Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Second rate reporter says what?

This fight is for everything.

Let’s finish the job.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“woke” is the new caravan.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

In my day, never was longer.

We still have time to mess this up!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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91Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    You may be an official FP’er, but you obviously haven’t grokked to which side of the plate some people swing from.
    Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  7. 7.

    Steve

    @beltane: See, people would read your comment and think FDL actually tried to claim Blanche Lincoln is a progressive.

    The post is actually a reprise of the “Obama throws supporters under the bus” argument… itself an extremely tired meme. But there’s no need to mislead people. In fact, of the 4 people Obama is accused of betraying, not a single one is progressive.

  8. 8.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Steve:

    My favorite Coach gag is the one where he tells the long story about “The Blindman” who played shortstop despite being blind. Sam tells Coach “they called him the blind man because he sold blinds as a business in the offseason” and adds “he can see much as your or I can”. Coach says “in some ways, I think he sees more”.

  9. 9.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Anya:

    Yeah, I wish Sam hadn’t said the thing about “popping you one”, it adds a note to the scene that I don’t like.

    Still, Sam and Diane are my all-time favorite tv couple and I don’t see how that’s misogynist — Diane always had the upper hand.

  10. 10.

    beltane

    @Steve: Yes, I was being slightly (only slightly) sarcastic. However, it has become obvious to me that Jane Hamsher’s hatred of Obama is so intense and all-consuming that she would even rush to Joe Lieberman’s defense if it provided another opportunity to slam the president and his supporters.

  12. 12.

    debit

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: My favorite Coach gag was where two parties with the same name (Peterson?) were waiting to be called to a table upstairs. Coach yells “Peterson, party of two, your table is ready.” Both couple approach, one young and slender, the other older and heavyset. Coach calls upstairs, says “There are two Petersons, which one were you looking for?” then listens, hangs up and says to both couples, “I’m sorry, I must have heard wrong. It wasn’t Peterson, it was Blubberbutts.”

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    @beltane: In that forty foot scroll of cut’n’paste, is she trying to say Obama is to blame for Martha Coakley? This was a popular argument at my former bloggy haunt, with the obligatory “Obama is afraid of women!” posts.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    How’s Obama gonna
    Ram it down our throats
    While he’s throwin us under the bus?

    How’s he gonna throw us
    Under the bus
    While he’s slappin us in the face?

    How’s he gonna slap us
    Slap us in the face
    While he’s rammin it down our throats?

  16. 16.

    Pavlov's Dog

    haha…Jane in comments to Beltane’s link @ #3:

    “Maybe he’s worried John Cole will return to the Republican party now that he finally realized they didn’t need 60 votes to pass health care, and his posts for the past 10 months built on that premise make him look like an raging idiot.”

    Jeebus, she’s got a thing for you JC. You should start thinking about a restraining order…

  17. 17.

    jl

    The ugly subtext and implication of the clip is that Hamsher and Cole will soon be (or are) emotionally united in some gloriously awful and cosmic dysfunction.

    Please forget that I event thought of such a thing.

    Ewwwww! Yuck.

  18. 18.

    Left Coast Tom

    @Steve:
    I think the problem is that the “arguments” are somewhat hard to keep track of. Is Obama Throwing Progressives Under The Bus And Slapping Them In The Face, or is he doing this to People Supported By The Chamber Of Commerce Until The Primary Ended And They Weren’t Useful Anymore? Because I’m totally down with the latter.

    (edit) Except he didn’t really…just trying to follow the Not Veal Pen Narrative. (/edit)

  19. 19.

    TooManyJens

    To this day, I still remember the song Coach used to teach Sam about geography so he could get his high school diploma:

    Albania, Albania
    You border on the Adriatic
    Your land is mostly mountainous
    And your chief export is chrome

  21. 21.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @TooManyJens:

    SO MUCH WIN.

    I thought I was the only person who remembered that. I’m proud to say that I’ve bit my tongue every time I started to sing it to the Albanian grad student here.

  22. 22.

    Restrung

    Hamsher was irrationally anti-Obama early on. I used to hang out there, and I didn’t get it then. I’m talking early ’07. anybody?

