I've had my own run-ins with Jane, and yet she invites me to post occasionally on FDL, which I sometimes take her up on. I'm willing to overlook things in order to promote a mutual agenda when there is one to promote.
The attacks on slinkerwink, one of the most fundamentally decent human beings I've ever met, that have been happening at Daily Kos ever since she got hired on by FDL, have been beyond despicable. Those attacks are profoundly disturbing and, as far as I can tell, entirely without justification.
But enough of the personalities. This dispute is, as I hinted at above, symptomatic of something deeper. What Obama has done is a classic example of basic neoliberal politics as practiced by non-conservatives - use progressive rhetoric to reassure the base and ensure they won't block corporate-friendly deals that are cut without meaningful progressive input and engagement.
We've seen it with Clinton, we saw it in Britain with the Labour government and in Canada with the Liberal government. The end is always disillusionment on the part of the base and the alienation of the independent/swing voters who sooner or later vote for conservatives who at least speak a direct language that they then follow through on exactly as expected. Canada's Liberals lost the '06 election, and Labour is going to experience a punishing replay of the 1979 election sometime next spring.
Health care reform, regardless of what we think of the contents of the bill, is beginning to resemble a pyrrhic victory. Sure, a bill gets done, but at a huge political cost. Instead of consolidating his base, Obama has split it. Instead of having progressives and other Democrats united to explain and defend the bill to moderates and swing voters, Obama has some progressives trying to explain and defend the bill to other progressives, in a process that is getting increasingly ugly and divisive.
Those sort of tactics are effective at producing short-term gains, but they have never proven effective at building a long-term and strong political coalition that can hold together to beat back the right and produce changes that can outlast the tenure of a particular president or Congressional majority. One could argue they're not intended to do that, but to ensure that progressives don't block a corporate-friendly deal. And the world will live as one
There's nothing anti-progressive about giving people healthcare, which this bill does. What all the screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth is about, is that it's not bigger and better or done the exact way we'd want or hope.
A political victory is never pyrrhic if it produces results (I realize only us old folks will have personally witnessed this for our side). If this passes, it will produce actual, huge, concrete improvement in millions of lives (unlike the neo-lib stuff you cite). This will overcome any political hurt feelings now. If it fails, we won't get another chance and it will be a disaster. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
In theory insurers are now obliged to spend money on actual health care, not on lunches, private jets, prostitutes and lobbying. In practice anyone with political experience knows that they will do everything they possibly can to make those clauses impossible to enforce. Until an insurer is sued, fined or forced out of business because they are not obeying the letter of this new law, those clauses remain meaningless.
Many of the flaws of the system - random and expedient exclusions, and refusals to pay not being the least - remain more or less unchallenged.
So it's almost entirely a political bill, designed to placate the base and make it possible to say that Obama Delivered, while not actually annoying anyone with money.
More than that, it's revealed Obama as a slimy little opportunist, who is unwilling or unable to change the status quo, and whose MO remains fine speechifying, with as little political and economic leadership as he can get away with.
This is a triumph of expediency, and the end of Obama's political momentum - not the beginning of the progressive renaissance that he worked so hard to persuade his supporters of.
It's true that it's as good as could be expected, considering Obama's lack of interest in real reform. But that's a receipt for mediocrity, not a recipe for continued improvement.
But it's not giving people healthcare - it's forcing them to buy healthcare from third party providers who do not have their interests at heart, at prices which they may not be able to afford, with stiff penalties if they can't make the payments.
The penalties involved cannot be more than 2% of your income or $750, whichever is more. Most people - a huge amount of people - will be eligible for Medicaid, which is a de facto public option, or subsidies. So far as I can tell, anyone to whom the $750 would apply wouldn't consider it 'stiff.' And there's a cap on premiums, limiting them to 8% of your income which, as Drew said upthread, would be a godsend to most people.
It's not an entirely political bill, as you claim - it's got 900 billion concrete bucks behind it. You say it ignores flaws in the system, and at the same time acknowledge it addresses some flaws, but predict they'll never be enforced. So damned for the stuff they include and damned if they don't?
it's revealed Obama as a slimy little opportunist, who is unwilling or unable to change the status quo, and whose MO remains fine speechifying, with as little political and economic leadership as he can get away with.
