It is probably worth pointing out that wishful thinking aside, if Coakley loses tomorrow, thirty million or more Americans will remain one slip on the ice and broken shoulder away from bankruptcy, with the alternatives being seeking more expensive and less thorough emergency room care with no follow-up rehab and costs passed on to all of us, or no treatment and debilitating injuries and pain in perpetuity.
You and I might think that is a big deal, but if you read enough left-wing blogs, it really is no big deal. If the bill fails, we can take Taibbi’s advice and just try again in 6-8 years. I mean really, the republicans aren’t much different from the Democrats, I’ve been told. Besides, won’t you feel better knowing that you didn’t sell out to immoral insurance agencies like Feingold and Sanders and the rest of the corporate whores?
No one said having firm principles was without pain, you know.
Task Force Ripper
King of Strawmen – take a bow please.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah, this’ll swing ’em over to yer side. How about a little “take it all bitches!” at the end just to sweeten the pie?
scudbucket
Reconciliation, baby. RECONCILIATION!
General Winfield Stuck
You keep pouring it on dude. And I love it. Maybe this thread will go to 900 comments thrashing to and fro “why does Cole hate us progressive so much”
Maude
Hey, what’s 6 to 8 years of chronic pain? Man up and soldier on.
mk3872
Or, the Dem leadership & WH can grow a set of balls and stop the Repubs from fillibustering EVERYTHING requiring the Senate to rule only by SUPERMAJORITY.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Kill the bill! I refuse to subsidize evil corporations!” Jane Hamsher said as she filled up her gas tank on her way to buy Monsanto-grown groceries.
General Winfield Stuck
LOL – and the usual suspects show up early thirty.
demkat620
I can’t wait till Jane Hmsher tells us that we will win on HCR by losing the congress in the fall.
My party always does stupid things, but this is by far the most stupid I have ever seen.
You think they are spineless now, wait until Wednesday morning and see 25 of them switch.
Good god. We won’t need a vote in November, half of them will just walk across and hand the keys to Boehner.
JGabriel
The plurality of whom will be Southern Republicans arguing that they seldom get ice.
(Which doesn’t justify letting the bill fail.)
.
Jesse
Congress could still pass the healthcare bill before Brown in sworn in.
They’d just have to have the will to do it.
Notorious P.A.T.
In what respect, Charlie?
ihop
soylent green is people, it’s people…..
Task Force Ripper
@General Winfield Stuck: Shorter Stuck:
“Slurp, slurp, slurp..whuh? I’ll ansther yoo in a minuth when I’m donth.”
Notorious P.A.T.
That would be very nice.
John Cole
@Task Force Ripper:
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Aww, poor babies. Feelings hurt?
Task Force Ripper
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Any more questions?
mai naem
I pitched in the Coakley’s ActBlue page you set up and I don’t want her to lose and I understand that Brown is a teabagger etc. etc. but the Dem leadership has sucked. Blame it on whoever – Baucus, Reid, ObamaRamen . The point is that they didn’t sell a/the plan. They diddled around and lost at least 4 months. This thing should have been passed in the early fall. And BTW when you don’t slap around people like Lieberdick, Baucus and Nelson you look a like a weak wishy washy girlyman.
Joe Beese
The Party can not fail. It can only be failed.
If Coakley loses, it’s because Jane Hamsher wants Americans to be deprived of health care and commanded her legion of zombies to make it so.
It can’t be because the voters of Massachusetts saw no reason to cast a ballot for yet another (the latest in a very long line) shitty Democratic candidate already bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry.
Mary G
The Democrats are cutting their nose off to spite their face.
Task Force Ripper
@John Cole: Now that you mention it, yes. I could use a nice BJ which would make me feel a little better.
scudbucket
John, if Coakley fails to win this thing, it speaks volumes about how the Democrats govern, not so much about failed purity tests.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: You and I both know that if John has AFLAC he can pretty much be retiring by now.
John Cole
@Joe Beese: Still no diary privileges to cross-post emo diaries at the GOS?
Health care and Obama are both polling ten points above Coakley- if she loses, you can’t trot out that weak bullshit.
Chyron HR
Goooooood, this blog keep insulllllllllllllting me! If only there was someplace on the internet I could go where people agree with my political views!
Zuzu's Petals
@Joe Beese:
And thus voted for an incompetent GOP candidate who vows to vote down health care reform, among other things.
slag
Thank you for this, John. If Coakley loses tomorrow, it will be two steps back for anyone interested in seeing some progress happen in this country.
For starters, health care reform–such as it is–will be further jeopardized. Second, the message will be–and anyone who doubts this is a bleeding moron–that this Administration has overreached and must now become more conservative. And Congressional Dems will not ignore that message.
Those are two steps too far, as far as I’m concerned. I wish more people calling themselves progressives would get their heads around the stakes here. Because they are, indeed, quite high.
JenJen
The most frustrating thing about any special election is that no matter the stakes, you just have to sit and watch helplessly. I’ve made phone calls, I’ve donated money, but I can’t vote, and that’s what matters.
I was sure in the end that some Dem would emerge to beat Ah-nuld. I was positive Fritz Mondale would somehow beat Norm Coleman and hold onto Wellstone’s seat. So I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Fucking Tweety isn’t helping with his, “my money’s on Curt Schilling and Doug Flutie to pull this out, not those guys on the other side” crap. He’s pretty enamored of multi-millionaire professional athletes and their appeal to the regular Joe. It’s just your typical Tweety, really, but it’s more grating than usual on days like this.
/vent
Mari
Biden has started talking about reigning in the Senate filibuster in the event the Democrats fall to 58 seats. Strangely, this kind of talk was completely unthinkable when it could have been used to pass something better than the Lieberman-Stupak Forced Pregnancy and Insurance Industry Bailout Act.
Tell me again why the WH should be given the benefit of the doubt about pushing for serious HCR.
General Winfield Stuck
@Task Force Ripper: That’s not too bad. Maybe you can give lessons to fuckhead?
Notorious P.A.T.
@Task Force Ripper:
If only it was your pain you were prepared to endure, rather than that of other people. Then you would have a point.
Mnemosyne
I see that the “kill the bill” crowd has managed to lose Digby. But I guess she’s just another mindless O-bot like Bernie Sanders, right?
Brachiator
The Democrats didn’t sell it. Maybe they couldn’t have.
I’ve heard anti-health reform folks say, “We don’t want no sozul ized medicine!”
I’ve heard the progressives scream “the plan ain’t sozul ist enough!”
The Democrats claimed that they would cover everyone. Obama promised that existing coverage would not change, and then come up with insurance mandates and taxes on supposed Cadillac plans.
Portability and pre-existing illness coverage got lost in the fog.
The Republicans threw up some opposition but mainly just had to sit back and watch the Democrats screw up.
The Democrats didn’t clearly spell out and clearly sell the benefits of their proposal.
And here’s some simple math. What would it cost to have the 30 million uncovered do what most of them already do, that is go to the emergency room? At in some extra for people who sit and suffer because they have no coverage.
If the proposed plan is not cheaper than emergency room usage, it is a no-sell.
If you can’t force lower overall costs in exchange for mandates and higher taxes for Cadillac plans, it is a no-sell.
The plan stank even though it was not nearly as bad as hard core progressives insisted.
But the plan did require changes in the way we think about health care, just as Medicare required a re-think.
I would hope that the plan still passes and is improved. But if it doesn’t work out that way, it is not the end of the world.
And I don’t want to hear crap about the false promise of single payer uber alles.
beltane
You are a good man, John Cole, better than many of those professional “progressives” out there who have become totally indifferent to the suffering of their fellow Americans.
Mari
As far as straw men go, there’s nothing in the Lieberman-Stupak Forced Pregnancy and Insurance Industry Bailout Act to say that slipping on the ice won’t result in medical bankruptcy at a lower rate than it does already. Nothing whatsoever.
Insurance companies are still free to arbitrarily and capriciously deny claims whenever they see fit.
AB
If the bill dies, on the bright side, companies wont make a ton of money!
Oh, wait.
Task Force Ripper
@Notorious P.A.T.: I want HCR to pass. But I don’t need some people using obvious bullshit strawmen to tell me what I think either.
Maybe you do?
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: By you? C’mon, with yer history yer lucky to hit the toilet when you piss. And I don’t mean by falling on it, Grace.
SiubhanDuinne
@Maude:
Fixed the spelling.
Lev
@Mari: Nuking the filibuster with 60 votes = difficult to explain. People will figure you should be able to break a filibuster with 60.
Nuking the filibuster with 59 votes = more plausible. Actually, that’s the best number with which to fight it. Making the argument that a bill should become law with 59 votes is doable.
SGEW
I’ve got a bad feeling about this thread.
Notorious P.A.T.
Thank you. Anyone who thinks Republicans aren’t more corporate-friendly than Democrats should just stay home on Tuesday and hit themself on the head with a garden hose.
@mai naem:
I agree except with the part about John C being a girly man. He threw out his pain medicine, for cripe’s sake.
General Winfield Stuck
@SiubhanDuinne: FTW!
Just Some Fuckhead
BTW, do we know Taibbi is one of “those” progressives? Or are we just throwing him in there to maximize page hits?
Task Force Ripper
@General Winfield Stuck:
It’s pretty obvious he’s already pretty experienced at breaking you down like an old shotgun. Don’t think he needs any tips on how to punk your ass.
Louise
The Dem leadership has been pathetic, the left-of-the-left self-righteous, the right wing shameless, and the media coverage appalling…but still — what the f*ck is wrong with Massachusetts voters? Are they seriously going to put Brown in Kennedy’s seat, either by staying home or actually voting for him? WTF??
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW: War tiz hell. Ever been hit by flying Cheeto?
Notorious P.A.T.
@Task Force Ripper:
Since when it is a straw man to point to a real person who really holds the views attributed to them? ie Matt Taibbi. Now maybe no one at all agrees with Matt on this issue, in which case John shouldn’t suggest they do. On the other hand. . .
John Cole
So Cornerstone and JSF got no argument, just insults.
Tell us, JSF- who will be to blame tomorrow if Coakley loses?
General Winfield Stuck
@Task Force Ripper: Fuckhead is my very own Huckleberry. He know that.
gbear
Christ with a shoulder cast, seems like every comment thread turns into a progressive piss farm now.
If I lived in MA, I know what I’d do because I’ve done it here in MN a number of times. I would wake up tomorrow morning and go to the voting booth. I would hold my nose and vote for the Democrat because it is SO FUCKING EASY to see where each party is at.
