Today’s entry is from Naomi Klein:
I hear Obama is also responsible for a run on o’s.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
We are aware of all internet traditions.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.
“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”
I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.
Black Jesus loves a paper trail.
I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.
the 10% who apparently lack object permanence
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.
Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.
Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.
I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.
Good lord, these people are nuts.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
Optimism opens the door to great things.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
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The Dangerman
No, that was Tiger Woods.
Oh, you said o’s; nevermind. Carry on.
Just Some Fuckhead
Dammit, I used to like Naomi Klein. Throw her on the pyre with the rest of ’em.
Anya
I say it is a win for the O man today if no one compared him to Tiger Woods.
grass
Was she one of the ones yelling to kill the bill last week?
Oh to be a pundit.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: LOL- you act like we are the ones throwing people on the pyre. We’re just laughing.
wilfred
You’re either fucking around or have a specific personality trait to detest opposition to authority figures.
Of course, Obama did practically everything goddamned thing humanly possible and Naomi Klein is just another stupid ‘ho like Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Sarah Palin.
That’s better.
calipygian
Well she did write that “Shock Doctrine” book. I suspect she’s pissed that Obama didn’t read it.
4tehlulz
>For Obama, No Opportunity To Big To Blow
>run on o’s
I see what you did there.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: mhmm
Max
My $.02 is that a lot of these “journalists” “bloggers” etc, are trying to raise their profile and get on the tv machine by piling on Obama.
They are screaming for attention and they know the media loves anti-Obama stories.
For example, Markos is only on MTP when he’s criticizing Obama and the dems.
See:
Huffington, Arianna (Joe Biden Should Resign)
John Cole
But you know what will really change the dynamic in Washington? Let’s raise some money and air commercials attacking Rahm Emanuel.
Now THAT is the true route to progressive policies.
Honestly, I know you are just trying to stir shit up, but if you can not see that the activist left is now about an hour away from mailing silly putty to Bernie Sanders, I don’t know what to say.
Sentient Puddle
Well, at least she didn’t mention health care…
But yeah, I’m mostly focusing on the editor fail. That one’s amusing.
Zifnab
Given that the Senate was able to buy off Nelson with some Nebraska pork, I consider this a success for the party. It is at least comforting to know a Senator’s principles can be purchased relatively cheaply. I was worried this was going to stalemate straight through January.
Lieberman’s public option / medicare buy-in hostage crisis was a major failure on the part of the administration. That said, this is one of the components that could, conceivably, be passed in Reconciliation. So it’s not the death of all hope, either.
I’m happy to see the bill moving forward and interested in seeing how the conference bill gets played out.
Why oh why
So, Michael Moore is fat after all?
Xecky Gilchrist
The Bush admin people stole all the Os from the White House typewriter keyboards on their way out.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
Hey, you let Erick Erickson worry about what we’re gonna send Bernie and stick to what you do best: pet pics.
eemom
you know, I have a feeling Obama doesn’t give a shit what any one of this babbling cacophany of lunatics thinks. It’s one of the things I like about him.
Rock on, O-man. Sell out! Alienate the base! Booyah!
calipygian
@John Cole:
I honestly thought they were 30 minutes from mailing coat hangers to Bart Stupak.
Jim
@John Cole:
I think you’re kidding, but I don’t read FDL or the Eschaton comment threads anymore, so for all I know this is true.
calipygian
@Zifnab:
The more I think about Nelson, I have to admire his commitment to good ole constituent care and feeding. Squeezing money out of the bill for Nebraska is his job.
On the other hand, I think Lieberman is an asshole.
The Dangerman
This may be overly simplistic, but if the Right is pissed off and the Left is pissed off, perhaps O threaded the needle.
jibeaux
Remember, if you are ordering salt or silly putty or what have you to send to Bernie Sanders, please do it thru the amazon link on BJ.
amk
The more the “base” yells, the more Obama can and will push his agenda by citing their poutrage to the wingers and indy’s.
No one seems to be safe from the base’s stink bombs – sanders, feingold, biden and even franken. Teh left now have rightfully their own tea-baggers.
Hob
Where they arose, well, nobody knows.
Kordo
Ugh. I have a certain amount of respect for Ms. Klein. She’s smarter than I am (not that impressive, granted), and she’s a passionate advocate for what she believes in. But, for fuck’s sake, can we have just a passing mention of the fact that President Obama is NOT Joe Stalin? That he can’t simply wave a wand (or a “bully pulpit”) and make US Senators jump to follow his orders? The Left blogosphere seems to veer wildly between wonkish reverence for the details of the legislative process, and childish foot-stamping over which politician is being less-than-tyrannical about ramming through whichever particular policy point is getting hammered out at that very second. I used to wonder how Liberals always seemed to lose political fights; they’re ideas are better, they’re more rational (generally), and they offer policies that actually help people who don’t have a bazillion dollars in the bank. Now I understand. Liberals are, in general, compassionate, forward-thinking, & committed. They’re also about as useful in a street fight as a bag of turnip greens.
Note to Ms. Klein: The guy you’re getting so much mileage out of knocking? He’s the best friend you ever had in the White House. You want to see him go one-and-done, so you can get a real Liberal in that job, then you’re on the right track. Call Jane Hamsher & Howard Dean while your at it. You guys can spend the next few years circle-jerking each other over your moral and intellectual purity. I mean, it’s clearly what you prefer to be doing anyway…
MikeJ
@The Dangerman: That’s overly simplistic, but does arrive at the correct conclusion in this case.
If the right think you’re an idiot and the left think you’re an idiot, the natural conclusion to draw is not always, “I am a genius.”
Sentient Puddle
@The Dangerman: I think both the left and the right would be pissed off if Obama signed an executive order repealing the ban on murder.
Not that I entirely disagree with where you’re coming from, but I think this is the same kind of reasoning Broder uses.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@eemom:
Seconded.
His biggest failure so far, AFAIC, is that he hasn’t shut up all the goddam WATBs that are using him to attract attention to whatever their WATB bullshit is at the moment.
If he would just hold a news conference and start with “I would like to ask all the WATBs out there to just shut the fuck up for a couple of weeks and give those of us who are doing something useful a frickin break” then I would stand up and clap my hooves together.
mcc
@The Dangerman: Is it accurate to say “the left” is pissed off?
