Why do you call Lieberman a Democrat? He left the party and I say good riddance.

And maybe this should be read by all Dems.

If the Progressive Caucus were serious when they demanded that health care must contain a public health insurance option, they now have the tool of reconciliation to make sure that happens.

They better be serious. And we need to continue to carry the pressure seriously.

I have no doubt that Jane will provide wisdom on this front.

If they are going to use reconciliation, they have no excuse to not include the public option and/or Medicare buy-in.

If yer making yer case with double negatives, that’s a good indication that it’s not going to happen.

This presumes that the DLC chieftans believe that winning elections is more important than placating the FIRE industry which will be the source of their post-government service recompense.

Breaking:Supreme Court rules 5-4 to ease restrictions on spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns.

O’s statement sounds like he’s doubling down. I can’t see HCR getting better. Hope I’m wrong.

As expected. Sounds like Sotomayor was with the 4?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/21/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Campaign-Finance.html

F***! Campaign finance reform now.

And while we are at it, no mandate w/o public option.

Jon, this sounds hopeful. Do you know if the WH is behind this strategy? Obama sounded pretty “hands-off” in his interview yesterday (big surprise!).

Rhetorical question: how can such a good campaigner be such a lackluster leader?

Yes, she voted with the dissent.

Of course Obama has to remain “hands off” since he cut the bad deals with the bad dealers. Congress needs to lead, tell all the dealers that the public has spoken, no mandates w/o public option, or just give us single payer.

OT Sup Ct opens the door, $$$; no corp spending limits. Bought and sold: highest bidder, anyone?

Ooops, just saw the above…;)

He maybe has to sound “hands-off”, but my question for Jon is if there is any sign that he is pushing for this without making it public (just my wishful thinking, no doubt, but maybe).

I predict the MA outcome will scare enough in congress to back off their earlier positions and pretend to create something called a public option.

But I predict whatever it is, it will be woefully inadequate and end up being a disaster.

John,
Thanks for the post.
Wouldn’t it be a beauty if only the simple majority could get it passed.
Read somewhere this morning Barney Frank said “convince me” on the Senate version if in reconciliation changes could be made more favorable to the House version.
Goodbye Joe, you gotta go…

The House Progressives want vote for the Senate HCR Bill period.

Why? The SENATE HCR BILL is a toxic nightmare.

The House progressives will probably just past the parts of HCR they like, Drug Importation, Public Option, No Cadillac Tax,etc. and let the Senate vote yes or no. The idea is to put this toxic HCR bill in the hands of the Senate. The House Progressives will wash their hands of this Conserverdem disaster.

The House progressives will have one mention in 2010 Jobs.

Nancy Pelosi, is not going to do anymore heavy lifting for this White House, those days are probably over.

The Progressives will run back to their base and stay their, because this is what happens when you lose in Mass.

If the Dem’s use reconciliation to force HCR down American’s throats (with or w/o public option) they will no doubt have walked the political plank. It is obvious that the left wing did not understand what message the Mass. election said. It is telling the Obama and the Dumbacrats to stick HCR (in its current form) up there ass!

This is probably the stupidest question of the day but here goes…how can Progressives or anyone for that matter get the Village media to correct their reporting that Obama and DINOs should double down on Right Wing policies when clearly Obama needs to respond to his Progressive base?
If the media keeps propelling these lies then the lies will soon become truth, as in Bush/Republican doublespeak.

Obama has never wanted a public option. If we get one it is because the progressive base gave Democrats no other choice.

Do you mean that they will not or that they “want to”?

Re: Corporate dollars…where are the muckrakers? The reminders of Jesus throwing the money grubbers out of the Temple….is there any chance
“we” are reaching the limits of obvious corruption and total disregard for the welfare of our country and of our people? Aren’t we there yet?

while the dems may be on the right side of history; they are stupid and spineless. they should take another look at the polling coming out of massachucetts. the majority of those voting for barack in 2008 did not vote in this special election. why, not because too much was being done but rather too little, specifically the lack of a public option.

the american voter will respect attempting the difficult and failing; but will never respect the lack of trying. it’s the watering down, the compromising with ideals, the sausage making, the pandering to the obstructionist of either party the american voter will turn against!

what we need now is (and heavens with all the ugly inference to violence we have seen on the right i mean metaphorically speaking) are the rebel patriot sharpshooters that defeated the arrogant british!

If they are going to use reconciliation, they have no excuse to not include the public option and/or Medicare buy-in.

They have been making up excuses form the start (out and out lying about it).
Nothing is not going to changing now.

