I want to talk about a losing ideological battle that is being waged on the left in this country by a group of people that I will call (non-pejoratively) “anti-corporatists.” They are hypercritical of the TARP program, wanted to nationalize the banks, want to audit the Fed, and fought fervently for a public option even though their true preference was the abolition of the private health insurance industry. But, first, I want to quote Hillary Clinton from her 2000 campaign for Senate.
Q: Would we be better off with a Canadian-style single payer system if it were politically possible?
Clinton: I think our system has so many unique features to it. You know if we were talking 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, before we developed the kind of mixed system that we’ve got of public and private resources, I don’t know, that’s a hypothetical, but given where we are today I think it’s imperative that we take it step by step, and that we build on what works.
And we know that people have responded positively in most parts of the country to CHIP [Children’s Health Insurance Program]. It’s a program that works. We thought it would work. We’ve got some kinks to iron out so we build on it. And then we take a step to get to additional coverage to parents, and a step to get —
So eventually we’ll have people covered but we’ll still keep a lot of choice in the system so that people can choose between different plans. They can have alternatives and options. Americans, as we know, we love choice, we believe that we ought to be able to make decisions about our most important matters in life, and health ranks at the top of that.
So I think that what I’ve outlined today is both financially feasible and politically feasible. And that’s why I’m going with that.
The program that Clinton laid out that day included expanding the CHIP, COBRA, and Medicaid programs, and giving people without access to employer-based heath care a tax credit to cover up to 25% of their premiums. She had previously advocated the expansion of Medicare to people aged 55-64. Does any of that sound familiar to you?
It should, because it is very similar to what she and Edwards and Obama campaigned on in 2008. It is very similar to what Obama is doing now. Obama already expanded the CHIP program.
President Obama signed legislation on Wednesday (Feb. 4th) extending health insurance to millions of low-income children, ending a two-year Democratic effort to enact a bill that former president Bush had vetoed…
…An estimated four million children will gain access to health care through the new law, which passed the House largely along party lines. The Senate passed it last Friday.
Also in February, Obama signed expanded COBRA coverage into law in the stimulus package. Both house’s bills have an expansion of Medicaid coverage. And the Senate briefly thought they had a deal to expand Medicare coverage to people aged 55-64 until Lieberman blew it up. Clinton’s 2000 health care comments anticipated Obama in another way. He, too, argued that single-payer might be a better system (in more definitive language than Clinton) but that we can’t get it done and must attack the problem in a more ad hoc fashion.
Now, you can characterize this position that has been mainstream for a decade, at least, in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party as a simple sell-out or capitulation to the health insurance industry. But you can’t call it a broken promise. The Democrats haven’t been offering single-payer to anyone, much to the frustration of the vast majority of their activists. They have not devised strategies to abolish private insurance, despite the accusations of the Republicans. If you want single-payer, you need another party or you need to work on the state level as progressives are doing here in Pennsylvania.
Despite his protestations to the contrary, Barack Obama did campaign on a public option. Maybe he didn’t emphasize it too much, but for the people that care about and understand health care policy, he was crystal clear. The attraction of the public option is manifold. It would help hold down premium inflation, it would avoid a situation where people are compelled to purchase private insurance, and it could lead over time to less and less private insurance (i.e., a stealthy way of moving toward single-payer). Because of these attractions, a public option is actually a way to make passing health care reform more popular and better for electoral politics.
Nevertheless, the Obama approach to reaching near-universality of health care coverage is built on expanding existing government programs, helping more employers offer coverage, and compelling private insurers to accept unprofitable customers in return for mandating that a lot of healthy people buy their coverage. It isn’t designed around an ideology that is opposed to private insurance, but around an ideology of making sure people have access to doctors and won’t be bankrupted if they get sick. The public option isn’t central to this goal in spite of its many benefits. But, for the anti-corporatists, the public option was the key component because it would allow people to opt-out of the private insurance system that they oppose on moral and ideological grounds.
It is this distinction of goals that explains a lot of the disconnect between the Democrats in Congress and the White House, and a large percentage of progressive activists. For anti-corporatist progressives, they wanted the health care debate to advance their view that private health insurance is wrong and immoral, while the Party never agreed to wage that fight. In fact, going back as far as Clinton’s 2000 campaign, the leadership of the Party has been focused on building on the private insurance model, but increasing regulation and protecting consumer rights. You may have noticed that Obama starting touting the fact that the health care bills basically include the long-desired Patients’ Bill of Rights. Obama is basically fulfilling the path advocated by the Democratic Party ever since they became convinced that universality could not be achieved without working with the system we have. For the Party, the public option was more important as a cost-saver than it was an ideological statement. They’d trade it for Medicare 55+ in a heartbeat because they’re focused on providing the most health care for the least money, not on screwing the insurance industry.
How you feel about this probably depends at least in part on your temperament. You may feel that the Party’s refusal to fight for the abolition of private health insurance on moral grounds is a result of the campaign contributions they get from the industry (or that they fear their opponents will get). On the other hand, you may see it is more explainable as a strategy to expand coverage that can actually pass through Congress. It doesn’t really matter a whole lot which explanation you prefer, so long as you realize that nothing becomes law unless it first passes through Congress. We don’t elect party leaders to lose votes in Congress, but to win them and get reforms enacted into law. We elected Obama to do what he is doing, which is reform the health care system, expand coverage, increase regulation, protect customers, and do it in an affordable way. We did not elect him to wage a principled but losing jihad against the private insurance industry. He never promised that.
The situation with TARP, the Fed, and the banking and mortgage industries are a bit different. The issues raised there were not part of the primaries or integral to Obama’s vision for America. The financial meltdown was a problem he had to address, not a promise he wanted to fulfill. But there is a similar disconnect between a segment of the progressive world and the administration. Many progressives wanted to see a nationalization of the banks for ideological reasons. But those reasons preexisted the meltdown. Others want to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve, but that has been a long-cherished goal and is not really a reaction to our current situation. For a lot of progressives, they saw the financial crisis as an opportunity to accomplish big things that might not come along again if not pursued by Obama at the height of the crisis. So they advocated strongly for those things and grew frustrated when Obama refused to follow along.
Congress is working on a new regulatory framework for the financial, banking, and mortgage industries, and they will try to pass those reforms early next year. It will be that legislation that determines how well Main St. does versus Wall Street going forward. I am sure it will not be as anti-corporatist as most progressives (including me) would like. But, again, it will have to pass Congress or nothing at all will change. And Congress is not progressive.
None of this is to argue that progressives should give up on advocating for progressive policy, although it needs to be remembered that there is quite a bit of ideological range within the progressive movement. What I am arguing is that progressives need to adopt a strategy that is realistic, practical, and effective to deal with the situation we face. First, we need to recognize that the Republicans are still the biggest problem facing the country. They have already defeated one of Obama’s core hope-messages, which was to get past the petty partisan bickering and work in a more collegial manner to solve the big problems we face. They’ve also forced Obama to govern from his party’s right flank by denying him any votes from their side and using an unprecedented amount of parliamentary obstruction. This has the intended effect of demoralizing the party base, and is a straightforward scorched-earth electoral strategy that has a very good chance of working quite well for the GOP next fall. We can play along with this like lemmings or we can recognize it for what it is. So long as Obama needs all 60 Democratic votes in the Senate to pass anything, he will have to craft his goals to satisfy the most conservative members of his party.