I have held my nose and voted for republicans before, but NONE of those republicans were as obviously scummy as fucking Brown.
Choosing not to vote in this (and in the broader sense, any) election is a collosal act of both apathy and ego.
GO VOTE TOMORROW.
General Winfield Stuck
Walla! the sneaky little bugger.
And yer my Huckleberry too Task Force Bottle Worm
Chad S
Its not dead if Brown wins. The Dems have to have a deal on a compromise bill by asap and vote on it within 100 hours. Or the House can just pass the Senate bill(and use reconciliation to basically create the compromise bill in the budget in 10 days). It would be helpful if the election goes to a recount either way, which would delay anyone’s seating at least a week longer than normal.
JGabriel
@Lev:
Especially if you need 60 votes to do it.
Wait, what?
.
Jim
Cathy Donahue.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: If John had AFLAC he’d be in here asking us how to sew booties for a duck.
Amok92
Cole, how many people died because you denied them insurance by voting Rethugican all those years? Maybe Nate can come up with a rough estimate?
General Winfield Stuck
@Chad S: at least ten days before absentee ballots can be counted and the results certified. And dems control the levers of power in Mass. There is time, unless Joe from Kokomo goes all wolly again.
edit- plus with dems ping ponging the final version between house and senate, it will eliminate several procedural votes in the senate by bypassing a formal conference.
gwangung
Mehhh……I wish folks wouldn’t play “more progressive than thou”.
Did that 35 years ago, and, in the meantime, a third of the folks went totally apathetic, a third went yuppie neo-con and a third of us decided that what we were doing was so silly when we could have spent that energy actually making things better.
baxie
I’ve got zero insurance now because I can’t afford it.
I fail to see how mandated junk insurance is an improvement in my situation.
Here’s what happened to my mom-
buys insurance as a private citizen at a ridiculous price.
Pays premiums for several years of generally good health.
Contracts an expensive to treat form of cancer.
Is ‘fired’ by her insurer because she had breast cancer in the 80’s.
Dies broke.
Does that play out any differently under the senate bill?
Maybe her premiums are less, but she’d still get fired and be financially ruined by the illness, assuming she survived.
This whole thing is a shit sandwich and anyone who wants me to take a big bite can fuck right off.
Cat Lady
For what it’s worth, I just got back from a Coakley rally with several hundred enthusiastic and clear eyed Dems. I think the turnout is going to be fairly high. The GOTV people are out in force, but it’s going to be close.
The stakes were discussed by every speaker. The rally was loudest about health care, and the head of the MA AFL-CIO was terrific. His folks are out in force for Coakley. Several people who are registered independents were commenting on the weird push poll calls they were getting. It’s the same old Republican bullshit fearmongering ratfucking we discuss here endlessly, but they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. The independents hold the key, and independent women will probably make the difference. This is what worries me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: I really don’t know, John. I think there’s a fuckton of missed opportunities that have gone into the last year to get us to the point where a Democrat could very well lose Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts.
Maybe we should have been more conservative?
bayville
I am confident Coakley will win now that Clinton and Obama have rallied the troops much like they did for Corzine in New Jersey.
Once she wins, then those
304045 million people will be able to get their comprehensive health insurance bennies beginning yesterday.Meanwhile, in financial news, health insurance stocks continue to “stumble”.
Davis X. Machina
You’ve got to take the long view. And winning isn’t everything — there’s covering the spread.
When the present effort fails — and it must fail — we’ll just come back stronger, this time with single-payer.
Of course, that will be defeated, too, but it will be a much more righteous loss.
And is there anything more satisfying that that? I don’t think so.
I figure that in thirty years, after two more defeats, the bill that gets defeated that time will actually create an American National Health Service, staffed by civil servants, with bricks and mortar belonging to the state — well, actually only call for the creation of, because that bill just got defeated, but you catch my drift…
Now losing a vote on health care reform that sweeping — I can’t imagine how any defeat could be more righteous than that one. That’s quality losing.
But losing a vote that big lies far in the future. We have to start small, by losing votes on less comprehensive reform plans now, and gradually increase the scale of the plans that get defeated.
Now some people like John will carp, and say “What about the unensured and uninsurable today?” That’s just a lack of vision. Any future defeated plan would of course also provide for a National Day of Commemoration for all the un- and underinsured who died in the meantime, in recognition of their completely avoidable suffering. ‘Health-care Heroes’, we can call them.
I’m sure they realize the place their sacrifice plays in our inexorable march towards a truly optimal solution to the problem of health care, and won’t be resentful.
Do you think they’d like to be on a stamp? Or is something tasteful and not too showy — a monument, but not too big — on the Mall in Washington more appropriate?
Chad S
@General Winfield Stuck: Yeah, the target date for seating either Coakley or Brown is Feb 5th. The Dems promised to put the bill online for 72 hours before a vote and they’re about 24-48 hours away from a deal. They have to move fast, but the bill most certainly isn’t dead.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@John Cole: No wait, which one is Corner Stone?
eemom
by what cruel twist of fate did I click on this thread and find the same useless idiots I left at the bottom of the 902 thread?
Whatever. This is the only topic that matters at the moment. Coakley MUST win tomorrow.
jacy
@SGEW:
I thought I would try get in early and say something brilliant before it totally devolves, but I don’t have anything to say that John hasn’t said better already.
Except for maybe that I should finally cease to be amazed by how fucking stupid people are. Sigh.
Keith G
From late last Spring, I wondered why Teddy wasn’t doing more to politically arrange for his passing. I had an Uncle die of that type of brain cancer and after the inaugural, I was sure Kennedy wouldn’t see the next Autumn.
I imagined that there would have been a bit more candidate R&D particularly in light of the narrow margins. I thought it was a priority, why didn’t others?
If Coakley goes down, I think it says less about Obama’s actions as chief executive than it says about Obama as head of the Democratic Party. And I that case, I certainly expected better.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Davis X. Machina: It always, always bears repeating:
Nach
NixonReaganBushPalin, uns!Sly
Don’t be myopic, Cole. All your talk about the uninsured is just DLC/ObamaRahma/Blue Dog propaganda designed to take our eyes off the real prize, as Davis alluded too.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chad S: Agreed, they have to move fast, but they have all the cards in DC and Mass. Joementum is the only wildcard, really. And if push comes to shove, someone could raise a point of order, or objection to a Brown seating that could delay things long enough. If push came to shove. They know the stakes involved and have been working all thru the break to prime this thing for final votes.
scudbucket
@General Winfield Stuck: But Coakley loss will also incline conservadems to rethink their initial votes in support of the bill. Lots of hurdles here, not least of which is to get some house progressives to support the Senate excise tax.
AhabTRuler
@eemom: Wait, weren’t you one of the useless idiots at the bottom of that thread?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@bayville: The stocks argument isn’t quite fair. If you compare the health insurance company charts against the DJIA, they more or less correlate.
Chad S
@General Winfield Stuck: That would be bad politics. In that scenario, it would be better if the House just passed the Senate bill, make the changes in the budget in a couple weeks via reconciliation.
gbear
@Davis X. Machina: yes. perfect.
Notorious P.A.T.
@baxie:
I’m sorry about your mom. What we do with this bill is: pass it, then expand its subsidies as soon after as possible until eventually the government is buying everyone insurance.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
Just get Alan Grayson to read their names during morning speeches. That’ll be enough.
John S.
You’re already doing a pretty good imitation of a conservative by ignoring reality and pretending that a progressive bill could have magically passed the Senate by a simple majority.
Keith G
@baxie: No you are wrong. The mandates exist because the insurance companies can not “fire” customers. Money can still still be an issue but there will be help available.
Your mom’s experience is in no way instructive in this case.
Midnight Marauder
@Amok92:
Good one. No one has played the “YOU USED TO BE A RETHUGLICAN, JOHN COLE, SO YOUR OPINION DOESN’T MEAN SHIT!” card in a good 18 minutes. Let’s keep that high-quality discourse moving, everyone!
Joe Beese
@ Cole-24
If you’re prepared to explain why: 1) Coakley isn’t a shitty candidate, and/or 2) How she’s not bought and paid for by Big Pharm, despite their having flocked to become “hosts” of her fundraiser at $10K+ per, you get on down with your bad self.
Who knows? Maybe it will re-energize the de-energized base and sweep Coakley into “Ted’s seat” [“Mind the ass-groove, ma’am. He had 46 years to wear that in.”] from where she can bring hope to millions of uninsured in their Dickensian wretchedness.
Napoleon
@JGabriel:
You don’t need 60 votes, just a simple majority.
Mumphrey
I’m sick to death of liberals screaming about how a “real” liberal would vote for Brown tomorrow. But then maybe I’m the one who has it all wrong. I mean, well, we can’t reform the party until we all vote for Ralph Nader and let the Republicans win. Then they’ll be sorry. Then they’ll know they can’t take us for granted any longer. Then George W. Bush II (otherwise known as Barack Obama) will know he’d better listen to us next time. Oh, I guess it’ll be too late by then, but, hey, won’t it feel good?
This whole mess saddens me beyond belief. I liked it when I thought that only the right-wingers were crazy. It was bad enough when some of Hillary Clinton’s fans lost it in 2008, but they seemed like a small group (and I think the truly crazy ones were a small group). But now I hear so many liberals saying it’s better to let people go 10 or 15 years without health insurance, just because they don’t like some things about this bill, which to be fair, is a truly crappy bill, but it’s a foot in the door, which is worth it to me. Besides, it’ll help some people now, which I guess a lot of liberals at the Daily Kos don’t care about, but I do.
I can’t believe so few Americans seem to understand basic civics. Who said running a democratic country of 300 million people was easy? It isn’t. It takes a long time to turn things around in a system like ours, and it takes a lot of work. We aren’t going to mend everything in a year. In all likelihood, there will still be an awful ot to do at the end of Obama’s term, even if he presides for 8 years.
