The 1/2 Percent Solution
| Nebraska U.S. Senate Election 2006 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Democratic | Ben Nelson (Incumbent) | 377,907 | 63.9 | +12.9 | |
| Republican | Pete Ricketts | 213,054 | 36.1 | ||
Now, it's the esteemed Senator from East Jesus, Ben Nelson, who is single-handedly threatening to pull the plug on the already on-life-support national health care bill. Just so you know, Mr. Nelson was elected by a grand total of 377,000 Nebraska voters in 2006. He trumped his opponent by an 160,000 vote margin -- that's the number of people who determined his election.
By my calculation, then, a man who is beholden to less than 0.5% of the American population is now determining the health care future of 300 million Americans all by himself.
Modestly, I'd say the action is now on that 300 million. It's their move. Do they have something they would like to say or do? Or would they prefer to continue gawking?
December 19th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Liberals and progressives seem to have thought they could push through health care reform without organizing a really, really big movement to make it happen. There are some heroic people and voices in this (the California Nurses Association, for one) but by and large too many people think all you have to do is go out and vote every 2-4 years and the rest will happen by itself. Wrong, so wrong, oncew again.
December 19th, 2009 at 4:37 am
That’s once again, of course, miss that preview button…
December 19th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Ben Nelson also happens to be a guy who got rich as an insurance company counsel and then executive.
That said, Michael’s point gets to the heart of the matter.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I think it’s obvious that liberals don’t need to get electoral majorities to enact reform with teeth – we need to be able to bulldoze the opposition in the arena of public opinion, broad activism and outreach to the center, and a bullet-proof super-majority in the Senate (which probably means at least 62 Dems so that we can afford to tell a couple to fuck-off). The bar is very, very high for reform in this system. That’s just a fact. I feel very frustrated about it, angry, disappointed, etc. etc. But we’d better get used to this reality and build on what we’ve got rather than walk away from it.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Bill Clinton was elected twice with less than a minority of voters, so nothing that he did should count.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Oops. With either “a minority” or “less than a majority,” but not what I just wrote.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Without the public option and without Medicare buy in, this is starting to look like very minor reform at best.
I think the real danger here now is to pass something this tepid with the mandate ot buy insurance. It’s too incomplete, it doesn’t sufficiently expand the range of options. And now instead of looking like a pool contributed to by all tax payers, it suddenly looks like a mandate to go buy something many of them cannot afford.
Even with the public subsidy stripped out this bill will end up looking to people like we’re coming at this from the wrong direction. It’ll be like teh government told them they were criminals if they don’t buy a car.
I think the potential for backlash without thiose two provisions is very, very high. And there is no reason at all why Republicans won’t just repeal it the next time they’re in power, probably under the guise of regulation reform.
Mandates of this nature need to be very carefully balanced if they’ll work with the American sentiment. If Lierberman and Nelson get their way, I think this bill is fucked, either now or in a handful of years. We need the House to stand up on this one.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Fwiw in the above I meant something like, “even with the public subsidy in place, it will looke like an unaffordable mandate.”
December 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
“I think the potential for backlash without thiose two provisions is very, very high.”
What I find so ruinous is the 40% tax on so called premium plans. 10s of millions of middle and upper-middle class people have these plans, so either they will pay the thousands of dollars in new taxes or will be forced to cut their benefits. That’s the ugly choice I and many others will have if this part of the bill passes. For many, health care reform will mean less coverage and more out of pocket expenses. Aren’t these same people the backbone of the Democratic Party? To me its plain dumb…
December 19th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Why a Senate anyway? Since 1789 it really hasn’t worked out. Senate rules have created a system whereby a minority of Senators can block legislation.
The six year terms (supposedly allowing for deliberation instead of the peoples passions) really amonts to protecting monied interests.
Out damn Senate, out I say!
On the other hand I observe that most liberals are comfy with the status-quo. In their heart of hearts they themselves only want incrimental change… and almosy none dare to pronounce healthcare an fundamental right which would trigger 14th Admendment protections, ushering in single payer. A fundamental right is indefeasable and in alienable
Few like Barney Frank had the fortitude to announce this on the House floor. He stood and made the exact arguement I just made above… plus he added that it is inevitable that single payer will come to the USA when a majority come to uphold the rights of citizens.
DEMs also lack constitutional understanding. The founding document limits the power of government granted by the people
Instead, in some gossamer evenicent fashion, liberals are worse than thier counterparts on the far right: Liberal candidates, including Obama, campaigned on the issue of healthcare by declaring it a fundamental right.
Should the left backlash be predicated on the promise of reform or from not enforceing a civil right?
Had there been sincerity in the campaign promise then the debate would have been moved in a much different direction: Americans have a fundamental right to healthcare and thus the job of government is to enforce that right.
Instead we are being told that this reform is a step in the right direction and thus a victory. That is the thinking of DEMS who will are more comfortable with the incremental change as long as profits are preserved over people.
December 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I have finally found my voice and my balls and pronounce healthcare a fundamental right…open the floodgates. Let the 14th Amendment work its magic. Yes folks, I’ve finally got the guts to stand with Barney Frank against that fucking Democratic Party. This is truly the dawn of a New Age.
December 19th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Tyler – the “premium” tax, which is in the Senate version but not the House and still must be reconciled in conference, is on the cost of policies costing over $23,000 for a family and $11,000 for an individual. The reality is that people who have plans at those levels as a benefit are receiving a tax-free portion of their employsee compensation as health care. I don’t think this is the best way to fix health care – we should scrap the system and go for single payer – but if we’re keeping the entire employer-based system as a big chunk of the “reformed” structure, I really don’t see how it can be justified for some people to get a benefit tax-free and others pay for theirs in after-tax dollars. The tax benefit should be evened out. Maybe that number is too low, but the truth is that relatively high-end health insurance packages that aren’t considered taxable compensation aren’t fair to the folks who don’t get their health insurance as an employee benefit. Somethings got to give in the system if you’re trying to straighten it out. That said, the whole approach is so Rube Goldberg that it’s bound to piss some people off and create unintended consequences.
December 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Incidentally, my wife and I have discussed this issue because we have pretty good insurance via an employer and, while I don’t know what the numbers are in terms of whether we hit this ceiling, we’ve agreed that if we get taxed at the top end in the interest of reform and bringing more people in, it’s worth it and we aren’t complaining.
