This self-promoting clown needs to get a grip:
SCHULTZ: I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him. … And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb. … I told Robert Gibbs, I said “And I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out. I’m telling you you’re losing your base. Do you understand you’re losing your base?”
When you have jackasses like Schultz running around bragging about nonsense like this, it does nothing but weaken the admin and the party. Why did Ed have to make this off-air interaction public?
For no reasons other than to prop up his own street cred. Self-promotion. No other reason.
Why is it that all the people who claim to be the base turn out to be self-serving, self-promoting jackasses who have very narrow agendas and love to inform us that if the Obama administration does just what they want them to do right when they want them to do it, they will “keep the base.” Otherwise, if they don’t fulfill their agenda right then and there, they will “lose the base.” And strategically, it always works out so well- see demanding the public option be put in the Senate Bill and shutting down the Snowe negotiations. That was awesome, and I don’t need to remind you who was demanding that Reid do that every day- Ed Schultz and company. I’m even willing to bet that Ed said Reid needed to do it or… “lose the base.”
Wait. What is this? A transcript from Ed’s show from October 23rd? Just a few days before Reid stopped negotiations and included a public option that then led to the two month Lieberman debacle? I wonder what Ed said:
Unless you, Harry Reid, support a full-fledged public option, I will work against you and I will donate against you in 2010. And I will encourage other progressive groups and other progressives in this country to do the same. We have come too far and done too much to have this bickering about the public option in the 11th hour.
Now, next week on this program, I‘m going to start bringing people out who are running Web sites, who are going to raise money, and who are going to go against not only Harry Reid, but any conservative Democrat that turns their back on the public option. It‘s time now for the lefties of this country to gather at the war table and make sure that we are heard. Not only the phone calls, not only the e-mail, but where are we going to put our money and who are we going to back, and who are we going to throw out of office?
The WH of course told them all this was risky but that Reid apparently knows his caucus better than the WH. Sure could use that two months back with the Coakley development, ehh?
The “base” doesn’t abandon their President after a few months. The “base” doesn’t issue public threats in the middle of negotiations. Hell, this President didn’t even have a honeymoon with his self-anointed “base”- he was being beaten up 24/7 before the inauguration over Rick Warren. It just went downhill from there.
The past couple of months, I’ve hated Democrats more that I ever did when I was a Republican.
Task Force Ripper
Word.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, try being a life-long liberal Democrat, knowing that the only other options for you politically are to make yourself even more irrelevant.
DougJ
Is he actually trying to say that Gibbs was out of line in telling him to “go fuck himself” after he told Gibbs he was “full of shit”?
And when did Dick Cheney take ownership of the f-bomb?
The f-bomb belongs to all Americans. It’s time we took it back.
Glocksman
I used to listen to his radio show and from what I remember he wasn’t nearly the self promoting asshole he is today.
Though that could be because Ed was on right before Randi Rhodes, and Randi is the unholy Limbaugh/Hannity hybrid of the left.
No one on the left combines arrogance and cluelessness like Randi.
You Don't Say
Ignore Schultz, 99.2% of the country already does.
CT Voter
Why did Ed have to make this off-air interaction public?
‘Cause he gets absolutely clobbered in the ratings for his TV show.
He’s very much a “My way or the highway” kind of “progressive”, and the similarity to a certain former president does not seem to occur to him, or some other prominent “progressives”.
jimBOB
I don’t agree. Shultz is saying no more than is being said all over the Dem side, and I can’t really disagree with him. Obama’s dogged insistence on pretending the political environment is anything other than hardcore partisan will lose him not only his base, but also any possibility of accomplishing major objectives. This is hardly a secret.
RC1
I hate to tell you, but Obama is losing his base. He’s losing it because he rode to town on a mandate of change, substantive change, and has compromised with himself so much, and watered down necessary legislation so much, the base is having second thoughts. I know I’m having buyers remorse.
Max
I love Gibsy.
More people should tell the talking heads to fuck off, or go fuck themselves, or fuck you.
I’d like to see Obama do it to a couple people, during this week’s SOTU.
How cool would that be?
Go Colts!
licensed to kill time
@DougJ:
Fuckin’ A!
used to be disgusted
The stiff necks on the left side of the Democratic party are at least as annoying as the weak stomachs on the right side.
But none of them are as disgusting as the nihilists who run the GOP right now.
And I’m still holding out hope that this time we’ll get our act together and govern. I don’t see that we actually have any choice.
Corner Stone
I may just be wanking here, but this post seems like 100% trolling.
Does anyone give a shit what nobody Ed said about inconsequential Gibbs?
Does the cursing matter more, or the fact that he told him Obama was “losing his base”?
I can’t tell.
maus
@used to be disgusted: Yeah, we need a Edward R. Murrow that America trusts, not a liberal Limbaugh, a blowhard.
Of course, the mainstream networks would NEVER hire or promote someone so subversive into power. And as much as I love Stuart, that’s not his gist and that’s not what he’s looking to be either.
Comrade Jake
Some time ago you wrote that the two parties couldn’t be more different, in that Democrats always spin victories into losses.
I think this argument was flawed because you were assuming Democrats were actually capable of achieving victories, when all the evidence suggests just the opposite.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
The “base” doesn’t abandon their President after a few months.
So why the results in Massachusetts?
John:
I don’t know how much you read Digby, but you need to read her every day. And read her archives, too. You’d understand why Democrats are pissed off once you do. Ever wonder where the “punch a hippie” thing got started? She’s been documenting it for a long time now.
Nick
@RC1:
He also rode to town with the warning that change would be a difficult, lengthy process that would require compromise, but in the midst of your delusional rapture, you must’ve missed that part.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Independents voted Republican in ridiculously high numbers. Independents, as I have been told, are not the base.
valdivia
yep. But the important thing is that progressives
hold the feet to the fire/move the overton windowundermine their leaders. Isn’t that heroic?ETA: snark tag.
Davis X. Machina
Ed Schultz does what he does because there were two lines for the bank tellers, and the left line was shorter than the right line. In 1994 he tried to interest local GOP rainmakers about a run for Congress against Ed Pomeroy.
I have no problem with converts — St. Augustine reminds us that a sinner, if thrown from his horse, can repent, yea veribly, between the saddle and the ground — but mercenaries are another matter.
Brien Jackson
I’ve always wondered what it is about politics and political strategy that makes people who’ve never actually done it think they know more than people who have gotten to the very highest level in the field. It should be bizarre, but I guess in a world where everyone’s an economics or foreign policy expert it shouldn’t be that surprising.
Napoleon
Snowe was never ever going to vote for that bill.
Ailuridae
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Ever wonder where the “punch a hippie” thing got started? She’s been documenting it for a long time now.
Sometimes hippies need punching. Especially after it is apparent that their tactics are self-defeating. Its interesting that someone can read that post of Cole’s and not focus on this:
Unless you, Harry Reid, support a full-fledged public option, I will work against you and I will donate against you in 2010. And I will encourage other progressive groups and other progressives in this country to do the same. We have come too far and done too much to have this bickering about the public option in the 11th hour.
Isaac
John,
The “base” is not a homogenous category – we aren’t all lunatics like Jane and her Fire-Baggers. Some of us were just trying to push for a better bill, not trying to bring the whole bill down.
We were putting pressure on the Senate to include a public option, as Obama had campaigned on. We weren’t abandoning our President, we were fighting for something he had promised. This wasn’t some radical position that resulted in the current predicament, it was a good negotiating tactic to get the best bill possible out of the Senate. And it would’ve resulted in the Medicare buy-in if not for Lieberman’s move to sabotage the compromise. Also, contrary to what you suggest, Snowe was never going to sign on the final bill – think of a single legitimate objection she had to the final bill before you try to argue otherwise.
So please, John, reserve your ire for the particular faction of the base that would rather we all die of thirst than accept a glass that is half full.
tim
John, your authoritarian, daddy-loving streak is showing again. I mean, HOW DARE Ed Schultz disclose an off-television interaction and betray what really goes on in real life, off stage, among the Village elders?
I often wonder what goes on in your time off-site, in your chummy emails behind the scenes to other “major” bloggers and political types. I’m sure the content of those emails would provide a much clearer picture of how your thinking, such as it is, develops, and by what it is influenced; as well as what topics and people you consider off limits. Which is why we lowly readers will never be allowed access to them.
I wonder which BJ regular will be the first to call me a “fucking asshole?”
Task Force Ripper
@tim:
Intemperate person!*
*Although I don’t qualify as “regular”.
Ailuridae
@Brien Jackson:
I think calling play-by-play 1-AA football clearly trumps any expertise Reid has in counting votes or knowing his caucus.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Ed “I work with Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, and Luke Russert” Schultz isn’t a Villager himself?
BerkeleyMom
I usually agree with you John but on the Rick Warren thing, Obama was wrong. It was his first self-inflicted wound and it was just tone-deaf (and unnecessary). After 8 years of Bush (not to mention Prop 8), is it too much to expect Obama to choose a preacher who isn’t so divisive?
Glocksman
@tim:
I can’t speak for the others, but my take on it was that Schultz was doing too much self promoting and not enough policy promoting so to speak.
Granted, media personalities aren’t shrinking violets but I don’t care for it when they try to make themselves into the story.
That’s one of the reasons I really like Rachel Maddow.
Eljai
I see your point about Ed and perhaps that was not the most helpful tactic to use. But it is hard to find the right framing to express frustration with the democrats and also remind the American people that it was the republicans that left us with a toxic steaming sh*tpile. Perhaps every sentence that begins with something like “Obama is (fill in the blank)…” should be prefaced with something like “remember how the republicans brought us criminal wars and trashed the economy?”
The Raven
AM radio personalities build their audiences by shocking and scaring people, and Schultz has been doing that since I started occasionally listening to him. I’ve thought poorly of Schultz for a long time; I was especially repelled by his anti-immigrant advocacy.
On the other hand, think about the bills we’d have gotten without the progressive populists weighing in! It remains the case that the majority of the public is not corporatist, and the Democratic party’s activists are to the left of the party’s leadership. Perhaps that would be better as “were.” I am not convinced that the Democrats can not rebuild their internal coalition. especially with the corporations given a license to spend on political propaganda.
Croak!
Glocksman
@BerkeleyMom:
I was ambivalent about the Rick Warren thing then and I still am now.
That said, if it had worked in actually opening a dialogue between the less loony elements of the religious right and progressives both secular and religious, we’d all be hailing Obama’s brilliant strategy.
Chuck Butcher
Crap, let us do a little math to see what is up the hippies asses. You’ve asserted there were 41 votes for public option. 41/60 is 2/3 or 60% and you wonder? Oh yeah the “left” is so out of step that 2/3 of the Dem Senators are out of step?
Nick
@BerkeleyMom:
No such thing, but I suppose you mean a preacher who isn’t so divisive TO THE LEFT.
Task Force Ripper
@Glocksman:
He was at a convention center promoting himself and his show.
Why would he be promoting policy there? Especially if he actually believes Obama may be losing his base?
FlipYrWhig
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Worst. Comment section. Ever. Nothing but unceasing gloom and despair and people trying to one-up each other with ever more intense gloom and despair. And then tristero decrying the evil Nutella conspiracy and hectoring people about cultural issues. Digby herself is fine, but IMHO the regulars destroy the experience of reading her.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
Do you even bother to listen to yourself? This is ridiculuous.
Ailuridae
@Chuck Butcher:
There were 43 firm Yays for the public option. And it consistently polled over 55% even after being demagogued against. But bills don’t pass by having a majority of the public support them. As long as the health care bill was going to reform the individual and group insurance market it was going to be subjected to a 60 vote requirement. A whole lot of people, including the White House knew there weren’t 60 votes in that Senate for even a watered-down public option and, to nobody’s surprise, it didn’t get there.