I think it is fair to expect the president to use his bully pulpit to move the conversation onto more favorable terrain. He can use his voice to pressure the Senate moderates to go along with goals that are out of their comfort zone. Obama can try to rally public support for controversial measures. But there are real limitations in how far he can get his Senate caucus to go. We have to recognize that and craft strategies around assisting him.
One thing we can be sure will not fly with the Liebermans and Carpers and Nelsons and Lincolns and Landrieus of the Senate is a strong anti-corporatist message and agenda. Arguing that it is morally wrong to profit off of people’s good health is not going to fly with them. They are more inclined to think it is morally wrong for the federal government to steal customers from private insurers. Another thing that will not work is waging relentless and withering personal criticism of their ethics and making accusations about their spouses. Finally, shifting all the blame for their corporatist sympathies onto the Obama administration does nothing, and is fundamentally misleading and unfair.
There are merits to the anti-corporatist progressives’ critiques and preferred policies, but their analysis and strategies are badly flawed. There is another progressive movement in this country that isn’t ideologically wedded to an anti-corporatist agenda. We’re wedded to seeing that we get the best possible outcomes and that Obama has a successful presidency. We may share most of the goals of the anti-corporatists, but we place those goals in a different place in the queue.
I guess these ideas are floating in the meme-pool.
Hey BooMan,
I agree that it is more important to achieve victories for struggling people, incremental/incomplete as those victories may be, than it is to wage all out “anti-corporatist” war.
However, the true enemy of progress in this country is the collusion of those who are supposed to represent our interests with those whose main interest is profit. There are some common ideas between the Left and the Right, an indication that many are beginning to truly grasp the degree to which entrenched interests are threatening liberty and actively preventing progress.
The political battles we are currently fighting shouldn’t be derailed by a populist push to rein in corporate interests, not just yet at least. But battles aside, there is a larger war to keep in mind, which will eventually have to be fought.
I think it’s interesting that you use the term “anti-corporatist” when there is a perfectly good term already in existence for this movement: “anti-Fascist.” I don’t mean to be shrill, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this country continues, even under Obama, to slide dangerously towards Fascism. We’re not there, but we keep getting closer.
If the government continues to whittle away at its own accountability (and the accountability of the corporations that control it), where will we all be?
Somewhere there’s a chart you can arrange by donations to individual senators from the health care industry. Maybe it’s not such a surprise, but those who take the most aren’t necessarily those who were opposed to the HCR legislation…John Kerry was, if I remember, one of the top recipients of the industry.
It’s pretty obvious that it’s not the money itself that taints senators; it’s their underlying ideology.
The health care industry is a pretty diverse lot: insurers, hospital and medical systems, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical supply companies, medical equipment companies.
The extent to which donations affected votes is not shown on the overall fight over the bill. For example, look for Kerry’s votes on issues of concern to the medical equipment industry, or Hagan’s votes on issues related to the pharmaceutical industry, or Lieberman’s and Nelson’s votes on issues related to the private insurance industry, or Conrad’s votes on issues to those Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans that haven’t been privatized. Compare them against contributions. But compare them also to the number of employees in their states that work for these various industries.
Politicians can be encouraged (or threatened) with corporate donations (or the loss of them). They can also be encouraged (or threatened) with jobs for their state (or the loss of them).
The analysis that looks just at declared donations is misleading. There are also networks of relationships. It was significant that Baucus had a back channel to the White House through his former staffer Jim Messina and that Steny Hoyer’s fomer staffer was gunning United Healthcare’s effort to kill the bill in the House.
What is important and not easy to change is these factors created a disconnect between Congress and the opinions of the constituents they represented.
Of course, this is even more significant on the Republican side, in which they dictated the opinions that their constituents ought to have instead of listening to their constituents. Just look at some of the tapes of Republican town hall meetings.
No. It’s the money.
If there were no corporate money involved in the various levels of governing, that is, no jobs for politicians’ relatives, no campaign donations, no ad campaigns, no organized teabagging displays, no corporate news reporting lies for the benefit of corporations, no think tanks et al, then do you actually think that political creatures like Lieberman would exist? Do you think that bureaucrats who’d worked in various industries would be inserted into government agencies to oversee their friends’ handiwork?
I wouldn’t say it’s an anti-corporatist movement as much as a realization of the nature of things. But generally there’s isn’t a very broad realization of the extent of corporate influence on the political process. Things are much like how Mussolini described the Corporate State. Maybe we don’t have factories ringing, say, Auschwitzes where people are worked and starved to death, but we have brown people in factories around the world working in terrible conditions to make products for international corporations.
To say that there is an anti-corporatist movement is like saying that the Kansas City Royals are poised to knock the Yankees and Red Sox out of the American League. It’s not so much a movement as wishful thinking.
Interesting point about the pervasiveness of corporate money in setting the agenda.
The other issue in looking a corporate participation in national politics is that of trans-national corporations who go shopping for a regulatory and tax environment. If corporations were exclusively national, we would have a different set of issues, more like the issues that faced the New Deal. Instead, we have international agreements that have been driven to help trans-national corporations and not protect workers, communities, or the environment.
I think this is an excellent analysis of the current divide on the left.
And, as I’m sure you know, it fits quite well with what Giordano wrote the other day.
It feels to me as if some have lost the ability to distinguish between the long-term goals of progressives and the reality of governing. I’m not sure that Obama embraces the anti-corporatist movement to the extent that some people expected either. But then, as Giordano explains, I’m also not sure how far many of these anti-corporatists really want to go. I’d love to have a more intelligent discussion about things like that.
All I know is that its clear that only very minimal progress on that will be made from inside the current system and that many of the strategies currently employed by the anti-corporatist types to affect the governing process seem to be hurting that minimal progress rather than helping to achieve the long-term goals. .
Again, I am struck by the parallels with the voting reform movement’s split. Many of us want, at a minimum, paper ballots, and a hand count (audit) of at least a percent of those. We don’t care which vendors is used because if you’re auditing what comes out, you’ll catch the garbage that goes in, in most cases.
But then there are those who want no corporation anywhere near our vote, and won’t settle for anything less than a fully handcounted system, without the aid of technology. So far, this side, the “single payer” side if you will, has joined with the evoting vendors to sink moderate legislation to the point where Congresspeople are now backing off this issue, tired of getting burned. This can happen with the health care issue as well, if the anticorporatists aren’t careful.
There are truly those who think if things just get a little worse, everyone will see what they think is needed. But the problem is, all that will happen is things will get worse, not everyone will see what needs to happen, and it will be that much harder to get reform passed.
I’m so glad to be a member of a blog led by sanity. It seems increasingly rare these days.
Regarding health care, the Swiss have developed a model that takes the profit out of health care, but still utilizes private corporations. They establish a baseline set of coverages (as I understand it). It’s mandated that everyone buy that coverage with assistance for the poor. But the corporations must run that part of the coverage on a not-for-profit basis. Extended coverage over-and-above those minimum standards cost more as a supplemental and that portion of policies can represent a profit base for the corporations.
This seems quite like the not-for-profit portion of the exchanges being proposed. Over time, these plans will attract more and more customers so that not-for-profit. I believe these plans are expected to be less expensive than those sold outside the exchanges and will meet a minimum standard, as set by the OPM. For me it’s a kind of public option in the works, but not called that.
