There are 60 votes for cloture on a bill with no public option? Does that mean every Democrat? Or is that including Snowe and Collins? If it’s only Democrats, what, we can’t at least get Bernie Sanders to veto it?

It does also seem to me to be a real question, how much of a B will this B b? if the choice is between definitely clearly no public option and a kinda sorta triggered opt-out state-based co-op private public option, is that actually a choice? or a mummers parade?

So. Let’s talk reality. Goldman Sachs says that if a bill passes (A) without a public option, they expect insurance company stocks to rise 47%. If it passes (B) with a public option, they expect stock prices to fall by 36%. And if nothing happens (C), they expect them to rise by 59%.

Well, there’s the obvious problems with using the stock-market as a rational metric, considering it’s little more than a glorified parlor game based on herd-mentality and asymmetric information. Then there’s the obvious problems with trying to predict it. Then there’s the obvious dubiousness of trusting the Goldman numbers, because they make tons of money in the shadow-banking industry based on bad-faith assessments and market analysis; causing huge swaths of the market to zig while they rake in short profits on the zag.

Of course, all of this completely sidesteps the greater argument for a continued fight. The public option battle has become a proxy war over who controls government, whether Congress has the slightest responsibility to reflect the will of the public, whether Democrats from Obama on down can just casually abandon their campaign promises in the wake of unrelenting influence peddling and whether progressives are going to take a stand for something and refuse to back down.

This is just sad. If any of that is true, then it’s not only an exceptionally shitty reason to pass expensive regressive taxes, and transfer wealth with additional protections to the very interests that we’re combatting (since we can all agree that money dominates our politics), but it’s also a seemingly spurious interpretation of who’s doing the controlling.

If this Congress and this White House manage to get the massive swath of the country that actual wants real healthcare reform to be propagandized and coerced into settling for anything that can plausibly be labeled “Healthcare Reform Act” –no matter how dubious–, then all it really shows is that the corporate interests have all the control.

Showing that Congress is willing to express the will of the people, and showing that progressives and other pro-reform groups are in control, and capable of taking the fight to the corporate interests, would arguably mean killing this thing that is widely panned –even specifically by you– as nothing but a huge bailout to the PhRMA and insurance industries. That we understand this is a big, big deal –not just for healthcare, but for our economic recovery–, and we’re not going to take the usual line of bullshit and half-measures useful for nothing more than partisan politics come election time.

Now is the time to demand solutions to our problems, and the Public Option (as currently formed) is not a solution, it’s been turned into part of the problem (since the risk adjustment measures are so weak).

The CBO scoring of the Senate’s Health Care Bill comes in at $849 Billion over a 10 yr. period that reduces the deficit by over $130 Billion and is paid for.In honor of Veteran’s Day. According to a study released by the Harvard Medical School, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that “that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.”It’s time for American Women to Stand-up/Speak-up for your full medical rights. Stop the rabid right-wing from restricting American womens medical choices. Call Congress and demand the “stupak-pitts amendment” be stripped from Health Care Reform. Also, demand that liebermann be stripped of his chairmanship of HSC and kicked out of the Caucus.Criminally corrupt politicians are the reason the U.S. is ranked near the bottom of every catagory when ranked next to other modern, industrialized nations. Time for publically funded elections. lieberman $12.6M, mcconnell $7.8M, baucus $7.7M, cornyn $6.7M, kyl $5.6M, grassley $5.4M, ensign $5.2M, conrad $5.1M, cantor $4.9M, nelson $4.9M, burr $4.8M, boehner $4.4M, hatch $4.4M, lincoln $4.1M, vitter $3.9M, carper $3.6M were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform. (Source: OpenSecrets.org, Aug. 09)Follow the Money: LinkCall Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!(Toll Free # House and Senate)1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-0044 1-866-311-3405Sign Single-Payer, Public Option and Health Care as a Civil Rights Petitions: Link Link Link kucinichpetition Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.SEMPER FI!

So we’ll put you down in the “let’s do nothing and let Joe Lieberman have his way” column.

Check.

Because Ralph Nader would’ve made a great President.

We’ll put you in the “let’s do nothing and let Joe Lieberman have his way” column too. Maybe we should start a chart.

well sure we should continue to push for the least awful plan. i’m just a bit pessimistic about how much less awful it will be. in your terms, i suspect that Joe will not be unhappy either way. but yes we still do what we can…

But even if we’re only considering the narrow points of the above argument, those advocating that everyone should stop working to pass (B), a bill with a public option, need to take responsibility for the fact that if that happens, the default at the moment is (A) a bill without a public option. It is not (C), nothing. It would be helpful to know why they think (A) is better than (B), because we’re not dealing in fantasy here, and that is the inevitable outcome in the scenario they are advancing.

Why can’t progressives join in a coalition of convenience with the Party-of-NO, to torpedo the whole thing? I don’t understand why the idea that it’s possible to kill this is considered fantasy (unless you think the Republicans will switch sides).

Progressives didn’t have enough power to coerce other Democrats to make reform actually bear resemblance to reform, but it only takes a tiny handful of them to block the whole thing. I mean that’s the whole point of half the articles on this site, that some small cadre of malefactors are impeding the whole process, so let’s throw ourselves for the moment into that cadre and capitalize on it.

Irrespective of any of that, the larger point is that the Public Option is at best mostly useless now.

1) There’s not even any guarantee that doctors accept it as a form of insurance, and it’s already hard enough in many areas to find doctors who will take on any more medicare patients (because the pay schedule is comparatively low, and demand for their service is comparatively high). Without any such mandate on providers, the only way to get it accepted is to pay the high rates that private payers do (cost savings?).

2) None of the CBO numbers seem to include data on risk selection, so even the $2.5 Billion per year is a largely unverifiable quantity, and it’s important to consider that in the frame of the $2,300 Billion per year we spend on this junket. Nor do they include any assessment on the inflationary impact of subsidies, which there absolutely will be some.

3) The risk adjustment measures in the exchange don’t prevent the Public Option from being a private insurer dumping ground for the sickest people in the exchange, meaning you’re actually lining the pockets of the private insurers with the youngest healthiest people, at the expense of the public who take on the huge burden of the chronically ill.

I fundamentally do not understand how the Public Option can be construed as being of significant importance as it has been constructed. It’s not born out by the numbers, it isn’t born out by any analysis of the independent and dependent mechanisms of the larger system. I’m a Computer Scientist, and as such I have no aversion to deconstructing and reconstructing systems. The Public Option shows absolutely no evidence or propensity to be able to achieve anything other than being an insurer of last resort, and even then only dubiously so, because the exchange at large fulfills that function anyway.

I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, I am just completely unconvinced that the data supports the prevailing progressive narrative about the Public Option, and what it purports to accomplish.

What the hell Jane? I don’t give a shit if Joe Lieberman gets his way or not. This fight isn’t about partisan politics for me, and it probably shouldn’t be the prevailing motivator for anyone else either. If it is, then I’ve been wrong about FDL this whole time.

If this is about partisan politics, then you’ve just ensnared yourself in the Veal Pen.

Show me the data.

I realize that’s a ridiculous request when asserting something, but I hope one of these days you’ll indulge my pointless inclinations toward empiricism.

This marks probably the 8th time you’ve decided to respond to me with some drivel about how I want bad guy du jour to “win.” Whatever that means. If I’m factually incorrect about something, just point me at the data. I’ll rescind every assertion I’ve made on fallacious information.

It might be nice if you didn’t keep moving the goalposts.

And I noticed how you blew off this part of Jane’s post because you couldn’t figure out a way to refute it — especially as it renders everything else you’ve written moot:

So. Let’s talk reality.  Goldman Sachs says that if a bill passes (A)  without a public option, they expect insurance company stocks to rise 47%.  If it passes (B) with a public option, they expect stock prices to fall by 36%.  And if nothing happens (C), they expect them to rise by 59%.

In other words, killing the bill is what Goldman Sachs and the insurance industry would love most of all, since they know full well that it means there will be no more attempts at health care reform for at least the next decade, if not the next half-century.

Why? Because while the single-payer forces are good at swarming blog comments threads and posting novel-length phillippics, they’re not so good at getting their alleged allies in Congress to stand behind the bills they allegedly back.

Well, OK, Jane, fight for the public option to be designed by the insurance companies as a dumping ground. Then if it passes you can fight for a stronger public option thereafter. And if there’s no public option in a final bill, you can organize for a public option after it passes.

As for whether or not this strategy would work better than doing something else right now (e.g. organizing primary campaigns against Blue Dogs) and organizing a public option campaign after the bill passes with no public option, well, it all looks like a lot of conjecture to me.

In other words, killing the bill is what Goldman Sachs and the insurance industry would love most of all, since they know full well that it means there will be no more attempts at health care reform for at least the next decade, if not the next half-century.

This is just conjecture. With insurance costs rising to toxic levels (and continuing to do so with no bill, or even with a bill), the likelihood that some rather nasty pressure will be placed upon Congress to do something more proactive than what it’s doing does NOT approach zero.

Where did I move the goalposts to? All I did was point out that the Public Option doesn’t hardly do anything.

Even if one accepts the Goldman projections at face value, it doesn’t change the fact that the Public Option doesn’t hardly do anything. Is the point of the Public Option to plausibly play to people’s irrationality in the market to depress the stock prices of the insurance companies? If their stock prices start plummeting, where do you think they’re going to get their money to make up their margins? From us, it’s their entire business model (you know the one we point out constantly is an arrangement of perverse incentives).

I blew it off, because it’s a market projection by Goldman in a market where we can’t really track their money (to make sure they’re putting it where their mouth is), and they make a living by doing as I said; beating everybody else to the leading and trailing edge of price variations, and they do that by not telegraphing their overall position, and moving markets with their PR and trading practices. It’s a projection about speculation. That’s speculation about speculation, that’s not data, and even if it were; it isn’t a direct corollary to the efficacy of reform.

Perhaps a diary series on logical argument forms is in order?

If the bill gets through the Senate without a public option, members of the House have said they will kill it and (C) becomes realistic.

well there you are.

Senate Democratic caucus has said they want to (C) “kill the bill,” so at this point it’s likely to fall short of the 60 votes needed and not a realistic proposition.

Sanders has not said how he would vote, of course, Sanders is not a Democrat. I don’t think that Sherrod Brown has said how he would vote, except that he would vote against a bill without any public option. But I do not believe that Brown has committed to the Senate bill. This bill could very well be killed.

Gee, where do we start?

As for the idea that the public option “doesn’t hardly do anything” and won’t help most Americans, an idea which you’ve been pushing a lot lately it would seem, the CBO says you’re wrong:

In a report sure to be misread by partisan Republicans, the CBO has done an analysis on the effect of the Senate health care bill on premium costs. It shows that most people in the exchanges would see massive reductions in their average premium, and even in small groups and the employer market costs would not rise and may even fall.

[...]

CBO estimates that 57% of those in the non-group market would receive subsidies that would reduce their premium cost 56-59% under current law. When you factor that all together, you get very close to Jonathan Gruber’s estimate that the average customer would pay around 20% less for premiums. The only reason that’s not even lower is that CBO estimates a still-robust individual non-exchange market, with 9 million enrollees, by 2016, the third year of the exchanges under the Senate bill.

[...]

Even in the employer market, home to 70% of all nonelderly subscribers, costs would be either even or 3% less by 2016, according to the report.

So, if the CBO is right and a public option will greatly reduce health care costs for a large number of folk and at worst keep costs from rising any further for another large number of folk, that would be a good thing, no? Especially if it’s the only viable political HCR option at this time.

And you still haven’t explained just how you would get single-payer passed in this or any other Congress, especially when its alleged backers’ love of it was inversely proportional to its chances of coming up for a meaningful vote.

Jane, you remind us Goldman Sachs has said, “with a public option, they expect stock prices to fall by 36%…”, but is that for the public option now being discussed or was that for a serious public option. I believe it’s the second & therein is my argument. Also, I don’t know anyone who suggests the Dems won’t pass some HealthCare Bill this term, that even they wouldn’t be able to weasel away from.
So, what are we doing fighting to enact absurdly weak legislation we do not believe in? I repeat, this was a once in 30 year opportunity, that the Dems BLEW it shows they are without purpose. The party should be disbanded, it should not be supported in hopes it will give us crumbs.

Um, the subsidies aren’t the Public Option, nor is it the exchange. You are aware of this correct?

You’re also aware that all the CBO numbers seem to take no account of the inflationary pressures on premium prices as the subsidies begin to be reflected in them, correct?

This of course being my entire point. The Public Option doesn’t hardly do anything. Almost all the things ascribed to it now; nominal premium reduction, insurer of last resort, etc. are all things done by the exchange without the Public Option, and the effect of the Public Option in the exchange is highly in question, because the CBO left out any and all information regarding risk selection in the exchange pool. Then further that the scope of the Public Option is contained entirely within the exchange, which itself is an almost pointless edifice in the scope of $2,300 Billion dumped down this hole. It’s essentially the only way to execute something like the individual mandate without the whole thing looking like a massive subsidy to for-profit corporations than it already is. There are some, albeit small, limits to the hubris of Capitol Hill.

Jane, thank you for the clarity of your explanation.

As one who has despaired in recent weeks, enough to be tempted to wish for “no bill,” you remind me what is at stake.

You’re right this is now a proxy for whether our elected officials can simply break their campaiign promises and ignore the electorate’s wishes; over “who controls government.” Ding!

That is exactly the reason for my despair, I realized reading this.

As for those who want to go for killing the bill; yeah, nice in theory, maybe – but yes, these guys are not going to do it, for all the reasons you’ve explained here and elsewhere.
I’m moving to the position of , okay, keep pressuring them, get as much as we can, and then start fighting to fix it.
And if it weren’t for FDL, Jane and all the health care writers here, I might well have given up. Giving up would have eliminated even the measly public option we have weeks ago.

I still don’t understand what is impossible about getting a handful of conservative democrats, reliable progressives, and the entirety of the Republicans to block this thing in the Senate.

As I said before, almost every article on government process on this site is a hashing of how broken everything is, because a small handful of people are capable of impeding everything. Why can’t we be a small handful of people?

Let’s talk reality. Goldman Sachs says that if a bill passes (A) without a public option, they expect insurance company stocks to rise 47%. If it passes (B) with a public option, they expect stock prices to fall by 36%.

jane, this isn’t this isn’t quite right, it’s a delta, the insurance companies still make money just not as much, that;s an important point becuase we need to make clear the insurance companies still improve their bottom line;

The Senate Finance Committee bill, which Goldman’s analysts conclude is the version most likely to survive the legislative process, is described as the “base” scenario. Under that legislation (which did not include a public plan) the earnings per share for the top five insurers would grow an estimated five percent from 2010 through 2019. And yet, the “variance with current valuation” — essentially, what the value of the stock is on the market — is projected to drop four percent.

when I say “it’s a delta” that’s the differance between the two, it’s not a drop in value

when they say “what the value of the stock is on the market” they are talking about the over all percentage of the stock as compared to the exchange

we really need to point out the insurance companies remain quite healthy and will enjoy a 5 percent growth

that’s very important in the discourse of public opinion

Do our tebagging, rogue going, dirty sanchez ( no insult intended, just pointing out us honkey’s aren’t really gifted at creating new phrases any longer) fellow americans really understand what life will be like in their compound of the future? They are in need of education, but it is reviled in most of our nation.
These poor people, and I mean all of us, need a place where the truth will become obvious. It doesn’t get to them that the insurance companies and the medical industry is paying billions out to stop reform because it means less profit for them and better care for us. That is good thing teabag, I will help explain it to you.
The whole thing is so broken that only bribery is keeping it together.

Jane, if a cruddy bill with a public option passes isn’t the public option going to be blamed for its failings? Aren’t progressives? Personally, at this point I’d prefer to see this die; if we’re going to improve anything, let’s improve Medicare.

if this dies it’s pretty much a lock the democrats lose their majority in one or both houses

40 percent of the democratic voters are so disillusioned they claim they will not vote next cycle

we need to turn that round

not as if we are using our majority though so no big deal

So, if the CBO is right and a public option will greatly reduce health care costs for a large number of folk and at worst keep costs from rising any further for another large number of folk, that would be a good thing, no?

it would be a great thing.

but i don’t think that’s what the cbo is saying.

since we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts, please correct me if i have this wrong. i haven’t read the lastest cbo letter yet (just now briefly skimmed it, but will try to find time to read it soon).

“And we’re going to have to leave it there.”

DON’T LEAVE IT THERE!

/Jon Stewart

Yes, this is turning out to be a regressive version of what they have in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has been unsuccessful at controlling costs.

So we’ll put you down in the “let’s do nothing and let Joe Lieberman have his way” column.

The friend of my enemy is my enemy because my enemy is the enemy of my friend!

The people saying we should “kill the bill” right now are out of touch with reality. It’s disheartening there are so many of these people, but it’s hard to judge their numbers just from internet comment threads. Yes, the public option is weak, but the game is to get something through and then strengthen it every time there’s a bunch of stories about insurance companies raising prices. If you don’t have the patience to play this game, life will continue to be tough for you.

However, if the public option is removed, then we should absolutely kill the bill. That’s a reasonable position supported by many House Reps and some Senators – not just internet commenters.

Jane, I think you’ve given the “kill the bill”-ers as much attention as they deserve with this post, and shouldn’t dole out much more until the public option being considered really does become worthless. And even then, we should say “kill the Senate bill and go with the House bill”. For us to be justified in absolutely saying “kill the bill”, we would have to fail in conference committee, which won’t be for months and isn’t yet that likely.

it’a not a mummer’s parade. those are actually fun.

There seems to be a prevailing tendency here at the lake to jump on anyone who disagrees with Jane, or who even honestly questions something she said… and her sharp replies talking about Joe Lieberman do little to help the situation.

FDL was the first group, that I know of, to begin threatening to derail the legislation if there was no ROBUST public option. (availabel on day one, available to every one and something else I can’t remember).

Remember Mike Stark’s videos this summer and all the efforts made to get representatives to sign pledges to that effect?

So now here we are… almost at the goalpost and now we’re supposed to say “hey, great… they call it a public option, but it is CERTAINLY not robust” but we need to vote for it anyway because Goldman Sachs says….

I saw Jane on Rachel’s show earlier this summer laying it out on the line saying that if there was no robust public option, progressives shouldn’t vote for it.

So who’s moving the goal posts?

I am not trying to incite here, I am trying to understand if the current Senate and House bills are worth voting for(see my Seminal diary posted yesterday entitled “Is it Time to Bid Adieu to the Public Option Mirage?”).

And from where I sit, I have to agree with Nathan that it is not. And I too think progressives could kill the bill int he Senate AND the House… and boy wouldn’t that get Obama and Emanuel scrambling?

Of course most of the country would not understand why the bill legitimately needs to be killed … but oh well… at least we wouldn’t be mandating more Billions to the corrupt Medical Industrial Complex… perhaps individual bills eliminating rescissions and denials and regulatory bodies actually regulating is what we need… given that there is clearly no robust public option.

I’ve written to Sanders asking him to trade the useless public option under discussion for a repeal of McCarran-Ferguson and adopting the Kucinich Amendment. If those can’t be included in the bill, then I’ve asked him to do what he can to filibuster it.

You say:

Why can’t progressives join in a coalition of convenience with the Party-of-NO, to torpedo the whole thing? I don’t understand why the idea that it’s possible to kill this is considered fantasy (unless you think the Republicans will switch sides).

Great. You tell me who those “progressives” are.

Here is a list of those who voted for the health care bill two weeks ago. Which ones are going to come out and say “you know, I’m wrong, I’m changing my mind. Don’t pay any attention to that vote. I’m full of shit.”

You’ve gassed on and gassed on about how morally superior you are. If it’s “possible,” pick three of them and tell us how you’re going to convince them to change their vote. Because that’s how many you’ll need.

Come on, you say it’s possible — who are they, and how are you going to convince them? I suggest calling their offices is a good first step. We’ll check back with you every day to see how much progress you’re making.

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Andrews
Arcuri
Baca
Baldwin
Bean
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Boswell
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Cao
Capps
Capuano
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Carson (IN)
Castor (FL)
Chu
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly (VA)
Conyers
Cooper
Costa
Costello
Courtney
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Dahlkemper
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Donnelly (IN)
Doyle
Driehaus
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Ellsworth
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Foster
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garamendi
Giffords
Gonzalez
Grayson
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hall (NY)
Halvorson
Hare
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Heinrich
Higgins
Hill
Himes
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hirono
Hodes
Holt
Honda
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Kagen
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kilroy
Kind
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Klein (FL)
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Luján
Lynch
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McNerney
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Mitchell
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Murphy (CT)
Murphy, Patrick
Murtha
Nadler (NY)
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Perriello
Peters
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Pomeroy
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Richardson
Rodriguez
Rothman (NJ)
Roybal-Allard
Ruppersberger
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Salazar
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schauer
Schiff
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sestak
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Space
Speier
Spratt
Stark
Stupak
Sutton
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Towns
Tsongas
Van Hollen
Velázquez
Visclosky
Walz
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Welch
Wexler
Wilson (OH)
Woolsey
Wu
Yarmuth

If you don’t have the patience to play this game, life will continue to be tough for you.

surely this is for those saying hurry up and pass something, anything, even a bill with 2 exchanges for every state, an in name only PO, an industry still outside of anti-trust laws, and no regulations that ensure any savings actually realized will be passed on to mandated consumers

Jane, I completely agree. The current bill is far from perfect, but as long as we stand to get something out of this process that helps real people, killing the bill is shortsighted, not to mention highly unlikely. I have yet to understand how us not getting everything we want now precludes us from fighting for more in the future.

I should add — you could also have 11 members of the Senate Democratic caucus agree to vote to take any health care bill down (12 if they get Snowe’s vote), or 1 to join a Republican filibuster.

Burris and Sanders have said they’ll vote “no” if there’s no public option, but they’d vote for the current bill so you have “zero” on the first list. And neither has said they’d join a Republican filibuster, so you you’ve got “zero” on the second list too.

I think you’ve got more hope on the House side, but since you’re the one who sees the “possibilities,” you’d be the one who knows best.

I appreciate the support but I’m actually saying something slightly different — if I thought that killing the bill was possible I’d lead that particular discussion and consider the merits, but nobody has showed me how it’s possible. They just say it is, as if this is some kind exchange of schoolyard taunts where proof has no place.

But looks like we’re about to be treated to those details, which I await anxiously.

Try it again.

We defined what we meant by “robust” on June 23. We stuck to that.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/06/23/fdl-action-lets-whip-the-public-plan/

I’m happy to hear how you want to kill the bill, though.

Which 3 members are you going to call, or are you planning to work on the Senate?

Actually Sanders kind of DID say how he would vote, on Stephnaopoulas this Sunday, and Thom Hartman’s program. Both places he said that, depending on what the bill ultimately says, that is a great deal about hw he will vote ~ but for sure, no PO, no vote for him. He is not happy WITH the PO we now have, but says it is better than nothing and can be worked upon and improved from there if it passed.

On Jane’s sad assertion that those theifs Goldman Sachs even have their dirty noses in any say , this is despicable. Why should anyone listen to those nimords when they participated in one of the biggest scams in fnancial history? These lawmakers need to get their heads examined. I wonder whty they care so mucjh? Because GS brived errrr, blackmaied them into giving them billions or they would blow te financial world up?

Please. What a weak and sad “reason” to stop this legislation. Does it not say who is being bought? I think if ANY lawmaker utters the words Golldman Sacks, the next question would be, ‘”Exactly how much did YOU get from them and their buddies to listen to such crap from proven irreputable blackmailing, openly greedy, self serving people?”

You can name me and ask that in my name, I am registered with FDL.

Cat In seattle

It’s already passed in the House, so that ship has sailed. Why not kill it in the Senate? I don’t understand why Lieberman can get in the way, but Sanders can’t.

It’s not a matter of moral superiority, something which I can make no claim to. It’s a matter of, “Will this thing do what you said it should, and having moved away from that, does it even do what you say it will now?”

I’ve “gassed on and on” about the sharp incongruence between the narrative surrounding the importance of these Public Options, and the reality of them. Until just now I’ve never seen you admit that this whole circus is nothing but a proxy fight over some random partisan tactic. If that’s what it really is, then fine, I disagree with making it nothing more than that, but at least that’s honest. Claiming that it should be central to efforts on healthcare reform because it saves gobs of money, is the only way to make sure there’s an insurer of last resort, etc. isn’t.

Kill the goddamn bill. If the Democrats are stupid enough to pass a bill that mandates we all buy crappy insurance, then to hell with all of them. I refuse to participate any longer in this extended charade. I don’t care if it’s “possible” or not to kill the bill. IT DESERVES TO DIE, and any party that passes the bills I’ve seen deserves to die with it.

We are long past the point of making excuses for our sorry selves. By defining what is “possible,” we align reality to fit the preconception. Mandates, gutting Medicare, giving BILLIONS & BILLIONS to the insurance industry is just plain W.R.O.N.G. Kill the goddamn bill(s). Kill ‘em dead, plow ‘em under, and start over. If anything on the table now actually passes, anyone associated with it will bear the stink of death.

Other than that, I feel fine.

So what you’re saying is that you can get Bernie Sanders to agree to join a Republican filibuster of a bill he just voted for cloture on.

Bernie Sanders won’t even say he’ll filibuster the SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE bill.

How do you plan to get him to do this?