  27. 27.

    Suck It Up!

    @Restrung:

    so basically she’s still reeling from an embarrassing loss.

    ugh!……Arianna on the Daily Show. will be hitting mute in about 15 minutes.

  28. 28.

    beltane

    @Jim, Foolish LIteralist: The FDL’ers and PUMAs were very loud in their support for Martha Coakley in the primary because Michael Capuano had endorsed Obama over Hillary and was therefore evil.

    I have no problem with people hating Obama. I do have a problem with these people using a more-progressive-than-thou stance to make their hatred seem like a noble thing.

  29. 29.

    Restrung

    @Suck It Up!:

    so basically she’s still reeling from an embarrassing loss.

    I don’t think that’s it. My recollection is that she was just really harsh towards BO. Not necessarily in favor of anyone else. hmm.

  30. 30.

    Steve

    @Left Coast Tom: The problem with that strategy is that it only works once. It’s kinda like how they supported Specter in exchange for his switch… by the time he needed their support, he had already switched and couldn’t take it back, but if they had thrown him to the wolves then no one would ever switch to the Democrats again. Someone who’s considering a party switch has to know that if they take the plunge, the new party will have their back.

    I don’t even understand how they supposedly threw Lincoln under the bus since the White House basically supported her 100%. True, they sent Bill Clinton to Arkansas to campaign for her instead of sending President Obama… gee, do you think that was the right call?

  31. 31.

    kwAwk

    I was never ir-rationally anti-Obama, but I wasn’t really for him in the beginning. He’s unfortunately exactly like I predicted he would be though I tried to buy into him at first.

    The fallacy seems in Cole’s logic is that just because there weren’t an obvious amount of votes coming out of the gate for the public option, doesn’t mean that had Obama shown some leadership that it couldn’t have been accomplished.

    Obama won the primary against Clinton by claiming to be in support of the same healthcare proposal that Clinton supported sans the individual mandates.

    From December 12th, 2007

    There are significant similarities between the Democratic hopefuls’ plans: All three would create public insurance plans (separate from, but similar to, Medicare) that would compete with private plans. All three would be financed, according to the candidates, in part by rolling the Bush tax cut on people with incomes over $250,000.</blockquote

    Obama was elected on a promise to enact a public option and I for one am rather tired of Obots pretending otherwise. I like Cole and agree with him about many things but to get indignant about someone being upset with Obama for not fulfilling his campaign promises and having Obama and his administration telling people to basically shut up and vote for him is getting rather grating.

    Obama ran against universal coverage in the primary, but now claims that universal coverage is his great accomplishment. Color me puzzled on that one.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    @kwAwk:

    Obama was elected on a promise to enact a public option and I for one am rather tired of Obots pretending otherwise

    Nonsense. Obama beat Clinton because of her vote for Iraq and the general, stunning and snowballing incompetence of her campaign. He beat McCain because of Iraq, Palin, a crashing economy and the fact that McCain’s intellectual and political shallowness became more apparent at every turn.

    Support for the public option, outside the Democratic/activist base, was a mile wide and half an inch deep.

  37. 37.

    asiangrrlMN

    OK. I need to say this. I think Hamsher MAY have a crush on John, but he can do so much better. This needs to be repeated as often as possible. He does not need that kind of crazy.

  38. 38.

    kwAwk

    @Jim, Foolish LIteralist:

    Support for the public option, outside the Democratic/activist base, was a mile wide and half an inch deep.

    The problem with that logic is that it was that same activist base you deride for being so supportive of the public option is the same activist base who were the ones really hung up on Clinton’s Iraq vote.

    Obama was able to make such a big deal about the difference on the Iraq vote because he pretty much pretended to be the same on all of the other issues as Clinton.

    Perhaps you’ve forgotten but Obama didn’t win the primaries by a landslide. Had Obama campaigned on being as wishy-washy on the public option as he in the end turned out to be, he never would have won.

  39. 39.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Poopyman:

    Yes, the show was never the same without him. Love that guy.

    I’d like to be high brow and say The Wire is my all-time favorite show but it’s really the first few seasons of Cheers.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice. #15:

    Maybe try it to “How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Par-ee)?”

