Well, the Republicans were quite predictably exposed as peddling a bunch of inaccurate talking points, not caring about the uninsured, not negotiating in good faith, and as generally not being serious at all about the crisis in exploding health costs. Now the job is to disseminate today’s summit as far and wide as possible. We just need enough momentum to give House Democrats the courage to pass the Senate bill and the sidecar reconciliation bill.
The road forward is a little blurry, but Obama will basically wait for the Republicans to make it clear that they still oppose any conceivable compromise and will filibuster any effort to pass health care through the Senate. Once they make that crystal clear, he’ll attempt to pass the bill through the reconciliation process.
The fight for the public option goes on (and I do think it would make it easier to pass in the House) but the other reforms need to be passed regardless.
If you watched the summit, I’d be interested to know what you took away from it.
That was some awesome Kabuki. Obama praising Coburn over and over again and Coburn doesn’t even support the idea of government doing anything to reform health care. The dems need to somehow find a way to force the republicans to buy into the process before they get a meaningful role in shaping policy. If I were Obama, I would have stopped the meeting, asked for a show of hands of who thinks the government has the responsibility and the ability to reform health care. If you don’t raise your hand, you can throw spitballs from outside the room. Then at the end Obama can ask any Republican who raised their hand to submit their proposed amendments (which it being understood, if incorporated would mean they support the bill) to the existing bills and he in turn would promise to fight for as many as possible in a new markup of whatever bill gets merged between the senate and house bill.
The Senate needs to have the courage to pass the sidecar reconciliation bill, whether the Senate bill is passed by the House first or later. If the Senate Democrats stiff the House on this, there will be a major intra-caucus rift.
For general viewers, the repetitious GOP talking points made it boring (which might have been their intent – to reduce the viewing audience). But there were flashes of conflict that might capture the soundbite MSM folks.
McCain slashing and burning on the Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida deals required to move the Senate bill through and calling out Obama for the PhRMA deal (in exchange for campaign ads — eeewwww) caused Obama to remind him that the campaign was over. Later Obama said that the Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida deals could be taken out in the reconciled bill.
Cantor lifting his stack of papers. Obama: Let me guess. You’re going to tell me that the bill is 2400 pages long.
Harkin’s framing of risk pools as segregation by illness.
Paul Ryan trying to punk Obama with facts. Unsucessfully.
The GOP conflation of Medicare Advantage with Medicare.
The exchange with Barasso. O: Would you think that converting what Congress gets would be a good idea? Would make us more careful consumers? B: Yes, then we would watch what we spend more carefully. O: Would you say the same thing if you made $40,000 income?
All of these will be YouTubes (and most are already). Some might even get out to the media.
Obama’s strength on policy and advocacy for this chosen set of policy options is refreshing and exciting. He outclassed the GOP animals by himself but a lot of the other Dems had their cards in order, too. As fractious as the House & Senate Dems can be, they hit almost all the marks today.
I think Pelosi and Durbin done good today.
progressives will attempt to move forward with the “Republicans were quite predictably exposed as peddling a bunch of inaccurate talking points, not caring about the uninsured, not negotiating in good faith, and as generally not being serious at all about the crisis in exploding health costs” analysis.
the lunatic fringe will use the sound bites from the rats to continue their invective assault against doing anything the rats don’t like, and the msm will paint it in the worst possible light, if the wapo response is any indication: Analysis: Politics and posing trump health policy…an aside; they sure got that out quick. sorta like george will’s pre-summit screed setting up the reichwing opposition to reconciliation)…FAIL, that’s going to be the msm’s meme and lede for the news cycle.
as for my personal thoughts, after listening to nearly all of it, it was a very interesting summation by obama, and saving rangel and dingle for the end to set it up was a very clever move.
reading between the lines, that the rats have been put on notice that if there’s no movement towards a viable compromise [bipartisanship] w/in the next 6 weeks…highly unlikely, imo…we’re going to see hir moved forward using reconciliation.
certainly a worthwhile exercise. but l don’t think it changes the status quo. it’s still a stalemate and it’s all up to the dems now, especially those in the senate…will they or won’t they support the presidents agenda?
we shall soon see.
People in most of America don’t read the Washington Post.
There will be a bunch of daytime TV addicts who saw it, hung around for some of the fireworks, and will tell their neighbors about it.
It’s primary purpose was to provide enough conservative House Dems the comfort to vote for it; they have been in duck and cover mode because of all the misinformation that was being spread in their districts. Yes, it is up to the Dems. That was true before the bipartisan Kabuki. The six weeks is to allow time to get the Democratic Caucus all on the same page.
