What if Lyndon Johnson, to get the Civil Rights bill passed, had said it would be okay to allow individual states to opt out? Just asking.

Ezra Klein says Nelson and Landrieu and Lincoln will withhold their votes. Now, is that the same as saying they will filibuster? I don’t know.

aimin’ for quail wings

♫ moo-hoovin on up! ♪

although no surprise, they apparently can’t count on Senator Dodd either

How much longer until that veal gets cooked?

How about the Opt-out with an ammendment that allows residents and small businesses to purchase health insurance across state lines. PO become available for all.

I would like to see how many Republicans vote against one of their talking points.

Apparently this phrase is just sooooo clever that we are going to just beat it to death. Sorta like “Kabuki” and “meme”.

Say what you want about Sen. Reid, he is not a fool. He is not going to let himself get Dodded by Rahm.

“Pleeeeease doooon’t eeeeeeat meeeeeeee, Lisaaaaaaaa.”

Reid’s a fool.

The human race was dyin’ out
No one left to scream and shout
People walking on the moon
Smog will get you pretty soon

You are more optimistic than I am. Reid may not be a fool but he is weak, lacking in loyalty, and he dithers.
He’ll do whatever he has to to make sure that he doesn’t get any blame.

And “optics.”

Everyone was hanging out
Hanging up and hanging down
Hanging in and holding fast
Hope our little world will last.

I bet Sen. Dodd wishes he had done that.

Too bad most of the fight in Reid left long ago

After a rough and tumble upbringing in the mining town of Searchlight, Reid became an amateur boxer and has acknowledged getting “called out” from bars in his youth.

“I am, by nature, somebody that … I was raised where you settled your differences physically, and I still have a little of that in me and I’m fighting that all the time. I don’t want to be mean to people,” he said.

Let’s just say that I’m not wild about Harry.

“Even the liberal institutional organizations favor the opt-out!”

Thanks, Veal Pen. Nice to know Rahm can count on you to snatch the people’s defeat from the jaws of victory. Who are the funders who made the Veal Pen do Rahm’s bidding to enforce the Corporatist deals?

Just sent my third letter to Reid, faxed and dropped in the mailbox.

A public option that states can opt-out of is not an option!

This thing is going on and on

Maybe everyone’s playin rope-a-dope, hoping that the loudmouths will punch themselves out and shut the fuck up.

The tea party guys seem to have had enough fun.

Lieberman is an ass. He just said that he hadn’t decided yet whether he would join a filibuster. Sounds to me like history could still be made by that jerkoff. If the Republicans will fund JoeLie to run as an R next cycle, my bet is that he would filibuster. OK, that’s a few years off, but still…

we have not been able to find a single time in history where members have joined with the opposition party to filibuster a bill.

Have you found a single time in history that a party with an overwhelming majority in both houses of congress and the presidency has bent over backwards to tongue the nether regions of a minority party, comprised of certifiably deranged wingnuts with diminishing appeal?

Putting Lieberman on the ticket in 2000 was one of the biggest mistakes Gore ever made.

Thank goodness he got knocked down a few pegs in the primaries. That should have humbled him, but it clearly did not.

THE biggest. Gave him cred and that’s all it took for him to be a complete asshat.

Gore’s capitulation in Florida was worse than his nomination of Leiberman.

I think Gore’s biggest mistake was deciding to run against the Clinton administration, which is the reason he chose Lieberman.

Gore lost because he let his big ego get in the way.

Having said my peace, I have a lot of admiration for Vice President Gore.

Al probably thought it would help him win Florida. How’d that turn out, anyway?

See, there was this guy? And he swore a lot and shouted obscenities at everyone and one time he got all worked up during a tirade and mutilated some furniture with a steak knife? And he has this maniacal vision of his own grandeur and power? Well, if he were all dirty and disheveled and acting this way on the streets of downtown Chicago, we’d try to help him get appropriate medical attention.

But instead, he sits at the right hand of the Leader of the Free World, and he made a lot of promises to a lot of people and it looks like he may not be able to keep them and he’s afraid that people will realize he’s not all powerful and really who needs to have a crazed fixer that close to power?

So in order to keep his grip on the big chair he’s going to punk his allies just to stay friends with his allies’ enemies.

Doing otherwise? That’d just be Fucking Stupid.

He said he chose Lieberman because he was the first Democrat to publicly chastise Clinton for the Lewinsky affair.