    Can’t really tell you. I was +2 at the time.

  42. 42.

    suzanne

    My favorite Cheers bit will always be the episode with “The Kelly Song”. Such fabulous comic timing.

    “…and your hair is so clean…”

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice. #39:

    Yes, early Cheers was sublime. Never did like the Kirstie Alley years.

  44. 44.

    Stefan

    To this day, I still remember the song Coach used to teach Sam about geography so he could get his high school diploma:

    To this day, I can’t hear or read the word “Albania” without hearing that song in my head.

  45. 45.

    Left Coast Tom

    @kwAwk:

    The problem with that logic is that it was that same activist base you deride for being so supportive of the public option is the same activist base who were the ones really hung up on Clinton’s Iraq vote.

    1) I favored the public option, mostly as a weak compromise. Hell, I’ve posted twice already, thrice now, that I voted for single payer when that option was presented to me on a ballot.

    2) I would _still_ like to know why that “activist base” “so supportive of the public option” doesn’t apply it’s energy to putting that option on state ballots AND GETTING IT PASSED IN THOSE STATES.

    3) I was among those “really hung up on Clinton’s Iraq vote”, it was a factor in my vote but it wasn’t a stand-alone deal-breaker. There was absolutely no excuse for it, I would have been happier during the primary if she simply hadn’t tried to excuse it.

  46. 46.

    Stefan

    Coach dying after the first season was a real tragedy.

    Coach died after the third season. A handy guide:

    Seasons one to three: Coach and Diane.

    Seasons four to five: Woody and Diane.

    Seasons six to eleven: Woody and Rebecca.

  48. 48.

    RareSanity

    @kwAwk:

    Obama won the primary against Clinton by claiming to be in support of the same healthcare proposal that Clinton supported sans the individual mandates.

    What the bloody hell?

    Are you serious?

    Obama won the primary because of Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote, the fact that Democrats did not like when she started the mud-slinging and that Hillary Clinton thought the primary would be a cakewalk and ran a real shitty campaign.

    And enough about the frackin’ public option! The goddamned bill would NOT have passed at all if Congressional Democrats insisted on a public option.

    Go and find one reputable source from the conclusion of the primary that states that Obama won because he promised a public option…go ahead, I’ll wait…

    Until then…STFU!

  50. 50.

    Restrung

    how’s that? Not playing the game, just winning it like a mofo… oh, I’m just over here running for POTUS, but hey, ya know. I’ll just let these others go ahead and raise money and I’ll just hope somebody votes for me.

  51. 51.

    kwAwk

    @RareSanity:

    lmao I already posted it. The fact that all three candidates for Democratic nominee included the public option in their plans shows exactly how important it was. I’d bet that if you looked up the 8 or so candidates total, from Dodd to Biden to Kosinich to Gravel they all had it in their plans. It needed to be there in order to be taken seriously as a Democratic candidate.

    The fact that Obama worked so hard during the debates to insist that his plan was no different than Clinton’s outside of the mandates shows that even Obama knew how important it was.

    I’d challenge you back to find one point of disagreement about the Healthcare issue between Clinton and Obama that wasn’t about mandates. You’ll find no difference on the public option between them.

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    @kwAwk:

    The problem with that logic is that it was that same activist base you deride for being so supportive of the public option

    I’m part of the activist base that supported a public option. Pointing out that a group of people who support something in politics is not large enough to be electorally significant isn’t “derision”, it’s part of being in the reality based community. There was and has been no great groundswell in support of the PO, that it hasn’t been a factor in any Dem primaries I’m aware of–though if you have data to the contrary, I’d be interested. It was never mentioned here in Colorado, though DLC Democrat Michael Bennet tried rather desperately to re-invent himself as a Russ Feingold progressive, I never heard him metion the PO. None of the Blue Dogs, in the House or the Senate, who killed seem very nervous about it.

    e he pretty much pretended to be the same on all of the other issues as Clinton.

    He wasn’t “pretending”, that’s pretty much true. Also, he didn’t hire Mark Penn. If you think Hillary Clinton could have gotten a ‘robust public option’ past Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman–which assumes she could have beat McCain-notPalin, which I think is debatable–than you’re even sillier than I took you for when you were keening about “O-bots”.

