effectively.
slag
@Sloth:
No one’s pushing pushing the PO instead of regulation. Obama, himself, has called regulation + PO “a belt and suspenders approach”. Some of us think that this problem is actually going to require both. And yes, Obama’s a smart dude who’s not nearly as naive as people make him out to be, but I still have one question…How’s that post-collapse regulatory reform coming along?
Elie
gizmo:
So he is a caretaker President? Trying to pass healthcare reform in THIS corporatist country is what a caretaker President does? Wow! This has been tried by no fewer that 5 previous Presidents going back to Truman without success. But shoo-wee its just caretaker! And in the middle of a recession/depression no less! Piece of cake for a caretaker….
Pushing the Congress to take its rightful role in leadership is pretty weak, eh? Trying to reassert the rightful role and balance of power between the Executive and Legislative Branches — well hell, that is just caretaking all the way…how boring, how EASY!
you.are.clueless. But very interesting.
General Winfield Stuck
@Elie:
Thank you!
Midnight Marauder
@Sloth:
Total and complete free choice for all citizens to choose a public option. Effectively, nationalizing health insurance.
And that looks like a political non-starter.
Surely, you aren’t mistaking the political cowardice and insanity of DC for actual popularity and favorability with the country, right? Because the public option has been shown continuously to be widely support by the public in poll after poll after poll.
Does a public option make something automatically work? Nope, it can fail. It has elsewhere. A public option can easily become the high risk only pool, acutally enhancing insurance company profits by letting them dish off the expensive patients to the PO. Is that better?
Slag nailed it in the response at 120. All those things could totally happen. However, that’s why people advocating the public option continue to insist that it needs to be “robust” in order to be effective. Also…
Short of that, you’re regulating the insurance industry. No way around it.
That shit needs to happen no matter what is in the final bill.
bedtimeforbonzo
MikeJ: I would only repeat that if the expectations are high for his presidency, it is Obama himself that caused such high expectations.
Chad N Freude
@DonkeyKong: Actually, we don’t have 8 more years. Barring a game changer like 9/11 or securitization of grade schoolers’ allowances, an administration has limited time to establish the way it is seen by the electorate. If Obama does not appear to be determined and persuasive by his first anniversary (I shudder at the thought of the media first-year retrospectives), he will have set a perception that will be difficult to impossible to change. Once seen as a wuss, he becomes a wuss forever. At best, he has until the 2012 campaign season to turn himself into an in-front-of-the-scenes leader
Sloth
OK, so we will regulate them either way. Good.
So, if I can buy the package for $X from either the government or private industry and they cover the same shit at the same levels (all regulated, mind.)
What does the PO bring to the table?
Bobby Thomson
Sloth, you’re assuming a can opener. Seriously, you think a Congress that thinks allowing a government insurance company to compete with private insurers is SOCIALISM! will suddenly pass European-style regulation? No chance in hell. “It’s been done elsewhere.” Yeah, so has the separation of church and state, complete apathy about the sex lives of politicians, and respect for the scientific method. I hate to break it to you, this is Amurka, where speaking in complete sentences marks you as a pretentious fop putting on airs and brownshirts get more media attention than cabinet secretaries.
jaquestraw
I am convinced Obama is just a tool for Soros.Everything he did so far is exactly what Soros Advised. Huge stimulus,Global stimulus remember Obama got laughed out of Europe for advocating that one. Cap and trade and I think health care reform.I don’t want to get in an argument over the two being connected but I am curious on what you all think of Soros.Would you trust him ,respect or even admire him.
Chad N Freude
@Bill H: Health care and health insurance have become conflated in the public arena [shudders at cliche]. The quality of care in the US is high, insurance companies have made quality care difficult or impossible for many people, and the result is a screaming match about the failure to see the difference.
El Cid
FWIW, the Krug-Man:
*************************************************
The Krug-Man says:
Why the public option matters
Paul Krugman | Conscience of a Liberal | New York Times | September 8, 2009, 4:56 pm
Most arguments against the public option are based either on deliberate misrepresentation of what that option would mean, or on remarkably thorough misunderstanding of the concept, which persists to a frustrating degree: I was really surprised to see Joe Klein worrying about the creation of a system in which doctors work directly for the government, British-style, when that has nothing whatsoever to do with the public option as proposed. (Forty years of Medicare haven’t turned the US into that kind of system — why would having a public plan change that?)
But what is one to make of the practical, political argument from the likes of Ezra Klein, who argue that any public plan actually included in legislation probably wouldn’t make that much difference, and that reform is worth having even without such a plan?
There are three reasons to be suspicious of that argument.
The first is that I suspect that Ezra and others understate the extent to which even a public plan with limited bargaining power will help hold down overall costs. Private insurers do pay providers more than Medicare does — but that’s only part of the reason Medicare has lower costs. There’s also the huge overhead of the private insurers, much of which involves marketing and attempts to cherry-pick clients — and even with community rating, some of that will still go on. A public plan would probably be able to attract clients with much less of that.
Second, a public plan would probably provide the only real competition in many markets.
Third — and this is where I am getting a very bad feeling about the idea of throwing in the towel on the public option — is the politics. Remember, to make reform work we have to have an individual mandate. And everything I see says that there will be a major backlash against the idea of forcing people to buy insurance from the existing companies. That backlash was part of what got Obama the nomination! Having the public option offers a defense against that backlash.
What worries me is not so much that the backlash would stop reform from passing, as that it would store up trouble for the not-too-distant future. Imagine that reform passes, but that premiums shoot up (or even keep rising at the rates of the past decade.) Then you could all too easily have many people blaming Obama et al for forcing them into this increasingly unaffordable system. A trigger might fix this — but the funny thing about such triggers is that they almost never get pulled.
Let me add a sort of larger point: aside from the essentially circular political arguments — centrist Democrats insisting that the public option must be dropped to get the votes of centrist Democrats — the argument against the public option boils down to the fact that it’s bad because it is, horrors, a government program. And sooner or later Democrats have to take a stand against Reaganism — against the presumption that if the government does it, it’s bad.
Adam
Hasn’t anyone noticed that the “take no prisoners” GOP lockstep strategy didn’t exactly work out swimmingly?
There’s at least some argument that the ideological rigidity of the conservative movement is what put them into the nearly-untenable position they’re in now; they set the expectations of the wingnuts too high and lost the support of the center. Now they’re limited to rearguard actions; granted, they took a lot of ground in the last 8 years, but their prospects for gaining more are dim.
Elie
slag@ 120
It is the Congress that is responsible by definition for regulatory reform.
Right now, (and apparently many of you did not notice), the administration is trying to get the Legislature to function properly enough to get some kind of decent health care bill passed. As many of you can tell, this is hard work because the Legislature has gotten fat and lazy and in bed with many interests during the time that the last President and a little before that, unbalanced and strengthenned the role of the Executive branch of government.
The kind of reform that is needed in our financial sector goes to the heart of the Beast (and we know the Beast I am talking about — the corporist heart and soul). We need the Congress to be at least demonstratably able to handle the rough sledding present in health care bill. If they can’t do that, they can’t go after the even bigger Beast.