Only got to watch parts of 1 hour of it and feed stopped just during the Ryan part, so I was late for a meeting trying to find it elsewhere on the tubes. Looking forward to watching on youtube – for laughs especially Obama responding to Cantor’s pages and McCain. Obama emphasizing the points of agreement with the repugs and how their points are incorporated into the dem plans was a set up so when the repugs refuse to sign on it is clear it has nothing to do with what points they support.
My takeaway point was Durbin’s. This is not about socialism, this is about equality. Pretty much nails it.
What I got:
Republicans still being lying aholes.
What interested me was at the end. Obama was clear that there was no ‘starting over’ and gave a general timeline of 4-6 weeks to get this done.
The house and senate Dems impressed me in the post-event news conference. They praised Obama a lot. Pelosi said that no one will care about legislative arcania about why this might fail, the public wants this done without excuses from Democrats and that it will get done.
How the fuck does the fight go on when the presumed leader of the fight didn’t even have the public option on the agenda of his “summit”?
Not on the fucking agenda.
And what makes that staggeringly stupid is that it’s POPULAR. The whole nation is thirsting for a public option and Obama is afraid of it because the Republicans and the media don’t like it.
He’s a coward.
For the PO to have any chance at all, the Dems were well advised to keep it off today’s agenda.
But only by 180 degrees.
It would have sidetracked the entire event. The Dems might as well have painted a target on their asses captioned “KICK ME HERE.”
Do you want the Republican Party on your side? Or the American people?
The latter support the public option. I don’t give a damn who the Republicans try to kick.
I agree that the American people, the majority anyway, already support the public option. That’s another very good reason why there was no need to bring it up. Don’t you get it? There is absolutely no point in trying to debate the public option with a room full of Republicans. It would have driven the whole exercise right off the rails.
Bringing up a program popular with the American people and forcing Republicans to display their opposition to that program would have been a bad thing?
Yes, according to what the summit was meant to accomplish. Democrats were trying to put the emphasis on issues that, according to what would traditionally be GOP philosophy, should get bipartisan support; or if the Republicans would not support something, they would have to articulate their reasons and offer alternatives. If they could not or would not do this, even on these moderate issues, it would be crystal clear they were just trying to block any HCR bill and had no positive contribution to make. In a debate you are on weak ground when you reject arguments that are consonant with your known positions.
Everybody knows the Republicans don’t support a public option, never have and never will. But to make it a major point would have given them the opportunity to turn the whole summit into a circus.
The President supports a PO, but he will not allow the entire HCR to be put at risk over it. If you’re wondering how it could ever put HCR at risk when the majority of Americans support it, then I’m afraid you don’t have a very good sense of American politics.
sense of what it means to people when their president lacks the guts to stand up for the things he ostensibly believes.
It has nothing to do with guts, it has to do with brains.
The Great Orange Satan has a post on the front page from Dave Waldman saying the Progressive Caucus signed on to pass Obama’s plan yesterday.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/25/840679/-Progressive-last-stand-made-on-one-leg,-hands-ti
ed
Or, as FDL likes to say, they “caved in” and “sold us out.”
“before the fall elections”
Now exactly how is that caving? The dKos story was about a failure of messaging from one day to the next. A lot can happen before November — and in the next six weeks.
My reading of the situation. In order to prevent an up-or-down vote on the public option through reconciliation, Republicans will have to partially come on board enough to allow and up-or-down vote on the sidecar legislation without a public option in regular order.
I was being sarcastic at the end of my post.
I had running commentary at my facebook page. Essentially, BO came across as seriously trying to get things done. Most of the dems had nothing to offer but speeches, although Dodd and Biden were notably quite constructive and really dealing with the matter at hand. The Republicans really had nothing except “wash we don’t want reform.”
I particularly enjoyed learning that Marsha Blackburn is a complete moron. Other highlights for me were when Obama called Boner a liar (to his face) and in general looked like he wanted a drink everytime the GOP launched into a rehash of their objections. Jim Cooper should just join the GOP, he loves their ideas so much. The 2 McCain outbursts were also fun.
Both sides played it as teams, with different roles for different people. Jim Cooper’s role was to reinforce the message, “Hey, this is essentially a Republican plan. Why are you against it?” Which was a good use of the fact that he is Blue Dog. Which is also why the only mention of the public option was in Pelosi’s final remarks.
If the Senate puts the public option in the sidecar amendments (a 10% chance), Cooper can now vote for a bill with the public option by minimizing the importance of the public option in overall healthcare reform that “implements a lot of Republican ideas”. And certainly gets his vote for any bill put before the House.
The more opponents of the public option within the caucus that Pelosi can peel off like this, the easier it will be to pass a public option now or in the future.
I watched and listened to most of the afternoon. The Republican’s have an impossible position to defend and that is why the “want a clean sheet” of paper and start over.
The Republican’s had a clean sheet of paper, for health care reform, for the 8 years during Bush Admin.