Obama's lack of interest in real reform
I'm not sure where all this vitriol comes from. As angry as the left got at Clinton, and for much better reason, I never heard this level of character assassination directed at him from 'our side.'
I mean, really "with as little... as he can get away with" - seriously? You're calling him lazy?
And he has no interest in reform? So I guess that's why he's come closer to achieving an unprecedented bill which establishes healthcare as a responsibility of government than the multiple presidents who have tried and failed before him.
But just to be clear that I understand your position: $900 billion to get healthcare for most people, reigning in the worst excesses of one of the most powerful industries in the world, saving countless lives, risking his entire political career to do so, and setting a legal and historical precedent that no one's ever been able to achieve makes him an uninterested slimy opportunist? I'm not following the reasoning here... Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
He's an opportunist because his campaign was a lie. He's on the record campaigning for a public option on many occasions, and then last week he says 'Nah - didn't say that.'
That is not the action of an honourable man, and it certainly makes his true intentions - whatever they are - suspect.
And it's not a $900bn bill - it's a $90bn bill that runs for at least ten years. In public spending terms, that's pocket money. Compare with $680bn per year for defence.
Now considering the current system is legalised mugging, it's certainly a step up from that, for at least some of the population. But I don't think it's realistic to pretend that this is a move to a Euro style health system. And I would still want to see some kind of punitive action taken against insurers when - and it will be when, not if - they start pushing the limits of what's legal, or they begin to use creative accounting and other tricks to minimise their obligations.
The key point is that Obama hasn't been actively pushing for change - he's allowed others to fight it out, and has reliably contradicted himself, to the extent that it's impossible to know what he himself believes, wants, or stands for.
If that doesn't make him slimy, it certainly makes him a poor leader.
He's pushed for the congress to come up with a healthcare bill (which is a change). Allowing 'others' to fight it out is exactly what the system over here is designed to do -- congress legislates. As I said elsewhere, I find it frustrating as well, but respect that he respects the system enough to actually, y'know, not circumvent it.
And I think it's a bit of a reach to say his whole campaign was a lie because you have one article seeming to contradict one aspect of it. He campaigned for healthcare reform, he's pushing healthcare reform. He supported a public option within that reform and, so far as I'm aware, has never come out against it. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
That all being said, the politics of this has been botched badly, perhaps fatally. Progressives have nothing clear to hang their hat on. They wanted a public option, but Obama was never serious about providing it. Progressives were willing to accept an opt-out, even an early Medicare buy-in.
Politically, giving progressives that bone would have made all the difference. The personal attacks and sniping we're seeing would be much more muted and there would be much more unity of purpose, helping grow support for the bill.
That matters, because the bill's key elements don't kick in for another 3 or 4 years. That's plenty of time for the reform to be framed negatively, especially if premiums rise before the full implementation is taking place. If progressives haven't been fully brought on board, then it's going to be very difficult to maintain political support for this, especially when there are other reasons to be concerned about whether Democrats will win the 2010 and 2012 elections.
What I see as fundamentally neoliberal about this, though, is the way it is being sold. Progressives are told that even though they didn't get anything they asked for, they should still like the final product. And if they don't, they'll be attacked for not liking it. On a very basic level, that is extremely poor politics - support is gained and coalitions maintained by giving someone what they want, not by denying someone what they want and telling them it's for their own good.
Further, this cramming down of progressives has been the hallmark of neoliberal politics in the US since the Carter Administration. Neoliberalism works by telling people they should forget about their desires, and instead accept a raw deal they didn't buy into out of fear or compulsion. The deal may offer them tangential benefits that are very real and worthwhile, but the deal is stacked to primarily benefit the wealthy, and everyone knows it. Progressives who object to this arrangement are then told that they're selling out the cause by rejecting the deal, that they're being wreckers or don't care about suffering or are willing to let people die to make an ideological point, whatever the issue is. It's one big "Sister Souljah" moment, all designed to ensure progressives don't make trouble for a corporate deal.
There remain very real and plausible concerns and doubts about the effectiveness of what's in the bill, it's not just concern about not getting one's way. But that merely reinforces the neoliberal nature of the bill, and helps explain why progressives are so split on it - a split that cannot be mended, at least not on this issue, not until the second half of the next decade. And the world will live as one
It wouldn't be FDL without the victim mentality. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