I also think he chose Lieberman because Lieberman’s personality wasn’t going outshine his own.

And running against the Clinton record was just plain stupid.

I can’t even imagine what Gore was thinking. It has never made any sense to me at all. Choosing Joe just stunned me. And yes, it was dumb of him to leave Clinton out of the campaign. The Big Dog could have won it for him.

I think Gore imagined Monica-gate would result a voter backlash that never really materialized.

This is SO awesome. Now the number of people who have signed the petition to tell Reid to strip any Dem senators of their leadership titles who side with Republicans and block an up-or-down health care vote on the Senate floor is over 61,000! The new target is 75,000!

If you haven’t yet seen it or signed it, please take a moment to look:

http://boldprogressives.org/ma…..de=bp_main

And running against the Clinton record was just plain stupid.

How’s Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagal working out for ya? DOMA? NAFTA? DADT, income steadily declining in real terms, household debt mushrooming?

The Clinton years were a real chucklefest.

Yet even with all Gore’s missteps, he actually won.

There’s a cold dirty chair
that hasn’t seen much air
and it rests at the back of this great hall
There is room for your ass
and there your days will pass
where a nothing can believe he knows it all.
Congress has a name
for someone that is lame
and certain to take their greatest ever fall
and old joe it’ll be you
for that old chair and you
have nothing left to do at all.

Exactly. He ran against the entire Clinton record out of fear of one thing that the American people, as it turned out, didn’t care as much about as Newt and Hyde thought/had hoped they would. And so he handed the election to Bush.

I didn’t say St. Clinton, Clinton the Perfect, or whatever. Clinton’s presidency, for all of its imperfections, was the best in the last 40 years. Care to name a better one since Nixon?

Kindly refrain from pissing on my leg and telling me that its raining.

Yes he did. So sad – think how the world would be different.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

“…Obama is pushing for a public option from behind the scenes. But it’s his choice. If the President wants one to be there.it’ll be there.”

Now read that back and think about it for a moment. I’ve been cryin’ in the wilderness for weeks, nay months, now that ultimately Obama owns whatever comes outta the Congress and he knows it. Even if a few Blue Dogs or fascist fellow travelers join the Rethugs to fillibuster, Obama wins but only if he holds them responsible to the public that has been cryin’ for relief for months now. The only way Obama loses is if there is no public option in the legislation and if the legislation isn’t enabled before 2012.

Obama has been lookin’ to get any of the opponents of the public option to go out front and take the fall for killin’ this and no one,and I include a bunch of Republicans up for re-election, is gunna stand up and take responsibility for killin’ a popular legislative action. In the end, after gettin 60 votes or more for cloture there will be more’n 60 votes for final passage.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION AND KEEP THE PRESSURE ON!!

It wasn’t entirely due to political miscalculation. He was also pissed that (like Hillary) he had hitched his wagon to Bill’s star and gotten dragged through the muck. Bruised feelings clouded his judgement.

Sorry, but it never should have been close at all. Gore should have walked into the White House. Instead, he ran on change, though he was the incumbent!

I refer you to my comment at 26:

Having said my peace, I have a lot of admiration for Vice President Gore.

Let’s just say that at this point, the Democrat Party is visiting on the health care insurance debate the same vision and attention to detail that characterized their approach in Florida after the 2000 election.

No room in politics for bruised feelings. You play nice, you don’t get elected.

That’s terrific. The above mentioned jerkoff is one I’d love to see lose a gavel. (Not that I hope he joins the batcrap crazies in a filibuster.)

Citizen ratfood:

Gore was trapped inside his own endzone and with a gameplan and coachin’ staff left over from the Clintons…he still woulda won without that bright shinin’ progressive populist Ralph Nader in the race.

No room in politics for bruised feelings.

Yet politics is as much about relationships as it is about policy, and all too often, policy disagreements are treated like personal disagreements.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve criticized an elected or veal pen calf’s policy to have someone ask me “so you don’t like so and so?”

Hey, the Democrats could start acting like Republicans. They could make decisions behind closed doors, force their caucuses to vote the party line, and push through whatever they want.

The Democratic Party’s culture of leadership is messy, but it’s how democracy is supposed to work.

But I agree with you: the Democratic Party’s leadership should have fought much harder in 2000!

