The PO’s creator, Jacob Hacker, also says it could have been passed through reconciliation.

Who’s paying you this week, Mr. Creamer?

Mr. Creamer styles himself as a “strategist” however I know of no strategy that he’s uttered that actually succeeded. Secondly, he’s goes on in the article to say how he hasn’t alwways agreed with the White House yet I know of no such instance in which he’s departed from their “genius”. You know, I think the problem this very stupid White House can’t seem to get is that we really don’t like to be treated as stupid. We know they had the votes and that Obama sold this fignt out before it began. To keep offering these fake excuses to someone who knows better is just insulting. It’s more insulting than the sellout.

What do you get for a whitewash? A dad rat on a string? A sling-shot? A top? Access? Money? Future employment? What?

jim extremely well written, quick, to the point and irrefutable

I love this post, lest we forget the actual account for why there is no public option, it has nothing to do with what could and could not have been accomplished

this president is not only a privateer, he is also a “trickle down” economist, he is a corporatist and he has turned people like myself against the democratic party to the point where I believe they are as bad as the republicans, and in obama’s case, worse then a republican since he masquerades as a democrat and gets constituents believing he somehow has his hands tied

x2. Well put. I feel exactly the same way.

p.s. that would be ‘jon’ not ‘jim’ who wrote this post!
thx jon!

Yes.

Outstanding post Jon.

Yes, the evidence is clear (except, it seems, for those unwilling to see) that the health care act they got was the health care act they WANTED. They being Obama and the Congressional Democrats.

And I still find it amusing when some still try to blame Republicans when not ONE Republican voted for it. You can’t claim any part of the act on the Republicans since it obivously garnered zero R votes. The act is the way it is because that’s what it took to get the Democrats, and ONLY Democrats, to pass it.

Great diary Mr. Walker, n great update on what went down with HCR.

HCAN sucked IMHO, so I’m greatly happy FDL divested themselves of that mess.

N Perris@5, right on. Only, it’s Jon, not Jim . . . *G*

here at work the discussion has already begun amongst democrats, thought to be the impossible a few months ago

right now just about every single person, both democrat and republican agree, obama is worse then bush.

how on earth that could be possible defies physics but it is indeed true, obama has managed passing corporate and trickle down agenda that no republican could have ever passed

Don’t forget Tom Daschle’s saying Obama dealt away the PO:

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/10/05/daschle-interview/

This is a really well written post. Best part:

In the end, it was fully proven without a doubt that the filibuster wasn’t ever a real obstacle to the public option. The Affordable Care Act was finished with a reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered and could have included a deficit-reducing public option.

More like this please.

yes should be included

x2

The whitewashing has just begun.

Final segment on democracynow this morning on Messina and his fundraising from big donors & how he tried to enforce order on the dfhs. Nothing new for most folks here, and a little too whiny & nostalgic on Berman’s (reporter guest) part for the good-old-days of the 08 campaign, but a good refresher.

On edit: Not whitewashing; reality creation.

THANK YOU JON!!!!!!!!!! Please, keep working to keep the record straight. Obama’s team is hoping if they keep repeating this lie, by 2012 voters will believe that Obama was fighting for strong HCR. The truth is, Obama sold out the great majority of Americans, not just Democrats, on HCR.

[The public option's] failure to make it into the law was the result of President Obama actively fighting hard against it, while lying about this support.

Yup. Obama actively screwed over the American people, lied about it, and continues to lie about it.

I wonder if Robert Creamer likes his view from the veal pen. Enablers suck.

The bottom line is the HCR bill didn’t come close to making health coverage more accessible, comprehensive, or affordable. It only further embedded the already immoral and failed system. If nothing else Obama is one of the best bullsh*t artists ever to occupy the White House.

It’s a reward to the very bad actors who turned our system into a mockery in the first place.

If I’m not mistaken, it’s mostly the plan put forward by Republicans in the 1990s. In the kabuki, Republicans got to shout about how much they hate it, while Obama worked hard to make it law in the name of “reform.”