Unless the democrats figure out doing something very popular might help them in 2010, but I don’t see that happening.

There is absolutely no way that the public option gets revived. Piecemeal stuff exclusively.

How long and how much it wld cost to put dwn in US constitution an dso leglize the following:each american will receive a necessary medical treatment; to be paid by all americans; possibly by sales tax? Or scaling dwn military and stopping present wars? tnx

Reconciliation: it’s what’s for dinner, Mr. Obama.

That is, unless, 10 months from now, you’d like to become the permanent poster-boy for presidential failure.

It should be an interesting day, I’m hoping Coakley caused Obama a “eureka” moment, he swallows hard & adopts Volcker’s Plan whole. This is ONLY chance we have to reign in our moneycenter banks! Watch for nuances, Volcker is one guy who CAN’T be bullied or bought.

the House will not vote for the Senate HCR Bill

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi met with her members and this is what was conveyed to her.

What is the upside for House Dems voting for the Senate HCR disaster? There is no upside.

The senate bill punishes unions cadillac plans (chevy plans)
the senate bill raise taxes on the middle class
the senate bill hurts roe vs wade
the senate bill will let insurance companies rape customers etc.

At the end of the day every politician wants to know, who is going to cheer when I vote for this bill?

Answer: No one will cheer for any house member when they vote for the senate HCR scam bill

Oh, of course. My wishful thinking–let’s hope this happens. Is FDL trying to push for it in any organized way? I’d guess Jane is already at work on that…

The current HCR bill needs scrapped altogether. They should use the reconciliation process to open Medicare enrollment to everyone and roll Medicaid into Medicare.

There is just far too much sleaze in the HCR bill to remotely consider writing this steaming pile of dog turds into law.

Expect to see guys like Bayh, Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln flanking Obama; not Volcker.

There is only one unchanging, inviolate principle in Washington: bipartisan piety.

Right now, we’re still dealing with the detritus from the special election, so not all the memes have converged and coalesced; but rest assured, moderates will rule the day.

I agree… biggest problem is the requirement to purchase private health insurance. You can make all the wonky financial arguements or impassioned pleas to expand coverage you want, but people don’t like to be told what to do. Adding a pretty bow on top (a weak public option for some) is not going to fool anyone.

I don’t think anything will be done on health care. The dems are going to pivot to the economy and financial regulation.

I am watching with great dismay as the progressive left self-destructs.
Ideology is for motivation, compromise is for getting things done.

That poll supporting the claim that Americans would prefer a Medicare like competitor to private insurance (a public option) is from 25 September. Anything more recent?

I would like to make 2 points for the conversation going forward:

1) Keep It Simple Stupid is our friend here. Push for expanding Medicare down to 55 and up to 25 from the current limits. Add the tax on the wealthy, don’t push for much else. Devil is in the details, don’t give them enough details to f’k it up. We can get 51 votes for those pieces and have HCR this year.

2) Ignore Obama, the Mass special election shows how the president is irrelevant to the Democratic party. His support can’t save you, he has become our Bush from 2006. Run against what he is doing, not with him. So for legislation, ignore the guy completely and do what you must for HCR.

I think you got it wrong. A poll conducted after the election showed that a big problem voters had was that the Senate bill doesn’t go far enough.

A plurality of people who switched — 48 — or didn’t vote — 43 — said that they opposed the Senate health care bill. But the poll dug deeper and asked people why they opposed it. Among those Brown voters, 23 percent thought it went “too far” — but 36 percent thought it didn’t go far enough and 41 percent said they weren’t sure why they opposed it.

Among voters who stayed home and opposed health care, a full 53 percent said they opposed the Senate bill because it didn’t go far enough; 39 percent weren’t sure and only eight percent thought it went too far.

The people who say they don’t know why they oppose the bill sure looks like a messaging problem to me. Corporate MSM “news” probably looks at that number and congratulates themselves.

Note: I didn’t mention it explicitly, but can the mandate and all the other crap language in the HCR bill. Just cut it out in totality.

Anything that includes in some way, shape or form pass the senate bill as is and fix it later or any similar term relying on trust on our democratic whoring corporate overlords is a no go.

Will. Not. Happen.

Was anybody paying attention the last couple of months. As long as the fascist faction (Rahm et all) are still running the White House and our big O’chief is still trying to grow a pair, this is just another way of screwing you/us over.

We need reconciliation only for the most important issues, and dare the repubs and blue dogs tpo vote down what can not be passed in reconcilliation.

