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A few weeks back I did a diary called “Mis-directed Fury.” It focused on the reaction to the State opt-out idea on health care reform at FDL, and basically made the point that there are a lot more important things to get furious about than the State opt-out proposal. Today we have another explosion of angst and bile, this time at the report of Joe Lieberman’s intention to filibuster with the Republican opponents of health care reform legislation if the Senate bill contains Harry Reid’s highly constrained Public Option with a State opt-out. Meanwhile, everyone I’ve seen writing, or heard talking, about this ignores Reid’s continuing commitment to the 60-vote game, and his refusal, thus far, to start talking about using “reconciliation” or “the nuclear option” to get a really strong PO bill through the Senate with a majority vote.
Sure Joe Lieberman is a skunk, and should be thrown out of the democratic caucus. Tomorrow, if possible. However, spending our time ranting at Joe’s moral perfidy isn’t going to change the fact that Harry Reid can’t deliver 60 votes for a good health care reform. But, why, in the end, should we care about Joe, or Ben Nelson, or Mary Landrieu, or Blanche Lincoln, anyway. Harry Reid and the Democrats don’t need any of them to pass a health care reform bill with a much stronger PO than we have now. All the Democrats have to do is put aside “regular order,” and use existing Senate rules to pass the legislation they promised voters last fall with 51 votes. When are they going to get on with it and do that?
We ought to be spitting nails about their failure to make that happen. We ought be furious about that. We ought to be pressuring them to stop the ridiculous games of the Senate, and use reconciliation and/or the nuclear option to pass health care reform. We ought to be telling them that they have no right to prioritize their “regular order” over the 45,000 annual fatalities, and the one million annual bankruptcies that are occurring as a result of the present non-system, and the activities of the private insurers. And we ought to be telling them that the deaths and the bankruptcies are the Senate’s responsibility, because they refuse to pass a health care reform that will eliminate these outcomes. And finally, we ought to be telling them that we are so mad as hell at their failure to pass a good bill, that we will go out of our way to defeat Harry Reid and any “moderate” Democratic Senators who oppose a strong PO we can find in 2010.
As I write this, Rachel Maddow, who did a great job last night laying out the main alternatives on health care reform, including national health care, and national health insurance alternatives, while also distinguishing among different types of POs, and making the point that Harry Reid’s State opt-out plan is very weak, has jumped on the angst bandwagon. She makes the point that never in the history of the Senate has a member of the majority party caucus voted against his or her party on a procedural vote such as cloture, even when they have later voted against the bill being brought to the floor through the cloture vote. And then, Rachel, turns to FDL’s own Jane Hamsher for discussion of the situation.
Jane makes the point that Joe may not be the only one contemplating breaking with the caucus, but that Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln may also be considering it, and then, bless her heart, she says “I dare Blanche Lincoln to join a filibuster,” making clear that if she does she will face primary opponents in Arkansas when she runs again. Jane also makes the point that Harry Reid bears the responsibility for letting Joe back into the caucus, letting him have his Chairperson positions, and vouching for his good behavior at the end of 2008, without exacting agreement from him that he would support the caucus on all procedural votes in the Senate. She also says that even though Joe may not pay the price in Connecticut for upholding cloture, if his actions turn out to be the death knell for health care reform in the Senate, it is Harry Reid who will pay the price in Nevada in 2010, for his error of judgment.
Those public fighting words from Jane were very welcome, as was the warning that Joe might not be alone in breaking with the caucus. I’m all for throwing not only Joe, but Blanche, Mary, Ben, and any other corporatist who wants to follow them on this vote out of the caucus. But I still think that all this is a diversion, because for some time now we should have been focusing on passing the best reform bill we could get with 51 votes, rather than the best one we could get with 60 votes. The 60 vote game, and also the 60 vote frame in the media, have both gravely injured the prospects for health care reform this year. Harry Reid should have signaled to every Democrat and Republican from the start, that health care reform was so important to the Party, and the country that he intended to pass the best bill he could with 51 votes if necessary, that he would not tolerate any filibuster games being played with the bill, and that at the first sign of such tactics, he would invoke the nuclear option and go down in history as the majority leader who ended the 60 vote shenanigans in the Senate forever.
We ought to start holding him responsible for not doing that. And also we should focus all our efforts and resources to demand that he shift gears right now, and start talking about the nuclear option and reconciliation right away. And we also should demand that while he’s doing that he ought to change the present version of his “merger” bill to remove the State op-out, to make everyone eligible for the PO, to tie the PO rates to Medicare, and to make the bill operational within 12 months from passage. In short, we need to quit raging at the second fiddles like Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Nelson, and start playing hardball with Senator Harry Reid, who actually has the power to get reform through the Senate with 51 votes, and tell him we won’t tolerate the 60 vote game or frame anymore.
(Also posted at the Alllifeisproblemsolving blog where there may be more comments)
153 Comments
The nuclear option. HUM! That would be the best way to solve all our problems. Nuke UM.
That may be the only way to get rid of what we have in Government and start over.
WE! can’t rebel, can’t vote UM out, can’t throw the out, and can’t convince UM of anything.
One tiny winnie little nuke as an option. Congress, the think tanks, K street, C street all of it in one fell swoop. Couldn’t hurt.
You don’t have that much power. You need to hold accountable the progressive “block” to do as they promised and vote down this whole bill even if it has the weak PO that it probably will have in it.
As things stand can anyone see them holding to their promise and commitment?
Talk about Obama or Reid getting the best health care reform they could is a fantasy as neither of them want it. Obama is, probably, fighting in the opposite corner and I wouldn’t be surprised if Reid was too. There was one hope and only one hope of getting a good bill and that was the fact that Obama needs to get a bill — any bill — passed. With the help of the Republicans the progressives in the House could have forced Obama’s hand and got a good solid PO with a large number of people qualifying for it and earlier than 2013.
But I cannot see it happening now because all the talk is about how happy we ought to feel for the weak PO currently being discussed. How a bait and switch could be more transparent I don’t know, but that seems to be the size of it.
The progressive “block” is going to throw the towel in again, just as they did in giving up single payer for nothing (Taibbi says they gave it up in a deal with Pelosi to get a robust PO included which she has NOT delivered, yet they still stick to their agreement it seems).
How is it then that we are talking about a PO as if it existed or could exist now. There is only one course of action left and that is to defeat this bill.
If it remains as it is now, that’s right. The only thing to do is to defeat it.
But, in the meantime let’s fight with Reid to improve it. He’s vulnerable. Progressives can beat the bill as it is and then beat him if he doesn’t deliver a better bill. So, we need to keep up the pressure and see what happens.
I was talking about the House bill. The bill will change — it will get worse. But as it stands in the House it’s already lame. A lot of chat about medicare +5% which is fine but not much about the fact that very few people can join the so-called “public” option, that it starts way late or that … I’m sure there was another defect in it .. I guess it only takes one.
It’s not like the PO is much good even if it was genuinely robust (as opposed to this fake “robust”). It was in fact pretty lousy but it constituted the bare minimum acceptable. The bare minimal while on the other hand the bill does much harm by introducing a new incredibly regressive flat tax on the poorest. I bet that will be hugely popular.
Not that I care about the Dems losing the elections since they act the same as the other guys, but this whole fiasco plays into the mindset of “government isn’t the solution”.
All true. News also last night that Nancy doesn’t have the votes for Medicare plus 5%. Nevertheless, we just have yo keep the pressure on to make this an acceptable bill. I’m with you on having a high standards of acceptability, as I’ve indicated all along and in my last few diaries. I’m also all for “Medicare for All.” But now’s the time to try to make this bill as good as we can, and then if it’s still not good enough to “just say no.”
I disagree. By signing on to the bill and pushing for it to become better you make it very hard to pull out at the last minute and reverse everything you’ve worked for and vote against the bill. There’s a certain momentum to these things I think.
That is how the progressives are being played. They are helping to build public opinion behind the bill and the bill will be crap, but it will be far too late at that point to reverse public opinion. You’re simply being used. Most of the public don’t understand any of the criteria for a “robust” PO. How do you plan to market a lightning fast campaign aimed at saying, “We know for the last six months we’ve told you one thing, but really that was a big fat lie. Now we are telling you the opposite.”
Bait and switch is used because it works. You can’t just turn on a dime. if we are serious about opposing a bill with a weak PO we need to be realistic NOW and start saying the bill needs to be voted down.
It’s already too late really.
They screwed you.
It’s done.
So far, as the bill has lumbered forward and the public has begun to pay attention to the minutae, the deals cut at the outset have been slowly unraveled. If this continues at this rate moving forward, I’d expect to see matters like the individual mandate softened, jettisoned in the absence of a universally available public option, and the pharma deal revisited.
There are still weeks of discussion to be had in the two houses of Congress, and then a conference committee which will be very high profile. The contours of the bill have invariably moved towards progressive positions over the past two months, and in the absence of any credible political forces capable of reversing those movements, I’d imagine those trends would continue.
That’s certainly an interesting view, but if you’ve been listening to the same lectures I have (I mean the scuttlebutt around here and everywhere), bills don’t get better; they get worse. The House bill will be worse than individual three House committee bills and the compromise bill between House and Senate will be somewhere between the two, most likely leaning to the senate bill.
IE the best of the three House committee bills is/was an effective maximum ceiling on how good a bill was possible. And it was a weak PO. The combined House bill is/was/will be weaker still and it will be a ceiling on the conference committee bill, which will therefore be worse again.
What evidence is there, that is true? Do you know what was agreed upon? I assume we’re precisely on the schedule they agreed upon. The “victories” are the bones they always planned on throwing. Having to work hard to get a “victory” binds you emotionally to the bill which is what makes the bait and switch work. This kabuki “fight” which you think you are winning is just that; fake. What have you really won? Nothing. What have they won? Everything.
They “gave up” what they had all along planned to. That’s what a canny negotiator does. The people representing you OTOH did the opposite. They immidiately went with their bottom line demand (the robust PO) and then sank below that again and again. That’s how you negotiate if you secretly want to lose.
You mean the prognostications of those who posit themselves experts but have never been inside a sausage factory working to crank out even moderately complicated policy?
Predictions are always difficult, especially about the future.
