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As Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics notes, it’s pretty obvious that the Democrats’ electoral woes are directly tied to the passage of the health care bill. But somehow horserace analysts like Jonathan Alter, Jim Vanderhei and Mike Allen don’t want to talk about that.
Well, we’ve been talking about it for months now.
Nate Silver describes Jay Cost as an “outstanding analyst.” Looking at the generic ballot average, Cost says:
Partisans on both sides tell themselves stories about why they’re up, why they’re down, and why the other side is where it is. These stories usually contain at least a grain of truth, but they also help encourage ideologues in the face of an impending rejection by the electorate. Democrats ignored the political problem of health care in the fall and winter – arguing that Martha Coakley and Creigh Deeds were bad candidates, that voters had been turned off by the health care bill because of the process, and that they would come around once the many benefits kicked in. Now, they’re pointing to the economy as the only significant reason why the party is in trouble.
It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats’ fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority – Independent voters – began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President’s job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
Reconstructing the Democrats’ meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That’s when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.
VanderHei and John Harris recently wrote a piece criticizing “liberal bloggers” who were obsessively naval gazing about the Dave Weigel/Journolist incident, and didn’t care about the fact that Democrats could lose seats in the House this fall.
In fact, FDL did polling at the first of the year that indicated that the health care bill was extremely unpopular with independents, and warned that the Democrats were living in la-la land to ignore it.
January 14, 2010: FDL commissions SurveyUSA to do polling in swing districts to try and ascertain how the health care bill (particularly the individual mandate) will affect Democratic incumbents.
January 14, 2010: The first SurveyUSA poll finds that Vic Snyder is trailing GOP challenger Tim Griffin by 56% to 39%, and that the individual mandate is unpopular with 3 out of 4 voters. If Snyder votes for the health care bill with the individual mandate, he loses another 6 points to Griffin.
January 15, 2010: Our second SurveyUSA poll finds that Steve Driehaus trails Steve Chabot in a rematch of their 2008 race, 39%-56%. When asked if their opinion of Driehaus changes if he votes for the health care bill, 55% of Independents say that their opinion of him would go down.
January 20: SurveyUSA polls one of the suburban districts that will be key to the Democrats’ ability to hold the House in 2010, this time Tim Bishop in (NY-01). Bishop holds a 2 point lead over potential GOP challenger Randy Altschuler, who was already up on the air with ads. Unlike Snyder and Driehaus’s GOP-leaning districts, Bishop’s district has a +3 PVI Democratic advantage. Party affiliation in the district is 27% GOP, 33% Democratic and 39% Independent. When asked how they feel about a health care bill which forces them to buy insurance or pay a penalty, 66% of Independents say they are opposed and 48% say they are strongly opposed.
January 21, 2010: SurveyUSA finds that Baron Hill is trailing Republican Mike Sodrel by 8 points if they matched up once again. Again, 60% of Independents say that their opinion of Hill goes down if he votes for a health care bill forcing them to buy insurance or pay a penalty.
February 16, 2010: Rather than thank us for the head’s up that their caucus is going to be slaughtered if they vote for the health care bill, Mark Ambinder reports that “Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is blasting Democratic activist Jane Hamsher for using Survey USA to essentially poll-pressure Blue Dog Democrats into retirement.”
March 13: I talk with a Democratic operative, who tells me that by forcing Congress to vote for the health care bill, Democratic leadership and the White House are like the generals in Paths of Glory, “firing on their own men in the trenches.”
March 17: I wrote “There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against. It will become a rallying cry for the right.”
July 21: A new SurveyUSA poll shows Tom Perriello trailing his GOP opponent by 23 points. Prior to voting for the health care bill, a PPP poll showed Perriello essentially tied with Hurt:
This confirms what FDL has been saying for months: forcing members of Congress like Tom Perriello to vote for the health care bill was truly a Paths of Glory move by House leadership and the administration. As our SurveyUSA polling indicated at the time, the health care bill was hugely unpopular in swing districts.
August 4, 2010: 71% of Missouri voters support Proposition C, which “would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.” It’s a non-binding initiative, but a clear indication of where public sentiment is in a bellwether state.
The DCCC was very good at getting not-so-savvy poll analysts to try and discredit the SurveyUSA polling. (Those same pollsters, ironically, didn’t see anything weird in the Research 2000 polls they were quoting authoritatively at the time, which many now find suspect — though Jerome Armstrong spotted it). Somehow Democratic members of Congress engaged in magical thinking and believed Rahm’s BS about the popularity of the health care bill increasing if it passed.
Rather than focus on jobs creation in a country with climbing unemployment rates, Obama spent the better part of a year focused on passing a health care bill that looks like it will play no small part in the Democratic Party’s upcoming electoral woes.
Well, we warned you.
Update: New headline at Politico:
Public sours on health care reform as midterms loom
Democrats said throughout the year-long debate on Capitol Hill that support for the overhaul would increase once the bill passed and Americans were able to take advantage of some of its benefits. But it appears voters’ opinions of the legislation were set more firmly than anyone thought during the bruising political fight.
You don’t say.
Update II: Dave Weigel writes a classy post. Kudos.
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Yeah, well, it was also the same time that the other “building block” of the Democratic majority, the progressive left activists, the ones who actually go out for ground game and are passionate, began to realize they were being frozen out and started to sour on the Obama led model. The most talked about basis was obviously the fraudulent bait and switch pulled on the public option, yet another indicator of healthcare’s centrality to the doldrums the party finds itself in today
But look at all the good it’s done (all the money it’s saved and health it’s improved)…
OK, WILL do (according to the flim-flammery models anyway).
And what about the great signing party, I mean, TWELVE pens for goodness sakes!
AND … CIGNA stock is way up!
Thankless bastards, you’ll probably have the same lack of appreciation when we save social security by gutting it.
signed – The Democratlican Party
Progressives, and particularly you Jane, have been right in just about everything we have been telling this administration. They didn’t want to hear it, and they will ignore it now. As Glennzilla has pointed out with the run up to the war in Iraq….those who were right all along are still ignored.
I’m not sure what mental trick they use to continue to justify the “fucking retarded” characterization in their minds.
People know a pantload when they see it. The general public isn’t known for being wise but they’re a hell of a lot smarter than our leadership gives us credit for.
We have been right about the wars, the economy, everything for the last 9 years. Just what made Obama think he knew the issues better than us? What made him think he could lie to us with no consequences? What made him think he could betray the people who got him to the WH and not be betrayed in turn and hung out to dry by the people who convinced him to betray us?
Still, that Graph comes from Real Clear Politics and they’re as right wing as FOX.
Well Margaret any word on the job front??
Obama will have just the Congress he wants soon ( a GOPer one ) and will then proceed to gut SSI and move onto gutting Medicare as well. He’s rapidly becoming a Jimmy Carter clone and I for one will gladly help out in any effort to primary the bastard for 2012. Nobody, likes to be bait and switched.
The chickens ALWAYS come home to roost. And the Dems just blunder around looking dumb.
They must have FDL in their RSS feeds. ;-)
Demand residuals.
The Polls taken in the winter and spring i think are reflecting the shock and horror of democrats and independents that still beleived that maybe the final bill wouldnt be as bad as it looked. The political situation is even worse now, the bill turned out to be even worse than feared. Now everyone has had time to reflect on WHY the WH and congress would force such a wildly unpopular bill through and the answer seems even more depressing. Its not just a really really stupid bill,its a sign of things to come. The economy didnt crash in 2008 unexpectedly or as a result of a few years of bad management. The process started in the 70′s when the supply siders set out in ernest to break up unions and keep wages low. 35 years later most of our economy has been shipped overseas, real wages have not risen for 30 years or more, while corporate profits have skyrocketed. Supply is worthless without demand. The HCR bill they forced on us is an example of enforced demand which is partialy subsidized by the govt. republicans and dems are on the same page here. all the repubs will do is try to cut the subsidies. the word that got used here on FDL a lot then was “Serfdom” and not without good reason.
The mental trick is the huge piles of campaign cash that are delivered on a regular basis to his chief of staff for services rendered. Now that the Gopers are going to take back at least one house of Congress the amounts will decrease unless Obama delivers even more. SSI and Medicare are on the cutting board up next and you can bet this lying shit bag will deliver for his Wall St. pals once again!
jake,
wrt “mental trick”
I’ve only recently stumbled upon the glaringly obvious – it isn’t just a continuation of the Clinton Presidency, it’s a continuation of the Clinton mindset – which means – TA DA ! NO INTERNET !
yes, I know they used it to raise unprecedented amounts of money – but from inside the bubble, that‘s it’s only function, a super kewl way to raise cash with the occassional warm n fuzzy message to keep it coming.
that whole Accountability thing doesn’t enter in to it – that’s reserved for top tier donors period
Damned straight, Jane, and the people in the street aren’t even fully aware of the negative consequences yet. For the first time in history, thanks to the Dems, US citizens in 2014 will be mandated to buy a commercial product designed by Congress or pay a penalty for not buying something many of them don’t need.
The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” — how does the Congress justify mandating Americans to buy it? Why it’s just a routine part of their obligation to regulate interstate commerce. Seriously. The law says so. And why are the Dems doing it? Oh, when all those thirty-somethings send their premiums to Wellpoint and other medical insurance corporations the rates for seniors will magically go down, the story goes. Next they’ll be mandating flood insurance for Coloradans to hopefully lower the rates for all those voters in Florida.
How better to piss off young voters than to require them to choose between paying six thousand dollars for something they don’t need or send Uncle Sam $750 plus for not buying something they don’t need?
It will be destructive for the Democratic Party as it plays out. A Republican victory and repeal of this onerous law before its full implementation would actually benefit the Dems.
Heckuva job, Rahmie!
No doubt the dems will lose rather badly this fall and that folks are not happy with health care. But I have a little different take on the health care front. We lost it last summer. Remember when they were shouting down the dems at the town halls and tried and succeeded in scaring the bejezzus out of everyone? The only thing I remember from then and this past year now and ending with the 100k assault on DC this weekend was the Tea Partiers. No one, I mean no one, ever to this day challenged them where it counts – - on the streets, except maybe Al Sharpton this weekend.
If there were any identifiable savings (premiums increase each year as “coverage” decreases), improvements or benefits to be happy about, I have not seen any. If there are any tax advantages, they won’t be realized until tax time – which is too late to help the Dims in November.
Dims needed the Public Option. They needed something tangible for the voters. Instead they gave Insurance companies more power over people.
OT: Where was BankruptingAmericadotorg when Dubya was bankrupting America?
True, and one must take it into account. But it is also true that the most popular part of the proposed health care reform legislation, the public option, was stricken from the plan and the public didn’t like what was left.
And it’s also true that both Dems and Reps are currently ignoring the bill’s devastating effect on Dem popularity. Instead, as Jane mentions, both sides do things like scapegoating Martha Coakley for being a “bad candidate” when even Chris Van Hollen of the DCCC admitted that she and other Democratic candidates were hurt by having to embrace the Baucus-WellPoint Bill, especially the anti-choice portions.
except that i doubt the repubs are going to try to repeal anything except the low income subsidies. or why didnt they do any of the things they could have done to slow down passage of the bill?
I don’t know about you Jane, but not only am I tired of saying ‘I told you so’ but it also doesn’t provide me any satisfaction.
Coakely was a bad candidate. Lose in Massachusetts, you gotta be kidding.
Rahm, the albatross salesman, sold the Dems NAFTA in time for the 1994 mid-terms and now he has done it again with the health insurance bill for 2010.
Heckuva job Obama. Next time, try to appoint a competent politician to your staff. That is, if you get a next time…
Do these clowns ever talk policy, or is it always horserace bullshit? Jeebus Xmas.
(That was a rhetorical question. I apologize.)