BTW, checked out some of the consultant’s submission for VT single-payer plan, Hsiao or sumptin is his name. Not only is the cost control kabuki, as I expected, I also came across a ref to his having used the infamous Gruber model.

A boomerang.

If we are going to have a real debate about the future of progressive actions we first need to put an end to what has become a persistent attempt to totally re-write the history of recent fights.

Persistent lies like this are no “better” that GW Bush’s big whopper about purported WMD in Iraq.

In both cases, human lives are at stake and have been lost due to 2 Presidents & their enablers LYING big-time to the US public. And I’m not kidding. Can you, in all seriousness, argue with me that human lives have NOT been lost due to HCR not really in one serious way “reforming” access to health care??? I call it: death by spreadsheet. It’s only gotten worse, not better.

Here’s a quote from the HuffPost link provided above by Jon that’s utter nonsense:

Messina believes that you have to put those [progressive] values into practice — that you have to convert them into public policy. Messina is passionate about winning.

Uh, Creamer, in the very same post, you’re saying two different things. On the one hand, you say you’re “not sure we could have gotten a Public Option no matter what the president did or did not do,” while on the other hand you’re also essentially arguing that a calculation was made that goes something like this:

Obama and people like Messina made a calcuation that it was better politically not to fight for something worth fighting for while claiming that the loss was really a victory than it would have been to fight, work hard to win something worth winning, and then show the American people some results.

You’re assertions that Messina believes in putting his “values into practice,” wants to “convert [his values] into public policy,” and is “passionate about winning” is laughable bullshit in light of the result of the HCR battle.

What?! A veal pen regular at ALPO shilling for Obummer and the WH? Say it ain’t so!

OK. So who first outlouded ‘reality creation?’ Was it Wolfowitz? Feith? I forget. It would be a nice master’s thesis in history of thought to write a history of that slogan in the U.S., and then tie it into other historic empires. I’d be particularly interested in what’s the farthest it’s ever been pushed, its record of success/failure, and any other color from the past that can be used to illuminate the dismal current state of affairs in the U.S.

Unattributed in the original article here, but said to be Rove.

It’s from a NYT magazine article, I believe … it was Rove who said it I think, or Fleischer, maybe. That’s the best I can ever seem to remembr about the quote.

Every once in a while, someone asks about it and someone comes up with the reference. I expect you’ll get an answer from some ‘pup with a good memory!

HA! Just as I said! Kelly’s got the memory!

Come to think of it, why would anyone who thinks Messina is a true champion of progressive values believe that he would be the perfect choice to be Obama’s reelection campaign manager.

Wouldn’t putting a progressive in charge of the reelection campaign of this corporatist sellout pos president be nothing more than a cynical effort to spin Obama’s shitty and totally anti-progresive record into something that it isn’t?

So, is Creamer saying that he’s in favor of efforts to deceive the American people once again into believing that Obama’s something that he’s not?

While we’re at it, never forget that Messina was O’s transition guy; he nominally hired Rahm. Being Baucus’s ex-staffer he could help Baucus keep the interminable hearings going while O bargained it all away.

Hey, sometimes I’m willin to accept urban myths if they fit my experiences, knowledge, and history’s accountability.

But then, I can be had for a good argument and some good Irish Whiskey.

Thanks Kelly.

Don’t ya know this is the greatest health care system in the world!!! For the insurance corporations.

“You’re assertions that Messina believes in putting his “values into practice,” wants to “convert [his values] into public policy,” and is “passionate about winning” is laughable bullshit in light of the result of the HCR battle.”

Well, he did put his “values into practice,” and converted them into public policy, and is passionately winning. It’s just that he and us have very different values and public policy desires. He is winning because he is in position to set up those $38,000+/person dinners that so many of us will be able to attend. There we will be able to buy obama back to play more eleventy dimensional chess as he does so well.

