Jane responds in an update, and apparently I am “eating my liver” (I thought I was pretty restrained- I simply said she was wrong, and what do you know- she was, and apologized!) because she had a “misedit” that changed “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias and John Cole“ to “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias, as well as John Cole.“ Regardless, it is still wrong on substance, because I never took orders or acted as a scribe for anyone. I said what I thought, and I stand by it. Additionally, as a “freshly minted Democrat,” I didn’t support the bill because it was soothing to my former Republican self. It’s her narrative, and we just star in it!
The fun doesn’t stop, though:
There were 53 Senators on record supporting the public option.
Life in a screeching echo chamber often makes it difficult to know what’s happening in the real world. But for anyone interested in staying informed and discerning the facts before they form their opinions, we actually took a good deal of trouble to document things along the way.
I get no small amount of frothing emails from people who say the same thing John says — “we didn’t have 60 votes for the public option.” And I’m sure that during the months he spent eating his own liver in a fit of misogynistic rage, he was responsible for misinforming many of them. An honest broker would take some time to correct that, rather than have another heapin’ helping of bile. But having lived through the “Jane Hamshers of the left” experience with Cole, I’m willing to bet that won’t be happening any time soon.
There were never 50 votes. Sure, there were 53 at one time who SAID they supported it, but saying you support something and, you know, supporting it, are two different things. I know us political neophytes and scribes can barely muster the political acumen as our progressive betters, but I’m going to go on record and state a bunch of them were lying. How do I know this? Because there is no public option in the Senate. If 53 Senators supported it, and we only needed 50 votes (which itself was wrong, as we’ve gone over a million times and you can again relive the glory days of this tedious debate in the comments), then where is the public option.
Oh, yeah. Rahm.
Bonus- I’m a misogynist! I’m not sure why, but I bet it has something to do with Hillary.
Comrade Mary
Liver is masculin, not feminin in French (le foie, not la foie), so I don’t know what she’s going on about.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
There are days when I’m so busy with other shit that I have no idea what is happening in blog-land. Sometimes those are good days. This one is a good one.
Brian +1 (and about to knock back a couple more real quick)
forked tongue
I’m not sure why, but I bet it has something to do with
HillaryJane.fxt.
General Stuck
Tee Hee. I always say, Balloon Juice serves up the tastiest heapin’ helpin’ of bile on the internets.
General Stuck
I still say Jane is smitten with Cole and this is just her way of saying “take me you big hunk of ex wingnut”
asiangrrlMN
John is not a misogynist–he’s a misanthrope. Get it right, Jane. I give her credit for the Jane Hamshers of the left incident because Cole was being an asshole in that thread, but she’s completely off base now.
@jinxtigr: Hahahhahahahahah!
@General Stuck: Can we get off this tip, please? Cole can do so much better.
jinxtigr
No, you’re a mishepatonist. Fine with women, but the scourge of livers everywhere ;)
pragmatism
you really hurt her baby feelers with the jane hamsters de la izquierda stuff. ya big meanie.
eemom
My good Mr. Cole, allow me to congratulate you.
When Jane breaks out the M word, it is indisputable proof that she’s full of shit, knows she’s full of shit, and has no ammo left in her quiver.
You are correct about it having to do with Hillary, in the sense that throughout all that interminable primary season, she put up a laughable facade of being “neutral” — all the while branding as a “misogynist” anybody who so much as THOUGHT Hillary should not be the next President.
(My personal opinion, was that she dreamed of kicking the dust of that dirty old blog off her shoes, and moving on up into the Big Villager Time as the next Dana Perino, or something similar, if Hillary became president — but admittedly that’s just speculation.)
Anyway, there is nothing more despicably pathetic than a woman who cries “Misogynist!” when she’s on the losing end of an argument — and this is particularly obvious to those of us who know that, whatever faults John Cole may have, being a misogynist definitely is not one of them.
stuckinred
@asiangrrlMN:BRAVES WIN IN 11 !! Bear DOWN CHICAGO BEARS!!!
300baud
I have pretty sensitive antennae for misogyny. I’m an ardent feminist in a male-dominated field, and trying to change that has made me acutely aware of it. And I just haven’t seen it here. Like AsiangrrlMN, I think Balloon Juice, and John especially, are equal-opportunity cranky people.
And really, that’s what I love about this place: minimal tolerance for bullshit and idiocy.
Davis X. Machina
Something about this whole episode reminds me of the time when my daughter, an 8th grader at the time, was taken aside by all the other gamma girls and informed, essentially, that yeah, she was being non-conformist, and everything, but in the wrong way. There’s a right way to be non-conformist, and a wrong way, and she was letting down the side.
Seitz
Just wondering, IIRC, the Senate passed the first bill. The house passed a similar bill with amendments in a very close vote. The Senate then passed the reconciliation bill to bring their bill into compliance with the House bill.
So my question is, forgetting the 53 “votes” for the public option in the Senate, could a public option have actually passed the house? The bill barely passed the house as it was.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Calamity Jane sez:
She isn’t self-aware, is she?
stuckinred
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yea, she lives in the real fucking world.
