Health reform is back from the dead. Many Democrats have realized that their electoral prospects will be better if they can point to a real accomplishment. Polling on reform — which was never as negative as portrayed — shows signs of improving. And I’ve been really impressed by the passion and energy of this guy Barack Obama. Where was he last year?
I dunno. Maybe expecting the Democratic majority in the legislature to write some legislation on the issue they have been trumpeting for five decades? I guess the fact Obama had some personal relationships with people from his time in the Senate blinded him to the simple fact that the vast majority of Democrats in congress are as worthless as breasts on men.
Also, only recently has the White House deployed the Rahm Emanuel Penis of Doom in the House showers, so who knows what else they have up their sleeves in their pants left?
I don’t know how anyone can look at the past year and not realize the problem in this government is in the Senate, and not the House or the White House.
Nicole
Simon & Garfunkel reference. Sigh. So much win. I’m sorry, what was the post about?
TenguPhule
Idiots and Republicans. What else?
Comrade Mary
Rahm Emanuel Penis of Doom needs to be a tag, please.
I offer you this cover as payment in advance.
Faux
Hey, I like my breasts. Something can’t be useless if it means you’ll never be bored.
Comrade Mary
God DAMN it, why can you say the p-word and we can’t? Can’t we be trusted with … well, I guess not.
To save you from digging me out of moderation, one more time:
Rahm Emanuel Pe-nis of Doom needs to be a tag, please.
I offer you this cover as payment in advance.
Bonus cover: September, just because I like it. Also? Cute stuffed animals and a dancing granny who completely kicks it.
El Cid
Well
I don’t understand how anyone could observe the U.S. political system for a couple decades and not realize that the problem lies in both the Executive and the two branches of the legislature.
But, I know, I know, how dare I suggest the President have seemed to have realized stuff I, a mere ordinary schmuck citizen, seemed to have learned over the last couple of decades. I must be a neurotic about Rahm.
Tonal Crow
The Senate is one problem among many. As usual, Bad Rhetoric ((tm) Democratic Party, all rights reserved) is the chief problem. Or why, for example, did it take Obama an entire year to begin demanding an “upperdown vote?”
Xenos
Rotten boroughs. It only took the British about 150 years to fix the problem, which is not very heartening.
Just Some Fuckhead
And FUCK YOU JANE HAMSHER.
There, we covered all our shibboleths in a mere 1 post, 9 comments. Bring on the new thread!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Why I was never worried they would pass at least some HCR. These folks do what they do in part because they like power, and the bright shining prospect of losing it tends to focus the scatterbrained liberal mind.
The problem isn’t really the senate, it is a minority party holding it hostage using the senates rules. A GOP that has gone into borderline sedition just short of outright rebellion, not willing even to entertain compromise. And now that the SCOTUS has opened the money spicket allowing their plutocrat masters to flood the realm with cash, it is not likely to get any better.
They aim to destroy what they cannot control. And have at least 30 percent of the populace behind them. It is the last refuge of mean spirited scoundrels. Gawd hep us.
John Cole
@El Cid: WTF- Nancy Pelosi and the House have delivered. Period.
I know I bash the progressives all the time, but they are NOT THE PROBLEM.
You are smoking rock. This is just another “I want to criticize Obama for not giving me a pony and the OBOTS won’t let me comment,” but the problem is the fucking Senate. Not the swarthy guy, not the house.
Just Some Fuckhead
The Anti-PenisFu is strong in this one.
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead: Thank you for getting *that* out of the way.
flounder
I am actually optimistic that we could get some movement on senate reform in the near future.
I think that story about how the filibuster got started (because Aaron Burr made some off-hand comments as he was nearing his term as V.P. about how the Senate needed to get rid of its rules to end debate) should be spread far and wide because it then is really seen as a big mistake and not some noble gesture to gentlemanly debate and a token to the minority.
lacp
I’ve obviously skipped a few years in politics: I was totally unaware that Dennis Kucinich, Jane Hamsher, and Noam Chomsky held Senate seats. Thanksralph!
mr. whipple
Go Cinci!!!!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
For any who might’ve missed it, Rachel Maddow has a great interview with Nancy Pelosi, she’s helping herself.
