1.) Ezra Klein–
Thanks to the magic of Google, it’s easy enough to revisit the plan (pdf) Obama campaigned on in light of the plan that seems likely to pass. And there are, to be sure, some differences. The public option did not survive the Senate. The individual mandate, which Obama campaigned against, was added after key members of Congress and the administration realized that the plan wouldn’t function in its absence. Drug reimportation was defeated, and a vague effort to have government pick up some catastrophic costs was never really mentioned.
***But whether you love the Senate bill or loathe it, whether you’re impressed by Obama’s effort or disappointed, it is very hard to argue that the bill Congress looks likely to pass is fundamentally different from the approach Obama initially advocated. “The Obama-Biden plan both builds on and improves our current insurance system,” the campaign promised, and on that, for better or for worse, they’ve delivered. You can debate whether Obama should have lashed himself to such an incremental and status-quo oriented approach, but you cannot argue that he kept it a secret.
There’s a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn’t the man progressives thought they were voting for.
But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that
(a) There wasn’t a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders
(b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressive
Now it’s true that many progressives were ardent Obama supporters, with their ardency mixed in with a fair bit of demonization of Hillary Clinton. And maybe they were right — but not on policy grounds. (I still remember people angrily telling me that if Hillary got in, she’d fill her economics team with Rubinites).
So what you’re getting is what you should have seen.
There have definitely been compromises, and there have been letdowns. There have been mistakes, and there have been broken promises. I’m not thrilled with the slow pace of Gitmo, I’m not thrilled about any number of things, but I see slow progress. But there have also been unrealistic expectations- Obama was always a risk averse, cautious, careful person- I remember the many discussions we had here regarding Obama as poker player versus John McCain and his reckless love of roulette, and we used to agree that a cautious poker player who studies the opposition and thinks long ball and treats us like adults was desirable.
I’ve said repeatedly that the only people who really believed that Obama was a left-wing radical were the people on the left who wanted him to be but refused to pay attention and those on the right who wanted to destroy him. I think I’m still pretty right, and it is why I’m not disillusioned. I think my take on the guy was pretty accurate, and still is.
Jody
Yeup.
And I still reserve the right to criticize him when I believe he’s fucking up.
mo
That’s exactly how I feel. Thanks!
General Winfield Stuck
Yes..but but but but but……we are concerned. I am outa juice for today/ Let’s all get some rest and do it all over again tomorrow. Obot out.
Joe Lisboa
Thanks for the bastion of sanity, Cole. Seriously.
kid bitzer
the art of the possible, baby. the art of the possible.
i’ve got to say: people who are unhappy with obama just seem to me to be suffering from complete amnesia about the last, oh, 45 years or so.
this is *so* much better. *so* much better.
and, sure, keep the pressure up and keep him honest yadda yadda.
but keep some perspective, fer crissake, too.
gwangung
@Jody: I respect folks who think he’s screwed up; I’m not sure I respect people who thinks he’s screwed up and that I’m drinking the koolaid for disagreeing.
Unabogie
Yep, and this is what frustrates me about the left right now. They are willing to hand power back to the Republicans because Barack Obama isn’t keeping promises that only existed in their imaginations.
Robin G.
@Jody:
Amen.
For the record, I don’t think that this is one of the times he’s fucking up. But there have been/are/will be times that I will.
Alien-Radio
A really obscure legislative win
In April 2009, the Polywell was awarded a further $2 million in funding as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009. The citation in the legislation was labelled as Plasma Fusion (Polywell) – Demonstrate fusion plasma confinement system for shore and shipboard applications; Joint OSD/USN project.[35] The citation occurs 166 pages into the document, and suggests development of the device for ‘Domestic Energy Supply / Distribution’.
fusion nerds like me love this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
BR
This is from Krugman’s slightly skewed perspective on the primaries. The main reason Krugman’s saying this is because on HCR, Obama didn’t support a mandate during the primaries and Edwards/Clinton did, and at the time this was the most important issue ™ in his mind. I was glad Obama was against the mandate at the time, and it’s too bad this bill has a mandate. But whatever, I’m not sure it’s clear that it’s clearly more or less progressive to have a mandate. (Rather, it’s not on that axis that we can consider mandates – it’s whether you like the bill to be more or less top-down/authoritarian – mandates are top-down.)
On other issues, like the war(s), Obama was more progressive by most definitions of that word than Edwards/Clinton. On most other issues Obama/Edwards/Clinton/Biden/Dodd/Richardson were about the same. Kucinich played his usual role as the purist, and really only Gravel, as nutty as he came off, was truly my kind of progressive/left-libertarian truth-teller.
So Krugman’s got his history a little wrong.
Just Some Fuckhead
No Unabogie, we aren’t interested in handing power back to the Republicans. Don’t be a dumbass. We got Stuck for that.
BR
@Alien-Radio:
Is this Polywell approach some hybrid of ICR and Tokamak? I’ve never heard of it.
Any chance that it’ll work with lower capital investment than ITER and other Tokamak designs?
Persia
@BR: Obama was more progressive on the DOMA than Hillary (he supported full repeal…not sure what happened to that but NOT THE CURRENT TOPIC) and transparency than, hell, almost anyone else on the trail (about 50-50 there, so far, IIRC).
Shade Tail
This. Absolutely. I’ve always realized that he wasn’t as liberal as I am, but he’s still a million times better than Bush was or McCain would have been.
Let’s not get over-wrought, though, about people who are “hating” on him. The vast majority of people in this country just aren’t as politically connected as we are, and are only really concerned with dealing with their day-to-day lives. That includes lefties. They’re going to base their voting decisions on the situation *now*, not on abstract political game-theory.
MobiusKlein
I have a notion to photoshop up the threat level rainbow from DHS with a progressive-blogosphere Obama sellout meter.
Red – Obama is Cheney!! – elect Nader NoW
Orange – Obama is Bush – elect Dean
Yellow – Obama is Clinton – elect Clinton (the other one)
Blue – Obama is Kennedy – elect somebody
Green – Obama is Nader – re-elect Obama
Jay B.
Yeah, other than those specific and rather consequential things, the promise of “reform” is fully captured in the immortal lines from the campaign: ““The Obama-Biden plan both builds on and improves our current insurance system.”
Who could forget how that stirred us so?
I can even agree with you and Krugman that he was temperamentally-and-politically centrist. I also know he got dealt a shitty hand. But what, at all, does that have to do with anything?
I’m not living through him to validate my life. I just want him to support better policies. If I agree with what he’s done, like I do with the programs you’ve highlighted here today, it’s good! If I don’t, like with his choice of an economic team or his tacit or explicit approval of Bush-era secrecy and policies, I get to not support it with all my heart and soul!
Regardless of his “centrism” or anything else, events that are happening in real time might prove to be a bad match for a cautious politician who called, incongruously, for the “Audacity of Hope”. So it may not be surprising that he’s delivering on his tempered promises — but that doesn’t mean it’s politically smart, when a bolder approach might also be the better strategy for politics AND results.
Who knows? Maybe the voters will reward double-digit unemployment because they find themselves convinced that he’s got a long range plan to mildly address it.
Kevin Phillips Bong
Mature and reasoned analysis? Boooring…
BR
@MobiusKlein:
And to be true to the DHS color-coded threat system, you can never let the threat level drop below yellow. (For a lot of folks this is still about Clinton winning the primaries.)
btw, I think you’d rather go with Kucinich – Nader’s lost his popularity.
Alien-Radio
@BR:
It’s not as advanced a technology, but the cost to iterate generations is much less, basically given the cost of ITER ten million or so to work on another approach is basically a gimme.
snarkout
@BR in 10:
And I think Krugman is underestimating the degree to which HRC’s refusal to say that the Iraq War was a mistake played into a lot of people’s decisions in Iowa through Super Tuesday about who to support. Krugman is the smartest guy writing at the national level and is entitled to his own judgment about this, but it seems transparently obvious to me that HRC had been willing to say that Bush pulled a fast one and duped America, she’d be president now. But either she really didn’t feel that way or Mark Penn talked her out of it.
General Winfield Stuck
It never ends. sigh
jfxgillis
John:
Yessiree.
Although frankly, I’m thrilled with the Gitmo progress. He’s much further along in the process than my cynical self thought he’d be. Whether Politifact calls it a “promise broken” because he missed the deadline or not, he’s kept a lot more of the promise than I thought was even remotely possible given the easy and powerful demagoguery of the opposition to it–and the ease with which Obama could’ve back-burnered it.
dr. bloor
You know, I support passage of the bill and all, but Ezra is full of shit when he argues that the bill is fundamentally the same as the one Obama campaigned on. The absence of the PO–which wouldn’t have driven down costs on its own, but would have served as a door opener insofar as it would have been an elegant demonstration that the government can do health care more efficiently–and the absence of drug reimportation provisions killed any cost control potential in the bill.
It’s an oversell, Ezra. Emphasize the strengths of the bill as it is, but don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
mr. whipple
I would use a more positive term: prudent. I liked that about him, and still do.
I remember watching one of the debates while I was online, and a lot of people wanted Obama to just kick the shit out of McCain and were dismayed when he didn’t. Then the after polls came in, all saying Obama had ‘won’, and they were dumbfounded.
I think on issue after issue people want some old wounds avenged. Don’t just get policy passed, destroy republicans. Don’t just get healthcare, destroy insurance companies. Don’t just get our financial institutions in order, destroy capitalism.
RandyH
I’m pretty sure McCain’s gambling preference was Craps, not Roulette. But same difference really. No skill or strategy involved in either game. Pure luck.
donovong
Looking at that Politifact scoreboard (and I can’t go in-depth on my Blackberry), I can only imagine what it would have looked like with President McCain.
Then I go and do my happy dance again. It’s only been 11 months, people. 7 years and 1 month to go!
BR
@snarkout:
It’s quite possible Mark Penn wrote one of his brilliant memos telling her not to. (Maybe as brilliant as his memos that said that they should highlight Obama un-Americanness and that the country won’t elect someone of color for another 50 years.)
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
Bingo. Bizarro Republicans.
MobiusKlein
@BR: Good point:
I’ll fix it:
Red – Obama is Cheney!! – elect Kucinich NoW
Orange – Obama is Bush – elect Dean
Yellow – Obama is Clinton – elect Clinton (the other one)
Blue – Obama is Kennedy – elect somebody
Green – Obama is Kucinich – re-elect Obama
Matt
Didn’t his FISA vote last summer and his support for the bank bailouts before the election show us how he would govern? Or were liberals just assuming he was tacking to the right to appease the centrist Villagers in order to get elected, and once he was President, he would suddenly shift dramatically to the left? I think this is why they feel “betrayed.” They thought he was pretending to be someone when he wasn’t pretending at all.
Jay B.
@mr. whipple:
Yeah, that’s not a particularly hysterical reading of why some people criticize Obama and the health care plan. It’s obvious. Even when it was the damn hippies, I knew it was the commies who were really opposed to it.
BR
@Matt:
That must be what throws both the hysterical PUMAs and the right off-balance about Obama. He generally really does say what he means and means what he says. It’s sort of odd, actually. I almost don’t like it even though I should, but maybe it’s because I’ve been conditioned by years of listening to politicians who do otherwise.
BR
@MobiusKlein:
Cool. So are you going to make a graphic? :)
burnspbesq
Butbutbut … Jane and Markos said there would be ponies for everyone! And there aren’t! It’s not fair! It’s not it’s not it’s not! Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
What? What do you mean I have to go to time out?
Guster
I’m drunk. Somebody give me something to disagree with.
John O
Exactly! (John C!)
It wasn’t hard to understand the dude was no political daredevil. Long before he was nominee.
Which to me is to his credit. The arc of history bends very slowly, as they say, and I think he gets at least that part of his job.
And I’m old enough to have drilled into my head: “Congress makes law, the President ratifies them.”