>>[T]his president is not only a privateer, he is also a “trickle down” economist, he is a corporatist …<<

Bravo perris! And bravo Jon for renewing the neuronal circuits of memory about the truth of what happened in the PO shell game. We were Gaslighted by Obama on the PO. The truth disappeared in a shell game after the PO disappeared in Obama's sellout to hospitals nearly 8 months before the bill passed, yet nobody realized it (broadly) until the NYT report which itself made few waves until a HuffPo blogger tried to take the story bigger. In those 8 months Obama traveled the country touting the PO (after he had scuttled it in the backroom tradeoff with industry) and used the corpse of the popular but dead PO to sell the bill as a whole to get public support for its passage. Cunning, calculating and cold.

Two things amaze me: 1) That Obama is such a cold-blooded liar and has a truly dark character (altho had a glimpse in his FISA flip before election), and 2) Why has this story never risen to TV land broadcast level of scandal for a 2-3 day news cycle? One would think it would by perfect fodder for Rethugs to show what a liar and hypocrite Obama is — but not a peep on air. Maybe it's because Rethugs and news corporations (and all corporations) don't want to advertise what a corporatist Obama truly is (never mind the character stuff) because they benefit so much by his sellouts and premature compromises and his disingenuous setups like a corporate-based health insurance system as the only thing that will work while single payer is "politically difficult," handing HCR over to Finance Comm money-pockets Max Baucus who handed it over to his chief of staff, former Wellpoint lobbyist Liz Fowler who wrote much of the bill, then Obama appointed Fowler to oversee HCR as it unfolds. Whoa! That was smooth! Her appointment was chilling. They don't want him to be broadly and publicly exposed as a rank corporate sellout artist. He's a golden goose for the corporate world which finances Rethugs — and many Dems too.

I'm still not sure what a veal pen is exactly but Obama is a Judas goat.

” Progressives like myself believe strongly that the Affordable Care Act would be better if it had included a Public Option. ”

Ya know it won’t surprise me if that statement above was poll tested for favorability,cuz all these so called progressives have been using that line.I first heard Johnathan Alter use it on Olberman’s show when I used to watch corporate TV news during the HC debate.And then I see people like Bill Press & Ed Shultz using it.Pay attention as you will see it be used much more by those who desperately want to make excuses on behalf of the Corporate encrusted Prez.

Once again demonstrating the incestuous nature of the Village.

The Rachel Maddow show was must see comedy TV last nite!

Rachel done a segment on Health Care and the main topic was Vermont

Vermont is going single payer

However, thru out the segment Rachel showed Obama talking about being a supporter of Single Payer? which was very odd

but after reading Jon Walker post today, it became very clear

the MSM wants to rewrite history,

they want all progressives to forget the fact that OBAMA fought very hard for the Bob Dole Health Care bill he got pass. (this may be one of the only things Obama fought for)

Rachel and others in the MSM also like to ignore the fact that real progressives hate OBAMACARE

GOPers are not the only ones that hate OBAMACARE.

Rachel was very funny last nite, she tried her best to make Obama Ted Kennedy, but she failed.

Obama killed the public option, every progressives knows this.

Obama hates single payer, ask any DEM in DC and outside of DC.

Where is Bernie Sanders? He must be laughing his head off at this attempt by OBAMA to become a socialist.

me thinks David Axelrod, David Plouffe, see Obama Poll numbers dropping, and dropping, while other progressive DEMS poll numbers are rising and rising.

OBAMACARE may be the poison pill that sinks OBAMA, if the 800,000 pound Gorilla name USA DEPRESSION does not wreck his re-election first

David Axelrod and David Plouffe also fear a left leaning candidate getting into the race in 2012, and hurting OBAMA big time.

no rational smart dem running for re-election in 2012 will mention OBAMCARE and think it will help him or her get votes.

Ah. The Public Option. The gift that keeps on giving. Continuing to poison the well of public debate on healthcare reform even long after it’s dead.

Who could have ever guessed? A completely fucking retarded brain-dead idea with exactly zero likelihood of resolving our healthcare quality, affordability, and accessibility crises even in the most generous fictional incarnations… and we’re still talking about it.

