Ezra explains how the public option may end up in the final bill even if it isn’t in the Senate bill.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.
They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…
Stand up, dammit!
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.
You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
“They all knew.”
Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers
The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
the 10% who apparently lack object permanence
Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.
Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.
Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.
Our messy unity will be our strength.
Their freedom requires your slavery.
Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Keith
From the headline, I assumed this was about Bob Novak dying. But it wasn’t followed with “are true”
wasabi gasp
@Keith: Grammar would’ve dictated It’s, not its.
evie
Any liberal freaking out about the public option who did not know the process PRIOR to Ezra’s post really shouldn’t be voicing their opinion because it means they are as ill-informed as the nutcases at the town halls railing against death panels.
steve s
Anybody know what the timing is expected to be? Around when is the bill expected to go to conference?
Hunter Gathers
It’s all about getting it out of Baucus’s committee. If the public option needs to be ‘dropped’ to get it throught the Senate, so be it. It will be added back in committee, and there’s no way in hell Conrad, Nelson and the other wannabe goopers will vote against cloture.
All this bitching about Obama not ‘knocking heads’ or ‘twisting arms’ is silly. How can one get a vote on a bill that doesn’t exist yet? Arm twisting is for October, before there is an actual vote.
This is getting done. Teabaggers, bigots, gun-nuts and the corporate media whores be damned.
cbear
Down goes Novak! DOWN goes Novak!
eric
@evie: amen. Plus, for all the angst inflicted upon us by the MSM and crazies, Obama still wins most of each fight he enters. Yeah, I wanted a more robust stimulus, but we are not gonna sink into a depression and i count that as a win.
While I wanted more regulation of Wall Street, we have an extremely aggressive SEC enforcement division for the first time in memory.
I like the recent statement on DOMA as a recognition that LGBT supporters will not wait forever. I think DADT is gonna be dead this time next year.
I see immigration reform on the horizon. (Cant wait for the race baiting there.)
Obama is fighting a FOUR front war against the GOP, the DINOS, the press, and the corporate powers pulling all three’s strings (and even his own to some extent).
So, I will wait a while longer to declare defeat on health care in general, and the public option in particular.
eric
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I also think a lot of people who have commented on the issue don’t appreciate the structural problem in passing progressive legislation–that it’s PROGRESSIVE. By definition, it changes the status quo in fairly dramatic (new) ways. A lot of people in the country (even Democrats) have a pretty strong status-quo bias, and that’s especially true in the senate.
Now people lament the fact that so many “compromises” have been made on healthcare reform; the basic argument is that the Democratic proposals have included things from a co-op like plan to a strong public option–why wouldn’t there be a “weak” public option as a compromise? Because the main constituency that is being negotiated with in the Democratic party (and the Republicans, but no one thinks they matter much) wants NO reform.
In other words, the other side is perfectly willing to rant and whine to get whatever they want–they have no investment, they can just walk away. Progressives want to change the status quo because the current situation is unacceptable. So ALL the leverage is on the no side, and you get pretty dramatic compromises. You wonder why it’s “easy” for the Republicans to get things done in Congress? Because, largely, the things they tried to get done didn’t change anything (preserved existing power relationships)! Invade another country full of shifty brown people with a foreign religion, give more medicine to seniors, further enrich already rich people with tax cuts, etc. When they actually tried to change something (Social Security)–it was a massive failure.
Da Bomb
OMG this is what some of us have been saying for the past two days!
But as always people were reacting like cats in heat!
OMG THE POOBLIC OPTION IS GONE, WHAT R WEEZ GONNA DO?
Now Kathleen Sebelius has to say public option every two words to prove a point, because if they don’t say it then that means it doesn’t exist in a nonexistent bill.
WOW!!
@Hunter Gathers: Of course it’s silly and some fools fell for the craziness of the MSM hook, line and sinker.
Da Bomb
@evie: I second that, big time!
eric
There are few competing impulses in tension. First, as dems, liberals, leftists, or progressives, we are used to losing and used to being the constituency that gets nothing. So, we have no problem believing signals to mean the very worst for us.
In constrast, many of us believe that Obama “gets it,” notwithstandng some of his centrist financial compromises. We also know that the guy always brings the gun to the knife fight. So, we have confidence in him (for the most part).
What is tipping the scale in favor of doubt right now is that the testicularly challenged Senate is involved, with Harry Reid and a merry band of DINOs.
Most dems, liberals, leftists, and progressives have NEVER seen a democratic president power through “progressive” legislation. We are not even sure what that would look like.
Hence, daily bouts of apprehension.
eric
JackieBinAZ
@wasabi gasp: no, it’s right. Its = possessive, it’s = contraction of it is.
hey unemployed editors are good for something!
gnomedad
I’d like to see Obama or his reps use graphics like this at a press conference. Lie-hungry crazies aside, I’d bet 90% of the population couldn’t give an accurate thumbnail sketch of what they’re arguing about. I blame the media. No snark.
