Come on, guys. Now you just sound desperate.
FDL’s David Dayen is being ridiculous. I suppose now that the State Department has rejected the Keystone Pipeline, there’s a lack of things to bitch about. So, why not bring up old gripes? Even though they’ve been resoundly debunked?
I mentioned earlier in the week how the public option fight changed the progressive movement. You had a popular, compromise measure that the public supported, where advocates did everything right, getting their pledges and using allies to make demands, and none of it mattered. It bred cynicism for future fights.
Underneath all that was a belief that the public option’s fate represented a sellout, that forces inside Washington cut a deal, whether with the hospital industry or the insurance industry or whoever, to get rid of the public option at the last minute. Tom Daschle confirmed this in a book all the way back in 2010, which he then had to walk back. And other reports have made similar claims, though nobody could nail it down.
Now, Richard Kirsch, who was the head for Health Care for America Now, the labor-backed coalition trying to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010, admitted that the public option was traded away in the midst of the fight.
The book is Fighting For Our Health, by Richard Kirsch, who directed the advocacy group Health Care for America Now during the push for reform. HCAN is a well financed umbrella group backed by scores of liberal groups, unions, and other reformers — making Kirsch a close witness to the entire saga. He confirms that the White House treated the public option like a bargaining chip with powerful industry players, and believes that when his group became most critical of the bill mid-way through the fight, that top White House aides sought to have him canned.
“The White House had negotiated a number of deals with the health industry, designed to win their support for reform, including agreeing to oppose a robust public option, which would have the greatest clout to control how much providers got paid,” writes Kirsch, largely confirming what has become an open secret in Washington.
(emphasis added) The fact that the head of HCAN, which was easily the most compliant outside ally to the White House during the health care debate, almost got fired for “off-the-reservation” tactics shows you how viciously opposed the White House was to any outside action – right up until the point they needed those outside allies at the end to get the bill home.
I don’t know how many people have to tell this tale. The public option got traded away. Jane Hamsher reported it here at FDL early on in the fight. Maybe it got traded away because the White House believed that it ultimately could not get the votes. Maybe the sequencing is that Joe Lieberman said he could never support it and THEN the trade occurred. There are ways to be charitable about this to an extent. But I don’t know how anyone can deny that it was traded away.
Oh, please. More hearsay, sour grapes (White House aides “sought to have him canned”? Really?) and obfuscation on an issue that has already been resolved: Obama never secretly killed the public option. It’s a myth. Our own Extreme Liberal debunked the political myth of the “deal to kill the public option” in grave detail. That Dayen claims that Kirsch’s book confirms an “open secret” blatantly ignores the facts.
It’s time for Firedoglake to get over it and move on. I’m sure there’s another Obama disappointment lurking around the corner that the FireDogCrew can grab and wave around, but rehashing this public option nonsense smacks of desperation. These folks have been wrong about virtually everything: public option, “catfood commission,” the debt ceiling (remember Jane Hamsher calling Obama supporters “dumbest motherfuckers in the world”?), the Tar Sands pipeline (remember Jane Hamsher whining that Obama had ordered protestors jailed?), and on and on.
Methinks Lady Hamsher’s efforts regarding “transpartisanship,” i.e., an alliance with Ron Paul are not bearing fruit, so I guess the FDL Obama-Deranged nutbags have decided to reset the clock and start bringin’ up old shit.
Yawn.
At least Cenk had the good (?) sense to simply make something up!
https://twitter.com/#!/cenkuygur/statuses/159640579859419136
Really, Firebagger David? Did you count votes? No? Then you didn’t do everything right.
This. This a thousand times.
Wow…these folks remind me of the chaps who keep hating on George Lucas because of STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 even though that was released, what, twelve years ago?
I would venture that they just cannot help themselves. They’re trying so hard to find a narrative that fits their (pretty much obsessive) position that any truth that shatters it is promptly ignored.
They cannot let it go, and that’s sad.
Hey, that’s a Godwin violation! You can’t bring up George Lucas! He’s history’s greatest monster! Frickin’ Jar-Jar….
As a friend I once had put it, Jar-Jar Binks was a computer-generated character in dire need of a large magnet.
And it is funny – they’re saying that Keystone only got rejected because of the election, even though rejection is the minority position – oh fiddlesticks, there’s another inconvenient fact.
Nothing satisfies these jagaloons. PBO is evil when he might approve Keystone XL. PBO is evil when he rejects Keystone XL.
It must be true! I mean, it’s not like the guys is trying to sell something or anything…
Oh wait…
Never mind.
LMAO!
I am afraid that the public option was not going to pass. There were members of the House and Senate who were not going to vote for it. That remains true.
Having said that, it is appropriate that people like Hamsher advocate a public option and try to convince people that is the correct way to proceed.
The key word in that sentence: convince.