We can’t abandon the private health-care corporations now anyhow. Where will all those unemployed people go? Should they become government workers? No centrist would allow that for something other than national security (see TSA under the Bush administration).
For me the key here regarding Obama, as everyone assesses who he really is (see Douthat in today’s NYTimes) …, is to assure that he has a more left-leaning congress coming up. The 60 seats in the Senate needs to be protected or expanded. This is the key role progressives should/could be planning for in the coming months. Obama is governing from where he must. We have to change who he gets to govern with.
I like that he is respectful of the division of powers in the constitution. He is letting Congress do it’s job of legislating. We objected to the King George scenario during the Bush years. Obama is much more of a constitutionalist, contrary to the far right’s silly accusations. We on the left ought to really applaud Obama for that. But it comes with some frustration as the Congress is now constituted. Changing it is our work, not his.
If the next order of business is job, a strong jobs bill, it may be hard for the Republicans to not come on board. It may be the issue that starts to identify who among the Republicans has a heart … and the best interests of the country in mind. These may be the core group to help get a bipartisan working group together. Somehow, some legislation has to help dismantle the lock-hold that the Republican leadership has on its members in its scorched earth policy. Strategically it would be great to see them splinter. They are rejoicing now in the splintering they seem to see among the Democrats.
Happy Holidays, all.
On the problems with the current Congress (specifically Senate rules) Ezra Klein has a great article today.
…you can’t expect the anti-corporatists to be more than off-again, on-again allies of the Obama administration or other mainstream Democratic (the party) institutions. To such progressives, Obama is cut from the same cloth as the Republicans, just a much less pernicious version.
Exactly, and that is why Obama’s coalition is based upon folks who aren’t the entrenched far left. Remember the incredibly voter registration drive of 2008? Minorities, youths, and previously disinterested independents are what make up the core of Obama’s voting block, and are also the folks he tailors his message to most. “Progressives” like Hamsher or Taibbi were never going to hear him right, while folks like me are pre-disposed to see what he is getting at and trust him to a degree the old lefties do not.
How much of the anti-corporatist movement is based on emotion? And, can’t they find a name that’s easier to spell?
International economics is a fragile structure–like playing a complex Mozart on the piano. It is all well and good to say that we want to slam America’s banking executives today, but that’s a quick way to get many of the “banks” to immediately move their headquarters offshore. A collapse of the stock market (mostly a fantasy) probably means that millions in middle America vote Republican next fall.
It’s all well and good to be anti-corporatist but it is a surefire way to lose control of the government forever.
In the words of Mr. Burns…..”Excellent” post Booman. I really wish those corporatists would read it without foam coming out of their mouthes, but how realistic is that. Keep up the good work, Booman.
Of course there are divisions in the progressive movement as it gets larger and involves different constituencies. And the range of progressive ideas and positions is quite broad and are not all within the tolerability of Democratic party discourse. In addition, there has been a slow trickle of small-l libertarians moving away from conservatism and toward progressive ideas. All of this promises pie fights well into the future.
Fortunately, most progressives (in number) are also Democrats.
In additon, there is a division between the moralists who want all decisions to be made on principle so as not to sully the purity of their vote. And the tacticians (I’m going to avoid the claims of “realism” and “pragmatism” here) who insist that to get results sometimes you take the ground you can even if it involves a tactical retreat. And the pie fights among these folks in the Republican Party is growing more that it is among progressives. But this is the jist of the pie fight among progressives. Interestingly enough, a moralist on one issue is often a tactician on another.
And there is a difference among people in the preferred style they like to see in their leadership. And there is a lot of variation here, if you look at previous successful presidencies. Lincoln had a relative permanent team of folks who often stood on opposite sides of issues (and then factor in Andrew Johnson–this was the era before “tickets”). Woodrow Wilson depended primarily on one advisor and ran government in a bureaucratic line-and-staff fashion. FDR had a habit of assigning the same problem to two teams. Eisenhower’s relations with his staff and cabinet were so behind the scenes that you saw the results except in a few cases without knowing to give-and-take required to get to them; he was also more respectful of Congress. LBJ picked up Congress by its ears like he did his beagles. Truman was outspoken and didn’t mince words. People liked them or hated them often because of their style rather than their ideas or policies. There is a lot of aggravation from one side of progressives that Obama works so much behind the scenes to gain agreement. To some this seems like an abdication of the promised transparency in government; yet for the first time on its scale, we saw the inner workings of some of the sausage factory in the markup sessions.
To reduce all of this to just corporate-anticorporate misses some of the important victories that the progressive movement has made. We are now publicly large enough to have significant public personal fights and divisions of opinion on policy and tactics. And unlike the in teh 1960s, there is not the club of “socialism” or “Marxism” or “communism” that can be used effectively to shut off the range of debate.
I think you make a great point about the divide being more complex.
A few weeks ago I had a conversation on another blog with someone who talked about Obama being a dialectical thinker and how this style would continue to aggravate progressives. I think part of that is because of Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” methods. But to me, Obama’s is more of a style of conversation and problem-solving than a political tactic. You see it reflected in everything from his speech on race to the one he gave about the Middle East in Cairo.
Yesterday, our Christmas movie was to go watch “Invictus.” It was fascinating to watch Mandela’s dialectical thinking in a post-apartheid South Africa…not an easy path to take.
The “anti-corporatists” are really just socialists. Their true agenda: nationalize health care and bring the BBC to America.
You can listen to the BBC over the internet.
And the BBC routinely reports the news in an annoying pro-corporate frame.
Oh man! You mean they’ve already brought the BBC to America? Can’t someone blacklist these people or something? Can’t we find some midwestern alcoholic senator to lead the charge?
I understand that Imhofe might be available after his foray to Copenhagen as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republican National Committee.
“We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismount it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components.”
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g978140510679515_ss1-71
In the 2008 campaign you saw Hillary Clinton as evil incarnate. Now you’re quoting her to justify the President’s timidity.
The only thing that will come of mollifying the
is the election of more Liebermans and Carpers and Nelsons and Lincolns and Landrieus.
Wow, that was really great, Booman.
Personally, I am not “anti-corporatist,” which is probably why I am much happier with Obama than many of my progressive friends.
I, too, would like to see some movement in the anti-corporatist direction, but it’s certainly not a core part of my outlook. In fact, I’d like to see go in that direction primarily for political reasons, rather than substantive reasons. I suppose this is another way of saying that I think he could use some more populist rhetoric.
Still, on the policy front, I ultimately am happy with Obama’s incrementalist, and “institutinalist” approach.
Ross Douhat has a column up today saying many of the same things.
Great post booman. Why does it seem so surprising to folks (that Obama would work so hard to get the economy quickly back in a recovery mode and get a health care bill finally passed in the way in which he did it) when in his book and in his life, he has always spoken out against idealogues of every stripe. In fact, in many of his campaign speeches he often said that he was not against insurance companies making a profit but against their denying coverage to people for health reasons.