Honestly, the only upside I see in any of this (and it will be bad) is the joy I will get from watching the GOP rain down subpoenas on this right-wing-fellating administration. I’m sure it will cause a lot of confusion for those folks. ObamaRahma….if you aren’t a member of their tribe, you are dirt beneath their feet, no matter how often you disgustingly grovel in front of them. Really, the perfect coda for Mr. Bipartisan’s presidency.
So true.
Instead we got “Trust us…we know best.”
And we see where that’s headed.
It will be interesting to see how well the 34 House Democrats (mostly Blue Dogs) who voted against the final HCR bill weather these midterms.
As for the Progressive Caucus, its never too early to start rubbing it in; they should be out campaigning to replace mandates with Medicare. The mandate already has one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel. The question is, what comes after? The Republicans will want to go back to the pre-HCR status quo, progressive Members should advocate moving forward to universal Medicare. If nothing else, they can truthfully tell seniors that every dollar Obama took out of Medicare would be put back into Medicare. :)
But none of this ersatz pseudo-Medicare-like public option buy-in for certain groups nonsense. It just sounds half-assed. Make Medicare universal by dropping the age restrictions and improve it from there. Brother Baucus has helpfully drawn us a map. As Jon Walker pointed out–
We have proof that expanding Medicare could have been done much quicker. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) made sure to include a provision in the law to expand Medicare to the victims of asbestos contamination in Libby—in his home state. I can happily report that less than two months after the President signed the new law, people in Libby were getting their Medicare cards.
Not yet and I’m afraid I’m not dealing with the stress well today at all.
thank you. they spun that obvious mass protest as if it were just another horserace in indiana or virginia. what a joke.
Politico couldn’t stay in business if they paid for all the stuff they steal.
Just to clarify something, “SSI” isn’t the same thing as Social Security retirement benefits. In fact, it isn’t even paid out of FICA.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a Federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues (not Social Security taxes):
It is designed to help aged, blind, and disabled people, who have little or no income; and
It provides cash to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.
http://www.ssa.gov/ssi/
What’s interesting about it is, its the one vestige of Nixon’s negative income tax proposal that Congress approved in the early 70′s.. If we’re ever going to see a guarantee income/ negative income tax plan in this country like Milton Friedman, Richard Nixon and more recently, Charles Murray, have all endorsed, it will involve expanding SSI eligibility. Sorr for the digression.
Heh, s’heah sure . . . public opinion will improve WRT the HCR Disaster just like the HCR Disaster will be improved legislatively in the future.
Nice read Mz. Hamsher. Overwhelmingly obvious in your evidence as offered.
What are We The People gonna do come November?
We can’t vote FOR Dems, we’re crazy to vote AGAINST them, and third party votes or abstaining is akin to handing the keys to the liquor cabinet to the crazies.
I wonder if there are more Pups out here as twisted on this Nov. as I am . . . cuz I got some REAL We The People rage to share with my elected offals due to their complete and utter abuse and abandonment of the middle class and all things we used to believe that our elected offals would support and protect.
Human rights.
Civil rights.
Constitutional rights.
Corporate regulation.
Peace and prosperity at home and abroad.
Employment.
Silly shit like that the Dem’s have completely vacated.
“except that i doubt the repubs are going to try to repeal anything except the low income subsidies. or why didnt they do any of the things they could have done to slow down passage of the bill?”
Why? See the graph above.
The mandatory medical insurance law, fully corporatized and mandated by the Dems, was a gift that will keep on giving to the Repubs. Obama might not be effected in 2012 since he wisely delayed full implementation until 2014 — we’ll see.
With all due respect the pro-choice vote in MA is absolutely essential for Dems.
Coakley was well ahead in the polls during the primaries when she assured voters here that she would oppose a bill with the Stupak/Nelson language. After the primaries, when Stupak had passed the House, and the Nelson language remained in the Senate version, Coakley changed her position and vowed to vote for the Senate bill. And voters stayed home.
It was the pro-choice block that put Republican Bill Weld in the governor’s office over the anti-choice Dem John Silber. Coakley could not survive the double whammy of Dems in DC selling out the public option and stabbing the pro-choice voters in the back. At that point Scott Brown might as well have been a cardboard box and he still would have won.
Don nice sum up. The Oligarchy marches on to world domination that we fought against in WWII and the cold war. We are being taken over from the insider corporation in the courts, congress and the White House. No longer a democracy as the founders conceived the balance of power has shifted since Regan whatever big biz wants they get. 1974 William Simon became Nixon Secretary of Treasury, when he left office he went to Wall street to do corporate takeovers selling off union shops and enlarging corporations while swallowing middle class smaller business into to big to fail corporations. The chain store movement consolidated mom and pop into corporations. Your local coffee shop is a Starbucks, Wall Mart forced small competitors out of business. Fourth Estate, the free press, an essential of Democracy. And the FCC and the courts were coopted to wrap up the Globe into a fascist state of indentured slavery as wages plummet and the middle class is shrunk wrap to fit a new role of servitude. Aside from that it is a nice day and 1984 has arrived no political demonstrations allowed at political conventions ask Amy Goodman. The French still have the little store below the home.
Myself for sure. It is going to be the hardest thing for me to drag myself into a polling place and once again cast votes for the lesser of evils. Where will it end? I don’t have the solution but our two party system has got us stuck because punishing one party ALWAYS means rewarding the other, no matter how crazy, how ridiculous, how EVIL that other party is.
Crossing fingers, toes, eyes and everything else I can Cross for you Margaret ☺
Maybe, just maybe, we should get our collective asses out there and stand opposed to the batshit crazy tea partiers and let everyone know we are pissed off and we’re not gonna take it anymore – - no matter how many rifles you bring to the rally.
Huh, somebody better save those poll results, because contrary to popular opinion, they’re NOT going to get better when all the facets of this shit sandwich kick in. Oh, they might get better temporarily, when everyone feels all warm and fuzzy inside because they’ve got a piece of paper on it that says insurance and they might’ve even got a little help to buy it too.
But when they find out the system is basically the same, with their out of pocket expenditures going up over time instead of down, and at all the other false promises like stopping the worst practices of the insurance industry, there’ll be a downward turn that will likely never recover for the health care bill, as well as for the Dems that passed it. And as I’ve said umpteen times, the Dem deserve every bit of it and then some.
One day a political party in this country will provide real health care reform that guarantees healthcare is a right and not a privilege, and guarantees that just because one suffers ill health doens’t mean he/she must suffer economically, and guarantees that the overall costs are constrained by limiting the levels and areas of profits and waste. And when THAT political party does that, they will have a majority for a generation. Too bad it won’t be any generation soon. And too bad it won’t be the Democratic Party. Wonder who it will be?
THANK you.
I don’t want to read or hear any more about Obama letting us down, etc. like he was ineffective, or foolish, or incompetent.
He was bought and paid for, from the getgo. And We The People now realize it.
We also realize the entire political process has been fully bought and paid for. Even, HRC. /s
And we also fully realize now that our ways of life are being eroded, deliberately, and our future is being eroded.
Now what. Do. We. Do. Ay, there’s the rub.
Pity the citizens. Forced to endure 12 months of the ugliest sausage making imaginable only to discover that the result was preordained in Obama’s back room. Gosh! It’s almost as if Obama is a two faced, lying ass hole.
Every day that goes by, Obamacare becomes more of a burden for the Democratic Party as the people learn from hard experience that they have been had.
Well, now both Parties are discredited and despised. What next?
If i had the money I would commision a poll of how many independent voters were concerened (or even aware) of the Greek economy, compared to the HCR bill just to PROVE (if any more proof were needed ) what a hack and a liar jonathan alter is.
The thing I wonder about is whether Obama and Rahm ever really thought their healthcare bill would become more popular. I know that is what Rahm supposedly said but did he mean it? The healthcare bill was such a blatant sellout to insurance, Big Pharma, and Big Medical. How could they ever think they could PR it into anything else? All I come up with is that they were more concerned with appeasing the corps than the public and that they think we are such incredible rubes that they could sell us any bullshit. If anything it shows us how corrupt and disconnected they are. It should also show us why it is important for us to oppose Democrats, not support them. They will use us if they can, but they will never work with us.
Another thought on that: If we reward the Teabagger Republicans because we are so intent of punishing the Democraps, the media and the politicians are going to take exactly the wrong lesson and say that it PROVES that the voters of the United States are more right wing than William F Buckley Jr and it will drive everything further into wingnuttia. That’s why I’m voting. To hold onto as much sanity as possible in the perhaps futile hope that sanity will someday be restored.
I’ll maintain that a lack of presence in the streets for 20 years has allowed the governing system we have now to be so bad. No pressure from the public = free rein for politicians to enable the wishes of their corporate owners.
And I FULLY agree that the HCR Disaster was a final clinching straw breaking the backs of more of We The People than any other single thing. The economy and lack of jobs piles it on.
It’s class war. And we the people are losing, badly.
but but but that hamsher woman is bad, and also she was mean to lanny davis and also too she is confrontational and argumentative. that’s why no one should listen to her because she is bad. and mean. also too she should be refudiatied.
that is what the reaction to this highly accurate post will be. It makes me want to sit down with my congressman with a flow chart: “ok, see here? when you abandoned the public option part? THAT is where you went wrong. Very very wrong.”
The GOP takes over and rams through their agenda. Their voters don’t go anywhere. Crazy doesn’t change its mind.
There is an election in about 9 weeks. You will see firsthand that they are correct in that we are rubes. And if I were a politician and knew that I could count on a whole segment of votes without ever delivering simply by pointing out teh evil other, I would never bother delivering either. It’s easy to call them names, but truth be told, almost everyone of use would do the same thing. If we could count on getting elected AND getting set up for life and pleasing the corps???? You betcha. Most humans would.
Only when they learn that both can’t be had that we can expect a change. In other words, not in most of our lifetimes.
This admin, and Obama’s picks for his minions was NOT a mistake, it was all calculated and has proven to work out just fine for the 1%.
That proggy’s at FDL still think Obama made mistakes is beyond me.
It was all calculated and has been executed to its fullest potential to date.
Class war.
Made me smile.
Nice.
*G*
We progressives always assume Obama, Rahm, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett are a bunch of Morons.
We should consider the fact Obama, Rahm, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, are intentionally wrecking the democratic party.
A half wit democratic president that got elected in 2008 could have maintain a huge favorability rating over republicans!!!
The only issue in the USA the last 2 years has been JOBS. (During the past 19 months no Poll said Health Care was more important than Jobs in the USA)
A half with average democratic president that made the first two years of his terms jobs would have killed the GOP. (simply making the first 2 years about BUSH stupid economic policies would have kept the GOP running for the hills)
Not Obama!
He works night and day to pass the Bob Dole health care bill.
Obama and his team of democrooks killed the two most popular items about health care, 1. the public option 2. drug importation
Again let us stop thinking Obama is stupid! Obama, Rahm, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, know exactly what they are doing! Was NAFTA a democratic idea? NO
Progressives welcome to the USA Class Wars!
The elites of the USA will do any and every thing to maintain the status quo! The elites must laugh daily at the fact that they got progressives to vote for a Black Ronald Reagan. :)
Ask BP, if they think OBAMA is more Bush or FDR?
Coakley was just one of many lackluster corporatist candidates the Democrats chose to run. What I like to keep reminding people of is that the very day Coakley went down to defeat is the same day that Obama with Reid’s and Pelosi’s blessing signed the Executive Order creating the Cat Food commission. What we are seeing is not a Democratic party making mistakes but one that has a corporatist agenda and is going for broke to see it enacted.
right, the republicans, for various reasons dont honestly want the law repealed. the most obvious reason is that big pharma and the insurance industry are thier natural allies and THEY actually wrote the bill. if the republicans attempt to repeal any of it at all, i think it would be the subsidies, just on GP. gutting social spending to cut taxes is their mission priority #1
I appreciate the idea, but I’m pretty sure you’re over-estimating the ability of a congressman to understand something like a flowchart. Maybe if it’s finger-painted…
Another smile, thanks Pups.