I’m not arguing anything’s worth passing, that would be as illogical as saying nothing being considered is worth passing. I’m for passing anything that moves the ball along towards single payer in the long run. I’m not for passing a bill with state exchanges because I believe we need national leverage. So state exchanges, while they might help a few people, would actually take us away from the long term goal of national single payer and would thus be an example of a waste of political capital, IMHO.

And from where I sit, I have to agree with Nathan that it is not. And I too think progressives could kill the bill int he Senate AND the House… and boy wouldn’t that get Obama and Emanuel scrambling?

Why is losing honorably so revered in something so intrinsically dishonorable as politics?

Rahm said earlier this year that success was the only non-negotiable ingredient of health reform. There are two ways of interpreting this: one, that progressives have a LOT of leverage to make his conservadem ass work for his “w”, or two, that he’s got a LOT of leverage over progressives and there really isn’t any gain to be had in granting the appearance of legitimacy to this system.

Or both.

Killing the bill is possible if it looks like passing the bill will be the equivalent of stepping in a big steaming pile.

The job of grassroots activists is to make sure those steaming piles are properly placed.

The job of the Veal Pen is to accept the framings of the Democrats and work within that.

Great, who are you going to get to do that? Nathan doesn’t want to take the House, he thinks “that ship has sailed” (I guess the conference vote doesn’t intrude on this particular version of reality).

So would you like to work on the House? Or are you going to join forces and convince Bernie Sanders to join a Republican filibuster of a bill he just voted for too?

I don’t see the possibilities, I don’t understand how we can’t get in the way of this thing. I spent a lot of time here reading about how random_Senator_X was going to prevent healthcare reform from happening; the idea that some lone, or small cadre, of Senator(s) can block legislation was put in my head by FDL. Now you’re telling me that such a thing is impossible; the work of unicorns and pixie dust.

If I’m understanding you, we’re placed in a position to have to try and kill the Public Option in the Senate, in the hopes that the House holds to its word and votes against something that lacks it?

Someone up above says, “I have yet to understand how us not getting everything we want now precludes us from fighting for more in the future.”

Oh please. THEY’RE EVEN GOING TO INCLUDE A COMMISSION TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY. The whole thing is a stalking horse for the worst elements of the establishment. Passing a bad bill precludes us from fighting for more in the future because it will destroy any political will to persevere, and we will all be fighting each other for a goddamn piece of bread. Get real.

if this dies it’s pretty much a lock the democrats lose their majority in one or both houses

This, too, is just a conjecture, and not a very good one at that. People are doubtless reacting to the Dem lack of traction on the economy, which mobilizes the public more easily than anything else.

Having thought about this quite a bit over the last few weeks, I think I’m now of the opinion that we need to keep on pushing for the best possible PO under option B, for exactly the reasons Jane articulates. The priority must now be on amending the bill to expand access to the PO as much as possible (the Wyden strategy) and on ensuring that insurance companies are capped on the amount by which they can increase rates for those they are forced to take on with existing conditions. So, my vote is with B, with a continued push to make B as good and as a strong as possible.

My question for Jane is this: If B fails altogether, then are we for A or C? Here I would have a much tougher time fighting for A over C. If the PO is removed completely or triggered or opted-in (as opposed to opted-out), failure may send the stronger message. What do y’all think?

Jane, you’re doing the work of the righeous. I love all you’ve done. I have no criticism of you personally.

I just see every single thing about this to be as wrong as wrong can be, and I hope to hell the crazies can sink it.

No, I don’t think you’re wrong that House members won’t vote down a bill they just voted for, in fact I hardly believe that they’d vote against something that lacked a Public Option if it came back around. I say this based on watching the TARP proceedings.

That’s why, at this point, to me the only place that seems like there’s any chance to kill this thing is in the Senate.

Love and kisses to you too!

Here’s the disconnect for me… FDL started the pledge campaign to get house members to say they would not vote for a bill with a ROBUST public option.

This PO is clearly not robust.

So then why don’t progressive groups start really screaming loudly for all to hear that this bill should be killed?

No one is doing that… everyone is still clinging to the fantasy that just by calling something a public option, they can take victory (obviously, as I said earlier… a pyrrhic victory).

Paul Starr in his oped yesterday in the NYT is the first progressive I’ve seen to call it like it is and say this PO is a piece of shit… so let’s jettison it and get better concessions… eg, earlier start date, stronger regulatory entities and state single payer options.

So again, if we said in the summer we would not vote for a bill without a robust public option, how come we are not pushing hard for progressives to vote this down?

Your simplistic “so which three are you going to get to change their votes” is dismissive and misses the target… to get these guys to change their votes (eg honor their pledges) takes all of us… not just me calling three people.

The reality is the reality.

Who are the three members of the House you’re going to get to kill it?

Who is the 1 member of the Senate who will completely reverse the position they took on Saturday and join a GOP filibuster?

Come on, if it’s “possible,” you should be able to name those names.

Actually, keep reading, cus Jane says she’d like to kill the bill… but it’s just not possible.

Jane, if you’re arguing that we can’t get enough Senators to draw a line in the sand and publicly commit to killing a bill, I completely agree with you. Senators don’t show their cards like that which is why I don’t think you can pre-whip them.

If instead you’re arguing that something is guaranteed to pass and there’s no chance we end up with nothing, I don’t know where you get that. There are a myriad number of ways in which the final bill won’t get enough votes in Congress to pass, I think that’s obvious from the last few months.

However, I do believe it’s likely that something will pass, because the majority of Democrats don’t want a repeat of 1994. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll all sign on to anything – a bill still has to be crafted to garner the required support. I believe that the most likely way to jump through that hoop will be with a modest opt-out public option passed through reconciliation and for the House to give in to that. Outside of this scenario, I believe nothing happening is one of the more likely scenarios.

oh I’d like to as well.. but that’s not the point. The point is what is the best option for us now, given the likely possible outcomes, and that seems to be B with the caveats above. If they are determined to pass A or B then we need B. My question related to what happens once the choice is between A or C and not A or B. Then may I presume that we should be working for C if B goes away?

Every single member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate just voted for cloture on the bill on Saturday.

Name the progressive you think will change their mind and join a Republican filibuster.

“White House health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle said the president was moving as quickly as possible. She said that the insurance industry cannot be forced to accept people irrespective of preexisting conditions until everyone is required to have insurance, and that the administration does not want such a requirement until the exchanges are up and running.”

Oh yeah, we can wait for YEARS MORE… Kill the goddamn bill, STAT.

“It would be helpful to know why they think (A) is better than (B), because we’re not dealing in fantasy here, and that is the inevitable outcome in the scenario they are advancing.”

Point taken. No PO? Unacceptable. Some sort of PO? Acceptable. The question then becomes this: What can be done to improve the legislation once it is in place – or is that even a viable scenario? I refuse to believe that what ultimately ends up being signed is the Final Holy Writ for the long haul. I have to assume that the product can be modified for the better, although I would assert that such an approach will take time – very likely years.

I do not believe there is one… which is why I agree with your strategic assessment. Certainly not in the Senate, and not nearly enough in the House.

Here’s who will join the R’s to kill it:

If it’s the current bill with a public option: Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson.

If the public option gets removed: Sanders, Burris, Brown, Whitehouse, Leahy, Wyden, probably Franken, probably 10 more, but of course only 1 has to follow through.

However, none of that will happen. Because first they are going to give Carper one last shot at devising the miracle trigger that can get 60 votes. Once he fails, the outcome will be an opt-out public option passed through reconciliation.

Bingo.

Several Presidents ago, I organized a public forum supporting single-payer as a campus campaign manager for a certain Presidential candidate. I was 18 and this was my first election to vote, and yet we knew quite well even then that single-payer is by far the best way to go. Got it.

I’ve done several other things in support of single-payer over the years since then, and I’ve never been more excited for Change in Healthcare as I am right now. In my lifetime at least, people have never been more engaged and active on these issues as now, and hell, most of those years you’d get blank stares when saying “single-payer,” and now it’s at least on the conversation map. In my experience, this is a monumental change.

I think the “take my ball and go home” crowd fails to think through the effects of it ending in failure. Do they remember what happened when Clinton didn’t get anything done? It ended the momentum for a decade or more.

Gee, everyone I know who I’ve done events with is totally jazzed and ready to rock on single-payer next. Getting something, anything, through that moves us in that direction, and helps diminish the carefully constructed and heavily financed stigma attached to “government-run” healthcare, is all we need to get the single-payer machine humming like never before.

The “public option” is the foot-in-the-door we’ve needed all these years. “Kill the bill” would be like the early 1990s all over again, and that’s why Repubs in their usual robotic way want to “start over,” like the robot who “debated” Jane said.

Every long-time single-payer organizer such as myself that I know really wants some sort of public option to pass, and thanks President Barack Hussein Obama for getting it this far. Once you sign the bill, Barack, we’ll take it from there, buddy.

I don’t think that the operative choice here is what product is in the national interest but rather what our Congresscritters are likely to do, the national interest be darned. If the game is between option A and option B, then we need to be working for B as it is, ’cause nobody is offering us C, much less a B that actually works.

Joe Lieberman is showing his true republican colors now!
He’s been safe voting democratically these last 15 years because he’s been in the minority!
NOW, when it counts, he’s got to stand up for the insurance companies!
Believe none of the BS that he’s mad at his treatment from the DEMS!

I’ve been calling his office for years and knew his stand long ago!
He’s for protecting Israel first of all then his purse comes next!!

Jane wrote:

The public option battle has become a proxy war over who controls government

Exactly. This corresponds directly to the enthusiasm gap the Dems are facing in 2010.

Who controls government? When our Democratic representatives demonstrate in broad daylight that they don’t give a fknA for us, why should we care a fknA for them?

Despite all rational arguments as to why I must vote in 2010, I’ve already decided not to. It’s going to take something pretty impressive to bring me back.

I’m 56. I’ve voted in every election since I was 18. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve watched Congress and presidents treat American citizens with more and more contempt until, now days, it isn’t even disguised.

I’m done. I’ll bet there are a lot more like me out here.

I’m about to fall into the ranks of the uninsured/uninsurable. My health plan? Hope I make it to 65 without dying.

I care about as much for my reps and senators as they do about me. In other words, fuck them all.

Logic isn’t the language of Congress.

Does it have to be a progressive? What about Bayh, McCaskill, Lieberman, Lincoln, etc.? What about Senators from big labor states who are going to have their “Cadillac” plans taxed to fund the PhRMA and AHIP subsidy?

I mean, there’s got to be a line in the sand someplace where these people would vote “no” hasn’t there? Or at least where their constituents would? Has that line been crossed, and would it help at all to point a giant neon sign at it?

Jane, you’ve proven yourself adept at targeting individual members of Congress, so I’m sure it can be done.

Like mikesong mentioned, there are varying configurations of Senators who could derail the bill from both sides. It is critical at this juncture to have balance on both left and right sides that oppose this bad bill.

Once the word gets out that the bill will have a negligible impact on driving down costs and coerces the purchase of insurance, as this all gets nailed down through conference, I believe that it will be much easier to build a coalition capable of doing the right thing.

There is little contradiction between voting to bring the matter up for debate and voting with the GOP to prevent a final vote on a bad bill.

In the House, the deed is done, but if the conference report gives enough daylight, then the opportunities for rebellion are greater.

It boils down to this: no ROBUST public option that I can sign up for at will then no vote at all in 2010. I WILL be part of the large percentage of erstwhile Democraps who will NOT vote for Democraps in 2010 and will let the chips fall where they may.

The Democraps shall reap what they sow. No money, no vote. Never again. Unless there is a PUBLIC OPTION that I can sign up for. Otherwise I WILL violate their unconstitutional bill that contains a mandate that I hand MY money over to a private criminal organization (insurance company). I will NOT accept or obey a law that mandates profits for ANY corporation. Period. I will NOT vote for any party that tries to pass that crap.

On your list is my very own critter. Also there are the “Seven Most Corrupt” congress critters according to the watch puppies at CREW.

The Eight Most Corrupt Burris has said he will not vote for a Bill without the Public Option. Melanie Sloan is full of baloney, I mean cocktail weenies.

Of course health care providers will accept the public option because some money is better than no money. I am a health care provider who provides services in nursing homes; almost all of my reimbursement is Medicare and Medicaid. I make a good living, but about one quarter of what my anesthesiologist brother makes, though we both went to school the same number of years.

I agree with you. It’s possible that nothing will pass. If that happens it will be because of an impasse, which could very likely happen.

But the bill before us is the Senate bill, and we’re being vociferously told that there is a third possibility at the moment, other than A) No public option, and B) A public option.

If a bill passes the Senate that does not meet the criteria we set — available nationwide, no triggers, no co-ops — we’ll hold members of the House to their commitment to vote it down.

We aren’t there yet. In the mean time, nobody has convinced me that fighting for B over A in favor of a fantasy “C” (which means a default to A) has a downside.

Great, how are you going to do that? What three progressive members of the House are going to kill the bill they just voted for? Which progressive member of the Senate is going to kill the bill they just voted for?

How do you plan to kill it?

Don’t ask me to do your work for you. Who are your three members that you are going to target to flip their position?

We ought to push Harry Reid for a quick vote in the Senate; make him earn his keep in the back room, only allow amendments from the four who object to the current bill. Do what’s necessary to get their votes immediately, with as little debate as possible. The more this bill is debated on the floor, the worse it will get.

Quick vote in the Senate, limit debate, and then: right to conference. Press Harry and Nancy — very hard — to appoint people-oriented conferees, not insurance corporatist shills. Then push for the House bill in conference. Harry can get the votes coming out of conference, he’s the best vote counter in Congress, Chuck Schumer tells me so on teevee every chance he gets.

LindaR,
Instead of joining and bringing your friends to infiltrate and change the democratic party back to the party of “We The People”………you’ll throw in the towel?

I hope you have lots of money in your mattress……….!

There is simply no way I can look one fellow American in the eye and articulate reason enough to support this bill. There is no way I can imagine voting for or endorsing some incumbent come next election season who does support this bill.

And I do believe progressives who failed us should reverse their vote. I do believe those who took the pledge are being allowed far too much leeway for breaking it.

At this point all I care about is what elected progressives (particularly in the House) have done and will do over the duration of this process.

I feel completely and utterly betrayed by them. This is not even a close call.

You said:

Does it have to be a progressive? What about Bayh, McCaskill, Lieberman, Lincoln, etc.? What about Senators from big labor states who are going to have their “Cadillac” plans taxed to fund the PhRMA and AHIP subsidy?

So you’re…wait for it…hoping that Lieberman gets what he wants.

What allies? Lacking allies doesn’t read me out of the game.

I think you’re on target that the hardest thing in the end will be to get the House to change its position significantly. Because of the possibility of reconciliation, the House is where the margins are actually the slimmest. If there is significant weakening of the public option, dozens of House members will be racing to be one of the first 3 to jump ship.

So bowing to that reality, the Senate has to pass a bill with a public option. Since they can’t get 60 for it, they’ll have to use reconciliation – and they really will because few of them want nothing.

The problem is here Jane is that the house isn’t going to block it like you think they will if the senate bill has a bad PO. they’ve already proven they won’t by passing Stupak.

You’re way to focused on the House.

We haven’t even tried to pressure a senator yet. So yeah Sanders may not say he’s willing to vote against it yet, but have we really tried to make him say he will?

I made this point once before about resource pooling. It’s easier to affect one man than 10..so it’s easier to get 1 senator than multiple house members.

No one is saying we should even stop the house strategy.

But we need to lean on Sanders right now to get him to kill it. See what he does when we’re actually pressuring him instead of giving him the pass like we are now. This should be happening on Franken and Wyden also.

You are also focusing to much on the cloture vote. Yeah Sanders voted for Cloture…so? So did Lincoln and the rest of the fake Dems..yet they seem fine in voting against the bill anyway..so why not Sanders?

no he’s not. Lieberman wants a watered down crap bill so he can say he voted for it.

We want no bill.

there is in fact a difference.

we dont have the money for health care

we need to spend our money on these wars that keep our freedoms intact

who cares about these people with no health insurance they are the no bodies of this country and the have nots

this is a country based on individualism and lets keep it that way some are poor some are rich that is the way of the world.

am i my brothers keeper?

it is survival of the fittenest out there and that is the way it should be in america

this is god’s country and I want to keep it that way and god’s land is america. and in god we trust.

we should have invaded iran long ago like mc war and that pretty lady wanted to

they have a ton of oil reserves and that belongs to us like the iraqi oil does

god bless america land of the free

signed
just your average christian american

jesus said there will always be the poor among you

we are the best in the world in everything

I am a proud american not one of those anti american liberals.

:-)

Three out of four of my grandparents have had significant trouble finding a consistent primary care provider in the last several years. All of them are on Medicare. The doctors just aren’t taking on many new Medicare patients; something I think they should be mandated to do, but I digress. There’s a massive shortage of primary care doctors, and a massive disequilibria in pay between them and specialists as it is. What is the financial incentive for an overstretched primary care doctor to take on Public Option patients when there’s no lack of better paying private insurance patients?

If Lieberman is willing to tank this whole thing, then I guess I want him to get what he wants, but Lieberman’s desires intersect with my own only coincidentally. When you replied to me with that before, it seemed pretty clear that you were doing so pejoratively.

What about the rest of them? Lincoln, Bayh, Nelson, etc.? What about the labor Senators? What about getting labor on board with killing it? Literally asking your honest opinion.

Well it only gets worse from here. So you can either leave the battlefield, or fight for something. That’s what lobbyists do. They stay in to the last minute and fight for every single thing they can get, and that’s why sooner or later they always win. And they often do much better than they deserve to because progressives get demoralized, take their toys and go home. We’re trying to fight that Naderite impulse, because it serves the lobbyists and their efforts very well.

At the moment we’re trying to sketch out the world of what’s possible. And I do insist that people frame their arguments in that world, because the progressive failures of the past 30 years rests largely on the failure to do just that.

If you do nothing, in the world of the possible the worst thing that could happen will in all likelihood be the default.

This is interesting, Jane, because I see you as having pulled a Ralph Nader in a way, making a high risk choice to go against the “liberal” path that was pushing for universal health care in one leap and your making the buzz about the “public option”. And then the buzz about the “robust” public option. So you were calling it. Where the bar should go. You were choosing to postpone universal health care for a future decade and even generation. You were willing to separate from the idealists. Because you decided that those who embraced it were in “fantasyland”. And you still maintain that. I admire risk-taking. But not denial if the risk doesn’t work out.

And you were amazingly successful, with your sophistication and charm, along with the additional advantage that your way was less inconvenient to the Dems in Congress and the administration. Populism and single payer after the Obama election was very threatening and had to be tamped down.

Now I say, Nader had the right to leave the umbrella party and run. I see it from his perspective and I see it also in breaking the momentum of the left in 2000. Nader was absolutely right about the level of Democratic corruption that I thought he was exaggerating, and the stranglehood on the party of the corporations. And we are all grown up and he deserved to run and would have made a great president I think. And people had to make their own choices about voting for him. Maybe Gore should have gotten out of his way? But we lost unity as Democrats then. Sadly. And maybe we had to hit bottom, and GW really brought us to an awesome one. Unfortunately the oligarchs are still bringing us lower.

But Nader’s choice had consequences. He did not build a coalition. And to me that lost the passion and momentum of united progressives. So, it is all perspective. I guess you see the liberals behind single payer as the Nader-like renegades. But I see you with your public option charge as making a very presumptuous Nader-like decision that had very profound consequences and being more Nader-like in style and chutzpah.

I think progressive success will be about the marriage of political imagination and moral imagination.

On your Trojan Horse piece I recommended we kill the bill and we do it loudly as progressives. Obviously that did not find resonance with you. I wanted to yell out they can “TAKE THEIR FAUX-REFORM AND SHOVE IT”! Just cuz the far right are against the bill, doesn’t mean we can’t have our own right and reasons to be against it. Strange bedfellows. And why do we have to settle as the wimpy Congress are settling and begging.

Time to wage a moral war on our Congress and our President because they are not really ours any more!

Don’t ask me to do your work for you. Who are your three members that you are going to target to flip their position?

I held up your example of how pressure can be exerted on individual members.

It is my belief that once the particulars of the bill become nailed down and they come into focus as this moves towards conference, that there will be a coalescence of popular opposition to the individual mandate and public option, as well as the lack of cost controls either in bending the arc or keeping recisions and preexisting conditions from being replaced by hikes in the share of costs.

The question of whether or not you see daylight is distinct from whether the policy on the table meets any of our shared goals. I think you’re saying that it doesn’t but don’t see any other option. The option is to go stick with your values because push has come to shove.

The progressive fight for the public option was never really about getting a decent bill passed- that simply wasn’t going to happen – the fight was really an exhausting experiment to see whether progressives actually had any power to influence policy with establishment Democrats. On that score, progressives got some interesting information. A handful of establishment Democrats adopted a progressive policy direction and made an occasionally spirited fight for it. I counted that as an achievement. Democratic party leaders actually adopted one of our policy directions. Sure, establishment Democrats simply designed a special Kabuki dinner show for us that included a progressive theme, but hey, at least they’re not ignoring us entirely. Progressives decided to go the route of transforming the Democratic Party from the inside, right? Well, now we have a compelling new metric on how effective that decision has been. I’m actually a bit encouraged to find that the progressive base can actually point the progressive caucus and other Democrats in an actual policy direction and get them to mouth words of support for it.

“Of course, all of this completely sidesteps the greater argument for a continued fight. The public option battle has become a proxy war over who controls government,
(the battle was fought and citizens lost; the question is ‘will citizens engage in the war needed for control of their government?)

whether Congress has the slightest responsibility to reflect the will of the public,(only to the point they feel their re-election is at stake, otherwise they will do the bidding of their corporate masters/sponsors)

whether Democrats from Obama on down can just casually abandon their campaign promises in the wake of unrelenting influence peddling (of course they can, been doing it for decades at least)

and whether progressives are going to take a stand for something and refuse to back down.” (I’ll believe it when I see it)

This comment “By defining what is “possible,” we align reality to fit the preconception.” is accurate; it is the basis upon which the ObamaRahma Admin has operated and is operating. Thier version of the Bush Admin refrain about ‘creating reality’.

‘Killing the bill’ is a non-starter for me as the Dems are NOT going to let nothing happen. BUT that doesn’t reflect the ‘reality’ that what will come out of conference will be a piece of crap compared to what NEEDS to be passed. Of Course, that hasn’t ever stopped Congress before.

Personally, I wish the ‘progressive community’ would launch a full scale operation to get the CBO to score ‘single payer’; that one action would blow the kabuki theater now playing completely up.

I am “sticking with my values.” I am not ceding the fight to the insurance lobbyists.

You really do not want to take responsibility for the fact that chasing a fantasy option has consequences.

It does. Things get worse.

You’re missing the effect that all the new regulations will have on weakening the private market. No more pre-existing conditions, rescisions, limits on OOP, eliminating caps on coverage – all of these things are the major profit sources for private industry. Once you remove them, they have to start charging everyone more, and fewer people are willing to buy in, so with fewer people they have to charge even more, etc. This cycle will eventually lead to public insurance winning the battle, although it will take longer than most of us would like.

Wrong. She’s right. She’s right morally and objectively. WHY do you think there is an enthusiasm gap? It DOES exist and there is a very very good reason. The Democraps have done absolutely nothing to justify being in control of their own asses, let alone the government.

War? They’re ready to go along with expansion. Gitmo? They worked along with GOPers to try to stop the closing of Gitmo. Spying on Americans sans warrant? Not a thing to roll back or stop future abuses. Patriot Act? Re-authorized. Bailout for billionaires? They’re OK with that and haven’t come up with SQUAT to help REAL human beings. Healthcare? They gave up the fight before it went anywhere.

Sorry, but a handful of good people (Grayson, Kucinich, Feingold, and a couple others) do NOT make up for the party as a whole being nothing but a bunch of Wall Street, insurance company, and big corporation shills. Fuck them all. The entire party needs to be sterilized with a flamethrower.

I’m with LinaR. No voting in 2010. No money ever again for the party. I can see it through to hand a few dollars to Grayson, Kucinich, and the other 2 or three but no one else. Too many of the Blue America supported candidates have gone on to be piles of shit. I don’t invest in shit.

Unless there will be REAL consequences that do REAL harm to the Democraps and its “leadership” then I will have nothing to do with them as a party anymore…and I will be voting Ron Paul whether or not he runs in 2012 just for spite and on principal.

Oh yes, Nader. I WILL be supporting his bid for the senate.

Yeah, call me a troll. That kind of illustrates my point. I’m sure my representatives think of me as a troll too.

You really do not want to take responsibility for the fact that chasing a fantasy option has consequences.

It does. Things get worse.

Jane, I could just as easily say this about the path you’re taking.

Public opinion is shifting against the bill. I don’t have enough information to indicate why the part of this shift that comes from the left is moving in that direction.

As opinion changes, political realities change, although political realities don’t always change to reflect public opinion, the calculus does change.

As everyone was freaking out in September, it is time to raise the possibility of public opposition to the whole thing if for no other reason than to have a bargaining chip and to see the other sides’ raising of our hand.

Truer words were never typed, Jane!

Having read most of the comments, I think people really need to think more deeply on that point.
And on this one:

The public option battle has become a proxy war over who controls government, whether Congress has the slightest responsibility to reflect the will of the public, whether Democrats from Obama on down can just casually abandon their campaign promises in the wake of unrelenting influence peddling and whether progressives are going to take a stand for something and refuse to back down.

