No matter how watered down a bill is, the Republicans will filibuster it.  And that’s for two reasons: a) The Democrats will hear the word and buckle, instead of forcing Republicans to actually go through with the filibuster itself

I am really tired of this filibuster freakout. I think it’s put up or shut time. My advice to the gentleman from X state who wishes to hold up this health care bill: get some adult diapers. It’s going to be a long night and you wouldn’t want to ruin your suit.

As a side note: I would dearly love to see a Senator soil him(her)self on the floor of the Senate.

Damn! “put up or shut up”  “gentleman or lady?”

Only the Dems could have blown the Mass. race.  Morons.  I am livid because you’re right.  It’s going to play out like you say, Amanda.  The Dems will get their asses handed to them in November and unless Obama can pull a miracle out of his ass, the Rethugs will retake the WH in 2012 because the economy will re-tank and the electorate will blame the spineless Dems, not the obstructionist Rethugs.

They still have a majority, but they might as well not.  HCR was the biggest winning issue they could ever have had and they were too scared to win.  Now it doesn’t matter what the House does because the Senate will roll over before the Rethugs even utter “fili-”.  It’s like they forgot the lessons of 2006 & 2008 because FOX and the punditocracy keeps telling them America is really center-right and loves Rethug policy.

And if we start now, it will only take 30 years for progressives to take back the Democratic party.  Probably more, since we somehow have to elect candidates who can get elected under the current system and who, once in office, will still be willing to dismantle the current corrupt system of non-governance.  Awesome.

Well, maybe I should start running for school board or something.  I’m not thirty yet, so in another thirty years, I could be in a place to run for national office.  (‘Course, the problem is that the idea of running for even city-wide office sounds dreadfully unappealing.)

it’s physically and legally possible to go forward.

Totally right.  The House just has to get a bare majority to pass the Senate bill.  It doesn’t require any approval from the newly filibusterable Senate.  Ezra Klein has been going on about how straightforward this is.  Nancy Pelosi is committed to doing it.  I imagine that after a brief post-MA freakout, that’s what’ll happen. 

But really, this is call your Congresscritters time.  And not just on-the-fence Blue Dogs—those of you with solidly liberal Congresscritters can play too.  This is exactly the time when they need a bit of prodding to go forward and finish the job, so tell them to stop fretting and pass the Senate bill.  If you don’t know the number, put your zip+4 in the upper left of the House.Gov page here.

I bet by the start of next week, the House agrees to pass the Senate bill straight up. It’s the only way they get health care through without encountering a filibuster, which I assume is some kind of giant city-leveling lizard based on the Dems’ fear of it.

Okay, fair enough.  They just will drop the House bill, and we’ll get that sad turd of a Senate bill.

Let’s hope the obstructionist allies in the House don’t have another trick up their sleeve.  Stupak-Pitts was devastating enough.

The problem with that, Phil, is that the Senate changed its own rules so that a filibuster no longer means someone getting up and talking like it used to. It just means “we aren’t going to go forward.” There’s no bluff to call, because there’s apparently no requirement any longer that there be an actual speaking filibuster.

I have to confess that I just don’t get Barack Obama. I thought I did: I thought he was a guy who, while maybe not as liberal as I would’ve liked, understood that the best way to get the adulation that drove him was to get into office was to deliver on making life better for ordinary Americans. And yet here he is constantly doing pretty much exactly the opposite, especially in regard to larger issues. I have five equally idiotic theories about this:

1. He’s such a narcissist that he simply doesn’t care anymore: his name is in the history books and that’s all that counts.

2. He’s playing some kind of 17-dimensional chess by letting us see just how corrupt Congress and the electoral system really are, so that liberals will finally really get organized and demand large-scale change.

3. He’s been a willing agent of Slightly Lesser Evil all along, and feigned concern for the ordinary folks in order to get elected so that the second half of the transition to corporate friendly-fascism could be completed before real opposition could develop.

4. (Really a combination of 1 and 3): He’s a narcissist who’s been duped into thinking he’s a transformational leader when in fact he’s been being played by our Owners all along. That Tom Daschle putz is like his controller. Obama has only just figured this out.

5. He’s a would-be transformational leader who, upon being inaugurated, was taken into the bunker underneath the White House and forced to witness the brutal murder of (insert appropriate totally innocent victim here), then told his daughters were next if he didn’t enact the corporate agenda.

Maybe I should, I don’t know, get out more.

I have to confess that I just don’t get Barack Obama. I thought I did:

My take on him is that he has always been a guy who was most comfortable dealing with a bunch of friendly colleagues and helping everyone feel like they got a good deal. He is not interested in picking fights or “winning” battles—his mindset is not adjusted to deal with zero-sum games.

I always gathered that he didn’t see how “bad” republicans were, from a moral/emotional/spiritual perspective. He just thought they were just like his conservative friends in law school or the minority republicans in IL: people who could be dealt with because he had good relationships with them. From his perspective, if the republicans are being a problem, it must be because the democrats are doing something wrong or because the republicans haven’t been approached in the right way.

“My advice to the gentleman from X state who wishes to hold up this health care bill: get some adult diapers. It’s going to be a long night and you wouldn’t want to ruin your suit.”

You know of course that they don’t have to do that anymore right? The rules don’t require anyone to actually rant to delay passage anymore.

In the end, what it’s basically boiled down to is that anyone can prevent debate from ending by declaring that they’re filibustering. At this point, they vote on whether debate can be ended (an action which requires 60 votes). Harry Reid could require them to actually perform a filibuster, as in go through the Jimmy Stewart bullshit, but they only need 1 but in practice probably 2 or 3 people in the room to keep that going. This lets them object to unanimous consent.

One of the things you can do in a debate is suggest the absence of a quorum, which is 51 Senators. You can have debate without a quorum, but only so long as no one officially points out that there’s no quorum. When that happens, the business of the Senate stops until the quorum is met.

If there is no quorum and the quorum call does not gather a quorum, the next move is to ask the Sergeant at Arms to round up Senators to make a quorum, but I’m pretty sure you can’t tell him “Go grab Republicans”, so he may grab some Republicans, or he might go grab more Democrats.

