The Guns of August
Jon Cohn says he’s “been obsessing over the lack of passion and organization on the left,” though now feeling slightly better. I agree, but it is worth saying that this is almost 100 percent the fault of Max Baucus.
There’s a reason, after all, why the President wanted the process to be much further along at this point. And I think a big part of that reason is that it’d be much easier to get people engaged and mobilized if there was a thing “the health care bill” that people were supposed to be getting engaged and mobilized about. By contrast, those most full of passionate intensity on the other side are basically prepared to oppose reform sight unseen. But without knowing much about what the content of “reform” is or who it is who’s backing “reform” it’s hard to know what to say about it. At the moment, progressives are simultaneously trying to impact the shape of “reform” (reasonable public option, reasonably generous subsidies and minimum benefits packages) while also trying to push for “reform” to win out against the opponents of “reform.” If the various congressional leaders ever work out what “reform” is, then no matter how disappointed folks may be with some aspects of it, I’m pretty sure just about everyone will find themselves pushing for it.
But by dragging out the process of defining what the proposal is this long, congress in general—but mostly Baucus in particular—have guaranteed a sort of asymmetrical summer.
89 Responses to “The Guns of August”
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August 6th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Ah, well, you might also blame the President, who hasn’t let us know which of congress’ proposals he favors and which he considers an unreasonable capitulation. I’m sure he wants to maintain maximal flexibility to deal as he sees fit, but the advantage of concrete proposals is, as you say, to unite a coalition of allies around your proposal.
The army is big and reasonably well equipped, but right now it’s fighting a lot of skirmishes all over a very large battlefield with little in the way of strategy.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Yeah, we’re getting beat badly by a bunch of lunatics.
I Don’t Belong To Any Organized Party: I’m A Democrat
-Will Rogers
August 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Yep, Obama wants to stay above the fray. When he says he wants to lower costs, increase people covered, remain deficit neutral and improve quality, who could disagree? So, when there is no possible way to deliver on those wants, he gets to blame congress for writing a shitty bill. It may be good politics but it is awful leadership.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am
“it is worth saying that this is almost 100 percent the fault of Max Baucus.”
It’s too bad Matthew doesn’t read the NYTimes. From today:
and
Baucus is acting an agent of the WH in drafting this legislation. The WH has requested of Max Baucus that he come up with a deal that has support of GOP Senators. That’s what he is doing. The WH is doing this for reasons that benefit the WH, but hurt the Democratic Party.
I understand that it’s in the WH’s interest to place blame for the legislation that eventually emerges on Baucus, since that way the target of the anger of Democrats gets shifted from the WH to Baucus. But that doesn’t make it true.
Watch for folks like Matthew to spend a huge amount of time lying in an attempt to shift blame from the WH to Baucus…
August 6th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Agreed! Right now there’s just nothing out there to support, while the opponents of health care reform are having a wild time making stuff up about the as-of-yet nonexistant bill.
Max Baucus and his puppet show over at the Senate Finance Committee are simply doing anything they can to delay the process. There will never be a perfect bill, and by postponing the actual creation of a bill, they are giving these opponent of reform a huge advantage: more time to define and drive public opinion to their side.
Not that I think all that many people will really end up listening to them in the end, but then again, I didn’t think the Swift Boat stuff was actually credible, and look where that ended.
Max Baucus is single-handedly strangling any type of enthusiasm the grassroots might have had by now. And I think his “group of six” is doing it willfully, which is the truly sad part. I wish the Democratic leadership in the senate would step up and put an end to their little charade.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Baucus is just cover for the Dems who want it both ways – talk up reform for the sheeple back home, while undermining it in Congress to please their pimps in the health industry. Baucus is doing exactly what a lot of Dems want him to do.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
talk up reform for the sheeple back home,
Have you seen the recent polls? less and less of the “sheeple back home” want it.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
As it happens, “reform” appears to mean “whatever the pharmaceutical industry is comfortable with.”
Try to get progressives excited about that.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
For the first time in my life I’ll be doing a phone bank next week to rally the troops. It might be a little difficult to discuss health care with people since there’s no bill, but it’s good to shoot down all the myths.
YOU ALL SHOULD DO THE SAME.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
there is a terrible lack of leadership here. but also a great deal of lack of respect. the ‘blue dogs’ and conservative Dems are acting shamefully, and I doubt they’d be bucking other Dem presidents the way they’re doing to Obama. it really feels like many of the Dems are actively working to torpedo every aspect of Obama’s agenda. we are seeing some real institutional rot in the Dem party.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I think the problem is that the health care is complicated, and it is hard for the average (and above average) liberal to explain the ins and outs. It is much easier for the conservatives to simply shout NO!, then to actually explain health care reform.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Let’s start a rumor that Brian Schweitzer is gonna primary Baucus. Judging from Specter’s behavior that’s all it takes.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
um, no. people don’t want the GOP ‘all-lies’ version of health care that the media and the rich who rule the airwaves are peddling to scare everyone, that’s true. but people voted for Obama to get themselves better care and a better life.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I dunno – could it have anything to do with the FISA vote, the moves by Obama’s team toward cementing down Dick Cheney’s Unitary Executive Theory, and both Obama and Emanuel’s fondness for playing “Punch a Hippy”? Just asking.
