More Health Care Sanity

Joe Klein:
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Does it ever occur to you not to label the people with whom you have policy or political disagreements as “insane”?

Joe Klein:
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Here’s Andy Stern on the individual mandate:

Look, I’m covered by private insurance and most of our members are covered by private insurance, whether or not I like it. So I don’t think that’s a reason to oppose the mandate. We want to improve the affordability. But I don’t think letting people out of being covered is the right way to do that.

Here’s Barack Obama on the individual mandate ( link to Dec 2008 ABC piece entitled “Obama and Daschle at Odds on Individual Mandate” )

During the Democratic primary season, Obama clashed with Clinton over her support for an individual mandate. Obama’s plan would only have mandated that children be covered. He would not have extended such a mandate to adults as proposed by Clinton.
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Clinton charged that Obama’s lack of an individual mandate would result in 15 million Americans going without health insurance.
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Obama regularly shot back by saying the solution to health care is making it affordable, not making it “illegal” to be uninsured.

Who is the voice of “Health Care Sanity”, Joe Klein, Andy Stern or Barack Obama?
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Don’t you see that the way that you’re arguing makes you (and the President) look like gigantic liars to anybody who’s been paying attention for the last year and a half?

Joe, semi-OT but will Karen be posting today? Or will she busy preparing for her WWR guest hosting gig tonight? thanks

1Joe Klein:
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Does it ever occur to you not to label the people with whom you have policy or political disagreements as “insane”?
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I seriously don’t think it has Stu. Its would seem that Joe thinks the best and most apparent way to convinice people of his argument is to brand opposing. As either insane or stupid.

Here’s a thought: how about one of you “journalists” cover the story here. The story is not that liberals won’t support reform with a mandate but no public option, we’ve known that all along and the reasons for that have been explained ad nauseum.
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What hasn’t been explained is why the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are tasking their minions in the Senate with killing the chance for 30 million new mandated customers and the hundreds of $billion is government-provided subsidies that go along with them, if they have to compete against an “inconsequential” public option.

I am going to repost a note I made to homer in Joe’s last piece:

The point is there is absolutely no guarantee that even this watered-down bill will pass. The baton-passing stone-walling of this legislation from the very start — the handing of the “delay-the-bill-baton” from one Democratic “centrist” to another, starting with Baucus and working through the full complement of DLC/Third Way senators — hasn’t been an accident. It has been their strategy. From the very beginning. They knew the longer they strung it out, the more likely they were to either kill it altogether, or get their way, which just so happens to be the way of the insurance giants who line their pockets.
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All of this caterwauling about Howard Dean and the liberal blogosphere has about as much impact on the bill as what you or me or minorities or anyone else thinks about it.
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You’re kidding yourself if you think the bill in its current form is the final bill.
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Do you really think Ben Nelson gives a crap about abortion? That’s just the latest excuse to hang this thing up like a pinata until the centrist DLC clique can bash it enough that it breaks open and the insurance companies run around picking up even more candy off the floor.
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The insurance giants are already getting taxpayer-funded, mandated boosts to their bottom line. And, hard to believe, Nelson and the rest of the so-called centrists still think it’s not enough.
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This is Dick Cheney delivering no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq on a even a larger scale.

One thing I wish people would please keep in mind when you listen to our national press corp and pundits. It does not matter whether you are a progressive, conservative, winger, teabagger, moonbat, tree hugger or pacifist. Our press corp has been dangerously bad for quite a long time. And I afraid with cost cutting going on in news media throughout the country things are going to get seriously, seriously worse.
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If I have ever conducted myself in the manner Joe has over the last few days I am embarrassed and apologize to all the people I have every disagree with here on this blog.

Greg Sargent takes on Joe Klein, Brownstein and the rest of Beltwayinsiders on health care reform. An interesting read:

Journalists Cheerfully Urinating On Senate Bill’s “Ideological” Critics

It would really be nice if certain Beltway journalists could get it into their heads that the Senate bill’s critics on the left have actual substantive differences with the bill’s proponents, and are not motivated solely by “ideology,” whatever the hell that means.

Ronald Brownstein, for one, is actually trying to claim that Howard Dean opposes the bill because he’s a “wine track” Democrat who doesn’t lack insurance and hence has the luxury to indulge in ideological struggles.

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Brownstein doesn’t meaningfully respond to any of Dean’s substantive policy objections to the bill. If he did, he could no longer claim Dean’s critique is purely “ideological.”

He’s not the only one making this claim. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The Times today wrote that “ideology” is “smacking the pragmatic president in the face,” presumably meaning that the word “ideology” is a good catch-all for all criticism of the bill. And Joe Klein has dismissed critics for being in the grip of “ideological fetishes.”

Read the whole thing.

“who care about better health care because it’s an issue that affects them personally.”

And heath care affects no one else personally?

