The Hill reports that President Obama was booed when he brought up the Baucus bill at his health insurance reform rally at the University of Maryland:
President Obama’s mention of Sen. Max Baucus’s healthcare proposal drew boos Thursday at a healthcare rally at the University of Maryland.
By contrast, the left-leaning crowd cheered Obama when he endorseed a public health insurance option, which is considered a core provision for liberal lawmakers but is absent from Baucus’s (D-Mont.) proposal.
According to someone at the rally, President Obama was taken aback by the boos, and he mentioned that each bill has its own strengths. I’m hopeful that the boos showed him that the public sentiment is very much against any legislation like the Baucus bill. After all, something’s got to pierce that bubble he lives in at the White House, and it might be as well the people at his own rallies.
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Oh, my goodness. You mean Rahm is not keeping him informed? My, my.
Good. He truly needs a wakeup call of some kind on the disastrous nature of the MaxTax.
If Rahm is turning him into Bubble Boy part deux, then we need to get Rahm a new job… any Rahm-Blago skeletons out there we can use? LOL. Be nice to see Rahm get dropped faster than sentencing at the Duke Cunningham trial.
I wonder to what degree Obama really knows what’s going on.
We have a lot of speculation, but little hard evidence either way. Is he really (as some of my more cynical progressive friends say, and I have to admit that I’ve said myself in my more bitter moods) just another “bought and sold shill for the lobbyists,” or is the truth more that he’s in a bubble — he really WANTS to do the right thing, but the “bubble” never actually lets the Right Thing get through to him?
If it’s the latter, then things like being booed when he mentions the MaxTax might actually be a Very Good Thing; if he sees that people don’t just blindly support HIM, but rather supports the ideas he says he stands for, it might be a wakeup call. It’s sort of like the alcoholic being shocked when he sees the look of disgust in his wife’s eyes — an unpleasant shock, but it could be the best thing that ever happens to him.
Priceless!
Wow, and here I was [am] in DeeCee and didn’t go to this event because I thought it would be “more of the same.” Rats, I missed my opportunity to boo!!
It’s been interesting while here to get my news from the Dead Tree sources. [Usually it’s strictly on-line.] Both the WaPoo and USA Today attempt to portray the Max Tax as “middle ground” — something to piss off the conservative; something else to piss off the liberals.
I’m glad at least SOME folks are paying attention to more accurate sources!!
Excellent news!
Signage idea for anyone wanting to make a simple sign to hold up at a rally:
NO PUBLIC OPTION,
NO DEAL.
Mandates? Fines?
Higher Taxes?
No Public Option?
NO THANKS!
This is very good! I hope Obama is listening.
I hate Rahm.
I like slinkerwink, though, very much: that post yesterday on the trigger lies in the Part D bill was great! Thank you.
Whax the Max Tax………hopefully more and louder booing will occur if Obama mentions his name at anymore rallies.
The baucuss bill is an abomination and if Pres. Obmama thinks it derves anything besides a trip to the recycling bin hes more out of touch than is safe for him or us. Pre. Obama dosent get it that The MSM arent shaping opinions andymore, they arent framing the debate. The MSM would ignore the baucus bill now, just so they could TRASH the president and democrats after it passed.
I think he is in a bubble. He was an academic, don’t forget. The Ivory Tower is real… I grew up with teachers, professors and “educators” who believed that good intentions meant actual actions.
Well the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Ya gotta walk the dog, not tell it how much affection is in your heart…
Wow. If he really is insulated from his base…that’s horrible and yet slightly encouraging.
the circle of life has fractured and our universe is comming to an end;
And no, Mr. President, they were not shouting “Boo-urns.”
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
I didn’t get any sense that Obama was taken aback by the boos. If anything he appears to be admonishing the crowd.
Each bill has it’s strengths… right. They strongly support private insurers.
This will undoubtedly be reported as
I’ve found you can lose the crowd here with obscure Simpsons references. Not me though, as I live in a perpetual state of arrested development.