(and, while I’m getting caught up with my TIVO. Stephen Colbert called Glenn Beck “The Silver Gopher”. That tickled me, in a non-sexual way)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I guess the prog butthurt is addictive. If Cole doesn’t provide the fix, we will just do it ourselves. Cool.
Mike Kay
I don’t know. Women love my pecs. But I’m still in my 20s. I’m sure at some point gravity will win.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
Then.. uhhhh, that means YOU are the problem?
mr. whipple
Trying to fix 8 years of Bush, Krug.
Go back to being filled with despair.
Comrade Luke
I disagree that the problem is the Senate.
There are problems in the House, the Senate, and the White House, regardless of the party in control, and the members of each know how to exploit the problems in the other two such that nothing gets done and they can blame each other.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tonal Crow:
I live to give. It’s just how I roll.
The Dangerman
If men’s breasts WERE useful, we’d be reading about Rahm Emanuel’s Breasts of Doom, which would just be wrong.
Cacti
The United States Senate is our very own House of Lords, but without the charmingly anachronistic titles, and with a lot more real power to thwart the House.
Lieberman became the poster boy for the detached narcissism of your average US Senator, when he opposed the Medicare buy-in for no other reason than to wave his ass in the face of the people who primaried him.
Mike Kay
Let’s face it, the reason so many congressional critters sucked on this issue is because we’re asking them to vote against their political donors. Every time we ask them to do something on behalf of their voters, they have to seek approval from their paymasters. I bet you if there was a secret vote, the public option would have passed overwhelmingly.
El Cid
@John Cole: I’m not criticizing Obama for not giving me a pony, and I’m not smoking rock.
This is literally one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard here — i.e., we all knew that the major barrier would be the Senate, and yet, what? Any suggestion that the administration acted in anything other than a perfect manner in dealing with this clear, objective fact is — what — Obama-hating?
Nancy Pelosi is one of the best leaders we’ve had over the past decade — yet how is it some sort of insult to her to note that there are still enough anti-HCR Congressional Democrats to form a barrier, albeit perhaps not a final one, to the House’s passage of the Senate bill? Does it not count that there’s still a troublesome minority of Dems in the House which occasionally number enough to block important legislation?
Is it some sort of Rahm-obsessed “progressive” whining to point out these objective facts? Is it not fair to mention them if it would detract from complimentary statements about non-Senate players?
What argument is this? Credit where due, certainly — Obama’s on the edge of shepherding through an HCR victory where none did before. And that’s a great thing.
That doesn’t mean I check my head at the door or get reduced to one of the stereotypes this blog orbits around, such as the Rahm / anti-Rahm debris field.
mr. whipple
Wow, what a game.
Mike Kay
@mr. whipple: You would think K-Thug, of all people, wouldn’t above a red meat addiction.
El Cid
Also, I don’t recall having ever politically characterized John Cole’s views, but, hey, resorting to lexicon-use is perfectly fine when a term like “progressive butthurt” seems useful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Dangerman: The under-reported story of the Bush Years was how Denny Hastert’s Moobs helped him maintain party discipline. They suffocated northeastern moderate Republicans until they went full wingnut.
freelancer
I…er, shit. I got nuthin’ :D
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord. Speaking of pony fantasies
mr. whipple
God, Colbert has Rasputin on.
freelancer
Also:
There should exist a web award for Best Imagery. This site would clean up year after year.
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
Well, they worked on Snowe for a year. That seemed to tie in to their final plans pretty well.
Mike Kay
@Mike Kay:
should read: You would think K-Thug, of all people, would be above a red meat addiction.
RadioOne
I diagree – the problem is definitely with the Senate. I mean, they’re siting on hundreds of house bills passed right now. You’d have to be pretty cynical to believe that the White House is thinking up ways to make the Senate look like shit, given what they’re already doing this session.
Chuck Butcher
Consider two factors, somebody has to run and then somebody has to elect them. The problem starts well before the 3 Houses mentioned.
Who runs? Who finances? Who votes?