Seeing Joe Klein and Sanity in the same post should have been a dead giveaway to keep moving past it. But you know its like having spoiled milk in the fridge, you know its bad but you taste it anyway.

I know we are approaching the apocalypse when I find myself agreeing with you more than once in a week.

LOL

There may be hope for you yet!

Second. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, none of are being served by our present pundits and national press corps.

Absolutely correct

It is rather strange that the Village scribes have launched an all out assault on the Left when it is “Centrists” who are holding the bill up. Not one single, elected “Liberal” has said they will not vote for the bill. The Left is being demonized for simply being unhappy with the bill, a bill that has been cleansed of any input from dirty, internet hippies. Even when they have been completely shut out by the folks they donated money to, worked for and voted for, they are still expected to be happy, especially when the village idiots are busy painting them as the source of all evil.

“No matter what side of the aisle you are on, none of are being served by our present pundits and national press corps.”
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Or any segment of our elite society for that matter. From the political, to the financial, to the military, to the press, we’ve witnessed the complete failure of elite leadership.

Joe Klein:

A very, very, very simple question.

If, as you believe, the Public Option, is an insignificant element of the overall bill, why do you not label the GOP, Lieberman, Obama, and the Blue Dog Democrats “dumb” or “insane” for refusing to give liberals what they want?

Liberals want the Public Option. You think it isn’t a big deal. Why not just give it to them and STFU already?

Its not just the liberals wanting a public option. Most independents and probably a few republicans who are not happy with their health care at the present time, want a public option to be available especially if there is a mandate to buy insurance or face a financial penatly. Otherwise I’m certain these people understand that they will be forced to purchase what ever crap the private insures forces on them.
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That does not mean that anyone opposed to an a public option is insane, crazy, don’t care about poor people or want people to die. Their concerns about government becoming to involved, running costs up further and not always being as competent as they like to see are very valid concerns.
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If our press corps would stop being more concern with clowing around maybe they could address these concerns with our leaders.

It’s not the end of the world when people whose political differences have been exploited and manipulated find themselves seeing the situation clearly.
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We can go back to thinking you’re crazy –and you guys can go back to thinking we’re traitors– when we get done stopping centrists from screwing America.
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We didn’t elect these guys to threaten and bully us with the health and physical well-being of our fellow Americans. We didn’t elect these clowns to build half a bridge so they could call it a “historic victory” for the President.
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We didn’t elect a cat that pisses on the bed so that we wouldn’t have a dog that craps on the rug anymore.
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If the popular right loves crap on the rug, but hates piss on the bed like the popular left, I have no problem in the slightest using them to stop the cat from doing its business.
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It doesn’t make me “on the same side”, it just means I’m anti-cat piss.
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People who don’t get that are too in love with their tribal storylines to be of use to anybody but the current centrist leadership. People who call us “tea partiers” in the hopes of freaking us out probably shouldn’t expect a whole lot of support from the internet money-bomb ATM machine.

SZ:

agreed. Peculiarly put (LOL) but agreed.

freeinpa:
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This is the kind of crap we’re getting over and over again from people whose sole purpose in life is apparently to shield Obama from political harm whatever the cost to the country:

Funny to see Dr. Teabagger Dean’s anti-HCR Op-Ed a few column inches from E.J. Dionne’s post on “Democratic Fratricide.”

and

There are substantive points still to work thru on #HCR. Mandate is one. But premature/harmful to adopt teabagger “kill the bill” chant.

and

.@HunterDK Will you be joining tea parties now, too? Because you are now in political alignment with Randall Terry & Michelle Bachmann.

That last one was to f-ing much for me, so I respond with:

RE [Will you be joining tea parties now, too? ] Come on, that’s dishonest.PPL can oppose centrist #hcr legisl w/o being crazee right.

That got me this doublespeak:

I said he’s in political alignment w/ them, not he is them. Strange bedfellows is an accurate observation, not “dishonest”

I’m not about to be told that being “in bed” with Michelle Bachman is some sort of objective observation, so I remind this guy of other vile arguments against us in the past, hoping that there’s a shred of intellectual honesty there:

[said he's in political alignment w/ them] Misleading shot. Opposing centrists bcomes “Bedfellows” w/right? “objectively pro-Saddam”?

And then I get this pile of crap:

Bedfellows are 2 or more sharing a bed. Strange bedfellows are unlikely allies. Both he & Bachmann oppose HCR. Suck it up.

“Suck it up?”
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Wow, what smug liars the Obama apologists are.
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So that’s what you get for telling the truth to these operatives, you get called the thing that they call you just before they start to call you a racist for disagreeing with them.
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That’s the kind of thing that’s going on right now, freeinpa. It’s getting close to Democratic Primary 2008 territory. It’s really foul and dishonest, and Joe Klein is right in the middle of it.
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That’s why “Health Care Sanity” is so offensive to us, it’s a campaign of discredit that looks very much like it originates with Obama operatives.