Davis X. Machina
@eemom:
Lotta that goin’ around. You tell me Sean Wilentz doesn’t think every day about how he was this close to being HC’s Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
eastriver
Look at you, JC, trying to drum up a little feud with someone with 50 times your traffic.
Sad.
Let go of Jane’s hem, little man.
stuckinred
You’re the pride and joy
of Illinois
stuckinred
@eastriver: Fuck you asshole
gnight
TaMara (BHF)
I must confess I have no idea who this Jane woman is, but if she thinks JC is a misogynist, she is full of shit.
KG
@Seitz: as I recall, the House had the votes for a public option at one point, and the fear was that if the House passed a bill with the public option, there was no way they would save it at conference/reconciliation. So, the House leadership twisted arms and a liberal contingent voted against it because it didn’t go far enough.
I’m going off the top of my head, there’s a 43.4% chance that I’m completely wrong on that.
khead
If John is the hysterical misogynist Jane claims, I suspect he just would’ve told her to shut up and make him a sandwich in the previous post.
khead +4
Odie Hugh Manatee
eastriver: “Look at you, JC, trying to drum up a little feud with someone with 50 times your traffic.”
Oooooh, an intert00b meat-measuring contest!
How adult of you.
Dennis SGMM
@eastriver:
Look at you eastriver; showing up here and making a fool of yourself. Go back to being 1/50th of Jane’s traffic.
Davis X. Machina
@KG: The one that the House thought it might be able to pass was pretty small beer — still too big for the Senate, too small to make any real difference in bending the curve. Stripping it out caused few real tears to be shed. By then the PO was a shibboleth anyways.
TooManyJens
I have typed and erased about seven different replies to this. Suffice it to say: Bullshit.
General Stuck
@asiangrrlMN:
Awwe. Jane’s alright, long as you sleep with one eye open.
Odie Hugh Manatee
eastriver: “Look at you, JC, trying to drum up a little feud with someone with 50 times your traffic.”
Oooooh, an intert00b meat-measuring contest!
How adult of you.
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
I believe the only reason the House got a bill out was because of the Stupak amendment. That went over well with the fuckups in conservative districts who could point to that to buttress their bonafides.
As for the public option in the Senate, at the very best, all we would have got was a negotiated rate program, not one tied to Medicare rates or any kind of Medicare buy-in. Byron Dorgan specifically stated that that was what he’d vote for and nothing else.
Interestingly enough, Russ Feingold was quite silent during the debate’s latter stages on the fate of the public option. He refused to commit in any way to voting for anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: Green Bay gave the game away with stupid penalties.
JC
Man today has been a fun, rage-filled navel gazing day for the blogosphere huh?
Good times!
Although, John Cole, you saying – with a little smile and wink, i hope – that “You’ve lost your shit”, is pretty restrained – well, you might want to rethink that.
:)
cbear
Yep, I’ve been following this debate all day and I knew it would come to this—the “mis” word rears its ugly purple head.
It’s all so distressing. I need a cookie.
General Stuck
@asiangrrlMN:
Awwe. Jane’s alright, long as you sleep with one eye open.
Brachiator
Man, these people are stuck in a mental rut. What do they want? Vindication? Validation? They couldn’t get anything that they wanted when Bush was president, but they were relatively quiet. But now they are positively apoplectic because they are not getting everything they want, exactly how they want it, now that Obama is president. They have even retreated to a fantasy world in which they are certain that they could have had the public option, a $4 trillion stimulus, nationalized banks and a golden unicorn if only Obama had done what they wanted him to do.
But while the tea party people are fielding candidates and winning primaries, these others just get more sulky, and scream “Just give me what I want!”
Odie Hugh Manatee
FYWP!
That is all.
jacy
@eastriver:
You’re funny. In a sad and totally predictable way, a kind of clown-in-a-trailer-with-a-bottle-of-Thunderbird way.
Dammit, and I was doing so well ignoring trolls all day long.
JC
I’m going to have to go by another handle other than JC while posting here, I think. I’ve been commenting here on and off, even before the GREAT CHANGE of 2005/2006, I think it was?
always as JC, so I’m a bit attached. But then I never know who is talking to me (which usually means no one is talking to me.)
MNPundit
I think you blew it here. If the senators were simply lying then what is the point of even bothering to get them on the record or influence them or interacting? You have to go by believing what they say and then forcing them to put their money where their mouth is. Otherwise they simply go on lying consequence-free.
TooManyJens
@TaMara (BHF): Word.
BTW, I don’t suppose you have a recipe for Veal Pen Flapdoodle? We decided in one of the other threads that that really needs to be a Thursday night dinner.
Dennis SGMM
@MNPundit:
Senators lie about their intentions? Oh say not so! The money comes from elsewhere, as do the consequences. They seem to be doing fairly well with that consequence-free thing.
JC
Funny enough, I sort of understand this. It’s beyond stupid that a public option wasn’t possible, politically. it is SUCH BETTER POLICY, that I sorta understand people driven mad by not implementing it. I mean, you have 40 countries experience that work made public, you have Medicare, you have larger majorities of democrats than we will see in a long long time again – and THIS is the best we can do?
it’s hard to swallow that, is all.