Source: 2007 Dem. debate at Saint Anselm College Jun 3, 2007 under quote: “Take on insurance companies; drive down health care costs”
My emphasis is on driving down the costs, taking on the insurance companies, making sure that they are limited in the ability to extract profits and deny coverage, and the drug companies have to do what’s right by their patients instead of simply hoarding their profits. We’ve got very conservative, credible estimates that say we can save families that do have health insurance about a thousand dollars a year, and we provide coverage for everybody else. We provide mandatory health care for children
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Barack_Obama_Health_Care.htm
forus50, you ask why it surprises people about Obama saying he was not against money making, ect.
The answer is that many thought he was going to show himself to be the far left progressive hard core believer and only govern for them alone.
Great post booman. Why does it seem so surprising to folks (that Obama would work so hard to get the economy quickly back in a recovery mode and get a health care bill finally passed in the way in which he did it) when in his book and in his life, he has always spoken out against idealogues of every stripe. In fact, in many of his campaign speeches he often said that he was not against insurance companies making a profit but against their denying coverage to people for health reasons.
But they don’t make money having sick people on their rolls. That’s why there is rescission and other reasons to deny people coverage.
Hence the ban under the new HCR bill.
I spent most of my adulthood being very anti corporate. As I age I find myself being more realistic in that you cannot eliminate corporations but, you sure can regulate them.
I guess I am saying instead of being so militantly anti you need to look for alternative routes to weaken the power of the corporations.
That is why regulation is important.
The militant left are pissy because they want a progressive nirvana overnight. They refuse to see the reality that the majority of the country is not far left. And 30 years of conservative rule has the country’s view of the left rather skewed. Afterall, many non political and moderate people see the president as a radical far lefty now. Imagine if he was and tried to rule as president of just the leftwing.
which brings me to the point that Obama is president to all the country not just a sliver of his base.
Besides, Obama worked in the senate and knows them well. He knows what is possible to pass and what is not.
Who will sink something and who makes only threats.
He understands the workings of the senate.
The far left has little understanding of that and of what is realistic.
The far left expected everything to change by spring. And also that while they hated the imperial presidency, Bush’s dictatorial ways and dreamed of a return to how it should be, they expect Obama to be just the same as Bush in grabbing for dictator of the year.
A bit hypocritical.
They should know a person who spent 10 years as a constitutional law professor would have a deep understanding of and reverence for the constitution and the powers of the presidency. and it’s limits. and the co-equal branches of government. That is why he let congress do the health care bill. Because it was their job and their venue.
If the far left is going to go teabagger, they do need to learn about how government works, the different branches and what is the limits of presidency to avoid being as silly as the original teabaggers.
Your summary view is a naïve, insulting distortion of much about the actual aims, motives and reasonings of the groups you malign.
I could respond in kind by pointing out that “your factions” begin implicitly or explicitly by agreeing,
“First, we surrender. Then we plead for mercy from the opponents we’re supposed to have defeated in the last election.”
Proximity1,
While your assessments are often thoughtful and valid, I find myself wondering what, precisely, is your endgame? I strongly agree that the current system has significant problems that need to be addressed, but you seem to reflexively dismiss the notion that anything worthwhile can be achieved using the tools currently available (while working in parallel to change what is broken), and mock anyone who is “naive” enough to suggest such. So what do we do? Say “screw it, the system sucks, so I won’t play?” Stay home on election day because the system is corrupt and voting is somehow “selling out?” In the end, how does rejecting anything short of universal single payer health care produce any results in the near term? If this is what you want and you are willing to scuttle anything short of that, when do we get single payer? How long is long enough to hold out?
“I strongly agree that the current system has significant problems that need to be addressed, but you seem to reflexively dismiss the notion that anything worthwhile can be achieved using the tools currently available (while working in parallel to change what is broken), and mock anyone who is “naive” enough to suggest such. So what do we do? Say “screw it, the system sucks, so I won’t play?” Stay home on election day because the system is corrupt and voting is somehow “selling out?” In the end, how does rejecting anything short of universal single payer health care produce any results in the near term? If this is what you want and you are willing to scuttle anything short of that, when do we get single payer? How long is long enough to hold out?”
Where is the “working in parallel” going on in this site’s discussions? Instead, I see a steady denigration of even the idea of that. You could test your sense of how much the readership here is interested in even the theoretical possibility of such an effort [working in parallel to change what is broken] by taking a census of the actual number of diaries and posts which are devoted to that. How many are there? Where are they?
One of my main objections is that the sordid illusions of “half-a-loaf” tactics are not part of a larger effort to change what is broken but are, rather, the resigned substitute for such an effort.
I categorically reject the (dangerous) notion of “endgames”. Instead, I urge a morally-sound and informed practical approach which, while making the best of a terrible situation, places the primary emphasis on the prerequisite understandings to changing the root ills (as nearly as we can understand them and address them, while accepting that social progress is and should be a piecemeal advance [though the word “advance” is important there!] ) rather than what now prevails: the social progress equivalent of a financier who is totally absorbed with the present quarter’s gains or losses to the exclusion of all else.
I have no “endgame” and that is not merely a semantic point. It’s an essential piece of understanding which is at the heart of the reasons why I regard much about the prevailing reasoning here in this blog as nothing short of morally-bankrupt and a sure-fire recipe for continuing catastrophes of just the sort (and worse) that we’ve been seeing.
In many ways, so-called “liberals” are mirror-images of the worst in blind selfishness that so many denounce (and denounced while the Right-wing extremists Republicans had WH, Congress and courts.) Many among us decried the standard Republicans’ practice of blindly excusing any and all faults of Bush and Cheney. We watched, appalled, as they simply flushed every principle of justice and democratic fair practice down the toilet in favor of offering their blind support to their party’s leadership.
Now, faced with numerous policies from Obama which are just as rightly to be condemned, we see the same sort of responses from “liberals” (as wee saw from “conservatives” regarding Bush’s policies) who constantly repeat how we have to be “realistic”. When it was Bush and Cheney doing it, these liberals weren’t apparently so morally lost. Now, though, it’s obvious that they were. It’s clear that whatever their motives were, they weren’t principled ones.
To continue from the previous, I don’t believe that the “current tools” as you describe them leave us with absolutely no recourse at all. But I do believe that in order to get anywhere useful from this point, many people must gain a much clearer view of the actual predicament—and that in gaining just that, it is one of the most valuable “things we could do“.
Right now, the American “Left”–what little there is of it, that is—is in the position of a beggar, and, moreover, one who seems to have little or no hope of ever being better than a beggar. If any useful progress is to come, that position has to be first recognized as being the case and then resolutely denounced and rejected as acceptable. But, how and why did that happen in the first place? I think much of the reasons relate to a very serious and general collapse in people’s political consciousness and, in particular, in their political self-respect. Liberals act like they are beaten, defeated and as though they feel no sense of self-respect. That’s not to say that they aren’t resentful, angry, disputatious and many other things, too. But these are not the same things as having self-respect and they don’t spring from having it. They spring, rather, from a lack of self-respect. Getting back this self-respect is a major undertaking and so much else of value really depends on first making real gains in that regard.
Some might imagine or believe and argue that the election of Barack Obama was an important and useful ingredient in the process of recovering this lost self-respect. I think the converse, that B.Obama’s election did not and does not in and of itself indicate any gain in self-respect on the parts of liberals. I also contend that very much of what President Obama has done and said since his election has positively harmed the prospects for recovering it. He has, as might have been expected, further demoralized many on the left by grievously disappointing them and by disgracefully taking them for granted. What’s more amazing is the number of so-called liberals who so vehemently object when some of their fellow liberals themselves object strongly to be so taken for granted. It’s as though the defeated and resigned are determined to snuff out any movement which seeks to reverse this situation—“We’re beaten, so STFU!” they seem to say.