“Liberals want the Public Option. You think it isn’t a big deal. Why not just give it to them and STFU already?”
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That question has been asked over and over again and the silence in response has indeed been deafening. There are only two possible reasons: 1) they actually don’t know why the insurance industry is scared of the PO (i.e., they’ve never done their jobs) or 2) the answer undermines the industry meme that the PO is inconsequential (i.e., they’re water-carrying for industry). Though, it could be both.

SZ-with whom were you going back and forth?

I can stomach Joe’s position–it’s not like his voice is unique in advocating passage. It’s his tone/insatiable need to piss on the dirty hippies. A la Tweety:

MATTHEWS: “I don’t consider them Democrats, I consider them netroots, and they’re different. And if I see that they vote in every election or most elections, I’ll be worried. But I’m not sure that they’re regular grown-up Democrats. I think that a lot of those people are troublemakers who love to sit in the backseat and complain. They’re not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they’re not interested in working for somebody in public office. They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.”

Not that I’m demanding civlity, by any means. I won’t be a flaming hypocrite. Joe is the enemy, and in his mind we’re his–civility is for British high tea. Civility will get us nowhere. The moment the libertarians and the lefties take it to the street, their unbridled contempt for Klein’s ruling estab. is the moment we’ll begin to take America back.

In any event, as Jane pointed out this a.m. the folks against this bill (symptomatic of rot write large in the Potomac-Wall St. gene pool) are far more numerous than he imagines. And putting forth that noxious Brownstein quote:

“Maybe one reason former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and so much of the digital Left can so casually dismiss the Senate health care reform bill is that they operate in an environment where so few people need to worry about access to insurance.”

… is simply priceless. Yes, ladies and gents, the centrists are the new populists! War is peace. Wasn’t it Friar Tuck who yesterday wondered why we bother?

Good news: Only 34% of America is stupid enough to support Obama’s socialized medicine scheme. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/december_2009/just_34_say_passing_health_care_bill_is_better_than_passing_nothing

The Democrats probably have no idea how much damage they have done to themselves, declaring war on their base. They are going to find out the next time they come looking for votes or money.

It’s this guy ( link to that guy ).

Thanks sz-I haven’t the foggiest who that guy is. When you were writing what “smug liars the Obama apologists are.” I thought it might be someone.
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Forgive my ignorance but is he just a civilian like me or does he have some capacity as an Obama operative?
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If he is just a guy with an opinion then being smug doesn’t quite make him unique. Speaking for myself, of course.

Even MORE sanity. This time from Rahm-
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“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats
As the White House leans on conservative Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska for the 60th health care vote, Emanuel has made the case that this generation of liberal political figures will not make the mistake of their predecessors.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/18/rahm-emanuel-dont-worry-about-the-left/
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This just gets better and better. I’ll give the proponents
this much-they hide their disdain for the left about as well as the republicans.

Oregon JC:

Yes, ladies and gents, the centrists are the new populists! War is peace.

The dishonesty of the centrists is just stunning. They’re incredible liars.
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Look at Ed Kilgore talk about centrist ideology ( link to rank dishonesty ):

To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, “New Democrat” movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as “the Third Way,” which often defended the use of private means for public ends. (It’s also arguably central to the American liberal tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson, and is even evident in parts of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives alongside elements of the “social democratic” tradition, which is characterized by support for publicly operated programs in key areas).

Unbelievable.
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What a f-ing liar. He’s actually describing the Third Way “partnership” between the state and industry as “central to the American liberal tradition”, and evident in the New Deal.
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This is what FDR said to Congress about that “partnership”:

The first truth is that the liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism- ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way to sustain an acceptable standard of living.
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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“Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power.” April 29, 1938

link to full text
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I truly have never seen ideologues so dishonest about their ideology, not even the Trotskyites, not even the Maoists.
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These centrists just can’t help lying about everything.
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Here’s Joe Klein from his 1995 Newsweek hit piece called “Stalking the Radical Middle” ( link to classic centrist Joe Klein ) giving the lie to Kilgore’s shameless appropriation:

“This isn’t about finding the middle of the road,” says Al From, whose Democratic Leadership Council has launched a nonpartisan “Third Way” project. “It’s about building a new road.”
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Decide What Comes Next. This is the toughest to describe. It is what replaces the government we have now.
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The Democratic Party, which runs the Bureaucratic Operating System, has opposed most [efforts...to chip away at the old system and attempt something more flexible]. The Republican Party, skeptical about any sort of public activism, opposes them, too. .
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Clinton has attempted to “reinvent” government. But that’s not enough: government needs to be replaced. It needs to be privatized and voucherized.