Now, if someone had realized this within the left the intra-caucus negotiation would have likely been met with different concessions – better subsidies, a national exchange, a better MPL ratio, etc.
Glocksman
@Task Force Ripper:
True.
I keep forgetting that self promotion works in his job.
It’s just something I find distasteful at times.
In fact that’s probably why even during my full wingnut years when I was somewhat to the right of Emperor Palpatine*, I found self promoting blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity to be hard to take.
*I found the Tarkin Doctrine to be preferable to Palpatine’s constant compromising with the liberals. :)
different church-lady
This is why I never wanted a “Liberal Rush Limbaugh”.
John Cole
I read Digby every day. She is one of the reasons I left the GOP.
Nellcote
And yet when Mr. ToughTalk was approached by local Dems to run for the senate he declined. Apparently preferring to talk the talk rather than walk the walk.
Freemark
I’ve this site daily for a couple of years and I have to say, John, that your Republican tendencies are showing through. This idea we need to get behind our leaders, right or wrong, is inherently undemocratic, both little and large D.
I think we Democrats need to fight and threaten our leaders. We would be better off with 58 dems with a strong leader than 59 without. Or 57,56,54, hell even 41.
And I’m not talking the stupid purity tests of the right wing. I’m just talking about getting some Democrats willing to fight for the basic platform of the party. Things that happen to very popular with the majority of the US population. I have not seen any fight from our leaders on this, not Reid, not Obama, maybe a small anount from Pelosi. I’ve just seen backroom deals being made and people afraid to get political bloody noses.
As for weakening the admin and the Party, they already look pretty damn weak to me. Not doing anything to show displeasure with cowardice and ineptitude would only make them weaker not stronger. Its no different than letting Lieberman keep his chairmanship because ‘we might need his vote someday’. That’s worked out well for us.
Nick
@Freemark:
Now I think YOU’RE Republican tendencies are showing.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
Yeah, all those idiotic liberals should just STFU and never, ever criticize Obama. Because he and Geithner know best. And HCR wasn’t really important enough to fight for anyway. And the war in Afghanistan is totally “winnable,” if we just escalate and let the generals have what they want. And we really need to keep detaining people without charges or representation. Can’t you see that, stupid libruls?
Obama is a coward and a weakling. He’s losing his base in droves. That’s what happens when you sell out on every front in the name of “bipartisanship.” But yeah, it’s all the fault of “teh Left.”
Freemark
Nick
That was the point of that remark. That the Republicans seem to be able to do more with 40 or 41 Senators, and no Presidency and House minority. Than we can with majorities and the Presidency.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Freemark:
__
And yet lately one of the biggest complaints about the Democratic Party on this and other blogs is how they “lack party discipline” and that thus-and-so should be kicked out of the caucus, stripped of their Party membership, stripped of seniority and committee chairs because they don’t go along with the Party leadership and Party platforms.
It can’t be both ways.
Corner Stone
@Glocksman:
There are wanks to be made here but I’m enjoying the game in between finishing up a project.
A secret project that will be announced on the front page in a couple days.*
*Not really.
Nick
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
Reality;
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/01/looking-at-democrats.html
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Maybe you should refresh yourself on what “the base” means in politics. Hint: it doesn’t mean “everyone who voted for you in the last election”.
Maude
Schultz used to start his radio show with talking about the tv show he’d been on the evening before. It was all about Ed.
He is stupid. He is trying to get (sigh) attention.
As far as hating Dems, familiarity breeds contempt. The righties are awful, but the Dems are looking out for their own self interests.
And I would imagine that the congressional Dems are uneasy with Obama. He isn’t what they are used to. Obama is smarter than most of them and that upsets them.
John Cole
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Yes. The most cherished right among “the base” is to criticize your leaders in the loudest, most ineffective, and self-defeating method possible.
The Schultz/Gibbs shit will be all over the Politico and Morning Joe and hence everywhere in the beltway tomorrow. “Democrats at each others throats!”
It will be awesome and really advance the cause.
Where were all the protest marches in favor of the public option to counteract the teabaggers? Oh, that is right. Our progressive leaders were too busy getting themselves on tv and threatening the administration and whining that they would stay home in Nov. 2010 to schedule anything or to do anything productive.
And you know why progressive radio fails? Because no one wants to listen to whining for three fucking hours.
D-Chance.
Shultz is a pansy… this is evisceration.
ruemara
@RC1:
He also said that change would require working with him. You know, us, working? With him, the President? Not superPresident, captain deciderer? You know, where we work to achieve progressive goals, like how we got him elected? You’re not seeing where I’m going here, are you?
And I like Randi. You can source what she’s saying and she’s got a pragmatic, practical liberalism. Ed, not so much. I can’t listen to most “left” radio. It’s too damn whiny.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@John Cole:
John, where did I mention one thing about liberal radio or Ed Schultz? I don’t watch Ed or listen to liberal radio. But if you think Krugman, Digby, et al., are just a bunch of whiny bitches who should STFU, while the Nutless Wonder we call our president shows zero leadership on one serious issue after another, then I think Freemark has a point.
But hey, just wait till the SOTU, right? The oratory is gonna be dazzling.
Ailuridae
@Freemark:
That’s the nature of their party – its more monolithic. Ben Nelson for instance is further to the right of about four Republican Senators and at times has been further to the right than eight to ten.
Morbo
@John Cole: It’s also because a lot of people are satisfied with NPR as a liberal outlet. That makes me laugh my ass off, at least for any of the weekday news shows.
Ailuridae
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
And yet lately one of the biggest complaints about the Democratic Party on this and other blogs is how they “lack party discipline” and that thus-and-so should be kicked out of the caucus, stripped of their Party membership, stripped of seniority and committee chairs because they don’t go along with the Party leadership and Party platforms.
It can’t be both ways.
See, party discipline is only for elected officials. Activists can demand that leadership chase unicorns to the detriment of 46 million people and still be true Democrats but if 17 members of the Democratic Senate caucus are lukewarm to cool on the idea of a public option they are DINOs.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Nick: No fair using polls and facts! He’s losing Hanoi Jane Hamsher, Glenn “Doesn’t Return Reason’s Calls” Greenwald, and Ed “I Ran As A Republican And All I Got Was This Lousy MSNBC Talk Show” Schultz! Just look at the keyboard vomit R-Chance the PUMA Bittereinder posted! He’s losing the base! Luke Russert told me so!
@John Cole:
Listen, if nobody wanted to listen to whining for three hours straight, there wouldn’t be any right-wing radio at all.
El Cid
FWIW, I’ve tried my damndest to keep up a degree of ‘support’ for Obama and the Democratic leadership, and somehow I don’t think it’s my fucking responsibility that my energy levels aren’t at full 100% all the fucking time.
arguingwithsignposts
I initially was excited that they were adding another hour of “progressive” talk to the nighttime MSNBC lineup. I hadn’t heard of Schultz before he got his talk show. However, after a few nights of watching, his “blue collar” schtick became tiresome. I haven’t watched him in months. The few times I do hear about something he’s had on, he seems too much like a liberal Father Coughlin, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I wish there were another Maddow out there to take his place. Or replace that asshat Morning Joke. For the life of me, I can’t understand how that guy and Mika keep the morning segment.
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
I honestly wonder what an acceptable critique looks like. I don’t know what someone who is unsatisfied is supposed to do. Call your representatives? Call the WH? Call the person who hosted home fund raisers for local officials as well as Obama? Oh wait, that’d be me. And I talk to me all the time.
Please someone help me understand what a principled, useful outlet is.
LM
I agree. I hoped it wasn’t a sign of things to come that we couldn’t even celebrate a hard-won historic victory without tiptoeing around the fury of fellow lefties:
Months of pummeling the Senate bill as a give-away creating “junk insurance” took its toll in delays and fueled worry in Mass voters. But I wouldn’t mind that so much if blogs’ comment sections hadn’t convinced me that the rage and trash-talking were mostly based on misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of the bill. Posting its actual language or offering charts or analysis from previously respected analysts like Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Paul Krugman made no dent. Purists decided to listen only to other purists.
It reminded me of the late sixties when advocates of “self-criticism” allowed no other business at political meetings. What they meant by “self,” unfortunately, was anyone less radical. Decades out of power could have taught us to value strategy and effectiveness. But I guess like any tools, these didn’t give rise to frustration till people actually had an opportunity to build something with them
Nick
@Corner Stone:
If you had a more in depth understanding of legislative history in this country and what it takes to get legislation passed (the compromises, the lengths of time it takes) you probably wouldn’t be unsatisfied.
Compared to pass eras of progressive legislating, what’s going on now is pretty tame and pretty good.
Corner Stone
@LM:
This was/is the problem? If blogs and blog commenters had saluted the Senate bill then Mass voters would have elected Coakley?
Ailuridae
@arguingwithsignposts:
His blue collar schtick is particularly tiresome as he often repeats that he’s a small business owner (from the way he talks about it I am guessing construction) and that small business owners really need reform of worker’s compensation laws as its hitting them in the pocketbook. There’s some progressive idealism for you.
Woodbuster
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Postlethwaite Windschitl? From the bullshit spewing, it looks like Just Some Fuckhead got a new handle.
And, why isn’t BTD here to tell everybody how stupid and liberally impure we all are instead of this douche? Isn’t that his job?
General Winfield Stuck
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
Time again to deploy Politifact Obamameter to counter Obama FAIL wanking. Don’t you morans have any respect for reality?
John Cole
@El Cid:
Obama doesn’t need a cheering section, nor am I demanding that everyone be thrilled. I know I’m not. There is lots of news out there that infuriates me on a daily basis. Just yesterday we learned that up to 50 of the Gitmo detainees are going to be held without charges in perpetuity. I find that horrible, and a definite stain on the administration, and I intend to blog about it a great deal in the future when this awful health care debate is over.
I’m sick of Geithner, I’m sick of the limp response to the bankers, I’m sick of a lot of things too.
But you know what I am not going to do? Attack Obama using right wing frames, calling him weak, or Jimmy Carter, or a definite one-termer, or threaten to stay home in Nov. 2010 because I didn’t get everything I wanted in the health care bill. If I had my way we’d nationalize the god damned thing.
And I certainly wouldn’t take my private conversations with prominent admin officials and then bash them for my own self-promotion. Go check memeorandum’s reponse to that rant that D-Chance gleefuly linked to above. They are loving the adoption of their memes.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
Again, this means nothing.
Who the fuck do you think is out there in election land? Professors of PoliSci?
Ailuridae
@LM:
There were likely no misunderstandings. Most of the posts here were by consistently cravenly dishonest commentators who thought that sinking a very good but imperfect bill would get them their
ponypublic option.Citizen Alan
@Nick:
It depends on who we lose. I would give up the seats held by Baucus, Nelson and Lieberman to the GOP tomorrow if it meant that the committee chairmanships they are presently abusing in order to gum up the Democratic agenda would instead go to reliable progressive Dems.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@Woodbuster: You’re so far up John Cole’s ass it’s hilarious. When are you going to donate to Leiberman’s re-election campaign?
Nick
@Corner Stone: You don’t need to be a professor to learn history. A little less ESPN and little more History Channel may put the world in a better perspective.
I mean it’s great to listen to voters who get offended at the very suggestion they should, you know, learn things.
General Winfield Stuck
I must consult the Noodly Appendaged ONE for truthiness of this.