Democracy isn’t easy, and it isn’t always fun. We’re going to lose a lot of the time, and even when we “win”, we aren’t all going to get everything we want. We could keep working, but I guess that’s just too hard for a lot of us, which is sad. It makes me think of Bush in one of the debates in 2004, whining that being president is “hard”. Well, yeah, I guess it is hard. And so is living in a representative democracy. It asks a lot of us: dedication; a good bit of selflessness; a willingness to get up off the floor after you’ve been knocked down and try again; an understanding that democracy isn’t a magical elf who will grant you every wish you have right away; patience…
Maybe that’s too much to ask of some of us, but it saddnes me to believe that.
scav
@jacy: yup. 1 2 & immediate attack of the crazies. Forget going galt, I’m wandering off to find Wonko the Sane for a bit.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Frankly, it really isn’t a huge deal to the 95% of us who don’t live in Massachusetts. I prefer Coakley and all, but if the system is so utterly dependent on a single politician out of the five hundred and some in Congress, to the point that catastrophe looms thirty hours from now, then the fucker really does need to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch, regardless of which party is in power. Somehow, though, I don’t get the sense that this blog is the hot spot for the revolutionary left.
My question is, who will the mainstream libs/progs blame this time? Nader isn’t running (a Libertarian is, though). Hamsher and some of her cohorts are endorsing Coakley. So who blew it?
John S.
Bullshit.
If Coakley goes down, it will be because she went on vacation for the month of December and ran a shitty campaign that didn’t even attempt to reach out to voters until a week before the election.
It has fuck all to do with Obama.
The Raven
Or perhaps, spending money they don’t have for health insurance they can’t use.
I still hope Coakley wins, though, if only because Brown is toxic.
Notorious P.A.T.
Well then, we’ll just drive them into retirement so Repbulicans get their seats! sigh. . .
General Winfield Stuck
@scudbucket: That is a valid point. But CC’rs know the extraordinary circumstances of a special election a year out from a new administration and that Obama still has a 60 percent approval in Mass, lending more credence to this election not being some harbinger.
And weighed against the consequences of failure to deliver on dems and Obama’s signature issue, I don’t think it will make a difference if Brown wins./
But there is Holy Joe.
@Chad S: Yes, it would be, and I think there is about no chance of it happening. Prolly shouldn’t even have mentioned it. But it is a possibility, and the odds are this will be a close election either way.
HCR will pass, I am confident.
Uriel
@Task Force Ripper:
Oooh! Wait! I have one!
Do you actually not know what the term “straw man” means, or is it just that it’s easier to keep throwing it out there when someone says something you don’t like, as opposed to actually addressing the issue?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Amok92:
lolz
How many more people will die because John wants to continue to flog the prog war?
glocksman
I have my reservations about the compromise, but I’m not opposed to passing the modified bill.
If for some reason the Senate bill makes it into law unchanged, I won’t vote Republican in 2010 nor will I refuse to vote Democratic on the Federal level*.
But I won’t donate money nor will I do any of the GOTV work I did in 2008.
Of course even if I were inclined to do so, all of my coworkers that I convinced to vote Obama because of the McCain insurance tax plan would laugh my ass out of the plant.
Maggie Mahar and other opponents of the ‘cadillac tax’ are more convincing to me than the proponents of the tax.
*(the local Dems are even bigger crooks than the local Repubs and that’s saying something)
mk3872
I just do not understand how a president’s agenda can be said to “hang in the balance” when his own party controls the WH, Senate & House? That will STILL be the case after tomorrow’s election …
gwangung
Pretty much. That’s because building shit up after the revolution is a lot harder than what we’re doing now (what? you think we’re the only ones with Bright Ideas on how to get things done after everything faw down and go boom?)
Davis X. Machina
Jeezus, people, think BIG!
Think win-win!
Coakley pulls it out, and HCR goes down to defeat anyways.
Everybody stays happy. You can get it if you really want.
Michael
Cheney/Hamsher 2012
Ralph Nader can crank out the bumper stickers in a greasy basement on an old mimeograph, they can be pasted on with flour and water onto old foreign beaters.
The bumper stickers will be great.
Obama = Bush
Rahm’s Dingo Ate My Baby
We Killed the Bill and Love America
Democrats Suck
Amok92
Good job the Juan Cole-ification of anyone who disagrees with you on HCR is complete, some things never change ;)
booferama
“I certainly hope Martha Coakley wins in Massachusetts, her opponent is a neanderthal.”
–Jane Hamsher, today
Just so you know.
John Cole
@Joe Beese: I’m pretty sure I think Coakley is a shitty candidate.
And you know who I blame for that? Not me. Not Rahm, not Obama. But the Democrats who live in Massachussetts and chose her 2 to 1 over Capuano.
I mean, I know those facts get in the way of your alt.reality of what happened, but it is what it is. They chose a shitty candidate who ran a shitty election in a special election in an off year that always provides institutional advantaged to the party out of power.
Not because Rahmbama is tongue-bathing big Pharm.
Notorious P.A.T.
In hopes of lightening the mood a little, here’s something I found that made me laugh (it’s about cats):
Link
bayville
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Au contrare, I think it validates my point. The many components that comprise the healthcare sector aren’t exactly sweating this pending health insurance legislation (see chart).
Notable components: Health care plans (up 52%, 2009); Generic drugs (up 72%); Specialized health services (up 29%) and Hospitals (up 79%).
John S.
Yes, clearly this is evident by the actual facts of how the Senate has been operating lately.
/eyeroll
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? I realize that the gridlock in the Senate is a bastardization of how things are supposed to work, but pretending that it doesn’t take 60 votes to accomplish anything in the Senate right now is sheer stupidity.
Wishing away an untenable situation by pretending it doesn’t exist is work best left to Republicans (see Global Warming), although I realize that the line between them and progressives has been rather blurry as of late.
freelancer
@SGEW:
I can haz fractious?
Davis X. Machina
She must have seen polls we haven’t. Coming in at the last minute, like Han Solo while Luke was running the gauntlet on the Death Star.
Just Some Fuckhead
@booferama:
Well, fuck, now we gotta oppose Coakley to stay consistent. Jane is a wily one, I’ll give her that.
mr. whipple
I’ve made this point many times, because my wife and I could be such people.
I’ve had commenters on blogs say, essentially, ‘sorry, it sucks to be you, but there’s a bigger point here.’
gwangung
Correlation does not mean causation. Your point is moronic. And I try not to use that word so freely these days.
Sly
@Mari:
Come on. You can’t fool us.
We all know the name of the bill is the Emanuel-Gruber Death to Howard Dean Act of 2010.
beltane
@John Cole: Massachusetts has a closed primary, which in these northeastern Democratic machine states tends to reward hacks over more exciting politicians.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sly:
This sir, is a keeper!!
AnotherBruce
If Coakley goes down, it will be because she went on vacation for the month of December and ran a shitty campaign that didn’t even attempt to reach out to voters until a week before the election.
This, if it’s important right now, before the election, to find somebody to blame.
Meanwhile, can we stop kicking the fuck out of each other and see how this actually turns out?
Davis X. Machina
I’m concerned. I looked it up on thomas.loc.gov and one of the co-sponsors of the legislation was The Man (‘D’-At Large).
Uriel
@baxie:
Yes. This is specifically addressed in the bill. It is, in fact, one of it’s major selling points.
bayville
@gwangung:
Brilliant, detailed analysis on your part. Can’t argue with that logic.
Head back into sand. Nothing to see here, now move along.
Demo Woman
Will the number of comments on this post exceed the Glenn post?
May I suggest that we all just take a deep breath.
Just Some Fuckhead
@mk3872:
Because of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
daryljfontaine
@booferama:
Guess she looked down at her Mumia sweatshirt and walked back the crazy a little bit.
I haven’t had the stomach to look in at the Large Naderon Collider that is FDL, but have her commenters accused her of treason and/or being a corporate sellout yet?
D
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Amen to that. The Democrats either decided that they could fall back on party insider games as usual or foolishly believed that some mystical demographic shift meant that they didn’t have to bother with fielding good candidates anymore or having candidates do any actual, you know, campaigning.
And now they may get kicked in the butt.
And when was the last time that a candidate for high office foolishly believed that she was magically entitled to the office, that none of her challengers stood a realistic chance of even approaching her high poll numbers, and that no one would even dare try to contest her inevitable victory.
PUMA Points to you if you answered Hillary Clinton.
I guess the Democrats just never learn.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
I actually had some hope when things like DailyKos and ActBlue first came along that maybe — just maybe — liberals had learned from our mistakes and had finally realized that we were going to have to put in some work to get “more and better Democrats” after 30 years of Republican dominance.
But apparently that was haaaard work so now our big plan is to stay home and sit on our asses — again — while the teabaggers go out and sign up to be precinct leaders so they can work their way up through the ranks and take over the party from the inside.
No wonder they’ve been kicking our asses for 30 years.
Ailuridae
@baxie:
Does that play out any differently under the senate bill?
Maybe her premiums are less, but she’d still get fired and be financially ruined by the illness, assuming she survived.
Yes it does play out differently under the Senate bill. She’s never dropped, she has a maximum out of pocket annual and lifetime expense, etc.
Keith G
@John S.: Hello John S.
Maybe I might have been more explicit. So, I will try again.
R&D: Identify and build up a candidate that has the willingness, ability, and desire to be a winner. Mentor that candidate, by the short hairs if necessary, if her/his compass seems a bit off.
This is what political parties and their leader do. Its what they must be good at if they are to succeed.
My point was that given so much lead time (almost two years since a terminal diagnosis), Coakley seems (by even your admission) to be a week candidate.
Seems like Team Democrat might have made a mistake or two. Who is the leader of Team Democrat? That is where the buck stops.
BombIranForChrist
Yeah, this blog is starting to rub me the wrong way a little with its knee-jerk anti-activist stink. Are you thinking of switching again, John?
If the Dems had listened the activists and actually had the balls to tell the Republicans to fuck themselves, this bill would have been passed a long time ago. But instead, the Dems did all the sensible and practical navel gazing and now people are fucked.
It’s pretty shitty (and tired) for you to tie the fact that people are going to be fucked out of healthcare to the antics of the activists. You are starting to sound like a broken record and Broder to boot. Give it a rest.
– not an activist
Mnemosyne
@booferama:
I guess getting a couple of thousand e-mails unsubscribing from the FDL list because of her cozying up to Grover Norquist and Fox News made her stop and think for a minute about how people are going to regard her if Coakley loses. Too bad it’s too little, too late.
jeffreyw
Blah blah blah…
Think of this as an intervention.
Amaliada
Actually, John I’m really disappointed that you didn’t use the occasion of this posting to talk about Jeralyn Merritt over at TalkLeft who has been encouraging her readers to vote against Martha Coakley because she dislikes some of the cases that Coakley prosecuted.
I know that Jane and Firedoglake are very high on your list of folks you have no truck for, but giving Jeralyn a pass has seemed out of character since it is more likely that Coakley may be defeated (I sure hope not) than that the health care bill will be scrapped in favor of a “do over.”