It’s been increasingly clear since last spring that this is a death-match on the issue of who controls government: legislatures + execs, or corporations?

That’s what is at stake here.
And Bernie Saunders sees that cold, stark fact quite clearly. (Frankly, I strongly suspect that Wyden, Rockefeller, and Cantwell see it pretty starkly, as well.)

If the Dems don’t make significant changes, you can kiss government as we know it goodbye because the budget problems will be so unmanageable that we’ll be very susceptible to the Palins and whatever eye-candy candidates come along, and ‘government’ will simply be one more category of tabloid news.

yeah, but you’d be blatantly wrong.

I’m not about to leave the battlefield, promise. And I can’t wait to fight the next one with you. Sorry we may be parting paths on this bill. You are a night in shining armor…and much of the reason i had such a difficult time breaking away. I regret not one moment of whipping or contributing time and money for the compromise “robust PO”. We tried.. a valiant effort against trillion dollar beasts.

I’ve been lobbying for killing this bill on the phone and in letters since the House failed us… and will keep doing so.

But hey, we are all (or most) Democrats here… none of us are happy and we are used to it.

How about that surge? /s

Thank you, Jane.

So I killed single payer. Good to know.

And here I was thinking that the “single payer or nothing right now” crowd (as opposed to single payer supporters such as myself) would be looking at everything they’d done and recognizing the fact that they were led around by the nose by hucksters, that their tactics were complete failures, that they were excluded from the get-go and were entirely inadequate in doing anything about it, and that their tactics desperately needed to be reevaluated.

Because any reasonable person would be engaging in some self-assessment right now. They’d be saying “gee we suck, maybe we ought to be changing the way we do things rather than running around blaming everyone else for our dismal abject failure on every single conceivable level.”

But, it’s always someone else’s fault. That’s the only way you can continue in the face of decades of humiliating failure. I was supposed to pitch in with a bunch of angry, lazy cultists who pissed off everyone and wasted all their effort trying to get a symbolic vote on a bill that never even made it to the floor.

Boy, why I didn’t pitch in with that one is a real head-scratcher. What was I thinking?

Who. Are. The. Members. Of. Congress. Who. Will. Do. This.

If you can’t name them, you don’t have a plan, you just have a position you can’t substantiate.

*g*

What were you thinking? *G* “that they were excluded from the get-go and were entirely inadequate in doing anything about it” ; and THAT is the real story.

I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve asked that question in the last 5 hours and been answered with various renditions of “All around the mulberry bush.”

It is not farfetched to assume that the Senate will pass to conference a bill with no PO, while the House puts forth its version with a PO. The conference reconciled bill will then move to each respective branch for final passage either with or without a PO. And then either of these two versions will either become law or not.

But this does not seem to exhaust the possibilities. As Sen. Sanders points out, the passage of a bill out of the Senate w/o the PO may be both inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing if it is viewed as a more limited attempt to reform private health insurance only. Meaning no rescissions, no exclusions for prior conditions, repealing the anti-
trust exemption and moving more patients into Medicaid.

If this reduced bill is what goes to conference from the Senate then it would be a question as to whether it would be adopted by the House, again understanding this to be an interim step meant to reform private insurer practice at this time. The adoption for a more expansive Medicare program would need to wait until changes are made in 2010 by replacing Reid and Lincoln with candidates willing to expand the scope of Medicare.

Nothing in this scenario precludes one from pressing the Senate to include the PO in the bill that is sent to conference.

If a bill passes the Senate that does not meet the criteria we set — available nationwide, no triggers, no co-ops — we’ll hold members of the House to their commitment to vote it down.

I am not sure you (or I or anyone else for that matter) thinks Congress has any backbone to vote down any bill at all. I mean, you read this conjecture about how “the Democrats will lose in ’10 if this bill doesn’t pass,” and about how “Congress only considers health care reform once every fifteen years,” and you wonder if anyone in Congress really worries about the “progressive” vote at all.

In the end they will all be able to say “we passed a bill,” and the only people with the ganas to keep fighting it will be those who had the ganas to oppose it before it became law, i.e. not the “progressives.” Nobody else, as you have pointed out so well in this thread, is going to say “I made a mistake.”

As for the current situation, with the Senate and House bills and the weak public option, it saves face for all the major players. It saves face for the “progressives” in Congress (“we got our public option”), it saves face for the “progressive” lobbyists (“we held Congress to its promise of a public option”), it saves face for the insurers and the Blue Dogs and the Republicans (“we weakened the public option so thoroughly it will never be a threat to the profit margins of the insurers”). So everyone achieves Erving Goffman’s version of happiness. This won’t do much, though, for five sets of people:

1) Those who must subsist upon an emaciated version of Medicaid
2) Those who must subsist upon an emaciated version of Medicare
3) Those for whom the purchase of “junk insurance” is the best option for complying with the mandate
4) Those for whom paying the mandate penalty is the only affordable option given the insufficiency of the subsidies.
5) Those who are ripped off, in one way or another, by the Band-Aid Period.

So, since these bills are all really about saving face, how do we know that Congress won’t opt to save face by voting in favor of a bill without a public option? Answer: we don’t. And attempts to make them “lose face” by voting for such a bill, yeah, I don’t see it working. The face-costs of “failure” are too high; best to vote for any bill.

Wouldn’t organizing the public, rather than Congress, be a better use of our time right now?

Eggszactly. That always happens when you try to pin them down.

OK. I have to admit that, while I don’t really want to rehash debates here and elsewhere from six months ago, this type of argument is really starting to irritate me. The single payer-or-nothing crowd (and, by the way, I too support the concept of single payer.. I suspect most of us do) here has yet to explain:

(1) how they’re going to get their concept passed with our current cabal of elected officials.
(2) how the mechanics, economics and moral hazard of their preferred option will actually work (and, no, sayin’ “medicare is cool so we want for everybody” when Medicare itself is under increasing financial pressure doesn’t quite do it).

Just screaming “Single Payer or Broke” in an ever-louder crescendo does not sell your idea. It just doesn’t. Give us a plan that works. Give us a road-map. Give us numbers, and give us the names of the Congresscritters who will sponsor and pass it, and we’ll give your idea the time of day. Otherwise this is a waste of time.

I believe strongly that there IS a single payer model that works from an economic and moral hazard standpoint, but you haven’t articulated how that system will look like or work. I also believe that the bill presently on the floor will help a few people but will not, in the end, stave off the collapse of our healthcare system, and that, as time goes on (in another generation, perhaps), VA-for-all or the idea of a unitary Federal Health Service will become inevitable. Finally, I believe that all of this is legislatively impracticable in the current environment.. something that you have not satisfactorily explained your around yet.

So, please, do the math, and then do the politics, and then argue your case.. not the other way around. Please… Remember? We’re the party that actually lives in the reality-based world, with all due respect.

Who will introduce an amendment that alters the PO that is in the current bill?

Yes, and for others who might not know this.

It would appear that it’s too much work to sit down and work that out. It’s easier to bitch and throw stones.

Wouldn’t organizing the public, rather than Congress, be a better use of our time right now?

The public is already on our side. The public-option provision is more popular than the rest of the bill — or Obama, for that matter. It’s the Congress that’s where the action is.

But, if you want to lobby/organize both the public and Congress, a good way to do so is to let the constituents of key Senators and Congresscritters (such as Blanche Lincoln) know who she’s really serving with her stances. (Hence the idea of running TV ads in Arkansas. You can also write letters to the hometown papers of various targeted Senators and Congresscritters — that in many ways is more effective than calling their offices, as you have the chance to spread the word where it most needs to be spread.)

All well and good. Unless it contains a mandate. I will NOT be mandated to give my money, to any private corporation. It is really that simple. There is also a promise of a constitutional challenge to any such bill that carries a mandate.

The government lacks the authority to guarantee profits and bonus payments to private corporations.

Who opened the door and let in all the sensible people?

;)

Seriously, if anybody had asked me, I’d have said the most likely scenario by far is that the bill that comes out of conference does not meet the standards set on June 23 and we’ll be working hard to kill it before all is said and done. But we are staying consistent with what we sketched out on June 23. And until something passes in the Senate that fails to meet that standard, we’re going to keep working to make it as good as we possibly can.

i had to wait 7 months for my current primary care provider and i’m under 65 paying full cost private insurance. it’s just extra bad where i live. i understand (no data, just talking with people in different parts of the country) that it varies quite a bit regionally. medicaid patients have it the worst, then medicare. the cms report had some comments on this re the house bills (also on cuts to medicare funding). if you are interested, here are two old (couple of weeks) comments of mine with some of the relevant bits from the cms reports:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/11/16/what-about-that-cms-report/#comment-4528
http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/11/17/health-care-bill-to-drop-tomorrow/#comment-4697

But, it’s always someone else’s fault. That’s the only way you can continue in the face of decades of humiliating failure. I was supposed to pitch in with a bunch of angry, lazy cultists who pissed off everyone and wasted all their effort trying to get a symbolic vote on a bill that never even made it to the floor.

Wow, Jane. I keep looking to you to be a uniter for progressives from both groups. Bumped my nose on that glass. Are the personalized and generalized at the same time insults really necessary?

So now I am responsible for decades of humiliating failure?

I admire ego strength. It is necessary in effective and powerful leadership. Please make sure your choices now are not out of ego-protection and projection. And calling on others to support and protect your ego during this challenging time.

I think of the Bridge on the River Kwai. Alec Guinness built a damn fine bridge. But then it was to be used for EVIL by the enemy and had to be blown up, and he almost didn’t get that. He had invested so much time and energy and hope in that bridge. And it was great for morale, his and his men’s.

Maybe the easy contempt leaking out of you which I don’t know is normal or extenuating is a real off-putter in negotiating for what is best in terms of policy. Patriarchal style is about power and competition, humanist is about partnership and cooperation. Why does this seem a contest? So if you keep kicking at people who beg to differ with you and imho who have a damn good reason to be exasperated with the ways things have turned out, too. Maybe even more so. The betrayal happened with the corporations in play. We aren’t and weren’t naive. We knew it would.

It is important to be politically astute. There is also a danger of getting lost in the political gamesmanship matrix. Sometimes you can’t win at a fixed game, not playing at times is the way to go, you have to step back. Not forever. To rerally.

We need to rally ALL progressives and wake up the non-progressives.

I think it is a lost opportunity not to go all-out-media as progressives in balking at this blasted bill, with the knives from sell out dems in our backs.

Amen, sister. 61 here; also voted in every election since the age of . . . was it 18, or 21? Will not be voting next year. In 2012, I’ll be hoping for an attractive third party. I’m done, too.

The bill stinks—

no one likes it.

Time we had Dems stand up and say “we will not support a bill that is endless welfare to insurance companies”.

“We will not allow a plan that actively discriminates against low income and minorities to be passed on our watch with the hope we will “fix it” later.”

Now, that would be real courage.

no one can fight every battle. choosing to step away from one doesn’t necessarily mean any less time/effort is devoted, just different priorities is all.

Well said. The fact that the public option always polls higher than the general bill says good things about Americans’ political evolution, although the Senate is still lagging behind what the people want. As Ron Wyden says, people are going to be disappointed when they found out how few people are eligible for the public option and that the bill is actually not liberal enough for the public. And that sentiment will allow Democrats to further strengthen the bill.

The trick will be getting through the initial period where people are somewhat underwhelmed by the Democrats’ achievements. If we can get people to keep voting for Democrats who’ve done half of what the people want and promised the rest we can finally get 60 strong votes. And then we can do fun stuff like lowering the threshold for cloture and making membership in the Republican party illegal!

Flawed Health Reform Could Hurt Dems in 2010
Part 1:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5228/flawed_health_reform_could_hurt_dems_in_2010part_i/
Part 2:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5229/flawed_health_reform_could_hurt_dems_in_2010part_2/

Read this stuff and weep or resist. The problems, more or less described in Roger Bybee’s all-caps subtitles:

WHY THE DELAY? (2014?)

MANDATORY PURCHASE OF UNRELIABLE PRIVATE INSURANCE (“Private health insurance is a defective product. We know from our studies of bankruptcy that the majority of Americans who face medical bankruptcy start their illness with private health insurance but are bankrupted anyway by gaps in coverage, like co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services,” argues Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School

AFFORDABLE PREMIUMS? (For example, the Washington Post reported that a family of four earning $54,000 would pay premiums of $5,300. But before the family would derive any benefits from those premiums, they would have to pay a $5,000 deductible. In other words, the family would be exposed to
$10,300 in annual health costs.)

GIVEAWAYS TO BIG PHARMA

PATHETIC, PUNY PUBLIC OPTION

FREEZING INEQUITIES INTO PLACE (Apparently no longer feeling it necessary to hide America’s shameful secret, the Democratic plans openly create “basic,” “enhanced,” “premium,” and “premium-plus” levels of benefits.)

Both strategically and as pure wonkish ‘not solving the problem you set out to solve’, the health care plan is not smart for the Democrats. But, for Obama, well, he has no choice, cuz this crap will be what he fights 2010 and 2012 out on. Even though little of the plan will be in force then, since he knows the people who have to deal with the new mandatory or else provisions will be damned pissed off at him.

I think we are long past posing this sort of question as to whether the Congress has any respect for the wishes of the majority of the people when crafting legislation.

The answer is no it does not.What would it take for people to be convinced of that. We know that there are enormous forces acting to frustrate the common good. There is no secret about that.

This answer is to continue to pressure Congress to act in our best interests relentlesly and to vote them out when they don’t as best we can. Reid and Lincoln in my opinion are prime targets for the next election.

It would appear that it’s too much work to sit down and work that out. It’s easier to bitch and throw stones.

i’ve spent a lot of time reading reports and trying to “work things out” for myself. coming to a different conclusion, having a different opinion or just plain disagreeing is NOT “throwing stones.”

Jane, what is ultimately confusing to me is that the title of this blog post is “Why Continue to Fight for a Public Option?”

And essentially your answer is because we can’t defeat the bill… because it is not possible to defeat the bill, therefore we must fight for this public option.

This goes against everything you’ve been doing on this blog since May-June timeframe.

Why is it not okay (in your world… which I guess this is) to stand up and fight against a bill that does not have a robust public option (as you pushed so hard for the past 6 months)?

We can’t call it a lemon (scream it from the rooftops) in spite of the fact that it’s not possible to ‘kill the bill’?

In the comment thread to this blog you’ve got some very confused people… people who are your supporters and clearly think you are saying we have to fight for the public option BECAUSE YOU SUPPORT THIS VERSION OF THE PUBLIC OPTION.

But you say in this comment thread that you think it SHOULD be killed but since it can’t we can’t go that route.

Color me confused.

Reid IS toast. He is already in a squeaker and deserves to lose. Nothing could be better than ending that bastard’s career.

amen…

Not so fast, Jane. I think that you are underestimating the numbers of liberals that want the Republicans to kill the bill because we FIGURED OUT A LONG TIME AGO THAT OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS WERE AGAINST A PUBLIC OPTION DUE TO THE MONEY THEY TAKE. Its quite simple. Try measuring that first.

lazy cultists?

the reason this really pisses me off, is that the people i know of are the ones who have been, for years, working their tails off. research doesn’t get done on it’s own, policy analysis doesn’t magically appear after a spring rain. they’ve been doing the teach ins, giving talks to anyone who will listen, all that and much much more.

sure, lots of mistakes all around. i’m sure lots more than i even have a clue about. people are human, it’s to be expected. but when people are doing their best, even if that’s not good enough for you, have dedicated years of their lives to the human rights cause of universal healthcare, calling them “lazy cultists” is just too much.

Yes SIR!!

If we can get people to keep voting for Democrats who’ve done half of what the people want and promised the rest we can finally get 60 strong votes.

Are you so naïve as to believe votes on the floor are anything other than a formality, planned, whipped, and decided ahead of time by the leadership?

More to the point, are you more concerned for the electoral future of the D party or for the lot of the individual citizen?

Right. Not only is it conjecture. It’s worthless conjecture too.

I agree why shld we embrace a bill that is crap just to say we won something? It wld be better to let this bill die and Obama lose than pretend we’ve just been given a great gift from the dems. Any dem who thinks forcing people to buy insurance from private insurers is a good idea wont be around long. The reason progressives dnt achieve anything is bcz they fall so easily for everything. They talk and squawk and squawk and talk, and on tv they look like they really mean what they say but when the metal hits the road they kneel down and put their butts up in the air. And they rationalize their defeats as it is better than what we had. I dont have insurance right now bcz I lost my job and forcing me to buy insurance wld burden me.

Indeed. So if we want to kill it, we back Joe Lieberman in the Senate, and then the House will oblige us by killing it.

Nathan, 2.5 – 2.6 trillion in 2009 according to the NIE estimate.

There’s a terrific piece on the selling of America’s health to the highest bidder at: http://wp.me/pClhD-1t

Progressives need to rise up against these corporate owned robots. And when I say corporate owned robots I’m talking about Dems and Repubs. At this point I think the progressive base in particular and moderates in general need a wake up call that makes it clear just who this government is actually working for.

I say kill this bill lest those who follow the action in DC less closely than us get the impression that the Dems have acomplished anything of substance here.

Sorry for the delay. Had to feed the tigers.

You were definitely not included in that comment because it didn’t refer to those who have done the work and come up with different conclusions or opinions. That is to be expected in any group endeavour.

I’m referring to those who seem to think it’s a simple matter to enact what they want enacted and are disappointed and angry that we might end up with something less than optimal. There’s a vast difference between reality and “the way it should be” or “the way I want it.”

I think it’s safe to say my goal matches yours.

As far as battles go not all the elements are on the field. I want to wait until I can see the complete picture before I make a decision, doing what I can to influence those elements to my advantage as they appear.

Why are we prepared to throw the uninsured lower middle-class under the bus? Yes, for people who are already buying insurance there will be savings. But for people who are not, much government-mandated expense, and for poor-quality insurance. Is the Democratic party prepared to lose that group, perhaps forever?

It is both, and I’m afraid it’s a matter of who has the most guts in using their leverage.

Successful lobbyists write the bills that their clients pay for; they then may or may not Astroturf the hell out of the bill in order to convince the critters their clients bought and paid for to stay bought and vote for the damb thing.

That’s the process. That’s how it works. The Public — you and I — are at best tangential to this process. In fact, the less we have to do with it, the better in the Fantasy World that is Versailles on the Potomac.

The progressive grassroots/netroots is still very much a side show to the process of crafting major legislation. We don’t have lobbyists per se, not yet, and even if we did, it would be almost impossible to get them to agree with their clients’ wishes.

Why? Because the lobbyist is always going after what’s possible. Knowing all the backstage deals, who’s got dirt on whom, what can be squeezed out of which Member (ew), when and how… That’s how the successful lobbyist has to operate.

But progressive netroots/grassroots want something that “can’t” pass. Medicare (or its equivalent) For All. Simple, straightforward, to the point, medically effective, cost effective, universal.

Can’t have that. Won’t happen. Why? Because other clients, major clients, have already paid lobbyists to write the bill we can have. And their clients have already paid off practically the entire Democratic caucus to go along with it. And the White House is perfectly fine with it; why shouldn’t they be? They’ve been making deals with the major stakeholders (which do not include us) all along.

The point has been from the get go to get something passed and into law with as little “public” involvement as possible. That meant, ironically, months of Teabagger shoutfests and threats. Months of insanity. Ah, but it was Astroturfed, wasn’t it? Hm? Without the gentle ministrations of lobbyists like Dick Armey, where would the town hall yappers and insurrectionists have been? See how it works? They figure they can’t really prevent something from passing, but they can make it as ridiculous and offensive as possible, and it looks like they’ve done that.

There is a real chance that if what has been cobbled together by the lobbyists and their clients passes, with mandates to purchase overpriced and useless policies, but no effective healthcare services for years to come, or only the most minimal provisions for the most marginal uninsured now, there will be no stopping the revolt that will ensue.

That’s really the only thing our critters fear. And only energy for that at the moment is on the right. Glenn Beckistan.

So. There you are.

These people in the Senate and the House, or rather, those people, are politicians. Not reformers. Not ‘consumer’ advocates, or ‘public citizen’ advocates. Barely human. I don’t know if that’s an overstatement or an understatement; it’s no exaggeration. If Jane Hamsher thinks like I do, she can’t say it; and I’ll still send FDL money even if she insults me for what I’ve just written. I’m very very pissed off that these politicians are trying to sap her energy. They don’t like her.

Before you know it, the midterm campaigns will be in full swing. Why would a politician NOT want the issue-of-a-lifetime to be part of the imminent campaign and election cycle? I think they’re stalling and more than giddy about the complications. We’re being played.

Be well, Jane.

“Because Ralph Nader would’ve made a great President.”

Right, because Joe Lieberman was the perfect fit for high office in 2000. Laughable. Funny how ex-Joe Lieberman lap-dogs still amuse themselves standing on the shoulders of Joe and pointing their fingers at Naderites. Look at you ex-Lieberman supporters now.

Let’s not throw rocks. I’m tired of it, but I’ll keep throwing them if I have to.

Need a refresher course in sarcasm?

I don’t remember Short Ride being anything but a piss poor VP candidate. Kerry supporters also being Short Ride supporters is a false equivalency.

you forgot “because the moon is made of green cheese!”

the failure to answer such good points is itself an answer.

the defensive projection about Lieberman (who really cost the (D)’s the 2000 election) and Nader (who didn’t) is also quite revealing, since Nathan referred to them not at all.

sorry I’m so late, now time to read the comments.

This was a suggestion brought up by Sen. Sanders once it became clear that there was not 60 votes in the Senate for a bill that included the PO. In view of that reality the thinking is that a more limited aim can be achived this time around.

A further condition as he explained was to exclude the mandate that would direct more unwilling entrants into private insurers. He left it as an open question as to whether this more restricted bill would be agreeable to the majority in the House. Again with the understanding that the heavy lifting of expanding Medicare would be pursued shortly thereafter.

This is in a sense a fall back plan if the PO fails to pass, and it certainly is consistent with people continuing to press the Senate to include the PO in their bill.

Actually, the public is turning against this bill, whereas the “progressives” are lamely clinging to it. This is what Congress gets for gutting the public option: fewer people with a legitimate defense of their bill.

Since this PO will neither be nationwide nor available on Day one, how can it still possibly called “robust”?

The notion that progressives committed a sin for voting for Nader, regardless of the election, is dogmatic nonsense. There are plenty of good reasons to vote for a candidate or to skip voting at all.

I think the bill is killable and at this point it definitely deserves to be. But I don’t understand what the fate of this bill (whether it passes or not) has to do with my opposition to it.

I favored impeaching Bush and Cheney. And I kept getting the argument from Democratic officeholders that they couldn’t even begin an investigation of Bush unless they had the votes to impeach him in the House and convict him in the Senate. (Leaving aside this is not how things went down in Watergate where the Senate and House acted to investigate without such an assurance.) But under this kind of requirement, most of my opposition to Bush was misplaced. I should not have been for impeachment or against the Iraq war. I should have remained silent on his extra-Constitutional power grabs, torture, detention, and domestic spying because the Congress was going to stop him. I should not have stood against Roberts and Alito because hey, we didn’t have the votes there either.

But somehow I can not bring myself to admit that I was wrong to oppose so much of what went on under Bush or what is going on now under Obama. I do not distinguish between Republican and Democratic crap. The healthcare bill as it is shaping up is not a close call. It is crap. If others wish to fight for it that’s their business. Mine is to oppose it.

If you can’t name them, you don’t have a plan, you just have a position you can’t substantiate.

It is always easier to bring coalitions together to kill something than it is to bring a coalition together to pass something.

Sorry, I’m not a professional organizer, so I don’t have a plan. I see which direction the political currents are flowing, and can extrapolate that there is a high likelihood that this bill will die of its own contradictions.

I’ve made this point on other posts a few times. I agree with Linda R

We have 2 parties that fight for corporate sponsorship in agreement to pass laws they want enacted (in a nutshell). They are so important we even buy them health insurance. The fact that we have a majority in the Senate, house and the Presidency and yet torture, war, spying on Americans, Health insurance, Wall street bailout….really?, we’re gonna elect enough ‘good ones’ someday ?? I don’t freak’n believe it.

Jane, You apparently agree that the choice is among A, B, and C considering both Houses of Congress. If both A and B stink, but C won’t happen in the Senate, then we ought to be working to get the result in the Senate that will, in the final analysis, get us C as a final result.

That’s A in the Senate, not B (the bill with a weak PO), assuming that the House progressives will then block a bill without a PO and get us C in the end.

However, in deciding what to support we have also to factor in the Conference. If the conference committee passes a very weak PO (essentially “B”), whether or not a bill without a PO is passed by the Senate, then both Houses may end up accepting it. From my point of view that is a very bad result because I think it is the one most likely to prevent real reform any time soon. Whatever we do in the Senate B may come out of the Conference.

That result is made more likely if the Senate passes B, since the House has already passed one version of B. That’s the downside of supporting B in the Senate. That means we ought to work against B in the Senate, if our real goal is to eventually kill the bill, and if we are to have any reasonable chance at all of getting it killed.

What’s wrong with this reasoning?

Cassiodorus, Rassmussen polls are biased to the right, and I am not sure how much the current polls matter in any event. I am more concerned about what will happen once the mandates go into effect.

All to the good but it is further necessary and crucial to have him replaced with a candidate that is commited to expanding Medicare. It is futile and counterproductive to oust Reid and lose ground by having a GOP moron take his place.

Ousting Reid is only half the task, the same goes for Lincoln. It can never happen that we cede ground to the GOP, that is suicidal.