I completely agree with you on the clever sounding word thing. my skin crawled everytime i heard some MSM pin-head misusing the word “occult”…remember that? for awhile, instead of “hidden” or “obscure” everything was occult this and occult that, i wanted to kick the TV. problem is, “occult” in that context {really} only works as medical jargon. One other thing…if you can give me a word to use instead of “meme” that works as good, i’ll use it…until then i think “meme” is just “spot on”..

***I’m repeating this because the link didn’t work @ 32***

This is SO awesome. Now the number of people who have signed the petition to tell Reid to strip any Dem senators of their leadership titles who side with Republicans and block an up-or-down health care vote on the Senate floor is over 61,000! The new target is 75,000!

If you haven’t yet seen it or signed it, please take a moment to look:

http://boldprogressives.org/ma…..de=bp_main

Politics is about take no prisoners and never stop.

Let’s just all agree that Lieberman should know better than to side with the Republicans on such an important issue.

Hey, the Democrats could start acting like Republicans. They could make decisions behind closed doors, force their caucuses to vote the party line, and push through whatever they want.

I was thinking this through at the gym the other day, and came to the same conclusion, that we’re stronger for the debate.

But there needs to be a killer instinct retained, directed outwards, the willingness to play for keeps when push comes to shove on the things that really matter.

Well he DID win. Unfortunately his legal team did not include five Supreme Court justices.

Never lose the killer instinct. Calves in the veal pen have no killer instinct.

But politics is also about building coalitions that can overwhelm opponents and managing internal conflicts in some healthy, non-authoritarian manner if possible.

Al Gore would have won big if he had run as the Al Gore of 2002 onward. The Al Gore of 2000 wasn’t worth the cardboard he was printed on.

They need to be more like this.

But there needs to be a killer instinct retained, directed outwards, the willingness to play for keeps when push comes to shove on the things that really matter.

Exactly. Which is why it’s so disappointing that there’s so much division over health care reform among Democrats and those caling themselves Democrats in the House and Senate. President Obama correctly identified it as a moral issue. So what’s the big problem? All we can do is continue to speak loudly!

Ouch. It hurts because it’s true!

Again, I refer you to my comment @ 26:

Having said my peace, I have a lot of admiration for Vice President Gore.

Citizen ratfood:

Yeah Brother Rat, the biggest crime since the beginnin’ of the industrail revolution and it was done on television and declared legal by the final arbitors of our system of “rule of law”…what a fuckin joke…I know that the Director of this Divine Comedy has a sense of humor and the joke is not on us, the joke IS us!

Dana Lyons rocks! I remember sharing one electric Oregon sunset with Dana and friends on a camping trip a few years ago.

We won’t know which direction this thing is going until the fuckin political posturing is over. The blue dogs, if they are going to vote for cloture, need to demonstrate that they are fighting hard and will need to receive something visible to give them cover- at least that’s how these things seem to normally work. It’s a fucking THEATRE party.

All we can do is continue to speak loudly!

We need to act, more stuff like this: http://www.freeclinics.us/

Calls for people to converge on city halls around the nation at a predetermined date demanding a Medicare for All would help.

Its about showing hard numbers and political strength to back up the election results now, to reframe the debate on our terms.

That is just great. Sent to lots of friends. thanks

SOMEONE has no doubt realized that the Public Option’s greatest selling point is its SIMPLICITY.

They want to screw it up so that average Americans no longer intuitively understands it, and then they will kill it.

We have to put the kabosh on any attempts to further muddle the Public Option.

Citizen rwcole:

“It’s a fucking THEATRE party.”

Indeed it is, the process is theatre but ultimately the end product is real and only one person takes the credit or the blame…while ALL of us suffer the consequences.

SOMEONE has no doubt realized the that the Public Options greatest selling point is it’s SIMPLICITY.

The Public Options on the table are mostly Rube Goldberg machines compared to HR 676.

The PO selling point is the cost savings.

TRUE, but the “opt-out” plan is a Rube Goldberg machine compared to the Public Option.

IMO nobody is going to filibuster this on the Democratic side ‘cept for the Great Troll of Stamford. Landrieu won’t, Nelson won’t, Lincoln. Sure, they’ll hem and haw and scream but precedent shows that they will follow the leadership in the end, so long as the leadership is prepared to lead. So let’s be clear, when we’re talking about a left-side-of-the-aisle filibuster risk, we’re talking about the Great Troll. Period.