Rahm had certain ideas about who was worth running and it goes considerably farther than that – he scarcely being the sole determiner. Move on from there. Funny how voters get gauged and how often those measurements are flawed.
This State was never supposed to pass tax increase measures, particularly in a recession.
Mike Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She knows better, but likes to stir the
potblog.She’s also trying to shift blame. When the petition first started she said 52 senators will easily sign the petition, yet 4 1/2 weeks later, they’re stuck on 41 votes. When someone as liberal and independent as Russ Feingold refuses to sign, you know the votes aren’t there.
Comrade Luke
@RadioOne:
Valid point wrt them sitting on house bills passed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike Kay: She’s also trying to shift blame. When the petition first started she said 52 senators will easily sign the petition,
I didn’t know Feingold had refused to sign on. Ryan Grim’s headline is even worse
The Public Option’s Last Stand: A Matter Of Will, Not Votes
Grim spells out his countdown to fifty. It includes not only Claire McCaskill and Evan Bayh, but…. Ben Nelson.
Desert Rat
Dear Mr. Cole,
We’re asking you to desist in your defamation of breasts on men. We’re extremely offended that you likened us to something as useless as Democratic Senators. By contrast, we find Democratic Senators to be less useful than breasts on men, in that at least we are ornamental.
For example, have you looked at Harry Reid lately? Not ornamental at all. You get what we mean.
In the future, may we suggest the more standard comparison “useless as tits on a bull.”
Sincerely,
La Lack of Leche League
kay
@Mike Kay:
The number was 42, IMO, so 41 makes sense. 30 committed publicly (The Sherrod Brown letter) and 12 voted a PO out of committee.
42 – Massachusetts = 41 It hasn’t budged.
The Raven
I figure if about 10 conservative Senators lose their seats to progressives, the Senate would no longer be the problem, and then we’d find out if the House really meant it.
Croak!
Mike Kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
It’s interesting to read about Clinton’s presidency. During the first two years the republicans were in the minority, and while they opposed Clinton’s agenda, they didn’t invoke the filibuster. They let the Brady Bill pass. They let the assault weapons ban pass. They let the crime bill pass, even though they voted against it. And while healthcare failed, they didn’t filibuster the motion to proceed to debate. These rebels have decided to filibuster everything.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Luke:
I disagree. Republicans in the same situation would have found a way to do it. They were willing to blow up the filibuster over something on the order of 1 in 10 justice nominees being filibustered by Democrats.
But here’s the deal: they didn’t have to blow up the filibuster because as soon as they indicated an intention to do so, a few Democrats and Republicans caved and came up with a compromise. They did this in order to preserve their status as important swing votes for cloture and the beneficial position this often puts them in. Would something like this have worked in the Senate now? Who knows, we never tried.
When Republicans were pulling this same nonsense back in the ’70s (but not nearly to this degree), President Ford and VP Rockefeller asked Democrats in the Senate to blow up the filibuster, which they did. Contrast that with Obama who is way more popular now than Ford was then, refusing to do anything other than hug all over Republicans in pursuit of some worthless bipartisanship fetish.
Yeah, the Senate is broken. But that doesn’t mean *a leader* can’t propose a solution and then push hard for it.
Toni
The best thing to have happened to the Dems so far in 2010 is the loss of that seat in MA. If they still had 60 in the Senate they would not have been doing reconciliation, they would have been trying to cut deals with Nelson, Lincolon, Landrieu, Lieberman, etc to try and win their votes for final passage. These people are irrelevant now as they are not needed for reconciliation.
tc125231
Emo John calls Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate, Kthug.
Very cute.
Listening to Krugman allowed me to make timely moves that saved about 30% more of the value of my 401K than I would have otherwise.
Exactly what is your value to the universe, Bush Boy?
robertdsc
Time to start flying Predator drones over these assholes’ homes.
Mark S.
The Senate is certainly a problem. Another problem is the fucking nihilists that now constitute the GOP. How can you even debate, let alone compromise, with people lacking both a sense of morality and a grounding in reality?
Exhibit A: The goopers came up with a health care plan that would cover a whopping additional 3 million people.
