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What’s the deal with Digby? First she discusses her shock that the real long-range Obama health care plan — if Ezra Klein is a good guide — is to convert Medicare and Medicaid into ‘premium support’ programs, which is what Obamacare is. For the record, here’s the Klein she is reacting to:
So Bachmann is perhaps right to say that the president is moving us towards a day when ObamaCare — or, to put it more neutrally, “premium support” — might come to Medicare. He’s seeing whether it works in the private health-care market first and, if it does, there’s little doubt that the political pressure to extend it to other groups will be intense.
(The new ‘support’ won’t cover close to all of geezers’ health care costs, but that’s why they should’ve been saving their asses off their entire adult lives: they should’ve known the uni-party would eventually ditch Medicare.)
Despite that hard slap in the face of ‘authentic Obama’, note the end of Digby’s second sentence below (emphasis added):
But the reason liberals were so wedded to the public option was because it, at least, created an obvious path and useful alternative to actual humans once the insurance companies started their inevitable gouging and manipulations. Regulating is hard, and the resistance from our monied class will always be huge so it is going to take decades longer to implement and get the results from this plan than if they’d simply expanded the existing national plan to everyone. There was a better way.
Digs, get it through your fearful, conventional, wanna-stay-friends-with-Obama-operatives head that Obamacare was/is NOT some sort of very convoluted indecipherable path to the progressive destination that we all ‘just know’ Obama wants to get to. He’s going somewhere else! And that is a very Hoover/Reagan Republican, unprogressive place. You just recognized that two paragraphs earlier yourself when you blasted Klein/Obama’s path toward the privatization/trashing of Medicaid & Medicare.
Progressives had “a better way” to the ‘health care at reasonable cost for all Americans’ goal, so that’s ALSO Obama’s goal? What a crazy thing to say! After the deficit hawking, big bank servicing, warmongering, anti-unionism, Patriot renewing, Bradley Manning, yada yada, WAKE UP! It’s mid-2011 fCs: he’s not Kennedy (or wtf) but, like Ezra Klein sez, The Greatest Republican President Ever.
Just a final side note: Is Digby the best real progressives can do in 2011-2012? Can you imagine her in next year’s election year? Just asking.
[This post was originally a comment at pfuggeecamp.]
22 Comments
Digby is just another of the many who can’t — or won’t — bring themselves to admit that they’ve been sold down the river by Zero and the Dems to whom they cling for identity and access. See’s an Obamabot, pure and simple.
Stopped reading digby a while ago. Just sayin.’
Good Lord – you dudes are getting pathetic – ‘Sold down the river’ – ‘Obambots’. Are you still able to think about anything else – or are you planning to drag out every single ‘lefty’ or ‘progressive’ who is not running exactly on your more and more limited track of thoughts as some kind of ‘traitor’??!.
HELLO – Dame Hamsher this is slowly becoming the ‘Lefty Masochistic’ site – where the left loves to torture itself.
I just read ‘four names every progressive needs to know’ and the only name I can think about is Michele Bachmann. Remember the great ole times when the Republican rule was pretty much ‘total’ – how (kind of) focused and solidaric the Left was. All dead and gone – and every day and and every post – whatever the issue – ‘Obamabots’ – ‘the traitors’ – ‘what’s the deal’ etc. etc. Do y’all realize – if the tables are turned again and a ‘American sweetheart like beautiful Michele’ will be in charge y’all played one of the biggest parts in her success? Y’all together with the morons and idiots of this country! And you seem not to realize at all what are you doing.
There was a time (2008) – where it was tremendously ‘cool’ to be ‘left’. And now that’s to the utmost degree because for ‘the folks’ it’s just too f… obvious that even the ‘Left’ does NOT believe in their ‘heroes’ anymore. And don’t come back with this crap: ‘we just have to hold ‘ours’ accountable’ – That’s all fine and dandy if you each time make sure that with all our faults WE ARE ALWAYS THE BETTER OPTION – (and f… lightyears away from the right)
GOT IT??!
make sure with each of these
‘progressive’ should ‘think’ say do
when they brought
Hello!! Mrs.
Just…remedial composition FTW. And you think we’re dumb.
So let’s see here – I read bullshit, some more bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Oh this is interesting about playing into Michelle Bachmann’s hands. It might mean something if there was more than the tiniest sliver of difference bet. So bullshit.
Democrats are not always the better option. At least with a Republican in charge we could mount an opposition. With Obama, he can get away with anything because dipshits like you won’t oppose him under any circumstances.
And he knows it. And we’re the dumb ones. Quit giving away all your power, or go hang out on frackin’ dKos with all the other apologists.
and that’s the usual reaction: ‘bullshit’! and at the same time you write: “at least with a Republican in charge we could mount an opposition” – What a mountain of bullshit – and then on top of it the usual idiotic: “hang out at Kos” as if we have embraced the Bush ‘doctrine’: “You only can be for me or against me” – And I tell’ya a secret my post is NOT about Obama AT F… ALL but ‘dipshits’ like you aren’t able to think about anything else anymore! (get therapy!)