Obama would not be able to tackle the Beast without the power of the Congress. That is just the facts — not a matter of whether you like it or not. It is mean, nasty wet work.
Right now the Congress is flabby and un-used to any real responsibility to do much in the last decade besides pass tax cuts and sign off on war appropriations.
They are being exercised like they havent been in a long time. It looks sloppy and ugly and its SUPPOSED to look like that…that is called democracy and is the result of the push and pull of different interests at play.
Under Bush, it appears many got used to an imperial Presidency where the big dude just tells folks what to do and they go do it (of course he only told them what they already wanted to do anyway). Its different now. They are being told to do some hard assed stuff and people are all watching and are going to remember AND HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.
THAT is the way its supposed to work. Many fixes (to get rid of some of the bums) will take a little bit of work, but you didnt think you could sit on your bum and mail it in, did you?
slag
@Sloth: There are laws against robbing my house. Why should I lock the doors or have an alarm system?
Chad N Freude
@jaquestraw: !!![Sirens]!!! Conspiracy Theory Alert!!!
Do not panic. Tiptoe carefully away from the soapbox.
slag
@Elie: I don’t disagree with anything you said except I believe it’s the president’s job to help set the agenda, which includes regulatory reform. And I will do my best to hold them all accountable for any failure to do so.
jaquestraw
@Chad N Freude
I asked the question nicely, and that was me walking on eggshells.Just tell me what you think about Soros.Please
Sloth
We’re already setting these rates, as we’ve seen above, so either they can hit them or they cannot.
This and the above are an argument that can be equally solved with private insurance and a public option trigger. If the worry is that the trigger will not be pulled, make it a mandatory trigger. Don’t hit cost X – person can take medicare. Don’t have coverage in area Y – medicare.
OK, I’ve lived through this and the backlash was minimal. And short-lived. The major complaint is not the *who* people had to buy the insurance from but the *why* they had to buy it.
And there will be equal backlash if some people are forced to buy insurance from the government. Or get taxed for not doing so. If not quite a bit more.
Elie
slag
Agree. And I also will be holding everyone including Obama to carry forward what is necessary.
Still, its history in the making. Hoping one day to look back or to read about what happened holding aside the blow by blow of each micro critique.
Obama is a Constitutional scholar. He will make mistakes and there is no doubt, he maybe already has. But his goals are as plain as the nose on his face in terms of the stress he is putting on the Congress and our whole regulatory process.
It doesnt look glamorous, but its the foundation that has to underlie all the change we are hoping for. You can’t build that kind of substantial change on a rotted foundation.
Midnight Marauder
@jaquestraw:
I asked the question nicely, and that was me walking on eggshells.Just tell me what you think about Soros.Please
Oh man. Thanks for the best laugh of the day.
So far.
slag
@El Cid: Indeed.
And one other point: If a president named GW Bush told me that we were going to mandate health insurance but not provide a public option for said health insurance, I’d be suspicious, to say the least. A president named Barack Obama gets a little more benefit of the doubt from me (naturally) but certainly no blank check.
jaquestraw
The public option is dead get over it.
Midnight Marauder
@Sloth:
If the worry is that the trigger will not be pulled, make it a mandatory trigger.
That is the worry and, quite frankly, it’s an incredibly valid one. More importantly, the whole premise of a trigger (while I can understand its political value) is kind of fucking ridiculous. The situation is already horrific, but we should just wait a few more years before letting any kind of reform get started? Or that we should trust the insurance companies to get their act together over the next however many years, thereby eliminating the need for the trigger at all?
Again, no one should have any faith in those assholes to get their house in order and eliminate the need for the trigger to be pulled. These are the same companies who sent their people to Congress and flat out said “No” when asked if they were going to stop their rampant abuse of rescission. But we should trust them to do the right thing this time? Spare me.
And more importantly, if the worry is that the trigger will not be pulled, why in the hell would the solution be another trigger? Why not just pass the legislation in the first place? This is why the discussion of triggers is typically infuriating.
jaquestraw
@Midnight Marauder
They don’t have the votes
Zifnab
@jaquestraw: Wow. That was fast.
Midnight Marauder
@jaquestraw:
The public option is dead get over it.
And he strikes again. Good thing I added that “so far” about the best laugh of the day.
You are a delight. Let’s go for a hat trick.
Michael Gass
DougJ,
As one of the ex-Republican’s turned Independent, I’ll see if I can answer your question(s).
It was noted above that Republicans could ram through any legislation they wanted with lesser majorities. But, it goes deeper than simply having a larger majority.
In 2006, the American public gave control of Congress to the Democratic Party, largely due to the Iraq war, the revelations of lies by W. and Cheney to the public, and growing evidence of Republican malfeasance. The Democrat’s whined about how they couldn’t do anything because they simply didn’t have a big enough majority to break Republican obstruction.
So, in 2008, the public responded. It elected a Democratic President and gave the Democratic Party 59 votes in the Senate, 60 when Arlen swapped Parties, and a huge majority in the House. Problem solved. The Republican’s could no longer obstruct our government.
Candidate Obama ran on a platform of transparency, ending the Bush era abuses, health reform that included a public option, equality for gay’s, among the most important of his campaign platform. Yet, as President, we, and by “we” I mean every American who voted for him, has seen not only Congress still capitulate to Republican’s, but, Obama himself!
Public option in health care reform he campaigned for? Nope. Repealing DADT and DOMA? Nope. Transparency? Not when his lawyers are arguing to keep everything secret because of “state secrets” and “national security”. End the wars? Nope, he’s escalating Afghanistan.
There has not been ONE campaign promise he’s made that he has kept.
Not ONE that I am aware of, so, you’ll forgive those of us who see a President and Democratic Congress with filibuster proof majority caving to the Party we, the people, kicked out of office in 2006 and resoundingly rejected in 2008.
Midnight Marauder
@Michael Gass:
There has not been ONE campaign promise he’s made that he has kept.
Not ONE that I am aware of
These are two very different statements, now, aren’t they?
slag
@Michael Gass:
Now, before we go all crazy, here’s Politifact on Obama’s promises kept and not kept: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/browse/.
Amanda in the South Bay
Lets see…will I congratulate Obama for being Super Grand Chess Political Master of 90 Dimensions if he signs a bill into law that penalizes me with fines if I don’t buy health insurance I can’t afford anyways?
All I see are excuses, excuses galore. And people feeling sorry for themselves for demanding so much out of the majority in Congress.
jaquestraw
@Micheal Gass
Gays can forget about any support from him after he had that smackedass preacher at his inauguration they should take the hint .speaking of taking a hint I should go but I will say Obama would be nowhere w/o Soros and another thing Clinton would never had been successful if it weren’t for the republican bills he signed.
BlizzardOfOz
So your list of Obama’s accomplishments consists of:
– defeating a party with the popularity of herpes who spent 8 years destroying every facet of what we used to call a country
– taking action to combat the worst economic crisis since the great depression, with supermajorities of his own party in both houses
– subjectively appearing to be close to passing an incremental reform to a health care system which is threatening to bankrupt and/or kill any of 95% of the people in this country.