Exhibit B: Paul Ryan’s tax plan that would raise taxes on everybody except the top 5%.
ruemara
How is it that even when Mr. Cole isn’t punching hippies, they show up and do it themselves? With an “And so there, too!” attitude that’s mighty strange.
danimal
The jackasses in the house have much less individual power than the jackasses in the senate. Stupak is every bit the jackass that Nelson or Lieberman is (at least on this issue), but he’s only 1/435 of a body that recognizes majority rules. Give him a 1/100 share of power in a body with supermajority rule and Stupak (or Kucinich) would be the same level jackass.
My apologies to jackasses; they’re good animals and I shouldn’t compare them to lower life forms like ego-driven congresspersons.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oops, someone is unaware of all internet traditions.
Hell, Rick Perry was flirting with secession barely a year ago, and Politico suggested, based on the fact that as an incumbent he won a Republican primary in Texas, that he’s a front-runner for the presidential nomination. The media is arguably as big a problem as the Senate.
No Joy in Mudville
Hmm. I don’t know how anyone can look at the past year and not realize that there have been problems in the White House, House, and Senate, but the worst problems have been (by far) in the Senate.
This is where I can never quite figure out your reasoning. Yes, the Senate is the worst, but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been problems (some serious) elsewhere. And sometimes when there is a really serious problem (like in the Senate) the president (historically) has been able to overcome that problem through inspired leadership (and sometimes down and dirty coercion).
Congress has often been guilty of incompetence and worse. Sometimes the president has come to the rescue; often it’s been the Supreme Court. Now, maybe the president and Supreme Court could blame the problems on the Congress, but the people are better served when everyone does the best they can with what they’ve got to work with. Today’s Supreme Court isn’t going to come to the rescue of anybody but gun owners, corporations, and the wealthy (not an exhaustive list). To argue that the White House has done the best a White House could do in the last year is simply nonsense. That doesn’t mean we abandon Obama, but it should mean that we call on him to do better — whenever he’s not doing all he could and no matter what the Senate is or isn’t doing.
In the end what matters is do we get health care reform. If it fails, then anyone who could have done more is at fault. No, not equally at fault, but that isn’t the most important consideration. Once HCR is law, it won’t matter how bad (or good) any of the actors were. Those who caused real problems, like the Stupaks, Nelsons, and Liebermans, should be held accountable. Those who did less than they could have (in a timely fashion) should be reminded that we have higher expectations and the failure of one actor doesn’t get others off the hook.
It’s not (or shouldn’t be) about blame. It’s about results and responsibility.
Obama is working hard to get this thing passed — now. If he’d done more (and better) last year, he might already have a signed bill and he could be working on other things. Personally, I think that if Obama had done things differently, we would already have a signed bill. That’s an opinion, not a fact, but I think there is good reason to think so, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that opinion.
As for the Senate? If only there were a way to replace all the dead wood and idiots with people whom we could trust and rely on. If only.
kay
@Toni:
That’s generous. Rational and rule-based.
I think they panicked beginning with the VA and NJ losses, and it’s taken them this long to calm down.
Obama dropped in the polls, they lost three races, and they completely lost their shit. All those past losses flashed before their eyes, and they went crazy. “It’s happening AGAIN!”
I honestly don’t think Democrats function at all when they’re winning.
Obama’s got some of it too. He’s better when he’s back on his heels a little.
Mike in NC
They are the Masters of the Universe (AKA corporate whores). We, by contrast, are merely worthless pond scum. Carry on.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Here is what would happen if dems blew up the filibuster on legislation, something that the wingnuts were not willing to do. Just for judges. Because they, and everyone else with a working brain knows that utter chaos would ensue. Dems pass what they want with simple majorities, and in a few years wingers get the congress and WH back and repeal everything with a simple senate majority vote, as well as SS and anything else they find time for. Because the rule they will have nuked is the one requiring 67 votes to change rules.
What senate dems and Obama are now doing they should have started earlier, but that’s water under the bridge. And that would be to pass popular bills with the public in small packages and dare the wingers to block them.
And mostly make the filibuster an issue day in and day out. Talking about reforming it, holding hearings on it, and make it a top shelf issue and educate the public to what is going on.