The MOST important point is that anything that can not be passed through reconcilliation is by definition budget neutral, and thus by definition a vote of special interrest vs human interrest, ie corporatism vs the people, if there was ever a time to use populism for DEMOCRATIC purposes and as a wedge to HCR, this is it. Let them fillibuster the most horrendous issues currently bankrupting and killing people with each passing day.

For once, grow a pair.

“I dare yah”

Obama needs to get off of his skinny black ass and “man up!”

Fire Summers, Geitner and Rhambo. Bring in Elizabeth Warren, Howard Dean and others that actually give a damn about the middle class.

See the German Reich’s take on Obama’s predictament:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aQCiRjvZY

Oh, I’m sure the Senate and WH will come up with another excuse to kill the PO.

Such as, “Republicans don’t like it.”

“Compromise is for getting things done.”

That’s why the democrats have been so successful in the past 2 years.
snark

Obama’s post Massachusetts comments show him to be clueless. This guy still wants to work with Republicans. He will get a warm, rosy glow from all this pandering and we will get the shaft. My plan would be to ignore him and cobble together a coalition of people like Howard Dean, Alan Grayson and Mr. Wiener to shepard a practical bill through the legislative process.

Now that the 60% vote requirement hoax has been exposed as a fraud, perpetuated by the Democratic majority, it becomes clear that the Hoaxey-Change team is much more interested in an insurance reform hoax than actual reform.

What is interesting is that the republican spin, that the “bill went too far in a takeover”, is incorrect, but that is the neo-con line you will hear from Rush and Beck, but it is incorrect.

It is also incorrect of Obama and Glibbs and Ax to say, “this is the anger that brought us into office”. Not so. People are mad at YOU, my friend. It cannot be hidden. That is the progressive spin in the other direction. Neither is an honest evaluation. In fact, they are both incredibly dishonest spin jobs.

Here is an important poll that shows that the people of Massachusetts rejected the health care bill because it was BAD, DISHONEST, TOO EXPENSIVE for NOTHING and DID NOT GO FAR ENOUGH. Over 70% people in Mass. want a public option, even though they have Romney-care, which is incredibly unsuccessful and unpopular.

The independents in Mass. voted for Obama when he was FAR MORE LIBERAL (and honest) in his rhetoric.

Here is the poll:
95% of voters said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.

53% of Obama voters who voted for Brown and 56% of Obama voters who did not vote in the Massachusetts election said that Democrats enacting tighter restrictions on Wall Street would make them more likely to vote Democratic in the 2010 elections.

51% of voters who voted for Obama in 2008 but Brown in 2010 said that Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street.

*****HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Nearly half (49%) of Obama voters who voted for Brown support the Senate health care bill or think it does not go far enough. Only 11% think the legislation goes too far.

I say, Unless Obama fires Geithner, and many other in his administration, and returns to either a public option or an expansion of Medicare, WHICH MOST CONSERVATIVES HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH, we know he is hoaxing. Which he is, no doubt. And we know it. They know it in Massachusetts. But it may be too late…

Here is the link:
http://pol.moveon.org/brownpoll/results.html

“Now that Democrats are talking about using reconciliation, there is no excuse for not including a public option.”

Yeah there is. They don’t want to waste any political capital on health care. They won’t pursue hcr. The end.

“or an expansion of Medicare, WHICH MOST CONSERVATIVES HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH, we know he is hoaxing.”
Hahahahahahahahaha. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Conservatives still want to kill Medicare, they just know they can’t say those words out loud. Republicans are playing to win, Democrats are playing to lose. Do you know what the silver lining in Coakley’s loss is? There isn’t one. House Democrats will decide that they don’t want to vote over the Senate Bill, no bill will be passed, hcr will be declared dead, so they are going to guarantee that people like you stay home, and the Dems will lose the House and Senate and more than a half dozen governorships.
And the public option? Dead, for at least ten years. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to bring in a Medicare expansion or a public option through reconciliation after passing the Senate Bill, but no. Coakley lost so the entire Democratic party is going to commit mass suicide.

Political Capital? They’re in arears now.

Hey, how about another pact with Grover Norquist? That might help.

That is, unless, 10 months from now, you’d like to become the permanent poster-boy for presidential failure.

Yeah, Carter needs a break in his old age.

DNC should have gut to kick this old snake out of the party long ago.

No “PUBLIC OPTION”?….

Don’t expect my vote in 2010 OR 2012…that’s simple.

I’m glad that you see WHAT I see.

I doubt that President Obama is clueless. He’s just been too clever by half. For the White House, the process leading up to Senate bill was never about negotiations and “bipartisanship” was never seriously considered. The last year was merely theater. It was supposed to let the Party monopolize corporate contributions without taking too big a hit for it at the polls. The Party would keep voter support by loudly championing healthcare reform and keep the industry’s money with a process that “forced” it to give industry what was promised. Obama planned to have his cake and eat it too.