Now you have a quorum of 3 Republican members and 48 Democratic members. You actually can’t force those 3 Republicans to speak, though they’ll certainly be happy to give short speeches. If you don’t want C-SPAN showing a chamber with 51 members twiddling their thumbs, guess who’s going to have to step up and speak?

The key distinction to understand is that the default nature of the Senate is debate. The fact that no one is actually giving speeches doesn’t mean the Senate is not debating, and the only two methods to actually close debate are to pass a cloture resolution(which doesn’t even stop debate, it just puts a 30 hour time limit on it), or by unanimous consent. Short of those items, debate continues even if no speeches are actually being given.

So long story short Lieberman will not be forced to stand up for what he “believes in”

Democrats need to get it through their heads that the only language Republicans understand is violence. Not actual physical violence but verbal assaults. Every day, Democrats should be up there pointing out how harmful the current obstructionist minority in the Senate is. Call them out on it and don’t let anything slip. Since they can’t be bargained with, don’t bargain with them; launch full-scale assaults at any Republican who so much as opens his mouth. They need to be made to pay and pay dearly if they intend to render the government of the country non-functional.

There’s no god news this morning.  Obama continues to be the man we elected, a senator.  A man determined to reach consensus and not buck the minority.  The Democratic Party continues to be a joke.

Will a miracle happen and these things change?  Make no mistake, it would be a fucking miracle if either of those two things change and it’s requirement that both do for change to occur.  So will these miracles happen?

All signs point to no.

The real question is, where to go next?

I bet felagund’s #3.  I was pretty sure that was what I was voting for yet again.

One of the big things that the Republics have done when in power is to tweak or interpret the rules of the chamber to suit their needs. The Democrats have not been willing to do so, for some reason. The rules that allow for indefinite procedural filibuster are not just bad for the Democratic agenda; they are bad for the business of getting work done for the American people. Yeah, it’s that overblown pundit-speak, “the American people,” but it’s fucking true.

As for my home state of Massachusetts, I really have no words.

Blegh, no one is talking about giving up.  Where did that idea come from? We’re just pointing out that the Democrats themselves are acting like babies.  It’s not the bloggers that are.

If you don’t want C-SPAN showing a chamber with 51 members twiddling their thumbs, guess who’s going to have to step up and speak?

That’s where the problems begin.  What’s wrong with causing a showdown that embarrasses Republicans?  That’s what I don’t get.

And if we start now, it will only take 30 years for progressives to take back the Democratic party.  Probably more, since we somehow have to elect candidates who can get elected under the current system and who, once in office, will still be willing to dismantle the current corrupt system of non-governance.  Awesome.

The teabaggers have already started working to take over the Republican Party.  It’s not going to take them 30 years to do it, either—more like about 10.

This, ladies and gents, is why the Republicans keep kicking our asses over and over again:  they are willing to do the work to change their party from the inside.  We’re not.  We’re happy to donate and do some work from the outside, but we’re not willing to do stuff like sign up to be local precinct leaders, which lets us help pick the candidates on the local level, and work our way up.  It doesn’t matter if our ideas are better if we can’t manage to get our people into office.

I thought when people started talking about “more and better Democrats” that we had finally, finally started to understand that we weren’t going to be able to move the party to the left until we controlled it but, no, apparently it was too much hard work.  If we couldn’t even get Kos to stay on board with his own plan long enough to primary Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh this fall, we really are fucking doomed.

This could actually work out pretty well for health care reform.  First step is for the house to pass the senate bill, and Obama to sign in, preferably before the state of the union.  But that doesn’t have to be then end of it.  You can then use reconciliation to tweak the budget effecting portions of the bill, and there is convienently already a reconciliation vehicle ready to go.  This route actually allows you to get a more liberal bill because it will only require 50 votes in the senate (with Biden breaking the tie.)  This route was problematic when the party had 60 seats (sort of) as there was an implicit bargain not to muck with the compromise bill through reconciliation.  That obstacle has now been removed as there is no longer any other option.

This of course requires the house democrats not to lose their heads and panic, but I have a lot of respect for Pelosi, so I think she pulls it off.  They have a chance to keep both chambers if they do this and can campaign on the good things in the bill.  They have no chance if they let the bill die.

But we much pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get ready for November. Its over 10 months away and anything could happen. There’s still time to get progressives in the primaries and organize campaigns.

As Coakley so wonderfully demonstrated, efforts are mostly useless without leaders willing and able to use them. If Obama and the Dems don’t want my help and can’t use it to good effect, what am I doing here, anyway? If Obama doesn’t want to pick a fight with the republicans, why should I?

I will support with money and time some “good democrats,” but I am not going to go out of my way to save the hides of politicians who just don’t have any fight in them.

I’m too fucking depressed. Can someone please wake me in a year, when this horrible ordeal is over, and tell me if I need to move to another country to get health care? As a contract worker, I’m sick of living in absolute fear every time I get a cough or a sniffle, that I’ll be dropped, or that it will count as a pre-existing condition. 
If they don’t pass the bill, I’m done with Democrats. Why can’t they just filibuster!!!

I am starting to think Dems really miss Howard Dean as the leader of the party, he seemed to really understand what it means to be a progressive.

@felagund:

6. The transformations to the state that conservatives have engineered since at least the past 30 years have effectively neutered our democratic institutions, so that any attempt, no matter how slight, to provide social justice is automatically punished by the market: funds rapidly flee out of the country and the economy crashes, disciplining every elected official no matter how progressive in following market dictates. In fact the very fear of what the masters of the world will do with their investments should health care reform come to pass might be keeping most of the Democrats from truly wanting to bring it about.

Forget preparing for the next presidential election. That’s *short term thinking*. What we need to work on right now is building dual power: community-run soup kitchens, strike solidarity funds, independant women and homeless shelters, the whole shebang that the Left had before the New Deal made us think we could let the state do it for us. *THEN* we can maybe elect officials to pass about some state-based reforms, and when the investments flow out and the economy crashes we’ll have a security net in place to keep us afloat. Until we have that nobody is even going to risk be the one in charge when the masters of the world decided to sabotage our economy out of spite towards progressive reforms. Personally once we have dual power I’d be willing to just let the state wither away, but that’s me, the anarchist. My praxis still works for all our social-democrat friends. How will you bring social democracy through the ballots if even in countries with strong socialist parties they had to obey the dictates of financiers?

