Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.
As the White House leans on conservative Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska for the 60th health care vote, Emanuel has made the case that this generation of liberal political figures will not make the mistake of their predecessors. The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s greatest regret was not cutting a deal with Richard Nixon on universal health care. Former President Bill Clinton has forever rued the day he did not take moderate Republican Sen. John Chafee up on a compromise that could have secured a health care bill early in his presidency.
Liberal senators nearly scuttled the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program -– S-CHIP –- because Clinton compromised with Republicans and agreed to take the program out of Medicaid and involve private insurers.
“Every time they’ve gotten close to the deal, they’ve passed up the opportunity and chosen to walk away from a particular where they’ve lost the forest for the trees,” Emanuel said.
Now, of course, Rahm is right. There are no more liberal votes to be had in the Senate, and the bill is being held hostage by the Joe and Ben bullshit parade, but here is the thing- YOU CAN’T SAY THAT. This is going to enrage the usual suspects. Good christ, I can hear the shrieking already “Rahm’s not taking us seriously!” and “Obama is taking us for granted” and “we got you elected.” They are probably already working on another idiotic commercial attacking Emmanuel.
And for the record, the always even-keeled Booman laid this all out the other day:
Obama can’t pass anything that doesn’t have unanimous support in the Democratic caucus because of the ruthless obstruction and opposition of the Republican Party. This forces him to govern to the center and make all his compromises with centrist Democrats and/or the two still-existing centrist Republicans in the Senate. The Republican obstruction empowers people like Joe Lieberman. It actually gives veto power to every single senator, but the only way to make up for a defecting Democrat is to win over Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. So, if Bernie Sanders or Roland Burris revolt, he has to move the bill further to the right in response.
The left is immensely frustrated with this situation and inclined to blame the administration, but this is a simple logic tree. Obama cannot push the progressive position on pretty much anything if the centrists refuse to go along. Compounding the problem, progressives don’t really know how to influence centrists. They tend to insult them, call them whores, attack their families, and generally question their morals. Over time, this sets up the situation we saw with Lieberman where he switched positions on a Medicare buy-in proposal simply because the measure was pleasing to people who have been demonizing him for over three years. Rather than persuade the Ben Nelsons and Blanche Lincolns of the Senate, progressive tactics make them even more inclined to reject anything they perceive to be coming from the left.
I think progressives have multiple reasons to be pissed, and it sucks that Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and the rest of the moderates get to force-feed them shit sandwiches. But there isn’t much that can be done about it. This notion that if “Obama used his bully pulpit” or “got out in front of the bill more” is just silly. The bill progressives want is not being held hostage by Obama, it is being held hostage by Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.
And it is infuriating. Personally, if I were in the liberal wing of the Senate, I would have my staffers sniffing out every single piece of legislation Nelson is interested in and would attach pro-choice amendments to each and every one. I would be designing strategies to block or put on hold every thing on his agenda. I would block any judge from his state. I would work to make his life a living hell.
But right now, there is not much you can do. Nelson wants this bill killed, and would love it if the liberal wing does it for him. His insurance industry checks aren’t going to stop.
NobodySpecial
I thought you left! Look, man, go kill zombies or something on the magic box. You’ll feel better.
Kryptik
You still have to admit though, John, as hamstrung as they are….liberals really are being taken for granted.
And I agree with NobodySpecial. Take a day off, for all our sakes. I think the site could use at least one day of trivial shit to discuss just for the reprieve, and killing zombies is always cathartic.
Cain
This is a great post. Well said, Mr. Cole.
cain
Dave Fud
See, doesn’t that make you feel better? Now, wipe what’s left of the shit sandwich off of your mouth and let’s move on to another topic.
Health care has sucked the life out of so many topics. We really do need to move on. There are lots of things to talk about that don’t have such huge corporate resistance, so for kicks, let’s move the ball down the road with some things to piss off teabaggers.
Like DOMA. Or passing something outlawing Christmas. Or whatever sounds like it would cause grief, outrage, and endlessly circled spam in the conservasphere.
We gotta know when to cut a deal and move on. This isn’t going anywhere, and we already wasted a year.
cleek
from MSNBC/AP
i’m 100% sure this is what the GOP looks like, from the inside, these days. wild-eyed idealists are screaming and stomping and threatening to blow up the party if they don’t get their way, the rest of the party is watching in horror, and the opposition is laughing, laughing, laughing.
we are all Larison now.
KCinDC
I’m beginning to think Rahm’s reputation for hard-nosed negotiating is about as reality-based as Rove’s reputation for political genius.
Punchy
Let me do a Booatribe in fewer werds:
Republicans are homogenous on nearly every policy, every position, and vote thusly.
Democrats are heterogeneous, and thus unable to vote in bloc.
Simple.
cleek
@KCinDC:
exactly.
The Grand Panjandrum
I drank to two 750 ml bottles of Three Philosophers last night and really enjoyed myself after reading all the non-stop heartache over the Senate healthcare bill. After reading a bunch today, it looks like I am checking out again and headed to the cooler to grab a very nice Belgian Abbey Ale. I don’t have a vote and I’ve called and emailed both of the Senators more than a dozen times in the past month. This is now in the hands of the FSM.
Take it away Willie and George!
Have a good’un.
Violet
Great post, John.
Stupid question: Why does this have to be done by Christmas? Is that a self-imposed deadline or is there some actual Congressional rule or issue that means if it’s not done by then it’s dead? I feel stupid for asking that because I think I should know the answer. But I don’t. If it doesn’t pass now, can it be taken up again in January?
john w
When they pass a bill (and it will pass) and the sky doesn’t fall and old people are not killed and the end isn’t nigh … then Democrats will have more credibility with centrists.
Hey, fellow liberals: this is gonna take a long time to fix and it’s never going to happen all at once.
So pleas,e John, keep bringing the snark, because there’s still people that need to hear it.
jibeaux
@Violet:
it’s self-imposed, but psychologically important. The other self-imposed deadlines have come and gone. The longer it drags on, the less likely it seems to actually happen and the more casualties we have in the hurt feelings war.
John Cole
@Violet: Every day this is debated the bill becomes less progressive, less popular, and the Democrats are seen as more ineffective and not doing anything about jobs, which is what people are really freaking out about (and rightly so) right now. Did things get better when Baucus put the brakes on things for a month?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
John, there is quite obviously much that CAN be done. For Christ’s sake, using nothing more than vague statements to the press Lieberman and Nelson have managed to make enormous changes to the “current bill”. I still haven’t figured out why you are so opposed to even attempting to nudge it back in the other direction. There’s no downside for you, John. Worst case is that Jane Hamsher gets painted as a radical, and why would you care about that?
kay
“The latest annual Census Bureau figures show that in 2008 just 5.96 percent of college-educated whites lacked health insurance. For whites without a college education, the share without insurance jumps to 14.5 percent (the number is surely higher for non-college whites who are not union members). Among African-Americans, the share of those without insurance rises to 19.1 percent. Among Hispanics, the share of those without insurance soars to a daunting 30.7 percent, the Census found.”
I don’t think you can ignore those numbers when looking at any political calculation the White House might be making.
Especially the Hispanic number.
Just take it into consideration. Who needs this legislation, and how many of each group are going to be directly benefited by it as a practical matter, and which group are Democrats most determined to capture?
DougMN
Lordy, what’s wrong with him? Is he just a vindictive son of a bitch? What’s the point of those comments? Why the hell can’t he just sit in his office and gloat instead of rubbing our noses in the shit sandwich we have to eat?
Violet
@jibeaux:
Thanks for the info. Given that it’s only a self-imposed deadline, it seems to me that it’s time for a psychological revamp. It’s better than it gets done than it die because it didn’t meet some arbitrary deadline.
geg6
@Violet:
Completely arbitrary deadline. There is nothing to stop them from holding it over until kingdom come. The argument is that the longer it sits, the worse it gets. I, personally, think that it’s bad enough already that it really doesn’t matter. But there are those who think differently.
AB
What I don’t get is, why can’t they pass the shitatstic bill with the exchanges and stuff and then pass the Medicare buy-in/robust public option with reconciliation?
John Cole
@DougMN: I don’t think he was gloating at all. He’s just stating the facts. There are no more liberal votes to get.
Tonal Crow
And if Obama had done more to persuade the DINOs, we might be in a much better place. A poster yesterday suggested that Obama arrange free healthcare fairs (e.g., http://www.medworksusa.org/news/medworks-fair-thrills-patients-volunteer-medical-personnel-a-second-session-is-in-works/ ) in each DINO’s state, then use the huge turnout to shame him into supporting reasonable reform.
It might not work, but it’s not “just silly” to suggest that it would. And that’s just one idea.
Violet
@John Cole:
John, I get that. But the self-imposed deadlines aren’t helping if they fail to get it done, either. It just makes them seem ineffective because they missed the fall deadline, the Christmas deadline, etc.
As I said in some comment yesterday, the Dems should also figure out how to tie healthcare reform to job creation. I don’t know exactly how that could be done, form a messaging standpoint I mean, but I’m sure some smart ad people could do it. Then the Dems should pound it home. Passing HCR helps businesses create jobs. Republicans don’t want to help create jobs. And so forth.
geg6
Rahm Emmanuel can suck my dick.
If I had one, that is.
That said, this cements my resolve. Regardless of how I plan to vote, I won’t be volunteering for or donating to Obama.
Emma
I want, seriously, seriously, want, people going after Nelson and Lieberman for everything down to and including ingrown toenails. I know the White House has to make political calculations (Lieberman is taking the lead on some things, supposedly) but we don’t have to.
Sentient Puddle
I hereby propose that we retire the term “shit sandwich” from discourse. Or alternatively, start calling it “shark sandwich.” For no particular reason.
NobodySpecial
@AB:
Because nice people don’t play that way, only DFH’s do, and DFH’s are an endangered species in the Senate.
John Cole
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): Ok. Give me your master plan to make it more progressive and better and still get Nelson or Snowe or Collins to vote for it (and this is assuming Lieberman does not decide to fuck things up again).
What can Obama do? What do you suggest? You are not allowed to say “use the bully pulpit” or “put pressure on Senators.” You have to tell me something that they need to do that will move this bill to the left and get the votes of the ahole centrists.
Dave C
Remember when Obama pushed for the triggered public option to get Olympia Snowe onboard, and Harry Reid was like, “Nuh uh, we’ve got Lieberman–we don’t Olympia.” Ugh.
John Cole
@geg6: Shorter geg: Rahm Emmanuel stated facts and therefore I refuse to help Obama.
I thought we were the reality based party?
Grumpy Old Man
Good christ, I can hear the shrieking already “Rahm’s not taking us seriously!” and “Obama is taking us for granted” and “we got you elected.”
Is any of this untrue?
Look, I think we should probably pass the bill that seems to be taking shape in the Senate. Beyond this particular issue, though, I don’t think it should be controversial that the White House is taking progressives for granted, and that progressives should start calling the White House on this.
Violet
@geg6:
I’m not convinced it gets worse. I don’t know, though. I do think people are tired of hearing about it. Republicans should be painted as not wanting to help Americans and not wanting to help businesses. Attack them on their strengths.
Jeez, Democrats are SO bad at messaging. It’s frustrating. It’s not that hard.
gypsy howell
Funny, because I don’t recall Bush making concessions to the more liberal republican senators to get their votes. They were expected to toe the line with the far-right of their party. The center moved right, not the other way around. “Or else…” was the threat to the more liberal republicans, one assumes. (yes, I use the term “liberal republicans” only in comparison to the right-wing) And I doubt if Bush needed to worry about keeping the far-right vote in the Republican fold and more than Rahm says he needs to worry about keeping the liberal vote in the Democratic fold.
And yet… in the democratic party, it’s the opposite. The liberals are expected to move to the right, and jolly well like it. Has Obama ever, ever applied pressure to the Nelsons and Liebermans? Not that I can see.
John Cole
By the way, all the people who are suggesting the WH do something to Lieberman, remember that he is most likely the point man on DADT. Don’t think he won’t scuttle it to piss off the DFH crowd and the gay lobby, then we get to spend the next year hearing that Obama hates the gays as much as he hates progressives.
I
Tonal Crow
@John Cole: That’s just defeatism, and “justifies” never applying any progressive pressure, lest we lose support on something else.
Napoleon
@Violet:
Another reason to get it done by Christmas is if they do not it floats into the window of the State of the Union. So you end up with Obama making a speech about his next big programs while HCR is still sitting in Congress.
But as to what Rahm Emanuel said. Here is a prediction, that will end up being one of the biggest mistakes that that someone from the Obama administration makes. He just set the entire relationship with the left on fire and it will cost him passage of programs and worse case senerio draw a primary challenge fro Obama. The left had enough of this BS during the Clinton years and having Lieberman and Rahm take a dump on them in the same week is going to leave a lot of people laying in the weeds waiting to pay it back for a long time to come.
Hunter Gathers
@Sentient Puddle:
MMMmmm…..Sharkwich…
Kryptik
@Violet:
I’m pretty sure it does get worse the longer it goes on, because following the pattern already established, once one ‘consciencious objector’ is satisfied enough to step aside, the next one immediately chimes in on the new demands he’s had time to figure out over the time used to wrangle the previous one. Nelson, Snow, Collins, and Lieberman have been playing with this baton for months now.
And the problem with paining Republicans as not wanting to help is that we keep getting told that ‘Democrats have the filibuster proof majority’. Democrats, rightly so or not, will own this bill or its failure, simply because we “should” have the votes to go alone, where public perception is concerned.
And part of why Dems are so bad at messaging is because we can always count on other Dems to fuck over the message for the sake of ‘bipartisanship’ usually.
wilfred
Lieberman? Try this:
a) Don’t show up for his Aipac jamboree;
b) Threaten to endorse the Goldstone report;
c) Threaten to remove him from his chairmanship of Homeland Security
d) Have your fucking press secretary criticize him as much as he did Howard Dean
Threaten him as much as you threaten members of your own party:
And please don’t say that Obama must have done all this because you don’t know if it’s true.
Kryptik
@John Cole:
Honestly, John, at this point, I doubt we can count on Joe for anything, even something like DADT. He’s just as likely to hold the damn thing hostage like he’s doing with the Health debate right now. We can’t hang on Joe like a lynchpin, because he’s reveling in his ability to fuck the Dems over.
JMY
@DougMN:
I don’t think he is being vindictive as you may think. Just being realistic about it. When the Recovery Act was finally signed and people complained about it not being large enough, which was a fair assessment, and many people blamed Rahm for cutting deals and making concessions, his line of thinking was, “Okay, Kennedy isn’t able to vote, Minnesota didn’t have it’s other Senator yet, so what do we do?” The answer was to try to get some moderate Republicans involved and that’s what they did and it worked.
I tend to think that if the there were more liberal Democrats in the Senate and there was no Bayh, Nelson, Blanche, Lieberman, or Landrieu, there would be no need for concessions, but that’s obviously not the case.
jeffreyw
Dammit! Where’s my sausage and doggie thread?
Citizen Alan
@jibeaux:
Actually, I suspect the biggest concern is that if it’s not done before Christmas, then there will be a holiday break before Congress comes back for recess, during which we will have a repeat of the August tea-bagger lunacy. I don’t think it will change any votes, as the battle lines seem clearly drawn, but it will allow for further negative publicity as tea-baggers get on TV all over the place, likely in festive seasonal garb, to scream about the deficiencies in the bill (some of which will actually be true).
ellie
I love your idea about attaching pro choice legislation to every one of Nelson’s pet bills. I would do that to every one of those DINOs. Just to hear their whining. Which would then taste like candy to me.
KCinDC
Judging by this latest bit of idiocy from Rahm, the people complaining that progressives aren’t being paid attention to are wrong. It’s not that they’re being ignored — they’re being actively insulted. What possible purpose does this sort of thing serve?
PeakVT
Any ideas on how a non-senator could get standing to challenge the super-majority cloture rule? I realize this is something the Supremes wouldn’t want to get into. But since cloture is now the key vote – the vote for which deals are done – I think it’s unconstitutional.
Sentient Puddle
@Napoleon:
Ah yes, I remember those dark days…the left hating Clinton so much that they gave him a vigorous primary challenge in ’96…
Citizen Alan
@DougMN:
Yes. SAFSQ.
Death Panel Truck
Love how progressives actually believe that. I seem to recall that close to 50 percent of the Democratic base wanted another candidate to get the nomination, and then threatened to withhold support for Obama when they didn’t get their way. Much of the progressive support for Obama was tepid at best.
Obama was elected because he managed to convince 53 percent of a largely centrist electorate he was one of them.
Kryptik
@ellie:
I’d worry about the public perception and predictable media spin that’d result…but it’s not like public perception is really driving this right now, so…
Brett
John: I think that the argument would be: Obama could use the power of the office to attempt to change the rules of the game, and that if he was actually interested in the reforms outlined in the House bill, then you would think that reconciliation and the elimination of the filibuster should be on the table, as they say.
John Cole
I want to cry. Rahm wasn’t shitting all over the left, he was just stating fucking facts.
And now we have ten commenters here with reading comprehension issues who apparently missed the point of the entire post and are saying that Rahm just shit all over the left.
Is being butthurt fun? Is that why progressives practice it so much.
I’m really done for the day now. Irrational idiots. v And I’m still waiting on the master plan that Obama is supposed to employ to move this bill significantly to the left while maintaining the centrist votes. You don’t think it is taking everything in leaderships power to keep that showboating jackass Evan Bayh from getting some of the attention Lieberman and Nelson are getting.
Christ.
Ben
@John Cole:
Fr srs, John. What makes you think he won’t fuck with DADT or anything else just to puff his own ego? Leave Lieberman in charge, he pisses on every bill he can. Take him out and he still pisses on every bill.
I just don’t buy the argument. “If we coddle Joe, he’ll be on our side on some stuff.” He flipflopped on the Medicare buy-in, on his health plan, on his pledge to not campaign against the Dem candidate, etc., etc. He’s nothing more than a troll at this point. There’s nothing to be gained by continuing to humor him.
cyntax
@John Cole:
So the strategy going forward is don’t piss off Lieberman? Can’t see that going wrong, ever. He’s with us on everything but the war, right?
KCinDC
Unfortunately Howard Dean doesn’t have a vote in the Senate. If you had an example of a liberal senator that the White House had criticized, you might have a point — though even then you’d have the problem that conservatives have more leverage because liberals ultimately care about passing the bill, unlike Lieberman.
Citizen Alan
@Tonal Crow:
That was me, and I wasn’t just talking about DINOs but also Republicans who were vocal opponents of reform. If Obama had wanted to play hardball, his number one priority would have been to indelibly associate the GOP with the suffering caused by the lack of insurance. But that wouldn’t have been “post-partisan.” It wouldn’t have “built bridges.” And it wouldn’t have been “change we can believe in.”
licensed to kill time
__
Uh-oh. John’s giving up again.
ETA: Maybe we’ll get 27 more posts? :-)
JMY
But honestly, where was Rahm, shitting on the Left?
NobodySpecial
@John Cole:
I told you, Cole. Zombies. Or maybe Nazis. Everyone can get behind shooting, stabbing, and burning Nazis, right?
James K. Polk, Esq.
My cat’s breath smells like cat food.
/Wiggum
tamied
@jeffreyw: Is that like a weiner-dog?
Tonal Crow
@PeakVT: I really doubt that the filibuster rules are unconstitutional. Art.I s.5 cl.2 says that “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” That looks like unfettered discretion to adopt pretty much any rules they want (as long as the rules themselves are ratified by majority vote). On the flip side, nothing prevents a majority of the Senate from restricting or eliminating the filibuster. What the Senate cannot do is restrict its own ability to change the rules, since that would contravene Art.I s.5 cl.2. But you’re correct that the federal courts would be very hesitant to entertain a lawsuit challenging Senate rules.
KCinDC
@John Cole, I think part of the master plan should be having Rahm not come out and gratuitously say things that make the progressives even angrier than they are. Is that hard? Does it have some unseen disadvantage?
geg6
@John Cole:
Rahm Emmanuel deliberately set out to smack people like me in the face. By saying Bernie Sanders doesn’t count, he’s saying that Lieberman and Nelson count more. I don’t see the White House kissing Sen. Sanders’ ass the way they have Lieberman and Nelson. It was said the way it was said to piss off people like me.
And FTR, I’ve been saying this exact thing about not putting out for them again for days, long before Rahm decided being an even bigger asshole than usual was cute and funny to the Village. Rahm just made it even more of a sure thing.
dan
@John Cole: Within the narrow time-window left to get a bill, you are right. It is accept what there is, or no bill. All of the arguing is about which of these is better, and it is not interesting. Nor do I think most people are really informed enough to know.
What is unfair to ignore is that this moment was created on purpose.
This is “Lieberman’s fault” because the strategy only allowed for a bill as good as the 60th vote would support.
No meaningful change — remember that slogan Obama used so well — can come out of such a strategy.
Mothra
Thanks for that post, John.
kay
@Death Panel Truck:
I think they’re probably looking at who is actually going to be impacted by any bill we get, like or loathe it, and it isn’t college educated whites, 94% of whom have health insurance.
It doesn’t have to be a slap in the face. It could just be looking at the numbers.
Hunter Gathers
@John Cole:
The Human Marshmallow know as Evan Bayh getting that kind of attention would be torture. Not on the level of, say, Chinese Water Torture, but more like sleeping under a leaky air conditioner, slowly being annoyed to death.
lawguy
You know it is fun to kick the DFHs, but in the end what does it get the democrats. A republican majority next election. It is going to be great fun to have the IRS collect for CIGNA and AETNA and that will play well with the average voter.
So they give more and more and more to the conservatives until there really isn’t anything but a shit sandwich for all of the rest of us and by the way that includes you.
Just tell me again what the liberals have gotten out of this abortion again? By the way if Obama had wanted anything other than he is getting he could have strong armed the conservatives, instead …………….. well instead.
So we can be called assholes for backing the guy and expecting anyting other than a shiv. Silly me.
Xenos
@John Cole: A few rallies in places like Omaha, Baton Rouge, Little Rock and Hartford might help. Walk into the lions’ dens, as it were. Make a news event out of it, lay out the logic behind it, show the popular support for it. Build the popular support for it.
OK, his agenda is pretty full with the clusterfucks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with all the trips to China, Oslo, and Copenhagen, but really – is this a priority or not? Obama is the salesman in chief, and if he is not out there selling, people think he is not behind it.