December 19th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
The insurance industry basically has written the bill. Their stocks have gone up around 13% the past month. Its their bill…not ours.
December 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Pioneer politician:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-18/the-man-cheering-obamas-health-care-woes/full/
This gets better and better
December 19th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
reg Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I have finally found my voice and my balls and pronounce healthcare a fundamental right…open the floodgates. Let the 14th Amendment work its magic. Yes folks, I’ve finally got the guts to stand with Barney Frank against that fucking Democratic Party. This is truly the dawn of a New Age.
——————————
Simply aquarian.
(don’t forget a check to the DNC if you need a tax break before the new year. Show your thanks)
December 19th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Anna:
Good article from the BEEST…One might add (while cherchez les balls for single payer) that Nader is spot on.
Imagine Obama running his campaign on no exclusions for pre-existing conditions in exchange for mandantory health insurance coverage for already bloated insurance middlemen.
Reg and co are estatic that the DEMs have delivered real reform for the people. The horror is that libs stand ready to deal with Liberman and pounce on Nader under their own unique DEM logic: “The left has nowhere else to go”.
reg misses the point in its entirity. The DEMS lied during their campaign on the issue of healthcare.
So when the DEMS lose with Nader in the race they blame Nader… because they can’t blame the right wing… who would be left to deal with?
December 19th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Chris Hedges is right. Stand ready to support the party and candidate who reprents your views towards public policy.
Don’t sweat the outcome.
Vote Green
December 19th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Yes, Pablo, I keep raising the spectre of Nader on this blog to the ire of most all…
reg, I think going round and round in circles with political speculation is pretty immaterial. Its about the revelation of how utterly corrupt the is the engine that DRIVES the politics in the US. Its good. All has been revealed so now the real political process begins of people being guided by an internal locus (or however that is phrased) and not twist themselves into pretzels trying to take a view based on some speculative ideological gibber.
My view on the bill is only what does it mean in the real world.. Because I know what is in it is all about how corrupt or brave those that are constructing it are and ditto for the citizenry.
As to Nader. He has been right about everything and now everyone is saying what he was saying. But he finally is quoted in that piece as understanding its sort of the kill the messenger phenomenon that will prevent him from leading rather than always having to play the Greek chorus.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Nader is a joke as a candidate because he can’t even get 5% of the votes. That’s abysmal failure in politics. This argument is idiotic. I’d just as soon discuss the concept of a flat earth.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
IMHO I’m the one who’s fucking right about everything. Vote for me or you’re a lost soul.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
you know just how serious the g.o.p. is about controlling costs when it kills drug reimportation. hypocrisy is mind boggling
December 19th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
You know, I heard that Sen. Nelson was able to wrangle a bunch of federal tax money to completely cover the state of Nebraska’s medicaid tab. Great. I’m contacting Boxer & DiFI Monday. I want the tax on cigarettes in Nebraska up to $50 a pack, a complete vegan diet in all the public schools, and every cornhusker must were a helmet, elbow, and knee pads the moment they set foot upon a public sidewalk. Just saying…
December 19th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
On the whole, I am probably more inclined to agree with Reg and Marc regarding the current health care bill – who are we to deny thirty million, twenty million, even ONE milliion or one thousand currently uninsured people some basic coverage that they need? Certainly not me. And if some of the proposals manage to have some bite (e.g., protection against denial of coverage under so-called pre-existing conditions, or eliminating insurance company caps on lifetime benefits, which would probably benefit myself and perhaps all of us, since health costs will not likely go down soon), then it might go down as one of the more necessary, if underwhelming pieces of legislation in some time.
However, Anna and Pablo’s reactions are quite similar to mine, especially Anna’s use of the word “corrupt.” This so-called health care reform bill, like all of its predecessors over the years, not only does nothing to address sky-rocketing health costs (witness the defeat last week on reforming the ridiculously high cost of pharmaceutical drugs, nearly all of which are/were created through taxpayer subsidy to the industry), but it will probably end up making costs higher. It is as if everyone has received generous fire insurance, with the stipulation that new ones must be started in your living room in order for you to receive it. I felt the same reaction when Bush, and later Obama, insisted that the best way to save the banking industry was not to save the individual consumer lender, but the collective asses of the crooks who got us into that fucking mess in the first place.
So, I am somewhere b/w Reg and Anna….and quickly realizing that there may not be a single honest person in DC. Change to believe in, indeed…
December 19th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
reg Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Nader is a joke as a candidate because he can’t even get 5% of the votes. That’s abysmal failure in politics. This argument is idiotic. I’d just as soon discuss the concept of a flat earth.
———————-
Reg, we have been talkng about two different things. One, the DEMS take the leftb for granted at their peril.
Two, when the Dems lose they blame the left instead of the right.
It’s not about supporting a candidate who oly gets 5% of the vote, it is about support for a candidate who is in sync with the issues.
Reg doesn”t caterwail when a the party of torture eclipses a DEM even if only by a percentage point.
Here is reg from a year ago. His words seem to have taken on the opposite of their intended meaning from when they were first written on this blog:
reg Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 6:31 am
Nader must be on to something because rather than call Ralph out as a jive-ass motherfucker, Barack Obama had this to say: “What’s clear is, Ralph Nader hasn’t been paying attention to my speeches. Ralph Nader’s trying to get attention. He’s become a perennial political candidate. I think it’s a shame, because if you look at his legacy … it’s an extraordinary one.”
Or maybe it’s the difference between being clueless and having a lot of class.
———————-
Or maybe Ralph just has a better bullshit detector than reg.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Pabl0 – You’re officially putting me to sleep. You’re struggling for coherence and failing.
December 20th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Well, Pablo, I am willing to agree with you that most liberals really don’t want much more than incremental change. Here’s the second half of the formula that you conveniently left out: most other people who do not identify as liberals want even LESS change! That is except for a so-called Progressive Left — which MIGHT be about 3-4% of the electorate. And the tea baggers are also an exception, except they want radical change of the wrong kind.
That’s why most of this discussion is absurd. The system is indeed corrupt. Its process and product are indeed depressing. The pols it generates are mediocre (though I give Obama more credit than that based on his obvious intelligence and political skills).
So there is good reason here to be (fill in the adjective)… angry, disappointed, furious, pissed or whatever you please when it comes to describing the watered down compromise that is reflected in the Senate bill.