All or most of these dynamics in the left’s predicament mirror similar or virtually the same phenomena going on on both the political “right-wings”, center, and, more generally, throughout society as a whole, which is similarly lost, feeling defeated and demoralized and doesn’t seem to know what to do about it. Our faults are very deep-rooted and widespread. They concern the very fabric of society and our culture’s most central elements. When these are shaken, the psycho-social effects, which are to be seen all around us, are profound. I read recently that there is a very strong albeit implied resentment of China among many people in the West and that this resentment is mainly one which begrudges the Chinese for their rampant optimism, which in general in the contemporary West is now basically entirely discredited and those who are optimistic about the future–the main gist of the Chinese people’s optimism—are seen as hopelessly naïve. I think that this observation of the West’s resentment of China is basically accurate. That should tell us much about the mood that prevails now throughout the U.S. and Europe, which in many respects is just as lost and demoralized–with the notable exception, I think, of the Nordic or scandinavian countries who in various respects have things fundamentally better in hand or at least understand themselves and what’s going right and wrong and what to do about it, better than most of the rest of Western Europe.
I think that liberals have to start expecting more of themselves and of each other rather than continuing to take whatever they can get–the beggar mentality that I mentioned above. Before the next candidate is nominated, people on the left should make their demands and expectations very clear and they should get some clear commitments in advance from any candidate to whom they give their support. In Obama’s case, basically, they left threw themselves into his arms desperately, asking practically nothing from him in clear commitments, expecting much but having nothing at all on which to reasonably base those expectations’ being met in practice. The results should have been predictable: Obama drafted and constructed his own ‘team’, he used public relations tactics and devices cleverly and adroitly and in essence he took in the left by default, co-opted it, made it his without any genuine or clear commitments—other than to big-money contributors who demand and get these as a condition of their support and contributions, regardless of whatever bullshit Obama may peddle about not being owned by anyone or beholden to any person or groups.
One thing is clear and ought to have been even before he was elected: Obama certainly feels no obligation to what I regard as the “Left”. Instead, he routinely takes it for granted—when it’s not even much worse than that.
People of the Left not currently not only don’t know how to bargain, how to fight and how to get what they want, they don’t even know and agree on what they want in the first place. Though it’s stunning to behold, numerous of the most fundamental elements of left political beliefs, the core of liberal political principles, have come to be issues over which self-described liberals are fiercely divided. People now have diverging views on what constitutes torture, whether it’s sometimes necessary or defensible! Imagine that! Who is your fellow on the left today? What can you count on him or her to believe, espouse and defend along with you? These are anything but clear today and that fact is at the heart of our troubles.
Enormous work has to be done to address these and other issues. But in general the American public has neither the stomach nor the heart for that work. They are thoroughly demoralized; bitter, disappointed and angry and very much ignorant and confused about what has happened in their generation and the ones which immediately preceded it. They don’t just not want to think about any of that, they don’t even want to begin to think about it.
To advance beyond being the miserable beggars we are today, (and in anything which dares to consider itself as a democratic society, being such political beggars is the height of disgrace) we have to find a way to learn these lessons and to convince ourselves and others of what is wrong, what we might do about it if we cared enough, and, with that, we have to rediscover why we should care enough rather than simply throw up our hands and remain beggars, taking whatever crumbs others more determined might throw our way.
“What was truly impressive about the decade past, however, was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes. “
— The Big Zero
link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28krugman.html?ref=opinion
Frame those words and hang them in every home and school-room.
And that is why many on the “Progressive Left” will never HEAR what this POTUS says. They are speaking in different languages. Obama can and does make the translation, and I believe that is what leads to his not attending to the Progressive Left as they feel he should. It also results in their getting more entrenched, more angry and more dogmatic. He problem solves. They “scream.” He probably should have met with the caucus for HCR, perhaps some of this could have been avoided. But I doubt it. I do not think this twain will ever meet.
I never see things in black and white. Corporations are not inherently evil.
What do you mean HEAR? Could you please explain further.
I believe all humans have filters based on their dispositions, past experiences, hopes and desires, etc, through which they perceive stimuli. What I learned from the Prog Blogs is that many people have developed Kevlar filters because of the Bush years and feeling disrespected. It makes it tough to go beyond listening and really hear. They jump on every badly sourced Huffpo story if it dovetails with what’s behind their filters. I realize I am sounding pretentious. But I hate writing and tend to think interms of graphics. Apologies.
How do you determine what is a badly sourced HuffPo article? But see, plenty of us do hear. We take Rahmbo at his word. Which makes some of us think he’s a very bad influence. But that is based on what Rahm himself has said. And we know that Rahm just loves him some Blue Dogs. Tell me where I am wrong.
No, I’m sorry, Calvin. I had enough of that type of “discussion” at DKos. Our perceptions are extremely different, and as a veteran of every “war” imaginable over there, I’ve never seen discussion partipants experience revelations that they were wrong, LOL. So beyond a bit of back and forth, which is interesting, I’m not going there. Have a fine holiday.
Exactly, I came over here to get away from DKos. lol
They should know a person who spent 10 years as a constitutional law professor would have a deep understanding of and reverence for the constitution and the powers of the presidency. and it’s limits.
Is that why he wants to keep and expand the powers Bush had? And what anout Dawn Johnsen?
Do you mind giving examples?
While Calvin can perfectly well speak for himself, here are my examples for you:
the U.S. are in an official, presidentially-declared “State of Emergency”, remember that? That declaration, a legal act by President (G.W.) Bush, had and has practical consequences. Question: has Obama rescinded it? When was this?
the military invasion and occupation of Iraq were and continue to be, under every accepted concept of international law, illegal acts. Attendant with them were many acts which are clear cases of war crimes—these included torture and murder to mention only two; and the use of torture was both systematic and done at the direct behest and on the orders of high political and military officers including Bush and others in the White House. Though Obama may have ended the systematic use of torture, he remains nonetheless, by his continuation of Bush’s illegal war, not merely an accessory after the fact to Bush’s war crimes but, more, now a direct prosecutor of that illegal war through his own acts as president. War crimes aren’t simply excused because they’re carried on and carried over from one’s predecessor.
Remember the Wall Street bailout? It actually first happened under Bush. That’s right. It was Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who first devised and implemented a massive bailout of Wall Street’s largest investment banks—which had, through their own outrageous irresponsibility, gotten themselves (and the rest of the world’s people) into the biggest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Since then, Obama’s policies, carried out by former Wall Street darling and former president of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, Timothy Geithner, has carried on and worsened Paulson’s outrageous mistakes and give-aways of billions of taxpayer dollars with essentially no counterpart to show for those lavish gifts to the people who created the financial disaster.
Do you need other examples?
I know all these things. If we want to condemn a president every time they do something that Bush did or similar to what Bush did then everyone is going to be condemned. Anyone can make parallels if they look hard enough. That’s part of the point Booman is making.