But breaking the rules to permanently kill the filibuster for all legislation will only serve to introduce more chaos into the political realm, and paint dems as rule breaking bullies. Part of which is why the repubs are severely in the penalty box for their excesses.
Mike Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Russ is up for reelection. It’s not the safest seat. He knows if he votes for a public option, the insurance industry would pour money into his opponent’s war chest. Now he still could win, but like any other individual, he wants the best odds. And the best odds is not to pizz off a giant conglomerate. So he enters into a non-agression pact: he doesn’t vote for the PO/Insurance doesn’t make his reelection a bloody hell.
Les
@Desert Rat:
As a member in good standing of The Lack of Leche League, Desert Rat, I thank you for your stalwart defense of the ornamental (and often entertaining) value of men’s breasts.
I would award you teh Intertubes if I could.
Mike Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
His post is fanciful. His speculation that Max Baucus would vote for a public option is ridiculous, since Baucus voted against the PO in the finance committee, and since Baucus has accepted millions of dollars in
bribescontributions from the insurance industry.bago
@tc125231: It’s a secret Lovecraft reference. K’thug nyarloth shoggoth! Bring forth the shrill ones!
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Constitution only requires a simple majority to pass legislation.
Comrade Luke
@No Joy in Mudville:
Thanks for taking time for this reasoned and rational reply. I can’t find an issue with anything you said.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The constitution directs the senate to make it’s own rules, and they did, and one was, you need 60 votes to end debate, that is a standing rule of the senate. It will take the VP to over rule the senate parliamentarian to disregard that rule and change the cloture vote. Any way you look at it, it is breaking the rules. It can be done, because no one has standing to challenge it in court and the courts shun getting mixed up in another branches procedures.
And the nuking of the cloture rule in the seventies ended up just lowering the majority needed to 60 votes from 67/
And if dems did this, the rest of my comment applies on the chaos it would create.
Mark S.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Is it just a courtesy that no one has to stand up there for 57 straight hours to filibuster? Making them actually filibuster might not require the nuclear option.
Cain
If they did vote for the PO, would the insurance company be able to afford giving out money? I would think that they would be in big trouble since they might not get a lot of money coming in if they suddenly have to compete against the public option.
Personally, I don’t think Russ has much to be afraid of. THey would have to find a fairly centrist republican which is not going to happen.
cain
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mark S.: Repubs only need to keep one senator on the floor and dems would have to keep 50. The winger doesn’t have to talk or do anything other than object when a dem tries to call a vote. So it’s barely a bother for the minority to maintain their filibuster.
The only real worth of doing a real filibuster would be for PR purposes to highlight the problem and educate the public. So for that reason, it isn’t a bad idea to stage.
Mark S.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I know what you’re talking about, because I vaguely remembered reading about it a year or two ago. Basically,
That is fucking stupid. I don’t even see why it requires 41 Senators to disagree with the legislation; couldn’t have Bunning or Shelby just have done this instead of holds? It seems like it just requires one asshole Senator to stand there and demand a quorum every time they had just finished determining that there was a fucking quorum.
I’d say these are playground rules, but that would be an insult to schoolchildren everywhere.
IndyLib
@Mike Kay:
I live in Wisconsin, and I don’t think Russ has a whole lot to worry about. Tommy Thompson has a decent reputation in the state as of now, because he was reasonably moderate as Governor, but if he runs in the Republican primary against the 2 lame Republicans that have already signed up to run against Feingold, he’ll have to move to the right and I don’t think that’s going to play too well in Wisconsin this go around.
MikeJ
@Mark S.: A hold is a threat to filibuster. Once a filibuster starts there are built in delays to doing anything, even if you had 99 people to vote cloture. After the filibuster starts, you have to wait two days, get 16 people to file for cloture, wait two more days, vote for cloture, then wait 30 hours. If you persuade the person to drop the hold, you can go in less than five minutes.
J. Michael Neal
@No Joy in Mudville:
One one level, this is true. However, the problems in the Senate are both necessary and sufficient to completely skull fuck the kitten. The problems in the House and Executive are neither. The House was ready to pass HCR last July. It was the Senate that decided that nothing could conceivably happen that fast and that we desperately needed to go through August with frothing wingnuts lying about the bill and the media not calling them on it. That’s on the Senate, and the Senate alone. Without that insistence, this whole thing would have been over months ago.