The individual mandate has been watered down, and I expect for it to further be watered down if past performance is any example of future returns. That action has caused HIPA to bolt Obama’s coalition, and that opens up more space on the progressive side of the debate.
The Public Option, watered down as it is, has been retained and strengthened in the house, pegged to medicare rates, and available to all whether or not they are previously insured or not. Most all efforts to sandbag any sort of sandbagged public option have themselves been sandbagged, coops, triggers, and whatever various artifices have been floated over the past 2 months.
I’d imagine that there is still room to maneuver on weakening the individual mandate, and that it is highly likely that the pharma deal will be reopened.
Over the past two months, the only policies to be taken off of the table were conservative, and the range of progressive policies put onto the table has expanded, apparently with no exceptions. If that trend continues, as I expect it to as the public focuses in on policies like the individual mandate and the pharma deal, then I expect for us to see a similar groundswell against mandated purchases commensurate to the weakness of the PO on the table at that time, as well as a demand that Americans be able to purchase meds from other countries, that a hidden drug tax not be levied solely on Americans to subsidize pharma research, profits and cheaper drugs to the rest of the world.
There is reality and there is political reality, rarely the twain shall meet. In real terms, we’re getting hosed because it is the Democrats who are driving. But in political reality terms, the worst of the worst proposals have fallen of its own weight as the economic analysis, industry hubris and contempt as well as significant public mobilization has kept them from working the worst of the worst. With all analyses pointing to public financing of health care as the most fiscally responsible option, I expect for that to be of use.
When pinned down, I don’t see the argument of “Deficit hawks oppose a robust public option available to all Americans because it would save tens of billions of dollars and would be preferred by Americans, causing them to bolt from private insurers” carrying the day.
If one controls all aspects of a political process, then one has much more latitude to approach the situation. It appears that Obama kept his powder dry during August, allowing their opponents on the lunatic right wing to soil themselves for the public to see, delegitimating their critiques.
For all of Obama’s caterwauling about lack of WH support for a PO, it appears to me that he’s playing the role of Brer Rabbit telling Brer Fox to do anything but throw him in the public option briar patch, anything but that.
So when you control all pieces on the board, you can posit yourself as the moderate who set the initial bargaining position so low as to not threaten the established order, and is being dragged into change by the American people who are demanding that Congress do our bidding.
If you don’t control all of the pieces on the board, than a strategy to hold tight to stronger demands and to compromise late is the way to go. But that is not the case here.
Well I was informed you were a conservative but you don’t sound that way to me.
So you are claiming that the original 3 House committee versions of the PO didn’t (any of them) peg the PO to medicare? That is new you are claiming?
And you’re claiming that the current House bill makes the PO available to all Americans?
Are either of those things true? I was under the impression both were false.
I am not a Democrat, but I am progressive, and I have this real aversion to drinking Kool-Aid.
I called Pelosi’s local SF office yesterday from my home phone in the 4-1-5 and was transferred to a policy person in DC who indicated that the house bill Pelosi is cobbling together would grant full access to the PO for all, insured or not, and that rates would be based on Medicare+5.
After 20 years of disappointment in Pelosi for never engaging in progressive economic issues, if this turns out to actually be the case at the end of the day, it is huge. That it is even on the table for discussion indicates that the bounds of the debate have moved our way decisively.
If what you say is true then I agree, and about Pelosi too.
Well, if her people were telling you the truth, then bless Nancy. But HR 3200 doesn’t contain anything like that, and I haven’t seen any reports in the past few days that indicate she’s going beyond that bill. I have heard some mutterings from Clyburn suggesting that there may be some stopgaps in the bill to provide some band-aids until 2013. If those are good they would be very welcome.
I think you have it right. Nor does the current House bill make the exchange and the PO operational before 2013. That is the most ridiculous sellout of all. When that is clear to the majority of people, they will laugh at these bozos.
“The Public Option, watered down as it is, has been retained and strengthened in the house, pegged to medicare rates, and available to all whether or not they are previously insured or not.”
There was a report yesterday that Nancy doesn’t have a majority for Medicare + 5%. Also, I think your scenario about how Obama’s working with this is a nice story, but there’s no reason to believe. Also, as you say, when you don’t control all the pieces on the board, the right thing to do is to hold tight to your demands and compromise, if necessary at the end. That applies to the progressives. They need to hold tight to a more robust PO than is now in any of the bills now and to make the case that none of them are worth passing.
That’s right. But the bills can get better if progressives in Congress just say they won’t vote for any of the bills on the table. To get them to do that we have to put on heavy pressure over the next few weeks. And that pressure can’t suggest that we’re happy with what Harry’s done so far or with HR 3200. It has to say that these bills fall far short of the minimum we need and that we are willing to defeat them and come back next year.
What???! Events have been trending favorably due to relentless pressure through lefty blogs writing, texting, calling, donating, protesting, demonstrating and reformers appearing on tv and ads against recalcitrant legislators and campaigns to expose Healthcare cartels duplicity and bloggers connecting with media types and giving strategic input and networking and doing ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING BUT KICKING BACK AND LETTING THE PROCESS WORKS ITS WAY OUT naturally.
“in the absence of any credible political forces capable of reversing those movements, I’d imagine those trends would continue.” My response? “This writhing corporate monster is fighting for its life and is capable of injecting venom to the very end.” AHIP and it’s mega millions is working as we write on Leiberman,Nelson, Landrieux, Lincoln, the Blue Dogs in the House, the Prez, hell even the Supreme Court! Juicy Consultant jobs are being readied.No credible opposition? Tell me you’re kidding.
The polling seems to be constant over time, through the tea baggers, through the left wing blogging, people seem to oppose an individual mandate and support a public option.
Members of congress can read polls as well as we can. They’ve been going through the gesticulations in order to avoid doing working the will of their constituents, but the Democrat Party base is as unified as it gets on this, and that in addition to the economic analysis which indicate that anything but Medicare for all will be a waste of money is what is driving here.
We’re not even at half time now, our opponents have shown their very unpopular hands, and the polling numbers are static. That did not happen in 1993. Can you show me a data point from the past three months where a progressive policy was stricken from any of the bills or where a conservative policy (other than death panels and abortion) was included in the bill?
This debate is unprecedented in my observing American politics since I was a kid watching Watergate. Every aspect of this bill is open for all to see, people are talking about it, people are reading about it, and folks have been getting informed. As that has happened, the bill has gotten better and not gotten worse.
I’d note that this happened with a soft touch from the WH as well as a soft touch in the Senate. I think that the onus is on you to demonstrate why a change of tactics, of freaking out about the last play in the game when you’re just kicking off after halftime (sorry for the sports analogy).
When your opponents are freaking out like chickens with their heads cut off, you always look better when you’re deliberate, thoughtful, rational and have public opinion behind you.
-marc
What economic analysis is that? Everyone I’ve seen says that Medicare for All will greatly reduce national expenditures on health care and that the waste of oney is due to our retaining the private insurance system. My own analysis indicates that the current system is costing us $700 billion per year more than Medicare for All would cost.
Reid’s State-level opt-out strikes out the universal applicability of the PO present in the Senate HELP bill. Also the only reason why there have been no strike-outs is because we’re only just at point of merging bills now. Unless we keep the pressure up Harry will strike things that were in the HELP bill.
I considered that a wash where the difference was split between Finance and HELP. More of a move to the side than back, given the assumption that Finance would rule.
We’ve got to keep the pressure on, but we’ve got to keep it effective and consolidate the support of a supermajority into the legislation. That means appealing out from the base while keeping principles solid. And that requires the change in tone and posture from disempowered rag tag protesters to confident citizens (and non citizen friends) doing what they told us to do in civics class in order to petition our government to bring change and elect candidates who will if those in power won’t.
Since HELP was a more progressive bill than Finance, Reid’s compromise clearly wrote out something that progressives had written in. You can’t spin this by saying that it was assumed that FInance would be controlling. You may have assumed that, but the question was always how much progressives would lose.
Well, first, I don’t think the soft touch from the White House has had good results. We would have been far better off today if the WH had announced support for Conyers/Kucinich on Day one and fought for it with Reid and Pelosi. Furthermore, Reid’s soft touch in the Senate has resulted only in several CoservaDems talking about defection his bill. The language you’re using here is a straw man. We’re not talking about freaking out. We’re talking about fighting, the way that FDR fought when he he wanted something, the way that Harry Truman fought for all the good stuff he got through and for his reelection. And finally, the way Lyndon Johnson fought for Medicare and for the poverty program and for Kennedy’s civil rights legislation that he made reality. The image you’re projecting of cool, rational, measured politics, is exactly the kind of behavior that has gotten kicked out of politics time and time again. it’s why people say we have no values. It’s the attitude of the wonk not the attitude of someone who cares about the outcomes of politics and knows that the everyday lives of Americans are shaped by it.
I don’t know. I think that we had to arrive at a point where a public option was non threatening. Had they gone for socialized medicine first, then that would have bolstered the tea baggers because their claims would not have been so incredible.
Talk is cheap. Let’s see the contours of the final bill and the votes on the cloture motion and what happens politically between now and then.
Calling for Lieberman to be busted down to private now is freaking out. I detest the man, but it is freaking out.
The institutional support that powered that no longer exists in either the Democrat Party or organized labor.
Obama is no FDR. Truman, Taft-Hartley? And Johnson was still riding the post war economic boom when he did Medicare which we are not.
No, we got our asses kicked because we became the veal pen. There is a difference between freaking out, being in the veal pen, and professionally, coolly and efficiently practicing political science by making electeds offers that they cannot refuse because they know you can credibly visit consequences on them. Nothing personal, just business.
The fault of poor scoping rests with those who set the table here, but it looks like we might be served something more than half edible. I’m sure there is a bail out point, but I think that’s higher than we’re likely to see the bill go bad.
Again we disagree for reasons already stated. One point, however. You said:
I completely disagree. The PO was not less threatening than Medicare for All, at the beginning. it was more threatening because people did not know what it is.
They still don’t know because of the bait and switch and all the variations on the PO. Also, socialized medicine was never an issue. Medicare for All is only about socialtzed insurance, getting the insurance companies off our back. That would have been an easy one for Obama to sell if he wanted to sell it.
Regarding the “tea baggers” if they had made claims like the ones they made about “Medicare for All” everyone would have laughed at them because everyone knows what Medcicare is like or they can ask someone they know. Or failing either of these things they’d have only a 30 page bill to check out rather than an 1100 or 1300 pge bill (whichever it is now). No “Medicare for all” would have been far easier to sell. Obama really blew it, as did many major progressive organizations in pushing the PO. The real lesson of the 1994 failure was not that Clinton tried to bring a bill to Congress they didn’t like. It was that he tried to bring a bill to Congress no one could understand. Obama has made the same mistake because he and Rahm learned the wrong lesson from 1994. I’m afraid you’re insisting on learning the wrong lesson about why we’re having a bad outcome now.
OK, I honestly can’t tell.
Was that sarcasm?
Miscommunication somewhere here. Sorry. Lefty blogs like FDL HAVE played a strong role in the evolution of this HC reform. Blogs communicate with blogs. Commentators read the blogs.- (KO and Maddow) Site founders like Jane get on TV. Donations to candidates, petitions, ad campaigns in critical states often start with sites like FDL and others. My point was that whatever progress has ocured up till now didn’t just happen. It was the result of a huge, conscious PUSH from many quarters-not just sitting around waiting for our eminent legislators to do it all for us. So no, it wasn’t sarcasm although I am fully capable of it!
A hit! A palpable hit!
I think that here you have a point, but I also think that to continue this progress, we have to continue the education and the pressure from our side. People in Congress have to realize this is a life or death issue for many Americans, and that if they vote against the interests of these Americans, they won’t just be making unhappy voters, but will be creating actual enemies who will not forgive them anytime soon.
David, I agree with much of this. But the pressure I’m advocating is not the kind of pressure we’re now seeing which supports some vague “strong” or “robust PO,” what I advocate is pressure which says: Harry, it’s not enough. Here’s what we need: Day one for the PO, one year from now; eligibility for the exchange and the PO for everyone; Medicare + 5% rates, Mandatory access to Medicare providers for the PO; Administration by Medicare, not some entirely new organization.
Without that in the bill, we’ll invoke the nuclear option and question the constitutionality of the opposition’s right to block this bill. Then we’ll work to get a majority of Democrats to support a PO bill with the above features.
The publicity campaign for this has to be one which says that the only kind of PO we can vote for is one that will work. No POs that don’t have the above features will work. So, we promise to defeat anything less, and we also promise to be back next year to push an HR 676 bill through Congress.
So if you want to get past health care you need to get behind us NOW and help us get a majority, ’cause if you don’t this is coming up in an election year after the insurance companies have had one more crack at raising rates and after they’ve killed 45,000 more people and driven one million more into bankruptcy. And if we bring it up next year you’ll be facing single payer. No PO bullshit compromise any more. It will be worse for you then doing it now. Take the PO compromise while it’s still on the table, because next year we won’t make the same mistake again. We’re not compromising to get the insurance companies and Pharma to back health insurance reform again. We now know that doesn’t work. Next year, it’s Medicare for All, or bust.
What I think would work is television that demonstrates that a 9/11 death toll goes down every month or so under the non insurance system, think of the Johnson daisy nuclear TV ad. It only had to run once.
And so much of this is not related at all to the substance of policy rather to people’s increasing comfort level with the vague notions of the policy direction. Sometimes it takes time for ideas such as Medicare for All or HR676 to sink in and gain a comfort level. I’d argue that the Medicare for All meme is an anesthetized mental incision. it is possible to advance before that happens, but is always less risky to wait until you’ve done the work so that public opinion can lead.
It appears that is what is happening with the PO, over the past 5 months, and a similar exposure and familiarity will be required for Medicare for All.
Right something that animates ralphbon’s diary.
“We have not yet begun to fight”
All too true.
You won’t get a strong PO so why not ask for nationalised health care now? Start negotiations high, not low.
Couldn’t agree more. Start them with national health health care for my money, and then negotiate that down to “Medicare for All.” At least people would learn the difference between the two.
One more thing, you think you’re telling me something I don’t know? See here and here. Btw, you might like a lot my previous diaries.
I think there’s much good in telling people what they do already know.
Good point! But it would be even more effective if you cited what I wrote previously.
I think you raise some good points here, letsgetitdone, on the nuclear option. Certainly the most neoliberal and elitist four or five Democrats are not the main problem–it’s the whole body of the Democratic Party, not just this tail, that is the real issue.
However, Reid personally cannot invoke the nuclear option. It would have to be a decision of at least fifty Democratic senators, and because of that, we would have to go after the whole Democratic part of the Senate. And actually, that is exactly what I think should be done.
The central problem that shows like Maddow’s and Olbermann’s have, and also blogs like Daily Kos have, is that they’re wedded to the main part of the Democratic Party. Yes, they’re willing to oppose Blue Dogs and, say, the five worst Democrats in the Senate, but not the much more numerous “corporate centrists” that make up most of the party right now.
And once we realize that is necessary, I for one don’t see much reason to limit the criticism to the nuclear option. I say we should just lambaste them for not voting for Medicare for All outright–because the public probably favors it, right?
Hi khin, I think one Senator can invoke the nuclear option, by making a point of order when someone else begins a filibuster. To implement the nuclear option you need 50 Democrats, plus the VP. Also, you need the VP to rule properly on the point of order. I review the procedure here.
I think if Reid wants to implement ot he can certainly ask Bernie Sanders or a number of other liberal Senators to invoke it by making the point of order and calling for the vote. If he tells the Press about it beforehand it will be spotlighted. If 50 Democrats don’t vote for it, then they’ll be exposed as responsible for a bad outcome on the health care reform bill, and the Party as a whole will be exposed as hypocrites. If the Administration through Biden defeats it with the wrong ruling from the Chair there will be hell to pay with the base.
No, they will run for cover under protecting the prerogatives of the Senate. I’d bet that the liberals could dredge up myriad examples where a liberal filibuster, in years back when the Democrat Party had a spine, was deployed to stop right wing initiatives.
It is not so cut and dry.
I know what they’ll do, marcos. But we have megaphones now, also, and we can give the other narrative. The fact will be that preferred to protect the prerogatives of Senators to undermine constitutional majority rule rather than end 45,000 annual deaths, and 1,000,000 plus bankruptcies per year. Somehow I think that liberals bleating about the myriad times they stopped Republican legislation on this or that won’t stand up against those costs as an excuse.
As I write this Obama is bleating about how great it will be that he and Gates have saved $2 billion in fighter plane expenditures. Congratulations, Mr. President! You’re saving us $2 billion a year on fighter planes, and costing us $700 billion per year by refusing to promote and pass HR 676 Medicare for All. Way to go!
Another point. I think we need to focus on the nuclear option because getting rid of the filibuster is so important in bringing change in many areas. If we don’t get rid of it we will have the same problem with perfidious Joe and Empress Snowe on the jobs bill, on energy, on Education. You name it. We have to neutralize those who are trying to maximize individual benefits for themselves at the expense of the American people. See this one for a more lengthy argument.
Agreed. Marcos is correct in pointing out that the filibuster has been used in the past to block bad conservative bills. But I maintain that today the stakes are too high to allow it to continue. The Nation is in the midst of a Perfect Storm, a true EMERGENCY. The times demand that the rules be changed to save the Republic. And in this case it’s not even unconstitutional! We’re talking about arcane procedures of an old rich boys’ club. I have hated the filibuster for years.
We are all party to war crimes being committed in our name, with our money, by our Democratic President and Congress against civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Under international law, we are all probably more liable for our criminal conduct in resisting our duty to stop such crimes against humanity given that we’re spending our time wringing our hands over how to keep our own healthy while we are engaged in wonton anonymous murder elsewhere.
A bit of perspective, please.
There’s no “Good Samaritan” law for war crimes.
And if there were I find the concept that the US voter is in a position to dictate to the US government on foreign policy, laughable. There’s an upside to being so powerless; it really isn’t your fault; the wars I mean. Participation in a crime has to be more directly linked than just living in the same country and paying (mandatory) taxes.
I guess this comment is off-topic so my apologies, but I hate to see Americans beat themselves up over things that can’t be helped.
Parties to war crimes are required to take steps to stop them and are liable of they do not. We are parties to war crimes, and under the Nuremburg Principles, we are all, to varying degrees, exposed to criminal liability for war crimes.
Observers of war crimes are likewise required to take steps to stop them.
Being a Good
GermanAmerican is no defense.You are not a party to the wars: you are not a soldier out there.
Have you “Participated in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of planning, preparing, initiating or waging a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”?
No.
Have you committed, “murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”
No.
Have you commited, “Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
No.
Observers of war crimes are likewise required to take steps to stop them.
Not that I know of. Governments (not you) need to stop genocide I think.
The last time I checked, we were the sovereigns.
LOL! Good one.
I suggest you– check again.
I’m a gay anarchist Jew. They’ve come for me in many incarnations. Whether in Gaza, Lebanon or in southern Asia, the fact that as sovereigns in a democracy we are coerced to participate in war crimes reflexively buys us into the crimes.
The fact that we choose to remain alive and free instead of doing what we need to do to stop these crimes means that we make a choice, a choice for which we must all take responsibility.
Legally you are incorrect. Morally or metaphorically? I won’t argue that but I will say that pragmatically castigating yourself over something you cannot or will not help is not a good idea.
There’s 24,000 people starving to death a day. And what do we do? Nothing. We’re all just horrible people.
Our standard of living, our convenience is predicated upon untold baseline suffering. Indeed the legitimate political grievances which serve as the bases of support for asymmetrical warfare against us are not due to our way of life, rather because our high standard of living relegates several billion souls to abject poverty and abusive dictators.
How many human beings have been killed because the US has imposed brutality on the southern Asian oil patch compared to the number who die each year here due to lack of access to health care? What is the median age of death for someone who dies here for lack of access? What is the median age of death in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan?
So it is not like we’re passive bystanders. Each and every day, we squeeze a bit more misery out of the tube to get through the day without having to walk, or get cold or fetch our water from the well, or get rained on or deal with the real world in any way.
We are willing participants who are too damn chicken to do our duty to stop horrific crimes from being committed in our names.
Now you’re just getting silly. “Passive bystanders” is precisely what we are. Your thesis, is that being a passive bystander is itself immoral. that is a tough case to make and legally it just isn’t so. however you brought up something else I often hear,
Is that true? So often it is assumed. In effect you are saying that there’s simply no way anyone could have the lifestyle of an American (or whatever) without empire. That doesn’t seem right to me. America’s standard of living honestly just isn’t that great especially at the bottom of the US heap.
The suffering of the third world doesn’t buy anything for you. I am not sure if that is better or worse but it does undermine your argument that Americans are silently colluding with empire because they see their standard of living is dependent upon enslaving foreigners.
Also of course morally, since you are not colluding, even if you did benefit you would not be guilty. That’s like saying if a local gang starts giving you money from their crimes that makes you a co-conspirator. That’s only true if you take the next step and actively or passively aid them. You don’t.
Yes, it is true. People living in SRO apartments with one toilet per floor down the hall in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district live in luxury compared to people living in Africa or Central America. The entire dollar system and military complex is designed to extract from the global south at cheap prices for convenient consumption in the global north.
Yes it does because the natural resources in those countries which should be supporting their own interests has been hijacked by dictatorships to produce raw materials, food and other economic inputs at favorable terms for us and the Europeans.
The issue arises here of moral imperative to cover everyone, he writes neatly wrapping the discussion back into the thread after an interesting philosophical digression, as we discuss opt-out, accessibility, depth of subsidy and a wide range of policy choices.
At some point, we’ve got to take responsibility for our consensus obligations to each other that define what it is to be human, making health care a right at home, guaranteeing civilians living in the southern central Asian oil patch that we’ll not impose brutal dictators on them so that we can abscond with their oil on the cheap and send predator drones to rain death on them if they fight back. If we cannot solve those problems in one fell swoop, let’s be honest and admit that we can’t solve it, admit that it is our obligation to do so, acknowledge that we fall short on our obligations, and resolve to not rest until we can meet those obligations.
I’m not one to look for legalisms to absolve me of my responsibility for the consequences of my actions and my standard of living. Where I can, like on the environment, I try to meet my obligations by lessening my footprint and helping move that agenda in my community through political work. But when it comes to the big picture issues like health care and war crimes, we don’t get off on technicalities given the human and environmental costs of sickness and war.
That’s not what I questioned. I questioned the causal relationship you’re suggesting. Sweden doesn’t have an empire and they are also better off than the third world. Just because the elites are ripping off the third world doesn’t mean they are handing it over to the American public.
IMO Americans would be better off not worse off, without their empire. At least the majority of them.
That is a very different moral calculation from saying that Americans are guilty of collusion with elites to screw the third world. it’s one thing to tell someone that the poor is everyone’s problem. Quite another to tell them that actually they are part of a conspiracy to continuously rob the poor (but never knew it!)
At any rate I guess this diversion’s gone about as far as it can….
The Krona is not the world reserve currency. Sweden does not maintain an army to keep the world safe for capitalism. They pay us, largely through the foreign exchange/dollar circulation of petroleum purchases to cover that expense. The game they play is to keep their dollars subordinate to dollar hegemony and they’re bought into the system. The elites keep democracy rigged in the US to perpetuate the military industrial operation and keep those profits flowing, profits which do not create anything of use. We get fucked so that we can get conveniences and Europe can pay high taxes and oil prices to enjoy democratic socialism.
Depends on what you values are. Things would be different, foreign imports would cost more because we couldn’t just print money or hold the world economy hostage to them buying our debt.
Democracy carries both rights and obligations. We can organize to change the government, we just collectively decide not to because it would be too uncomfortable to do otherwise. They pay us minor conveniences so that we’ll pay them tax dollars so that they can commit war crimes to further enrich themselves. Sounds like we’re all in on a war crimes racket worthy of a RICO prosecution.
Well, again marcos, I can agree with much of what you say. However, I also think that obligations we owe to others ought to begin here at home, especially since “ought implies can” and we collectively can have more control over what is done here than what goes on in Africa or Central America. So, I think our most intense responsibilities are ones of democratization: social, economic, and political here, and also an intense effort to create a sustainable society here in America that has no negative impacts on Africa, Central America, and other societies. This, of course, means ending trade practices and corporate impacts that hurt other nations both South and North.
Right. But there are varying degrees of culpability. the doctrine of “collective guilt” is not controlling in International Law and did not apply to ordinary Germans or Japanese. You and I are not as culpable as Dick Cheney for the behavior we’ve been seeing. On the other hand, there’s no question the performance of American Democracy in not requiring accountability for War Crimes is an enduring source of shame and guilt. I’m sure that many of us would make this the number one priority of all if others would join with us to put an end to the lack of accountability.
The least we can do is speak it.
Thank you for putting the match to that silliness.
Right. That’s International Law, and we did much to put it in place.
marcos, all that you say here I agree with, but why do you think it is relevant to our discussion. Do you the presence of the filibuster and the Seniority System in the Senate has protected us from committing war crimes? Puhleeze!
Not the seniority system, rather the Great Compromise of …. wait for it …. Connecticut which made the house more democratic, one person, one vote, and the Senate republican one state, one vote. Those pesky 14 states where the electoral college vote is greater than their share of the population will continue to make mischief in the Senate because they have more voice than this Californian or my 36,000,000 compatriots do. I’d prefer to see that minority voice empowered to stop stuff than to make stuff happen.
marcos, I don’t buy this. If they can make things happen, they’ll make mistakes. That’s better than not being able to make a mistake. Mistakes will be visible and the Congress will be able to correct them. The present system is one where the Congress can’t do very much and therefore can’t be either successful or unsuccessful. So, the Congress can’t learn and and can’t progress and neither can the American people. Problems hang for 60 years, 40 years years, 30 years. They never go away. We need to create the capacity to make them go away. This is the essence of progressivism. Progressivism is not about blocking legislation. it’s about passing legislation that is responsive to the people. But you can’t see if legislation is responsive if there is no legislation because it can’t get through.
Damn dude, you’re on a roll.
Thanks. I’ve got a diary about that here. Didn’t get much attention when I posted it. But I think it’s one of great interest.
Well you sure as heck got a lot of attention with this post! Even innocent bystanders are covering their heads. Thanks for the link to “The Elegant Solution,” I’ll check it out. G’night.
Wendell Potter points out the obvious: the situation is not sustainable. We cannot have millions more families put beyond the reach of health care. We are pouring billions down the rathole of the insurance industry. This is more dangerous the more you look at it. The cartel gets stronger. It’s ties to Wall Street more binding. The influence of Wall street and the Cartel over all three branches of gov’t plus the media become even more insidious. The people become more cynical, deflated, angry and unhealthy. Financial reform sails further away. No financial reform? That equals more valuable billions stolen down the rathole. No money to invest in new green industries to remain competitive w/ China and everybody else. No climate legislation. No escape from energy dependence. Unemployment, inflation, ON and ON.
I don’t know about you, but I have found in my life that I can get away with doing 1 or 2 stupid things. But by the time I have piled on 6 or 7 stupid things, then I am in real trouble. (I have some surfing lulu’s believe me.)
I see the same thing happening to the country. Trouble with people lost in the wilderness or on a boat or wherever usually starts with one benign error and is COMPOUNDED by follow-up errors that escalates a manageable problem into a deadly ordeal.
And just look at what this country does when it gets a little pissed off and nervous. 2 buildings fall down and the next thing you know we are in not 1 but 2 full-blown shooting wars. Unthinkable! But here we are. Who are we going to attack if the fabric of society becomes more unraveled? The whole world hates us and we are paralyzed in the face of problems that have fairly obvious solutions but no way implement them. I am sounding the alarm because I have always thought of the USA as a tinderbox. We had one Civil War, remember? Do you remember the fights and gun-packing that happened in the long lines that occurred during the first oil embargo? And we do have a history of riots. And every NUT in the country is armed to the teeth. It’s a violent culture and this nation is not immune to chaos. And for all my talk about Revolution, I would much rather avoid it. I’m too chicken. So, there’s a little perspective for ya.
I agree. The only question is how do we herd these stoned cats in the right direction without getting scratched up too much, if they can indeed be herded.
There is no “error” that is being compounded here. This is, was and has been deliberate. We were pushed, we did not jump.
Repeal of Glass- Steagall was an error. Defeat of the energy conservation bill during the Reagan era was an error. Tax cuts to the hyper wealthy was an error. Not placing solar panels on all new homes in the Southwest and California is an error. Waging 2 specious wars is an error x 2. Paying twice as much for one fourth the health care is an error. Pouring trillions into non -productive financial thievery is an error. As I pointed out in the entry you responded to; these things CAN have a cascading effect. I could go on but please don’t get semantically bogged down. I think you get the point.
SO you want to make it easier to make more errors?
Right. the easier it is to make errors, the easier it is to learn from them, correct them and go forward. Without the filibuster, we would have had health care reform many years ago and we would have had plenty of opportunity to have improved the system. The UK is a case in point. Their national health care system, real socialized medicine, not socialized insurance like Canada’s Medicare, used to be held up as a bad example compared to our “free enterprise” system of medicine. But according to current ratings by international organizations the British have now improved their system to the point that it greatly surpasses our own performance on life expectancy, and infant mortality rates. This has happened because the British political system gave them more than one bite at the apple since 1945, while we, in contrast talk about having only one opportunity for a generation to get it right. The key thing here is that one can rarely get anything right is one has only one chance in a generation do it. We’re human. We make errors. We have to legislate again and again to get things right and solve problems.
That’s a risk I’m willing to take. In my life it seems like every time I turn around it’s the Repubs standing in the doorway threatening filibuster. The times the Dems have used it seem to be few and far between. I use to work with a boss on a construction crew (years ago) who, after we’d spent an hr or so pondering some vexing problem would say “aw hell, let’s just DO something even if it’s wrong.” And we’d start down some course and eventually solutions to the problem would reveal themselves and we’d work the situation out. Legislation is even more like that because you NEVER know exactly what is going to come of it but you really must try SOMETHING. Paralysis = status quo 95% of the time and the filibuster is ALL ABOUT paralysis.
Exactly. Ever study how Toyota’s gotten where it is now? Try Matt May’s The Elegant Solution. You’ve got to do things to learn things.
He probably does, but he doesn’t seem to get the point, that we haven’t been able yet to correct these errors because of the filibuster.
So getting rid of the filibuster is pretty essential isn’t it. One reason for all the anger, frustration and violence is that we can never get anything done to improve the condition of working people.
Thanks. As I say above. It’s the filibuster that is unconstitutional. It’s just up to us to exercise the nuclear option and get Biden to say so.
The Senate is, constitutionally, a nondemocratic body.
In that case, I think we need more unconstitutionality, not less.
Again, according to the constitution majority vote governs in the Senate. The composition of the Senate may be anti-democratic and elitist according to the constitution. But formally it’s internal decision making is not supposed to be.
lets, thanks for continuing to speak truth to power.
I read a fascinating article about how Obama is enthralled totally by the media. He is significantly, his brand, a creation of the good will of the media (major help from Oprah) and that he is driven to court the CONSERVATIVE media, not to get their drum beat after him. So his eye is not on the polls, sadly, which show the popularity of expanded medicare for all and ending the wars, but on a media that sustains the rotten status quo and has corporatist bias, and which is shallow and non-empathetic. And what the media addresses as important and titillating is the bright shiny object that Obama goes after, too. Was he really a bleeding heart community organizer? I’m not seeing the spiritual residue at this point.
So, Obamacare. The 60 vote charade. Thanks lets. So sacrifice the quality of a health care package, ignore the horrifying statistics, and try to drag over one Repub. to the vote. Triggers????? Good God.
It was scary listening to the Newshour last night, talking about how little people have in their checkbooks to try to cover the mandatory health care, people who are struggling. Yeah, this government takes away your job, outsources or drains the economy, and then turns around and forces you to pay the first $5,000 or so for healthcare you can’t afford.
So, Obamacare is a travesty. With what I am hearing, I hope it doesn’t pass. The bottom-feeding Congress and the President who lacks empathy for the citizenry … want to congratulate themselves on doing reform when they are not doing reform. They are aiding and abetting medical industrial complex and taking care of their own campaign finance needs, and letting their country, like they did Katrina victims, drown. Die, go bankrupt, suffer.
Hi lib, Thanks for this point. It’s really very compelling. If the mandates pass with the shitty PO on the table now, families ought to take the same $5,000 to a new political Party that promises to bring in Medicare for All and forgive any penalties incurred as a result of the mandates. Even 10,000,000 families giving that kind of money ought to finance the new party well enough for it to overwhelm the majors with its message.
Yes, exactly.
Lie man and the other dogs will need to pay for trying to screw the American people out of healthcare and they will. They are not necessary to finish this. Reid had his press conference and got his congratulations it is time for him to earn it by using all of the tools of the senate to cut loose any dog or sneak who is not on board with vast majority of American people who want a chance to be released from the clutches of private insurer gangsters and make the bill stronger without their dead weight.
It may very well come to reconciliation and/or the nuclear option. I find myself leaning toward Jason Rosenbaum’s view that we should support Reid, as we continue to pressure him, as he moves through the ridiculous games of the Senate, step by step, and shows strength and courage.
Jane was angry about the idea of a silent filibuster. Well, by going through the ridiculous games of the Senate, Reid is forcing certain immoral, sleazy senators to show themselves publicly for what they are. Lieberman was just the first.
After taking 24 hours after Reid’s announcement on Monday to think about what he’s doing, I like so far the direction that this is moving, and wrote Senate Reid a letter last night to thank him, but also to remind him that millions of Americans are expecting a real, strong, competitive public health insurance option for everyone once he goes to conference with members of the House.
This is far from over.
Hi Knoxville, I agree that it is. I’m all for words of encouragement to Reid. But we must back off of the threats at the same time. We need both carrots and sticks.
I think beginning to talk about reconciliation or the nuclear option right now, in the face of Lieberman et al, is really smart. The thing these people fear most is irrelevance.
Right. But we need to get Harry to do that. People need to know that he’ll go as far as he needs to know to get a good bill.
Reid and Durbin are talking about it today:
Thanks, glad he’s talking about reconciliation. But, as the article said, it;s limited in its flexibility. On the other hand the nuclear option opens the way to anything the majority wants to do, and not only on health care, on everything else too. Does Harry have the guts to make most of the ConservaDems irrelevant? I hope so, but I doubt it.
You people need to chill the fuck out and allow the vagueries of the political process to work their way through.
How asinine, when a colleague wants another’s vote, to publicly humiliate them with threats of retribution when the colleague could care less how things work out. Sometimes, it is beneficial to be vague and indirect when people expect for you to be precise and direct.
It ain’t over until its over, and predictions are very difficult, especially about the future. Yes, Lieberman is a freakaziod, but the way to ensure that he plays ball in the legislative process, if possible, is for collegiality to run its course first on the inside. An outside strategy could be a primary challenge, but that worked so well last time…and it can also be public threats demanding his ouster from the caucus and committee chairpersonship.
Damn, people, you all need to learn to steel up those nerves and quit looking like falling fools clucking the sky is falling.
marcos, What nonsense. When the inside game is played and we sit back and watch we always lose. Sure we need the inside game. But what works best for us is a good inside game and an outside game threatening doomsday for them.
The calls were for the Democrat caucus to punish Lieberman BEFORE he voted against cloture. What does that buy you?
An object lesson for Lincoln, Nelson, Landriu, Bayh, and anybody else who’s thinking of going rogue. Throw Joe out, and then see if the others are still ready to support a filibuster.
So clipping the caucus to 59 before the cloture vote gets us where again?
Lieberman needs to know that the moment he supports a Republican filibuster, he’s out of the caucus rather than be threatened with being kicked out of the caucus beforehand as an object lesson if he indicates that he’s going to vote against cloture.
I’d prefer that we get rid of the gentlemen’s filibuster as a first step. Force them to get up on the Senate floor and debate the matter until they collapse the way it used to be. If there is no cost to filibustering, then the barriers to entry are too low.
Uh oh. I agree with everything you say here. I just made an appt. for counseling. LOL
marcos, You want to keep the filibuster, I don’t. So, I don’t care about that 60th vote. I don’t care if joe’s in or out of the caucus. And if Reid were smart he’d convince Joe that he, Harry, feels exactly the same way. he should say to, Joe. Go ahead Joe, make my day. It’s just what I need to throw you out and exercise the nuclear option.
You say:
I’m OK with that to a point. But I also think he must be made, on pain of explulsion from the caucus, to make a public statement informing people that he has changed his mind and won’t deprive his fellow Democrats of the opportunity for an up or down vote on a bill crafted by the majority. This is needed to help hold Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu, in line.
I couldn’t agree more, and have no objection with Harry starting this way. f he does those two things then any future threats he might make about the nuclear option will be believed.
You know that they’ve not got the spine nor dedication to the American people to do that. I do not want to keep the filibuster any more than I want to keep the Senate. I am always concerned that structural reforms that appear attractive upon cursory analysis might just change the balance of power in your opponent’s favor permanently, not just for this measure.
I don’t think you’ve really thought through the moving parts involved and the consequences of changing that moving part, rather it appears that you’ve preferred to focus on how the rules change would impact on the matter at hand if you were able to run key senators like marionettes.
No marcos. I’ve thought a lot about it, not simply with respect to health care but also with respect to many other issues.
You know the stimulus bill was crippled because of the context of the filibuster. The credit card reform act could not get at interest rate constraints because of it. The cap and trade bill is being crippled because it is in the background. In legislative area after area the filibuster in the background insures that there eithet be no legislation, or if there is that it will be watered down. My desire get rid of teh filibuster, is much deeper than just the hope of getting a better health care reform bill. It’s rooted in a belief that the US Government now lacks the capacity to act on any proposal that is controversial, and that this incapacity is largely responsible for our decline over the past 35 years.
If they didn’t have the filibuster they’d just find some other excuse.
Maybe. But this is about exposing them. Isn’t it?
Thank You.
Oh I remember quite clearly the last time we “chilled the fu** out and allowed the vagueries of the political process to work their way through.” It was 1994 and ALL healthcare went down in flames. Smoldering, dead for 15 YEARS. This is no time to play it cool. No less than the survival of the Republic is at stake this time (and I am not normally given to hyperbole.) Anger and disgust need to be registered at EVERY level constantly. This damn filibuster has been used far too long to keep the power elites in position to screw the people and lead this nation to the abyss. This isn’t some local city council power play. This is the U.S. Congress and if something REAL doesn’t happen then we will witness a descent into further chaos. I say “further” chaos because bankruptcy by medical bills is chaos for your family. Same with incapacitating illness or death due to no insurance. Leaving these incredibly grave issues to the “vagueries” of our corrupt, limp-wristed legislators is pathetic. PUSH HARD FORCEFULLY.
Are you trying to intimate that the course of events we’ve seen over the past 3 months or so in any way resembles how things crashed and burned in 1993?
And my call to chill the fuck out was on screeching that the Democrats preemptively and in public humiliate someone whose vote they need. That’s stupid politics when you’re trying to count to a finite number.
Yes it is as pertains a whip count for cloture. When a movement matures it quits acting like a narcissistic child rather sublimates our desire to do so through the facilitation those who are wavering. If Joe Lieberman is allowed to feel like a big man, then he can be cajoled along with threats coming in private.
Then we look like the teabaggers.
No, we need to do what Jane is doing, daring people to filibuster from the outside, unleashing credible threats on people’s political viability and the like. Professional, well considered, thoughtful and EFFECTIVE actions which apply the pressure which has been organized decisively.
Human beings are human beings and they behave the same way no matter whether they’re at the local, state or federal level of government. I guess you’ve never had to corral stoned cats to get to 50%+1 with the local corporate posse applying its pressure, huh?
And can we get real for a moment here? None of the proposals on the agenda will address the crisis in health care. There is very little we can do to coerce a winning outcome there. All we can do is to limit the harm done by these bills and to make whatever favorable provisions slightly more progressive.
If you want to do something different, then best of luck trying to mobilize a viable electoral coalition by shreiking in protest.
“Human beings are human beings and they behave the same way no matter whether they’re at the local, state or federal level of government. ”
This is what Jimmy Carter thought when he arrived from Georgia and found out the hard way that he was now dealing with Washington -a whole new animal.
Point about teabaggers? I don’t care who we LOOK like. What’s important is that we register our disgust from the strength and foundation of FACTS. Not from some artificial astro turf cooked up fantasy movement. There is a WORLD of difference there.
“Are you trying to intimate that the course of events we’ve seen over the past 3 months or so in any way resembles how things crashed and burned in 1993?” Yep, I am. In the sense that the public basically trusted that all those in power would come to their senses and do something to address the problem. Like Iraq. Like the economic meltdown. Like so many other things, we all play it really cool and things go to Hell.
Beside, I’m speaking more narrowly of the posting on the filibuster. Lieberman? I calculated a LONG time ago that Lieberman would stab us all in the back. He is the poster boy for exactly what I am talking about here.
And finally and more broadly: Just exactly WHEN DO you stop negotiating with Hitler? Civil rights was basically going nowhere till the cities started burning. Ditto for the labor unions-basically no progress without flames, strikes and the sound of heads cracking violently. I’m not advocating for violence. Yet. But angry protest has its place and to characterize it as simple “screeching,” is to denigrate all those who fought and died in the past for very serious causes against powerful forces. For them, gentle persuasion and waiting forever just wouldn’t do. 45,000 a year are dying. When does this get serious enough? Sometimes there needs to be a whiff of Revolution in the air.
There was no internet to speak of in 1993, not one with media and blogs. All eyes are on this and nobody is trusting those in power. But one need conduct oneself different when one holds a better hand than one’s opponent. So many leftists are unable to get out of protest mode that they end up looking weak when they are in truth strong.
Don’t you remember in “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” that when Stan was told to seek the Clitoris in order to win Wendy back and finally did, that the Clitoris told Stan that the way to win a woman was to exude confidence: “Chicks dig confidence, dude.”
I am no fan of Lieberman, but this is just wrong.
Thurgood Marshall with the NAACP leads the legal case against Brown v. Board of Education and wins desegregation.
White Arkansans freak about dignified black kids entering schools and Ike sends in the national guard setting an example for all.
James Meredith tries to attend the University of Mississippi, whites freak out, Kennedy send in the national guard.
Were there race riots leading up to the Civil Rights act of 1964?
Uh, the violence came from the thugs under the employ of the state and employers. And the wins were achieved by organizing to raise political power.
It is 2009. The Soviet Union is dead. Angry protest is what people who are frozen out of the political process use. That is what the teabaggers use. When you win elections, the time for angry protest is over. I’d been arrested many times for direct action and civil disobedience, and our contribution helped win an end to apartheid and no major US invasion of Central America.
Now that I’ve been sublimating that protesting angst into participating in electoral politics locally, I’ve been much more productive in helping bring positive change to people’s lives to the extent that an increment of protest only delivers a fraction of the same increment of work spent moving legislation.
Now that we’re moving legislation, we need to distinguish ourselves from our irrational opponents by presenting ourselves as confident members of a majoritarian coalition that might not agree on everything but walks in power as an example that folks want to identify with.
So, the Vietnam war protesters had nothing to do with ending the war?
And maybe Rosa Parks should have just moved to the back of the bus and waited for “incremental legislation.”
And MLK should have stopped “screeching” at the Montgomery police.
You also need to re- read the nascent beginnings of labor unions and when they became TRULY effective. When Irish miners pulled coal mine operators and owners out of their beds and beat the crap out of them. Try being a scab sometime and tell me you don’t learn something about the fear of violence. Strikes, which are a form of passive violence, along with the threat or actual use of violence is always the invisible club in the background. If you don’t believe me, hang around an old Teamster and soak up some stories.
You yourself have said, in essence, that this whole PO thing is a joke. Yet we have had to move heaven and earth just to get to this flimsy point. The opponent’s hand has all the cards that really count (WITHIN the system,) which is gazillions of dollars that they aren’t shy about using. On dozens of issues we have the stronger argument but we continue to lose, lose, lose. This whole thing was lost the minute single-payer was taken off the table. Get it? How is that the stronger hand?
I give up. I don’t know what the Soviet Union dead or alive has to do with this.
And I wish I could get excited about the wisdom of talking cartoon clitorises. Clitorii? Anyway thanks for the image. How about you work the halls of Congress and I’ll organize the marches and let’s call it good? Have a nice day.
marcos,
No. But there were plenty of street demonstrations and bus rides to the South, and protest meetings and mass movement phenomena. Without these there would have no Civil Rights laws.
And while Labor Unions in the 30s and 40s didn’t initiate violence they certainly engaged in it to defend themselves and their right to strike. And they wouldn’t have won without using violence in self-defense.
You say:
I couldn’t agree more, and I think we have to exhibit that power by using it to exert pressure on our legislators as progressives have been doing. You and I agree that Jane has been doing a good job. Perhaps we can agree that it’s that kind of activity complete with dares and implicit and explicit threats that we need?
Yes, mass movement phenomenon, brave people standing up to unjust laws, putting their lives on the line, other folks standing in solidarity with people who were taking a risk. There is no comparison between those expressions of liberation and the ritualized protest we see today and there.
Direct action where what they did was closely drawn to what they demanded, again, looking nothing like today’s ritualized protest because today’s protest movement is sponsored by the veal pen.
Progressives are poised now more than ever to expand our coalition to a true majoritarian governing coalition capable of keeping the electeds in line. That is made difficult when our posture remains one from when we were out in the political wilderness.
Joe’s already shown that threats don’t worry him. Probably because he views Harry as gutless. Harry needs to throw Joe out now as an object lesson to impose some discipline on the Party in the Senate. I don’t care about cloture and 60 votes. The bill is no good now. Let Harry move to reconciliation, where Amendments can be introduced and passed by majority vote. Then we will get a better bill.
“Professional,” I’m afraid that vague word has not much meaning here. On the other hand, I do agree that Jane’s threats are effective because she’s showing all the time that she can “bring it.”
This is a profound error. Human beings behave differently ay different levels of Government and depending on their situations, personalities, and attitudes. When dealing with politicians one has to know them and how they will react to pressure. In my view, if Joe is thrown out of the caucus, the others will vote the way Reid wants them too procedurally. Why, because Lieberman is the 60th vote. If Harry throws him out, then everyone else knows that Harry is ready to go at least to reconciliation. So, the others can’t gain anything by joining Joe. All they do is risk their own positions and probably lose them since Harry will have shown that he’s willing to throw people out. Further, if they still persist, Harry can then threaten both to throw them out and to use the nuclear option. If he goes through with it their power is gone. They are now nobodies. They won’t risk that. the whip is in Harry’s hand if he’ll use it.
I agree that the bill is crap, but for the Democrats, “failure” as measured by no bill is not an option, it has been amended to the minimum amount possible to ensure that outcome.
I assume that any bill with new heath care premium subsidies would be drowned in the Byrd Bath which also has a 60 vote threshold. There is no free lunch.
The punishment needs to be that Lieberman is stripped of all committee assignments and his bills will not get assigned. Say goodnight, Joe.
Professional means that one is taken seriously because one can credibly deliver on a threat to cut off someone’s balls. It also means adopting language that appeals past the liberal base without giving up the substance of the policies. The individuals here who believe that I am some sort of conservative plant because I don’t drink Kool-Aid are also the ones most gung ho about “really socking it to them.” It reminded me of the losers who grabbed onto the Green Party in a death grip chiding everyone with both feet on the ground for not “running all out against the Democrats,” as if gnats posed a credible threat. In order to be effective, you’ve got to measure your delivery in terms of the muscle behind it or else you look out of your league.
For all of her litmus testing on opt-out, given the magnitude of compromises that is the PO, Jane Hamsher is putting together the kind of package that is incubating good ideas here and tying them together to funded intelligent strikes that are delivering the message loud and clear. That is why I post here, because that effort is something novel and effective even if I do not agree with her on every aspect of the very complex issue.
Politicians don’t like their fingerprints visible on tasks like these, they wish to afford the outward appearance of comity and collegiality especially if leaders of their caucus. But inside, they are feared because that is how they deliver the goods.
I’ll reassess when we get the first data point in eight weeks of a retreat from a progressive position or an advance of a conservative one. Always open to evidence and reasoned argument.
In the Senate system, the nuclear option will empower conservative podunk states to take decisive action over well populated diverse states because their representation in the Senate is magnified.
What’s your poison, facilitate the imposition of policies or the blocking of them? I’d prefer that blocking new ideas be easier than implementing bad ideas, given the antidemocratic skew.
I’ve answered most of this already, so I won’t repeat here. You said:
I don’t agree. A failure for the Democrats this year is better than a bad bill. This bill is not yet nearly ready for affirmative votes by progressives. We’ll be better off if we defeat it and come back next year.
On the nuclear option, I think that getting rid of it will lessen the power of people like Kent Conrad and Max Baucus and other representatives of rural lily-white America. Also, I’d rather facilitate legislation than block it. We have many problems. To solve them we have to have the capacity to act and to leatn from our mistakes. Right now we never get to that point because for the most part we can’t act. And when we finally do get bills aimed at problems through the Congress those bills are so watered down that they can’t eiither solve problems or even clearly direct toward what we’ve done wrong. We’re condemned by Congressional incapacity to drift and drift toward deevolution of the United States and domination by the wealthy. The evidence that capacity to legislate rather than to block works better is all around us in other indurial nations who have been successfully meeting their problems and improving their societies while we languish. We came out of World War II the strongest and happiest of nations with a political system that could adapt to change. Now we can’t stem the movement toward plutocracy and extreme inequality, and you say that we need to block legislation.
Thanks GDC707, I agree, of course. Now is the time to push very, very, hard.
The goal is fairness and justice for all Americans, to realize their human rights for access to affordable and quality health care. This human right (sic!) is finally within reach, the American people are so close. And the means are health insurance reform in terms of Medicare for All or a strong, robust public option and a corresponding bill to be accepted by the House and Senate. How about the leader fairness and justice of Reid, the President and the Democratic Party regarding this human right? Their distributive justice and fairness, procedural fairness and interactional fairness will be judged by living American human beings.
Regarding the distributive outcome it’s very clear that the pursuit of well-being and happiness cannot be had without good health and a human right to healthcare. There is nothing more important than a human right? Nothing, everything else has to be set aside. Of course it still remains to be seen whether Reid’s proposal really has all the necessary elements to be considered a strong option. Everything else has to be rejected and not passed into law, as it will be an insult to the American People. Human rights are a national matter, as they apply to all States and all people of the US. Giving States the possibility “to opt out” of a civil right is really breathtaking. A 360 turn in mind set is needed, it seems to me that when it is about financial matters, that when a State suffers high financial losses due to bad health of their population in a certain year (disasters etc), the other States and the American people will have to show their solidarity and will help to compensate for this.
As for procedural justice and fairness, it is clear that lawmakers hardly listen to what the American people want. The polls are clear. And you are so right in your post. Now there’s the chance of a lifetime to give Americans their human right regarding health care. Democrats need to go for that, their gain will be a “license to operate” for years and years to come. Of course they should get rid of this old obsolete internal rule to avoid a filibuster, if a human right is at stake. This nuclear option is not against the Rule of Law or the Constitution, is merely replacing an old value by a new value. This internal procedural rule isn’t a fact of life; it’s just a “frozen” value. As for interactional fairness, with things like trust, respect, etc, …. that has long gone in the US. Reid c.s. should to look for wisdom in the sky of Washington; may the stars in the banner flying over the Capitol guide them.
No, it doesn’t.
That’s right. We already know it’s quite inadequate.
Henk, Yes, you’re right about everything. Health care is a human right, and it should not be denied because providing it would hurt or even destroy the insurance companies, or cost some Congress people their jobs. The nuclear option is not at all something that is inconsistent with the constitution. In fact, the constitution specifies that the Senate will decide on things by majority vote. So, it is the filibuster that is a violation of the constitution. The problem is that the Supreme will not touch litigation about the internal rules of Congress with a 10 foot pole because it is a co-equal branch of Government, and as a result of that, it is not possible to get the filibuster declared unconstitutional by the SC. Also, notice that when the nuclear option is invoked, what the Senator who invokes will do is precisely to ask the Chair (the VP) to rule on the point of order byd deciding that the filibuster is in conflict with the specification of the written constitution that matters should be decided by a majority vote of the Senate. Thus, the VP, if he decides in favor of the point of order, will be deciding, on behalf of the Senate that it is the filibuster that is unconstitutional, and therefore against the law of the land. This is how the nuclear option should be understood; namely, as a legitimate challenge to the constitutionality of the filibuster in the only way this can be done short of a constitutional amendment. In fact, I think I’ll promote this point in a blog.
A legislative body can set and then alter its own rules of order, there is nothing unconstitutional about that.
I’m just saying that the Senate could easily be used as a cudgel by interests better funded and organized than progressives.
The Citizens United case is under consideration by the SCOTUS which might eliminate bans on direct corporate contributions to campaigns and might also lift contribution ceilings.
Imagine a nuclear Senate elected under those circumstances freed of the control rod that was the cloture vote?
The Senate is limited by the constitution on what procedures it can put in place. The constitution plainly says that the decisions in the Senate are to be made by majority vote. The majority has decided to adopt the rules making the filibuster legal, and the majority can unmake that rule at any time without being subject to the filibuster. The nuclear option is the procedure for doing that. And those who want to get rid of the filibuster need only claim that it goes against the written specification of the constitution as their justification for wanting to end it. If the VP advised by the parliamentarian agrees and 50 votes uphold that ruling, the filbuster is deemed unconstitutional by the Senate and will be gone.
You say:
I have. I still prefer formal democracy in the Senate and I trust that the people will be able to hold the Senate responsible. Right now, it is cheap for the interests to buy off the a few Senators in the middle. I’d rather make them try to buy the whole Senate. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
This is a different statement than “the filibuster is unconstitutional.”
51 votes in the Senate could declare they wanted to end the filibuster because Joe Lieberman is an asshole if they wanted to. The Senate cannot declare anything unconstitutional or illegal. Only the SCOTUS and the President, with consent of Congress or the Congress overriding a veto can do those respecitvely. A legislative body has wide latitude to set its own rules of order and the Filibuster has not been declared unconstitutional to my knowledge.
Gotta disagree. The Democrats were arguing precisely the opposite a while back when they GOP was discussing the nuclear option. I can’t help but to see the hypocrisy here.
Given that the Democrats are viewed as not bringing substantive change to bear on the biggest problems facing us right now and that they might still fuck this up and pass an individual mandate without a public option, ensuring their loss of government by 2012, like they usually do, and their reluctance to go for anything but the most tepid shadow of Medicare for All, it is possible that we might see some Senate seats shift back towards the GOP.
If the Senate were democratically representative than I’d have no problems, but it gives a handful of states in Jesusland that barely add up in population to California a free hand to work its freakish will should it gain control of the body.
In response to my:
You say:
Right. But nevertheless, I assert that it is unconstitutional, in spite of the fact that it exists in the Senate today. I may be wrong, or I may be right. But a Senator who raises the point of order in objecting to a filibuster will also make this claim, and then the Senate will decide whether to validate the proposition or not. If it does, then the reigning interpretation will be that it is and was unconstitutional. On the face of it, given what the constitution says it is unconstitutional because the document clearly says that decision will made by majority vote of all Senators.
You also said:
Of course it can. It can pass sense of the Congress resolutions stating its opinion and it can claim that certain legal interpretations of the executive are illegal and pass new legislation to clarify the legal situation, or alternatively it could sue in the Executive in the Courts to compel it to obey its inetrpretation of the law that it, itself, has legislated. The Congess can even declare things unconstitutional. For example, it has always had the power to assert that the right of judicial review is not constitutional, because it is not explicitly written into the constitution. It has never done that. But their is nothing in the separation of powers that stops it from doing that.
Finally, when it comes to deciding that its own rules and procedures are constitutional or unconstitutional, each House of Congress has the unlimited authority to do that in our Government. The Executive certainly has no authority here, and the Supreme Court, who might possibly assert a right here, will, as I said not touch this with a ten foot pole.
On the impact of getting rid of the filibuster, I think your judgment isn’t sensible, because everyday we see the influence of small state Senators magnified by the filibuster.
Nonsense, even the most ambitious, progressive elements of bills before either house of Congress falls far short of making access to health care a human right or of guaranteeing access to that right for all Americans.
For some reason, the delta between Medicare for All and the Public Option does not cause any problems around these parts, but the delta between the Public Option and out-out sends everyone into a tizzy.
I must admit marcos that I don’t understand that myself. Somehow, progressives decided, some before Obama came in that they were willing to compromise national health insurance (Medicare for All, single-payer) and take the PO. And so, they decided also not to get mad about that. And since that time most of them have been mesmerized by the term “PO,” and anytime anyone calls something a PO, they seem to forego their privilege of getting mad and saying “that’s an outrage.” Of course, Reid’s opt-out PO is an outrage for all the reasons (operational date, eligibility restrictions, no Medicare rates, no ability to bargain with drug companies, no mandated access to Medicare providers) you, David Byron, libbyliberal, raphbon, Montanamaven, kip sullivan, Hugh, hipparchia, myself, and many others have written about around here. That was one of my main points in my earlier “Mis-directed Fury,” many folks around here have gotten very angry about trivialities; but they’ve been willing to compromise down the PO and call some pitiful bills on the table in Congress “robust” with nary a peep.
The Democrat Party hierarchy decided this. Despite Moynihan’s 1993 aside about why not just amend medicare, unfortunately “Medicare for All” was not part of the discourse coming into this. Those three words are the Big Takeaway from this, as they communicate in three words what “single payer” and “public option” don’t.
And on this blog, the delta between Medicare for All and the PO is been ignored, while people go ballistic over the notion of opt-out. Had we had Medicare for All as a meme earlier this past summer, then it might have been possible to create critical mass to contest that by September, but there was no lead time.
Aside from state opt out, the bills are all over the place on eligibility restrictions and rates (medicare + X or negotiated). I don’t know if there is anything viable on moving the start up date to anything politically beneficial on the 2010 election front. And I believe that the pharma deal is the next wall to crack once the PO has been pinned down.
Again, we’ve got to play this hand the best we can because we can only alter the cards we’re dealt and the hands of our opponents if we do the political work to win those discussions as we have through adroit exercise of our smarts and exploitation of our opponents supreme idiocy.
As this moves to conference, we’ll continue to see intense scrutiny on the remaining issues, and given public opinion, the relatively positive moves that have been made, the low esteem of insurance, pharma and the GOP, there are few impediments towards more of that incremental change to file off the sharp edges to this bill.
I don’t agree with the final sanguine view of your comment. However, these comments I entirely agree with:
Again, see this diary dated October 10th.
Again, see this diary dated July 30th.
I meant it was ignored by St. Jane of Hamsher.
Its gym time…fun chatting with you all.
She is so cute though! Like a little pixie.
Thank you. it was a good plumbing of these ideas. Sometimes you have to go deep. I think we did that.
marcos, I don’t believe in capital punishment and would like to see it abolished. However, the number of people who die each year from capital punishment is only a small percentage of those who die because of lack of health insurance.
Also, I want this to be a democracy. Above all, I want that. Many times the majority will be unwise and perhaps even immoral and we certainly need protection for minority rights in the constitution and the judiciary. But the Senate is immobilizing the United States and is giving us among the most ineffective national Governments in the developed nations. Things happen too fast in these times for us to be immobilized by minroities on some issues for 60 years or more. This ability of minorities to thwart legislation that majorities favor has to stop, and it has to stop now, or this country will end up as a devolved plutocracy, and guess what? We’ll still have capital punishment.
Yes, yes, yes and yes.
Thank GDC707. I appreciate it.
I like to quote Divine from John Waters’ “Female Trouble:”
The Senate System causes all sorts of problems, not just the filibuster, but the electoral college. So long as these tiny, flat, windswept states with populations that are white as snow and where most people have never left their home county enjoy a disproportionate influence in the body, it makes sense to have a somewhat fail safe recourse to check the disproportionate power granted them by the great compromise
This is a rule of order that is tantamount to a structural reform, reform of a structure that is in and of itself inherently antidemocratic. Trying to paper over an antidemocratic system with the veneer of democracy as an instrument to overcome a temporary political obstacle is a very risky strategy that can deliver all sorts of unintended consequences.
I believe the distinction between the word “democracy” and “republic” is nil. I’ve heard “republic” used by right-wingers to try and explain how the US wasn’t intended to be a democracy, often quoting Benjamin Franklin. The words didn’t have two different meanings. Republic = Democracy.
Technically a republic has no royal as a head of state so eg. the UK is not a republic but is a democracy. A difference that has no application to the US.
I think there’s a difference with respect to separation of powers. The US consciously adopted Montequieu’s notion of a Republic, and the founders were at pains to avoid Democracy. However, over time the democratic element in our democracy has evolved and is far more important than it used to be due to universal coverage, enfranchisement of women, and finally of blacks, and also through Americans’ embrace of the idea that we ought to be governed by majority rule tempered by minority rights. The situation in the UK has developed in a parallel way. It is still formally a monarchy, but it is also a Democracy. And we formally are a Republic, but we are also a Democracy, I still believe.
marcos, this is an argument for inaction. The filibuster has produced much more harm than good and continues to do so. For you to say that the Senate is anti-democratic without the filibuster, is quite beside the point, because the filibuster has done nothing but magnify the anti-democratic influences even more. What we need to do is get rid of both the filibuster and the seniority system, and then go after changes to the constitution. It will be a lot easier to get that constitutional change if we first get the other two.
A few thoughts (in order of appearance):
I see the 45,000 figure has achieved “big lie” status.
“this whole fiasco plays into the mindset of “government isn’t the solution”.”
LOL! Yeah, kinda like a burned hand plays into the mindset of “don’t touch a hot stove.”
“If 50 Democrats don’t vote for it, then they’ll be exposed as responsible for a bad outcome on the health care reform bill”
And if they do they’ll be exposed as responsible for a bad health care reform bill.
“the Party as a whole will be exposed as hypocrites.”
Too late, but if it makes you feel any better: the other side is just as bad.
“getting rid of the filibuster is so important”
Yes: it always reminds me of a child holding his hands over his ears and chanting, “LA, LA, LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA, LA, LA!”
“There are still weeks of discussion to be had in the two houses of Congress, and then a conference committee which will be very high profile.”
That’s true. Whatever your political persuasion, whatever your opinion on what would be true reform: shout it at your representatives loud and clear. The fat lady hasn’t even started warming up yet.
That’s true but the rest of your comment is just a bunch of unsupported assertions.
Sorry to bust the hippie bubble, but the Vietnam war ended only when divisions in the elites over profitability were played out in the government. The only thing that the hippies ended up winning us was much better, healthier food. If their model of organizing worked, then the 1970s would have looked much different than it ended up, Reagan’s rise would have been checked.
Rosa Parks was a powerful African American woman who stood her ground with dignity. That is why we remember her today, not because she was screeching.
We remember the Black Panthers today because they took their weapons onto the streets to keep the cops honest. They were dignified people who were walking in power in a society which disempowered them.
Again, they did sit ins, real civil disobedience, disobeying an unjust law, not acting out in ways that are tangential to the social change sought.
My husband is SEIU. The history lesson is instructive but wholly inapplicable to the circumstances in which we find ourselves now. Labor has had the lions share of progressive resources since the 1950s, and has singularly been unable to leverage that relative power into increasing their hand. To the contrary, labor has one issue and one issue alone, demanding that everyone else put their interests aside to stand with them in this perverse one-way solidarity to bolster their headcount or stop losses of union jobs. If you don’t support that, then you’re anti labor in their book.
And, yes, we tried to do something about it, by trying to build independent progressive political power through the Green Party and got slapped down big time by the Democrats who spend more resources attacking similarly ideologically situated opponents than our common enemies. That said, this is the hand we’ve been dealt, and I think we’re playing it better than could possibly have been expected.
The system as developed an immune response to protest. Protest gets framed in a way that dismpowers and delegitimates protesters. I hate to let you in on a little secret, but speaking the truth to power is the ulitmate narcisstic action, because, guess what….power already knows the truth. Unless your protest chokes off the economic engine that drives the system or threatens electeds with a political death sentence, exacts damage from your opponents, then it is all but meaningless.
Confident folks walking in power is what scares politicos and gets the goods, not flailing protesters.
marcos,
Do you know what this sounds like? Clintonite cant. -:)
C’mon, what scares politicians is any way of demonstrating that you’ve got the votes behind you. I know the conventional wisdom is the elites are immune to protests. That’s crap. It’s a question of numbers. If we get 2 million into DC, they won’t be immune because they’ll have to shut Congress down. And such a protest would also social betworks and potentially a new party emerging from teh grass roots. There are lots of different ways of organizing and acting. the things that are effective yesterday, won’t necessarily be today, and the things that were effective long ago may become effective again. And what is important tomorrow may be entirely new. You’ve said very frequently that things are hard to predict, but when it comes to your model of political action, you’re predicting all the time.
This is a time of great dissatisfaction, even fear and hate. It is a time when people can go into the streets and demand and get the attention of the elites. these elites have mostly not seen anything like the protest movements of the 30s and the 60s. They don’t know how they’ll react to them. The Press offers the frame that such protests are ineffective. But the Press itself is composed of very well-paid elites who don’t want to see massive change. They have a vested interest in saying that.
One thing we do know about out elites. They’re not known for their physical courage, since so many of them have never been exposed to violence or the threat of it. Personally, if they found 2 million in the streets of Washington I think they’d worry about that.
Back in 1993 we had 1,000,000 LGBT and friends marching in DC and that worked out well, didn’t it? When was the last time that a mega march delivered a policy change?
Parties have to be built and maintained they spring into existence as much as Congress reacts to mega marches. Have you ever tried to build a progressive party under withering Democrat assault?
What I’m seeing is a moment where the divisions of liberal and conservative, economic and social are getting all mixed up as the GOP is imploding. This is an opportunity to pivot the terms of the political debate from the bottom up in our terms.
I believe that the way to make this happen is with targeted political interventions, media, support for primary challenges or threats. There is a place for mass demonstration, although I think that it yields diminishing returns, but it has to be of a paradigm that is inviting and affirmative, not one steeped in the failed dreams of 60s relics.
2,000,000 is twice 1,000,000,000 and more than twice as impressive because DC hasn’t seen a crowd that size except perhaps at the recent inaugural. But also, you said:
I haven’t said that a mass demonstration should be based on “the failed dreams of 60s relics,” but have said that such a demonstration should be and would be a part of a larger movement. I think agree that the movement is the thing and that will have many manifestations. So my remarks about the many methods it will need still stand, I think.
Oh give me a break. This entire entry is raging horseshit. And completely misses the point. Rather than go through the entire delusion and refute it point by point, let me just make a little prediction. At the end of this fight your precious little cool, clever, don’t roil the waters style is going to end up with . . . . . nothing. It’ll smell something like the present COBRA program. Mass bankruptcies will continue. People will continue to die in large numbers due to no insurance or underinsurance. The cartel will be stronger, the people weaker. This will compound with other fault lines and cascade through the system. Cynicism will reign and another generation of bright – eyed young people will completely turn off to the issues. Down the line, when things get bad enough, a spark will set it all off and then you’ll see exactly what I’ve been talking about. Sometimes, smart guy, shit does happen.
GDC707, It’s history. You can see how often shit happens. Who would have predicted that the USSR would break up? Our plutocratic regime isn’t invincible. They know that, even if some of us doubt it. That’s why they’re getting as much money as they can while the getting is good.
I know I’m probably wrong, I sure hope so. We’ll probably start crawling out of this recession and people will go back to work and enough folks will get some health insurance to keep the pot from boiling over for another 15 years. But I just sense that we can’t keep playing it so stupid on so many fronts and not suffer some permanent crippling damage. Anyway, the struggle continues. G’night.
A quick call to Pelosi’s SF office did not offer anything to confirm this.
Obama controls all pieces on the board except for the SCOTUS. The only provision in this bill which might interest them would be the individual mandate.
Obama has nominal control over the executive and legislative branches. My read is that he painted as small a target as possible on himself when he allowed Congress to move on a bill and his touch has been so light as to be imperceptible–what changes has Obama ordered to any of the bills?
There are so many decisive steps upcoming, finalization through the two chambers and conference that this is so far from over and the progressive political pressure raised so far will continue to increase and exact more concessions. I’d hope that we’d position ourselves as confident and in power because our side is nominally advancing as our opponents retreat. That kind of symbolism is as important as the content of the policies in building decisive political power.
Sorry, this is an error.
please excuse the OT.
letsgetitdone, i just left you several comments (and hopefully some links that may be of interest to you) at the bottom of your diary, Deficit Hawkism and National Suicide: Part One.
Oh hey! In another thread you said we’d talked before c. 2003 on some board. Were you using a different handle at that time? And which board?
Thank you selise, I’ll revisit as soon as I catch up here.
Since Jane dared Senator Lincoln to filibuster a public option last night on TRMS and launched FDL Action PAC’s “Fund Organizers in Arkansas: Dare Blanche Lincoln to Filibuster the Public Option,” almost half the target amount has been reached.
Less than 24 hours.
Impressive!
Very. Jane is a dynamo.
You guy’s are batting these things back and forth like it is game, I’ll bet one and I’ll see you two.
Healthcare, the wars, and even our economy are life and death problems, and as we are seeing the people in Congress are letting us down on all fronts. The political gamesmanship they are playing with our lives and money should get us so upset that we wish to take action, instead of just blog.
if this report from david swanson is true, then this is what’s got me furious: Healthcare Hoax from Hell
worse than a bait and switch. a hoax. i’m going to have to post this in ralphbon’s diary too.
Now, this is an outrage. Joe is not such an outrage, we don’t need him. Americans need the Kucinich Amendment to survive. Thanks selise, for calling my attention to Swanson.