We need a social movement to prune corporate rights and power. Without such a movement, dicking around in the Senate gets us nowhere. Without our best, most charismatic leader, the movement is going nowhere.
Citizen Alan
@John Cole:
Bwah! That actually did make me laugh out loud.
John, I am telling you right now that Lieberman will scuttle DADT and will do it in such a way that Obam simultaneously comes off as hating the gays while also somehow being anti-family values and anti-Christian. I can’t wait to see how Lieberman uses this contentious “values”-laden issue to fuck with the Democrats, now that Obama and the progressives have been shown to be completely impotent in the face of his veto power. It will be hilarious (again, I laugh so that I don’t cry).
scarshapedstar
Liberals need to bend over and take it and like it, because they outnumber the conservatives and thus are less important.
Can we abolish the fucking Senate already?
And would it really hurt for Obama to say, “You know what? I want a public option, or Medicare-for-all, and as the leader of the Democratic party I will ensure that anyone who joins a Republican filibuster against my policy proposals will not get a dime from the national party ever again.”
OniHanzo
I strongly disagree. It doesn’t matter if one is strongly conservative or strongly progressive… what matters is convincing the independents and the “centrists” that your idea is a) sound and b) that you have the majority of Americans at your back. Can Obama do it by speech ninjitsu alone? Hell no. And that’s up to us to continue primarying Blue Dogs to lessen the Republican dead weight.
But Obama, in his first year, with nothing really gambled yet, can make an effective case for a bill that is stronger than this Senate-neutered bag of glitter and dogshit. So far… crickets.
To believe otherwise is to disregard the political influence of the goddamn office. He is not leading the party and now, more than ever, it needs ferocious leadership.
If not Obama, who?
Cassidy
Gotta love Democracy. At least Rahm has the cojones to say something out loud. Here’s what I say: If the liberal Dems in the House and Senatre want this bad enough, why are they not out front, loudly shaming their peers? I can catch video clips of shitheads like Lieberman and Nelson all day long, but it seems the esteemed Independent from vermont is the only one with any backbone. Our government has changed and has been changed for a long time. The “Rules of the Senate” are this: the biggest crybabies, whiners and drama queens get what they want. And in any fight, the only people who talk about “fair” is the guy who got his ass kicked. So, if they want to win, they have one option: publicly shiv these fuckers (rhetorically speaking) in the liver.
Just Some Fuckhead
Again, we’re doing all the strategery as if legislation required sixty votes to pass. It doesn’t. It requires a simple majority, or even a 50-50 tie with the VP breaking the tie.
The vote for cloture to end debate requires 3/5ths of the senate (provided we aren’t willing to use the nuclear option that Republicans invented, or to use reconciliation.)
In any event, I don’t understand why we aren’t screaming from the rooftops that Republicans or Lieberman or whomever isn’t allowing us to have a goddamned upperdown vote.
Instead, we act like we need 60 votes to pass legislation.
Edit to add: And thereby concede defeat before we’ve been defeated. Republicans don’t die so easily. They threatened the nuclear option and BAM, compromise happened and they got some of what they wanted. We, OTOH, curl up and die every fucking time.
Napoleon
@Sentient Puddle:
I really don’t understand your point but after taking it with NAFTA and welfare reform many on the left were left fuming at Clinton by the end of his administration (and it didn’t help they had to get his ass out of the jam of impeachment). All of that has carried over to this day and Obama is really not starting over with a completely clean slate with the left who remembers the last go round.
Tonal Crow
@Death Panel Truck:
True.
Utterly false.
And if the many progressives who worked their asses off electioneering for Obama had not done so, he easily could have lost.
Grumpy Old Man
By the way, all the people who are suggesting the WH do something to Lieberman, remember that he is most likely the point man on DADT. Don’t think he won’t scuttle it to piss off the DFH crowd and the gay lobby, then we get to spend the next year hearing that Obama hates the gays as much as he hates progressives.
Right: He’s with us on
everything except the warDADT.It’s clear by now that Lieberman isn’t actually going to be with us in a helpful way on anything that matters. He doesn’t care about policy; this is personal for him. If we keep him close enough, he can find a way to stab us in the back on anything.
If it were actually possible to strike a useful deal with Lieberman, we wouldn’t need to talk about striking such a deal in December 2009: the deal he made to keep this chairmanship after the 2008 elections should have taken care of him a long time ago. But as long as we treat him like the marginal vote in the Senate, he’s going to ensure that he stakes out a position just a little beyond what we need it to be. His shift on the Medicare buy-in is a good example of this.
We’d be much better off negotiating with Collins or Snowe, who at least have some relatively fixed set of positions on policy. Lieberman is going to keep moving the goalposts, because his real goal is hurting his enemies in the Democratic Party. We should stop pretending that we can actually pin him down, and we should start hurting him in the petty ways (seniority privileges, office space, constituent services, holiday party invitations, whatever) that he seems to care about. Maybe, after a while, he’ll come back to the deal he must have made at this time last year. If not, well, I don’t know what else we could do.
Maude
@John Cole: Before you go, what kind of bread do you use for a shit sandwich?
All of this reminds me of Rush’s wanting Obama to fail.
JM
If only that fourth plane hadn’t crash-landed in Pennsylvania.
Cassidy
We’d be much better off if someone developed a little Joementum off a cliff.
Citizen Alan
@Death Panel Truck:
I suppose my memories are flawed, but my recollection is that the Dems were evenly divided between Obama and Clinton and that when Obama got the nomination, everyone generally lined up behind him fairly enthusiastically. The PUMA phenomenon was a joke that no one (except maybe McCain and Limbaugh) ever took seriously. Also, progressives weren’t particularly thrilled with either Obama or Clinton because of a variety of overly centrist stands, but it’s not like progressives stayed home or voted for Nader again.
AnotherBruce
Again, just blow up the filibuster and there is no problem. I guarantee that the next time Republicans take power in the Senate that is just what they’re going to do.
Blow the fucker up, go nuclear, it’s the last thing they expect. Think of the pleasure at hearing Republicans and ConservaDems howl like banshees.
SteveinSC
@geg6: The nice thing about Rahm is he doesn’t have a vote in the Senate. Thus, while we have to hold our noses on Liebermann and Nelson, Rahm has no such protection. He is fair game and I expect there will be plenty of hunters and no end to the season. That said, isn’t it ironic that the asshole who didn’t get elected Vice President ends up as a co-President?
terraformer
@John Cole:
And I’m still waiting on the master plan that Obama is supposed to employ to move this bill significantly to the left while maintaining the centrist votes.
Well, the idea of the ‘bully pulpit’ is to move not just the bill itself, but the ‘centrists’ to the left as well, by virtue of their constituents hammering them at home via phone calls, personal visits, and emails demanding their support of the ‘left’ bill.
No one knows for sure, but if Obama had gotten out on the airwaves more throughout this battle, targeting the centrists’ states and the voters within them–while others point out that those Senators are currently against what Obama is saying–that might have helped do this. But now we’ll never know, I guess. Sure, Rahm’s pointing out the facts, but the point is that the facts didn’t need to be what they are now if things had been done differently earlier.
danimal
@Citizen Alan: I think this is a great idea.
It would appeal to the community organizer section of Obama’s brain, too. I don’t know that Obama is going to give up on this too easily. As I read it, he seemed to indicate he believed his mother died because she didn’t have adequate health insurance coverage.
Napoleon
@John Cole:
At least speaking for my self that is how the left is going to view it. What I think he is actually doing is irrelevant since I do not dictate public opinion, but if you don’t think you will be reading that quote from someone or other once a week from now until Obama leaves office you are crazy. Rahm just handed them a bloody flag and it will get waived from now until Obama is back in Hyde Park in Chicago.
cyntax
@Death Panel Truck:
True but by a 2-1 margin, that same electorate doesn’t want mandates without a PO or a Medicare expansion. Kind of puts Obama in a bit of a jam if he signs some POS like the Senate bill into law. I’m sure 2010 and 2012 will be peachy if he doesn’t find some way to reel Lieberman and Nelson in.
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Exactly.
scarshapedstar
By the way, the only reason Lieberman is the “point man” on DADT or anything else is because of his committee chairmanships that he SHOULD NOT FUCKING HAVE. This is like if an arsonist set your house on fire and then you told the police that you wouldn’t testify against him because he proceeded to pick up a little spray bottle and pretended to douse the flames. Or something. Maybe he’s more like my senile cat who shits on things no matter how nicely we treat him.
Furthermore, I will bet my nonexistant house that Lieberman will not get DADT repealed. As a side bet, $5 says there will be a hearty round of Hoocoodanode and “he was with us on everything else”.
bago
That was a very clear and well reasoned post, John. It just goes to show that you have no future in politics.
danimal
Obama campaign ad “Mother”
Svensker
I’ve come to agree with you on this one John, but the hub and my son are on the “I’m never voting for a Democrat again, Obama has sold us all out” thing. They don’t want the political reality, they want the pony. It took me 20 years of voting Libertarian to finally wake up and realize you gotta work for the pony, and that work may involve shoveling a load of shit first.
Santa Claus doesn’t bring the pony, folks. You gotta get a minimum wage job first and earn the damn pony. Sorry.
Tonal Crow
@AnotherBruce:
Yes. And do it to pass a good bill (real public option, no preexisting-condition exclusion of any kind, no rescission of any kind, administrative-cost caps, etc.) that goes into effect pronto, not in 2013.
jeffreyw
@tamied: yup, like this
Rick Taylor
__
This seems to me to be an excellent reason to find another point person for DADT.
__
I’m not a purist. But Lieberman didn’t just oppose the bill, he announced he’d filibuster it. And he didn’t just announce he’d filibuster it, he declined to participate in the process of forming the bill, giving the impression he’d be fine with it, and made his announcement the extension of Medicare was unacceptable after a compromise was reach but before it was scored by the CBO, timed in such a way to cause maximum embarrassment to Democrats and maximum damage to Obama’s agenda. Why on earth would you want someone like that to be the point person for anything you cared about?
Mike E
That’s right–Howard Dean pulls a Yankee Dynasty on the Repubs by losing ONE incumbent (dude w/cash in his freezer) in two elections, swings the Legislative Branch, and he gets The Treatment by his own party.
I swear, I may never register D again in my lifetime. Assholes wanna be Repubs so bad…
Cassidy
If Progressives don’t have the backbone to speak publicly, what makes you think this is anywhere close to a realistic option?
Citizen Alan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
This. We need complete unanimity because it is accepted, simply accepted by everyone as part of the normal course of politics, that the Republicans can filibuster every Senate action with complete impunity. Less than five years ago, people were suggesting it was treasonous for the Dems to consider a filibuster on anything when the Republicans only had a 51-49 advantage. Can you imagine what the Broders and Brookses would have said if the Democrats had simply filibustered everything Bush proposed for 8 whole years?
From the day that the Repukes voted en masse against the bailout that saved us from the Depression: Part II, Obama should have been on TV bellowing about how childish, petty and downright unAmerican the Republicans have been. But no, wouldn’t be “post partisan.” Wouldn’t be “change we could believe in.”
When the Republicans eventually do regain the Senate, anyone wanna take bets on how long it will be before filibustering anything at all suddenly becomes anti-democratic.
eemom
Thank God for John Cole and Booman, the only sane voices in the left blogosphere.
(Well, except for Steve Benen and Ezra — but they’re not as fun to read.)
The sound of making Nelson’s life hell with pro-choice amendments is sweet music to my ears. Too and also.
Oh how I wish there were a way to make all of these fuckers’ lives hell. You know, kind of like the lives of sick people who don’t have health insurance.
Noonan
I’m still trying to convince myself this is some sort of puppeteering by Dean to enrage the liberal base and give cover for Nelson to jump on board just before the vote. Because the alternative is too stupid and unproductive.
Senyordave
Obama gave himself a B+ for his performance in his 60 Minutes interview. I think he gets about a D on HCR, and avoids an F only because we have a GOP that is clearly acting only in what they think is the party’s best interest, and makes no bones about not even offerring solutions to health care problems.
Obama has been terrible on this issue, and I don’t even understand what his end game is.
He has shown every shitbag senator (that takes care of most Republicans, the Blue Dogs, and the Schumers, Feinsteins, etc. of the world) that they can be the most important person in the world. This will affect his entire agenda, because no Republican will support any of his policy initiatives.
I just don’t get it. I really believe he wanted to change the process, and it probably turned out to be worse than he ever thought it was, but what part of no, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman just plain don’t want to see a HCR bill passed does Obama not understand?
kay
@cyntax:
They’re betting the people who don’t have insurance will sign up without a mandate, because they don’t have insurance, and they want insurance.
Remember: the group that comprises the “people who don’t have insurance” are not 1. college educated white people, or 2. union members.
Not the target audience here. What’s the political blow back of 5% of college educated whites possibly being subject to a mandate?
Not big.
What’s the political blow back of not providing some solution to the 30% of Hispanics who don’t have health insurance?
Mari
In multiple court cases, Obama has been quite happy to advance the previous administration’s position on the ‘unitary executive.’
How many TSA cavity searches would Nelson accept before rethinking the importance of insurance industry cash?
How closely do Liberman’s phone calls and emails need to be looked at to find enough material to motivate him to retire?
Just how hard would it be to accidentally rendition a senator?
There’s no reason to play nice with Republican sycophants.
TheWesson
John Cole,
I think you are just mistaken when you say “what else could Obama have done?”
Getting DINO’s in line: “Vote my way or national democratic support for your Congressional campaign will evaporate.”
Getting Repugs into line: “Vote our way and we’ll go real easy on you in 2010.” (throwing Dem challengers to the wolves, sadly.) Also, there’s plenty of public shaming to be done, as one commenter already suggested. But for some reason, Obama wants to play nice even in the face of 100% opposition.
What happened to Organizing for America? After Obama’s election, there were millions of progressives and/or organized Obamabots waiting for marching orders. They haven’t gotten any orders to speak of.
That last is the tragic part. This health care bill is the outcome of a negotiation between corporate America and the Administration, essentially. Why is corporate America the negotiating partner? Probably due to donations and lobbying of Congress-critters. Well, that’s where OFA could play a big part; it’s a potential source of political power ($$$ and boots on the ground) that could absolutely swamp corporate power – or at least counterweight it.
Well, after the election the Obama admin ignored OFA – it served its purpose, getting him elected, and though absolutely serviceable for progressive change as well, has never been deployed for that.
This is what Obama wanted, for some reason.
It’s just like his vote on FISA in 2008. Why would he want to protect corporate America? I don’t know, but he does.
eemom
and for all those who keep whining about how the republicans could get THEIR shit done, why can’t we — ever pause to consider that that’s because all the moneyed powers in this country — i.e., all the powers fighting health care reform and everything else that is good and decent
— WANT the republicans’ shit to get done, because it’s THEIR shit that the republicans are doing? Seems kind of glaringly obvious to me.
Rick Taylor
Following on your criticism of Rahm, a further quote from Booman from the post you linked to:
__
__
Perhaps I don’t have a full picture, but it seems to me that the Obama administration has spent much more effort and capital reaching out to so-called moderates and even conservatives than to liberals. Perhaps since they feel liberals are with them on the issues, don’t need to be convinced, and have nowhere else to go, they take them for granted. But liberals have egos just like everyone else, and now it looks like they’re losing the left as well as the right. If so, that’s a political failure. The left doesn’t need as much attention (indeed they’ve put up with huge amounts of shit up until now), but we need some. Take someone for granted and they’ll get pissed off at you, and perhaps even bite off their nose to spite your face.
cyntax
@Svensker:
If that’s they’re stance, I’m sorry; I can see how that’s frustrating.
On the other hand, there is a political reality to saying we need a better bill. It’s not ponyism to point out that most Americans don’t want mandates without either the PO or an expansion of Medicare as a backstop for costs.
The bill has to be improved, and part of the way to do that is to apply pressure from the left so the WH gets more involved with what comes out of the conference. So raising a ruckus can have a positive outcome–it’s not just histrionics as some would have it.
tamied
Sigh. I’m just so tired of feeling like the loser.
bemused
@eemom:
Amen to your Thank God.
Listening to Thom Hartmann. Victoria Jones’ news from the Hill said chances are the vote is not likely until 7 pm Christmas Eve. Also that DeMint is determined to get senators back between Christmas & New Years to work on another bill. I have no idea what kind of power he would have to force that. (Funny how eager R’s are to work through weekends & holidays now.) Rep Grayson was a guest & said there are at least 100 bills stalled in the Senate because of the HCR bill obstructionism. The Senate is a damned mess.
JMY
The goal right now is to move on to the next phase, which would be conference. The Senate Finance Committee bill didn’t have a public option, but it was voted on so we could move on to the next phase. The House voted for their bill and it barely passes with a public option. Now it’s time for the Senate to pass theirs. Doesn’t have a PO? Fine. But let them vote so we could move on to the next phase. When it’s time for conference, then we could fight like hell for the PO or Medicare buy-in. But this is not even the final bill.
cyntax
@kay:
I think the blowback number [from this poll] is much larger than you’re estimating:
I’m not saying the Hispanic vote isn’t important, but doing something for that block at the expense of the rest of the electorate just doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. Notice how the base and independents come home when the PO and Medicare are back in the mix.
AnotherBruce
@Cassidy:
I don’t think it’s going to happen, but if it did you would you would see the Democrats energized again. I just think that at a certain point the Democrats need to become a party that stands for something. FDR was re-elected again and again because he did stand for something. And I believe he took a stand for the right values that launched decades of unprecedented prosperity for our nation.
I’m not going to bitch if we get the watered down health care bill. We have what we have with our current crop of Democrats. But if we don’t set our sights a little higher over the horizon we’re never going to get close to getting what we value.
scarshapedstar
When you say this, are you referring to the latest “quote” ginned up by the Doctored Dean Quote Mafia? (viz. “I won’t support Obama in 2012. Yeeeeargh!”) Or are you referring to him speaking for, um, probably the majority of the Democratic party?
Anya
Someone please shoot me! This idiot Inhofe is representing people and he just embarrassed the United States in Copenhagen. Although the treatment he received is really funny, this is from Politico:
Edit: I cann’t seem to be able to fix the blockquote.
Wile E. Quixote
Yeah Rahm, you go, punch the fuck out of those lousy stinking DFHs. Give John Cole a boner because at heart John’s every bit as much of a DFH puncher as any teabagger or Palinite.
As far as not supporting Obama in 2012 why should I? I’ll vote for him, but since you and the rest of the DFH punchers keep telling me that there’s nothing that Barack Obama can do because he’s too pathetic, weak and ignorant to influence Congress
unless of course it’s for funding wars, why should I waste any time or money supporting him? So I’ll spend my time volunteering for whoever runs against Dave Reichert in WA 8, and send some bucks to my Congressman, Jim McDermott, who probably doesn’t need them because he’s Congressman for life in WA-7 and sending money to progressives who are challenging Republicans or Conservadems to try and change Congress instead of wasting it on someone you keep telling me is completely impotent to affect any change? So you have fun supporting the completely helpless and impotent 11 dimensional chess player in chief. Give him your time and money, I’m going to use mine to try and help someone who can get something done.
JMY
It’s year one, not 2011, why are we talking about 2012?
cyntax
@Anya:
Hey! I want reporters like that! Where do we get some of those?
Wile E. Quixote
Oh, and John, you and the rest of the “Obama can’t do anything” pearl clutchers were described perfectly by that shrill old meanie Glenn Greenwald who wrote:
John Cole
@Wile E. Quixote: Seriously. Wtf are you talking about? How am I punching hippies? I’m furious with Lieberman and Nelson. I agree the progressive wing is getting crapped on by the moderates. How am I punching hippies?
Seriously?
Emma
eemom: This. Also.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Not sure I agree with your analysis there, John.
Suppose that the only thing Nelson really cares about is reelection as a D in an R state? How does making his legislative life a living hell, as you propose, get him motivated? Isn’t that tactic just going to get him defeated and lose us a seat? And doesn’t he know that, and play it to the hilt? Isn’t all his posturing just aimed at holding onto his seat with his skeptical R voters? If his seat were already R, we wouldn’t be in a position to do anything to the holder of that seat. The whole game only works if the strategy keeps him in the game as a D. How does your approach do that?
Anya
@eemom: Add to that list Matthew Yglesias.
Sasha
And exactly who would those DINOs be?
The problem isn’t that the Democrats aren’t progressive enough – it’s that if the junior senator from Connecticut refuses to vote for cloture, that’s all she wrote. He cannot be threatened, pressured, or reasoned with. (IMHO, Lieberman doesn’t intend to run for reelection in 2012 so never mind threatening to withhold support, and if his chairmanship is removed, you can be almost certain he will never vote with or for any Democratic initiatives again.) No amount of bill killing and resurrection is going to change that.
It is self-defeating and ridiculous for liberals to condemn moderates when a majority of Dems in the House and all the Dems in the Senate were on board with a public option or Medicare buy-in. (Including Nelson: he would buckle like a belt if push came to shove.) If you want to vent your anger, don’t displace it onto Obama and his administration. Direct it at Lieberman and the transparently obstructionist Republicans – they’re the one’s truly responsible for this clusterfuck.
If you want a better health care bill, you can do two things: (1) Fix the current one in conference and then hammer away at “moderate” Republican senators to pass it (and advise GOPers running in 2010 that their (re)election is contingent on voting for the bill), or (2) Pass the bill as it, then fight like hell to add a public option or Medicare buy-in through reconciliation in 2011 (using it as a campaign issue in 2010 to energize the base). Anything else is just less-than-useless handwringing.
John Cole
@Wile E. Quixote: IF you can show me once where I have said Obama is playing 11 dimensional chess, I will grant you that the Greenwald piece describes me perfectly. Just once.
And then, when you are done, you tell me how Obama changes the current dynamic in the Senate. You’re mad at the jackasses in the Senate screwing with the bill, and you are taking it out and lashing out on everyone.
Citizen Alan
The reason the Left remembers and reveres FDR isn’t just because he gave us Social Security and defeated the Nazis. It’s because as bad as things were during the Great Depression, people never stopped believing that he was fighting on their behalf. And when the Right attacked him as a Socialist and a tool of the Soviets and a class traitor, you know what he said? “I relish their hatred.”