I think if you carve your “win” small enough you are going to win. You seem to be tirelessly fighting for a heap of shit though. I’m sure you’re aware of that and will carve out your victory any way that you can.

The posturing about which congressmen people who want the bill killed should try to flip doesn’t invalidate their arguments btw. It makes you seem small. Just because your readers can’t get their faces on TV doesn’t mean they don’t have a point of view, and just because you do does not mean yours is particularly valid. You’d think you’d realise that, given the company you keep there.

letsgetitdone, I tend to think of this “Congress won’t consider health care again for another fifteen years” meme as actually being quite harmful, and self-fulfilling at that. The people who employ this meme are usually proponents of the crap bills, and the crap bills’ provisions are strung out over so many years in an attempt to discourage reconsideration. So yeah, whenever you read or hear that “Congress won’t consider health care again for another fifteen years,” that’s probably what they want.

Have it your way, then. Here’s a Gallup poll with pretty much the same data.

Could happen, but also keep in mind that some House Dems voted for the bill with Stupak because they thought it wouldn’t survive the Senate and the Conference. What if it does? How may more Dems will the bill lose in the House then?

Inquisitr, I don’t think Sanders will be affected by pressure in the usual way. If you want to affect him, you have to actually go through the analysis with him and convince him that this bill isn’t an improvement over the status quo because it will freeze the possibilities of future reform. Then you can get Bernie. But, a pressure campaign of the kind Blanche Lincoln is getting, won’t work with him.

Personally, I wish the ‘progressive community’ would launch a full scale operation to get the CBO to score ’single payer’; that one action would blow the kabuki theater now playing completely up.

How can we get that to happen without getting the leadership to ask for it, and why would the leadership do so now?

And what will be the cost in additional deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures, before the final victory? Have you tried to calculate that? If not, and if you haven’t tried to calculate over a similar time period given that the bill is defeated now and we come back next year for another try, how can you form a minimally rational opinion about whether the bill with a PO should be supported or killed?

Marcos, Not only could you make that case, but Jane has been chasing that fantasy option for this whole year in the name of realism.

Well, mikesong. Look at the results and the choice in the Senate — between horseshit A and bullshit B, and debating whether there’s a dogshit “C”. What did Jane say about pursuing fantasy options? They have consequences. They make things worse.

Nicely outlined.

Why do you hate democratic self-government, Teddy?

I had to stop reading the comments to respond to this Reid-worthy suggestion.

I profoundly disagree with your dreadful prescription for more status quo backroom deals using Party power plays, Rahm Emanuel-style, to quash democratic debate and actual legislating.

Why will the bill get worse with more public debate and amendment, given the solid Democratic majority in the Senate? Are you, like so many now in the Congress whose master is Party politics, afraid of genuine debate? Are Democratic Senators, the elected federal representatives of their states, that much of a dangerous fraud that you seriously prefer placing the whole shebang in the hands – not just of Harry Reid in those back rooms, but effectively in Obama and Emanuel’s Executive Branch hands, to do with as they will, with zero accountability?

[Obama's going to be allowed to dictate outcomes once we get to the conference process, as it is, you do understand? Pelosi and Reid let the White House run that show, in the name of Party and in defiance of the separation of powers, even if you never witness it happening behind those closed doors.]

You describe my nightmare scenario. Right now, we have a window for the Senate to conduct actual democratic debate and amendment, in an effort to improve the bill. A process that will take place over weeks (if Reid isn’t afraid of the honest debate and allows the process to proceed without playing favorites) and that thus has yet to deliver a final Senate product for everyone’s consideration. That window could be slammed shut at any moment by the sort of power play you recommend that would shut down the democratic amendment process on the Senate floor via UC agreement (limiting it to a select few amendments, favoring Republican amendments by necessity, with artificial super-majority margins), in the name of a Party win. If that happens, believe me, the American people, and the Senate, will be the worse for it, even if Emanuel ends up getting Obama his “W” as a result.

“Personally, I wish the ‘progressive community’ would launch a full scale operation to get the CBO to score ’single payer’; that one action would blow the kabuki theater now playing completely up.”

You’re right. What can we do to get that idea front and center?

The FDL Public Option Please campaign… it would be hard to campaign against B since they just sent out a mass mailing asking for dollars for the POP campaign… the two are mutually exclusive here at fdl apparently.

You were thinking that you’re the only one who has any purchase on reality so you pursued the wrong course for most of this year along with the veal pen organizations and may other progressives and now that you’ve failed you can’t face it! You’re the one who can’t see reality. Not libbyliberal. She, at least knows, that some bills need to be killed.

BTW, I left you a comment on your reply to my comment on your earlier post and the discussion there on taking responsibility for this tragedy. I still haven’t seen a reply from you to it.

Thanks for enlightening me.

Because any reasonable person would be engaging in some self-assessment right now. They’d be saying “gee we suck, maybe we ought to be changing the way we do things rather than running around blaming everyone else for our dismal abject failure on every single conceivable level.”

All progressives who have been trying to manipulate Congress toward a decent health care bill should at this point be engaged in such self-assessment, as it appears virtually certain that no such bill will be passed.

Also, they’re generalizing mindlessly from a few cases without considering that conditions have changed since 1993-1994, 1977, 1972-73. Now there are many, many, voters hurting. They won’t tolerate much more of this crap and the political class’s excuses about why they can’t solve problems whose effects are hurting many millions of people.

Thank you. I’ve been a longtime fdl supporter… but these smackdowns tonight were rude, uncalled for and beyond the pale imo.

ouch. That one may gotten through that magnificent armor.

Who says that if you don’t have a plan you don’t have a position that’s correct. Some people are good at positions, some at plans, others at both. Perhaps what we need is Marcos’s position and one of your plans for bringing it about.

So let me get this straight, Jane thought she’d bet on the right horse, only it turned out to be the wrong horse for reasons outlined here?

The only good thing about FDL is the bloggers. Jane has become a confusing hack. Unless you can be a real blog with guts, just go the way of Randi Rhodes (diminished because of her ridiculous support of sleazy Dems and her self-love), Rachel Maddow, (stay tuned for her cancellation), and Olberman )and other somewhat quasi-gay jealous men (Robin Williams) who attack Republican women for fun, thereby making them famous beyond all deservedness, and Pelosi, the “whatever happened to baby jane” of politics.

Jane, your days are numbered. SERIOUSLY read your own blogs.

Haha man I am just laughing. Seriously, back in 1994, could anyone have imagined a more surreal sight fifteen years down the road than progressives sitting around bemoaning the inevitable passage of health care reform and frantically attempting to stop it? Crazy. And WTF @ tropicgirl’s homophobia.

Perhaps that’s because Jane didn’t put the question correctly? Perhaps we need to know who will kill this bill depending on what’s in it? It’s very hard to answer the question without knowing that.

Also, do we assume FDL efforts at lobbying one Senator or another? The likelihood of certain Senators voting to kill the bill might increase greatly if Jane were to get behind killing it and this was carried by Arianna in Huff Post.

A little boomlet among the netroots for killing it could give Sanders, Rockeller, Franken, Feingold, Brown, Leahy, Wyden, Whitehouse, Burris, Cantwell, Murray, Boxer, Stabenow, Levin, and Paul Kirk a boost in opposition. Only a few are needed to sustain a filibuster on the final vote.

Reid can circumvent a filibuster, of course. But, if he invokes closure, or even uses the nuclear option, then I think the floor is open to further amendments all subject to majority vote. That may create entirely new possibilities for strengthening or weakening the bill.

Sorry. I think the bill is more likely to produce a limited regulatory product, which I can certainly live with if no PO-based is produced in the Seante, implying that we should not work any longer for a PO in the Senate.

Wow, Michelle Malkin AND Ann Coulter read FDL!!!!

But cassiodorus, how can Jane do that when she’s committed to the nuts and bolts of influencing the Congress.

In the end they will all be able to say “we passed a bill,” and the only people with the ganas to keep fighting it will be those who had the ganas to oppose it before it became law, i.e. not the “progressives.” Nobody else, as you have pointed out so well in this thread, is going to say “I made a mistake.”

And certainly not Jane.

One of the advantages of pursuing a kill-an-atrocious-healthcare-bill strategy is that progressives can leverage the issue to primary particularly awful Democrats. If a shitty bill passes, progressive candidates lose a valuable issue to run on against incumbent, do-nothing, lobbyist-loving Democrats.

The ultimate irony of this thread and of the smackdowns about not being able to kill the bill…

is that MSM and the punditocracy are trying so hard to show how the bill can PASS… but Jane is so sure it can not be killed. Maybe it can’t be killed by progressives alone (as she tried so hard to get pledges from the house to do)… but the conservadems and republicans can kill it.

Is it just me or do you guys feel like we’ve slipped down the rabbit hole on this thread? I hear faint twilight zone music…

Krawkrawkraw. No fair piling on Jane. The Senate bill is bad, and I don’t think we’re going to fix it. But what’s good about it is largely due to the efforts of progressives.

To someone or other who was writing about how progressives would only accept a single-payer system: not so. There’s plenty of non-toxic things that Congress could do: better preventative care, a regulated insurance system, and so on. Even lesser things: ending the abuse of recission, for instance, would get progressive support. But that’s not what we’re getting.

Perhaps that’s because Jane didn’t put the question correctly? Perhaps we need to know who will kill this bill depending on what’s in it? It’s very hard to answer the question without knowing that.

To coin a phrase: Ya THINK?!

THERE IS NO FINAL SENATE BILL AVAILABLE FOR ANALYSIS YET. There’s only Harry Reid’s base bill, that will apparently be – according to all indications today, and in an increasingly-rare Senate procedure – available for genuine attempts at amendment for weeks to come, including weekends, starting today.

You think maybe it might be wise to cease and desist the all-knowing political strategist theorizing, and impugning of Jane’s motives, long enough to watch a Democratic Senate publicly work its will on a bill most of them have had no opportunity to change or affect to this point? We. just. might. learn. something – if, in fact, a genuine debate breaks out in the Senate, which would be “historic” as current Senate practices go. The groundwork has been laid by Harry Reid for such an outcome. And if we do get that genuine debate, we just might have a better bill (yes, really – and thanks even to Republican amendments), even a much better bill, before the Senate is through with its work.

Time enough for blocking this legislation after the first democratic legislating on this bill conducted on a floor of Congress has delivered a final product. [Since the Party in control of the House let only one (Stupak) amendment offered by its 435 members reach or be debated on the House floor.]

Well, if the position you took on June 23 is the standard, and you think that that standard is consistent with the House bill and with Reid’s bill, then I’m afraid that that standard wasn’t worth much since it is allowing for far too many deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures to continue to exist if these bills pass.

For others of us who may have had a more exacting standard in mind, such as as a PO that would be open to all, be able to use Medicare providers, and to charge Medicare rates, available on the actual day one after a reasonable implementation period of no more than a year, the earlier bills have long fallen short, and the current bills are certainly unacceptable and deserve to be killed.

I’ll welcome you to our side when the Senate gives up on the PO. I hope it’s not too late to block it then.

We need to rally ALL progressives and wake up the non-progressives.

I think it is a lost opportunity not to go all-out-media as progressives in balking at this blasted bill, with the knives from sell out dems in our backs.

It is a lost opportunity. But how do we get to the media? How do we get covered? Who is losing the opportunity?

but, powwow, if a better bill comes out of the hoped for process isn’t there also time to support that bill? for people who think the current bills are not supportable, are you saying that they are supposed to sit on their hands and wait until, well i’m not quite sure when — after a bill comes out of reconciliation? — while it’s ok for other people, based on the current bills, to voice their support now, or to lobby for specific changes now?

i’m not trying to argue with you about the position you personally take on the legislation, rather on what i think you are saying is an acceptable role for some, but not all, citizens to take. it’s just that what i think you are saying is so completely at odds with what i thought you’d say…. well, i have to check: am i misreading you?

powwow, I don’t think I’ve been questioning Jane’s motives. But if some folks have, it may well be because of the rhetoric Jane uses in disputing things with people. She uses an awful lot of labeling, ad hominems, and unwarranted assertions in the way she comes at people. That sort of thing creates its own response and it’s not always so pretty. Civility is a two way street.

You said:

You think maybe it might be wise to cease and desist the all-knowing political strategist theorizing, and impugning of Jane’s motives, long enough to watch a Democratic Senate publicly work its will on a bill most of them have had no opportunity to change or affect to this point? We. just. might. learn. something – if, in fact, a genuine debate breaks out in the Senate, which would be “historic” as current Senate practices go. The groundwork has been laid by Harry Reid for such an outcome. And if we do get that genuine debate, we just might have a better bill (yes, really – and thanks even to Republican amendments), even a much better bill, before the Senate is through with its work.

All this may be true, but just as you think that it may be valuable for teh Senate to debate the present bill and to improve, don’t you think that it’s also consistent with Democracy for groups external to the Senate to express their loathing and opposition to the bill in its present state? Don’t you think that that also is part of the Democratic process?

I do and I think attempts to kill the current bill as it’s now structured have no necessary implication for any improved bill the Senate might end with, rather I think such efforts might persuade some Senators that what Harry gave them is not something that’s good for America and that it’s also not good for them to run on. That’s what I’m trying to get done in the short run, and I don’t think it is as likely to get done if we just shut up and let the Senate work its will, uninformed about what our real views are?

To simplify things a bit it may be helpful to lay out all the possible outcomes and then debate which if any of these meet with approval.

There are 8 possible outcomes, if we limit the bills as either having or not having a PO of some sort. We will not for the sake of simplicity consider whether the bills contain the Stupid ammendment or not, but his could likewise also lead to four possible outcomes.

As regards the PO you have:

1-conference votes out bill with PO and both chambers pass it
2-conference votes out bill c PO and House passes and Senate votes down
3-conference votes out bill c PO and House votes down and Senate passes
4-conference votes out bill c PO and both chambers vote it down
5-conference votes out bill c no PO and both chambers pass it
6-conference votes out bill c no PO and House passes and Senate votes down
7-conference votes out bill c no PO and House votes down and Senate passes
8-conference votes out bill c no PO and both chambers vote it down

Of these outcomes only 1,5(concieveable)are possible. I think everyone would be in favor of outcome 1 and even outcome 5 may be acceptable as a limited measure. These at present exhaust the options as far as the PO is concerned.

The same two choces also apply as regards the inclusion of the Stupid ammendment or any other provision considered in isolation.

raven333, You have to evaluate the bill as a whole, to see what’s wrong with it from a progressive point of view. See this.

your definition of a robust public option:

* available nationwide
* available on day one
* and accountable to Congress and the voters

available on day one? what day would that be? 1/1/2013?

available nationwide? even if there’s no opt-out and no trigger, the exchange[s] won’t be opened to everyone in the entire nation before 2015 [or later] and there’s nothing written into any of the bills requiring them to ever be opened to the entire public.

accountable to congress and the voters?

(c) LIMITATIONS ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology established under this section or under section 324.

section 324 gives the hhs secretary the job of designing and implementing ‘innovative payment mechanisms’ in the public option and implementing ‘delivery system reforms’ but i don’t see anything about congress or the public having a say in any of it.

so your three criteria all appear to have been hamstrung, if not entirely gutted, already.

to be sure, there are some good things in the bill[s], but also lots of bad. how bad does it have to get before the price that somebody else has to pay for jane hamsher’s public option is too high?

Sorry. gamd521, for reasons outlined here, a bill with a PO like the House bill would not be acceptable to me, and to many, many other progressives who write here. Your laying out of possibilities is symptomatic of what has been wrong with the process of getting a health care bill from the start. Ever since SP was taken off the table, for many of us the issue has been, what kind of PO will it be. Some of us wouldn’t have accepted anything but SP, Most probably would have considered a Jacob Hacker-type PO if the Democrats would have insisted on that pre-compromise, but with each weakening of the bill since then, more and more of us have gone into opposition.

letsgetitdone, seriously.

If you are going to pick on Jane for refusing to say “I made a mistake,” then you are cherry-picking. They have caught practically every progressive in the House making this mistake.

My piece on progressive ideology hints at why progressives do this. Progressives start from this utopian position, you know, that they can attain a paradise of peace, freedom and equality while leaving the existing system intact, and then go backwards according to the tenets of “realism” until they are in complete conformity with the ideology of the ruling class and there is maybe a crumb or two to offer the workers and the poor. The closer to DC you get, the more “realism” you use to go backwards.

Jane’s important contribution to political discourse is her advanced thinking about the “Veal Pen.” I circulated a little-read diary over on DailyKos.com today suggesting that, yeah, let’s go after the Veal Pen. I really wish that’s what we were doing here, rather than waiting for the Senate to finish its dessication of the “public option” so that we can organize for something real at some point AFTER the eventual bill either passes or fails.

Thanks for doing the analysis. I think it shows that Jane’s three criteria are already violated, at least from the perspective of many of us, and that is part of the reason why we have so much angst about Jane’s continued support of current forms of PO-based legislation. To me, it seems that Jane has been captured by the reflexivity of the process, as I’ve outlined here, and is interpreting her three criteria in a way that allows her to remain within the process’s reflexive boundaries.

What those interested in getting the best possible product should be doing now, rather than sitting on their hands, it seems to me, is working with the ongoing legislative process to pass improving Senate amendments however possible. Almost all the many comments in this thread – marcopolo @ 32 commendably excepted – seem to accept that the backroom deal, that merged the half-hearted HELP and Finance Committee bills, is all we’re going to get from the Senate, and that the resulting base bill is the Senate bill, no changes of any import possible on the floor itself (which, of course, was the case in the “democratic” House).

That may yet turn out to be the case (at the interfering direction of the White House). But how can the Senate sustain weeks of debate without any substantive amending possible? As I said, so far the signs are favorable (including, believe it or not, Blanche Lincoln’s effort – which may yet fail – to get all offered amendments distributed and on-line before they’re called up, so as to inform a genuine floor debate).

But if, in the meantime, everyone thinks the base Reid bill is it, and they oppose that bill, then while they’re busy trying to convince Senators to kill it, those same Senators will be busy and distracted trying to improve it without the support of supposed allies… It’s working at cross-purposes.

I don’t know myself, at this stage, my own position on a final Senate bill because I haven’t seen one. Meanwhile, I know I want to see major improvements to the base Reid bill. Including, in particular, to the extent possible, and damn Obama’s false deficit target, a much earlier implementation of the major provisions of the reform, however that might be arranged to meet the objections of those in the Senate worried about Obama’s self-image and/or the 10-year (as opposed to 20-year) deficit projections.

So I’m not sure if or how you’re misreading me, but everyone should be lobbying for specific changes in the base Senate bill now, if they want them, while keeping in mind that that’s exactly what the Senate itself is about for the next several weeks, if all goes well.

Look, none of this is “betting on the wrong horse.” This is complicated “ninja ju ju,” rocket science, and the best we can do when we don’t get it right is to roll with changing realities. Ain’t nothing wrong with getting it wrong if you learn from it and roll with it.

The worst thing we can do is to get trapped in our positions once they have become obviated by eventualities. When guys do this, I say that they’ve got their dicks in their game too much.

In response to ubetchaiam @ 91 (show text)

“Personally, I wish the ‘progressive community’ would launch a full scale operation to get the CBO to score ’single payer’; that one action would blow the kabuki theater now playing completely up.”

You’re right. What can we do to get that idea front and center?

anthony weiner may have gotten his substitute amendment scored. perhaps someone could call him and ask if it was and if he would be willing to release the cbo score [such scores don't have to be released publicly, he could decline].

also, bernie sanders has said that he plans to introduce a single payer substitution amendment in the senate and my understanding is that it will have to be scored first before he can introduce it. he might be willing to share the cbo scoring of his bill with the public at some point in the process.

neither of these two bills would be exactly hr676, but it would still be nice to see how cbo scores either or both of them.

cassiodorus, I’m not picking on Jane for making a mistake, I’m trying to get her to see that it is one. And as for cherry-picking, I’m trying to communicate with Jane because I think she’s really important to us. If that’s cherry-picking, then let’s make the most of it.

Hi,

Not to quibble but there is no implication involved in what you state. That is if the bill passed by the Senate to conference has no PO then working for the PO at that point is moot.

However prior to that point you are certainly free if so inclined to advocate for the PO. These two statements are not contradictory. It’s a small point I know.

As an attempt at insurance regualtion only with enhanced elegibility for Medicaid, I suppose that if the degree of regulation is meaningful this might be acceptable to members of the House and Senate both. Meaningful regulation would entail some combination involving, no mandate, no exclusion or rescissions, no co-pay or co insurance and so on.

I couldn’t agree with you more Marcos. Why do you think I don’t?

i’m certainly happy to let bernie sanders have a chance to introduce a single payer substitute amendment and get a vote on it.

but if that fails, or doesn’t happen, there’s a HUGE amount of work that has to be done to keep me from advocating to kill it.

Not to quibble but there is no implication involved in what you state. That is if the bill passed by the Senate to conference has no PO then working for the PO at that point is moot.

Sorry. I think you misunderstood. My point was that if one works for a PO in the Senate and it passes, then the Conference will pass a PO-based compromise bill. But as I’ve said to you already, such a bill is quite unacceptable in its present formats, either House or Senate. So, the best way to kill such a bill is for a bill to pass the Senate without a PO. This still may not kill it because the Conference may put it back. But if they don’t perhaps the progressives will defeat it in the House.

I know.

Thanks Hugh, That’s a great statement.

But spork, where are your comments?

This sounds too much like “3-D chess”.

I also don’t understand Jane’s agressive posts, tho I do recognize the style from a very intelligent and powerfull journalist I know who operated (be it in another field) in similar fashion as wearing the multiple hats of owner/chief editor, participant, stakeholder, referee.

It does however tend to stifle honest debate in the long run, and discourage dissent, which is a tragic thing for a blog. Some signs of conformism, despite the contradictionary and confusing stance by jane, are clearly visible in this thread.

My opinion is that this bill deserves to be killed, and that the majority of dems deserve all their voters staying home come next election. With the reps back in power, at least I know they’re sincere about fucking me and this country up beyond recognition.

selise, I guess Jane thinks that people like Steffie Wolfhandler, David Himmelstein, Kip Sullivan, and Marcia Angell are “lazy cultists.”

Thanks fairleft, for this statement and the links.

I deliberately did not qualify the nature of the PO in my scheme. It will ultimately be as expansive as the Congress makes it or it will be ommited altogether. The scheme lays out all 8 possible outcomes as far as the PO is concerned only. It says nothing regarding the SP.

The same scheme applies to the SP when and if it comes to be considered by both chambers of Congress. There is no debate but that these are always the same 8 possible outcomes, and only 2 of which are actually feasible, namely outcomes 1 and 5. This just a matter of logic.

I think that Jane’s frustration and the point of the scheme is that when considering a preference it is always incumbent on you to first show that the realization of that preference is possible in the here and now. Everyone wants a SP the question is whether it’s doable now. And the answer according to Jane, rightly in my view, is no.

When you pose that same question regarding the PO the answer is yes.

You know it’s possible. You just can’t say how.

O-kay.

Good, kill the bill.

Please, tell us how you’re going to do that. Nobody has given a reasonable answer to that question, though many appear to be angry that the reality of the situation is intruding on there advanced Naderism.

If only we’d elected Hillary Clinton everything would be better, is that what you’re saying?

Thanks for clarifying.

Under your scenario I think that comprehensive private insurance regulation is worth pursuing as the ultimate result of the Senate bill as opposed to scrapping the effort altogether, which won’t happen in any case.

There you go again with that FAITH thing! I have been advocating the “Let it Fester, Lester” strategy for awhile now , but I admit it’s a real gamble. It’s predicated on “the people not tolerating much more of this crap.” But you and I both know there are no analytics for it. It’s all gut feeling and I have to admit I have been wrong on this before. In 93-94 I thought the situation was way past tolerable and look what happened. On Turkey Day I had a long discussion with someone, pretty smart guy raising a family with health insurance issues, who, even at this late stage had absolutely no comprehension of what single payer is. And that’s not uncommon.

How sure are you that the great, lumbering American public will wake up enough to do the smart thing? I have written that there seems to be no crime, no inequity or injustice that the American people will not swallow.

Wendell Potter and many others have pointed out that the current system is simply unsustainable but to me that only translates to more and more people being tossed out of insurance due to cost. We have 47 million uninsured NOW! Where are the mobs? The public anger? The political efforts to this point have been, in their results, pitiful. It’s exciting to think the folks will rise up and tolerate no more, but I’m not entirely confident.

tigers come first. at least that is what my housemates tell me. *g*

anyway, turns out i had to take a break, otherwise might have written something i would regret.

i think all our goals are pretty much the same. the differences, i think, are mostly about how to get there. but that is to be expected, and i’m mostly ok with that (shit, some days i can’t even agree with myself! how could i think less of someone just because they disagree with me?).

but when blub @110 writes, “I believe strongly that there IS a single payer model that works from an economic and moral hazard standpoint, but you haven’t articulated how that system will look like or work” and you support that with “It’s easier to bitch and throw stones,” i’m going to object. people actually have been doing a lot of sp policy analysis for years — some of it (this year) in comments and diaries on this site, with links to peer reviewed articles in jama and nejm and sites like pnhp, fer crying out loud! and since discussions of sp policy or even apparently po policy issues from sp experts was specifically excluded from the front page conversation (i asked), i don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on sp advocates for blub’s not having some of the answer he/she is asking for. some of it is actually out there. and it’s particularly aggravating to me because i have, for over a year, asked for a explanation of the pre-compromise to support hcan strategy. and for months, have asked for details of how a public option was expected to work (and transition to sp, but there were people making that claim too) and have mostly been ignored, piled on (not all the stones have come from sp advocates – i know, because a lot of them have been directed my way), or given substance free talking points or worse (mad props to scarecrow for his posts since june). i’ve actually learned more about the po from sp advocates than anyone else.

so, if blub, or anyone else, would like directions to sp source material, i and lots of other people will be glad to help. but if we’re going to be accused of not having it without even being asked first? imo, that’s just not right.

please be at peace my friend. and please argue with me as much as you want. that will not undermine my respect or create bad feelings. but i will argue back. *g*

The “lazy cultists” are the ones who spend their times complaining in comment threads that other people don’t do their work for them. Who have never once thought about meaningful political organizing, and are wedded to their own abject failure by always making it someone else’s fault.