So, can we get a primary challenge against this weasel?

rahm, is that you coming back to haunt us? It’s just that obamarahma held the PO out to us instead of single payer (which would have been orders of magnitude better) but we got you sneaking around to make sure that the big medical people understood that it was all just more Kabuki.

Ah. The Public Option. The gift that keeps on giving. Continuing to poison the well of public debate on healthcare reform even long after it’s dead.

Who could have ever guessed? A completely fucking retarded brain-dead idea with exactly zero likelihood of resolving our healthcare quality, affordability, and accessibility crises even in the most generous fictional incarnations… and we’re still talking about it.

no one could have predicted….

oh, wait. these democratic consultants did…. in 2007:

… people using a neoliberal mode of thought do not view a market-driven, profit-maximizing approach as a surrender of any kind. They deeply believe that progressive moral principles can be served through neoliberal methods and forms of argument. We want to stress, however, that the consequence is dire whatever the motivation. The failure to articulate a clear progressive morality in favor of more technocratic solutions to profit-maximizing markets puts the progressive cause at a disadvantage on health care and other policy issues as well. It doesn’t matter whether one is simply trying to avoid conservative and insurance company opposition or whether one truly believes in one’s heart that the market will cure us. The progressive moral basis for providing health care for all—empathy and responsibility, protection and empowerment—is not stated. As a result, Americans don’t get to hear the progressive moral basis for extending health care to all Americans, and they don’t get to decide whether they agree with that moral premise. Americans only hear the conservative moral view. That moves them in a conservative direction, not only on this issue, but on all issues.

The surrender in advance by the neoliberals means that any “compromise” will start with a capitulation to fundamental conservative values, and will be tilted even more strongly in a conservative direction as negotiations proceed.

and that’s just the politics. from day one, EVERY ONE of the policy geeks in the grassroots movement for universal healthcare saw the “public option” for the bogus policy it was.

……..

i don’t think this post would make me feel quite so nauseous if it wasn’t whitewashing our role at fdl in this farce.

but the thing that really makes me ill is the continued focus on “the public option” as though it ever represented anything other than a neoliberal marketing campaign slogan.

It’s just that obamarahma held the PO out to us…

it was a fucking slogan, NOT a workable policy.

please be pissed off at the D party leadership (and their consultants) who pulled the bait and switch….. and not nathan just because he saw through their lies and had the guts to say so.

The Hsiao designs call for uniform reimbursement rates from all payers – that could imply a state set rate – that could imply a cost control. I am trying to find out if he followed the Taiwan global budget/prospective payment system to each health insurrer in the market.

I have met Hsiao only a few times (he is a health actuary as well as an economist :-) – famous for being chief actuary of Medicare in the early years and then being the force behind Taiwan’s moving from 45% of the population not covered for health care to the current universal coverage).

Gruber’s famous lying “proprietary” spreadsheet was indeed brought on board – Hsiao knows that it is pointless to recommend something that will not pass – and Gruber has cred with the Obama right (keep your friends close and your enemies even closer).

The Taiwan system that Hsiao (pronounced “show”) produced stated out as a “National Health Insurance (NHI)” in 1995 that was single-payer compulsory with only centralized disbursement of health-care funds in a fee for service system with financing via “premiums” (a payroll tax) and a small bit of direct government funding. Lack of cost control showed up early (amongst the insurance companies – the doctors charges for a given service for any given individual were indeed mostly cost contained by the system) – but NHI’s need to control cost meant it was forced to change the payment system from fee-for-service to a global budget, a kind of prospective payment system based on total enrollment and age and sex of enrollees, in 2002. The effect is to constrain the nonsense types of coverage that ins co’s use to justify higher rates. But given a budget for next year from which to make a profit, the ins co’s do not accept annual major increases in hospital rates. A simple federal office to set prices is in effect in Singapore and other countries – but the US would never accept such an office.

Of course the Obamacare plan stopped state single payer until such time as the state can get a waiver from the Obama plan – and the Obamacare plan says no waivers can be granted until 2017 when he is out of office. I expect some great speeches from Obama about how he is fighting to change 2017 to an earlier date – followed by a sad face as he explains why he just could not get that bill passed.