“Single Payer,” their preferred option, was dead even before it was mentioned. The public option was dead in the womb. They weren’t going to happen, because too many Democrats were against it. What I found interesting was that Jane (and her minions) went on a big fund-raising spree to pay for “lobbying efforts.” Which basically amounted to Jane and Eve Gittelson running around the halls of Congress trying to get appointments to talk to Representatives. Oh, and sending lots and lots of petitions to members of Congress who already were on the record as supporting a public option. :roll: All very, very dumb and ineffective.
Now when the bill passed the House, Jane went nuts with the “kill the bill” ramble. I asked them at the time, “what is your plan after that?” In other words, if the bill is killed how do you plan on getting your ideal bill through this Congress? The sound of crickets was notable, although then the “well, they’d have to do it!” idiots started screaming.
If I were going to look for a serious advocate for a public option, Jane Hamsher and the Firebaggers aren’t even in the running. I’d keep them the hell and gone away from any effort. Jane is in this for Jane, and her minions over there can’t realize that.
I wonder how many of them know:
1. the definition of single payer?
2. that it is not the only possible form of universal healthcare?
3. that it is not the form of universal healthcare most countries in Europe use?
4. that things like this makes it hard to take them seriously?
For most of them, I’m guessing the answers are no, no, no, and no.
All this jumping up and down, waving of arms in the air, hollering “Oh My God”, accomplishes very little.
Formulate an argument, marshall facts and try to convince people that a public option is the best way to proceed.
“Formulate an argument, marshall facts and try to convince people that a public option is the best way to proceed.”
Definitely the right thing to do, but, in the Internet age….it’s probably just better to yell and scream and get attention. Putting a proper argument together, getting your facts straight, and going out and speaking to people not part of the “choir” requires work….and I’m guessing that these chaps cannot be bothered with that.
Wow. Are they really going there (again)? I guess now that Keystone XL is dying, Republicans are scrambling on the payroll tax, and the President’s poll numbers don’t look all that bad, the Firebaggers have to turn back the clock to find something to poutrage over. I guess it also hurts that Ron Paul’s campaign is going nowhere fast. Hehe. ;-)
So SOPA/PIPA going down
Keystone XL going down, and now they’re trying to dredge up old shit because the very shit they want to currently complain about is now dead…..WTF?
Can you give a brother some god damn props, can you fuckers take a win?
He gave you what you wanted, or did he?
If he had approved Keystone XL & SOPA/PIPA, I think this would have been a fundraising boom for those emoprog hucksters to get more cash from emotional proggies who want their pony now.
And now with that fundraising cudgel effectively neutered, they gotta go back into past poutrages, my badness…..
These fuckers come right out of a comic book
“Can you give a brother some god damn props, can you fuckers take a win?”
I don’t expect them to do that. Not now, not ever.
Put it this way….it is far, far easier to bitch and moan than it is to sit back read the solid facts, and give praise.
And since most of these schmucks only care about two or three issues, none of the achievements of President Obama will matter.
Sad, really.
I suppose next they’ll trot out their other favorite two-word mynah-bird golden-oldie soundbite: “Elizabeth Warren!” Because Obama was supposed to let her have a big showdown in the Senate so the EmoProggers could all cream their jeans with a RIGHTEOUSGASM OF JUSTICE!!!! — even though she had no chance in hell of being confirmed, and even though she’d pretty much made it clear that she didn’t want to head the CPFB, and even though she hand-picked the successor, and even though she’ll probably get elected to the Senate.
Lord, I am tired of these numbnuts who prize their dewicate fee-fees and their financial shenanigans (Accountability Now has elected HOW many people? Right) over actual progress.
You forgot the next part:
…and even though once she’s in the Senate, she’ll become a progressive darling, and then she’ll get elected president, and then she’ll have to, you know, govern.
And then the puritopians will complain that she shows none of the backbone, mettle, and brilliant strategy of that former two-term president who they always loved, Barack Obama.
And the circle will be complete.
Anyone want to lay bets on how soon after Warren is sworn in the disappointed chorus will start complaining about her?
“Righteousgasm of Justice” FTW.
Is this the old school hip-hop drive? Are Emo Progs digging in the crates for one hit wonders? Can I get my Hammer Pants and a High-Top fade?
This is more evidence that Obama’s got everyone’s number – the angry militant Firebaggers on the Left and psycho Teabaggers on the Right. Since, its pretty much clear that Obama is going to put a mud hole through Mitt Romney’s ass this fall and the Caviar Communists will once again be revealed as politically irrelevant (and outright incompetent) -they’re throwing the Hail Mary of ‘Public Option’ hoping that their faithful are too stupid to Google.
Isn’t Miss Jane still pallin’ around with Fox and the Murdoch people? Because the Wall Street Journal debunked the myth that the President axed the public option weeks ago.
I am sure there’s something just lurking around the corner they can emote about. Seriously, I am losing all patience with these people.