Ailuridae
@The Raven:
And you show up to spout bull shit again. This is always fun. Should I post the CBPP article on what the maximum amount each person/family will have to pay up to 400% of the poverty level?
Comrade Jake
What I struggle to understand is the “logic” that next time, say 15 years or so down the road, the HCR bill will be more progressive. I’m pretty sure the current bill is quite a bit more conservative than Hillarycare, no?
So what happens next time? The bill fines health insurance companies $100M per year? That will be full of win by comparison. Fer sure, dude.
Comrade Kevin
@daryljfontaine:
HA!
Sly
What does that even mean?
Sen. Reid: Hey Mitch.
Sen. McConnell: Yeah, Harry?
Sen. Reid: FUCK YOU, BUDDY!
Sen. McConnell: Well played, sir. I guess I’ll just give up and go home now.
Sen. Reid: Give my best to Linda and the family.
MikeJ
@Keith G: You’ve never actually worked for or even in the Democratic party have you? Do you know what the state party does when national comes around telling them what to do? Do you know what the county, city, ward and precinct officers do when state, county, city or ward officers try telling them what to do?
The Democratic party is not a top down “do what we tell you” party. It is a party of consensus and cajoling.
Uriel
@Sly: FTW. Well played, internet personage of undetermined gender.
SIA
I’ll say the same thing I said here last summer. There IS going to be a health care bill signed by the president. That bill is not going down.
Cat Lady thanks for the update.
beltane
@Amaliada: I’m not sure Jeralyn Merritt was given a pass. It was more like she was forgotten.
mr. whipple
Nothing. Just the usual tripe of people that can’t count to 60.
baxie
@Ailuridae:
the senate bill doesn’t place any meaningful limitations on rescission, sorry.
General Winfield Stuck
@Amaliada: Cole is sweet on Jeralyn. nuff said. Prolly too much
Comrade Jake
Does TalkLeft even exist anymore? I’ve been seeing BTD here so often I’d assumed he was just tired of speaking to himself only over there.
Jim
@BombIranForChrist:
Which Dems would have told the Republicans to go fuck themselves? Bayh? Lincoln? Landrieu? Nelson? Feinstein? Both of my Senators, Bennet and Udall, joined Bayh’s Senate version of Blue Dogs before getting a shitstorm of emails. Tom Carper? Robert Byrd? Bill Nelson? Tim Johnson? Byron Dorgan? Claire “Silly Stuff” McCaskill? Kent “Entitlement Commision” Conrad? Mark “Evolution is Bunk” Pryor? Max Baucus? Jim Webb? Jon Tester?
Just typing out those names, I’m surprised that even this bill, that I don’t much like, got through.
nepat
@booferama: well, that was certainly helpful – waiting until the day before the election to release that thunderous call to action. Seems to me like maybe Hamsher is feeling a little pressure herself.
btw – that Greenwald post from yesterday was like one of those old 60 Minutes exposes, only unfolding in real time. The Hamsher/Greenwald PAC donates money to Ron Paul. Progressives!
John S.
@Keith G: Hello Keith G.
Martha Coakley is not a candidate that would have or could have been mentored by Obama. She is a long-time establishment candidate that obviously thought she could cruise to victory and then only reached out for help when the shit hit the fan.
That is not Obama’s fault.
As head of the party, it is Obama’s job to shape the agenda, push the agenda and help get candidates elected that will support that agenda. It is not his job to win the election for those candidates – that job is up to them. He can (and has in this case) help the candidate by campaigning for them, but there really isn’t much he can do beyond that as far as getting them elected.
Coakley was selected by the Democratic voters of Massachusetts to be their candidate. Obama does not have mind control over them. The outcome of the election falls squarely on 1) the voters and 2) Coakley herself.
There are plenty of things we can fault Obama with as far as being head of the Democratic party is concerned, but this is not one of them.
John Cole
@BombIranForChrist:
Good, God, no. I’m hear to stay. And I’m not anti-activist at all. I’m anti-activists doing self-defeating things. You know when all these inter-party fights would be good? THE LAST TEN YEARS WHEN YOU WERE OUT OF POWER. Now, you all get in power and it is like a three stooges episode, but with thirty stooges, each representing a different special interest within the coalition, all beating each other up with folding chairs and rubber chickens to get to the front of the line, screaming that the admin is not doing enough to keep you happy, ignoring everything Dems have actually accomplished this year, all while the Republicans and Ben Nelson are holding a gun to the President.
And I mentioned no names in this bill- why are you all interpreting it as an attack on Jane?
Just Some Fuckhead
@jeffreyw: I think of it as ritual abuse of fat people. :)
baxie
as specifically relates to my mom:
ds
I’m not convinced the Senate health bill is dead if Coakley loses. This isn’t a fucking referendum. It’s a Senate race.
219 Democrats in the House have already voted for a more liberal bill. There are several more Democrats who are planning on retiring who won’t care about their reelection prospects and you could get to switch over.
The Democrats appeared to be fucked either way, but, would you rather face the Republican attack ad screaming:
or
In the former case, Republicans will just be able to make up any fabrications about the bill they want, and there’s no way to disprove them. But if the bill passes, people will see that death panels and “government takeover” didn’t really arise, and you’ll have real benefits that you can tout to voters.
Cathie from Canada
Jon Walker at Firedoglake writes “If Coakley loses in Massachusetts, I don’t see how health care reform passes without reviving reconciliation, and, by default, the public option.”
I think they are living in a dream world.
If Coakley loses, then health care reform in the United States doesn’t pass at all.
Thanks to the teaparty wingnuts last summer and the progressive push-back this winter, HRC is already barely alive. Reid and Pelosie stitched together a very small majority as it is.
If Coakley loses, her loss will be blamed on HCR and the whole initiative will again be radioactive for your Democratic politicians. The talking heads would talk about nothing else for the next two weeks except for how foolish Democrats would be to continue with such a loser initiative, so bad that it will cause even the bluest of the blue states to vote against a Democrat. So then the Democrats in the House and the Senate will just be too scared to pass any health bill — not the Senate bill, not reconciliation, nothing.
Zandar
To the Emopants Avengers:
I salute you.
You have truly put the Useful into “Useful Idiots Are Useful.”
Ailuridae
@baxie:
Yes it does. You’re either ignorant or deliberately misrepresenting facts.
The Raven
@daryljfontaine:
Blue Texan got blasted, to the tune of several hundred comments in about six hours. Ironically, a number of people who voted for Nader in previous years are saying, “No, don’t go there!”
General Winfield Stuck
Lunch hour at the idiot factory.
gwangung
Let’s not play the “more progressive than thou” game, shall we?
ds
@baxie:
Yes it does.
Health insurers will no longer be able to take into account health history at all when they issue policies.
Even if your mom somehow lost coverage through one plan, she would be able to sign up for any plan under the exchange, despite having a preexisting condition.
That’s the whole point of reform.
Comrade Jake
@ds:
I hear you, but I just think you’re likely to see a good number of House Dems run for the hills. If I have confidence in the Democratic party to do anything, it is to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I’m just trying to decide if Brown winning in MA to kill the bill is worse than Joe Lieberman pulling his Lucy act one more time on the final bill. It seems like a toss-up really.
mcc
If Coakley loses tomorrow, the health care bill likely still passes. Massachusetts election law does not appear to provide for immediate seating of the winner of a special election; the certificate, it appears, would take something like ten days to be granted. As with the other two people seated in the Senate mid-term, Brown would not be seated until that certificate comes in. All the HCR bill needs to pass is another week.
If by some freak chance the HCR bill cannot be passed by the time Brown is seated, it is still possible for the bill to become law if the House passes the Senate bill verbatim. That would be really bad, and the House clearly wouldn’t accept it if there were any other alternatives. But it’s possible.
This said, if Brown gets seated, it does raise the specter of losing the improvements in the merged house/senate bill vs the senate bill. It makes passing something like ENDA one vote harder. It makes passing the jobs bill one vote harder. It makes financial reform one vote harder. It makes EFCA one vote harder. And a lot of these bills were looking like they’d pass by one vote as it was.
I guess we’d probably be passing the wall street transactions tax using reconciliation either way? But again every reconciliation vote gets one vote harder without Coakley– because Coakley is one of the left-aligned, public-option-supporting dems, so her losing tips the Democratic party balance in the Senate one vote further toward the Ben Nelsons.
Ladies and gentlemen, the politics of magical thinking.
Really, how does this work?
[Joe Lieberman] I will not vote for this bill.
[Harry Reid] Go fuck yourself.
[Joe Lieberman] Oh… oh no, what did you say? Stop, I’ll vote for anything you want! *runs and hides under desk*
mr. whipple
It is shocking, isn’t it? Because in the end, what does it mean for all these ‘shitheads’ in Congress?
They worked their asses off on a largely thankless task, for people that most folks don’t even give a shit about. Meanwhile, they had to put up with listening to insane ranters at town halls and in their offices from both sides, while their approval ratings sink in the toilet.
If I were in Congress, the lesson I’d learn from this is to stick with giving away tax cuts and making kids wear school uniforms and naming Post Offices after Ronald Reagan.
gwangung
@baxie: As a matter of clarification, how does one combat willful fraud without such a clause?
And how will court matters play out when there are specific measures in HCR against recision, which would put the burden of proof back on the insurance companies, not the patient?
beltane
@John S.: On the night of the primary a self-proclaimed PUMA returned to the GOS to gloat about how Coakley’s win was due to Hillary supporters turning out against Capuano, whom the PUMA said was an Obama man. If true, this would be one more example of why I did not support Hillary in the primaries.
Ailuridae
@baxie:
Except your mother would now be able to go to a new health care provider, be honest about her previous cancer and then get insurance that can’t be subject to recission and they couldn’t deny her for a pre-existing condition. So, indeed, the situation your mom was in is forever eliminated with the Senate or House bill.
SteveinSC
@John Cole: Obama knew what the stakes would be and he will share the blame and he and the country the consequences. He has shown himself to be a bloodless, fancy-talking fop. If he and his vile handlers e.g. Rahm had shown more emotion and cut this bipartisanship bullshit, the voters in Massachusetts would have been fired up and would have voted in a child molester. Fast on the road to One Term Wonder.