Not to mention, no movement on climate change (absolutely essential), capitulation on lots of financial issues, when the greed and amorality of the financial industry has NEVER been so clear.
It is enough to make you want to give up, but, I still gotta vote.
Linda Featheringill
You haven’t missed much. I have been to her blog exactly twice and was sorry I went there. Both times.
Slow learner.
asiangrrlMN
@stuckinred: A good night for you in the sports world, indeed!
@300baud: Ditto this. Not the male field, but the low tolerance of bullshit about this place. It really is that simple. If Cole sees something he thinks is stupid–he’s going to call it stupid. So, I agree with you for agreeing with me!
@JC: I think you should keep it. Then you can pretend we’re all talking about you!
Ross
Hi John,
Long time reader (~6 years-ish?), mostly a lurker who pipes in very occasionally. You’re very definitely not a misogynist. I created an account at firedoglake specifically so that I could say so over there, and challenge the author to find an example to back up her character attack.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Your fair-minded, call it as you see it, no bullshit, approach to blogging is the reason that I’ve stayed tuned here.
cheers,
Ross
TooManyJens
@JC: It is incredibly hard to swallow, and that’s why we all went batshit during HCR. The problem comes when people decide that if this is the best we can do, we’d be better off doing nothing — never mind the people who are actually going to be helped by what we were able to get.
John Bird
As far as I can tell, most of this has to do with the 2008 primary battle on both sides, and very little of it seems to correspond to the supposed political poles of the two blogs. I, for one, am pretty goddamn disappointed in Glenn Greenwald for helping kick this one along.
Anyway, as y’all are now one-for-one on offensive and indefensible misidentification, I’d give it a rest after this post unless Jane forces a response. We don’t need any more blog wars.
somethingblue
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his liver in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because I am having some friends over later and am going to cook it up on the grill with some home-grown squash from the garden and a little mesquite rub, and after that we’re going to open a bottle of wine and watch the Steelers.”
eemom
actually, I have a pretty good idea of how Jane defines a “misogynist”
— but I’m tired of being scolded for my unladylike phraseology.
Davis X. Machina
@somethingblue: Hand that man an internet!
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
I find this genuinely incomprehensible.
I’m here every day and I have seen neither liver eating nor misogyny. Neither hide, nor hair.
I guess she just doesn’t actually need you for the conversation she’s having with herself about you.
pseudonymous in nc
“…then you beat the table” is how the standard response to this exchange ends.
Still, I understand the basis for anger at how the public option was dangled every so often to keep the left happy, even though in retrospect the process was never likely to include it. That’s what puts me in line with Matt Taibbi in saying that the ugliness of the sausage-making process, and the vulnerability of the final product, is a testament to institutional rot.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@somethingblue: And adopt a random dog or two.
Dr. Squid
@Linda Featheringill: Misogynist!!!1! Self hater!
Sure thing. I get a feeling the writers at Pandagon would have a good laugh at this.
Comrade Kevin
@Brachiator:
Be fair. Some of them are also screaming that we need to find a “real Democrat” to “primary Obama”.
You Don't Say
As a woman, this really pisses me off. What does misogyny have to do with this? That’s why I hate hyperbole. It lessens the charge when the real thing surfaces, as it does every day.
TooManyJens
@Dr. Squid:
Oh dear God, let’s not find out.
wmd
@Linda Featheringill:
I visit FDL regularly.
Jane and I got into a big rhubarb about bio-similars. At one point she was certain I was shilling for PhRMA and threatened to have me banned.
The mods knew better. I’m just good at doing research on the fly and arguing competently from what I’m learning in real time. Jane ended up learning from it, and eventually apologized.
Now I don’t have a blog on the order of Balloon Juice – I pretty much just blog about how many eggs my chickens lay.
FDL provides some utility. I see value in someone calling the political BS what it is, even though the ignorance of what’s politically feasible is palpable. That said there’s a real core of kool aid drinkers there, and Jane’s echo chamber comment is very ironic given the near personality cult many of her readers have.
mclaren
Are you eating your own liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti?
Oh, John, John, John…where’s your hockey mask and straitjacket?
And I bet your pulse never got above 85.
Ron
@KG: Not exactly. The House actually did originally pass a bill that included a fairly weak public option. My blue dog rep even voted for it. (And then used the excuse of “there’s no public option there” as part of his reason to vote against the final bill. which I’m sure was BS)
LT
I’ve never seen liver-eating or misogyny, but I sure have seen Hamsher vilified here, pretty badly from John and worse in the comments, just to note, but that was just an awful thing for her to say.
And I’ll never get where Cole, or Hamsher, gets the authority to claim how many votes there were. John, you constantly claim to not be an expert on a wide variety of things – how the hell do you know there weren’t 50?
I feel a lecture coming on. Sigh. I’ll stick around for the dogs and food and wiser fits of rage – but this shit is just stale
Brachiator
Wilentz was the little shit who accused Obama of being the “real racist” for calling the Clintons out on their slimy political tactics during the South Carolina primary.
He was definitely a big-time HC courtier.