Comrade Mary
@The Dangerman: Honeybunch, that is overly simplistic. I think that this bill is a good starter home (as someone else said), but I don’t think having disparate groups mad at you is any sign of success. It will be a pain in the ass to have some progressives sniping at Obama once the bill passes, so let’s hope that anger gets focused on improving legislation rather than just staying angry for the next few years.
(Getting angry? Understandable. Doing nothing but getting angry? Reckless.)
Ugh
I like the mouseover text.
donovong
At the risk of being accused of throwing somebody on a pile of fire or something, Naomi Klein has been a true believer in the Obama Concern Troll Alliance for a while now. Nothing new about that.
Simply added evidence for my belief that some people are simply not happy unless they are unhappy. Obama is just a convenient target.
FSM forbid they should actually try and do something constructive, like initiate a push for a change in the filibuster rules. Too easy to get on teevee if they talk bad about everybody else’s favorite target.
calipygian
Not only does he not give a shit, people like Jane H. are setting themselves up to be the Sista Souljah of the new millenium.
GReynoldsCT00
@mcc:
aren’t they?
The Dangerman
@Sentient Puddle:
I’ll go wash my virtual mouth out with soap.
Jim
@Comrade Mary:
Agreed. It would be good politics and good policy if the Dems used reconciliation to push through Something Big after the starter house is finished, but I really don’t expect boldness from fifty people whose number includes Dianne Feinstein, Evan Bayh and Bill Nelson.
wilfred
@MikeJ:
Ah.
A man sent his servant to the souk to buy one kilo of sugar and one kilo of salt. The boy grabbed a plate and trundled off to the market. When he got to the shop and made his request the shopkeeper measured out the right amounts of each. He asked the boy where he wanted the sugar and the boy held out the plate. After he poured the sugar onto the plate the man asked the boy where he wanted the salt. The boy thought for a moment and turned the plate over: “Here”, he said.
When he got home, the master was waiting in the kitchen. He tasted the salt and asked: “Where’s the sugar?”
And the boy turned the plate over.
Sentient Puddle
@The Dangerman: Don’t sweat it too much. You were well-intentioned.
Kordo
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
“I would like to ask all the WATBs out there to just shut the fuck up for a couple of weeks and give those of us who are doing something useful a frickin break”
I believe I would crap myself from joy. Great Idea.
PS
Max is right.
Huffington, Matt Taibbi and so on, its all about getting on the TVEE.
Huffpost is selling lots off ads, even twitter ads. Stirring the outrage pot is a profitable industry on both the left and the right . . .
Also, I love how the Propaganda-Post–you know the supposed liberal news outlet–never has any headlines, like “Krugman Says Pass The Bill”. See, thats not the kind of Hippie on Hippie violence that gets you on the TVEE.
Arianna Huffington is one of the biggest self-serving jackasses around . . . I’m just waiting for her to switch back to being a Republican.
AnotherBruce
The bodies of burning progressives are stacked like cordwood.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Mary:
The real problem is that they’re getting angry at the wrong people. They need to get angry at the people who are actively standing in the way of reform. Instead, they’re venting at their allies for being insufficiently zealous. It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it any less stupid and counterproductive.
GregB
I fail to see the problem with people being upset that President Obama is governing far away from what he alleged to be in the campaign.
Rightwing authoritarians are the ones who dopily fall in line with their Dear Leaders. Left wingers are always agitated and agitating because the world is full of scam artists, assholes and their lackeys.
President Obama is not worse than Bush but he sure as hell aint giving much to the left either.
President Obama is growing in suckitude as the days go on and I don’t like it.
-G
mk3872
Yeah, her hit piece was another rehash of the same ol story:
Yeah, Congress sux, but Obama should have changed the world, blah, blah.
Notice that she whines about the size of the Stim Bill.
Yup. Not about the fact that it was nearly impossible to pass as it was, but somehow Obama should have magically created more votes in Congress.
kay
It’s a weirdly anti-democratic and anti-activist stance, Blame Obama.
All of those assembled people and activists and world leaders were powerless to act, without the President of the United States.
I don’t even know how this attitude makes sense for issue activism.
Abandon hope without Dear Leader to show us the way.
HeartlandLiberal
Actually, I would urge you to read Drew Westen at HuffPo today:
Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator
Will
That’s what she said.
John Cole
Look, the fact of the matter is there does need to be a vocal presence pressuring Obama from the left.
What we do not need is a vocal and out of control presence from the left pushing the same god damned memes that the Republicans are pushing. When you are standing up and writing articles that Obama has blown everything and pushing the incompetence meme Republicans have been pushing, you are not helping. Period.
Likewise, some of the other crazy shit of the past few weeks is just nuts. What on earth did attacking Joe Lieberman’s wife for her nonprofit work do except make the progressive left look like the folks looking at Graeme Frost’s counter-tops? People look at that and think it is just crazy. Or what about the commercials attacking the President’s chief of staff.
I’m all for criticism- Glenn Greenwald documents and calmly and coolly puts out a case about Obama failures constantly, and I usually link positively to them. What I am not in favor of is unhinged teabaggerism coming from the left, and I’m not going to sit by and pretend it is constructive.
If you think that is just me having an aversion to criticizing authority figures, so be it. You are wrong.
Zifnab
@The Dangerman:
Obama could go parading around in a Dick Cheney mask while pitching hydrogen bombs into Tehran, Beijing, and San Fransisco, and the neo-cons would call him a peacenik girly-man. He could fire everyone at the IRS and hand Goldman Sachs the keys to the Treasury, and the corporate cons would call him a secret Marxist hippie. He could receive a blessing from John the Baptist while decreeing Evangelical Christianity the only true world religion and tasking the FBI with rounding up every abortionist in the 50 states, and the social cons would call him a baby-killing Muslim terrorist.
The Right just makes shit up to be pissed off about. Pissing them off is fucking easy. That Obama managed to turn an enthusiastic and highly optimistic base against him inside a year isn’t “threading the needle”. It implies there is an absolutely massive gap between the “middle” of Congress and the White House and what the President was elected to accomplish.
amk
Teh progressives at dkos considering seriously “Constitutional-amendment-to-dissolve-the-US-Senate”.
It’s offical. The miliant left has jumped the shark and has become a tea-baggers movement.