Jim
@gwangung:
I’m all for that, but this is about the last place in the blogosphere where you can point out things like the fact that Coakley won a primary, was not appointed by Obama; that the filibuster is a real thing; that the economy really sucks, and that makes everything harder, and there’s not much Obama can do about that in the short term– without getting blasted as an O-bot or a “DLC troll”. Emotions are running high again, and a lot of people are exacerbating that to refight the primaries.
Comrade Jake
People advocating for reconciliation always seem to forget that itsy witsy detail about the provisions sunsetting. I guess we can all just assume they’d really like a repeat of this in ten years, seeing as how much fun it’s been.
General Winfield Stuck
This is a good thread
Joe Beese
Good news, everyone!
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/538-model-posits-brown-as-31-favorite.htm
Mnemosyne
@baxie:
You did go to sections 2702 (c) and 2742(b) to see what the new conditions are for a rescission, right? You didn’t just look at the scary scary word “rescission” and assume that there are no conditions on it even though the section you quoted refers you to two other sections to explain the details, right?
General Winfield Stuck
@Joe Beese: Tell me. Who do you support to run against Obama in 2012?
Uriel
@BombIranForChrist:
See, now Task- that’s what a straw man actually looks like! And it’s a damned nice one too! All stuffy and puffy with it’s own self importance and not even vaguely similar to any argument ever presented on this blog!
See how BombIran did that there? “You don’t agree with everything the progo-sphere says, even when it mouths tea bagger talking points and sidles up to Grover Nordquist? Maybe you just want to make out with George Bush while setting our babies on fire! WITH FIRE!”
Yes, indeed- very nice example of the form!
Hope that clarifies the issue for you.
The Republic of Stupidity
Whoa… quite the slap fight in progress…
Somehow, the words of a very astute Russian political commentator I heard on the radio several years ago come to mind…
Meanwhile… any mainland Chinese who follow American politics are laughing so hard they’re falling down.
Me? Time to start learning Mandarin…
Cain
@SGEW: <blockquoteI’ve got a bad feeling about this thread.
That other thread is still raging. Bad black blood..er… you know what I mean.
Party on, dudes.. I want to see 1500 this time.
cain
Hiram Taine
@MikeJ:
Eh, I can’t say I’m seeing a lot of consensus and cajoling on this blog right now.
Looks a great deal more like fractiousness and vituperation.
Rather like the unmoderated usenet political groups I used to hang out on back in the day.
I’m getting a definite sense of deja’ moo, you know, the feeling you’ve heard this bull before.
Citizen Alan
@John S.:
This. I finally realized last week who Martha Coakley reminds me of — Lenore Prather. Who is Lenore Prather, you ask? She was the first woman to be elected to the Mississippi Supreme Court and eventually its first (and so far, only) Chief Justice. She was also one of the most respected jurists of the last 50 years in this state. In particular, she famously authored an opinion which was joined by the majority of the Court and which found that a right to abortion existed in the Mississippi Constitution, a fact which did not endear her to Mississippi’s religious leaders.
In 2000, the last time she was up for reelection, all the serious candidates running against her dropped out a few months before the election, leaving only one candidate, an absolute moron named Chuck Easley who was an unabashed shyster and who campaigned by going around to local churches and claiming that, if elected, he would never vote to reverse a criminal conviction under any circumstances. Prather thought Easley was a joke and decided that it was foolish to waste a lot of money on a full scale campaign when she was basically running unopposed. So with a month to go, she stopped all her advertising buys, and basically stopped campaigning to focus on court work.
And then, she lost and Chuck Easley. And for the next 8 years, Mississippi was saddled with an abject ignoramus who routinely quoted Bible verses instead of case law in his opinions.
Martha Coakley thought she had this wrapped up when she won the primary, because she couldn’t conceive of a teabagging, misogynistic loon and former nude centerfold catching up to her. And so she sat on her ass for months. And the DNC let her sit on her ass. And Obama et al ignored the fact that she was sitting on her ass. And how, here we are.
The same thing also happened with Dukakis, IIRC, who was so certain he was going to win in 1988 that he took his chief campaign advisers of the job to start working on his first 100 days. Maybe its something in the water in Massachusetts.
jacy
@SteveinSC:
Did you attend some Sarah Palin weekend seminar on how to string together buzzwords in such as way so they actually make no point at all?
Seriously, I can make no rational sense of what you just said.
daryljfontaine
@jeffreyw: Enclosed please find my bill for: “Damage to Monitor — gnawing.”
D
Midnight Marauder
@SteveinSC:
What color is the sky in this fantasy world you live in?
jacy
@General Winfield Stuck:
You are obviously drinking more than I am. :)
The S/0 bought me a selection of variety ales for my birthday – I think it’s time I start cracking them.
Skepticat
“The independents hold the key, and independent women will probably make the difference. This is what worries me.”
I’m an independent and a woman, and I certainly would love to make a difference. I nearly killed myself shoveling today so that I’ll be able to get to the polls tomorrow. I’ll be voting against Brown more than for Coakley but have only myself to blame–I voted for her in the primary because I wanted to keep Capuano in the House. More fool I.
Interesting that as an independent, I never got a single piece of mail or any contact from either campaign. (That’s not really a complaint.)
All that said, I cannot wait for this campaign to be over, even though I fear that I’m going to be extremely unhappy with the results. We’ll just have to fight on, no matter what happens.
ds
Anyone with half a braincell knows how desperately reform is needed. Without it you’ll have a deteriorating system where eventually half the non-elderly population is uninsured while at the same time the country is going bankrupt paying for Medicare.
This isn’t a fucking football game.
The Senate Dems, conservative as some of them are, aren’t crazy. They knew it was necessary so they took the political hit to vote for a package, bare bones as it was.
This is why I suspect that Coakley’s loss may not be the end, despite the sage Village wisdom the contrary.
219 House Dems have already taken the political hit of voting for health care reform. Changing their minds now won’t help them one bit. They’d be socialist flip floppers instead of just socialists. And even they realize how gravely necessary reform is.
bayville
@Ailuridae:
Whether rescissions are enforceable will likely depend on the interpretation of “intentional misrepresentation of material fact” or if a fraud was perpetrated by the insured. It’s not clear cut.
Jim
@Midnight Marauder: What color is the sky in this fantasy world you live in?
Naderite green, with puffy Kucinich clouds?
BR
Um, if Coakley loses, I’m putting my rep on speed dial and asking the house to pass the senate bill.
Priority #1 is to get a healthcare bill to the president’s desk this month. This is the way to do it.
Cain
@Mumphrey:
It is because all we have now is scorched earth politics. Something happened to us while we were all out in the wild with the republicans in charge. We know want to be just like them but the other way. This really some seriously stupid shit to let Republicans back in power after a mere 3 years.
We have no patience for anything anymore. Young people want the corner office two years after getting their first job, and it seems to be the same with politics.
cain
The Republic of Stupidity
@mk3872:
It isn’t… that is simply what the Repubs and their MSM mouthpieces wish us all to believe… remember, these are the same people who were calling Obama a failure w/in minutes of taking office in January… or claimed it was the Obama Recession in November simply because he was the Dem candidate and favored to win…
Of course…. when one takes into consideration the way oh so many Conservadems behave, no matter what’s at stake…
Meanwhile, it appears Tweety has developed teh serious hots for a certain ex-baseball player…
Keith G
@MikeJ: A feature or a bug?
But you are wrong, any way. As I recall, Sherrod Brown of Ohio was freed from a pesky primary challenge from Iraq war vet Paul Hackett – courtesy of the Democratic Party. One easy example.
Ailuridae
Meh, if people are looking for someone to blame put it on the DSCC for never polling the race (or not often enough) to realize what the NRSC realized in mid-December: this was a close race and not a walk in the park. The DSCC has a lot of money running a poll every two weeks would have been well-spent even if they never showed the race tightening.
DA
Wait, we’re actually against the Senate bill now because it doesn’t explicitly legalize fraud? Firebaggers are now my favorite fringe political faction. I love this thread.
gwangung
@Jim: Yes, well, I’m a little tired of the game. Instead of “Obama being just like Bush,” these progressives are just like wingnuts, in that they do not know how to govern, do not know how to work with people who are in their same general area but don’t necessarily want the same ways and do not know how to work the mechanisms that allow large number of people to act together for their goals.
All of them would be happier in burgs of 10,000 people or less.
The Grand Panjandrum
As Ezra noted on Twitter a few minutes ago:
SteveinSC
@jacy: New to this planet are you jacy?
Cain
You know with all this Gruber business I’m surprised nobody made the connection to Hans Gruber from Die Hard. Gruber was an asshole in that movie too. His brother admitted it in Die Hard 3!
cain
bbs
Wait, so what is it called when you misattribute an argument to someone else just so it looks like you win an argument?
charles pierce
The Superior Dance being done at the Circle Jerk Ranch has finally made me as crazy as it has Cole. Jesus Christ, people, this teabagging pipsqueak is going to be MY FUCKING SENATOR for at least three years. The minute he’s elected, he’s instant Veep timber for 2012. (You just watch.) Broder may get hi semi-annual woody right there on TV. Can you please, for the love of god, take your unicorn-hunt and your Quest For Smiling Ponies to some other state. Oh, and show me on the doll where Rahm touched you.
(Best political line of the century so far.)
Citizen Alan
@mk3872:
The problem is that Obama has to be able to get legislation through the Senate in order to accomplish anything legislatively. When Obama took over, the Republicans basically told him (by actions if not words) that they had decided to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution so that a supermajority for every thing which would come before the Senate. And for reasons which elude me, Obama, instead of laughing uproariously and then attacking the Republicans in the media for being unAmerican obstructionists, he said “okay, that sounds fair.”
And once he loses his magical 60th Senator, nothing, absolutely no part of the Democratic agenda, will get passed out of the Senate. My honest expectation is that if any Supreme Court justices die or retire any time soon, their seats will just sit empty until after 2012. No one, absolutely no one, will be confirmed for any government position which requires Senate confirmation until the Democrats can get 60 votes again. Of course, if and when the Republicans get 51+ votes, the rules of Calvinball will change once again, and filibusters by Democratic Senators will be considered unconstitutional.
John S.
Actually, I can totally agree with this.
Thus far, this seems to be the most reasonable and legitimate blame to lay at Obama’s feet in this matter. The party simply ignored what Coakley was (or wasn’t) doing for far too long. Now armchair quarterbacking is fun and all, but how do you think Coakley would have responded to the DNC telling her a month ago, “You really had better get your shit together, because you’re going to have a real fight on your hands.”