There’s SO much to be pissed about, it’s GOOD to smile now and again.
*G*
Margaret, hang in there ma’am. The worm WILL turn.
I’m getting employment hits I’ve not had for two years.
Don’t know if it was cuz I retooled my resume, emp history and references, or just the local job climate.
Hope abounds here, though. May it do so for you, also.
Lessorevilism is what brought us here. Your natural aversion to doing it again is trying to tell you something. Please stop voting for evil. We have enough of it.
I sure wish being right would mean something to the party’s “elites” … besides their castigation … but then again they wouldn’t be the “elites” any more and their all-important corporate sponsors would be upset.
dem’s corporate health care bill = dem’s nafta = dem’s waterloo in the midterms
It’s primarily rahm’s and obama’s doing … probably purposefully, it makes the kabuki theatre easier to direct.
Z
Spot on.
An overwhelming number of readers at firedoglake have proven themselves to be among the best-informed readers (and commenters) on the planet. The primary bloggers, like Jane here, lead the way, thanks to their intelligence and the happy accident of finding smart and intelligent ‘researchers’ and sources – probably all day long and well into the night.
I wonder, though, if being so well-informed in no small way leads to an illusion of empowerment: that is, knowing well the problems and the issues, and also having a reasonable grasp of the kinds of responses and actions that would solve or resolve most of those problems and issues, ought to translate into success.
And so, the consequence seems to be frustration, anger, and loss of faith.
(I wish I could be more helpful than being merely descriptive and hopefully very wrong. Note to Jane: you mean ‘navel’, not “naval’ – that’s the second time in a week or so you’ve homophoned wrong.)
Public sours on health care reform as midterms loom
But the important thing is that the Health Insurance Industry and the Hospital Industrial Complex loves them some HCR.
That is, afterall, Bush III’s constituency.
What’s your solution? Throwing up your hands and quitting? Or just more pointless griping about how much they all suck?
Margaret says, to paraphrase, thank you sir, may I have another?
I guess the “illusion of empowerment” may have come from the democratic system of government we live in rather than knowledge of the issues.
Or maybe I’m totally missing your point. (Better bet)
OK you seemed to have watched this closer than I. She just seemed pretty weak to me all the way through from my vantage point.
GREAT POST!
I agree with you, Margaret. I’m in CA, and while I do have some reservations about Brown, I’m sure as hell not going to throw my vote away on someone who can’t possibly win, especially given that Whitman (and her $150 million of personal cash, plus whatever else she can raise) is the alternative. If she wins, Californians will look back fondly on the Arnold years.
Heh, gotta play devil’s advocate with that.
Definition of crazy is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
So, do we let it decay, die, erode, and collapse? Help it along by voting AGAINST Dem’s?
And pick up the pieces in 5 years after it’s all crashed down?
Or, do we continue the same behavior knowing full well, the house of empty cards is crashing all around us anyway, no matter WHAT we vote for in ’10 and ’12?
And make NO mistake, as Hugh and many others have suggested, a big crash is inevitable, because this gap of income inequality is unsustainable. History proves it.
I’m ALMOST convinced, it’s time to give the crash a boot and enable the quickening of it all.
So it goes from bad to worse to much worse. Where does it end jake?
I agree that Obama picked Rahm on purpose. And I also agree with the sentiment expressed in various ways on this thread that Obama is a two-faced liar.
My only point is that Dems got creamed in 1994 in no small part due to Rahm’s arrogant and duplicitous behvior in the Clinton administration and history is about to repeat itself.
If Obama was as delusional as suggested by all the Team-of-Rivals Lincoln-redux b.s., then he was planning on having himself a historic presidency. I think he will, but it will be remembered as an epic failure rather than success. Obama’s epic failures are entirely due to his choice of advisors and his stunning lack of understanding that the public will bend only so far before they snap back and hit you hard for your betrayals.
So yes, Obama’s failures were intentional and built on the shoddy foundation of a twisted world-view so out of whack with reality that he and his team imagined that they could betray every single Democratic constituency and get away with it. That is the failure I was talking about.
Coakley wasn’t the greatest but anyone should have been able to hold the Kennedy seat with a good prez behind them. I’m furious with Obama for lots of things but losing Ted’s seat is number one.
The Democrats are losing because they prefer taking action and then convincing themselves that it worked, and dismissing their critics, to using level-headed analysis and reasoning to learn from mistakes. You can’t learn from your mistakes if you refuse to admit you ever make any.
Not that it really matters, since the Citizens United ruling simply means that the Democrats may never ever win again anyway. It’s no longer a measure of accomplishment, it’s merely a measure of how much corporations are willing to spend in order to ensure a Republican win. And since they have all this cash they’re holding on to, that’s an easy decision for them.
It is one thing to vote for the lesser of two evils if I can expect to receive half or even a quarter loaf instead of the whole loaf. But now we are in a place where one party promises to take the whole loaf and the other party only wants to take half a loaf away.
Explain why I should vote or work for either of them.
Bingo.
And yeah, aside from my previe comments, I concur.
Jobs, erosion of income, standard of living. Add HCR Failure.
Class war, it transcends all issues because it attacks all issues on all fronts.
Total war.
I’m in the same place. Battles like this have to be fought in the streets. The other side is out there now. We are hunkered down writing messages to each other about how “bad” our party is.
There are some here that want to send the Democrats a message that they can’t count on our support if they don’t deliver. This includes me.
There are some here that also want to do that, but don’t want live in a world where the Republican Party is anywhere near the keys to the car anymore.
I think well-intentioned folks could disagree on the specific one of those they choose to adhere too and completely understand the other.
If we berate and beat each other over the heads for the next nine weeks (and I know I’m guilty, this is my last post on the subject) then it’s not going to be very much fun, and we’re certainly not going to accomplish anything.
Please, if you disagree with which of those two are the right answer, can you do so while remembering that the person you’re disagreeing with is almost certainly in full agreement with on the issues?? We all want to get to the same place, we’re in disagreement on how to get there. The right wingers want nothing whatsoever to do with the place we want to get to, and want to go to an entirely different place.
Please, advocate, as you all do so well. But can we all try and do so in a “kinder and gentler way” for the next 9 weeks??
Sorry, but I had to ask. Obviously I think I already know the answer. I love ALL of you pups. The ones of you that are going to march out and vote for Democrats, even the same Democrats that voted wrong on health care, I disagree but understand, and STILL love you. You’re all such good folks. I hope the next 9 weeks doesn’t ruin such a great place. Best place on the tubes, IMO.
Also, if the Republicans aren’t routed and destroyed – never mind the Democrats merely keeping a slim majority or losing a few seats – then it will become a proof of concept that their obstinate and contrarian strategy was successful.
The 2010 election will be a referendum on how to shut down or open up federal governance. The mean and vindictive Republicans in Congress have waged a slash and burn campaign since 2009. Kick them out and destroy their strategy. Their coat-tailers (Gingrich, Palin, and the like) will be left threadbare and shaggy.
It’s not a lesser-of-two-evils. It’s destroying a group of radical miscreants who want to ruin forever the democratic gains that have been made in the last 100 years. They can do it if they aren’t removed or heavily out-numbered.
There are many other problems with a bill this large and this complex. A simple one is the requirement that all businesses keep records and create 1099 for any cumulative purchases over $600 for a single entity. While our side may not see that as intrusive, it causes extra expense for the accounting systems, preparation of the documents and the like. Any truly small business probably will find this to be a significant imposition.
While that may not be a show-stopper, it reflects the problems that administration has. It is like death by a thousands msall cuts.
It is foolish of us to ignore the apparent feelings of the populace. The vote in MO to rescind the program is evidence that we are whistlinh past the graveyard if we ignore the revolt that appears to be brewing.
This website is absolutely INFESTED with doomcryers calling me all sorts of names for saying that I’m going to vote in November but not one single one of them has a solution. It all boils down to me just throwing up my hands and quitting. I guess I’m supposed to take the easy way out and log on day after day so I can ineffectually whine and moan about how horrible things are and how there’s no hope and boohoo, why don’t they treat us better.
IF YOU DON’T HAVE A SOLUTION OR AT LEAST SOME POSSIBILITIES TO DISCUSS OUTSIDE YOUR INCESSANT WHINING, WHY DON’T YOU [shut-up] ALREADY? I’m sure there are plenty of survivalist websites that would love to have your input. You’re not helping here.
I thoght Phred’s analysis was pretty much a general consensus amongst proggy’s.
Am I wrong about that?
Coakley lost due to floppin on the choice issue.
Margaret, I will have them pile on me. Also.
It sucks, but we have to vote. My congressman is good and I want him back in DC. He is WAY better than the R who runs against him now. I will be knocking on doors for him tomorrow. Do I approve of all of his votes? No. But I am still voting for him.
I don’t think perpetuation of his admin was EVER a consideration for Obama.
Witness his picks! *G*
They have four years to drive it all down out throats and finish the job of destroying the middle class.
And they’re doing one HELL of a job, as we all agree.
And yes, you are RIGHT, Phred, Rahm was a perfect pick for the position he holds.
*G*
You write like there’s a difference between the corporate love the Pub’s show, and the corporate love the Dem’s show.
Huh. Really?
Call her lackluster if you want, but I recall reading that she had a 19 drop in the polls after the primaries were over due to the health insurance fiasco in Washington. Her support of a deeply flawed bill killed off her chances, not some personality quirk.
Shannon O’Brien lost the governor’s race to MitWit because she was hand picked by deeply corrupt pols. John Silber lost to an electorate in no mood to coddle Operation Rescue. Coakley lost because of the health care bill.
They have the nerve to act surprised that their bait-and-switch health care bill is recognized for what it is. The last sentence of the Politico article linked to in the update (above):
is well known. But Obamrahma apparently thought that we would see the individual mandate as peripheral when in fact it is the heart of their plan: covering the uninsured by forcing people who can’t afford insurance to buy it anyway. Well, they didn’t fool anyone and now they can reap the whirlwind.
you know I could buy it, if you can assure me we can pick it all up in 5 years. It could be another generation or maybe never. There are some pretty evil people out there and they are not sitting on the sidelines writing neat messages to each other and congratulating each other on how smart they are. So, I will follow Margaret and vote for the dems and look for a way out in 2 years.
Throwing up your hands and quitting is exactly what I recommend as a first step. Withdraw your support from the system that is destroying you. When you cease to be a partisan Democrat (or Republican) you cease to be part of the problem. If you then want to be part of the solution, I trust you to find a way.
A good start would be reading the current (8/30-9/6) issue of The Nation magazine, with Eric Alterman’s analysis of the issues raised here constantly. The article includes responses from Michael Kazin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Norman Ornstein, and others. It’s probably all online still.
And I thought people might forget about the year plus Dems spent making bad sausage!
Good post, and, if you allow me to point out the obvious, it’s not as if these two issues, the economy and health care, are mutually exclusive. A good health care bill that kicked in immediately would’ve alleviated people’s economic woes. Alas…
Sure I have a solution, don’t vote for the same people who are screwing you over and stop buying into the theatrical production that is the democrats verses republicans when the real story is the corporatists verses the public.
You don’t want to hear it. Sorry I pushed your button. I gave in to temptation after reading your description of anyone wanting to send the above message to the democrats as “petulant.”
And as far as doomcryers, isn’t that what your message is WRT letting the republicans take the house?
Me, too. There’s just nothing else to do. 2012 is a different situation.