What I don’t understand is the impotent flailing around that somehow some weak-kneed political leadership or another has tricked and misled the otherwise amped up masses. That’s a convenient fairy tale that the left has thrived upon for my entire lifetime.. I call it the “if only” excuse. if only the media told the truth… if only Ralph Nader was listened to… yada yada.
There is only ONE if only that counts…. If only millions of Americans demanded more they would likely achieve more.
The health care bill is far from what I would write… but, alas, what you are witnessing are the LIMITS of the system. This piece of shit bill is the best that could be squeezed out of the Senate. Nothing to be estatic about. But I dont see what the alternative process would be unless millions of Americans stayed home from work for a week, stormed the private insurance offices, are the congress itself demanding humane and affordable health care.
As I said earlier… I offer no apology for Obama or Reid or anyone else here. But it is PURE FANTASY to believe that a stronger push from Obama would have moved a-holes like Nelson, Lieberman and Snowe as much as one mm.
Now, could have Obama –to use a nice rhetorical phrase– rallied the massed and triangulated congress from the left? I imagine that would have been a possibility. To be cold-eyed about it, I’d put his odds at success at such a move to be about 7 to 1 against him.
We live in a comic book political culture in which tens of millions of insecure white men (and women) think John McCain and Sarah Palin are average people who represent real change. We have Democrats who believe Nancy Pelosi is God’s gift etc etc.
That is unfortunate, but it is a reality.
As to Nader: look I endorsed him in 1996 and even in 2000 when it was not a popular thing to do. I think he is a man of integrity. I also think he peaked at about 3% of the vote. if people wanted to elect him, they certainly had the chance. They didn’t. Because, primarily, people do NOT want the sort of change he proposes even if it is arguably in their favor.
The Green Party itself is a miserable joke. It has crawled into bed with every rascal in sight including the Fulani cult and the wack-job Cynthia McKinney “truthers.” It is not a serious political alternative and, in fact, helps discredit the very notion of a Third Party.
The bill coming out of Congress sucks. It is, nevertheless, an improvement for many. It benefits many of the uninsured while further and grossly benefiting private insurance companies.
More than 8 out of 10 Americans already have medical insurance and they dont give a flying fuck about those who don’t. They might not like their own insurers but they are also AFRAID of almost everything… they are frail, weak humans who are willing to settle for much less than they deserve and take very few risks. And they clearly do not want Nader as president. Almost half of them would prefer Sarah Palin. That’s a real problem, pal.
I have been on the left my whole life and my whole life our explanation for everything is that liberals are not liberal enough. It’s a comforting thought. So is heaven.
December 20th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Btw, I just read the chat with Nader on The Daily Beast. His description of the bill is pretty much on the mark. His political prescription that flows from his analysis is ridiculous. You think that it matters one wit whether Markos, Arianna or Ed Schulz moves 3 degrees left or right? If you do, then you are really living in LaLaLand.
Nader’s suggestion is simple to synthesize. Vote the bill down. And then go out and build a grass roots campaign for single payer. Cool. Why stop there? Why not build a grass roots movement to overthrow corporate capitalism and set up a government of citizen’s councils? I like that idea. I know at least 15-20 other people who would go along with that.
Nader’s “logic” is based on a calculation that it is worth the risk to kill this bill, leaving (conservatively say 20 million uninsured in exactly that fix) while he, you, Ed Schulz and the Daily Kos build a movement that will support socialized medicine and that will win 60 votes in the Senate.
Sure. As I said, if you’re gonna go that far, why not socialize Wall Street while we are at it ( I like that idea too)?
One catch, Nader and his supporters will have to sit down and personally write a letter to the ten of thousands who die each for lack of ANY insurance and ask them to be patient for … um… 5 or 6 more months until we can squeak this Single Payer idea thru congress.
What a load of crap.
December 20th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Marc, you hit all the nails on their heads with your last comments. Perhaps we should take Brecht literally when he says that we should elect a new people…
December 20th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I think Marc overstates the perfidy of the American people, but the reason that this health care reform is so difficult is that folks who have something that more-or-less works for them aren’t likely to choose something they haven’t seen yet and that sounds complicated. It’s also a fact that a large swath of Americans are prone to buying into a find of faux-libertarianism that’s routinely exploited by right-demagogues and corporate interests.
But I don’t want to let political representatives off the hook. As for Obama, I will admit that I love the guy and agree with Marc’s assessment of his skills and intellect. He’s also very ambitious, which I don’t fault him far and which he has harnessed to a path I can respect. As a rising star in the Democratic Party, he saw a long-shot at the Presidency early on and took it. He might have taken another path and tried to build the reform wing of his party over time, or some such and become Ted Kennedy without the booze and girls. In any event, through skill, a focused intelligence and charisma he became President. The only President’s I’m aware of who we retrospectively credit as great, transformative leaders in office are Lincoln and FDR. I really can’t think of any others. Neither one ran on the stuff they are remembered for, both came to their “greatness” very incrementally amidst a record that included more failure than Obama has had to date, and both were President in the worst extended crises the country has ever known since it’s founding.
I have several major criticisms of Obama – related to his economic team mostly – but anyone who thinks Obama came into office promising anything other than incremental change or who thinks that campaign promises aren’t subject to certain realities once elected knows nothing about politics or history. Obama is doing more of what he promised as a candidate than FDR did in his first year – admittedly partly because FDR actually ran to Hoover’s right some issues. Given that the mess Obama was handed is even bigger than most of us anticipated, I’m not shocked that he didn’t spend his first year stumping for a stronger health care bill. Obama is what he is – which is a decent, intelligent guy in a position that offers many opportunities but even more constraints when one actually sits down in the chair. I respect him. I think he’s flawed. He’s the best man in that job I’ve seen in my lifetime.
So my criticisms of him are just that – criticisms – as opposed to rejections or attacks. For Obama to be doing what I would really like him to be doing, some strong, organized, effective social movements would have to exist. Movements that could move people in states like Ben Nelson’s. (Ironically, the most authentically progressive presidential candidacy in American history was borne in Nebraska which was a hot-bed of social protest in the late nineteenth century. Even more ironically, that fire-brand, left-populist candidate is remembered today more for promoting creationism in the schools than for his attacks on big money or his opposition to war and imperialism.)