Libby
Your take and mine were about the same John Cole. I think we were right. I had hoped he might turn out to be a great president but I didn’t expect him to be more than he turned out to be. A good president.
aimai
Well, I think I was pretty accurate in my assessment of Obama when I raised money for him, and doorknocked for him, and voted for him. I thought he was a cautious, incremental, centrist–hell, when I met Michelle at an early fundraiser I thought she’d be a republican for sure if she weren’t black–but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed with his conduct on this health care bill. He underbid it, and oversold it, and let himself be played for a sucker by a tag team of centrist dems and Lieberman. And, as I said below, I think he and his team have made some basic, discourteous errors in handling their own voters–that is not the netroots or Jane Hamsher or whoever but the very people on his mailing list. Since I’m one of them I know exactly how hands off the white house has been about health care reform.
Like Jay B I support the health care bill. And as for myself I personally love Obama and Michelle and the Kids and greatly admire many aspects of his personality and his political acumen.
But, speaking only for myself, I see a very real role for an angry, unsatisfied, left out there criticizing Obama and the Dems for “leaving money on the table” in a variety of ways. If we sit back and say “well done” then the dems will do nothing to fix the bad things in the bill. If we keep pushing and keep demanding more–and I dont mean silly putty in the mail I mean with our donations, our phone calls, and our organizational time and skills–then the dems will treat us the way the republicans used to treat their anti abortion flank: offer us promises every four years and then fail to deliver.
Its precisely because I knew Obama was the best I could do that I voted for him. And support him even though he’s a cautious centrist. But that just means that when I think centrism is unnecessary, or incrementalism is unnecessary to his achieving the goals he himself would cop to–well, I’m disappointed and I want to see him do better.
aimai
mr. whipple
@Jay B.:
I don’t think it’s hysterical at all. One rationale for the PO, for instance(and one I wanted badly to see succeed) was that over time it would lead to insurance companies going out of business and it would be a strictly gvt provided service. Too bad we didn’t get that.
Calming Influence
I’ll keep fighting for health insurance reform to improve whatever bill Obama signs. And I don’t hold him responsible for congressional Democrats failure to do any better. But the fact that Democrats hold the White House and both houses, and yet can’t manage to put together a bill with a robust public option that a solid majority of the people want is very discouraging.
And I do think it’s possible to pass a bill that actually does more harm than good and puts us farther away from a single payer system. I just hope this one doesn’t.
So yeah, I want someone to kill this bill, understanding that it could backfire and we won’t make progress on this for years. But this is not 1994. Again, a solid majority of the public want a robust public option. They’ve had 15 years of increasingly shitty insurance coverage, 15 years of watching friends, family, and neighbors getting screwed out of coverage and forced to sell their homes to pay for their own treatment. More and more people who just a year ago could have cared less about health insurance reform have now lost their jobs and their coverage, and found COBRA completely unaffordable.
This isn’t an issue that you have to convince the public about, you just have to convince the congress that it might be politically astute to show some spine and force a showdown on this.
As always, I could be wrong. But anyone who thinks so is an asshole.
BR
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but the Sanders community health clinic provision seems awesome – perhaps more awesome than a weak public option would have been:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/21/817467/-14,000-Kennedy-Sanders-Cardin-ClinicsHow-Senate-Rules-KILLED-Public-Option
Elie
@mr. whipple:
THIS
More important that folks realize…
thanks
BR
@Guster:
2+2=5.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Excellent writeup John and I agree with your/their analysis. While I too am disappointed at the slow speed of progress this DFH knows that progress is taken one step at a time and rarely ever as one single giant step. I temper my disappointment with the knowledge that Obama has a fractious legislative body that needs to learn to legislate once again. While others have complained about his hands off approach to congress I am happy to see just that. His is the executive, not legislative, and I know that Obama is working behind the scenes and letting the legislature side play out in public with little static from his office. That way the things they are doing are in the “news” rather than the things Obama is saying. If you noticed, while Obama was quiet the press could not shut up about his silence.
Obama is a good poker player and it seems those skills of his are transferable to the world of politics. Right now I would rate Obama 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. Our legislature?
2.5
Guster
@aimai: Yeah. And I love the idea that other than the public option and drug reimportation, this is basically what Obama ran on.
Other than the plot and the soundtrack, how did you enjoy the movie?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jay B.:
At this point, I’m just hoping for audacity.
Calming Influence
@Guster:
Check me @40, and if you’re feeling froggy, leap.
Wait, let me grab another beer.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Damn! My first comment since our cable went down at eight this morning and it gets modded!
Hep me! :)
Oh, and FYBWL. Also.
Max
I supported Obama since he announced and I’ve never regretted my vote and can’t wait to vote for him again.
I’m an O-bot, unashamed.
I have to wonder how the Clinton presidency would have been viewed thru the netroots of today’s purity test.
Guster
@BR: BR? What does that stand for, Brain Removed? I’d like to punch you in the medulla oblongata, you three-armed octopus. If I counted as poorly as you, I’d slit my throat with a spork and eat my own head.
beltane
A neighbor of mine supported Obama because he honestly believed he would be a Che Guevara who would storm Washington and use the imagined power of the presidency to bring about radical change. I bet he’s one of the disappointed ones.
It seems to me that Obama’s first year has gone much more smoothly than Bill Clinton’s, and in a world that is much more in flux.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
Discouraging in that the same American people didn’t elect more Congresscritters who would vote for that public option?
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Take some time off Stuck. Do it for the dog. Tie some bacon around yer leg so he doesn’t try to escape again. Dogs will put up with a lot of dumb shit for bacon.
Elie
@Calming Influence:
Irony abounds Mr Calming Influence. Which part of your handle is the most important?
Jay B.
@mr. whipple:
Then you are either being disingenuous in your #39 post on the one previous. Because, honestly, I think you can oppose this bill without wanting to see the insurance industry destroyed. Or wanting to pass progressive legislation without wanting to “settle scores”. Or wanting much tighter regulatory oversight of the financial sector without wanting to destroy capitalism.
Gwangung
@Calming Influence: Sorry, I’m not clear; how is it not possible to get to a stronger public option from this bill?
mr. whipple
Badly.
PeakVT
Can these two statements be true at the same time?
I think so.
Calming Influence
“Guster?!?” What the fuck is that, Buster with a fat gut?
Just Some Fuckhead
BTW, my anti-Obama screed soon to be published by Regnery Books will be entitled “Hoping For Audacity” so don’t try to steal it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Some days I want to engrave this on the bottom of my shoes so I can imprint it on the asses of people who refuse to accept that Obama really isn’t some radical firebrand. (Or put another way, they refuse to accept that he isn’t a bigger liar than Bush.)
And frankly, “OMG, OBAMA SCREWED UP EVERYTHING IS RUINED!1” became fucking dull during the election.
beltane
@BR: My whole family and I use these centers. Back in the days when my husband didn’t have insurance he was able to get dental work done for a fraction of the cost of a private dentist. There is a reason Vermont is rated the healthiest state in the country.
Corner Stone
@Guster: The sun revolves around the earth! And fuck you if you don’t believe me and the Church!
kay
@aimai:
It’s just not credible to me that the Obama Administration “got rolled” by Congress.
Obama was a Senator, and prior to that, he was a state legislator. Biden was a Senator (for a really long time). Rahm Emanual both served in the House and to an extent BUILT the blue dogs.
They took advice from Daschle.
I’m continually asked to believe that they don’t know how Congress works, that they don’t know each individual member, and that they don’t know how to use the rules, and I think that’s crazy.
If they don’t, if that combined Congressional expertise doesn’t, no one does.
I think you have to start from here: they know how this Congress works. It is extremely unlikely they got rolled.
Biden and Daschle alone have years.
I can take that starting point, and assume they set out to get less than they could get. I don’t think that’s what happened, though. I think they got all they could.
But to say they got rolled? That’s a stretch.
Guster
@Calming Influence: Well, I mostly agree with you, but what the hell does _that_ matter?
You want someone to kill the bill? That’s great in theory, but this isn’t a fucking theory–people’s lives on are on the line. I don’t know if 20 million or 30 million more people are gonna get insurance, and I don’t know if the number of Americans who die from lack of insurance is gonna fall from 20-40,000 to 5,000 or 10,000 or what, but those are real lives, and playing political games in the hopes that we’re gonna get a better bill at some point is playing dice with human lives.
Sure, the bill sucks in some ways. But the idea that now, _now_ that we’ve seen how much Congress sucks, we can go back and get a better bill? That’s insane. We got this donkey-sucking bill _after_ we cut deals with Pharma and Insurance and Satan’s left testicle. You wanna see what kinda deal we get if we’re _not_ tossing the Devil’s salad?
It’s not gonna be this good, I’ll tell you that–and in the meantime, the corpses are piling up.
mr. whipple
@Jay B.:
Not at all, Jay. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I’m not saying everyone- or even most people- fall into that group, just that the ones that do tend to be pretty vocal and passionate.
Ash
This is one thing I still don’t get. Why though? Considering –
1) They got no money to fund any of the things they needed to consider
2) All the files on Gitmo detainees could probably fit on one sticky note
3) People are really freaking stupid
So, to me, progress is pretty amazing so far.
Gwangung
Ugh. Purity tests, ie political correctness. Had enough of them in the 70s. Didn’t pass many of them but I can match my record against anyone else’s by now.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
@Jay B.: All true. The thing is, my Venn diagram doesn’t show ‘liberals against the HCR act’ and ‘Bizarro Republicans’ as completely overlapping each other.
Elie
@Jay B.:
I don’t think that the rational and balanced interpretation you give is necessarily borne out by the comments on many who oppose this…a whole lot has been about the indignity (and I agree to some extent) and wrongness of paying the insurance industry.
There has been, to my mind, much less discussion about the value of covering as many people as possible and the positives of that. Instead, we get the mandate freakout from those who do not want to be made to pay for others and/or have issues with paying into insurance industry profits.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay:
Thank you. He got what he wanted, as Feingold said.
And we got a health care bill without sitting through night after night of Harry and Louise ads. So there’s that.
Tomlinson
Exactly what is going on now with Lieberman, BTW. I’ve seen many people calling for him to call Lierberman on the carpet, make him eat his words — kick the shit out of him, essentially.
Obama won’t do that. Not prudent. Satisfying as hell, but it won’t get the job done.
FTR, what I was hoping for with Obama was that we’d see a pragmatist, and I think we’ve got that.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You’re a sick bastard, you know that. Leave my dog out of it fuckhead. And I am not taking any time off. If you are going to stalk me from thread to thread, then put on your sunday best, cause it won’t be free.
Now go be an idiot jester. It’s what you were born for.
Guster
@Calming Influence:
Hey! I’m a _sensitive_ drunk! Don’t make me cry. I’m warning you. After I start crying, the next step is, ‘I love all of you so much, I really do.’
@Corner Stone:
That’s an easy one, even _sober_. The sun doesn’t revolve around the earth and the earth doesn’t revolve around the sun. Relativity, you son of a bachelor! Einstein proved that everything revolves around the pimple on my left buttock.
Corner Stone
@aimai: I’m pretty sure I am enjoying your posts lately. Lemme check…yep, enjoyin’ ’em.
ETA – to be clear – I think you always have a clear point to make and find myself thinking my way through your posts. But lately you’ve been in the wheelhouse. IMO
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
Fixed.
When your Democratic Senate caucus thinks Harry Fucking Reid is Senate Majority Leader material, you’re starting off first and fifteen to begin with.
Calming Influence
@Gwangung:
There isn’t a public option in the senate bill. If the final bill looks like this, then insurance companies will have 40 million more customers who’s premiums will be guaranteed by the U.S. government and supplemented with taxpayer money. They’re never gonna give up that sweetheart deal.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck:
lmfao
PK
I voted for Obama because he was not a republican. My exact quote to a pollster was that “If it came down to a choice between a republican and a dead fish, I was voting fish”. Having said that, I am disappointed in him, probably because a person who gives such awesome speeches should not govern so timidly. If you give soaring speeches people will have soaring expectations. There is a disconnect between Obama the speech giver and Obama the cautious leader.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You are one pig ignorant sonofabitch. You don’t know what anybody wanted, you don”t even know what you want. You just wank on and on with mindless insults, and then whine that we are so mean when we shove it back in your face. DIAF motherfucker.