Cranky
August 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Sixteen countries wiped off the earth overnight, and I heard nothing of it on the news.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
but people voted for Obama to get themselves better care and a better life.
How’s that workin’ out for ya? Again, if the public is so eager to see these reforms through, pass the damn thing. You have 60 senators and a huge majority in the house. It’s not the “all lies” GOP, whatever that means, that is holding it back.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
It strikes me that “Asymmetrical Summer,” with its combined allusions to romanticism detachment, and would be the perfect title for an indie rock album in 2009.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
It’s the steaming piles being excreted by Congress that are complicated, not the issue itself. Health care financing doesn’t HAVE to be that complicated; the successful systems around the world are all pretty easy to sum up in a paragraph or two.
I’m at the point of pretty much writing the whole thing off as a dead loss, due to Obama’s corporatism and temporizing political cowardice and the Democratic congressional caucuses’ corporatism and indiscipline. I’m just not interested in working for passage of the Health Insurer Bailout Act of 2009, which will merely postpone the final crisis of the current system and thus the opportunity to do this the right way.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
> It’s the steaming piles being excreted by Congress
> that are complicated, not the issue itself.
Back in the 1980s when the German (then FRG) legislature decided to pass stricter automobile emissions standards they took a straightforward path: borrow the California EPA regulations, translate into German, adjust a bit. Similarly in the 1980s updated its nuclear power regulations by copying the US NRC rules wholesale. Why can’t the US Congress simply implement the German system, which by all accounts is both efficient and culturally compatible with the US, word-for-word?
Cranky
August 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
This post is right on the money. I sent a bunch of letters to my Senators, Rep, Obama and a letter to the editor of local paper last week. But I had a heck of a time coming up with a succinct exhortation at the end. “Single payer now” or “Robust public option” or “Pass the dang thing” ??? Without a clear position, our efforts really lose their impact.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
> Similarly in the 1980s [South Korea]
> updated its nuclear power regulations
Sorry.
Cranky
August 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
“and both Obama and Emanuel’s fondness for playing “Punch a Hippy”? Just asking.”
If the Senate Finance Committee bill is the one that emerges as the final bill in October, we’ll see if progressive members of the House and Senate have the courage of their convictions to vote en masse against the bill.
Scuttling a healthcare bill from the left will be an unappetizing prospect, but if the left doesn’t have the courage to do so, then I’d say that Obama and Emanuel are on solid political ground in playing the left as suckers.
After all, if Mike Enzi and Billy Tauzin care about the contents of the bill, but Lynn Woolsey and Pat Leahey don’t care about the contents of the bill, why should the WH care about the desires of the left? After all, the WH only cares about the appearances of passing “something”.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
And let’s put the blame for this exactly where it belongs: on Barack Obama, who doesn’t really seem to know what he wants except that it has to be highly corporate-friendly (read the stories about his devil’s deal with Big Pharma and weep.) That’s not change I can believe in.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
to qoute a famous american philosopher;
“it ain’t over ’til it’s over”
patience brothers, patience.
yeah i wish we were farther along but some times you have to see what the other side has; (which is nothing) before you go all in.
to quote another famous americazn philosopher;
“don’t shoot until you can see the whites in ther eyes”
metaphorically speaking.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
And what Petey said.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Farther along towards what? Aye, there’s the rub.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’ve just got this feeling that the uposhot of all of this work from the “Gang of Six” is going to be a Medicare/Medicaid reform/cut bill absent any real health insurance reform.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
some times you have to see what the other side has; (which is nothing) before you go all in.
Wow, can I play poker with you and your friends. “I’m not going to bet until I see what you guys have.”
August 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Shorter Petey: “Let’s you and him fight.”
August 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Except that even Rasmussen has healthcare up seven points in their last poll.
Obama’s endorsement of the public option on July 18, while late, seems to have helped a lot.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
farther along towards affordable universal coverage.
you’re right, there’s the rub. therefore the need for patience. what the president signs isn’t going to be written until you get to conference reconcilliation.
all the pieces have to there before but that’s the real test.
it takes more discipline but less energy to play defense. the time for massive counter attack and offense is coming. then it’s straight to the juglar and stake to the heart.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Does anyone have thoughts on The Guns of August? I bought it and some other books and I have time to read maybe two before school starts.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Tucker, sorry, I don’t believe for a minute that whatever mess comes out of this is going to move us, significantly and sustainably, toward universal coverage.