An Idiot’s Guide to Health Care Reform
Tom Q
eric, I think there’s one other element to be considered, one that crystallized for me last night as I watched some (couldn’t stomach all) of Matt Taibbi’s screed with Rachel Maddow. Taibbi not only put the worst possible interpretation on every step of the process, he was positively gleeful as he proclaimed that this was going to 1) completely fail and 2) destroy the Democrats for years to come.
It struck me: there are some liberals — Taibbi included — for whom nothing will ever be good enough. As some have said, they would have called FDR a sellout for the accommodations he made to get Social Security through. (They’d have been agitating for Huey Long/Upton Sinclair to challenge FDR within the party) I believe, on some level, these people have ENJOYED the last 40 years of Republican dominance. It suits their world view: that they alone hold moral high ground, that everyone who falls short of their absolute left-wing certitude else is corrupt or stupid and will always stymie reform of any kind. While some of us see the Obama presidency as a long-deferred opportunity to get progressive movement in the country, they are ready to pounce at the slightest apostasy (he didn’t repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on Day One; off with his head!), and perfectly willing to scuttle any halfway progress for the feeling of greater nobility that get from defeat.
It’s a relief to read much of his thread today. For the past 24 hours I’ve felt like my head was going to explode — watching as the press mendaciously spun offhand comments into a clear-cut surrender; no matter how many times in how many ways the White House denied it, the press effectively saying, It’s our narrative and we’re sticking to it; and seemingly the entire left-wing buying into the press spin verbatim (to read most liberal columnists or bloggers, you’d think Obama had written No Public Option Ever in blood). It’s an embarrassing spectacle, one I think alot of these people will be tying to eradicate by the time the bill actually comes up for a vote.
Hunter Gathers
@Tom Q: Taibbi thinks he’s Hunter S. Thompson. He couldn’t hold the Good Doctor’s jock strap.
valdivia
DaBomb, evie and eric
seconded and thirded.
The thing that most gets to me is that while progressives complain about the media they fall for their tricks every freaking time.
The nice thing is that now the media is paying attention to co-ops and revealing they would do nothing for cost containment. Let the sun in and their house of cards crumbles!
valdivia
@Tom Q:
amen brother. exactly my feelings.
Keith G
@Da Bomb: Agreed. You are da bomb once again.
burnspbesq
The scenario that Ezra describes is plausible. Alas, in my thesaurus “plausible” and “likely” are not synonyms.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I’m still somewhat skeptical about Obama’s ability to pull this off.
burnspbesq
@Tom Q:
Well said. The tendencies you describe are a big part of why I no longer hang out at FDL.
That said, Chicken Little isn’t always wrong. Sometimes the sky does fall. And I just have a queasy feeling about this one.
Mnemosyne
@valdivia:
Yep. The White House denied that they were backing down on the public option at least three times yesterday and denied it again today, but somehow that denial is proof — PROOF I TELLS YA! — that it’s all true and Obama has flushed the public option down the toilet.
I know we all got used to playing Kremlinologists during the Bush administration to figure out what they really meant when they passed, say, the Clear Skies Act that ensured more pollution, but I haven’t seen any evidence yet that the Obama administration is routinely saying one thing and doing another with every policy.
valdivia
@Mnemosyne:
exactly and most importantly no one seems to remember that we have NO BILL YET. well some of us have been screaming about it for a couple of days, we have no guarantee that things will work out but I am pretty sure we will get a bill this year and one that will have some form of public option.
I sort of ruefully laugh at the fact that all the people freaking out on other threads are silent and absent from this one. Hmmm.
Tom Q
burnspbesq, obviously the months ahead are uncertain, and, as I’ve said to people over the past day or so, if the final bill is a total sellout, I’ll sadly join the disappointed throngs. I’ve just been shocked by the willingness of so many on the left to, as a shrink I know once put it, rehearse the tragedy — to buy completely into a worst-case scenario, on so little evidence.
Hunter Gathers, I totally agree on the Thompson/Taibbi comparison. I don’t dispute Taibbi is capable of being funny, but there’s a “what’s the point of trying?” vibe behind everything he writes. Thompson, while perfectly capable of being vicious (ask Hubert Humphrey), always gave off the air of hoping for the best even if he secretly feared the worst. Taibbi more meets that Oscar Wilde definition of the cynic — one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
cbear
@Tom Q: Gleeful? What show were you watching? Taibbi was anything but gleeful—disgusted is more like it.
Taibbi is one of the few guys who regularly mocks and denigrates the corporatist whores and goopers and assholocrats who are ruining our country—and every once in a while he gets invited on teevee and is allowed to speak unappologetically about the rot in our body politic.