Truly brilliant, someone give the man a Nobel Prize.
Michael Gass
slag,
Read your link. Amazing. Not ONE promise “kept” was a major policy change, or, in fact, CHANGE. Lot’s of “stalled” and even more “compromise”. So, no wonder I didn’t include them, or, even know of them. Other than SCHIP, which Republican’s are trying to repeal, there wasn’t one “kept” that was more than a minor accomplishment.
So, when you have a filibuster proof 60 votes, when the public has over 70% support for the public option, why are you compromising? Why is your agenda stalled? Why are you caving on the MAJOR policy issues?
There is a reason that his popularity has taken a nose dive with independents. There is a reason that the LGBT community has already written off his Presidency and promises he’s broken (which weren’t even listed as broken, btw).
Elie
Amanda:
We’ll just leave it the same just for you and give you McCain and your own universe.
So sorry that we couldnt mail in the revolution just for you from the comfort of your own home.
I am not feeling sorry for myself or anyone else. It is important work to make the Congress do the right thing the right way for a democracy.
Its hard work though and I forgot. You think we have a monarchy
Amanda in the South Bay
@ Elie
Yeah, because its soooo fucking revolutionary that I would rather have no health care reform bill than one that fucks over the ranks of the un and under employed.
“We’ll just leave it the same just for you and give you McCain and your own universe.
So sorry that we couldnt mail in the revolution just for you from the comfort of your own home.”
Jesus F Christ, this shit makes me want to strangle kittens.
Elie
OOOOhhh —
Look all the left wing Star Warriors that have stepped out of their revolution star chambers from the 6th dimension!
Harsh task masters they are….!!!
“What we want we should get, just like that! or else you bootlicker Obama worshippers you just stand for fail”
And a former Republican amongst them too — which makes it so authentic (how we know they are REALLY serious about how to do things)!
Who needs a democratic process when you have the power of the majority to ram it in, right?
Hmmm — wonder where they learned THAT
Michael Gass
jaquestraw,
I saw the writing on the wall when he announced his economic transition team full of people who were part of creating the problem. It simply got worse after the inauguration.
Broken promises: DADT, DOMA, keeping out lobbyists from his administration, transparency, public option in health care reform, restoring the rule of law to America, ending military commissions for Guantanamo detainees, regulating Wall Street… basically, he will be a one-term President.
But, he’s genius, I tell you… GENIUS! Axelrod is claiming if Obama simply stares down the progressives in the Party (which will further alienate his base), he’ll be seen as a great… something…
Genius, I tell you!
The Sheriff's A Ni-
[[Citation needed.]]
Nach
ReaganBushPalin, uns!Michael Gass
Elie,
Actually, if by “star warrior” you mean a veteran who has been to Iraq twice and served not only in the military, but, the citizens of my state in law enforcement, then yes, I am a “star warrior”.
As for “ramming through legislation”, the Republicans rammed through everything they wanted, by vote or reconciliation, but, Democrat’s can’t?
And as far as our democracy is concerned, I swore to uphold our CONSTITUTION, not to bootlick W.’s, OR Obama’s, or even YOUR boots for that matter.
I know a bit or two about the rule of law. I know that average people go to jail for the littlest of crimes while those who committed the most egregious crime of torture suddenly cannot be bothered to be prosecuted.
So get off the cross… somebody needs the wood.
Amanda in the South Bay
I don’t know if Elie is referring to me with this little gem:
“And a former Republican amongst them too—which makes it so authentic (how we know they are REALLY serious about how to do things)!”
Though if you are, and if you knew next to anything about me over the past several years…your probably full of shit.
General Winfield Stuck
@Michael Gass:
Well, dude, one promise was to be bi partisan and work with repubs so the “compromise” listed for some of on Slag’s link could well be considered as that promise kept. Of course, it depends on compromised how much, but I don’t consider that as autiomatic fail/
As far as Afghanistan goes, he is doing just what he said he would do. And there is a long list of Executive Orders reversing Bush policies, not the least of which is torture.
I’m not sure if your for real of a disguised concern troll from the right, but it is interesting you go from winger to Dennis Kucinich. Takes all kinds< i suppose.
Sloth
I don’t think they have the votes. I think the choice comes down to a plan with a trigger @ 60 votes or a plan with a PO run through with reconciliation.
Yes, they could go the reconciliation route. And the bill will carry the stigma of being “rammed through” and “not even acceptable to all democrats” and man, that is likely to be BAD. Any plan is going to take a year or two (or four) to have an effect, ALL reasonable plans have a mandate and a LOT of people are going to hate the mandate. So the potential for political suicide is very large.
A bill that got to 60 can be defended as both bi-partisan and fully legit.
And if they pull reconciliation, that’s a second precedent for using it. If they DON’T, that’s a major precedent for NEVER using it, which would probably be better.
And, at the end of the day, given every single PO plan I’ve seen realistically floated, there is no meaningful difference between it and a private plan with a trigger. IMO.
Elie
Amanda:
Well I am not sure that I would rather kill someone’s opportunity to get health care they need on the alter of trying for the perfection you seek.
But that is just me. Many others feel that continuing with the current lack of coverage is the right approach as a trade off to what exactly? And the follow up scenario after you kill the hypothetical bad bill to get the perfect one you think is the only one anyone deserves? Well those ragged millions can just do without right? For how long? Cause after you destroy the bill in your scenario, another more perfect one would be possible right around the corner, right? Pushed by whom?
Learn some US civics before you go strangle kittens.
We have a structure that will have to be used in the solution to the new way. We had an election, not a revolution. All the old institutions still exist, for better or worse. They arent going to disappear nor are the people who ran them. So sorry that the administration could not wiggle its nose and make it all perfect for you by magic.
In the meantime, I want people covered as fast as possible and as broadly as possible. I can take working to improve but I know that killing the bill to achieve some ideologues vision of perfection is wrong.
slag
@Michael Gass: Not true: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/subjects/politifacts-top-promises/. But if your point is that Obama hasn’t accomplished the things you most wanted him to accomplish, then that’s what you need to say. My response to that is that it’s been 8 months. Truly significant policy changes don’t necessarily happen in 8 months. I have my own concerns about what’s happening now, especially as it relates to economic policy. And I have my own doubts about the level of progress I’m seeing. But I’m not going to frame them as: Obama has broken all of his promises (except for all the one’s he’s kept). Because that’s kind of silly.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Yes, let’s act exactly like the Republicans did. Everything will be puppies and rainbows because we’re Right and they’re Wrong and if you’re not with us you’re against us! Now all we need now is a ‘progressive’ Deciderer…
Michael Gass
General Winfield Stuck,
It took the Patriot Act, lying us into Iraq, torturing, establishing military commissions to try alleged terrorists (many of whom are innocent), imprisoning people indefinitely, illegal wiretapping… the list of abuses goes on and on by W. and Cheney.
So, if supporting Obama was the way to rectify those abuses, then yes, it takes all kinds… as long as you believe you’re an American first and foremost, and, that our constitution and laws actually mean something.