You know, I keep saying I’m going to do some single payer organizing, but the problem always is — how do I keep people like this at bay? They won’t actually do any work, and are content to wallow in failure and victimhood. They are a cancer inside any effort and everyone who has ever tried to organize meaningfully for single payer has always said the same thing — it’s impossible. The people who support it the most are the ones who doom it to failure.

So if you’d like me to do something on single payer, let me know how to organize it so that the people who like to spend their time irritating everyone else and don’t do anything anyway will stay away. Because that’s always been my stumbling block.

Jane,
I think you are approaching the tipping point in leading the liberal response to Health Care Reform. You need to listen more, be less defensive and work with those that commune with you daily to produce a viable new strategy, given the fact that we have been the victims of such a gigantic bait-and-switch on the PO. The Single Payer supporters have the benefit of a pure and moral position, just the kind of energetic agency that fuels a movement. What is possible changes with changing conditions. Conditions have changed and you need to remember that you are not a senator or a congressman or a political operative, but a moral force. Too long have liberals defined the possible down to the point of almost nothingness. Obama abandoned his movement and he no longer occupies the moral high ground. In effect, he has lost his juju. Don’t let that happen to you.

Jane,

Why are you buckling now? Why? It makes no sense. You’ve stayed with the facts … up until recently. You’re a fighter. A tiger. You’ve been spouting what HAS to be done – spot on! And now? You buckle.

I’ve seen this same pattern, time and again, from people who supposedly fight the good fight, until they feel a little threatened and then they buckle. With authority. Who next? Glenn Greenwald? I hope to hell not.

Is this a pride thing with you? – no matter how pathetic this is probably going to be , you want to say, you ‘won’? How infantile. How spineless

Our position has not changed since June 23. We staked out our territory, and very carefully set up a plan. We’ve followed it to the letter, and we don’t deviate no matter how many straw men get lit on fire by Naderites in our comments section.

Obama is who he always said he would be — he hasn’t abandoned anyone. You just weren’t listening. And I’ve never had any interest in being the “leading liberal” on anything.

But I’m really, really disinterested in having our comment section hijacked by a bunch of nihilists and Naderites, so unless someone would like to enlighten me on the details of their vivid “kill the bill” fantasies, I’ll keep asking the question…which three member of the House, or which member of the Senate, is going to reverse the vote they took as recently as the pass 2 weeks and make your champagne dreams come true?

As someone who has worked lo these long months to set up the architecture to make killing the bill possible, yes, I think that people who think they can wave their magic wand and make it happen are at best lazy and probably deceitful most certainly self-aggrandizing.

Because they just do not have as much power as they think they do. They are con artists manipulating your disappointment to make themselves feel important. You should ask a bit more of them before you let them sweep you into never-never land, something along the lines of “what’s your plan, oh powerful one?”

If only we’d elected Hillary Clinton everything would be better, is that what you’re saying?

?????

i’m sorry, i have NO idea what you are referring to. would you please elaborate?

This was the plan, we laid it out on June 23. We’ve stuck to it, to the letter. If you didn’t like it then, that was probably a good time to say something.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/06/23/fdl-action-lets-whip-the-public-plan/

We’ve never changed, no matter how much anyone whined in our comment section about taking their toys home, or how many straw men got lit on fire.

We’re at comment 223, that’s where these things usually go. “Primary resentment” usually starts to leach out as the Naderism exhausts itself.

Unless Lambert gets here early.

wow. totally losing it. copy/pasted that one for future reference.

They are a cancer inside any effort and [everyone who has ever tried to organize meaningfully for single payer has always said the same thing] — it’s impossible.

[citation missing]

Hey Jane, there’s a guy called David Neiwert, have you heard of him? He has an important series on Eliminationism in America – ten parts, including an appendix – I know it is a lot so here is a link to his Categories of Eliminationist Rhetoric.

The one that is relevant to you today is:

“E: Identification with vermin or disease”

not exactly credibility enhancing rhetoric, there.

that’s how i saw it too. for example, this thread from back in july (see especially comment @47). it was confusing to me.

Hmm, I think I’m just not following this thread very well. I’ve been on board with whipping the public option plan in your link from the outset. I’ve made calls and I’ve made donations and I’ve applied advanced Naderism as well as advanced Hucabbeeism on message boards whipping people toward the goal of achieving a “robust public option”. The only problem I see now is that the robust public option appears to be on the verge of getting ripped out of the legislation. So I suspect we’ll end up with shitty mandate legislation and have very little time (by Harry Reid design) to decide what do when that happens. So I’m chiming in now. If the final legislation is crap, then I think we need to be united in calling for representatives to kill it. I don’t know who will step up to do that. I’ve always assumed that the legislators who signed on for the robust public option would vote against a bill that did not include it.

“Primary resentment”

primary resentment? for clinton?

yikes! if you mean me, you are so incredibly wrong. could not be more wrong.

So if you’d like me to do something on single payer, let me know how to organize it so that the people who like to spend their time irritating everyone else and don’t do anything anyway will stay away. Because that’s always been my stumbling block.

huh? always???

when i asked you in feb you said it was because obama was too popular:

It is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, physically impossible to mobilize enough people against Obama right now to make him adopt anything he doesn’t want to, even single payer. Physically. Impossible. He has 80% approval ratings. It doesn’t really matter what the issue is, it cannot be done.

The words “Kill the Bill” seemed to have sent you off the deep end. OK, how about “Stop Supporting the Bill!” Or “let the bill die by impasse!” Or issue a press release announcing that the bill as presently configured will no longer be supported by FDL. Or yes, if one truly believes the bill will do more damage than good, then by all means call Lieberman and encourage him to filibuster. Or Nelson. Or Lincoln. Alliances of convenience happen all the time.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 because I wanted the one person who was telling the truth to make a strong show. I’m a California voter and if it had been close I would have voted for Gore. But I make no apologies for supporting a man who has always called it as it is and who has done more for the public good than the rest of us could do in 20 lifetimes. And that goes for you too, ma’am.

thanks powwow, i appreciate the detailed reply. please forgive me, but i’m too tired to think carefully about your thoughtful comment tonight. will try to return to this thread tomorrow…. after sleep and coffee…

You ask:

Since this PO will neither be nationwide nor available on Day one, how can it still possibly called “robust”?

And here’s a picture of me once again saying the same thing we’ve been saying at least a hundred times over the past 6 months.

“On day one” means on the day the plan is available, as opposed to triggers, . “Robust” was the term I first heard used by Jerry Nadler when they went out with a poll of CPC members in May or June. It didn’t have a definition.

If it isn’t available “nationwide” — if there’s an opt-out — we will hold members of Congress to the promise that we worked so very hard to elicit from them to try and kill the bill. That hasn’t happened yet.

Others seem to think they can just snap their fingers and members of Congress will fall in line, so maybe it was just overkill. It seems to be a much easier thing to accomplish than I ever assumed.

as for the origination of the “Veal Pen” metaphor, see Dennis Perrin.

“Little wonder that Obama has most of them spellbound. His oratory is sweet music among the crates, bovine heads bobbing to the beat. Hillary simply spooks the room, putting everyone on edge, even though, if it comes down to it, the veal libs will take her over any GOP keeper. But Obama spins a much gentler yarn, elevating captive moods while keeping all in place. He’s the most logical choice to run the abattoir for the next four-to-eight years.”
January 8, 2008

And this metaphor was adapted for the end of a little polemic called “Savage Mules.” So either I’m read by those who avoid debating, much less mentioning me, or the veal concept finally makes sense to more partisan liberals. Whatever the case, the crates remain crammed with obedient progressives, whiny but loyal to their keepers. Hopefully, they’ll break free to think and act independently, but we’ve seen how much HOPE is worth these days.

THEY’RE EVEN GOING TO INCLUDE A COMMISSION TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY

yep.

it’s bad when kent conrad wants to do this, but hey, it’s ok when there’s a public option attached to it!

actually, the more i think about your clinton comment, the more unfair and wrong i think it was.

for me, as you know (considering i had to tell you about my own and my family’s health history in a previous thread) this is not only politics — the cause of universal healthcare is PERSONAL.

i think it is for you too and you have NO right to treat it as anything less for anyone else. EVER. and especially not by mocking my serious and respectful question to powwow.

“THERE IS NO FINAL SENATE BILL AVAILABLE FOR ANALYSIS YET.”

Sure, but there’s no reason to think it’s going to get much better; the best proposal out of the Senate wasn’t very good.

If the final legislation is crap, then I think we need to be united in calling for representatives to kill it.

Yes, well that is what we’ve been working on since June 23, a plan that would make that possible.

I don’t know who will step up to do that. I’ve always assumed that the legislators who signed on for the robust public option would vote against a bill that did not include it.

I’m not sure what I’m saying here that is quite so controversial.

Right now they are not going to vote against the bill they just voted for. If it gets worse in a way that violates what they perceive that pledge to be — regardless of what you or I or any of the people in this thread perceive it to be — then it becomes possible to hold them to it. That’s not possible right now.

There have been strong internal movements within the progressive caucus to define that pledge as meaning “no opt-outs, no triggers.” Those efforts have been met with resistance. I do believe there are a sufficient number of progressives who have adopted that pledge to kill the bill if we get there, but we’re not there yet. Whether we can hold them to it or not I can’t say for sure, but it is what we’ve committed ourselves to doing, doggedly and relentlessly, every day. It is the plan we will continue to pursue, no matter how much pressure we get to do otherwise.

No it isn’t, it’s from Doug Copeland’s Generation X from 1991.

This is just getting sad.

“On day one” means on the day the plan is available, as opposed to triggers, .

ah, of course. So if, instead of phasing in in 2013, safely after the election cycle of 2012, the “day the plan was available” was written in the legislation as 2093, then it would still count as “On day one”.

cleared that right up.

And:

“Robust” was the term I first heard used by Jerry Nadler when they went out with a poll of CPC members in May or June. It didn’t have a definition.

mm-mmm.

If it isn’t available “nationwide” — if there’s an opt-out — we will hold members of Congress to the promise that we worked so very hard to elicit from them to try and kill the bill.

noted for future reference.

but technically, if the glorious PO is available in one state that borders on the Pacific ocean, and one that borders on the Atlantic ocean, then wouldn’t that count as ‘nationwide’?

I’ll respond this weekend … with many links. Quoting YOU. It takes time – that I don’t have.

Re: your pissant attitude (Jane, what the hell is wrong with you of late?)

“We’re at comment 223, that’s where these things usually go. “Primary resentment” usually starts to leach out as the Naderism exhausts itself.”

How condescending can you get? You’ve just alienated some, if not many, of your biggest fans. Me for one. Clump us all into one group, eh? Brilliant.

Glenn? If watching/reading, if you EVER, I mean EVER, pull this bullshit that Jane is pulling the last 2 weeks, I’ll wish the worst for you. And yank the few pennies (actually a hell of a lot more) that I send you and send ‘em to Ralphie, just to spite you.

Jane – yet ANOTHER lib with no spine. Another lib that ‘screams bloody murder’ and then…….buckles. In other words, she’s a conservative at heart.

Let’s see now …. my list of common sense, BY GOD DO WHAT’S RIGHT, bloggers (rare breed) has now dropped from 5 to 4. I’m almost afraid to wake up tomorrow and read what Glenn has to say. Something along the lines of “Well hell, it doesn’t really matter that Obama and his gang of thugs don’t uphold the Constitution, if he upholds it 18% of the time, I’m happy”

Ugh. I hate this shit.

A link only somewhat related to the above. EVERYONE should read it. No need to respond, Jane.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/

I think Dennis Perrin actually came up with it originally.

I don’t know. Maybe Dennis Perrin does?

it was getting sad before I got here, but thanks for clearing up the citation!

They are a cancer inside any effort and everyone who has ever tried to organize meaningfully for single payer has always said the same thing — it’s impossible.

I suppose I should assume that’s directed at me?

I have exactly one problem with the honesty of discussion around here. The current Public Option proposals won’t do any of the things that are being loftily ascribed to it, and are even further off the mark from the things it was supposed to accomplish. It has devolved into being an insurer of last resort, and even that function is completely unnecessary, because that will be handled by the exchange regardless.

Despite that, the never ending assertion seems to be that the “Public Option” (even as it is proposed today) is a critical and necessary component of the reform initiative. How?

While we’re on the topic of simple questions nobody can seem to answer: In what possible capacity is one able to measure the Public Option, and conclude it’s still a critical and necessary component?

If you can answer that question I’ll jump right on the Public Option bandwagon, and I’ll never make another note of how the narrative doesn’t seem to match the reality of this thing. I remain hopeful that someone can answer that, but I suppose I should just brace myself for another round of ad hominems and personal attacks.

Dennis Perrin has some good recipes for Egg Nogg. have a soothing cup, and good night.

Haven’t changed one bit. If you want to take your marbles and go home because you’re disappointed nobody is going to stop you.

We’ll still be here fighting for the same exact thing we’ve been fighting for since June 23. And we’ll still be here in the same quite boring fashion doing the same thing whether anyone answers the question or not:

How do you plan to “kill the bill”?

“I’m not sure what I’m saying here that is quite so controversial.”

Perhaps you should go back and read this entire thread in the morning… the dissmissive, condescending, boy are you guys stupid tone …. not to mention calling us lazy, nihilistic, Naderites and con artists who only want you to do our work for us could have something to do with the controversy. (for the record… I did not vote for fucking Nader whom you seem to be so obsessed with)

You have worked extremely hard… but don’t become a martyr over this. We/I have worked extremely hard too… not through the venue of a blog with a high profile… but I’ve worked my butt off as much as my two other jobs would allow. Calling repeatedly, talking to my senator’s healthcare aides diretly numerous times, organizing a big rally at his office… on and on.

To me tonight your, dare I say… yes, I shall, hatred and contempt for the people posting here has come through loud and clear. So sorry to have brought up the question of getting rid of the bill… when obviously you have all the answers and we are just idiotic time-wasters for you.

We may not have the perspective or inside knowledge you have, but that does not give you the right to treat us like shit.

And if you want to call that whining… call it fucking whining…

How do you plan to “kill the bill”?

Oh, Me! Me!
*waves hand wildly*
We will wish it! I mean really wish it, really hard, and it will just magically happen! And we’ll get the 3 or 4 SP stalwarts in the House, and the .75 in the Senate, and they will wish really, really hard, too!

We’re now on comment 245. You’re manipulating people’s disappointment by waving your fist in the air and leading everyone in a chorus of “kill the bill!”

I’m quite tired of progressive hucksters playing on people’s emotions by telling them the things they want to hear even when those things are unrealistic.

We worked hard for months to lay the groundwork for killing the bill. But you are leading people to believe you just wave a magic wand and members of Congress will fall to your will.

If you’re not just leading people down the garden path, I’ll ask once again that you tell people how you intend to do this. Is supporting Joe Lieberman really your plan? (I’m not being facetious, that is what you said.)

“I do believe there are a sufficient number of progressives who have adopted that pledge to kill the bill if we get there, but we’re not there yet. Whether we can hold them to it or not I can’t say for sure, but it is what we’ve committed ourselves to doing, doggedly and relentlessly, every day. It is the plan we will continue to pursue, no matter how much pressure we get to do otherwise.”

That’s why I’m continuing to fight for the public option, but make no mistake, I think we have to be able to switch tactics immediately if, and it’s very likely it will happen, health care legislation turns out to be nothing more than an elaborate bait and switch. Sticking Americans with an expensive mandate/insurance subsidy will be a complete disaster for all of us. There is good reason to be cynical and afraid right now about this legislation. We watched Obama place progressives on his team during his campaign and election only to see them replaced with guys like Larry Summers when he got into office and there’s no reason to believe that Congress isn’t playing the same games with the public option.

No, my contempt is for people who are making an already ugly debate worse by preying on people’s disappointments and spreading nihilism in the comment thread. I won’t ban them because we don’t do that, but there is no possibility of real change as long as people keep taking their ball and going home every time things don’t go their way.

If you want to have a real discussion about strategy based in a real world evaluation of what’s happening, I’ll happily give you all the information I have and look for more to fill in the blanks. But I don’t see that in evidence here.

So sorry that my enquiries don’t live up to your lofty standards. I humbly bow before you.

You know, we had a big single payer action planned for this Friday. We’ve been working on it for months.

I’m going to sleep on it but if I don’t cancel it, it will be a miracle.

On second thought, I’ll put up a poll. Let the community decide. If they want to do it, we’ll do it.

If they’re sick of the trolls and don’t want to bring that down on the place, so be it.

Withdrawal is not a strategy?
Then let’s just fucking root for a win in Afghanistan.

conditions have changed since 1993-1994, 1977, 1972-73

yep. those who decided to give up on single payer this time around were caught flat-footed by this change. we’re a lot closer to 1934 than we’ve ever been in most peoples lifetimes. this could have been used to galvanize public support for single payer, but it’s unlikely to make the public anything more than tepidly in favor of something that will maybe help them out in 5 or 10 years.

I’m leading nothing; I’m just not that charismatic. My opposition here is to the idea that the Public Option is a critical component of reform anymore. Quite separate from my thinking that the bill overall is worse than the status quo.

How exactly am I the huckster here? The chances that the Public Option will shape up to be the necessary piece of reform it was supposed to be are at least as bad as the chances that this whole bill will be voted down. You’re leading people to believe that getting the Public Option we stand to plausibly get (if we get one at all) is anything more than a way for Democrats and Veal Pen groups to grandstand to say, “See look. We got a ‘Public Option.’ Feed us cookies and votes.”

If that’s the frame you want to view this exchange, and my participation in, then we’re both peddling tripe.

So far your response to people has been, “What, you mean you don’t have your own FDL and media pulpit? Sorry, come back to me when you’ve got your own.” This is the benefit of new media, bilateral communication, and you happen to be the person being lobbied to reconsider your position by some non-trivial proportion of your readership.

Let me state this as clearly as I can. I DON’T HAVE A POLITICAL PLAN. That’s not my forté. I am constantly frustrated by Congresses’ complete inability to just pursue known good solutions, or following the best data available to craft their own. I have absolutely no idea how you do what it is you do, which is why I’m here asking questions, trying to be incisive, to get a better understanding of how people are justifying their assertions. I’ve never said that the bill can certainly be killed, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that I’ve been inundated with the notion that one or two crusty buttholes in the Senate are capable of ruining things for everybody, and if the goal were to obstruct this thing from going through, I don’t see how finding a couple of buttholes to stop it is necessarily “impossible.” On the front of killing the bill, that’s the piece I’ve been trying to get clarification on.

With regard to hopes in pursuit of the unrealistic; shall I expect to see your derision lavished upon everyone who posts to put an end to the Afghan War? How about those who want to see our civil liberties restored? I mean, we’re all dealing in the fringe here, because the power centers are wholly against us. Should we have just kept our mouths shut when TARP made its way back to the House after being resurrected in the Senate? I mean there was no possible way that the House was going to vote down their own appropriations bill. What is the reasonable threshold for the possible that’s okay to comment on and call to question without being called a troll, a huckster, a cancer, etc. etc. etc.?

tigers always come first at chez hipparchia too. :)

jane isn’t alone in bashing single payer supporters for not having a ‘plan’ to get single payer passed, but so far, none of the people pushing the ‘public option’ have demonstrated that they have an actual plan for converting it to single payer.

If you want to have a real discussion about strategy based in a real world evaluation of what’s happening,

question 1. from aug 13, 2008. what was the strategy behind the pre-compromise?

Denying Rham and Obama a W on this – and all they care for is the W column, not the bill – would force them to change their strategy on the Economy by concentrating on Jobs, Mortgages, Financial Industry regulation.

This is not my beautiful bill, beautiful wife, beautiful house, – regroup, reboot, and next time make street protests a bigger part of the tactic.

“We’re now on comment 245. ”

Condescending (“wannebelib”) Jane -

From now on, you should cut off all comments after the 1st 15. The first 15 are always smart and have all the facts. You know, the ones that don’t work and can sit there and WAIT FOR YOUR BLOG TO HIT THE NET AND THEN RESPOND INSTANTLY. Right? Cut it after 15. Happy now?

You’d be really, really good posting COMMENTS over at Huffington. You’d fit right in. Notice I didn’t say blogging at Huff, I said COMMENTING. Read their absolute b.s. Pathetic. Perfect fit for you and I’m sure you’ve already posted 3 zillion under a pseudo.

You’ve lost me, totally. No skin off you, right? Right?

Next up, Glenn. It’s only a matter of time.

“But, but, but, buttt BUSH!”

Spineless basfurds.

Nate? Jane? Can’t you two see you’re in love?

holy cow. i never saw that one. thanks for quoting it.

If I didn’t know any better I’d say that Obama looked at the American 2 class landscape and concluded that the enormity of problems facing America is gordian. That no matter how much you fidget around this unfathomable knot, it’s hopeless. And so, young Alexander Obama, chose theonly path likely to deliver the required results:

Create such a total, unmitigated clusterfuck, that the only remaining option for the people will require brute strength.

Healthcare @ $20,000 per family of 4 in the next 5 years? Ecomomy in shambles, 2 wars if not more and deficit harpies all around us….

how do you plan to turn the public option into single payer?

This seems completely uncalled for. Jane is clearly frustrated, and I’ve apparently pissed her off something fierce; to the point that she’s called me names and has now publicly stated that she’d just as soon ban me (if they did that kind of thing around here), but that still isn’t any reason to jettison remaining calm and keeping wraps on our own tempers.

i didn’t realize that only people with a completed realistic plan were good enough to participate in politics. i thought i could contribute a little based on what i’m actually capable of. that wasn’t a problem before – when i asked people to join me for the first in person citizen lobbying action in support of fdl advocacy for feingold;’s censure resolution (it was pach’s idea, not mine), or went to CT for the lamont campaign, or made hundreds of phone calls and documented the fisa fight, or when i started posting congressional hearing schedules because scarecrow asked me to, or any of the other little things that people do to pull together because they think it’s worth the effort but can’t do it alone.

this has just been the weirdest issue – and for more than a year. i do not get what makes it different from any other issue here at fdl, but it definitely has been.

I agree with Jane that it is not practical to kill the bill at this point, although I wish that it were, as the policy fight has already been mostly lost. The best option progressives have left is to dig in where Jane says and try to hold together those, like Burris and the House members who promised to vote against anything less than we have now.

That’s funny :-)

I actually have a little bit of a crush on Ms. Hamsher. I have a lot of admiration for what she does, and generally how she carries herself (in so far as that is at all evident from her candor here, and her appearances in the media), and how passionate she is about social justice and policy.

I suspect the feeling is not mutual ;-)

Just throwing in some levity. :-)

i read a lot and have a decent memory. but i don’t pull that shit unless provoked.

pretty sure it’s not just you on this thread, and there have been other threads.

do appreciate your encouragement to keep our tempers, etc. it’s especially hard when it’s an issue that affects so many of us personally and it’s late so we’re all probably tired (i know i am… so, goodnight to all and may tomorrow be a better one).

No, my contempt is for people who are making an already ugly debate worse by preying on people’s disappointments and spreading nihilism in the comment thread.

Sometimes it’s important just to ask people to be proactive — to remind them that they actually want something, and that responsibility for devising a plan for getting what they want devolves unto them, because nobody else is going to want it for them.

Let’s ask this question a little more deeply: what happens after the bad bill is passed? Do we have a plan for getting what we want then?

I think you are confusing the public option with subsidies.

letsgetitdone, we are obviously in face-saving mode, as I pointed out in comment #108, with these members of Congress. Some of Jane’s responses here obviously share in that, e.g.: “we’ve stuck with our original plan.” The hard question is this: how do we get away from face-saving, and towards proactive? If we want to kill the bill, we need to devise (and then fortify) a plan for getting Congress to kill the bill. If we don’t have that yet, we’re not yet proactive.

Don’t cancel your planned event for this Friday, it is imperative that the public at large realize that there is a strong backing and demand for the SP insurance plan.

Your point of view regarding the merits of the PO is not resonating with some in this thread. They are making a leap from the PO being an option that is different in kind from for profit insurers and offers some reprieve from for that model and from there leaping to the claim that it is not a SP plan and for that reason alone should be abandoned.

That is a giant non-sequitor, but just accept that. Everyone in this thread will stand to benefit from a show of strong support for the PS and the event on Friday will very likely serve to unite the disparate forces here.

Please, tell us how you’re going to do that. Nobody has given a reasonable answer to that question, though many appear to be angry that the reality of the situation is intruding on there advanced Naderism.