TRUE, but the “opt-out” plan is a Rube Goldberg machine compared to the Public Option.

Opt-out is quite straight forward, and if taken to its extreme, will build an even greater constituency for structural health finance reform.

Opt-out is not my first choice, but if that is the way to get a robust public option, then it should be considered. Canada got universal health care one province at a time.

What if you’re wrong?

Oh goodness…my 5 year old came in just as the urine started to flow. Had to turn it off.

it’ll be without precedent, and in WDC precedent is everything. Especially on our side of the aisle. Of course I could be wrong, and of course any of those suspects will probably against us in the end or not vote at all, but they won’t do a filibuster, no matter what they threaten. If you are proposing that we base a strategy around your argument that we should expect a non-Lieberman democratic filibuster you need to give us some evidence beyond your gut… ’cause I don’t see it.

A conservative Democrat or perhaps Saunders on the left could peel off to support a filibuster, it is a possibility either out of commitee or after the conference reports, and it is always prudent to anticipate such potential eventualities and have a plan to deal with them favorably. Opt-out might be appropriate for that case.

As I wrote earlier, it is also unprecedented to have a party which holds strong majorities in both houses of congress and the white house bending over backwards to lick the nether regions of a minority that is certifiably detached.

to anticipate yes, but not to base a strategy around it. What do you want me to say: I already admitted to the possiblity and to our need to have a contingency for it. But it is NOT the likely outcome. With JoeLie, it is likely.

This is totally different. In Canada you started out with a province-based system that spread. This is a national public option that we are slicing and dicing for no good reason.

(I don’t buy the argument that states benefit from freedom to choose. We’ll have to see the polls as to what the public thinks, but does this get us to 60 in the Senate? If not, why are we doing it?)

The only reason to slice and dice is because a weak compromise national PO might be worse than a strong compromise opt-out PO.

Nobody knows what gets 60 votes in the Senate.

just spent 10 minutes berating 2 Landrieu staffers who resisted my hypothesis of the health care sector, er, racket’s donations affecting her position. they actually agreed conservadem consolidarity was a legitamite reason to block reform!

If necessary and if it is effective, putting the question in the hands of state legislators may be a general way of defeating big-money interests. Under current circumstances, in which a few small-state senators hold the balance of power, they’re getting maximum leverage. They donate to those Senators and threaten to support their future opponents if they don’t cooperate. The more individual elections they have to influence the thinner they have to spread their money. Of course the leanings of state legislatures and governors has its own calculus – it could be better or worse than the Senate is currently.

That is the crux of the problem – overcoming the money influence in the states of the blue-dog senators.

I’d hope that we’d not decry the Veal Pen and then create our own Sheep Pen.

… and the opt-out clause will be removed in Conference, so the strong PO gets passed and signed into law.

If the Dems pass a weak Bill, they’re toast for the next 3 election cycles and their leadership knows that.

How ’bout that Hamsher gal, folks … let’s lend a helping hand above by donating to the effort.

You should totally write that up as a Seminal diary.

There’s an enormous amount of congnitive dissonance in advocating for the “opt-out” compromise and then hemming and hawing that we are creating a “sheep pen.”

But, as my mother used to say, no hill for a climber.

I’d be willing to accept opt-out if several conditions were met: first, a strong, non-crippled public option needs to be up and running in those states that don’t opt out by summer of 2010 (not 2013, that’s ridiculous). Ditto with the other rules preventing insurance companies from denying people based on pre-existing conditions. We need to go into the 2010 election with real, demonstrable improvement: millions of people who didn’t have coverage before, now with good coverage. It’s a win-win: the people see improvements quickly, and they have an opportunity to reward the people who made it possible.

Second, the opt-out procedure needs to be tough. A governor can’t be allowed to opt out on his or her own. Both the legislature and the governor would have to agree to opt out, and furthermore a state could opt back in at any time. That way, when the residents of a state see people in neighboring states benefitting from the public option, they’ll demand a way in.

Medicaid was originally opt-out. Arizona didn’t join Medicaid until 1982, they were the last state to join.

What is a veal pen?

Thanks.

I think it’s important to remember that Gore did not lose. The only place he lost was in the Supreme Court. As for his conceding, I personally wish he hadn’t, but who at that time had his back?? Part of the Congressional Black Caucus and that was about it as far as institutional players went.

