Labor’s Phantom Opposition to Health Care Mandates
It’s no surprise that I found Ron Brownstein’s article mostly lamenting the highly partisan and polarized nature of recent political campaigns to be full of things that struck me as false equivalence. After all, I’m a non-credible partisan hack so that’s how I would see things. On the other hand, I was surprised to read this criticism of Obama:
[Obama] has ruffled some feathers by emphasizing personal responsibility in the African American community, and in July he infuriated the liberal “netroots” by voting for a congressional deal that provided legal immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with Bush’s program of warrantless wiretapping after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But little of his agenda departs from conventional Democratic preferences. Initially he declared that to stabilize Social Security, “everything should be on the table,” including benefit cuts, but he’d renounced that position by last September. He has similarly diluted his earlier support for merit pay for teachers. He pointedly refused to join Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in crossing organized labor to propose requiring individuals to buy health insurance—though such a requirement is probably the key to a deal with the health-insurance industry for universal coverage.
About a trillion pixels have been spilled within progressive circles about Barack Obama’s refusal to endorse an individual health insurance mandate, and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that the issue here is that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were “crossing organized labor” whereas Obama was kowtowing to their demands. On the contrary, it’s mostly been the reverse with Edwards and Clinton in line with the labor liberal orthodoxy and Obama, for better or for worse, bucking it.
26 Responses to “Labor’s Phantom Opposition to Health Care Mandates”
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August 20th, 2008 at 8:53 am
OMG: accusing Bush of lying us into the Iraq war is the equivalent of Swift Boating? WTF??? It’s so sad. Brownstein is a really, really sharp observer, but he seems to have fallen into what we might call the Dana Milbank syndrome. Maybe dinged by a couple of excitable bloggers, perhaps he’s decided, Screw you all–I am so going to equivocate and be Broderistic, because you can’t be right about the big picture if you’re wrong and mean about something or other I wrote! This is a descent into late-Hellenistic sophistry and is a prescription for morbid mediocrity in the media and in cultural criticism.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Cue Petey calling organized labor a bunch of trust-fund scumbags in 3…2…1…
August 20th, 2008 at 9:06 am
“About a trillion pixels have been spilled within progressive circles about Barack Obama’s refusal to endorse an individual health insurance mandate, and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that the issue here is that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were “crossing organized labor”
Indeed.
I thought that passage was pretty damn weird.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:10 am
“Cue Petey calling organized labor a bunch of trust-fund scumbags in 3…2…1…”
The fact that I’m in favor of the Labor-Left is precisely why I’m so luke-warm about an Obama administration.
The last time the Democratic Party had a “post-partisan” nominee, we ended up with the Carter administration, whose “post-partisan” economic policies led pretty directly to the Reagan administration’s assault on the left.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:17 am
That’s really what brought us Reagan? Not the Carter administration’s inability to manage the Iranian hostage crisis, not the fact the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan happened on his watch, not the fact that his talk of conservation (wearing sweaters, etc.) looked weak in an age before people even knew what that meant, not the fact a lot of his persona seemed silly (from complaining about “killer rabbits,” claiming to see a UFO and his brother embarrassing him and the nation with his antics and his crappy beer), not the fact a lot of people thought Reagan was charismatic? It was the fact he tried to be “post-partisan”? Do you really believe the crap you write?
August 20th, 2008 at 9:24 am
R-Man,
Well, now that you’ve gone and disagreed with Petey, I suppose I should congratulate you on your new trust fund. You scumbag.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Meanwhile, Matt, just look what the AFL-CIO has to say about McCain plan to put a new tax on your healthcare benefits:
August 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
“That’s really what brought us Reagan? … It was the fact he tried to be “post-partisan?”
Well, Carter’s “post-partisan” schtick is what brought us Reaganomics.
Carter’s insistence on standing in opposition to the Democratic coalition on a wide variety of economic issues helped to legitimize the opposition to the New Deal consensus. That legitimization is what enabled Reagan’s legislative successes.
I believe that’s a more reasonable historical reading than blaming it on killer rabbits.
Why do you think General Electric is so enthusiastic about getting Obama into office? If you want to destroy popular social insurance programs, you need to a Democrat to weaken them before you can get a Republican to destroy them.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Is this comment “awaiting moderation,” too? If so, why?
Why is my comment on McCain’s new tax on healthcare benefits “awaiting moderation”?
.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am
“Is this comment “awaiting moderation,” too?”
No. The fact that we can read it indicates it’s not “awaiting moderation”.
“Why is my comment on McCain’s new tax on healthcare benefits “awaiting moderation”?
Because it’s off-topic. McCain’s tax policies are irrelevant to Brownstein’s bizarre assertion that’s Obama’s defective healthcare policy is pro-union.
CAP has an automated Germaneness Filter™ that can determine whether or not a comment is off-topic to the thread.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Ah, I see it’s out of moderation.
No, they’re not irrelevant when the AFL-CIO is pointing out that they’re taxes on healthcare benefits that are not offset like the McCain campaign says they will be.
And we’ve already established that Brownstein is an idiot.
.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Pro-union or anti, there are only two possible outcomes to Obama’s health care policy:
1) Four years from now, health insurance will be more expensive in real dollars than it is today and fewer people will be insured.
2) I forget the other.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Actually, Reagan was quite smart in attacking the Great Society while avoiding direct arguments against the New Deal. You are conflating a lot of issues. He knew trying to wreck Social Security would wreck his political career. Reagan didn’t win on Reaganomics in 1980, he won on national security. He didn’t win on Reaganomics in 1984, but on the fact that was one of the only two good economic years of his presidency (after all, the Federal Reserve tends to follow looser monetary policy when Republicans are up for re-election and tighter policy when Democrats are) and Mondale was a braindead campaigner. Reaganomics was more something pushed through the back door while Americans were lathering themselves into a fury over Khomeini.
Too bad General Electric isn’t as enthusiastic about making sure you take your meds. You know you sound like a conspiracy theorist nutbag when you write this crap, right?
August 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Great. Now I can afford to pay for my enforced health care mandate.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
“You know you sound like a conspiracy theorist nutbag when you write this crap (about General Electric), right?”
I really don’t care how the nescient read me as long as I’m correct on the history and the facts.
If you’re not aware of the central role General Electric has played in shaping the American political discourse over the past sixty years, I think that says more about you than about me. Some folks know who Lemuel Boulware and Jack Welch are, and some don’t.
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