This whole health care debate is a minefield of lies, distortions, propoganda, half truths, misleading information.

At the top of the heap is the duplicitious Kathleen Sebelius

ObamaCare’s Campaign of Misinformation
http://blogs.forbes.com/merrillmatthews/2011/03/28/obamacares-campaign-of-misinformation/

There is total cost control under option 3 – single payer – that Haiso suggested for Vermont.

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/jfo/healthcare/FINAL%20REPORT%20Hsiao%20Final%20Report%20-%2017%20February%202011_3.pdf

The single payer system is financed by the combination of a Federal grant and a state payroll tax. The Federal grant equals the exchange subsidies and small business tax credits the state would have received under PPACA. It also includes the funding for the enhanced Federal match rate for childless adult Medicaid enrollees, as well as 60 percent of the increase in Medicaid provider reimbursement rates up to the Upper Payment Limit. The remaining cost is financed by a state payroll tax. Individual income up to the Social Security tax cap is subject to the payroll tax, and the incidence of the tax is split between employers and employees. Variations were also modeled where certain low-income groups are exempted from the tax.

Benefit coverage decisions and payment rates together largely determine the next year’s expenditures, the required payroll contribution rates, and also the revenues of providers. The Board would recommend the change in benefit package, payment rates and payroll contribution rate to the Governor and the legislature. Ultimately, the legislature is the only body that has the authority to levy the payroll contribution. We believe that this negotiation is an improvement over the budget system in Option 1 because it is largely insulated from the political process and will produce substantially more buy-in by all parties than a budget that is developed in the Legislature. The Board’s decisions on benefit and payment updates would be binding, though the Legislature must still appropriate the funds and set the payroll contribution rate. We expect this negotiation would result in more modest increases in spending over time.

Jon – I forgot to congratulate you on your excellent post and this excellent thread- so congrats!

:-)

Thanks very much for the information you provided this evening. It’s the most concise and understandable presentation I’ve read

Seconded. Very interesting comments from papau.

Jon thank you for putting the spotlight on this coordinated whitewash by Obama loyalists. If we don’t push back they’ll be blaming us for everything that goes wrong with this plan.

not just any ol loyalist – Creamer is married to Official WH Pivot Queen Jan Schakowsky

not just any ol loyalist – Creamer is married to Official WH Pivot Queen Jan Schakowsky

Oh, puke. Well that explains a lot.

Hope it’s okay to post this — it’s a comment from one of the commenters (screenname aarontastic) over at ALPO who is less than thrilled with Creamer and Messina, and I found it to be high-level snark:

With all due respect, I think that the choice of Jim Messina for the role of the President’–s campaign manager is ridiculous–. Where are the Wall Street connection–s? What lobbying firms has he been associated with? What corporate-–welfare bills has he sponsored? Come on, let’s be sensible here: Jim Messina is not really the “right stuff” Team Obama is looking for. Let him go work for ACORN or something.

Public option, as if the rights and needs of the citizenry are optional. Which of course they are, in Obama’s neoliberal/technocratic regime.

The entire project from the get-go was to protect the insurance industry from meaningful reform. Their interests first, the public’s secondary. Hence the public option.

Thanks Jon for this and the many other HCR posts you have done here at FDL.

Obama WH rushed HCR into 2009 despite the complexity and politically slippery terrain any American HC regime change(s) would entail.

Barack Obama then played Hands Off while also doing backroom HCR deals or placing whatever deals he had made with campaign funders/donors during the 2008 WH election cycle.

Max Baucus did months of Slow Walk HCR while Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the D Party run Congress did Extended Kabuki Stage Play and framed and reframed HCR scope and width. In ways that–

>> shucked single payer ideas

>> shucked PO ideas

>> derailed actual reform of what AHIP,PhARMA and allied HMO/HC industry interests represent in American For Profit based health and sick care regimes.

>> employer based health care/sick care still largely left in the mix despite the well known gatekeeper shortfalls of access to/delivery of affordable healthcare security this presents for jobless,job changing,unemployed,underemployed,at risk health history,higher aged or disabled/at risk mental health history Americans.