Woodbuster
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Oooh. Wow, Fuckhead. You’ve gotten sensitive in your old age. Next thing you know, you’ll be accusing me of offending your royal goddess, Hillary of Clinton.
handy
The difference is wingnuts, being the ever-persecuted group they are, find comfort in hearing their own whining. Besides, they do it better than the Air America crowd.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@Nick: Your recommendation for understanding the history of our legislative process is to watch the History Channel?!! LO-effing-L. Irony really is dead.
Woodbuster
@General Winfield Stuck: If it ain’t him, it’s his dumber half-brother, Just Some Shithead.
General Winfield Stuck
@Freemark:
Just different ways to spell dumbass Dumbass
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@Woodbuster: The fact that you think I’m Fuckhead is amusing. Incidentally, I absolutely detest Hillary Clinton. You need to get a life outside of Balloon Juice.
Woodbuster
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Well, in order to be fair here, he was simply attempting to identify a source that you might be able to comprehend – since something on the level of, say, PBS would be way over your head.
General Winfield Stuck
@Woodbuster: I am tending toward your thinking on this matter.
Corner Stone
@Nick: You are absolutely clueless.
And I love the History Channel. Military Channel is also pretty good. Personally I also like SITV for Model Latina. But don’t tell anyone.
chrome agnomen
@John Cole:
maybe progressives don’t. i sure don’t. but the right has a remarkable tolerance (boy, that’s an ill use of the word) for the whining of right wing radio.
kay
The reason it’s suspect to me is it doesn’t make any sense.
Gibbs is actually a really aggressive presence. He’s all but combative. His comments about Republicans at press conferences are rabidly partisan, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m not at all surprised he lost his temper, and yelled back at Ed Schultz.
Ed Schultz wants to call Obama a wimp so he relies on a quote from Gibbs, where Gibbs told him to fuck off? What does this even mean? What’s the point of the story?
Ed Schultz wants you to know he’s fighting “FOR YOU” because he got a rise out of Robert Gibbs, which I’m betting is not a difficult thing to do. Bravo. I guess.
Woodbuster
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: “You need to get a life outside of Balloon Juice.”
Um – tell me again where it is that we are having this all too enlightening conversation?
General Winfield Stuck
I hate misdeceivery on Sundays
JasonF
This isn’t even the dumbest thing Schultz has done in the past week. No, that prize has to go to advocating voter fraud in Massachusetts. I wanted Coakley to beat Brown, too, but come on!
Nick
@Corner Stone:
ah the fallback argument of a defeated one…and yet I’m the one who knows that almost all progressive legislation has taken longer and been through more compromises than this healthcare bill progressive keep bitching about.
Good thing Jane Hamsher wasn’t alive during the whole Civil Rights debacle. She very well might have thrown her support to Goldwater after the bastard Mike Mansfield sold out civil rights to get Roman Hruska’s vote.
Amy
Meanwhile, Jane Hamsher is going after progressive Democrats to make sure they don’t vote for the Senate bill.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/24/call-report-yvette-clarkes-office-doesnt-remember-her-pledge-to-vote-no/
Ailuridae
@John Cole:
But you know what I am not going to do? Attack Obama using right wing frames, calling him weak, or Jimmy Carter, or a definite one-termer, or threaten to stay home in Nov. 2010 because I didn’t get everything I wanted in the health care bill. If I had my way we’d nationalize the god damned thing.
This. I think America would be much better served in terms of both social justice and fiscal responsibility from a health care bill that either had substantially more regulation of private insurance (here a more restrictive MLR but that can be augmented in the future) or a much more substantial role for the government directly providing the insurance. The failure of that to occur I look as a failure of progressives, including myself, to better sell the public. And Obama does play a significant role in that.
While all of that is true the frames to criticize this health care bill are, often, out and out lies particularly the parts about the insurance reform. The Senate bill really does protect against recission. And it really does eliminate pre-existing conditions and establish true and fair community rating. Those are huge fucking accomplishments. As is getting a foot in the door with Medical Loss Ratios. Similarly, attempts to paint the excise tax as regressive are, simply, dishonest. To have people who identify as progressives and think they are the Democratic base using the same dishonest methods of argumentation as McMegan or the Heritage Foundation is deeply disappointing.
bystander
Surely there is an exorcism ritual that could be performed so that you could revert back.
You’re a johnny-come-lately Cole. I’ve hated the Democrats since 1968. I probably won’t be alive when you reach your 40th anniversary of distaste.
General Winfield Stuck
@Ailuridae:
Further evidence that Cole is really a triple axel agent of the GOP fooling us at thrice of his covert wingnuttery with shit like this.
Don’t worry Joan, I got yer back. You can roll back over to the good side now.
kay
“Well, I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy, so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal,” Gibbs said, sarcastically linking Cheney to the conservative radio talk-show host.
This is what Ed Schultz is pining away for, right? I would think he’d love Gibbs.
Corner Stone
@Nick:
I’ll try this again since you seem to be pretty simpleminded.
Your knowledge of these matters is irrelevant to the populace and voting population as a whole.
Eee-rell-uh-vahnt.
You and I can argue all you like about timeframes, outcomes and good things coming from progressive legislation. Wevs.
No one outside this bubble has more than zero percent interest in that info. They are hurting, they want some relief or promise of relief, and they don’t give a damn otherwise.
I’d prefer more info made its way out there as well. If it did we’d be talking about a Democratic Party versus some other party than the Republicans.
Our reality is not inline with your stupid musings on historical timelines to pass legislation. But by all means please step on out there and educate the voting public.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
Boy, I guess the only thing worse around here than criticizing Obama is disagreeing with John Cole. Then the little Balloon Juice sheep turn into wolves.
Because anyone on the left (or anyone who wants a liberal president with a semblance of testicles, rather than a spineless Wall Street-coddler like Barry) is clearly just a bitter PUMA. Even if you actually hate Hillary and gave money to Obama’s campaign–like me.
Quell that dissent, you sober-minded centrist History Channel-watching scholars of progressive legislation! This place reminds of Red State.
valdivia
@Amy:
just perfect. fucking idiots.
blackwaterdog
Word, word, so much word.
Thank you, John, you piece of sanity in sea of madness.
blackwaterdog
@RC1:
Obama is the most Liberal president this country will put in the WH, at least for now. If the base is giving up on him, then the base is stupid and the base will welcome some Palin or Romney or whatever in 2012.
valdivia
@blackwaterdog:
this. but you know Jane Hamsher says she gets to decide so I guess we are wrong.
Ailuridae
I followed a link from here to FDL and then to another within Jane’s first piece and ended up here: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/23/60-votes-it-was-always-bullshit/
Jane is either a really poor thinker or just being completely dishonest. The 60 votes were required to pass, among other things, the (much-needed) insurance reforms. Nobody within the Democratic caucus is arguing that these aren’t good things. The reason the improvements to the Senate bill will only require 51 votes to pass is because the parts of the bill that required 60 votes don’t need improving not that the entirety of the bill could have passed through reconciliation. Her readers normally seem pretty bright and nobody is calling her on this. That’s disappointing.
Psst, Jane. If you have 50 votes in the Senate for a public option or Medicare expansion you can pass it as a separate bill at any time. But everyone knows why you aren’t hip to this reality – the public option never had 50 votes in the caucus as a stand alone piece of legislation, you dishonest fucking ass hole.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Oh Corner Stone, you big tease, you.
Freemark
I was in sales for 20 years and if I tried to sell anything by indicating to people that what I was selling wasn’t worth it by hemming, hawing, and negotiating down before I even started selling I would have failed everytime. And our lead Democrats have been doing that on every issue.
Over at DK there is a post there is a post about how McClellan in the Civil War lost even with overwhelming forces because he was out maneuvered and was never willing to fight.
I don’t think every Dem has to be on board every time but the people leading us in the fight need to FIGHT. And show the American people that they BELIEVE the fight is worth it. If they can’t do that then they need to be convinced or replaced.
I’ve talked to a number of people where I work who voted for Obama. Most don’t follow politics heavily but their impression is that Obama and the Democrats haven’t really tried to keep their promises. The funny thing is I try to talk up what the Democrats have done and how its Republican obstruction that is screwing us. But this admin and Congress has made that a tough sell because people don’t see any evidence of any real effort. All they hear is how they will have to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it.
blackwaterdog
@Nick:
Obama, on election night: “We may not get there in one year, and maybe not in one term, but we will get there”.
Some people should go back and watch his election night and inaugural speeches. They’ll realize that they were just not listening.
blackwaterdog
@Nick:
Indeed.
Obama, on election night: “We may not get there in one year, and maybe not in one term, but we will get there”.
Some people should go back and watch his election night and inaugural speeches. They’ll realize that they were just not listening.
blackwaterdog
@valdivia:
She can jump from her freaking Overton window, it’ll be fine by me.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@blackwaterdog: If Obama said it, it must be true!
valdivia
@blackwaterdog:
:)
that is all.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@Freemark: Exactly right, Freemark. But Obama’s wayyyy too “cool” to actually act like he cares about anything other than Olympia Snowe’s goodwill. What we need is bipartisanship and tone-changing on the Potomac.
Monumental passivity and inertia–that’s Barry’s real specialty. We wouldn’t want to ruffle any Republican feathers now, would we?
But hey, he makes a hell of a speech!
PS: I’m a bitter librul PUMA hippie.
Joel
@tim: Sorry, no dice, dochenozzle.
policomic
What really pisses me off about all the “pure” lefties calling for Obama to “fight” and “show some backbone” and “grow a pair” is what a bunch of cowards they actually are. There’s nothing safer than sitting on the sidelines and complaining. And that applies, too, to Weiner and the other House libs. who would rather maintain their street cred. than take a hard vote. I have no love for the Senate Blue Dogs, but we shouldn’t expect them to blithely commit political suicide in their conservative districts, and then let the Weiners get away with this kind of risk-free grandstanding–especially when the cost to the people they alledgedly serve is so high.
If your Rep. supports “starting over” because the Senate bill is too weak, he/she is either an idiot, or–more likely, I think–a coward.
blackwaterdog
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
Why spin what i said, ah? You think it makes you clever? I quoted what he said in his speech to show that he knew this will be long and hard. I didn’t say that “it must be true”. But hey, it’s not a huge surprise, you know. These days there’s really no big difference between the teabaggers from the Right and the Left. They all spin and lie about this president.
Woodbuster
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
“I’m a bitter PUMA asshole.
Fixed.
AxelFoley
@Nick:
Seems like many on the left missed that.
And somehow, I knew many would.
kay
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
But you’ll defend any Obama critic.
Schultz: “I know this is being recorded. But I wasn’t told it was off the record. Mr. Gibbs and I had quite a conversation the other night. And… I’m gonna tell ya… I told him he’s full of shit is what I told him. …And then he gave me the Cheney F bomb…”
Come on. This is self-aggrandizing nonsense. The Cheney F-bomb was in response to Patrick Leahy’s accusation of war profiteering.
Ed Schultz goes up to Gibbs to offer some more unsolicited political advice and Gibbs swears at him? Those two things are comparable?
I don’t mind Schultz firing up the crowd, but what bugs the shit out of me about populism is it seems to bring out every huckster and charlatan.
Ed Schultz is no Patrick Leahy.
John Cole
@kay: Hell, the way Ed himself tells it, he told him he was full of shit. That warrants an F-bomb.
General Winfield Stuck
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
You ain’t seen nothin’ really. Stick around longer and watch us feed PUMA steaks to our doggehs and kittehs, Bah bahha
General Winfield Stuck
@kay: Used to like and listen to Ed back in the Bush days. New York seems to have gone to his big head and now he does political vaudeville for the liberal mouth breathers.
