Well, one group of individuals that has not given up is Sanders’s army of small donors. The Sanders campaign just announced that they raised more than $40 million in February and are now trying to get to $45 million by midnight.
In case you don’t know, those are insane numbers. If he accomplishes little else, Sanders has proven the concept that you can run a presidential election funded by regular folks.
I don’t even know what they can do with all that money. But he’s got no reason to drop out.
I’ll tell you, it makes sense to want two seemingly contradictory things at the same time. You might want Clinton to be the nominee and still want Sanders to have as close to half of the delegates at the convention as possible. In other words, you may want to vote for Sanders even if you don’t actually want him to win.
Why would you want this?
Because you want a progressive party with a progressive platform and progressive rules changes, but you’re not ready to roll the dice on Sanders as the nominee.
If the polls are anywhere near correct, it’s a risk-free proposition with no downside.
Yup!
Just gave him my second small donation in 2 days. It’s not over until it’s over.
Not cancelling my monthly contribution to Sanders until the end of the primaries. Not a dime for Clinton nor anyone that endorses her. (Note to DNC, DSCC, DCCC: please STOP calling me for contributions!)
I, my husband, sister, and brother-in-law are doing the same thing. We all were “born” Democrats and the youngest in the group is mid-60’s. Sis and her husband voted for Bernie today in the Oklahoma primary and I and my husband are doing early voting today in our state. Today is our 31st anniversary and we are celebrating by voting for Bernie!
Already, Sanders has pushed Clinton to the left. He got her to embrace the public option which she proposes introducing at the state level. Imagine if California passed a public option, what a game changer that could be. Hillary Clinton had no intention of pushing the public option on her own. Sanders forced her into it. At the same time, given how entrenched health care interests are, I think a public option is actually the fastest and best path to single payer.
Keep in mind that moving to single payer in one fell swoop wouldn’t just mess with insurance companies and drug companies. It would mess with doctors, nurses, technicians, and pretty much everyone else in the healthcare industry. My wife is a psychologist. Her reimbursement rate would fall. I’m alright with that; it’s a price we’d gladly pay to have single payer. But we’re not normal. A public option could get us to single payer in a way that doesn’t cause anywhere near as much disruption.
that argument: if you have to be “pushed” to the left . . . then are those your real beliefs? Will you stick to and follow through on them if elected (or are they just what you perceive to be the “right” things to say to GET elected)?
Or will you be more like Obama, e.g., paying lip-service to mortgage “cram-down” in a bankruptcy bill, while spending no political capital to actually make it happen (and even spending only a tiny fraction of appropriated HAMP funds, despite being given that authority)?
This is my #1 misgiving re: Hillary. If she hadn’t had to be “pushed” by Sanders to embrace positions close to his, but embraced them on her own from the start, she would seem a pretty acceptable candidate to me. But if she had to be so “pushed” to get there, how reliable is her commitment to those positions?
This is just a reality of politics. FDR refused to come out strongly against lynching, which was then a scourge in the South, because he had a political coalition to hold together. If you’re wanting purity, look elsewhere. Those who cannot accept compromise are not going to accomplish much. But those who can accept incremental change can pocket gains and, over time, change law and culture.
Effective anti-lynching laws came in time. It took longer than it should have, but those with a vision of a colorblind society (including Eleanor Roosevelt) never stopped pushing and it eventually came to pass. Of course this was part of a larger movement to truly embody the founding vision (for all the hypocrisy of Jefferson and others) of a nation where all men (today we’d add women) are equal. Even with an African-American family in the White House, we’re not there yet and that movement continues.
When liberal congressmen were threatening to pull the plug on Obamacare because it didn’t include a public option, I contacted my Representative, Raul Grijalva, who knew me personally because of my community activism, and made clear in the strongest possible words that to withdraw support on the eve of a huge victory would be unforgivable. I think my exact words were to not be a fucking pussy and support the damn bill.
I’ve no idea if my words made any difference. But there were no doubt many similar calls, letters and e-mails and Raul changed his tune. Imperfect as Obamacare is, it was (and remains), to quote Joe Biden, a big fucking deal. That’s why Republicans have been hyperventilating about it ever since.
They understand the long game. Many on our side do not. Yes, Hillary had to get pushed. Yes, she cannot be trusted. We’re not the only interest she’s looking out for. But we can hold her feet to the fire. She promised us a commitment to a public option. It’s our job to demand it and not let her place it on a back burner.
“Pushing her left” huh? How much commitment do you, personally, expect her to hold? This is pure posturing and striking a pose. She hasn’t been pushed left at all. What nonsense. Do you guys even listen to her on the campaign trail? She has been driving a wedge between identity politics and class based politics once it became clear Sanders was starting to develop into an actual threat. She and her handlers have not been disparaging Sanders for being unrealistic, but for his positions altogether. She opposes universal benefits, she supports means testing. She supports overturning Citizens United, but doesn’t seem to understand the premise behind money in politics altogether (of course she understands, she’s just spoon feeding lines for her supporters; the line is “where’s the quid pro quo?!? Huh?” Who knew she agreed so much with Justice Scalia). She is a neoliberal to the core, yet somehow people here are actually convinced of some leftward turn. Lol. You are politically expedient to her. When the GE rolls around she isn’t going to be draping her campaign in BLM talking points, I can tell you that. When she needs to hold onto the rust belt against a white supremacist who very well could attract a substantial portion of the white vote from key regions? That’s the last thing she’ll be doing. We will be the first ones thrown under the bus.
Yes, and her proposed domestic policies are her strong suit! I found it interesting that a committed unreconstructed American interventionist wanted to talk foreign policy in a Dem primary, ha-ha. I don’t know my own party, I guess.