More please.
cbear
@Tom Q:
@Mnemosyne:
@valdivia:
Your overall point(s) is/are extremely valid, in that there is no bill yet, but, for God’s sake, have you guys forgotten how many times the Dems have folded like a cheap suit on issue after issue? If there is no pressure from the left, what’s to keep them from doing so again?
@Tom Q: “As some have said, they would have called FDR a sellout for the accommodations he made to get Social Security through.”
FDR to activists in his won party: “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”
Da Bomb
@cbear: Well if he’s going to talk about rot, then speak about it concerning healthcare after it’s failed or there’s at least a bill to bitch about.
@Tom Q: Rehearse the tragedy is a good metaphor. I also am going to use “ripping off the corset” too.
Da Bomb
@valdivia: You won’t hear retractions on this. All you are going to hear now is how, people aren’t sure that it(healthcare reform) will happen anyway. And Obama is still Hoover. Also.
FlipYrWhig
@ Tom Q: I decided the Taibbi stance (and FDL comments, Digby comments, etc.) could be called “auto-erotic Schadenfreude.” It’s a positively masturbatory glee at your own misfortune.
Some of it is just pure masochism, but there’s also that weird revolutionary righteousness and martyrology, and it has to happen as fast as possible. You don’t get credit for being the _second_ guy reduced to despair. It’s the thrill of finding a new band–not one you _like_, but one that someone else will like but actually sucks, and you saw it first. (Think of the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy: not just “worst. episode. ever.” but “I was on the internet within moments registering my discontent throughout the world.”)
Too many liberals get off on being disappointed, because that feeling reminds them that they are special and sensitive and highly evolved and nonconformist. It’s fucking tedious. Instead, I’ll wallow in my characteristically liberal disgust towards other liberals.
FlipYrWhig
@ Mnemosyne, I quite enjoy that as I travel from blog to blog, I can encounter your sanity and composure several times over.
Tom Q
cbear, I have no problem with pressure from the left. But that’s not what I’ve seen/heard. It’s been 36 hours of “I always knew Obama was a sellout” — and, as so many of us are saying, this on the basis of something the never-reliable press is reporting despite flat denials from the White House. I have no problem whatever with what Weiner and the House progressives are doing, and, honestly, I don’t think Obama does, either.
FlipYrWhig, I’m with you 100%. I’ve always thought too many liberals consider defeat the only vindication of their cause. Look at their emblematic art: could there be a more perfect embodiment of liberal masochism than To Kill a Mockingbird? I love the book/movie as much as anoyne, but look what it tells us: the rubes will falsely convict and even kill Tom Robinson..but we have the satisfaction of knowing Atticus is the wisest, most honorable man in town.
joe from Lowell
Tom Q is da bomb.
I mean, not Da Bomb, who is also da bomb.
I just mean…oh, never mind.
Good posts, you two.
valdivia
@Tom Q:
yes yes this. exactly. I want pressure from the left on Obama but that is different than the hair on fire we are doomed rhetoric of the last few days–over nothing.
and also–rehearse the tragedy is indeed right. I like the corset line as well.
all comments on this thread make me feel there is sanity out there!
kay
I’ll keep trying just because cable tv anchors are smug and secure and clearly overjoyed that they will retain the status quo. I know this is not a positive or hopeful motivating factor.
I’ve never seen a “debate” on an issue where we never got around to discussing health care DELIVERY, which was the point of this “debate”, and where the only people who weighed in were wealthy people who have great coverage, or senior citizens, who also have great coverage.
The people I talk to every day, under-65 lower middle class people with kids and crappy employer “provided” coverage that they pay through the nose for, or no coverage at all, were never mentioned. It’s as if vast swathes of people don’t exist.
Old people and rich cable personalities yelled the loudest, and both groups can barely constrain their glee that their cushy status quo is no longer threatened.
Some debate. Real broad.
tgeb
@ burnspbesq
That’s no moon.
Dr. Loveless
@FlipYrWhig:
WIN.
My once-favorite blogs have been saturated with this for months.
I also think that parts of the left blogosphere are just as infected with the Baby Boomers’ scorched-earth, the apocalypse-will-not-be-televised politics of temper tantrum as the right … and the fact that Obama doesn’t play that way is just as confusing to them as it is to any wingnut.
Leelee for Obama
@Dr. Loveless:
I also think that parts of the left blogosphere are just as infected with the Baby Boomers’ scorched-earth, the apocalypse-will-not-be-televised politics of temper tantrum as the right … and the fact that Obama doesn’t play that way is just as confusing to them as it is to any wingnut
This is so full of WIN!
It’s why I thought he was the right guy for the job. In a sober and sane moment, Sully wrote “Goodbye to all that” and I still think it’s true.