Kordo
@PS:
I’m old enough to remember when Madame Huffington was pulling this same, sad trick from the other side of the fence (google: Huffington Clinton Scandal, and you’ll see what I mean). She’s a carnival barker, nothing more, though I grant you she’s a good one. I love that she keeps printing Lanny “If yer gonna be a whore, be a great one” Davis columns, too. I think the only reason she doesn’t have Dick Morris in her stable is his contract with Fox.
FlipYrWhig
@PS:
There’s actually something nice about the idea of getting the news orgs to expand their rolodexes to include the views of people from the liberal-left continuum other than James Carville and Donna Brazile and such. But it would be nicer still if the new crop weren’t such a heaping bag of dicks.
GregB
Also, it is pretty weak tea to compare those Jane Hamshers of the left who are pushing for better legislation of being tea-baggers who were known for displaying guns, Nazi photos, photo shopped pics of the President Obama as a witch doctor, Stalin, Hitler etc.
It is unfair.
-G
p.a.
Nice. Not quite POtY material, but close. ‘Course, that may be an editor’s fault…
HRA
@The Dangerman: @Just Some Fuckhead:
I work in a library setting. You two have me trying my best not to lose my composure here. Thanks for the mirth.
FlipYrWhig
@HeartlandLiberal:
Mostly because both sides don’t know what the fuck is actually in the bill, other than that the public option isn’t, and thanks again to everyone who decided _that_ would have to be the litmus test for whether it was A Good Bill or not.
Lolis
@PS:
Yeah, the Hufffington Post is mostly unreadable these days. They are often factually incorrect which really gets me and they keep their errors on the front page hours after they have been debunked by other sites.
Have a conversation with a hardcore socialist/communist. They can talk to you about how all American presidents have been corporate whores/racists/imperialists. It is true on one level. On the other level, we have two choices for president and one is significantly better than other. It would be stupid to not participate in the system. Obama is doing a lot to improve current circumstances in our republic. American’s don’t really want a lot of change. They get afraid. Liberals do not accurately reflect America as a whole.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Let’s raise some money and air commercials attacking Rahm Emanuel.”
Well, I have been disappointed in Rahm. I was expecting Rahm to have I-hate-DFHs-Joe’s balls in his desk drawer, so getting screwed over by Leiberman at the last minute was an unpleasant surprise, though in retrospect predictable.
Rahm being where he is made one strong lever against Leiberman unusable – threatening to weaken support to Israel if Leiberman didn’t cut his bullshit.
I wonder if Daschle had been appointed as Secretary of DHHS whether this would have went better. One more reason to resent Geithner at Treasury. Geithner’s job could have been done by several people – Summers or one of the other regional Fed presidents – but Daschle was unique and skilled at getting Repugs to jump, like when he got Jim Jeffords to switch caucus and so flipped control of the Senate in 2001. Instead, we got Sebelius, who I like but who has not been a player in HCR.
mcc
@GReynoldsCT00: At a minimum, it doesn’t seem like there is parity between a situation where
– On the right, the right, the entire right institutional, elected officials and grassroots, is not just pissed, but apocalyptic– at the point of calling for insurrection, using language that would have seemed archaic in 1898.
– On the left, a specific clique of personally tight-knit bloggers is pissed*, and practically every other source one might at a different time have identified as left– including pundits, intelligentsia, and every single elected official– is something closer to “disappointed” saying things along the lines of “I wish we’d been able to do more”. (Anecdotally, the leftists I encounter outside the blogosphere seem in many cases disappointed or wanted more, but are not that I’ve seen identifiably pissed. The grassroots individuals I encounter on the blogosphere who clearly are “pissed” generally phrase their arguments as to why in consistent ways that lead me to suspect they are essentially repeating things that particular clique of bloggers said, a number of which things are factually inaccurate.)
In order to say “the left” is pissed, you have to manufacture a split where an increasingly shrinking pool of bloggers is “the left”, and there are no members of “the left” elected anywhere except maybe dennis kucinich. This seems to take a fairly dismal take of the ideological leanings of the electorate, implying “this is a center-right country” is probably an understatement.
ASTERISK And I think it’s reasonable to count Howard Dean, who can be thought of as the godfather of today’s liberal blogosphere, as part of that clique– and even his rhetoric is rapidly softening.
FlipYrWhig
@GregB:
No, she’s pushing for _no_ legislation. Abstractly, I guess she’d _like_ “better legislation,” but doesn’t have much of an idea about how to accomplish that, and there’s no sense in “pushing” for something that doesn’t exist and couldn’t exist because there just plain aren’t the votes for it.
GregB
I do agree that bringing Mrs. Lieberstrudel into the mix was not necessary.
-G
Comrade Mary
@GregB: This specific Jane Hamsher is explicitly allying herself with Norquist, Schlafly and their ilk, and has said that she shares concerns with the teabaggers. Lie down with dogs, get up with dead shit all over you.
FlipYrWhig
@mcc:
I think that’s exactly right. There’s a particular brand of blogospheric “left” that has been relishing propagating a repeatable sense of indignation, like this weirdness about how rescission isn’t really banned, or the phrase “shit sandwich.”
ETA: Or “corporate,” especially in compounds with “tool,” “overlord,” and “shill.”
wilfred
The best thing to come out of this is the emergence of a political consciousness variously called progressive or leftist that is decidedly different than it was as recently as 10 years ago.
Obama is a corporatist; hcr was always to be the expression of corporatist government. The anger that it provokes in some people is justified and healthy, especially as it makes clear to those people that they in fact do not have a voice or place in the Democratic Party.
I really fucking doubt that Ted Kennedy would have meekly accepted this corporatist tripe. The onus is now on the left to come together and become politicized as a separate entity in full awareness that none of the nominal progressive, at least in the Senate, have the stomach for a real fight.
If Democrats or, heaven help us, liberals don’t like it – tough shit.
Shell
Even the comic strips are turning against him. Mark in ‘Doonesbury’ had a “I’m done with Obama”-type rant today.
Jim C
@John Cole:
Your ideas are intriguing to me. Have you a newsletter to which I could subscribe?
Please tell me more. Silly Putty? Did I miss a discussion?
Fern
@donovong: They make a living by catastrophizing. Can’t stop now.
GregB
Comrade Mary,
By those standards we should support the war in Iraq because Ron Paul and many of his conspiracy minded racists do not support the war.