The progressive energy that Obama is NOW belatedly trying to mobilize against the teabaggers- and much more- could and should have been called on from the start to fight for REAL health care reform. This will go down in history as a failure and missed opportunity at least comparable to 1993 despite that fact that something mis-called “reform” will no doubt pass so that Obama can declare himself a “success”.
I’m pretty close to being through with Democrats, definitely including Obama. If they’re just going to go right on behaving as the left wing of the Money Party despite the massive challenges this country faces, screw them.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
judd
in poker, it’s called slow play
August 6th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
There is an oft used adage by chessplayers: you can win with a bad plan, but you can never win without one. The German High Command understood this in August of 1914. They stuck with the von Schlieffen Plan, knowing full well it could not achieve all that it was designed to achieve. But short of total victory, and by any quantifiable measure, the much maligned plan -the whipping boy of WWI historians- proved to be a smashing success.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
“patience brothers, patience.”
Oh, I’m patient, alright.
I know full well that no one outside of the WH will have any idea what will be in the final bill until October. It could be a wonderful bill, but more likely it’ll be an awful bill better scuttled from the left than approved.
The one thing I’m not patient about is folks like Matthew Yglesias lying and saying that Max Baucus is determining the timing of this, when Baucus is rather transparently acting as an agent of the WH in this.
(I will note how clean it must seem to put the blame on Baucus. The left’s anger gets deflected away from the WH, who doesn’t want their anger, and onto Baucus, who doesn’t care about their anger. The only loser is the truth.)
August 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
in poker, it’s called slow play
Well, I’ve never played poker where I can see the other person’s hand before I bet. Have you? If so, I’d like to get in that game.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I much prefer “The March of Folly.”
“Aware of the controlling power of ambition, corruption and emotion, it may be that in the search for wiser government we should look for the test of character first. And the test should be moral courage.”
August 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The Dems lost me when they voted for the Patriot act, the Iraq War, FISA mods, and on and on. They didn’t even pretend to filibuster.
Obama gave me a hitch when he immunized the telecomms, and lost me when he endorsed and Bush’s civil rights violations.
“The other side”, tucker? The other side of what?
The rest of you can argue over the scraps these corporate owned shills let fall, I’m hunting around for other options.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Phaedurs @ 39:
The fat lady is on stage for the final tragic scene. The shills are in the wings preparing to pop open the celebratory champagne.
Also hunting around…
Let me know what you find.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Oops:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/has_the_white_house_given_the.html#comments
=== But I imagine the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania are pretty pissed at Tauzin today. It’s one thing to make that deal. It’s another thing to see it on A1 of the New York Times. But Tauzin is so confident in the White House’s desire to retain his support that he could spill the whole thing to reporters in an on-the-record interview and be assured that he’ll face no reprisals. His argument this morning was that the White House has given his industry immunity, and Congress has to respect that. We’ll see whether it will. ===
August 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
It’s rich, isn’t it, Cranky? Obama will halfheartedly “support” the public option while frantically signalling that he’d be quite happy with some figleaf “alternative” to it. Meanwhile, when it comes to fellating Big Pharma, THAT is where we suddenly get a clear line in the sand. So Obamesque.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
If by “smashing success” you mean “abysmal failure that doomed the German Empire”, then sure…
The Schlieffen Plan staked everything on one roll of the dice — the hope that if the Germans could quickly seize the French capital, it would knock the French out of the war and let them concentrate on Russia. But it glossed over huge logistical challenges that had to be surmounted to reach Paris on schedule. When they actually tried it out, those challenges (and some tenacious fighting by the French) proved insurmountable, and the Germans spent four years being bled dry through attrition as a result.
The Schlieffen Plan was supposed to prevent a “long war”. It ended up guaranteeing one.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I’ve been a fairly strong Obama supporter from the beginning, and I’ve been willing to cut him a great deal of slack this year to try out his bipartisan overtures and use his finesse tactics to get things done. Because that’s the candidate he ran and won as. I bit my tongue when he let the bank executives off the hook, because decades of bad decisions had left a handful of Wall Street firms holding the whole global economy by the balls… and that sort of systemic fuck-up can’t be undone overnight.
But if 2009 ends without serious health care reform based on a strong public insurance option, and no serious financial regulatory reform gets through Congress, then this will be as devastating a failure as Clinton’s first term, and infinitely less excusable given the much stronger Congressional majority.
It’s wrong to place ALL the blame on Obama — he isn’t responsible for the craven corporate whoring of the Blue Dogs or the dysfunctional nature of the US Senate. But he’s responsible for squeezing as much progressive change as possible out of the hand he was dealt. And I’m growing more pessimistic by the day.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Might have something to do with the fact that Obama told progressives to sit down and shut the fuck up, and announced ahead of time that the reform progressives favor — single payer — was the only plan that, no matter what, would not be considered.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Well, I guess this is what happens when you support the more conservative candidate in the primaries….