Some “reform” of the American health care regime. Time to call BullShit.

The R Party? Has gone to Crazy Town. Often does Crazy really well.

The D Party? It went to Sell Out City. Seems to do Sell Out really well.

POTUS Barack Obama? He’s the Mayor of D Party Sell Out City.

HCR just had to “get done” in 2009 the Obama WH told Americans — yet so much of this so called HCR that is now law has to reach 2014? 2017? — before coming into force. WTH?

The pro AHIP mandated Buy/Join feature of ObamaCare? Barack Obama did get that done — Buy In/Join Up Mandate of ObamaCare a very profitable upside for Big Five American health insurance players — Aetna,Cigna,United Health,WellPoint and Humana.

Obama derailed any Single Payer Plan/Medicare For All Plan very early on and sabotaged any viable PO ideas early and often during 2009/early 2010.

AHIP Forced Buy/Join/Pay Mandate? In.

Single Payer/Medicare For All/PO? Out.

This is what Barack Obama and his D Party delivered as HCR in early 2010.

Barack Obama owns it. The D Party owns it.

Now own the consequence spectrum of it too.

i am no fan of obama (didn’t even vote for him after the fisa sellout and a couple other things. disclaimer: i wouldn’t have have voted for clinton either).

but it wasn’t just obama (although it’s a comforting fairy tale to think so). the sellout started before obama even had the nomination. it was the d party leadership and consultants, not just obama.

by 2006 at the latest, the fix was in (this is part 6/6, i highly recommend the entire series):

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/16/two-thirds-support-6/

read and weep.

Yes yes yes. I have had so many debates with people singing that messed up song about how Obama couldn’t get health care by himself and we have to elect people that can help him. Then they get on this righteous tirade about how govenment works and sausages and crap and tell me I am naive etc etc. It makes the steam come out of my ears.

I wish someone would make A HEALTH CARE DEBATE TIMELINE WEBSITE. So we can keep these people from this disinformation dissemination. Some probably truly believe this BS, but others are working for those that want to rewrite history.

Rawstory.com did an article today about the sell out of Huff Post and I think this is a message that we should revisit regularly as the articles at HP have taken a decidedly soft turn on Progressive beliefs as well as warming up to the right with PR stories about W etc.

I have considered doing the Health Care debate timeline site myself but don’t really have the time for it. However, there are some people that know where most of the info lies already. So anyway, people we need this timeline to keep the Dems, that set us and used us, to get in office from rewriting history and continue the forced transfer of wealth through the exploitation based health care that is being forced upon us.

These people have no shame. The proof is the health care debate and the legislation they shoved on us. Here’s some other enlightening info.

Health Care Behind The Scenes w/ Wendell Potter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6aZPPSsryw&feature=channel_video_title

the more damn info starts about halfway in.

Yep. Thanks for the links. Sebelius is a first class straight face liar tool without an ounce of integrity. She might as well be speaking to a stump as far as what she thinks of the people she’s addressing.

whatever the point of that post is , it doesn’t obscure the fact that the Whitewash is in play and the Dems responsible for selling out the folks at home are totally lying about what went down and who was served at the expense of the people.

Obama punked us. He played us for fools after *WE* made it happen for him. I will never vote for him again no matter what. Nobody plays me like that and gets a minute of trust from me ever again.

You said it. thanks for taking the time. That joke of an effort the Dems put out for health care was the worst and most ridiculous beating around the bush I ever saw.

The only thing I would add is that the Obama care is just an expanded Welfare Program and you will have to have poverty upon entry. This means people will not be saving their homes and getting care. The rub has been carefully hidden to come into the light after the next Pres. election.

I for one won’t vote for any of the Dems again. Come hell or high water, I am making a real vote away from the phony two party system that both serve the same uber rich at the expense of all of our quality of life.