-G
mk3872
Call these types of stories “HuffPo-bait” instead of “Drudge-bait” … rehashing the same old whining in an effort to pull in click-thrus and linking to drive ad revenue on “news” sites.
Fern
@PS: I have yet to be convinced that she ever stopped being a Republican.
Anya
@John Cole: When I saw a recommended diary at GOS attacking Mrs Lieberman and calling for her ouster from a non paying gig for a non-profit org, I realized that we’ve become what we hate the most, classless reactionary ideologues.
Its fine with me if Ms Klien hates Obama’s incremental style but to jump on every stupid meme and react to every leak (mostly from Politico and WP) is insane. Also this obsession with Rahm is no different from teabaggers’ scapegoating of his brother.
Also, health insurance industry stocks are up, also.
Comrade Mary
@GregB: No. You have that completely backwards.
I can oppose a war for my own reasons. I can grudgingly accept that Ron Paul and the like also oppose the war, but their constellation of reasons for it probably include some arguments and beliefs I find abhorrent. And I am always free to oppose the war without explicitly aligning myself with Ron Paul.
Jane Hamsher has praised the teabaggers, has tried to cloud the issue by calling them “libertarians”, and has made communications in tandem with Schlafly and Norquist. That is self-serving, obnoxious and abhorrent.
Tom Hilton
@John Cole:
This. Everyone who slams the individual mandate (for example) is explicitly helping the Republicans in 2010.
@Comrade Mary: glad someone got around to pointing this out. It’s been obvious to me ever since she posted that image of Lieberman in blackface that Jane Hamsher is a deeply stupid person. Now, I think, that has to be obvious to anyone who isn’t completely oblivious.
Fern
@Tom Hilton: I wonder what this latest stupidity is doing for traffic on FDL.
Sean
@John Cole:
I can’t agree more. What I’ve read about Emanuel suggests to me that he’s a pathological asshole who personalizes everything – a bully who gets in people’s face and cows them with personal invective.
An old-fashioned political bitch-slapping on the public air-waves would probably do the dynamic in Washington a world of good.
-S
John S.
Then you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
According to Kennedy himself:
And according to his widow:
And according to the guy who came up with the public option (and advocated for this flawed bill):
But I guess you know more than ALL of them, eh Wilfred?
Joy
@Kordo: Thank you. You said it better than me.
joe in oklahoma
the better interp of Obama is by Drew Westen in HuffPo.
the fact is Obama did not provide leadership. he waffled from the beginning on PO. he said he wanted to reduce medical costs, but the Senate bill does not do that, and allows premiums to soar.
it would be nice if someone would remind him of his campaign themes.
Joy
@PS: I agree. You haven’t heard a peep out of them since Krugman said that. Since they were using him as a front man for everything else, i.e., stimulus, etc., you’d think they would at least mention this in passing.
jenniebee
A radical base is like God: if it didn’t exist, we would create one in our own image.
I really don’t get the complaining from the moderate left about the existence of an only-less-slightly-moderate left, provided they don’t actually turn out for Nader again. As long as teh left-out seemed happy with the bill, the talking heads bobbled on about the need to compromise; as soon as Dean said that the compromises were unacceptable, their tune shifted to “everybody’s unhappy so it must be good.” When Rep. Weiner said that the Medicare buy-in was a good compromise, Lieberman suddenly didn’t like it; when Weiner indicated that Lieberman’s latest grab pushed him on the bubble, Joe’s concerns were suddenly resolved.
These people have no metric for whether or not they’ve “won” other than how loudly they’ve made liberals howl, and they won’t be satisfied until they get a good shriek out of the Jane Hamsher’s of the Left. If you want to blame Jane and Dean for something, blame them for not howling when the public option got dropped in favor of the buy-in. It would have been wildly irrational to kick up a ruckus then, but had they done it, we might still have the buy-in.
gwangung
I have a bit of a problem with freak outs that are unfocussed or aren’t channeled into the system. Freaking out and getting folks to listen is good; freaking out and getting folks to act on it is good. A lot of that done recently was of that type and that’s not a bad thing.
But some of it just doesn’t seem useful.
New Yorker
Never had much respect for the “intellect” of Ms. Klein. If she’s pissed off because Obama isn’t the radical
that the teabagger loons claim he is, that’s a good thing.
GregB
Oof.
I can’t abide working in tandem with Schlafley and Bathtub Grover.
-G
donovong
@joe in oklahoma: Aw, ferchrisakes, this is such bullshit. Obama REPEATEDLY stated that he believed that the PO was a necessary ingredient for reform. REPEATEDLY. AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY.
No, he didn’t draw a goddam line in the sand, because that would have been about as productive as publicly smacking down any sentor who disagreed with him.
Mari
How easily Nelson was bought off stands as a perfect example of how Obama and the rest of the Dems could have done more to pass HCR that benefited the public instead of insurance companies. Nobody pulled out the bribes to strip the industry of its anti-trust exemption, protect access to abortion, protect Medicare buy-in, or even protect the weakest public option.
Instead of actually fighting for the public’s interests , the Democratic leadership decided to sit on their hands and force feed everybody an industry-friendly shit sandwich. No amount of whining about the ‘need’ for Democratic solidarity will change that.
MNPundit
@John Cole: You do realize life would be IMMEASURABLY better if Naomi Klein were in charge of that policy, right?
Jus’ sayin’
Elie
@eemom:
LOL
wilfred
@John S.:
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Now this is a ‘good bill’, but is this what Kennedy wanted?
Bullshit. Rallying round the wagons looks like good politics when in fact it is accepting what is only good for the insurance companies.
Kennedy would have accepted this without a fight? Is this your point?
jenniebee
@gwangung: Not so long ago that group did get organized and focused and that focused organization was called the Nader candidacy. Bad juju.
As for the rest, today is not October 2012. It isn’t even Oct 2010. Today is the day for activists to scream their damn fool heads off so that Obama is “forced” to do something to placate them.
joe in oklahoma
@donovong: repeatedly? yes, you are correct, until this past summer, like when he backed off of it in his speech to Congress?
did he take his argument to the American people? other than that televised speech to Congress, when has he addressed the nation about healthcare and laid down his demands? oooops.
will he draw a line in the sand for anything?
maybe he OUGHT to challenge some people publicly.
bayville
I blame
Nader,Rahm,Michael Moore,Hillary,Dean, Naomi Klein.Didn’t ya’ll hear? We passed health care reform.