Note: I said WHEN the economy crashes after you vote in progressive reforms. Not IF.

Only the Democratic Party could take an 18 seat majority (well, really 17 - Lieberman is worthless and now is the time to tell him to hit the fucking road) and hide in the corner like frightened little ninnies with their tails between their legs.

I mean, it’s almost as if they enjoy losing.

Can you imagine how the Republicans would act if the numbers were reversed - they’d be stomping around like kings of the world.  They’d do that with a ten seat senate majority!

I’m serious about Lieberman.  He’s not the 60th vote anymore, and Harry Reid needs to stop acting like Lieberman is worth anything to the party anymore.  Strip him of his chairmanship and kick him out of the caucus, now.  I don’t care if that means we’ll have one less senator in our caucus.  59 votes is just as worthless as 58 votes if you aren’t gonna pass anything that isn’t filibuster proof.  The man serves no purpose whatsoever, and he needs to be banished to nowhereville for the final 3 years of his pathetic political life.  Fuck him.

Because when I donate to and volunteer for Democrats, I’m not doing it for Obama. I’m doing it for my country and my community, my family, myself.

Elizabeth, the point of activism is not to make you feel better about yourself. The pointbis to get things done. my time and money are scarce and I have little interest in playing the martyr for failed causes. Find me a good hardworking Democratic candidate, and I’ll send some money and maybe some volunteer work in that direction. But waste my time walking the precincts for another Coakley or Evan Bayh look-alike simply because a D is better than an R? I have better things to do.

Blegh, no one is talking about giving up.  Where did that idea come from? We’re just pointing out that the Democrats themselves are acting like babies.  It’s not the bloggers that are.

Well and good, except it’s the elected Democrats who vote on legislation and it’s the elected Democrats who are continuing their grand tradition of rolling over and playing dead the second a Republican so much as breathes at them.  Angry letters and phone calls to representatives haven’t changed that yet.

The paranoid in me tells me this is what they wanted—-now that they can hide behind the filibuster, they can tell themselves there are no expectations that they’ll get anything done.

This is it exactly.  The majority of Democratic politicians do not want to change the status quo.  They were happy being the minority party b/c they could make promises that got them elected, but then they never had to follow through and get results.

Now that they are in the majority, they’re all freaked out, b/c the people who elected them actually expected them to follow through, but if they do that, the insane sums of money from their corporate sponsors—and their future gigs as lobbyists and consultants for those corporate sponsors—dry up.

They WANT to lose.

There’s no other real explanation for the nightmare we see.  It’s true that the minority bloc is together in such a way that we haven’t seen since the 30s, but they have 60 votes.  Lieberman is a putz—threaten to pull his chairs and seniority and he would fall into place in a heartbeat.  He’s said so.

Obama did not want Lieberman to fall into place.  Obama had Rahm tell Reid not to fight Lieberman.  Lieberman was Obama’s sponsor in the Senate: they are friends.  Obama used Lieberman to kill the public option.

Why?  I don’t know.  I don’t know why he made a deal with Big Pharma behind closed doors.  I don’t know why he’s hiding in the background…except that he doesn’t really want a health care bill that does very much.  If he did, he would have been out there mobilizing the base and fighting for something different all along.

He hasn’t, which means the Senate bill is what he wants.  It is NOT what the public or the people who voted for him want, but it’s what he and whomever he’s buddied up with want.

I can easily see the wonky side: now that there’s no 60 vote lock, they can jettison Lieberman and put the public option, drug reimportation, and anti-trust laws back in and take Stupak out in reconciliation, since they only need 51 votes.

But that would take will and nerve, and the Democratic politicians simply do not have the will.  The people who vote Democratic want change, but there is no method to obtain it.

Why vote Democratic?  They refuse to follow through with their promises.

As for Coakley?  It reminds me of Dan Rostenkowski, who was my Representative for years.  He got caught abusing the mail service and went to jail.  He was in the middle of a campaign when it came out, and he had the decency not to fight very hard for his seat (primary was over).  If he’d tried just a little, by pointing out the conservative tripe his opponent believed, he would have won (and then gone to jail anyway).

Republicans acted like it was a huge deal that Rosty lost.  They tried to claim it was b/c the area had gentrified and white, rich people voted GOP and the district had changed forever!

Mostly people in the district didn’t vote for the GOP, they were voting to get Rosty out.  The political system supports incumbents, and if your incumbent sucks, it’s really hard to get rid of him/her.  Two years later, the seat was Democratic again (Fucking Rahm, thank FSM Obama yanked him out of there)

Coakley was not a proper progressive heir to Kennedy.  She ran a shit campaign (Tip O’Neal talked about how you have to ASK for people’s votes) and from all appearances would have been another mealy mouthed Dem who would be happy to fail to follow through on her promises.  If the Dems run another conservative Dem in 6 years, they can probably expect the same result.

Now, with the teabagger, I think they’ve let a far worse evil in, but it’s getting harder and harder to make the anti-naderite argument.  We elected Obama.  We gave him a majority.  We are not getting what was promised.

It’s better by FAR than if we’d let McCain get in.  For the SCOTUS alone we’re better off without McCain.  But it’s not what we wanted and it’s not what most people voted for.

my time and money are scarce and I have little interest in playing the martyr for failed causes.

Any fool can die for a cause.  What takes real genius is to live for a cause.
~ Solomon Short

Can you imagine how the Republicans would act if the numbers were reversed - they’d be stomping around like kings of the world.  They’d do that with a ten seat senate majority!

That’s because it doesn’t matter how they poll, it only matters how they poll in one sector of the population: Wall Street. The thing is that the Republicans only need to be able to run roughshod over the economy and to give Wall Street what it wants, which is cheap state asserts being sold off at bargain prices. Whereas the Dems have to both get power AND not let investors completly ruin the economy by pulling their money out of the country (due to the global currency markets made possible by globalization).

asserts == assets

It sounds pie in the sky but the teabaggers keep getting their people elected!! They are working the system and we are not.

Elizabeth, I get what you’re saying, I really do, but teabaggers get candidates elected who respect them and do their bidding. I am not interested in setting myself up to be an abused spouse. Forgive me if I want a candidate that is going to take my side, rather than expend energy trying to save voters from themselves.

