More Fact Check: The Obama Flip-Flop On Medicare Drug Prices

Big Pharma has been running those “pro-reform” Harry and Louise commercials for months. Now we know the price for them.

“They can’t make a deal with them. You can’t hope they are going to go away. You have to actually be willing to fight.” – John Edwards @ 5:30.

It is hard to argue that we lost an opportunity when we failed to nominate a candidate who fathered a love child on the campaign trail. But there it is.

When the President threatens to veto a Health Insurance Reform bill that provides for Medicare/Public Option to negotiate drug prices/tie them to VA prices, then I’ll believe that Tauzin has won. Until then, there are too many opportunities for Congress to overcome it, and for Obama to tell Tauzin “It’s out of my hands” to proclaim doom.

Let’s see what the shape of the final legislation is.

how is this a fact check? Has Obama claimed there was no deal? Flip flop, I get (and don’t think that’s inherently necessary an evil thing), but “fact check”? What fact are you checking?

Looks like Tauzin, et al are in a win-win situartion. To get health reform passed will require the admin to agree not to negotiate drug prices. If the bill allows negotiation, then it may not pass both houses. Either way pharma will continue to have one of the highest profit margins of any industry, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/performers/industries/profits/ .

don’t be stupid now. edwards could never get a stimulus bill passed that was of this size or bigger. Edwards would be mired in so many controversies by now that he’d prolly have like a 39% approval rating. he would never get any bluedog or conservadem to follow him. we wouldn’t have 60% dem seats because some people would vote for him but vote for a repub sen just to keep an eye on him.
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now, i just couldn’t be more disappointed in obama. i mean, if congress made a deal with big pharma and obama accepted it as a step to get things done, i wouldn’t mind because id know he was still looking out for me. But dude, no wonder dems are getting out-organized. i could and would never take time out of my day to go counter some crazy wingnut who may or may not be carrying a concealed weapon to a townhall to advocate for a healthcare plan that a) doesn’t have an autonomous and self-funded public option b) pretty much guarantees that drug prices won’t be lowered c) might actually be a pathway to forcing me to buy insurance without lowering prices which just might bankrupt me d)although budget neutral, will require a 900 billion downpayment.
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id rather obama just save that money, make the approx. 600 bill cut in medicare and medicaid then scratch the bill. then write a narrow bill that bans the practice of denying medical coverage b/c of ‘pre-existing conditions’. You wouldn’t have to spend any money for this bill.

What lupercal5 said.

Aye – it be past time t’ be stoppin’ this snowball o’ sh*t fr’m rollin’ any further. It be no’ in our interest t’ be havin’ somethin’ tha’ be called “Health Care Reform” when it be nothing bu’ a huge windfall fer th’ health insurance an’ pharmaceutical corporations!

I be quittin’ beggin me reps t’ pass real reform, an’ startin’ t’ demand they just stop th’ whole boondoggle ri’ now.

Arrgh.

Bring back th’ bloody paragraph breaks!
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yarr!

What Tom in The Swamp said:

“When the President threatens to veto a Health Insurance Reform bill that provides for Medicare/Public Option to negotiate drug prices/tie them to VA prices, then I’ll believe that Tauzin has won…

If Robert Reich is correct and and the White House was essentially blackmailed into giving Big Pharma what it wanted in exchange for supporting reform (rather than becoming part of the disloyal opposition) then Obama had every right and duty to tell them what they wanted to hear with no intention of ever delivering any restrictions on government’s ability to negotiate drug prices in the future.
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So Michael, all you have to do is show us “a provision in that bill that prevented us from doing it,” to have any hope of getting your “Flip-Flop” premise right at some time in the unknowable future. Small surprise, I figure that there will be no such provision and Billy Tauzin, Big Pharma and so, so many of your colleagues in the so, so easily duped corporate press (at least you’re in good company this time) have been thoroughly and embarrassingly punked by President Barack Obama. And how sweet it is that a Democrat has finally learned how to play the game as “conservative” political elites and your industry have designed it.

if you wait until the bill is in its final form, its too late. What we’re looking at here is political corruption, plain and simple — and by making sure that everyone knows that Obama was selling out to drug companies to make himself look good, we make it far less likely that the “sale” that Obama negotiated will go through. If we wait, the odds are greatly enhanced that Obama’s sell out will become a reality._