Now go away and shut up until we need money and volunteers in a few months. Then all of your opinions will matter again.
donovong
@wilfred: I will take what Ted Kennedy’s WIDOW said at face value (in her op-ed yesterday), when she stated that Ted would want to pass the bill.
While you and President McCain might agree that Ted would not, neither of you know what she does.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/bipartisanship/mccain-ted-kennedy-would-have-been-disappointed-because-health-care-bill-isnt-bipartisan/
FlipYrWhig
@donovong: Also, if Obama insisted that he wouldn’t sign a plan without a public option, and it unfolded that there weren’t votes in the Senate for a public option (especially considering spiteful Lieberman), then what? How does he get out of that bind? The whole thing becomes A Crushing Defeat For The President. Headlines about A Failed Presidency. And everything else dies. You have to pass the thing that lets you pass other things. Otherwise it’s nothing all the way down.
ronin122
@Comrade Mary: Considering that there will always be disparate groups of people–at least on the left, I refuse to give a shit about the teabaggers or whatever on the right–who are unhappy or otherwise discontent at anything they do, warranted or not. He might as well just do whatever he was thinking and not give a shit. I know that’s what I’d do; not because I don’t care but because when you know you can’t make everyone happy you learn it’s best to stop trying before you start.
FlipYrWhig
@joe in oklahoma:
He CONSISTENTLY phrased it along these lines: the important thing is to reduce costs and increase competition. In my opinion, a public option is the best way to accomplish both of those goals. If someone has a better idea, I’ll listen to that.
Then over the summer the Hamsher-Kos crowd decided that any time he didn’t SAY “Public Option Or Bust” it meant he no longer supported it. But the statements were _consistent_ throughout. Ends are important, means are negotiable.
Rick Taylor
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Well Taylor Marsh says that Krugman has gone out of his mind, or something along those lines.
eemom
@Tom Hilton:
I actually don’t think she’s stupid — I just think she’s a hypocrite and a fraud. Her whole schtick has zero to do with caring about HCR or any other substantive policy issue, and everything to do with the personal advancement of Jane Hamsher.
She’s also, fundamentally, a bully, as is obvious from any of the increasingly few comment threads where someone shows up to disagree with her instead of kissing her ass.
Little Dreamer
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
It would behoove you to wish for that, eh?
LMAO!
gwangung
Bullshit yourself. You’re just ignoring evidence you don’t like.
Do it right. Go into his writings and show where he favored stronger solutions. Go into his statements and show how his widow is softpedaling his wishes.
Otherwise, you’re just projecting.
joe in oklahoma
@FlipYrWhig: right. and where are the cost savings? for ordinary people? why are we bailing out the insurance industry instead of working peeps?
gwangung
My take away was that this was done badly and backwards, a top down approach that didn’t do any grassroots work in electing congressional reps, to establish a presence there.
Long as it’s done to move legislation in favorable directions and not just to vent steam (I favor actions that can do both).
Mal Carne
Take a good, hard look at what happened to Medicare before you call this bill “useless”. It covers far more people now than it did at it inception. It used to be the Republican’s whipping boy. Now they defend it passionately.
Ditto Social Security.
Even if it is no good (which I doubt that it is)… what good is a baby?
PanAmerican
Different day, same clueless bunch of clowns.
The money quote from K/O:
Meet the Neo-Village, same as the old Village.
General Winfield Stuck
Rep Elijah Cummings is sounding very positive about getting the conference bill as much like the house bill AS POSSIBLE but talking like there will be a bill, no matter.. Same from Wasserman Schultz. But of course these are phony “progressives” and must be “silly puttied” with extreme prejudice by the real progressives”.
Elie
@joe in oklahoma:
This was not a promise (PO) that he could make without involving the legislature..He gave his desire, his own opinion and that he supported PO.You know that of course. He advocated for it but what comes out of the legislature is what the constitution provides for in the way of law passage.
Always surprising to me how many on the left don’t know about how that works
wilfred
@gwangung:
There was even talk of naming the public option after him. I give up.
Ash Can
@FlipYrWhig: This. Obama is doing exactly what he said he was going to do on healthcare reform. He gave the job to Congress, they ran it through the legislative sausage machine (with him nattering in their ears on a regular basis), and if there’s anyone less surprised at where we are now than he is, I’d like to know who that could be.
Mari
@FlipYrWhig:
The proper response would be to veto Liberman-Stupak.
The overriding issue with health care is catastrophically rising costs. Most of this is due to rentierism by the insurance industry. Any effective HCR would cut insurance industry profits and, as a result, should gut industry stock prices. However, Liberman-Stupak is expected to be so effective at controlling costs that industry share prices have actually gone up as the process has moved forward.
With an individual mandate–effectively granting the insurance industry the right to tax the public–and no Medicare-E or other public option to control costs, Liberman-Stupak will be both deeply unpopular and fail to bend the cost curve. HCR is only worth doing if it is an improvement over the status quo. Liberman-Stupak is not an improvement over the status quo. Instead, it will make things worse.
If Obama was actually interested in serving the public interest, he should stick to his line in the sand and veto Liberman-Stupak.
Midnight Marauder
@FlipYrWhig:
Very well said, and that’s why the FDL/GOS crowd have no idea what they’re doing from a strategic sense. If Obama had come out and been the “Health Care Hero” that these clowns wanted, and said something to the effect of “No public option, no presidential signature,” and then things played out the same as they have now (and really, what reason is there to think they would play out any differently)–then what? How in the world would he get his administration out from that corner?
He wouldn’t and then they would finish bludgeoning him to death, so they could use his sacrificial blood to grease the skids for
EmperorPresident Howard Dean.This is what it boils down to, and this is what Jane Hamsher fails to understand every time she touches her keyboard or opens her mouth:
General Winfield Stuck
@wilfred:
We have had the fight, though it is still not over. Kennedy would have fought, but realized he does not control Lieberman nor Nelson, and being able to count to 60, would have taken the best bill we could get considering the ever present political elephant in the room that represents always, political reality.
See No Child Left Behind. Kennedy was a tough hombre in fighting for causes, but was also willing to compromise when the fighting was over.
gwangung
@wilfred: Yes, he favored a stronger solution, but you’re not taking the further step of showing that a) he wouldn’t accept a weaker step, b) that he saw that this current step could NOT leave to his preferred method, and c) that his widow could not possibly know his wishes as to this.