Ultimately Bernie decided not to highlight the differences, as far as I can tell. Not a single negative ad as far as I’ve seen. Hell, his “FDR/Glass Steagall” ad doesn’t even identify the prez that signed the repealing legislation! I guess he assumes the viewer can figure it out—good luck with that!
Certainly no one can realistically accuse Bernie of waging a bitter and divisive campaign.
From what I’ve read (see link below) he wanted to hit back much harder, but Tad Devine ruled against it saying she was too popular within the party. Understandable, but I think he could have been more forceful in connecting Wall Street and how that affects your day to day operations.
And how exactly is anyone going to hold her feet to the fire (whatever that might mean in concrete terms)? We’re going to demand a public option. Right, demand it. So demand it and see what you get until the next election After all, you say yourself, she can’t be trusted! What’s going on here? Bipartisan compromise. I, too, find it hard to get my head around any kind of substantial, consequential change. Who doesn’t? Very few on this blog anyway.
Citizen bends FDR’s ear on some proposal citizen favors. FDR responds (paraphrasing?), “I agree. Now make me do it.”
The relevant distinction being between a politician seeking backup (and/or cover) in order to achieve something s/he already believes in and wants to do; and a politician expediently adopting positions (to which s/he may have arrived only recently, or which may actually contradict previous positions) with an eye toward his/her electability (and thus for which questioning sincerity and reliability for follow-through seems not-unreasonable).
I’m agnostic re: on which side of this divide HRC resides (though I suspect “both”, depending on the particular issue/position in question). I see merit in argument’s like Minneloushe’s (this thread) for seeing a genuine, leftward evolution in Hillary’s life history. And merits in the counter-arguments. (I have little patience with or sympathy for the rabid vituperation casting her as the Spawn of Satan that I seem to find here with depressing frequency, though.)
arguments [NOT ‘argument’s’!!!] like Minneloushe’s . . . “
I would say reliable relative to the strength of the pushing. I don’t see Clinton as a faithful ideologue, but someone who is looking for the largest demographic to represent, without a whole lot of concern for what they want.
Make it a mandate, and remember she’ll be running for RE-election from day one, and I don’t see a problem. But there must be public pressure commensurate with what the Teabaggers did on the right… which seems feasible now, maybe not so much four or eight years ago.
Oh, hi, Booman Tribune. Only discovered you recently, when ‘Balloon Juice’ said you were a bunch of lefties. Good for you 🙂
See the silly Ohio debate over NAFTA, when both O and C said they opposed, and neither believed it.
Clinton believes in Free Trade. Period.
A major tell if there ever was one, but this time, Clinton really, really will only say what she really will stand for if elected. We voters are all Charlie Brown.
It ain’t free-trade! It’s advantaging monopolistic trade.
“free trade”, as though any such thing currently existed or is even remotely foreseeable. Doesn’t exist above the level of individual barter transactions, and hasn’t at least since fiat currency became the near-universal norm. Nor do any current or recent so-called “free trade” agreements actually have anything to do with anything that could accurately be called “free trade”. They seem more about editing the lists of winners and losers resulting from global trade.
Another example of grossly inaccurate and misleading terminology adapted into common usage for something it doesn’t remotely fit, thereby dumbing down our already-immensely-dumb discourse even further (cf. “conservative” for an extremist, Reality-Denying “movement” which includes among its core tenets the oxymoronic “principle” “conservatives against conservation”).
Just my opinion (but echoed by people I know who have known her personally over many years):
Hillary has been slowly moving leftward since college.
She was to the left of her husband when in the White House.
She is indeed a progressive, but clearly less so than Bernie Sanders.
Her campaign is primarily focused on the general election, not the primaries. She therefore was consciously aiming at Ohio, Virginia, Florida, etc. – swing states. However, realizing that Bernie’s campaign has achieved some real success with the Democratic base, she had to redirect her attention to the primaries. Therefore, although her team feels it may actually weaken her a little in the general, she has indeed emphasized progressive themes more, of late. This is not flip-flopping or hypocrisy, but strategy, and reaction to circumstances as they change.
My friends also consider her absolutely not a “hawk.” However, we are all happy to see her focus more on progressive themes. I disagree with her about the No-Fly Zone, and I disagree with both HRC and Sanders about the meme that Iran is the “main state sponsor of terrorism.” It is clear that this would be Saudi Arabia; but they are our allies, so neither of them can say that. Hillary, having been part of the administration, especially cannot say it. It is my opinion that all of them know this. Hillary has a big Israeli donor, and this also further restricts her; but no US candidate or president will ever abandon Israel, despite all of us here (I think) feeling … disappointed … with Netanyahu and the Likud/Settlers. Politics = Compromise.
NB: My suggestions here should not be taken as implying I am voting for Hillary, nor that I am voting for Bernie. I like them both for their different strengths. I reject categorically all the trash-talk about both of them; there is more about her, of course, since she’s been around longer in the public spotlight, as prime target of Fox/Rove/Drudge.
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Thank you for helping people understand this, parallax. It’s an important thing to put into the discussion. The assumption many people have that it would be possible to institute Medicare For All is a false assumption, not just politically but in policy terms as well. No country has public insurance that matches the qualities of the Medicare program in reimbursement to providers and access to all patients. Both of those aspects of public health programs are crucial.
Thanks cfdj. Sounds like you know a lot about this subject. Would love to understand more about Medicare reimbursement and its implications for building a system that provides healthcare access for all.