I think the chances of this are something less than 20%. Again, a lot of people forget what actually happened last July. Obama *did* go public. He *did* make explicit calls for the Senate to pass the bill. He *did* openly call for deadlines. In fact, almost everything people insist that he should have done, he actually did.
About the only thing he didn’t do was lay out the specifics of the bill he wanted to see. That’s because the Senate loudly told him they didn’t want him to do that. Sure, we all, almost certainly including Obama, knew that their insistence that they had it covered was complete bullshit, but, if they want the President to butt out, they have the power to do that. In retrospect, it may have been better off if he had tried it anyway, but, even now, it isn’t entirely clear to me that it wouldn’t have been counter-productive. Never, ever underestimate a Democratic Senator’s ability to throw a juvenile temper tantrum.
There has been a major shift in the attitude of a lot of them. The most important element of it is that you now hear a lot of calls by actual Democratic Senators to do something about the filibuster. If you remember last summer, Chuck Schumer declared that he didn’t want to take any steps to fix it; yesterday, he announced that he’s going to hold hearings about fixing it.
Just because it appears that Obama is successfully strong-arming them now does not mean he could have done it last year. One of the many ways in which the Senate is really a rebellious teenager at heart is that they have to fall flat on their face in the most embarrassing possible way before they’ll accept the idea that maybe they should listen to their parents.
J. Michael Neal
@Mark S.:
And as long as there aren’t 60 Senators on the floor to vote to end debate, they’d be successful. If there are, then the Senate can proceed, albeit very slowly. That’s why they can’t do this instead of a filibuster in the normal course of proceedings; if you have the people on the floor to force cloture, then you have enough people to beat this tactic.
What quorum calls do do, though, is require that there be an actual quorum in order to keep the Senate from shutting down for the night. If there aren’t 51 present, then they all get sent home until the next day. Unless there are 50 Democrats actually present, no one can be forced to do anything, even stick around, to prevent there from being a vote. In other words, the *only* way to make anyone actually filibuster is to have 5/6 of the Democrats stuck there, while Republican Senators have to pull one night’s duty a month.
different church-lady
Dude, I don’t know if it’s my cocktail or your painkillers, but one or the other has kicked your writing flair up a notch!
MikeJ
Not to mention that the Jane Hamshers of the left have lost the argument. 83% of Dems say PTDB. It’s to the point where Kos is calling out Denny K. The P may have finally brought us some M U.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I’d rather they shut the hell up because they’ve never outlined a single viable political plan for getting single payer or even the PO passed by the current make-up of the Congress. Instead they all seem to think they just ask for it and the entire Congress would just fall in line. It’s either extreme naivete or pure lack of forethought. Either way it’s now officially annoying.
Tax Analyst
Rip Van Winkle wants to know if they’ve passed Health Care Reform yet – he’s really, really tired of all the bullshit about it and is really hoping it will pass so he can get some help with his narcolepsy disorder.
He contacted his Senatorial and Congressional representatives but they told him they were going to hold out for a better deal.
Rip told them “But I don’t want to wait another 20 fucking years for some help with this! Please Pass The Damned Bill, assholes.”
Alas, poor Rip…
oh really
@Comrade Luke:
Thank you. It has always seemed to me that arguing and hurling abuse at one another is a waste of everyone’s time that accomplishes nothing. Blogs like BJ can be a place for people to rationally discuss issues or it can be a playground for adolescents to tell each other to fuck off. Why anyone would want to waste their time doing the latter escapes me.
@J. Michael Neal:
J. Michael, I began to respond to your comment, but the length of that response became unmanageable. I cut the comment and saved it on my computer. In it, I explained why I disagree with a number of your points and why I think Obama could have played a very different and more successful role in the creation and (we can only hope) passage of HCR.
If you’re interested, I can come back to this thread after it has run its course, and paste my response back in for you to read at your leisure. That way I won’t have posted a much-too-long comment in the midst of an active (but dying) thread.
If you’re not interested, that’s OK too.