Yes, that’s Joe Klein –this Joe Klein, the one who’s selling liberals on the promise that single-payer is on the way– talking about “replacing government” with a “privatized” version.
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Does that sound to any reasonable ears like what FDR had in mind?
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In a way, one can really almost understand why these people drove the right insane in the 1990s. There is apparently no lie too big for them to tell about themselves.
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The centrists are a cancer of dishonesty on our government, the backroom deal incarnate.
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The Third Way is central to liberalism?
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War is peace, indeed.

SZ:

Well I can tell you there are numb nuts at both end of the political spectrum.

It has all become about power and there is no more honest disagreement. I noticed this attitude start with Carville & Begala and it has accelerated downhill.

The question is as a country can we recover before it destroys what we have develped for over 200 years?

I’M NOT CRAZY! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S CRAZY! … Doesn’t matter, the insurance money’s about to run out anyhow.

I am a devoted Swamp fan. Sometimes comment, sometimes just read.
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To the many participants, most of whom I do respect, please spare us the Joe Klein attacks. I have spoken out on this before, in behalf of MS and rusty. Please. The insults and diatribes are wasted on me. Just speak your view briefly and succinctly and to the point, and I will greatly appreciate it.

“These centrists just can’t help lying about everything.”
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Actually, it’s only mercenary lying. They lie whenever it serves a purpose. It’s fundamental with modern corporatism. What people often fail to realize when they fail to connect government with corporatism is that political corporatism springs from institutional corporatism, where anything that improves the profitability of the organization at relatively low risk is a virtue. In fact, there are no other virtues.

“The centrists are a cancer of dishonesty on our government, the backroom deal incarnate.”
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But you’d surely agree that Joe & his “mercenary” ilk (h/t Shep) are far less damaging to the prospects for change “we can believe in” than the inherent and apparent-for-all-to-see deceit of Obama himself. Millions inspired, and in less than a year it’s patently obvious that he’s yet another two-faced politician.
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The next time the American electorate is poised to act on Zinn’s bottom-up words…
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“If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen’s movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed”
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… hopefully we won’t fall for 2-party snake-oil salesmen. A different vessel is necessary if we want that change.

PNNTO:
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…is he just a civilian like me or does he have some capacity as an Obama operative?
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Well, if he’s not literally an operative, he should be getting paid for his efforts.
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This is information about his blog ( link to info ), which you can’t actually view, since it requires his approval…for you to see it at all ( link to his inaccessible blog ).
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Here’s his “interview” on blogtalk radio ( link to this interesting interview ).
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I should really say that I don’t know this individual, and all I know about him is that he’s in DC, and that he works really hard to be “real.” If he’s an actual independent agent, and not working for somebody whose agenda he’s pushing through social media, I’d be surprised, because he’s got all of the hallmarks of social media astro-turfer, political PR guy.
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I should ask Jay Ackroyd if he knows this guy.
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I should also make it clear that I am speculating, and not speaking from empirical fact. My apologies.

It’s a big deal, I think people know that. It’s the clearest mechanism for the government to ever get a direct handle on medical costs. It would seem that some on the left want to downplay the public option and measures like it because they know that politically, it isn’t feasible, it won’t pass. It’s easy to bash people for wanting to cover it up and keep liberals from becoming agitated, but the truth is they’re right. The composition of the Senate is such that you pretty much just can’t win this one right now.
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I fail to see the wisdom of telling people it’s not important, though. The idea seems to be to keep liberals happy and on board by telling them we’re winning, even when we’re losing ground on a daily basis. The reality that an ideal solution isn’t attainable is no reason to sweep the issue under the rug; voters in Nebraska, Connecticut and any state where a sitting liberal is in danger should be very aware of how much conservative democrats are doing to hurt the causes they were ostensibly voted into office to support. Placating the base will make the liberal position in the Senate weaker, but it needs to get stronger for more progressive reforms to get passed.
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It would seem to me that the best position politically would be to pass what you can, but be very clear with the voting public that you know we haven’t done enough, that conservatives have kept certain important measures from passing, so when your insurance bills continue to rise at a 10% annual clip, know that it isn’t because of what Democrats did, it’s because of what conservatives didn’t let them do. That’s the argument you have to win going forward, because if conservative scream tactics continue to be more effective than whatever it is liberals do to make their case, every employee who loses employer coverage will be made to believe that blame rests with what this bill accomplished, rather than with the provisions that were cut or watered down to the point of uselessness. Passing this bill with a smile on your face invites extremely damning criticisms in the future.

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Valeriy Kharchenko, son of Mary Chumachenko father Vladimir Kharchenko. Kirovograd region, Dolinsky district, village Vasylivka.

city DNIPROPETROVSK 49029
Street. Заміська 39-1
phone mobile 380985052947
home 38056 7166470

UKRAINE xarchenko2009@meta.ua