Questions: ‘qualities of reimbursement to providers and access to all patients.’ Does the first part refer to the amounts of money that the providers get for their services. If so, well those amounts are completely over the top compared to European health systems. If not, what do you mean? Do you really know so much about all the health systems in all other countries that you can confidently maintain Medicare provides wider access? I’m curious about this serious topic.
Not to mention drug costs under Medicare. But maybe (s)he thinks high cost is a plus, not a minus?
No, there is no doubt that the Federal government would save a bunch of money if Medicare were allowed to use its purchasing power to bargain down the price for medications. That portion of Medicare Part D is a real scandal, and it is why Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats took to the floor and bitterly attacked that portion of the Law before the vote. Let’s face it, voting no on giving seniors a break for their drug costs was a tough vote, but the Dems who did so were right to point out that the Law would, and has, needlessly created a lot of deficit spending. There was no meaningful funding mechanism to finance the subsidies to seniors.
Describing the various permutations of other nations’ public insurance programs would be complicated and lengthy, and I’m about to start my work day. Suffice to say that people in the United States who have good insurance plans do not have to wait as long on an average basis for routine health care appointments, checkups and tests as people have to wait who are covered by their government health insurance programs. In addition, top-line health care providers and executives are paid less, often significantly less, in those countries.
You and I can say that people should accept longer waits and health care professionals should accept lower but still healthy compensation for their work, because it would be for a greater good. I’d point out people’s reactions to the ACA and ask you to consider what the public’s reaction would be to single payer, which would disrupt the system and people’s current circumstances much more than the ACA has. Human nature is human nature, and vested interests are vested interests. Lobbyists are a tiny portion of the challenge here; the realities are broad.
80% of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans support single-payer, Medicare-for-all. Not your point, but it goes to show what Sanders says about money in politics (elections, lobbying, special interest) is the issue, like you say, not the will of the people.
As an apologist for those forces, consistently, persistently, what is your stake in the outcome, actually? I gather that you’ll say you’re in favor of single-payer, in theory, like Hillary pays lip service to it, but that it’s impossible to achieve, so “reality.”
When do politicians do the job voters elect them to do instead of lobbyists? And with leaders like Clinton, and apparently almost the entire Democratic Party behind her, how do we move toward Medicare-for-all, as a clear majority of the public has favored it for almost a decade now? Another long topic; discussion ongoing (and on and on and on). When do leaders begin to see that they’re the problem, and their so-called, not too pure, not too sullied, “just right” point of view is out of the mainstream?
This provides us a valuable opportunity I’d like us to engage in to really grapple with the intersection of politics, policy and public opinion.
“80% of Democrats and a quarter of Republicans support single-payer, Medicare-for-all.”
Public polling often creates disgust, anger and disengagement with politics by causing people to misidentify policy and political challenges. I’m not looking at the methodology of the polls you’re claiming here, but I’m aware of polls which show single-payer or Medicare-for-all polls well with Americans. Let’s confront how these polls are selling fantasies to the public.
Those of you who point out the many other Western nations who have forms of widely available public health insurance, and the relatively low amount those countries spend on health care, need to continue to think things through. What other public policy do all of these countries share? They have a much higher tax rate on individuals. Taxes of all sorts and varying by countries, from income to sales to property to services. Those taxes are necessary to help finance higher levels of government social services than we enjoy in the U.S.
The “Medicare-for-all” and “single-payer” polls you mention almost never poll for whether their respondents are willing to pay the taxes necessary to finance the program. The program would have to be financed, particularly on the front end to set up the infrastructure for both public and private actors who would have to become almost 100% cooperative with the program.
What is another thing which polls extremely well with the American people? Low taxes.
This is a political reality which is a significant barrier to passing single payer. The ACA increases taxes for insurance and services, but the taxes necessary to finance Medicare-for-all or single-payer would be much, much higher. Well-executed polls on political issues must poll for the positive and negative information which would come out in the course of the campaign or, in this case, policy discussion. Would Medicare-for-all poll at 80% with Democrats and at over 50% of all Americans if those polled were asked if they still wanted it if their income tax rates were raised to 40%?
What is another thing which polls extremely well with the American people? Waste, fraud and abuse takes up a huge amount of public spending which our taxes pay for.
I’m going to make a claim which would be hard to refute if you’re honest. Americans would not be willing to pay significantly higher taxes for a single-payer program because they would assume that if the “fraud, waste and abuse” were wrung out of the system, higher taxes would be unnecessary.
I have experience with this from having worked at a hospital for 25 years. Some of my colleagues would become angry with “frequent fliers,” a few people who used up a vast amount of health services. The provision of acute care hospitals services are expensive, so it is attractive to believe that if the homeless alcoholic/drug addict brought in by ambulance to the ER were denied services, we would not have to pay more taxes to get single-payer. This runs into the problems that we will not stop providing those services so it’s damaging to our discussion to pretend that we will, and that providing services to the frequent fliers which are more rational and less expensive is a laudable but extremely difficult goal to achieve.
Another patient in the ER with Medicaid insurance intentionally misreported their symptoms so they could receive an abdominal ultrasound which they would not have received if they had been truthful. It was attractive for a couple of my colleagues to believe that this person represented a massive part of health care expenditures, as a couple of colleagues also believed the care our hospital provided to undocumented immigrants represented a massive part of hospital expenditures. Our hospital collected enough data on patients to make it provable that those colleagues were wrong, that our hospital actually gave a disproportionately low amount of care for Medicaid beneficiaries and undocumented immigrants. It did not make a difference to my colleagues; they did not change their views when confronted with the evidence.