I. Relish. Their. Hatred.
That was FDR’s crowning moment of awesome, as far as I’m concerned. What FDR didn’t do was come into office at the height of a national crisis and make “bipartisanship” and “healing partisan divides” his number one priority. He didn’t base all of his policy decisions around getting at least one Republican Senator to vote for the bill, no matter how pro-business the ended up being. And he didn’t treat progressives like Frances Perkins with indifference bordering on hostility.
If FDR had conducted himself in 1933 like Obama has in 2009, we would not remember his name today. Because in the long run, who cares about one-term presidents.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Enough with the strawmen. Nobody’s got a “master plan” for what they want. Does Joe Lieberman? He just talks off the top of his head into a microphone and stuff changes. That’s what I want to see done by some of the players on the other side of this, instead of just “please sir may I have another” over and over again. That’s my “master plan”.
I don’t know, maybe this? But you’re asking the wrong question, IMO, we’ve long known that Obama is more a country club member than gate-crasher. I want whoever has the balls to do it to throw a little left-wing hissy fit and see if it helps. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, who gets hurt? Won’t hurt me a bit. Will your blog get less traffic or something because of something Howard Dean says? Has bribery been tried, as was apparently done with Landrieu?
Then after the bill finally passes the Senate there’s going to be a continuing process before the Health Care Shit Sandwich of 2010 finally gets considered by both houses of Congress. Buck up John, there’s a long way to go.
eemom
this. Fucking THIS, and I don’t care if it’s coming from that Brownstein guy:
“Maybe one reason former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and so much of the digital Left can so casually dismiss the Senate health care reform bill is that they operate in an environment where so few people need to worry about access to insurance.
[. . . .]
[Andy]Stern didn’t commit to endorsing the final bill, but he pointedly refused to join Dean in urging the Senate to tear up its work. Stern can’t surrender to the vanity of absolutism because he represents a predominantly lower-income and minority constituency with a tangible stake in the outcome of this epic legislative struggle–not only for themselves but for their relatives, neighbors and friends. For much of the constituency that Dean and the digital Left represent, by contrast, the health care debate may be largely an abstraction–just another round in their perpetual struggle to crush Republicans and ideologically cleanse the Democrats.
(sorry, can’t link from this infernal work computer)
“The vanity of absolutism” indeed — less politely as I would put it.
Rick Taylor
__
I think he should do what he says he’s doing. Get a bill to conference, even a bad one, and use that process to improve it, then when it comes up for a vote in the Senate, put all the pressure he’s been putting on liberals on everyone to allow an upper or down vote on the bill and then to pass it.
__
It’s possible the so-called centrists would filibuster it at that point. But it would be more difficult. At this point they can argue they’re working to get a better bill, by then it would be an up or down vote. Any Democrat would who voted against cloture would become the one who scuttled the President’s priority legislation. Maybe Lieberman or Nelson would take it that far. If they would, that’s that. Take away all their perks, effectively kick them from the party. We’d lose then, but if we don’t, you yourself have pointed out there’d be no hope for party discipline ever in the future.
__
The other possibility I see is getting an awful bill out of conference that meets all of Lieberman and Nelson’s demands, and then beg the progressive wing to support it. Unlike the so called moderates, the progressives have been arguing in good faith and playing fair; so far at least the only one’s who’ve threatened to vote against cloture have been the moderates. I doubt this would work though, I doubt the bill would get 51 votes, and I’m not sure it should.
Wolfman
Glenn Greenwald has it right about the bill being exactly what the WH wanted in the first place.
Regarding John’s view I agree that his posts are as usual very persuasive (I am saying it as a compliment). However I have a feeling that his posts were persuasive during the run up to the Iraq war (although I admit I did not read him at the time) and I am sure the “pragmatist” position at the time was to go along with whatever shit pie was being fed to us. Perhaps this time it may be a good idea to listen to DFH ?
Regarding the ability to improve on the bill in the future I have strong suspicions. Economy is likely gonna lapse back into recession next year and it will be pretty hard for Democrats to keep the majorities that they have. Plus if you pass a crappy bill (which it looks like it will be since there are no cost controls) it make things even worse.
Anya
@cyntax: Don’t you like how he blamed Hollywood and the UN. Yes this Brangalina’s agenda and does not concern anyone else.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’d like to make one more point: most of you barely sentient. The ones of you that have demonstrated at least once in the past that you are able to think clearly are usually drunk or on your way there.
Most of you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about in regards to how the Senate actually works. Many of you think if we can “pass anything with 60 votes” it can magically be outfitted with Medicare Part E in conference committee and we’re home free. A simple google search could disabuse you of your childlike notions but you are too stupid to do that.
Others of you are so mentally bassackwards that you think passing what everyone and their mother describes as a “not very good” bill is excellent politics and will stop those dastardly Republicans led by Rush Limbaugh from taking control. As if America is crying out for a legislative Democratic victory versus all the stuff they actually want according to polls, like a robust public option, etc.
Many of you appear to be of the “do something, do anything think of the children!!!!!” variety that has cheered on every legislative boondoggle of the last nine years. But this time it’s totally different, of course.
You all suck.
Martin
And this is the real reason we need health reform, so Obama can lace the next DNC mailer with topical valium so that we can actually fucking get something done without the hysterics breaking out and fucking up the works.
Jay B.
@Svensker:
Well, you’re certainly spewing it. Figures it takes a self-described political dilettante to agree with a recent Republican to lecture lifelong Democrats what they should expect after 50 years fighting for actual health care reform.
This isn’t something that appeared out of nowhere and we expect magical things from it and if you don’t understand that you haven’t learned anything from your Libertarian days. Many of us feel acutely betrayed by the process, the terrible politics and the broken promises. Moreover others of us have worked our asses off to give these fucking assholes a president who campaigned on real reform and a majority which claimed it as a priority. So yeah, we’ve shoveled a lot of shit, Sven.
If this insurance bill is what we get, OK, great. It’s not health care reform. The system is still fucked. Costs will still spiral out of control. Insurance companies, which people hate, will still dictate health care policy. But some people will benefit for sure, until we find out just how badly insurance companies can still screw us over and then it’s the same thing all over again, but worse because the Democrats own it — and even more insulting, those of us who’ve shoveled the shit for them become complicit.
Whatever it is, and whatever it’s become for whatever reason, it’s not health care reform (and what Kennedy said he regretted with Nixon most certainly was).
If real health care reform is a pony, which we can apparently never have because we’ll always have “unrealistic” expectations as what it should entail, then let’s just stop campaigning on it. Because, evidently, anything will do.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
And by the way, John, I posted this link in one of Doug’s threads, I hope you read it.
kindness
There is one thing that could be done. Reid could announce he’s not going to recognize/allow holds & he could pull the nuclear option & either limit filibusters by lowering the threshold or eliminating them all together. Republicans would explode of course, but how would that be different than now? We’d have a bunch of prima donnas rolling around crying like Newtie did in 96 and we’d actually get bills passed. Who do you think the American public would support?
Wile E. Quixote
@Anya
Wouldn’t it be awesome if Arnold flew to Copenhagen and called out Inhofe and just beat the fucking shit out of him? Really, what would happen to him if he did? He’s not running for governor again, and if he did it in Copenhagen I don’t think that the Danish authorities would do a whole lot.
I wonder if we could get Arnold to go around after Sarah Palin and debate her on global warming? Gore would be a total disaster, Cole’s idea that he should debate her was a stupid one. But Arnold would be great, he could tell everyone that AGW deniers were a bunch of pussies and beat up a few of them. And Arnold is way more interesting than Sarah Palin, he’d have people lining up for miles at the debate to get their copies of T2 signed, and you just know that if Caribou Barbie had to share a room with someone more famous and who people found more interesting than her that her ego would be crushed like a bug.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh BTW, Nelson wants to scale the bill back even further. Who said something mean? Who was it??! I bet it was Wile.
stickler
What Some Fuckhead up there said. How in the hell can it be that a member of the Democratic caucus is allowed to join a Republican filibuster to prevent a God-damned upperdown vote? Whose brilliant leadership brought us to this dismal point?
Lieberman doesn’t like the bill? Fine: vote against it. But for the love of Judas Priest, let the damned vote happen. And if he’s going to support the Republican filibuster, he should have to pay a damned big price.
But noooooo. Lieberman and the Republicans get to dangle a filibuster promise out there — for free. No penalty, no price, no talking at a podium with a catheter attached to their junk. God I hate the Democratic leadership.
The Raven
“Is he
justa vindictive son of a bitch?”Yes.
BTW, different account of the 1994 failure, which sets the blame on Rahm.
John Cole
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): Nice cop-out. Everyone screams they should “do more,” then when asked to produce what exactly they should do, you say “I dunno, really” and the link to Rahm issuing vague threats.
Awesome. And now doubt me stating this will have Wile E. Quixote accusing me of “punching hippies.”
Tell me WTF they can do to change this, not vague generalities, but something they can actually do, and will front page it, tweet it, and so on. But ebnough with the magical thinking and the butthurt and the attacking people on your god damned side.
Sasha
If you would please tell me how any amount of ferocious leadership will get Lieberman or any Republican on board, please tell me.
The problem isn’t that Democrats aren’t doing their job, it’s that the GOP and Lieberman is making their job nigh impossible. Work on them, not the guys actually interested in health care reform.
Rick Taylor
And by the way, I really dislike the refrain, “The people who oppose this bill already have insurance.” I’ve read people without insurance who oppose it too. There are plenty of reasons why people oppose this bill at this point in good faith, and attacking their motives isn’t going to persuade them, it will just make them mad and harden opinions. Even someone like Krugman who supports the bill does so grudgingly, hesitantly, after soul searching.
Tonal Crow
@Sasha:
That’s *today’s* problem, which we might not have if Obama — via Citizen Alan’s health-fair shaming approach and possibly others — had convinced, e.g., Nelson (and possibly the GOPers Snowe & Collins) that they needed to support a decent bill.
Obama didn’t do enough to move legislative (and public) opinion in the right direction. He can still change that. Will he?
Sasha
Yes and amen! The problem isn’t getting the Democrats in line, its getting that last damn vote from someone who isn’t a Democrat. That’s who needs to be worked over.
cleek
how do you know this hasn’t been tried ?
huh ? you think the Reps are afraid of Dems ?
the Reps are having a field day with the Dems’ troubles.
there are fewer than 60 Dems no matter how Obama plays. so, he can be a dick to Lieberman, ensuring no support on anything, or he can try to work with Lieberman, which means compromise. either way, he can’t force Lieberman into doing anything. Holy Joe’s proven again and again that he’s more than happy to tell other politicians to go fuck themselves.
fasteddie9318
Me too. And I knew when I voted for him that Obama wasn’t that guy. But I thought then that “that guy (or gal)” is who we needed, and I think it even more now.
ETA: I give up. Blockquote fail.
TheWesson
Medicare ‘E’ (Medicare for Everyone) would be incredibly popular. It’s politically feasible; it would just hurt corporate America a /lot/.
How many GOP’ers would vote against something called “Medicare”? Those that do, would be handing their opponents an incredible club to beat them with. Commercial: “Senator Schmo voted against Medicare! Is this right?”
You’d see GOP’ers cowed like Dems were on the Iraq War.
The essential political problem with Medicare-E is that corporations wouldn’t like it.
Why does Washington represent corporate interests better than public interests?
Obama could’ve changed that, with his incredible organization (OFA) owned solely by him. He did not want to.
John Sears
@Kryptik: As a founding member of The Zombie Rights Campaign, I just have to say that killing Zombies for fun and ‘catharsis’ is offensive and demeaning to the Differently Animated community.
There are many fine videogames out that do not involve the brutal slaying of innocent Undead individuals.
I liked Batman: Arkham Asylum recently. Mark Hamill’s Joker is my personal favorite anyway.
cfaller96
I find it interesting that DougJ excerpted the part of Booman’s post where he took liberals to task for being provocative jerks, but decided Booman’s overall point wasn’t worth discussing:
Sart
You know, all this debate is great but we don’t have a Senate bill. It’s just weird that Krugman, Klein and others are defending the status quo when there is no status quo. Dean at least makes sense–he said “this is crappy enough that I want to go to reconciliation” but the supporters are saying, “No, it ain’t crappy enough” forgetting that Ben Nelson is determined to make it crappier and will likely get some help on that from Snow, Collins (who won’t vote for it even when further crappifying it) and Lieberman, who still has committed to it. It’s nice to see Rahm, who is being totally politically inept here, mock the DFH’s, but neither he, his boss nor Reid have a bill. I’m not even sure that it is possible to produce such a bill given the deficit scolds who like paying for wars and wall street but nothing else. So, this civil war on the left is interesting but misses the point. There will be no HCR bill worthy of the name–4 dem senators are too busy working on the Billy Tauzin retirement plan.
jibeaux
People are tired of the infighting, tired of it dragging out, tired of nothing changing. Nobody is looking to have their opinions changed. Put this to the JC test and list specific actions that Obama can take to change legislative opinions. The only thing I can think of is a full-court press to shame Nelson into not obstructing on the cloture vote, throwing his many previous statements against obstruction back at him. In order to actually shame someone, of course, that person must be capable of shame. As far as I can tell, not one person on this blog has convinced any other person on this blog of anything whatsoever. What on earth is Obama going to say at this point to convince a legislator of the substantive merits of this plan?
jibeaux
@cfaller96:
There was a reason I used “credible threat” in my previous description re: Bernie Sanders. I was aware he’d made a threat.
TheWesson
Cleek – why AREN’T Republicans afraid of Dems?
There are powerful populist issues available to make them so – unemployment, health care.
These issues, in the right hands, are just as powerful as memes like “support the military”.
But the Dem usage of them has been weak; the very opposite of ruthless.
cyntax
@Sasha:
I just don’t think Obama is this unable to affect Lieberman. I really believe, given that he sent Rahm to lean on Reid, that Obama was more interested in going down the path of least resistance, which meant caving to Lieberman while getting the bill. If the progressives raise a big enough stink, then it’s worth it to try and flip Lieberman. For example:
In the 20th century the executive branch is all about persuasion, given the huge expectation gap between what the public expects them to do and the actual authority the President in repect to legislation. If Obama doesn’t know that, or really thinks that he can get something as contentious as healthcare done by leaving the Senate and House alone, then he’s no strategist, not much of a chess player, and not a good student of history. But I find that hard to believe, so it’s a question of making it clear that he needs to act.
And lo and behold there’s a little movement:
cfaller96
Lieberman can be added to that list too…so what’s your point? It sounds like you’re trying to rally support for a bill that:
1. Doesn’t exist.
2. In its current form in the Senate, doesn’t have 60 votes.
3. As you note, never will have 60 votes.
I would very much like to know what the point of all this anti-liberal wanking is that is going on right now with John and DougJ. Yelling at the liberals isn’t going to change the facts noted above, so maybe in addition to telling Rahm to STFU, maybe you two should do the same.
Shygetz
If Bernie Sanders or someone similar doesn’t attach a big, smelly, liberal amendment to the next farm subsidy bill coming down the pike, I will be very disappointed.
jibeaux
elect more liberal Congresscritters and Senators is what comes to my mind.
Tonal Crow
@jibeaux:
Similarly, shame Lieberman, Snowe, Collins (and any others susceptible to shame — are there any?) with our existing system’s horrific shortcomings using the Citizen Alan’s health-fair idea. You’ve got to do something dramatic, with gut-punching optics, to reframe the debate. And I think that’s it.
cleek
@TheWesson:
well, for starters, there’s the fact that the Dems can be counted on to take themselves out of power, every fucking time.
a “ruthless Dem” is a creature of fantasy.
mai naem
If Rahmbo is so fucking brilliant then why did he not want a 50 state strategy? Idjit wanted an 18 state strategy and bitched about Dean’s 50 state strategy. Uhm, I’ll take Dean’s political instincts over Rahmbo’s thank you. BTW why is Lieberhole in charge of DADT and involved big time in climate change legislation? Furthermore, didn’t this prick agree not to filibuster anything when he got his chairmanship?
Sasha
Part of the reason that Obama didn’t get out more in front for healthcare was that Reid assured him he had the votes. Don’t completely blame Obama for that. (And the DNC and other liberal groups could have done that as well.)
His speech also helped rally the cause back when a bunch of Dems were ready to turn tail in the face of the town hallers. Give him credit for that. As I mentioned, a majority of House Dems and all of the Senate Dems are pretty much on board.
The situation now is that one non-Dem vote is needed. Get that and we’re on our way.
auntieeminaz
@John Cole: I feel your pain.
Martin
I hate to point this out, but Obama might have been right here. I think it’ll be easier to get the Senator from Maine to drop her filibuster than Lieberman. Remember when Obama dressed down Lieberman in the floor of the Senate last year? They didn’t forget.
But the people arguing politics on this are doing so disingenuously. This is now called a ‘bad bill’. In what context? Because it’s worse than a public option one? Wouldn’t a public option bill be a ‘bad bill’ in the context of a single payer one?
The only context that matters is the here-and-now. Is the bill better, worse, or no different than the status quo? The people that are arguing it’s worse are insane – there’s no possible way to argue that without either waving away parts of the bill as if they didn’t exist, or without elevating some groups to be more important than others. Will some individuals get screwed here? Yep. There’s no way around that. Even single payer will screw a lot of individuals.
And the point of the bill is still being missed. This bill is being approached from the macro side. Health care is wrecking our economy. It’s bankrupting our entitlement programs, it’s making businesses uncompetitive, it’s sucking up money that could go to more productive things. That’s what they are trying to fix, while doing as little individual harm as possible, and doing as much individual good as possible, but those are entirely secondary. This bill is 100% win if health care expenditures don’t climb faster than the rate of inflation and in the near term (next 20 years) decline relative to inflation. That’s the goal. Kill accelerated cost growth dead – right here. Once that happens, everything else becomes possible, including job growth, starting to turn around the trade deficit, all kinds of shit. Almost any bill that does that, Obama will support, and this one is close to that. It’s not 11 dimensional anything, selling out one party for another, etc. The goal is stop growth and if Aetna CEOs earn more in the process, oh well, that’s not important now and is easy to fix later. Are any of the ‘bad bill’ folks demonstrating that costs will go up due to this? That would be a bad bill. Staying the same and shifting costs regressively would also be a bad bill. Nobody is even trying to argue that from what I’ve seen.
This isn’t health reform for you or me, it’s health reform for the US economy. Once the cost growth is stopped, health reform for you and me individually gets much, much easier – and at least some of it will self-fulfill. Along the way, some people will be winners, some losers – that’s the way it is now.
cfaller96
jibeaux, so you’re essentially saying that you think liberals are bluffing. That’s an incredibly risky strategy, for several reasons.
First, you could be wrong- that’s what happened in 2000. You really want to go down that path again?
Second, it implies that you don’t think the threat of liberal opposition is ever credible. Because again, there is no bill right now with 60 votes, and calling the bluff now means you think it’ll be the same bluff no matter what happens to the bill. Nelson’s got a list of demands, and Lieberman’s not done gutting it.
Somewhere, there is a breaking point, and it’s no longer a bluff. And without 60 votes now, you’re essentially taking liberal support for granted. That’s not rational, because it’s emboldening a move to that breaking point.
TheWesson
Cleek,
Ruthlessness starts at the top. But I am afraid Obama is in bed with Ruth.
John Sears
@jibeaux: I’m not sure there’s anything he could do now; that’s the point. Greenwald and Russ Feingold are right; this is the bill he wanted, so why should he?
Offhand, in the PAST, I would have suggested that, when the White House was closely conferring with the Baucus gang to write the odious Senate Finance bill, which is the core of the Reid mess we’re all currently arguing over, he could have pushed Baucus to, say, finance the bill in a way more compatible with the House (thus speeding the conference committee along, without the nuclear time bomb that is the Excise Tax; year 1 it hits up to 19% of all private insurance plans, fyi). That was the point I think he had the most leverage and influence, and sure enough the White House heaped praise upon Baucus for doing his job well; he wrote the bill Obama wanted. Alternately, he could have not cut an awful, extra-legislative deal with Big Pharma that cripples our ability to seek cost reductions in prescription drugs. That one had absolutely nothing to do with Congress; it was all Obama, and he got what he wanted out of it, a shit ton of advertising dollars to push his deal. He wanted this bill.
Now, why in the hell you’d want a bill that gradually absorbs the entire existing private insurance structure and forces employers to rescind coverage in favor of high deductible junk insurance while pushing a ‘free rider’ clause that forces poor people out of work because they can’t afford insurance and don’t get it from their shitty employer… I have no clue whatsoever. I’ll admit I’m totally stumped there.
Ecks
@AB: They can certainly try to do that, and might well.
jibeaux
@Tonal Crow:
Can we do it by the close of business today? This isn’t getting better with age. I seem to recall Landrieu comfuckingpletely missing the point of the last one.
Sentient Puddle
It is said in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the job of the President (of the Galaxy in this case) is “not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.” During the Bush administration, it seemed quite apt, especially when you considered players like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and whoever else pops into your mind. Today, it seems quite apt because it appears nobody has a fucking clue what the President’s job is.
That’s one thing (of many) that has become evident to me over this past week.
Shygetz
No, it’s really not. All the CBO estimates thus far have indicated that the bill will do little to “bend the curve”, because they only function at the level of insurance coverage, which is only a small part of the out-of-control train that is American health care spending. Controlling costs is going to require several things that Congress hasn’t been willing to touch, including allowing the government to negotiate health care prices and reformatting price incentives to reward outcomes rather than number of procedures performed. This has been all about micro-level health care reform.
John Sears
@Martin: Wrong. This bill will do next to nothing on cost containment.
See this Commonwealth Fund study showing that a private insurer only exchange can be estimated to slow health care inflation a paltry .7%, from 6.5% to 5.8%.
We need health care costs to DECLINE, dramatically, right now. We pay an extra 4-6% of our GDP compared to our competitors in the global community and get absolute shit outcomes in return.
This bill will not do that; to the contrary, it sets up a plan for continued rapid growth of costs, despite our already crushing burden.
By 2020, with the current Senate plan, they project our healthcare spending to be 19.9% of GDP. That will kill us, utterly and completely.
cyntax
@jibeaux:
I don’t see the merit of that test in this situation. If we agree it’s a matter of persuasion, then it’s a question of knowing the people you have to persuade and knowing what they want. We don’t know what sort of sticks and carrots Lieberman might respond to, cause we’re not on Capitol Hill and that’s not our job. To illustrate my point look at some of the things that LBJ did to persuade members of Congress:
•Have a list of every member of Congress on his desk.