Congress, not the Presidency, is where the political action lies ultimately. People who say that Obama got the bill he really wanted are full of crap IMHO. I think that the original House bill represented something closer to what Obama wanted, although I’m dead certain that if he could have sat for a couple of days with his advisors on health care and gone through the House bill adding and subtracting in full knowledge that whatever he handed back would pass the House and the Senate, we’d see excellent health care reform – even if not single payer. And I’m sure Obama could have used the power of the White House more effectively. But only in the sense that its almost always true that in hindsight one can craft “better strategies” that are useless except as learning experiences. Maybe Obama “learned” the wrong lessons from this. I do know that the lesson he would learn from the failure of this current bill to pass would be to become even more like Bill Clinton. That’s not my version of a nightmare, as it likely is for some people, but it does define “disappointment” for this liberal.
Sometimes we get politicians who measure up, not to our “hopes”, but to a sort of optimistic pragmatism that “bends the curve toward justice” as Obama is fond of saying. Other times – we get politicians who represent thinly disguised venality and stupidity. In both cases we are probably getting, in some karmic sense, the representatives we “deserve” because politics is mostly a spectator sport in the USofA. And too often when some of us get the bright idea to change that and people get “involved” its unfortunately because they have become paranoid, hysterical and reached a point where they can be manipulated by demagogues. This is another nasty fact. So, yeah, we suck as much as our politicians. The Democratic party is a very messy coalition of relatively decent people and others beholden to special interests. Political representatives even at their best are bound to disappoint. Outsiders who reject the existing parties don’t have a chance of influencing the process. We mythologize a handful of leaders we believe have served the country well in the past. We tend to demonize not just the opposition we would like to see crushed, but folks on our side who we don’t believe are taking the brilliant advice we are dishing out or who don’t see it as we do 100%. Very few of us are willing to commit the kind of time and energy that…uh…Obama and David Axelrod and even the reviled Rahm Emannuel have committed to getting their hands dirty in politics. People who do have that kind of energy and ambition are not saints, ever, and are subject to tremendous pressures and, over time, exhaustion of idealism and a certain cynicism about a fickle electorate actually wanting them to do what in their heart of hearts they believe is the “right thing.” It’s a mess.
But I get sick of self-righteousness on the left. The outsider “left” hasn’t had a coherent or rational strategy for change that I’ve seen in my lifetime. When people on the left do make real contributions it’s generally because they shelve ideology and work as grunts or mid-level leaders in reformist social movements that, as soon as they gain some ground, end up as compromised as the larger political process itself – for the simple reason that they eventually immerse themselves in it. Also because the social movements of any consequence – and that we’ve idealized – represent people who want “in” not “out.” This has been true of the labor movement, the civil rights movement and the rest of it. It’s complicated, it’s messy, there are occasional good guys and ever-present bad guys, but anyone who approaches politics from an ideological perspective or who believes that they’ve got some formula for structural reform that would produce dramatic change if only the liberals or the corporate Democrats or even FOX News would get out of the way is operating in an alternate reality. It’s not much different than the pathological ideologues blaming the Stalinists, the Trotskyists or the Social Democrats for the sorry state of the working class.
All of that said, there ARE things we can do. Rather than circular firing squads, I would suggest more energy be spent trying to influence the 2010 elections so, at the least, we don’t end up with an even worse Congress than we’ve already got. This is where the game is if you care about politics as it exists, not cooking up schemes to expand the influence of Ralph Nader or pushing Cynthia McKinney as the alternative to the perfidy of Barack Obama, the World’s Biggest Sell-Out. Beyond that, if this bill is as bad as it’s critics on the left say it is, the opportunity to “reform the reform” will present itself over the next few years. The fact that a principal of near-universal coverage has been established should make that task easier, not harder if we don’t fetishize a particular approach. But we’re going to go through the same thing with climate change legislation, where the stakes are actually higher. It’s going to get ugly in DC, we need to embrace a certain amount of “shrill” to rally our troops, and we need every effort that might mobilize the sluggish center, but this is one where I really don’t want to hear people tell me that if only we work to oppose Sell-Out Obama’s weak tea, put our faith in the Green Party and come back in 8 – or 15 or 20 – years with the real deal we’ll all be better off.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Marc & reg may be missing the arguement here.
Obama and the DEMs by extention campaigned on universal coverage as a fundemental right.
Even before they began negotiations they announced that single-payer is off of the table.
There is something – in fact a lot- to be said for the truth.
Healthcare as a fundemental right was stillborn and the resulting reform is a betrayal.
Since all here see the perfidity of a corrupt system there are just a few possible political responses left to the citizens:
1) Refuse to call these reforms a victory as they do include a fundemental right to healthcare.
2) Begin reform to a corrupt system by refusing to support DEM candidates.
It is obvious even among partisan DEMs that they stand ready to chaffer with the Right rather to build a coalition with the left.
Marc/ a note on the Greens: As a platform to gain ballot access in local and state elections
the Greens are an invaluable vehicle.. on the national level the party is still decades away.
Where I feel you are going off the tracks is the thinking that that two ruling instutions which have a stranglehold on the political system can be reformed.
Still it is a duty to support the voices which speak closest to one’s values without regard to their relative chances of electoral victory.
I held out so much hope that Obama would be the agent of change and reform and have concluded that if Obama is shackled on a range of issues. Thus the Dems are distinguishable from the Right in that they – in the main- don’t torture.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:53 am
There is only ONE if only that counts…. If only millions of Americans demanded more they would likely achieve more.
——————————–
They have… and it doesn’t count.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Incidentally, i just saw Howard Dean make a strong critique of the health reform bill, but one that was strategically quite sensible in the context of where the bill stands today in the conference process. What he DIDN’T do was turn it into a pissing contest against Obama or suggest that the hard-core of true progressives need to turn on the Democratic party or we’re all doomed. He DID talk about a long fight for further reform if the bill passes without more teeth. I think he’s right.