I’m just sick of listening to the doom crying and the aspersions being cast upon those of us who plan to vote without offering any alternatives. Alternatives which I would love nothing more than to hear. Alternatives that don’t include stopping voting because “that’ll show ‘em”. Good lord it’s like I’m still in high school or something.
Oh yeah, copy that. And they got the money of the Kochs to help them along.
I’ve never been a partisan, I have no use for them. And my not voting will sure show ‘em who’s boss. The right wingers who DID!
I’ll be honest.
I think it’s way too late for street actions to make any difference in the system at hand.
Other than to enable more and quicker fascist type blowback.
System’s gonna collapse, hard, with or without us in the streets.
I’m gonna try and ride it out and see what comes out on the other side.
I’ve got about 30 years left on this rock (I’d be 87). I have to believe, it will get better for us all in them 30 years at SOME point, whether I do anything or not. System’s gonna collapse. What happens after that, is when I do what I can.
General musings on my part, but I DO find these diaries and comments from Pups dragging me into trying to figger out, just WTF DO I believe in anymore?
What do I stand for? What’s my REAL position on it all?
Thanks FDL and Pups all, as I AM coming to some synthesis of what I think is a base set of . . . being. Coping. Doing.
It’s HARD being challenged like this!!!
*G*
Oh go get em girl!!!
Have you read about the Roman Empire?
Part of Jane Hamsher’s work includes rounding up her forces, getting them all in the same room so they’ll pay attention. Now and again I think she also stampedes them/us. It’s okay, it’s fair.
But let’s remember that Social Security was passed originally excluding most folks at the margins (it was racist and sexist, if you will). It has evolved and changed. Medicare was passed but most doctors wouldn’t go along. Medicare has evolved and changed.
Health care reform you would expect is also very far from where it needs to be. It’s a start. Keep the faith…
I have asked this before, but how far to the right are the democravens going to move before those on the left stop supporting them? If they start goose-stepping down the street in black uniforms will we be told that we must support them because the repugs are slightly worse?
Deregulation of essential utilities and transportation began under Carter with strong support from the Democrats.
Natural gas – 1977
Airlines – 1978
Trucking & Rail – 1980
While the supply-siders came in with fire in their eyes, they had essentially shot their load by the end of the 80s as monetarism as a viable economic theory was discredited as far as reputable economists were concerned. Of course no one ever accused many Republicans of being reputable and I don’t think Larry Kudlow has a reputation for it. The only people pushing tax cuts as a raod to economic growth and job creation are politicians who never gace a shit about economic theory as long as they got elected and re-elected.
And Larue, you’re 100% correct, perpetuation of his administration wasn’t Obama’s main consideration. He was chosen by the boys at the CFR to completely fuck over the remnants of the middle class by destroying Social Security and by putting in place “reforms” that entrench Wall Street and the health insurance industry and Big Pharma.
Do you suppose the tea baggers and the Kochs are doing that too?
Wow. This is getting tiring, Jane. The bill passed. We all wanted a stronger bill (even a strong public option wasn’t enough for me – I wanted single-payer). It didn’t happen.
Do you ever think that the massively negative articles and appearances on C-SPAN, regarding Democrats, is playing a big part in the Democrats huge impending loss in November? I’m starting to wonder if that even matters to FDL anymore.
Couldn’t these articles run AFTER the mid-terms? How does saying, “We told you so” help Democrats get elected now?
you could say the same thing of the conservative right. What have you added to the conversation?
I guess the solution some of us was hoping for was going something like this:
The Dems lose badly in 2010. And probably in 2012 too. The Repugs regain power, and the Dem party, after such a short run with such huge majorities, finally admits it needs to look at itself and ask why. And it restructures, and moves back to the left, back to its roots, as they’ve learned the lesson that moving further and further right eventually doesn’t work.
So, I guess the hope is that we tolerate a few years of R rule in exchange for a new and improved Democratic Party.
If I knew for certain that would be the result, I would gladly help the R’s win, and help Sarah Palin herself become POTUS if that really did result in the Democratic Party moving back to its FDR roots.
But I don’t know. We could send the message loud and clear and D party could move even further right. They could ignore it and feel ok as a minority party. So, there is no DOUBT that this “solution” is a LOT MORE RISKY. The upside is it should generate rewards quicker, within a couple of cycles. The downside is it could generate nothing but R rule.
By continuing what we’ve been doing, voting for the D’s in NOV cause they’re better than the R’s and trying to win progressive seats through the primary process, well, IMO that’s now been tried enough for me to make a judgement on it’s liklihood of success. I doubt that anyone alive today will ever see Democratic majorities any bigger than what we just had, and because no real pressure is brought to bear in November (it’s only brought in the primaries), we’ve seen the result of these Democrats.
I could be wrong, have been most of my life, will be again, and so I’m not going to berate you or anyone else for not liking my ideas. I do assure that if I ever hear a better one, I’ll jump on it immediately. Including grabbing my pitchfork if that’s what’s needed (which is what I’m really coming to the conclusion is the only ultimate fix, unfortunately).
I wish you well Margaret. The very best. I hope that job comes through, or an even better one opens up tomorrow. You’re good people Margaret, any employer worth his salt should know that. I do, and I’ve never even met you.
Peace.
I would add to my #66 that there’s a real shot in my congressional district to knock off a Class-A, Large-Type Rethug Asshole. I ain’t gonna miss that…
I’ll play Polly Anna (a little twisted)
We’re getting another crash, probably 2014 time frame. Economy will muddle through until then, unemployment trough of about 8%, spike in 2014 takes it back to 9%… Peak Oil issues start to get addressed.
Another crash in 2018 or so. And then we restructure the world economy. Score keeping aspect of it becomes secondary. We cut hours for workers worldwide, but make sure living needs are covered. Much of this is enabled by technology that is invented between 2014 and 2018, just not properly deployed. By 2020 worrying about how much money one has, or if one person is doing better than another financially just isn’t an issue any more.
And I haven’t even been smoking anything.
I’m not going to carry water for Corporate Whores because of a letter after their name.
Do you suppose the other side would say that??
WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST OTHER THAN INCESSANTLY WHINING ABOUT WHAT AN IDIOT I AM? You offer nothing, NOTHING but criticism. And since your history is obviously incomplete, maybe I should point out that the goose stepping and black uniforms were enabled by people just like you. People who were so disgusted that they wouldn’t participate.
Speaking as someone who has been without health insurance since 1992 because of a preexisting condition I am offended by your patronizing attitude. The bill was a worse-than-nothing dog, and we aren’t going to shut up about it: we will be forced to live with this failure.
That’s what gets me. The Democrats are waging class war against us same as the Republicans, and yet the response of some is to keep supporting this or that Democrat. If Democrats wanted our votes, they would be running on our issues. They aren’t. We owe no one our vote, just because they are not somebody else. We do not owe our vote to Democrats just because they are not Republicans. As we have seen with Obama and the Democrats voting for the lesser of two evils doesn’t even get us the lesser two evils. Obama has continued all of Bush’s policies. He has expanded many of them and looks like he will be able to slash both Medicare (in the HCR bill) and Social Security (via the Cat Food commission), something even Bush was unable to do.
Agree, again!!
You guys KNOW I’m not a partisan and if you don’t, your comprehension is as shallow as your accusations. Stop disparaging me because you don’t have the guts to make change happen.
Yeah, I get the argument that holding on to power was never the game plan. And there are certainly too many examples of politicians and their staffers cashing out for obscenely lucrative lobbying gigs.
But I do take a different view of the Presidency. Right now, the power of the U.S. President is unparalleled. I think Clinton still hasn’t gotten over losing it as he seems to gravitate toward any spotlight he can find. I suspect if Obama only had one term it would be a crushing blow to his ego.
I do not believe that Obama is intentionally working from a one term game plan. I think his problem is that he is a dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal who played around with populist progressivism as a campaign strategy.
Had he presided as a progressive from deeply held personal beliefs, he would not be in the world of hurt that he is. In any event, there is no escaping the fact that he is a neoliberal, has presided as one, and will almost certainly be rejected by the public for it, just as Bush and his cohorts were ultimately rejected for their neoliberalism.
You bet there’s a difference. They hedge their bets and buy Democrats when Democrats are in power, but given their druthers they’ll back Republicans every time. Democrats can be bought: Republicans are on sale.
Great comment, I’ll only suggest I think we Pups have come so far, for so long (and I’m not an original by ANY means) that we will hold together, regardless of our differences about any one thing, or in the voting booth.
As you say, this is TRULY a unique and special place Mz. Hamsher and FDL/Seminal have built for us to come to.
*bowsdeeplytoall*
No of course not. But the only marching in the street should be us’n.
I’m sorry, but the Dem’s are as evil and miscreant as the Pub’s.
Are you missing that point, cuz the Dem’s are only incrementally slower or nicer about being evil and miscreant in service to their fascist corporate overlords?
Maybe I just don’t understand what your comment intended . . . ?
So Progressives are told to STFU all through the legislative process, and are continuing to be told to STFU now that we are in election season. Basically, the consistent message is to STFU.
Here is our message: A Democrat who simply serves the elite isn’t a Democrat worth voting for.
So, let me see if I’ve got this straight: I shouldn’t support my Rep because he’s a Democrat, is that it? Just because he’s affiliated with the same party as Obama, I should just stay home and pout? Now who is insisting that I act out of the letter after his name? You know who else insists I shouldn’t vote for anybody with a D? Republicans.
But the current bloc of Republicans in Congress have blindly followed their strategy of preventing any helpful or beneficial measures from passing. Their strategy has been to make the citizenry suffer, blame the current administration and Congressional majority, and hope that they’ll win in 2010.
Isn’t that obvious by now?
Point well taken, one I tend to overlook in my negative based assessment.
What was that you were saying about “doomcrying?” Goose stepping?
You’re on a roll. I guess I’ll just second you from here on.
What many Democrats just can’t accept about the opposition to health reform is that there’s a real-life basis for it.
Coinsider my own situation. I’m self employed, and have been buying my own family’s health insurance for more than two decades. Since this reform bill passed, my rates shot up 45% and we must now pay $19,000 a year in premiums and deductibles before coverage kicks in.
Now I recognize that we can’t firmly pin the blame for this on the bill. But two things are worth noting here. First, In 25 years, I have never had a premium increase over 15%. Now we have a 45% increase and according to the LA Times, small businesses in California are facing 76% increases.
Plus, there’s a hidden little feature of the bill that makes small busiess bear unreasonable burdens to pay for it. It requires, beginning in 2012, all small businesses to file 1099s not just for special services purchased but for anything — gas, office supplies, travel, equipment, etc. — that costs over $600 from a single vendor.
Those of you who have ever had to get the coprrect corporate name and tax ID of a vendor and then file a 1099 — in paper, and in triplicate — will know immediately what an obscenely-costly burden this will be.
So here I am, a lifelong left Democrat, faced with the fact that Democrats just protected poor people without insurance (good) and people with pre-existing conditions (good), but left us middle class small business taxpayers to twist slowly, slowly in the wind with not one iota of real protection except for some vague rhetoric about “unreasonable rate rules” which have yet to be written — and most say, won’t be.
So are independents and small business Democrats crazy for thinking this is a junk bill that helps the poor at the expense of the middle class and small business taxpayer?
I mean, this is the concrete, real-world effect of this law.
How ironic that all of my life I’ve been dismissing Republican propaganda about how the Democrats don’t care about small business — the engine of job growth in our economy. And now it turns out to be true!!
At least in this case.
The Democratic Party has no idea how badly they are going to be hurt over this one stupid bill.
The job situation is crumbling all around us. The secopnd wave of foreclosures has begun — this time of people who did NOT buy too much house but who instead have a perfectly affordable mortgagte — if only they had a job.