Lady Jane and her coterie of FDL diariests (outside of TBogg) have spent years attempting to appropriate liberalism under the banner of progressivism. Their means of appropriation have been to sew distrust of PBO and malign his fundamental character. Coupled with their tendency to infer these same motives upon supporters of PBO (in their world even Noam Chomsky is an Obot because he will vote for him and sees a primary as damaging), this makes that site and its content providers little internet Robespierres.
there was a similar article in TPM, which greenwald is gleefully circulating on twitter.
these people make my teeth hurt.
I thought that access to health care was one of those minor unimportant issues that Greenwald says caring about more than the big important issues makes you the moral equivalent of a child killer.
If the FDL crowd could point to one — just ONE — fucking victory they have scored, one thing that has yielded progressive results, I’d take them seriously. But they are made of utter, absolute fail. When your idea of political “strategery” begins and ends with putting Joe Lieberman in blackface, then you really don’t have any business telling other people that they are “dumb motherfuckers.”
Greenwald was the jackass that pushed the conspiracy theory that Lieberman and Nelson’s scuttling of the public option and Medicare expansion was an elaborate kabuki. He’ll fuck any chicken that moves to keep his fanboys from seeing through his schtick.
You know how the church folks say “Let go and let God.” The PL really need to do that. I was on DailyKos during the healthcare kerfuffle and I remember the post when they counted votes and found only 44 Dems would vote for the public option. PBO and Rahm knew this and that’s why they didn’t even bother to choose the public option as their hill to die on. Plus, the public option that passed the House was Medicare + 5 and it would have only covered 6 million people. The hospitals didn’t want Medicare + 5 and last time I checked, the finally bill covers 30 million people and covering 30 million people > covering 6 million people. But what do I know…
We have a bill that makes insurance rate increases subject to government approval, that says 85% of monies from insurers must be spent on care–and Sebellius put her foot down and said no, lobbying money will not be exempt from this. Insurance is a public utility. We have a bill that expands Medicaid to 110% of poverty level, that says pre-existing conditions shouldn’t stop you from getting insurance; we have a bill that mandates determines a minimum level of coverage. We have a bill that subsidies insurance for those who can’t afford it.
Jeebus, this is sooooo tired! HEY, no one is listening to YOU except those in your echo chamber!!!
I’m going to bring this up again, since this is my little hobbyhorse. These people are fundamentalists. Just like Greenwald, just like Pat Robertson, just like Stalin, just like any number of loons who believe what they believe–whatever it may be–so deeply, so absolutely that facts that contradict their beliefs just don’t matter. They wave them away. It’s why teabaggers still believe we found weapons in Iraq; it’s why they believe Saddam Hussein attacked us 10 years ago. It’s why 27% of the country believes Bush was a good president. It’s why the birthers still think Obama was born in Kenya. And it’s why these firebag losers think Obama could have “rammed through” the public option by using the “bully pulpit”. You just can’t reach these people.
You can’t reason with fundamentalists; you can’t debate them. They aren’t open to reason and they don’t want to debate. You can’t prove them wrong, since they won’t accept any proof. I really don’t know how to deal with them, but we need to find some way, since they’re here and they can fuck things up badly when they work at it.
I think that what we have to do is find out why they believe what they do so fervently. We have to understand them better. I think that fundamentalists believe what they want to believe because they want to. They get something from believing it. (It’ll be one thing for one kind of fundamentalist, of course, and something else for another.) If we can understand what they get from believing what they believe, then maybe we can find some way to reach them. I don’t know, maybe it’s hopeless, but I hope not.
I am so furious right now but I’m trying to stay calm in case the current moaning is because the reporting of Richard’s interview was not accurate.
See, I was interviewed for Richard’s book because I heard directly from Olympia Snowe that she was trying to keep the public option (a convoluted triggered version) in the Senate Finance Committee mark up against strong opposition from Max Baucus (D Wellpoint). I wrote a memo that was passed up the food chain at HCAN and spent a lot of time on the phone with the head of their lobbying arm because we were still trying to save it.
Sen Snowe also told me that she had spent a lot of time on the phone with the President who did soooo much more behind the scenes (he had to switch tactics over the summer as he was attacked and became less popular) to get healthcare reform passed.
But even if we were to believe that the President traded away the public option to the insurance industry (this doesn’t fit the facts and it makes no sense given the timeline) does anyone honestly believe that Lieberman, Bayh, Nelson, Landrieu, and Lincoln would have voted for the public option if it had made it out of the Senate Finance Committee?
Also, the “robust” public option he refers to in this article would have tied reimbursement rates to Medicare making it more cost effective but this version of the public option didn’t even pass through the House. The version of the public option that made it through the House had been so weakened and watered down that it really wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
After thinking about it a while, I believe that this article by Dayen is simply FDL rattling the monkey cage bars. I would imagine that Jane’s fundraising for her various “efforts” has fallen short (again), so her bloggers are going to see if they can pry open wallets by rehashing various tried and true outrage generators.