I don’t see any point that Pablo is making that I’m missing that isn’t rhetorical or moralistic rejectionism, incidentally. I guess that’s one way to approach politics, but I’m not interested. As regards the Greens, I live in the Bay Area where the Green Party should be very strong if they have even a remote chance anywhere. I voted for a Green once for state assembly, because the Democrat was such a piece of shit. It turned out to be one of the most embarassing votes of my life – the person was an upscale dilettante who became somthing of a joke and was turned out in the next election. If the Green Party can’t even elect a mayor in San Francisco – or Berkeley for that matter – what’s the point ? I don’t want Pablo to soil himself with the Democratic Party if he can’t stomache that – but I would suggest he focus his efforts on education on some issue that’s dear to his heart so that whichever pols happen to be in office they’re facing a more aware, mobilized public. These arguments for some left-progressive electoral strategy to win victories for the people by first displacing the Democratic Party are completely ridiculous.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Pablo,
I’m sure Woody will correct me if I’m on wrong (there’s a first time for everything), but donations to political parties are not deductible.
Indeed, any charity engaging in partisan politics as an action organization would run the risk of losing its exemption.
People for The American Way, for example always acknowledges that contributions to it are not tax-deductible.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Reg;
The problem with centerist parties is that they tend to lean either to their left or to their right.
So to with the DEMs.. In fact if the DEMs of today were running against FDR in 1936, the Republican party of 1936 would be the centerist opposition bewteen FDR and the new DEMs.
All agree that the two ruling institutions are corrupt because they have effectively carved up the electoral districts into safe zones whereby one party dominates. In this sense America has become to resemble Mexico. As these seats are safe the democratic pressure is removed and special interests move in.
To break this requires that one party be broken. Once the ruling institution sees that the peolple have withdrawn in sufficent numbers they will attempt a coalition with the left instead of the right.
Breaking the party is necessary because as the decades of DEMs have built coalitions with the Right their ability to deliver meaningful reform becomes more attenuated.
Nowhere is that better seen than the “triumph” of healtcare reform.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Randy:
Thanks. You are probably correct. But the two ruling institutions each have their own favourite 501c(3)’s where tax exempt donations are coveted.
This is an American form of the mordida, yes?
December 20th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Probably.
December 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Balter made the best comment that the fault is liberals/progressives didn’t build a grass roots movement for single payer.
I think that Marc and others who argue for the bill are well-intentioned but misinformed. Yes, if this wretched bill passes some of the uninsured will get corporate health insurance. Many will got pay for premiums. Many would rather take the fines. Unfortunately, rural health care is wretched. The corporate nursing industry is wretched. So poor people will be forced to get corporate health insurance and being fed into the present rather wretched corporate system.
My mother was in two corporate nursing homes. She broke her hip. She should have been able to walk within a few weeks but neither corporate nursing homes had physical therapists who bothered to get her to walk. I got her into a small mom-and-pop nursing home and got her into physical therapy at a hospital-run program and she’s walking with a walker. If I hadn’t moved her out of the corporate nursing home she would still be sitting in a wheel care.
Marc, your assumption that the corporate health care system helps people–well it helps some but doesn’t help others. The corporate health care system in the nursing homes is designed to make profits and not I repeat not help patients. I saw patients’ rights violated every day day after miserable day. The second nursing home my mother was at violated her rights 3 times. Someone in northern California sued them. What improved the corporate nursing homes are lawsuits.
December 20th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
“In fact if the DEMs of today were running against FDR in 1936, the Republican party of 1936 would be the centerist opposition bewteen FDR and the new DEMs.”
Total bullshit. You know nothing of history, nothing of politics and nothing of FDR. You’re really just babbling to suit your fancies. When Social Security first passed it excluded large segments of the workforce, including many of the jobs held by minorities, had no cost of living provisions and no survivors or dependents benefits. FDR had to be threatened with a march on Washington to sign legislation securing black people jobs in wartime defense industries. The Democrats internal battles over civil rights, with some of the worst racists in the country as part of the “DEMS” are well known. Democrats in 1936 included corrupt urban political machines that make today’s urban politics look like Sunday School. And some in FDR’s own party sounded like Glenn Beck in attacking him – Huey Long claimed that the Supreme Court had saved the country from “fascism” when they struck down Roosevelt’s NRA (I guess it takes one to know one in Long’s case.) Yes, some of the first strong corporate regulation was being enacted, but in that second term Roosevelt pulled back from stimulus programs because of fears of the deficit and there was a second steep drop in the business cycle because of reduced demand. It’s also a myth that businessmen uniformly opposed Roosevelt – FDR came into office with the Chamber of Commerce supporting him over Hoover. Frankly, I can’t figure out where people come up with some of this stuff that idealizes a history that was just as complicated and mixed in motives and results as what we’re seeing today.
December 20th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Marc…Nader’s position isn’t really diff than Dean’s or any of the other critics.
I think you have some fantasy that the bill as it is is going to “cover” people that would not have cover at all.
Would you care to detail that? According to all critiques that is not true. It would only be true if there were to be a gov’t subsidy extending to beyond those at the current poverty guidelines. Then what sort of cover is it?
Its wonderful to go off on ideological tangents but I have screaming for you to please look at the reality of what these rotten current incarnations of the bill really mean in the real world.
December 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Reg is making a sideshow of an analogy.
As a centerist party the DEMs must either lean right or lean left. In fact they fake left and go right.
The analogy was employed to show the rightward drift of the DEMs in the eagerness to form alliances with the right.
As DEM power rests of safe seats gerrymandered to prevent democracy they have come to resemble the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Reg is holding onto romantic illusions that the new DEMs- the NAFTA/Welfare Reforming/Hawks created by the same Clintonistas which inhabit this administration somehow uphold the legacy of FDR.
Have at it.
The American PRI (the DEMs) will parade this historic reform of healthcare as a triumph of liberalism… passing legislation which is far short of what they campaigned on. In fact the legislation is a failure because it was originally offered not because 30 million are uninsured but because the empoyer based system costs have been growing over 10%/year for well over a decade and has become largely unaffordable to middle class workers and small employers. The rhetoric of the uninsured was proffered to quiet the left.
The quicker progressives abandon them the sooner the new PRI will lurch left in search of a coalition. Until then they are content to share the spoils with the party of torture.
December 20th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Randy: I’m sure Woody will correct me if I’m on wrong (there’s a first time for everything), but donations to political parties are not deductible.
You’re wrong if union dues and donations to ACORN count.
December 20th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Only in the court of Woody.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
I was not raised on socialist theory or left wing history, so a lot of this discussion is pretty much lost on me. At best, I notice that predictions about how the populace will react to political and economic stresses were wrong in 1968 and look just as wrong today. The war dead in the late 1960s did not turn the U.S. into a left wing country; quite the contrary. The protests led to substantial reaction, and it was only when the housewives and businessmen and lawyers and dentists joined the march that it all began to unravel.