And in the midst of all this, we’ve got a huge disappointment of a president who insisted — despite clear public opinion polls — on trying to remodel the kitchen of health reform while the whole damn house was on fire.
Dumb.
So much for listening to the masses. We will pay for this mistake big time.
you vote for the best candidate you have in front of you, even (heavens forbid) he/she happens to have a D in front of his name.
While we DESPERATELY needed a public option, at the very least, to have a bill worth fighting for, adding one meant nothing for the mid-terms. This is ALL about the corporate funded Tea Party Terrorists and the right-wing assault on reality. When the public option was long dead, they still said it was a Socialist takeover of America. Reality doesn’t matter, rhetoric does. And the ONLY way to win this fight is to take it to the streets, just like the Tea Party’s doing. The Tea Party Terrorists work just like any terror cell — they get us fighting each other instead of pointing a finger at them.
If we wanted a public option, we should have been in the streets.
We should have been at the town hall meetings.
We should have been active.
What we did was blog and impress one-another with witticisms on MSNBC.
As Gibbs and Rahm have made clear, this administration despises progressives and our goals. After getting literally spit on, their delusional pap of “Let’s work together!” gets the middle finger from me.
Find another sucker. The whole scenario reminds me of an abused spouse who keeps coming back for more. Fuck that.
Had someone asked me about natural gas, airlines and trucking/rail I would have NOT hesitated and shouted, REAGAN at the top of my lungs.
Wow.
Thanks for that hit! So, Carter enabled it, or, he was outgunned in Congress?
Maybe it don’t matter, no mo, huh . . . cuz it IS what it is, today.
Thanks for your reply, too.
Out of curiosity what kinds of social justice have the repugs brought us in the last, oh, say 75 years? And what are they proposing now?
Here’s the list:
Cynical
Fucking Retarded
On Drugs
Petulant
Whining
Solutionless
Now I’m being referred to as an infestation, and told to STFU.
Nope, I’m still not sold. Dems, you’ll have to sweeten the pot a little.
Here’s my voting calculus:
If there’s no discernible difference between the D & R candidates (Tea party R, Blue Dog D fits this) I vote third party to signal my displeasure.
If one candidate (either party) aligns OK on some issues and isn’t totally impossible on others I’ll vote for them, even if it is a lessor of evils choice.
I’m voting in November. Probably will vote for Boxer. (it it were Feinstein and Fiorina I’d vote third party; Feinstein and Campbell in 2000 I voted for Campbell). Voting for Brown. Voting entusiastically for Prop 19, and against the Republican Attorney General candidate (has been horrible on Med MJ in LA county and would be a disaster for the state wrt Med MJ).
Voting third party for Congress. Anna Eshoo lost my vote during the tempest over bio-similars in HCR.
wow…I am super pumped to vote now…thanks.
It’s simple: Democrats are willing and happy to tax and spend and run up deficits. At this hour, the country needs huge investments in making jobs available and putting a lot of people to work. The Democrats have introduced legislation to accomplish some of that, even a lot of it. The current Republican strategy is to make sure none of it passes, that millions of people continue to suffer and blame the Democrats for not being able to help them while they are in the majority and in the WH. I don’t care if the Democrats are whores, pimps, and miscreants as long as they’re willing to spend money to fix the infrastructure, get people working so the labor unions and teacher unions will continue to support them and give them campaign funds. With all respect, Larue, I don’t think anyone should expect sausage making to be kosher.
We should have been in the streets. You bet. You shape the conversation by showing them that you care not by writing blogs. We should still be in the streets if for no reason than to say we want something done about jobs in this country and we want it now.
Agreed.
Wow, that is hurtful. But I have a response, actually one I made a few days ago to the article “Does It Really Matter if the Republicans Take Back the House?” when several other people were warning about the dire consequences if we didn’t support the center-right party most immediately to our right, so I’ll just copy and paste:
To sum up, in my view, it is the collaborationists who will be responsible for fascism in the USA.
“I guess the hope is that we tolerate a few years of R rule in exchange for a new and improved Democratic Party.”
The country wouldn’t last through a few years of R rule. At least not the bottom 98% of people in the country. The disaster before us comes from 6 years of GOP and 8 years of Bush. Citizens United should be all anyone needs to know about the importance of electing Democrats. A few more years of Republicans would lead to how many more Citizens United? Liberal priorities are REALLY messed up if a health care mandate causes them to stay home, rather than Citizens United causing them to get out and vote!
It’s just not about left and right, or either party.
It’s about the entire system and process being corrupted.
Fascism. Class war.
Using that lens to view it all, the whole thing about who to vote for becomes a grain of sand WRT to reality at hand.
*G*
Thanks OFG, Margaret, Blue and all . . . as we disagree with each other, virulently or not, and then CONTINUE to communicate with the keyboard, things come into better focus.
Well, for me, anyways, can’t speak for others. It IS hard, to be torn, and agonized, about it all. But that forces one to come to grips with your core. Strips away all else. What’s your core.
Good stuff. I’ve been avoiding being stripped nekkid (bad visuals, I know) for a while now.
*G*
I’ll just come over and stand with you if ya don’t mind.
you nailed it. Note for next time around. Get out there. do not let the assholes take over the town halls and the streets and let Beck take over DC. Never, ever let that happen again.
continuation of the Clinton Presidency???/
Obama hired many that once worked for Bill, but Bill made the decisions – now Obama makes the decisions – and the decisions direction on health care and regulation are quite different.
Perhaps your Clinton hate sustains you, but it does not help the analysis.
Wow, nice look forward! Well done, nicely presented, too.
I’ll say BIG crash comes before ’14. We don’t muddle thru.
But big changes follow, by ’20.
What the heck, SOMEthing’s gonna happen, it’s the waiting that’s really killing me.
So, why wait any more?
Here’s to ME, hedonism, and enjoying every sammich!
*G*
Honey’s first day of vacation today. We’re out of merlot. Might be time to hit the store.
*G*
Carter was embroiled with double-digit inflation and an unprecedented energy panic. Cutting government spending and letting the private sector try to right the ship of state seemed like a fairly harmless experiment at the time. But the sense of panic was genuine and felt by everyone.
enforced demand ”
yes- I agree. The mandate plus the refusal to regulate price under the mandate reveals an economic view that is close to being a serf. Indeed that is the GOP direction post Reagan on all things related to workers.
Doesn’t matter, IMHO, what the ‘other side’ thinks, if they are in the streets, or not.
They will be hit as hard as all of us, as the crash ensues.
HIstory shows that.
Other than a few fat cats at the top, crashes kill all in the empires.
But I appreciate your thought and reply, thanks.
I was at town hall meetings. FDL had tools to find town hall meetings, and was pointing to the tea party disruptiveness at the time.
I’m not dispariging you, but what for instance am I susposed to do? My congressman is a blue dog who voted against HCR, but has voted wrong on most everything else. The Senate race has Lee Fischer (Corporatist against Portman (Crazy). What does voting democrat get me here? Nothing that I can see.
I would give the teabaggers the same advise I gave Margaret. Margaret, the teabaggers and I are in the same boat. If by the “Kochs” you mean the billionaire brothers who fund the tea party, I would advise them to take a long walk on a short pier.
I think you just made Margarets point. Read it again.
Here’s a case to talk about from the PBS national business report.
NBR | Affordable Health Insurance
Although the healthcare reform bill finally passed after a year of intense debate, many of the measures will not go into effect for years, leaving many to wonder what to do now.
http://www.newslook.com/videos/246167-nbr-affordable-health-insurance?autoplay=true
Obama, like any CEO/leader, makes decisions based on the information given to him. Much of the advice he’s getting comes from the Clintonistas in the administration.
I picked 2014 because I think the economy will be managed just well enough to let Obama get re-elected.
The question is “who are the collaborationists?”
Me, by not voting for the party of capitulation?
Or the party of capitulation itself?
Good analysis. The current crop of Republicans are licking their chops at the opportunity to lock down the country and fix bayonets on every street corner. It’s their party platform decoded.
Dammit! Conservatives believe the people can’t be trusted and have to be controlled. Liberals believe just the opposite.
Too many Jane Hamsher types in the liberal ranks.Jane Hamsher credo is you do what I want or it’s fuck you.
Thanks.
I’ll go further and stipulate we the people are in it so deep and are so screwed it doesn’t really matter anymore who we vote for or what they do once elected.
It’s downhill politically, socially, culturally, economically.
Until it collapses, nothing can reverse the existing trends.
Voting is a shiny bauble dangled to keep the masses occupied into thinking they HAVE a choice in the matters at hand.
They don’t. Other than for each individual to think and do what’s best for them and theirs.
I think at this point, I’m content to let it all run its course and hope the outlook on the other side of it all is better.
And I suppose if would have the same affect it does on us.
“we aren’t going to shut up about it: we will be forced to live with this failure.”
Go on and on and on about it. It’s your right. I still don’t see the point in doing so, as the results will be all of us having to live with the nastiest, craziest Tea Party Terrorists running both houses of Congress and making laws FAR WORSE than HCR. But if cutting off your nose to spite your face to teach Democrats a lesson is your way of doing things, more power to ya. But I’m guaranteeing you right now, when things are 1000 times worse than they are now and everything’s deregulated, you’re dying of food poisoning or the very “air” left to breathe and any semblance of a social safety net is gone, we’ll be the ones to say, “Well, we warned you.”
Hmm, perhaps, about Obama.
Overlooks him being groomed and sold to the public by corporate fascists to further their agenda.
Once again, leave the political lens out of it, use the class war lens, and the politics are stripped away for what they are, a distraction to confuse we the people from the reality at hand.
*G*
Yup. Did you see what happened to the Soviet Union? It was so fast you could have missed it.
Not really her kind of argument but it does remind me of the democratic credo, “we’ll do what we and the rest of the political class wants, fuck you.”
It’s hard, real hard, to get that point across. You can get closer by reading Jane Mayer’s account of the brothers Koch in the New Yorker.
If this were 1990 and Clinton was President, I might agree with that at that point in time.
However, since then, I think it’s been quite proven both parties are equally whory.
It’s not politics, it’s class war.
Nice try, though. Thanks for the thought.
*G*
Shouldn’t be surprising that the Democrats are on the other side in the class war. It’s a CLASS WAR and guess what class they belong to by dint of their net worth.
dkline: “Plus, there’s a hidden little feature of the bill that makes small business bear unreasonable burdens to pay for it. It requires, beginning in 2012, all small businesses to file 1099s not just for special services purchased but for anything — gas, office supplies, travel, equipment, etc. — that costs over $600 from a single vendor.”
Here are some details, from the IRS website –
The PPACA provision would apply to businesses of all sizes, charities and other tax-exempt organizations, and government entities. These would include, as reflected in IRS data, 26 million non-farm sole proprietorships, four million S corporations, two million C corporations, three million partnerships, two million farming businesses, one million charities and other tax-exempt organizations, and probably more than 100,000 federal, state, and local government entities.
This new requirement has generated a great deal of concern because of its potential to create administrative burdens for businesses, vendors, and the IRS.
First, vendors will have to furnish, and businesses will have to collect, TINs (Taxpayer ID Numbers). If the vendor is a sole proprietor who uses his or her Social Security number (SSN) as the TIN, there could be identity theft concerns, especially if TINs essentially become public through routine printing on receipts.
If a vendor fails to furnish a correct TIN, the business is required by law to impose back-up withholding at the rate of 28 percent of the purchase price.
Second, businesses will now have to keep records of all purchases sorted by TIN.
Third, businesses will have to produce and transmit information reports, including many not previously required.
“Coakely was a bad candidate” is the Obamabots answer to 800,000 staying home and not voting Dem as they had a few months earlier. They pretend no message was sent.