Who extorted who?
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Obama was in the catbird’s seat here — he repeatedly promised to cut Medicare payments to drug companies, there was massive public support for doing so, and Obama would have had no problem passing “stand alone” legislation mandating those cuts even if “comprehensive health reform” failed.
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And Obama has never been truly committed to comprehensive health care reform — that was obvious during the campaign, and has become even more obvious with each day that has passed since he took office. Obama didn’t need PhRMA, because Obama doesn’t care if real reform is achieved.
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So if there was extortion, it was probably the white house that extorted Pfizer and friends — he told Tauzin that he wanted $100 million plus spent by the drug companies to help make him look good, or it would cost the drug companies 1000 times that.

shepherdwong:
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If “Robert Reich is correct“…

I don’t want to be puritanical about all this. Politics is a rough game in which means and ends often get mixed and melded. Perhaps the White House deal with Big Pharma is a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance.
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But if that’s the case, our democracy is in terrible shape. How soon until big industries and their Washington lobbyists have become so politically powerful that secret White House-industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important legislation? When will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV advertising designed to persuade the public that the legislation is in the public’s interest? (Any Democrats and progressives who might be reading this should ask themselves how they’ll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities.)
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We’re on a precarious road — and wherever it leads, it’s not toward democracy.

, then “[all the bad corporate lackeys and their masters] have been thoroughly and embarrassingly punked by President Barack Obama“?
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Waaat?

Thom Hartmann’s third hour today will cover the interlocking directorates between Big Medicine/Insurance corporations and Big Media corporations. It should be revealing to see some of the reasons why Big Media is so slanted against Health Insurance Reform.

“Wait” doesn’t mean “sit back and wait”.

We still need to keep the heat on Congress and the White House to make sure that whatever lands on Obama’s desk gives Medicare and any Public Insurance Plan the same power to negotiate with drug companies as the VA has.

“Who extorted who?”

Work with me here, boys (and stop trying to read Obama’s mind – you may be smart but you’re not that smart). It doesn’t matter whether Pharma gave the ultimatum to Obama or the other way ’round (though that seems unlikely). The only thing that matters is whether Obama ever had any intention to deliver on his promise to Tauzin. I’m guessing just like you but I bet he was lying.

This steady drip drip of information, disinformation, misleading points and plain old fashioned lies has so muddied the debate that it is no wonder that people are confused.

Pieces like this by MS add enough details to confuse readers.

How come we don’t have a bill, of a reasonable size, to study and comment on? Who needs a 1000 pages to set out the main issues in health care that require reform and the means by which it can be done. Who needs 5 versions? This is idiotic.

All I see is that the usual suspects go out and spout bald faced lies – eh talking points – we don’t want to tell the truth do we?- light fires on the net , and all the Obama team is doing is extinguishing same. This is a loser’s tactic. The WH is playing defense and doing a little “getting into bed” with Tauzin.

Time for the change we’ve been waiting for!

If Edwards were president, the headlines would alternate between Haircut Gate, Trial Lawyer Gate, and Should Rielle Hunter Be First Lady Gate. Healthcare reform would be lucky to get a paragraph on page 27b. As for the nonsense about political corruption, I don’t see that Obama is gaining financially by this. Nor do I care if he flipflops, toespins, does a triple salchow or loops the loop, provided we make some progress as a nation on healthcare.

I’m guessing just like you but I bet he was lying.
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well, all the evidence suggests that he had every intention of doing everything he could to keep his promise. Lets not forget that it was Obama who has been deferring NOT to the various liberal committee chairs that have direct influence over health care legislation in the House and Senate, but to the notorious Max Baucus whose committee (Finance) is only peripherally involved in issues concerning health care reform. And Baucus is already on board with the Obama sell-out deal.
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So, here you have Baucus and Obama on the same page with regard to the drug companies, and Obama and Rahm encouraging the “blue dogs” in the House to challenge Waxman in his committee….but you think Obama was lying? That’s a bad guess.
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Also, keep in mind that presidential credibility is essential to the exercise of presidential power. If Obama was “lying”, as you suggest, he could no longer be trusted at all to do anything that he promised “in private” — and he’s already broken so many public promises, his credibility would be completely shot.