Sly
@Max:
Considering that the operating principle seems to be that legislative negotiations are like bargaining for a used car: Hillary would have turned over control Medicare to Aetna as a for-profit program, given a trillion dollars to Phil Gramm to fix the economy, and personally shot the balloon boy in the face just to show she’s tough on theoretical UAV strikes by rogue states.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You shouldn’t laugh, it wasn’t meant to be funny shit for brains.
Jay B.
@Elie:
Being put off with the idea that we’re going to shovel hundreds of billions to the industry which has fought tooth and nail to prevent anything getting passed AND will be further enriched to fight any subsequent fight we might want to put up to fundamentally fix our broken healthcare system through the magic of “incrementalism” isn’t exactly a bad one.
Still, the difference between opposing the enrichment of the insurance industry and wanting their destruction is still vast.
So long as the profit margin is the goal and they can buy Congress without fear of regulation, they will continue to be an impediment to meaningful health care reform. However, in examples like Switzerland, Holland and Germany, I believe they still exist as an industry. What ever works to deliver better, cheaper care. I’m very unsure this will do that.
Ailuridae
@BR:
The CHC provisions are awesome. And its great to see Ben Cardin getting some much deserved recognition as he often toils away at the outskirts of progressive recognition or, even worse, is confused with Tom Carper.
jcricket
Let’s not forget we also got 40 Republicans voting against HCR, and using every stalling tactic in the book. And they threw “death panels” and “tea parties” at us. Yes, this got a couple of important propositions removed from the bill, but it didn’t kill it.
How well do you think that will work next time, when budget reconciliation is used to tweak subsidies, etc? Much like GOP opposition to SS and Medicare, their full-throated refusal to go along at all will be an anchor weighing the GOP down for decades. See Prop 187 (diff. topic) in CA for a recent example of what happens when the GOP gets on the wrong side of an electoral issue, long-term.
Believe me, I am far from happy with the final outcome. It’s not Obama I blame, but the Senate Dems – and esp. people like Nelson and Lieberman. Their behavior was truly execrable, given the reality of the US healthcare system.
But having read the history of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, I’m pretty confident we’ve just seen the first big step on a long road of HCR in America. It’s not going to be rolled back, and enough of the public will see who is on the right side of this issue to benefit us (Democrats) long-term.
fauxpopuli
You do love your false dichotomies John Cole. Believe it or not it’s entirely possible to be disappointed/disillusioned with what we’ve seen of Obama so far without believing he was a “left-wing radical.” Pat yourself on the back for being so wise if you must – personally I’m disillusioned because it looks like he’s turning out exactly like I feared he would – hypercautious and all that, in other words we saw the same thing and are now coming to different conclusions. I know you’re quite fond of the whole Obama is powerless to effect the course of this legislation/this shitty Senate bill is the best we could’ve ever hoped for lines of thinking, but believe it or not there are plenty of things he could’ve done to try and push a little harder. He chose not to and some segment of people being disappointed and upset is a natural repercussion of that, regardless of how you’d prefer to paint it.
Calming Influence
@Guster:
If the coverage of every uninsured person were to start the moment Obama signs, I’d be with you. But 2014? Holy fucking shit!
EDIT: Oops,forgot to mention you’re a dick.
[goes for additional beeeers]
Corner Stone
@snarkout:
Shit.
Max
@Sly: I should have been more clear….
I meant Bill Clinton.
My point being that the same people that fetishisize him now would have hammered him in real time if they had the same forums.
I know, the internet was around for Bill, but not like now.
Kyle Moore
@aimai:
I get and respect the keep them honest angle, but Jack at Jack and Jill politics makes a good point too:
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/12/at-least-one-more-healthcare-post-that-you-must-read-and-im-out-hopefully/
As a bulk of commentors here realize; this president is better than the last and is doing if not an excellent job, then at least a decent job given the fact that he was handed the country in deplorable conditions. And, as the graphic John provides points out, for his first year in office, he’s not doing too poorly when it comes to addressing campaign promises.
And for all of that, right now morale is taking a hit in the breadbasket largely as a result of high profile liberal activists who have decided to attack the president without giving him an inch. For those of us who worked hard, knocked on doors, made phone calls, put together lawn signs (that was me for most of the election season. I’m a severe misanthrope and have among a long list of phobias, people fear. So, safe, not too many stranger containing, lawn signs) etc. and still think he’s doing a decent job, it feels like a sucker punch. What’s worse, it weakens Democrats and everyone left of center as we look at the next challenge after healh care reform.
On the threshold of one of the biggest liberal pieces of legislation in decades, and instead of taking some form of pride, we find ourselves in a position of defending it against not conservatives, not Republicans, but liberals, or “progressives”.
For me, it’s simple: Will more people get healthcare? Yes. Will lives be saved? Yes. Will this help with the budget? Yes. Okay, good enough for me, put this in the W column, and let’s move on to the next.
Elie
@General Winfield Stuck:
His contest is the snark award…not interested particularly in the merits or content of the argument — just to be cynical and to get in the aside
Too much of that already.
Thankfully, we are not reliant on him to actually DO anything. Flapping gums are just that… Relatively harmless
Unabogie
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Sorry, but this bullshit. All of the progressives and activists who are threatening not to vote and not to canvass are going to succeed in one thing and one thing only. Namely, everything they lament that is being done too slowly will not be done at all. And the GOP will take back congress.
Sorry if that sucks, but what else do you think will happen when progressives stay home?
Gwangung
@Calming Influence: Sorry, but that’s not the question I asked. What’s the roadblock from going from this bill to a stronger public option in future years? A victory, mo matter how small, makes the liberal side stronger.
Xanthippas
In other words, he’s a politician.
John O
@kay:
I agree wholeheartedly, Kay.
You take what you can get, in a generally non-violent democracy/Republic.
I’m not happy about the final(ish) bill, but I think most of them did as best they could, including those like Joe given their own personas and the political circumstances, and I didn’t think I would ever see it.
gizmo
My problem with Obama is twofold– It is very seldom that the stars are aligned in such a way that large scale transformation of our society is a real possibility. Such opportunities come along rarely, and I think Obama’s cautious incrementalism means that we’re squandering a chance to move things in a progressive direction. Obama is playing by the rules laid down for him by the corporate establishment; he’s tweaking things in little ways, but he is clearly not going to rock the boat. So far, he looks to me like an updated version of Bill Clinton.
Second, he has utterly abandoned the enthusiastic base that worked so hard to get him elected. During the campaign, we built a powerhouse grassroots infrastructure, which I thought should be put to good use to help further Obama’s agenda once he got into office. But he has treated the most fervent and effective part of his base with disdain, and we are all going to pay the price for it in the 2010 mid-terms.
Tecumseh
I don’t get the centrist thing as I don’t think he’s centrist, or at least what “centrism” is usually seen as. I’d say he’s liberal, just sneaky liberal. He’s already done quite a bit for the economy, is about to capture the liberal Holy Grail and sign a health care reform bill, and is actually giving money to people who have been walloped by the recession (like the Republicans would keep on extending unemployment & COBRA benefits). These are “progressive” issues and he’s getting them passed. No, they’re not as good as we all dreamed they would be before he became President and what he’s done to get the bills passed is obviously open for debate but these things are still happening.
My hunch about Obama’s Presidency is that for most of his administration, people are going to bitch and moan about him doing this and him doing that but at some point everybody’s going to look back and go “wow” when they realize just how much he’s done and how more progressive the country will be.
Or, at least that’s what I hope happens.
fauxpopuli
@Unabogie:
So basically, “Do what the Democratic leadership says or the country gets it.” Sorry, but this whole “people who continually get disappointed after giving a specific party their vote must continue to do so anyway or they are to blame for any negative results that come from the opposite party taking power” thing isn’t any less a crock now than when it was Nader’s fault that Bush got elected. This idea that we’re supposed to just ignore how we actually feel as individuals and just think like scorekeeping DC insiders and keep mindlessly pulling the lever anyway because BOOGITY BOOGITY SARAH PALIN… I mean what the hell, does that actually satisfy you? That’s the best we can ask for? Maybe some day the Dems should try sucking less and see if that doesn’t inspire a bit more support.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Unabogie: Yeah and that equals The Left and it’s a veritable tsunami. Stop conflating everyone together that doesn’t agree with the bill.
Look at Stuck, drooling and cross-eyed, hugging the puppy for protection. Do you want to be like that??
Desert Rat
I hate the label “Progressive” with a passion. I equate it with people I knew in the 80’s who were too chicken shit to say they were liberals. That being said, I never had illusions that Obama was as left as I was.
To the extent that I’m disappointed, it’s not in Obama, but rather in worthless shits like Ben Nelson and Joe Shitstain, Party of One, from Connecticut.
The bill is actually as good as I thought we’d wind up getting with the exception of the god-awful abortion defunding, which is what will wind up happening. And I will say that I will have a hard time supporting individual members of the house that voted for Stupak.
I made a vow, in 2004, to never again vote for a pro-life Democrat, after I learned that all three of the “Democrats” running in my state’s legislative district were anti-abortion/anti-women.
Never again. If you’re not pro-choice, I won’t vote for you, fund you, and I certainly won’t work to get you elected.
jcricket
I think the threatening not to vote thing is lame, imho.
The left needs to take a page from the right – threatening to vote in greater numbers and take over primaries, and local party politics – that’s how you gain influence in a party. That’s one factor in how the GOP moved right over the past 30-40 years.
Threatening to pick up your vote and go to Nader’s Nonecumene (the lefty Galt’s Gulch) is the fastest path to irrelevance.
I can tell you from personal experience on non-profits and at work, the people who don’t show up, get ignored, not courted.
aimai
Kay,
We’ll have to agree to disagree. You and I have very different understandings of what Obama, qua president, could have done to set the tone and timing of the entire health care reform bill. As I have argued over at my other blog–which I’m not expecting anyone to follow–I always argued that the first error was treating all negotiations about what would go *into* the bill as happening only within the bill. None of the recalictrant Senators appear to have been successfully bribed or bludgeoned prior to the bill to gain their compliance. In the end the most difficult Senators–like Baucus, Nelson, Bayh, Landrieu and Lincoln all proved to be buyable. They should have been bought earlier, so the Dems could show a united front. I thought it was absolutely political malpractice to lose the entire month of august to Baucus with no payback. That was getting rolled, big time.
There’s not point repeating all this stuff. We just have to agree to disagree. When you get right down to any bargain you can always look back and the pathway and discern ways that it could have gone one way, or another. I am not sure Obama and Reid could have gotten us a better deal. But I believe they set their sights and their methods too low and got us a worse deal than they could have. In fact, if Obama and Reid and Pelosi turn around after this bill is past and pass a stand alone Pharmaceutical reimportation bill, or use reconciliation to drive through a large and robust public option, I’ll take my hat off to them and talk admiringly about their “long game” and their “incredible political acumen.” If they don’t, I won’t.
I think my favorite aphorism comes into play here “she who lives the longest, will see the most.” That’s about it. As we look at what the Democrats do with this bill, and its good and bad points are revealed over the next few years, we’ll have a better idea of whether it was as good as it could be and really pretty good. Or as bad as it needed to be and pretty bad. The proof is going to be in the pudding.
aimai
sparky
@Gwangung: (wades in for a sec)–the point here, and one that most people for some strange reason seem to think doesn’t matter, is that this legislation assigns the right to collect funds from taxpayers to the private sector AND grants that private sector the right to spend them as it sees fit. the US just privatized the government.
ok, you want a concrete example? some time someone will say, let’s set up a public option. the insurers will claim it hurts their ability to pay because it will change the mandate stream, and that will be the end of it. forever.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I am here, you want to keep it going, I will be here all night. Now pundit some more stupid you sick fuck.
Splitting Image
One thing to keep in mind is that if Obama is to be a really transformative president, he pretty much has to be more of a centrist than any of the other Democrats. Nixon governed as a centrist, and the wingnuts have basically disowned him for it, but it was his administration which made it possible for the right-wing assholes they love to achieve power.