Amanda in the South Bay
@General Stuck
Since when is it SOP in these parts to criticize someone moving from one part of the political spectrum to another? I don’t want to accuse people of sloppy ad hominem attacks, but geeze, would you rather that everyone who initially worshiped W and the GOP revert back to their original positions?
We all have unique experiences that make us who we are; not all of us have had the luxury of being serious, concerned liberals who know to put the kooky left back in its proper spot.
slag
@Elie: Please stop arguing with yourself. You’re imputing arguments to others that they haven’t made. And your hyperbole is going nowhere.
Michael Gass
The Sheriff’s A Ni-,
First of all, the public spoke loud and clear in TWO elections rejecting the GOP, or, did you miss 2006 and 2008? If that isn’t a mandate to actually implement change, by whatever means it takes, what is?
Second, there IS right and wrong. The GOP was wrong in so much of what it did when IT had the Presidency and Congress, WITHOUT a public mandate, that yes… I’d like to see the Democrats finally FIND their balls for once.
Sloth
@slag:
This.
And I would add that, as much as I want MY Pony, there is something much more important at work. Reestablishing a functional political process. The republicans are not helping here, at all, but we need a working government so badly that I can take a lot of stalling, back and forth and attempts at compromise to try and get it.
But at some point, we have to pull the trigger on this stuff and I would guess that that is what tomorrow’s speech is going to be about.
Elie
Michael Gass:
You may know what you think is the “rule of law” but you don’t know the Constiution.\
In the Constitution, the military is subservient to the authority of the civilian government. That means by definition, bootlicking if told to bootlick, while you are in the military anyway.
I don’t need you to lick my boots.
I would like you to understand democracy better and how power is supposed to work. Consensus where possible rather than the rule of “Shut Up’ or coercion.
Your knowledge of how power is used I am sure is deeper than what you display here. What you display in your comment is superficial and incomplete in the ways to influence or achieve an outcome.
It is also not rooted in reality and the time it takes to get complex and large things done in a complex and pluralistic society. But you know that and choose to ignore it because you want the sexy coercion , ram it in thing..
There are ways to tickle that funny bone in the comfort of your own home without making our government be that way.
General Winfield Stuck
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I was not criticizing for seeing the light and leaving the GOP. It’s curious you took it that way. I was suspicious due to casual claims of Obama as failing on everything and declarations of a one term presidency based on broken promises. That’s the stuff of spoofery.
Michael Gass
Amanda in the South Bay,
I wasn’t part of the “kooky right”. I’m surely not part of the “kooky left”.
There is a reason that the GOP is now down to 20% of people identifying with it — the nuts took over and the people you term “serious and concerned” became independent.
It was those newly-minted independents that turned red states for Obama, btw.
Amanda in the South Bay
Elie,
Wow, now I am an uneducated dumbass who needs a high school civics lesson. Wow.
So…you’ve redefined the playing field so that holding out for the public option or not supporting any bill is such an extremist, out of left field position that it cannot be taken seriously?
Help me answer this: do you really think that the cost of mandated health insurance will really help the underemployed? Or, will it be cheaper to simply pay the government the appropriate fines than be covered by mandated insurance?
Will the health insurance that I am being forced to buy cover gender reassignment surgery? Facial feminization surgery? A trach shave? A simple orchiectomy? Hormones and t-blockers? Of course not.
You assume a lot about me based on the comments here on this blog, and, well, its simply frustrating to be told in a patronizing tone that I am an ignorant left wing buffon.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
‘Change’ for a varying degree of what that actual change is. You seem convinced it was a mandate for Mirror Universe Republicanism. Obama, perhaps rightly, saw it as a mandate away from the GOP’s our way or the highway politics. After all, some of the same people who wanted change in 2006 and 2008 were the same ones who voted R in 2000, 2002, and 2004.
You mean having both houses of Congress and the Presidency isn’t a public mandate?
Chad N Freude
@Sloth: I think Soros is talented in the field of making lots of money from businesses, he is a philanthropist, and he holds very liberal/progressive political views, unlike many other talented businessmen. He is willing to fund causes he agrees with, just as conservative wealthy people are willing to fund theirs. I see less justification for conspiracy theories on the Soros side than on the conservative side. And yes, until he is exposed as untrustworthy with actual evidence, I’ll consider him trustworthy. I also pretty much agree with his political positions.
A suggestion: In future postings, if you try to phrase your reservations and fears in a way that doesn’t suggest you believe some nefarious conspiracy exists, you’ll be more likely to be seen as a participant in a discussion than a weirdo. For example, phrases like “Obama is a tool”of some person or organization immediately sets of alarms.
Sloth
@Chad N Freude:
I’ll bear that in mind, should I ever decide to post about Soros or nefarious conspiracies. Which I haven’t. Yet, anyway.
Elie
slag:
I am not sure what you mean about imputing arguments and hyperbole that isnt working. (well, perhaps my star warriors thing was a bit over the top)
Monitor your own responses and leave me to mine. I argue against myself all the time
Chad N Freude
@Sloth, @jaquestraw: My comment at 175 was intended for jaquestraw, not sloth. Apologies to both.
General Winfield Stuck
@Elie:
Me too. It’s the only ones I always win.
Chad N Freude
@Sloth: Sorry, Dude. I posted the apology for my misaddressed post while you were posting your response to it. I have an untrustworthy mouse.
Sloth
@General Winfield Stuck:
Damn, I need to work on that, I’m only around 50% with a lot of ties.
Michael Gass
Elie,
I know far more then most, simply due to the job I held in the military. Whether or not I choose to write a novel here is immaterial.
As for waiting, that is what the Democrat’s said in 2006 — we didn’t have the votes, so, you can wait. In 2008, they GOT those votes. The time for waiting is OVER. Act or don’t act with the majority you were given, but, stop with the victimization act, the “we have to keep our powder dry”, and “it’s so hard”.
It isn’t hard. There are ways to do things, by procedure, to get things done. So, do it or don’t.
The fact is, and has been, that Obama couldn’t keep a promise he made, or, did you forget that he promised as a Senator to filibuster a FISA law that gave telecoms immunity until he voted for giving telecoms immunity. He tossed the LGBT community under the bus as quick as he could do it. He STARTED the health reform debate from taking the single-payer off the table and now the public option AFTER having secret meetings with the industry leaders.
All of this is public record. (no citations needed, just people who understand teh google)
We got told he would bring change, but, it’s still business as usual for Wall Street, and now, health care.
We got told to believe. So, where’s the proof when Axelrod and Rahm are itching to alienate its own base in order to placate the GOP and the corporations?
Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s merely raining.
Michael Gass
The Sheriff’s A Ni-,
Considering that there is considerable evidence that the 2008 election was stolen by W. (and yes, I did vote for him in 2000), especially given the Gore v. Bush Supreme Court decision to halt the democratic process because, if you read the decision, “it would harm BUSH”… I didn’t agree with much the man did.
I voted Kerry in 2004. I voted straight Dem ticket in 2006. And I voted straight Dem ticket in 2008.