You and others believe it’s corruption and corruption only which blocks a more rational health care system. Simple answers tend to be appealing. I’m in agreement that even post-ACA we have a jerry-rigged, irrational health care system which spends money inappropriately and has tons of severe and immoral inequities. I’m also asking us to understand that there are many barriers in the way.
There is no savings to be had: $9,276 per capita which includes 33M uninsured and dog knows how many who can never use it prophylactically because of deductibles and high copays?
Why do they need MOAR taxes?
You kind of make it sound like health care providers, ER doctors, their associates and colleagues, and I assume, their incompetence, biases, and greed, are the enemy of the kind of single payer health care that fifteen developed nations have long provided for their citizens. Are our doctors, nurses, med techs and administrators so much worse than in those countries?
No. It’s the corrupt politics. This is not news; I’d guess it’s well known to 80% of Democrats that want to change our system (vicious or corrupt), and likely to the 25% of Republicans in favor of Medicare-for-all as well. You said a public outcry against a single-payer system is what would prevent its realization here in America. Polls don’t support the contention.
I think your response reflects what I’m talking about. Public biases, human nature and fixed ways of thinking of things are what makes improvements in public policy difficult.
I wouldn’t have expected a person to read my post and boil it down as you do here. Let me try to boil it down more directly:
– Polls which show majorities of Americans in support of single payer do not poll for whether those people would be willing to pay the higher amount of taxes necessary to finance the program. Thus, those polls falsely measure Americans’ support for single payer.
– Americans love low taxes, and have wildly false beliefs of how much taxpayer money is consumed by waste, fraud and abuse. These strong beliefs of Americans combine to make it unlikely that Americans would agree to tax themselves sufficiently and up front for the setup and implementation of a single payer program.
The Sanders campaign has to deal with these political realities, and it causes Bernie and his people to be evasive of the fact that it would require significantly higher taxes and/or other sources of revenue to set up and implement a single payer or Medicare For All system. Bernie cannot be as honest as would be preferred about this because if he was, he would lose support for both the policy and his campaign.
These obstacles are not so large and immutable that they will never be overcome. What I am asserting is that these real obstacles and other real obstacles exist today, and that campaign finance reform will not be enough to overcome these obstacles.
I brought up the views of a tiny number of my past colleagues as proxies not to represent that they are one of the major blocks to better policy, but to reflect what is a much more prevalent belief in the general public: if we got rid of all the cheats they’d have unicorns.
You have a well-developed belief that if we got rid of corruption in politics that “popular” public policy would be a relative snap. Your belief extends to finding Clinton and those you associate with her as nearly entirely responsible for the denial of what the American people want. These fixed beliefs caused you to bypass absolutely everything else I discussed.
Taxes are always a problem. But back up and comsider first that we pay about twice any other country. Why is that? Would it be possible if we eliminated for profit insurance from the mix that cost would fall and denial of service like narrow networks and impossible deductibles would cease thereby improving outcomes?
The question may really be this. On a cost basis, would the increase in taxes be more than offset by a reduction in insurance payments and just maybe a further reduction in overall health care costs to match other coumtries?
Let me be clear: on a sensible public policy basis, it would be much less expensive for the average American if they were to accept paying higher taxes for a form of public insurance in exchange for paying little to no premiums, co-pays and other fees to private insurers. This has to do with something that is less sensible: the fact that Americans feel differently about taxes and government than they do about private businesses and the payments for services they provide to businesses. They have been taught to hate government and taxes.
In addition to a million real policy challenges that our government would face in the implementation of a new public health insurance system, the political problem created by Americans’ distrust of their own governments is a real barrier. We could be mad at those Americans and feel that they are stupid for opposing what would be in the big-picture best interests of many of them, and certainly in the best interest of our society and our public budgets, but that will not win the support of those Americans.
Why do you keep injecting INSURANCE into the debate? Medicare is universally accepted by us and its tithe or TAX is collected from our wages without objection. The same system that works in several universal care nations whose citizens are equally allergic to TAXES.
With a population of 322,762,018 @ $10K a pop we cannot provide heath care to everyone? Absurd.
Medicare is public health insurance. It is insurance which has been established for decades. It is insurance which was extraordinarily controversial at the time before and after it was passed into law:
That said, it was less controversial at the moment of its passage in 1965 than a single payer health insurance program would be in 2016 for all Americans. One reason is that Medicare is enjoyed only by senior citizens. Senior citizens are more sympathetic as a group, and they vote more consistently. For these reasons they are harder to demagogue and have an easier time winning public policies which are in their self-interests.
There are additional reasons why public health insurance for all Americans would be more controversial and more difficult to pass into law than Medicare and Medicaid were in 1965. I think the Trump campaign reveals one of those reasons.
“With a population of 322,762,018 @ $10K a pop we cannot provide heath care to everyone? Absurd.”
Clearly, we can. And we should. What I am identifying is something else.
The Affordable Care Act is seen by many on this blog as an unsatisfactory quarter-loaf as health care policy goes. Many tens of millions more Americans view the ACA as an evil Communist/Marxist/Socialist/racist plot than the number of Americans who share your views.
Both of these groups of Americans undermine the future of the ACA. The group which wants to take away ACA-subsidized health insurance from Americans exhibits more power in the discussion of future health care governance. That is because there are more of them, and they are louder.
I am not saying that it will remain this way forever. This, however, is the political reality now.
that precise argument. He has publicly acknowledged (though apparently not sufficiently, or maybe not in sufficient detail or with sufficient emphasis to satisfy cfdj) that there would have to be higher revenues (i.e., taxes) from somewhere to pay for his proposals, but that there would be a net financial benefit to individual taxpayers in the former of lower payouts for their healthcare, including insurance, co-pays, etc. (Obviously, whether that’s true is arguable, since it’s the subject of considerable, ongoing argument.)