Again, you’re ignoring contrary evidence.
wilfred
@Elie:
And the veto? When did we get rid of that? And you’re giving civics lessons?
Rick Taylor
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Riiight.
__
It’s funny, I think some on the left have a similar desire as those on the right to see the President as a father figure of sorts, someone who’s going to be in charge of everything and who can single-handedly make everything right. The President is powerful, and there are plenty of things I wish Obama did that he didn’t, but he is just the President.
joe in oklahoma
@Elie: I know how that works. not interested in a dictator, just a President. I also know the president has a “bully pulpit” that he could have used much better than he has.
look, some bill needs to be passed, even one that is not very good, yet does offer some improvements. I UNDERSTAND THAT.
What I lament is that the man I voted for has basically waited for others (conservaDems, Insurance company lobbyists, and BigPharma to lead).
wilfred
@gwangung:
I’m presuming he would have fought for something he believed in instead of placating Lieberman and Nelson. I’m also presuming he would have put his immense public prestige on the line and called their corporatist bullshit for what it is.
If that failed, he may very well have gone along with the rest of the herd. But I’m talking about having the balls to fight fire with fire.
Jamey
Too big to blow?
Projection, much. Naomi?
gwangung
THEN YOU DON’T KNOW.
And you’re saying that you know better than his widow.
Hm. Perhaps this belongs on the arrogance thread.
General Winfield Stuck
Something else this bill fixes that gets squashed by the PO pony rage. And that is the elimination of the donut hole in the Prescription drug bill. Just heard Barbara Boxer point this out on MSNBC. Another faux hippie falls to our corporatist master Obama.
Sentient Puddle
@donovong:
and
Um, one of those things doesn’t mean the other thing.
wilfred
@gwangung:
So the widder Kennedy is saying that he would not have done a goddamned thing except sit back and bask in the glow of mandated health care without public competitiion. YAY for us all!
She’s a fucking oracle, she is.
Mari
@General Winfield Stuck:
Unless it also removes the prohibition against government negotiating drug prices with industry, removing the Medicare-D donut hole is nothing more than an even larger cash giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry.
Cost control FAIL.
Sentient Puddle
@wilfred: Y’know, if you really want to know what Kennedy would’ve thought, there are sources you can turn to before wild speculation.
Just sayin’.
Midnight Marauder
@Mari:
Axelrod promises to push for drug re-importation after healthcare reform
Your thoughts?
licensed to kill time
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@Jamey:
Heh. You read my mind.
El Tiburon
Shorter Most of the Commenters here:
“WE ALL LIKE TO YELL AT THE SAME TIME AND SAY THE SAME SHIT WAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Once again the overriding theme seems to be for liberals to shut the fuck up and sit down.
Did anyone read Klein’s piece? Could have fooled me.
I did not see any “unhinged teabaggery” in her article. Disagree with her all you want, but she made some good points.
Funny how Obama can move the earth and the mountains to get the financial industry all of their loot, but can’t do anything else.
For many of us it has become apparent Obama, contrary to his campaign, doesn’t care so much. Naomi seems to be pointing this out. But I guess Balloon Juice is all about just everyone getting along.
And for the record Cole, as much as I love Glenn Greenwald, some of his screeds can get teabaggerish in nature.
wilfred
@Sentient Puddle:
Here, asshole:
From the letter Kennedy and Dodd circulated to the members of the HELP Committee members:
It must have been ghost written by Jane Hamsher.
http://dodd.senate.gov/?q=node/5062
John Cole
@Rick Taylor: It is infuriating. One of the things that really hamstrung Obama was that he went to Copenhagen with nothing in hand because the Senate never did anything. I know by pointing that out I am just being an O-bot and making sure he is never to blame for anything, but it was widely reported.
However, when you are perpetual outrage mode, it is a nice convenient fact to skip.
Mnemosyne
@Mari:
No, it’s not, or Medicare wouldn’t be in the deep trouble that it is right now. Most of the rising cost is on the provider side, not the insurance side. Sticking it to the insurance companies does jack shit to fix the problem of providers raising their prices.
I know it feels real good to try and grind the insurance companies into the dirt, but they’re only about 10 percent of the cost problem and focusing all of your attention on that is idiotic.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mari:
Yes, true. Though since it is included in an overall deficit neutral bill, it shouldn’t cost the taxpayers, but again raises the question we have been fighting about lately.
Is it more important to help citizens in need, over concern or outrage of increasing profits from big business?
I haven’t been keeping up with efforts to end the ban on government negotiating prices with Pharm., but am pretty sure there will be efforts to do this in the fairly near future.
Tom Hilton
@Mari:
Sadly, no. What’s driving rising healthcare costs is actual healthcare costs; insurnace company profiteering is a tiny component of overall cost increases. And addressing healthcare costs is an extremely complicated matter, requiring multiple approaches targeting individual aspects of the problem. Which, by the way, is how the Senate bill tries to deal with it.
But of course it’s more satisfying to believe that everything can be solved by punishing the villains in the morality play, even if that doesn’t happen to be true.
Tom Hilton
@Mnemosyne: guess I owe you a Coke or something.
Sentient Puddle
@wilfred: But that doesn’t really prove your point. Going way back in the thread, the original point you made was:
Is it reasonable to interpret this as saying Kennedy would’ve gone the “public option or no bill” route? Because if so, that letter you linked doesn’t really say that, except in a rather specific interpretation.
Martian Buddy
Having noticed that the top headline was “Health Care Bill Advances,” I started my morning by heading off to the wingnut havens to
gawk at the trainwrecksee their reaction. And oh, what a reaction it was–a veritable smorgasbord of schadenfreude (Little Green Footballs has a sample of the comments on Hot Air for any fellow vultures who are interested.) Perhaps I over-imbibed; I had visions of a 2010 where every Republican primary was NY-23, dominated by crazed teabaggers shrieking “Coup de Etat!” and “treason!” and helping to get more Democrats elected. It was beautiful.Then I read through the overnight cloture thread and now I know that the circular firing squads will be busy on both sides next year.
Joy.Elie
@Mari:
Mari, you and many others wanted a revolution that would have removed the insurance industry and replaced it with government administration of health care. Understandable, but a huge change that in no way was ever going to happen given where our country has been over the last decade or more. I believe much of the anger around the PO is the displaced desire to dismantle the insurance industry — since most of the comments relate to the anger about paying them instead of the government — again, understandable but not particularly realistic to accomplish in one jump.