August 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
LaFollette- I’d be prepared to give him points if he were even trying. But in fact the only attention he pays at all to progressives and their ideas is negative attention when he feels it’s time to indulge in a spot of hippie-bashing.
If he doesn’t want my support, fine- then he doesn’t have it. Good luck with that 2012 thing, Mr. President, as more and more people who voted for you in 2008 start feeling that way.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
There’s not a mill’s worth of difference between Obama and either of the Clintons, never mind a dime’s worth. All three are members in good standing of the Money Party.
Stupid me, while I always perceived that, I thought at least it might be microscopically better not to have an Administration full of retreads from 1992-2000. Then came the announcement of Larry Summers as Obama’s chief economic adviser…
August 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
shorter @44 LaFollette :
“I was willing to overlook the negation of my civil liberties and Obama’s shredding of the constitution in hopes of getting . If I don’t get that plan, though, I’m going to be angry”
Obama has the EXACT same position on civil liberties, incarceration, habeaus laws, etc., that Democrats railed against for eight years. Now their guy is in power doing the damage, they’re fine with it.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I much prefer The Proud Tower but if you have bought the Guns you should read it.
Obama is a monster, and his corruption of kids like Yglesias and Klein may be the final worst disappointment of my life.
Serve Obama, Matt, and you also are just a shill for Goldman Sachs.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Somebody did, but he took a sweetheart deal from a mortgage company, so it never happened, he doesn’t exist, and he’s going to lose an otherwise safe Democratic seat.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
tucker:
to qoute a famous american philosopher;
“it ain’t over ’til it’s over”
patience brothers, patience.
yeah i wish we were farther along but some times you have to see what the other side has; (which is nothing) before you go all in.
to quote another famous americazn philosopher;
“don’t shoot until you can see the whites in ther eyes”
metaphorically speaking.
Exactly.
These guys like Petey and LaBonne are in a constant state of agitation because they need the drama. They know Obama is selling out b/c, well they just feel it in their bones.
What I’m seeing and I could be wrong, is that Obama is currently making a perfuctory (given how cooperative Republicans have been on other issues) effort to be bipratisan, but he has already said he’d go the partisan route to get it done this year. What I see Matt and the Democrats as doing is building the case that they had no choice but to go partisan. Part of Obama’s support is based on his bipartisanship, something the ultras couldn’t give a rat’s ass bout, so the WH has to take that into consideration and Obama probably believes it the right thing to do as well as the smart thing to be bipartisan in a good way, but not a sell-defeating way which upsets your base.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
No, we just actually care about, you know, GOOD POLICY, not just stupid political game-playing.
But of course, we’ll never get good governance from the Democrats as long as there are enough people like you to robotically support them no matter what. There’s a word for that- “enabling”.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Poptart:
I hope that you’re right and that Obama has some kind of plan for extracting something useful out of all this. Until that happens, however, I can only go by his actual results (zero) and rhetoric (vague) on this issue. I think Matt’s logic about the importance of having a tangible proposal really pinpoints a lack of leadership by the president – if having such a proposal is important to gaining support and achieving success, and if the congressional efforts to craft one are going to be influenced by a well-known hack and weathervane like Baucus, wouldn’t it seem prudent for the president to take a more active role in shaping smething that he wants? Blaming Baucus alone, when his deficiencies aren’t a mystery to anyone, is awfully convenient but a litte too pat.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Obama has the EXACT same position on civil liberties, incarceration, habeaus laws, etc., that Democrats railed against for eight years. Now their guy is in power doing the damage, they’re fine with it.
Well, there may be some people who are stupid enough to be fine with it, but it is still wrong.
On the other hand, that’s not the whole ball game. Those things are important, but the Republicans still support all those things as well as bullshit like bombing brown people for the fuck of it. The choice is between creeps and monsters. I’m afraid I will have to go with the creeps until the choices are better.
And yes, looking around is a good idea, but if your vote ends up enabling the monsters then you are part of the problem.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
As an American living in Canada who cannot return to live in the States because my son has a “pre-existing condition”, I can say that single payer works. I hate it when people say they don’t want “government” coming between them and health care.
What happens when their house is on fire and they dial 911? Don’t they realize that is “government”?
Here is a link to a video I made about my story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TWuO5dBYjo
August 6th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Oh, and as for health care? I’m not impressed. No plan that enables the scum-sucking insurance industry to keep reaping massive profits by arbitrary rationing health care is worth supporting.