What I do know about US healthcare in comparison with the systems in other countries is that if they spent anywhere near what we spend on Medicare (per capita), their systems would be broken. Medicare beneficiaries complain about the co-pays. The providers complain about the reimbursement rates. Seniors in other countries appear to access services with their providers more often. Best guess (a guess because the data isn’t released) is that drug and medical device companies are the ones getting fat and happy off Medicare. Oh, and Part C (Medicare through managed health care providers) costs more than traditional Medicare, but can’t “cut that out” because those that opt for Part C are generally wealthier than those with traditional Medicare and therefore, they and their providers have clout.
Switzerland has comparable costs, but better outcomes. Germany does it for a bit over half.
Nobody considers 11.1% of GDP as comparable to 16.4% of GDP or $8,213 per capita comparable to $5,270 per capita And keep in mind that the US per capita figures include the entire population and unlike other countries, the entire US population doesn’t have access to medical services except in dire emergencies.
Was using dollar costs, of course. And I noted your other objections in another post. We don’t have anything approaching universal coverage or access, if cost is considered.
“Keep in mind that moving to single payer in one fell swoop wouldn’t just mess with insurance companies and drug companies.”
That is an important point that few consider. Single payer, with the government as the effective insurer like Medicare, necessarily reduces the space for private, for profit insurance companies. Imagine the fall in stock prices for companies in that space. There would be an uproar about government take over of private business – – socialism and communism. It could never happen all at once, and Sanders has not addressed that issue.
OTOH I have no idea what you mean by a public option. Anything outside of private insurance will be a problem. And how exactly would you modify it to keep insurers on board? They tried that once. I think the so called public option is a ruse and nothing substantial will come of it.
Single payer- medicare for all might move forward on an incremental basis, but it needs to be on the federal level to insure it is uniform and universal, and can be transported between states, and not boycotted by conservative state legislatures. It is too bad Sanders has not addressed the way forward. I expect nothing to come of the so called public option, and I think I object to Hillary supporting that as much or more than Sanders ignoring problems with single payer. Both are unrealistic.
I can say I would rather support the aspirations of Ssnder’s plan far more that Clinton’s fake plan. But maybe hers is a salve.
I would hope we learned a HARD lesson in failing to federalize Obamacare.
ARGGGGGGG…..
OK, I want to go all caps here, but I’ll refrain. As originally written, the ACA law essentially did in effect federalize the expansion of Medicaid eligibility. It is the Roberts Court SCOTUS decision that took that away.
It is infuriating that people blame Obama and Congress for the fuck-over of poor people forced on the ACA by Chief Justice Roberts’ irrational judicial decision and the Stupid States who hate the Black President and poor/minority people so much that they badly hurt their own States’ budgets and the providers of safety net health care services by refusing billions of dollars of Federal money to subsidize those States’ health insurance coverage.
The ACA also (again, to a degree) Federalized the private health insurance exchanges in each State by making them mandatory. Either the State is required to run its own exchange under fairly strict guidelines or the Federal government will run the exchange in the States who refuse to run their own. In Kentucky, for example, the new Governor announced that he will end the State’s staffing and financing of its Kynect exchange, but a private health insurance exchange will still exist in Kentucky. It’ll just be run by the Federal government once Governor Bevin and his Legislative wrecking crew have finished with their discussion of how best to withdraw the running of the exchange by State personnel.
It did not federalize Medicaid. It expanded Medicaid to all states that participate in exchange for them to fund 10% of it in the future, and they would get no Medicaid money at all if they didn’t expand it. Roberts re-wrote the second part. It was never federalized. If it was we would save even more money than we already do from Medicaid dollars because how much of it is privatized at the state level.
I would claim that Medicaid is federalized in a limited way, in that the Federal government has very strict guidelines and provides strong oversight of how each State must achieve with the Federal money it spends on its Medicaid expression. I concede that it is not federalized in the same way Medicare is. But the Fed’s Medicaid guidelines and oversight are very strong.
Medicaid eligibility expansion has been accomplished by a couple of States with permission by the Federal government to include some private sector adminstration of those States’ expansions. But those States are going to have to show in ways measured by the Feds that the new Medicaid recipients have enjoyed equal or better quality and access to care at equal or cheaper costs at the end of the States’ relatively brief (2- to 3-year) waiver periods. It’s going to be difficult for them to show these results. If the States’ expansions aren’t found to have delivered those things, their waivers will be pulled.
ACA is more than just Medicaid expansion. States are where safety net/healthcare initiatives go to be mismanaged and blown up. I live in Texas. Ask me about S-Chip. This “laboratory of the states” nonsense has never improved a federal program to my knowledge.
I agree. It is maddening that the ACA has often taken all blame for all problems in the health care system, including intentional and incompetent public policy failures by State governments. But it has.
Now, THAT’s a righteous rant, and 100% accurate! Kudos.
We lived all that here in MT. First, GOP-majority legislature simply refused Medicaid expansion. Then in the next session, our ConservaDem Gov. Bullock collaborated with a “traitorous” (in the eyes of their batshit-insane wingnut colleagues) faction of “moderate” GOPers to finally pass a Bastard-Child-of-ACA “compromise” Medicaid expansion that includes premiums (2% of income as I recall) and co-pays, and required a separate, (redundant) private administrator be contracted rather than running the expansion through the existing Medicaid state government agency. (The bastard child did get approval from the feds and is now operating.)
Cuz, ya know, it just wouldn’t do for those poor people not to have some “skin in the game” (the literal argument that was made)! Morally damaging to them, dontchaknow.