I am most concerned, however, in much of the discussion about the PO and how Obama “failed” again, is the real missing focus on getting everyone covered as a goal. Most of the angst on the left has been about who is getting paid and how unfair the mandate is because it “forces” everyone to participate — even though that was, I thought anyway, the number one goal — to cover everyone.
Ana Gama
But amazingly enough, the Senate bill is just about identical to what Obama campaigned on for health reform.
Alex S.
This whole situation isn’t all bad. In fact, having a consistently enraged activist left could make life a lot easier, especially as long as you can gain credibility by making hippies suffer. It recalibrates the overton window and centrist senators will have an easier time looking like centrists if the left is always enraged about something.
“Officially” I am opposed to the liberal firebreathing, but inofficially, I think it’s not that bad. As always, the trick is to keep the activists within your camp and energized but without real power to enforce their agenda. (And to clarify, I don’t disrespect the left. If it was up to me, I’d import the swedish or french system. It’s just that it’s going to take a lot of time to enact real change.)
Tim I
@kay: The ‘digital left’ blames Obama for everything. Senator Franken diaried in support of HCR at Daily Kos and the 2500 lefty nutballs who commented were mostly concerned how Obama had coerced their Liberal Senate heroes into supporting the bill. Some thought it might be mind control, of course.
Elie
@joe in oklahoma:
Joe:
He got the legislature to legislate — to do its job, not perfectly or all that we would have wanted, but its job. These folks in the legislature hadnt worked this hard on anything of this complexity in remembered history. I know, I know, you wanted him to just run it HIS way, even though you say you understand the role of the Executive and the Legislature, you then take it all back saying that he should have pushed his will using the “bully pulpit”, which he did in my opinion. But the “bully pulpit” has no inherent enforcement capability —
I consider getting the Congress to work a major victory that will be a plus plus in the future. Everything we have facing us will require the power of the Congress to inact — for example all the kvetching about financial regulatory reform. This would not be implemented by executive fiat.
You don’t obviously think that getting each branch of government to function appropriately is significantly important…
Tim I
@kay:
The ‘digital left’ blames Obama for everything. Senator Franken diaried in support of HCR at Daily Kos and the 2500 lefty nutballs who commented were mostly concerned how Obama had coerced their Liberal Senate heroes into supporting the bill. Some thought it might be mind control, of course.
Mari
@General Winfield Stuck:
It’s two sides of the same coin. There are so many citizens in need precisely because executive compensation and other forms of business profits are consuming an ever larger share of economic output. Prevent businesses from extracting 20% profit from the population and there will be many fewer citizens in need.
Every cent the health insurance industry makes in profit is a cent that does not go to providing health care. Every cent of profit denied to the industry is a cent that can go to providing care.
Decimating insurance industry profit margins is a necessary condition for serious HCR. Failing to constrain profits will not contain costs as the industry will simply raise prices–as they’ve already done in this HCR cycle–in order to keep profits constant in the face of reforms that allegedly constrain their way of doing business.
dadanarchist
C’mon, John, your criticizing the critics is getting just as tiresome as the criticism of Obama.
Klein was never on board the MUP-train, nor is she a Democrat, nor even a liberal.
Why wouldn’t she criticize Obama?
Sly
The stimulus was never supposed to completely transform American infrastructure to the tune of “the best public transit systems and smart grids in the world.” Building a high speed rail system and energy grid to replace our current ones, entirely, would have cost the entirety of the current stimulus package. Countries that have already done something along these lines already had very large public transit sectors, in terms of usage, or had geographies that made construction easier. Replacing Amtrak alone with something like a mag-lev system would have had a price tag in the hundreds of billions. I’m not opposed to that, but you’d have to do the same thing for other areas of the country to keep everyone happy. And that’s big, big bucks.
The point of the stimulus was to distribute investments and state aid across a broad spectrum of initiatives, to recoup lost GDP and mitigate job losses. In that respect, it wasn’t big enough. Probably should have been around 1.2 trillion. The auto-bailouts had much the same goal: prevent a major sector of the American economy from going under, and required each company to submit long-term plans for viability that included fuel efficiency. And I grow a bit tired of people conflating how the bank bailouts operated under Bush and how they’ve been operating under Obama.
I guess people forget that FDR was President for nearly six years before the entirety of the New Deal was fully implemented. Hell, quite a few of the major transportation infrastructure changes didn’t come around until after he died, and the first truly big proposal of the New Deal, NIRA (1932), was widely regarded as a failure and had to be replaced by the NLRA (1935).
I like Naomi, but I think expecting that kind of reform in less than a year is going way overboard. Why people keep forgetting that Roosevelt was President for 12 years, and had more false starts than Obama did, is beyond me.
Mari
@Midnight Marauder:
Wasn’t drug re-importation legislatively banned in either the H or S version of Liberman-Stupak? That’ll be hard to turn over by executive fiat.
In any case, re-importation is a dangerous red herring. If re-importation is allowed and wide-spread, the pharmaceutical industry will ram up drug prices in the rest of the world to US levels. This will devastate healthcare systems in the rest of the world and export the diseased American system globally.
Domestic cost controls–including weakening of patent protections–are necessary.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mari:
I think it is better to help seniors first, then take on negotiating for lower prices second. It will be on the books and saving lives. This fight is not be over with just this bill. Reform is a process constrained by political reality.
I do not hate big corporations. I do want them limited to respectable profit. I am just not willing to sacrifice the lives of innocents to continue that fight. That is liberal to me. And one that fights, on his own terms.
Tom Hilton
@Mari:
First time around, I was prepared to deal with this as good-faith ignorance. Repeating falsehoods after you have been corrected (more than once) makes you just another lying troll.
Sleeper
@Elie:
Of all the nonsensical Obama apologias making the rounds, this one is perhaps the most absurd. Regardless of whether one likes, loathes, or is indifferent towards the health insurance bill, the notion that Obama deliberately cut himself off at the knees as part of some long-term goal to restore parity between the executive and legislative branches of government is just laugh-out-loud ridiculous. If that’s the case, how many of Bush’s executive orders has he withdrawn? How many standing executive orders from all of his predecessors has he withdrawn? Why does he (for the most part) advocate keeping or even expanding the powers of the executive branch when it comes to domestic surveillance, etc.?