Coakley strikes me as the type of person that would have said, “Massachusetts matters are best left to the good people of Massachusetts. (Fuck off.)” In which case, I’m not sure the situation would be all that different now. And for that matter, does anyone know for sure that this isn’t exactly how it went down? Who really knows for sure.
Chuck Butcher
So what’s with all this HCR loss talk around here? I’m pretty sure the majority concensus was that the Senate Bill was as good as it gets because it got 60 and all. So the House passes the SOB and sends it to the Prez and that’s it. What’s the problem?
Sure it means the end of LIEbercratted cap and trade and etc…but, well … but.
Ailirude will be happy…
Ailuridae
@bayville:
Yes it is clear cut. Not telling an insurer you had previously had testicular cancer or that you are bipolar would qualify.
But again, given that most people lied on their medical histories to get insurance they wouldn’t be able to access because of the pre-existing condition they chose to omit. These people will no longer be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions so any justifiable reason for omitting relevant parts of your medical history are gone. If someone in the post-reform insurance world omits their medical history to save money I’m not terribly sympathetic to them subsequently being dropped from that health plan: the insurer was, indeed, defrauded.
beltane
@Citizen Alan: Something in the water in Mass? That explains they way they drive. They don’t call ’em Massholes for nothing. (Just kidding. I have nothing against MA, except the loser Red Sox)
bayville
@Ailuridae:
Likely not true. It would be up to the individual states to investigate the “fraud” charges. I don’t foresee too many state Insurance Commissions too enthusiastic about that nowadays with budgetary cutbacks.
Donald G
As Tom Lehrer put it so well way back in 1965:
“Remember the war against Franco,
That’s the kind where each of us belongs…
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs….”
snowbird42
Isnt it that the Mass people have health care..they have nothing to lose
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
@Cain:
“And When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”
Cain
Can we get Dean back ? And someone shoot the morons in Massachusetts for fielding a stupid candidate. Jeezus. What the fuck is wrong with them?
cain
Ailuridae
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Especially since if they had arrived at the August recess with one house bill and one Senate bill the narrative at those town halls would have been much, much different.
Chad N Freude
I really don’t want to join the Manure Flinging Festival, but . . .
Passing an incomplete, inferior bill is not the end of the line, it’s the beginning of a process of testing and refining implementation mechanisms. We can wait for perfection, we can’t wait for a baseline/starting gun/metaphor of your choice.
Second, those who say it’s Coakley in a vacuum are wrong. The Democratic party is a Rube Goldberg machine where moving one component causes a bunch of others to perform sometimes useful functions. For the metaphorically impaired: Obama’s showing up was needed, his holding back had a negative influence, and the national party apparat (assuming it actually exists) should have been pushing on this from the second Coakley was named, with or without her active participation.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
Again, why would anyone omit medical history when they can no longer be denied care as a result of it? If they are doing it to save money then, frankly, that is fraudulent behavior.
NobodySpecial
I have to say, Cole, you’ve done well.
You’ve managed to convince me. Before, I was just a DFH who personally didn’t care two shits about the Senate bill simply because I ran the numbers and determined that the only difference between HCR and not having insurance at all was the money I spend on the premium not being available when I go to the emergency room with the broken shoulder. And I committed another sin when I determined that Coakley was a lazy ass who expected to be handed the seat and, when it was determined that she’d actually have to, you know, RUN to win it, cried a lot about having to actually meet voters. Finally, my mistakes in judgment were compounded by my figuring that as an IL resident, that my influence on MA elections was next to zero.
Little did I know that my tepid reactions and lack of support was augmented by my previously unknown Force Powers to convince MA democrats that Coakley wasn’t the droid they were looking for. So let me make amends.
Folks, I was wrong when I supported Kennedy with his crazy ‘Medicare For All’ idea, not understanding that the Magical Unity Pony had, in fact, demanded ObamaCare. Fortunately, he’s been removed from his seat and now we have a chance to elect a REAL Democrat like Coakley and together with Joe ‘He’s with us on everything but the war’ Lieberman, together we can all have insurance!
Or, if this was just all an ego-stroke post by you – sorry, dog. My bad.
gwangung
What makes you think that this same splintering of the Democratic majority wouldn’t have happened then as it has now?
blogasita
Thank ol’ Max Baucus. If that fucker had figured out he was being played (or did he actually know, & went along just to kill this thing?), this bill would have passed before the Thanksgiving break. But noooo, he had to negotiate with those idiot rethugs for months after anyone with a pulse could see it was going nowhere. So thanks Max. I can’t wait to see you voted out. I’m going to give as much as I can to your primary opponent & hopefully we’ll see the last of you (& Nelson, & Lincoln, & Leiberman, & for that matter, Snowe.) At least there will be some new life in the senate. Will it make it any better? Only if they have the balls (or ovaries) to change their stupid rules.
Ailuridae
@snowbird42:
That’s some of it. Its the progressive equivalent of the standard Republican line of “Fuck you, I got mine” There is nothing particularly commendable about it but i think that sentiment is somewhat understandable.
ds
@Ailuridae:
No. Insurers wouldn’t be able to use medical history at all as grounds for rescission, even if you left out details.
They won’t be allowed to look at your medical history as grounds for coverage.
bayville
@Ailuridae:
I don’t disagree with what you say, I am just leery to the phrase “intentional misrepresentation of material fact”.
For example, some people don’t realize they are bi-polar until middle age. Would this disqualify someone from coverage? Just using that as an example.
John S.
Actually this is exactly the scenario that could come back and bite Republicans hard in the ass since it is the perfect analogue to their “nuclear option” tantrum.
Remember, that was all about filibustering judicial appointments – not legislation.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@SteveinSC:
Let’s make a deal. If the Republican wins tomorrow, and a healthcare bill still passes and gets signed, will all you noisepimps go away and just bother each other from now on?
I think it’s only fair. You are about being fair, aren’t you?
gwangung
@Ailuridae: Where would the burden of proof lie with the proposed bill? Wouldn’t that be relevant?
The Raven
@Ailuridae: and I will tell you that I know households that can be broken by the need for an extra $100/month. “Geg6” is actually in that position. And who knows what kind of care the bottom rung of mandated insurance will buy? If you believe that the insurance industry will spend extra money out of the goodness of its heart, you are wrong.
And, you know, I’ve yet to call anyone here a liar or a bullshitter. I’ve stated the limits of my analyses, and acknowledged errors when pointed out. It is you who are overconfident here, who believes without reason, who cannot see what they cannot imagine.
Croak!
DA
We may never get a meaningful healthcare reform bill passed, but by God, we can congratulate ourselves that the bill we’re never getting is single payer.
Chad N Freude
@The Raven: The Poe references were on another thread today.
Keith G
@John S.: Its not a matter of mind control. You are reacting too strongly for a simple observation.
Political parties do spend resources encouraging and discouraging candidates in their decisions about running for office. The more important the seat, the more energy used. They counsel, they plot, sometimes they direct.
Rahm Emanuel pushed Paul Hackett out of the way for Sherrod Brown in 06. Its just the way the game is played. Look, I am an Obot who is just a bit surprised that they are not playing this game a bit better.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
For example, some people don’t realize they are bi-polar until middle age. Would this disqualify someone from coverage? Just using that as an example
Obviously not.
Chad N Freude
@Donald G: I thought I knew all of Lehrer’s stuff, but I don’t know that one. What’s it from?
John S.
Unfortunately, a lot of other households are getting broken by those households.
Ailuridae
@The Raven:
Then you simply don’t buy the insurance and apply for a needs waiver.
And, no, geg6 isn’t in that situation if her situation has been portrayed honestly. She has employer based health care.
mr. whipple
@DA:
LOL. True, true.
jacy
@SteveinSC:
Happy to say that if a planet exists where that made sense, I’ve never been there. But I must commend you on your snappy comeback. May I be the first to say: I know you are, but what am I?
Just wanted to take that off the table before you could pull it out of your rhetorical satchel.
NobodySpecial
@John S.:
Ah, I see. Because of those dirty poor people, we all suffer?
digby
@Mnemosyne:
I wish I knew where people got the idea that I ever said “kill the bill” but I never did. In fact, I’ve been saying since last fall that it was almost impossible to imagine that liberals would ever kill a health care bill that radically expanded medicaid.
But hey, why read what I actually write? It takes too much time.
Cat Lady
@charles pierce:
The Raven
@Ailuridae:
And when you have an accident, then–?
John S.
@Keith G.:
Obviously there are things that the DNC can do and have done to influence the outcome of the election. I already conceded that point to Citizen Alan.
But this situation is not analagous to Sherrod Brown in ’06. Coakley was the establishment candidate. The road was pretty much cleared for her to win the primary. And then she went to sleep, and nobody at the DNC seemed to notice that she was sleeping. And for that, I think you have to lay the blame on the DSCC and Tim Kaine for being asleep at the switch because it is actually part of their daily job not to be.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Citizen Alan:
And of course, the Dems will just go along w/ that like beaten puppies…
Brachiator
@BombIranForChrist:
Bullsquat. The activists kept shouting “single payer” even though this IS NOT the uniform model of other countries with universal health care.
The activists live in a fairy land where they think they should always get their way simply because they are “progressive.” In this regard, they are just as asinine as conservative evangelicals, who foolishly believe that the GOP should kiss their butts just because they are “the base.”
The funny thing is that while the evangelical nutballs at least try to field candidates, activists are too busy activating themselves to get progressives actually, you know, elected to freakin office.
The whine of activists was a useless distraction that prevented meaningful health care proposals from being drafted.
nepat
@charles pierce: Charles, you had me convinced it wasn’t going to come to this a couple of weeks ago over at NMMNB, when I started to wear the paint off my worry beads. Na. Ga. Ha., you said. What happened?!
John S.
Are you really too fucking stupid to understand that the millions of uninsured in this country has a lot to do with the flaws in our system?
Oh right, you’re one of those delightful purity trolls that cares so much about poor people that you want to help them by not passing a healthcare reform bill and leaving 30 million people out in the cold.
Keep on wanking.
NobodySpecial
@John S.:
Hi, dumbfuck. I’m one of those millions of uninsured. And believe you me, I know ALL about the flaws in our system.
Maybe if I’d stop getting sick you could keep a couple of extra bucks in your pocket, right?
Guess what? For a lot of us, the Senate bill STILL leaves us in the cold. Good job, right?
Sorry, it’s fairly obvious you’ve got the franchise.