Mnemosyne
@TooManyJens:
Which then leads to the next problem, people deciding that since this was the best we could do at this time, there’s no point in even talking about the necessary improvements to the law.
It drives me up the frickin’ wall to see people constantly harping on how we didn’t get a public option a year ago instead of pushing their reps to get one now. There’s nothing in the current law that forbids a public option, so why are these whiners living in the past and not still working to get a public option passed if it’s so all-fired important to them?
LT
@Linda Featheringill:
A truly nuts part of all this. Even Cole would say how good parts of FDL is. Marcy is a monster (good kid) over there. But children on the tubes make it a playground clique war.
Ron
On to the greater point, I think the Hamsher wing of the progressive left just misses most of the point. Aside from the ridiculous accusations she makes of John, they have this fantasy that all democrats will just happily vote for the most progressive bill out there, and if not they are DINOs. In some sense, they are the left’s version of the Tea Party, because they want purity. The 50-state strategy worked specifically because the democrats decided against ideological purity. Does that mean that no democrat should ever face a primary challenge from the left? Nope, absolutely not. But we have to work with the Senate we have, broken as it is. And as for the PO, maybe the Senate could have mustered 50 votes for a public option, maybe not, and maybe it would have survived a challenge as to whether it was a valid use of reconciliation and maybe not, and if the Senate made changes to it, maybe the House which barely passed the bill it had would still pass it after the Senate changed it and maybe it wouldn’t. The idea of the public option as the line in the sand is just hopeless. The examples of SS and Medicare should provide hope. Neither one was initially as good as it could or should be, but getting SOMETHING done was better than nothing and over time it was improved. But right now, the progressives ought to be working their assess off to hold on to the House and Senate so that what DID get done doesn’t get undone.
MattR
@John Cole at top:
I can’t possibly believe that you would think that politicians might say one thing and then later do another. Why I am sure that every single representative who signed Jane’s pledge not to vote for any bill without a public option all voted against the final bill that passed.
AxelFoley
@eastriver:
Dude, remove your face from Jane’s crotch.
Quicksanf
Fuck, this is getting tedious.
anonymous
Jane Hamsher has unlocked the Passive-Aggressive Achievement!
something fabulous
@somethingblue: AWE-SOME.
(PS: I knew about the Oates novel, but had never read the poem the title came from– so also: edu-macational!)
Martin
It’s because you put a period at the end of the sentence
Davis X. Machina
In HCR-related news today, Deval Patrick’s sending legislation to Beacon Hill that will start transitioning physician reimbursement in Massachusetts from fee-for-service to capitation.
This has the potential to be a huge change, and huge step forward, in extending health care coverage and in cost-containment.
asiangrrlMN
@anonymous: Ok, this made me chortle. I need all the laughs I can get, so thank you for that.
@Martin: OK, that’s priceless. I love reading the archives of BJ.
Elie
@300baud:
Yes…this
tomvox1
Keep this up, John, and she will have you made out to be a child molesting goat raper in blackface. The woman cannot separate the personal from the political and anyone who disagrees with her or her preferred strategies is The Enemy and a Sell Out (see also Kucinich, Dennis and Sanders, Bernie, not to mention Obama, Barack). I am not at all convinced she is a member of the Left at all. Fifth Columnist for the libertarian right and sower of discontent/demotivator of progressives is more like it. An irredeemably petulant individual, in my opinion, and hopefully an irrelevant one in the not too distant future.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Green bay LOST — they did not GIVE it away. They LOST the game….
Nothing dumber than expressions like that. If they did stupid stuff that they should not have done, they in fact, LOST the game
Sheesh!
MattR
@Elie: Green Bay lost the game AND they gave it away. How’s that? :)
Malron
Wow, Ms. Hamsher. (Yes, I know you’re lurking here somewhere admiring the efforts of your minions in their unfruitful attempts to tear down Sir John of Cole, Destroyer of Livers. You’re just that narcissistic, hun. You’re so obsessed with winning an argument I think they named a sandwich after you at KFC. I’ll leave you to guess which one.)
Anyway, I find your terrible writing and baseless punditry excellent Schadenfreude to lighten up my evening, You had me at “Bernie Sanders is not progressive enough,” dear Lady. Thanks for the laughs, wink wink.
Instead of wasting my time trying to type a serious response to the latest in your endless stream of baseless (and clinically deranged) accusations, I’d like to mock you with this song.
When you lay your pretty head down to sleep tonight, be sure to lean over and kiss Grover for me. Good day, Madame.
P.S.
I hope my use of the affectionate term “hun” does not come off as sexist or misogynistic to you.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
I’m sure it’s already been said, more than once, but…
VEAL PEN FLAPDOODLE! floy floy
Brachiator
The ultimate strategy of some progressives is to try to build support for a “better Democrat” to challenge Obama in 2016.
They are fixated on rehashing Obama’s supposed failure to include a public option as part of healthcare reform. You can see part of this mania at play in endless thread discussions on theoretical vote counts which shoulda coulda got the version of health care reform that they preferred.
The worst of this bunch are no better than the tea party people.