As MST3K used to say, the right people will get it. ;)
chuck grassley’s bawling. poor baby. when’s barack going to console him?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..82335/-OMG!-GRASSLEYS-OUT-OFFICIALLY!
or
PUBLIC OPTION
NOT CORPORATE OPTION
I cannot for the life of me imagine that he’s in that much of a bubble — or that he was ‘taken aback’. It didn’t look like it to me. I think he was trying to save face for Baucus and the Blue Dogs.
dunno, I got the opposite idea, it looked to me like he well anticipated the boo and was ready with an answer right in the speach already prepared
Thank you Maryland! No corporate wellfare. I know Obama read polls durring the campaign, what the hell does he think 76% means?
Close your eyes and imagine what the booing would have been like for Bush if his crowds were not screened so vigorously.
True on the Simpsons, but Sufi’s Bill Murray reference is universally understood among all peoples.
The dissemination of false information – death panels – government control – is overpowering the real information.
If Obama thinks the Max Tax is a potentially good bill, Obama is feeding the misinformation campaign himself.
The Baucus Bill is a total piece of shit. (We already knew it would be.)
LOL…
One of my favorite Simpsons references….
I would have enough difficulty imagining shrub addressing the AFL-CIO.
I don’t think Obama understands quite yet how quickly the information highway runs on health care. People know the MaxTax is a disaster for middle class families, and used the opportunity to tell Obama so. Obama’s surprise may be that people know that already, since the MaxTax only came out yesterday.
But he should also be listening to the cheers for Public Option.
This was NOT ‘booing Obama.’ It was booing the Baucus Debacle. Come on, Slink. I know Jane is basically an unreconstructed PUMA from the Sirota/Greenwald faction but this is nonsense.
I love this because it shows what a difference the internet makes. Citizens have such a better knowledge and understanding of the politics taking place, which we did not have ten years ago. I can see the possibility that we might be able to have an impact on this healthcare bill which would never, ever have happened if it weren’t for the internet allowing us to easily read the bills for ourselves and have smart people call bullshit.
The Obama Bubble isn’t a bubble of not being aware of what people want, he surely learned from his campaigning skill in front of crowds cheering wildly when he spoke of universal health care.
It’s the White House Bubble, the Executive Branch Bubble. The Military Bubble. The Security State Bubble. The Lobby Bubble.
He wants to be loved by everyone but has to please the powerful and moneyed first. The progressives he only has to soothe with words which used to work in the past when teevee and dead tree media were the only sources of info.
He’s a pleaser and appeaser not a fighter like FDR.
if i was in there, i’d have booed too – not baucus, but OBAMA because he had the nerve to mention that piece of garbage and suggest that it has some decent proposals.
terp power baby!
Misleading headline. They weren’t booing President Barack Hussein Obama. They were clearly booing Max Baucus.
Yea, let’s boo the guy who could very well be bringing the biggest move to a single-payer system we’ve had in several decades. Smart move.
You have GOT to be kidding.
I was there…we definitely booed, and it was clear that we were booing the Baucus bill. We cheered Obama and we cheered the public option, which he emphasized clearly as a priority.
There was no doubt about what was going on.
This is great news… on top of the overwhelming roar from the crowd in Minneapolis(?) in support of PO over the weekend.
If O really is kept in the dark in re the polling results in support of the PO, Rahm and Axelrod should be fired yesterday. Somehow I doubt that’s the case. They are all counting on things like pharma / insurance 150 million dollar ad buy to sell and seal the deal.
he said this after mentioning baucus by name:
that’s crap. total crap. boo-worthy.
With “Liberal” friends like these, who needs Republicans?
was there a big a$$ line that wrapped around cambridge like last year’s? I couldnt make it since i transferred out :/
Do a lot of public speaking do ya?
That was exactly my impression. I feel like I was tricked into watching that video. Even the booing was a bit disappointing.
Uh, is this not the standard Obama M.O.? “There’s more that unites us than divides us…” and so on?
He did this on the Stimulus and other things that didn’t get a single Repub vote, yet he still continues. He knows what Repubs are going to do, and they end up looking like petty children, and he’s the reasonable adult.
Plus, the statement in and of itself is not “total crap.” There’s stuff about removing pre-existing conditions and so on in all of them, so it is a factually correct statement.
Maybe a Maryland constituent should send this link to Steny.
your comment would have met will full agreement from me before the DADT and torture fiascos. not now. i don’t trust him to act like a “reasonable adult”. i am willing to be pleasantly surprised though.
it did strike me as interesting that of all the bills under consideration, he chose to mention the one by max baucus by name and not the others.