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
Was it fraudulent of that lady who testified before the House about HCR to have left off her application the fact that she had been treated ten years earlier for acne? That was the excuse given for the insurance company when it denied said lady’s coverage for an emergency radical hysterectomy when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Is it fraudulent behavior if you forget to list on your application some medication that you stopped taking three years ago? What if you forget exactly what form of cancer killed your father?
And here’s a question that will just blow your mind: if your insurance company rejects your claim by baselessly asserting fraud, what exactly is your remedy? Does this bill allow you to sue the company? Bring some sort of criminal charges against them? What? Because I’ll tell you what I was told by the HCR policy director for my congressman — that the bill offers no new protections for people who see their insurance rescinded. But not to worry, because if your policy is rescinded, you can complain about it on some website, and then when people go to the exchanges to research which insurance to buy, they’ll see your negative comments and go to some other company, and consequently, your insurance provider will simply never consider rescinding the contract because of the negative PR. It was one of the few times in my life I have literally not known whether to laugh or cry.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
No, we all suffer because we as a society have decided that we’d rather pay $200,000 in a futile attempt to save a kid’s life than pay $50 to extract the tooth that ended up killing him. We’ve decided that we’d rather pay $20,000 to amputate a diabetic’s foot than pay the same amount for his/her insulin and regular doctor’s visits so s/he doesn’t have to lose the foot.
Basically, we decided years ago as a society that we’d rather pay for critical care than try to prevent people from getting to a critical point in the first place. And now you’re going to claim that those of us trying to change that dynamic don’t care about poor people?
Fuck you. With a rusty pitchfork.
Ailuridae
@The Raven:
Then you are in the same situation you are now. And that’ll likely be 8-10 million people. Don’t pass the bill and its 40 million people. Ill take insuring 75-80% of the uninsured at reasonable rates while slowing the long term costs of health care relative to GDP.
FWIW, I think that the compromise bill is likely to cover medicaid up to 150% of FPL so that insures some not insignificant amount of the uninsured from the Senate bill.
Also, way to avoid owning up to misunderstanding geg6’s description of her situation
baxie
@Ailuridae:
Keep on dreaming and maybe in the beautiful Utopia you create insurance companies can be trusted to act in good faith and with the best interests of their customers in mind.
In the real world, they are going to dump everybody who’s too expensive and let the lawyers sort it out.
As for “oh she can just go find some other company”….I’m just speechless.
I take small solace in the rude awakening many of you have coming if this epic POS passes.
Uriel
@bbs:
Yes, fair enough. I did in fact make a straw man of BombIran’s straw man.
Not by all that much, since he did mis-attribute John’s arguing against the anti-HCR position as somehow being inspired by a desire to switch teams as opposed to addressing the actual substance of his arguments. But I do admit, no one, in fact, accused John of wanting to actually set babies on fire. With fire or otherwise. (Although I think the argument could be made that I was actually closer to unjustified hyperbole than an actual straw man.)
In my defense, I wasn’t actually trying to win anything there- I was helpfully trying to instruct Task Force in recognizing actual straw-man arguments, as opposed to people who merely disagree with him. To that end, I could argue that I was actually trying to help reinforce the lesson by helpfully providing multiple examples of the form. Because I care.
That’s what I’m going with, anyways.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Hey, here’s a thought — since the piece that bayville quoted includes the references to the portions of the bill that govern rescissions, maybe you could look it up for yourself and see what the answers to those questions are?
Nah, you’re too busy worrying about things that you think might maybe be in the bill to actually look at the bill and see what’s in it.
Ailuridae
@Citizen Alan:
See that’s a strawman. Nobody is defending such practices that insurance companies currently engage in.
if your insurance company rejects your claim by baselessly asserting fraud, what exactly is your remedy? Does this bill allow you to sue the company? Bring some sort of criminal charges against them? What? Because I’ll tell you what I was told by the HCR policy director for my congressman—that the bill offers no new protections for people who see their insurance rescinded
Please indicate the name of your congressperson and his HCR policy director. They sound frightfully uninformed.
daryljfontaine
@Chad N Freude: “Folk Song Army.”
Oh, we are the folk song army
Every one of us cares
We all hate poverty, war and injustice
Unlike the rest of you squares
D
Donald G
@Chad N Freude:
It’s a lyric from “Folk Song Army” from the “This Was the Year That Was” album.
John S.
@NobodySpecial:
Ah, I see. You’re just a bitter asshole, and because YOU won’t be helped by this bill then that means 30 million other people should be screwed, too?
And you’re accusing me of being shallow and indifferent to the needs of the less fortunate? That’s fucking precious.
Martin Gifford
John Cole wrote:
False dichotomy.
We don’t want to be like George Bush saying, “You’re either for us or for the evildoers.”
We should be above that. We should be thinking strategically, long-term, and uncompromisingly.
Citizen Alan
@John S.:
IOKIYAR. The general public has no clue about the extraordinary extent of Republican obstructionism, especially in the area of appointments, because the Democrats don’t have the stomach for attacking and exposing their conduct and the MSM certainly doesn’t, even though it would have been a national scandal if the Democrats had acted this way back during Bush’s first year in office.
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne:
I’m one of the guys left at the dock as the boat you assert will save us all pulls out of port. So forgive me for thinking that you really don’t mean to save poor people, because at least one poor person that I know of (and millions who I don’t) are getting left behind.
Fuck me with a rusty pitchfork? You just did. Felt good, did it?
Ailuridae
@baxie:
And, you have nothing. Well, the next thread I am sure there will be another infrequent poster making silly arguments, getting corrected and declaring us all rubes.
Its awesome that when confronted with uncomfortable facts some people declare that there is simply no way to ever regulate insurance companies or force reasonable behavior despite plenty of states (MN for instance) doing just that.
Xenos
Maybe I am thick and delusional, but Coakley, in the Dem. primary, had almost twice the total votes of the entire Republican primary.
Are 90% of the independents breaking to Brown, and are they voting in record numbers? Unlikely, but possible.
The story from the polling, if it is correct, would require many Democratic voters to be choosing Brown based on some Bushian real guy criterion. Unlikely and really perverse. Coakley is being savaged for being a hardass prosecutor when that was what everybody loved about her for the last decade. So now that is getting some sort of traction at the last minute?
Maybe I am just another delusional neo-mugwump. But based on the truly crazy onslaught of polling, most of which I and everybody I know has been hanging up on or picking up and saying crazy things for shits and giggles, the pollsters don’t really have a handle on this state. The margins of error should be three times larger than claimed, and they really don’t know what is going on.
I predict Coakley wins it by 8%.
deadrody
What complete and utter bullshit, John. In so, SO many ways. FIrst of all, 2/3 of your total are in that position of their own choosing or are eligible for government health care programs but are not enrolled.
Second of all there are an INFINITE number of health care proposals and methods to insure those people with the absolutely piece of shit 2000+ page nonsense Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are trying to shove down our throats.
If you really gave a shit about those people without insurance you would be pushing the incompetent morons in Congress to pass REAL health care reform or some kind of bill to address JUST those without insurance.
What a dishonest tool you are.
Chad N Freude
@daryljfontaine: @Donald G: Thanks.
NobodySpecial
@John S.:
You seem pretty indifferent to my needs. What, I don’t need health care?
I’ve said it before on this blog several times. Pass what you want. You got your victory. But you did me (and people in my situation) no good at all, so I won’t celebrate with you.
John S.
No, apparently you’re one of the assholes that decides that if YOU don’t get on the boat then that means nobody else should get on the boat, either.
Ailuridae
@John S.:
Ah, I see. You’re just a bitter asshole because YOU won’t be helped by this bill then that means 30 million other people should be screwed, too?
The bill likely doesn’t help me personally in any way (I’ll likely see a small increase in my premiums) but I still think its good policy to pass it as it’ll help 30M people to have increased economic security and will result in improved long term fiscal prospects for the country. I guess that’s the down side of my not being a hate-filled ogre.
Tax Analyst
@ #86 Mumphrey:
I won’t repeat your lengthy post, but – Yeah, democracy in a nation of 300 mil+ is not easy and being a responsive and effective President of such a nation is hard. These are not words that go down easily for babies and other people who are used to being spoon-fed. They want easy to digest two or three word slogan answers to take care of their problems. Drop a few bombs on far-away brown people so they don’t cause us any problems.
It would help though, if so many of our representatives weren’t so used to being hand-fed and schooled by large corporations, would-be oligarchs, and/or Taliban-like theocrats.
Keith G
@John S.: I agree, almost totally. Almost.
Obama is the de facto leader of the party. That is a role all American presidents play. The de jur party chairperson is the president’s choice.
If indeed the DSCC and Tim Kaine were asleep at the switch, a more (shall I say) competent West Wing operation would have backstopped the problem more quickly.
It is these types of decisions that make a presidential administration more or less successful. Look John, this is Obama’s bowl of rice. His, and by extension, our, future hangs on his ability to be an effective leader of a national party, which is a whole lot different than being a great personal campaigner/politician.
God, I hope he gets really good at this, asafp.
Texas Dem
Passing the Senate bill unchanged would undoubtedly be the wisest course of action, as several commenters have noted. But don’t be too surprised to see the Dems abandon the whole effort and run for the hills. It will be every man for himself. In every battle you reach a point where one side starts to break. Panic sets in, and then the battle becomes a rout (and frequently a slaughter).
I agree that the issue of health care will not be off the nation’s agenda for too long, given the unsustainability of the current system, but it’s quite possible that reform will now be on Republican terms, i.e., draconian tort reform and allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin Gifford:
There’s a strategy for democracy.
John S.
I don’t know your situation, and if you legitimately won’t be helped by this bill than that most assuredly sucks. But for you to sit there and begrudge millions of other people who will be helped because you won’t be is pretty fucking selfish.
I can only hope that this opens the door to making changes later on down the road that WILL help your situation, and I sincerely hope you are around to see it.
NobodySpecial
@John S.:
You obviously didn’t read my post. I have never said ‘kill this bill’. I’ve only said that you’re leaving me behind, and a lot of other people in my situation, and it’s really fucking galling that any time someone points out that this bill isn’t helping that they’re accused of trying to kill the Democratic Party and making sure that no one will ever have health care FOREVER. Or whatever artificial straw-based construct they want to rail about.
Of course, I ALSO find it galling that, in Ted Kennedy’s seat, we get not a Ted Kennedy progressive, but yet another ‘centrist’ who has no trouble dumping people like me over the side so Bristol Myers Squibb can keep their profit margin…and being told that this is the BEST we can do. If anyone wanted to convince me that this country really IS a ‘center-right’ nation, there are few arguments they could make stronger than saying that a Martha Coakley is the best we can follow a Ted Kennedy with.