In Nov 2010 again many will stay home to send a message – and again Obambots will post the there were bad candidates and a bad economy so it does not reflect a base disgusted with bad Obama policy. Heck – Obama is working hard for his medal for throwing the “left” under the bus as he proves how much in the center he is. Besides the Dem’s have more money than the GOP for Nov 2010, so Obama’s policies obviously worked. We will see how long the corporations stay with him when they can get the original pro-corporate and rich folks back in power in 2012. I know I will keep sending a message as the Dem Party disappears as a party the left and non-corporate and non-rich can support. Of course that message sending in 2012 will be viewed as “racist left” because they always have an answer so they can ignore the message.
Well, I disagree.
And this voter, who voted for Carter and Mondale and Dukakis and Clinton and Kerry and Obama and every D Senate and House candidate, will now never, ever, vote D again until they return to the left.
But it is only me, (and a few members of my family), so no worries. Not a tragic loss at all.
I will NOT reward that party for that right wing answer to health care, or the right wing finreg bill, or for the likely turn to the right the SCOTUS has taken.
Not going to reward bad behavior with my vote. I will write in myself, OldFatGuy, or vote for an indie if he/she’s closer to me on the issues.
But I’m not voting for a party that I disagree with their policies. I don’t agree that the PResident can assassinate Americans. I don’t agree that the President can sign a piece of paper declaring any person a non-person and not subject to any rights. I disagree vehemently with this health care bill and it’s mandate. I disagree with ANY and ALL mandates, as the government has no business forcing me to purchase something (and please if anyone wants to respond with the old car insurance non-similarity, do yourself a favor and educate yourself on the difference). I disagree with the piss poor fin reg bill in the very time of need of the best possible fin reg bill. I disagree with not passing EFCA. I disagree with not passing an end to DADT. I disagree with all of these DEMOCRATIC STANCES and more. Therefore, I cannot support the Democrats and any D politician that supported any of them.
I disagree with pretty much everything the Republican Party offers too.
So, there’s no party for me. That’s ok, that doesn’t mean I have to give my vote to one of the party’s that doesn’t represent me. I can do with my vote what I wish, and I will. I will vote for progressive D’s in primaries and in generals when they’re there. I will vote for progressive indies. I will even vote for a progressive R if one exists.
I urge all others to vote based on what they support to. It’s what’s supposed to happen in a democracy.
Thanks for that sharing, what a story, and perfectly illustrative of why we’re fucked, we the people, the middle class, etc.
Wow, great detail of how it all works, this class war.
I honestly have no quibble with that, depending on how that ‘best’ is defined.
Brown v Whitman? I gotta go w/ Brown, no doubt.
But I want Boxer, Pelosi, Feinstein and Rep. Matsui to feel the heat.
And I guess, I don’t care if they lose.
They’ve done little for me lately.
I’ll look state wide and county wide to make a difference in my votes, if I can.
But again, the politics are a ruse, we are the rubes.
It’s class war, baby, nothing less than total class war.
That lens reshapes everything I see. Everything I do.
OK then. So you say the dems are the party of capitulation? What does that make the repugs who you would like to elect? Think they are upstanding citizens voting for “freedom”? Do you support that parties platform? O forgot they don’t have one, you know whatever the Kochs want I guess.
Bingo, I’m almost aligned with every point.
But that’s the political process.
I’ve decided, it’s a minor concern for me anymore.
Decided that, today, in fact, thanks to FDL/Pups.
Heh, let’s see how long I stick to THAT, though!
LOL
AMEN.
The fallacy I see inherent to all these “hang in there with the Dems” comments is that somehow they would be a better better if only *we* were better voters, or gave them better ideas, or pressured them more, or something. As though the problem they were lacking in ideas, or were unaware of what needed to be done. They’re not. As for the the “it’s ‘our’ fault for not pushing them more, f&#k that noise. No, it’s not my fault. Millions of people marched against invading Iraq and were ignored by the media and shut out by the people making the decisions. The current Dems from Obama on down are no different. Yell all you want, they’re not listening to you. And no amount of prodding or poking or demonstrating is going to change that.
As far as I’m concerned the only way out of the trap is the one Jane has already identified and been pilloried for (by those very same MOTU) – find alternate candidates and build them into viability. Stop supporting the Democratic Party, stop supporting and rewarding bad behavior from one’s own representatives, tell them the party’s over and put your efforts into creating a Progressive party to take over the Dems in the same way the radical nihilist teabaggers are doing to the GOP.
Everything else is just a lot of hot air. Keep on pushing the same line sold by the same people expecting different results and let me know how that works out. We may fail in our efforts for a few cycles but it’s still better than supporting the corrupted Dem party.
I lived through Reagan, I lived through Bush, and they weren’t 100 times worse than now. In fact, I lived through Nixon too and his policies were far more advanced and humane than this guy’s. I recently have come to see that the democravens are worse in many ways than the repugs because as the titular left party in this country they have cover to do things the repugs couldn’t get away with, e.g. the individual mandate, or to tear up the SS IOUs and make my parents go back to work in their late 60s, something that is coming under this guy. And frankly most of the tea party people have more in common with me than Obamarahma and the gang of patricians ruling as an oligarchy. But go on trying to scare us.
WOW!!!
When did he/she voice support for electing R’s????
Look, you can blame those of us that don’t vote for D’s for R wins all you want and it’s still BULLSHIT. And I can prove it.
If everyone does as I do (vote for 3rd party, me, write-in, whatever except a D) then NO REPUBLICAN will win ANY SEAT anywhere. None.
Therefore, the only way possible is if someone ELSE does some OTHER ACTION. Which, duh, makes it by definition THEIR fault for R’s winning, since it can only result from their acts.
Yer killin me.
This is where we disagree a LOT.
Efforts to support middle class values, employment generation etc are pure illusory, mostly ineffective given 30 MILLION people out of work, and a lack of jobs created.
We coulda had an FDR but we got Hoover.
And the corporations are delighted with it all.
Class war. We are dying, losing, failin, on all counts.
And the Dem’s are part and parcel of the failure and our deaths.
On this, we disagree a lot.
*G*
Down ticket voting for the Dems that appear honest is a fine idea – Coakley was a one time Massachusetts idea – but Nov 2010 will be the first time to send a message in other states – and I suspect that message will be sent under the assumption that a corporate sellout is a corporate sellout – party does not matter.
it is the 2012 Presidential vote that I am sitting out – Obama is pushing further right than most of the GOP alternatives would go – I don’t see a choice to be made.
I’m not the resident icons Margaret and SouthernDragon are, just a drive by commenter, but I’m with you FWIW. Rewarding bad behavior encourages it and only serves to promote abuse.
I meant “bad” as lackluster. Sorry about that. Messaging is one of the things we are talking about here. Should you just not vote to send a message or do you get really bad assholes to represent you by doing that. Not a good idea for Ms and not a good idea now. I think you vote for the best candidate. You do not sit home on your hands, not unless you really view the world as upside down. Maybe you do. I cannot imagine having the tea party run this country.
The Dem’s are all FOR Citizen’s United!
What part of that don’t you get?
It’s a class war, rich v the rest of us.
All dems and all pubs are the rich.
End of story.
Maybe (or in fact) since Reagan, a generation of Americans looked the other way at so-called ‘Third World debt’ (imposed by the IMF and the World Bank), at slavery and sweat shops, at outsourcing. Drip by drip. You want a picture of America’s self-image during the Great Prosperity? *Doing a Misterogers impression* Do you know how to spell SUV?
It’s like Hemingway’s description of a person going broke: Gradually and then suddenly.
Staying home on election day isn’t exactly an isolated phenomenon. In 2008 77 million people, or 37% of the electorate, did, the lowest percentage since 1960.
Platform? Are you kidding? The democratic platform has a trapdoor in case you haven’t noticed.
?!?!?!?
How so?
Both are working for the corporations.
What’s the dif? Clinton (Bill) really wanted corporate care, it was Hilary promoting a kinder, gentler version of care, she wasn’t promoting single payer, insurance reform, or Universal Care as we know it in other countries.
As to de regulation, Clinton was king! As is Obama!
My apologies Margaret. It was the following that caused me to assume that you are a partisan Democrat.
“It is going to be the hardest thing for me to drag myself into a polling place and once again cast votes for the lesser of evils”.
My bad. I have long equated lessorevilism with Democratic partisans. Now I see that (of course) others might be afflicted with it as well.
Sorry all. Stuck around longer than I should have.
Gotta go.
Hope everyone has a pleasant day.
When it comes down to brass tacks we will, each of us, decide for ourselves how we vote.
I don’t think much of those who wait for the St Pete Times, for example, to publish its recommendations a week before an election then vote accordingly. I also don’t think much of those of tell me how I should or should not vote. I’ll make that decision for myself, thank you very much.
That’s one of their favorite misdirections – oh, you don’t like what the Dems are doing??? Then you must prefer giving aid and comfort to President Sarah Palin!!! Boogedy boogedy boo!!!
Like you, I’m done. Been voting for lackluster Dems for decades and for my trouble been told by the current crowd to go suck eggs (the contaminated ones). They made a clear decision to turn away from voters in favor of corporate $$$ and we all will see how well that works for them this year. They’re already setting up (as are the tribal loyalists here and elsewhere) to point their dirty little fingers in our direction when the whole proceeding heads south. They have always hated the people who correctly told them up front what they were doing was bound to fail and then were proved right. They’re not going to change.
There are I suppose still principled positions one could find to keep supporting a corrupt system. But none of the arguments I’ve seen yet are anything more than frightened mewls from people still too afraid to face the truth about the party they’re trying to convince others to support.
Take care, I liked your contributions.
“this voter, who voted for Carter and Mondale and Dukakis and Clinton and Kerry and Obama and every D Senate and House candidate, will now never, ever, vote D again until they return to the left.”
So Clinton ditches health care COMPLETELY and instead does one of the most damaging things in the history of this country by campaigning for and signing NAFTA into law and you vote for him again, anyway? But Obama passes a weak form of health care reform, that still does many good things, like allowing college aged kids to stay on parents health care, stopping insurance companies from refusing those with pre-existing conditions and you’ve given up? Really?!? Bill Clinton was SO far to the Right of Obama it’s embarrassing. If you had no trouble re-electing Clinton, you should be honored to do the same for Obama.
I’m not a fan of Clinton or Obama. I actually wrote in Nader in ’96 after the disaster that was Clinton’s first term. But again, Obama is a more progressive candidate than Clinton. He has done more good in his first 18 or 19 months than Clinton did in his entire 8 years.
Margaret,
I’m planning to vote (not stay home), but I sure as hell am not going to vote for either evil or lesser evil. I’m going to vote 3rd party. Does this mean I’m whining and not offering a solution? I don’t think so. It means I’m making clear my dissatisfaction (such a woefully understated name for how I feel) to both parties in a way that can be counted.
Do you feel that the only solutions are those which involve voting for Democrats? I understand the argument for voting for lesser evil, but the slide to the right never stops, so at best all you are doing is slowing it. I don’t think that’s a solution, either.
Yes, it meant so much having Obama overseeing BP’s drilling in the Gulf and the subsequent blowout.
Wow, bold!
*G*
Interesting, too.
I’m with you OFG : ) Nice comment at 175, too.
I find having done with both major parties is freeing. I get to look elsewhere and if there is no one on the ballot I like, I write in someone that I do like. Voting is once again a cheerful experience without the irritation and teeth grinding involved in the 2-party hostage experience ; )
I might be more disillusioned than you, more anarchistic also, but I’m not comfortable recycling the new populist rhetorical fuzz. It’s good to thrash around here. A little box and brief comment, or 200 comments, make a very complicated situation appear manageable. I don’t trust any politician, but I’ll do business with them because there isn’t any alternative. I don’t expect the Constitution to be amended soon to make any of us happy.
