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(Also at Nevada Progressive)
Flowery language: A
I’ll admit it. He still speaks well, with complete sentences actually. Nice.
Refuting attacks: A-
He finally called a lie a lie. Good on him. It may not stop the Republicans from lying some more, but maybe there’s a chance that crap like "DEATH PANELS!!!!!" and "GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER!!!!!!" stop gaining traction.
Policy: C+
Yes, he finally said "public option"… But then caved some by remaining "open" to co-op craps and never-to-be-enforced "triggers". And worse, he called on Congressional Democrats to be ready to cave in as well. I hope they ignore those sentences from him. And hopefully, Obama himself isn’t all that serious in selling out his progressive base AND the chance for real health care reform for a few feel-good "we’ll say there’s no more preexisting condition discrimination, but let the HMOs continue to do whatever they want" thirty pieces of silver.
Overall: B
Again, the speech seems like a good step forward after all the floundering around that has thrown The White House into the mess it’s now in. Maybe we can still salvage HR 3200 and make it a good bill. However, there were some clear warning signs that all isn’t well.
President Obama still seems ready to capitulate on important issues like a strong Medicare-like public option if he thinks he’ll get a "bipartisan reform bill" to call a "victory" regardless of whether or not we the people actually benefit from it. This is where "The Progressive Block" steps in.
House and Senate Progressives must absolutely do whatever they can to ensure a strong public option survives in the final health care reform package! And in the mean time, we need to keep the phones ringing off the hook and the email inboxes completely full at your Congresscritters’ respective offices. If they "support a public option" but haven’t yet taken the pledge to ensure we have one, we need to make them commit. If they haven’t even supported the public option yet, make them feel the heat. And ultimately we must make sure President Obama doesn’t just sign any bill, but rather a good bill that will actually help people.
16 Comments
Great speech, but talk is cheap, and it takes money to buy whiskey. The Republicans will still do everything they can to stop everything he wants to do. He keeps looking to the Republicans better side, but they don’t have a better side. He is running around a Republican circle, not realizing circles don’t have sides, but he is still trying to find it. He can’t understand that the Republicans don’t care about people, or their problems, and don’t want to pay one dime to help someone else. They are affraid that healthcare will cost them somehow, and would rather beat it down then take a chance that they will have to chuck out that dime.
Agreed, iremember. The Republicans don’t want compromise. They want to kill the bill. What more evidence does President Obama need? We progressives have already compromised, so we shouldn’t be forced to sell out on all our goals just so he can say he got “a bill passed”.
They don’t want pizza!!!
And Schakowsky is on the “Ed Show” is on speaking for the Progressive caucus. Just threw up in my mouth a little.
That’s the worst. An’ you can, like, feel it in your nose. makes you wish you just did a full-on puke.
Obama the “centrist”. There is something scary and “loan wolf” grandiose about how he plays that. Your grade is much higher than mine, but I have trouble hearing him because of all the previous betrayals. I think the Pres is a power and control guy with a velvet glove. Mr. round table except a legitimate group of intelligent single payer people. Not so democratic, after all. Willfully disrespectful to a worthy constituency but we, the real Dems, are constituency in name only (cino). His and congress’s real constituency are the corporatists and the military hawks. The Obama brand. What we get when the election resembles American Idol. He will fight for the corporatists hard. How perverse of him. How sold out. Good thing I’m not bitter.
I thought he did well with the way he spoke of Ted Kennedy and bringing in his past relatonships on getting reform with Hatch, McCain and Grassley under the watchful eye of his widow sitting next to Michelle. He was using what he had to use and skillfully.
It is a can of worms, but his reference to abortion not being paid for with tax money was not addressing the question of whether it would be covered in a public option plan. Private plans cover reproductive health care. If they cover Viagra, they should cover bc and abortion.
Some other folks in other threads opined that he was trying to shame them into support. I saw some basic (and skillful) use of acknowledgment and appreciation; things that do not push people further in defending, and thus hardening opposition, but rather invoke empathic responses.