Here’s the only possible good news in all of this, but probably it still isn’t.

Vice President Joe Biden said unequivocally the other day that the filibuster, as it is currently being used, will eventually destroy the country - “no democracy has survived needing a supermajority” were his exact words.

Well, we can get rid of it.  And it isn’t that difficult to do so.  And while I understand all of the reasons for not getting rid of it, it appears to me that as things currently stand, the rule hurts Democratic policies WAY more than it hurts Republican policies.  Republicans haven’t held 60 Senate seats since 1923, and yet they’ve managed to get plenty of things in their agenda accomplished in that time despite never having held a filibuster-proof majority in the past 87 years.

On January 3, 2011, when the 112th Congress convenes for the first time, the majority has a one-day window of opportunity to implement a rule change that would nullify (or change) the filibuster rule, and they only need to have 51 votes to do this - or 50 votes plus VP Biden.

Now while the 2010 midterms could be really bad and we could and likely will lose a fair number of seats, it’s incredibly unlikely that we’ll lose the Senate majority outright this November - the Republicans would not only have to win all 18 seats they are defending, they would also have to win 10 out of 18 seats that the Democrats are defending - they would need to 28 out of the 36 total Senate seats up for election this year.  That has never happened for either party in my lifetime.  That would make the 1994 bloodbath look like nothing.  The odds of the Republicans actually overtaking the majority in the Senate in 2010 are virtually nil - they simply need to win way too many seats to pull that off right now.  They could conceivably flip the Senate over the next 2 election cycles if the Democrats really screw things up, but no way will they do it in just one election year.  I don’t think anybody has picked up that many Senate seats in one cycle in the past 100 years.

Anyway, the Democrats can kill the filibuster (or make it harder to use) with just 51 votes on January 3, 2011 - but that’s their one shot to make the rule change without needing a 67 vote supermajority to do it.

He just thought they were just like his conservative friends in law school or the minority republicans in IL: people who could be dealt with because he had good relationships with them.

Just to make this crystal clear.  Republicans in Illinois, at least the ones who get elected, are pro-choice.  Mark Kirk, GOP candidate for Obama’s seat, is tacking as hard to teabagger right as he can, but the teabaggers hate him b/c he is pro-choice and voted for cap and trade.

Republicans in Illinois are not like other Republicans.  There’s even a letter to the editor of the Sun-Times today whining about why they didn’t cover and endorse a far distant nominee for Senate who’s pro-forced gestation.  Blaming the liberal media, of course, but the Alan Keyes/Jim Oberweis whackadoodle anti-immigrant, homophobic, fetus-loving teabagger type doesn’t win statewide office here.

To be fair, George Ryan was a good governor—he followed through on his campaign promise to remake “the Hillside Strangler”, a stretch of highway that was notorious for traffic jams.  When it became brutally honest that too many people were on death row due to inappropriate police conduct, he commuted every prisoner’s sentence to life and ended enforcing the death penalty.

He was just a crook who lived off bribes from his underlings, who unfortunately sold driver’s licenses to get the money.  He’s in jail b/c he belongs there, but most Republicans would have a hard time recognizing him as GOP b/c they’ve Overtonned themselves so far into wacky land.

I can buy Obama believing that people are reasonable, except that by now it should be more than obvious that he’s not dealing with a reasonable opposition party.  These are NOT Illinois Republicans.  He needs to marshall what he’s got left of Democrats and give them strong marching orders instead of begging the more liberal parts of his party to play nice with the assholes like Lieberman.

That is, if he’s not an asshole himself.  I think his future as a ‘consultant’ and ‘speaker’ looms larger than his will to fight for what’s right.  And that’s sad.

Well, it’s pretty much over.  Obama says the Senate will not vote on healthcare until Brown is sworn in.  Because, as I’ve been saying all along, the Democrats are assuming that Brown won because people think they’re going too far left, so they don’t want to antagonize those people.

Thanks, kill-the-billers!  That sure was some great stratergizing.  What’s the new plan to get our healthcare pony now that you’ve gotten what you wanted and killed the bill?

At some stage, people are going to realise that you can force more such special elections using high powered rifles.

Given the frustration at the schlerotic American political system, I fully expect to see a Congress or Senate assassination in the next few years.

“Obama says the Senate will not vote on health care until Brown is sworn in.”

Yep, that’s just what a Republican wouldn’t do.  Democrats are so hopeless.  I do kind of give up.

I will support with money and time some “good democrats,” but I am not going to go out of my way to save the hides of politicians who just don’t have any fight in them.

That’s a huge part of it right there.  I just learned yesterday that since the MA primaries ended a month ago, Brown held 66 campaign events while Coakley held only 19.  I also found out that with three weeks to go in the campaign, Coakley thought it would be a good idea to go take a vacation in the Cayman Islands, while her opponent was out in the field rallying support.

No fucking wonder she lost.  That’s a level of electoral incompetence that makes the Gore 2000 Presidential Campaign look brilliant by comparison.  That’s almost malpractice against her own constituents.

Voters don’t like being taken for granted, and Coakley stupidly assumed that because this race was in Massachusetts, there was no need to actually continue running for the seat after she won the Democratic primary.  She figured she was already the Senator in waiting.  The fucking hubris!  Ted Kennedy was perhaps one of the safest bets going in almost all of his re-election efforts, but from what I understand, the man made damn sure to be out in the field shaking hands all the way up to election day every time he ran for re-election.  Sure, he probably knew that his seat was relatively safe, but he never once took his own re-election for granted.

He did the most fundamental thing that Martha Coakley forgot to do - he asked people to vote for him!

This should be a warning to all Democrats running in ultra blue states and districts - it doesn’t matter how liberal you think the electorate is in your race, if you don’t get out there and campaign for your seat, YOU WILL NOT WIN!

Hey, let’s at least wait for the House vote before letting despair settle in.

You know what, Mnemo, if the health care bill is going to restrict women’s right to control their bodily autonomy and prop up the for-profit leeches by forcing people to buy high premium, high deductible ‘catastrophic’ insurance enforced by the IRS it’s better off dead.

Even the bankruptcy provisions, pre-existing conditions, and maximum lifetime benefits regulations have been gutted.