Big Brother hid that 1099 thing in there so the government will know exactly when where and how you spend your money.
The issue of not voting for a lessor evil D really only comes into play when the district is competitive.
If the D is likely to win by 15 points (Eshoo comes to mind, Pelosi too) there’s no problem at all with not voting or voting 3rd party. Many of the competitive seats are held by Blue Dogs or other conservadems. Personally I don’t see a big problem with not voting or voting third party in those races either…
Losing 30 seats in the House, especially Blue Dog seats won’t make much difference. Party count would be 225 D, 210 R, we wouldn’t get the circus investigations the Republicans are promising.
Losing 43 seats would mean we get circuses, government shutdowns, etc. That’s not something I want as it would mean more suffering and further erosion of most American’s standard of living.
“frankly most of the tea party people have more in common with me than Obamarahma”
Then you’re not a progressive.
And I didn’t say things were 100 times worse under Reagan or Nixon. I said they WILL be 100 times worse than they are now once we’ve elected the Tea Party Terrorists into the majority. And right now things are quite a bit worse than they were under Clinton. But if you’re blaming Obama for that, you’re literally overlooking the missing link.
I fear the electronic voting machines the most. The rigged polls will tell us that the repugs are going to win and the machines will make sure they do.
and, of course, the dems waited to see what the supremes would do with Citizens United and acted accordingly.
A strategic option, i.e. our own party would be a better option, one staffed with people committed to specific policies. Run in districts that we can we, i.e. both coasts and cities like Denver/ Boulder. Probably too late this cycle but not too late for 2012.
(Is your handle related to the county with the Taj Mahal by any chance?)
I don’t think we disagree on any of that.
But let me get you back to “equally whory”.
Would you agree?
Somewhat agree?
Disagree?
Somewhat disagree?
Don’t know?
*G*
I gotta go, honey’s wavin cash and demanding merlot, and who am I to deny her.
Best to all, really enjoyed this one today, thanks to Mz. Hamsher/FDL/Seminal once again.
It’s really forced me to dig down deep and figger out some things that were mullin and messin me up.
*G*
We’ll see how long my ‘clarity’ lasts . . . again, best to all.
Great comment, wmd1961. Thanks for posting!
Wow, so it was yours that was the other write-in he got! I’ve been wondering all these years.
OFG wields the hammer with precision and force and hits the nail (despite admitting error) on the head every time.
I am a working class Marxist. And Obama is less progressive than Nixon. Or Rockefeller. Or Eisenhower. Or Hoover.
One last one.
I’m 57, and have been disillusioned since Camelot fell in ’63. Yes, as a fifth grader.
And as for anarchy, why, my sitting it all out till it’s done is about as anarchistic as I can think of.
Short of fermenting the chaos deliberately, which I won’t. Not now.
Long ago, but not now. Anything I could contribute now would be meaningless for the big picture.
And now, off to merlot we go.
*G*
The other side is not out in the street. The other side is safe and secure in their penthouses and mansions.
Interesting similarity, wall street’s hurtin because the ‘dumb money’ decided not to hold the bag.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/confirming-dumb-moneys-resilience-wall-street-sirens
Heh, well you do bring up another aspect of the poll that we didn’t really expect — that a public option made the health care bill MORE popular, even among Republicans, in swing districts.
I don’t want to re-ignite that one, but a public option would have been both better policy and better politics. I doubt that even then it would have come close to addressing the underlying problem, but the collateral damage would not have been quite so bad.
Soon we will have universal no health care.
If I were voting in my old district in Indiana (Hill vs Sodrel) I’d vote third party. Even though Hill could possibly win, he has earned my active disapproval via bad communications with me as a constituent (and GoTV volunteer in 2006) and bad votes on issues.
And honestly Sodrel isn’t likely to vote much worse than Hill. Getting Hill out means there’s a chance that 2012 could produce a candidate worth voting for. Especially when you consider new district maps in 2012.
Redistricting is a sleeper issue. State legislative races in many states are going to be important to the make up of the federal House through 2022… and working on state legislative campaigns is likely one of the best places to seek influence on redistricting.
It’s also a place where smaller amounts of time and money can have an impact.
God, what a nightmare this is going to be.
The people who proposed adding this to health reform to “help pay for it” have no idea what it’s like to run a small business.
Aside from the fact that they should have gone after the drug companies rather than small business. But deals had to be made, I guess, at our expense.
For 2012? I’m hoping against hope that Obama get primaried. (Is that even possible – for a political party to primary a standing president because he is bound to lose?)
Absolutely correct.
If you don’t want to re-ignite it, at least keep it on the burner, okay?
Carter had primary opposition from Teddy Kennedy in 1980.
Americans for Prosperity also created an offshoot, Patients United Now, which organized what Phillips has estimated to be more than three hundred rallies against health-care reform. At one rally, an effigy of a Democratic congressman was hung; at another, protesters unfurled a banner depicting corpses from Dachau. The group also helped organize the “Kill the Bill” protests outside the Capitol, in March, where Democratic supporters of health-care reform alleged that they were spat on and cursed at. Phillips was a featured speaker.
Americans for Prosperity has held at least eighty events targeting cap-and-trade legislation, which is aimed at making industries pay for the air pollution that they create. Speakers for the group claimed, with exaggeration, that even back-yard barbecues and kitchen stoves would be taxed. The group was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, and waged a crusade against international climate talks. Casting his group as a champion of ordinary workers who would be hurt by environmentalists, Phillips went to Copenhagen last year and staged a protest outside the United Nations conference on climate change, declaring, “We’re a grassroots organization. . . . I think it’s unfortunate when wealthy children of wealthy families . . . want to send unemployment rates in the United States up to twenty per cent.”
Grover Norquist, who holds a weekly meeting for conservative leaders in Washington, including representatives from Americans for Prosperity, told me that last summer’s raucous rallies were pivotal in undermining Obama’s agenda. The Republican leadership in Congress, he said, “couldn’t have done it without August, when people went out on the streets. It discouraged deal-makers”—Republicans who might otherwise have worked constructively with Obama. Moreover, the appearance of growing public opposition to Obama affected corporate donors on K Street. “K Street is a three-billion-dollar weathervane,” Norquist said. “When Obama was strong, the Chamber of Commerce said, ‘We can work with the Obama Administration.’ But that changed when thousands of people went into the street and ‘terrorized’ congressmen. August is what changed it. Now that Obama is weak, people are getting tough.”
As the first anniversary of Obama’s election approached, David Koch came to the Washington area to attend a triumphant Americans for Prosperity gathering. Obama’s poll numbers were falling fast. Not a single Republican senator was working with the Administration on health care, or much else. Pundits were writing about Obama’s political ineptitude, and Tea Party groups were accusing the President of initiating “a government takeover.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all#ixzz0yDjrA6qR
Yeah, Jane, you’re right. It musta been that health care bill. That and that Grover Norquist guy. Jane Mayer documented a few of his friends. Did you know about his friends?
That curse won’t go away until the rigging winners indict themselves.
A cheap way to help eliminate that curse is to offer as an alternative to the private voting another table where you can vote in public, like on a slate board, and a video digital recorder makes a record of your vote. Worried about the recording being hacked? A precinct video person records the same thing. The whole world is watching…
Ted Kennedy almost beat Carter in 1980 (edit: whoops, didn’t see wmd1961′s post.).
I cannot believe I forgot that. Thank you for the reminder! At my age, some days you feel like your memory has leaked out all over the floor.
It’s funny, I spent my youth organizing workers, tenants, and other oppressed people. The poor vs. the rich, that’s how I saw things.
Now, all these many years later, it turns out that the only force that keeps all of us economically alive is small business — specifically startups. New research shows that literally 100% of net new job growth since 1977 has come from small startups.
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/u-s-job-growth-driven-entirely-by-startups.aspx
Like the report says, “When it comes to U.S. job growth, startups aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.”
And neither the Democrats or the GOP has any clue about this. The policies of both parties are crushing startups.
And this health reform plan is yet another nail crificying small business.
Drew Westen (as usual) is right:
Unfortunately the same graph that shows those of us that are disillusioned with Team Obama’s financial and health reforms has a different message for the party of NO. The noes probably think they got here by guile and will almost certainly ramp up their efforts win or lose in November. The Ds that were led to the corporate water trough will see their losses as part of being a good soldier in an inevitably declining economy. Team Obama will see it has proof that they never should have wrapped so many liberal sounding words around their pro-corporate (read pro-business) agenda. As for this leading Team Obama back to their core constituency – their core works in Wall Street and various financial centers around the world and they have no loyalty. They will simply see themselves as victims of the economy and blame the lefties for forcing them to muddy their message of support for corporations as the only important thing that must be protected.
As for the various comments putting Carter in the same boat with Obama, I’m guessing that they were watching a different Presidency than the one I watched when Carter was in office. Businesses of the time that I remember hated all of the do-gooder restrictions of the time – from cars to the EPA – and the bond market, with the help of the Fed, made the message through the economy ring loud and clear. Put that against the trillions that the new corporate dole has transferred in the last few years to the TBTF and the only obvious connection is the D.
BTW, on the 1099 reporting BS in HCR… Some in Congress are trying to roll that back.
Dan Lundgren is a somewhat odious politician (my view on him was formed by his opposition to Prop 215), but he’s doing something worthwhile on 1099s and your congress person should be urged to work on passing HR5141 or similar legislation.
Well, vote or don’t. There are strong incentives to vote in CA. I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but here it’s Brown or eMeg, and that’s a no-brainer. Not to mention the legalization of cannabis.
I suspect there will be a substantial youth vote here which, for a non-presidential cycle, ought to be significant. There will also be a significant C of C inspired turnout for eMeg, so I believe every vote counts.
Overall, I’m with Margaret. The question one could ask oneself might be, had Hitler not won, would the alternative been any better? That’s likely a resounding “YES” so where the choices are stark, it’s better to vote.
On the other hand, when faced with Tweedledum and Tweedledee as one’s choices, not voting does send a message. Voting for a deserving third party candidate might be likewise useful to that end.
Nevertheless, poll numbers do suggest a backlash to the HCR bill. There will be a political price to pay, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the R’s in charge of the House post November.
There is still a lot of dumb money in terms of pensions and such that probably will end up holding the bag. But that is still encouraging. The markets are so rigged if you are not one of the scammers, then you are one of the patsies.
If you’re not running co-located HFT software as a part of your market access, you are just another bag of money getting skimmed each day. Pensions, 401ks, 457s and anyone else that accesses the market through an equity fund are all sheep being shorn. One small patch at a time.
Less dumb money than money trapped by decree in a rigged system.
Great. Last August is when we lost it. Those people really did terrorize our reps and nothing happened after then. If we stay at home and cede the turf to Beck, et al it will only get worse.
Are you suggesting the public didn’t feel there was bait and switch here? Because it certainly felt that way to me. The President refused to even consider a single-payer system because the D’s are FINANCED in part by the same corporations that would be hurt by it. The public option was dismissed for the same reason: It would crush insurance companies. The substitution of a mandate to purchase insurance for either of the other two is what the public perceives as a swindle. And they should, because the final bill is exactly that.
Yes, the Koch brothers and the baby salamander opposed any reform. Hell, the Kochs have financed virtually every disgusting political maneuver benefiting the right over the course of my lifetime. Yet, until the administration turned its collective back on the individual voter to worship at the altar of the Bank of Insurance Companies (In Tort Reform We Trust), there was plenty of public pressure to counter the influence of the right-wing politics of opportunity. Once the President showed his true colors, his support began to evaporate, and influencing the public away from supporting his agenda became trivial after that (and probably a whole lot less expensive – all you need do is stage a rally and a few thousand angry people are more than willing to show up and do your advertising for nothing – thanks, Fox News!).