“Infuriating” is exactly what all that was. Better than nothing, but massively worse than what the ACA originally provided for. And sadly, probably as good as was politically doable here, given the basic meanness of the wingnut opposition.
Here’s the reality of your claim that Clinton has been pushed to the left:
DNC Chair Joins GOP Attack On Elizabeth Warren’s Agency. And DWS will be an even more powerful surrogate for a Hillary administration.
Lots and lots of DEMs need to stop chugging down the “third way” swill cloaked in unicorns and rainbows.
Saw that. She already made it possible for poors to pay higher interest rates on auto loans. Whatta girl!
Right in there with Biden’s bankruptcy bill (which Clinton managed to keep her fingerprints off and she’ll do the same with this one). But DEM looove Biden and Clinton.
I love what Bernie’s done and I’m grateful for what he’s already achieved. It’s very unlikely that my vote will matter by the time California has it’s primary. If it does, if Hillary is far ahead, I’ll vote for Bernie to push a liberal agenda. If Bernie pulls off an upset and is strongly ahead, I’ll delightedly vote for him. If the vote is basically tied, then I would vote for Hillary, because if Bernie isn’t able to take Democrats by a good margin, I think that shows that the nation isn’t ready for his “revolution”. In that case, we let Hillary run things while we keep building the foundation for a Dem Socialist society.
This is really patronizing.
Sanders didn’t run as some sort of demonstration that the “little people” can in fact contribute enough to make a viable candidate out of someone that they like but don’t want to win. The DEM establishment is salivating over all that money from the “little people” that they expect to co-opt for the general election and subsequent primaries. It’s not as if this is the first time that a presidential candidate has done this. It’s just that Sanders has done it better than the others, and doing it better is all about who he is and what he stands for. That’s not transferable to any neo-liberal DEM.
Sanders also didn’t run to push Clinton to the left. He knows, and voters should know, who she is and who has funded her rise to achieve her long-held goal. Should he lose and should Clinton win the general election, far more people will be far better informed to evaluate her performance in real time because Sanders is educating them. That’s something that didn’t happen during Bill Clinton’s term (in part because of all the time wasted defending him on personal matters). In real time, how many DEMs correctly read the telecom and energy deregulation that Bill supported? I actually saw the repeal of Glass-Steagall coming but couldn’t get anyone interested in paying attention. And much of that damn commodity futures “modernization” was slipped through in the dead of night; so nobody but the sneaky bastards (that didn’t including Congress) knew what they were up to.
The DEM establishment is salivating over all that money from the “little people” that they expect to co-opt for the general election and subsequent primaries.
You saw that Tiger Beat on the Potomac article, right? This one:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/sanders-and-house-democrats-219430
Gerry Connolly is a clown if he thinks the energy and money are transferable.
I didn’t. But I do know how establishment DEMs and their party roll. They’re very predictable. Unimaginative, uninspiring, and greedy and envious as all get out. There is no monetary cost to adopt authentic principles in favor of the many, not be hypocritical, not lie, cheat, and steal, and develop a vision that makes for a better country and world. But they’d rather plot out ways to tap into getting money from the “little people” as Sanders has done.
God, I loathe the scum filling the insider and upper echelon of the DEM party.
Yes, their all little emperors without clothes.
Yes, your intense hatred is quite evident. In my view, it causes you to receive and deliver information through a distorted lens. It certainly causes you to be a less effective organizer than you are capable of being.
Persuading people you hold in contempt is nearly impossible. I think you understand this. You don’t like being talked down to and told you are wrong. It doesn’t work any better when you treat others in the same way.
I respect you. Disagreeing with you is not the same as disrespecting you.
Over under on how many months Clinton passes TPP and goes “welp I came here to get big things done and this is the best we could get. And we won’t want China writing our rules, amirite?”
And then Clinton’s backers will do a two-step: first, they will act betrayed during the negotiations, “whocouldaknkwn!?!” Then they will adopt Clinton’s lines for why they support it and why you should too. Then when she signs it into law, they will browbeat liberals for opposing it, something something emoprog.
I always heard from these same Clinton backers that “we’re fine with a challenge to the left in the primary! We welcome it in fact.”
No. This was not a welcoming. Clinton and her backers needed to smother any left challenge in its crib before it really catches on. The truth is, that same anger exhibited now isn’t going away.
Those in love can rationalize anything and everything. Plus, the Clinton’s supporters don’t authentically care about climate change, income/inequality, etc. Winning with the candidate they have chosen is everything. Anything/everything else is as irrelevant to them as it is to Trump supporters. They’ll believe anything/everything their candidate says today even if it wasn’t what he/she said yesterday and doesn’t matter if they preferred yesterday or today’s policy position of the candidate.
you can be.
E.g.,
Does it never even occur to you that that could possibly, just maybe, perhaps apply to anyone, anywhere, ever who’s “feeling the Bern”? (I ask as one who feels it myself!)
And the baselessly sweeping generalizations of the rest (certainly false, given the universality with which you state them, i.e., it would require only a single verified counter-example to disprove them) are just ridiculous.
We all remember….renegotiate NAFTA, don’t we?
And then when Clinton gets more involved in Syria (and she wanted to) we will get the excuses (Well we can’t do nothing)
Expect the Ukraine to heat up, too. Pressure from industrial agriculture lobby for their ROI.
After race baiting Sanders with his post on South Carolina, and then bringing up McGovern (ever notice how Mondale never gets mentioned in those pieces ) he now tries to pretend that he has anything in common with Sanders supporters.