Bush NEVER had a public mandate, even though he claimed one.
Bruno
As FDR said, “make me do it”.
That’s all the left is trying to do.
Obama can handle the pressure from the left, in fact I’m pretty sure he appreciates it.
It would be nice if we could be more civil with each other even when we disagree on the tactics, though.
Just like the election we can scream and shout at each other all we want as this is really the (health reform) primaries. Like last year once we get to the general (bill out of reconcilition) we’ll all come together to give the President a bill to sign, and I predict it will be one that improves the current situation.
Michael Gass
(meant the 2000 election)… correction
Elie
Amanda:
You are not nor did I imply that you are an uneducated dumbass.
I apologize if that was what you might have interpreted…
You are making an argument as though it is a foregone conclusion that the bill will cover this or that and there is no bill yet.
You also stated that you would be ok tactically killing the not yet existing bill for which you might or might not have x coverage to achieve a more perfect even more amorphous bill in the future..
All the hypotheticals about what you would and would not pay you already had decided that was a failure on a bill that does not yet exist.
So tell me I am crazy or did you not imply if not directly say all of that.
It is unlikely that health care reform will be everything everyone wants. It is likely to cover more people than currently have anything at all — anything. Both Medicare and Medicaid will be expanded to address coverage of most everyone.
What would killing it give you, tell me?
HyperIon
@Shawn in ShowMe: You won’t see anybody who’s dug in their heels on the public option engaging this point in any substantive way. It’s the public option or nothing! Because shut up, that’s why!
I have no problem with the Swiss model. But I have heard NO ONE who rejects the public option say what is being left unsaid. That is, in Switzerland insurers do NOT get to make a profit on the basic coverage that everyone has to buy.
Do you think a bill is going to pass that prevents US health care insurers from making a profit? I cannot imagine this.
This leads me to the conclusion that a public option is the only way to get affordability. We already have an instance of that: Medicare.
The only person I’ve heard voice the other “cannot say this out loud” thing is T.R Reid. When Brian Lamb ask about GP salaries in other countries, Reid said they ALL make less than the docs here. Paraphrasing his remarks “They get paid less (about $60K in France, more in other countries), have essentially zero malpractice insurance premiums, never get sued, and get out of school with no debt. They have a nice middle-class existence and like that they get to be a doc and save lives.”
Nobody wants to admit that doc salaries must go down. However, again we already have a model for that: Medicare decides what docs get paid.
Comments?
Michael Gass
Bruno,
At this point, the “point” of ANY bill on health care will be to keep the insurance companies making a profit. Period.
The GOP is bought and paid for, so are too many Democrat’s, to include Obama. He’s proven that now.
Larry Summers and Geithner to handle Wall Street? Right, we’ve seen them bend over for Wall Street.
No public option after having secret meetings with the health industry execs? Who do you think they want to please when they are willing to toss their own base under the bus?
Again, where is the change?
Add to that the Sotomayor confirmation to the Supreme Court. She was first nominated by Bush Sr. to the Supreme Court — what does that tell about how she will rule?
And Wednesday, the Supreme Court is going to rule on Citizen’s United vs FEC, and likely, will overturn a century of precedent giving corporations even more power to influence elections.
So much for change….
jaquestraw
Oh those Bush years remember when everyone who wanted to work had a job and welfare reform was still in effect.
HyperIon
@geg6:
thanks for making my point.
i got impatient and skipped to the end to comment (#187).
HyperIon
@gwangung wrote: It’s a fuckin’ democracy folks, and if we aren’t being AT LEAST as noisy and as firm in public as the “anti-death squad” crazies, then THE BLAME IS ON US BECAUSE WE LET THEM MUDDY THE WATER.
YES!!!!
Michael Gass
Elie,
“What would killing it give you, tell me?”
Let me spell it out for you…
1) That the progressive Democrat’s have a spine and will stand up for their beliefs, ie, a public option or nothing.
How many times over the years has the Democratic Party simply cowered in the corner whimpering about how the bad, mean GOP was running all over them?
Standing up for the public option or nothing is a HUGE step for KEEPING those newly-minted independent voters. It shows conviction and the balls to follow through.
2) A shitty bill is worse than no bill at all.
Passing ANYTHING so you can say you did something is not a winning strategy when that “something” sucks.
It is bad now. Why pass shit when you have the majority to ram through a GOOD bill?
3) Keeping your majority.
Independent voters decide elections, and in 2006, and then in 2008, the Democratic Party picked up millions of votes, some of which WERE those newly-minted ex-Repub’s. Surely, KEEPING that majority should be in the Democrat’s own interest, yet, how willing is Obama to toss ALL of his own base under the bus?
Amanda in the South Bay
@Elie
Oh, I don’t know, the ability to save up money for things that could be put to much better use that (obviously) will not be covered by any sort of co-op or anything similar-like, oh, hormones and t-blockers, electrolysis, etc. Stuff that is sorta necessary if I’m to get a job that offers affordable health care or pays me decently so that I could afford to subsidize Kent Conrad.
The thing is-I know the costs of health care through my employment, and quite frankly I have more important things to spend the money on, like transition related health care, so I can use my recently hard fought college degree and so something other than get bitched at by angry customers all day.
Now here is where I think you are being more than little pie in the sky-do you really think that some underemployed peon like myself is going to be able to afford some sort of mandated health insurance scheme, without having to give up expenses that are sorta necessary to lead my life as I see fit (I would hope you would give me the benefit of the doubt here when I have some experience with insurance companies not covering trans related health care)? I hate to bring up the t word (transphobia), but still, its sorta in the front of my mind…
Chad N Freude
@jaquestraw: I misaddressed a response to you at Comment 175. Please read it if you haven’t already.
gwangung
@Michael Gass:
Your dues in the Circular Firing Squad are up to date and current, I see.
Elie
Michael Goss
There is no cheap way to a complete revolution.
If that is what you want, you will have to work for it from the grassroots up.
We have had a capitalist hegemony in this country forever.
It may be modified, but not radically overturned in one election.
Everything else is incrementalism that you disdain and takes time, and consensus, etc..
Not sexy, not dramatic. Actually meant to be hard to change (checks and balances and such)
But then you know that since you know the Constitution so well like you told me
HyperIon
@Sloth: There’s no need to set “profit” limits on insurance companies.
It is my understanding that NO other industrialized country having universal health care through private insurers allows that insurance to be sold for profit.
But we’re American so I guess we can do anything, right?
I think your full of crap on this one.
Elie
Amanda:
I am seriously hoping that you will be able to have the coverage you need at a rate that is subsidized or whatever to make affordable for you.
I want THAT for everyone more than any other thing. I fight for that and will not quit till we have that.
Michael Gass
Elie,
What was cheap about TWO elections that soundly rejected the GOP way?
What was cheap about Obama getting an electoral LANDSLIDE?
Damn… talk about “battered wife” syndrome!
We won, but, it’s STILL hard! We have huge majorities, but, don’t ask us to use them!