Selise, I would join in support of your comments and Nathan’s, but sometime in 2010 I fell asleep next to a giant pea pod…

BINGO

Messina was a Baucus ex staffer???????????? Oh that really shows ya what a sloppy con job this was. Baucus screwed the people every day and every day he walked around with this big sh!# eating grin on his face. My God that is so thin. Obama is the biggest f’n liar to walk the planet.

That said, I do not count myself among those who question the progressive credentials of folks who believed that any version of a PO would have been better than nothing and an incremental step in the direction of something like Medicare for All. But no one here has ever even attempted a rebuttal to the detailed critiques of that notion by PNHP’s Kip Sullivan, based on the actual descriptions of the 18-inch-high PO on offer in draft legislation.

Thanks for your follow-up comment :-) …

…and you are very right about Barack Obama not being the only prime suspect or likely sole authorizing agent in the D Party who gave us ObamaCare With A Mandate To Buy AHIP Products.

We know that many loyal D Party supporters/voters gave Congress to the D Party in late 2006 only to get let down by Nancy Pelosi’s politics and gelatine quality partisanship going into 2007. For those of us who had hoped the D’s would be making The Decider and Dick tne Dick uncomfortable politically — and better yet legally — we were given little or nothing by Pelosi and the D Party during 2007.

By mid 2008 it was Barack Obama who as clearly seen now was selling D Party partisanship and politics that he from early 2009 on has not serviced.

The D Party did this to us.

Nancy Pelosi (D) did this to us.

Harry Reid (D) has done this to us.

Barack Obama (D) has done this to us.

All three have sizeable staffs of D Party players and partisans who bear the burden of what the D Party has done since late 2006. Going back to 2004 or 2000 requires way too many words for this FDL thread.

Subscription to R Party vs. D Party two party run government has become pointless. Both Rs and Ds have failed to govern well,uphold the rule of law and/or to solve problems of run amok American militarism,economic decline,social/health care equity/security with fiscal soundness and fidelity.

Barack Obama advertised himself as the Anti-Bush during 2008. He is not.

Genuine,effective and intelligently done reform of the broken and coming more undone US healthcare access/delivery regime is central to any frontal attack on the sick American economy which is bleeding jobs and has lost tremendous amounts of resilence from 1975 to the present. If WashingtonDC will not,can not reform American healthcare to get Ameerican HC done better and cheaper this will directly impact the American economy for small,medium and large sized employment/economic recovery efforts. For forming innovative 21st century relevant economic and social pathways forward/outcomes for all Americans. America is not just the top 5 percent of Americans who do well money wise and security wise while the rest of we Americans fall down and through the big cracks.

Barack Obama is no FDR plain to see. Absent that badly needed quality of leadership and politics there is little point in voting for this D Party POTUS.

Americans need better governance from our federal and state governments.

Ronald Reagan was wrong. Government is not the problem. Bad governance is the problem.

Barack Obama is giving Americans far too much bad governance.

The D Party is not the only answer to what ails America today.

The corporatists seem to have bought both the Rs and Ds off to get what the corporatists want.

Barack Obama (D) is proof of that plain to see. It has to stop.

Throughout the health insurance reform debate (with Obama pushing single payer off the table early on, but he did speak of “insurance reform,” not health care, as the objective of his legislation, which should have been a big red flag to any supporters of universal care) the term “public option” was bruited about, but seldom, if ever, defined. The original meaning was long lost by the time it became a rallying cry, and thus became a roach motel for many progressives.

Can even supporters of a/the “strong” and/or “robust” “public option” actually explain with any degree of certainty what was meant and even now is meant by the term?

It seems to be more a smoke and haze, or fog, term. Or, as Obama was during his run for the presidency, a reflective surface onto which anyone could project his or her wishes for what Obama was. That’s how the so-called but undefined “public option” works: Something to allow anyone to apply his or her own definition, yet never have to define to the point of being a clear program.