A full single payer system isn’t just the right thing, it is the most logical.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
shorter @55 NASAWA :
“Yeah, I gave up my constitutional rights (the real basis for America’s greatness), but at least I got this cool T-shirt”
Let me turn that last little bit around on you, ’cause I hear it alot -
By not actively pushing for alternatives that defend our constitution you are guaranteeing it’s destruction.
How’s that feel?
August 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
When Max Baucus first ran for the Senate, he was open to running as a Republican or a Democrat.
Max cares about Max. He doesn’t give a damn about people who don’t have health care or are screwed by the medical-industrial complex.
And he sure as hell could not care less about the Democratic Party. That’s why he’s working hand in glove with Republicans to delay and water down and defeat health care reform.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
You’re totally right, Barack Obama loves the fact that Max Baucus has choked off all momentum for his signature policy initiative, sending his approval ratings into a nosedive and reviving the fortunes of an increasingly radical opposition party that seemed dead when he got elected. A plan like that makes a hell of a lot of sense.
If your theory was true, Baucus could have shot off the pro-corporate bill Obama “wants” three months ago, swallowed the progressive anger, but moved the process forward on Obama’s original timeframe. Instead, he’s left Obama totally exposed while the right trains its machine guns on him. If this is really a coordinated attempt to screw “the left,” what’s the purpose for this truly shocking delay while Baucus ‘negotiates’ with the Republicans? AHIP and PHARMA can draft legislation they want to see passed as fast (honestly, FASTER) than Families USA can.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I know a hell of a lot of progressives who don’t really care what the formal structure of health reform is as long as it creates affordable, universal coverage. Single payer is not the only way to do that, not by a long shot.
It IS probably the most efficient way to control costs. But I’m much more willing to accept a deficit to get people healthcare than to invade Iraq.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I’m at the point of pretty much writing the whole thing off as a dead loss, due to Obama’s corporatism and temporizing political cowardice and the Democratic congressional caucuses’ corporatism and indiscipline.
I assume by “the whole thing” you mean the United States? Because I’m sure you saw how well the likes of Kucinich did in the primaries. You may like Obama or hate him, but with the electorate we have in this country in this generation, a candidate noticeably to his left will be elected approximately the week after the sky falls and the earth vomits forth the dead.
But of course, we’ll never get good governance from the Democrats as long as there are enough people like you to robotically support them no matter what.
And we’ll get it from the Republicans *two* weeks after the sky falls &c. I don’t support the Democrats no matter what, I support them while they are better than the alternative. (You know, the alternative that says that any government involvement in health care is a plot to kill your grandparents. I am not making this up.) I would love to see the Republicans become a regional party and the political space be redefined by the Democrats and a truly progressive party. But I don’t expect it any time in the next couple decades, and certainly not in the current congressional session. (I think the major obstacle is the corporate-owned media, but I don’t have a good answer to what to do about it. Money corrupts, and huge amounts of money corrupt hugely.)
I would vote for a yellow dog if it was running against Michelle Bachmann or many other *actual members of the current Congress*. You, apparently, would abstain disdainfully, so that you could wash your hands of the result.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
The problem with Petey’s “Baucus as political cover for WH” theory is that the WH isn’t, well, getting any political cover out of it. Obama would have been in infinitely better shape if there’d been a single bill, any bill, to defend; but there isn’t, and now he’s getting hammered. It’s his polls that are tanking (along with support for his make-or-break agenda item), not Baucus’s. There’s no sacrificial lamb here. I have little to no love for Obama anymore, but I think we have to chalk this fuckup up to Baucus and his Grassley fetish, because even if the WH did delegate this responsibility to him, he’s certainly not carrying it out the way Obama wants him to.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
> If the various congressional leaders ever work out what “reform” is, then no matter how disappointed folks may be with some aspects of it, I’m pretty sure just about everyone will find themselves pushing for it.
This is not actually true. If the “reform” is as shitty as it appears it will be, I for one will fight against it. The U.S. does NOT need a giant giveaway to drug and insurance companies under the guise of “reform”. And that, currently, is what is being proposed.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Then you’re helping to insure that they never have do do anything BUT be just a little better than the alternative, and that they can continue to get worse whenever the alternative gets worse. Thus the Overton window continues its inexorable rightward slide (as nobody who can get a hearing in the MSM even TRIES to explain or sell even mildly progressive ideas to the public, and all they hear is corporate propaganda of one flavor or another) and the country continues to deteriorate. No thanks. This attitude is what got us in the mess we’re in.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Medicare for All…with a Robust Private Option!
Dems are going about this ass-backwards:
We don’t want private insurance parasites sucking us financially dry, even sucking the life out of us with denial of care.
We want health CARE with the security we can afford it and it won’t be taken away from us. We want choice of health CARE providers, not choice of overpriced, profit driven Big Insurance Parasites, with their limited list of doctors and faciities.
We want…say it loud and proud!