General Winfield Stuck
@Freemark: well said.
Robertdsc-iphone
Please explain how a fuckup like Larry Summers is part of how “change comes to Washington”. Please explain how things Obama was against during the campaign, like mandates & taxing health benefits, appear in his Preferred HCR bill. Please explain how he can be convinced to include things he criticized during the campaign, as I just mentioned, then not be convinced to continue a pointless fucking war that can’t be won no matter how many bombs, guns, & drones are shipped to AfPak, yet when this mentioned, the defense is that he’s keeping a campaign promise. Please explain how a Constiutuonal Scholar can ignore the the law and prevent war crimes from being investigated & how people can be detained indefinitely without charge forever. Please explain how the Administration has consistently buckled to the bankrupt GOP at almost every turn, from Honduras to the TSA nominee to Dawn Johnsen. Please explain how anyone can just shut up and bear a Chief Of Staff who takes every opportunity to bash the liberals. How cruelly funny it is that in order to save HCR the whipping boy caucus, the progressives, have to step up the most. That’s gotta hurt a bit.
The President is a good guy who I personally admire but his policies and pursuit of bipartisanship are ruining the country.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne:
As if. I think BJ already has too many front pagers with PhD’s anyway.
Robertdsc-iphone
By the way, if Rahm had bothered to spend the same amount of time attacking the blue dogs & Lieberman over HCR and cramdown as he did against liberals for the war supplemental and for Bernanke, the country would be better off. Instead, we’re the poorer for his mistakes. Smooth move, Mr President.
Corner Stone
@Robertdsc-iphone: ***snipped rant***
Easy. Two words for you – Political Reality.
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@kay: Actually, I won’t defend any Obama critic. And I could give a fat fuck about Ed Schultz.
General Winfield Stuck
@Robertdsc-iphone:
No, you can criticize these things. That is not the problem. The problem is providing no context as to why he has not made changes he promised. Only a fool naif would conclude that any presnit candidate must implement every thing he promised as a candidate like ordering Pizza. Presidents are not kings, except the last one functioned that way, or tried to, and dictated his wonts to his own party with promises of political death if they didn’t do his bidding.
I don’t want this for a dem president or any, I want one that respects, at least in public, the separation of powers, and the compromise that often requires. He can be criticized rightfully for flipping flopping from a standing start when no mitigating factors are present, also to a degree for not fighting hard enough within reason, but not as knee jerk lists of things promised and not getting those results absent of any context why./ And the why is for the most part comes as bucking from a co equal branch of government that has a vote and a veto. I will repost once again an unbiased source of Obama”s record thus far, one year in and 4 to go. Call it a Obama FAIL wankers chill pill.
If you want to discuss Obama’s record within the parameters of political reality, I will be glad to, but no to within the PUMA parameters of my way or the highway. A phrase with recent sad history.
John Cole
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Jeebus. Here is the first thing you said on the thread:
No one told everyon they could never, ever criticize Obama, but when pointed out Ed is being a pinhead, you had to come out, jump in with two feet, and tell us once again that the most important right for liberals is the right to criticize, no matter how accurate or effective it is.
If you look around here, you will not that we are not against people who criticize Obama, we are against people who do nothing but reflexively criticize Obama. Look at RobertDSC- no one is going to wage jihad against his criticisms.
Can’t you get it through your head that the loudmouths like Ed and the rest of our progressive betters are doing more damage than good?
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@Robertdsc-iphone: Robert, you are clearly a bitter PUMA librul like me. And you are also exactly right.
Eljai
@John Cole
Okay, okay. Actually, there’s going to be rallies for healthcare on Tues., Jan. 26th sponsored by Moveon and Democracy for America and other organizations.
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?rc=dfa&action_id=202
Maybe Ed should stop yelling at Robert Gibbs and use his megaphone to tell his listeners to get their asses to one of these rallies.
kay
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
I read and take to heart Krugman’s and Maddow’s complaints, because I respect both of them.
I think Maddow is particularly interesting because when I listen to her I hear a fairly hawkish Democrat, particularly on terrorism issues, and yet she’s really loved on the Left. She pulls that off, I think because she genuinely knows something on foreign policy.
I’m trying to sift through the bullshit and identify the hucksters and charlatans, like everyone else. Schultz doesn’t meet my standards.
General Winfield Stuck
@General Winfield Stuck:
This is the wingnuts job, don’t do it for them.
Ailuridae
@Robertdsc-iphone:
By the way, if Rahm had bothered to spend the same amount of time attacking the blue dogs & Lieberman over HCR and cramdown as he did against liberals for the war supplemental and for Bernanke, the country would be better off. Instead, we’re the poorer for his mistakes. Smooth move, Mr President
The problem with this thinking is that true progressives are willing to take incremental victories to improve people’s lives. The Blue Dogs in the House, their counterparts in the Senate and psychopaths like Lieberman aren’t motivated by that same desire.
Just look at the student loan bill being stalled in the Senate. Simple, great piece of legislation that any centrist nonetheless progressive should be thrilled to back. Passed the house with four Dems against and six Republicans for and it’ll be whittled to shit by the Senate. If progressives want a cause to rally behind that involves the Senate and reconciliation they should get behind passing that bill via reconciliation. Alternately the could push for investigating Rahm Emanuel’s ties to GSEs.
Freemark
@policomic
Policomic you said
So I guess you think only Representatives and Senators should be allowed to talk, complain, or do anything else. That we should just accept whatever gruel they deign to give us. The fact that we gave money, went door-to-door, and campaigned for Democrats means nothing in your view. Sure I’ve had people threaten to sic their pitbull on me because I was campaigning for communist muslim Obama. Had my tires flattened and general insults thrown in direction because I dared to let my neighbors and the people of my deep red county know my personal views and that I’m willing to fight for them. But I now realize I am a coward because I want the people I fought for to fight for me.
By the way I’ve called my Democratic Senator Casey and told him that I want him to pass this bill and to do anything he can to make it happen. And I do understand pragmatism as I have helped the campaign of my local Republican representative as he is a moderate and could easily lose to a Teabagger in a primary. But almost every poll done in Nebraska indicates Nelson probably would have done better sitting on the sideline voting for cloture and against the bill. If he was really worried about his re-election that is. But I think most people realize this was more about his corporate masters than re-election.
kay
@John Cole:
Being a Democrat is horrible. It was on the bottom of the sign up sheet, in little tiny letters, when they handed you that clipboard.
Nothing happens if you bail, though. I’ll write you a sternly worded letter, per the guidelines. That’s about it.
Amaliada
So, where do I go?
I’m 62 years old with several pre-existing conditions and my husband and I pay for our health care which currently costs $22,000 a year, with a $1,000 deductible each.
Why so high, because I’m a woman of a “certain age” and we have medical issues.
So, do I accept a plan that will tax me for having to pay so much for health care, won’t cover my pre-existing condition, and then penalize me if I can’t afford less coverage?
Give me a break! I know that change takes time, but I haven’t seen Obama fight to maintain those things in the health care plan that he campaigned on…he fought for more funds for Afghanistan and Iraq. He fought for more funds for the bankers. But he caved in terms of the stimulus, which would have put more people to work and now he’s completely capitulating on health care.
I don’t want to see the bill killed – but I want someone to explain to me why I want less than what I have and why I have to smile while getting it!
John Cole
@Eljai: See, that would be constructive criticism and an effective use of time and energy and would actually help frame the debate in that there aren’t just masses of people against health care, but a lot of people in favor of it as well.
But that takes work, and it is so much easier to misrepresent the legislation, wail about how Rahmbama let you down, talk about your cherished right to bitch about the President,and then blast off obnoxious emails asking for money.
There is a real sickness in our DuPont Circle Mutual Masturbation Society that makes up our current progressive “activists.”
bago
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: You should try and defend your absurd parsing. Someone agrees with John so they should donate to Lieberman? WTF?
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@John Cole: Actually, John, your whole “libruls are assholes for criticizing Barry” thing has not been limited to Ed Schultz, has it?
It’s not the HuffPo bloggers or Paul Krugman who are “damaging” Obama. It’s Obama himself, with his Rahms and his Geithners and his Summerses and his bipartisan approach to HCR and Afghanistan and detainees and DADT, among other things. But you know the whole “leftist” litany that pathetic librul whiners like me like to spout. We really should just STFU and get over it.
Leadership requires more than pretty speechifying and showing the world what a nice, reasonable, unflappable guy you are. But to you, the BJ commentariat, and Cokie Roberts, the problem is libruls and their “whining.” Or, as Barry would say, our “tizzies.”
Mnemosyne
@Amaliada:
So, just checking — your employer is paying $22,000 a year to your health insurance company to cover you and your husband, right? Because if you and your husband have private health insurance — as in, your health insurance does not come through your employer — you are not subject to the excise tax. It only applies to employer-based insurance, it only applies to the excess amount, and the tax is paid by the insurance company, not the insured.
Let me emphasize this: if you do not have employer-based health insurance, the excise tax does not apply to you.
John Cole
And another thing the “activists” don’t want people to remember is that a lot of this isn’t about the HCR legislation, this is also in many ways our own little cold war era proxy war to continue re-fighting the DNC/DLC wars and continue the Lamont and Darcy Burner campaigns. Health Care reform has in no small way become our own little war in Congo.
John Cole
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Um, are you new here? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve been quoting Krugman a great deal and agreeing with him. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been pretty skeptical about Afghanistan and in particular our reliance on drone attacks.
I love it when folks roll in here and tell me what it is all really all about when I am as compulsive as anyone following this shit.
kay
@Postlethwaite Windschitl:
I don’t think it was directed at liberals, or even regular voters. I think it was directed at pundits.
“I understand why after the Massachusetts election people in Washington were all in a tizzy trying to figure out what this means for health reform, Republicans and Democrats, what does it mean for Obama? Is he weakened? Oh, how’s he gonna survive this? That’s what they do.”
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
Question? So if she has a completely private plan, will she be able to enter the Exchange and get a better deal maybe?
Sly
@BerkeleyMom:
Is it too much to expect that people don’t bellyache about which Emissary of the Lord a politician wants to give a speech? If not, then vote atheist. We don’t have these problems.
Ailuridae
@Amaliada:
So, do I accept a plan that will tax me for having to pay so much for health care, won’t cover my pre-existing condition, and then penalize me if I can’t afford less coverage?
The plan covers all pre-existing conditions. If you are asserting otherwise you are either misinformed or lying. Age at a multiplier of 3:1, smoking at a multiplier of 2:1 and family size are the only allowances to providers to price their care within the community rating system.
If you are paying 22000 now you will almost certainly pay less because current multipliers for age in most states are far greater than the 3X multiplier that the Senate bill allows.
Addtionally if you are below 400% of FPL you will get somewhere from a substantial to small but still helpful subsidy.
I know that change takes time, but I haven’t seen Obama fight to maintain those things in the health care plan that he campaigned on…he fought for more funds for Afghanistan and Iraq.
The insurance reforms are very good. The subsdies are less than perfect. The absence of an expansion of public insurance is problematic but not damning.
Mnemosyne
@General Winfield Stuck:
Possibly, since pre-existing conditions will no longer be allowed as a criterion for setting the price. At 62 she may not find an awesomely better deal since age is one of the criteria that are allowed for setting prices, but there could be some price relief.
And she will not be paying any extra tax in any case if she has private insurance.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: Thanks!