•He would be on the telephone with members (and their key staffers) constantly: “Your president really needs your vote on this bill.”
•He would have a list of every special request every member wanted — from White House tours to appointments to federal jobs and commissions.
•He would make a phone call or have a personal visit with every member — individually or in a group. Charts, graphs, coffee. They would get the “Johnson Treatment” as nobody else could give it.
•He would have a willingness to horse-trade with every member.
•He would keep a list of people who support each member financially. A call to each to tell them to get the vote of that representative.
•He would have Billy Graham calling Baptists, Cardinal Cushing calling Catholics, Dr. Martin Luther King calling blacks, Henry Gonzales calling Hispanics, Henry Ford and David Rockefeller calling Republicans.
These are the kinds of things Obama needs to be doing now and arguably would have been done to greater result earlier in the process, but these aren’t things we can provide a blueprint for because we don’t know what Lieberman wants–it’s Obama’s job to know that (or Rahm’s or someone on the staff). If he can only get a bill out of congress that’s palatable to 1/3 of the electorate, we got problems.
jibeaux
@cfaller96:
I don’t exactly think he’s bluffing, because I don’t hear him saying that he isn’t going to vote for it. I take it as a line that he is not willing to accept much more in the way of compromise. Which is fine, it won’t hurt anything. But it doesn’t sound like anyone actually believes that he isn’t going to vote for it if the other 59 can be gotten. No one actually believes that the fate of health care reform hinges on Bernie Sanders, and the reason they don’t is because it doesn’t.
Sasha
They can. I suspect if the current bill can get passed, they will. (But don’t say that too loudly or else HCR opponents will redouble their efforts to kill the bill now.)
Shalimar
What we can do is work to primary Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln. It doesn’t seem to make any difference with Lieberman, but a primary challenge from the left has worked wonders with Arlen Specter this year. Is there any doubt he would be one of the attention whores in this debate if he didn’t have to worry about his seat?
batgirl
@DougMN:
Yes.
This wasn’t a mistake. This was a slap in the face. Fuck Rahm.
Tonal Crow
@jibeaux:
That might change it. It needn’t be done today, but most certainly it needs to get done in the next few days.
I recall something about an attempt to bribe Landrieu, not an attempt to shame her. But I’ve forgotten the details. Got a link?
eemom
@Rick Taylor:
too damn bad. I happen to think that’s a major fucking issue. Show me someone who doesn’t have insurance AND isn’t young and healthy who opposes it.
John Sears
@Shygetz: Well, getting rid of the ludicrously wasteful private insurers wouldn’t HURT.
It would be icing on the larger cake of reform, true.
Sentient Puddle
I think we all need to take a minute to step back, take a deep breath, and mock teh funneh: Bill Krisol wants Nelson to join a filibuster because it might snow in Washington over the weekend.
You may now resume.
Martin
Remember when Obama took Lieberman by the collar and dressed him down on the floor of the senate last year? They remember.
Lieberman has power over Obama now. He’s exercising it. I’m guessing that Obama warned Reid that Lieberman might be trouble and that’s why he was courting Snowe. Snowe might be easier to get if Lieberman is just hosting McCain’s anger in his ass right now. Bridges are burned. Lieberman is probably uniquely out of Obama’s reach. I suspect that’s why the WH told Reid to give Lieberman what he wanted – fighting him will only cause him to dig in deeper.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
You may not have used that particularly stupid phrase but the piece is still a perfect description of you and a lot of other Obama supporters. I’ve been saying this for months, the idiots who keep telling me about Obama’s long game, or his political skills, or that he’s playing 11 dimensional Parcheesi while his opponents are only playing 4 1/3 dimensional Snakes and Ladders are behaving and sounding just like John Hinderaker when he famously wrote It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
As far as changing the dynamic of the Senate you’ve said that Obama can’t do anything about that. I disagree, if he had a pair he would have come out and hammered on the 33 Republicans who tried to stop the bill about their latest bit of wankery on the defense bill and slammed them for playing politics with the lives of American troops. Shine some light on this obstructionist bullshit and put Tom Coburn on the defense, accuse him of working for Al Qaeda and trying to get American troops killed. The Senate gets away with a lot of their obstructionist bullshit because they’re given respect that they in no way, shape or form deserve, knocking them off of their perch and calling them on sleazy political bullshit like their attempted defense filibuster would be a good way to slap them down and change the fiction that their the “world’s most deliberative” body instead of just another group of politicians with a bunch of posturing assholes in their midst.
But since you’ve told me that Obama can’t do anything about the Senate and since he doesn’t care about the people who busted their asses to put him in office last year, and apparently doesn’t have to, why should I give him any more than token support? You keep harping on the point that Obama can’t do anything and that it’s Congress’s fault. OK, I’m going to work to change Congress then. Obama will get my vote, that’s it, but giving him anything beyond the bare minimum of support he needs to win re-election in 2012 is a complete waste of time because as you keep saying he’s just a pathetic babe in the woods and can’t do anything because of those big meanies in Congress.
cleek
@TheWesson:
since when ?
over the past 12 months, how come i haven’t seen a single pro-reform TV ad, but i’ve seen dozens of anti-reform ads ? why don’t i see pro-reform ads coming out in response to the stream of lies and misrepresentations the anti-reform folks have put out?
is that because Obama didn’t tell them to ? did he use his magical powers (the same ones that he refuses to use on Lieberman!) to silence all the lefty groups ?
this blame-Obama stuff is utter bullshit. there are dozens of liberal groups who could’ve tried moving this discussion to the left, but not one of them (as far as i can tell) bothered – they didn’t even bother countering the nonsense. outside of bloggers, i have heard nothing in support of Obama’s HCR that hasn’t come from the White House itself. no mass media, no billboards, radio or TV ads. nothing. it’s not supposed to be Obama vs the entire fucking right; he’s supposed to have some people fighting along with him! it’s a team effort. but instead of support throughout the year, he gets no help from the left – until they start to see that things aren’t going their way, that is. then they’ll stand up and fight. they’ll stand up and fight Obama. they fight him and complain that he didn’t ask them to help, that he didn’t punch harder, that he didn’t use Jedi mind tricks on Lieberman. when the going gets tough, then they’ll fight. they’ll fight themselves.
the fucking left is a joke.
jibeaux
@cyntax:
Apart from soliciting dead men to make phone calls, which I admit is unlikely to have been one of the strategeries, do you have some reason to think this sort of thing hasn’t already been done? Your list consists of calling them, and playing politics with them?
PanAmerican
Wanted? No. But they did their homework and had a good idea of where the whip count was given any of the particular options.
They weren’t working Snowe and considering triggers just to piss Jane Hamsher off.
Of course putting the fear into Reid and sending him running to Lieberman was major fuckup two from the poutrage set. The original sin was failing to kneecap Holy Joe. Now they’re going for the trifecta and sinking the bill.
Fucking bunch of Rhodes scholars, I tell ya…..
Lurker with a Preexisting Condition
I had hopes this bill would pass. Even after everything done to it, it could still have helped me.
Now I have a sick feeling that the extreme left will “succeed” in killing this bill, leaving me with nothing. Not even a scrap.
ksecus
I have started watching sports way more than I used to. Politics and the mess were in is driving me batshit crazy.
I agree with you , Mr Cole. Rahm should just shut up.
Tonal Crow
@Lurker with a Preexisting Condition: Do you like your trollberry pie with cream-puff topping?
jibeaux
@Tonal Crow:
Olbermann made a lot of hay with the health care fairs in Louisiana. My memory is that she was asked about them later and she said something like, they’re nice but I don’t think they’re a solution to the problem. At the time she was still wavering on the whole idea of health care reform. So I guess what I mean is that she got the point, and missed the necessary conclusions flowing from that point. But I can’t find the link and don’t have time to hunt any more, kids home.
cfaller96
John cole:
I’d love to see what John’s plan is to get Nelson or Snowe or Collins or Lieberman to vote for it. Because the existing bill doesn’t have their support.
Once more, with feeling- there is no bill to rally around that gets us 60 votes. To ask liberals to meet a standard that no one else (not even President Obama) can meet is insulting and ridiculous and makes you look like an asshole.
John, it’s a Friday. Go outside and STFU for awhile.
mike in dc
I’m a progressive, and I also think this bill sucks, but…
…John does have a point. Progressives haven’t figured out what levers to pull in order to influence centrist and conservative Dems. Part of that has to do, I think, with the “missing” third tier of the progressive power pyramid–we have a grassroots system, we have pundits and a means to elect “more better Democrats” by raising money and turning out the vote. But we haven’t gotten a handle on the professional lobbying thing–we need “more better progressive lobbying” on our behalf, done by some of the same firms (or their competitors) that have been lobbying on behalf of Aetna et al. Progressives showed they could raise hundreds of millions to get their candidates elected…now they need to show they can raise tens of millions to get their agenda passed, by walking into Patton Boggs or Akin Gump with a big sack of money and saying “get me a meeting with Ben Nelson, I want to help him get re-elected…right after he votes for a Medicare buy-in”. In the alternative, we shift that money to Sen. Nelson’s primary challenger, but point being that the pro-grade lobbyists actually know what these guys’ leverage points are.
We can’t cede the battleground just because we find it distasteful–we need to level that playing field at least a bit.
patrick
the small engineering analysis business I work for spends ~ 16-20% of salaries on health insurance (and my out of pocket expenses–copays, deductibles, non-covered dental and ophthalmology, denied claims for my family eat up another 5-8% if income)….if we had a more reasonable cost public option to choose from, we could potentially hire more staff….
Tonal Crow
@jibeaux: In other words, the approach pushed her some ways in the right direction. Now think how it might have been had Obama jumped on the bandwagon? Or how it might be if he does so tomorrow?
cleek
@cleek:
i should add: there was the summer’s HCR town-halls by some Dem congressmen. they tried to help, that’s true.
i was thinking more about the liberal thinktanks, 501s, PACs, etc..
Noonan
If only Obama had channeled the wingnut lunacy of deadender progressives in his public comments, then Liberman and Nelson would beg for mercy and ask for an even stronger public option.
I need to smoke more drugs just to keep up with the hallucinations coming from the left.
danimal
@cfaller96: I think a fair number of liberals are, in fact, bluffing. My hope and desire is that they stop because we don’t have leverage on this bill. As has been said a thousand times, we need their votes on this bill.
Play hardball and get victories elsewhere. Kevin Drum suggested financial reform as a topic. Attach pro-choice language to the farm bill. Put a nuclear dumpsite in downtown Hartford.
Force the GOP to vote against funding the troops.DONE. Use the tools available to push the agenda.Failure to pass this bill puts lives at risk due to medical neglect, it increases bankruptcies, it inhibits job movement, it perpetuates an unbelievably bad status quo AND it politically neuters Democrats more than they are already neutered.
Emma Anne
Atrios laid it out in a way that really hit home for me. He said that if anyone in the Senate was trying to change the Senate rules, he would certainly get behind it. But no one is.
The plain fact is that the way the Senate currently functions is the problem. Needing 60 votes to move anything forward makes governing *impossible*. And Obama can’t change that. Nor can the netroots, or the House, or Howard Dean. Only the Senate. And who in the Senate is working on changing the rules? No one. No. One.
We are hosed, but it isn’t Obama who is hosing us.
Uli Kunkel
@Wile E. Quixote:
It worked because it’s plausible.
cyntax
@jibeaux:
My point was that asking for us to come up with the plan for Obama to persuade Lieberman (or whomever he can) just doesn’t work.
And we do have reports of Obama leaning on Reid (via Rahm) to cave to Lieberman and threatening DeFazio about withholding his vote cause the bill doesn’t have the PO, so Obama is certainly doing something but whether it’s effective and whose interests it’s in is questionable.
As Feingold pointed out this probably is the bill Obama wanted, but that doesn’t mean it’s the bill we have to settle for, and expecting Obama to put pressure where he can to get a better bill rather than applying pressure for this one is not an unreasonable expectation.
Svensker
@Jay B.:
You may be right. Plenty of gall, I know.
I don’t like this bill either and I’m very disappointed in Obama (having gone from being a Libertarian to be pretty much a screaming liberal). And I’m not saying people shouldn’t push from the left. But it seems to me you get health care “reform” with the Congress you have, not the one you wish you had. Doesn’t seem to me that we have a Congress that will do the big step, so we’re going to have to settle for the little step. Am I wrong on that?
And if Obama were the liberal that many of us were hoping for, how would that have changed things, vis a vis this bill?
After realizing how wrong I’ve been for so many years, I have learned a bit of humility, so am willing to be educated.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Why can’t liberal Senators attach a proper bill to something that Republicans can’t live without? Something that will drive the Teabaggers insane.
Perhaps an “Audit the Fed” bill, or something roughly equivalent.
Split the Republicans with something the corporate Dems deeply desire.
Sentient Puddle
@danimal:
I’d disagree. I think a lot of liberals think they’re not bluffing, but don’t realize that they are.
I’ll say again, everything reeks of PUMA stench.
Emma Anne
Regardless of how I plan to vote, I won’t be volunteering for or donating to Obama.
I find this puzzling. Do you feel that this situation wouldn’t be occurring if Hillary was president? Or Edwards? I don’t even bring the Repubs into it – there would be no health bill to argue about in that case.
To me it seems clear that if FDR himself could arise from the grave to lead us all, the Repubs would still filibuster everything, and Lieberman and Nelson would still be whining around and chipping away at the bill.
I guess the argument is that Obama isn’t persuasive enough? Who do you think would be more persuasive in his place? Because I can’t think of anyone. Gore? Kerry? Who do you have in mind?
ChrisWWW
John Cole,
What do you think of the calls for Senate Democrats to end the filibuster, and then pass something better?
As far as I’m concerned, the entire Democratic caucus in the Senate is responsible for the shittyness of this bill. 50 of them could end the filibuster any time they want. That they wont just betrays how little they care.
danimal
@James K. Polk, Esq.: This is the type of thing that increases our leverage over the conservadems. More like this, please.
wasabi gasp
If this is how he politicks, I’ll take the deep dish pizza.
Martin
The study shows that the Senate bill is required for any of the 3 to work. This still needs to be passed:
The bill provides the payment and system reform.
That’s contradictory to the study you just sent me to. Either it’s necessary toward slowing costs or it’s a plan for continued rapid growth of costs. It can’t be both.
Ecks
@Grumpy Old Man:
We’re treating him like the marginal vote in the senate because he *IS* the marginal vote in the senate. That’s not political pretending, that’s simple math.
And believe me they are trying everything they can to get Collins or Snow insead. They would love nothing more than a “bipartisan” bill. It would give the entire establishment a nuclear powered woody. But Collins and Snowe aren’t dealing, so that leaves Lieberman.
The only real debate here is whether you can play a stronger brand of hardball and come out with a net win. Can we yank his chairmanship and make his life miserable, and would that work? I don’t know, maybe…. There is potential for it to backfire, and I don’t pretend to know enough of the intricacies of the complete set of people involved to know if it would work.
The other way is to threaten the “nuclear option”… Potential big win there, but also potential big lose, becuase you’d have a lot of dem senators who would resist it because they want it in their back pocket when the R’s become the majority, and there’s a potential huge PR loss if this gets painted as Dems trashing the government for partisan reasons… that really might push some of those squishy ignorant independent votes we really need into the R’s arms (just imagine how the MSM is going to portray it, and for better or worse, this is where these guys get their view of the world).
One of the best suggestions I’ve heard is temporarily shelve HCR, put up a big jobs bill that the R’s will all hate, let Lieberman block it, use the nuclear option THERE, where it’ll be seen as a popular way of saving America, then come back and pass a better HCR bill.
And yeah, optics shouldn’t be important but they are. Welcome to politics.
cfaller96
jibeaux:
Bernie Sanders, December 16, 2009
jibeaux, you’re saying that Senator Sanders is lying. Again, I think this is an incredibly risky bet to make.
Noonan
The Democrats are doing one hell of a job making sure the GOP’s obstructionism makes liberals look bad.
burnspbesq
@Grumpy Old Man:
Okfine. The question that you haven’t addressed, however, is why the White House shouldn’t take progressives for granted.
Your options are as follows: (a) work with the Administration while grumbling under your breath, or (b) retire to the sidelines and hand the levers of power back to the loony right. There is no third option. And no sane person would choose (b).
You know that. The Administration knows that.
Sorry, there is no pony. Now suck it up.
Sasha
Lieberman is a lost cause but if Snowe or Collins can be seduced, Nelson will fold. Has anyone tried working Snowe or Collins?
There is a bill that can get 60 votes — the one without a public option or buy-in. It’s not great, but it’s a good first step.
Jack
@John Sears:
Keep repeating this, John. It’s really important that the “it’s worth it” folks understand this point.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@John Cole:
Does “you’re with us or you’re against us” sound familiar? I just want to assure you that the other so-called DFH wannabees out there are ain’t the real deal.
If they really are DFH then I may have to burn my DFH card. I’ll keep the pony tail, weed and attitude though. Fuck them.
John Cole
Which means I haven’t done or said anything of the sort, but you are still pissed off and have decided that somehow I’m the fucking enemy here, so you will pretend I said it or something similar to that idiot Hinderaker. Jackass.
Jack
@Lurker with a Preexisting Condition:
Because we have magic telepathic conduits to Ben Nelson’s conservative brain?
Libby
I’m as pissed off as the next liberal, maybe even more, but John Cole is right. Reality sucks and the reality is we were sold out. Again. But it’s not like we didn’t predict this a year ago. Change is incremental.
There will be plenty of other opportunities for liberals to take a last stand to make a point. This bill just isn’t the hill to fight that battle on I think. Too much at stake.
And I was just thinking that we rightfully find it hard to believe it will be made better down the line, but Medicare D sucked and they fixed it a little with this bill. So it’s not like there is absolutely hope for the future.
Liberals could take a lesson from drug policy reformers. We suffered many, many losses before we started to win tiny victories. Those victories get larger every year.
John Cole
@cfaller96: I excerpted that because it was relevant. As to the rest of it, I agree, and am hoping that Obama does more to placate the progressive wing more in the future, because I SHARE A LOT OF THE SAME GOALS.
Mari
We know very well what Lieberman wants. He wants to stop HCR.
The way the White House should handle Lieberman is to make it clear that he needs to sit down and shut up or something just might happen to his cushy lifestyle or to any of the Israeli interests he cares about.
Sasha
jwb
@ellie: Yes, I think the point is to look for pressure points outside of HCR and other aspects of the progressive agenda to influence the centrists. Ask yourself what the centrists care about—like, maybe the estate tax—then get 41 senators to make leverage out of that.
Rick Taylor
__
This may be true, perhaps there’s nothing the administration could do, but I don’t see how they can run on it. Obama promised health reform. I guess he could say, “Hey guys, I know I promised health reform, but you know those Republicans? They turned out to be more obstructionist than I ever could have imagined! And Nelson and Lieberman? They’re willing to use the filibuster to bludgeon it until it’s such a mess, I can’t convince enough of the left wing of the party to support it to get past 51 votes in the senate, and there’s not a god damned thing I can do to change their minds; they do what they want. So it’s just not possible. Sorry for getting your hopes up. Maybe if you can get me more Democratic senators, we can do something then.” Maybe that’s the situation, but then it would have been better not to fight.
Jack
Since this has come around once more to game plans, I’ll go with (again):
Table it. Come back from recess with a number of provisions that were negotiated away before any of the midwestern Dems or Republicans had a chance to obstruct.
Break the deals with PhRMA and AETNA, et al.
Break them.
You don’t keep agreements with people who break them before you.
You don’t keep faith with a bad faith actor.
Yes, they’ll give money to Republicans. Lots of it. They’re going to give that money to Republicans in 2010 and 2012 anyway.
They really are.
Force the conservative Dems to vote against what you know they’ll vote against. Force Lieberman to go on record in a vote against health care reform.
The 2010 election cycle starts for real in February. Lincoln and Bayh are up for re-election, as are Dorgan and Feingold. You’re not going to get the former on board with an actual liberal plan, at any juncture. It’s not going to happen. Dorgan and Feingold could use the pressure of upcoming primary contests to shift left.
None of the Republican incumbents are coming from threatened seats. They can rail against it all they want, without any danger.
You aren’t getting any Republicans. It’s not happening. It really isn’t.
So, come back to the table (avoiding this insane call to rush it through to give the Dems some kind of “win”) with something that forces people to take sides.
Real sides.
Then, free up the fucking base and the unions to go on the attack, already.
Even if that means dividing up the draft legislation into manageable parts, for example banning rescission and discrimination, et cetera.
Pass a Medicare expansion, earmarking the subsidies monies for Medicare instead, and force the Republicans to argue against their own position on saving Medicare.
Pass a measure which allows employers to negotiate/purchase coverage for employees directly from Medicare.
But don’t just “pass anything” on the alarmingly naive notion that the future presents unlimited opportunities for improvement.
jwb
@Brett: Are there sufficient votes in the Senate for either of these options? I don’t think so and that’s why no one is seriously discussing them.
Lurker with a Preexisting Condition
@Tonal Crow:
I’ve posted here before. My situation is real.
I live in California. My applications for private insurance have been rejected by two major health insurers to date. As I age, access to health insurance will determine where I work and where I live. The Senate bill would have given me greater freedom and financial security.
I am not trolling. I’m grieving.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
John, if you’re going to act like an asshole to your commenters then you really will lose traffic. I’ve told you several times now some of the strategy I’d like to see employed in a general way, you just don’t want to see it.
I’m not everyone and I’m not Wile E. Quixote. I’m not a U.S. senator and I don’t get invited on television. I’ve told you what I think should be done and you continue to pretend like I haven’t. I’m not going to type out a statement for Rahm Emanuel to read to Ben Nelson because that would be stupid and pointless, not to mention caving to your ridiculous strawman. I’ll tell you once again, because I’m a very patient man, that raising a stink about this, which a good deal of the left blogosphere is doing, is tactically the right thing to do.
And I’ll ask you one more time: if Jane Hamsher goes on MSNBC and raises a stink, who gets hurt? Give me a plausible scenario whereby she causes damage to anybody other than herself.