The fact of the matter is, the modern presidency plays a huge role in shaping legislation and getting it passed. How big a role can vary depending on the Congress involved and the president involved, but to suggest a president is helpless to affect the outcome, as many BJ commenters have done recently, is pretty ridiculous. And to suggest that a president, any president, would give up any but the most inconsequential and trivial powers of his office, not as the result of a court ruling or legislative act, but voluntarily? It’s naive beyond words.
And before anyone brings it up, I don’t find the fact that Obama taught constitutional law to be a compelling argument that he’s got a secret master plan to strip away fifty years’ worth of unlawfully accumulated power from the office he spent 800 million dollars obtaining. Politicians are collections of contradictory impulses. Hell, Nixon was a Quaker, that didn’t stop him from obliterating Southeast Asia.
Mnemosyne
@Mari:
Again, you’re completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of healthcare costs do not come from insurance. They come from providers. Constraining insurance companies’ profits will do absolutely nothing to rein in provider costs.
Gus diZerega
While it is definitely true that Obama has had a bunch of the most corrupt and incompetent Senators in American history to deal with, the problems he is having with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are not the result of their blaming him for the failings of others. Drew Westin is not Jane Hamsher, he is not Markos Moulitsis, he is not connected to the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and he is quite blunt on Obama over at Huffpost.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Little Dreamer:
Yes, and I should have said, “rear up and clap my hooves together.”
I know we cows generally don’t do that, but hell if Mister Ed can do it, I am willing to give it a try.
Ruemara
You know, I’m pretty fucking left. I’m progressive to the point of socia1ist. When people think bleeding heart lefty, they think of me. Pro-union, pro-gay, pro-woman, anti-corporate. I’m fine with most of the bill. WHY? Because I am a small minority and I know I am barely represented in the Congress. I know that once a starting stone has been place, building the actual American National Health Care Service ( I’ve already named it) will become much easier. Whining because it isn’t my GREAT SOCIALIZM LEFTY KILL GRANNY BABIES HEALTHCARE THAT IS FREE ALSO TOO will not help a damn person. Why Jane Hamsher isn’t putting out practical solutions like who’s in charge of sending the bill to conference, who to call, what changes should be added, etc, etc., I do not know. But despite the fact that she’s always seemed like someone I could agree with politically, I now find her to be another shrill attention seeker who is profiting off of the American ignorance of their own government.
Obama was always too right for me, but he was an effective compromise between where we were and where I’d like us to be. Same with the idiotic dems. Not great, but Lord, have you seen the alternatives. I can get somewhere, I can even, who knows, have a fricking job that pays a decent amount so I can afford to use my benefits. I can turn surviving into living again. I’ll take that and the devil take the purity people. Civil Rights took decades to get where we are now because people had to stand up and make it apply to real life. That’s what this HCR will require. & it won’t be Kos or Hamsher doing it, I can promise you that.
Tom Hilton
@Ruemara: you speak sense.
ricky
I think Obama’s biggest blown opportunity was not finding a country with a more appealing populace to lead.
Ruemara
@ricky:
taking that for my twitter feed
@Tom Hilton:
it’s my greatest failing besides not liking the jonas brothers.
Comrade Mary
Ezra takes apart Jane Hamsher’s arguments against the current Senate bill. He grants her a few points — mark of an honest debater — but otherwise shreds her nonsense.
Jim Once
@John Cole: Speaking as a lifelong Democrat, and one whose family sneeringly refers to as a socialist liberal radical – thank you. Exactly.
@donovong: And this.
FlipYrWhig
@ricky: I believe that deserves a “FTW.” /claps slowly and approvingly.
Elie
@General Winfield Stuck:
THIS says it
Elie
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
LOL
Elie
@Ruemara:
Wow — you say it clearly and I am very sympathetic/empathetic.
I too am what I would consider to be pretty left in my values. I have however been completely taken aback by the inability of the left to seize opportunity or know how to implement and take the handles over on this kind of big change.
Ruemara — this is the biggest thing that has happened to us legislatively in at least a generation or more. We have had ossified and not to a little extent, degenarate muscle in our legislature. That has to be built for us to do better and move to a more robut progressive capability and foothold.
I totally agree with your comment and celebrate your way of saying it both straightfowardly and also with heart.
Elie
@Sleeper:
These folks in the legislature hadnt worked this hard on anything of this complexity in remembered history
Today, a Democrati led legislature blocked a Republican filibuster to the HCR bill — they freakin stood up! (I acknowledge you think it wasnt enough)
I dont think this is small ball.
You are well within your rights to disagree but this is HUGE for us, in my opinion.
(PS — I fully acknowledge the role of the Executive in shaping legislation. You seem to focus on what the executive controls — and to me, what one considers control is squishier. This is not a black or white thing — more nuanced — and as I say, I acknowledge your point of view in the need for the Executive to shape legislation. Please acknowledge the importance of a functioning legislature)
YAY — representative (though imperfect) democracy!
Sleeper
@Elie:
I agree, and that is sort of my point. This Congress, or at least the leadership in the Senate (Harry Reid primarily) made it pretty clear on many many occasions that it was waiting for the White House to make clear where its priorities were in health care reform. There was a lot of frustration because the White House either committed to nothing, or sent out contradictory signals within days or hours of each other. Both Reid and Obama wanted to keep HCR at arms’ length I think. Both seemed to lack the courage of their convictions, at least with regards to making open declarations of what they wanted or what would be unacceptable.
I know the retort to that will be that Obama was being cagey and didn’t want to jeopardize the bill by making demands and then having his (presumed) bluff called. There is some truth to that, but that strategy has drawbacks too. If you ask for very little you’re not likely to be disappointed, just so long as you can get by on very little.
I hope everyone else is right on this. I hope the big problems will get fixed in conference, or maybe in the 112th Congress. I hope this isn’t seen as a huge giveaway to the insurance industry, and I hope by some miracle this actually does lower costs for health care. I just don’t see any of that happening. Now that this is locked in place, I think the CW will be “health care reform, rightly or wrongly, has been settled for this generation.” Even partisans for it won’t have the stomach to make another run at it.
I really would love to be wrong on this.
Remember November
just another crow on the wire. Cawing until they find something shiny, or roadkill.