Yes, hopefully; but, he’s already sold out to Big Pharma for $150 million — much, much less than 30 pieces of silver to them.
I dont get all the praise for this speech. Even though Obama said he supports a public option (nothing new there), the pundits insist that a robust public option is dead, dead dead – and everyone, but the liberals/progressives, knows it. (Lawrence O’Donnell, Al Hunt among others). Lawrence O’Donnell even said that Obama’s speech outlined, in all its glory, the Max Baucus plan!!! I’m no Washington insider, but I’m really worried that progressives are going to get screwed over … that we are being played for fools.
Can someone please explain to me what we are paying for in this bill if there is no public option? What’s costing 900 billion? What do, we the people, get from this 900 billion if there’s no public option?
A drug company & insurance company bailout! That’s what $900 billion of our tax dollars will be going toward if we don’t get a real plan with a real public option. The government would just be forcing all of us at gunpoint to give our money to United Health, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna, et al. And considering how we all have (rightly so) “bailout fatigue”, I fear an HMO/Pharma bailout disguised as “health care reform” will absolutely doom Democrats in 2010 and 2012. Don’t they see how Republicans are setting up a trap for them?
Agreed on the commentary, it makes no sense. We just heard Obama defend the public option more than he’s ever done. Ever. He didn’t draw a line in the sand, but he mythbusted and he set the bar high for “compromises.” And yet, commentators say it’s dead?
Well, they are corporate shills.
selise, The praise is for the rhetoric and people seem to be downplaying the policy content. I’m tired of the rhetoric. It’s infuriating and stupid to use it when the reality is not there. It’s just an insult. The truth is that our Party has been captured by the corps. Progressives need to leave it. In the meantime they need to dig in their heels and not pass a lousy giveaway bill. Every other advanced civilized industrial nations has, in one way or anther said, F–k the corps and their profits off people’s sickness. We need a party that will do that too. The Dems are rotten with corp money. Let’s have an end to them.
Charlie Rose hardly let Weiner speak. David Brooks is in love with Obama. That should terrify all of us. What the people want is really irrelevant to the pundits this morning.
How DARE Obama equate the earnest single payer people on the left and the wingnut crazies on the right as similar… “ideologues”. Hello????? Celebrate the middle of the road, Obama. Oh really? Well morality is speaking to you from the left. CINOs. We are constituents in name only. The REAL constituency of him and our Congress are the top 3% of this country. 1000 page bill with all their lawyers loopholing their protections. We are screwed.
He is promising all things to all people but covering his ass. He will shrug and say later, I told you the po was not vital as he lets it go, or as is his pattern, he may not even ever acknowledge it, but he would not take the stand to keep the Lucy and the football game going which is exhausting and dispiriting but it buys him time with the battered hope he has used he is adept at (not as much but still) whipping up.
It is a given that the corporations must be protected at all costs.
Obama said people trust insurance that may not be trustworthy. But then he says people trust insurance, so we can not upset them with CHANGE by being too drastic (hmmmmm…. which was his very SLOGAN!!!).
Joe Califano said on Charlie Rose that LBJ got health care legislation because he had BALLS. Titillated Charlie’s panel.
Someone just said Obama was elected by a left wing cuz Hillary wasn’t liberal enough. Apparently Obama sees that as totally irrelevant. how insulting is that. He sold out those who brought him there. He is a liar. His ambitiousness sold out his integrity. He did not tell us who he was. He encouraged the illusion. Leaked some clues, but to me essentially it was a big con. Blame us, too, for the seduction. Blame corporate media and corps moneny always.
Delivery: B- the empty earnestness is getting old
Mealymouthedness: A Being for this and some of that and maybe some of that over there is appropriate at a buffet not a joint session of Congress
Leadership: F He was supposed to give us his bottomline. His bottomline is that he has no bottomline
Content: F this is still a bigtime sellout to the insurance, medical, and drug industries