Jane,

You are very close to earning my “respect”. Few ever have. I would like you to schedule yourself 48 hours away from tv and internet, maybe go to a spa or something. (If you choose Oasis Spa/Resort in Mesquite, NV. I’ll pay, and they give excellent spa :) If you crack you are no good to us, and you deserve a break. Be good to yourself, if only for a few moments, because you can’t be good for anything else otherwise.

Jane, the sheep pen referred to the attacks offered up on motive for exploring how the opt-in model might end up with better results for more people than a weak nationwide PO. Maybe the Cow Pen is more appropriate.

If I had IRV for health reform, I’d go for: 1) HR676, 2) Strong PO and weak individual mandate, 3) Strong PO and strong IM, 4) no PO and no IM and only business practices reforms.

Opt-in is not my first choice by any means, but it might end up better than some other crap on the table. In any event, discussion of the pros and cons of a policy proposal shouldn’t be attacked on motive. One of our strengths is that we have a lot of folks with strong ideas. We should encourage criticism and exploration because we’re intellectually liberal.

What you’re advocating is one trade off, all of this involves different trade offs. Everyone has their preferences, but it is not us who get to cut deals on all of this, it is legislators and the president. The best thing we can do is to organize for the most ambitious proposal and have fallback positions as contingencies, default swaps as it were.

The work that you and Keith Olbermann are doing is the way to go, to leverage our power to achieve the best result. But I’d not dismiss opt-out out of hand, as it is closer to what we want and less convoluted than previous efforts at compromise, which proves that the pressure is working.

For further discussion of how far some progressives are willing to bend over in support of the proposal for states to opt out of the public option see the Huffington Post: “AMERICA-STAN: The Progressive Movement Neuters Itself by Supporting ‘States Rights” to Opt out of the Public Option”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..16030.html

The article also discusses how the Public Option has been turned into the “Public Option in Name Only.

Progressives were not at the table when the bounds of the discussion were set, so it is very difficult to blame progressives for trying to bushwack the least worst viable path out from a bad position.

An aspect of the current debate pertaining to the PO , the single payer scheme and the private insurance scheme should be established. This is that if the PO is to function at all it will ultimately lead directly to a single payer scheme, and ultimately necessarily to supplant the private insurers. There is but one condition that the PO needs to satisfy, that it offer lower premiums than the private insurers.

The polemic between those that argue for a PO plan now or a single payer scheme now becomes mute. The real polemic is between the private insurers and those aspiring to make the PO viable, because the two can not coexist.

The argument is simple. For the PO to succeed it must offer premiums that are continually lower than private firms, As long as this holds there is no need for private insurance firm to exist and once this ceases to hold there is no need for the PO to exist. Stated differently, the PO exists if and only if the private insurers do not exist. .

Carry Florida you win the election. Put Lieberman on the ticket, you win Florida.

It worked, too.

Sorry to say, I was Joe Lieberman’s roommate at Yale for four years. I respected the fact that he stayed kosher and I supported his moves to become Chairman of the Yale Daily News (the managing editors, Paul Steiger and Bob Kaiser, later became real journalists and, incidentally, managing editors of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.)

At the time, I predicted that Joe would become the first Jewish President of the United States. Thank God I was wrong.

Joe has since metamorphosed into becoming the Likudist representative in the Senate and a personally cowardly proponent of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. He dodged military service during Vietnam and none of his children or grandchildren have ever served in the military of the United States. He and they are scum-sucking pigs who support war against innocent people in Iraq and yet also support sending other innocent Americans to die there in an immoral and illegal war. May Yahweh have mercy on their souls.

Any insurance company in the country can sell insurance in any state, provided they comply with that state’s laws. The proposal you seem to have in mind is a Republican proposal to allow insurance companies to sell insurance in any state provided they comply with the laws of the state in which they are headquartered. Why? Virtually all credit card companies operate out of South Dakota — because South Dakota does not regulate credit card companies. Virtually all large businesses are incorporated in Delaware — because Delaware does not regulate corporations. So which state will try to attract all the big health insurers by offering not to regulate them at all? It’s a reasonable sounding proposal that’s a Trojan Horse on steroids.

Joe may not BUT good o’l Kay Hagen DEM(?) from NC is a safe bet. The GREAT SILENCE that comes from her office to her constituents is hard to take any other way.