Final Score:
One_Outer: 1
Piece of Shit: 0
Game over.
So now Klein is saying Obama’s goal is Ryancare – nice to know that Congressional Democrats have merely been showboating about their alleged opposition to Ryancare and all the claims that Ryancare not being like Obamacare were mere smokescreen.
Okay that made me laugh.
Funny how pieceofcake does the same thing, if you don’t support O then your not a good democrat. Guess what, I care more about a good American…
“some” of us are realizing (or have realized) that both parties are corrupted beyond the pale and yes some even have entertained the idea of having a Republican win 2012 so as things continue to go to shit (as they surely are) Obots don’t have to go through the pain of realizing he was “at least” as big an arse as Bush was (more intelligent liars just seem more evil); then we can go right back to pretending we need a democratic majority in the house and senate with a brave “change” kinda leader..
oh wait we had that didn’t we ??
I can’t fight for democrats when they don’t fight for us…
baby steps my ass, he’s lying to you.
I don’t read Digby the same way. I suspect what she meant was the path to Medicare for all via having first the choice of a public option in the exchanges was going to take longer than just offering Medicare for all in the first place. As for who’s a legitimate ally, I’d fight along side Ms. digby any day of the week.
Klein, on the other hand, now confirms he’s enthralled by private insurers functioning in a free market, even though he’s also written that all of the countries that provide u niversal care for less money don’t function that way. His hint that that this what the Administration wanted too may or may nor be true, but he doesn’t offer any quote or source for that.
i disagree with digby re “the reason liberals were so wedded …” but i think her position is honestly held and to my knowledge she has never made false statements about medicare-for-all supporters or used bullying and/or eliminationist rhetoric against us. (am i wrong about that?)
i guess what i’m trying to say is that while i mostly agree with your critique of her position wrt to the po, i don’t think your critique of her is a fair one.
You may be right about what Digby meant. I’ll have to look at it again in context.
It’s hard for me to understand why anyone still sees Obama as a frustrated progressive in 2011.
Yeah, and TPM too, along with Ezra K, all sold outs to the system.
I just see no point to reading and arguing them or their readers.
After all, I’m happy here at FDL/MyFDL, and there’s a plethora of OTHER places to go for REAL news and behind the scenes details on domestic or foreign affairs be they political or social issues.
*G*
KaCHING!
“Would you like to play a game?”
;-)
it was hard for me to see why ANYONE saw obama as a progressive CANDIDATE.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/22/valedictory-debate/#comment-1290642
but that didn’t mean anyone’s position wasn’t honestly held.
honest disagreements don’t have to make us enemies.
Fairledt @4:54p I’m not sure most Pups feel that way, only a cadre of non regulars who continue to infest the site . . . paid to do so no doubt.
*G*
MY bottom line is, who cares what Digby, or Josh Marshall or Ezra Klein say or think?
They are status quo or centrists for the most part, although Digby has a LONG history in the blogosphere regarding many progressive issues . . . in the past.
;-)
Why quibble with or about them? There’s PLENTY of other stuff to be wound up about than trashing other bloggers.
*G*
The dems were right about the ACA being “baby steps” but not toward single payer, not by a long shot. Baby steps toward further privatization? Sure.
As someone who voted for third party candidates in every election except for 2008 when I voted for Obama, two things off the top of my head resonate when I ask myself why I voted for him.
First, he was appeared to be the only candidate who didn’t want to bomb the hell out of Iran.
Second, I truly believed him when he made this statement regarding health care.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AOJBiklP1Q
Of course, the latter has proven to be his completely opposite view (I wouldn’t be surprised if he changed his stance on Iran, either).
Overall, I made a huge mistake (fortunately I didn’t have the time or the money to volunteer or donate to Obama’s campaign). I’m sorry to say I didn’t even realize how horrible Obama was until December 2009 when he supported the Baucus health insurance bailout bill. I’m voting completely 3rd party from now on.
I take that ‘defeat’ with pride!
and isn’t if funny – how I didn’t write a word about ‘supporting O’ and that’s the only thing you could think about?
I didn’t say her position isn’t honestly held. But people live in a real world of various powerful pressures which an honestly held opinion can be an unwitting victim of.
People like us should care what they think and say because each of them controls a little piece of the mainstream public discussion. We much littler bloggers do not. In other words, critiqueing digby or klein or marshall is just the same as hammering front page b.s. in the Washington Post. It’s all the mainstream media and it all supports and normalizes the very weird and very right wing political world we experience every day.
Sometimes I think very tiny bloggers criticizing small bloggers is more pound-for-pound effective than doing the same to impossibly enormous institutions like the NY Times and WaPost. One reason is that most of the criticism of these large media institutions is already being done every day, very effectively, by Dean Baker and at dailyhowler.com. Rather than echo them, it makes more sense to take on a different segment of the mainstream media, the well known ‘small site’ bloggers.