No amount of public pressure is going to get the votes, because we
are dealing with folks who just don’t care what you or I think. Period.
I’m to the point now that I think the Senate is only floating the
public option to fire up the House and make them more opposed to any
bill without a public option, so that way they can blame the house for
no bill passing when the Senate public option effort fails.I
know it is fashionable to beat up on Joe Lieberman, but honestly, I’ve
seen nothing the past few months that makes him any worse than the rest
of the centrists. If anything, he is just more upfront about the fact
that he is just doing things to piss people off. Evan Bayh is so upset
with the lack of bipartisanship that he is going to quit and reward the
GOP with a seat for their obstructionism. That is the kind of quality thinking we get from the centrists.So
basically, we successfully vilified the insurance companies, got the
house to pass the public option, got the public to support a public
option, and ten unnamed Dems in the Senate will scuttle it, leading to
the inevitable death of the whole bill in the House. And should a
miracle happen, Bart Stupak and the C-Street goons are waiting in the
wings to get their fetus fetish on.I wish Obama would live up to the reputation the wingnut bloggers have given him and just nationalize the whole damned thing.
Here’s where I start to go off the rails with this shit. I really think we as a country have a lethal tendency to take what we think we can get and be satisfied with it. On a personal level I don’t have a problem with the strategy of learning to love what you have, instead of pointlessly yearning, but by and large we really do believe every asshole and his brother when they tell us that something is impossible.
Public option? Not enough votes. Single payer? Never happen. Fight poverty? Shut up, hippie, be realistic. There’s a wall here. You can’t get over it or under it. Go home.
When people say this, we LISTEN. Dear God. The only possible response to someone telling you not to do what you know in your blood and your bones is the right thing to do isfuck you I’mma be over here working if you have something to contribute then gimme a call but for now get out of my face. But we listen. I can’t … what are we really afraid of here? Losing? We’re going to do that anyway. We are doing that anyway. Sitting still is losing. Sitting still, by its very definition, is losing.
And we have utterly no way of knowing if the people who are saying this is all we can get are right in any meaningful way. Absolutely no way of knowing. So why believe them? In fact, as far as health care is concerned, there is a pretty good reason in the form of every poll on the planet to know they’re wrong. Yet all it takes is somebody saying, “Eh, it’s not politically feasible” and off we go, right past denial and anger and bargaining straight into depression and acceptance.
A.
It’s a weird situation: the Senate plan is unpopular and the public option *is* popular. That’s politically unrealistic? Nope. I’m willing to take half a loaf but the Dems are bad bargainers. Oh well…
As long as there are going to be repercussions from corporate campaign contributors (and recall that the news in the last few weeks is that those contributions are now swinging back to Republicans in the 2010 election cycle), the Senate will find a way to stop this.
The problem is not the merits of the House bill (the currently-drawn public option is exceeding weak, as compared to the original).
The problem is money in politics. If you have millions to offer, and a secure, use-your-influence job for a million or two a year waiting for a Congress critter when he retires, your views will get the same sort of attention.
Obama made a lethal mistake by not taking on campaign financing first. He wasn’t about to do that, because he’s entirely dependent upon the system as it exists, like most every other politician. What began a year ago as people shouting, when single-payer was ditched in favor of a robust public option, “the perfect should not be the enemy of the good,” is now a rather half-hearted and pathetic, “don’t let the less than mediocre be the enemy of the absolutely execrable. Or horrors, you’ll get nothing at all.”
That didn’t happen because ordinary people wanted it that way. It was inevitable because the corporations controlling election money wanted it that way.
The HCR process is just a symptom of a much larger problem which Obama and the Dems chose not to address. The results were predictable from the moment single-payer was thrown overboard.
Whenever anybody says that something is so high you can’t get over it, and so low you can’t get under it, the only option is to fire up a fat spliff and listent to George Clinton.
montag sez:The HCR process is just a symptom of a much larger problem which Obama and the Dems chose not to address. The results were predictable from the moment single-payer was thrown overboard.
SP sez… HELL YEAH!
But did they CHOSE NOT TO ADDRESS? Or were they NEVER GOING TO ADDRESS? That is the question now swirling in the minds of a large number of BHO supporters. And those are the people they need to turnout in Nov and in 2012.
And yet, it is the DFH’s fault that the process is broken. Or so all the tradition media and even Rahmbo tells me.
SP
appeasement never works. isn’t that what the rite always says.
Uh, did everyone forget that the Senate refused to accept anything more robust than what they passed? That is the politics that makes it impossible at this time to pass a better HCR bill. As much as we all want single payer health care, and I want it very, very badly, we aren’t going to get it with this Senate, operating under these rules. And, I see nothing to make me believe that this Senate is going to be willing to change these rules.
That’s why passing the lousy Senate bill is the only way left to proceed. Once that is done, the reconciliation method is available to start making the needed changes to that bill, such as speeding up its effective date, increasing the subsidies for those who can’t pay the price for insurance, reducing or eliminating the tax on “cadillac” insurance plans, eliminating the ban on covering abortions, getting anti trust controls on the insurance companies, etc. With time the HCR bill can become very close to what we want, but not if the Senate bill isn’t passed by the House.
So, KBH is going to run for governor. We need a new Senator in Texas, and another one in 2012. (And for my money we need Bill White running the State instead of Rick Perry OR any other GOPer.)
Connecticut’s people rejected Liebermann in the Democratic primary, and the $%#@%#*$r ran anyhow, as an “independent.”
It is time for the voters to rise up and say, “Do what we want, or we take your jobs away.”
Do you know whose job it is to calculate political feasibility? Politicians. Our job is to continually agitate for the best policy and beat the shit out of our leaders when they fail to provide it. Our job isnot to listen to their earnest explanations of why the best policy is not politically feasible and sullenly resign ourselves to something less.
If you want to make arguments based on political feasibility, become a politician and give up on activism. If you want to convince me of something based on that, show me where I go to cast my vote on it. If I don’t have a vote to cast – if I have to depend on an elected representative to vote in my place – then fuck you and your feasibility and don’t expect your weak ass explanation of howhard it is to buy you any breathing room from me.
I agree with Dan and Athenae. I get really tired of commenters and even so-called liberal wonk types like Ezra, Matt, and Nate Silver earnestly lecturing us on how we should never ask for anything higher than two inches off the ground. Well, no. We should ask, demand, curse, make noise, and make trouble, ie, be citizens, not docile house pets of our political masters.
I told you that a man who covers up for torturers and rapists would never give you healthcare. I don’t have any sympathy. You were fine when he was declaring the right to murder people without trial, have kids raped in front of their parents and tortured for years. Now you’re only mad because you’re not getting a cookie.
You made your bed.
Hey, soullite, I think you could use one ofthese.
It must be comforting to be so right all the time.