Elie
@MattR:
Nope
As a Chicago fan, I have learned to eat it when they loose and accept that reality. I truly believe that if you stupid mistakes and don’t execute to a so called “lesser” opponent, than its even worse — you lost and then some!
They lost fair and square as would have the Bears in the opposing situation. You do stupid stuff, you don’t execute, you have bad luck — whatevah — you LOST. Period
John Bird
btw, I’m “thanos” in that thread and elsewhere on FDL.
Elie
@Brachiator:
yep
asiangrrlMN
@Elie: Agreed. If you play stupidly or play down to the competition or whatever, you lost. Accept it and move on.
Elie
@John Bird:
Doesnt ‘thanos’ mean death in ancient Greek?
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator:
Say what you will about the tenets of the Tea Party, but at least it’s an ethos.
MattR
@Elie: @asiangrrlMN: I don’t diasgree with the central premise that the game is lost and it is time to move on. But part of that is understanding why you lost so you can try to prevent it in the future. And there is definitely a difference between losing a game because you make stupid and/or mental mistakes compared with losing because you did everything right but the other team did it better.
asiangrrlMN
@MattR: Yes. This is true. However, it aggravates me when a team gives no acknowledgement to the other team at all. So, “We sucked, and they played well” would sum it up in a way I don’t mind.
karoli
at least she corrected herself in your case. In mine, she just decided to ignore what I really said so she could score a couple of cheap shots at my expense. What I’d really like is for her traffic to drop to zero every single time she bashes one of us.
karoli
at least she corrected herself in your case. In mine, she just decided to ignore what I really said so she could score a couple of cheap shots at my expense. What I’d really like is for her traffic to drop to zero every single time she bashes one of us.
Elie
Matt
Naw… a loss is a loss.
Only exception is poor officiating. But that isnt about a team giving it away
FlipYrWhig
@MattR:
Is this still about football? Or is it a political parable?
askew
Jane Hamsher must be the least self-aware person on the netroots, if she is calling someone else a misogynist. Considering the sexist attacks she hurled at Caroline Kennedy and the woman she referred to as a “sandpaper snatch”.
My question is at what point do the prominent bloggers start ignoring Jane and FDL like they do with Jerome Armstrong and myDD? Both of them lost their marbles with the election of Obama and haven’t recovered.
MattR
@FlipYrWhig: Yes?
Ailuridae
@Davis X. Machina:
Great news. Although what sitting Governors should be doing is probably talking to Martin O’Malley to better understand Maryland’s system (not the O’Malley or Erlich had anything to do with it).
Since I do it every time a firebagger makes some claim about the Senate and public option support:
Commitment to the public option topped out at 45 Senators
Since the final vote was after Kennedy’s passing at that point, with some not full-throated support, the public option didn’t have more than 44 advocates in the Senate when the clamoring for passing it via reconciliation was made*. Now it is true that many Senators were willing to vote for the Senate bill that included the PO (all but two or three) but that doesn’t mean they supported the PO just that they were willing to permit it to be included in the bill to pass the legislation.
*As always, if there were 50 votes in the Senate to pass a PO via reconciliation and it was permissible to pass the PO through reconciliation (and I am very certain it was permissible) then all that needed to be done was pass the bill and introduce the PO separately. Heck, that could have been done anytime in the last six months. It hasn’t though and there is a very simple reason for that: it never, ever had 50 votes in the Senate as a stand alone piece of legislation. Further it is highly unlikely it could have passed with a majority vote in the House at any point in the last six months.
When it was whipped post Brown election it topped out below 130 yeas in the House.
The Raven
John, she left out a comma and few words. It’s an easy enough error, and I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. I wish you would climb down from your perch. It’s hard enough to be a progressive without the infighting.
The Raven
My take on the broader issue, from December of last year:
chrismealy
No way were 53 senators supporting the public option. I think by the end we got it up to about 37.
FlipYrWhig
@The Raven: Come ON. She wrote it assuming John was on the list because she associates him with the middle-of-the-road liberals like Yglesias and Klein, then she made up a story about punctuation to do her version of the Jonah Goldberg/Megan McCardle “perhaps wrong on the facts, but definitely right on the analysis if I do say so myself” gambit.
morzer
Jane Hamsher? Wasn’t she an Ann Coulter wannabe who hooked up with Grover Norquist for a while?
FlipYrWhig
@chrismealy: There were some funky cases like Baucus, who included the public option in his original draft of the proposed bill (IIRC), but was pretty clearly never a full-on proponent. There were a lot of skeptics who talked about their skepticism — not just the ones who were very difficult at the end, like Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Nelson, but also Bayh, Webb, Carper, Conrad, and Baucus, and even more who largely kept quiet, like Pryor and Warner. Plus then you have the “process hawks” like Feingold, who may have liked the underlying bill but were fretful about using reconciliation to do it. I don’t think it got very close to the magic number. Which is too bad, because it really is a good policy idea.
Andy K
@chrismealy:
I had it at 48, tops.