And please try not to be insulting to your commenters. Even if they insult you first, try to be better than that. It’s your living, after all.
ChrisWWW
Libby,
This isn’t just incremental change, it’s change in the wrong direction. The cost of expanded insurance is too high. Just about every American hates the insurance industry, but this bill makes that same industry stronger and more entrenched.
Sure there will be other chances for liberals to take a stand, but why should they give up so easily on their decades long signature issue?
ABS
While Bob Kerrey certainly has some wankerish qualities to him, he was still faaaaaaaar to the left of Ben Nelson. How the hell did he survive in Nebraska?
John Sears
@Martin: The Commonwealth Fund considers the reductions IN PROJECTED GROWTH significant.
They still find that rapid growth occurs, over 5% a year. Our costs will not go down a penny; they will simply go up slightly slower.
This is obviously insufficient.
Currently, the second highest percentage of GDP being spent on healthcare is Switzerland; they spend 12.
Tell me how we compete with that at 20%.
Wile E. Quixote
Sentient Puddle
Did he also write that fact that it might snow in Washington D.C. this weekend proves that AGW is a myth?
kay
@cyntax:
I don’t think anyone understands the public option. They like the word “option”.
I don’t think the polling on the public option is any good.
Why would the White House listen to people who are not going to be relying on this bill for health insurance?
94% of college educated white people have health insurance. Union members have health insurance.
The people who are relying on this bill passing and the people who are going to be subject to any mandate are not members of the Daily Kos community. They’re just not.
That matters. The White House is worried about the 15% of white working class without insurance, and the 30% of ALL hispanics without insurance, and the 20% of ALL black people without insurance.
Again: you are not the target audience. You’re not going to love the bill or hate the bill, because 94% of you aren’t going to USE the bill.
It is going to be goddamn hard to find a college educated white person who is not in compliance with any 2014 mandate, given the extension of parental insurance coverage until age 27.
Jack
@Lurker with a Preexisting Condition:
Perhaps you shouldn’t blame the one faction utterly powerless to do anything about it.
Blaming ETTLOEB makes no sense.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
I think he meant the “John Coles of the Right”, not necessarily THE John Cole.
cyntax
@John Cole:
Absolutley know you do, no questions about it.
It is possible, at times, that your criticisms of the people wanting to raise a stink might sound like the sit down and STFU wing of the Dem party.
Personally I don’t hear it that way, but it’s another pretty heated time for Dems (just in case anyone was getting nostalgic for the primary).
Rick Taylor
__
Because if nothing else, progressives have egos just like everyone else, and if you do it enough they will blow up in your face. To repeat Booman,
__
John Cole
I don’t have a master plan. Reid clearly kissed off Snowe because he thought he had Lieberman. I have no idea what to do with Nelson other than just ignore him and find someone easier and more honest to negotiate with, like say, Jim DeMint.
But then again, I’m also not the one saying Obama just needs to “do something.” I don’t know what anyone does at this stage.
I’m also not the one freaking out because Rahm Emmanuel and Booman are accurately describing the numbers dilemma here.
I’m also not convinced that we can just wave the wand and ram everything the progressive wing wants through reconciliation like JustSomeFuckhead seems to think is possible (love the tone- we’re all drunk and idiots, but your dispassionate analysis of “JUST DO IT IN RECONCILIATION” is the height of reasoned analysis. Just grunt and say Git’R Done next time and save us all some time). I have very little faith in Harry Reid, b ut I’m assuming he is at least smart enough to know whether or not he would lose votes if he tried that. I would not be surprised to see folks like Bill Nelson, Carper, Bayh, Baucus, Conrad, etc start acting like drama queens in reconciliation and then put us below the necessary 50. Has anyone thought that through? Anyone done a whip count on that? Or are we just supposed to chant that Rahm hates hippies, Obama should “do more,” and “Git R Done in reconciliation?
I’m at my wits end, but I’m sick of being treated like I’m the fucking bad guy here. or, for that matter, the WH is the bad guy. There are 42 bad guys here- the Republicans and Nelson and Lieberman, but for some reason everyone has lost sight of that and has opted for fratricide.
And I’ll probably be accused of punching hippies for pointing that out, too.
dadanarchist
Awesome. So now we aren’t even allowed to complain about it when we get the shaft.
Sweet. I’ll note that down.
Sasha
Not JC but . . .
John Sears
@Jack: One caveat: As someone from Indiana (uggh) formerly, I can attest that there is no way in hell Evan Bayh ever loses a campaign for Senate.
Indiana is the ultimate home of the Low Information Voter. They’re little better than rats pushing the reward lever; they’ll put a mark next to anyone named Bayh or Lugar on the ballot.
Anyone.
Evan Bayh could be caught with his pants around his knees in a preschool playground and he’d still be the next Senator from Indiana.
Sentient Puddle
@Jack: So in short, let reform die. Nice plan.
John Cole
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): Link me your ideas again. I must have missed them.
John S.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you. You are a one-trick pony snark-o-meter with very little of actual substance to say. I mean how the fuck do you expect anyone to take your bullshit seriously?
Wow, that’s fucking brilliant! If only someone let Harry Reid now this so he could just pretend that there aren’t 40 Senators waiting to filibuster, and that he lacks 60 Senators to vote for cloture, end debate and proceed to a floor vote.
Says the guy who has already proven that he hasn’t a fucking clue what is going on in the Senate. Sure, they can blow up the filibuster or change the rules, but according to the current Senate rules, they need 67 fucking votes to do that. Are there other ways to get around it? Probably, but Harry Reid has already proven that he is a shitty parliamentarian because he lets Mitch McConnell run fucking rings around him.
If you have a solution for how to get a progressive bill that is full of ponies to the floor for an up or down vote without having to deal with a Republican filibuster, I’m all ears. Pretending that isn’t a problem males you look like a fucking idiot, and chiding others for not understanding how things works makes you look like an even bigger idiot.
Put up, or shut the fuck up you tedious douchebag.
Jack
@John Sears:
Yeah, I know that. That’s why I wrote:
“Lincoln and Bayh are up for re-election, as are Dorgan and Feingold. You’re not going to get the former on board with an actual liberal plan, at any juncture. It’s not going to happen.”
cfaller96
danimal, I’m going to take your comment apart a bit.
I’m assuming the “their” refers to the centrists. Yes, we need their votes, just like we need the liberals’ votes. But what doesn’t seem to have occurred to John or Ezra or Rahm is that it is NOT POSSIBLE to get Nelson or Lieberman’s vote, without forcing liberals to walk away. There is no bill that gets you 60 votes, and again, the existing bill that John and Ezra and Nate and Krugman and god knows else does NOT have 60 votes, so it’s just as dead in the water as a bill with a Public Option.
Because this isn’t an important issue to liberals? Because folding on a core liberal principle will make it easier for people to take liberals seriously on issues that aren’t core principles? This makes no sense to me, please elaborate.
I’m sure John Cole and Krugman and Ezra and everyone else will totally get behind liberals being dicks on just-as-important issues like banking reform. Yep, that will go over really well with the crowd that is in the midst of guilt-tripping and fearmongering liberals for opposing what they consider to be bad policy. Keep dreaming, the pressure and the optics will just as bad then as it is now.
As for the rest, I fail to see the point- to what end?
I’m pretty sure this has already been done. Look what it’s gotten them.
Here let me fix that for you:
The liberals aren’t the problem here, and they never were. But they will become one unless the President starts to use his influence on somebody other than the liberals. There is a breaking point, which I speculate is what really bothers John and DougJ- they would much rather take liberals for granted than try and figure out how to actually solve the problem of Lieberman and Nelson. They’re not supporting this bill, they’re not done gutting it, and they’re not going away anytime soon.
Jack
@Sentient Puddle:
Tabling this until after recess, and attempting to fight for stronger provisions is killing reform? Really?
Tonal Crow
@Emma Anne:
Obama could be more persuasive than he is. The poster is attempting to goad him into becoming so.
Seebach
The problem is all of the democrats are much too concerned about being each others’ friends, and this takes priority over actually doing anything productive. Nobody wants to do anything that might get them uninvited to the next cocktail party.
Franken seems to be the only one who realizes what he was elected for.
John Sears
@Jack: I will, but I don’t think they’re listening.
This bill will pass, or it won’t. Ten, fifteen years from now, when the country is broke and ruined and in a state that makes the Great Depression look like a picnic in the park, if anyone around the barrel full of burning trash will listen, I’ll gladly tell them again.
Assuming of course that I can’t get back to the homeland (Scotland). I should work on my accent.
Sasha
John S.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you. You are a one-trick pony snark-o-meter with very little of actual substance to say. I mean how the fuck do you expect anyone to take your bullshit seriously?
Wow, that’s fucking brilliant! If only someone let Harry Reid now this so he could just pretend that there aren’t 40 Senators waiting to filibuster, and that he lacks 60 Senators to vote for cloture, end debate and proceed to a floor vote.
Says the guy who has already proven that he hasn’t a fucking clue what is going on in the Senate. Sure, they can blow up the filibuster or change the rules, but according to the current Senate rules, they need 67 fucking votes to do that. Are there other ways to get around it? Probably, but Harry Reid has already proven that he is a shitty parliamentarian because he lets Mitch McConnell run fucking rings around him.
If you have a solution for how to get a progressive bill that is full of ponies to the floor for an up or down vote without having to deal with a Republican filibuster, I’m all ears. Pretending that isn’t a problem makes you look like a fucking idiot, and chiding others for not understanding how things works makes you look like an even bigger idiot.
Put up, or shut the fuck up you tedious douchebag.
Seebach
Also: Civil Rights and Medicare would never have been passed without Johnson being willing to break people’s dicks off and use Hoover’s FBI to blackmail people. Just get a list of all of their goddamn mistresses and be done with it.
Sentient Puddle
@Jack: Really. We don’t have 60 votes now not because the provisions aren’t strong enough, but because assholes like Lieberman think they’re too strong. You’re not going to get to 60 by doubling down.
John Sears
@Jack: Ah, ok. Misread there a bit.
But it’s worth telling anyone else who might not know about Bayh: you cannot win him over, you cannot threaten him. He cannot be swayed.
His wife is a bigwig with Wellpoint who has made millions off of stock options. Bayh makes Lieberman look like he took a vow of poverty when it comes to corruption.
John S.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you. You are a one-trick pony snark-o-meter with very little of actual substance to say. I mean how the fuck do you expect anyone to take your bullshit seriously?
Wow, that’s fucking brilliant! If only someone let Harry Reid now this so he could just pretend that there aren’t 40 Senators waiting to filibuster, and that he lacks 60 Senators to vote for cloture, end debate and proceed to a floor vote.
Says the guy who has already proven that he hasn’t a fucking clue what is going on in the Senate. Sure, they can blow up the filibuster or change the rules, but according to the current Senate rules, they need 67 fucking votes to do that. Are there other ways to get around it? Probably, but Harry Reid has already proven that he is a shitty parliamentarian because he lets Mitch McConnell run fucking rings around him.
If you have a solution for how to get a progressive bill that is full of ponies to the floor for an up or down vote without having to deal with a Republican filibuster, I’m all ears. Pretending that isn’t a problem makes you look like a fucking idiot, and chiding others for not understanding how things works makes you look like an even bigger idiot.
Put up, or shut the fuck up you tedious douchebag.
Grumpy Old Man
@Sasha Lieberman is a lost cause but if Snowe or Collins can be seduced, Nelson will fold. Has anyone tried working Snowe or Collins?
To the extent that I think the White House deserves some blame for the proximate cause of this blowup, it’s because the White House seems to have pressured Reid to strike the quickest (and thus most one-sided) deal possible with Lieberman, rather than try to negotiate with Collins or (especially) Snowe. Snowe or Collins could be logrolled, but it would take a lot of time and effort to figure exactly what deals we could make with them. By contrast, while Lieberman gave the appearance of staking out his position up-front, it should be clear by now that his position is going to keep shifting, because he’s less interested in the concessions that he can extract than in the process of extracting those concessions.
We had some very promising indications that Snowe, in particular, could be brought around to supporting a triggered public option. Even more promising, we had some reason to think that Snowe and/or Collins hated the Stupak-Pitts amendment in the House bill; we could, conceivably have strengthened our push for a public option (or a Medicare buy-in) while weakening Stupak-Pitts, killing two birds with one stone. And if necessary, we could cheerfully load the bill with Maine-specific pork until we found Snowe’s or Collins’s price. At this point, I just don’t think Lieberman actually has a price.
But even if we’d ultimately had to make the same concessions to any 60th-vote senator, I think many progressives would have found it much easier to stomach making those concessions to Snowe or Collins rather than to Lieberman. The long-term political risks of further empowering Lieberman are significant, even if the policy outcomes in this particular case are the same.
John Cole
Do you even read this blog? I’m reasonably sure I’m to the hard left of Bernie Sanders when it comes to banking reform.
cfaller96
sasha
That’s the current bill in the Senate, if I understand it correctly. That has only 58 or 57 votes (depending on how you count Sanders). No, please try again.
GReynoldsCT00
For the love of jeebus John, we need a pet post or two tonight. SRSLY!!!
kay
@cyntax:
I think you’re wrong on the politics. I completely understand the problems with the substance of the bill, but I completely reject your political analysis.
Can the people who are not going to be relying on this bill convince the people who are going to be relying on this bill that it sucks? Yes, probably.
But only until the people who actually need health insurance use the mechanisms in the bill to purchase health insurance, which they will do without the 2014 mandate, because they need health insurance.
Today. They need it today.
You are never, ever going to convince me that the 30% of all hispanics who do not have health insurance are going to REJECT a subsidy to purchase health insurance, out of some deep-seated loathing for insurance carriers, and because the people who have health insurance told them over and over that it sucks.
eemom
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
fwiw, Jane Hamsher is a total asshole to her commenters — and anyone else who disagrees with her.
And yes she does cause harm. She foments distrust and mindless fury among the bleating sheep that listen to her on the basis of zero factual accountability and McCarthyesque name calling. It’s called “demagoguery,” and it’s no less so because it’s coming from someone on “our side.”
Tsulagi
@John Cole:
Yes, but what does it say about you some could easily believe you would. Or that if you slipped using those words you would undeniably be part of the loony left?
Okay, just doing a FNS anchor impression.
Anyway, no worries, the cave to Nelson will commence in 4..3..2.. It’ll be another stand against the “far left” so that’s good. Others are waiting for their turns before Xmas gets here. The Democrats are sorta like Santa at the mall for the Rs and I-Conns, only they really do give out presents.
cyntax
@kay:
Because passing the largest expansion of social services since Medicare (or whenever) is a big deal and you need the electorate with you on that? They’re not going to like the idea of being mandated to buy insurance without something to balance that out with. Just cause you aren’t getting healthcare from the bill doesn’t mean you aren’t affected by it. But if you think that those polls are worthless and passing something that unpopular won’t be an issue, while I disagree, I can see why you’re not convinced.
John Sears
@Grumpy Old Man: Snowe and Collins are an endangered species and they know it.
If they care at all about their state’s dwindling Republican influence, they might be able to be bought.
Lieberman is evil in a way that is hard to describe in words. Cutting any deal with him is worse than dealing directly with Satan.
jwb
@terraformer: Yes, I will fault Obama for not mobilizing his supporters. I’ll say the same thing for the progressive activists, almost of all of whom seemed to think following the inside baseball aspect of the legislation was more important than mobilizing supporters. Writing on blogs doesn’t for the most part count as mobilizing supporters. Why have their been so few demonstrations in favor of HCR? Why did our progressive blogs spent so much time mocking the trials of the teabaggers, Glenn Beck and the Silly Sarah show rather than highlighting our own organizational efforts? Maybe because we didn’t have much to highlight. Really, we’ve been completely out-organized by these teabaggers, which given how incompetent the teabaggers supposedly are is pretty remarkable and very sad.
bago
John Cole Link Bait.
Barney Frank on Rating Agencies.
J.
Four words: Al Franken for President
dadanarchist
I have been. But forgive me if this is all a bit too deja vuey of the Clinton years: shut up, liberals, and let us responsible people take care of it. Oh, and you have to like it too.
John Sears
@cyntax: Once again, just putting this out here: the Senate Bill is paid for with an Excise tax on health insurance.
Up to NINETEEN FUCKING PERCENT OF ALL HEALTH PLANS will be covered YEAR ONE.
That means A LOT OF US.
The CBO expects most companies that hit the cap to SLASH BENEFITS AND RAISE COPAYS.
The percentage will go up every single year, as the Senate bill is indexed not to health inflation but to the CPI plus 1%. Here’s a quick question for you: what does consumer inflation look like in a prolonged inflation?
So it damn well DOES fucking affect people outside the exchange, and their input matters, especially since many of them will end UP on the exchange thanks to the poor employer mandate in the Senate bill.
Yeesh.
cyntax
@kay:
I never said they would, nor would I expect them to. I think that this bill is meant to serve everyone, not 30% of a minority group. I’ve never heard it described that way by anyone but you, but if you think that’s how this bill needs to be targeted–fine. I disagree.
jwb
@Tonal Crow: The goopers would like nothing better than have the Dems to blow up the filibuster.
batgirl
@Citizen Alan: This. Also. Too.
Ecks
@Wolfman:
Really, none? Where do you get this information from? Show your work.
Here’s Ezra’s list of five:
1) Bundled payments
2) Prudent purchasing
3) The Medicare Commission
4) The excise tax on high-value health insurance:
5) The individual mandate
See here for explanation of how they work.
cyntax
@John Sears:
Ya don’t have to tell me. It’s kay who thinks that the only constiuency that matters is 30% of the Hispanics. To me that seems like a very large misreading of… well everything, but I’m not feeling sisyphean enough to climb that hill today.
slag
@John Cole: I agree with all you’ve said. But honestly, I was hoping to see a little more innovation and political savoir faire from this administration than I’ve seen so far. Or at least something less obviously boneheaded than instantaneously sending Rahm to pressure Reid. One of the things that impressed me about the campaign was Obama’s ability to smile while punching his opponent in the gut (figuratively, of course). Maybe that kind of thing is easier to do in a campaign than it is here, but that doesn’t make me want it any less.
What I had expected to see was a little more subtle destruction of Lieberman’s public reputation before they gave in to his demands. I can only assume that the administration has a few friends in politics. People who would happily go on the teevee and muck up Lieberman’s name a bit in a semi-serious way for a few days. At the very least, even after they gave in, it would have sent a message. Of course, that kind of strategy has its drawbacks, but as we’ve seen, so has this one.
Midnight Marauder
@cfaller96:
Right. He’s not voting for the bill. Do you see the word cloture in that sentence? No, you do not. Because he has always planned on voting for cloture, because he’s not a piece of shit like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. Sanders has been one of the loudest voices in the Senate saying that it’s a complete travesty that anyone in the majority party would prevent a bill from even coming to the floor for an up-or-down vote. So Sanders isn’t lying and he isn’t bluffing; he’s pretty much right in the middle. This is the full context of that quote, by the way:
And on a different note, for the people who have been saying the White House should threaten to not provide Lieberman with any campaign funding or something along those lines…
HE.IS.NOT.A.DEMOCRAT. He’s an Independent, so he would be completely unaffected by that line of “persuasion.”
@Martin:
This point cannot not be made enough in these types of discussions. There’s a reason that, when the White House found out about Harry Reid and his plans to put in the opt-out PO, they allegedly told him,
Thanks again, Harry. If nothing else, 2010 will be a success if Harry Reid faces a vigorous, full-throated primary. I will give however much money I can from every check I get for the next year–$5. $10. $50. Gold doubloons. Whatever–to whatever credible, serious individual wants to go after him. If the left wants a fight to stake its future over, that is a hill I’m more than ready to die on.
You want to change the optics of how D.C. operates? Send Harry Reid packing and do it in a MAJOR way.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: This is the John Cole that voted for Bush not once but twice. No one can tell you a fucking thing because once the thought gets in that fat ginormous head of yours, it can never find it’s way out to daylight again.
When you sober up, go back and read what I wrote. It isn’t even close to what you characterized.
GitRDun!
Sasha
Seebach
@jwb: But the Democrats would never actually use it. All you have to say to the Dems is they’re threatening national security, and they all roll. So right now, the filibuster is only a weapon the Republicans use. Why not get rid of it?
cfaller96
I’ll concede that there are some on here insisting that Obama “do something,” but I don’t believe I’m one of them. I think he should do something because this is headed for failure. But this is his baby- if he wants it to fail, he can let it fail. If he wants it to succeed, then he doesn’t need me to “insist” that he do something- he’ll figure out a way to make it work. It’s up to him, really.
The bottom line is that there aren’t 60 votes to be had- the current Senate bill isn’t conservative enough for Nelson or Lieberman, and I think we can safely assume if Nelson successfully injects the Stupak amendment then we’ll lose not only Sanders but probably Boxer and Brown and maybe guys like Franken. The same logic applies with Lieberman. So here we are, not far enough to the right to get 60, but any further move to the right may actually lose votes. No, I don’t have a “master plan,” although in this type of situation I’m not sure why reconciliation shouldn’t be tried. If you don’t try it, then the bill fails, so what’s the risk?
But more importantly John, you missed my point- you’re asking liberals to come up with a plan that no one else has been able to come up with, and then suggesting that we’re clueless/immoral noobs and dickwads for failing to do so and opposing the current bill. You’re applying a double standard, and that’s why you’re being portrayed as a bad guy.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
That’s what it all comes down to.
Martin
@John Sears:
I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing how not doing something that you admit slows growth and doesn’t tie our hands down the road is supposed to slow growth?
I don’t get that. Pass the damn bill and start drawing up the next one. I’m not arguing that this is sufficient, I’m arguing that it helps. The people calling it a ‘bad bill’ and a ‘shit sandwich’ are calling it that in relation to some abstract and impossible marker that would be sufficient. Okay. Great. But the public is hearing that it will make things worse not better because they don’t know what point of light you guys are referring to with your relative ‘badness’. The GOP are more than thrilled to say ‘look, even the left thinks it will make things worse’.
If people want to argue that this is a good bill and we need a better bill, fine. I’m there. Then let’s debate whether this good bill can be made better or whether a 2nd bill is more realistic. But please stop making me fight arguments that this bill will make things worse. It doesn’t. It makes them unequivocally better for the country. Maybe not better enough, but economists have already proven that single payer or something remarkably similar to it are the only stable system. That’s not going to happen today, much as we would prefer it.