  54. 54.

    kwAwk

    @Restrung:

    Yep. He won. We all get that.

    But now he’s paying the price for promising things he wasn’t really committed to. That’s what I meant by playing the game.

  55. 55.

    kwAwk

    @Jim, Foolish LIteralist:

    The public option is dead at this point. It will be for at least another generation because Obama, a democrat if you’ve forgotten like he has, declared it unnecessary.

    He didn’t declare it to be on the wish list but negotiated away out of pragmatism. He himself declared it unnecessary.

    Thats why people on the left are so angry at him.

  56. 56.

    RareSanity

    @kwAwk:

    lmao I already posted it.

    No, you didn’t.

    Let me rephrase to be a bit more clear. In the avalanche of analysis after the conclusion of the primary, find one reputable analyst that stated, unequivocally, that Obama won the primary solely because he promised a public option.

    Not any analysis during or after the whole HCR event, analysis immediately after the conclusion of the Democratic primary.

    I’d challenge you back to find one point of disagreement about the Healthcare issue between Clinton and Obama that wasn’t about mandates. You’ll find no difference on the public option between them.

    The similarities of their plans are irrelevant to your statement that Obama won the primary based on promising the public option, that simply is not true.

  57. 57.

    Steve

    @kwAwk:

    Obama was able to make such a big deal about the difference on the Iraq vote because he pretty much pretended to be the same on all of the other issues as Clinton.

    Obama actually pretended to be different from Clinton a lot more than he pretended to be the same. Example: what would you do if Iran nuked Israel? Even better example: should illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses?

  58. 58.

    Left Coast Tom

    @kwAwk:

    The public option is dead at this point. It will be for at least another generation because Obama, a democrat if you’ve forgotten like he has, declared it unnecessary.

    If you think he’s wrong then why aren’t you applying your energy to putting it on your state ballot and proving him wrong?

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    @kwAwk:

    He didn’t declare it to be on the wish list

    What does that even mean? He campaigned on it but didn’t “declare it to be on his wish list”? Which Senators would have flipped if he had put it on a “wish list”? And which ‘public option’ are you talking about? the one in the House bill? That was the hill we should have the left health care to die on?

    You have a lot of anger, but not many facts. You from FDL?

  60. 60.

    kwAwk

    @RareSanity: .

    Jebus. It wasn’t an issue in the primary because Obama supported the same public option package that Clinton and Edwards supported. Had Obama not supported the public option openly during the primary campaign there would be oodles of articles analyzing the fact just as you can find oodles of articles analyzing the differences between Clinton and Obama on mandates.

    Ummm…..Obama didn’t win the democratic primary because he was pro-choice, but one can be assured he would have lost had he been pro-life.

    Does that make sense to you?

  61. 61.

    Steve

    @RareSanity:

    Let me rephrase to be a bit more clear. In the avalanche of analysis after the conclusion of the primary, find one reputable analyst that stated, unequivocally, that Obama won the primary solely because he promised a public option.

    He didn’t say Obama won the primary solely because he promised a public option. Let’s not be dumb about this. No one in the history of mankind has made that argument, including in this thread.

    The public option was one part of the platform Obama got elected on. We all agree on that, right? Let me try to spell out his argument a little more clearly.

    (1) Health care is an important issue to the Democratic base, arguably the #1 issue.

    (2) Many members of the Democratic base, including the progressive activists who were an important part of Obama’s coalition, came to see the public option as a critical component of health care reform.

    (3) Had Obama left the public option out of the plan he campaigned on, he would have come across as the weakest Democrat on the health care issue, and that would have hurt him to some extent. Whether it would have cost him the nomination is completely unprovable unless you have access to alternate universes, but at one point this thing was pretty close.

    That’s really not a horrible argument. Now does any of that mean there were 50/60 votes for the public option, or that Obama wasn’t allowed to drop it if he genuinely believed it was impossible, not in my opinion it doesn’t.