I can’t tell you how, if or when the bill can be killed. It’s my opinion this bill has become an utter travesty, and the ~fight~ over it ‘having a public option’ has become a symbolic issue without relevance.

Personally I’ve become totally ambivalent over health-care reform in its entirety. I have stopped giving a shit I think. I am among the lucky ones who has an employer provided Cadillac plan without deductibles and small co-pays. I had to be treated this year for anti-immune issues, and lord knows it would have cost me an arm and a leg on any ‘private’ insurance plan. My bill now is something like 15 * $10 for co-pays. A joke really.
I was/am more than willing to sacrifice having to pay taxes over this plan if that is what it takes. But you know what? Few people will. I don’t care if it’s Pharma, Health Cos, labor unions, FDL, everyone, fucking everyone has their own interest first. Ideological or material, all of these parties are in it for their own interest first and foremost. Everybody cares about their fucking grandma. But sacrifices? Not happening. Oh wait, ‘we’ were supposed to sacrifice, ‘we’ being all progressives who wanted single payer, got a cold shoulder (and hand-cuffs) when all we wanted was a seat at the table, ridiculed and scoffed by the pragmatics. Sacrifice single payer in return for a strong and robust public option. Sacrifice women’s rights for a public option. Sacrifice social security for public option. If that is the price of a public option, then really, we’re being sold a lemon, and it saddens me that people are willing to buy that lemon. I don’t know what part of that defines Naderism. Pragmatism is good, but I can no longer judge this argument to be that.

A friend of mine is a doctor, and he has a bumper sticker: “Ask your doctor if medical advice from a television commercial is right for you” Those are the questions that are perhaps more relevant in this HC debate than a fake perception of having a ‘public option’. The real issues are beyond this now silly ‘To PO or not PO’ skermish. The real issues (as you have stated also) are about special interrests, corruption, corporatism and power. You recognize this, but for some reason use this as an argument to cave in, and plead the progressive side to accept this turd with the idea it can be polished into a shiny ball? And that we are ‘safe’ because the house would never pass a real turd in conference? Really? You really believe that? If so I can only see that as dressing up a sure defeat on getting real reform by bying into this lemon of a bill.

I know what’s wrong with it. I don’t like it. I oppose it. This has just turned into another damned defeat for progressives, and I’m sick of defeats.

You could have saved yourself a lot of words and simply proclaim the trite and demonstrably false claim that “everyone acts always in their own self interest”. Altruism is not hard wired in our make up?

If so then when was the last time you decided to spend your kids college savings and spend it on a trip to Hawaii? Or bashed up your teens play station because it was getting on your nerves?

In any case if self interest is highest on your list then advocate for a SP system for all or for a functional PO in lieu of that, which is the issue immediately at hand. Insurance plans are in fact the perfect example where you stand to benefit to the extent that others benefit as well.

Or maybe you think time is better spent trying to bring down Goldman Sachs and Pfizer within the nect election cycle.

I’ll leave aside the snide.

… or for a functional PO in lieu of that, which is the issue immediately at hand.

Your presumption being that ‘the bill’ as now being worked on in the senate is a functional PO. That’s a mighty presumption in itself. With all mandates and wiggle room for corporate interests, this bill has the potential to end up doing more harm than good while giving the corporate dems the excuse that they ‘passed health-care reform’.

Or maybe you think time is better spent trying to bring down Goldman Sachs and Pfizer within the nect election cycle.

Is this an either/or question? Do we have to pick our issues? Wasn’t Obama the first to bring on the ‘I can chew gum and walk at the same time’ argument, yet now, when push comes to shove, we can only deal with one issue at a time? I have to chose? “Make your pick: a) health-care reform OR b) regulate banks, sorry, can’t have both”???

Okay, now you’re just getting dramatic.

Your point of view regarding the merits of the PO is not resonating with some in this thread. They are making a leap from the PO being an option that is different in kind from for profit insurers and offers some reprieve from for that model and from there leaping to the claim that it is not a SP plan and for that reason alone should be abandoned.

If a public option falls in the woods and no one’s eligibile for it, is it a real public option?

Since a public option that doesn’t have universal eligibility isn’t a real public option, I fail to see how anyone’s “making a leap” by saying there’s no real public option here. Hacker said it needed to be pre-populated by around 40 million, and should come to cover around 130 million. This bait and switch piece of garbage is intentionally set up to cover almost no one, precisely so that it won’t compete with the gangster racket.

That there’s no real public option is a fact, that there is one is a political hack lie.

You make 2 claims both of which are false.

One is that time is better apent bringing down Phrma and the Financial sector rather than debating the merits of incorporating the PO as part of HCR. This is clearly false, from the standpoint of time alone, it is much better spent in trying to incorporate a functional PO into HCR because it is more readily achievable. Leave its merits aside, that is not what makes your statement false, it is the issue of time.

The other statement you make is that people always act in their own self interest, which is false because altruism is demonstrably apart of our make up. Examples of selfless acts abound and we would not survive or function in a society if altruism did not exist.

Moreover, the best example of self interest is one which negates your denial of selflessness. It is in fact the universal health care insurance plan, in which your self interest is inextricably bound to the welfare of others. We will not get into the notion of fairness.

That is what I am saying.

This aside, the implementation of a PO by definition makes it functional. Whether it is self-sustaining depends on its design and on its acceptance, ie how many people it can recruit. We will need to wait and see what shape it takes.

You know it’s possible. You just can’t say how.

O-kay.

And you can’t tell me how there will be a PO worth its name in the final bill, yet you proceed as well.

O-kay!

I don’t think anyone has an end game at this point. But one side has populist mobilization and another side has an insurers welfare bill.

Mark me down for populist mobilization over insurer welfare.

Yes if it falls it has to exist and you claimed that it fell.

I am not defending the PO as it is currently configured and whether it is self-sustaining and will serve a purpose remains to be seen. But my point and the point Jnae is making I think doses hinge on its usefulness or lack of it. The point is more restricted is mostly one of practicality. As she goes on to insist.

Better phrased the critique she decries is this: the PO is deficient (or malevolent or whatever) whereas the SP is not. So if HCR contains the PO then it is preferable to have no HCR at all and instead advocate for the SP. But this argument can only be true if the PO precludes the SP from ocurring, that is if they are mutually exclusive. And they are not it’s that the SP can not exist now whereas the PO can.

The point is that you can’t use the abscence of the SP as a reason to undermine the incorporation of the PO into HCR, to do so it to make that leap.

Ah, gamd521, that’s true, but there are other considerations which you are leaving out of account, the term “PO” is a surrogate for many different variations on a general solution, the likelihood of most of these variations is very low right now. For example, the possibility of a PO with medicare rates is nearly as low right now as Congresspeople suddenly waking up in the morning and deciding to support S 703. The possibility of a PO getting passed that would allow choice for anyone to select the PO is also very, very low. The possibility that the PO would go into effect by the beginning of 2011 is also “off the table” right now. I could go on and on.

My point is that effectively when you say that a PO is possible right now, you’re really saying that the best we are likely to do by fighting for one is hanging on to the Senate’s bill’s PO, keeping it unstupakified, and without State op-outs. Now, that outcome is a very bad outcome in my view, and much worse than an outcome that would abandon everything in the present bill except the provisions regulating insurance companies.

The reasons why I believe that, are stated in this diary, to me are very compelling, and focus on the issue of sustainability of the fight for health care reform that will end entirely the deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures due to lack of insurance.

Passing a version of the terrible PO-based bills now at the forefront of attention in the two Houses, would grievously hurt the fight for health care reform by tending to put off further reform by another perhaps 5 or 6 years while people continue to die, go bankrupt, and get foreclosed upon because their medical bills have made them poor. Even though this delay is not inevitable, since if the band-aid period is bad enough, politicians may not be able to resist the pressure for further reform until 2015 or 2016, it is very likely. So, I’d rather not subject Americans to this, and would much rather see a limited, clean regulatory with no Government Plan component, rather than one with a very bad one, along with mandates and subsidies that most will find inadequate to cover the costs of their mandated insurance.

You might reply that such a bill isn’t on the table right now so that I can’t have my pie; but such a reply would just be silly, because regulatory provisions are in the bill right now, so that a regulatory bill is implicit in what is facing us now. All progressives in the Senate need to get a clean regulatory bill on the table is to let people know that unless others are willing to pass at least a Jacob Hacker-type of PO, they will vote against anything else except for a clean regulatory bill that ends rescissions, preconditions, and other insurance company abuses. If this were done and such a bill did emerge, then Democrats could claim a limited victory, and could return to the larger issues next year once the insurance companies have dome their thing and raised premiums by 20% to hit back against the regulations.

You might say in reply to this that this is unrealistic because progressives would have to grow a backbone in short order and that won’t happen. I agree with that, but that is another reason why it is best for us to see the terrible PO defeated and a bill without a PO emerge from the Senate. If that happens, progressives are far more likely to vote to kill a PO-less bill. If they either did so, or signalled their intention to do that in a credible way, the Administration and the leadership would have to offer something else. Since getting a PO passed might then be viewed as impossible, people may turn to the regulatory bill, which, I think, is really the best outcome we can have at this time. BTW, Bernie Sanders has said that he, too could live with such a result, if the PO is stripped from the bill.

I seriously doubt that.

I agree. As I indicated in my reply to your @212. To some degree, here we’re getting into semantics. When I say “kill the bill,” I mean kill the bills now at the forefront in the Senate and the House or close variations of them. I’m quite open to different bills that would focus on regulation, accomplish something good without heavy costs or goodies for the insurance companies, and without measures that would affect the sustainability of our efforts.

GDC707, I agree with your concerns. But I don’t think this is just faith. It is a theory, however, about how much people will take and under what conditions. Whether people continue to take crap in this area of not depends in part on those of us who have reached the point that we’re mad as heel as we won’t take it anymore. We’ve got to market to other people and spread the message that they don’t have to take it anymore. One thing that mean is stop talking about SP. People don’t know what that means. You’ll get a blank stare when yo say SP, or have to explain it. You need to call it “medicare for All.” That notion they will understand almost instantly.

More generally, what’s needed is a new ideology opposed to the free market ideology of the Reagan period. We need to get people understanding the world in a different way. Part of that new ideology has to be health care as a human right, which can’t be sacrificed to the interests, profits, or even continued existence of the health insurance companies. If we can spread that ideology and with it a movement for progressive-populist reform, we can accelerate the possibility of getting to Medicare for All.

Moving away from good messaging, ideology, and their importance, we also have to recognize that in earlier generations Americans did conclude that they wouldn’t take it anymore. This was true in the Revolutionary War, and in the movement that got Andrew Jackson elected. A similar view was a part of the social movements that fueled the civil war and the rise of the populist and progressive movements and the political movements behind the New Deal. We haven’t seen such a movement for a long time here. But movements like this are built into American culture. The idea of “don’t tread on me,” is an idea that fuels “teabaggism.” But, even more, it can fuel our movement too. We must not be afraid it is as American as anything else in this culture and, ultimately it is powerful enough to free us from our growing bondage to the corporations and their political servants.

Let me read your reply a little more as I have orals to prepare for. Talk to you later.

My, this has been an interesting exercise for a rather moderate outsider who supports healthcare reform and wonders what’s next to watch.

This was the clincher:

From Jane @ 252:

“there is no possibility of real change as long as people keep taking their ball and going home every time things don’t go their way.”

From Jane @ 254:

“You know, we had a big single payer action planned for this Friday. We’ve been working on it for months.

I’m going to sleep on it but if I don’t cancel it, it will be a miracle.”

Uh. Pot. Kettle. Black?

I think you will find that the only way to move establishment politics is by creating a movement from which to respond. Change will not come from within this horribly subverted machine I call the Corporate States of Amerika. Martin Luther King knew this, Gandhi knew this, hell, Jesus no doubt knew this. I don’t want to elevate the present health care crisis/debate to the level of a religion, but I think it has become the central human rights issue in America today. Until we convince Americans that health care is a human right, the machine will not relinquish its control of our health and we will continue to pay with our lives and our treasure as a consequence. Don’t treat moral ideals so harshly. They represent the only avenue from which to drive real change. You would gain much power from this if you would internalize it. You are right. This congress is too corrupt for us to expect a decent health care reform bill, what we are all struggling with is how to proceed. I think the craven disrespect that congress has shown by cynically presenting us with these pathetic PO’s has thrown you off your game. I know you are fighting the fight you think must be waged, but you should bring the rest of us along for the ride because you need us as much as we need you. An adequate response to this betrayal has not yet been formulated and time is getting short. What are you waiting for? The hour is getting late and the Watchtower is a lonely place. That is why we all need the glow of a moral compass to push on. Everyone in, nobody out.

Well, Jane, I really can’t endorse the characterization you’re giving of SP supporters or their tone. And if you’re really looking to do something with SP or to organize SP supporters to broaden the progressive spectrum on hcr, then the first thing to do is lose the personalized, pejorative characterizations of SP advocates. These only serve to persuade people that you don’t respect them and why would they work with you if they believe that?

Second, trying to be as objective as I can be as an observer, I really don’t think that SP people wallow in victimhood any more than anyone else. I think you’re just annoyed that they would not support your own hcr reform efforts because they didn’t agree with you about what was necessary. If you took the trouble to do a content analysis of the comments on diaries and included not only your own diaries but those of some of the SP advocates here, I’d bet that the sense of victimhood expressed in the comments is no greater among SP partisans than it is among PO ones. And I’d bet you’d find this even during a period where comments on your own and many other progressive sites reflected the PO point of view and often attempted to marginalize the views of the SP advocates they were exchanging with.

Moving on to what could be done to get organized, First, identify the SP people here. You’ve got more than 100 people blogging and commenting here who say they support SP, or as I like to say “Medicare for All.” I’ve been counting those people over time and have an earlier diary where I identified 66 of them. I’ll update that diary shortly so that the full >100 are identified and so that additional SP people might be identified through comments on the diary.

Second, I can think of two things that might immediately be done by SP people who were willing to work. A) I think they might be organized to express their extreme dissatisfaction to their Congresspeople about the present bills at the forefront in both Houses, and to deliver the message that these bills are unacceptable as they stand. I suggest that the SP people be encouraged to positively advocate for an SP bill, a Jacob Hacker type of PO-based bill, and if her/his representative or Senator was convinced that these could not be enacted in the present session, to tell their Senators and Rep. that if that was so, then they themselves would be opposed to anything else other than a clean regulatory bill that removed insurance industry abuses including rescission, precondition denials, discriminatory pricing directed tow, ard sick people, and, if they could get it through, a measure that would impose price controls on the health insurance industry restricting annual premium increases to the overall rate of inflation.

B) I think there’s a real need to distinguish Medicare for All proposals from others on just how much in savings on health care expenditures could be expected from Medicare for All. I made a preliminary and probably seriously failed attempt at that in this earlier diary. But if we could get a team of FDL people on this, and put together better estimates, we might get a very striking result that could be released by FDL in the form of a web-based research report. That report could then be circulated within the chcr reform community, the Congress, the Executive Branch, and made available to the general public.

C) Assuming the report was striking enough in terms of the different magnitude of savings to be expected from Medicare for All, as opposed to other hcr alternatives. The 100 plus SP supporters could then be sent out(next year of course) to talk the report up to their Senate and Congress people. To make sure they acknowledged the findings and to try to get continuing commitments from them to work toward Medicare for All in concrete ways, which we would be specifying month-by-month is response to changing political situations.

D) Some SP supporters could be asked to make contact with some of the SP groups trying to build a movement, such as pnhp, California Nurses Association, Health Care Now, MadAsHellDoctors, Progressive Agenda for US, CorrenteWire, and others.

E) Other SP supporters could be tasked with making contact with PO advocacy groups. The purpose would be to inform them, the the SP movement is in favor of working toward SP in an incremental way, and that we would welcome a Jacob Hacker-type PO-based reform as an interim reform position, and while advocating for Medicare for All, would always be open to possible compromises on a Jacob Hacker-type PO, so long as the PO groups would refrain from attempting to marginalize SP efforts from now on.

F) medicare for All supporters can be tasked with developing loner term-strategies for getting to Medicare for All. These should focus on relations with Congress and the President, but also on movement building among the grassroots and netroots.

G) One thing that would help in working with SP people is if FDL opened up teh front page to Medicare for All bloggers. Now we get exposure on Seminal thanks to you and to Jason Rosenbaum and that’s very good, but I know that soem feel that SP son’t be fully legitimate at FDL until some SP representatives get FDL front page coverage.

I guess, that’s all right now, and thank you for asking the question I’ve tried to answer here.

Don’t let Jane lose her juju! What a slogan!

I’m sorry, Jane. The test was: “. . . a robust public plan that is

* available nationwide
* available on day one
* and accountable to Congress and the voters

Now, you can claim that you’ve stuck to that, but when I read this on June 23rd, I know I thought that robust meant: available to everyone, using the Medicare network, using medicare rates, and applicable to all essential health care services; that available nationwide, meant no state opt-ins or opt-outs; that available on Day one meant available immediately after a reasonable implementation period, and accountable to the Congress and the voters meant by close investigative monitoring by the Congress.

I view the present bills as clearly in violation of the robust public plan and the first two criteria, and also that one can argue that the third criterion has been violated too. In my view you should have called BS on the House bill long ago, and you should be calling it now on Harry Reid’s bill.

Now you can accuse me all you want of trying to set up a straw man to accuse you of inconsistency. But I think these are reasonable interpretations of the meaning of the pledge, and I’ll bet a lot of others made similar interpretations of meaning. I’ll also bet that if you do a poll of FDL participants today and ask them whether they think the present bills are in violation of the pledge, that you’ll find that a majority of those polled will agree that these bills violate the pledge.

VMT, there has never been a “robust PO” in any legislative proposal that has cleared a committee. At first the term “robust” was clearly meant to distinguish a Jacob Hacker-type PO from others. But the term “robust” was constantly re-defined until now House people are using it to describe HR 3962, and Reid uses it to describe his PO travesty that will cover only 3 million people. We need to call reality the way it is. A “robust” PO was originally one that could out-compete the private insurers. Congress then manipulated the term to call anything they were doing at any point in time “robust.” This process has been a lie from the beginning and we need to kill this bill.

GDC707, Nader tells the truth as he sees it, not necessarily as it is, since like the rest of us he is fallible and is often wrong.

One of the things he’s been very wrong about is his deficit neutrality philosophy, something he has in common with neo-liberalism that prevented him from doing a much more effective job of fighting its rise.

Oh whew, that’s a relief. It’s just you lets. I saw the comment count on this post going up, and I thought maybe it was sign of a malignant tumor. ;-)

So you exacted a pledge from them which meant:

no triggers and

no state opt-outs

“Day One” was meaningless since it could be out off as long as Congress wanted

“Robust” was meaningless since as you say it had no definition.

Silly me, I thought the pledge meant more than that. I wonder how many other people who whipped for it also thought that.

Question: Why didn’t you just get them to pledge a PO without opt-outs or opt-ins, and without triggers? Wouldn’t that have alleviated all possibility of misunderstanding?

Nathan, this:

If you can answer that question I’ll jump right on the Public Option bandwagon, and I’ll never make another note of how the narrative doesn’t seem to match the reality of this thing. I remain hopeful that someone can answer that, but I suppose I should just brace myself for another round of ad hominems and personal attacks.

gives away far too much. We must never cease calling attention to the gaps between narratives and reality.

You dodged his reasonable question, again!

Well sure, but at least that gap would have been bridged, so there’d be no need to keep hammering on it.

yes, the whole PO strategy really got traction before the crash of 2008. At that time it may have been reasonable to think that Medicare for All was impossible. But by January 2009, it was much more possible, and well worth advocating, if for no other reason then to stretch the overton window to the left.

And additionally wrongly correlates my questions about the Public Option with my overall desire to see the bill fail in total. They’re related tangentially, but are largely independent clauses.

Somehow criticizing the Public Option’s failings, and noting how they differ from the prevailing narrative about its usefulness, comes with the prerequisite that one have a plan for how to kill an entire piece of legislation, which includes all manner of things that I find troubling that aren’t the Public Option (an individual mandate, a series of inflationary subsidies, a weak insurer of last resort –the exchange–, give aways to PhRMA and AHIP, etc).

Also, when PO people claimed that they had a plan to get the Hacker-type PO passed, how good was that plan? At every stage of watering down the PO, advocates for it claimed they had a plan to make it happen and each time all their plans resulted in was further watering down. A string of failures which they’ve adapted to by doing more of the same.

We don’t have a plan yet because there’s not enough of a movement in back of SP to provide the context for getting it passed. So, the first thing we need to concentrate on is building that movement. A legislative plan will come later.

This business of it not being practical to kill the bill right now is irrelevant. The point is that if you call your Congresscritters and tell that the bills as they stand suck and you want them to either kill this bill or severely modify it to X, Y, or Z, because otherwise you’ll vote against them, then they will have a clear message and it may be possible to kill this bill next week, or two weeks from now. But if you keep fighting for the emasculated PO you are more likely to get that and then there’ll be hell tp pay.

Jane is wrong about this because she’s tried to narrow the context of the decision about what to do now fra too much. What to do now has to be evaluated in terms of what may be possible in the future if you act in one way or another now.

Let it Fester.

I still don’t believe the problems are so very hard. It’s the political structure that cannot tack and pivot to confront the problems. I wanna start the Pragmatic Party. Unhindered by binding ideologies, it would be free to concentrate with brain and sinew on solving problems. I know the Constitution was designed for stasis. But at this crossroad, we need motion.

I have some spare time, so allow me to address the fallacies:

You make 2 claims both of which are false.
One is that time is better apent bringing down Phrma and the Financial sector rather than debating the merits of incorporating the PO as part of HCR.

I never claimed anything. In my original post, I opined that the real issues driving the HC debate are special interests, corruption, corporatism and power. IMHO, the PO has become a side-show.

I think you are referring to your own quote

“Or maybe you think time is better spent trying to bring down Goldman Sachs and Pfizer within the nect election cycle.”

It’s your prerogative to make a wild guess about what my motivations or priorities are. In the real world, I never claimed that or would ever claim that. In the real world, I actually responded asking why (if posed) that has to be an either/or question.

The other statement you make is that people always act in their own self interest<

I don’t think it was intended to read that broad, but alas, aside from the philosophical question, if we look at the main players:
- Health Insurance Cos: profit
- Pharma: profit
- Lobbyists: profit
- Politicians: image, re-election, sponsors, personal / ~core principles and dogmas~ (religion, conservatism, abortion, etc)
Yes, there are ‘good’ politicians amongst them, but few and far in between. And if one wants to descend into silly, one could argue even altruism is in the end a selfish act, but alas, I digress.

Anyway, none of that is of relevance to how I am sad to see HC reform be mutulated down to a weak and overall useless bill compared to what opportunities there were for a strong PO and real reform. (and I am not even talking SP).

OK. Let’s figure out how we can get into the consciousness of Congress critters the idea that the progressive grass and netroots are coming to believe that this reform bill foes more harm than good and either want the bill to be killed or want it to be only an insurance industry regulatory bill.

To do that we need to generate some activity from their constituents and we have in some way to breach the “newsworthy” standard of cable news so that Ed Schultz, Keith, and Rachel might get involved in getting our point of view get expressed. We then need to get it spread to other more centrist news channels where Congresspeople will at least realize that they will get blame for this bill among their progressive constituents, and that progressives believe that no one, in the end will give them any credit for reform.

Now how do we get this into the media? Well, since time is so short, I think we need to get a media personality involved whose switch over to opposition to this bill would be News. Jane is one such person, which is one reason I’ve been spending so much time here exchanging with her. But Jane seems immovable, at least for awhile, so I’d say we need to see if someone else is willing to move into active opposition. Anyone have links to Arianna? Perhaps we could make the case to her that the current bills deserve to be tanked.

We do. And I agree about the problem solving emphasis. But “The Pragmatic Party”? If we want the name for the new Party to resonate with people we can’t use that. How about the New Populist Party?

. . . They are making a leap from the PO being an option that is different in kind from for profit insurers and offers some reprieve from for that model and from there leaping to the claim that it is not a SP plan and for that reason alone should be abandoned.

I don’t know if anyone is doing that. I certainly am not. You really need to read my diary advocating killing this bill. You’ll find that my reasons relate to the deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures it fails to stop, and not to Medicare for All at all.

I think you’re getting tied up in teh rigid categories of your own logic. It’s true that the passage of this PO doesn’t exclude the possibility of working for a better PO or Medicare for All solution later, but it does make the possibility of being able to work for either outcome in an effective way in the short run much more unlikely. That is, it hurts the sustainability of political efforts to have a better reform in the short run. i.e. in 2010 or in 2011, and perhaps even later. That is a heavy price to pay for a bill that is relatively ineffective at ending the deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures, that imposes what promise to be very unpopular mandates on people, and that also strengthens the insurance companies by supplying them with huge additional revenues, a percentage of which they will use to block further reform.

In contrast, opposing the current PO bills, makes the passage of a bill without a PO more likely in the Senate, and this maximizes the chances that the inadequate House PO bill will be defeated in the Conference, which makes it more likely that the House would defeat a PO-less bill. If they did that the pressure would be on the Administration and the leaders to get something and then the progressives could propose a clean regulatory bill that might well pass and also provide the opportunity to advocate for SP next year and, at a minimum, get a much, much better PO for our efforts.

Thanks gamd521, Orals, ah, I remember them well. Break a leg!

Pretty dry, huh? But New Populist sounds like something out of 1903. I’m a big retro guy, but I dunno about that. I would just like the name to reflect the aim, for once. Democrats? Republicans? Phooey.