“…all the evidence suggests that he had every intention of doing everything he could to keep his promise.”
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And, from my point of view, all the evidence suggests that he wanted to maintain the fiction of a “deal” to keep Pharma from going off the reservation and those corporations wrote the book on public deception.
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“If Obama was “lying”, as you suggest, he could no longer be trusted at all to do anything that he promised “in private”
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As I said, Obama is playing by the rules written by the very people he’s dealing with. As you may have noticed by watching what business, Republicans and other “conservatives” do and how they are reported in the corporate press, successful lying is considered an admired virtue, a feature not a bug in The Village. Obama is testing the waters for a Democrat, to be sure, and a lot of people will be pissed-off but they’re all the right people so I say a public servant’s job well done.

http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNkYmZhMGJhY2YyZjNlNTIzZDllZDViYzM2ZmU0ZDE=

Paul Lukasiak:
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the notorious Max Baucus whose committee (Finance) is only peripherally involved in issues concerning health care reform
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Now wait a second…Finance isn’t “only peripherally involved”, they have direct control as per Senate Rules:

The U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (or, less formally, Senate Finance Committee) is a standing committee of the United States Senate. The Committee concerns itself with matters relating to taxation and other revenue measures generally, and those relating to the insular possessions; bonded debt of the United States; customs, collection districts, and ports of entry and delivery; deposit of public moneys; general revenue sharing; health programs under the Social Security Act (notably Medicare and Medicaid) and health programs financed by a specific tax or trust fund; national social security; reciprocal trade agreements; tariff and import quotas, and related matters thereto; and the transportation of dutiable goods.

Finance has jurisdiction over health programs if they are in any way like Social Security or Medicare:

The role of the Committee on Finance is very similar to that of the House Committee on Ways and Means. The one exception in area of jurisdiction is that the Committee on Finance has jurisdiction over both Medicare and Medicaid, while the House Ways and Means Committee only has jurisdiction over Medicare.
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Due to the Committee’s wide jurisdiction, it is often considered an influential committee. A wide array of Senators with differing policy concerns seek membership on the Committee because of its role in setting tax, trade, and health policy.

The reason this whole mess is such a colossal joke isn’t because Baucus & Finance are supposed to be peripherally involved, it’s because Finance is by definition intimately involved in legislating programs that are like Social Security and Medicare…which is precisely what we are not getting out of Baucus!
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Get that?
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Baucus is involved because Health Care Reform was supposed to be like an extension of Medicare, but the legislative proposals being negotiated in Finance are deliberately not extensions of Medicare because…Max Baucus is involved!

Whoops.

The full terms of the White House agreement with the drug makers, like a similar deal with the hospital industry, have never been disclosed.

Several people involved in the negotiations of the original drug industry deal with the White House said there had been some ambiguity in the original discussions, conducted primarily through the Senate Finance Committee, over whether the overhaul might include the government negotiations of drug prices.

Caught between a pivotal industry ally and the protests of Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration on Friday backed away from what drug industry lobbyists had said this week was a firm White House promise to exclude from a proposed health care overhaul the possibility of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare.

everyone needs to calm the hell down. there is no way to get 60 votes in the senate if u don’t take a couple of repubs with you. And that’s assuming Kennedy and Bird will wheelchair their way to capitol hill. Unlike the house, you don’t convince senator to vote for a bill one by one. They go by packs. that’s your gang of 14s, gang of 6s ect… And Olympia snow is more of a liberal conservative than say ben nelson. so the baucus experiment is necessary. I don’t think anyone expected us the get 100% of what we wanted. We always expected to make some compromise in order to reduce costs for folks AND the gov’t.
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Obama was supposed to be our trusted representative in this thing. we expected him to be practical. If we could find another way to achieve the same results of a public option that would get votes, we all understood he’d take it.
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What’s worrying is the shift in position since this big phrma deal. congress is actually the one fighting it. Now i know rham will say liberals said the same thing about schip (and im no freakin’ liberal mind you, just a moderate progressive). But it’s just not the same thing.

Didn’t Obama get 80 billion from the drug companies?

“What is clear is that it is a major league flip flop for Obama…”
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So, Michael, how do you like your crow?

That’s what some ofud have been doing : “remain calm”, Obama knows what he is doing. And we have recipients of Medicare shouting in favor of the Insurance crowd.

Progressives have understood that compromises have to be made. The problems is that our side is making all the compromises in this fight. Our Democratic Senators are pulling five ways; “our” Blue Dogs?…look we have been outmanoeuvred thus far.