If Obama is to duplicate Nixon’s achievement and make it possible for left-wing
assh-purists to get more say in what gets done around Washington, he pretty much has to follow Nixon’s path and make it easier for some of these “centre-right” folks to align themselves with the Democrats. So far, he’s not doing too badly. The worse people like Beck and Hannity get, the more embarrassing it is for people like Chuck Hagel and Jon Huntsman to be around them. At the moment it’s still too easy for them (for for Ben Nelson, for that matter) to revert to type and vote with the nuts on important issues.Getting the health care bill through, even flawed, is a big step in the right direction. If they can tackle immigration next year and get a bill through amidst a Republican freak-out, they’re golden.
Ailuridae
@Gwangung:
What’s the roadblock from going from this bill to a stronger public option in future years?
Nothing. And as I have mentioned elsewhere either a plan for a robust public option or allowing folks to buy into cost or cost plus Medicare sustainability are, by design, better than deficit neutral. They can be passed, at any time with 50 +1 votes in the Senate. The question is whether the political will exists to do it now or will exist to do it in the future.
mvr
The last paragraph of that Krugman piece seems to me to capture something very important nicely, even if I think he’s not quite right about relative progressiveness of candidates:
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t know that the Obama Administration is big on “wanted”, Fuckhead.
I think they want what they can get. You can hate that, and I can certainly see how it isn’t inspiring and could be disappointing, but I don’t. It’s how I would approach it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Whine whine whine. WATB. You think you got some special status cause your a clown.
Steeplejack
@MobiusKlein:
Heh. I’d like to see that.
Llellorin
@The Sheriff Is A Ni-:
The sad thing is, with the caucus we have and with the Republicans a solid frozen block of stupid, Reid probably is Majority Leader material. After all, in the end he got at least something through, and even shills like Nelson and morons like Lieberman got behind it.
The other option would have been more satisfying to watch, while it lasted–we wave the liberal flag and march forwards for a proper bill. Lieberman opposes us and we strip him of his committee chairmanship. Nelson opposes us and we start going through the reconciliation process.
And then we lose, because if we shot for reconciliation we’d lose Bayh, Landrieu, Lincoln, and probably six more besides. Lieberman starts caucusing with the Republicans, and we can’t invoke cloture. The MSM warms up its favorite “Democrats in Disarray” storyline. With a bit of luck, we get back to health care in 2025.
I really wish Democrats had to formally organize as “Blue Dogs” or “Progressives”, so the composite nature of the party were more obvious.
Corner Stone
@kay:
You are on an absolute roll my friend. Please, please, please keep bringing the awesome sauce of fail.
Desert Rat
@Tomlinson:
Right on this. As much as I hate Joe Leiberman, Obama (and Reid) have to deal with him until 2010. Let’s face it, his vote is easier to get on a lot of issues than Olympia Snowe’s or Susan Collins’.
After that, they will most likely be able to kick him to the curb. He won’t run as a Dem in 2012 (there’s no way he’d win a primary), and chances are the Democratic majority will be smaller after 2010 (in which case he becomes irrelevant), or larger, in the event of a GOP collapse over the next year (in which case he becomes even more irrelevant.
I honestly wonder whether Leiberman won’t retire,
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: I wouldn’t necessarily say I Hate It, kay, but I’m not happy about it. I’m not much of a hater. But if I have a choice between fighting for what I want and settling for what the man wants me to have, I’m going to fight. That’s all I ever asked for, the fight.
jcricket
@Ailuridae: Is that true (the Medicare buy-in)? One of the reasons I was a big fan of any public option or Medicare buy-in being in this bill was that I thought they could be added onto later via the mechanism you said.
But could they really add a Medicare buy-in through reconciliation in the future if there’s none in the bill now?
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: lolz. Yer so jacked up now, it’s comical.
mr. whipple
I really don’t understand this point, and I keep seeing repeated all over creation.
#1) It’s normal to lose seats.
#2) Obama is somewhat of a unique circumstance insofar as if you are a Dem rep from TN or Arkansas or some other red state that Obama lost by a gazillion points, you are gonna be endangered, period.
#3) The most vulnerable seats are swings and blue dogs, the same ones we see bucking the Obama agenda. Some of these reps suck anyway, right, so what’s the loss if we lose them?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I really don’t get how supposedly intelligent people would think that this country can be goverened successfully from either the real right or the real left. We saw what trying to govern from the real right produced. We see that moving government to the left is akin to putting one’s hand into a hornet’s nest.
America is not a right or left country, it’s a mix, and a dysfunctional mix at that. An ugly dysfunctional mix.
And so we have government, and history, that is a mix. We have a history of basically progressive social policies and basically bellicose foreign and defense policies. We have a mix of tolerance, and inequalities. We have 24 hour porn and 24 hour evangelical tv and 24 hour cartoons. We have it all in this mashup of a country.
The idea that somehow we elected a Democrat and now the government is supposed to shift past center to the left is just ridiculous, AFAIC. Barack Obama ran as a centrist. He’s a centrist. The country elected a centrist. Let him be a fucking centrist. He’s a centrist who thinks about things and reads books. That’s pretty damned encouraging.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
My Dinasaurs are laughing at you. Fight? by wanking endlessly on a blog. You can;’t even stay with a flame war you started on one. How you gonna fight. tough guy.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Actually, I’m not jacked up now. I was a couple of days ago, but now pissing on walls of idiots like you is coming without angst. Do not start a flame war you are too chickenshit to have.
John O
@aimai:
LOL, aimai, I was just about to post that I agreed with you, too. I guess the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
They (the Obama Administration) set the bar too low.
But I think they did it realistically, as much as I hate it from a negotiating perspective. How long would you have been willing to wait on this in the face of all the other things they have to tackle?
(I love your stuff on your other blog, too.)
It simply takes much less time to burn a house done than it does to build one.
Unabogie
@fauxpopuli:
No, it’s reality. In 2000, I was right there with you, pissed at the DLC and Gore and Clinton.
I voted for Ralph Nader.
Then, George Bush won the election and murdered one million people in Iraq.
One million freaking people.
And Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.
They are not the same, Democrats are better.
And whiny, petulant “I’m staying home in 2012” will get you fucking disaster.
Ailuridae
@sparky:
There are plenty of instances of the government collecting tax dollars and doling it out to private corporations that the citizens likely wouldn’t individually or collectively authorize. Is that argument that its unprecedented the means of collection (penalties versus direct taxation)? I really don’t get this argument.
Seriously, if someone asked me I would object to a single dollar of the Pentagon budget going to anyone but the government including the actual manufacture of weapons. Is there something different about tax payers having their money lit on fire to line Haliburton’s annual report versus them having to select Blue Cross of North Dakota?
The Moar You Know
@fauxpopuli: Maybe someday you should try being less of a fucking drooling idiot.
John O
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Right. Again, you take what you can get. And I would be surprised if there was broad disagreement out here about what Obama would do if he COULD. Were he King George The Best and Third.
Could he have done more? I think so. But that’s a tactical and not strategic move. I need strategy at this point in my life.
Just Some Fuckhead
Alright, Stuck, you win again, worthy foe. I gotsta crash, nigga. Peace.
Ailuridae
@jcricket:
Sure, its by design deficit neutral (actually better) Thats the requirement.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Just don’t bring my dog into it, and this won’t happen.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck:
It’s a deal, Timmy.
kay
@aimai:
I don’t think they lost the entire month of August. I think a month is a short period for putting together the essential framework of the bill.
I don’t think Max Baucus tricked Tom Daschle, and I don’t think Obama duped the liberal members.
I think they’re pretty much on schedule.
We disagree not about what happened, but about what could have happened.
I just won’t explain what happened by saying “everyone got tricked”.
I think you are wildly overstating how much movement there was, and is. There’s nothing at all to indicate that they had a lot of play here, at any point in the process. Nothing.
If it passes, it will be with the minimum number of votes.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
See there, all better. You stick to tellin’ jokes and stuff works like it should. Nite Fuckhead.
Mark S.
I’ve been generally staying out of the ten to fifteen threads a day on this subject, but I am sick of the theme of “You stupid hippies were naive if you thought this bill would be any different from what will shitted out of the Senate shortly.” Yes, I didn’t think Obama was the second coming of Che Guevara, but I also didn’t think his idea of health care reform was going to be such a big sloppy kiss to Big Pharma and the insurance companies.
John Sears
Ezra is either an idiot or a liar if he thinks HCR in the Senate closely resembles what Obama campaigned on.
Let’s see: no public option. No drug reimportation. No significant employer mandate. No national exchange. No significant reduction in costs (Obama speculated that the premiums on these new plans would go down as much as 2,500 dollars per year, see here). In fact, the CMS projects premiums will go up by $1,000 per year for a family of four.
Add to that the most significant rollback in abortion rights since Roe (states will, under the manager’s amendment version, be able to ban all plans on the exchange from covering any abortion, for any reason, ever, not just with federal dollars. ALL ABORTION.).
Add to that an excise tax that will force tens of millions of people (19% by 2016!) to either pay a surcharge or get lousier insurance, with more affected every year because it’s not indexed to health care inflation, and… yeah.
Oh, and one other thing: the CBO projects that 5 million people will lose the insurance they get through their employers. Thanks to this plan.
That doesn’t jibe very well with the central plank of Obama’s plan from the campaign. Remember this?
Yeah. Not so much. 5 million lose it entirely; another 19% by 2016 can expect to be taxed or lose the quality coverage they have now.
Other than all that, it’s precisely the same. Go team, rah-rah-rah.
mr. whipple
@Kyle Moore:
Thanks for the link, Kyle. That was a good read.
NR
@Unabogie: To paraphrase Glenn Greenwald, you cannot say that you want the Democrats to do some things differently (and better) and then with your next breath say that you will support them no matter what they do. Your second statement renders your first irrelevant.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
My strategy is always aimed at the voting booth.
Here in AZ, for example, we got some Rs replaced with Ds in congress last time out, mainly by focussing on the complete ineptitude of the Rs and talking up the real interests of the middle class.
Multiplying this by 20 or so out there in the country, we picked up a few dozen seats just by advancing better candidates than the morons did. We outnumbered the morons at the polls. That’s the key. Outnumber them, and be patient.
NR
@John Sears: Yes. This.
Look at the insurance companies’ stock prices. Tells you all you need to know about this bill.
MNPundit
Like I’ve said over and over and over until you want to kill me: I thought he would be the way you thought but that he would at least build the party. When he’s gone in 2016 the party will be an empty shell like it was after Clinton. We’re going to have to build up again like we did after 2004.
Midnight Marauder
I think this deserves some serious consideration for tag status in 2010. I have a feeling it would come in quite handy, and besides, I think it’s time we give starbursts a little vacation as the go-to Palin phrase.
@mr. whipple:
Absolutely. It can be an infuriating style, but it has also proven to be a crushingly effective one as well. Also.
+3
wilfred
How stupid and blind these leftists are.
It must be very strange to be President Obama. 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.
John Sears
@NR: Good point. Let’s do that:
mr. whipple
@wilfred:
LoL.
Anya
@Shade Tail: The reason I am “overwrought” about the people who are hating on him from our side is the other side is quite mad and they are directing all of their artillery towards defeating his agenda. Granted this artillerly is mainly lies, distortion and general lunacy but since the media is advancing these hideous lies as legitimate opposition (death panels) we need all of our energy on constrictive criticism and defeating the other side. We do not need this division and we cannot afford to create memes that will be used against the President or to advance the some that are already out there.
mr. whipple
The Cleveland Clinic is just getting started in hiring 1,800 new employees, a lot of them Drs. You could say this is a bonanza for them, or the people who will be getting care.
John O
@John Sears:
Well, yeah, duh, that’s the next legislative step. Once everyone figures out the insurance companies are still ripping everyone off, we’ll take another one.
We live in a weird country, but it’s pretty good in a lot of respects, including sometimes change coming slow.
BR
@jcricket:
Yeah they could. It’s something I’ve been calling my senators about too. Nate Silver mentioned it as a good, but unlikely strategy. (It requires, of course, passing this bill as is.)
What’s probably required is that the medicare buy-in be added from the floor to some budget bill that could go through reconciliation clean, and have Reid agree to not table it (this is the hard part). Then Conrad won’t have as much power as if the amendment came from within the Budget committee and will have to shepherd it through whether he likes it or not. It really depends on Reid though.