The problem with the Hamshers of the Left is that they count someone like John Tester, who said he’d always been for a public option that was structured the right way, but he never indicated what he meant by structured the right way. Not publicly, anyway.
morzer
@Andy K:
“Structured the right way” means “sufficiently meaningless that I can vote for it while thumping my chest and denouncing socialism”.
Andy K
@asiangrrlMN: @Elie: @asiangrrlMN: @MattR: @FlipYrWhig:
This (Not to be confused with “This!”).
As little sis Amy K said as she was leaving the sports bar, THE BEARS STILL SUCK!
BTW, asiangrrlMN, if that was indeed a picture of yourself I saw earlier today…Not how I imagined you to look. For some reason I pictured you looking more like Margaret Cho’s cuter sister….
The Raven
@FlipYrWhig: You seem understand her motivations and the exact history of the composition of the essay as well. I bob my head to your superior telepathy and clairvoyance.
Andy K
@asiangrrlMN: @Elie: @asiangrrlMN: @MattR: @FlipYrWhig:
This (Not to be confused with “This!”).
As little sis Amy K said as she was leaving the sports bar, THE BEARS STILL SUCK!
BTW, asiangrrlMN, if that was indeed a picture of yourself I saw earlier today…Not how I imagined you to look. For some reason I pictured you looking more like Margaret Cho’s cuter sister….
(Too many links throw the first into the mod queue?)
Yutsano
@Andy K: Now I’m curious. Because I don’t know the picture you saw, but that is pretty much how she looks to me. If Margaret Cho were Taiwanese anyway.
MattR
@Andy K: I’ll try to ignore you thinking of me as a little old lady and will focus on the message :)
FYI – Three is the max links it allows
karoli
When is 50 Senators not 50? When they know they won’t ever have to really vote on it. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/public-options-fate-foretold-in-sputtering-campaign.php
LikeableInMyOwnWay
John, why you engage that crazy bitch is beyond me. She is not worth your time.
Just my two cents worth.
Cody_K
@You Don’t Say:
Somehow, I’m a misogynist too.
Me. A female. Because I called her a bitch.
How does that work exactly?
Andy K
@Yutsano:
For some reason I pictured her as a bit- just a tiny bit- chubby-cheeked. I don’t know why, exactly. Hell, until I saw her avatar at C&L, I pictured karoli up there as having longer, darker hair than she does. Again, I don’t know why. But I was wrong in that case too.
Andy K
@MattR:
Sorry, Matt, but cool is cool. Accept it, ma’am.
And thanks- I wasn’t sure what the link limit was. It was the 5 replies that did it.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
RE: The worst of this bunch are no better than the tea party people.
Actually, it’s more like Luminiferous aether, an imaginary substance which people foolishly think binds the universe together.
xochi
“[T]he months he spent eating his liver in a fit of misogynistic rage.”
Wow. So much to unpack there. I’ll leave that to some better judge.
But she does have a point, that gets obscured in all of this screeching. More than 50 Dems said they’d vote for this bill, and they didn’t. They were weak, they vacillated, and gave up some things when they really didn’t need to. Or alternately, they claimed guaranteed success, and then failed to follow through. Either way, they shot themselves in the foot, and made things easier for the Republicans. I don’t think that’s on Rahm Emanuel, I think that’s just the fact that Democrats suck at demagoguing.
morzer
@xochi:
Well, for your average Democratic senator, a firm commitment is really only an opening bid for attention.
mclaren
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s an excellent point and a very significant news item. Not unexpected, however. The reason Massachusetts is doing this is that they’ve run out of money. They must either (A) ration medical care, or (B) lower costs.
Now this is actually a part of the Obama HCR stratagery that makes quasi-sense. The current non-reform HCR does nothing to meaningfully contain costs. Apparently Obama and his crew were hoping that once they get a system in place, even if it’s unworkable, they can transition it away from fee-for-service nationwide and thus contain costs.
“Health Care: The Disquieting Truth,” Arnold Relman, 3 September 2010, The New York Review of Books.
The problem with that (mis)calculation on Obama’s part is threefold:
[1] Fee-for-service represents only a small part of the cost explosion in U.S. health care. The other reasons for exploding costs are: A) bribery and corruption by medical devicemakers who makes cheap plastic disposable surgical instruments for 40 cents and sell ’em for 40 dollars but which then get billed by the hospital to the insurance company for 1200 dollars; B) the AMA acting as a medical cartel to artificially restrain the supply of physicians to insure sky-high salaries for U.S. doctors, at least twice what doctors in other countries make; C) corrupt hospitals that overcharge for $50 aspirin and $20 cotton balls, among many many other things, and enter into corrupt collusive contracts with doctors and medical devicemakers and doctor-run imaging clinics who massively overcharge; D) insurers who act as monopoly cartels to prevent competition and force enrolees to either pay whatever premiums the insurer demands or go without.
[2] U.S. doctors slight preventive medicine, preferring heroic intervention;
[3] U.S. doctors make too much money compared to other countries.
Capitation only acts on the C) part of that equation. Moreover, capitation represents a weak control mechanism, because while it cuts down on one source of a doctors’ and hospitals’ income, doctors and hospitals can merely ramp up their other sources of income to compensate. For example, if capitation limits the cost of fee-for-service line items, the hospitals can simply schedule a lot more unnecessary operations. Likewise, if capitations caps a doctors fees for a given procedure, the doctor can simply open an imaging clinic and perform lots of unnecessary scans and tests and make up his lost income that way.