And I don’t believe Obama is responsibly for Bush’s use of torture simply because he didn’t prosecute Bush. That is a really overused and stupid argument.
he has expanded the use of state secrets to keep victims of the torture from havign their day in court and to protect the telephone companies the broke the law by spying on people.
Yes, I don’t agree with that. What’s your point? What was the point in bringing up Bush in the first place? Obviously you didn’t read my other comment.
Correction, I don’t agree with the expansion of state powers. I don’t claim to know why he did it.
You asked for examples in your reply to this comment from Calvin:
“Is that why he [i.e. President Obama] wants to keep and expand the powers Bush had?”
remember? You asked for examples, for pity’s sake!!!
Then, when you were shown them, you wrote:
“I know all these things. If we want to condemn a president every time they do something that Bush did or similar to what Bush did then everyone is going to be condemned.”
and, later added, in reply to Brenden,
“What’s your point? What was the point in bringing up Bush in the first place?”
Do you even read your own posts? You went on to accept that Obama has, indeed, sought to extend Bush’s own abuses of powers where you wrote,
“Yes, I don’t agree with that.” [i.e., citing you again, “I don’t agree with the expansion of state powers. I don’t claim to know why he [obama] did it.” ]
In other words, you made an objection, your abjection was answered with examples, which you yourself granted were valid!!!! and yet, you somehow cannot connect the dots and grasp what all of that means: that your previous objection has now been met and shown to be empty.
Do you ever draw conclusions (or benefits) from others’ pointing out your mistakes? Is there ever a point where you actually admit in some form or fashion,
“Yes, I see your point and you’re right. I grant you that I had it wrong and therefore, I now see that my views concerning ___ were unfounded….”
You also offered this,
“If we want to condemn a president every time they [sic] do something that Bush did or similar to what Bush did then everyone is going to be condemned.”
” Everyone is going to be condemned”? For being officially and actively engaged in the continuation of the war crimes committed throughout the administrations of George W. Bush? Is this your claim? And you seriously imagine that those of us who are criticizing Obama for his continuing those illegal Bush administration policies are just a band of malcontents who are only out to find anything at all which they can use to condemn Obama?
Can you explain why any of those things you’re relying on make reasonable sense?
Umm if you don’t understand what I mean perhaps you should pay more attention to your own behavior. I’m not getting into this and I wanted links to the information, which I never got. It’s pretty obvious to me what your agenda on here is and I don’t care for it. This is why I left Dkos.
As for my question to you,
” Can you explain why any of those things you’re relying on make reasonable sense?”
clearly, the answer is, “No, you can’t.”
What a “surprise”!
You r nowhere near as smart as you like to pretend you are. Lol im sorry talking down to people makes you and your friends feel good.
And I didn’t bring up Bush, someone else did and I asked for examples. So what is YOUR point??? Do you actually read the posts? I know this is fun for people to compare everything Obama does to Bush but I think it’s ridiculous.
I love this comment. It expresses my take, but better than I can. I should favoritize it and link to it from now on. In fact it answers Calvin’s question to me so well, I should do it now 🙂
“None of this is to argue that progressives should give up on advocating for progressive policy, although it needs to be remembered that there is quite a bit of ideological range within the progressive movement. What I am arguing is that progressives need to adopt a strategy that is realistic, practical, and effective to deal with the situation we face.”
As a practical matter, it’s exactly to argue just that since the clear upshot from having read your views and the reasoning behind them is that, to put it plainly (which you’d never do)
this:
“None of this is to argue that progressives should give up on advocating for progressive policy,”…
and this:
…”progressives need to adopt a strategy that is realistic, practical, and effective to deal with the situation we face.” …
amount to much the same thing.
Ideological conservatives of the worst kind (from Limbaugh to Beck and their fanatic followers), even in defeat, are determined to fight like Hell; what passes for “liberals” (as exemplified by you and others like you, Booman) are resigned to take what they can get without much of any real fight. In such a circumstance, the electorally “defeated” Right-wing sets the tone, calls the tune, for the supposed electoral victors—a disjoint and splintered amorphous mass of morally lost known as “Democrats”.
To expect that to win the assent of even so loopy and out-of-touch a group as “the American electorate” is expecting too much. I’ll be very surprised if Obama wins a second term.
Well I think it’s ridiculous and way too early for you to be saying if he will win a second term or not.
True to form with the Hamsher, Taibbi, Sirota, etc. crowd, the single-term idea has been a consistent right-wing meme since the campaign. This is what they say absent of any real argument and it further illuminates their alignment with the right.
About nationalizing the banks: That poses a whole host of legal problems. I supported nationalizing the banks until I realized this. It’s also important to note that nationalization means different things to different people; Krugman was talking about receivership when he spoke of it. The key is that in receivership, the receiver has the authority to impose haircuts on creditors. Outside of receivership, conservatorship, or bankruptcy, there is no legal mechanism for unilaterally imposing losses on creditors of bank holding companies. That’s why nationalization posed such a big problem for banks like Citi; it wasn’t just political will, it was a whole set of legal problems.
If you’d like to know more about this, see here:
http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/macro/mac08/Swagel-090409.pdf
Swagel takes academic economists to task for their failure to understand the very real legal constraints on policymaking.
People like Krugman don’t help the conservation, either, because Krugman isn’t great on banking and finance policy.
You could call me more conservative when it comes to banking and economic policy, or more corporate, whichever you prefer, but I am there not for ideology, but what I perceive to be the best route to helping the little guy. People get pissed at bankers writing banking policy, when armchair economists don’t know shit about banking policy, and typically it’s far better to have ex-bankers writing it. There’s all this anger at Goldman Sachs and what people think is some conspiracy between how AIG was bailed out “specially” while Lehman was ignored, but this is just preposterous. Is there some conflict of interest? Yes, but there is and always is for every policy that we have in the US. So I think a lot of this talk of “Goldamites” is valid, not because it’s true, but because there are conflicts of interest at times.
People like Taibbi and Naomi Klein anger me, because a lot of what they write makes sense to the left. However, usually it’s not as cut and clean as they like people to believe, and typically it’s their own misunderstanding. Don’t even get me started on the Shock Doctrine; what a horrible book. Since I mentioned AIG and Lehman and Goldman, let’s just look at what would have happened to Goldman if AIG wasn’t bailed out:
Goldman collateralized and hedged its counterparty exposure to AIG, as has been repeatedly explained by Goldman themselves. If you don’t take their word for it, check AIG’s own internal memo: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/collateral_b.pdf
Since this is how it went down, Goldman could either a.) be given that $13 billion from AIG or b.) collect that $13 billion from AIG’s hedge counterparties. So if AIG would have been allowed to fail, it was as simple as collecting the remainder from AIG’s hedge coutnerparties; this is what it means to be hedged…
A lot of this nonsense about Goldman Sachs is simply Goldman envy, and a lot of other banks hold a bit themselves. Not envious at how rich they are, or even that they have a lot of influence; they’re envious at how much better Goldman is at what they do.
Of course, when I tried having this conversation with people over at FDL, they called me a troll, someone from RedState infiltrating, a corporate sell-out, etc etc.
You misunderstand the problem. First of all, Goldman should have never been paid back 100%. Second, bankers are going to do what is best for the bankers. Third, CDO’s and all that were basically insurance. Where were the loss reserves? Fourth, it’s interesting to see you agree with the “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” way of thinking. Because that’s what it comes down to. Why should a bank(or IB) behave if they know the Gov’t is going to save their bacon every time they screw up?