Gods…
Amanda in the South Bay
@ Elie, 196
But isn’t mandated health insurance a very cheap method in its own right to get uninsured people insured? Don’t you think that if the under employed and working poor could afford health insurance, they would jump at the opportunity? Its the easy way out, a fix that will only hurt the people its supposed to help.
I have no faith in the insurance companies and Congress to hammer out a bill that will *genuinely* make mandatory health insurance affordable for people that need it. Call me an idealistic revolutionary if you want.
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: I think you oversimplify the dilemma. “Public option or nothing” shows strength and firmness, and it also shows “If I don’t get my way, nobody gets anything, so there,” a stance adopted by my son when he was about 5. The consequences and risks of “nothing” have to be thought through by Obama and Co., and if their assessment is no public option but a lot of other good stuff, then that would be the way to get something positive done. I do not mean capitulation, I mean a real risk/cost/benefit analysis of the available options. Re thinking through: I’m not 100% confident that they are doing that, or even know how to do it.
Sloth
@HyperIon:
I agree. We will need to set *cost* limits, but they should be free to make as much profit as they can, as long as they hit the cost guidelines we have set. And if they do, then we should either wait for competition to appear and wipe out that profit margin, or we should drop our cost guidelines. Pretty much what we do with other monopolies.
It sometimes feels like a semi-radical thing to say, but the profit motive is actually a *good* thing, as long as the incentives are aligned. If the insurance companies making a profit helps us, have at it. If they are not aligned – and they are not today – you will see exactly what we see today. Abuse. And that is not good.
Michael Gass
Amanda in the South Bay,
Too many people forget that our founding fathers were idealistic revolutionaries that gave blood and life to give us what we have today.
In fact, in the eyes of the British, our forefathers were (gasp) TERRORISTS!
They wore no uniform. They attacked at night wearing masks. They terrorized the rulers.
Amazing how that works, huh…
Elie
Michael Goss:
Two elections where in total about 50% of the total population that was eligible to vote actually registered to vote.
We dont have rule by fiat.
Its a representative democracy that you want to run like a top down autocracy..
Really, hate to keep saying it..go read the Constitution…
Huge majorities did not vote to overturn all the currently existing institutions. Thats what YOU wanted when you voted for Change. Not what others necessarily wanted or meant.
Health care is 17% of our GNP. Lots of people make lots of money off of it. The new will require using the old in the transition. That is just reality. Unless you were going to play Madame LaFarge at the guilotine, we have to work with what we got and morph it to where we want it to go and be. Its hard work but you get the difference right. Your way, we have to overturn everything and make it up new the way you think it should be real fast and dramatic. The other way, we have to work over time and bust our buts with elections and do policy wonk boring stuff..
Chad N Freude
BTW, if anybody cares, my preference is single payer, if only because government bureaucrats are motivated by a desire to rise in a hierarchy as opposed to insurance company bureaucrats who are motivated by a need maximize a profit for a corporation. (There are other reasons. Also.)
Amanda in the South Bay
@chad
Okay, point taken. The issue then becomes, is passing a public option less bill with coops and mandatory insurance schemes better than passing nothing at all? The thing is, not all of us who oppose such things are pie in the sky idealists with the philosophical maturity of a five year old. I don’t think its at all clear that that would be an improvement over the status quo.
Michael Gass
Chad N Freude,
“I think you oversimplify the dilemma. “Public option or nothing” shows strength and firmness, and it also shows “If I don’t get my way, nobody gets anything, so there,” a stance adopted by my son when he was about 5. The consequences and risks of “nothing” have to be thought through by Obama and Co., and if their assessment is no public option but a lot of other good stuff, then that would be the way to get something positive done.”
No. It was a campaign PROMISE for the public option. To give all Americans affordable health care. You simply do not promise this and then run to appease the health care industry AFTER you get elected and expect to keep your support.
This is black and white. A promise was made, and, it is now being broken. So, we CANNOT, and SHOULD NOT, trust his word.
But, AGAIN, this is not new to Obama who broke his word on the FISA bill.
When people learn this simple fact… our political discourse will be able to advance.
Michael Gass
Amanda in the South Bay,
No, it is NOT an improvement.
People are uninsured NOW because they simply cannot AFFORD it, and, what they CAN afford is JUNK.
So, we should ACCEPT being FORCED to BUY this junk because that makes the insurance industry richer????
How can we buy what we can’t afford, mandate to do so or not?
DAMN… FIGHT for what is RIGHT!
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: For a picture of the founding fathers’ idealism, I highly recommend “A Magnificent Catastrophe” by Edward Larson.
Michael Gass
Chad N Freude,
I recommend to you the Federalist Papers.
gwangung
Oh, did you learn your history from winguts and libertarians?
That’s a clear sign to me that you’re not too well equipped to work in the public arena. Totally unable to work with other people.
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: Well, campaign promises are made to be broken (not a good thing, but a fact), and I think “This is black and white” is a high risk approach to achieving any goal.
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: I’ve read some of the FP, admittedly not all . Have you read the book?
gwangung
@Michael Gass: Yup. All theory, no practice.
NR
Had I known on Super Tuesday, 2008, what I know today, I probably would have voted for Hillary in the primaries. Not because I think she would have been any better or more progressive than Obama – I’m sure she wouldn’t have – but because at least the left would have known from the outset that we were going to have an adversarial relationship with the White House and we could have planned accordingly. During the campaign, a lot of progressives seemed to think that Obama was some sort of “stealth” progressive and was only running to the center-right to get elected (despite the fact that there was absolutely no evidence to support this belief and quite a bit of evidence against it). And so they became complacent after he won, and are just now starting to realize that they have a real fight on their hands.
Well, now the Blue Dog/Republican lite wing of the party has an eight-month head start on us, and that’s going to be tough to overcome, if it can even be done.
So, yeah. Definite case of buyer’s remorse here. Like someone upthread said, Obama is better than Bush, but that’s the lowest of low bars to set for him.
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: I should have also mentioned that I see an analogy between the relation of the Federalist Papers to the actual political events of the day and the relation of a campaign promises and what actually gets done when the election is over.
Sloth
@Michael Gass:
No. But who’s proposing that? If the final bill forces us to buy JUNK, I’d say it’s failed across the board. But for all you know, we could be forced to buy a Public Option which is *also* junk. Also unlikely, but just as probable as your other hypothetical.
Michael Gass
gwangung,
OHHHH… reading the words, thoughts, fears, and goals of our founding fathers… in their own words… is now WINGNUT?
OMFG…
I thought it was getting the big picture from those who set up our country, our government, our laws, our constitution…
Go figure… reading the most important documents that detail the background of our Constitution is now WINGNUTTIA!
Scarlet
I agree completely and thank you for stating it better than I could’ve. Obama is doing a great job. Perfect and exactly what I want when I want it? No…but I never expected that. Changes are going to be incremental not instantaneous – We just all have to keep pushing in the same direction and not start fighting among ourselves. I find that even more discouraging than the ‘right wing’ attacks.
gwangung
If you only came to this now, then I submit that you, also, are ill equipped to be working on policy in the public arena.
What part of “need pressure from the left” didn’t you get? And why are you thinking in binary terms, just like a wingnut?