John Sears
@John O: Err, what step would that be?
Are you suggesting that the Geithner-Bernanke axis of stupid is going to crack down on the excesses of the stock market, or large corporations?
Seriously. What’s the ‘next’ step?
John O
@wilfred:
LOL. True enough, but Bush’s history at least as far as that quote goes was written LONG before Obama’s in terms of timeline.
Midnight Marauder
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Bingo, you crazy cow.
BR
Al Giordano is right about how we can get a strong movement going for the 2010 midterms: take up immigration. The right wing will get into a froth, if OFA does grassroots work it’ll show Latinos that not just Obama but his political organization is willing to fight for immigration reform and could pump up the anti-GOP vote:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3695/countdown-health-care-pray-dead-fight-hell-living#comment-33311
Oh, and it’ll help Reid in Nevada too.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
But fight whom? Again, you are assuming a lot of movement was possible. I don’t think that’s the case.
It hasn’t escaped my attention that the high profile “bad cops” in this drama are also the politicians who run in conservative states and districts, and a lot of ostensible “liberals” were completely MIA.
Dannie22
Mr Smith Goes To Washington is on TCM right now
John Sears
@Midnight Marauder: I voted for Obama because John McCain was/is a nutbag who babbled on about the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. In 2008. A man who sang about bombing Iran. In public.
So it wasn’t much of a referendum for me on Obama’s place on some arbitrary political spectrum.
Maybe a *sanity* spectrum. If there is such a thing.
aimai
Kay at 130:
Oh, I think you are dead wrong about August. If you look back the Republicans weren’t perfectly united on their strategy at that point–getting through the month of august with no Senate Finance bill *and* the teabaggers was a huge distraction and caused panic among the house membership. It also gave the Republicans a new energy to fight back at every level.
Baucus was on record *before* his negotiations with a pretty reasonable set of bullet points. Its clear that when Obama and Reid gave him his head with those meetings they thought they could rely on him to keep the focus on those bullet points and maybe bring around several republicans. In the event Baucus *clearly* “got rolled” by the Republican members of the Finance Bill. They strung him along, and he strung Reid along, and that pushed the entire bill farther into the winter than they had intended.
You can’t both grasp that that was the strategy, and it was, and also think that it wasn’t some kind of error or miscalculation to let Baucus go on so long without adult supervision.
And don’t get me started on the Pharma thing.
But the main thing is–who cares what we think? We are both, I take it, mere observers of the political scene? My opinion of this bill is based on my opinion that it fails to do some very important things that bills need to do and that some version of a good public option would have done: get buy in from many levels of society all at once. Also, and I’m certainly far from some kind of wild eyed lefty on this–I think most of the good things in this bill are too long delayed relative to the next round of elections.
Of course Obama is going to lose seats–that’s something that we as democrats have to fight against. I want my party to gain seats–especially in the Senate if we can. And more than that, I want to trade up and trade out some blue dogs for some better dems. That’s why people are upset, if they are upset, with the selling of the bill. That is why people talk about the dangers of Obama’s not taking seriously people’s hopes and dreams, even if its just rhetorically. Today he came out and said that he never thought the public option was that big a deal. You know what? That’s just not that smart a thing to say. For whatever reason the public option caught people’s imagination–it was something they actually supported *even if it hadn’t been promised to them* and *even if it wouldn’t have been perfect.* The really smart political thing to say, and I think candidate Obama would have been smart enough to say it is “I feel your pain. I too would have liked a really great public option.” It costs *nothing* for him to say that. And it would win back a ton of goodwill. So why won’t they say it? That’s not centrism, that’s political tone deafness.
aimai
Midnight Marauder
@John Sears:
I think that’s a very real and applicable spectrum, which speaks to why so many people keep using the terms “pragmatism” and “prudent”. I’m far less concerned with ideological purities than I am with not being fucking insane.
John Sears
@Midnight Marauder: True, but you don’t have a standard Left-Right, Blue-Red, commonly understood axis for that.
This is why I am forced to explain to people that, yes, I voted for Obama, yes I thought he was a tool then and I still do, no I don’t like him much, or his policies, but no, I don’t regret voting for him either.
This country and its two party system gave me a choice: vote for a certifiable madman or a corporatist, centrist Democrat whose eagerness to please everyone at once was painfully obvious from the get-go. That’s not much of a decision, but it’s still a shit sandwich we all had to eat.
wilfred
No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
“The U.S. will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq”
No, it will just have them. Maintenance will be left to independent contractors.
No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.
No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
Fuckin’ ay!
No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
Hmmm.
No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
Can you please turn off the fucking lights, please.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Maybe I just need to give up on the liberal/progressive left for a while, because this whole debate has congealed around mostly irrelevant points. Opportunities to influence the outcome remain, seeing as we haven’t even started reconciling the two bills yet, but the lefty turf war seems to be all consuming right now. Might as well concentrate for a few days on crass consumption of useless consumer goods in the name of a mythic ancient god-man.
John Sears
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): You’re free to celebrate the month-long feast of Johnus, the holiday I made up as a 12 year old atheist so I could keep getting presents.
This holiday is primarily celebrated by sending me gifts. Address available upon request.
Sleeper
@mr. whipple:
In fairness, for some of us the one can’t happen without the other. It’s not simply motivated by revenge. I realize that most people here are not as left-wing as I am, though. (Just an honest description, not trying to out-lefty anyone here.) I do happen to think that the Republican Party, and the insurance industry, and capitalism, need to be destroyed.
Maybe it’s impossible to separate the political and personal desires on this subject…
cleek
OBMAAFAILZ!
kay
@aimai:
I don’t think it’s possible to get the mechanism in place for the health care part of the health care bill prior to 2014.
It’s 15 million more on Medicaid, and Medicaid is administered through the states, all the way down to the county level.
I think they have to start with enabling legislation, for one thing, at the state level. Then they have to have the capacity to actually provide the care. I think that’s why the community health centers are in there in such a big way. The Medicaid population is currently underserved by providers, and they’re adding 15 million people. They jacked up provider rates to Medicare levels partly to address that.
That’s just that piece. They have to set up an exchange for the other.
NR
I hate that, as bad as Obama is, the Republicans are probably going to nominate someone crazy enough to force me to vote for him again in 2012.
I won’t be donating to him again, though. And anybody who calls to ask me to is gonna get an earful, I’ll tell you that right now.
Midnight Marauder
@NR:
Any chance you’ll hold that
contemptthought until 2011?Midnight Marauder
@John Sears:
You must have missed it before, but I personally prefer shit filet mignon. It just goes down better that way.
+4
NR
@Midnight Marauder: It’s a moot point anyway. I’m going to have to save my money for that health insurance Obama is going to force me to buy.
Elie
@Anya:
Ahhh — the voice of rationality…
Beware Anya — there is much lunacy and just exaggerated expectations…
Way too many expected the Messiah to bring it to them and way too few knew the work to get the progressive agenda inacted…Way too many were in the George Bush, bring it on, mode…
But I am very hopeful that we are learning even as we scream at each other
Studly Pantload
You know what we’d be talking about if the Republicans were in charge, right now? Hint: It wouldn’t be about how to best extend medical coverage to 30+ million people. No, it would be about a freaking *spending freeze* amid the biggest economic downturn since the Depression. That, and of the cardboard “McCainvilles” springing up all over the country.
gwangung
Absolutely nothing, in other words.
That’s like saying the market dive in early ’09 was a judgement of Obama, right?
Corner Stone
@Mark S.:
You stupid fucking naive hippie.
Corner Stone
@Elie: I’ve never seen anyone with such complete disregard for ellipsis.
Why do you hate punctuation so?
Corner Stone
@gwangung: But Ins Co stocks aren’t “the market”. They are specific actors that are a proxy for some certain subset of monied investor/institution.
Corner Stone
@Studly Pantload: What would we be talking about if Alvin and the Chipmunks were in charge?
Because both a McCain presidency and a chipmunk reign were about as likely.
I for one welcome our chipmunk overlords.
Calming Influence
@Gwangung:
Sorry, stepped out for another be…for dinner. I thought I addressed what I thought was your question – there has to be some sort of public option in the bill that is signed into law for it to be “strengthened” later. It’s not clear that the bill will have any sort of public option. This is not just semantics (in my opinion) because you’ll basically have to start selling the whole idea of the public option all over again, against a more emboldened insurance lobby, who will claim the bill that was passed is just fine and the public option will lead to hell on earth.
Sleeper
@Anya:
Well the difference is that we on the left are trying to influence him. There’s disagreement on whether or not threats to withhold votes or support work or not, sure. But the goal is to move the president closer to what we want. The right is not trying to move the president. They’re trying to stop him dead in his tracks. They have no policy goals whatsoever at this point, they only have political goals.
Calming Influence
@Ailuridae:
As I understand it, I will be paying out of my own pocket, at a rate set by the insurance company, regardless of my tax bracket. There is nothing to stop the insurance company from setting my premium at $15,000/yr because of some preexisting condition. If I’m wealthy, I pay it all. If I’m poor you and the other tax payers make up the diff. Not sure how this controls costs. And look, I don’t know what the final bill will look like. This is a pig in a poke and I’m just unwilling to say that it’s better than nothing until I see what “it” is.
John Sears
@gwangung: Yes, because when large hospital chains like Clarian and the investors of several large insurance chains all agree that a particular piece of legislative action under discussion at the precise moment is exceedingly good news for a select set of companies, that’s totally unrelated.
Just like Boeing’s stock has nothing to do with defense contracts, or Monsanto’s stock has nothing to do with USDA policy. It’s all the maaaaaaaagic of the free market and has nothing to do with governmental action.
Calming Influence
@Midnight Marauder:
Good point about the debate polling. I was focusing on all the missed opportunities to kick ass, and he was focused on winning support. Probably why I’m not one of his advisers. (If I was, however, McCain would have walked off stage holding his testicles).
Calming Influence
Sorry, props to mr. whipple @ 24.
The Raven
The September before the election, I wrote a post titled “What Brung Them” on factions supporting the presidential candidates. One faction I named “progressive beginners:”
And on war, health care, and the environment, Obama has not delivered. Never mind that he never promised to; kicking these people in the teeth was a really dumb idea.
cleek
@John Sears:
take a look at stock prices for United HC or Aetna – they’ve been trending upwards since Feb. their latest climb fits perfectly with that trend.
by some strange coincidence, Apple’s price has been climbing in that same period. same with GE, Microsoft, Dell, Sony, and Starbucks, too.
pick a big company, look at the 1yr stock history.
conspiracy!
Mike in NC
The movie was called “Soylent Green”.
John Sears
@cleek: If you’ll agree to give them anonymity the insurance people will brag for all the world to read.
Wellpoint, who own Evan Bayh through the ‘we can pay any politican any bribe we want if we make the check out to the spouse’ exemption, have been at the forefront of both the stock market soar and the lobbying:
That’s not even counting Mrs. Bayh’s stock options. Wheee.
But we all know that the market is just rewarding their solid, innovative business practice.
Which, so far as I can tell, is buying votes in the Senate. Maybe the market IS on to something.
John Sears
@Mike in NC: Pfft. Republicans wouldn’t be able to keep Soylent Green going. They’d set up a faith based people-food company, and when that failed we’d all be issued bibles and told to pray for manna.
D-Chance.
Too good not to link. And shame on Cole for not having a blogroll spot for the putz-observers.
gwangung
@John Sears:
I am awe of your stock market expertise.
You made out well despite 2008, right?
John Sears
@gwangung: Pfft. I don’t have a single stock, and I would never put any substantial money in that casino.
I’d rather go down the street to the local Ho-Chunk casino and let them fleece me. At least then the profits (some of them) go to schools and public works.
I did try to advise my grandmother to get out of stocks last year, when the housing crisis was getting underway. She lost a third of her life savings. Is that funny to you? Are these games where super large corporations co-opt our politics and rob the middle class of trillions of dollars while throwing millions out onto the street, are they terribly amusing to you?
Just asking.
gwangung
@Calming Influence: I think the perception of this bill will determine what could happen. Not entirely convinced that the insurance companies hold the upper hand in subsequent policy battles.