Billmon has been dead right: Sanders exposed a rift in the party. What appeared to be a tactical argument was actually a profoundly ideological one.
The teactical argument allowed people like Booman to pretend to be something other than marginally left of center.
McGovern!
African American votes in South Carolina.
All designed to get the left to sit down and shut up. At which point everyone will pretend that we actually really agree.
But we really don’t.
Stunning isn’t it? And look at all the self-identified liberal/progressives lapping it up. (Apparently the history of the ’08 DEM nomination has been rewritten as well. No racist dog whistles from team Clinton and she really didn’t keep her campaign alive by appealing to white voters that weren’t so keen on having a black man as POTUS.)
Here’s the thing no one will talk about. And I mean no one.
See there was always a lot of hate directed at liberals by the left. I HATED that. I cannot tell you how much I hated the self-righteous jerks in Burlington.
Truth be told we thought they were losers. That they didn’t matter and they would never matter, and that they hurt the cause more than helped it.
I was always being called sell out, etc. How stupid I was for not thinking Chomsky wasn’t Jesus.
My response was always the same: you couldn’t get elected dog catcher.
But make no mistake, it was an ideological dispute.
So 35 years later:
*The cold war ended. This had a big effect on the left – even though they will try to say they never were communists.
*When it ended, and this is particularly relevant for Sanders, it became clear he was more democrat than Marxist. I very well remember him during the attempted Coup in the Soviet Union, and how much he wanted Yelstin to win.
*Over time, as the DLC took control over the Party, it became clear the left and liberals had more in common than we thought.
*Nader happened – and third party politics as a serious project ended with him.
*Meanwhile – a lot of the predictions of the left about income inequality have proven true AND
*Our joint opposition to US involvement in stupid wars, which had very different origins in the cold war, became true joint opposition.
But for many liberals hippie punching and McGovern! is a reflex. They can’t stop it.
Even it makes them accomplices in the destruction of what they want to achieve.
What I refer to as the “woo-woo leftie-lefties” were as problematical for politically and economically astute lefties as they were for liberals. The difference is that lefties understood that the woo-woos were out-to-lunch and didn’t inform a social democratic political position.
WRT to attempted Soviet coup, lefties don’t like coups and in this case considered Yeltsin a proxy for Gorbachev. Sort of messed up on that. OTOH, Russians came to loathe Gorbachev and it took them years to figure out that Yeltsin was much worse economically.
Lefties back in those days weren’t prescient but had studied their history and could correctly connect the dots. I will never believe that it was a failure of lefties to communicate with liberals that was at the core of the fissure between the two. It’s really not different today. Liberals can rationalize their positions as “pragmatic” and lefties only want the impossible and liberals don’t even like much of that “impossible.” At least not until bits and pieces of the impossible come into being and then they like it without ever owning how much they had previously opposed it.
Same sex marriage is a good example because the impossible came relatively rapidly. To lefties it was a no-brainer. Equality under the law. No different than “Loving.” Marriage is a contract, law, and legally not a “sacred bond between a man and a woman.”
I cannot say how surprised I am to find myself on this side of the argument.
Why would you want this?
Because you want a progressive party with a progressive platform and progressive rules changes, but you’re not ready to roll the dice on Sanders as the nominee.
Why would Clinton’s supporters care? Meaning those that write the convention rules and party platform.
Have you ever watched a committee mark up a bill or have a vote on an amendment?
It’s disappointing to observe on this thread how extraordinarily disempowered these very passionate people believe they are, and how disempowered they want all Sanders supporters to be.
Hillary absolutely can be held to the positions on which she has moved left, like the TPP. But if people who care about the issue believe that upon winning the nomination there is nothing Americans could do to keep Clinton in opposition to a trade deal which would be bad for the American middle class, then they will be proven right by allowing their cynicism to overwhelm them so much that they fail to effectively organize TPP opposition.
It’s up to all of us, each and every day.
Well, that clears up a lot of things. You want progressive politics but with the Establishment leader. People in hell want ice water but the ice machine always seems to be broken. You put your nickel in the machine and all you get is the same old familiar neoconservative neoliberalism when you clearly pushed the button for progressive reform. Is it just me or is it hot in here? Did I just see the Donald taking the oath of office?
I know you don’t like Bernie because he’s outside of the Establishment, besides, your Princeton financial worker friends don’t like him either. At this point I think you should be afraid, very afraid, in fact, terrified of a President Trump.
You were quite right to worry about electability. Forget about Bernie for a moment to think about how Hillary will do against the now inevitable GOP candidate Trump in the general.
When my beautiful daughter was in middle school she would come home upset about what those mean girls at school had said about her. I would ask, “Was it true?” NO! Then don’t worry about it.
I was always glad the answer was no because if the answer was ever yes we would have a much more difficult problem. Please consider if you think the things in this article are true:
http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-me
ans-a-trump-presidency
Demographics and fear of the evil Trump will carry the day for her. Or so her supporters claim. If they don’t, they’ll do the same thing they did in 2000, blame the DFHs.
DEM leadership and partisan DEM voters aren’t all that skilled at strategic thinking and demonstrate a poor ability to imagine what a general election would look like once the GOP nominee is a known entity. Oh, the glee among Democrats when the ignorant and inarticulate GWB won the nomination. A cakewalk for Gore. (Poppy wasn’t all that much better and he was going to be easy to beat as well.) Gore did win the popular vote and probably the election as well, but to demonstrate that required the full counting of all the votes in a state where the governor was GWB’s brother.