Ah but, don’t forget the role of “pragmatism”, the lectures about “what’s possible” and “political reality” and “numbers of votes”, the excitement and analysis of “who is whipping and how many numbers”, the piling onto single payer activists, their banning, and the tribal drumbeats for HCAN as if they had ever EVER had a published policy position that delineated what a “public option” meant in any specifics,let alone all the permutations…may Celinda Lake and Jacob Hatcher glean their worthy place in the firmament for their ethical liquidity. OTOH, the Green Party has always stood for Medicare-for-All, has recognized the game-playing of AHIP, AARP, the DLC, and anyone else who wants to sell out the American public for their pieces of gold.

“health INSURANCE reform debate” is the key phrase..if you are bound and determined to include Insurance Company profits in your calculations while discussing healthCARE delivery, then it’s obvious the American public has already lost, so the best way to hide that outcome is to create a non-existent tension between non-existent “policy prescriptions” like “public option(s)”, and the “Health Insurance Provider Profitability Act” that our corporatist “representatives” passed. Ask yourself why the National Nurses Union opposes this piece of legislation, along with the PNHP, and countless other populist groups.

I do not count myself among those who question the progressive credentials of folks who believe…

with respect, i have a problem with the unnamed “among those.”

i don’t think that was ever the issue.

(sorry to give you a hard time, it’s always good to see your handle on a thread)

“Public option” had no fixed meaning whatsoever. It was a placebo, and it distracted nearly the entire progressive community from noticing, in real time (when it mattered), the untransparency of the Obama/Daschle/Baucus process, and it supplanted real reform (removing profit from the equation via single-payer or nationalized healthcare) in the HCR discussion.

“Public option” meant some sort of undetermined amount of access to some sort of undetermined program with some sort of undetermined benefits and some sort of farcical hope of creating some sort of meaningful competition to Big Insurance.

Amazing at this late date this canard is still being mourned.

Kinda funny all the bleating and hoocoodanode about the public option not meaning anything when 70% americans don’t care what it means, they just want it.

What’s amazing to me is that you single payer people are still caterwauling about the rest of us not going with single payer. It wasn’t up to you.

Bleat!

The PO was a farce and part of the charade. It demonstrates the strategy of saying no without being insulting to the dying and suffering and then the inevitable close of the objective of the PO was to just say NO to that too at the right moment of distraction.

The whole health care discussion was an insult to people that know dishonest discourse when they hear it. Only the most simple and authority struck childlike mind could have ever swallowed the lying crime that was the health care “debate”.

Obama, Lieberman, and Pelosi showed their complete contempt for their bases and paid homage to the elite at every turn.

A rape is a rape by any name. These Dems are a disgrace to the party and the rest who stared down at their laps silent , as well. We have only a couple of good Dems now. Kucinich being the bravest and, of course, that makes him a target. At this point, if the progressives and true Dems don’t stand behind Kucinich they deserve what they get.
To the DNC, we are watching. Right now the Dem party is in *Disgrace*.

Our only hope is Green party. I believe we should all vote Green come what may and refuse to hear the “Wasted vote” cries the two party scam promotes, The dumb and simple Tea Partiers did it. So can we.

Green Party is our only hope

EXACTLY. And this why it was obvious that Obama, Pelosi, Reed, and without question, Baucus, were contemptuous and continue to be.

Please do go on!

i’d like to forget, but it’s not possible. :(

But the message is gaining traction in Vermont and CA, the polls are still always in favor of the SP position, and the implementation of the pathetic act passed by Congress is creating more and more SP pushback, so there’s that….perhaps “pragmatism” is being thrown over for for actual “functionality”?

Yes, absolutely, it is not only our right, but our duty to vote FOR the principles we believe in..and the “wasted vote” canard is just part of the Dem party tactics to veal-pen (or “kettle”) the left vote. As an anti-war Green candidate, I was often, and loudly, confronted by so-called “peace-niks”, that could only spout the D mantra of “but what if the (scary) R got elected?” And then Levin (D) (who won by 83%) votes for EVERY war appropriation bill presented. My floor time would have been spent creating must-see U-tube videos of a true anti-war leftist, that would have supported working families, criminal prosecutions of banksters and torturers (let THOSE chips fall where they may), fought against any congressional support of ALL of our illegal wars (and “kinetic actions”).
AND I’m running again in 2012!