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@John Cole: Oh, yeah–you’ve really been articulating your love of Krugman and your skepticism about Afghanistan. Those have been nonstop themes for you, just like your incisive criticisms of Geither. But yet you hate the Democratic left (led by the all-powerful Ed Schultz) and libruls who criticize Obama.
John Cole
@Postlethwaite Windschitl: Now you’re just trolling.
Freemark
By the way it now appears that the “pre-existing conditions” provision is being thrown under the bus.
from Aravosis at Americablog
But we ‘cowards’ should just sit down and STFU.
John Cole
Other than Sam Stein and Froomkin, does anyone read the HuffPo anymore? Every time I go there, it seems like the top ten stories were stolen from Maxim magazine- see the Octomom in a bikini and other nonsense. It’s like a watered down Talking Points Memo with more nip slips.
General Winfield Stuck
@Freemark: And John Aravosis being the paragon of accuracy. No pre existing conditions protection, no bill, trust me.
Parents won’t have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition.
He takes this comment by Plouff and extrapolates a demise of the PEC
John Cole
@Freemark: That is nonsense and a direct misreading of Plouffe. The children being no longer cut for pre-existing conditions starts immediately upon signing, everyone else in 2014.
For fuck’s sake, how many times do you all need to be burned by Americablog?
Postlethwaite Windschitl
@John Cole: Yeah, and you’re Paul Krugman’s ideological soulmate. Uh huh.
robertdsc
The Medicare buy-in deal was supported by 59 of 60 senators. All that was needed was Lieberman’s cloture vote, not his final vote. And yet at the moment of truth, Rahm said to let Lieberman have his way, per TPM’s reporting.
Shortly after the 100-day mark, cramdown came up for a vote in the Senate. Michael Bennet of Colorado went on record after the vote failed as saying that the reason it failed was that the White House didn’t push for it, even though the President campaigned on it and made cramdown part of his recovery platform.
The liberals were pressured and threatened by the White House to vote for the war supplemental, a vote Pelosi has called her toughest to date.
The PhRMA deal was preserved at all costs in the Senate HCR effort.
All of these examples are testament to the White House’s ability to use their power. In every instance, they could have gone the other way. The country would have ben better off for it.
I disagree with John that I’m reflexively critical of the President. It’s that what he’s done has been, to me, greatly overshadowed by what he hasn’t done or is unwilling to do.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole: isn’t this fun? like root canal ground hog day.
Mnemosyne
@Freemark:
Given the multiple times that John Aravosis has been running around with his hair on fire based on wrong or seriously misinterpreted information in the past year, I think I’m going to wait for a more reliable source, like Jake Tapper or Mark Halperin.
(yes, that is snark, but it’s snark on the square, if I may paraphrase)
John Cole
I never said you were. In fact, if you reread what I said about you, you will learn I said the opposite.
General Winfield Stuck
And why do you think that was? Cause Obama secretly loves him some big PhRMA? It is because they, PhRMa, with their deep pockets have been famous for lobbying away US Senators good libtard sense. And likely did the same this time, or would have.
Did you think getting HCR done, something that has been tried over and over since the 1940’s was going to be done just with good old fashioned well intentioned left wing idealism? idealism I happen to agree with BTW.
policomic
The reason the Republicans are (alledgedly, anyway) “more effective” with 41 votes than the Democrats are with 59, or even 60, has to do with unity, not willpower, or the courage of their convictions. To notice this is not to endorse groupthink for Dems, and it’s not to say liberals should “just shut up,” and it’s not to defend Nelson, Landrieu, Bayh, B. Lincoln, or any of the other horrible, horrible Blue Dogs. Yes, they’re wrong. Yes, they’re tools. BUT they exist. The Senate rules (which are also horrible) exist. They must be dealt with. To deny reality is crazy. To understand reality (as House liberals certainly should, if they’re not idiots) and refuse to deal with it because it’s against their individual principles is selfish, and, yes, cowardly. They were right to complain about the Senate bill, but now it’s that or nothing. They can continue to criticize it, but they should still man up and pass it.
robertdsc
And yet before the Coakley disaster, the President was overruling both houses in the informal negotiations by voicing a desire to make a cut in the exclusivity period from 12 to 10 years. So the will to move in positive directions is there, it remains to be seen if the Administration can do so on a consistent basis.
Besides, if the Administration can show some sense and/or foresight in co-opting PhRMA, why is it so fucking frustrating to see them bow down to the bankrupt and discredited GOP?
Freemark
Sorry if I jumped to conclusions about the “pre-existing conditions”. Must admit much of that comes with arguing with my Paulite brother. He told months ago that we would end up with a bill that would require insurance purchase but no public option, anti-trust exemption, or pre-existing condition price protection. And so far over the last few months he has been much closer to being right than I have. May have made me a little gun shy. Getting tired of hearing “I told you so”.
P.S. Hope this score keeps up. Total of over 100 points would be fun.
Mnemosyne
@Freemark:
If it’s any consolation, Steve Benen did the same thing. I think we’re starting to get into Kremlinology here, which probably means we all need to pause for a beer.
Ailuridae
@robertdsc:
The Medicare buy-in deal was supported by 59 of 60 senators. All that was needed was Lieberman’s cloture vote, not his final vote. And yet at the moment of truth, Rahm said to let Lieberman have his way, per TPM’s reporting.
The Medicare buy-in deal was a last ditch attempt to get at least three and more likely five votes on board with an expansion of public insurance. Ten people entered negotiations and got to 59 votes and a psychopath with no convictions other than pissing off the left wouldn’t vote for it. And he also categorically wouldn’t provide his cloture vote. These were known known – you can look at Open Left’s attempt to whip the Senate caucus on this.
But, again, if the votes are there for a Medicare expansion it can be taken up at any time and passed with a 50+1 vote via reconciliation.
Shortly after the 100-day mark, cramdown came up for a vote in the Senate. Michael Bennet of Colorado went on record after the vote failed as saying that the reason it failed was that the White House didn’t push for it, even though the President campaigned on it and made cramdown part of his recovery platform.
Cramdown wasn’t even close to 60 votes. Dick Durbin’s comment that bankers own the Senate isn’t that far off the mark.
I’ve mentioned this in another thread where there was a claim that progressives gave and gave and gave. What exactly about the history of Evan Bayh or Blanche Lincoln or Mark Pryor or Max Baucus make you think that they want to be on record expanding an entitlement program (Medicaid) for at least 40B a year (and after reconciliation more like 55-60B). That’s half of the fucking bill. So when progressives claim that Conservadems gave nothing please remember that fully half of the bill, without visiting any other part of it was something they likely didn’t want to vote for. The Democratic Caucus covers the wide range of reasonable political approaches in a Western democracy (except a true far left). Ideally Ben Nelson would be the right pole of political discourse. In America he’s the 60th vote and votes 61 -100 are voting in lockstep unison against progress.
Oh, and thank God the Pharma deal was struck. Otherwise nothing would have ever passed the Senate. I don’t know what you mean that the Pharma deal was preserved – nobody was making any serious noise about getting it removed. It was a political necessity to get progress made.
kay
@Freemark:
A pared down bill that drops the mandate will drop the pre-existing conditions protection.
You can argue it both ways.
HRC argued during the primary that we needed a mandate to get rid of the “free rider” problem, ie: young and healthy people go without insurance and get health care, crappy, emergency health care, but they get it, and it has to be paid for. It’s a rational choice for them. They’re playing pretty good odds.
What she didn’t want to say is the mandate also broadens the pool, and allows people with pre-existing conditions to purchase an affordable policy, because there are more healthy people paying premiums. In other words, the healthy are subsidizing the not so healthy. Reality, but not very politically saleable.
General Winfield Stuck
@robertdsc:
Lemme get this straight. You spend many comments railing about how Obama is not living up to his campaign promises, and now whack him for doing just that, or at least going through the motions of working with and reaching out to the GOP.
And I know they are not interested in helping or negotiating in good faith with Obama and dems. That is not the point. The point is there are a whole lot more voters out there who are impressed with at least an effort on his part, than those of us that watch politics closely and advocate for liberal solutions.
You are hand wringing over optics and posturing. The reality is Joe Lieberman with the 60 th vote, and now the 59th, which in a weird way, brings me some happiness.
Now it matters, the optics of putting the obstruction onus back on wingers, which is what we should be doing rather than navel gazing Obama’s public style. And part of that equation is at least the willingness in rhetoric from the dem president to make it plausible to claim GOP obstructionism.
This is politics, in all it’s ungloriousness.
Brien Jackson
@Freemark:
Um, isn’t moving a bill through reconcilliation what the firebaggers want them to do?
robertdsc
By bowing down, I mean Honduras, Southers the TSA nominee, and Dawn Johnsen, among other things. In each instance, the Administration has changed their policies or nominees solely because of GOP obstruction. That asshole DeMint has more power than anyone else. Why did it take the Xmas bomber to highlight that there’s no TSA nominee and force Reid to schedule a vote? Why isn’t the Administration doing more to get their nominees in? Hell, in Johnsen’s case, Arlen Specter, a personage who greatly needs the President’s support to get re-elected, held up her nomination. Why? Why did it take Joe Sestak’s pressure in the primary to get him to change his mind?
See where I’m going? I don’t mean to suggest that we have a Bushian king. I mean to suggest that the Obama administration has to step up its game and fight the cancer that is the GOP. Put nominees to a vote. Get things ready to go, like a larger bank tax, and then force the GOP to side with the bankers. Play politics to win, not be bipartisan. The country needs Democratic success in the most dire way.
General Winfield Stuck
@robertdsc: I am just glad I don’t fret as much as you do with time and space minutiae. But I will agree that Obama needs to re calibrate and be more forceful with his will on matters of governance in general. Not too little, not too much, but just right.
The Truffle
@John Cole: Please don’t insult Maxim by comparing it to HuffPo. Seriously, HuffPo is now like the Weekly World News. And Daily Kos is gaining on it.
RC1
@Nick: It would be nice if he tried a little harder. I haven’t yet seen Obama’s health care plan. I hear high rhetoric, but maybe get in the trenches and fight. From what I’ve seen of Obama, he exudes weakness. GW Bush was horrible, but there was never a day when you didn’t know what he stood for. I can’t say the same of Obama.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Ailuridae:
I watched the Teabagger/Birther takeover of the August recess and meetings that congresscritters held with their constituents and wondered where the progressives were. The left let the right take over the in-your-face public narrative on HCR and did little more than bitch about it online. The right has been fighting tooth and nail and the left has been whining about it online.
It seems that the Teabaggers/Birthers can multi-task by having a presence both the real and virtual worlds while the left thinks they can do it via the virtual world with the minimally effective real world action of raising cash for pols or causes. I saw more public protests about going to Iraq from the left than I did any protests from them in support of a public option, even with the press blackout of the protests on Iraq.
Obama said we want change but he tempered that with the knowledge that it would not be easy nor would it be quick in coming. It seems that the far left would rather have a Democratic version of Bush/Cheney than a president who would rather have the sausage making machine do what it’s supposed to do while he either approves or disapproves of it with his pen.
The Executive, Legislative and Judicial are the three branches of our government. They are three distinct branches and they need to operate as such. That the legislative is fucking up and the executive is being blamed for it is pretty sad to say the very least. It’s not Obama’s fault that the Democrats are a bunch of spineless weasels, it took years of Republican and media browbeating to get there and expecting one man (or woman) to fix it all with a wave of their hand is delusional.
But what do I know since I’m only a self-hating neck-punching DFH banging away at my keyboard while stoned out of my gourd. That I even wrote this clearly shows that I’m totally wasted and completely out of my mind.