Chad N Freude
@Michael Gass: Where was “wingnut” used in this discussion?
Shawn in ShowMe
But they do in the Netherlands.
Doctor’s salaries are less than 10% of health care costs. And with Medicare heading towards bankruptcy the amount of their compensation is going down anyway.
Elie
Michael Gass:
Black and white is actually pretty rare in real life.
Promises get broken a lot, and sometimes are essential to break.
Your point of view seems very dichotomous.
There are a lot more shades of gray in everything about this life..
Not saying that we should not have expectations of our leaders and that we can’t be let down…of course we can and are.
But governing is not a set of check boxes on a clipboard document headed by the label “Promises”. Governing is difficult and to be done according to the democratic process most of us want, is messy and raucous and filled with surges and set backs towards accomplishing our greatest ideals…
In my lifetime, my Grandmother, who could remember the last vestiges of slavery, lived to see our Congress pass the Civil Rights Bill. She cried like a baby and my Mom and I wept in her memory the night that Obama was elected.
Did we end all racial hatred and our nation color blind? Not by a long shot. But have we made big progress? Hell yes!
I can’t talk you into my point of view and I respect your judgement that Obama has not met your expectations. He will not meet everyone’s and he will not meet all of mine.
But my hope is that in this next year, we can cover every American with health care as a right that will never be abrogated…that we can make the specter of bankruptcy for healthcare expenditures disappear and that we can raise the notch of civility and improved wellbeing for a whole lot of folks that dont have that now.
Thats my hope and what I am dammit going to work to achieve.
gwangung
@Michael Gass: Pretty much. You talk like a wingnut, you act like a wingnut; your orientation may be different, but you tend to over-simplify and over-romanticize people who were essentially elite the equivalent of aristocracy. You’re treating their writings as Holy Writ.
Feh. I’m too old for that kind of nonsense.
NR
That’s exactly what I’m saying. I fully believe that, had Hillary been elected rather than Obama, the pressure from the left would have materialized a lot sooner, to the betterment of the entire country.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Okay, it showed up. But after the post that triggered (that word!) Michael Gass’s response to gwangung.
This is really getting complicated.
Chad N Freude
@Elie: Much more eloquent than what I posted, but mine was pithy.
Sloth
Yes, they do. But if you think it’s coming from Obama, you’re deluding yourself. A good chunk of the independents out there – and a good chunk of the democratic party – are well to the right of the progressive wing of the democratic party. They are distrustful of big government, they are worried about deficits, they believe in the profit motive.
So there is going to be some compromise. If you didn’t expect Obama to work towards consensus, well, I just think we voted for different people. The guy I voted for tried to find consensus with McCain during the debates. On abortion, fercrissskes.
And, since I’ve already admitted that I think the profit motive can be a good thing, let me add this: I think that moderate republicans can offer a lot to the healthcare debate, especially when it comes to cost control. I think they should offer it. And I think it is a crying shame that they cannot be heard over the crazed wingnuts.
gwangung
@NR:
Oh, you’re saying people are stupid.
Well, I agree. Anybody who thought Obama was substantially a progressive was fooling themselves (and was none too observant). He can be pulled to progressive side, but that takes effort–which is an improvement over the previous administration.
What I don’t get is that people thought that pressure wouldn’t EVER be necessary or that right wing elements would act as crazy as they did. It’s all fairly rational progression of political tactics (even if the impulses aren’t rational)
gwangung
@Chad N Freude: It’s supposed to be complicated. Only idealogues (wingnuts et al) think in simplistic, binary terms.
And anybody who thinks the “Founding Fathers” were idealistic revolutionaries is thinking like a wingnut. They were men, not idealized heroes.
Michael Gass
gwangung,
You are “too old” to read the words of our founding fathers… gain the wisdom of their wants, fears…
Are you on the edge of Alheimers?
Or, do you simply not care about what our country was supposed to be?
General Winfield Stuck
I’ve read some dumbass stuff on the internets, but this is in my top 10. What would have materialized is a three ring Clinton circus with round the clock coverage of the Clenis, Mark Penn, and Hillary in a Rasputin like horror show of 90’s tabloid hell. That said, I think Hills is doing a very good job as SOS, and I am sure she will continue to do so.
Corner Stone
I’m pretty sure that NR is a DougJ spoof he’s trolling y’all with to prove his “PUMA under every rock and behind every bush” fetish.
Amanda in the South Bay
@219
Well, I think we can all thank any and all deities that Obama was elected rather than the alternative, but I do think its a little creepy when we start thinking the guy can do no wrong, or that there should be no dissent on the left. Surely there is a nice mean between “circular firing squad” and “go team incrementalism!”
Elie
Chad N Freude
I work on pithy all the time but get there infrequently…
gwangung
Michael Gass is very romantic, don’t you think? I see Robin Hood, Zorro and the like…
Sadly, a lot of people thought this administration would rule by decree from a place of irreproachable idealism rather than the calculating, egg headed pragmatist they got.
He is not the government. We are the government!
If he does nothing but get us to understand that we have to make him and the Congress work right, then THAT is the victory. He actually said that he wanted us to make him do right. Well, we have to do that.
Write him, vote, organize. Unfortunately, its not magic — its WORK that he can’t give you the easy short cut to get done.
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: Having Mark Penn as far away from the Corridors of Power as possible is major win for the country, and if that means Hilary must be defeated, so be it. The question now is does the Secretary of State pay any attention to him?
Amanda in the South Bay
@ General Winfield at 232
The cynic in me thinks its already the 1990s redux, which was pretty much guaranteed to happen regardless of who was the Democratic winner. A Hillary win would’ve been good for one thing, that’s for sure: seeing Andrew Sullivan’s reaction.
jl
It is true that Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands have good health care without a ‘public option’. But they have much much stronger insurance market regulation that anything proposed in the US. In Switzerland, insurance companies offer the basic mandetory comprehensive package essentially as non-profit public utilities. Health insurance companies must make any unregulated profits on the supplemental insurance market.
As for France, I do not see how that model is relevant to the US, since no one is proposing. But if one cares to look up the free statistics at OECD health topics page, as a percentage of GDP has grown much more slowly than other European countries until the current recession. The recession blew a whole in the budget, as it did for the US. Up to the recession, discussion of the French healthcare finance focused on two items that I can see:
1 long run sustainability of the system with an aging population (the same issue as we have in the US) for next 50 years
2 artificial regulatory restrictions on supply of health care professionals that is increasing the price of services and that will soon create shortages relative to demand (same problem we have in the US, except we already have shortages due to restricted supply).
There was no crisis of sustainability that I have read about. As for what will happen with the recession, that is anybody’s guess, as it is here.
Chad N Freude
@Elie:
Yes, but … How well does that work out in practice? I do not intend to be snarky about this, but the 2nd Amendment Birther Anti-indoctrinators (and don’t forget Glen Beck) can say the same thing. The “we” of whom you speak are not a single entity and do not speak with a single voice.
NR
@Corner Stone: No, it’s how I actually feel. But go ahead and believe that everything is just peachy for Obama on the left. Makes no difference to me.