The current system of for-profit insurance is unsustainable in the long run as the insurance companies are already bleeding too much money out of the system.  With no drug reimportation or negotiated prices, no anti-trust legislation, no strong regulation of any kind forcing insurance to put most of the premium money toward health care, we’re left with a GIANT bail out to the insurance companies—who aren’t in a bad way right now.

IRS-enforced premiums are regressive tax that is a giant transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.  It’s a horrible precedent—forcing people to buy product?  Without a public option, a socialized real option, it’s about the worse possible bill we could have hoped for.

There’s no fucking way I can support that.  Kill it is right.

We need health care reform.  We need it now.  This insurance company bill is not it, and Obama saying they won’t vote before Brown is seated is clear evidence that Obama is not interested in a health bill that helps most people nor in the fight getting any such bill passed would take.

He’s fucked up this opportunity.  People will die b/c of it, but better insurance die its natural free-market death than be propped up an additional decade or two by taxes.

Fuck it all.  We pay so much more for health care than any other civilized nation, and we get almost nothing for it.  It’s just another way to make the rich richer.

Mnemosyne’s attitude is that it’s so crucial we get out of the Republican’s promise to give us all thirty lashes of the whip that we should accept the Democrats’ plan to give us all only twenty.

At this point, we wait for the bankers to have their come-to-jesus meeting with the politicians.

Oh, I’m sure they’ll try to do internal deflation measures like what’s going on in the Baltic Republics, but those policies are poison politically and probably anti-ethical to social peace and also economic demand levels.  Not to mention what it will do to the world economy…

Nooo, we’re pretty much going to head straight into political crisis if we can’t even get the small potatos we’re supposed to get before the election.  Politicians just can’t abdicate decision-making unless they’re backed by powerful external forces.  Who OUR external powerful force?

The Democrats are such flaming political idiots! If politics were sports, I’d say they were deliberately throwing the game.

Agree 100% with Caren #30.  Both Democrats and Republicans work for the corporate kleptocracy.  The weakness Democrats have is they have to actually pretend they don’t.  Republicans can do it in the open while distracting their base with tax cuts and the specters of gay marriage, terrorism, abortion, and the war against Christianity.  This whole bit about a 40 seat minority being able to shut down the Senate at every turn never seemed to come up during the Bush administration.  The problem is the unelected power brokers who actually run everything can’t be taken down because they control both parties and exist outside the democratic system.  I thought their destruction of the world economy might shake things up a bit, but the Republicans have masterfully redirected populist anger away from Wall Street /banks and toward Obama and the Democrats, socialism, healthcare for poor people, and the federal deficit.

At some stage, people are going to realise that you can force more such special elections using high powered rifles.

Only problem with that thinking is this… the perceived benefit of special elections for Republicans is that turnout is typically much, much lower than it is in regular elections.  Low turnout = better chance of GOP victory, right?

Well, that meme got shattered yesterday.  The turnout in Massacusetts was through the roof… higher than it was even in the 2002 governor’s race, which was held during the regular midterm Congressional elections in November 2002.  The conventional wisdom that higher turnout means better chance of a Democratic victory failed yesterday.

The voters came out in droves.  Problem is, Coakley ran such an absolutely horrifically awful campaign that 1/4 of DEMOCRATS voted for the teabagger.  On top of that, all of the Republicans and a huge majority of the Independents went to Brown.

Getting out the vote wasn’t the problem.  A shitty candidate coupled with milquetoast policy coming from DC and very little improvement in the lives of people living on Main Street meant this race was lost long before yesterday.  We didn’t fail to get enough people to the polls.  We failed to realize that turnout wasn’t our biggest obstacle.  A crappy candidate running effectively as an incumbent of a party that is spineless was our biggest obstacle.

There’s an excellent analysis by Peter Daou about the two narratives that are already emerging from this at HuffPo:

Liberal Bloggers to Obama and Dems: We Told You So

One argument is that Democrats lost because they are being too liberal.  That’s the meme being pushed by most of the mainstream media (including even most of the MSNBC staff), the Republicans, and shitty Conservadems like Evan Bayh and Jim Webb.  Voters are rejecting the supposed leftist overreach of Obama and Congress.  HAHAHA - what leftist overreach?

Then there is the other narrative, also known as the truth - the Democrats are getting pounded because the promise of hope and change isn’t being delivered.  People want progressive legislation, and when the Democrats have this huge of a mandate and still fail to deliver, they say “Fuck it, why did I trust these assholes?”

They have ten months to get it right, and to really give a 100% effort to promote progressive change and to enact policy that tangibly improves people’s lives.  I’m not holding my breath.

I hope they prove you wrong, Amanda…but I’m increasingly convinced they’ll prove you right.  Alas.

Strange times.

Uh…I really thought the House passing the Senate bill with fixes later in reconciliation was going to be the way ahead, but based on the stuff up at Talking Points Memo it seems they’re going to do something….stupid, whatever, I don’t even know. It involves Snowe, and everyone slowing down (because we’ve been moving so fast already?!?!) and somehow this argument from Barney Frank:

[Frank] told me it would be wrong to push the bill through now that new senator would vote the opposite of the current occupant. (see full text here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/reality-based_community.php#more?ref=fpblg)

What is that about? Is that some sort of Senate etiquette? How does it makes sense? Does it mean we can undo all of Bush’s policies since the new Congress (in theory) would not support them?

I just don’t. understand. What is motivating the Dems? Why do they behave like this? It doesn’t make any sense.

If healthcare dies I think the next focus for the Democratic party should be rebuilding our nations schools, because you only get politicians like Scott Brown from electorates too dumb to fucking breathe. I am astonished at how fast the country forgot who caused the economic collapse. Like rebelliousjezebel said at #48 I also thought “their destruction of the world economy might shake things up a bit, but the Republicans have masterfully redirected populist anger away from Wall Street /banks and toward Obama and the Democrats, socialism, healthcare for poor people, and the federal deficit.”

The current narrative I see again and again that “unions ruined the economy and destroyed jobs.” That narrative wouldn’t be able to take hold if people actually learned about the positive ways unions transformed our country in their primary and secondary school history classes. The way my history classes taught, the triangle shirtwaist factory fire happened and the powers that be went “oh drat! that was a dreadful idea, let us do end sweatshops.” Child labor is taught as though it just *poof* vanished on its own.