When considering the possible DEM nominees, I always imagine them up against the possible GOP nominees. ’08 was easy with both Obama and Clinton as the GOP was enfeebled that year by the GWB administration and none of their candidates had the personal horsepower to defeat either of them. With Biden, Dodd, Edwards, and Richardson, it didn’t seem as clear cut to me. Had George Allen not imploded in ’06, he would have been the ’08 GOP nominee and I wouldn’t have been able to imagine that Obama or Clinton were the strongest DEM choices.
In ’04 my objection to Kerry (didn’t ever consider Edwards as viable) was his IWR vote. How does one run against an incumbent when one had agreed with the incumbent’s major disaster? Kerry couldn’t figure it out either and lost.
While I sort of agree with the linked article — don’t think his argument is as strong was he appears to think it is. He’s leaving out any possible events between no and next November other than Trump beating up the DEM nominee. It misses out on hedging for intervening variables. For example, in a Clinton v. Trump race the establishment GOP may sit this one out or they could go full anti-McGovern as establishment DEMs did in ’72. With Sanders as the nominee the GOP establishment will find a way to make a deal with Trump and the DEM establishment won’t lift a finger to prevent Sanders from losing. Doesn’t mean that any of those possible establishment moves will have the desired/intended effect but all of them can.
If the US economy hits a rough patch (many reasons to project that) before November, Clinton as the nominee will be dead meat. Sanders, OTOH, could end up a stronger candidate because of it.
I never give good odds to a candidate that can’t carry his/her home state. So far not seeing any reason to suspect that Trump can carry NY. So, that should be a little ray of sunshine for DEM partisans.
AustinSax,
Very well said. I congratulate you. It is a bit of a class thing, isn’t it?
Austin Sax,
Very well said. I congratulate you. You’ve opened a big can of worms. It is a bit of a class thing, isn’t it?
Brilliant – no two ways about it:
“You want progressive politics but with the Establishment leader. People in hell want ice water but the ice machine always seems to be broken”.
link
God, if they can just force that trade deal onto the platform.
She would probably have to depend on Republicans for the most part, but neolibs always have a Dem in the back pocket to put in the knife.
I agree. voting for him is not a waste.
A vote for Sanders is certainly not wasted, and neither are the donations — but an optimal donation/vote would be to liberal candidates in competitive house/senate races. It’s too bad Sam Wang is scaling back because his ROI page was really helpful in this regard.
Would be nice if Steve Israel/DWS had recruited many worth actually donating to.
As one of the little people, I have to admit that this vote isn’t that hard for me. I am a demonic lib’rul, and when given the choice I vote for (and donate to) the candidate that I think is the more “liberal”, and even hope they prevail. As far as I can see, Bernie is the actual committed lib’rul, Hillary is not. I don’t “know” what she is, frankly, because she has decided (or been “forced”) to play the political chameleon game–the boardroom lawyer is now the committed opponent of corporate abuse, ha-ha.
Anyway, being counted with like-minded voters doesn’t seem a waste to me. I do care about consistency of positions over time–as well as disastrous past actions–as outre, unsophisticated and naive as that may be.
I have serious doubts about how easy it will be for the salivating DC Dems to replicate the small donor model. It has now worked for Obama, and even moreso for Bernie. But as Marie points out, Bernie’s fundraising has a lot to do with his connecting to his “little people” supporters via his long record of fidelity to progressive policies. He seems authentic.
Thus, this model would never work for a temporizing, triangulating beltway establishment Dem. The bundling of the wealthy dollars will be their model for a long time to come. Fly in, ride the limo to the target city’s mansion district, meet to plutocrat of the hour and their maxed-out cronies, collect the bundle, prattle meaninglessly for 20 minutes while the wine is drunk, and fly out to the next target city and maxed-out bundles. Rinse and repeat.
That’s our tried-and-true “system”…
So, someone wants a party that that gives lip service to a progressive platform and progressive ideals, but in reality takes bribes from Wall Street, Big Pharma, Hollywood, and WalMart? Just window dressing to con the rubes? Count me out.
What I see with Sanders: Sanders is EDUCATING voters about what is going on with potential solutions.
Democratic voters NEED this education. Ergo, I really support Sanders running until the bitter end.
I have no illusions that whatever Sanders says will actually result in Goldwater Republican Hillary Clinton changing anything.
What I do think can happen is that VOTERS will gain an education, which may (maybe) spur them to THINK more deeply and become a bit more active.
It’s worth a shot. I see Sanders as providing a valuable and worthy public service. And it’s exactly WHY the media does it’s best to ignore him and hide him behind the black out curtain.
That’s my take. I am contributing to Sanders for that reason, mainly. If something else takes place and he gets the nomination, I’ll continue voting for him.
Sanders is far from perfect, but I don’t buy the LIE that Clinton can “get more done” than Sanders. Not true.
I might add that Sanders may also be valuable in awakening some in the GOP, who haven’t been totally brainwashed by the usual suspects in Hate Radio/Fox/the various Christian stations.
What Sanders is saying is so important to be said, and who else is saying it??
While Trump has bellowed out some “stuff” that sounds populist – and may be true – his message is mainly argleblargle hate minorities.
Sanders is a teacher and provides a consistent message. Way to go, Bernie!
This was pretty much what I was thinking when I filled in the Sanders blob in Virginia this morning. I’ll strongly support Clinton in the general, but I want the liberal numbers to show up. I thought about voting Trump just to troll the Repugs, but I feel much better for my Bernie vote.
Well here it is Super-Tuesday and the US Court and the NC Legislature have kicked the can down two weeks until the 15th. Or at least that’s the way I understand in. None of the voting precincts were open today.
I finally found descriptions of the folks on the ballot and said “who are these people”? Or “where have they been?”