Either we work for one part of the bill to include a public option or we settle for tokenism. For now I am not sure Obama – pace Durbin – is really on board. He seems to be getting on and off from time to time. It depends on the audience.

stuart –
Finance is in charge of trust fund programs and other existing programs funded by a specific tax.
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Medicare really isn’t part of the “health care reform” problem (although savings from Medicare are necessary for a “solution” to the overall problem, Medicare itself is an “entitlement” problem, not a health care problem.)
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In terms of actual health care reform, Finance should have played no role until after the overall structure of the reform had been determined — it part of the comprehensive reform package included changes to Medicare, than those specific changes (rather than the entire program) should have been sent to Finance.
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That’s what I mean when I say that Finance should have been peripheral to the process — it simply was not the appropriate committee to write a bill that was intended to provide comprehensive health care reform. Finance had no more purview over comprehensive health care reform than committees dealing with small business, veterans affairs, community development, taxes, or just about any other committee would have, because comprehensive reform would impact the purview of just about every committee.
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KT told us that baucus was the White House choice to run the whole process — in other words, the white house wanted someone who was a wholly owned subsidiary of the health care parasites in charge of the process. But when you look at what should have happened, the Senate HELP committee should have been running the show. IMHO, Obama exploited the power vacuum created by Kennedy’s illness to turn the whole process over to the parasites.

what crow?
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Obama flip flopped — and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and is now flipping back.
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He sold out Americans to the drug companies, got caught, and now is trying to pretend that he never made — and then pushed — the deal in the first place.

You’re obviously angry to the point of irrationality and the tell is you’re stating as fact what you can’t possibly know. In other words, you’re talking out your @ss.
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I can at least admit the possibility that Obama was sincere in his “negotiations” with Tauzin (assuming you believe that Obama actually thought he could deliver such a promise about what Congress would or wouldn’t do) but that is looking increasingly impossible to believe – to the rational.

From out of the distance, Dan Froomkin returns from an extended interim vacation to post his first article as Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, and it’s about just this subject.

His take on it?

Eventually, however, a White-House brokered deal will emerge from the back rooms. And one of two things will happen.

One possibility is that Obama, to everyone’s surprise, will come out with a strong bill much like the one he promised his supporters during the campaign. It is conceivable, after all, that the reason Obama hasn’t publicly issued ultimatums and twisted arms and busted heads is that he believes it’s best to do those things in private — and only when the time is truly ripe. In this scenario, which I call the Obama-as-community-organizer scenario, the community’s needs are finally met, but in a way such that even those who had thwarted the people’s will are allowed to save face.

The other possibility — well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store — having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.

So far, the glimpses we’ve seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario. Most significantly, late last week, first the Los Angeles Times and then the New York Times broke the news that Obama had secretly made a sweetheart deal with former arch-nemesis Billy Tauzin, head of Big PhRMA. The same man who during his presidential campaign so ardently pledged to let Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, has now apparently agreed to block any Congressional efforts to do that — or anything else that would rein in the industry’s obscene profits, for that matter — all in return for $80 billion in promised cost savings over 10 years and, it turns out, an $150 million ad campaign in support of “reform” efforts.

If the health-care deal that emerges benefits the health care industry more than it does ordinary Americans, Obama is likely to argue that the agreement was by necessity a compromise. But keep in mind that Obama went into the entire debate having taken a fairly dramatic compromise position to start with. The most effective way to achieve universal coverage and bring down health care costs – Obama’s two ostensible holy grails — is, of course, a single-payer system. But Obama unilaterally ruled out creating an actual government-run health-care system – rather than a mythological one — on pragmatic political grounds, before the public debate even began.

Does Obama have the ability to stand up to corporate interests? There’s scant evidence of that so far. Indeed, most notably in the course of the financial industry bailout, he deferred to them quite spectacularly. And it’s not just corporate interests, either. There’s something about the military/national security complex that seems to set Obama back on his heels on such issues as dealing with Guantanamo detainees, coming clean about the Bush administration’s torture legacy or “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Yes, despite an occasional commitment to open government, the White House remains largely a black box. We know some of the inputs – including a surprising number of health industry titans and veritable parade of other CEOs. By contrast, the “voice of the people” seems to be expressed mostly by the ten miserable letters from ordinary Americans that Obama reads every day. Doesn’t exactly seem like an even match.

But we still don’t know what really happens inside. Is the real Obama being serially co-opted by his aides in there? Or is the real Obama at heart a conflict-averse facilitator, rather than a leader?