I see a kind of mirror image of that this year, in the form of the teabaggers. They misbehaved and brayed and pounded their chests in August, and in spite of their bragging, they didn’t seem to kill the bill. My guess is that the voters will react against the teabaggers as dangerous extremists, just as they reacted against Palin. This presents opportunities for the Democrats in 2010.
The mirror to this mirror would be for the bill to die for lack of a 60th vote in the Senate. The conventional view would be something like this: Truman couldn’t do it, Clinton couldn’t do it, and Obama couldn’t do it, so it’s not worth spending political effort on trying to do it once again and fail once more.
I realize that this is a political site, but there are technical and economic issues that strongly affect the discussion. One interesting item I read on Medpage a few days ago: The rate of heart attack deaths and other disastrous heart-related episodes has dropped approximately 40 percent over the past decade (for the age groups that count, normalized properly). As one of the medical bloggers put it, even 35 years ago, the treatment for a heart attack was to give morphine and turn the lights down and wait. Nowadays there are stents and bypasses and lipitor, and they work. And except for lipitor, they are very expensive. Some of this is because a simple little balloon angioplasty and the insertion of a stent to maintain blood flow requires several trained people, expensive equipment, and further nursing support. For a surgical bypass, take that cost and square it. It didn’t cost very much to give morphine to the pre-1970 heart attack patient, and nobody expected much effectiveness from that treatment in terms of the underlying disease or its inevitable progression.
At least one of the folks at the Redcat forum would have complained that this change in medical process has benefited international capitalism. Well, it may very well have done so, but the average American would likely respond, “So what?” The issue is how to continue to improve on medical care while lowering the costs and extending care to every resident.
European and Asian countries have managed to accomplish this without cutting life expectancy, patient satisfaction, or accessibility. In fact they have improved on these, to their glory and our shame.
The problem I see with a lot of this discussion is that it isn’t about the government that was designed in 1787 in Philadelphia, but about other places, real and imagined. We don’t build coalitions out of third and fourth parties here because we don’t create the new government after the national election — as parliamentary systems can and often do. We elect a president and that’s that, rather than separate parties getting together in a smoke filled room to pick the next prime minister.
Some of the commenters here seem to think that the rule against rejecting people for preexisting conditions is trivial. Actually, it’s a core issue for a lot of people and has been for a lot of years, considering that a third or more of all of us would be ruled ineligible for one reason or another by the time we hit the ripe old age of 35 or 40. That little snip that Melanie Griffith had for “skin cancer” the other day would probably mean that she would be rejected by every health insurance company, were she to apply for a policy. There is a huge population that is in jeopardy.
There is another population of people who are held at some limited number of hours in the workplace, whatever it takes to keep them ineligible for health benefits.
Here is a way to get that “single payer” that is so beloved of everybody from the far left to the moderate center: If only the businesses, large and small, would get together in a secret conspiracy and then announce, all at once, the following: “As of July 1, we will not offer health insurance as a work benefit. If you want it from then on, either buy it on the open market or get the government to create a system that works for you.” It would be interesting to see the results of a hundred million working Americans all calling their congressman the next morning. And we would have a system modeled after the Swiss or the Taiwanese or the French in place as of July 1.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:10 am
Julia
I’m sorry but I never heard so much BS in my life. Plse don’t lecture me on the inadequacies of corporate this or that. I think we all know how the world works and most of us, including me, have had a relative or him or herself abused by the medical system. I can trump you, if you want to play your family card. My father died in a shitty private nursing facility while I was still fighting, to the point of exhaustion, to get him the state-administered Medicaid he was entitled to. My story proves nothing — as does yours.
But to say that, across the board, nobody can ever benefit from private medicine is to join the flat-earth society. I had a near death experience in 2007 and was treated in both a non profit and for profit facility. Sorry to disappoint you, but the care was excellent in both places (significantly better in the private hospital as it turns out). I have a wonderful, capitalist corporate doctor who makes a lot of money and who not only saved my life but also gives ongoing, compassionate and wise care (and is fortunately paid for 100% by my corporate Blue Cross insurance). A corporate medical device company, dedicated to profit, also invented a wizardly piece of machinery about the size of two match books that guarantees to about 99.9% probability that I will never suffer sudden cardiac arrest due to a spike in heart rate. Every night that machine downloads a cardiac report to a wireless device that then sends the info to my doctor and alerts him to any irregularity. I also take corporate manufactured drugs that control my heart rate, thankfully, and have lowered my blood pressure to normal instead of dangerously elevated rates. Try to take those away from me and I will rip your head off/
Am I thankful? Yes, because I am alive. Do I think there are better and more humane ways to deliver such care and treatment? You bet I do. Am I glad that I at least have these deficient systems instead of empty rhetoric about what we don’t have? Yes, I am.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am
To Anna:
You are 100% wrong that this bill does not extend coverage. Expanded medicaid will make health care for low income families under $30,000 completely free. It will provide subsidies for families making up to $88,000 a year so they can purchase coverage. The income ceiling is too low. The subsidies are too lean for my taste. They are insufficient. But insufficient is different than non-existent. Millions will have insurance that don’t have it now. If its provisions hold up, millions will get or preserve their insurance because they will no longer be able to be denied coverage. What part of that dont you understand?
I sometimes think folks like you would actually be disappointed if anything positive happened. God forbid.
Anna, I wonder if you would also be kind enough to let us know how YOU are insured? if it is public i.e. Medicare, then please let us know how you were insured immediately prior to that. Do you somehow have a right to shitty inadeuqate insurance but others have to wait for Socialism to get some sort of coverage?????
P.S. to Julia: You say I “support” the current bill? What kind of crap is that? Do you not read this blog, just comment on it? I support Single Payer. That’s what I want and that’s what I think we should get.
What I have been saying is that it is better that this bill passes than it doesnt and those who vote it down will be doing a dis-service to millions of uninsured. Those who vote for it, don’t necessarily support it, they simply think it is the better of the two choices immediately available. This is a complicated argument called the Lesser of Two Evils. Something new in history.
BTW, I wasn’t born yet, but in retrospect I would have “supported” U.S. Imperialism in defeating Nazism. I suppose that makes me a simple corporate tool of U.S. Imperialism.