Carry on. ;)
Brien Jackson
@RC1:
I think the best way to understand Obama is as a pretty mainstream, maybe slightly left of median, Democrat. With that in mind, I think the reason you don’t really see Obama do a lot of public posturing, especially on healthcare, is that he’s probably going to be OK with whatever a Democratic Congress churns out, at least relative to the status quo.
I’d also submit that the White House is pretty good at counting votes, and also pretty well aware of how fragile the Senate Democratic caucus is at the margins. So you don’t see them drawing bright lines over issues they don’t think are going to be able to survive the Senate. I mean, they could have promised to veto any bill without a public option, but does anyone think that would have moved Lieberman? It just would have painted everyone into a pretty tough corner.
General Winfield Stuck
LOL. Are you even mildly aware of the ironic contraindication in this statement. It is the stuff of prog motivation from wanting.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@RC1: Obviously he needs to strap on a pilot suit and jump onto a carrier. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
RC1
@ruemara: Do you do any work within the Democratic Party? I happen to be a county party chair and vice chair of the county chairs caucus. I work my ass off for the Democratic party. What do you do?
RC1
@blackwaterdog: It would be nice if he’d actually fight for what he believes in. Making the stimulus smaller was a terrible decision and not only hurts American’s looking for non-existent jobs, but will bite him later. If unemployment does not come down, 2010 will be ugly and Obama will not get re-elected in 2012.
Comrade Kevin
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
One reason for that, I think, is that it really is easier to motivate people to go out and protest *against* something than *for* something.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@
Postlethwaite WindschitlPosthaste Windshitter: “Actually, John, your whole “libruls are assholes for criticizing Barry” thing has not been limited to Ed Schultz, has it?”When I see “Barry” in reference to Obama I immediately dismiss everything that ‘person’ has said or will say. It’s like the Republicans and their “Democrat Party” bullshit.
It’s childish.
robertdsc
He didn’t have the votes for a larger package at the time. He had no choice but to deal with the GOP on this particular issue. However, I read something one day that said that most of the stim pack funds were geared towards 2010 by design, though I can’t remember where I read that at.
Brien Jackson
@RC1:
There’s this thing, called Congress…
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Comrade Kevin:
If that is the case then where are the huge protests over the mandate? Judging by the online outcry from the left, there should be millions of people in the streets.
;)
AxelFoley
@blackwaterdog:
blackwaterdog, I just wanted to say thanks for what you do over at DailyKos. I lurk there, but I’m always sure to read your diaries.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Brien Jackson:
Easy now… be gentle or you might startle them. Not a good thing to do to sleepwalkers.
General Winfield Stuck
@RC1: it wasn’t a stimulus bill, even the wingnuts get that. It had just enough stimulus bells and whistles to get by calling it that.
What it was, was a massive progressive spending bill for future R and D for perennial progressive wish lists. In energy and medical science just to name a few. The biggest such bill in our history by far. And fighting harder for it with not Franken seated would have been fruitless. He needed Snowes vote to break the filibuster, and sacrificed a 100 bill to soothe her and Ben Nelson. Political reality. Face it, or get nothing passed ever in the current pol environment.
It is why the wingnuts hated and still hate it so much. Not because of not enough stimulus. They could care less about that, and actually want the economy to falter. There is more targeted leg pending to create jobs, but I think the economy is going through an internal healing process and self reconstruction that will happen when it does. Hopefully before the midterms, but Obama can only do a little to push it along.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@AxelFoley:
Same here. I see a bwd diary and I head right for it. I may not post there any more but I do return to read (and view the pics of!) the sane few who remain in that mosh pit of stupid.
Thanks for wading through that mess bwd, that takes some real effort to do.
bystander
Most of the folks here yammering about the “far left” wouldn’t recognize “far left” if it came and pissed on their shoes, or stamped far left on their behinds when it ran them over. There is no far left in the US. There is barely a true center in this country. What passes for moderate left in the rest of the world isn’t even on most folks’ radar screens here. Most of y’all wantin’ to get a good-on hate goin’ for those to your left need a different identifier than “far left,” ’cause truth to tell you’re barely standing in “smack dab middle of the road” territory. You continue to let the Republicans identify and describe who you are, and everyone else is. I’m telling ya it’s just sad.
+2
Ailuridae
@robertdsc:
Don’t forget that the Medicaid funding in this health care bill is straight stimulus. The only thing more stimulative by most measures is food stamps (have to spend those) . This country isn’t going to be at full employment to 2014 – the 40B (current) or 55B (more likely) in Medicaid funding per annum the Senate Bill represents is a big fucking deal especially if the federal government kicks in for the state’s portion of the expansion (universalizing Nelson’s sweetheart deal)
General Winfield Stuck
@bystander: Who used the term far left here? I haven’t read the whole thread, but would like to know your source for this.
Nick
@robertdsc:
58 at best, Nelson didn’t care for it either.
Ailuridae
@General Winfield Stuck:
He needed Snowes vote to break the filibuster, and sacrificed a 100 bill to soothe her and Ben Nelson. Political reality. Face it, or get nothing passed ever in the current pol environment.
Some “econometrics person” needs to estimate how many jobs Nelson stripping out the state funding for the AMT cost the country just so we all know. Barring that I am just going to conjure a number – 2.1M jobs. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.
The worst part is that Nelson gained nothing by it except to punish people. Only the left subtracts the AMT money out of the stimulus bill when measuring its effect and the AMT fix passes like 90-10 every year through the Senate. And this is the ass hole that the Republicans are forcing Obama to negotiate cloture with when he’s not negotiating with a psychopath.
Nick
@Corner Stone:
Then maybe democracy isn’t the best government to handle problems like this.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
Nelson agreed to the compromise. He was going to vote for cloture although he may have exacted the same payment with the sweetheart deal on Medicaid expansion.
kay
@Nick:
I think it’s really important to note that the Medicare buy-in deal was opposed by providers, not insurance companies.
Olympia Snowe said it, and she was right. She said “my providers oppose this”. The AMA head held a celebratory press conference when the deal fell apart.
Insurance companies would love the buy-in. A mandate combined with the sickest segment of the population, 55+, on the public plan? A beautiful thing.
Providers didn’t like it because Medicare holds down payments to providers.
I thought it was a great idea, but I think it’s important to know who we’re fighting. There’s a lot of players.
General Winfield Stuck
@Ailuridae:
The very worst part of living with the filibuster in the present time. IMO.
Smiling Mortician
@General Winfield Stuck: DougL used the phrase. Once. Comment #172. So, yeah, that would be “most of the folks” and “yammering.”
Ailuridae
@General Winfield Stuck:
When most people do refer to the ‘far left’ here they are explicitly referring to the American political landscape. I think everyone here understands how ‘much further right the ‘American center’ is than in other Western nations. But, again, this is an American blog about American politics so having to qualify every use of ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘center’ as being explicitly American seems like a tedious waste of time. But, yeah, I think most people here realize that cultural differences aside Ben Nelson would be on the far right of the British Tories.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@bystander:
When referring to the far left at this site, I thought we were talking about our country and what is going on in it. When the hell did we drag the rest of the world into it? Shit, I know I’m stoned but you are stating this after only two drinks?!
Stick to sniffing the bottle cap though there is the possibility even that might be too strong for you. Don’t even try smoking weed, there’s a chance you could go insane.
gwangung
Honestly, not many people know who the players are and why certain actions were taken to take care of these players.
robertdsc
He originally said yes, then hedged, then abandoned it. But the solution is the same, for both he and Lieberman. Let the bill have an up or down vote. No more, no less. And on this, the White House could not get it done. They should take the blame for that, especially given Rahm’s purported ability to twist arms and persuade people.
We saw the pressure from the White House for the war supplemental. Where was the pressure on Nelson and Lieberman to let the bill have a vote? Hell, they didn’t have to vote for the fucking thing. Just let it have a vote. I think that’s the saddest part of this entire fuckup. The conservatives could have voted for cloture and against the bill with no tears and no bitching. Instead they gave in to the GOP whining that the votes for cloture and the final bill are the exact same. That’s not true, no matter what the GOP says.
General Winfield Stuck
@Smiling Mortician: Thanks. The reason I asked is that “far left” has mostly only been used by wingnuts. Cole used “base”, I use prog, only cause I’m too lazy to type the word out.
It is kind of a side hobby of mine to track meanings of various political labels we use and what side or group is using a particular one, and to point out that they are just political, and not personal, when people take them that way. Though they can have connotations of negative meme making that it is nice to be aware of/as well as mocking ammo/Obot
John Cole
That is the other thing that is maddening- people seem to be looking at the negotiations as if it is completely linear- do this, and this will happen. That just isn’t the case. This is a gigantic system, and each player and all 60 of the preening egos in the Senate moves. It’s a lot like rescuing someone from the rubble in Haiti- you think you might be moving just that beam or board, but you are actually moving ten other things you can not see right away. You put the public option in, you gain 12 votes but lose 11 others. You put in a trigger, you gain 8 votes but lose 7 others. Etc.
It’s health care jenga, and no matter what happens, if it falls, the American people get crushed.
John Cole
@robertdsc: There was no real intense opposition to the war supplemental. That was a shot across the bow and lip service to anti-war constituencies. There is no way the Democrats, as timid and shell-shocked as they are after 8 years of being called troop haters would let the supplemental go down. I don’t think the comparison is apt.
angler
clap louder
kay
@gwangung:
The Leiberman mistake was easy. Joe Leiberman, Connecticut, insurance, right?
Except for the fact that the NYTimes caucus blog highlighted the AMA Prez crowing the next morning.
Buried inside the Medicare Advantage graft and scamola is higher payments to providers. There they are again!
I know. A lotta players. We needed a battle plan. Now you tell me.
Brien Jackson
@John Cole:
The war supplemental was arguably peak firebagger. as annoying as the public option pony has been at times, I don’t think it ever got as bad as Hamsher whipping votes to kill funding for troop supplies and such.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@General Winfield Stuck:
Guilty! :p
Brien Jackson
@kay:
That’s what annoys me about the “single-payer would be wicked popular” crowd; they barely even acknowledge that doctors and hospitals would be out in front of opposition to a single-payer insurance system, because it would hold down payments. But hey, if Obama and Reid can’t pass a major healthcare overhaul over the opposition of every vested interest, including your doctor, that’s just because they’re a bunch of spineless wimps and not change I can believe in. Also too.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Smiling Mortician:
I dare to speak for everyone. Everyone I tell you! Do I have to align myself with Grover Norquist to prove my point?!
Don’t push me…
Brien Jackson
For the record, I don’t really consider the firebaggers to be the “far-left.” Hell, I’m probably substantively to the left of them on a lot of things. They’re more petulant than radical.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@General Winfield Stuck:
This unapologetically unwavering O-bot is a small “i” independent so I tend to refer to the extremes on both sides as “far”. At least I am fair and balanced about it!
Damn, another righty slip of the tongue. Oh well, good night and good luck…
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Brien Jackson:
I think they are a conglomeration of convenience, many different political walks united in a common cause.
Making their Hamster popular and powerful!
RC1
@Brien Jackson: Funny, that didn’t stop George Bush.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): You’re cool :-)
the farmer
out in front of opposition to a single-payer
Not many were out in front of netroots opposition to single payer advocacy all last year quite as obstreperously as Jane Hamsher and her strange bedwetter coalition.
*
kay
@Brien Jackson:
I have mixed feelings about that. During this long, horrible debacle, I learned that the AMA is composed of older, wealthier doctors. I think, suspect, there are a sizable portion of doctors who would like to get out of billing and fee for service and just treat patients.