We’ll know a lot more soon enough.

everyone needs to calm the hell down. there is no way to get 60 votes in the senate
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you don’t need 60 votes, you need 50 — and a backbone. Bush didn’t have 60 votes to get his tax cuts passed. And Bush was more than happy to allow the Democrats to try and filibuster bad ideas like AUMF — the Democrats backed down, rather than deal with the political consequence.
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A good health care reform proposal would either be passed in 2009, or result in an electoral rout in 2010 for the GOP — and passage in 2011.
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So please take you “60 votes” and put them where the sun don’t shine.

We don’t be needin’ 60 votes t’ pass a bill – we be needin’ 60 votes t’ stop a filibuster – two diff’rent things.
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Th’ democrats could be passin’ an actual bill wi’ 51 votes, if they were wantin’ to, bu’ they be no’ wantin’ to.
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Just as they could be passin’ an actual health care reform bill if they were wantin’ to, bu’ they no be wantin’ to, either!
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Yarr!

An’ by th’ time we be knowin’ it, th’ tide’ll be out an’ we’ll all be left high an’ dry…an’ it’ll be too late t’ be makin’ any changes.
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YARR!

Blast the bloody keyboard!
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So, whilst we be knowin’ a lot more soon, it’ll be long past “soon enough”!
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Yarr!
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“Does Obama have the ability to stand up to corporate interests?”
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The only thing I’d differ with is I’d say that you don’t “stand up to” corporate interests (since they own the corporate and right-wing media and will use it to destroy anyone who is seen as a direct threat), you beat them at their own game, which is deception and implementation, plain and simple.
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Otherwise, Froomkin is correct as usual: we’ll know only when we see what legislation is finally put forward.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/10/media-ignore-hcans-playbook-thwarting-town-hall-protesters

Interesting. Sheppard’s got a point.

Gotta feel sorry for Dan. Here he is at HuffPo, home of thousands of the Oborg, and so he equivocates his butt off while simultaneously providing an extensive list of exact why the final result with be “Obama the pushover”.
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Of course, the problem here is that the “Obama the pushover” meme puts Obama in the role of victim, rather than perpetrator. But nobody forced Obama to take single payer off the table. Nobody forced Obama to pre-emptively sell American taxpayers down the river with his drug company deal. Nobody forced Obama to defer to Baucus, instead of Waxman, or Dodd, or any number of other congresscritters.
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Obama didn’t get “pushed over” — he leaped at the chance to betray regular americans in deference to corporate interests.

“Obama didn’t get “pushed over” — he leaped at the chance to betray regular americans in deference to corporate interests.”
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Again, you have no way of knowing that or Obama’s motives (and, quite frankly, the belief that Obama should have some desire to screw regular Americans

“Obama didn’t get “pushed over” — he leaped at the chance to betray regular americans in deference to corporate interests.”
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Again, you have no way of knowing that or Obama’s motives (and, quite frankly, the belief that Obama should have some desire to screw regular Americans…makes little sense and sounds spob-like it’s obtuseness) but if the legislation is industry-friendly and costly to average citizens, I’ll pass you a pitchfork and light your torch personally. It will be all Obama’s.

It is easy, in hindsight, to claim that an Edwards administration would be mired in controversy, but Rielle Hunter wasn’t the reason he lost. He lost because too many Democrats, liberal Democrats, lack the stomach for a fight.
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edwards could never get a stimulus bill passed that was of this size or bigger.
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And why is that? Because too many Congressional Democrats are bought-and-paid-for corporate whores? So we need to keep electing corporate whores who will get along with the other corporate whores? Is that how it works?
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Look, I’m not under any illusions. The GOP, the Blue Dogs, and the media would link arms to attack any true liberal. But that is why it is called FIGHTING. Nobody said it would be easy.
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This isn’t about John Edwards. The reason that we are in this mess is that Americans keep electing losers. 9 times out of 10 it is because Americans have been convinced that they have no alternative. A non-whore would rock the boat too much.
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There is no magical liberal politician who is willing to challenge the status quo without attracting a sh-t-storm of corporate-financed abuse.
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now, i just couldn’t be more disappointed in obama.
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Hello? Who is being stupid? Obama TOLD YOU what he would do. He TOLD YOU he would work with the insurance companies. He TOLD YOU he would work with the pharmaceutical companies. He TOLD YOU that his focus would be on saving money around the margins (i.e. technological advances in record keeping, fact-based medicine, etc.) rather than taking on the parasitic elements in the system. He TOLD YOU all this. You voted for him. And when he does what he said he would do, you are “disappointed”?

im no expert in congressional procedures but u can’t use reconciciliation but for the finance related parts of health care reform. So, yeah, technically you could do it with 50 dem votes but 2 years down the road before anything gets implemented (it takes years for implementation), all the non-finance parts would be scrapped. and that’s just opening the pandora box. it would become a routine process in congress.