The problem with the American health care system is systemic. It won’t be “fixed in the mix.” Tweaking won’t bend the cost curve.
“Health Care: The Disquieting Truth,” Relman, Arnold, op. cit.
The AMA cartel must be broken, widespread bribery and rampant profiteering must be eliminated from the medical devicemaker industry, insurers must be broken up and profit removed from the system, and a large seriously competitive market must be created to give the government enough clout to demand lower prices for basic procedures like MRIs. In Japan, MRIs used to cost $850 just like they do here. But the government instituted nationwide public health care, and the government of Japan had the power to tell imaging clinics, “Either you bring the scan in for $150 instead of $850, or we don’t pay.” Faced with either getting no money or reducing costs, the imaging clinics in Japan chose to reduce costs.
Here in America, when the government says to an imaging clinic “Either you bring the MRI scan in for $150 or we don’t pay,” the imaging clinic says “Okay, fuck you, we’ll stop doing business with medicare and medicaid and instead we’ll only do scans for privately insured patients. And we’ll charge $3500 for an MRI scan, so bite me.”
Moreover, the Boston Globe article merely outlines the governor’s latest initiative. The legislature in MA must sign off on it. They’ve been unable to do that ever since the MA health care system was put in place due to the massive pressure (read bribes-cum-campaign contributions) from money-sucking doctors and insurers and medical devicemakers and hospitals.
cthulhu
The “good” side of me finds all of this rather pointless but the “bad” side of me finds it entertaining in a sort of trash TV type of way.
I do wonder if, as eemom suggested, JH’s behavior PUMA-esque and forward was indeed sour grapes. But one has to wonder, if she really was connected enough to be part of an HRC Admin that HRC couldn’t have found her a place in the vastness of State. Just pondering.
I had been a regular reader of FDL through mid-08 but only go there a handful of times per year now. I’m fine with ANY attempts to pull the Overton window to the left but there are definitely some I judge to be more effective than others.
Andy K
@xochi:
How many of those 50+ Dems thought that “Public Option” actually meant “Flaming Bag of Dogshit”? I’m sure Lieberman, Baucus and Nelson were all for flaming turds, but when it meant a public option to private health insurance, well…
Sly
I wonder if its a coincidence that the “Public Option via Reconciliation” strategy was taken off the table just after Reid made initial inquiries on the subject with Alan Frumin, the Senate Parliamentarian.
I also wonder if its a coincidence that the only thing that failed meet the Byrd Rule on the initial vote was language relating to Pell Grants, which was added to the reconciliation bill by the House at the last minute.
@eastriver:
Cole isn’t pretending to be something he isn’t.
Combine a traffic level that is fifty times greater than BJ and no viable political constituency and you get… no viable political constituency.
Jane fancies herself a potential bigwig in the Democratic party, against all evidence, political acumen, and sane thinking that points to the contrary. She may have more visitors, but she’s still irrelevant.
asiangrrlMN
@Andy K: Bwahahahahaha! That’s funny. You know why? Because that’s Margaret Cho! Ha!
@Yutsano: He saw a picture of Margaret Cho! I’m still cracking up here.
This is a real picture of me (first pic, on the left in the zebra shirt with the tat).
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: You live! I’ve missed you the way I would miss an irritating itch. And yeah, that’s her.
mnpundit
@Dennis SGMM: And they are doing so because of the John Coles, not the Jane Hamshers.
John S.
Someone untwist mclaren out the pretzel knot he tied himself into trying to explain why Obama is to blame… for everything. He should be impeached. Also, too.
Kerry Reid
@askew:
Oh, I’d forgotten about that — some bitchy comments about how Caroline was in the middle of having her nails done and decided to run for Senate. I by no means was on the Caroline bandwagon, but the notion that she and the rest of the Kennedy clan haven’t in the aggregate done a hell of a lot more philanthropically for this country than a Hollywood blogdiva with delusions of adequacy is just risible.
I mean, Caroline never put somebody in blackface as a political strategy, so already she’s more astute than Hamsher.
JPL
I think it’s safe to say Rahm won’t be enlisting Jane’s help if he decides to run for Mayor of Chicago.
rootless_e
@Davis X. Machina: Sean Wilentz’s “Race man” story was one of the most vile contributions to American Politics since the DixieCrats collapsed.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Which would be excellent news for Hillary.
Michael
Palin/Hamsher 2012 – Incompetence and incoherence that America can’t count on.
Morbo
This narrative might be entertaining, but the main character is such a Mary Sue.
Emma (From FL, because there's been another Emma around lately...)
Can we just ignore all these people? Really? AAAWWWW pet pictures and general crankiness, that’s what I’m looking for… and the odd slanging match between General Stuck and some of the usual suspects…
J.W. Hamner
So I guess we’re just never going to stop talking about the damn public option?
