Comments on: Shorter Harry Reid: Don’t Look at Me!

By: beowulf

beowulf — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:49:39 +0000

Express your admiration that your Blue Dog Rep has come out strongly in favor Medicare over Obamacare and tell him you support his efforts to make Medicare available to everyone.

Let him try to talk his way out of that compliment.

By: PaulaT

PaulaT — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:30:52 +0000

Mention the support for the public option and how lucky your district is to have someone who takes care of their health and the deficit by endorsing it. Make it rousing and sincere sounding (practice!). If he calls you on your mistake, apologize profusely as if you really did make the mistake of thinking he supported it. If enough people applaud at the right points in your introduction, he might just go along with it.

By: runfastandwin

runfastandwin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:06:38 +0000

I cannot for the life of me understand why any Democrat would support a mandate. What are the going to do, put half the country in jail once their employers drop them and pay the measly fine?

The President is playing a dangerous game, I sure hope he knows what he is doing…

By: wocolor

wocolor — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:19:36 +0000

I heard you on Rehm show! You were great and I’m sorry you are ill and w/out healthcare. I thought the caller who followed you, from MA, was also interesting in the information she shared about not being able to afford her healthcare premium, which is 25 percent of her pay. She said the premium amount after a certain amount of income is the same whether one is making 35K or 330K per year. I was reading the letters in today’s NYTimes and almost every single one is an indictment of private insurance and call for a public option.

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:12:47 +0000

I guess he remembers what the White House did to Chris Dodd when they didn’t want to own the backlash over the AIG bonuses. Dodd’s poll numbers still haven’t recovered.

That pretty much sums up the main points.

If Harry Reid caves to the WH, either by dumping PO — or by insisting on all those bipartisany GOP votes from the likes of Sen John (”I don’t need maternity benefits because I’m male”) Kyl — it would be political hari-kari.

As it is, this health care mess has exposed the craven, vapid lack of policy vision in the GOP. So as long as the Dems move forward and pass PO, they’ll win more than they actually expected, both legislatively and politically.

By: Shamus

Shamus — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:11:53 +0000

I found the quote put out by Reid’s office:

“Sen. Reid believes that health insurance reform must include a mechanism to keep insurers honest, create competition and keep costs down,” the statement reads. “He feels that the public option is the best way to do that. While we don’t know exactly what that option will look like, Sen. Reid, working with President Obama, will ensure that whatever is included in the final bill does just that.”

That sure sounds like wiggle room double talk for “trigger” to me.

By: Shamus

Shamus — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:48:01 +0000

Jane,

I wouldn’t jump for joy about Reid being on board with the public option just yet. After Reid was quoted yesterday, his office put out a statement to clarify his previous statement. They said something like he will make sure there is a “mechanism” to include the public option in the bill (forgive me, but I’m going from memory here so “mechanism” might not be the exact word used, but it was something with similar meaning). When I heard that word “mechanism,” an alarm sounded in my head. It sounded like political word-play to me–mechanism is probably code for “trigger.”

By: PaulaT

PaulaT — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:05:07 +0000

The Dodd example is a good one. Nobody had his back when he had the WH’s. They let him hang. OTOH, nobody has been punished for not being a good soldier (like a certain “independent” we all know and love). Anyone in the congress who doesn’t get the message that there is more to risk by standing in the way than by helping the public get their preferred options no matter what the WH thinks is crazy. As for insurance and pharma, they’ll live. Even they are smart enough to see that this populist movement is out of control. There might be some risk to those who don’t fall in line, but they aren’t going to stop trying to make deals over this one falling apart on them. They aren’t emotional entities who have hissy fits over betrayal, they are financial entities just trying to buy whatever breaks they can.

By: JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin

JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:36:18 +0000

Nice article as usual, Jane.

It’s pretty well known that Obama and Rahm are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming for the public option. Obama’s weak, waffling “support” of it has been pretty obvious, and Rahmbo obviously underestimated the fact that the public really wants a public option, and the DLC line of “what’s good for corporations is good for America, so STFU liberals” isn’t playing well in Peoria (as pundits like to say, even though most have never actually been to Peoria, but I have).

If they have to be dragged kicking and screaming, so be it. Health care is too important to be “polite” about.

By: JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin

JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:29:29 +0000

To quote an old REO Speedwagon song…

Keep pushin’, keep pushing, keep pushing on…