MEDICARE FOR ALL…with a Robust Private Option!
No mandates to buy from the parasites. If anything is mandated, it must be Medicare for All. Not the Big Private Insurance Parasites.
Call your Congress Critters and tell them you want your Medicare for All NOW. (Not 50 years from now as Rep. Bill Pascrell, D(??)-NJ, said on WNYC Tuesday. Good grief, Mr. Congressman, whassup wit you?)
Tell them to VOTE YES on the Weiner bill for HR676-type Medicare for All.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
It’s dryer than most of her writing. It is probably her best work as history. I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as “A Distant Mirror” or “March of Folly”.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
and both Obama and Emanuel’s fondness for playing “Punch a Hippy”?
I’ve looked and haven’t found any reference to this on my Google machine.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
[...] Agreed. [...]
August 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Max Baucus is a betrayer. Look up the table that Nate Silver did:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/real-problem-with-senates-small-state.html
The so called Table for Six should be renamed the Trough for Six.
As for Obama asking Baucus to do what he’s doing, B.S.
Obama wants a public option. Baucus is trying to kill the public option.
Look up the table. We know who Max is working for.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
@65 LaBonne
Thank you. Trying to get that point across is just the hardest thing to some people.
Using their logic, a vote for Pol Pot is justified if he’s running against Atila the Hun. At some point you have to pull the plug – and the loss of constitutional rights seems like a really good trigger.
This president has said that he can unilaterally imprison anyone of us indefinitely, beyond the reach of the judicial process. He can do it proactively, prior to any supposed offense, and, if by some circumstance we were to be exonerated by a court, he could continue to hold us regardless.
Why do people care about health care with that kind of stuff going on?
August 6th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Hundreds of thousands of people died in Iraq. You know what Phaedrus? Fuck off. Those rights are important, but if the choice is: not having them or not having them and supporting the mass slaughter of human beings only a complete fuckhead would choose the monsters in column B.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Kat at #56 — Thank you for posting your lovely and moving video.
I am so happy for you that you have good health CARE for your family, happy for the other woman in the video. But I could cry that so many Americans are forced to suffer, make do, go bankrupt, even die, for lack of good health care and the security they won’t lose it.
Living pretty far from my family I know, make that realize as I can’t actually know, how much we miss when we can only make “visits.” Best wishes.
And best wishes to Americans that our pols get real and enact single payer Medicare for All…with that all so necessary to Obama and Blue Dogs private option.
Just want to let you know I posted your video at Corrente.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
@72
And our Iraq policy changed how? Obama is following the same timeline for withdrawal sketched out by the Bush admin.
The Dems had a chance to object to the Iraq war, but they didn’t, they authorized it. Do you remember that vote? They had ample opportunities since then to pull funding and force an end to the war (they’ve had the majority for several years now), but they didn’t.
Your revisionism in an effort to defend the Dems does you a disservice. Please get informed.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
[...] Yglesias says blame Max Baucus for the difficulty progressives are having right now in mobilizing behind healthcare reform because [...]
August 6th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
“If your theory was true, Baucus could have shot off the pro-corporate bill Obama “wants” three months ago, swallowed the progressive anger, but moved the process forward on Obama’s original timeframe.”
No. Baucus’ mandate from the WH is to gather GOP votes for the healthcare bill since the WH (very stupidly) doesn’t want to pass a bill with only Democratic votes.
That’s why we’re all waiting for enough concessions to be made to the Senate Finance bill for Mike fucking Enzi to sign onto it.
That’s the path the WH decided to walk down, that’s why we’re waiting, and we’ll see what comes of it.
—–
The WH is not showing its cards yet. They could decide to end up screwing Enzi and Tauzin after the bill moves out of the Senate Fiance committee, and then produce a genuinely good bill via Conference.
I just don’t think this WH thinks it’s worth bothering, though. I just don’t think this WH is attached to the Democratic Party, which is why I couldn’t support this crew in the primaries.
But we won’t know until October. That’ll be when the actual cards are shown.
For all I or anyone knows, the WH could be playing possum right now, and they’ll end up ditching the Senate Finance committee bill in the end. I just wouldn’t bet on it. They seem more scared of being Democrats than they are scared of Democrats.
If everyone’s fears about this WH prove true and they hold to the bargains being struck in the Senate Finance committee, I hope progressives in the House scuttle the bill, despite how unappetizing that choice will seem. If progressives just lie down and take a bad bill, the next seven years will be significantly worse than this one, and this one was pretty damn bad. The American political system has a long memory, and if the left is willing to stand up to a Democratic President who is selling them out, it’ll pay political dividends for a long time.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Obama is being set up by Baucus and PhRMA.
and here’s why I’m saying that. It was only a few days ago, at town hall meetings in Raleigh, NC and Bristol, VA, that Obama was talking about the $80 billion in cost savings pledged by the pharmaceutical industry — but then he added that he thought we’d be able to save even more.