AIG paid out 100% because Goldman wasn’t in a position where an AIG failure would have been worse than accepting a haircut. If AIG failed, Goldman would have seized the posted collateral and collected the rest of the money from its hedge counterparties–so if AIG had offered 50 cents on each dollar, Goldman would essentially have been choosing between 50% and 100%. Hmm, I wonder which one they’re going to choose? If you have a problem with the FDIC-backed debt that Goldman issued, take it up with Sheila Bair; it’s her fault for not including a call-provision in the debt-instruments.
How so? Because I don’t think it’s politically or legally possible to put the banks into receivership?
Mark Thoma talks about this in one of the recent lectures I watched, I think on December 3rd?
You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRwWzdbjCsM
So you are saying that the banks are really the ones that rule this country?
If banks were “ruling this country” (whatever that means) they wouldn’t be repaying their billion dollar loans that they got last year. Most of them already have because of both the restrictions imposed and the stigma of having received the loan from the government (taxpayers). Do they have a lot of influence in Congress? Of course, the most uneducated voter knows that.
@seabe: I’m in the banking business and could not agree with you more on your comments regarding the banking bailout, etc. Matt Taibbi and Ariana Huffington and Sirota and the like insist that anyone who was in banking in the last 10 years can only be guilty, part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution. That’s complete hogwash. That’s like saying after the Challenger space shuttle disaster, that you get rid of the space engineers who were part of the design and delivery and bring in automobile designers to build the next shuttle.
I liked Taibbi for a time, but his nonsense starting with “The Big Takeover” and ending with “Obama’s Big Sellout” has pushed me over the edge.
Don’t even get me started on Sirota; that guy sucks at everything he touches, from policy (he supports populism in policy, which is idiotic), to understanding how Congress works and what’s good strategy (which Booman dominates, as is why I come here and love it here), to being able to take criticism (lol @ his poutrage diary at Kos when he left).
I don’t trust Huffington. She reminds me of Dianne Feinstein.
Well, they’re part of the ruling class. No?
Another thing about my own ideological position, I, like Yglesias, find Denmark to be a better model for how we should conduct business. That is, have much higher taxes, a simpler tax system, and less regulation. This brings freedom for businesses, freedom for the workers who have a social safety net to rely on if need be–Universal Health Care, great education systems with free/near free college, etc–high unionization, etc.
However, our idiot conservatives won’t accept the social safety net like European conservatives have. This poses a problem…
but you see Booman, the problem with not being an Anti-Corporatist is that then you have to write long, coherent, well-thought out posts like this one……when it is so much easier and more effective to blame Rahm Emmanuel for everything and team up with Grover Norquist to write nasty letters about him to the AG.
THAT, Sir, is how smart progressives get things DONE.
has Obama gotten DONE?
We still don’t have even the shitty health care plan that the Senate passed.
We’re still spending millions every day in Iraq for no reason whatsoever.
And we’re about to escalate our involvement in Afghanistan to prop up a wholly illegitimate government there.
“We still don’t have even the shitty health care plan that the Senate passed.”
Exactly. And we may never get it; hence the importance of “celebrating” it right away, as was done in this blog as soon as the Senate voted its passage.
An organic vegetable garden and beehives on the White House south la—– oh, wait, that was Michelle.
He dropped the use of “war on terrorism”. Granted, that’s a positive step. But then, he was no sooner nominated by the Democrats in 2008 than he took up the stupid habit of the flag-pin in the suit lapel. That should have been understood to speak volumes.
Wasnt Hillary the same person that gave up her fight for Universal HealthCare b/c of all the money and pressure from the insurance industry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMqXIcG6oWM
M. Moore already exposed her as a sell out.
He buckled to Lieberman and gave the insurance companies a Christmas gift.
Booman,
You just don’t get it. The anti-corporatists (3 or 4 of the commenters here as you will note) expect Obama to bring his knife to the gunfight and fight like hell. Doesn’t matter of course that he would lose – we elected him to fight dammit!
I had to laugh at the reactions of the anti-corporatists last week when Obama said he hadn’t campaigned on the public option. Well IMHO he didn’t. Now you can parse the words “campaign on” if you want but the fact is, it was never a staple of his rhetoric. Only when asked he would usually say he would prefer a single payer but it would be too difficult to implement from where we are, that the public option would bring more competition, yada yada yada. But hilariously over on Daily Kos, slinkerwink as we all know, had spent the last several months with screaming headline diaries about Obama not supporting the public option to her satisfaction. Then when the Senate bill eliminated it and Obama said he didn’t campaign on it, all the sudden slinkerwink was headlining diaries on how he HAD campaigned on it. lol. You can’t satisfy these people – no way, no how.
I personally thought he was saying he campaigned for some sort of healthcare reform and not just on the public option alone. But I’m not surprised that people spazed out over that. I’m used to their behavior by now.
l have no interest in parsing the did he or didn’t he campaign on a public option argument, imo, it’s a moot point. however, his rhetoric since assuming office has been very clear: from 17 july 09: “…any plan l sign must include an insurance exchange including a public option…”
given this clear statement, as well as others, and the unfortunate fact, for reasons we’re all aware of, it is not going to be the bill as of this date.
l’m not of the kill the bill group, but l can understand, to some degree, the anger and frustration being felt by many on the left. l am going to very interested in seeing what actually comes out the the merging process, whether it’s done formally by a committee, or they revert to closed door negotiations, vis-a-vis the ping pong procedure. l’m not optimistic that there’ll be significant changes from the senate version.
“Any plan I sign…”. He hasn’t signed any bills yet, has he?
l specifically noted that we don’t yet have a final version of the bill. but if are you implying that there’ll be a public option component in the final bill, that battle’s lost.
And if this were a monarchy and Obama were king, we’d have our public option. But we’re not. So we won’t. At least not in HCR 1.0.
Well done, BooMan.
It amazes me how soon Americans forget. I swear, we must be the dumbest fucking people on earth.
Obama can be the biggest disappointment to progressives in the world. He can punch all the hippies he wants. I will hold them for him as he punches them (right now the ingrates deserve it). He can go to Hawaii for a three year vacation if he wants.
And I won’t give a shit. You know why? BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS REPUBLICANS. THEY ARE FUCKING CRAZY.
When a so called progressive gets in bed with a crook/lier/asshat like Norquist and uses Republican talking points and gives tea baggers cover on their web site, they are no friend of mine. You don’t associate with Norquist, even when you agree with him. Why? BECAUSE HE IS FUCKING CRAZY AND HAS NEVER BEEN RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING.
They will destroy this country! How is that so hard to understand? We are no longer talking policy, we are talking about whether you want a government run by SARAH FUCKING PALIN and her cohort!
I would say some of you cannot see the forest for the trees, but that is not the case. You are whining about the leaves on the trees while people are coming with torches to burn the forest down!
You complain about congress? Well guess what? Some posting here don’t deserve better.
Because you are to stupid to recognize ‘better’ when you see it.