To Pablo: More bullshit from you. Reg is absolutely correct, you know nothing of U.S. history. Go back and read FDR’s campaign speeches and see how far to the right he ran in ‘32. He pulled a 180 once elected, I suppose because he saw no alternative. I also suggest you consult with some women and blacks for a comparison of the Democratic Party in 2009 and in 1929. I am not a Democrat nor a defender of Democrats. But one thing I can say in favor of the current DP, at least it broke with the Klu Klux Klan since ‘29.
Also, Pablo, where are those millions who you say demanded more but were not heard? Again, BS! There were some nice letter writing campaigns and online petitions from the Netroots and from OFA… And a blowhard like Ed Schulz peed all over the TV studio DEMANDING a public option OK. but BFD/ The progs got their lunch eaten by the teabaggers. The American Left remains a university-cloud-class-based sect with NO organic links to what it likes to call the “masses.” No wonder Obama treats it like a flea. That’s what it is.
Final Note to Pablo: You are wrong on two other counts. The DP is a bag of crap. It is not, however, the PRI. It’s a complete historic non-sequitor. The PRI held a one-party monopoly of power for 70 years and did not flinch from using brutal internal repression and disappearances to stay in power. That is not analagous with the two American ruling parties who have maintained power by, unfortunate, popular consensus. The other place you are totally out to lunch is in how you imagine the Dem-Rep duopoly will be supplanted — if ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. But all your discourse implies some sort of deux ex machina that will descend and abolish them. Worse, you seem disappointed that they dont abolish themselves.
I, on the other hand, see very clearly how the current system will be transcended…. want to know? I am god-damned clairvoyant. Ok, here goes. It’s when the mass of the population rejects both parties and decides a different route (an emergent third party, a one man dictatorship, anarcho-communism. monarchy, government by Fed Ex) etc etc. In other words, the one little tiny concept y’all can’t seem to get in your head is that there is NOTHING holding back the people from changing the system if enough of them wanted to. History is full of examples.
Stable ruling classes rule through popular consent and broad consensus, no matter how corrupt or duplicitous they might be. Once they lose credibility, governance collapses overnight(unless enough repression can be unleashed) and they find themselves easily replaced and swept from history. Ask the Czar about how absolute his absolutist control was over all mechanisms of society round about early 1917. Then ask the same Soviets how much popular support they retained72 years later when their entire system imploded, Red Army, VoPos and all. Made no difference that the Communist dictatorship/s held total sway over the political, economic, social and media institutions. Poof! Overnight.
You seem to argue that that the American people are all yearning to be free but that Reg keeps tricking them back into the arms of the Democratic Party! If only life and politics were that simple. How many national televised debates did Dennis Kucinich compete in for free during the 08 primaries? Eight? Nine? What percentage of Democratic votes did he get? Who stopped Democrats from voting for a nice, harmless social democrat like Dennis other than Democrats themselves?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:28 am
Marc, that last post is a perfect example of why I keep coming back here. Very good.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:39 am
“Who stopped Democrats from voting for a nice, harmless social democrat like Dennis other than Democrats themselves?”
With all due respect to Kucinich, who I appreciate as a perennial gadfly, I think Dennis himself stops most Democrats from voting for him. Personally, if I were given the absolute power to put a full-blown social democrat in the Oval Office, I’d choose Bernie Sanders – who “isn’t” a Democrat. As someone who has the reputation as some sort of glad-hander for the DNC in these threads, I love seeing that “(I)” after Bernie’s name (even though he’s a de facto Democrat – and frankly one of the best spokespeople fervently progressive Dems have going for them on the issues. Of course, Senator Bernie represents a populace that’s smaller than Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district.)
December 21st, 2009 at 7:43 am
Ok. Marc. Clarity on what will actually happen is all I have been hoping to scratch out of this mess. No one was talking particulars…
I said IF it actually did something I was for it. On the basis of your understanding that it WILL expand Medicaid and lower the threshold for the needy to step over into that group then OF COURSE it is a life raft.
Because I am self employed with a wildly vacillating income and am lucky enough to live in a state and county where services for 50’s are based on sliding scale for access to a very good county clinic for “seniors” (god help calling a baby boomer a “senior”) that is in part funded by a bequest AND depending on income I am sometimes covered by various levels of Medicaid. So I am “lucky” to have stumbled into a community I didn’t plan on living in where there are such amenities. It is an exception.
Most of my life I skipped around uninsured except when living in England.
I hope that clarifies my feelings about the bill.
And your lecture to Pablo isn’t saying anymore than what I have said forever on this blog about the American public being all the things HL Mencken said they were only triple it 80 years later and THAT is why we can barely maintain our ‘democracy’. We are a weird collection mental aberrations that the gene pool is still sorting itself out on.
And I think your failure to recognize a Kucinich or Nader as samples of good genetic material that should be engineered into the general population is just willful obtuseness. Human history has never supported the good guys, Marc and you have plenty of martyred friends to know that. So why your determination to classify a Kucinich or Nader as tin foil hat people? You should be photo shopping that gear on the heads of the masses.
It just occurred to me (as its near Christmas and all) to give you the benefit of the doubt and wonder if your refusal to even admire those that stand on principle is because your experience in South America associates doing that with a pretty good certainty for being murdered. History certainly supports that…so maybe as a survival mechanism you feel constant compromise and incremental progress the only safe way for institutions to be reshaped.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:53 am
Incidentally, just to show how getting “ideological” about party affiliations or progressive electoral strategies is remarkably beside the point, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary in Vermont. But he proceeded to run as an Independent (and self-identified “socialist”) in the general election, where he won with two-thirds of the votes. The Democrats have just accepted him as their guy, because he’s popular and had a good record in Congress. He got official support in his Senate run from Howard Dean at the DNC, along with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. I guess the lesson for Vermont Democrats is “Don’t fuck with a guy from Brooklyn.”
December 21st, 2009 at 8:29 am
incidentally,
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:11 am
I’ve got Sergio right where I want him.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Marc writes:
You seem to argue that that the American people are all yearning to be free but that Reg keeps tricking them back into the arms of the Democratic Party
————————–
It’s that Las Vegas thing going on in the big room behind where you are playing cards.
The rabbit, the hat, the wand… and REG bamboozling us with talk of the party.