“Again, you have no way of knowing that or Obama’s motives…”

Let’s all agree that none of us know what “Obama’s thinking,” in his “heart of hearts,” when the cameras aren’t rolling etc. I think personalizing it, from P-luk or Shep’s perspective, is misguided. Obama is a politician, anything he’s doing/not doing is determined by, you guessed it, a very political calculus. What he personally thinks about a given issue is wholly irrelevant. Do you think he sees Afghanistan as winnable, or is his position defined by how it portrays him … as a cojones-bearing tough guy (a la Hillary’s war vote back in the day).

His being a likable guy, a fellow traveler, must be uplifting, but if it clouds our reason, we’re f@cked. Well, let’s just cut to the chase…

What we have here is a merry band of liberal voices (Rich, Froom, Reich, and the entire slate of progressives I spend my mornings reading)–though some are more full-throated than others. With the recent exception of The Krug they’re all voicing the same concerns.

What we’re left with is what Shep alludes to, some nebulous gut feeling that Obama will win the day in the end. God, wouldn’t it be nice, a happy ending outside of H-wood. As you’re sitting there munching some popcorn, let me know how the holding of the breath works out.

Interesting. According to numerous things I’ve read today, things are heating up out there.
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And yet all that appears on Swampland is a double dose of tepid nonsense from Scherer.

Edwards didn’t lose because of Rielle Hunter, but he certainly didn’t lose because no-one had the stomach for the good fight. Plenty of people saw Edwards as smooth, unreliable and less than convincing. Some of us also remembered his hamfisted performance as the VP candidate for Kerry.
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That said, if Edwards had won the Presidency, you can bet that Rielle Hunter would have been the story of stories. Personally, I am glad we avoided that embarrassment.

I fear that pluk is now a serial shark-jumper. Want a rant without facts or reason? Pluk is there to serve the community!

60 votes to beat a filibuster. 51 votes if you go by the budget reconciliation path – although it is far from clear that you can do so in this case. It probably depends on the state of Robert Byrd’s synapses on any given day.

I hope I haven’t said anything that suggests I don’t think that Obama is thinking and acting like a politician – quite the reverse, what I’m suggesting is that he’s an exceptionally gifted one. I also have no feeling one way or the other about whether Obama will “win the day”, I simply think he fully recognizes the “conservative” forces arrayed against the public interest and how they operate and is writing a new playbook in how a Democratic president, on a tilted playing field, can still fight them.

sadly shep, your reasoning is circular, and premised on Obama being both preternaturally intelligent and infinitely benign.
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and because Obama is all-wise and all-knowing, whatever comes out of ‘health care reform’ will be the bestg outcome possible — how can it be otherwise, given that Obama is all-knowing and all-wise?
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but if you’d remove your Obama-blinders for a moment, you’ll note that Obama has never accomplished much of anything besides getting himself elected to higher and higher office. Once in office, he achievements are consistently meager.
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So while there is ample evidence of Obama’s ruthlessness and cunning in advancing his own personal situation, there is ample reason to suspect that those particular talents don’t transfer to actually being President, with all that entails.

“sadly shep, your reasoning is circular, and premised on Obama being both preternaturally intelligent and infinitely benign.”
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At least it’s reasoning. Beats hate-driven conjecture ten times out of ten.

“the community’s needs are finally met, but in a way such that even those who had thwarted the people’s will are allowed to save face.”
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So if Obama comes out with a strong bill the party of NO, rampant rumors, lies and tea-bag mobs will assume no responsibility or loss for their acts, but if the bill ends up a watered down corporate insurance / Big phRMA benefiting piece of dung, it will be all Obama’s fault.
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This Froomkin piece is good, it just makes me wonder how the heck the repugnants get away from any blame either way. Obama could be doing a much better job at messaging I admit, but his responsibility must have some limit in this mess.

“The real question is why is the left in the US so goddamned polite and domesticated that these Right Wing cranks look positively rowdy.