Wonder how many people died today as a result of collusion between Republicans, Blue Curs and the health insurance corporations?
If the boos keep up at the mention of the Baucus fiasco at Obama pep rallies it won’t be long before he’s isolated in a cocoon spun by Rahm E.
He makes Neville Chamberlain look like a paragon of strength.
Priceless. :-)
I’m pretty amazed the crowd was that well informed too.
Ah yes, dancing on the graves and horrible suffering of others.
While those “too big to give a damn” get “pipe” the tune.
One wonders how many human beings, all around the world, perished, fell ill, were killed or maimed, today, through war or greed, simply to please the “ambitions” of the sociopathic elite? How many tomorrow?
How long can it go on?
Indifferent, “death panels”, comprised of those for whom there is NEVER enough wealth or power to satisfy the lust of their pathetic fears and their small, constrained imaginings, leave behind a wake of destruction and despair, and, if there is too be, ever, any “reparation”, “clean-up”, or “admission” of responsibility … it will have to come from others and NEVER from the self-styled “elite”.
There are those who will stoutly maintain that “it has ever been thus”, implying that NOTHING can ever change. It is simply human “nature”.
Could this be so?
Perhaps we shall see?
Will those who see all humans as grasping and selfish, always seeking “control” and power, never valuing anything beyond themselves and their own mean little purview be proven “right”, or might some other, more humane vision find sufficient support to allow some other possibility?
Got hope?
Got gumption?
Well, we’d better get “going” …
Incredible!
Jane must not become a Republican!
I was thinking about making him the “dish washer” at the White House, but with Rahm’s temper, he would be slamming dishes on the floor in no time!!
Whatever his new job ends up being, Chief of Staff is not it.
Yes Jenrin. It´s so uplifiting!
I hope Obama listened to NPR today. The Baucus shit was hitting the fan among callers. If Max is trying to foment an insurrection, he’s doing very well.
Agreed. The crowd was booing Max and his plan.
The plan is so pathetic that not only are Republicans not supporting it, Slapsie Maxie’s own Democrats are bailing. There is so much strident opposition to the proposal that you could call it the Raucus Baucus Bill.
Now lets hope everyone keeps to the same message. The Baucus Bill is the Corporate Bill and the Public Option is the American Bill. Now is the time to pick up the pressure on our own Senators to oppose anything out of Finance and improve the the HELP Bill. Public Option or No reform!
Why is Obama always let off the hook and the evil Rahm is always the bad guy. Obama appointed Rahm. Period. They are both complicit in this health care snooker scam.
No, but we filled the place. I arrived only 15 minutes early and got a great seat. Lots of my friends were on the floor (the best seats). I should have tried harder but I had to work…
President Obama seems to be clueless on this. I was watching the speech and he seemed perplexed when there was wild cheering for the public option. I don’t think he gets it.
agreed—to stand in front of about 17,000 of the folks who stand to get CREAMED by the max tax in a few years, and praise max and his shit sandwich of a bill, deserved a good bronx cheer.
AND communicate with each other, all over the world, in real time..a real weapon of democracy in the hands of the people. no wonder the right wing capital ruling class dont understand how to make it work for them.
I remember during the campaign how Jane was simultaneously a “puma” and an
“obama-bot” and a serious “kool aid” juicer…and had a telepathic link to glen greenwald.
Yeah!!! We booed, hope teh Pres HEARD it. In fact, cause you can’t ALWAYS believe the MSM, there were quite a number of us older people there, too (at least 30%). Where we were sitting, only a few New Yorkers (the kids at UMDCP are mostly from NY-NJ) around us. Most all locals, and not students.
I don’t know that Obama “doesn’t get it”. Maybe he’s telling us to force him on the public option. That’s how Frankie Roosevelt worked (& our old good Gov. Glendening). They both would tell us progressive to our faces to “force them to do the progressive thing”.
Organize. Use teh internets (but don’t think typing is organizing, teh internets is jest teh newist kinda’ phone tree). Get out, talk to people you don’t agree with, make sure yr. Congresspeoples aides know you by yr 1st name. We all know how to do this…
Ditto.
The crowd cheered for a public option. Imagine That!
no point in blaming the approaching health care train wreck on Rahm. It is the fault and responsibility of Rahm’s boss. Period.