Elie
Chad N Freude
Yeah I hear ya.
Its why getting anything done is such a bitch. We are ALL the damned government and we have to figure out how to get it done around sometimes crazy opposition. I think I read somewhere that up to 25% of the citizens in America during the Revolutionary War wanted to remain part of the British Crown. That’s a pretty good sized proportion.
I think this messiness and drama is why people secretly yearn sometimes for the certainty and calm of authoritarianism. The friction necessary to be a part of a good democracy is almost more than anyone can bear!
Chad N Freude
Nailed it! I’ve thought this ever since I started reading about Nazism as a youth. Why did Hitler come to power if not to bring stability?
jaquestraw
@ Chad N Freude
I read 175 thanks for the advice.Its just I am seriously creeped out by Soros maybe its just me but he has been accused of using the left wing in Britian and Japan by first hedging against their currency,help placing them in power encouraging them to spend into oblivion,then the payoff the dollar drops he cashes in.Then the shit gets really deep he is accused of orchestrating the 9/12/08 money market crash.Having said all that I was wondering what good intentions is he accused of.I am inclined to believe the worst and I think this is the source of my anger against the current administration.
reasoned lib
Interesting subject. Kind of reminds me of the latent racism that you see in sports, in particular baseball. The white player is “scrappy” and “always gives 110%.” The black player is “naturally talented” and “makes everything seem effortless.” Of course when the black player fails to hustle, it is mostly front page news, but when do you hear about white players who are not hustling?
Obama will never be portrayed by the village as a hard worker making the most of his talent, instead you see how he is portrayed as a smooth talker. Feeds into the racist undercurrents of the press, and for that matter America.
Elie
Chad N Freude:
Yep…
And our country has A LOT of friction given its size and diversity. Add to that the internet and MSM and you have a lot of noise and confusion…
I sometimes worry about our expectations of calm and quiet and polite discourse in this country. When you travel many (not all ) places abroad, politics are discussed and argued openly and with relish. We still relegate it to having arguments in certain circumstances among only our best friends and like minded neighbors. We see to eschew the essence of democracy — open exchange and argument about ideas…
I hope that we can learn to tolerate our noisiness better and learn more about how to use it to our advantage while educating young folks coming up. I feel more comfortable with that than the smooth quiet of oppression and suppression and groupthink..
Chad N Freude
@jaquestraw: I have no facts at my disposal other than (1) Soros is Jewish, and (2) his supposed financial manipulations are the same as the ones that have been falsely attributed to Jews for centuries, which (3) have been justification for antisemitism for centuries.
Elie
Chad N Freude
Man o man —
I hope that health reform makes antipsychotics and other neurogical drugs readily available and affordable for everyone, don’t you?
Chad N Freude
@Elie: I’ll be first in line.
Chad N Freude
I’d like to make this the longest thread in BJ history, but I have to go now.
Cain
@NR:
Ah yes, with supporters like these, I’m sure that we all have Obama’s back if he went for the gold ring. It’s not like any of us are out there agitating against Fox News and what not, the wingnuts I guess have all that stuff sewn up, we’re just going to be the morose liberal majority who says nothing but bellyache amongst ourselves.
Jeez, we are a bunch of losers. Is there another party I can join up?
cain
NR
Obama can’t go for the gold ring. He already gave it away to his corporate overlords.
Corner Stone
@NR: Nobody on the left ever thought Obama was for their agenda. The only people who decided he was their champion were the ones who did not listen to him.
However Doug, your phrasing just sounds a little over the top.
Elie
Naw Cain —
Many of us like twisting our hankies and crying and waiting for the Messiah who will deliver us to the where we ought to be without any effort on our part..
So easy that way…
I think we will work ourselves out of it after a while..
Someone showed us the wagon of Change and we thought it came with nice horses.
Found out WE were the horses and some folks are still pissed off about sweating up their nice threads and getting poop on their shoes.
This was supposed to be real nice and clean and quiet. Mr Obama was going to read his pronouncements to everyone and there would be great cheers and feel good video moments. We didnt think that the right wingers should be able to say anything. Who knew the reality of law making? I expected all the health care reform, regulatory reform for the financial markets and environmental regs to be done by now! Shee – it!
Mike P
In other news…WSJ says Obama will endorse a public plan tonight.
slag
@jl: Thank you very much for this information. I’m not surprised by it, but I find it useful, nonetheless.
Tom
Two Elvis titles in one day!
bob h
I try to imagine what the history books will say about this first year, and I think it is going to center around at least three, major, historic accomplishments: The stimulus and rescue of the economy; exit plan for Iraq, and some form of healthcare reform.
A very good year indeed. But, because the stimulus bill was not big enough for Paul Krugman, the Iraq exit was not pell-mell, and the healthcare plan might not include a public option, Obama is judged to be a failure.
Sloth
@bob h:
Not to mention successfully walking two of the largest corporations in the country through bankruptcy.
Sloth
<blockquote.“The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.”
Not quite. It’s left behind a group of ideological purists, unwilling to admit that any idea outside their narrow bounds can have any merit.
Good thing we don’t see that on the left!
FlipYrWhig
Liberals (a club of which I’m a proud member) like to be disappointed. Why? Because that feeling of disappointment is also a sense of righteous superiority. If you’re pleased with anything, you’re just like everybody else, instead of special and enlightened and shit.
It’s the same reason why hipsters have to hate Coldplay. Too many other people like them already.
Original Lee
I apologize for not having read the entire thread, and I realize this info may be somewhat out of date, but I had German medical insurance for a year when I was briefly transferred to the Cologne office of the company I worked for at the time. IIRC, this is roughly how it worked:
Each family that was insured by my carrier got a booklet of vouchers at the beginning of the year. There were vouchers that were specifically for dental care and eye care, and then there were the general health vouchers. I think there were 4-6 general health vouchers, 2 dental vouchers, and 1 eye care voucher per person. Anyone in the family could use the vouchers, so there were not 2 Dad dental vouchers, 2 Mom dental vouchers, 2 Kid A dental vouchers, etc. The first time you went to see a medical professional that year, you handed in a voucher. The voucher was good for all the office visits you needed to make during that quarter of the year. So if you got sick the last week in March and had to go back in April, that cost 2 vouchers. But if you got sick in January and had to go back 6 times before the end of March, that cost 1 voucher. If you used up all of your vouchers, you had to pay out of pocket until the new year, when you got your next booklet. If you found you were going through your booklet too fast, allegedly you could pay for an upgrade.
I believe the doctors turned in the vouchers on a regular basis and got compensated based on a schedule of some sort, but I don’t know at all how that end worked.
I don’t know anything about hospital care, emergency care, visiting nurses, or anything complicated, because my family didn’t use any of those things the year we used the German insurance. But I think a modified version of the voucher system could work just dandy for the public plan. What if the public plan gave every individual a booklet of vouchers every year, where each voucher was good for one office visit during that calendar year, and if you used them up, after that you had to pay out of pocket? It wouldn’t work for catastrophic care, but you need something different for catastrophic care anyway.
Just my 2 cents.