Back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement wasn’t polite and domesticated. It brought activists to events in the Deep South all the way from New York and Boston. Its members rallied in the thousands to shut down segregated public and even private institutions. Its activists occupied buildings on university campuses, boldly confronting police and police dogs and armed men in white robes.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, anti-war protesters in turn shut down recruiting and induction centers, destroyed draft board records, tried to close down Washington, DC, got arrested in the hundreds, incited soldiers to desert and then helped hide them from the law, exposed the 1968 Democratic Convention as a farce, and faced down armed police and soldiers repeatedly, at one point in 1970 closing down the nation’s campuses in a national student strike when soldiers shot and killed four unarmed students at Kent State University.

Years earlier, when workers were being abused, they occupied factories, forcibly shutting them down with sit-down strikes, battled Pinkerton detectives and armed National Guard forces, and set up tent cities in Washington to make themselves heard.

And they won great victories.

Where is that passion today? For the most part, the left, in all its various guises–environmentalists, labor unions, civil rights advocates, health care reform advocates, anti-war activists–have become neutered office-chair potatoes, sending canned emails to their elected representatives or to the White House, occasionally marching politely inside of pre-approved, permitted and police-prescribed routes, and attending sponsored events like the current round of town meetings, perhaps to raise polite objections to aspects of a proposed piece of legislation.

The agenda of the left in today’s America is being written not by uncompromising radicals in the street as in earlier decades of struggle, but by the bought-and-paid Democrats in Washington. The left, such as it is, has become simply a reactive force, trying to make discrete little improvements in the truly horrible legislation–health care “reform,” cap-and-trade, the Employee Not-So-Free Choice Act, continued Iraq and Afghanistan War funding bills–that is being offered by a wholly corrupt Washington in thrall to corporate lobbyists.”

Dave Lindorff

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/10-4

“This is the third television generation,” Nader said. “They have grown up watching screens. They have not gone to rallies. Those are history now. They hear their parents and grandparents talk about marches and rallies. They have little toys and gizmos that they hold in their hands. They have no idea of any public protest or activity. It is a tapestry of passivity.”

From Chris Hedges’ latest

Nader seems to have missed the anti-war protests against the Iraq folly, not mention the rather large Obama rallies that many of us saw and even attended. Quite a number of young people were there, unless my aged eyes deceived me.

I find this ironic in view of the comment you left me in the Wexler thread!
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the protesters of the sixties weren’t polite — they were transgressive. They deliberately p*ssed people off by speaking truth to power, and being intentionally offensive in doing so (including use of expletives that, at the time, were completely outside the norms of public speech — you didn’t even aver to the “f” word, let alone say it.)

Worry not. The fearmongers and billionaire Kochs will kill off reform this time, so in anther generation someone else can give it a try. By that time things will be so bad the pharma gang will be begging for a reform bill just to survive the impending outright collapse of the health industry.

Those who die in the meantime? Tough luck. At least it was private greed, not some malevolent government, that gotcha.

The BHO admin is committed to fighting and winning the current and future wars which will be primarily asymmetric wars.
One component of that strategy is to wage an effective psyche war to “win the hearts and minds” of the people – with convenient spin, half-truths and blatant lies. {Otherwise known as propaganda.}

fighting asymmetric wars? effective psyche war? winning?

So far, WH and DNC seems to be immobilized, indeed mesmerized and clobbered, by this bush fire of GOP’s version of asymmetric war/psyche war on their opponents – the guerrilla campaign of misinformation and loud, violent disruption.

Yet that is essentially a ‘friendly’ match. How are we going to fare in the larger, deadly serious ‘theater’ out there?

WHERE IS THE BEEF. GIBBS?

P-luk, I clarified my pt. (perhaps) on the Wexler thread. I don’t have a problem with the bile you throw up here, I was just curious about where you fit the Clintons into the great democratic whorehouse. In fact, I think the general liberal sensibility, afraid to step on any toes, to give offense, is why the dems are incapable of governing. Afraid to tell fascists to f@ck off, afraid to say what it is you stand for or want in anything approaching full-throated voices. Too many cling to this notion that if you speak in polite, respectful tones, you’ll be given equal weight in Michael Scherer’s magazine, that they’ll surely reward the rational over the lying demagogue. Yup, keep waiting.
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And Maverick, to compare the protests that took place against Iraq to the Vietnam era is absurd. Not to make light of those who did protest during the Bush years, but they simply never gained enough traction to impact much of anything. And the fact that most of the protesters are eerily silent now that Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan makes me doubt their convictions in the first place. And it’s even more absurd to compare the rallies in support of a man’s election to those Nader, Hedges and Lindorff are talking about, in support of causes intended to alleviate suffering of the less fortunate.