  62. 62.

    kwAwk

    @Left Coast Tom:

    Thats a bit silly. Obama’s already declared the Healthcare debate over and rousing success, if you haven’t noticed. You’re not going to get people to continue paying attention at this point.

  64. 64.

    RareSanity

    @kwAwk:
    @Steve:

    I see where you two are going.

    Let me pose this question to the both of you then, do you think that a healthcare bill, with the public option would have been passed of Hillary Clinton were POTUS?

    I assume you answers would be ‘yes’. The position of a lot of the commenters here is that, it doesn’t matter who the President would have been, a healthcare bill, including a public option, would not have passed the Senate.

    If you believe that had Obama pushed harder for it, more Senators would have supported it, that is a difference of opinion that also cannot be proved. I personally think that the Ben Nelsons, Blanche Lincolns and Mary Landrieus of the Senate wouldn’t have voted for it anyway.

    But, again, none of this can be proved, so here we are…now what?

  66. 66.

    AxelFoley

    @Ron Beasley:

    The Republicans have always recognized that you don’t piss off the base. That’s why they win – that;s why the Democrats and Obama will lose.

    To quote someone on another blog: “Does Spock have a beard in your universe?”

  67. 67.

    Left Coast Tom

    @kwAwk:
    In other words, you choose not to try. After all, what “Obama declared” has absolutely nothing to do with what gets put on your state ballot…Obama also doesn’t support legalizing marijuana, but that’s not changing my vote on CA’s Prop. 19, even though Prop. 19 actually challenges current Federal law and a statewide public option wouldn’t.

    So why are you haranguing others about a public option when you don’t seem to care about it enough to take effective action in favor of it?

  68. 68.

    Steve

    @RareSanity: My answer is no. Hillary did not have super powers. I don’t think anyone can say with 100% confidence that Hillary would have gotten a health care bill passed at all, although sure, I’d like to think so.

    There is a tragic sort of mentality where some people assume that every one of Obama’s successes is something any old Democrat could have accomplished, but every one of his failures bears his unique imprint.

  70. 70.

    AxelFoley

    Damn, maybe I should have directed that question at kwAwk.

    Seriously, dude (or dudette, as the case may be), WTF?

  71. 71.

    kwAwk

    @RareSanity:

    My response would be that if Hillary had been President we would have seen a much clearer picture presented to the American people about what the plan was and she would have been more effective at combatting the right wing propaganda regarding the proposal.

    Nobody can say for sure what would have happened as an end result, but I think she would have fought a little harder for the bill. Perhaps she would even have been willing to take expend more of her own political capital to achieve a public option given her failure on the issue the first time.

    Hard to say what would and wouldn’t have happened but there is a lot of room for improvement over the effort Obama put forward in terms of selling a plan to the American people.

  72. 72.

    Yutsano

    @kwAwk:

    My response would be that if Hillary had been President we would have seen a much clearer picture presented to the American people about what the plan was and she would have been more effective at combatting the right wing propaganda regarding the proposal.

    Just out of curiosity, what color is the sky on your planet?

  73. 73.

    kwAwk

    @Left Coast Tom:

    Its taken decades for the legalize marijuana movement to succeed in the face of federal law. Ballot initiatives that have a chance to succeed in California this year would have been unthinkable in 1984.

    It would take a similar time span to get a healthcare reform ballot initiative to succeed in this environment, especially with the President declaring that the Federal Government has just solved the issue.

  75. 75.

    RareSanity

    @kwAwk:

    My response would be that if Hillary had been President we would have seen a much clearer picture presented to the American people about what the plan was and she would have been more effective at combatting the right wing propaganda regarding the proposal.

    Now that’s just kinda silly…the right-wing noise machine would have dug up every old skeleton from the 90’s and Superman couldn’t have effectively fought the onslaught.

    Perhaps she would even have been willing to take expend more of her own political capital to achieve a public option given her failure on the issue the first time.

    She may have been willing to spend her’s, but, could she convince the Senate Democrats to spend theirs?

    Hard to say what would and wouldn’t have happened but there is a lot of room for improvement over the effort Obama put forward in terms of selling a plan to the American people.