And if the only thing it actually accomplishes is to stretch out Medicare so that the government plan is sustainable for another generation or two, that’s no small thing. For one, it allows a discussion of government managed programs without the specter of deficits, two it allows us to discuss a simple expansion of Medicare to other age groups, three it actually fixes Medicare which on its own should be worth doing.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John S.: Do you really think anyone cares what you think? Yer the same idiot that made the claim that Jews were under-represented in Congress, right?
Seebach
He still is chairman of his powerful committees, which he used to cover up Bush’s disastrous handling of Katrina. Give Franken all of his chairmanships.
Wile E. Quixote
John, you’re annoying because you get mildly annoyed with those who criticize Obama from the right, but your true fury is for anyone who dares criticize him from the left. You were a DFH punching jackass when you were kissing George Bush’s ass and nothing has changed.
You sit there and piss and moan about Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson and clutch your pearls and then moan and say “well, there’s nothing we can do, I guess we’ll have to accept anything that Holy Joe or President Nelson decides to give us” but if any progressive says “No, I’m not willing to settle for this” and brings up real arguments why this bill is worse than the status quo, such as the facts that the excise tax on the so-called “Cadillac” plans is going to disproportionately hit the working classes (and you might be in for an unpleasant surprise there) or that there are no real restrictions upon rescission, or that there are no cost controls, or that there’s no guarantee that the health insurance that the uninsured are going to get will be any good, or that we’re basically handing a huge chunk of the economy and hundreds of billions of dollars over to a group of largely unaccountable corporations and then naively hoping that the same politicians who completely neglected to regulate AIG and Goldman Sachs, something that you’re always bitching about, will somehow find it in their hearts to regulate HealthNet, Aetna, UnitedHeath, CIGNA, etc, you go into a self-righteous fury that a teabagger would envy and start slamming those people and claiming that they don’t care about the 30 million uninsured who will now have health insurance (because you’re too dumb to know that health insurance != health care, a painful lesson which I’m kind of hoping you’ll have to learn one of these days) and telling everyone who opposes this bill that they’re an utter bastard and totally unrealistic and won’t someone think of the children.
I’ve asked you this question before: At what point will you not support this bill? At what point do you walk away from the table? I’d like to know. Is there any amount of ConservaDem poison that would make you say enough? Or are you just a chump? If anything I’d like to know because it sure would be fun to have someone then attack you for walking away from the table in the same way you’ve gone after the people who have said that they can’t support this bill and tell you how stupidly unrealistic you were and how people were going to die because of your lack of support. It’s not that I think that you’d learn from the experience, it’s just that I’m a mean fucking bastard who enjoys watching people get hoisted by their own petards and has a real hard-on for Schadenfreude.
John Sears
@Ecks: Oh yeah, the excise tax will work all right.
By making your healthcare unbearably bad.
I hope everyone who supports the Senate bill likes copays and not being able to afford going to the doctor, because when it goes into effect in 2013-2014, it starts grinding down the quality of all private plans. Inexorably, inevitably, bit by bit, as they rise faster than the CPI+1 and more and more plans go above the cap and get hit with a surcharge.
Ezra Klein is not half so bright as he thinks he is. Here’s a hint, Ezra: health inflation has been rising far faster than regular inflation for decades.
Ye gods.
jwb
@Seebach: Sure, they would. They did it all the time with judicial appointments (the reason the goopers want to get rid of it).
ChrisWWW
Isn’t the fact that Democrats can’t even unite behind this bill telling?
The reason it’s easy to stand behind a program like Medicare or Social Security is because everyone is in it, even if we don’t really need it.
This bill, however, doesn’t have something to offer to everyone. Before, there was at least the nice idea that the public option would be there for us if we got f*cked by private insurance. Now we just get the promise of a shotgun wedding and crappier plans because of the new taxes.
batgirl
@cfaller96: There is a difference between voting for the bill and voting for cloture. Somewhere, somehow, we’ve come to think that 60 people need to vote for the bill. 60 just need to vote for cloture. I haven’t heard Sanders say he wouldn’t vote for cloture. As for not voting for the bill, I expect he will stand by that.
John Sears
@Martin: It’s a bad bill because when that Excise tax kicks in a shit ton of people are going to lose the healthcare they have now, there will be a mass bloodcurdling scream to repeal it, and health care reform will be tarnished for a generation with bad memories of this failed experiment.
Oh, and it throws women and the poor under the bus with the abortion crap and the free rider clause too.
Oh, and the biologics provision means that you won’t be able to get or afford any new prescription drugs.
But other than THAT, why, it doesn’t do anything to slow reform at all.
jwb
@TheWesson: “Getting DINO’s in line: “Vote my way or national democratic support for your Congressional campaign will evaporate.””
This line doesn’t work very well for Senators—do you really believe that either Lieberman or Nelson would be moved by that threat?
Libby
@ChrisWWW: I’m a pragmatist. We had nothing to start with. The ins. corps are going to win either way. If we let the bill die, or kill it, who wins? Progressives? What victory can we claim? We killed reform? Isn’t that what the GOPers have been trying to do from day one? I don’t see the logic in blowing it up.
Is killing it going to stop the ins cos from screwing us? They’re going to screw us either way. Like it or not, this is the farthest we’ve come in decades. Passing a bill would be a victory. Even if only a symbolic one.
All that being said, I came back to add, Rahm and Axelrod and the rest of the WH spokesmouths are assholes for kicking *teh left* . Never expected them to deliver anything meaningful to us, but a little respect for our POV would go a long way. The one thing that pisses me off most is the WH took a fucking year to even mildly call out the GOPers and other nutcases and they’re batshit crazy. Only, took what, three days for them to call “teh left” insane for expressing reasonable objections. Thinking a lot of the anger out there would dissipate some if they at least acknowledged we have a valid point.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Didn’t I read all this stuff from the same people saying the same damned things yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, over and over and over? I get it. We know where everyone stands, we know nobody’s going to change his/her opinion. Move the fuck on to something else.
GREEN FUCKING BALLOON-JUICE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!
kay
@cyntax:
You’re deliberately missing the point. Again: 15% of white working class. 5% white college educated. Those are the uninsured. One in 4 Americans has a college degree.
This bill isn’t directed to the people who are opposing it on principle. You don’t need it. You’re not going to be using it.
In fact, the single biggest reason we didn’t upend the whole health insurance system is the FACT that 94% of college educated white people have health insurance, and they want to keep it. Obama and every Democrat started this debate with “you’ll be able to keep your health insurance” for a reason. Because people would have gone bonkers if he had said he was going to take it away.
Let’s poll on that. Let’s poll the people who are actually going to use this bill with the following question: “if the government gives you a subsidy to purchase health insurance, would you purchase it?”
The answer is going to be “yes”.
MikeMc
I think the reason the administration doesn’t take the progressive blogosphere more seriously is you don’t seem to accomplish much. For all the passion the results, of late, aren’t very inspiring. Nader very well turned the election away from gore. The Dean campaign never got of the ground. Ned Lamont lost to Lieberman by, what, 10 pts. Gay marriage is usually over-turned when the people vote. I don’t mean to run anyone down, but i don’t see a substantial list of victories. Now we have the health care debate. Which, has devolved into an internet version of street basketball where talking shit is more important than actually playing. The real question isn’t why doesn’t the administration and elected democrats take the liberal netroots more seriously. The question is why should they.
Seebach
Or at least assurance that this placate the republicans first and start out the negotiations with the compromise won’t be the method of doing all other bills.
John Sears
@jwb: Lieberman is determined to piss on all our graves. He’s a smirking madman sociopath.
Nelson’s just a tool.
Libby
I’d also add, in terms of liberal/prog pushback, everybody should do whatever they feel is best. But they shouldn’t be demeaning anybody else for having a different idea about tactics.
People should be making their case by building up their own ideas, not by tearing down somebody else’s or else, how are we better than the wingnuts?
Seebach
@MikeMc: The reason they should is because the blogosphere has been right. The blogosphere did not exist during the Nader debacle. However, if we’d have been listened to on everything from the Iraq War to Lamont, I doubt we’d be in the situation we are today.
Additionally, I will point out, at all of these junctures, the Democrats fought us when we were right!
Democrats sided with the war. The establishment democrats did everything they could to destroy dean. The Democrats did everything they could to support Lieberman.
Sasha
cfaller96
As the banking bill gets negotiated and whittled down, the liberals will still support it. Then the CFPA will be neutered or perhaps eliminated. The liberals will still support it. Then whatever new regulations are in place for the ratings agencies will get gutted. The liberals will pitch a fit, but then eventually support it. Then regulation of derivatives will get thrown out. The liberals will then say “kill the bill,” and then yes, John, I fully expect you to yell at the liberals for ruining a good banking bill that will help “set us on a path” for blah blah blah.
I’d be ecstatic to be wrong about this, and I’d love to see you on the flipside of one of these episodes. I’d love to see how you handle being lectured to by the more sensible, serious Democrats.
Tonal Crow
@John S.:
That provision of Rule 22 is unconstitutional. Art.I s.5 cl.2 (“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings….”) does not permit the Senate to require more than a simple majority to change its rules. If it did, the Senate could effectively amend cl.2 by rule, perhaps to say, “The Senate may amend its Rules only if Sen. Lieberman consents”. Fortunately, no statute or rule is superior to the Constitution.
They should narrow the filibuster to allow a healthcare reform bill to pass by a simple majority, gin up a good bill (e.g., public option available to everyone, no pre-existing exclusions of any kind, no rescission of any kind, administrative percentage limits, effective beginning in June 2010, etc.), and ram it through on an upperdown vote. Upperdown vote, majority rules, we got elected to change things for the better, all that.
John Sears
@kay: How about we make it an honest poll instead?
“If the government gives you an insufficient subsidy and expects you to either a: pay a fine and get nothing, b: buy costly insurance with annual limits and high copays or c: go to jail, how would you feel about that?”
You might put in a second question for those who have insurance about how they’d like the Excise Tax taking it away and replacing it with the Cheez Whiz equivalent.
BruceFromOhio
I swear to Gaia someone has written a thread-bot that just keeps posting the same comments on each of these threads. I blame President McCain and the lack of Tunch pictures.
Libby
@Seebach: I don’t expect them to admit that out loud, but I really hope they’ve learned something about negotiating from this one.
A fool’s hope probably. At some point, after they make the same mistake over and over again, you do have to ask, do they really want to win?
eemom
“Oh, and it throws women and the poor under the bus with the abortion crap”
I don’t condone the detestable likes of Nelson and Stupidpak, but the fact is that even Stupidpak’s amendment will have almost no impact on who can pay for an abortion. Poor women are already shut out under the Hyde amendment, and most people who have private health insurance can afford to pay for an abortion, which only costs about $400 — and is generally not an expense that women incur on a regular basis.
When you stack that up against the disaster of leaving people with preexisting conditions uninsured — and other benefits to women’s health that insuring those people would provide — it’s a no-brainer.
For anyone except a purity troll, that is.
jwb
@TheWesson:
Actually, I think corporate America was the negotiating partner because in studying the Clinton effort at HCR, the Obama and the Dems decided that a big part of the problem was that the corporations were so virulently against it. They thought if the corporations could be brought on board that they wouldn’t have to fight that significant headwind. The downside was that they ceded a lot of ground right at the start of the process. It might not have been the right strategy (hindsight is 20-20), and they can certainly be criticized for it, but I do think it was a strategy and it was a rational choice at the time.
John Cole
@cfaller96: Would the existing bill be better than no bill?
Jay B.
@Svensker:
Appreciate the reply.
As for this:
That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that the Democrats passed the House bill and it’s pretty good, so far as shit-eating compromises go. And there were various half-way decent compromises floated by various Senators before the entire endgame came down to how can we give Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson what they want?
OK. As you said, we have the Congress we have. So let’s change it. I’m counting 53, 54 sure votes in the Senate for better health care reform, at least various programs that might actually address the bulk of what is crippling the system in this country, rather than concoct a shaky insurance accessibility program, you figure you are 6, maybe fewer, votes short for not suicidal reform.
The gamble here is to either give in to passing what is already a universally derided bill (even by its supporters), OR make centrist and Republican obstructionism the play for the 2010 midterms. This isn’t that much bigger a political risk than passing a terribly compromised bill (if it is at all), but it would require Presidential leadership where he’d have to go back to his initial support and a tactical retreat to go all out on a More and Better Democrats strategy. The seats are there.
We already see the makings of a Referendum Strategy taking place in Arkansas where the popular Democratic Lt. Gov. is threatening a primary against Blanche Lincoln because of her shameless opposition to her constituents’ support of a robust public option. So that’s potentially 1. There are Senate races all over the country that are or could potentially be in play if REAL health care reform is made the deciding factor (remember, the public option is popular and the GOP hasn’t won that message game, despite the screaming about Nazis or Town Hells) — New Hampshire (a flip opportunity anyway), North Carolina (ditto) and a couple of others (Florida, if the winger wins, among others). Plus, we’ll probably lose Harry Reid from the caucus (God willing). Suddenly, the calculus changes. The leverage Joe Liberman has vanishes. A different dynamic develops.
Progressives would be happy because we’d have a clear understanding of what President Obama really (hypothetically speaking, I think we already know what he really wants here) wants (instead of what Harry Reid allows to happen). We’ll get a crystal clear mandate of what the Democratic Party really wants. And we’d be completely mobilized and energized. The “let’s win one now” crowd, since it’s apparent they don’t care about what’s in the bill so long as the Democrats win, can take heart in the Democrats winning. Make Real Health Care reform the stated goal of the 2010 elections and make obstructionists the enemies, and there’s literally NO reason it can’t be brought up again and revamped.
But again, that would force Obama to either reassert the 2008 Obama’s priority or expose himself for being a sunshine reformer.
John S.
Er, wrong.
But hey, you haven’t been right about a single fuck thing yet, so keep up your batting average!
Like I said, you got nothing to say.
Senyordave
He still is chairman of his powerful committees, which he used to cover up Bush’s disastrous handling of Katrina. Give Franken all of his chairmanships.
Seebach,
Great point! I actually think this is very important. No matter what happens Lieberamn should be stripped of all his committee positions, and in a very public way told to go fuck himself.
This pile of shit actively pushed to sweep all of Bush’s incompetences/misdeeds under the rug. No Dem should have any discourse with Lieberman on anything except when necessary.
If there is karma, he and his wife who whores for insurance companies will be in for a rough time.
As a Jew, I find it insulting that Lieberam trumpets his “Jewish values”. Jewish scholars throughout history would condemn him as a liar, a hypocrite and a cheat.
There is a word, mensch, that in Yiddish means man. But it really means a stand-up guy, someone who is to be admired. Lieberman is the anti-mensh, basically a schmuck.
Senyordave
He still is chairman of his powerful committees, which he used to cover up Bush’s disastrous handling of Katrina. Give Franken all of his chairmanships.
Seebach,
Great point! I actually think this is very important. No matter what happens Lieberamn should be stripped of all his committee positions, and in a very public way told to go fuck himself.
This pile of shit actively pushed to sweep all of Bush’s incompetences/misdeeds under the rug. No Dem should have any discourse with Lieberman on anything except when necessary.
If there is karma, he and his wife who whores for insurance companies will be in for a rough time.
As a Jew, I find it insulting that Lieberam trumpets his “Jewish values”. Jewish scholars throughout history would condemn him as a liar, a hypocrite and a cheat.
There is a word, mensch, that in Yiddish means man. But it really means a stand-up guy, someone who is to be admired. Lieberman is the anti-mensh, basically a schmuck.
ChrisWWW
Libby,
Fair enough, and I think the two of us disagree fundamentally about the utility of this bill.
But I still think it’s equally possible that killing this bill brings about a better attempt in the next few years. The health care system in this country is simply crumbling in a way it wasn’t 10 or 20 years ago.
Accepting a bill that in essence wins the battle over “covering” 30 million people but loses the war on comprehensive health care reform seems shortsighted. I say that because this bill seems designed to piss people off and give them a negative idea of both Democratic ideas and the Universal Health Care.
Seebach
@Libby: The one thing I could credit Clinton with is that she does know the the GOP are sociopaths. I assumed Obama secretly knew that, since he appears to have a functioning brain, but I guess I was wrong.
The problem is not the tone or partisanship. The problem is one party is completely and totally nihilistic.
mr. whipple
Harry was in a real tight spot. Eeven before the PO got dumped his poll numbers back home were shit. Imagine, if you will, the caterwalling from the left if he *didn’t* include the PO in the senate bill. He *had* to do it, and when he did, I sure didn’t hear any complaints from the left.
I have mixed feelings about the guy, but one thing I’m sure of is that it’s no easy task rounding up this herd of twits, corporate toadies and misfits. And he’s got us only one vote away from getting this sucker through, which is farther along than anyone else has ever got.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Nice cop-out.
Once again, who is Jane Hamsher hurting? Plausible scenario, please.
cfaller96
sasha and sears:
I fully understand the difference between cloture and passage, but you may not realize that Nelson and Lieberman have coupled those two votes together. They have specifically said they won’t vote for cloture yet with the bill as it is now. They have more demands. And when Nelson puts the Stupak Amendment in, I can’t imagine that NARAL and the other pro-choice interest groups aren’t going to press Senators to join a filibuster.
This bill does not have 60, for cloture or for passage.
Citizen Alan
@Sasha:
What????????????????????
The bastards tried to impeach him over a consensual affair! 1998 was the closest this country’s ever been to a coup d’etat!
Martin
@John Sears:
Don’t get too worked up on the excise. Other parts are more likely to stay than that one. The house has a completely different approach and there appear to be enough senators who favor the house funding approach for that switch in conference.
I think the piece that will kill the excise is exactly what you pointed to – in the scenario of spiraling inflation, the excise will be killer, and at a time when we need job growth, the excise is counterproductive if increasing employer-provided coverage is also part of the goal. The excise will serve to instantly dampen job expansion right at the moment it hits.
I can’t imagine it’s going to get funded that way, and fortunately the house looks likely to use that to bargain away the public option.
Let’s see what happens with the amendment introduced on Monday.
MikeMc
@seebach
I wasn’t really talking about being right. I was talking about being effective. I don’t get the feeling we’re effective.
jwb
@cyntax: It all depends on what sort of ruckus is raised. The ruckus that is being raised right now—no, I don’t think it is helpful at all, because it has been framed as an all-or-nothing gamble. If it leads the progressives to get themselves better organized so they can demonstrate their power rather than bitching and whining about how they are being ignored, then it will be productive.
Grumpy Old Man
I think the reason the administration doesn’t take the progressive blogosphere more seriously is you don’t seem to accomplish much…. Nader very well turned the election away from gore.
I don’t endorse Naderism in any form at all, and I intend to vigorously support Democratic candidates at every level in 2010 and 2012, but these two statements simply aren’t compatible. Are progressives so weak that the White House can ignore them, or are they so strong that they’re at fault when we lose elections?
In the same vein, I agree that it’s unhelpful when some progressives threaten to sit out elections. But by the same token, it’s totally unhelpful when other Democrats start berating them in very strong and personal terms for doing so (“grow up,” “take your ball and go home,” etc.). Sitting out elections doesn’t achieve anything good, but yelling at people for threatening to sit out elections doesn’t achieve anything good (like, getting them to vote/volunteer/donate) either. And honestly, it bothers me a lot more when Gibbs, Axelrod, and Emanuel do this sort of thing. (Why on earth does a paid representative of the White House think it’s productive to use terms like “insane” in the current situation?) These people are professionals. Their job is not to express how they personally feel; their job is to get other people to do things. If they can’t do their jobs, then other people should.
John S.
@Tonal Crow:
But as it stands, the required number of votes TO change the rules is 67. If we can’t even get to 60, how the fuck do we get to 67?
I’m not a parliamentary expert – I have no problem admitting that – but anyone can see that we have a serious issue with the filibuster being abused. The chart on Wikipedia of historical cloture voting really tells the story.
So how do we fix it? Anyone?
Tonal Crow
@jwb:
It’s not like the Goopers won’t do it the next time they get power. So why not get it over with and pass a good bill that takes effect promptly?
John S.
He’ s not even a schmuck – he’s a schmekel.
(For those of you not well-versed in Yiddish, that’s a tiny schmuck.)
cfaller96
John, the existing bill doesn’t get past cloture. So…no.
John Sears
@eemom: Bzzert, Wrong!
Here, go read the George Washington University study.
Amazing how people will delude themselves.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
If her audience is “bleating sheep”, as you so charmingly put it, then we don’t want them on our side anyway, do we?
Please, non-hysterical arguments for why her tactics are wrong, if anybody’s got one.
cyntax
@kay:
Look, “I’m not deliberately missing the point.” I have a different understanding than you of how this bill works and what it’s supposed to do. If you really think the only people with skin in the game are the uninsured, then you should tell the unions that are gunning for the excise tax that they don’t need worry about it. I’m sure they’ll be relieved to hear that they’re deliberately missing your point.
John Sears
@Martin: If they ping-pong it into the House, it passes with the Excise or not at all.
If there’s an honest conference, you’re right. Chances are good that they’d drop it.
But… that’s a big if. Talking about the Senate bill, it’s a disaster, plain and simple.
The House Bill? Eh. I’d vote against it for the Biologics provision alone, but that’s because I don’t want any future AIDS vaccine to cost a million dollars a shot forever and ever amen.
Midnight Marauder
@Seebach:
Look, I’m totally with you on kicking Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and stripping him of every chairmanship of any and every committee that he’s ever been a part of, wanted to be a part of, sat in the gallery for, or even just fucking heard an intriguing word about in passing. I am absolutely in that camp; I even get my mail there.
But if we are having a realistic conversation about the current political environment, and what types of leverage the White House would have had over Lieberman, it ain’t all that much. They couldn’t threaten to withhold any funding for his re-election campaign because, even though he caucuses with the Democratic Party, he’s an Independent and he gets not a single dime from the party’s fundraising arms; so that option is out the window.
Let’s say you want to strip him of those chairmanships. All well and good, but the legislative agenda is already supremely backed up in both houses of Congress, but particularly the Senate. So let’s say you find a way to make that happen within the labyrinth of Senate rules dictating how that process works. What happens to the rest of the legislative agenda from there? I’m sure these are the questions that formulated the White House’s strategy from the beginning.