I think that the President had already sold corporate interests something close to or identical to the Senate bill before the process began. But he wanted to minimize or deflect Democratic voter anger while denying the Republicans a share of the corporate goodies. To achieve both, he needed the Republicans to take the blame for the concessions in the bill while still opposing the bill’s professed objectives. He needed a close, Party-line Senate vote with just enough non-Republican conservatives to insure that result would be the pre-arranged Bill. Hence the supposed need for a 60-vote super-majority:

* Those nasty Republicans just wouldn’t be bipartisan so we don’t have a single vote to spare.

* Lieberman and the Blue Dogs are holding us all up and we can’t do without them.

Now that Ted Kennedy has had the bad form to die, giving the voters a chance to screw up the favored scenario, Mr. Obama is forced to look for a way out. None of the options are attractive.
Reconciliation is off the table. It would let public-financing advocates show how we could really save money. It might win the election. But it would lose the corporate money and might cause the the donors to expose the deal, thus risking the election.
So all that is left is to go hat-in-hand to the Republicans, hoping that they’ll do a “bipartisan” deal for a share of the corporate money.

Of course, once they weaken the Democrats badly enough, the Republicans won’t need to do deals. As it is, they can probably use Obama health-insurance bailout process to beat Democratic Party incumbents to death at the polls and still rake in the corproate bucks. Graft is, afterall, for winners.

Too bad that your scenario is more likely closer what happened and how it will play out. The end game was played pretty much the same when Clinton, that phone buddy of W, was in office. Much like before, I doubt Rahm Emanuel and his cohorts consider their effect on the Ds to be anything other than part of the changing game. Obama has already pretty much promised that new work on the healthcare bill will be bi-partisan because he owes it to the people that voted for Brown. He feels that he should make sure people that voted for Brown get their say because… Honestly I can’t come up with a story.

Vote against my party and my candidate and I will bend over backwards to prove you made the best decision possible. Stupid or politically incompetent.

Obama has never wanted a public option.

I disagree about this, but it’s beside the point. The important question is: what evidence do you have that the House wants a real public option? Even back in the sunny days when they passed their bill the most they could pull together was a weak and crappy option that almost nobody would have been eligible for. I think it’s delusional to hope that everyone who voted for that would now, in this political climate, vote for something stronger.

And as for all the “you can’t force people to buy private insurance” complaints, I never understand why being forced to buy public insurance would be better. And yes, you have to force universality. Either you institute a universal government plan (my preference, but politically unfeasible), or you make people buy insurance–it’s a mandate either way. If insurers have to take everyone but everyone doesn’t have to take insurance, the eventual results will be catastrophic.

Once US legalizes universal health care, the door to more human rights may fly off its hinges.
Once americans wld obtain our second-dearest right, right to healthcare, a clamor may arise for other basic rights: to be formed [not deformed], informed, educated, fed [instead famished or holodomored].
One can aver that is what modern robber barons fear more than any other thing.
To distract americans from seeking these rights, barons badly need ‘terrorism’;today’s and tomorrow’s wars. Expect at least 30 more wars this century by US.
Infact, there had not gone a day that US hadn’t been involved in hostilities, interventions, invasion, and wars.
This heralds ill for many ‘aliens’ or new indians!tnx

The Senate will just filibuster any of these bills. If you want to try to make the Repub’s look bad, this may feel good for you, but won’t get you HCR. By modern filibuster rules, they don’t have to read the phonebook and other Senate business will continue. I.e., there is no downside to filibustering for a party that has already said, “No matter the subject, the answer is ‘NO’”. If you want HCR, sidecar reconciliation in the right order, requiring only 50 senators, is the only practical option.

what evidence do you have that the House wants a real public option?

The post-election polling results in Mass. should convince any frightened conservadem rep. with a brain that voting for the PO is in their enlightened self-interest.

I haven’t found the data on the web because I’ve been away from my computer, but the poll results were alluded to on Young Turks and on Maddow.

The post-election polling results in Mass. should convince any frightened conservadem rep. with a brain that voting for the PO is in their enlightened self-interest.

Unless their seats are in Massachusetts, what difference would this make to them? Many conservadems voted for healthcare reform against the majority opinion in their districts.

You’re suggesting that a Democratic representative of a conservative district should interpret the election of a Republican senator in a liberal state as evidence that they should move to the left. You’re dreaming.

Hope lives again !
for millions without.