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Health Care Reform: Now With PR Gimmicks! We're Doomed.
Posts
Yes because that is what 50 Democratic Senators want, to be able to say to their constituents "Look at those assholes!! See why I couldn't work with them?"
Is that really so complicated. Do you really think they are at all interested in legitimately having a summit to hear Republican ideas?
[edited for indoor voice]
Well in that case I don't know why you even bothered to follow this at all since Bill Clinton failed last time around.
Was it because the mean Obama man sold you the hope?
And now you've decided nothing good will ever happen ever?
No.
Cheer up buddy.
I'm sorry I disagree with you over the capability of Democrats to self immolate, but being cheerful doesn't seem to impact that regardless. Hell, I am cheery. I'm a white male about to get a graduate degree, and I'm going to go see a Bulls game tomorrow. Things are likely going to come up aces for me regardless of whether or not this bill fails along with other important reforms. That doesn't make the seemingly chronic systemic issues that go unaddressed by the government less significant. It's rather amazing that we've managed to come as far as we have as a country given how shitty our institutions are. It makes you wonder if we'd have flying cars and shit if we were a Parliamentary setup.
Again: as long as they pass the bill their constituents won't give a damn how it was passed. Procedure is meaningless. What needs to happen, and will not be accomplished with this summit, is the House Dems and the Senate Dems need to sit down and figure out what needs to be in the reconciliation bill for the House Dems to sign on. And then they need to pass that. Consultations with the Republicans serve no purpose. Except, potentially, to embarrass the Republicans. Which of course, does nothing to pass the damn bill.
EDIT: As a sidenote, by engaging in this argument, you're going to get a new thread and my mean, nasty title will go away.
Are you always this pissed off when it looks like what you want to happen is about to happen?
What you think about voters is kind of beside the point. It's what Congresspeople think about voters - and if they want this political cover in order to effect the reconciliation passage - great.
It's 1:30 in the morning.
Let's just leave it that we all hope it will happen, are afraid it won't and that if it does we'll party like hell.
Jesus God let it end before April though.
See! You're right there with us! Where you say April, we say: last August.
Gah.
Basically my attitude is that as long as they are still trying I'm still with them.
At some point though that kinda has to degenerate into wondering whether or not you're getting played.
I'm not really trying to implicate the DNC in some grand conspiracy to sink the healthcare bill here, but for any given issue that strongly motivates people to vote for a particular candidate, the candidate is better off keeping that issue around for as long as he can while still appearing to be trying to resolve it.
That sentence is a mouthful but it's late and I don't care.
Played for what?
It's not like the Democrats have done well out of this whole thing politically.
The same way doctors keep people sick and firefighters occasionally start fires.
Mostly kidding. Mostly.
Purely from a game theory perspective, keeping an issue around so you can campaign on it makes sense if all you give a shit about is getting reelected (until you're put in such a position that you don't have any way to weasel your out of taking (meaningful!) action on that issue.)
This is the why the Republicans never take meaningful action on abortion theory, right?
The problem with this theory is that it tends to piss off the base. Which means it's like 50/50 likely, given the DNC's penchant to punch hippies.
Eventually, once you run out of people to blame for Issue X not getting resolved. The 60-seat Senate majority makes whining about Republican obstructionism somewhat difficult to take seriously, which is probably a big part of why Reid is getting his ass handed to him in November.
It's also worth noting that while it may piss the base off - eventually - it's not like they're going to vote for the other guy. At worst, your fundraising and turnout dips for a cycle or two, and the incumbent eats a primary challenge.
Edit: Thank you for removing the last remnants of idealism towards the legislative process I had, Professor Feig!
Michael Steele even taunted Obama about the fact.
EDIT: Well okay, they had something to do with it, in that they did some excellent fearmongering and got the Blue Dogs' constituencies to make it hazardous for them to vote on anything that included a public option.
This is surprising. Source?
And it was my impression that a combination of constituents' vehement opposition to some of the more generous proposals put forth (and mostly incorporated into the House bill) and the sheer impact of lobbyist money that effectively "stole" those last few votes from the passage of the Senate bill.
Psh, it was lobbying and them being greedy, soulless motherfuckers (particularly Landrieu and Nelson).
Poll from October back when this mattered.
<Obligatory election finance reform plug>
On one hand, I can't blame them for going after Republican votes - after all, if you have Olympia Snowe, who at least voted for the Senate Finance bill and might have been close on the real deal (emphasis on might), you can say fuck you to Lieberman and Ben Nelson's sweetheart deal like we all wanted to. And after it really became obvious that Snowe was not on-board, the Democrats didn't waste nearly as much time. On the other hand, grow a fucking pair already.
The null hypothesis is that this changes very little, right?
If those candidates lose and we're stuck with centrists, then we're stuck with centrists. It is true that they can ignore us and "punch hippies" because they won and the hippie candidate lost. Oh well. Suck it up you silly geese!
Any gamers in the Danville, PA area? PM me if you're interested in some tabletop gaming.
The House doesn't trust the Senate at all, so this is probably harmful. Depends if Reid is demanding they pass both the fix and the main bill before the Senate passes the fix or just the fix.
If it's the latter we're not too screwed, if it's the former we're very screwed.
Senators have goverment Health Care and not the crapy kind, but the Cadillac kind.
Fucking Socialists.
That's basically why Republican's aren't blameless. Universal obstructionism places the legislative pivot point at 60th most Liberal/40th most Conservative Democrat. Meaning that due to the Dems 'only' having 60 seats they had pretty much no leverage over what Lieberman, Bayh, Nelson et. al. wanted because each of them were the '60th vote' necessary to get things passed. If there were 61 Democrats in the Senate, or if the Republicans were acting in good faith that would mean that you could play people off of each other in order to reign in their excesses.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/reid_democrats_will_use_reconc.html
427 columns about this being a partisan thing that will take away precious time from cutting taxes to create jobs.
This, and also so that the Senate can move on to CLEAN-TEA (with the infrastructure bank and better funding formulas for New Starts), and ACES. Those are basically everything I wanted out of an Obama administration, plus the repeal of DADT (which is in process) and DOMA (which isn't) and generic good governance.
One positive upside to going through with reconciliation is that it tells Republicans with no ambiguity that they either work with Democrats or get shoved out of the way. Right now they get away with it because they probably don't think the Democrats have the guts to go through with reconciliation.
"Why didn't you try to get our needs addressed in x bill when you knew it was passing anyway?" is more powerful than "Why did you work with the Democrats?".
Also: words, not actions.