Grace Nearing
@charles pierce: Why limit Brown to just a veep slot? It’s going to be Brown for President 2012 if he beats Coakley. The first drafts of the media narrative are being worked on right now. You can never start these things too early.
bayville
It’s like the bloggers Hall of Fame weekend at BJ. GG, Wheeler, Pierce, Digby et al joining the threads.
If Wolcott chimes in you’ll be able to field a baseball team of internets All Stars.
John S.
@NobodySpecial:
I think Coakley is an awful candidate, and I also find it galling that she is replacing a seat once held by Ted Kennedy. I think the people of Massachusetts could have done better, but for whatever reason, they did not.
I am not a centrist – not even close. But I am a pragmatist, first and foremost. I think the current healthcare reform bill could have been a lot better, but it isn’t. I think that too many people won’t be helped by it, but I think there are far too many others that will. But I also think that this is just the beginning, and not the end.
I look at this flawed bill as the pebble released at the top of the mountain of healthcare reform. I don’t know how fast it will roll or how long it will take to get to the bottom, but by the time it gets there it will be much bigger than when it started, have a lot more momentum and be impossible to stop.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
Just checking — you make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (that’s about $40,000 for a single person), which means you won’t get a subsidy, correct?
Note that that’s not less than $40,000 as family income, only if you’re a single person. If you have a family of two, you can get a subsidy with a household income up to $80,000, etc.
Just Some Fuckhead
@digby: I read all yer health care stuff and you weren’t clapping as loudly as you could have been so that’s the same thing as wanting it killed, as I understand it.
SteveinSC
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: If the HCR bill does manage to stagger through to signing but a republican is elected senator in Massachusetts leaving Democrats with 58 votes, should remind us of the Winston Churchill comment “…I’ll be sober and you will still be ugly”, so obviously: No Deal.
TWP
@johncole: Enough with the Hamsher/FDL/Feingold, etc. whining! Coulda, shoulda, woulda. God Forbid you blame Obama’s great idea to allow two months to go by in Aug/Sept so that Baucus and his team of jackoffs could waste time debating what color pen to use. Or how about Obama bringing Snowe to the WH everytime she wanted to fuck around and remove a little more from the bill…so that she could end up not voting for it. That was a great idea. But Obama did NOTHING wrong, remember! He’s an innocent bystander…no power…don’t blame him…poor guy. And Rahm is a brilliant Chief of Staff that has managed to piss off just about everyone during this process. Brilliant! I’m so glad FDL and Bernie Sanders have controlled this whole process and really screwed it up. President Hamsher really has mucked up the process with all her liberal demands!
Get the fuck over it and stop whining. If Obama, Reid, et al hadn’t jacked around for months on end attempting to get the fucking brass cock ring of “bi-partisanship” which does nothing and means nothing, this bill would have been signed a LONG time ago.
Mnemosyne
@digby:
It was coming across that way for at least a few weeks. I’d have to go back and re-read it to explain why, but when I would come by your place and read what was being posted, there was a definite “kill the bill” air. Maybe I wasn’t looking at nyms closely enough and I’m attributing what tristero was saying to you?
Julius Ray Hoffman
How absolutely untrue this post is! All that has to be done for the problem to be solved is for the House to pass the Senate bill. Done and done. No waiting 6-8 years or more, and no leaving millions of Americans one step unfortunate circumstance away from bankruptcy.
But nooooooo, not for John Cole, right? You’ve gotta pretend that this possibility doesn’t exist.
Why? Why the big lie? Well… I suppose that you’ve gotta monger some fear up so the people of Massachusetts can be intimated into supporting a candidate that they think is unfit for the Senate. Please stop these Cheneyesque tricks!
If health care reform is not done, Mr. Cole, it will be due to the stubbornness and obstruction of House Democrats. Don’t try to lay the blame at the feet of the voters of Massachusetts.
SteveinSC
@Julius Ray Hoffman Where did that incoherent blast come from?
Svensker
Can’t we all just get along?
Anne Laurie
@Chad N Freude:
Phil Ochs, “Love Me, I’m A Liberal”.
Can’t find his version on YouTube but others might have better google-fu.
Julius Ray Hoffman
Pardon the anger but I am pissed off with all Democrats right now, especially the left-leaning blogs. I used to drink this stuff up back in 2008 and the quality has gone down, down, down… Kos, for instance, used to stand up for morality and righteousness and lately that place has been excuse-central for the terrible things Coakley did as a prosecutor.
I like John Cole’s writing and I am being a bit of an emotional gay right now. I understand Sullivan is doing the same thing. We can become a little unhinged in these late hours as we cry ourselves to sleep.
We aren’t crying for a lost Senatorial election, though. We are crying because our party leaders and our bloggers are losing their clear sense of what is right and what is wrong, and are resorting to the fear-mongering that we all found so distasteful during the Bush years.
JWW
John,
These are your words, ” thirty million or more Americans will remain one slip on the ice and broken shoulder away from bankruptcy”.
Give me a break!! The President and Congress have all the time they need to write a bill that is the best for the country. Not a bill that is paid for buy organizations. Not a bill that you or I may agree with, but one that is best for this nation.
We don’t need to be buying shoes for Monique and Unique.
JenJen
@charles pierce: I could barely make it through the thread but dammit Charles, just had to stop to say I’d buy you a drink if I could. Sorry. :-(
And you’re spot-on about insta-Veep timber, too. Gawd help us all, but for now, just you guys. This fucking blows.
nepat
@Grace Nearing: Exactly. He’ll fly above the rest of the inbred herd if he wins. Palin remains covered with Lose electorally. A win tomorrow in a race with this level of national attention will give this guy wings that he never expected and catapult him into the Republican and MSM stratosphere. His lack of experience takes care of itself: I have exactly as much experience going into this race (2012) as our current president.
The most disappointed person alive right now must be Mitt Romney. In fact, I got a call today from a guy who sounded suspiciously like him, encouraging me to vote for Coakley.
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne:
No. I make less. The subsidy as written in the Senate bill is not large enough to allow me to make up the difference and still have a reasonably shitty quality of life. Further, the cap on out of pocket expenses, while nice, doesn’t take into account the fact that a LOT of poorer people live paycheck to paycheck and will have a hard time coming up with the $50 to $175 some doctors charge as an office fee, let alone if they also have to fork over a monthly premium for bad insurance. That’s assuming they find nothing wrong, by the way.
JenJen
@Keith G: Rahm didn’t push Hackett out of the Senate primary… Schumer did. And the entire “pushed out” thing was always just alleged by Hackett. Not saying it didn’t happen, but people stopped caring because the end result was fantastic… Sherrod Brown was a proven statewide candidate already (vs. the rookie Hackett, who had lost narrowly to Jean Schmidt in the OH-02 special), and he absolutely crushed a sitting Senator, Mike DeWine. It was a thrilling campaign to watch, and none of that is a knock on Hackett, either.
For the record, count this Buckeye as very proud to have Sherrod Brown as her Senator. I can’t see how Paul Hackett would’ve been any improvement at all. And now that I think about it it’s insulting to Sherrod Brown and the Ohio Democratic Party to compare him and especially his robust Senate campaign to that of Coaksley.
Cain
This place has turned into ground zero for firebaggers vs (I don’t know what the fuck we call ourselves, anti-firebaggers?). I’m going to start drinking for every time I see the word fuck three times in a post. Go! I must get rid of this anger!
cain
Chad N Freude
@Cain: Balloonbaggers? Juicebaggers? (No, that should be Juiceboxers.) I kind of like Colebaggers.
Glocksman
@Ailuridae:
Insurance tax and giveaways to PhRMA aside, one of my big reservations about the Senate bill is that it largely leaves enforcement to the states.
Or that is my understanding at least.
I could be wrong.
In fact I hope I am.
If I’m not though, the people of Minnesota will probably have robust enforcement.
The people of Indiana, Mississippi, or North Dakota, not so much.
JenJen
@Chad N Freude: I can only speak for myself, but I would prefer not to be called any kind of “bagger” same way it annoys me that all political scandals have to be “-Gates.”
daryljfontaine
“Firebaggers” always had the specific connotation of the people who bought into the unholy Hamsher/Norquist alliance, thus FireDogLake+Teabagger = Firebagger.
For locals, I always liked just “Juicers.”
D
Chad N Freude
@JenJen: Unfortunately, these formations and locutions become part of the language. We’re stuck forever with -gate, and we are well on the way to being stuck with -baggers.
Uriel
@Svensker:
No.
And if you wouldn’t mind, could you fill me in on whether you’re a emo-firebagger or a corporatist o-bot? I just want to be clear what catch phrases and invective I should be spitting out from between clenched teeth when we start punching each other in the virtual neck. Which should start anytime now.
Thanks in advance.
Uriel
@Cain: fuckity fuck fuck.
Glad to help.
Martin Gifford
@General Winfield Stuck:
I mean we shouldn’t compromise on basics like facts and reality. Of course, you should definitely be willing to change your view in the light of new facts. But look at HCR. We are talking about Americans dying and suffering miserably. There should be no compromise on fixing that properly.
bob h
I wonder whether the politics of killing this thing on the 1-yard line really work for Republicans. It just looks like malicious nihilism. My guess is someone on their side comes forward with an offer to compromise.
I think of the kids who get H1N1 and spend a week or two in IC with perhaps $200,000 in medical bills. If their parents had been laid off, couldn’t afford coverage, or had it denied, the family goes bankrupt, maybe loses its house and any hope of sending the kid to college.
Isn’t that just social barbarism?
madmatt
Coakley is bought and paid for insurance co. shill. The fact is the industry is rich enough to buy off both sides of the argument, they will win either way.
Sorry about the poor and ill, hell I am one of em but I’d rather stay ill then see this shit continue…I propese killing all involved, just like they want to do to the poor and liberal!
Da Bomb
So, the past two threads have been wallowing in complete muckity-muck.
I am missing out on all of the fun.
And fuck! That’s for you Cain.
henqiguai
@beltane (#112):
Um, no. Unless you mean something other than being able to be an unaffiliated registered voter who can walk into the primary of one’s choice, TEMPORARILY (and quite legally) declare for that party, vote, then unaffiliate just before turning in one’s ballot. I do this every primary. Is it different where you live ?
The Truffle
I doubt health care is lost if Brown wins. There is probably a plan B.