I believe Jane is correct. It began with HCR.
Do you think anyone outside of progressives reads this site or would be affected by Jane’s analysis? I don’t. I know tons of liberals, and none of them read this site until I mention I write here. We are just the voice in the wilderness, seeing what is there and writing about what we see.
Don’t sell yourself short. Truth is hard to come by, and it’s good to find it. Blaming Obama’s POS performance and the utter gutlessness of congressional dems on people who tell the truth is just an attempt to blame the messenger and shield dems from the repercussions of their cowardice and stupidity. Not worth your time…
Yes I did. But if I have to agree with people about every single point or not work with them at all about the things we do agree on, it leaves an awfully small group to work with.
Let’s start by excluding the people who just make stuff up and accuse people like Glenn Greenwald of taking Koch money without any proof and spread smear campaigns to try and discredit those they don’t like just because they get their noses out of joint and generally display less maturity than the average puppy.
Remind you of anyone?
He just wants to get a shot in at me for working with Grover Norquist to pass Audit the Fed.
Some people would rather see people tortured to death and left in a bloody heap than work with anyone who doesn’t achieve their level of political purity. Which Jonathan Gruber apparently meets, but Glenn Greenwald does not. So Glenn apparently deserves to have a pack of lies spread about him throughout the blogosphere:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/08/30/kurtz/permalink/71e1b9d1511b65b22d3884b4f7f07fc4.html
I’m not quite sure what the logic is. I don’t really think there is any, it’s simply a highly emotional WATB outburst.
Probably a lot of the same people also accused you of too much purity when you opposed the health care bill.
I’ll take $500 under “Hypocrisy” Alex.
Why yes, yes it does Jane.
Hi Mary,
It might be helpful to see if you can push a change in voting machines in your local district to something that’s more safe and verifiable.
http://www.scantegrity.org/
It’s able to be retrofitted to existing optical scan machines, and is based on the methodology underlying this: http://punchscan.org/index.php.html
There are ways to do maintain anonymity, but still ensure the integrity of the election results, while still using the efficiences of modern technology.
It’s actually a very simple cryptographic problem to solve, you’d cover it in an undergrad CS course.
http://punchscan.org/index.php.html
Wow, what a thread!
Work is obviously interfering with my blogging.
It seems to me that the existing optical scanning machines can be reliable since it has a paper trail IF THEY WOULD DO RANDOM AUDITS EVERY ELECTION.
Would you agree, or are they just too easily hacked, or is the problem more in the counting software outside the precincts?
I’ve worked the precincts several times in my county and each time I did I audited the days returns (by hand counting) and they were always either right on the money or off by 1 (which could’ve been my mistake). Certainly close enough that I felt relieved each time.
FWIW, OFA reports over 200,000 doors knocked on and over 168,000 phone calls made last weekend.
Some folks are still willing to work to elect Obama Democrats.
I wasn’t one of them.
The issue is that some of them can be hacked, there’s also the general lack of transparency in the tabulation, they’re also error-prone in a variety of circumstances with less-than-optimal markings.
Adding a layer like Scantegrity provides a fully auditable operation with internal checks, supervisory checks, and end-user checks.
The worst part of the health care reform debate was the sad realization that, with the notable exception of FDL, all of the presumed champions of the public option…everyone from Lynn Woolsey to Raul Grijalva to Dennis Kucinich to Ed Schultz to Rachel Maddow, and countless others…were nothing more than White House puppets in the end.
I’d say that worse still, and including FDL, is the realization that the Public Option was never going to happen, and we let it redefine the whole Healthcare Reform debate away from things that may have had equal likelihood of becoming law, but at the very least would have actually alleviated our massive healthcare crisis.
Instead we were relegated to arguing vehemently for a crappy concept, constructed badly, that co-opted any discussion of real reform.
The Republican leadership in Congress, he said, “couldn’t have done it without August, when people went out on the streets. It discouraged deal-makers”—
If Congress had passed the HCR bill via reconciliation in the first place (which would have meant a Medicare-based plan, instead of a AHIP sellout-based plan), it would have been completed BEFORE Congress went home for August recess.
Clinton signed his first year reconciliation bill on August 10, 1993
Bush signed his first year reconciliation bill on June 7, 2001.
President Obama didn’t use the filibuster-proof reconciliation process at first. He had a really crummy August (see above), got bogged down in the Senate for months and then ended up having to use a reconciliation bill anyway, which he signed March 30, 2010. That was actually the 2009 reconciliation bill (the President ran out of months to waste time in within the year 2009 itself).
For God knows what reason, Congress didn’t authorize a 2010 reconciliation bill, so the Dems need 60 Senate votes to get any tax or spending programs through. Its not like an election’s coming up or anything, so once again, the Washington Generals turn in a surprisingly weak performance.
Considering they made it damn clear the entire time that advocates for making the bill more liberal were going to be castrated, and advocates for making the bill more conservative were going to be covered for, it doesn’t take a deity to figure out the reason.
Does it just make people feel better or something to look past all the glaringly obvious evidence that Democrats do what they do, the way they do it, because they’re effectively exercising their political prerogatives? Is it just nice to be able to say, “Well I’m sure they agreed with me, and they really, really wanted to do the right thing, but gee shucks they were just too danged absent minded to make it happen.”
There should be a name for people that promote this meme. How’s Mayberry Democrats sound?
Instead of listening to the corporate oligarchy, The Democratic party should listen to their Progressive base more often instead of hating us. They wouldn’t have a problem being re-elected.
Hugh, that’s my take also.
I’m voting third-party or write-in. If by some miracle, a Dem who is progressive in action and deed slips through the party machine, I will vote for them. Note that I said “action and deed”.
Heaven’s to betsy Jane, you worked with someone “across the aisle” to achieve a shared policy goal?!?!? How… how… how… bipartisan of you! One would think Obama and his supporters would be pleased ; )
I think that the HCR bill was pivotal in turning independents and progressives against Obama and the Democrats, but it was preconditioned by the cavalier treatment of human rights, the refusal to prosecute war criminality, caving to the military and the security industry, the bankster bailout and the puny stimulus package. Now we have added to this roster of failure the BP oil spill and coverup, the serious build-up and escalation of the Afghanistan War and an ineffectual financial reform bill. Obama blithely told the progressive community to make him change the system. We now know he had no intention of ramrodding significant change. The result is not only a depressed voting block for the Dems, but the actual resignation of many long time Democrats from the Party. I would say it is time o turn the tables and say: Make us vote or you, Obama and Dems, because right now many of us have decided to sit out 2010 or vote for independent candidates.
Lessorevilism, I like that.
Mind if I change that “o” to an “e” and steal it?
Exactly.
Right here: http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/08/30/kurtz/permalink/71e1b9d1511b65b22d3884b4f7f07fc4.html
But see, spreading smears about people he/she/it doesn’t like is apparently very important to ondelette.
I liked your post, good read. Not being a small business owner I never realized that aspect of it.
1. I was talking about the 2010 reconciliation bill (or the lack therof), HCR was passed as part of the 2009 bill. A 2010 bill would have allowed Democrats to cut taxes and/or increase stimulus spending with only 50 Senate votes (plus the VP). That would have saved them a lot of grief this summer and perhaps would have made a difference in November if they’d passed a second stimulus package of sufficient size. That was never in the cards since there wasn’t a budget resolution passed in April to authorize a reconciliation bill.
2. I got your Mayberry reference (that Aunt Bee is a handsome woman), apparently you missed my Washington Generals reference. Some call me a basketball truther, but you need to know this– they’re throwing their games.
The Washington Generals are an American exhibition basketball team, best known for their spectacular losing streak in exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Generals
Good post, OFG.
Well said, JeffCO.
Wow – the many contrasting views of Barack Obama – progressives consider him a corporate sell-out and disappointment to their agenda; conservatives think he’s a socialist left-wing radical, still others (independents?) say he must push back against the perception in corporate America and on Wall Street that he’s promoting an anti-business agenda. It does certainly look like he’s successfully pissed off almost everyone. However, unlike most people on this site, I will be sad to see the Democrats go in November. As I’m listening to our future speaker Boehner lecturing on how badly the Obama administration has done on the war on terror (and just about everything else), I can only imagine what’s to come. I know most of you feel the change from D to R makes no difference, but 2 solid years of subpoenas and maybe impeachment proceedings along with the probable dismantlement of a lot more than the individual mandate in the healthcare bill is not something I’m cheering. The Republican alternative may not include an individual mandate, but it also won’t include single payer, medicare for all or a public option. I can’t remember what Jane’s solution was back when she was pushing to kill the bill, but the idea that anything better (or more to progressives’ liking) will be passed down the road seems highly unlikely. I think it’s done as a national issue.
Jimmy Carter was ineffectual but, at least, not a liar like this bastard. As a matter of fact, peruse his “Malaise” speech and see if he wasn’t borderline prophetic.
Gallup has a poll [http://www.gallup.com/poll/142718/gop-unprecedented-lead-generic-ballot.aspx] that reveals the GOP is 10 points ahead of Democrats in the Congressional elections of 2010.
In the popular-vote margins for 2008, Democrats won the Senate by 5.9% and the House by 10.65%. Supposing 10% is the final outcome, that would mean a shift toward the minority Republican party of 15.9% for the Senate and 20.65% for the House.
Current trajectory holds (or grows), House is gone. Democratic to Republican. For the Senate? Political analysts figure Dems hold on with, say, 52. University of Virginia professor and political analyst Larry Sabato pointed out, on his Twitter site, “”House has flipped 5x since WWII: ’46, ’52, ’54, ’94, ’06. Every time, Senate has flipped too. If House flips in ’10…Contrary: 5 is low N.” A follow-up comment added 1948. And this is true.
Democratic base (progressives) are alienated. Democratic moderates are the ones who shift (greater or lesser support, election after election), and they’re not motivated to defend Team Blue. Independents are going Republican. And Republicans are the ones who’ll be turning out the vote.
I believe, once Nov. 2, 2010 comes to pass, Barack Obama will become the third post-World War II president—who won his 2008 election as a party-pickup (Republican to Democratic) and arrived in the White House with same-party control of Congress—to have lost same-party control of Congress after Year 2. It happened in 1954 with Dwight Eisenhower and in 1994 with Bill Clinton. Both, of course, won decisive re-elections.
Maybe much of the first two years of the Obama administration has been this thing I’ve heard called triangulation. Senselessly alienate the base (David Frum, on the “professional left” slip by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, wrote: “More proof of my longtime thesis, Repub pols fear the GOP base; Dem pols hate the Dem base.”); make excessive and unrealistic, time-wasting efforts to get aid from across the aisle, from the party that has been destructive to the country over the past decade (“bipartisanship”); play a charade over the Senate process, of 59/60 Democratic caucus members, in getting a healthcare bill without a mechanism to compete with private insurance (“we don’t have 60 votes”!).
Anyone think this wasn’t by design?
Thats basically it. Just as long as they can strip out the low income subsidies,its nirvana for ins. companies
Just to let everyone know, ProCon.org, a free, nonpartisan, public service website has just launched a new site on the pros and cons of the March 2010 health care reform. Take a look and find out some answers: Is the health care reform good for America? How will this legislation impacts the lives of all Americans?
The site, Health Care Reform ProCon.org (http://healthcarereform.procon.org), presents 34 questions regarding the March 2010 health care reform laws along with responses from over 150 experts including President Barack Obama (pro), former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (con), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (pro), House Majority Leader John Boehner (con), AARP (pro), US Chamber of Commerce (con), New York Times (pro), Wall Street Journal (con), along with many physicians,
economists, government officials, medical organizations, and dozens more.
If you are looking for a concise, easy to understand, and unbiased source of information about the health care reform bill(s) then please take a look at http://healthcarereform.procon.org.