The Cleveland Clinic is doing salaries, and that’s a prestigious and desirable place to work.
“Cleveland Clinic’s physicians are paid a salary only. There are no bonuses or other financial incentives for the number [of] procedures performed or the number of patients seen. Every physician has a one-year contract and renewal is based upon the results of an annual performance review.”
RC1
@General Winfield Stuck: He didn’t need Snowe’s vote – he had Specter’s vote. At the time, we only needed one gop vote. Nonetheless, regardless of whether it’s a stimulus or not – Obama has to own it. If the economy doesn’t improve – his chances get worse. What’s even worse, passing a watered down bill only re-enforces the notion that keynesian economics doesn’t work. Then we’re left with more bullshit tax cutting for the rich to stimulate the economy. We all know how that worked out.
robertdsc
The White House had to work to get people to vote for it. Pelosi is on record as saying that the supplemental was the toughest vote she’s had to secure.
But here’s a separate bit about the White House and flexing its muscle:
Obama to DeFazio after stim pack vote.
Again, where was the pressure on Nelson and Lieberman to let the bill have an up or down vote? There was none and they killed the deal on their own.
Brien Jackson
@RC1:
From what?
Brien Jackson
@RC1:
They needed 2 GOP votes because Franken wasn’t seated.
Mnemosyne
Um, didn’t they re-nominate Dawn Johnsen a second time? I’m not sure what the “bowing down” reference is here to that. Her nomination expired and they re-nominated her for the same position. As I understand it, Southers decided on his own to withdraw his name, and at a particularly bad time, too, since even Congressional Democrats could have made some hay out of the Republicans holding up the TSA appointment right after a terrorist scare.
Honduras … yeah. I understand why they did it — too many appointees were being held up — but it still sucks.
General Winfield Stuck
@RC1:
This is absolutely true. And it is also true that presidents can do very little to effect short term economic activity. But here’s the thing, this was no ordinary downturn, it was a economic freefall heading for the depression abyss. What was Obama to do, let that happen, or use the tons of political he was given with victory to keep the entire economic boat from sinking?
Where are we now?, from losing 700,000 jobs a month to under or around 100,000 with actually adding some jobs in Nov. And an economy sputtering along, though not dead.
Cole’s point, I think, is not doing the GOP’s work for them with framing things the way they do. Criticism is fine, but shouldn’t we at least consider the nuance of what is happening with willingness to give our guy the benefit of the doubt, and frame our criticism in that way?
So the base is disappointed and you and others come here with dire warnings the sky is falling. And with it the irony is mindnumbing to us who realize how important it is to keep the WH is dem hands. Something to ponder.
YOU ARE THE BASE. and you have the keys to the kingdom, or presidency in your hands. What you gonna do now?
robertdsc
Specter registered his opposition the first time. He needs Obama’s support to get re-elected. But Obama didn’t bother to do any politicking on Johnsen’s part to convince Specter to vote yes. She languished for an entire year before being re-nominated. It took Joe Sestak’s commentary in the Senate primary race to get Specter to change his mind. Obama should have done that himself but chose not to. That’s what my entire problem is.
Nick
@robertdsc: It’s a lot easier to strongarm people who want a bill to vote for any one than one who doesn’t want any bill at all.
That’s the big difference. Lieberman and Nelson don’t really want a bill, people like DeFazio do.
Nick
@RC1: There were 58 Democrats in the Senate in February, Franken hadn’t been seated yet, so he needed TWO Republicans.
Nick
@robertdsc:
Here’s a clue…nobody gives a shit about Dawn Johnsen except some liberals, most Americans don’t know who the fuck she is. If Obama goes around demanding Arlen Specter vote for Dawn Johnsen people are going to go “wtf is a dawn johnsen? is that a climate change thing?”
By renominating her in the middle of a Democratic primary, and allowing Sestak to use the nomination to his advantage with Pennsylvania liberals, he got Specter to change his mind.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Nope, you’ve been here at least as long as I have, and I know you as a solid common sense liberal that I enjoy reading you’re comments. I have been an independent most of my life up until 2000 when I registered dem to oppose GWB. :)
robertdsc
The OLC may not be widely known, but it sure does have a hand in how things are done. See Yoo, John and torture memos for starters. But I can see where no one cares about that except us liberals. Just keep on walking, Peggy Noonan style.
Admiral_Komack
@Nellcote
“And yet when Mr. ToughTalk was approached by local Dems to run for the senate he declined. Apparently preferring to talk the talk rather than walk the walk.”
If Ed thought he could win, he should have run for the senate seat.
Otherwise, ED should shut the fuck up.
I’ve never liked ED, the loudmouthed fuck.
Since April 2009, I’ve stopped watching the pundits regularly.
It’s done wonders for my blood pressure.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thanks!
Whew. I almost blew my cover!
;)
Nick
@robertdsc: Oh yeah because the American people have proven that they are so fucking concerned about torture.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/fox-news-shows-rasmussen-poll-indicating-m
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
And he fucking well deserved to be beaten up by the base over Rick Warren. Rick Warren is a hate-filled bigoted homophobe. You don’t get this because you’re a straight white guy, but just try for once to have some empathy. I knew some people in the GLBT community who really busted their asses for Obama and who weren’t thrilled by Hillary Clinton because of the Clinton administration’s support for DoMA. So these people busted their asses for Barack Obama and what do they get? President Obama decides that he really needs to appeal to the Rick Warren bigot demographic, which is largely composed of people who didn’t vote for him and wouldn’t vote for him in a million years regardless of what he may do as president and shits all over a group of people who busted their asses to get him elected.
And what do the John Coles of the world say to these people, people who have had to go through worlds of shit that John “I’m a straight, white, southern male” Cole will never, ever have to deal with? They tell them that Barack Obama’s kowtowing to a bigot who works to deny them their rights, hell, to deny them their humanity in the almighty name of Jeebus, is no big deal and that they should just get over it.
This isn’t a case of asking Obama to act like Bush and issue an executive order overturning DoMA, DADT, legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states and proclaiming Ted Haggard and Larry Craig man and wife. This is a case of asking him to have some respect for a constituency that busted their asses for him and not to legitimize the same homophobic bigotry that he condemned during his campaign by inviting a homophobic asshole to deliver the invocation at his inauguration and he failed big time.
Nick
@Wile E. Quixote:
Having spent the entire campaign as part of the GLBT community, almost nobody liked Obama and treated Hillary like she was some sort of Queen.
Wile E. Quixote
@Nick
I didn’t see that in my neck of the woods up here in Seattle. Yeah, the HRC types were all over HRC, but at the grassroots and among the GLBT folks I knew most of them supported Obama.
Ruckus
@Brien Jackson:
If you think all Docs are against single payer you should check out this site: Physicians for a National Health Program
Seems a lot of Docs aren’t the money grubbers a lot of people think they are.
Nick
@Ruckus:
In a world where there is a such thing as Jews for Jesus, I’m not surprised a (small) percentage of doctors in this country actually do put patients over their salaries.
RC1
@General Winfield Stuck: Problem is we’re probably heading into a double dip recession. Since Obama didn’t pass the stimulus needed, he should have used his political capital to pass what was needed. Jobs matter more than anything else. If the economy was adding jobs, his standing would be improving and health care would be easier to pass. Now – he’s shot his wad and doesn’t have much to show for it. No health care bill, not political capital to push another jobs/stimulus bill through congress. EFCA – what happened with that? DADT repeal – yeah right. After MA senate there’s no way those items get dealt with. Bank reform without a consumer protection unit isn’t worth passing. Need I go on. Will I vote for Obama again, yes. Will I send buckets of money – no. Will the youth vote show up again – no. You can’t lift their spirits, vow to change things and then fail without losing them. Anyone who has worked in politics long enough knows that getting the 18-29ers out to vote is difficult, piss them off they won’t show for a generation. That’s why this is so sad.
General Winfield Stuck
@RC1:
Obama’s approval rating is right about where election his victory percentage was, and is historically near, or even better than many first term presidents. Maybe he isn’t as liberal as you wanted, so it might be prudent to choose a possible challenger for 2012 and quit bellyaching on Obama fail. Sounds like that is where you’re going with this, as well as the other Janebots and those like her howling at the moon.
I twice posted in this thread the Politafact Obamameter on where he is at, relative to campaign promises and the current status of those. And only one year in of a 4 year term.
You list all the alleged failures, but not a single success. Get honest with yourself and more importantly we here at BJ, and admit you want another president. And we can start the primary debate early.
But constant wanking Obama fail is getting old and dishonest to the point of progs like you need to come clean and go for Hillary, or some other candidate to run against Obama.
FlipYrWhig
@RC1:
Oh, lord, this again. Getting what he got required watering things down to get them past self-appointed gatekeepers. Not watering them down means _losing_.
OK, let’s say he stands firm, and has 50+ votes but not 60. Republicans filibuster. Democrats then say, “Hey, what the hell, filibustering this hurts the country.” Republicans then say, “I don’t care how hard you complain, we’re not stopping the filibuster.”
Democrats then say… what? What do you do when the other side has no shame and fears no repercussions? Because that’s what we’re dealing with.
That’s the fundamental problem: standing firm on more liberal policy items that are sure to lose a few center-right Democrats means getting nothing, and the only fix is working out how to expose Republican obstructionism _to the point where they feel they have something to lose_. As things stand, they don’t have anything to lose. They know nobody likes them as a group, and their goal is to make nobody like the Democrats as a group, so they can reduce everything to individual candidates’ personalities, like happened with Brown vs. Coakley.
I just don’t understand how “political capital” is supposed to work. The only thing that makes any sense is if it turns into public pressure, and not just _some_ public pressure but _sufficient_ public pressure to flip would-be No votes into Yes votes. No one ever explains how that comes to pass.
Calvin the Bold
I read this blog every day, but have only occasionally posted.
I’m not a Democrat, or a Republican. In fact, I left the Republican Party over the issue of torture, indefinite detentions, and extraordinary rendition. I don’t consider myself especially liberal. I voted for Obama.
That said, I am in utter wrath at Obama and the Democratic Party. This country desperately needs real change, a REAL break from the policies of the Bush Administration, and the economic philosophies of the last 20 years. It’s obvious that the middle class is under siege. It’s obvious that we are reaching a devastating imbalance of wealth and opportunity, and that we are looking at the real possibility that our kids will not have as good a life as we have had.
In office, Obama has proved to be lukewarm and ineffective. This isn’t buyer’s remorse; I know just what kind of a disaster Palin and McCain would have been. But that doesn’t mean that Obama and the Democrats aren’t delivering another kind of disaster. This is not the time for half measures.
It’s a time for nuclear options. It’s a time for Reed to thunder from the floor of the Senate that the people WILL NOT tolerate obstruction and backroom deals to get 60 votes. Whether he’s right or not, he should declare that the Senate has the power to make rules for itself with a simple majority, even to the extent of jettisoning any rule that says they need a supermajority to change the rules. He should ram through an agenda that actually helps the American people, and he should do it over the public howls of the Republican Party. And every Democrat should be on the weekend talking heads programs thundering that the time of capitulating to the conventional wisdom, the Village idiots, and the special interests is over.
No one is going to care if there are procedural irregularities in how this shit gets passed. What matters is that it gets done. The GOP has collectively lost their goddamned minds, and they deserve absolutely no seat at the table until they can grow the fuck up and start acting like adults again. In the meantime, they need to be stood in the proverbial corner so grownups can do work without being distracted by tantrums.