If what Billy Tauzin’s PhARMA had “negotiated” with Max Baucus was understood by Obama as a “deal” then he wouldn’t have said what he did at those town halls. Clearly, instead, the PhARMA cost savings pledge was and was perceived as just that — a pledge.
Now Tauzin, Baucus and his man Messina in the White House are setting up Obama in opposition to House Democrats, working to jettison the public option via the Max Baucus Secret Caucus that has hijacked health care reform.
One way out: Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee who have been shut out of the Max Baucus Secret Caucus — Schumer, Rockefeller, Stabinow, Kerry, Menendez and others — draft their own version based on the HELP Committee bill and work to bring all Democrats to it along with Senators Collins and Snowe AND use reconciliation if necessary to preserve the public option.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
[...] TWICE in one week???!!! Agreed. [...]
August 6th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
@ Phaedrus and Adams
Looking for something different?
Try this.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
That would be a reasonable thing to give up on, yes.
Anyone who has an “in” to Canada or the EU should have taken it during the last eight years.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Phaedrus, stop your attempts to re-write history. The Democrats craven agreement with the AUMF is an embarrassment, but it isn’t the same as having authored it. And, unlike the Republicans, they did not vote 100% for it. Guess what, moron. I’m not happy with the assholes (including SOS Clinton) who voted for it. It was a dishonest document that required one be so ill-informed that one believed that Iraq posed a threat to the national security of the United States.
But you know what? That was done in a time when Americans were being routinely scared into thinking that the next big attack was on its way (do you not remember George W. Bush’s big fun with color coded death threats? Seen many of those lately?). The Republicans used that fear to browbeat the Democrats into that vote. I’d like to see every cowardly Democrat who voted for it out of office. But not if it means handing power over to the malicious fucks who created that document.
Now, if you think that the fact that George W. Bush was pushed by the Iraqis and by the the certainty of a Democratic victory into signing a withdrawal makes no difference, then you are not worth bothering with. If you think that McCain’s reaction to the Iranian election would have been the same as Obama’s, then you are too fucking stupid for words.
Under Clinton there were no unprovoked acts of American aggression. Under Bush we had Iraq. Under Clinton there were all the same pressures to go and murder the Iraqis, but Clinton worked to ease the sanctions.
If you weren’t such a pretentious fuckwit, you might notice that the difference between “massively fucking evil” and “often bad” is significant. But no, you are above it all and would rather let “massively fucking evil” have power just to show that you can’t be bothered to make “often bad” better.
What a dick you are, and, I must say, a blight on the discourse. Do you have any actual constructive things to say or just that you can’t tell the difference between night and twilight?
August 6th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
And what, Phaedrus, would you have Obama do in Iraq? Go back in time and prevent Bush’s unprovoked assault on its people? Well, that’s just right out the fucking window. Reject the accord already signed between Iraq and the United States? Please, give me your brilliant plan for how Obama should be dealing with Iraq.
In the meantime, let’s consider the alternative. We could have the unstable warmonger John McCain in power, with an assist from the nutty Sarah Palin.
In the real world, one I’m guessing is pretty far from the fantasy where you live, there were only two realistic options in each of the presidential elections since at least 1996. And in each of those the Republican candidate brought so much baggage that there really wasn’t a choice for someone who wanted a decent nation. Sorry, for bursting your bubble but the Republican Party has been a fount of evil for decades – from at least the time they put forth the criminal Nixon as their standard bearer and started pulling in the racists.
Is there a party to stand up for the Constitution? No. And there won’t be until the Republicans are destroyed and we can make the right-most edge of political discourse the kind of Democrats who voted for the AUMF. But the Republican Party must be destroyed first. It is a cancer on our nation.
August 7th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Not as Stupid as Will Allen: Two words: ANGER MANAGEMENT
Beldar of Remulac: Interesting. Dense. Certainly to the point. Somewhat strange, i. e. foreign. Can’t help but feel that more than a little is lost in translation. There are numerous refs to French life and culture that escape me, and I didn’t follow up on first read. Also it feels very “young” in orientation. I’m not.
Probably worth the struggle to read in the original. Makes me think of Althusser and even more Adorno, and I haven’t thought about them in years. But it really makes me want to take refuge in Ortega y Gasset.
I know, “taking refuge” misses the point. Like I said, I’m not young. Also, I work. Sorry to disappoint.
Anyhow, thanks for the link. Good luck with the meta-revolution.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:38 am
@ Not… Stupid… Allen
Let’s take this point by point.
You say the Dems are better than the Repubs because they didn’t write the Iraq war authorization, they just signed it? That’s just bullshit reasoning. For the last years this war has raged on under a Dem majority, they could have stopped it, they didn’t, you seem to ignore this… why?
