Only drunks and skunks are in the middle of the road, and no one gets credit for watering down health care reform and then voting for it. Joe Lieberman now has a 25% approval rating in the Nutmeg State. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with him until January 2013.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
7 Comments
“no one gets credit for watering down health care reform and then voting for it.”
OK, first of all, this isn’t health care reform: it’s health insurance reform. It’s not the same thing, and i am getting really tired of seeing the two conflated. (and by the way, have you noticed that the word “insurance” is so much smaller compared to “health” and “reform” on the official signs? Funny, huh? It’s as if the person who designed the sign had to take white-out to the word “care” and cram in the substitute.)
Second, given that you “have a readership in the White House and in offices of the leadership in the House and Senate” and you “want to convince them of certain things”, could you remind them that “no one gets credit for watering down health insurance reform and then voting for it”? i don’t think that message has gotten through.
The insurance reforms are the best parts of the bill, but there is plenty of health care provided, too. Twenty to thirty million people with new access, and preventative care, and health clinics, etc.
What we wanted was a path to ending private health insurance. That didn’t have to do with health care delivery anyway, except tangentially.
But you’re right about not getting credit for a product that is too watered down. Unfortunately, Ben Nelson gets to decide. I don’t think we can afford or even would succeed in going to reconciliation now. Delay worked in that regard.
honestly, at this point i’ve kind of moved on, other than to point out this lie or that flip-flop. i’ve resigned myself to the fact that the bill is shitty at best, that middle class taxes are going to go up since Obama now supports the excise tax that he opposed as candidate, and that the democrats are going to pay in 2010. “I never campaigned on a public option” was kind of the last straw for me.
i wish they’d just done what they campaigned on. that’s the most disappointing thing.
O/T, but:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.
more at daily kos.
3 different polls (including your take on leadership, BooMan) BUT it is clear that the public option is more popular than leadership, Obama included, and Lieberman tanking and his stance on HCR being the reason why tells me that Dem leadership better wake the frick up, IMHO.
Side note: I agree with something I heard on Morning Joe today… Mika said something along the lines that younger voters get the nuances of what is going on. They are better informed about what is happening.
And they will know if they get shafted with the gaping hole version of healthcare reform from the Senate if there is no Public Option, IMHO. Gonna be costly in the next elections if that happens.
link.
I made this point elsewhere but I think it’s appropriate here.
Voting for cloture and voting against the bill are two separate things. The conservatives could have voted for cloture and voted against the bill and kept on going. Instead, they chose to do both.
The conservatives also weakend and/or killed publicly popular concepts for their own reasons. Now they have to pay the price for it.