And I’d add that it’s not merely about civil discourse or dignified sensibilities. B/C that’s be easy to fix–stop bringing knives to a gunfight.
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No, I’m afraid it’s far more depressing than that. The dem leadership is terrified of any indication of the full-throated passion that Howard Dean spooked the estab. with 5 years ago. Anything touching on class, anything smacking of populism (Gore dabbled in 2000, Edwards’ 2 Americas), anything that threatens the parasite class (i.e. their patrons) cannot be spoken in polite society. Is it any wonder that we’re left with spineless and craven spokesmen. If they ever had convictions or principles they long ago, by cozing up to the powerful, jettisoned them.
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What’s left is a gigantic charade, whereby they offer illusions of conviction, of passion, of caring about the little man. What any somewhat bright viewer or reader soon discerns is that there’s fundamentally no there there. Absolutely empty rhetoric.

You know, there’s a lot of passionate rhetoric flowing around here, but most of it is nonsense.
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At the end of the day the United States had essentially 3 candidates for POTUS. They were McCain (and his dreadfully unqualified sidekick), Obama, and Clinton. That’s it.
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The cards were dealt, and Obama won for a myriad of reasons. Not the least of which was that most people did not want the other two.
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At no point was Obama some super-liberal, Mr. Fix-all, or going to somehow strong arm the rest of Washington DC and our cooperate world into breaking all the habits and motivations developed over the last 50 years and make America some shining city on a hill with a rainbow over it.
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All of this so-called “anger” now is either irrational or just flat out fake. Either way it is not helpful. I refer you to the first chapter of his book where he addresses this very trait in American culture, long before he was ever likely to be in the White House.
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Get some perspective and some rational presence about yourselves. Otherwise, you’re just like those people on YouTube embarrassing themselves and their fellow citizens with endless emotional tirades that have little foundation and fact, and even less prospect for positive impact.

Correction: … foundation “in” fact …

I’d also note that if you ask yourself who is the “best person you know”, using character/wisdom/etc as metrics: would that person be in politics?
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I’d be willing to wager a non-meager amount of money the answer is no for over %95 of all responders. Yet amazingly, people hold onto these lofty expectations of public service in a culture that promotes people to fill those slots more as a career choice than anything to do with “service”.
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Obama is probably as close to “service oriented” as anyone in such a high position has been in many, many years. Does that mean he’s gonna do everything you like and kiss your forehead before you go to bed and tell you everything is going to be ok? No.
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Moreover, the POTUS has a lot less power (legally) than people give him credit for. The only time a President can steamroll his will around is when the Congress lets him. We just went through that didn’t we? Is the idea now that it wasn’t ok for the Republican President, but now that it is a Democrat, he should (try to) use the same tactics to steam roll what he wants and swing the pendulum to the other side? Pfffft …. sad.

Maury, your notion that ranting progressives are suddenly awaking to (f@cking surprise!) he’s not one of us, is nonsense.

“All of this so-called ‘anger’ now is either irrational or just flat out fake. Either way it is not helpful.”

I’ve been angry about our system for 20 years, regardless of the party in power. I’m fully cognizant of our system’s limitations: by your logic I should simply accept them as permanent, as well as what the ruling class chooses to give me. Honestly, I don’t know how committed liberals can fail to be angry, what with their so-called party feigning its credentials, screwing the people and rewarding its patron class. If you’re not angry (and you are paying attn) then you must be relatively untouched by this ongoing con.

We don’t owe Obama or any other pol our loyalty or civility. They’re there to do our bidding, not Wall St’s. The notion that when they fail at the latter and embrace the former, repeatedly, despite all promises of “change you can believe in,” that we should just chill (i.e. STFU) is what I’d call irrational. To me, that reeks of rational (cynical) pragmatism.

Shame on Obama. What a wasted opportunity.

Nobody owes loyalty, but I was not aware civility was something that required ‘earning’. It may indeed be something one can discredit themselves into the rank of ‘undeserving’, but this notion of being ‘angry’ while adding no beneficial substance bears little difference from the extremists on the right. You know, those guys who champion Sarah Palin.
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The goal is to channel “anger” (if we must use that term) into logical pathways with reasonable substantive goals. If we’re just going to rant and knock our heads on a brick wall, there’s little reason to think we’ll be any less angry about our system for the next 20 years as well.

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