    I have an idea of what would have happened, the same thing that happened to Obama. But, instead of “Where’s the birth certificate”, and “Death Panels”, it would have been “HillaryCare, The Sequel”, “Whitewater” and “Bill Clinton had the chance to kill Osama”

    I just don’t get the fact that so many people think that Hillary would have magically transcended all of the ready made, right wing attacks from the 90’s, just because she was elected President.

    It would have been the same blood in the water, feeding frenzy that Obama went through.

    The same thing would have happened to Edwards, Biden, Kucinich, Dean…anybody.

  76. 76.

    Steve

    @Yutsano: I think it is fair to say that Hillary would have been quicker to recognize that the Republican votes were not gettable, considering a much more liberal GOP blocked her previous plan straight down the line. Whether that would have made a difference, who knows. The battle involved the marginal Democrats and most of them liked Obama better than Hillary.

    I think it is also fair to say that Hillary would have been quicker to understand that crazy wingnut lies like “death panels” actually do take root in the public consciousness and can’t just be laughed off. Again, who knows if that would have mattered. I respectfully disagree with my colleague’s contention that Hillary was a paragon of clear messaging.

  77. 77.

    Left Coast Tom

    @kwAwk:

    It would take a similar time span to get a healthcare reform ballot initiative to succeed in this environment, especially with the President declaring that the Federal Government has just solved the issue.

    Only if “the base” that you keep appealing to agrees. Yet it’s your vociferous claim that it doesn’t.

    As I said earlier, I think a Public Option is a weak compromise, and while I favor it I have no idea why it’s such a Hill To Die On. So…put up or shut up. Put that compromise on the ballot somewhere appropriate – the really great thing about this idea is you get to pick your own battlefield!

  79. 79.

    Yutsano

    @Steve:

    I think it is fair to say that Hillary would have been quicker to recognize that the Republican votes were not gettable, considering a much more liberal GOP blocked her previous plan straight down the line.

    That seems a reasonable analysis. Though it is hard to predict how the ladies of Maine would have reacted with Hillary up there.

    I think it is also fair to say that Hillary would have been quicker to understand that crazy wingnut lies like “death panels” actually do take root in the public consciousness and can’t just be laughed off. Again, who knows if that would have mattered.

    I’d buy this save for two words: Mark Penn. He was a liability early on and she still kept him as a spokesman for her campaign which very likely would have translated into a White House position for him. And few can make the argument that he was anything but a complete disaster for her.

    I respectfully disagree with my colleague’s contention that Hillary was a paragon of clear messaging.

    See above.

  80. 80.

    Left Coast Tom

    @Steve:
    I can agree with that. Why it can’t be pursued post-HCR, at either the state or federal level, is what I really don’t get.

    Why isn’t it on some reasonably blue state’s ballot this year? I can vote on legalizing marijuana, but I can’t vote on making further incremental progress on health care?

  81. 81.

    Adrienne

    @kwAwk:

    He didn’t “declare it unnecessary”. What he did was decide that the public option was not the end all be all of healthcare reform and he was absolutely fucking right in doing so. He was not willing to let all the other important reforms — coverage for pre-existing conditions, children on parents healthcare until 26, gender equality in pricing, preventative care — die on the mantle of the blessed public option. For the sake of passing the most important foundational aspects of health reform the public option got the boot.

    Do you people not understand that Obama is not a dictator? He does NOT have the power to pass all of his campaign promises in exactly the way he promised because there are 535 OTHER people that get a say in our laws. 100 of those can individually hold up any piece of legislation. The fact that the PO didn’t make the cut doesn’t mean Obama didn’t really want it, it means that not enough legislators wanted to vote for it. No amount of revisionist history can change the fact that WE DIDN’T HAVE THE VOTES. The correct approach is not to deride Obama b/c he didn’t produce the magic unicorn you thought he promised… It’s to work harder to get more progressive legislators elected to vote for the progressive policies you want. Staying home or voting 3rd party does NOT serve the ultimate goal of more progressive legislation. It serves the Republican narrative.

  82. 82.

    Yutsano

    @Left Coast Tom:

    but I can’t vote on making further incremental progress on health care?

    What? Do it the way every other country did it to get to universal health care? What kind of Commie are you?