Of course, if everyone on the progressive side keeps saying they can’t bring any more changes, well, I guess they can’t…
John Sears
@gwangung: Heh. Filter caught my reply because I mentioned… hmm. I can’t think of a good way to state it that wouldn’t get caught again.
Suffice it to say, I don’t own stocks, I don’t invest, I tried to tell other people to get their money out last year and they didn’t. I can read a chart though, or a bill in the Senate. I can see where the CBO says that this bill will cost 5 million people their insurance entirely, where it says that another 19% will lose their quality of coverage by 2016, where the CMS says most employers will respond to the coverage by hacking the guts out of benefits.
I can see where the insurance companies pay off our senators, where they have armies of lobbyists, where the big pharmaceutical companies hire Billy Tauzin to push through back room deals with Obama. Where Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman get funneled big sacks of cash through their equally hideous wives.
It really isn’t hard to tell that we’re being taken for a ride. I don’t know why people are so resistant to admitting it, other than some cult-like fascination with the myth of the free market.
FlipYrWhig
@cleek:
Well, those are easy. GE for the moment still owns NBC, including MSNBC, and they’re looking forward to months of scolding Democrats about not having a public option. Profits! Microsoft and Dell are excited because no public option for health care means no public option for operating systems or hardware (which is too bad, because I was looking forward to the iPublic). More Profits! Sony is excited because no public option means a lot more people sitting at home watching movies instead of seeing the doctor. Profits! And Starbucks, well, they’re just evil.
FlipYrWhig
@Mark S.:
I’ve been generally staying in the ten to fifteen threads a day on this subject, and I am sick of the theme of “big sloppy kiss to Big Pharma and the insurance companies.” (Also, “shit sandwich” and “corporate tool.”) Last time there wasn’t enough foreplay for the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and they burned the fucker down. So we massage them a little, give them a happy ending, and achieve paradigm shifts in the way health care works in the country for millions of people, while expanding primary care and at least _beginning_ to crack down on the worst practices of insurance companies. I can live with that.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Mr. Fixit to the rescue!
Fix’t. ;)
gwangung
@John Sears: Hm. It just seems like a very simplistic understanding here; there are, after all, other factors in the health care and there seems there’s as just a desperate effort to hang onto a single, simply understandable solution (which, if you think about it, needs as much tinkering as any other solution to work well).
Although, if you’re ready to give up, feel free.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Sleeper:
Fixed.
Calming Influence
@gwangung:
Oh for Christ’s sake: Happy Happy Joy Joy! Does that do it for you? I’m trying to point out some flaws I believe will do more harm than good, as a point of policy, and you give me that shit? I’ll now be responsible for the failure of health insurance reform because I was insufficiently upbeat?
Troll somewhere else.
burnspbesq
@fauxpopuli:
It was Nader’s fault that Bush got elected. Over 92,000 Floridians voted for Nader. CNN’s exit polling asked those who self-identified as having voted for Nader who they would have voted for if Nader hadn’t been in the race. The responses were better than 5:1 for Gore. Do the arithmetic.
Sorry you’re not on speaking terms with reality. You two should kiss and make up.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I’ve been generally staying in the ten to fifteen threads a day on this subject, and I am sick of the theme of “big sloppy kiss to Big Pharma and the insurance companies.” (Also, “shit sandwich” and “corporate tool.”)
Well I want to get Big Pharma to lace a shit sandwich with some nasty shit from some failed experiment and then shove it down the throat of the nearest corporate tool!
Last time there wasn’t enough foreplay for the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and they burned the fucker down.
That’s what happens when you don’t pace yourself, too much friction and BAM! Up in smoke.
So we massage them a little, give them a happy ending, and achieve paradigm shifts in the way health care works in the country for millions of people, while expanding primary care and at least beginning to crack down on the worst practices of insurance companies.
You volunteering to deliver this ‘massage’ and happy ending? Fuck if I am unless one of those pharmaceutical companies lets loose with some good shit! Otherwise I will take my risks with the bill that comes out of reconciliation.
I can live with that.
Bully for you, me too!
;)
John Sears
@FlipYrWhig: Wow. So you’re willing to sell out fundamental principles for incremental reform. Impressive.
Tell me though, what happens when the incremental reform doesn’t work, and throws millions off their healthcare? What then?
That’s from the CMS, about the weak sauce employer mandate found in this odious bill.
This policy robs people of the healthcare they have and creates an enormous new bloc of angry voters who will look to vent their rage on Democrats. If that’s a new paradigm, it’s certainly not a good one for the Left.
John Sears
@gwangung: What solution do you think I’m hanging on to?
I’m curious what you think my position actually is. Here, I’ll give you a 1 in 3 chance:
1) Single Provider System. Complete government operation. Government system (think NHS or VA) employs doctors, runs hospitals, negotiates prices directly with device suppliers and pharm companies. Etc.
2) Single Payer System. Government insurance only. No significant private role (outside of supplementals). Government sets policy terms, guarantees quality, establishes strong regulatory body. Private providers, hosptials, doctors.
3) Private System with Strong Risk Adjustment and Regulation. The Dutch model. Private companies offer basic policies under strict government regulation. Profit is allowed, within certain limits. Very, very strong risk adjustment mechanism eliminates rewards from cherry picking risk pools.
I have a personal favorite, though I could live with any of the above. Or France’s system (hybrid universal basic plan and supplemental coverage on top). Or Germany’s (super-Exchange style).
What I do not support is the half-assed reform package the Senate is debating. Or for that matter the slightly less-half-assed reform the House passed.
I’m unsure where you get the idea that I’m going to give up. It might be the same part of your ass you pulled the idea that I have a ‘simplistic’ understanding of this issue or that I’m ‘desperately’ clinging to something you don’t name and probably don’t know.
burnspbesq
@John Sears:
You’re awfully certain of yourself, there, bucco. I guess you take comfort from the fact that neither CBO nor the capital markets have ever been wrong about anything.
And Susan Bayh may be many things, but “hideous?” You need to have your eyes checked, my friend.
burnspbesq
@John Sears:
Wow. You have said a host of stupid things on this blog, but that is the all-time winner.
Who the fuck is selling out fundamental principles? Has it occurred to you that sometimes the only path open to keeping faith with those fundamental principles is to bust one’s ass working for them, and take incremental reform as a necessary first step when it’s all that can be achieved?
Jenny
Paul Krugman has never been a supporter of Obama.
Ironically, he has always been a very big unabashed supporter of centrist Hillary Clinton.
John Sears
@burnspbesq: Oooh, because the only way to judge a woman is based on her physical appearance.
Moral character means nothing with a pretty smile. Nice.
Addressing your other, not-horrifically-sexist point, they are wrong sometimes, like when the CBO for transparently ideological reasons prevented a 90% medical loss ratio requirement in the Senate bill. However, both the CBO and the CMS evaluations of Reid’s bill range from awful to apocalyptic, depending on the section. Millions lose their coverage. Millions more lose their quality. Employers slashing benefits to the bone. No significant controls on costs (excise tax only saves .3% of National Health Expenditure, extra drug costs due to Tauzin deal passed on to consumers, etc). Costs actually, according to the CMS, go UP a tiny bit under the Senate bill, if you can believe it, though it’s tiny enough to potentially be a blip.
The Commonwealth Fund also called this back in June when they evaluated the public option and said that a Senate style plan without one would only cut the rate of growth down to 5.8% percent annual inflation.
Tell me though, what group of economists or actuaries do you use to evaluate these proposals?
gwangung
Sorry, I was just thinking out loud and probably didn’t express myself. It just seemed to me that the constant drumbeats of the louder progressive elements can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the future.
jcricket
@burnspbesq: Is there any time in this country’s history where progressives have gotten everything they wanted in one shot?
The fucking constitution has amendments, for crissakes. Lincoln didn’t really free all the slaves in one swoop (and there was still that pesky jim crow stuff). Women got the right to vote, but that was about it. SS was a racist, chump-ass POS when it passed. Medicare too. Medicaid as well. It took 100 years for all the interracial marriage bans to be stricken from the books. Marital “rape” was legal until a couple decades ago. Gays have been waiting 30 years (or longer) from the time of the first gay rights laws to make the limited progress they’ve seen.
Believe me, I’m with you on the substance. I want all the same things. I just am not dumb enough to think we’ll get them by pouting or talking about fundamental principles.
We will get there, but don’t be ignorant of history.
cleek
@John Sears:
maybe you’ll forgive me if i don’t take the word of an anonymous “insider” quote in Politico as anything more than Politico doing its usual “mock-the-Dems” shtick.
yeah, sure, the insurance industry gets millions more customers, but they also get a bunch of restrictions that they absolutely hate.
Mark S.
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh Jesus. How about some synergy as well?
Here’s a paradigm shift that might work: how about people realizing that it’s pretty stupid for the government to pay people to buy private insurance? Why not just have the government provide that insurance? Isn’t it kind of stupid to have a middle man there? Until people realize that private, for-profit, basic care health insurance is a crock of shit, we are never going to get anywhere.
It would have been nice to at least had a debate on the merits of single payer, but it was too important to make sure that the Medicare-for-all bill couldn’t even be scored by the CBO. What were they afraid of? Everyone knows that soshalism = failure. We just pay twice as much for health care than everyone because we do it so much better.
NR
@jcricket:
And labor legislation passed under FDR was later gutted.
I don’t understand why everyone is taking it on faith that this bill is going to be improved later. That is by no means a certainty. You know that the subsidies are going to be the first things the Republicans cut when they get back in power, so this bill is just as likely to get worse in the future as it is to get better.
John Sears
@burnspbesq: Show me where it’s necessary to throw millions of people off their employer health coverage to achieve this reform.
Show me where it was written in stone by God, or is laid out in the laws of physics that we must have private health insurers skimming off the top of our healthcare.
Show me where. I dare you. I fucking dare you.
You can’t do it because it’s not true. You’re a faithful adherent to a free market healthcare cult. This bill will cost more, or break even. It won’t save money. It will expand coverage while costing millions the coverage they have. It will start another decade long culture war over abortion as each state slugs it out in the legislature on whether or not to allow abortion in their exchanges. It will gut many state regulations on health insurance as the nationwide plans under the OPM supercede state authority.
None of that is necessary, or incrementatl in any path toward meaningful reform.
gwangung
Pretty much every word you write. Because almost all the systems you allude to tend to go through transitional periods of half-assesedness; I’m not sure I know of a large system change that hasn’t gone through piece meal and awkward adjustments. (I would consider total collapse as awkward). Rejecting change because it involves danger does not seem realistic to me.
I don’t see a viable path from here to there without a period of jerry-rigged awkward structure, and I don’t see a path starting for the next 15-20 years if nothing is done now.
John Sears
@NR: This. I forget who I was reading today, but they made a fascinating point about how Pass-Anything types believe in two mutually exclusive myths that are driving this debate:
1) This is absolutely our last chance on health care reform
2) We can fix anything later, there will always be another chance.
The cognitive dissonance is amazing.
John Sears
@gwangung: Half-assedness has degrees.
A system that empowers the very people who rob us blind and inflate our costs while bribing our government to look the other way is not merely half-assed. When the CBO and CMS agree it will lead to millions losing their coverage and won’t reduce costs significantly (CMS thinks costs go up slightly by 2019), then it’s not merely half-assed. When it does all this plus puts women’s rights on the block state by state, it’s not merely half-assed.
This bill is an utter-disaster.
And for the record, the Dutch system is very new. It was implemented in one fell swoop back in… 2006?… and has worked extremely well since then. It’s actually a form of privatization; they had a system more like France (state basic insurance with supplemental private insurers) and didn’t like it as much, so they switched. So far, by all expert accounts I’ve read, it’s going great.
Which is a great fork in the eye to the ‘we can’t do it quickly’ or ‘private companies have to be evil and poorly regulated to make money’ arguments.
gwangung
@John Sears: That’s a little disingenous.
A better statement of 1) is
1) If we start a fight to change health care, a defeat means it can’t be brought up for at lease a decade because the fight is so bruising.
That’s not particularly dissonant with “2) We can fix anything” later, unless you’re saying saying even a Pyrrhic victory is sufficiently bruising to prevent fixing.