The Dems have the right ideas (for the most part) right now in terms of where this country needs to go. I won’t forgive them if they can’t turn that into results.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Winfield Stuck
Jesus Christ, will you knock it off with the Jane Hamsher dogwhistle. Look, who gives a fuck about what Obama’s approval ratings are? Seriously you sound like a fucking villager when you respond to a post about Obama’s economic policies by bringing up his approval ratings. Yeah, Obama’s approval ratings are nice, remember George H.W. Bush. In the spring and summer of 1991 he had fantastic approval ratings and a year and a half later he lost the presidency because the economy was in the shitter and he was perceived as being uncaring, aloof and ineffective.
Here’s the thing, the people you’re shitting on in here and accusing of being Janebots (I guess it takes an O-bot to know a Janebot) will probably show up and vote for President Obama in 2012. They won’t be enthusiastic about doing so, but they will. But they’re not going to bust their asses the way they did in 2008 to get him elected and he’s not going to win many independent votes either. Barack Obama’s January, 2010 approval ratings aren’t going to matter in November of 2012 any more than George H.W. Bush’s April, 1991 approval ratings mattered in November of 1992.
Wile E. Quixote
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re right. I realize now that President Obama is as helpless as a newborn and he can’t get anything even remotely liberal or progressive done because of the big bad Republicans and the big bad Blue Dogs and therefore he shouldn’t even try because if he does Evan Bayh and Claire McCaskill will go on TV and say that he’s going too far and that will give him a case of the sadz.
All you seem to be saying is that Barack Obama is impotent and can’t accomplish anything significant. Hey, isn’t that what Cole was bitching about when he started this thread?
Wile E. Quixote
@General Winfield Stuck
Oh, and could you please explain to me, and everyone else, what Barack Obama has accomplished in the last 12 months that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have accomplished if she had received the Democratic nomination and been elected in 2008. Seriously, was there anything at all to all of that hope and change stuff? Or was it just another meaningless campaign slogan?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Wile E. Quixote:
Obama has (or has not) accomplished what he has (or has not) because he is the President and Hillary is not. Anyone who seriously responds to your challenge is wasting their time on pure speculation that will accomplish what? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zero. El Zilcho. Is that your point?
Quit whining about Obama and focus on those who hand him the bills to sign. As has been stated here repeatedly, the Executive signs bills and the Legislative branch writes them. Unless your point is that you are wishing Obama to be a king for you and rule like Bush/Cheney (but from the left). Is that what you want, Obama writing, signing the bills and bypassing congress? Because it sure sounds like that is what you want.
I have listened carefully to Obama and he has made it very clear (to me at least) that though the country hungers and wants change, he can’t do it all on his own. It’s impossible.
As I asked above in another post in this thread and in other threads in the past (which has gone unanswered thus far) where were/are the public faces and voices of the left who should be pushing our legislature? Holding protests? Holding rallies? They sure weren’t at the town halls since the Teabaggers and Birthers had the run of those places with nary a liberal standing up against them. Nope, they must have had more important things to do like posting bullshit online about how ineffective Obama has been. All I see from the far left is an online freakout. No rallies or protests like the Teabaggers have had, nothing. Nada. Zero. El Zilcho.
Keep banging away on that keyboard though, that’ll show Obama who is boss, right? I laugh my ass off at people like you same as I do the 101st Chairborne, it’s online advocacy at its worst. Lots of words, just words, and very little good comes of it.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig:
Besides this, we also have the problem that the stimulus wasn’t filibustered, it needed 60 votes as stipulated in a 1970’s-era legislation that demands a 3/5 majority of any legislation increasing the deficit.
General Winfield Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
And here be Wile E Quixote being a delicate flower and whining with concern about name calling. Coming from one of the most caustic lips ever to adorn the pages of BJ.
I am tired of the non stop ruminations and the incessant Obama fail wankings. Sometimes when the squirrel cage of hand wringing gets to be too much, I say what I want to describe it. You can take it, besides, according to you they will all still vote for Obama.
General Winfield Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
No idea how this is in any way relevant to my comment, but it is still elegant in it’s stupidity.
General Winfield Stuck
Every one with an ounce of political smarts knows a presidents approval rating is directly relative to his power to move congress and instill the requisite fear they need to motivate themselves. That, and the commenter I was responding to was claiming “the base” being disappointed was causing Obama to be generally unpopular and could cause him to lose in 2012
madmatt
You mean those early days when he hired holder, geitner and rahm? Most of us were smart enough to recognize a sellout at that point! Hell Rahm helped lose healthcare the first time around, lets put him in charge again. And the first thing Holder did was make sure that bribe taking sack of shit Ted Stevens NEVER had to pay for his crimes.
Its ok to hate some dems, some dems hate sellout punks like you who believe if we don’t roll over on command EVERY SINGLE TIME we will never accomplish anything. Why should we ONCE AGAIN take one for the team, whens the last time the team took one for us?
General Winfield Stuck
The only thing you have to take is your medicine when you come here with tepid bullshit memes of Obama FAIL/ We dispense it because somebody has to.
Jay
Except he is losing his base. Our more accurately, he and the Congress, are losing the base. Ignoring that is pretty stupid.
General Winfield Stuck
The wanking never stops.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@madmatt:
We have been getting hit with some nasty storms over here while Rahm is on the opposite coast. Coincidence? I think not.
@Jay:
No he is not. See how easy that was? You say one thing and I say another to cancel it out. I have the fact that polls show Obama has nearly the same support as he had when he was elected, what do you have to prove your point? Polls also show that Obama is more popular than both the Dem and Repub congresscritters by almost double so it would seem that statistic shoots more holes in your argument.
I believe that the only people who are saying that Obama is losing them are pundits, those who voted for a pony and not a president, and those didn’t vote for him at all.
Da Bomb
@General Winfield Stuck: I love how people who type on blogs feel they are the base. When we make up only 2% of the electorate.
As I have said ad nauseam, there’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism of the President, but I start to tune out when there are ad homimens and strawmen being used to complain about the Obama Administration.
As Nick stated upthread,
When time and time again, polls come out and prove how popular Obama is. I also love how people ask about his accomplishments, regardless of how many times I have listed the information from Politifact. But maybe Politifact is a paid consultant for the administration, so why even bother to pay attention. They would just rather excessive wank on and on, without any experience in holding an office or knowing how policy works.
But keeping banging on your keyboards if it makes you feel better and yelling about how the President should be canned or that he’s a corporate tool and a hack. Or that he spineless and weak. That’s helps with reassuring the President and his administration that you have his back. Keep it up.
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): THIS.
madmatt
Fine Doug, you believe what you want, but since you call yourself conservative, I call you scum. I am calling the bill shit because it is shit, not even pre-existing conds. anymore. So other than a giveaway to the ins co’s there is nothing worthwhile in the bill. The bill sucked from the moment they let Baucus’s hooker from wellpoint write the bill.
Obama sucks because of who he appointed and his lack of leadership. I am still waiting for somebody to explain all the benefits the liberal base got for helping obama?
Mnemosyne
@robertdsc:
Specter registered his opposition while he was still a Republican. It’s pretty interesting how you keep forgetting that minor little detail and claiming that Obama has magical powers to make Republicans do what he wants.
FlipYrWhig
@Wile E. Quixote:
Pretty much. Explain how “trying” accomplishes fuck-all. It doesn’t. Those are the choices: “try,” lose, and somehow convert the resulting outrage (?) into more votes later; or water things down to the point where you get the 60 votes you need. Everything else is just wishful thinking. Bush could get things through the Senate because Senate Democrats actually worry about being portrayed as obstructionists. Senate Republicans don’t give a fuck. That’s not fixable until you find a way to give Mitch McConnell a shame transplant.
onceler
hehe, Kos just gently smacked your silly logic down.
DetroitMark
So Shultz only did it for the street cred.
Gee, what do you suppose motivates Obama to go from Huge Bank Corp Apologist and Back Slapper, to throwing around words like “populist” as if he’s got such a bone in his body?
That’s right. For the street cred.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@madmatt:
Awww, some idiot that can’t read says I am “scum” because they think I am a conservative. No, it’s more likely that some fuckwit on the internet who I know absolutely nothing about thinks I am “scum” because I don’t agree with them. Either way, does it matter one whit and do I really care?
No and not one fucking bit.
I do know that one benefit of your helping Obama is that by voting for him you kept McCain and Palin out of the White House. Now you can go do something else since you don’t have to wait around for an answer anymore. Might I suggest a long walk off of a short pier?
The weather is perfect for it.
Jennyjinx
Shorter Kos:
I’m all powerful and influential– until the shit hits the fan and then I hide behind “But I’m just a widdle guy wit’ a blog!”
Apparently, GOS forgot the credit they took for taking control of Congress. Can’t have it both ways, kidz. You take credit for that, you take credit for the damage you’ve done while screaming for your perfection.
If this bill tanks, GOS can pat themselves on the back for a job well-done. Aren’t they glad they crashed those gates?
strawmanmunny
@Jennyjinx:
Yeah, funny how all of a sudden, Kos doesn’t have that much pull after all. Oh well, guess I don’t have to follow what he says if he doesn’t have any influence.
cd
The problem will get solved by the midterms. Harry Reid and most of the conservaDems are getting voted out this November and November of ’12. We can bloviate about it- the voters are just going to do it.
This is the post-Kennedy Democratic establishment on Capitol Hill getting voted out. Kennedy worked hard to keep liberal and Left support for it and himself. The last two elections brought in a lot of additional centrist and center Right Democrats, which made his job harder. And now he’s gone and no one currently in it has bothered to do that job- if anything, it’s all contempt and taking liberal and Left support for granted. The place has run off to center Right.
The ideal sort of Republicans to vote in, if one has to, from a liberal Democratic point of view, are a crowd who are totally incoherent on policy but united and utterly hostile to conservative Democrats and the now Reid-centered Democratic establishment. These can be easily voted out as soon as Democrats shape up again post-Reid and post-LieberNelsincoln.
And that’s exactly the sort of Republicans we have now.
Matthew
Ever stop to consider the possibility that you never really stopped being a Republican, but simply switched allegiances to a similar party with a different name? When people self-identify as a Republican, it’s similar to self-identifying as an evangelical, insofar as you are publicly acknowledging that you are entirely comfortable with other people handing you a set of beliefs or principles to be internalized. In essence, you become little more than a proud cog in a larger bullshit machine.
Self-identifying as a Democrat means fuck-all. It means whatever you want it to mean at the moment that you say it. Sure, the Democrats have a policy platform and a beatific creed, but no serious person believes that Democrats as a party are uniformly committed to anything at all. We tend not to be cogs, but rather an anonymous piece in a bizarre, 12 dimensional jigsaw puzzle with no solution.
Our downfall, such as it is, is that we are easily roused to romantic heights by glittering rhetoric. We want to believe in some higher calling, a better purpose, and when the man that we elected as our leader proves time and time again to be nothing more than a charlatan who conned his way into the White House, we no longer have any interest in self-identifying as “with” him.
You want Democrats to become Republicans. That’s not going to happen. In the meantime, have fun trying to convince people that Democrats should have continued their mindless negotiations with Snowe. If you really believe that, then you should probably consider re-changing allegiances.
Sake
Ed’s right. Obama’s losing his base. Including this school teacher and her family.
Last time we had a Democrat in the White House, progressives waited, and waited, and waited for Bill Clinton to get his shit together and do something for the left wing base. We ate every spoonfull of bullshit that Rahm Emanuel fed us. We were patient. We believed. We hoped. And then we got Nafta and Monica Lewinsky. Not again. Not this. I won’t take it again.
Sanford Sklansky
I think Markos had a good response.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/18/826443/-Canaries-in-the-coal-mine