    Honestly, a lot of these folks need to study how this happened in Canada. 30 years from when Tommy Douglas started his crusade to the passage of the Canada Health Act. There is still a shit ton of work left to do.

  83. 83.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    @Steve:

    > But there’s no need to mislead people.

    Of course there is. This is “Gritty Omniscient Pragmatic Balloonbagger Realpolitik Central” (BOPBRC).

  84. 84.

    Adrienne

    @Yutsano:

    Though it is hard to predict how the ladies of Maine would have reacted with Hillary up there.

    No, it’s not. Hillary or no Hillary, they still would be the overly dramatic diva queen twits they are today. They would still be self interested, clueless, and playing coy to keep their names in the press. Plus, their party (unlike the Dems) actually have mechanisms for punishing those who side too often w/ the opposition and that would go double if the opposition was HRC.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    @kwAwk:

    The public option is dead at this point. It will be for at least another generation because Obama, a democrat if you’ve forgotten like he has, declared it unnecessary.

    Whatever you’re smoking, I want some of it. Unless you’re one of the many confused people I keep seeing online who think that “public option” and “single payer” mean the same thing.

    The only thing that “public option” means is that in the exchanges where people can buy health insurance on the open market, they would also have the option to buy insurance from a government-run insurance plan. Some people think of it as a small step on the road towards single payer, but the public option and single payer are absolutely not the same thing.

    It’s extremely strange for you to keep repeating that the option of adding a government-run option to the exchanges — you know, the public option — is “dead for a generation.” Did they kill the exchanges when I wasn’t looking? Why, pray tell, is the very notion of having a government-run option on the exchanges dead for the next 30 years?

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    Not to mention that there is a government-run plan on the exchanges: people have the option to buy their insurance through OPM (Office of Professional Management), which is the same insurance plan that federal employees have. But because (IIRC) you still end up getting your service through an insurance company like Cigna or Kaiser, people don’t count it as true Medicare- or Medicaid-style “public option” where the provider is paid directly by the government.

  89. 89.

    NobodySpecial

    Actually, people seem to forget that single payer was the original position of the left where healthcare was the big issue.

    The public option was only embraced because, as Steve said above, that’s how you get to single payer eventually. So to claim that the PO was some kind of leftish fantasy isn’t quite correct. People were quite aware that single payer wasn’t going anywhere, and so pushed for the public option as a compromise.

    So what the left was told is that despite coming to the table and NOT demanding everything they wanted, playing the game and making concessions, and then doing what the President said he wanted and making a large public push for the public option that got it a successful vote in the House and damn near got it on a Senate bill…that the fault was theirs because they didn’t play the game.

    At least, that’s what revisionist plants like Nick will have you believe, here in his country where Nothing Can Be Done. It’s kind of like Republicans deliberately failing with government to prove that government doesn’t work. In this case, conservative Dems deliberately fail because they want gridlock and nothing getting done.

  90. 90.

    Suck It Up!

    @kwAwk:

    I paid attention every day of the primaries plus the general and Obama was not running on the public option, he ran on health care in general. I don’t remember hearing anything about the public option until the health care talks began in congress.

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @NobodySpecial:

    So what the left was told is that despite coming to the table and NOT demanding everything they wanted, playing the game and making concessions, and then doing what the President said he wanted and making a large public push for the public option that got it a successful vote in the House and damn near got it on a Senate bill…that the fault was theirs because they didn’t play the game.

    Tell us, in what sport do you play a single game and never play again all season?

    That’s what it feels like progressives did here — they tried to get a public option in this particular bill, they failed with this particular bill, and then they flopped over and refused to ever play another game because they lost one piece of this one.

    Again, if the public option is so all-fired important to you, why have you given up completely on getting one passed? It’s true, you’re not going to get one by the end of 2010, but why are you not trying for 2011 or 2012 or beyond? WTF is this crybaby shit of kwAwk’s that we can’t even propose a public option for the next 30 years because Obama was so mean to you?

    ETA: I see that for both you and CS, “Nothing can be done” means, “We couldn’t get it done our preferred way the first time around so we’re not even going to try doing it a different way.”

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