Aniope if you figure that out, bottle it because a lot of people, including me, will buy it.  I have no fucking idea.

DTG, about the assassination thing?

PiaToR is right.  Violence is an intrinsic part of right wing make-up, and you really shouldn’t expect them to be rational.  I fully expect an increase in potential for assasination, but mostly from the right wing.  The people who’ll go out an hurt and kill others do so because they are entitled, and feel that the system should work for them regardless of whether they play any role in success (or more likely) failure.

Being deadly serious here, because I’m not sure how many people really grasp this (it’s a systemic issue rather than any one issue that can be pointed at), we are in very deep doo doo, cosmically bad doo doo, and if the health care reform bill fails (because the KEY here was cost control and stopping health care inflation) just because a large majority is whittled down by one, then we haven’t yet stopped digging ourselves deeper yet.  If things don’t get better politically, those of you with passports/dual citizenship should seriously think about getting out.  We are seriously under a high risk of economic collaspe (for various reasons) and political collaspes at the state level with strongly negative implications for most people.

If things don’t get better politically, those of you with passports/dual citizenship should seriously think about getting out.  We are seriously under a high risk of economic collaspe (for various reasons) and political collaspes at the state level with strongly negative implications for most people.

Word. I wish I could persuade my family to come along, but they refuse, and I’m not sure I have the heart to leave them behind. They see how bad it has gotten—but they seem unable to believe that it can get worse. Even though it has. Consistently. For years, now.

Well, I guess I’ll just try to find a tent city that has wi-fi…

First, I don’t see where the hate on Coakley comes from. She is more progressive than most of the current Senators, she was also possibly the most progressive of the Democrats in the primary.

In terms of the election, you have to remember that she had a large lead until mid/late December. Scott Brown was mostly unknown (even in MA) and usually a candidate should not campaign much if they have a big lead against an unknown because this gives the unknown exposure. The change came in a two week span, at which point she (and the whole Democratic party) did mess up.

As an aside, this really wasn’t a vote for Republicans. Brown is a Republican, but he almost never mentioned it.

sha8 I hear you, and that’s why I wasn’t part of the kill the bill crowd.  I was pleased the House was improving it, and believed certain Dems when they said don’t worry, we’re coming back for more in 2010 through other legislation.

I really think this is a disaster.  And I’m very much not with the Jane Hamshers.  Now, this happening is in no way her fault, or how she would term it, “to her credit” she didn’t do this.  But she wanted to do this, and this is going to get worse than she and her buddies could have imagined.

She comes from a fairly PUMA crowd.  That’s a big part of the hate, and uh, no she was not the most progressive Democrat in the primary.  There is a pretty huge difference between her and someone like Sotomeyer (and not to Coakley’s credit) even though there are superficial similarities.

John, she wasn’t the most progressive candidate in the primary, and frankly, she’s a real reflection of how insulated and entitled these politicians are, on both sides.  Do people understand that people don’t have fucking jobs?  That they’re losing their homes?  That they’re terrified and enraged?

And you go on a three week Caribbian vacation?

Come the fuck on.

Phony repig populists driving around in pick up trucks are pathetic and transparent, but any fool knows; it fools a lot of fools.

You know what?  We’ll pass the Senate bill; all of us with preexisting conditions will buy health care in 2013… and one of four things will happen:
1. Insurance companies will learn to live with small profit margins (ha!)
2. Enough people will get denied for lifesaving procedures that even Republicans grow a conscience and agree to allow a public option
3. Health insurance companies start to go bankrupt.  The federal government steps in and becomes a majority shareholder in Aetna, UnitedHealthCare, etc.
4. We’re fucked.

Welp, I’m done with this stupid party. I know I was naive to ever believe that Obama would change anything but that’s over. From now on I support the SPUSA, they may not get elected to federal offices, but what’s the point of getting elected if you won’t stand up for your principals?

@ #61: I think all four of those things are actually going to happen. Just at different times and possibly not in that order.

DTG

They have ten months to get it right, and to really give a 100% effort to promote progressive change and to enact policy that tangibly improves people’s lives.  I’m not holding my breath.

There is no “get it right”. They won’t make it up to me and many others by doing well in some other area (not that they will).

Sorry, if there was one single issue that was absolutely indispensable that this Administration got through, it was the health care bill. Abortion, gay rights, Guantanamo are all big deals, but they don’t even come close just in terms of the sheer immensity of needless human suffering and death.

If the House doesn’t pass this Bill (it’s still possible), first I’m going to admit that Republicans are right that Democrats are corporatist WIMPS. Then I’m going to enter political hibernation for a while.

I’ll wake up again in 2012 to make it perfectly clear that Obama, my Senator and my Rep. will not get my vote by acting like this.

3. He’s been a willing agent of Slightly Lesser Evil all along, and feigned concern for the ordinary folks in order to get elected so that the second half of the transition to corporate friendly-fascism could be completed before real opposition could develop.

This is the most plausible. He doesn’t think of it as fascism, of course, it’s got a more patriotic name like American Economic Interest or good old Free Market Economics. But it amounts to the same thing: politicians bought and paid for by corporate interests.

At some stage, people are going to realise that you can force more such special elections using high powered rifles.

You might want to learn that Massachusetts is the only state that requires a special election to fill a Senate seat, and look at the fact Democrats have won 5 out of the 6 special elections held for Congress since 2008 (several in “safe” Republican seats) before prognosticating about apocalyptic scenarios.

The orthodoxy in economist circles right now is that the government should ideally outsource everything but its ‘core competencies’ to the private sector. Used to be that police and military could still be relied upon to be considered ‘core competencies’, but Blackwater and the prison-industrial complex did away with that. If they outsourced the military do you think they actually will bring back healthcare, which was never a core government competency in the USA, into the government’s portfolio? Hah!

Right now the only core competency of government economists recognize is collecting money, and giving it to the programs who needs them. The ideal state according to Chicago School economics is nothing more than a conveyor belt from taxpayers pockets into corporate firms coffers.

This is what you should see as the model for what sort of ‘reforms’ will actually get support from the international economic community. Anything else than that will be met with swift retributions in the form of capital flight.

This puts the economic stimulus package and healthcare reform debacle in a new light, no?