The point I’m making is that the road for HCR was treacherous from the start. It was a bold move for Obama to pick that as the prime objective of his administration’s legislative agenda; that is something I feel he deserves to be commended on, regardless of how you feel about how this process has unfolded.
But part of choosing to go down such a dangerous, trepidatious path is that you have to be very careful in how you make every step. As frustrating as it was having PRESIDENT SNOWE WINS AGAIN headlines staring you in the face every single day, didn’t you feel more optimistic about how things were proceeding when that was the devil we were dancing with? Weren’t you surprisingly relieved when she voted to “move the process forward” (always thought the language she used in her statement was very interesting) and bring the bill out of the SFC debacle? Most likely, you were.
And just when the articles were blooming about “How Likely Is It Snowe Can Be Won Over,” Harry Reid hit the switch to send the entire train right on the path to flying off the fucking cliff. We gloss over it somewhat now, but there were a ton of articles written about how livid and insulted Snowe felt after that entire boondoggle went down.
In conclusion, I love Al Franken too, but he’s not getting any of Joe Lieberman’s committee chairs any time soon. And if you think there’s even a remote chance of that happening, I would like to give you my address so I can have some of that top-of-the-line stuff that you’ve obviously been smoking.
shep
“Nelson wants this bill killed, and would love it if the liberal wing does it for him.”
And lord only knows what “the liberal wing” will do next with their awesome political power.
TJ
What is it with the centrist hissy-fits all of a sudden? It’s not like any progressives have actually stopped anything in the Senate. Talk to Ben Nelson. There’s actually not even a bill yet.
Martin
Obama knows that. The GOP, collectively, are sociopaths. The GOP individually, and in context, are not, however. And a lot of necessary voters don’t see them as sociopaths, so there’s no political benefit to calling them out as such.
If you need one or two republicans to not filibuster something, that can be done. Remember, Joe Cao voted for the House bill with a public option. Individually, they can be persuaded.
JD Rhoades
Here’s a question for those people angrily saying they’re “done with the Democratic Party…”
The problem is that the narrow margin in the Senate means that every single Democrat, even the “blue dogs”, has to be catered to.
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to work for a bigger majority so if someone like Nelson says “do what I want or I won’t vote for cloture,” the majority leader can go “Gee, sorry you feel that way, I’ll go ask someone else”?
I seem to remember at one point the rally cry was “more AND BETTER Democrats.” Can someone tell me how quitting the party in a huff (or even a minute and a huff) is going to bring that about?
cyntax
@jwb:
But to be effective the threat has to be all or nothing at this stage. We went into this from a weak negotiating position so now we’ve got our backs against the wall. But the WH is finally starting to say that they will be more involved and that will try to bring the Senate bill closer to the House’s version. I don’t believe for a minute that if the left and the unions hadn’t started making a stink that the WH would be saying that.
Course they still may not do it, but it’s a start.
gwangung
Hm. That tells me that we got a lot of unintended consequences for a lot of the moves that were made. How realistic was it that we could have kept Snowe on board, given this?
(Also tells me that none of us commenters are very good at figuring out the consequences of moves in the opening or mid game–we’re not even good at 2-d chess).
Jack
@Jay B.:
Well written.
lol
@TheWesson:
Organizing for America has made over a million phone calls the past couple months, which is about a million more than the inactivist left (aka the Netroots) combined.
Of course, bloggers haven’t said a fucking thing about it so it’s understandable that you were unaware of what they were doing.
John Sears
@cyntax: Kay wants to believe whatever is convenient to get this bill passed. It isn’t me, or some ‘liberal’ blogger, or even the dread Cthluhu of Balloon Juice, Fire Dog Lake, that’s saying that the excise tax will spread like a plague and ruin private health insurance by forcing benefit cuts and service reductions.
It’s the gods-damned Congressional Budget Office.
Rick Taylor
__
That is the $64,000 question. If it’s better than nothing, then it can be improved upon. If it’s not, it will bring health care reform itself into disrepute and make future reform even more difficult. And politics do matter. If people hate the bill because of being mandated to buy insurance and that insurance turns out to be poor, and congress returns around to repeal it, it won’t matter if it helps some people.
__
And so much depends on details we don’t even know. The best argument I’ve seen for it is it gets the insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. But will the copayments be so large or the coverage so limited that people covered go bankrupt anyway? Will insurance companies refuse to cover needed treatments (it’s not just recision, insurance companies refuse to cover treatments for all sorts of reasons and if you have to appeal).
__
The trouble is that the current system of private insurance is one that gives large incentives to companies to collect premiums and then not pay for treatments. And it does so in a culture that regards greed and acting out of self interest as innately virtuous. And this reform arguably does nothing to change this basic system; instead it forces everyone to buy into it instead, and then pours some money to subsidize premiums. Even on days when I think I support the bill in its current form, I find that idea scary; it could blow up in our face.
__
And on top of that of course, the existing bill is subject to change; we have no idea what the end product of this sausage making is going to be. In a conference call, it sounds like the Obama administration’s current message to progressives is trust us, it will get better in conference. We’ll see; it had better. Progressive’s have already been strung along for so long, another disappointment won’t be pretty. Maybe that’s not fair; maybe they’re doing the best they possible can given the institutional challenges they face, but that’s the way it will be.
gwangung
Hm. Would anyone argue that we’re in the middle of this process? And that it really is unrealistic to expect to get more and better Democrats instantaneously? And that trying to pass major legislation in mid-process is inevitably going have results like this?
Ecks
@patrick:
Midnight Marauder
@mr. whipple:
You are acting as though this was his first rodeo or something.
John Sears
@John Sears: Oh, and it’s not an effective cost control either. From the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
Once again, for people who fixate on the word ‘significant’, I don’t consider .3% signficant at all. Slowing rapid growth is not enough.
MikeMc
@Bruce
I don’t know if Jane Hamsher’s tactics are wrong, but it reminds of something. When i was in college i helped this girl move into a new place. I was happy to do it. She was a friend. Truly awful experience. Constant complaining. “That doesn’t go there!” “Be careful with that!” “It’s too hot out!” “My clothes are wrinkled!”
That’s problem with Hamsher. We all want what she wants. Still, it’s hard to be sympathetic to a dick.
John Cole
@TJ: I’m not sure I’m having a hissy fit, and I’m mainly frustrated with Nelson and Lieberman.
That said, the glass half full crowd is killing me. Obama just negotiated a non-binding deal with the Chinese on Climate change, and you know what the netroots folks who I follow on twitter took out of it?
“Not legally binding!” “Climate deal sacrifices goal of halving emissions by 2050 ”
There is never any good news for the professionally angry.
jwb
@John Sears: That may well be, but it doesn’t change the math.
Libby
@ChrisWWW:
That assumes the Dems will keep a majority. I wouldn’t bank on that and the GOP sure as hell isn’t going to give us universal health care. Ever. They’ll be trying to kill Medicare as an unsustainable “entitlement” program, just as they always have.
I ask again, what do we “win” if we kill the bill? Is it going to stop the ins cos from gouging us? Eliminate recission? etc? You really want to give them a few more years of the status quo and let them bleed us completely out like the banksters before we try again?
Tell me how handing the GOPers what they’ve been fighting for since day one, helps the cause and I’ll jump on the bandwagon to kill the miserable thing. Just not seeing any practical benefit.
Tonal Crow
You missed the point. Art.I s.5 cl.2 permits rule changes on a simple majority, and no rule purporting to change that requirement can do so. All we need is a simple majority to change the rules. The GOP will yell, scream, threaten, and even file lawsuits. The courts will quietly dismiss them under the “political question doctrine” and the changes will stand. If the Democrats understand rhetoric, they’ll paint the GOP as obstructing an “upperdown vote” and as putting fatcat CEOs above main street.
John Sears
@Rick Taylor: What people seem to fail to understand is the essential nature of the private insurance industry.
They are not in the business of selling insurance or providing care. Neither of those practices makes them money.
They are in the business of DENYING CLAIMS.
That is the only thing that makes them money. They take in premiums, and then refuse as many claims as they can, for as long as they can.
Everything else is window dressing. They will always deny the absolute maximum number of claims permitted by law and society’s tolerance. They are in the business of maximizing death and pain and suffering.
And they’re very, very good at it.
Jack
@John Sears:
I live in a state with a bunch of carpetbagging sociopaths moving in each year, on the off chance that collapse will give them an opportunity to set up a glibertarian paradise.
Maybe our family will make its way across the pond as well…
Midnight Marauder
@Martin:
Exactly. I feel like a lot of the freaking out people are doing over the possible bill coming out of the Senate is due to them forgetting about a) the fact that the bills will need to be merged in conference; b) the House bill is a much better bill than the Senate bill, and c) THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS TO PULL THE BILL COMING OUT OF CONFERENCE CLOSER TO THE HOUSE VERSION! Because it’s not a fucking bizzaro world like the Senate.
That is all.
John S.
You must not be familiar with how that all worked out in the 1970s.
Nixon offered a Democratic congress a universal healthcare plan (arguably better than what’s on the table now) and Democrats rejected it thinking they could get better later on. That was in 1974, with Watergate swirling and the Democrats in a seemingly very strong position. Hell, they even won back the White House in 1976.
So what happened? Do you really want to repeat history again?
Rick Taylor
__
I forgot about that, yeah that needs to be taken out. Putting a tax on some people’s health care plans to pay for others, what are you doing, trying to stoke middle-class resentment against the poor? Who the hell thought of that. I’ve already seen a youtube video of a woman with asthma who would be taxed because of this. I’ve been sort of assuming that would surely come out and we’d find a more sensible way to finance it, but yes, I do think because of that the bill in its current form would be worse than nothing.
cfaller96
BUT…BUT…EZRA AND KRUGMAN AND NATE SILVER ALL SAY THAT WE SHOULD SUPPORT IT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO SUPPORT?
I’m becoming convinced that the MGoBlog tag “West Virginia is a post-apocalyptic den of insanity” is less hyperbole than I originally thought.
Grumpy Old Man
c) THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS TO PULL THE BILL COMING OUT OF CONFERENCE CLOSER TO THE HOUSE VERSION!
How is this supposed to work? If the Senate can’t pass a stronger bill on the first try, how is it supposed to pass a stronger bill on the second try?
John Sears
@jwb: No, it doesn’t. Sadly. It merely indicates that he CAN be bought.
And has been.
If we knew something to buy him off with that’s bigger than that, we could do so.
Lieberman cannot be reached.
I suppose it’s an academic point but that’s what I was trying to say, that there is a difference.
shep
“There is never any good news for the professionally angry.”
John, you only been punked by the corporatist “conservatives” for a relatively short time (you were with them before you were against them, remember?). Save your snark and come back and see me in like 20 years.
lol
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I know for a fact that Jane Hamsher’s bizarre witchhunts over the summer pissed off some of the legitimately progressive members of Congress that she was attacking. She’s literally pissing away what little influence she had.
Grumpy Old Man
@Midnight Marauder:
c) THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS TO PULL THE BILL COMING OUT OF CONFERENCE CLOSER TO THE HOUSE VERSION!
How is this supposed to work? If the Senate can’t pass a stronger bill on the first try, how is it supposed to pass a stronger bill on the second try?
John Sears
@Jack: I dunno… can you trace your family back to William Wallace?
My Grandfather who’s big into geneaology jokes that EVERY Scottish family claims they can do that, though.
Libby
@Seebach: Sorry, I do not want to play the “what if Clinton had won game.” I don’t think she would be doing anything much different. Maybe she would be more respectful to the DFHs but I doubt it.
I don’t really want to spend a lot more energy on this. It’s useful to remember this is NOT the final bill. It’s the Senate version. Senate bills always suck, because our Senate is broken. I still have some hope some of the worst crap can be fixed in the joint committee reconcilation. Thinking it might wise to save some fire for that round.
Oh and yeah, anybody that figures out a way to rid of Harry Reid, sign me up. Thinking he should be the end result of the that old google bomb – miserable failure.
jwb
@Tonal Crow: It’s hard to say whether they will or won’t, but you know that they are going to want to and would love not to have to take the heat for doing it.
John Sears
@Rick Taylor: ….
I honestly hadn’t thought of that.
Wow. How deviously brilliant, or monumentally stupid.
Sasha
@cfaller96:
Like I said, IMHO, Nelson will fold if a 60th vote can be found. There’s a decent chance Lieberman may vote for the current bill without the PO/Buy-in (maybe), or that Snowe et al. can be wooed back into the process. That’s the tricky part.
jwb
@Midnight Marauder: This. Well said.
Jack
@John Sears:
My vote is:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/12/0082740
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I know for a fact that I see her on my TV multiple times every day and that Politico had her write an op-ed. She’s a player to some degree whether you want her to be or not.
Rick Taylor
__
That’s a good question, I’d like to see an answer to. I’ve always assumed the reason was that Democrat centrists would be more hesitant to use cloture to kill the President’s signature legislation that he campaigned on when it was in its final form, as opposed to still being negotiated. I think that was always Booman’s position; that it was a mistake to attempt to put the public option in the senate bill because when Lieberman predictably killed it, positions were set in stone. Lieberman will lose face if he doesn’t filibuster a bill out of conference that he’s already declared was unacceptable. But from what I’ve seen, I’m finding it harder to believe they wouldn’t cross their party and damn the consequences regardless.
eemom
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
um, ever read “Animal Farm”?
The manipulation of mindless sheep serves a purpose, and it’s never a good one, no matter who does it.
I’d think that would be pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t a sheep.
John Sears
@Jack: I will make a note to read that. Unfortunately I’m now packing up for a brief trip back to the Land of Bayh, aka Indiana, aka the Northernmost Southern State, to visit friends and family.
And play Zombie Santa Claus, but that’s a long story.
John S.
@Tonal Crow:
Art.I s.5 cl.2 is not as cut and dry of a scenario as you seem to think it is, and there seem to be plenty of legal writings all over to that effect. According to Wikipedia (not the final authority, obviously) the Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Ballin (1892) stated that changes to Senate rules could be achieved by a simple majority.
And yet it goes on to say that the current Senate rules state that 67 votes are required for future rule changes according to the language in Rule XXII. Since I’m not a constitutional scholar, I fail to understand what the actual answer is here.
And the intertubes paint a rather murky picture on the topic.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m not asking anybody to be sympathetic to her, just somebody to tell me who’s being hurt by her tactics.
Midnight Marauder
@Grumpy Old Man:
You know what, I have no fucking clue how it would work; I honestly don’t. But I know that after watching this Lord of The Flies chicanery we call our United States
CongressSenate at work the past year, I don’t think there were really too many other feasible options for getting this done. And part of what I’ve based my frame of reference on is that conference is the place where the exact questions that you are proposing are designed to be addressed; that’s what it’s fucking there for, in my estimation.It reminds me of trying to go out for a night on the town with a bunch of friends, and someone kicks it off by saying, “All right, what do you all want to do?” And then everyone starts firing out suggestions and then people start sniping at each other, and then everything just completely breaks down, people are yelling at each other, and next thing you know, you’re all just standing there in the same place you were at the beginning, not going a goddam place any time soon. And finally, at some point, there is someone who usually says something along the lines of “EVERYONE JUST GET IN THE FUCKING CAR AND WE’LL FIGURE IT OUT ON THE WAY THERE!”
That is how I feel about the conference process.
Jack
@John Sears:
Safe journey to you.
jwb
@cyntax: I don’t know. My presumption all along has been that the bill will move towards the House bill in conference—the only question being how far. That’s why we have to wait until we see what’s in the conference bill before deciding whether it is worth supporting. But before it can get to conference it has to clear the Senate, and forcing the WH to issue these assurances now makes getting it out of the Senate more difficult because if you don’t think Lieberdouche and Nelson-of-a-bitch are listening in, you are a fool. Basically, all we are doing is narrowing the strategic options available to the WH and the Democratic leadership and, for what, so we can feel good?
MikeMc
Jane Hamsher has a new post up at HuffPo. She thinks the liberal left and teabaggers should unite. She is a dick!!!
John Sears
@Jack: Thanks. It’s not that long, just 7 hours by car.
Through the godforsaken wastes of Northern and Central Illinois, but hey. What the drive lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity.
Walker Dee
You wrote
And it is infuriating. Personally, if I were in the liberal wing of the Senate, I would have my staffers sniffing out every single piece of legislation Nelson is interested in and would attach pro-choice amendments to each and every one. I would be designing strategies to block or put on hold every thing on his agenda. I would block any judge from his state. I would work to make his life a living hell.
How doe we start? Where do we begin? Let’s put some real pressure on this lunatic, and either bring him around or force him out of office.
Tired of the BS
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What, she’s a nascent Stalin? Are you feeling alright?
Martin
@Rick Taylor:
They’re counting on things getting worse. Nobody wanted to get involved in WWII until Pearl Harbor. It took Pearl Harbor to get everyone on board.
Let’s also point out that the group pushing to slow down and start over since this summer is the GOP. Is that the playbook liberals are reading from now? Are we really that stupid?
eemom
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
let’s see if I can say this slowly.
Getting people worked up into an irrational frenzy does not serve any good purpose. That’s what Jane does. Just check out one of her comments sections.
Got it now?
John S.
Well for all you
wilting flowersmanic progressives dismayed over being compared to Teabaggers, here it is out of the mouth of Jane Hamsher herself:And then she goes on to advocate for joining forces with glibertarians (which seems to be her euphemism for the Teabaggers). Yikes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Rick Taylor:
And, on the flip side, if we can’t pass much more than a shitty bill now, how will we ever have the votes to make it better?
Only one thing is certain, if the Senate passes a bad bill, we’ll get a bad bill.
ChrisWWW
Libby,
After this bill passes, the health care system will continue to go down in flames and people will continue to get screwed by insurance companies. That sad state of affairs will be rightly blamed on Democrats and wrongly on Universal Health Care. And could you really fault voters for assigning responsibility that way after all of the Democratic promises?
Democrats are going to lose their majority and sour the public on further reforms all in one fell swoop. Ultimately, that’s what Democrats deserve for putting insurance companies and their Congressional tools in charge of the process.
But we can save the popularity of proper universal care and the chance we’ll get it someday relatively soon by making sure this bill doesn’t pass.
Ecks
@John Sears:
In other words, “fuck you, I’ve got mine.”
Funny how cost containment is a far more wonderful idea when it doesn’t affect you eh.
Remember, we don’t want health care spending to hit 20% of GDP? Someone else totally has to take a bullet for that shit, right.
Rick Taylor
__
Liberals aren’t slowing anything down right now. Currently it’s Nelson that’s threatened to filibuster the Senate bill if his conditions are not unilaterally met. Some are arguing that the bill has been so gutted that the senate version shouldn’t be passed; I think that’s at least open to debate. Others have gone off the deep end and are saying Obama is plotting against us, he could have gotten Lieberman to cave, but he never really wanted the public option to pass. I think that’s nuts, but regardless, with all the shouting, liberals are not slowing down this process one tiny bit.
jwb
@John Sears: To me, this has turned more and more into a math problem and I better appreciate now why so much time was spent with the ridiculous Baucus bill. I still can’t believe, however, that Obama agreed to Reid’s plan of putting the public option into the Senate bill and they didn’t have a back-up plan, which seems to be the case. Because really at the moment things appear to be completely off the rails, and I’m not seeing a clear path to 60 on anything.
Alan in SF
It’s not really for us, or Rahm Emmanuel, to decide how “liberals” should feel. Because no matter what we say, a certain percentage of the great mass of people for whom voting is an optional activity will stay home in 2010, and maybe in 2012 as well. This will hurt the Democratic Party and it will hurt the country. These people might have been thinking, “The Democratic Party, against bizarre Republican opposition, made my health care not twice as expensive as everywhere else in the civilized world.” Instead, they’ll be thinking, “Who gives a shit?”
MikeMc
@John S
I read that too. It’s fucked up! She’s going to run into the arms of people that openly loathe everything she believes in! She’s got issues.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Well, there goes three fourths of your commentariat.
JoePo
I found Greenwald’s column today pretty fucking condescending. I normally think he’s a brilliant analyst, but to suggest those of us who support this bill don’t have qualms with the merging of corporatism and government is an obnoxious black-and-white assertion. As always, anyone who disagrees with him is craven and of impure intention.
It’s particularly galling when the passage of *anything* resembling reform at this point seems like it would be almost miraculous.
Sasha
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Personally, I’ve always considered being angry more of a hobby.
John Sears
@Ecks: Actually, no, you dumb bastard, it’s not at all clear it will hit me.
I get my health insurance through my wife’s work. They’re in the medical software industry. They get a miraculously good deal from their insurers, who conveniently enough use their product. Huh. Wonder why.
The Excise Tax is set based on the COST OF THE PREMIUM. Not the services, not the quality. The cost of the premium. Our premiums are so low now that even if they’re raised considerably we should be under the cap for many years.
So thanks for your assumption, now stick it up your ass sideways.
cfaller96
But sasha, Nelson’s still making changes. And Lieberman has said he won’t support cloture. The “bill” doesn’t exist yet. You’re banking everything on Nelson and Lieberman simply buckling under because…well, just because. And you’re banking on this magical pony to appear right at the moment when the rest of us are at our most desperate to get the damn thing passed.
I find it weird that some people are completely willing to just “trust” guys that are completely responsible for making this bill worse and worse and worse…and who STILL refuse to support the bill or cloture. I don’t see any reason to trust them.
You embolden them to do this, then there’s no reason for them to stop. And, similarly, there’s no reason to rally support for something that is still in flux and is inevitably going to get worse.
John Sears
@John Sears: Also, I love how ‘someone’ has to take a bullet to keep healthcare spending below 20% of GDP by 2020.
The same phantom someones who live in every other OECD nation?
Fuck you, you ignorant tool.
ChrisWWW
JoePo,
You should be concerned with passing something good not just anything.
This bill takes us one step forward on “coverage” and two giant steps back on the insurance monopolies. It’s not unreasonable to fall on either side of the debate. Some people think the increased coverage is an illusion or not worth further entrenching the insurance companies. Others think getting 30 million more people insurance trumps everything else.
Rick Taylor
__
I wrote about this already, but the argument is if the bill is shitty but better than nothing, it may improve because the public likes it and there’s political advantage in improving it. If it’s just shitty, it will just make everything stink. So that’s why there’s this huge fight if the bill is shitty-but-better-than-nothing versus just-shitty.