Even if we postulate that 53 Senators supported the weak ass Senate HCR public option that was completely pointless… that doesn’t imply they supported passing HCR via reconciliation.
Are we done now?
lol
@Brachiator:
To be fair, she did form a PAC, Accountability Now, with the stated purpose of recruiting primary challengers…
Except in practice, the PAC has done little more than shovel money into the pockets of Greenwald (who denied being paid), Hamsher, and Tribbett. The PAC’s website isn’t even up anymore and Jane herself hasn’t mentioned it in over three months. The ActBlue page is still working though. Just screams ‘legitimate progressive organization’ doesn’t it?
norbizness
Y’all should enjoy your round(s) of self-importance; 20 years ago, such a venue didn’t exist.
El Tiburon
Wow. Let me officially go on record now as stating Jane may be a bit unstable. John may be bit odd (Steelers??) but misogynistic? Just don’t see it and the accusation in the context presented (which was none) seems beneath Jane.
I hereby mostly renounce my prior support for Jane. Although I still don’t have a problem paling around with Norquist if it is calculated to achieve a certain outcome.
But I still think the Democrats and Obama punted on HCR and a much stronger bill was possible and attainable if certain dems would have been pressured properly by the leadership and the administration. But obviously neither the leadership nor the administration wanted the stronger bill. And I still commend and respect Jane for her strong progressive advocacy even though she may be a few pieces of meat shy of a Gaga dress.
Anya
I am just surprised that Jane didn’t put Rahm in a black face, yet.
Why are we re-fighting the HCR fights again? Should we not be talking about how to improve it. Did I not read a poll that suggests voters want improvements no repeal?
tomvox1
Stay classy, Jane:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/27/axelrod-stabs-rahm-runs-from-wreckage-of-health-care-bill/#comment-123481
Whatta dope.
Anya
@asiangrrlMN:
We don’t even know what he looks like. We only know that he has god awful ugly sheets and that he’s cranky and likes to watch lots of teevee. Of course the cute pets will help.
AxelFoley
@Malron:
Ouch!
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
AxelFoley
@Brachiator:
This. All this.
fasteddie
Jane is nuts. She can’t get over the fact that Obama being elected was a tiny incremental victory of a battle in a larger war that we need to keep fighting. We ALL have to keep on fighting, pretty much forever. It’s why Ben Franklin said that we have “a republic, if you can keep it”. This is the “keeping it” part – fighting against those who would tear it apart.
Ed Marshall
@El Tiburon:
Not to be a dick, but this right here is why this argument is so pointless. This is the root: The administration is working against health care. If the Senate had all voted for single payer, Obama would have vetoed it, amiright?
Occam’s fucking Razor. It’s conspiratorial, it’s stupid, and if you have really bought into this horseshit (and it’s is horseshit, it’s a fantasy) there is nothing a sane argument is going to do about it.
It’s just not real, it’s something made up by a really, really, sad faction of the left who will bitch no matter what until we have achieved the dictatorship of the proletariat and smashed capitalism. Some of them are smart people, they have goals and they aren’t above crafting a narrative to get there. If that’s not your goal you need to unpack this whole thing and see how many pieces of evidence there are to support this arguement and the “evidence” consists of people bellyfeeling that the President has more cards than he does and an unwillingness to accept a dysfunctional legislative body in the form of the Senate and replacing their reality with a Manchurian president.
asiangrrlMN
@Anya: I have. But even if I haven’t, it doesn’t matter what he looks like. He can do better than Mean Girl Jane just based on his cranky, but lovable personality.
eemom
somebody ought to get Ned Lamont on one of the MSNBC shows and ask HIM what a great “progressive activist” Jane Hamsher is. That would be a real eye-opener for a lot of deluded groupies.
Of course, then Jane would just call Lamont a sellout corporatist misogynist veal penner, and all the little groupies would be happy again.
Benjamin Cisco
@Brachiator:
__
Challenge him for what, exactly? Unless the law against more than two terms is repealed, he’ll be headed home by then…
Admiral_Komack
Medicare for all, single-payer system:
5 votes for it in the US Senate.
-Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, on Morning Joe, 12/22/2009.
I believe Senator Sanders.
Jane needs to STFU.
Blogasita
Umm…Of course there were 50 votes for the public option. Not 60, but definitely 50.
lol
@eemom:
When Lamont endorsed Obama during the primaries instead of Edwards, you should’ve seen the shit-storm that ensued at GOS.
lol
@Blogasita:
The whip count to include the public option in the reconciliation bill stalled around 44-45 Senators. There were Dems (including Byrd and Feingold, IIRC) who supported the PO but didn’t think it should be passed through reconcliation.
John Cole
@Blogasita: You’re wrong. I’m not going to rehash what has been discussed to death, but anyone who thinks there were 50 votes for the PO is just wrong.
Phoenix Woman
@Mnemosyne:
But if there weren’t
6050 (per the new Cole moveable goalposts) votes for a PO in a Democratic Congress now or last year, what makes anyone think there will be 50 votes for it after January 2011?Phoenix Woman
@lol: Are the primaries still going on? Why should a website designed to find and fund primary challengers for a particular election cycle stay active once the primaries are done?