Michael Bennett Supports a Public Option
Senator Michael Bennett’s blog has a post up opening with the observation that “There has recently been some confusion on Michael Bennet’s support for a public option” and offering the following new video in which he articulates strong support for such an option:
David Sirota observes that what introduced the “confusion” seems to have been genuine lukewarmness on Bennett’s part about fighting for a public option:
Bennet said that he favored a so-called public option, which would provide an alternative insurance source for those who can’t get private insurance. “But as I stand here today, I think it’s very unlikely that the public option part of this will pass.”
As Sirota says, one possible difference-maker here is rumors of a primary challenge from former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. As I’ve observed in the past the prospect of primary challenges also seems to have helped ensure that Kristen Gillibrand and Arlen Specter have stayed onside in major policy fights. Primaries are a pretty clunky and expensive way of fostering party discipline, especially in the Senate, but there aren’t a lot of other tools in the box. It’d probably be smarter and better for everyone to rely more on control over committee chairmanships.
18 Responses to “Michael Bennett Supports a Public Option”
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September 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Primary challenges are good. But the way things are going, I think high voltage protests by massive throngs are gonna be required.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
“but there aren’t a lot of other tools in the box.”
———
Psst! Pork. Defense contracts. highway spending. Regulatory enforcement. Tax audits of campaign patrons. etc
But somehow I suspect Rahm already knows this.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“Psst! Pork. Defense contracts. highway spending. Regulatory enforcement. Tax audits of campaign patrons. etc But somehow I suspect Rahm already knows this.”
It’s too bad Rahm isn’t fighting on the side of the public interest.
The guy could really make a difference if he wanted to.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Japan just threw out the LDP, which has been in control since WWII, and installed the Democratic Party.
Party leader Yukio Hatoyama recently delivered a stinging attack on “market fundamentalism.” Instead of this “U.S.-led” approach, he argued that “we must work on policies that regenerate the ties that bring people together, that take greater account of nature and the environment, that rebuild welfare and medical systems, that provide better education and child-rearing support, and that address wealth disparities.”
Maybe he won’t be just a repeat of Obama. Maybe he actually means it.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
There’s plenty of other ways to pressure members. But really, our efforts are better spent trying to get rid of procedural rules that destroy majority rule than trying to bully Democrats into acting more like the Republican caucus. There’s a reason we have 60 seats and they have 40. There’s a reason they’re shackled to a declining minority of voters.
I’m less interested in making Democrats less responsive to voters at home, and more interested in making it easier for them to pass laws. Because, by and large, the laws that the filibuster prevents us from passing are laws we actually want. And you know, if it turns our they’re something that just sounded good but is really lousy in practice, it’s a lot easier to un-do them if it’s majority rule.
We don’t need to mimic the Republicans. Our strategic advantage is an agenda that’s broadly in line with what people want. We need rules that make it easier to pass laws, not rules that make it easier for us to pressure our caucus into supermajorities.
And there’s a side benefit of making the Republican party less crazy and partisan. Seriously, you think the Republican party would be this crazy without the filibuster? They’d be so powerless they’d sane up. That would be good for America.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Usually, when a senator says, “I like it, but it’s unlikely to pass,” they’re lying, and they really mean “I don’t want to fight for it.” But that’s because most senators are jaded, seasoned spin-masters. Michael Bennett is not, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just committed the classic gaffe of speaking truthfully.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Party leader Yukio Hatoyama recently delivered a stinging attack on “market fundamentalism.”
Dude, I am sorry, but you need to brush up on your Japanese history. Japan has never, I repeat, NEVER, in its ENTIRE history had what could even be remotely called a functioning free market. Never ever.
The LDP wasn’t a free-market liberal democracy party (neither liberal nor democratic, as the snark goes), it was a pork-barrel special-interests status-quo conservative party. In fact, it wasn’t so much a political party of like-minded people as much it was a club for pork-barrel-lovers. Japan has never had a functioning liberal democracy, to speak nothing of functioning political parties; that is why this election is so important.
By the way, it is the complete absence of any semblance to a free market that has the Japanese economy in such doldrums for the past two decades; check out the labour market, which is now hopelessly resembling our situation circa 1978; a dysfunctional market consisting of a labour aristocracy (the unions in our case, the tenured workers in Japan’s) and a labour underclass (the rest)
Frankly, the only time there was even an attempt to have a free market was with Koizumi, and he could not get past the bureaucratic inertia, who have effectively been running Japanese since 1900.
The only genuine hope for substantive conviction politics before this was in the immediate post-war era, but it was (probably necessarily, and there was probably no other choice) quashed because the risk of Japan having an uncertain stance (not to mention the defence arrangements) in the Cold War, it being on the very frontier of the U.S.S>R. and all, was too great to allow the socialists to grab power.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
You spelled his name wrong, only one “t”
You should know this, he’s your old bosses brother.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
As a fellow Wesleyan man, I am saddened and disappointed by Senator Bennet’s opportunistic and dishonest embrace of such an illiberal plan (the public option) which goes against all one has been taught about the basic principles of Western (classical) liberalism.
All those books read and papers written at Wesleyan for naught, Senator? I am sure your professor who taught you Locke and Isaiah Berlin would have been proud.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Or is it just the older generation? I know of very few at Wesleyan today who could force themselves to argue in good faith that a public insurance plan conforms with the principles of (philosophical) liberalism.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
What the fuck is up with this “Myles” douchbag? Is he too stupid to cohere his trite “thoughts” into one comment? Why do I have to skip over multiple comments every time this shitbag decides to annoy us with his presence?
You’re better off going back to sucking your headmaster’s cock, loser. Buh-bye.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
What Steve Balboni said. Bennet, not Bennett.
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Or campaign finance. A primary is much better and more democratic, just too porhibitvely espensive.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Dude, I am sorry, but you need to brush up on your Japanese history. Japan has never, I repeat, NEVER, in its ENTIRE history had what could even be remotely called a functioning free market. Never ever.
Instead of this “U.S.-led” approach
He’s talking about US market fundamentalism. You twit.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
[...] has it about right here. There are other ways to get your elected officials to embrace the party leadership’s (ie the [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
[...] has it about right here. There are other ways to get your elected officials to embrace the party leadership’s (ie the [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Back to the beginning: why is Michael Bennett a U.S. Senator? He’s never been elected to a public office in his life. He’s an elite rich kid who’s never really worried about money or paying all of the bills in his whole life.
Some Democrat.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Primaries are a pretty clunky and expensive way of fostering party discipline, especially in the Senate, but there aren’t a lot of other tools in the box. It’d probably be smarter and better for everyone to rely more on control over committee chairmanships.
Huh? The point of primaries isn’t to ensure loyalty to party powers-that-be. The point of primaries is to ensure that Congress can’t ignore its supporters. That’s absolutely more important than ever, considering the Obama debacle.