John Sears
@John Sears: My eyes hurt so bad from reading this stuff for about 10 hours today that I’m going to bed.
Call that giving up, if you like. If I read one more word about cost curves or new, awful loopholes found in Reid’s amendment today I think I’ll lose my mind.
Anne Laurie
@Sleeper:
So does infectious malaria, but the parasites are amazingly well adapted to their environment and resistant to our current half-hearted efforts. I’m still in favor of mosquito nets and vaccine research, though.
John Sears
@gwangung: You think it will be easier to fix the system after Republicans campaign for years on the 17 million people the CMS projects will lose their employer coverage? The coverage they have right now, today?
17 million people who will be seething with rage. If I was one of them, I’d never vote for another Democrat. Would you, if they took the care you have, healthcare from your family, your kids (if you have any)?
Anyway, as I said, bed time. Argh my eyes hurt.
Calming Influence
@gwangung:
When you talk to your senators or representative, what do you say to them? I read Balloon Juice, FDL, Greenwald, &c. both for information and to help formulate what I say to my elected officials. Very rarely does the conversation start out “gee, I really like the way you voted on…” It’s always about pushing them. When they do good, I send them money. When they sell out, I send their primary challenger money.
But the idea that I have to be supportive on a progressive blog or they’ll lose heart has never occurred to me.
John Sears
@John Sears: Argh, should clarify that point.
CMS says 17 million lose coverage, 12 million gain, for a net loss of 5 million employer covered people.
NR
@John Sears: But they’ll get a shiny new mandate to buy insurance on their own! And according to the Democrats, that’s the exact same thing as providing them coverage. So why wouldn’t they be happy?
Calming Influence
@Anne Laurie:
Gin and tonic is your best defense.
Calming Influence
@John Sears:
Weakling! Stand and fight!
Calming Influence
I need to be just one or two time zones further west and I could rule the internets.
D. Aristophanes
And I still reserve the right to criticize him when I believe he’s fucking up.
Awesome. And clearly, the key to reserving that right is NEVER EVER using it, as per John’s helpful instructions to the dirty hippies these past weeks.
jcricket
@NR: Well you know what’s guaranteed not to be improved? No bill, esp. when we lose seats.
Smart or not, Democrats react to losing by moving to the center, not the left. I don’t think that will change until the left is seen as a real force.
And “killing the bill” will result in another 10 to 20 years of serious pain for actual people.
The best way to get the bill improved is to pass it, then improve it.
Chuck Butcher
Well, effective 10 PM PST I relinquished all positions within the County and State Party. They need those positions filled and active, not on wait until February or signing. I have a lot of interests but I expect withdrawal will take some toll. That’s OK since I won’t be having to deal with all this.
S. Luggo
Barry’s philosophy is: All In or All Out.
I must agree with Howard Dean. Without a relative cost containment mechanism through either a Public Option or a Medicare Extension to Age 55, the Senate Bill will allow private insurers unrestrained increases in premium charges. Due to Republican & Blue Dog [assured] resistance to increased appropriations needed to subsidize (fund) private health insururer premium torqued-up rates, the Senate bill, if enacted, will eventually become underfunded, fizzle out, leaving us once again at square one.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Speaking of mistakes, a memorable quote from a few days ago:
D. Aristophanes: “Anyway, here’s the rub – I would stake my firstborn’s life on Joe Lieberman STILL not voting for cloture on this bill despite getting every obstructionist wish of his granted.”
I was just wondering; did anyone ever take you up on that offer? Curious, that’s all.
FlipYrWhig
Hey, this thread was busy churning while I wasn’t reading it, because I was off compromising my fundamental anti-corporate principles by watching some corporate television provided by a corporate cable hookup.
Then after I had some water filtered by a jive-ass corporate water filter, I read the best big-picture piece I’ve come across lately on all this: via Al Giordano at The Field.
Chuck Butcher
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m not so sure that anti-corporation is even sensible. Now limiting the power and reach of corporations is another thing. There are some very real issues that are addressed with the capital gathering ability of multiple ownership.
Platonicspoof
@Calming Influence:
Just so I can now rule the internets:
TNR’s Jonathan Cohn with a comparison with the no-reform option.
kris
Let’s see, The claims are:
1. The insurance and PhRma industries are very powerful, so incremental reform is the best that can be expected.
2. It is awesome that Mr. Obama has managed to pass such an incremental reform, which requires taxpayers to essentially subsidize and pay insurance companies-thus strengthening them.
I wonder how one reconciles points 1) and 2). Given that it is so difficult to thwart their power over the health care decision making process now, why should one believe that legislation that cedes even more power to them makes it any easier to improve the reform, and health insurance options for the average person.
Also, the argument that Mr. Obama is a centrist and nothing better could be expected is a bit of a bait and switch. Mr. Obama broke his campaign promises (contrary to the highly disingenuous arguments of Ezra Klein) when it came to health care reform. In this specific case, it is perfectly reasonable to feel betrayed, given that inspite of his centrism, he did promise certain things about the health care reform. What makes this particularly bad is that he did not even really pretend to fight for a better deal, and at the outset prepared the ground for an industry sensitive legislation through the PhRma deal. And to add insult to injury, the White house and its partisans have tried to paint the people who expected him to keep his campaign promises as the villains in this process.
oh really
Democratic voters have come to expect their presidential candidates to move to the right during presidential campaigns. It is natural for them (us) to hope that the candidate, if elected, will move leftward, at least a bit, after being elected. Of course, most Democratic candidates haven’t been elected, so there aren’t many real test cases.
In Obama’s case, during the campaign he relied heavily on emotion-laden language that was significantly at odds with his actual policy positions and personal politics. We can argue whether it is the fault of voters — desperate after eight years of Bush — for not understanding who Obama really was (and is) or the fault of Obama for clearly trying to give a portion of the electorate the impression that he is far more progressive than he is. Words like “hope” and “audacity” hardly seem appropriate in the context of “risk averse” and “moderate.” So, understandably I think, a lot of voters chose to hope that Obama was more like his flowery rhetoric than his timid politics.
In my opinion the hope was reasonable, but not especially realistic. I volunteered for Obama, gave his campaign a small (but significant to me) amount of money, and voted for him. The first order of business was to make sure that McCain-Palin didn’t win. By the time I cast my vote for Obama, I no longer had any illusions about who he was or what we could expect. It was easy to vote against McCain, but impossible to be genuinely excited about Obama. In short, I didn’t buy the “audacity” crap at all. There is no point in my mind of putting one’s hope in the audacity of timid, corporatist moderation.
Ignoring Washington, because of the uniqueness of being the first president of a new nation, our great presidents have not been revered for being timid, moderate, centrist, or cautious. They hold their places in our history for doing what was necessary in the face of adversity. If someone believes that this country’s problems are so minor and manageable that caution and timidity are what we need to fix the mess we’re in, then Obama ought to look pretty good. I don’t believe that. I think the hole we’ve dug for ourselves is so deep that only bold, even radical action will turn the tide. Our elected leaders and the system they’ve created are thoroughly corrupt. One legislative bill after another reveals the House’s and especially the Senate’s preference for corporations over citizens and for the rich over the middle class. The poor don’t even rate a mention.
It’s pretty clear to me that Obama is little more than a space filler. His basic allegiance is in line with biases of Congress. His expansive language is a sham — his are the words of someone who thinks words are a substitute for action.
It may have been naive of left-wing voters to expect Obama to live up to his rhetoric — or at least to the tone of his rhetoric — but given the mess this country is in today, their only other choice seems to have been despair.
CDT
Being disappointed with Obama is not the same as failing to recognize that he’s light years better than the alternatives. And complaining that his uniformly cautious approach produces disappointing reuslts — substantively and politically — is not the same as rooting for failure. The problem, as Jay B noted in No. 16, is that the cumulative effect of Obama being incremental on everything is a set of policies that doesn’t adequately address our challenges and makes him look weak or out of touch to boot:
“Maybe the voters will reward double-digit unemployment because they find themselves convinced that he’s got a long range plan to mildly address it.”
bob h
I cut him some slack because he is still getting his sea legs, but the first year achievements do look pretty impressive. Historians will note the recovery from the Great Recession, the withdrawal from Iraq, the HCR, all in the first year, not the kvetching of liberals.
General Winfield Stuck
How does one live up to the tone of his rhetoric?
The tubes are full of Obama goodbye letters. All I can say is, close the door on yer way out.
Lisa
Agrees with Stuck. Big time. How indeed do you live up to the “tone”. Serously, “oh really” you are full of fucking shit, man. Admit you were stupid and delusional (and exactly like the right wing said you were: voting on your wishy poo fantasies) and then move on.
The man NEVER sold himself as anything but a centrist. I am way to the left of him, but I still see him as a damn sight better than McCain/Palin.
ellie
@mr. whipple: I think that you hit the nail on the head. I was semi-arguing with someone on DU who wants Obama to nationalize the banks and destroy capitalism. She will take nothing less. She is in for a lifetime of disappointment.
Jay
The public option was going to be the way to measure progress. How will that be measured now? It was a way to add competition. How will that be added now? Ditching it and adding mandates are huge differences not minor ones.
Jay
The public option was going to be the way to measure progress. How will that be measured now? It was a way to add competition. How will that be added now? Ditching it and adding mandates are huge differences not minor ones.
Simply agreeing with the leader and not pushing isn’t just stupid it’s undemocratic. The opposition, be they insurance companies or the GOP, damn sure didn’t just sit back and see what they were handed.
The inability or lack of desire to keep fighting is going to harm us not help us.
Democracy isn’t top down. Or at least it’s not supposed to be.
Jay
@Platonicspoof: No reform was a position taken by who, other than the GOP I mean?
Joe Beese
Well, John, it took you a while to open your eyes about Bush. I suppose it’s only to be expected that you’re slow on the uptake about Obama as well.
But that’s all right. Our “We told you so” will be waiting for you when you come around.
D. Aristophanes
I was just wondering; did anyone ever take you up on that offer? Curious, that’s all.
Yeah, there’s this little fella that keeps banging on my door, goes by Rumplestiltskin, I believe … but I know how to deal with bill collectors.
Lisa
Joe Beese,
Will you throw in a “neener neener neener”‘s as well?
Corner Stone
@S. Luggo:
Hmmm, a Senate bill that’s enacted yet becomes underfunded and starts to undermine the very thing it was enacted to support/reform/help. Damn, if that doesn’t sound like NCLB I don’t know what does.
John Cole
@D. Aristophanes: Telling people “You’d be stupid to kill the Senate bill because you think a better one is right around the corner” is not saying you can’t criticize Obama.
Flail away at him. You still haven’t told me who the 50 votes are for this strong public option in the Senate or who the 60 votes are for a much stronger bill.
But yeah. It’s all about me telling you not to criticize Obama (something I haven’t even done).
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
Conflation is in the air this joyous season, where making counter arguments to Obama criticism is the same of telling someone they can’t criticize Obama, or something like that.
Tomlinson
Um? Medicare? Medicaid?
You measure cost growth and net cost against either of those.
oh really
@CDT:
I suspect that the people who fall into these categories represent a relatively small number who are either fairly stupid or simply so despondent over what they see, rightly or wrongly, as betrayal that they aren’t really thinking clearly.
It’s obvious to all lefties (except those who fall in the above type categories) that Obama is better than McCain. (But so are lots of people who are worse than Obama.) It’s why many people with serious reservations about Obama voted for him. But being better than someone who is no longer a threat (except perhaps to set records for Sunday morning appearances) can only carry Obama so far. There are plenty of people, many quite mindless, who are so wedded to the “lesser evil” argument that they are incapable of understanding why that is ultimately a road to nowhere. Obama would probably be a reasonably fine president given different circumstances and a much less formidable set of challenges. For example, he might serve nicely during a time of peace, economic prosperity, and an atmosphere of bipartisan good feeling. A time when a caretaker is ideal. Since he apparently can’t stand conflict, he would be much better off (and so would we) if he served in a time of relative tranquility. I’ll leave it to others to find such a time in our history or to predict when another one might arise in our future.