Oh, and the House will (and needs to) pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama’s desk ASAP.

Using the nuclear option now, on this issue, would look desperate and unhinged and not be popular with the public, and I’m not even sure they have the votes for THAT at this point.

Save the nuclear option for financial reform which will be much more popular with the public (who hate banks), and do it at the beginning of the process so it doesn’t look like a desperate gamble.

Obama has made many mistakes in this process, but he learned during the campaign to fix mistakes he made and he can learn now, and I hope he has.

Really 59, 60? Who was the most progressive candidate? One of the whole points of the primary was that there were few differences in position between the candidates.

The New Deal was a compromise by the elites between capitalism and communism. It was designed to stop defection to a competing economic system.

Communism died. The only model left is capitalism. This is what Fukuyama called The End of History.

Ergo, there is no longer a need for the New Deal according to the masters of the world. It is a costly programme that needs to be dismantled. There will not be a new New Deal, ever, unless some new model rises enough in prominence to challenge the capitalist system.

I have nothing useful to contribute here, but just wanted to say how delighted I am with Amanda’s phrasing at comment #8: “the obstructionist allies in the House.”

Yes. Of course the Democrats could manage to have “allies” who oppose Democratic goals and interests. How could it be any other way?

Ergo, there is no longer a need for the New Deal according to the masters of the world. It is a costly programme that needs to be dismantled.

What?

Bush tried privatizing Social Security and he failed miserably. Republicans tied cutting Medicare in the ‘90s , they failed miserably. Medicaid still exists, food stamps still exist, TANF still exists. The SEC, the FDIC, etc., still exist, an nobody even talks seriously about dismantling them except for the libertarian fringes.

In Britain, Canada, France, nobody talks seriously about abolishing national healthcare. The conservatives in Britain call it a “national treasure” for God’s sake.

Once liberal programs ARE PASSED they are wildly popular and neigh-on-impossible to dismantle. The problem is getting them passed.

DTG, about the assassination thing?

PiaToR is right.  Violence is an intrinsic part of right wing make-up, and you really shouldn’t expect them to be rational.  I fully expect an increase in potential for assassination, but mostly from the right wing.  The people who’ll go out an hurt and kill others do so because they are entitled, and feel that the system should work for them regardless of whether they play any role in success (or more likely) failure.

Let me clarify my point.  I’m not disputing the contention that wingnut rhetoric gins up the possibility of a political assassination.  Absolutely that’s a secret unsaid hope of some people in the wingnut ranks.

I’m pointing out that if PiaToR’s logic is, “they will assassinate someone to force a special election because special elections have lower turnout, and lower turnout means better odds of Republican victories”, it’s wrong.

Democrats didn’t lose Massachusetts yesterday because the turnout was too low for them to win.  GOTV wasn’t the problem.  Tons of people went to vote in Massachusetts yesterday, including a sizeable number of registered Democrats.  The Democrats lost because well, quite frankly, they fucking suck right now.  Coakley was a shitty candidate, Obama is unwilling to accept that Republicans hate him and don’t want to be his friend, and Congressional Democrats are terrified of their own shadows.

If those trends continue, count on us getting absolutely crushed this November.  Being the lesser of two evils has never won us an election, and it won’t this year, either.  Obama and the Democrats won big in 2008 because they said, “You should vote for us because we are gonna kick ass and take names!”  Had the message been, “You should vote for us because, damn, do those other guys suck!”, 2008 might have turned out quite differently.  Martha Coakley never sold herself as a good candidate, but she tried desperately to sell Scott Brown as a terrible candidate.  And while her claim was objectively true, people don’t get motivated to vote for you if all you tell them is that the other guy really sucks.  Coakley never once told her voters why she would make a great senator, she instead focused her campaign on painting Brown in a negative light.

It doesn’t work.  Too many Democrats still don’t get that.  Given the choice between a spineless fake Democrat and a bold real Republican, the electorate will always swing toward the latter.

Now that Obama and the Democrats run Washington, the game has changed.  It isn’t enough to just tell us about all the great things you plan to do, you must actually do those great things.  And if you don’t do what you promised to do, the electorate will turn on you.

Democrats can only turn this ship around by focusing their energy on delivering good government to the people, and enacting strong policies which tangibly improve people’s lives.  If all they do is wring their hands and tell us, “We want to do stuff, but those meanie Republicans won’t let us!”, America will not respond kindly.

The primary goal is not, and should never be, about defeating Republicans or making them look bad.  George Bush isn’t the president today, and Republicans don’t hold the majority of Congressional seats in either house.  We need to stop focusing all of our energy and time on talking about how much the other team sucks.  We know they suck.  Telling us they suck doesn’t do anything to improve our lives.  We want you to do things to make our realities a little better.  Let the asshole Republicans act like assholes in the corner, and quit blaming them for why you aren’t getting shit done.

The primary goal is about enacting good policy and showing why you are not merely marginally less bad than the opposition, but incredibly good at getting good things done.

If Democrats can ever do that, they can win, and win big, and we all win in the end.  If they fail to do that on even a minimal level, all they are doing is biding their time until the Republicans regain control of our government.

President Obama’s second term is FAR from inevitability at this point.  I hope he realizes that, and I hope Congress realizes that the same truth applies to them as well.

Ten months.  That’s what they’ve got to work with.  If the next ten months look the same as the ten months that preceded the election of a teabagger to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, well fuck it, we’re screwed.  We’ll be reading about President Obama’s congratulatory phone call to Speaker Boehner this November if nothing changes between now and then.

I’m pointing out that if PiaToR’s logic is, “they will assassinate someone to force a special election because special elections have lower turnout, and lower turnout means better odds of Republican victories”, it’s wrong.

Not to mention that in ever state except Massachusetts the Governor appoints a Senator who holds the seat until the next regular election.

And in the House, five special elections have been held since Obama was inaugurated. In all five, Democrats one. Two of them were pickups for the Democrats.

Ben D. at 72, common wisdom has always said that we wouldn’t dare cut those entitlement programs, but this morning I read this WaPo article about the formation of a new “Deficit Commission” being formed that plans to examine Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as part of its work. I doubt they intend to expand those programs in order to shrink the deficit.