The Democratic party has bent over backwards to follow the party of torture in their rightward drift…
You want to argue analogies about FDR and the PRI… argue the point!
The reason there is no meaningful reform of healthcare is because some DEM representatives are to the right of Atilla the Hun. Why not? Seats are safe.
(you know nothing of Atilla you BSers! In 1332 he was actually a man of the people!)
You seem to find ways to support the DEMs no matter how attenuated their populist leanings.
Think it will get better?
December 21st, 2009 at 10:33 am
I wish pablo wouldn’t use analogies or asserts facts to make his point that are totally bogus, because it makes it very hard for us to see what’s underlying and should be obvious – that he’s got the better argument. Mea culpa…
December 21st, 2009 at 10:38 am
Marc admonishes us:
” In other words, the one little tiny concept y’all can’t seem to get in your head is that there is NOTHING holding back the people from changing the system if enough of them wanted to. History is full of examples. ”
——————————-
When your hunble but outspoken resident village idiot suggests that the vanguard begin with an exodus of progressives from the DEMs, with their empty words and lukewarm deeds, you and the East Bay defender of the Party greet us with howls of execration.
In this fashion you two sound like the PRI: Oxymoronic. (How is it one both Institutional and Revolutionary? often asked in Mexico) So the people are free to leave the party…. up to the point where they begin to talk about it seriously… then they are, as Marc and Reg have variously said, fools and idiots.
On the other hand I have yet to observe a similar critique arising from the DEM who moves to the right and joins the party of torture. The colloquial explanation usually offered is that shit happens.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am
Personally, if I were given the absolute power to put a full-blown social democrat in the Oval Office, I’d choose Bernie Sanders
That would work. So would Russ Feingold.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Marc, I want to echo what DanO says (5:28AM). Also, at the risk of sounding obsequious, I want to thank you for taking the time to respond to us here in the comments. You obviously don’t get paid for it, and you have better things to do with your time (like fishing and a bit of blackjack), but just know that your putting your thoughts here for us irritating and irritable scrags does not go unappreciated. We gobble it up like, uh, cucarachas navideñas.
Anyhoo, thanks for the rockin’ posts. In the midst of my cynicism and pissed-off-ness regarding the recent nauseating sausage-making in congress, your posts are a shot in the arm. You’re like an atheist Santa! (thinner, and currently beardless, of course).
December 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Pablo: “the vanguard”
Kyle: “irritating and irritable scrags”
I think, unfortunately, that Kyle has more of a grip on the reality.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
“howls of execration”
Pablo – you are too kind. But I will do my best to live up the standard you’ve set for me. I guess I should pull my Ginsberg off the shelf to get the juices flowing.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:48 pm
reg, the lesson about Bernie Sanders is we should all move to Vermont.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Vermont might be the logical stepping off place for a real grass roots movement.
Once the snow melts and the maple syrup is harvested.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Psyching out Obama:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/leadership-obama-style-an_b_398813.html
December 21st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Anna – Actually “the lesson” from all of this, if one wants to get real and extract change from the system, is that “we” should move to Nebraska…
December 21st, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Ok Anna, thanks for insurance disclosure. You are lucky. Most people have it tougher. This bill, yes, call it a life raft. We can agree on that much.
Pablo… I have forgotten more about Nader and Kucinich than you will ever hope to know. I have known them both for 25 plus years. I told you I was one of the few endorsers of Nader in a NYTIMES ad when it was very unpopular.
I think Nader was an OK candidate in 2000. After that, he became a terrible candidate. I also think his latest book is a lot of conservative home-spun hogwash.
Kucinich was more or less a catastrophe as mayor. He has been a terrible candidate for president. He surrounded himself with New Age (advisors) and mixed the Course of Miracles mumbo jumbo into his stump speeches.
He has NO concept in how to turn whatever support he has into any sort of real movement. When he entered the Iowa caucuses in 2008 it took him months to open a single campaign office. And when he did, he hired ONE staffer for the most important caucus of the campaign.
Now, perhaps this is all due to shortage of resources. Or neglect. Or both. Or because even Dennis didnt take his own campaign seriously. But you tell me… why should have anyone wasted their support, their vote, or their donation on a Kucinich campaign that wasnt even willing to make any real fight on the ground on Iowa? Dennis’ “campaign” was all about getting his mug on TV and not about movement bldg.
And before you cry me his financial woes and the odds stacked against an underdog, remember that Howard Dean started out in mid 2003 with 1% name recognition, no federal profile and NO money whatsoever. I seem to remember him overcoming that because, unlike Kucinich, he took his campaign seriously and the favor was returned by a whole lot of Democratic voters.
When Kucinich voted AGAINST the House bill (the good old days compared to the senate version), he earned himself a tin foil hat, of not a kick in the pants. His vote aided the enemies of reform by allowing them to say the damn thing squeaked by with only 2 votes. Thanks Dennis.
And it wasnt even an authentic vote. I would bet MY LIFE that if passage of the bill had actually depended on Kucninich’s one vote, he would have voted for it.
I asked you in the other thread and I will ask you here: PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME THE POLITICAL DYNAMIC THAT RESULTED IN KUCINICH GETTING ONLY 2% OF THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTE (OR LESS). Why didn’t grass roots, average working class Dems vote for the sort of change you claim they have been clamoring for?
My answer to that question: Democratic VOTERS (not the elites) didn’t agree with or didnt find Kucinich to be a serious candidate and they chose someone else. Pretty damn simple.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
reg Says:
December 21st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
“howls of execration”
Pablo – you are too kind. But I will do my best to live up the standard you’ve set for me. I guess I should pull my Ginsberg off the shelf to get the juices flowing.
————————
No reg, it’s Camus: “L’etranger” (The Stranger, last line) check it out… maybe at City Lights.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Marc:
Whoa:::
me thinks your protests are telling me much…
Kucinich, only as a proponent of healthcare as a fundanmental right, not as the next POTUS.. (comment on what I wrote not what you think I wrote)
You are a bright guy, an admirable fellow,, but you have this propensity for placing words in others mouths..
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
I defended Pablo on another thread, but this view is really indefensible:
“Chris Hedges is right. Stand ready to support the party and candidate who reprents your views towards public policy.
Don’t sweat the outcome.”
THE OUTCOME IS REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT!