I, too, would like to welcome Mr. Armey to the Land of Swamp and I look forward to trying to mediate some kind of discussion between him and our faithful commenters during the week.
But my first duty is to put a tiny condition on Joe’s point to Dick (in an altogether delightfully feisty post):
None of the Democrats is proposing that. None of them is even proposing a “single-payer” plan, like Canada, where the government collects the premiums and people get to choose private providers.
Dennis Kucinich is proposing that. And on a different day, I might be tempted to let it be understood that the above is just shorthand for “None of the [major] Democrats,” but with the “Talk Clock” fresh in my mind, I’m feeling like there should be more transparency about which candidates we take seriously and which we don’t and, when possible, we need to explain why we feel the way we do. Maybe Kucinich isn’t the best example here, but if people think Dodd and Biden and Richardson were short-changed, shouldn’t we think about how to cover an expanded field without exaggerating their chances? And being clear about who we’re talking about when talk about “candidates” might be a start… People’s ideas can be relevant even if their polling numbers aren’t.