Morons.
nalbar
Excellent comment, Nalbar. The good news is that Obama’s approval rating is actually rising following the HCR vote. This only underscores the total irrelevance of the likes of Hamsher, Sirota, Taibbi – which in turn pisses them off more. It’s all about them. Let them talk to themselves. They had literally no impact at all on the HCR debate. None. This whole tempest lives inside the “progressive” (alleged – for reasons you effectively outline) teapot. Luckily the average uninsured person today has no idea who Jane Hamsher even is.
I totally agree with ya Nalbar! So infuriating that Hamsher has aligned herself with Norquist and is acting like it’s the best thing since sliced bread. WTF.
I don’t see the point of self-identifying as “anti-corporate” when we live in a corporate-dominated world. If you dismiss things that are “corporate,” you presumably live on some sustainable farm somewhere where you grow crops from seeds that have been handed down in the family or something. And who knows where the computer came from that allowed you to carp about “corporatism.” Yes, corporations touch everything, and to malign effect. But clearly there are degrees of malignity, and IMHO the point of this bill is to reduce the amount of harm corporations can do to the citizenry. Before we can achieve non-corporate, let’s work towards less corporate, or, barring that, at least towards better corporate citizenship.
Not that I post here these days, but I used to, and now I will write this site off, and “Booman”, as just another “centrist” Republican-Lite bullshit site.
You should be seriously ashamed of yourself. Seriously ashamed.
Are you blind? Do you not see that what we have in this country is defacto fascism? Do you watch CNN 24 hours a day or something, are you fucking BRAINWASHED?
I’m astounded at the moral depravity on display here, by someone calling themselves a “Democrat”.
Fuck you and the Chinese schoolgirl making 20 cents an hour you rode into town on.
Here’s a nice picture to leave you with. A little reminder of what corporatism is all about. Does the word “Bhopal” mean anything to you, or are you like ten fucking years old?
I love the ‘cancel my account’ comments, but they’re better as emails.
There is actually a diary to the same effect…
yep…we haven’t had a lot of GBCW diaries here…they’re always entertaining though, imo.
wow. has no one mentioned “neoliberal” yet? the post was an almost perfect example of neoliberal thinking.
considering how many millions neoliberalism has killed, wish you-all would reconsider.
anyway, here’s a bit from a 2007 paper, The Logic of the Health Care Debate (my bolds):
neoliberalism is fundamentally at odds with progressivism.
Hey, Selise, I think I hear Mistress Jane calling……she’s got a new Kill the Climate Change bill petition up that she’s co-signing with George Will. Turns out Rahm Emmanuel was behind global warming too.
Why don’t you scurry back over there and be the first to sign it, like the good little Janebot you are?
hahahahahaha!!!
oh, that’s hilarious. i didn’t know you had such a great sense of humor. you must have been holding out because i haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.
thanks. am still laughing.
That’s the ideological argument.
But I’m not willing to lose an opportunity to give 30 million people access to health care, including those with preexisting conditions so that I can lose an ideological argument.
Practically everything done worthwhile in the legislative sense has necessarily involved a compromise in ideology. I distinctly remember Bill Clinton during the 1993 SOTU drawing his “line in the sand” regarding universal coverage. It was a great applause line, but can we review the end result of all the ultimatums and tough talk? That’s right — nothing. I suppose for the ideological purists that really don’t give a shit about actual results this is fine (e.g.: the “anti-abortion” hard-liners in wingnut world). For me, I will sacrifice ideological purity for results any day.
where to start?
ok, i’ll stop for now.
Brilliant! But this critique of yours won’t be “heard”. Booman and his clique here are deaf to this.
You write,
“you are confusing your role, which is that of a citizen with a soapbox and not that of a legislator. you can’t control whether or not a bill is passed, you can’t even vote for or against a final bill.”
No, Booman is the force behind the scenes (LOL!). He’s directing the action. Don’t you read his stuff? He’s always writing about how “we” have to do this, that and the other thing in Congress, the White House, etc. Of course, he’ll say that all that is just a manner of speaking.
Yeah, right.
p.s. re: “30 million people access to health care”
booman, it’s health insurance not healthcare. please read marcy’s threads:
21% of People in MA Still Forgo Necessary Medical Care
“Affordable” Health Care
Just curious, but isn’t Kos media a corporation?
First of all, don’t start an argument with anti-corporatists by quoting DLC Saint Hillary. Now, I know that you, Josh Marshall, Nate Silverman, et al, have been busy gilding this Senate HCR lilly (trying to inflate crumbs into steaks) and are a little chagrinned that we anti-corporatists can’t comprehend eleven dimensional chess (a figment of your imagination in retrospect) and notice the turds in the punch bowl. I recognize your three monkey (hear, see and speak no evil) approach to this, but I find that it lacks passion as well as premise.
In your latest attack on Hamsher, you baldly admit Obama lied about the Public Option–but hey, according to you and the smartest guys in the room, that’s grown-up politics. You drone on about marginal successes such as extending COBRA, forgetting to mention that it really doesn’t matter as no one can afford it anyway. You’re proud, that unlike anti-corporatists with their flawed analysis and strategies, Obama Democrats such as yourself, just want the best possible environment to ensure Obama has a successful presidency. Booman, politicians in a democracy are tools of their electorate–no more and no less. I can sleep a lot better at night knowing my politician is not sleeping with corporatists as opposed to knowing Obama’s presidency isn’t successful. He and Rahm may think everybody’s in the boat on this fraud but that’s not the case. As a Democrat, I donated $100 and volunteer time. As a Progressive I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
Gee Booman–its going to be such a wonderful world when your Democrats increment their way to a Progressive Corporate State. Meanwhile, I’ll just link to your site once a week or so–like I do Politico and Red State– to see what the grown-up Democrats are doing.
BTW What is with all this sympathy for Hadassah Lieberman on your blog site? I could see it if she were a sweet little Jewish mother cranking out chicken soup all day–but that’s not the case is it? She’s part of the problem–add her annual salary to “Traitor Joe’s” health industry contributions if you don’t mind. I’m sure they consider it. Your defense of her seems to be based more on The Godfather rather than reality.
Your reading comprehension isn’t very good. I never said that Obama lied about the public option, unless you mean that I acknowledged he lied when he said he didn’t campaign on it.
Also, I didn’t quote Hillary to contrast her policy with progressives, but to show that the Democrats at the leadership level have been selling us this incrementalist private insurance-reliant crap for a very long time and no one should be surprised about it getting it now.
Socialized medical care is the last possible New Deal program that Democrats must want to finish our liberal-socialist agenda. Yes, we must also go back to a true progressive tax system, but government run medical care is last essential system we must work toward.
It would not be possible in the US, given the amount of corruption in our electoral system, to do a regulated private care system such as Japan’s. And that is why the public option or broadening Medicare or even Medicare for All was important. But it doesn’t look as if we will get there during this administration’s two terms.
It is easy to be patient when you are young. But the rest of us….well.
Socialized medical care is the last possible New Deal program that Democrats must want to finish our liberal-socialist agenda. Yes, we must also go back to a true progressive tax system, but government run medical care is last essential system we must work toward.
It would not be possible in the US, given the amount of corruption in our electoral system, to do a regulated private care system such as Japan’s. And that is why the public option or broadening Medicare or even Medicare for All was important. But it doesn’t look as if we will get there during this administration’s two terms.
It is easy to be patient when you are young. But the rest of us….well.