Great reply, cbsunglass. Only one correction. It’s “Everybody In, Nobody Out!” The functional equivalent of “We Shall Overcome,” in the Medicare for All movement.

Naw! I get up relatively late in the morning, so if you don’t see me for awhile and I have a lot of stuff to reply to, I can drive that comment count up.

We’ll see.

Hi Joe and others,

I really was worried, are you all alright? Boy where did that come from. Better have a rabies shot. This CEO of FDL must really love you all very much, for as the Germans say ”Wass sich liebt, das neckt sich”. Mrs. Hamsher really displayed very well what the values are of FDL regarding appropriate communication. I looked it up in the work of Beck and Cowan. My diagnosis is that Mrs. Hamsher (and her FDL) is in a red stage of consciousness; and that she has quite some levels of evolutionary grow to go. I’m not going to write down all the aspects of a red stage of consciousness (values, self-identity, eco-self), but I restrict myself to the aspect of appropriate communication as part of the red stage.

One finds the best sources in: person with recognized power or something to offer; straight-talking Big Boss; respected, revered, or feared other; celebrated “idol” with reputation; proven tough entity.

Hot buttons are: change and appeal to machismo/strength; point out heroic status and legendary potential; use heroic images; offer more clout, personal power; appeal to looking good, getting due respect, gaining control; be flashy, unambiguous, reality-based, strong; appeal to narcissistic tendencies.

Cold buttons are: challenge power and courage; denigrate person/group; move onto turf uninvited; display more powerful weapons, be derisive; make gestures, name-call.

The communication examples are many: “Be a habitat hero! How do you plan on saving the environment?”. Classic !
In short, (setting aside the context for a moment), this was a poor display of respect and empathy for others (with other colors) and if these are the values “how we do things at FDL” this website is already in decline, and will not survive, if it doesn’t adapt.

But there is always a good side, I think I will be a psychiatrist, before this health care reform debate is over :)

Once again, many of the same issues discussed in this thread were also discussed in a contemporary thread, where I also replied to an acerbic reply from Jane. I call your attention to this comment, and point out once again that Jane hasn’t replied.

Interesting comment. Did you go to the Bill Frist school of remote, long distance diagnosis for whatever you perceive might ail someone?

FWIW, it might be that Jane actually has a life outside of FDL and doesn’t feel the need to respond to every comment by every commenter that disagrees with her.

She also does not respond to every comment that agrees with her either.

You zeroed in on the critical issue, you just got it 180 degrees wrong. You’re correct that under the current approach, which is to remove the power and abuses of private industry and slowly replace that with an ever-expanding pool of public insurance, progress will be slower than we’d like and some people will suffer.

If we could enact single payer tomorrow, all that suffering would be alleviated. But what you and so many others miss is that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anything like single payer into law anytime soon. If we “kill this bill” and try again next year, as you suggest, we’ll end up with another 15 year period in which zero progress is made on healthcare. That would result in vastly more suffering than if the current bill passes, and I think you “single payer or nothing” advocates have to accept responsibility for that.

Instead, the best course for single payer supporters like me is to support the current bill (but not if it’s significantly weakened) and its steady, patient progress towards single payer. The public option will have tens of millions of participants in 5 years and will continue expanding rapidly, which is actually very impressive considering the weakness of the current Congress that will pass it. In 15 years, we’ll pretty much already be at single payer, instead of being nowhere, which is where the single payer or nothing advocates would take us.

What would constitute “significantly weakened?”

No, dakine01, I didn’t go to that school. I look at the same text on a PC screen as you do. It’s my guess it must have been a headache or something premenstrual.

Sorry let’s, I don’t buy this one. Deficit neutrality would’nt even be a big issue if the country had followed Ralph’s positions. Nader opposed corporate welfare and sought to end corporate loopholes, exemptions, credits, accelerated depreciation schedules, deductions, and targeted exceptions. He wanted to balance the national budget by cutting military spending by $100 billion, or about a fifth, and through SHARPLY PROGRESSIVE TAXATION. And early on he advocated for a steep tax on financial derivative transactions I’m not a deficit hawk, but I do believe in attempting to stay within reasonable limits. Running modest deficits is OK, even desirable. But massive deficits are not unless one is a big fan of inflation, devaluation of the dollar, discouragement of personal saving and other attendant ills.

Beyond that, all you have to do is go down the list- NAFTA, consumer product and safety, workplace safety, environmental legislation, opposition to the wars up front and early, rights for gays and lesbians, renewable and alternative energy and hybrid cars, repeal of the Patriot Act, support for pro-choice, sensible immigration reform, stem-cell research. Ralph has supported Medicare for All, FOREVER and has never wavered. Plus I quite possibly owe him my life twice due to legislation he guided to passage (The national Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.) He was referring to Washington as “corporate occupied territory” back when that was considered
“a little too strident” by mainstream Democrats.

I saw him speak when I was in high school (1972) and heard him lecture at Pepperdine University. He is by far the most eloquent and informed public figure we have. Nobody can drive home a point with quiet power and moral resolution like Ralph. He tried to persuade the Dems to wake up but they were too busy batting their eyes at the corporate power structure to hear him. So they did what they did and here is where we are.

Decade after decade after decade of being right 98% of the time. Again, I make NO apologies.

That strikes me as being a really insulting, or at least chauvinistic, assumption.

Indeed it is.

You might be reading the same text but if you’re making a “diagnosis” of any sort (which you have apparently just done), then yes, you are following the same path as Bill Frist with the same level of credibility.

I.E., zero.

GDC707, The populists of an earlier era faced similar problems of corporate domination of the economic and political systems. So the historical resonance is there. And we are talking about restoring democracy aren’t we?

How should I know what triggered all this. It was not my intention to be insulting

Hi Henk, Worried? About what?

btw, great little piece. Don’t know whether Jane will appreciate the characterization or prognosis, however.

dakine01, This isn’t a question of responding to every comment, nor of having to respond to my comment, and Jane has every right to what she wants in replying to commenters. But I also have every right to call attention to an exchange on the same subject as much of this thread, and also Jane’s dropping of the subject over there as well as here.

Jane’s raising difficult questions and then dropping the exchanges is becoming a pattern. Did you note the question selise has asked her a number of times about the strategy behind the PO compromise? I think what’s happened since makes that a very key lessons learned question that cries out for an answer from thos who chose the precompromise on the PO position.

Significantly weakened would be opt-in. State-based exchanges w/o national leverage. A member-run national co-op w/o the expertise to exert leverage. These things are no go for me, and more importantly I hope for Sanders, Burris, Brown, JayRock, and others.

One thing I believe we must grudgingly accept is the opt-out. Not because I like it, but because we can’t get 50 votes without it.

The real nefarious area when it comes to acceptable capitulation is the trigger. Snowe’s trigger and most of the other iterations I’ve seen are unacceptable because they use some arbitrary standard to decide if private industry is controlling costs. The devil’s all in the details.

There’s no reason that the few anonymous WH quotes we’ve heard about a trigger being more robust than an opt-out couldn’t be true, there just haven’t been any versions of a trigger that I’ve heard about that come anywhere near that. But it would be theoretically possible to craft a good trigger – you just set the standards high. Obama said things on the campaign trail about lowering premiums 25%, which should be the minimum standard for a trigger, but better would be 50% since we’re currently paying about twice as much as other nations. I would actually prefer a trigger that said if premiums don’t go down 50% in 4 years, we enact a B-grade national public option, than a triggerless public option which is only C grade.

So technically a trigger could be acceptable if it’s a hair trigger which then enacts a much stronger public option. But of course we haven’t heard anything like that being proposed, so all triggers thus far are unacceptable. The Dems know that they can’t sell a trigger to the base and FDL, which is why Reid didn’t include one. But Carper’s still working on the miracle trigger and Sheldon Whitehouse’s nods toward it on Keith last night was discouraging. At this point, FDL may be better off articulating the kind of hair trigger, robust option that we would accept, because the Dems would certainly be listening if we did that. Instead, we’ve refused any discussion of triggers, which I hope will continue to be successful, but fear it may not.

HS, i must strenuously object. women can behave badly just like men and it has nothing to do with our hormones. please don’t pathologize female biology. that part of your comment was really offensive and hurtful to me.

i’m going to say “thanks” because i think you would want to know how i felt reading that comment and because i don’t believe you would ever do that intentionally or knowingly.

thanks,
selise

Have you ever responded to her requests for how you would bring the Congress to support a Single Payer option? Have you ever provided a road map strategy of any sort?

It sure seems to me that Jane has written often about dealing with the reality that is not the fantasy that folks wish for.

And as the saying goes, stick out your hands and see which one fills up first.

mikesong, That’s all nonsense. I’ve already answered everyone of your points in previous blogs here. I suggest that you read them and then criticize my reasoning in detail, but just don’t mouth a bunch of talking points that have been amply refuted by me earlier.

agree or disagree, but you can’t say lets hasn’t responded with detailed comments and even more detailed diaries.

OK. Point taken with the exception that I still don’t like the presentation of the importance of balanced budgets as a principle. I think that pays into Hooverite hands, and that we need instead to follow a broader principle of evaluating whether a particular government expenditure has a positive benefit to cost ratio in the broadest non-monetary value, sense of both those terms.

I’m not even talking about single-payer, or the reality of killing the bill, I’m just looking for an explanation that the Public Option is all it’s cracked up to be; such that it warrants keeping it squarely and vociferously in our advocacy sights. Maybe other things could be just as efficacious, and less contentious to politicians to promote? Weakening the mandate penalties, compelling providers to accept exchange/Medicaid/Medicare patients, etc.

Do I think the bill on whole is worse than the status quo? Yes. Does that instill a desire to have it fail entirely? Yes. Does that have anything at all do with the disparity between what the Public Option is being promoted as, and what it actually is? No.

If we want to talk about “fantasy” we can start with the one where we’re going to get a robust Public Option.

mikesong, The Senate bill as formulated by Reid has a State opt-out and a PO that is forecast to include 3,000,000 over the next decade. You think this is significant progress toward SP warranting accepting a bill that still leaves 31,000 fatalities per year, God knows how many bankruptcies, and foreclosures, and subjects people to mandates, while most probably freezing further efforts at hcr until 2015?

selise, I know Henk pretty well, since he is one of my co-authors and also took my knowledge management workshop, and I can tell you that he is one very humanistic person. I did a double-take on that one too, but came away believing that Henk was most probably referring to himself and his own emotions in a self-deprecating way rather than to Jane. I do believe however, that he should have avoided the stereotyping inherent in use of the term.

Selise, Sorry, my apologies. You’re right, it wasn’t my intent and I didn’t give it much thought, with still a brilliant sentence of Libby about judge Sotomayor in my mind. Thanks

Yes, but very few states will actually opt out. More importantly, without an opt-out we don’t have the votes to pass anything.

You have a very tenuous grasp of the facts. CBO said 3 million people at the low end, and that’s at the start of the public option, not in a decade. Anyway their analysis is barely worth the paper its written on because they don’t understand that the ideological commitment to the public option will mean many millions of early adopters, giving it leverage to further lower prices and continue to take over the private market. The Republicans aren’t wrong about this being a government insurance take over, they’re smart folks, they just exaggerate the pace and ignore the role that free will plays in making this eventuality a reality.

And I know exactly how much suffering the current bill will produce. A fraction of the suffering of people (me included) who have nowhere to go in the status quo. The status quo that you’re are advocating for, because anyone who says single payer or nothing obviously prefers nothing.

Nope, not going to do any of those things. Sadly I guess we’ll just have carry on without your help. But there’s no reason you can’t do them yourself — do keep us posted on your progress and let us know where you set up shop.

Anyway their analysis is barely worth the paper its written on because they don’t understand that the ideological commitment to the public option will mean many millions of early adopters, giving it leverage to further lower prices and continue to take over the private market.

Where are these early adopters going to come from? Almost nobody is even eligible to enroll in it, that’s the biggest sticking point here. If it had open-enrollment I wouldn’t be harping on it nearly as much. My only real complaints then would be any provisions that compromised it’s capacity to negotiate prices, and some mandate or incentive for care providers to accept it.

I don’t think modern Americans give a fig about historical resonance. Indeed, in our youth-obsessed culture, anything older than 10 years is considered passe’ and boring. I care about it, so do you. But remember we are talking about solving problems. Results-oriented action. Doing what works. Plus, an emphasis on problem solving pragmatism might attract people from other camps whose interests overlap with ours.

Restoring democracy? Ralph Nader has forever been a supporter of public financing of campaigns. Corporate money OUT. That’s a position I haven’t heard about much from our Democratic Party lately.

Pragmatic may be pretty dry and boring but at least it would HOLD us to something. As in “what? You call yourself a PRAGMATIC? That sounds like a load of unworkable ideological wankering to me.” Plus remember that content and results glorify the name, not the other way around. If you think about it “The Beatles” is a pretty stupid name for a group. If you want the name to sound cool, the best way is to be cool and do cool.

Finally I would say that the Pragmatic Party would Not have advocated for a watered down PO because it ultimately is unworkable and potentially damaging to the end goal. The party would get behind Medicare for All precisely because it would get us into the end zone and the party would settle for a Hacker PO because, while not perfect, it does move the ball confidently and demonstrably nearer the goal. Pragmatic does not mean being POLITICALLY expedient. It is about being socially workable.

Dakine01 you said:

Have you ever responded to her requests for how you would bring the Congress to support a Single Payer option? Have you ever provided a road map strategy of any sort?

My road map strategy is here.

See also:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/11/30/why-continue-to-fight-for-a-public-option/#comment-64301

and:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/11/30/why-continue-to-fight-for-a-public-option/#comment-64281

It sure seems to me that Jane has written often about dealing with the reality that is not the fantasy that folks wish for.

She has, but that doesn’t mean she always deals with reality. For example, I think her narrowing of the context of the decision about what to do now in the Senate to her two alternatives is not reality, it’s just a distorting logical construct of hers that is as much fantasy as any other mistaken view. I also think that her decision to back the PO near the beginning of 2009 was based on certaion “fantasy” assumptions about what was likely to happen, and that what was consistent with reality was actually backing SP — not because SP would have passed but because backing SP would have been the best way to get a Jacob Hacker-type PO passed

And since the powers that be chose to take Single Payer off the table from the start, how does your road map achieve anything? How do you force them to place it back on the table as a viable option?

How do we implement your “road map”?

thanks again for your thoughtful reply. i’m still not sure i’m understanding you correctly, but if i am then i think we are going to have to disagree on this one:

But if, in the meantime, everyone thinks the base Reid bill is it, and they oppose that bill, then while they’re busy trying to convince Senators to kill it, those same Senators will be busy and distracted trying to improve it without the support of supposed allies… It’s working at cross-purposes.

other than bernie sanders, i’m not the ally of any senator on this issue.

but i think where we really disagree is about what should be done when not everyone thinks the same way, has the same position, etc (which, of course, is always).

if some people think that it is unlikely there will be anything better than the current house bill and/or reid’s bill, imo they, based on their own judgement, should be free to act to oppose the bills now.

and if someone else’s judgment is that there is a good enough chance to improve the bill to an acceptable level then they are the ones who imo should be working that approach.

perhaps other people think the current bill is good enough as is and so will be asking their senators to support it.

i’ve over simplified the range of people’s positions and judgements just to give some examples. and of course imo everyone is free to try to persuade everyone else to their own position and judgement. but not, at least imo, that one group has no business acting on their own judgement because it will interfere with the goals of another group.

and i don’t think any of this interferes with the senate debate (i’m also hoping there is a real floor debate). on the contrary, i think it is each citizen’s duty to follow their own judgement and conscience.

Both Chambers’ bills ramp up the eligibility to every single American after just a few years, although they differ on whether the HHS sec would make this decision or the states. The point is they envision creating an actual public option and expanding its eligibility rapidly, which is rather impressive considering the number of luddites we still have in our party. Additionally, consider two important factors which will likely lead to further strengthening of the public option: One, passing this bill should lead to Democratic gains. Two, there are sure to be endless stories about how much the private market still sucks, providing a further incentive to strengthen the PO. We’re just going to have to be a little patient (but vigilant) and allow market and political forces to keep moving in our favor.

Results-oriented action. Doing what works.

Are these mutually inclusive?

thank you so much! i really thought you would respond as you have. (thanks to lets too). really appreciate your willingness to hear my objection.

I’m not advocating for the status quo. I’m advocating for getting a bill that doesn’t freeze further reform for years to come. As for my tenuous grasp of the facts, why don’t you quote the language from CBO that says that 3 million will immediately enter?

On CBO, I don’t think much of their estimates either. I think that premium costs are going up 50% between now and the operative date of the exchange for example. Having said that if you have better estimates than CBO about forecast membership then please produce them. I think that 3 million may be high, because even though Ideology may favor it among some people. If, as CBO forecasts, it will be more expensive, that will outweigh ideology. I’m with Kip Sullivan on this. I don’t think the PO as written in this bill will be economcally viable.

Thanks Jane. I appreciate the reply.

There is no auch thing as things being necessarily inclusive.

I couldn’t agree more with most of waht you’re saying. Only the name troubles me.

“Both Chambers’ bills ramp up the eligibility to every single American after just a few years”

I’m embarrassed. This is news to me. Independent confirmation anyone?

You force them in the usual way. If the movement is successful. The political context is changed. They adapt to the new context or get replaced. There’s no mystery about this. It’s what happened during every great movement in American history.

On implementing my road map, I certainly can’t be expected to do an implementation plan here.

However, I will point out that your not subjecting Jane to the same standard as you’re applying to me. Jane hasn’t laid out a detailed implementation plan of how we move from here to get the PO without a State opt-out, or stupakification. Why not hold her to the same standard, especially after support for the PO over most of this year has led to the current terrible House and Senate bills.

Redundant wording. I know. Thanks.

In other words, you got nothing.

As far as Jane is concerned, I have plenty of evidence of her involvement and the path she has been following.

If it weren’t for Jane, we would already have the supposed Health Care Reform, with un-pullable triggers and the sight of Rahm popping champagne corks in the oval office.

I was thinking more along the lines that results aren’t necessarily the same thing as what works; that you can’t really have pragmatism as a core guiding principle. For instance, peppering Afghanistan with nuclear weapons would defeat the insurgency. That’s a solution that gets results, but I suspect it misses a rather important mark.

@gamd521: All A are B, and all B are A.

I suspected it would because in a few comments you have used the word “pragmatic” to describe what the PO people did with the pre-compromise, and with the dumping of single-payer altogether. That’s why I wrote the last paragraph. But you’re not listening, because you are fending off assaults from 4 or 5 different directions! Duck!

Oh I see. Got it. On the other hand maybe results in the context of our current immoveable political situation would be better than nothing. Such as “oh hell, let’s try something even if it’s wrong!” Just kidding.

Whatever works, whatever we wanna call it.

Don’t be embarassed, because nearly everyone here seems to have missed this crucial fact. But I found out about it right here at FDL…yesterday Jon Walker posted again summarizing how both bills expand coverage to every American in year 3.

I’m surprised we haven’t seen the Republithug/Fox crowd crying about this crucial provision, but perhaps they haven’t thought of a way to spin their opposition without sounding like they hate average people. I also give tremendous credit to the Democrats for inserting these sleeper provisions without scaring most people into concluding that the Democrats basically are proposing single payer. They were so sly that they’ve managed to sneak it by even most single payer supporting FDL’ers who should love it.

But you know, pragmatism regarding healthcare reform would work, in so much as we already have multiple operating models in other countries that DO work or at least work much better than ours. This one’s pretty easy, really.

FYI, here’s a useful Op-Ed in the WSJ which explains that despite big businesses’s ideological opposition to the proposed public option, once it’s created they will flock to it in droves.

Hi:

Get ready for more of my rigid logical categories, but be forewarned that these are irrefutable.

You argument is as follows: 1) If PO then not HCR, where PO is sub optimal and 2) if no SP now then no HCR with PO.

Now, premise 1) is false because a suboptimal PO and HCR can coexist;
Now, premise 2) is also false because HCR c a suboptimal PO can exist while no SP now also exist (or SP now does not exist).

Now if you join 2 false premises with an “and” you do not get a true conclusion. QED.

“Nope, not going to do any of those things. Sadly I guess we’ll just have carry on without your help. But there’s no reason you can’t do them yourself — do keep us posted on your progress and let us know where you set up shop.”

Whoa! Now that’s an invitation OUT if I ever saw one.
Hey Let’s, you wanna start this political party? I’m pretty good at speechifyin’. If you’ll supply the research, I’ll wave the bloody shirt!

I’m having a hard time making a determination on whether or not I think it’s a positive or negative thing to leave such a decision for expansion up to the HHS Sec. On the one hand the position isn’t as politically accessible, and on the other hand the position isn’t as politically accessible. You get what I’m saying.

I don’t really understand how passing this particular bill will necessarily produce additional Democratic victories, since it’s putting conservative Democratic in jeopardy from the left AND right, and it’s a huge de facto regressive tax on people who paid nothing before, but we’re all working in the realm of speculation on that front, so I am skeptical of the assertion, but don’t have anything other than speculative counterpoints. Though I’m also leery of the value of additional Democratic victories; as they’re not intrinsically good things.

You’re joking, aren’t you? what makes you this is valid reconstruction of my argument. Why don’t you take a statement of mine and then place it side by side your re-statement of it, and then we’ll see whether you can get to your supposed reconstruction of my argument.

Where did I say:

1) If PO then not HCR, where PO is sub optimal

?

Where did I say:

2) if no SP now then no HCR with PO.

?

So, if I never said nd 2) then your critique falls by the wayside.

BTW, Karl Popper used to say that when reconstructing someone’s argument in order to criticize it is important to restate it in a strongly defensible a form as possible, because if you can criticize its strongest form that will mean you’re crticizing its weakest form too.

Now that’s not the usual style in politics. Instead people try to strawman other people’s arguments, and the knock down the strawman. This leades to endless exchanges beginning with I didn’t say that, and no one learns anything.

GDC707, Not sure I’ll accept either invitation just yet. Think I’ll just keep blogging, commenting, and twittering and see what happens. Remember FDL operates in many areas. On most issues I like the dominant positions around here. No reason why I can’t post here and also in other places. Is there?

Yes, if Obama were truly pragmatic, he would already have drowned the opposition with facts about the operation of successful models elsewhere.

Please quote Jon Walker to that effect. I didn’t see any such expansion in his account, and I don’t think it exists in the bill.

jay rosen has a term for what we’re doing here. he calls it overcoming audience atomization (my bolds):

Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

and since i have it handy and it’s on topic, here’s more jay rosen from an interview with glenn greenwald: Salon Radio: Jay Rosen on the media’s control of political debates

And that’s why I go, an earlier piece which also talked about in your column, about savviness being the kind of real ideology of Washington journalism — it’s not liberal or conservative or even power-worshipping. It’s savviness, it’s this notion that that might be a good argument, but that’s not what the committee is going to do, you know? And this kind of religion of – I call it a religion because it’s a faith – that if you’re savvy, that you are realistic, and again, you are vulnerable to irresponsible elites when you do that. You can cut yourself off from your naturally constituency which isn’t them, but an informed and engaged public.

and jay rosen on bill moyers:

BILL MOYERS: One of the subjects not in the debate over health care reform is single-payer. And contrary to what many people think about it being a far left proposal, the polls show that it has substantial support among a large swath of the American people. Many of whom would not call themselves far left.

But Senator Baucus said, its not in the discussion because we’ve gone too far now to go back and consider single-payer. There it seems to me is a very good example of how a legitimate idea gets delegitimated in the debate between the powers that be.

JAY ROSEN: I think it’s a classic example of the real religion of the Washington press, which is savviness. And from a problem-solving point of view, we would certainly want to consider single-payer, because it’s an important option in a debate. But from a savvy point of view, the inside players know that single-payer is never going to be the answer. And they’re already factoring that into their political calculations about what’s likely to result.

Which in a way cuts off the debate that we need to have. And so, the inside players in Washington are able to kind of contain the debate by anticipating the outcome, and then talking about the things that are most likely within that set of assumptions. And this is a normal process in Washington that goes on all the time.

all links from this thread.

how both bills [permit] expand coverage to every American in year 3.

permit expansion. in the house bill, iirc, it’s up to the hhs. which by then may well be in a republican administration and there is no guarantee that the obama administration would do it anyway.

to make the po viable, the more important thing isn’t to permit expansion later, it needs to be prepopulated up frong with a large customer base. for example, maybe put in all uninsured, medicaid, chip, etc people in from the start.

jane also says, “there is no possibility of real change as long as people keep taking their ball and going home every time things don’t go their way.”

Of course not, let’s (pat on head.) You’ve had a rough day, taken a lot of incoming. Take a rest, but don’t go anywhere.

Coming up next: The Putsch!

I have been lazy in reading your entire line reasoning I admit, but I was summarizing. I am studying and that takes time away.

The gist of Jane’s complaint is nevertheless directed at those that hold those 2 false premises. Particularly the 2nd, in which she says that those that are unwilling to accept that the SP will not come about now and are for that reason willing to defeat the HCR c PO now, are like kids that take their marbles home because they did not get their way.

In her typically harsh criticism of that line of reasoning I think she is nevertheless right. Also that practically defeat of the bill is easier said than done.

I think that was what a lot of the back and forth was about. I know that much rides on whether the PO is worth defending and in the final iteration it may not be, and that that is not the only reason that this HCR effort may be fatally flawed, such as the Stupid amendment, mandates and inadecuate regulation of private insurers.