I’ve got to get some sleep.
Kirk Spencer
Part of the problem is that those resisting are VERY adept at word use. See, they’ve managed to make almost everyone ignore something pretty darn amazing:
The bill passed, already.
The house passed a bill. The senate passed the same bill, amended. Yes, the amendment was “replace the house bill with the senate version,” but that happens all the freaking time. It’s why what is SUPPOSED to happen is that the bill goes to a joint committee which hammers out a compromise and sends it back for final approval.
The extreme majority of the time, we’d be done. But this time we’ve got some people VERY adept at roadblocking and misrepresentation.
But the bill already passed, and it’s now just getting the compromise together. Oh, and getting past certain egos.
bob h
Perceptive George Packer article, “Obama’s Lost Year”, in New Yorker bearing on this.
John Cole
When you do triage, you pick out the worst case and deal with it first. You don’t sit around wanking and saying “Clearly, patient #3 is the worst, but there are also problems with #1 and #2.”
This reflexive need by some of you to paint me as unwilling to criticize the WH is starting to piss me off. If the Senate was as functional as the House and the WH, we’d have had a helluva lot more successes in the past year and made some real progress. That was the point of this post- not to gloss over the sins of the House and the WH, but to point to the real bad actor- the Senate.
flukebucket
@Mike Kay:
And yea verily I say unto you, the time cometh and cometh quicker than you think that more than just thou nipples will be permanently pointing due south.
Stephen1947
When my old mother was really pissed off about someone/something not doing what she expected, she would declare that it was “as useless as tits on a boar.” She didn’t much care for our laughing about it either.
kay
@bob h:
I don’t know. It sounded like more blame-shifting to me.
Asking members of Congress why Obama has failed them seems a little silly. I bet they were eager to weigh in on that.
Congress has some real popularity problems. If the endangered House member quoted in the article plans to go back to his district and talk about how the stimulus should have been bigger, I would suggest he needs a better argument for re-election. He’s telling his constituents he’s ineffective and helpless, and that he fully intends to remain ineffective and helpless. No one is going to care about after the fact dissections or complaints. It may not be fair, but that’s the way it is.
At some point, he has to move forward. What’s he running on?
deadrody
Paul Krugman, cheerleader for the outgoing Democratic majority.
ROTFLMAO!!!!
deadrody
The problem is in Congress ? While nimrod Barry allows Harry and Nancy to run with health care reform for a year. And NOW Barry posts HIS ideas.
If the man were a leader – AT ALL – this would not have been an issue for the Democrats, maybe.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Join the club.
PTirebiter
@Kirk Spencer: Thanks for reminding me just how easy it is to fall into a false narrative. It’s a bit like that dawning moment I sometimes experience, mid-reply, in a conversation with a troll. And I hate it when I can’t blame the media for my own foolishness.
Mardam
I don’t know…I’d kind of like to have breasts.
Just sayin’.
mr. whipple
Are you referring to the MoveOn poll? That 17% is a pretty small slice of the activist left.
kay
@mr. whipple:
I don’t know a thing about Kos and I don’t have any particular feeling about him or the site one way or the other, but I do wonder why he abandoned his own site for 6 months.
That’s what it looked like to the occasional reader, anyway.
He just wasn’t there, and there were all these rabid posters churning out screeds, and rebuttal screeds, and long messages saying goodbye, and then responses to the “goodbye” messages.
I got tired of parsing all that emotional subtext, and the long, convoluted “history” of each poster. I was failing at it anyway. It was a completely in-house discussion, and incoherent to the casual reader.
Uloborus
I’m in the ‘Obama played it like he had to play it’ group. He went hands off at first because hands on got Hillarycare sunk FAST. Congress threw a hissy fit. Whether that would have happened here, it’s a very reasonable attitude for him to take. He WAS out stumping publically and smacking down lies all last year, and the media just… ignored it. Pretended it didn’t happen. What else can he do? Twist arms in congress? He ain’t got much direct power there, and we will *never know* if he pushed that angle hard because it happens behind closed doors anyway.