The rest of your rant is just attacks on me, fantasies about what would happen if John McCain got elected, and “I love Bill Clinton” revisionism. I thought this was rich, “Under Clinton there were no unprovoked acts of American aggression”.
Look, I don’t think we’re that far apart, politically. The difference seems to be that you reject actually holding Dems accountable for their actions – you see this as equivalent to electing Republicans. It’s not.
I agree that the only sane thing to do in this last election was to vote for Obama, and that’s what I did. But Obama the primary candidate had turned out to be very different from Obama the president, and pretending that many of Obama’s policies are not exactly the same, or worse, than Bush’s, isn’t going to get you where you want to go.
Look, for you it was war, and Obama would wind this one down and McCain would start more – I get it. For me, it’s civil rights, the guarantees that will create the world my children will live in. History show that once you give them up you don’t get them back without a fight.
But Obama and the Dems have screwed us on both fronts. Obama is doing nothing but following the Bush plan for Iraq exit (let’s be honest) – and he’s escalating the Afghan war.
He’s taken Bush’s “war on terror”, repackaged it, and extended it.
I’ve been looking for some constructive alternative – Greenwald and some others have advocated working within the Dem system to support progressive primary challenges…
But ’til I find something, the best I can do is call out this partisanship “rah, rah, go Obama” bullshit. That’s not the same as supporting Republicans, and quit confusing the two.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:48 am
@65: Not supporting Democrats unless they’re perfect is what got us the Bush Administration. If you want to keep fiddling while America burns, could I ask you to do it somewhere *else*?
The Republicans can’t keep going to the right without politically destroying themselves, unless the people are also going to the right. (AFAIK, they’re not, but if they were, no democratic method could stop the government from following.) Within the next few election cycles they will either realize this or self-destruct. Either way, they could do a hell of a lot of damage in the meantime if not for the fact that they are the minority party (they can do a fair amount of damage anyway by abusing Senate procedures, but not nearly as bad as the Gingrich or DeLay Congresses).
In the meantime – perhaps you haven’t noticed, but this isn’t an election year, aside from a few governors’ races. We have the elected officials we have right now, which is why the current fight is focused on _legislation_. Whatever we can wring out of the current Senate that is better than the status quo is… better than the status quo, even if it’s not everything we want.
P.S. The Republican Party is dominated by “death to compromise!” purity enforcers much like you (except with the opposite political views). How’s that working out for them?
August 7th, 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] think Matt Yglesias is right on why it’s harder for people who want health care reform to have the passionate intensity of the screaming [...]
August 7th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
ok
#1 stop with the damm townhall meetings, didn’t have them before, don’t need them now. congress folk have franking priviledges. so have a staffer type up your speech,
answer common questions, and then address the concerns of the
nuts. MAIL IT. end of problem. don’t give the crazies the opportunity to disrupt anything. geez – that was hard.
#2 if you can’t do #1, then put single payer back on the table and ask the progressives to show up at townhall meetings on SATURDAY OR SUNDAY! WHEN WE AREN’T WORKING!
I PROMISE IF THERE IS SOMETHING TO SHOW UP FOR WE WILL!
August 7th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Bingo, Konnie. I have a really loud voice and can out-shout any of the astroturfies, but I’m for single payer. I lived for nearly 20 years under the British NHS and it was great. Now I have government run health care, Medicare, and it is much better than my employee health care. Give me a government bureaucrat over an insurance company any day.
It is really hard for serious health care reform advocates to get excited about the nothing-burger bills in Congress. Here in Vermont we have already been there and done that stuff being called “reform” in Washington, and guess what, it didn’t work. We have based our government subsidized health care on private insurance and it is expensive and unsustainable. We still have uninsured, underinsured, people and businesses being beggared by premiums and copays, and medical bankruptcies galore. Until we get private insurance companies out of the mix, we will not be able to control costs, assure quality care, or provided everyone with the care they need.
I will be at the meetings of our independent Senator Bernie Sanders because he stands for real reform, government-run single payer. (And if our Dem Congressman Peter Welch decides not to wimp out and actually holds meetings, I’ll be there too because he has voted for the Weiner single payer amendment.)
Like other serious health care reform activists, when there is something to shout about, I’ll be there.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
chris @85
“Not supporting Democrats unless they’re perfect”.
Did I say perfect? Did anyone say perfect?
See, that’s what’s called a straw man. It allows people with very weak arguments and/or and infantile grasps of the subject matter to pretend they have something important to say. I hate straw men because they’re dishonest – first you have to lie about what the other person has been advocating, then you have to pretend that knocking down the lie has refuted them – a classic moron twofur.
Start off with a dirty trick like that and I know not to waste my time reading the rest of your dreck.