(Emory University professor Drew Westen has a pretty good description of Obama’s leadership style and why it isn’t up to the task. His article is up at Huffington and is worth reading…unless, like for some here, it is impossible to honestly consider the shortcomings of the president.)
Many of Obama’s critics make it clear that one of the points of their criticism is to try to prod, coax, or coerce Obama into better policies. That is a worthwhile effort. For the standard issue Obamabot (an appellation I dislike and one I don’t believe I have ever used before), many of whom post on this blog, any substantive criticism of Obama seems to be unbearable. They will often pepper their comments with throwaway lines like — “I’m not saying he’s perfect, but” in which the only important word is “but.” The truth is such people never initiate anything that could be fairly called substantive criticism of the president. American politicians know that both parties are largely populated with such supporters, so they feel free to behave as they do. No one can seriously argue that our political system is not horribly corrupt and dysfunctional, yet those who make it so manage to continue to get elected and re-elected because the “lesser evil” crowd has no line in the sand that can’t be crossed with impunity.
Just a note in passing. I don’t respond directly to people (usually referred to as trolls) whose sole purpose in posting is to cause conflict and turmoil. Neither will I waste my time on those whose bloated egos and minimal intellects limit their posting to assumed superiority and adolescent insults. It’s no surprise that such individuals are constantly in unpleasant and pointless blog-fights with those with whom they disagree. It is sad that they have such empty lives that they have nothing better to do or that somehow in the vacuum they inhabit they got the idea they own the door and can decide who gets to stay and who should leave. Trying to carry on any kind of give and take with people in either category is a waste of everyone’s time. Apparently, they have nothing better to do with their time. I do.
Corey
I’m not defending him in the slightest, but the idea that a president could defeat the military-industrial complex, medical-industrial complex, or Wall Street and the legal bribery that allows these interests to control both houses of congress is completely naive. It’s unfortunate that he hasn’t even tried, but the second he nominated Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff (he of the “shoving NAFTA down the throats of Democrats for Bill Clinton” fame) it was obvious that these corporate interests would be embraced, to keep the majority of campaign dollars flowing to the Democrats instead of the Republicans.
The most glaring disappointment for me is that a constitutional lawyer who promised to end the horrific abuses of civil liberties by Bush/Cheney has done the exact opposite, defending these abuses, expanding them, and codifying them. There really is no excuse.
FlipYrWhig
@Joe Beese:
Here you crystallize every damn thing wrong with your entire “side” throughout this entire debate. Your “toldja so” accomplishes nothing. What is that, virtue porn? Seriously, it’s the worst habit of online liberal-left-progressives, because it reduces all politics to a sentiment of righteousness, never to praxis. If all I wanted was to feel that my uncompromised views were right-er than everyone else’s, I could do that while living within a damn Skinner Box, which is where I’d be living so that scientists could determine what region of the brain had led me to develop into such a smug emo jackwad.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Virtue porn. Very well put.
Has the Obama administration actually abused civil liberties (wiretaps, etc)? Has the Obama administration put more people in Gitmo or overseen the infliction of torture?
oh really – Emory University professor Drew Westen has a pretty good description of Obama’s leadership style and why it isn’t up to the task.
This kind of thing is nuts.
Corey
@Brachiator:
It’s established fact that the “sneak and peek” warrants from the Patriot Act continue to be used to investigate anything but terrorism. As for Gitmo, is sending prisoners to Bagram or other “black sites” somehow better? Is it not absurd to send them to “Gitmo North” in Illinois, where only those with slam-dunk cases against them will receive trials, others (with less evidence against them) will receive military tribunals, and others will simply be held indefinitely without ever seeing a courtroom? Holder has even stated that should a suspect miraculously be found “not guilty” in a court of law, the government will hold them indefinitely anyway.
Someone needs to read more Glenn Greenwald. (His blog is excellent in general, see here for more detail on “Gitmo North”)
Lisa
Okay pounding the president to shit on torture, the Two Shitty Wars, and his unwillingness to prosecute the Bush Crime Syndicate is completely fair.
I am not really sure about trying to kill healthcare reform. That just seems like a colossally bad idea no matter what fantasy spin you put on it. Will we all go back to the table and put together a bill that will look like Canada’s healthcare system but with ponies? Probably not. Probably it will be another 15 years before we ever see another viable health care reform bill again.
:-(
Lisa
Trying to carry on any kind of give and take with people in either category is a waste of everyone’s time. Apparently, they have nothing better to do with their time. I do.
Yeah, it would take away precious minutes from your job of posting long, pretentious posts.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Lisa
#250: Best comment in the history of Tuesday afternoons.
CDT
“Many of Obama’s critics make it clear that one of the points of their criticism is to try to prod, coax, or coerce Obama into better policies. That is a worthwhile effort.”
Isn’t oh really’s point a fair one here? And why do so many on this blog jump immediately to the strawman argument that critics of Obama are simply going to ensure another electoral catastrophe like we saw with Nader? Many of us, rightly or wrongly, fear that a health care bill that gives insurance companies too much leverage will not only be less of an accomplishment, but politically dangerous. People who complain about that may be right or wrong to be so fearful. But trying to prod, coax, or coerce Obama and the Democrats to pass a better bill — and thereby avoid political danger — is entirely appropriate.
oh really
@Brachiator:
Well, gosh, how could anyone argue with that assessment? It pretty much destroys the professor’s argument point by point.
I’m particularly fascinated by the avoidance of opinion and the clever use of detailed analysis.
Or I could have responded less pretentiously for the benefit of Lisa by simply saying:
Fucking full of shit asshole.
But I fail to see the point in that, so I’ll leave that particular brand of erudition to Lisa herself. And no, Lisa, I’m not going to get into an extended pissing match with you. Sorry to disappoint you.
General Winfield Stuck
@CDT:
Because many of us here actually like Obama’s style, and more importantly were fully aware of it before we voted for him.. Contrary to myths, we never expected a Unicorn, or some kind of progressive saviour, and reject outright the premise of PUMA criticism that Obama should do it different.
And numbnuts like Oh Really, have been telling us since the primaries they don’t like Obama, and come on to wank pompous how we got it wrong. We do not agree with the failure rhetoric and list of failures Obama has allegedly proffered. When two sides cannot agree on the basic premise of an argument, then what is there to debate?
So we get Oh Really and his like minded continually whining that we don’t debate properly because we reject most of the premises he and others put forth. This is not an ideological blog as should be garnered from the fact that the host is a recovering republican that many here appreciate. It seems to me what the PUMA’s are pissed at and whine about rough treatment is that they cannot bring BJ into the fold of mainstream left blogs, so they carp, complain, and hand wring that we are mean and blunt and pragmatic, which most of us are./ No secret here. You bring in solid arguments with solid evidence and you will get a solid and civil response. Bitching about Obama’s leadership style is not one of those. Nor is blaming him for things not in his control. It hasn’t changed since the NO DRAMA OBAMA campaign, and most here appreciate that.
oh really
@Brachiator:
Actually, I shouldn’t have been so flippant. Instead, let me ask what you find “nuts” about the article? What do you disagree with and why?
I was directed to the Westen article by a friend. He and other friends have read it and didn’t find it “nuts.” Neither did I.
CDT
@ General Winfield Suck
Let’s talk about premises, then. One of my premises is that the current Senate bill poses greater political risk to the Democratic Party than would a bill with a robust public option, Medicare buy-in, antitrust exemption, or something tlese that would inhibit the ability of insurance companies to abuse their captive consumers. Is it this premise with which you disagree? Or the premise that Obama could have done anything to produce a bill that was better?
Lisa
@oh really:
Ok.
Carry on.
Ron McBride
I like many am not totally satisfied with his performance, but I am thankful that we are once again taking steps forward along our progressive path, instead of taking two steps back as we did under the previous administration. So what if he is more middle of the road, he has done more for the progressive movement in 1 year than most so called progressives have done in a century.
Graf Zeppelin
I have to agree. Policy-wise, this is what candidate Obama promised. I remember last summer and fall having to constantly confront those who came at me with “We don’t know what he’s going to do!” “We don’t know what his policies are!” “We don’t know [fill in the blank]!” “He hasn’t explained [fill in the blank]!” with “What steps have you taken to find out?”
The only people paying attention during the campaign were the ones who had to seriously consider both candidates and make an informed, intelligent choice between the two. Everyone else already knew who they were going to vote for and didn’t bother to find out all this information that people hysterically claimed they “don’t know” or that Obama “hasn’t explained” but that was readily available to anyone who cared to look.
What I see from Obama so far is exactly what I knew I was voting for last November. I was voting for a man with lofty ambitions, soaring rhetoric, great intelligence, and let’s face it, the man is deeply cool. But I was also voting for a man who, given the choice between on the one hand considering all considerations, making compromises and getting things done, and on the other hand hewing strictly to liberal or progressive ideology and getting nothing done, would choose the former.
Obama knows that no matter what his policy positions, GOP supporters and enablers will label them “far-left,” “left-wing,” “radical,” “socialist,” “communist,” or whatever other scary label. It didn’t take long after his nomination for the Right to label him the “most liberal Senator,” just like in 2004 Kerry was the “most liberal Senator,” Gore was the “most liberal Vice President,” Clinton was the “most liberal governor,” etc. Every Democratic candidate is, in the eyes of the Right, the “most liberal” member of whatever organization he belongs to. To them, anything Obama does is far-left radical commie left-wing socialism.
What’s more troubling is that liberals thought he was a left-winger too. Nothing he said or wrote during the campaign suggested he was a radical anything. Reading The Audacity of Hope, I found nothing but a pragmatist; his policy positions are laid out like appellate judicial opinions. Obama may be moderate to a fault, but he has never been, nor ever presented himself as, anything else. The Wright and Ayers nonsense was a smokescreen to make people think Obama was more out-there than he really was.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not thoroughly happy with everything, but I suppose I’m not meant to be. But I’m not going to waste my time and energy acting like a teabagger, feeling all persecuted and defrauded and oppressed and ignored
Graf Zeppelin
I have to agree. Policy-wise, this is what candidate Obama promised. I remember last summer and fall having to constantly confront those who came at me with “We don’t know what he’s going to do!” “We don’t know what his policies are!” “We don’t know [fill in the blank]!” “He hasn’t explained [fill in the blank]!” with “What steps have you taken to find out?”
The only people paying attention during the campaign were the ones who had to seriously consider both candidates and make an informed, intelligent choice between the two. Everyone else already knew who they were going to vote for and didn’t bother to find out all this information that people hysterically claimed they “don’t know” or that Obama “hasn’t explained” but that was readily available to anyone who cared to look.
What I see from Obama so far is exactly what I knew I was voting for last November. I was voting for a man with lofty ambitions, soaring rhetoric, great intelligence, and let’s face it, the man is deeply cool. But I was also voting for a man who, given the choice between on the one hand considering all considerations, making compromises and getting things done, and on the other hand hewing strictly to liberal or progressive ideology and getting nothing done, would choose the former.
Obama knows that no matter what his policy positions, GOP supporters and enablers will label them “far-left,” “left-wing,” “radical,” “socialist,” “communist,” or whatever other scary label. It didn’t take long after his nomination for the Right to label him the “most liberal Senator,” just like in 2004 Kerry was the “most liberal Senator,” Gore was the “most liberal Vice President,” Clinton was the “most liberal governor,” etc. Every Democratic candidate is, in the eyes of the Right, the “most liberal” member of whatever organization he belongs to. To them, anything Obama does is far-left radical commie left-wing socialism.
What’s more troubling is that liberals thought he was a left-winger too. Nothing he said or wrote during the campaign suggested he was a radical anything. Reading The Audacity of Hope, I found nothing but a pragmatist; his policy positions are laid out like appellate judicial opinions. Obama may be moderate to a fault, but he has never been, nor ever presented himself as, anything else. The Wright and Ayers nonsense was a smokescreen to make people think Obama was more out-there than he really was.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not thoroughly happy with everything, but I suppose I’m not meant to be. But I’m not going to waste my time and energy acting like a teabagger, feeling all persecuted and defrauded and oppressed and ignored just because the “government” has enacted, or is poised to enact, public policy that is not perfectly in line with my political beliefs and priorities.