And keep it up, deadrody. This is trolling at its finest. Does anybody not on FOX think that if the Dems pass HCR they’ll lose their majorities? Lose a USEFUL majority, maybe. Thank you, senate.
And was it you, general, pointing out we do NOT want the GOP able to reverse SS with 50 voted? Good point. I’ll think about it.
Da Bomb
@deadrody: Wow that was a really simple statement.
@Uloborus: Agreed.
@kay: That’s been my issue with DKOS. It’s like Kos just took an extended vacay and let his lawn grow weeds. It was mentally draining just to read the site.
Uloborus
Also, I would like to point out that Rahm was willing to strip naked and shower with congressmen to get HCR passed. If you expect him to twist anything else, I *really* don’t want to hear about it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@No Joy in Mudville:
This, about a thousand times.
If HCR doesn’t pass (something which at this point I think is very unlikely) the failure will have more causes than World War I.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@J. Michael Neal:
There is a lot of political wisdom in these comments. At the same time, I’m not willing to make Panglossian claims about how well the WH handled the HCR debate. Do you honestly think that, after all the dust has settled and in 2017 Obama sits down to write his WH memoirs, the subtitle of the chapter on mid-2009/early-2010 is going to be: The great Health Care Reform battle – how I didn’t make any mistakes and if I had the chance to do it all over again we would make all the same choices
One of the things I like best about Obama is that he tries to learn from his mistakes. I really doubt that anybody in the WH involved in this battle came away from the last year with no lessons learned. Guess we’ll find out, huh?
Mnemosyne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I won’t make any such claims because mistakes were definitely made, but I prefer to start the postmortem after the subject is actually dead (or in this case, passed by the House). Right now, I feel like we’re enacting this scene over and over again.
Rick Taylor
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The thing I love most about Obama may also be his greatest weakness: he consistently treats everyone else like adults.
Rick Taylor
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And additionally, the trouble is the senate rules and traditions. Pelosi has done heroic work, but if the House had a requirement that bills could only pass it with 60% support, health care reform would be dead by now.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. I’m well into crazy superstitious phase of “waiting for result”, and I intend to blame you all for “jinxing” this, if it should fail.
You were warned.
Svensker
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Why not? I could use a good Panglossian claim about now.
Rick Taylor
The congressional Democrats beg for Obama to show more leadership. He says ok, lets get this thing done and out of the way before my trip. They say, woah, where do you come off? We’re doing this in our own sweet time.
__
As one of those who’s wanted Obama to more publicly push the process, I’m a bit red faced.
kay
@Rick Taylor:
Not Nancy Pelosi, who is “very exhilarated” today.
She actually said that.
Paul V.
Just a thought…
It is very obvious that the threat of a Republican filibuster has many posting here up-in-arms, just as many conservatives are angered when they have Democrat filibuster. The senate can change the rules to eliminate the use of filibusters with a simple majority vote, though laughably any side can filibuster the debate. I digress…when the democrats or republicans had the supposed filibuster proof senate, why is it no attempt has been made to do so? Along the same lines, why is it the most vocal senators (including Obama) against the “nuclear-option” used during the Bush administration are so quick to press the button now. The truth is both sides like the options when it benefits them and hate them when they are used against their position.
Mnemosyne
@Paul V.:
So angered, apparently, that conservatives decided to filibuster every single piece of legislation in the Senate instead of only pieces they didn’t like, which is what both Democrats and Republicans have done in the past:
Chart here.
Sorry, but the facts just don’t support your assertion.
Paul V.
No need for apologizes for disagreement, I rather enjoy a spirited debate. That is as long as those in disagreement don’t resort to use of foul language and personal attacks, something that happens far to much these days.
My point was that both sides may publicly came out against both the filibuster and reconciliation they themselves have used it in the past. Now, you can go on and on why one side was justified just as the other side can point how their use was different. In doing so they are only playing to the media because as much they may hate the particular application of their own rules, I have no doubt neither will do anything to get rid of these options as they themselves may wish to invoke them in the future. Lets face it for the members of congress (left/right/conservative/liberal/democrat/republican), with few exceptions, its about power.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Fuckin’ A it does.
Rick Taylor
@kay
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Nancy Pelosi has been one of my heroes through all this.