__
Which the more I think about it, the stupider it gets, because there is no bill. If Nelson or Snow or someone can’t be appeased, there will be no bill. And if there is a bill, we don’t even know what it’s going to be like. So why are we wasting so much breath on what we know for certain won’t be the final version?
Midnight Marauder
@jwb:
Just sayin’.
John Sears
@Sasha: It’s a calling.
The world is full of shit and doesn’t have to be. There’s no God to blame it on. Just us. Hence, anger.
jwb
@Rick Taylor: I think it gets progressively harder the more Nelson and Lieberman are pushed before it goes to conference. A week ago, for instance, I think Nelson would have voted for cloture but then voted against the bill itself. Today, now that he’s been pushed to the wall and the WH has evidently been promising that the bill will move toward the House version in conference, I think he’s likely to vote against cloture, which means that the bill is less likely to pass. So basically I think all the pressure that’s come down the past week has been very counterproductive. But that’s the reality now and I’m not sure what can be done about it.
jwb
@Martin: “Are we really that stupid?”
Evidently.
Ecks
@John Sears:
Er… do you actually read him? He’s been pointing that out himself every day for months.
Look an excise tax might make a lot of people’s coverage worse, but that’s kind of the problem. Lots of people are using services that cost more than we can collectively afford. That is why, y’know, health inflation has been rising far faster than regular inflation for decades.
The whole problem won’t get fixed until healthcare providers start being able to cure people for less money. And that’s not going to happen until the squeeze gets put on them. And nobody has the policial guts to squeeze them directly, so they’re going to get squeezed through insurers, if it will happen at all.
And if that sounds like it will suck, it will. That’s what happens when you let your heatlh care system get this fucked up for this long. The cure is going to suck. And this is just the start of the cure. Welcome to reality.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Rick Taylor:
Beats the hell outta me. I’ve been saying we have maneuvers available to us that allow us to enact a good bill, a strong bill, and guilt it or ram it through and if we fail, it will be clear who caused it to fail and we can use that as a cudgel at election time.
My practically braindead opponents have been screaming, do something, do anything, pass a bad bill, it’s yellow rain, i won’t cum in yer mouth..
Jack
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Mustn’t blame Rockstar Jesus Reagan or the assclowns who actually wrote the drafts.
Must blame the people who don’t sign on for the historic signing moment.
ChrisWWW
@jwb:
The difference is that Republicans don’t actually want to start the debate over, they want to end it. Howard Dean & Co. are serious about actually starting from scratch in January.
Anyways, at this point we should be ignoring the Republicans (aside from Joe Lieberman and Snowe) entirely. We certainly can’t reflexively do the opposite of whatever they say.
scudbucket
Let’s be real here. In conference the bill will only get worse, whether it gets passed or not Dems take a huge beating in the press and by the GOP, and if enacted the bill provides worse health care for more money! What’s not to like!!
Anne Laurie
@Tonal Crow:
Part of the glorious FUBAR-osity of America’s current medical “system” is that Tennessee is the only state that permits out-of-state-certified doctors to show up and practice medicine without risking their accreditation in their home states. (That, I believe, is why RAM is based in Tennessee.) Of course Obama could have requested special permits to allow RAM to hold one-time-only events in other states (I believe Ahnuld did this for the LA-based event recently) but that’s not how Obama rolls, since the fReichtards would’ve been braying STATES
RITESRIGHTS and SOCKSIALISM! ! !One of the many reasons to hate Joe Lieberman is that he’s inspiring me, despite my hard-learned better instincts, to wish his badly-mangled corpse be discovered on the Family’s C-Street stoop. Preferrably chained to Jim Inhofe’s.
Sasha
@cfaller96:
“Trust but verify” would be my watchwords concerning those two.
Lieberman is the one I’m truly concerned about. I wish that more overtures would be offered to moderate GOPers.
The conference bill is the real show. Let Nelson deal all he wants now — when push comes to shove when the final bill comes through, he’ll cave.
And if Obama steps in in the near future and breaks this logjam, would that count as the magical pony? :)
Jack
@Ecks:
I’m sure the Republicans will ignore the shittiness of the bill and how lots of people have to suffer now because assholes were greedy in the past (although it is neat to read a Bolshevik austerity argument in defense of corporate hand outs).
They’ll just talk about Goldwater, Jesus Flowers and Russ Kirk throughout 2010.
I just knows they will…
ChrisWWW
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Democrats would rather make their bed with a shitty bill, I guess. They wouldn’t want to use the nuclear option or reconciliation. That would be too mean or something?
John Sears
@Ecks: Reality my ass.
Do YOU read Ezra? I do when he’s linked to with something interesting, though his pass-anything tone often puts me off my food.
A while back he had a post up with data on how much more we pay by procedure and drug than other developed nations. I’ll give you the punchline:
Now, it’s a somewhat self-serving argument he got from an insurance industry CEO, but it illustrates an important point: US healthcare is not some magical fantasy land of ultra quality care. It’s the same care at monstrously inflated prices.
So, no, the cure does not have to SUCK. At least not this bad. We just have to get over our arrogance and admit that someone else might have come up with a better system first.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ChrisWWW:
How about the threat of the nuclear option right up to the point where a couple moderate Republicans break off like happened with the Gang of Six?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Irrational frenzy, eh? Somebody’s being irrational here, and I think I know who it is. Nighty-night.
Robin
Call their bluffs!!! This bill has nothing left to it but insurance reform & subsidies for the “poor”. I think those are good enough reasons to pass it, but what else is left? We’re coming to the end of the road here. I don’t want this bill to make abortion financially unavailable for the majority of American women who have insurance. It’s over. It’s been as stripped down as far as it can go & still drive. Put on the floor. I dare either Lieberman or Nelson to be the 2 guys who side with the GOP and kill it. I dare them!! (Like they care, but anyways). But if they do filibuster it, at least we know where we’re at and need to go to plan “B”- Reconciliation.
Steve R.
Poor Obama. He’s a pitiful, helpless giant.
Rahm might also remember that the left wing of his party, for which he has such ill disguised contempt, was the driving force behind his candidacy in the Democratic primary fight against Hillary Clinton. You want to kick dirt in people’s faces as a tactical measure, that’s fine and they will understand why that’s necessary from time to time. But I suspect Rahm kicks dirt in their faces because he thinks that’s what they’ve got coming. Big difference.
And somehow this imbroglio is all their fault, and not owing to any screwups on the part of White House strategists during this process.
ChrisWWW
“It is neat to read a Bolshevik austerity argument in defense of corporate hand outs” – Jack
Awesome.
John Sears
@Jack: Oooh, ooh, I know how the next part of that argument goes:
Progressives, women, the uninsured and then the insured have to suffer for… ‘The Good of the Party’
*rimshot*
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here for… another few minutes. Please remember to tip your server.
Tonal Crow
@John S.: If you read Ballin itself, you will see the Court saying that “The constitution empowers each house to determine its rules of proceedings. It may not by its rules ignore constitutional restraints….” Art.I s.5 cl.2 is both a power and a constraint: it empowers each house to adopt its own rules, but it likewise also permits the same house to change those rules in the same way as adopted the original rules. Any other interpretation of this power would change the power itself, which would “ignore constitutional restraints”. That is, if the Senate adopted Rule 1234wtf saying that, e.g., new rules could be adopted only if Lieberman approved them, then it would have unconstitutionally limited its own exercise of its Art.I s.5 cl.2 power.
If the Senate later voted by a majority (but without Lieberman’s consent) to abolish Rule 1234wtf, and Lieberman sued to overturn the vote, a court would likely dismiss the case as “nonjusticiable” under the “political question doctrine”, http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?54+Duke+L.+J.+1457 , without addressing the argument’s merits.
Jack
@John Sears:
I don’t think it’s coming from Congress, John.
À bas l’État!, as my French friends are wont to remind me. Sometimes, when the bastards won’t budge, we should find extra-legislative ways to remind them that treating with our needs is worth considering.
And I know I was roundly mocked as a wobbly the last time I quoted Good Lucy, but:
“Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth.”
ChrisWWW
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That could work. Although I’d rather just use the nuclear option rather than pussy foot around with threats. Getting rid of the filibuster would be a praiseworthy goal in and of itself, making it easier to pass more liberal stuff down the road.
If that happens, then maybe the Democrats can run on solid accomplishments. It’s a crazy idea, I know…
kay
@cyntax:
You’re so dishonest. I showed you the people with “skin in the game” and now you’re pointing to unions.
Because the whole liberal line that there is going to be rioting in the streets over the mandates came from a single Digby post, and you’re all quoting it like sheep. It never made any sense. If people are offered a subsidy to buy insurance they are not going to give a rat’s ass if Digby says their insurance provider is ideologically pure.
One more time: this bill is meant to benefit people without insurance.
The people without insurance ARE NOT liberal internet activists.
You won’t be relying on this bill, you won’t be figuring out if the mandate applies, and you are NOT the people this bill was targeted to help.
You know why? Simple. Because 94% of you have coverage.
John Sears
@kay: So the fact that those 94% will, according to the CBO, face the prospect of losing their coverage and being forced to take shitty plans or go on the exchange themselves is meaningless?
Or the fact that, according to the CMS, this awful thing is being done to save .3% of our NHE, that doesn’t matter either?
Huh.
John Sears
@Jack: I won’t mock you. After all, it looks like you may be my neighbor in Glasgow someday.
Plus it’s a good quote.
Ecks
@Rick Taylor: Great post, but some issues:
True. So the plan is to have these plans sold on exchanges that a) list their benefits in a standardized format, making them easier for consumer to compare apples to apples (which is almost impossible now, making a mockery of the idea we have an insurance “marketplace”, and b) that include consumer reviews. So if Aetna is dicking people over, angry people will write angry reviews, and the next year most people will be looking for alternatives to Aetna.
Keep in mind, we all effectively have a mandate to buy food every week, but the market for food is transparent enough that we really do get genuine competition that keeps prices down with reasonable quality wares. Free markets are fetishized by the right, but when properly run and regulated they really can provide win/win results.
True. Very true. I give this twelve gold stars for accuracy. But then this is true of every single bill that ever gets passed. So there’s really no way around it really is there.
John Sears
It is so past time for me to turn off the laptop and put it in the bag.
I’m out of here. I will make sure to tell my Mom, who worked in hospital billing for a while, about how good the people on the exchange will have it now that they have access to private health insurance. She could use the laugh.
If you want to convert someone to single payer, just have them file claims with the insurers for a living for a few weeks. Gives you a good grasp of the field of carnage they leave behind them, every single day.
burnspbesq
@dadanarchist:
Didn’t say that. You can complain all you want. So long as you keep in mind that this isn’t about you. It’s about the 40-some-odd-million uninsured, and if the cost of making their lives better is giving the Firepups some butthurt, I will make that deal all day, every day.
Look, the only health care initiative that would make me enthusiastic is single payer effective January 1, 2010. That’s not happening, and it was never happening. But if we can get to a short-term solution whose net effect is to make make even a handful of people’s lives a little better, don’t we have a moral obligation to do it, and not get all goofy because we didn’t get everything we were hoping for?
Tonal Crow
@Ecks:
And does the plan also require them to list their fine print in a standardized format, and to make it understandable to subscribers, and not to reserve the right to change it at their whim? If not, the standardized-benefits-format requirement won’t accomplish anything.
John Sears
@Ecks: Hah….haha….. Food market is transparent…. high quality… oh lord… oh sweet Jeebus….
I mean… *snort*… only 5,000 people a year die of food borne disease in the US, right? That’s… not so bad….
Not like we have safety recalls all the time and a useless, neutered USDA, right?
Man, you seriously should consider standup comedy.
Jack
@John Sears:
I have a socialist friend from Lancashire who has expressed great confusion at the opacity and density of our political process (w/o heaping too much praise on the crimes and betrayals of New Labour, and while worrying the prospects of the BNP).
I’m not sure I’d go in whole hog for parliamentarian rigmarole, what with the damage wrought by She Who Must Not Be Named and the Sock Poppet, but sometimes his explanations of British and European politics leaves me wondering if perhaps Roosevelt screwed us in the end by doing an end run around domestic American socialists and unions, and the conditions which brought them to prominence.
We probably could use fully articulated regional and ideological parties, and be done with captive bases beholden to one of only two viable and thoroughly co-opted national parties.
Joel
@Ecks: This.
Needless to mention, medical professionals and hospitals are going to need the squeeze, too.
John Sears
Ok, really, really, for sure leaving now. Still laughing about that food thing though.
Jack
Apparently I’ve tripped the mod filters. I wonder what spam word it was.
Ecks
@John Sears:
Actually I will apologies for that one. Got caught up too much in the excitement and shot from the hip. So I realize that nobody does this on the internets, but sorry.
Ecks
@cfaller96:
why, that’d be like emboldening the terrrists…
/Jon Stewart’s Bush voice
ChrisWWW
I’m waiting for the next version of this bill to require us to buy insurance from Blackwater (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days).
Ecks
@John Sears:
Again, a certain amount of hip shooting… but… yeah, you guys have FUCKED up your system, and evil insurance companies are only part of the problem. You’ve also gone and built ridiculously expensive health care infrastructure, as the president of Kaiser Permanente will tell you in shockingly empirical detail. Making the insurance companies stop being evil will be the easy problem to solve compared to this one. I don’t know how it’s going to be done, but it’s not going to be through handing hospitals all the money they ask for for everything.
I’ve lived most of my life in other OECD countries, and they’ve all found ways of saying “no” to doctors in ways that provide equal quality care. America is going to have to find some hard ways of doing the same.
The current bill doesn’t get it there yet, but at least it sets up some steps in the right direction.
The one thing that worries me is something that people here are already hinting at, which is that the more the government runs healthcare, the more people’s natural bitching about healthcare becomes directed against the government instead. The US essentially overpays massively for health care right now in order to spare the gov from such bitching.
Meyer
Actually, it is going to SUCK, for a lot of people. In order for us to truly rest our cost basis, we’re going to need to suck the profit (or a lot of it) out of the insurance industry, we’re going to have to get pharma to sell at the same rates they do worldwide (i.e., way lower – less profit than today), we’re going to have to have tort reform (suck it, lawyers) and we’re going to have to force the doctors to take a haircut.
Notice who Obama has allied himself with here: big pharma (why? Because it’s not a huge cost driver), lawyers (why? Because, again, not a huge cost driver), the AMA (why? Because they are untouchable), and he’s thrown the health insurance guys under a bus (why? Because they are evil bastards and everyone hates them except for our bought-and-paid for senators.)
But make no mistake, for that cost curve to REALLY bend, we’re going to need major concessions from all of the above. And there is a LOT of suck in there for a LOT of people who have been feeding on the suffering of the rest of us for a very long time.
It is, of course, possible to craft a health bill that is so fucking vile that everyone will hate it and you will sink your party for a generation, in which case the only reform we will see in our (probably foreshortened) lifetimes will be forced on us by our creditors. Now THAT is true suck. A reform bill stripped of meaningful cost controls, say, or one that looks like it was written by the health insurers.
And it’s exactly where we are today.
ChrisWWW
@Ecks:
What’s frustrating is that you’re right when you say “Making the insurance companies stop being evil will be the easy problem to solve…”
But we can’t even do that!
Everyone hates insurance companies (and banks for that matter) but we’re being legislated into giving them our bank account codes.
Ecks
@John Sears:
That’s funny, I just cited the exact same interview back at you before I read this.
In this same interview the Kaiser guy says that they’re having to build entirely new hospitals because they can’t buy existing ones that are capable of running efficiently enough. Duplication and other craziness is baked into their infrastructure because there was never anybody strong enough to demand lower payouts from them. And that’s a place where the insurance companies are not the villains – Cigna did not build the hospital where the X-ray unit is run separately from the emergency room, with it’s own separate billing, staff, and machines.
In fact, you get all kinds of perverse effects over here where more monoplistic insurance companies actually end up providing cheaper insurance, because they become the real costs are set the providers, and a monopoly seller of insurance is also a monopsony buyer of medical services for their customers. In other countries the government steps in and plays that monopolist role. That’s not going to fly straight up in the US (which is dumb, but there it is), so that leaves you trying to explore other new ways out.
And that, I am unhappy to maintain, is going to be a miserable experience for you all, and is perhaps the single biggest reason why I would be quite happy to move back to Canada .
Ecks
@John Sears:
I think everyone already stopped reading this thread.
But for the record, note how I said “properly regulated”… I mean, no system that big will ever be perfect, but the food industry worked pretty well until Bush the Lesser gutted the regulation of it.
Also for the record, I’ve lived most of my life under single payer insurance, and this country is INSANE for not adopting it (I still feel rage every time I see a private ambulance). But that’s not up to me, and it’s not going to get through congress any time soon either. And until you tear up the constitution here, that’s going to be your choke point. Meet shit creek, and don’t you wish you had a paddle.
kay
@John Sears:
Yesterday it was “the poor” and when it was explained to you that there’s a VAST expansion of Medicaid in the bill you went to “the young” who are going to be subject to mandates, and that doesn’t make any sense, because “the young” are going to fall into one of four exemptions, and then you went to “the unions” and now it’s all insured people.
Today, you’re willing to use scare tactics to make these dramatic arguments how INSURED people are going to suffer, because all the “liberal humanitarian” arguments fail, on the merits.
You’re now full circle. You’re to the Right of John McCain. Congrats.
dadanarchist
To quote my niece: Well, duuuu-uuuh!!
AngusTheGodOfMeat
You and I see this from exactly the opposite direction, Headster. 180 degrees.
I see two powerful forces playing a game of chicken.
One side gets riled up that the game isn’t going well, and says Kill The Bill. In other words, blinked.
I say, no blinking. Stay the course. There isn’t going to be a rematch on this game any time soon. And, ideology is bullshit when the Republicans focus on it. It’s bullshit when we do it, too.
I am not willing to give up one provision or benefit of a bill in order to gain some kind of politically symbolic victory. I’m in the highest risk group here. This is my chips you are playing with for the next ten years. Pass the damn bill, do the conference, and let’s see what we get. If it’s not good enough, try again next time. But pass the fucking bill and do the conference. I don’t care if Joe’s cock gets sucked. Let me see what the process will get me.
Onihanzo
@John Cole
In defense of Wile E. Quixote, you may not have used “11th dimensional chess” line… but you’ve certainly peddled the “Obama plays long ball” meme before.
Brett
@jwb: “Are there sufficient votes in the Senate for any of these options? I don’t think so and that’s why no one is seriously discussing them.”
Are there sufficient votes for health care reform right now? Everyone could save a lot of talk (and energy) if setting the agenda were that easy.
Ecks
@Onihanzo: In John’s defense, this is not a contradiction. Obama is good at looking ahead to the end-game, and skipping a lot of the bullshit in between to keep his eye on the prize. He showed that quite a few times in the campaign… and is arguably doing the same thing here. You might not think his methods are very progressive, but the dems have never ever had a health bill survive this far through the process since medicare. You can kvetch about what shape its in, but don’t pretend it was an easy thing to get it this far.
All that is a lot different from claiming he’s some mega-genius who knew that you knew that he knew that he knew the poison was in the cup on the left, so fakes you out by….
Shorter: There’s a difference between looking ahead to where the end-game can realistically be, and being omniscient.
Onihanzo
@Ecks:
And yet the arbitrary application of that meme is precisely what Wile E tackled via Greenwald.
Regarding Lieberman, yes threatening to dry up DNC funds are wholly worthless to that bastard. But stripping the prick of his Homeland Security Chair seat might convince him to mind his manners.
roshan
John Cole @this post:
This notion that if “Obama used his bully pulpit” or “got out in front of the bill more” is just silly.
John Cole @previous post:
Personally, I blame Obama for not using the bully pulpit and think a stronger President like Hillary would have never let this happen.
mamiller
Sure, whatever Rahm. But I will never give another dollar or spend another second on the Dem party. SMD mo fo.
Ecks
@roshan: Yeah, he was doing this thing called “irony” in that post you link. It’s where you say things that are the opposite of what you really mean. Confusing at first, I grant, but you’ll get used to it when you live among humans a little longer.
@Onihanzo
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of very confused commentary going on about Obama, and Greenwald makes some sharp observations there. Hey, it’s confusing times, and part of Obama’s mystique has always been that he’s enough of a cipher that people can project a lot of different things on to him. Patient observation can unravel a lot of it, but the media and blogosphere aren’t exactly known for their steady hand on the wheel there.
MNPundit
Man, if those poor poor Obama staffers ever call me… haha. It’s going to be memorable.
The only way to beat the centrists is to be as willing as they are to let people die.
ED: Hey Ecks, if patient observation can unravel then tell us, what has your patient observation told you?
Just Some Fuckhead
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: I’ll consider going along with you on yer suicide run if you pull out the individual mandate and the excise tax.
Edit: BTW, I’m not a kill-the-bill proponent. I’m a pass-a-really-good-bill at any cost proponent. So we’re sorta the same on this except you don’t care if you hurt real Americans as long as you get what you want and I don’t care if I hurt the feelings of millionaire senators as long as I get what I want.
Chuck Butcher
@Just Some Fuckhead:\
I was a pass a good bill at the cost of a lot to a couple Senators also. Now I’m not sure there’s an actual legal way to do it. As much as I might enjoy seeing some extra-legal persuasion applied to certain un-named personages I can’t step up and volunteer.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Chuck Butcher: Did you read the Just Impeach Him Already thread?
Chuck Butcher
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Some, keeping up with BJ today has been … an effort.
This must be an un-ghey post record at 456?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Chuck Butcher: Your answer is there. Start from the bottom.
Chuck Butcher
I commented at 166 and read through most of the Stuck/head flame. Just finished it.
I will note this, if the filibuster hadn’t been in place during BushCo things would have gotten worse than they did. I disapprove of it being easy to actually do, but I also can’t warm to doing away with it.
If I wrote the rule it would require continuous debate with hourly roll calls and whenever there were not 41% of a quorum to vote against cloture it happened. Something like that, anyhow. It’s late and I’m not in a real mood to do Senatorial rule making.
Chuck Butcher
I’m not a pacifist, either. I just can’t warm up to jail time for straightening out one of those assholes.
roshan
@Ecks: my bad.
Lisa Pease
Thank you for the sanity. Indeed. So hard to come by on the far left or the far right these days..!