But a good vetting of the proposal as it winds through Congress is needed for sure and every effort to defeat a counterproductive proposal may well be needed. Whether we’ve reached that point is the real debate and should be able to be carried out clearly and convincingly.

Of course it would be nice to have as big as a PO as possible from the start, and I fully support Wyden in this effort – I’ve been writing Senators to point out that Wyden’s goal is as beneficial to them politically as it is on policy. But to whatever extent he fails, isn’t it a good thing that the Democrats are already planning a rapid ramp-up to allowing every in after just a few years? The only thing missing is a sign saying “Trojan Horse Here!”

Actually, I charged them with short-run pragmatism, not real pragmatism. Actually I’m very favorable tio the pragmatism of Peirce and his successor and even though I am what is called a Critical Rationalist, which is different, it is a also a position that has much in common with Peirce’s pragmatism. I talked about the difficulty our country has in solving its problems in some earlier diaries here and I I’ve written about problem solving a good bit on my own site here.

The gist of Jane’s complaint is nevertheless directed at those that hold those 2 false premises. Particularly the 2nd, in which she says that those that are unwilling to accept that the SP will not come about now and are for that reason willing to defeat the HCR c PO now, are like kids that take their marbles home because they did not get their way.

I don’t oppose he bill because it’s not single-payer. I oppose the bill because it’s worse than the status quo, in my assessment.

The title of Jane’s piece is, “Why Continue to Fight For a Public Option?” To which apparently the answer is some random Goldman Sachs speculative factoids of dubious character, and because it’s a partisan proxy war of some kind. Is that all? What about all the other stuff the Public Option is supposed to do? Does it do any of that stuff? Are Goldman Sachs speculations on speculation and a partisan proxy war necessary cornerstone components of healthcare reform?

Apparently these are completely unreasonable questions.

Savviness. Very interesting. Marginalize by excluding from consideration-call it unrealistic. That’s exactly what she’s doing to let’s! Selise you sly devil.

This is a more nuanced variation of the old “render them ineffective by pretending they don’t exist” ploy. Like with unions. Have you ever noticed that in the wider popular entertainment culture, TV, movies, etc which is controlled by corporations, that unions are almost NEVER mentioned. Like they are non-existent. (Except rarely, in a very negative caricture.) So that if someone ever approaches you at the office or on the shop floor it seems alien and unfamiliar. Just like single -payer is made to seem “extreme” and something those socialist foreigners do, and Ralph Nader, who is waved away as a “crackpot.” Thank you for this reply.

That’s true. But things are going my way. I’m blogging, ain’t I?

re trojan hope you’re right, but i don’t see it. just the opposite. maybe the po is the trojan horse for the mandates, medicare cuts, etc?

Can’t putsch on the web. ICANN prevents it.

ah, unions on tv are a great example! thanks. and glad you liked the jay rosen quotes. best pro-blogger journalism prof and academic analyst i know of.

I’m blogging, ain’t I?

and i am so very glad you are!

but i must go for now and get some rest tonight… later friends.

Never forget. You serve at the pleasure of the queen.

I think Jane greatly simplified the argument of the opposition and that since she did her argument is inapplicable to most of the SP people. You said:

I think that was what a lot of the back and forth was about. I know that much rides on whether the PO is worth defending and in the final iteration it may not be, and that that is not the only reason that this HCR effort may be fatally flawed, such as the Stupid amendment, mandates and inadequate regulation of private insurers.

I agree that much rides on whether a bill with a PO including mandates and a greatly delayed operative date is worth defending. But I think the issue has been settled, and that it hasn’t been worth defending many legislative iterations ago. See this one. I also think that neither of these bills is worth defending for reasons I’ve given at the links I gave you before. Jane has never answered the arguments I’ve given in those posts. And I also think that shwe is caught by the reflexivity of her commitment to an earlier strategic analysis and her actions since and that she cannot back off right now.

In her place George Soros would have backed off the PO horse back in June, or latest July. I think she needs to take a page out of his book.

GDC707, she’s been doing it to all the SP people. Read her replies to this thread.

Get a good sleep, selise. I’m just coming out of a state of minor exhaustion myself, only lately catching up on that necessary sleep.

I’m less concerned with Jane’s lack of advocacy for Single-Payer, and more concerned with the unwavering advocacy for the Public Option; seemingly no matter how irrelevant it ends up.

She can say that Single-Payer is off the table for her; that’s a matter of opinion and prerogative. What troubles me are things like claiming that we have to fight for the Public Option because it’s the only way to make sure the poorest and sickest can get access to health insurance, because that doesn’t appear to be at all true. The exchange itself serves that function with or without the Public Option. etc.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way in this exchange I wasn’t smart enough to keep my interest in single-payer from being speciously conflated with my criticism of the Public Option.

I guess the “bait and switch” frame is dominant here.

maybe put in all uninsured, medicaid, chip, etc people in from the start.

that’s a compromise i could support, if it were all federal [like medicare], and not state-based [like medicaid] and had no means testing. a better solution is to just put them all into medicare, instead of making another healthcare financing silo. still, putting all the mediciad+chip+uninsuredandgettingfreecare into one large [new] group does cut down on the overall complexity of the system, so it would be an improvement.

if you do something pro-single payer this friday, i promise to not be a troll.

and the medicare cuts happen first.

letsgetitdone, trying to get Jane or anyone to admit to a mistake is the hard way up the mountain. Remember: Goffman. Face. Why not just find a more important task, and persuade all of the bill’s cheerleaders that your task is more important than what they’re doing?

hipparchia, You’ve never been a “troll.”

VMT, there has never been a “robust PO” in any legislative proposal that has cleared a committee. At first the term “robust” was clearly meant to distinguish a Jacob Hacker-type PO from others. But the term “robust” was constantly re-defined until now House people are using it to describe HR 3962, and Reid uses it to describe his PO travesty that will cover only 3 million people. We need to call reality the way it is. A “robust” PO was originally one that could out-compete the private insurers. Congress then manipulated the term to call anything they were doing at any point in time “robust.” This process has been a lie from the beginning and we need to kill this bill.

I’ll be honest with you, Letsgetitdone, I’ve been cynical from the start about HCR. I believe that Congress has become so downright corrupt that it’s often wiser to avoid even starting important legislative initiatives in the current political environment. In other words, putting people’s vital interests into the hands of the most ardent disaster capitalists (the majority of our congressional representatives) often ends up doing more harm for the majority of us than good. And that’s the unfortunate reality we’re dealing with in our current legislature. I’d be more comfortable starting HCR legislation after we succeeded in electing a more intelligent and moral Congress.

Nevertheless, I’m not entirely comfortable with abandoning the HCR ship and giving up on it. There are too many people out there with a ton of hope invested in this legislation and I don’t want to be the one to tell them there is no hope. I’m not entirely sure that it’s all hopeless, anyway. I also believe that if terrible legislation passes (if history is any guide, it probably will), it might actually end up helping progressives transform Congress. Look what GW did for progressive politics. Further, I haven’t really sat down and worked out the calculus of whether the saved lives the disaster capitalists offer us as goodies in their garbage legislation make the deal worth taking. It’s a bitter pill to choose between saving lives and allowing the corporatists to enrich themselves further, but that’s the choice Congress gives us these days.

Hi cassiodorus, because when we’re part of systems whose people, including its leaders won’t admit mistakes, those systems don’t learn and adapt, as fast as other systems. See my blog series on the Problem Solving Pattern Matters and related posts accessible from here.

To hold leaders and ourselves accountable we must establish a norm of admitting mistakes, learning from them, and moving on. BTW, that’s the heart of the problem of reforming our health care providers and their functioning also — after we get rid of the mistake of having a private insurance system that’s allowed to pursue profits.

Hi VMT, I appreciate your feelings. You said:

Nevertheless, I’m not entirely comfortable with abandoning the HCR ship and giving up on it. There are too many people out there with a ton of hope invested in this legislation and I don’t want to be the one to tell them there is no hope. I’m not entirely sure that it’s all hopeless, anyway.

I’m not talking about abandoning the hcr ship. I’m just suggesting that we kill the bill if it is a small variation of either the House or Senate versions. I’m certain that if we do kill it, or firmly signal our intention to do so, the leadership and the Administration will be back in very short order to negotiate a deal. The key point is that they need something to passed right now, as do the blue dogs, progressives on the other are mostly from safe districts, they can survive without a bill. By standing firm, they can get a clean regulatory bill out of the Congress and take up something more comprehensive next year. In the short run, say over the next 6 months to a year, this will save as many lives as the current bills with their band-aid periods, but it will not lock us into waiting for further reform until this one has had a chance to work sometime in 2015.

I also believe that if terrible legislation passes (if history is any guide, it probably will), it might actually end up helping progressives transform Congress.

Not if the progressives allow it to pass. If they vote for it, then they’re to blame too. If they vote against it, there are enough of them to kill it.

It’s not too late to do it right. We can strip down the current legislation to the important beneficial features, including ending private insurer abuses, and pass it as a temporary emergency measure, codifying “temporary” and “emergency.”

We can include in the legislation language that the process must move forward immediately with reform that will ensure that health care is universal, accessible, comprehensive, portable, and publicly administered. That would set us up for success.

Right.

revised pledge: if jane goes forward with her planned single payer action on friday i promise to not do or say anything, either here or on any other blog, to derail it.

Your resistance to a greater partnership with SP advocates is a mistake. They could provide you with an important ultra-left dialog on your already far left site. In a way, they would represent the pure principles that you are fighting for everyday in a more pragmatic fashion. What could be learned by both sides in a more constructive dialog is essential to HCR and it would form the basis for an effective strategy to achieve our shared goals in the long fight to get universal health care similar in structure to most other advanced western societies. FDL has done great things for this country with your organizational skills behind it, but you need to expand and grow to confront the battles we need to wage in the future. I cannot know how you actually feel about the House and Senate POs and the prospects of an even wormier PO Frankenstein that may emerge from conference, but I cannot believe that you are in any way satisfied. More needs to be done now, because otherwise the cowardly congress will kick HCR down the road at least 5 and probably more years before any additional major work gets done on it. I know you don’t want that.

So what you want is a sea-change in attitude, to where admitting to the endorsement of a mistake (and not continual endorsement of that mistake) becomes the real face-saving gesture.

You’ll need more than just Jane Hamsher for that.

Having gone back and read over some of my remarks, and trying to be understanding of the tough position Jane is in here, I wanted to at least post this mea culpa in thread.

It’s clear that I’ve upset Jane, and am perceived as getting in the way of her reform advocacy efforts. It’s not my intention to lead some kind of open rebellion, or to subversively derail her efforts. I’m almost certainly not communicating very well, because at some point along the way my interest in single-payer as a kind of mathematically/logically pure –and desired– solution, and my overall inclination that the current legislation is worse than the status quo, has been conflated with my most recent questions and criticism of the efficacy and worthwhileness of the plausible Public Option. Not to mention my confusion and curiosity is coming across as derisive and combative.

In any case, I wanted to apologize for my inflammatory and hyperbolic remarks regarding how Jane views this fight. It’s not fair to say that she views the whole thing as a partisan proxy war, as I know her commitment and her concern runs a lot deeper than that. When I made that statement it was mostly out of a sense of despair that she’d seemed to succumb to that viewpoint per her explanation as to why we still needed to fight for a Public Option. A sort of, “has it really finally come to this?” moment.

I’m not going to stop asking questions in comments when it seems like an assertion needs qualification or accountability, but any kind of alternative policy advocacy would probably be more appropriate to do in a diary rather than in comments where it just throws the discussion off-keel. That’s just good online discussion courtesy unless the original poster electively decides to open up, or guide, the debate to alternatives rather than refining –or rejecting– their original position, and it’s a courtesy I’m sorry I haven’t abided by previously.

On this issue, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt. It’s not entirely encouraging that similar kinds of arguments cyclically only get so far in either direction, but in an attempt to open up a direct dialogue with Jane today she made it very clear that she’s under duress of time dealing with trying to undo the Stupak Amendment, and I can hardly blame her.

One assumes that being blind-sided by that doosey is a bit of a shock to the system.

This is a big issue, one that many people are heavily invested in, and while I think it’s fair to try and keep Jane to account for her positions, I also think it’s fair to keep in mind that she may not have the luxury of coming back into these old threads and reading 200 new comments. It’d certainly be nice to keep the conversation going, but there will undoubtedly be times to ask these questions again, and there’s always the opportunity to pose them as diaries (perhaps even repeatedly, within reason); not to mention the staying power of a diary is a lot more significant than trying to track down old poignant comments and questions.

This has been a most impressive comment thread. What’s both simultaneously heartening and infuriating is that it seems we’re looking to ultimately achieve the same goals, but the reality of of what is achievable today versus what we might all like to see in a perfect world has created a great deal of tension.

Jane’s working night and day to achieve the best possible results she can get today. And she’s fighting the good fight, much like Sisyphus rolling the rock uphill.

Folks can point out that there are bigger rocks still waiting to be pushed up that hill, but until they are willing to help push today’s rock, nothing changes.

My personal take away from reading all of the comments is that a little Saul Alinsky might help some folks understand the larger picture here.

Much as I hate to glom onto your metaphor, I think the position of folks like myself, selise, lets, etc. is more that this rock we’re pushing today is a lot bigger than it looks, and it might just roll back down the hill over us.

I don’t disagree…but in the interest of our collective self preservation, we better all get behind pushing today’s rock before it rolls right back over us.

site rule or request?

(if request, i have a question re your @411, but if rule will not question)

Just a request. Ask away.

Actually, I should clarify…it’s more than a request. It’s an observation from someone who’s been reading these comments for some time now, and is having an increasingly difficult time each day reading what seems to me to be little more than “we want it all” and “we want it now”

FWIW, I suspect that no one here understands Overton’s Window better than I, but the daily pounding is getting hard to take.

I guess my simple reply to all of the SP diaries and comments will be:

What did you do today to bring SP closer to reality?

thanks! actually two questions, but big one first:

i don’t know what you mean by your alinsky reference (there’s so much, and we’ve never discussed this stuff so i can’t even begin to guess what you are thinking). would you elaborate? i’m much more influenced by bill moyer (not the bill moyers of lbj/pbs) and his book doing democracy (and nonviolence literature) than i am by alinsky so maybe i’m missing something really basic and obvious to all but me?

My reference to Alinsky is that he was one incredible guy when it came to community organizing. Check out the link….and buy the book from some place other than what I linked to :)

And your second question is?

did you have anything specific in mind from his book? (i don’t have it to reference right now, it was lent to me a while back but i never bought a copy of my own).

second question in a few….

Actually, I have nothing specific in mind from his book, but until someone’s read the basic textbook, it’s a little difficult to discuss the larger picture of strategic planning,

Looking forward to your second question.

second question….

first, i completely disagree with your characterization of “achievable today” vs “perfect world” — i don’t think that’s the source of the tension at all. here’s what i think are two main points of contention / dissent:

1. is what we’re doing today moving us closer or further away from where we want to be tomorrow (not just some distant future)?

2. tension between social movement thinking/mindset and politics as usual thinking/mindset. this one is really complicated to me because i think it usually happens early in social movements when the problem is first being identified and i think we (the country) are several steps beyond this point.

so my question is: if i’m at least partly right about this, what can be done (specifically, what can i do) to help the dissent be a creative force and not a destructive force? do you think stfu is the answer? i kind of got that impression from your comment @ 413. if the answer is yes, i’d rather be told straight out than have to guess. but i’m hoping i misunderstood and you have other answers/suggestions.

p.s. if it’s not obvious, i’m firmly in the social movement camp.

Google is my friend:

And would you agree that’s a large part in how our mutual friend, Ms H., has accomplished as much as she has?

Sorry, didn’t see your earlier reply while I was typing mine.

Give me a few to reply to you at 421.

Although, while I’m typing, you could be cogitating. :)

re larger picture of strategic planning.

i’m going to type out a few bits from chap 1 of moyer’s book (link above), that i hope will give you an idea of where i’m at. (please pardon the typos)

…..
…..

SOCIAL MOVEMENT STRATEGY

Social movements involve a long-term struggle between the movement and the powerholders for the hearts, minds, and support of the majority of the population. Before social movements begin, most people are either unaware that a porblem exists or don’t believe that they can do anything about it. The believe the powerholders’ societal myths and support the high-sounding offical policies and practices, all of which seem to be consistent with the culture’s deeply held values and beliefs. This was the situation before all of the social movements of the past 40 years. For example, before 1963, most Americans thought everyone could votel before 1967, most thought the war in Vietnam was to preserve democracy for the people there; before 1976, most Americans thought that nuclear power was totally safe, necessary, and too cheap to meter; and before teh anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, most thought that corporate globalization was inevitable, provided good jobs for people in the Third World, and was sustainable.

The strategy of social movements, therefore, is to alert, educate, adn win over an ever-increasing majority of the public. First, the public needs to be convinced that a critical social problem exists. Then it must be convinced that polifcies need to be changed. And then a majority of people must be mobilized into a force that eventually brings about an acceptable solution.

To carry out this strategy, social movements need to be firmly grounded in the values, symbols, beliefs, sensibilities, and traditions that are important to the general population. Only by proving to the public that the movement, not the powerholders, upholds these values and principles can the movement win over the citizenry and create a level of motivation that inspires people to challenge the powerholders and their policies. By the same token, movement activities and attitudes that violate society’s values and sensibilities, such as acts of violence and rebellious machismo posturing, have the opposite effect — they turn off the mass population, including those people who are already involved, or would like to be involved, in the movement.

To achieve the goal of winning over and involving the citizenry, social movements need to reframe the issue by exposing and providing to the public that the powerholders’ actual policies and programs violate the societal myths. The best way to inspire the public to be actively involved in creating social change is to show continueously, over time, the gap between the powerholders’ actual policies and programs and the culture’s values and beliefs. Highlighting this gap is the most critical consciousness raising owrk and lies at the center of social movement strategy.

GRAND STRATEGY

The grand strategy is the broad framework that describes the overall process of movement success. It provides movement activists with a model they can use to create goals, strategies, tactics, and programs that are consistent with the movement’s long-term goals. A shared understanding of the <strong>grand strategy proides activists in various organizations and sub-movements with a basic understanding of how each of their efforts can contribute to attaining the larger movement’s ultimate goal.

Without a grand strategy, the disparate activists and groups involved in a movement do not have a common, consistent basis for planning, organizing, and evaluating their efforts and supporting each other. This leads to inefficiencies and unneccessary dissidence [sound familiar? -- s] as groups go off in contradictory directions. Moreover, without a grand strategy there is no basis for challenging people and groups including agents provocateurs, who either inadvertently or intentionally undercut the effectiveness of social movements.

… grand strategy is based on the people power model of nonviolent social movements. This process includes four strategic steps.

1. First, social movements must focus directly on the powerholders’ policies and institutions to expose their societal secrets and challenge their actual polices and programs. This involves developing critical analyses, presentations, and publications and using all of the normal channels available to the public, including demonstrations, rallies, and marches that, when necessary, include civil disobedience….

2. Second, the purpose of these activities is to put the public spotlight on the problem and on the powerholders’ actual policies and practices in order t o alert, educate, win over, involve, and inspire the general public to become involved in the movement. These activities are not intended to get the powerholders to change their policies and practices at this point.

3. Third, social movements then mobilize the general public to put tremendous pressure on the powerholders and social institutions to change their policies and, at the same time, create a new peaceful culture and democratic political conditions….

4. Fourth, these activities attract additional members of the general public to become social activists and either join existing movement organizations and activities or create their own.

ASSUMPTIONS

… based on the belief that nonviolent social movements area powerful means for mobilizing people to become involved in a dynamic political process to address and resolve critical social problems.

… four underlying assumptions:

1. A chief cause of social problems is the concentration of political and economic power in a few elite individuals and institutions that act in their own self-interest….

2. Participatory democracy is a key means for resolving today’s awesome societal problems and for establishing a just and sustainable world for everyone. The resolution of today’s problems, therefore, requires an informed, empowered, and politicized population that assertively participates in the political and economic process to demand democracy, justice, ….

3. Political and economic power ultimately rest with the majority population; the powerholders in any society can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people….

4. The most important issue today is the struggle between the majority of citizens and the individual and institutional powerholders to determine whether society will be based on the power elite or people power model.

…..
…..

chap 2 goes into the various roles of social activism (the citizen, the rebel, the change agent, the reformer), how to play these roles effectively. i’ll just type one bit then quit:

…..
…..

Both individual activists and movement organizations need to understand that social movements require all four roles and that participants and their organizations can choose which ones to play depending on their own make-up and the needs of the movement.

oops. was typing… will cogitate now.

yes i do agree. and really really hate when it’s used against me. makes me think the person considers me the opposition (or at least is treating me as such) instead of ally. have to work really hard to try (don’t always succeed) not to respond in kind.

hmmm. this one is harder. more cogitating….. :)

Yeah, me too :)

Well, as usual, your questions are not easy to answer so let me try in my best feeble way to do so.

I’m going to start with your final point and try to work backwards from there:

Both individual activists and movement organizations need to understand that social movements require all four roles and that participants and their organizations can choose which ones to play depending on their own make-up and the needs of the movement.

I completely agree, and believe this is the very crux of what we are struggling to overcome.

The most important issue today is the struggle between the majority of citizens and the individual and institutional powerholders to determine whether society will be based on the power elite or people power model

I can not disagree, but it conveniently avoids the fundamental point:

What are each, and every one, of us doing today today to make each of these infuriating slow incremental steps a reality?

i’m hitting the wall of lack of sleep. would it be ok if i come back in the am to leave my reply and/or read yours? really do appreciate your time here tonight and wish to continue but don’t think i’m physically able. please forgive.

.” Political and economic power ultimately rest with the majority population; the powerholders in any society can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people…”

I don’t know about that. I would have to amend it to read: the powerholders in any DEMOCRACY can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people . .

I don’t think Hitler would ever have been deposed by the people, nor Stalin. And if, say, the Soviet Union had been the colonial power ruling India, I doubt if Ghandi whould have gained much traction.

Germane to right now only in that with each passing day the U.S. is resembling a democracy less and less.

Sorry to barge in on your discussion but it was too interesting to keep my mouth shut.

i promise to reply to this one too after some sleep and coffee. but yikes! i usually ask question that are hard to answer? will have to work on that too.

peace rbg.and my thankls.

is ok. will try to reply to you in the am too. but right now i really need to try to get a couple hours of sleep. i can attest: sleep depravation is torture.

peace.

Some more food for thought on this issue:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/bargaining-power-by-digby-i-may-not-be.html

http://www.openleft.com/diary/16286/changing-the-goalposts-on-healthcare-reform (Great comment section.)

I meant in my parenthesis great comments in the comment section for Chris Bowers’ post.

I don’t know about that. I would have to amend it to read: the powerholders in any DEMOCRACY can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people . .

I’m not sure that holds either. I start thinking about Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin or think about what would have happened if the Chinese soldiers, ones brought up from the southern region of China and ordered into Tiananmen Square, had simply decided to stop driving their tanks. What if the soldiers confronted by tank man had stopped and refused to continue or even joined the protesters? Those possibilities are the stuff of nightmares for all tyrants, regardless of whether those tyrants operate in police states or democracies.

” Political and economic power ultimately rest with the majority population; the powerholders in any society can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people…”

I don’t know about that. I would have to amend it to read: the powerholders in any DEMOCRACY can only rule as long as they have consent or acquiescence of the people..

GDC707, imo this is a really important question. i’d write something on it now, but i already owe too many people responses, and anyway i think you’d be better off reading gene sharp than me. his little book, Power and Struggle (Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part 1) is directly about your question. it’s a fast info and idea packed read, and can be bought used for only a few dollars. i highly highly recommend it if you are interested in pursuing your question. if you are interested and do read the book, give me a holler and i’d love to discuss it further with you (and the little bits where i take issue with some of sharp’s thesis) when i’m not feeling so overwhelmed.

please forgive my lack of a better reply for now (i should have at least typed out some bits from the book)…. but must go and among other things, cogitate some more on my reply to RBG.

…but must go and among other things, cogitate some more on my reply to RBG.

while i’m pondering… just to try to keep things straight in my own head (not so easy a task these days), by my count i owe RBG a reply on his questions @416 and @430, and RBG is cogitating on my question @421.

I guess the best answers I can offer are:

1. Somedays it’s two steps forward, one step back….and other days, we aren’t so lucky.

2. I agree that much of the tension is the result of our struggling to define the best solution versus an achievable solution.

When all is said and done, I guess my basic point is…are we working to achieve what we can for today, knowing that we will continue the good fight tomorrow, and every day after?

or

Are we just throwing in the towel because what we can achieve today is not what we may ultimately want?

I’d argue that the former is constructive and the latter is self defeating.

“What if the soldiers confronted by tank man had stopped and refused to continue or even joined the protesters?”

Then another corps of soldiers, 3 times as large would have been brought in to quash the insurrection and execute the mutinous soldiers. Maintaining power in a dictatorship always hinges on the military. Armed forces are controlled usually by a combination of pampering the officer corps and to a lesser extent the rank and file soldier, (it is usually clear to the foot soldier that his lot is better than the average civilian and carries some authority and prestige,) and fear, whereby it is bloody clear that any dissent will be dealt with immediately and without mercy. Any smart and effective individual who rises to the level of dictator knows this quite well and works overtime to ensure it.

And it works pretty well. Look at Saddam. Perfect example.

OK!