So far I really dislike 2010. Here’s the link to the article, I’m more than willing to accept I’m freaking myself out over nothing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011903310.html

First, I don’t see where the hate on Coakley comes from. She is more progressive than most of the current Senators, she was also possibly the most progressive of the Democrats in the primary.

It’s not due to her platform positions—we wanted her to win, even with the faint praise that she’s more progressive than most sitting Senators.

In terms of the election, you have to remember that she had a large lead until mid/late December. Scott Brown was mostly unknown (even in MA) and usually a candidate should not campaign much if they have a big lead against an unknown because this gives the unknown exposure. The change came in a two week span, at which point she (and the whole Democratic party) did mess up.

Let me re-cast your statement in terms of recent Democratic Party history:

In terms of the primary, you have to remember that Hillary had a large lead until mid/late April. Barack Obama was mostly unknown (even in IL) and usually a candidate should not campaign much if they have a big lead against an unknown because this gives the unknown exposure. The change came in a two week span, at which point she (and the whole Democratic party) did mess up.

How’d that attitude work out for Clinton? I don’t think even Penn and Wolfson could defend it with a straight face.

It comes down to unwarranted hubris. Nothing is guaranteed in political campaigns, no matter what the pundits say. If you’re a candidate, your supporters and donors expect you to be busting your arse on the hustings from start to finish—3-weeks in the islands doesn’t impress in that regard.

We are tired of candidates and a party establishment that professes core values we agree with (at least, more than the second party in our 2-party system), but through a combination of arrogance and incompetence have wasted opportunity after opportunity for 30 years.

jessilikewhoa, cutting any of those programs to any real degeree would be a political non-starter, just like Social Security privatization was for Bush. It doesn’t matter what any commission says, it just wouldn’t fly. Raising taxes would be easier!

If those trends continue, count on us getting absolutely crushed this November.

Sadly, I think it will continue. In the long interval between now and the 2006 majority, and both Reid and Pelosi have repeatedly failed to capitalise on that advantage in any meaningful way.

Worse, I haven’t seen anything close to the sort of party discipline we’ve seen on the GOP side. In many ways, the rifts between the Know-Nothings and neoCons go far deeper than those between progressives and blue dogs—and yet the Republicans are whipped to vote in lockstep on core issues no matter what while the Democrats go hither and yon.

And that’s putting aside the incompetent campaigning and the “vote for me because I’m not quite as awful as the GOP candidate” approach.

Ben D. I’m not sure about that, crazy Rod Blagojevich couldn’t get a tax hike past a Democratic state congress in fucking Illinois. I’m pretty sure it would be easier to enact a law saying Social Security will end in X year decently far in the future (30 years from now say,) or you and I could both learn to levitate, both would be easier than raising taxes. The economy collapsed and the dying middle class has declared all out war on the poor.

I just read transcript of Obama’s interview with ABC and I’m disgusted. What a gutless out of touch jackass. I was one of those “now, now kids, progressives turning on the President fuels the opposition” types until today. Now, fuckit, I just want to find a job that pays my bills and gives me a tiny bit to save up so I can get the fuck off this sinking ship.

cutting any of those programs to any real degeree would be a political non-starter, just like Social Security privatization was for Bush. It doesn’t matter what any commission says, it just wouldn’t fly. Raising taxes would be easier!

Political suicide is more like it. Rule one of American politics: don’t f*ck with grandma!

Yeah, but you can fuck with young people and say “we’re going to end SS when you retire”

I’m pretty sure it would be easier to enact a law saying Social Security will end in X year decently far in the future (30 years from now say,) or you and I could both learn to levitate, both would be easier than raising taxes.

That makes a bit more sense. They’d be more than happy to screw over the Gen-Xers, but they won’t go after the Boomers. The only snag is that the Boomers believe they’re so special that they’ll all still be alive and kicking when the trailing Gen-Xers turn 65.

Not even X-ers, I’m turning 29 this year and I’m one of the oldest Millenials. Say you’ll end Social Security and Medicare in 2040 and most of the people who get screwed by that can’t even vote yet.

Also, the Boomers think their children (Millenials or Gen-Y) are equally special, and won’t like the idea of their being screwed over. Given that, the only scheme that might have a chance is a temporary moratorium on Social Security payouts between 2030 and 2040.

Ben D. I’m not sure about that, crazy Rod Blagojevich couldn’t get a tax hike past a Democratic state congress in fucking Illinois. I’m pretty sure it would be easier to enact a law saying Social Security will end in X year decently far in the future (30 years from now say,)

Complete and total non-starter. Especially after the stock market collapse.

My God liberals are pessimistic. Democrats win 5 out of 6 special elections, hold the Presidency, the House, and because of a special election in Massachusetts with a terrible candidate that brings our majority down to 59-41 (the largest in years), OMG TEH WORLD WILL END!!! ASSASSINATIONS!! END OF SOCIAL SECURITY!!! COLLAPSE OF THE USA!!1!!!11

Calm. The Fuck. Down.

First, I don’t see where the hate on Coakley comes from. She is more progressive than most of the current Senators, she was also possibly the most progressive of the Democrats in the primary.

She took a Caribbean vacation with three weeks to go in the campaign, she insulted her voters by saying that she thought it was a waste of time to stand outside shaking hands in the cold, and she only held 19 campaign events while her opponent held 66 in the final month.

She behaved as if she was just automatically entitled to the votes of the Massachusetts electorate without having to do anything to earn them.  It’s as if she really didn’t give a shit about whether or not she won.  She even said during her concession speech last night, “Well, at least my dogs will be happy.”  WTF?

She may have been a damn fine progressive in some regards, but she was a monumental failure at campaigning.  She assumed that there was no way that Republican could beat her, and by acting as if her election was an inevitability, she insulted the voters of Massachusetts.

Books will be written about what a monumentally terrible and hubristic campaign Martha Coakley ran in this race.  Someone from the DNC categorized it thusly: “the worst debacle in American political history”.  If her and failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds were to be the next Democratic ticket for President/VP, it would probably be the first time in American history that the electoral college was won unanimously by one party… and it wouldn’t be the Democrats.

She forgot the most fundamental rule of running for office, something that even most high schoolers running for student council understand: “If you want people to vote for you, you have to ask them to vote for you.”  And no, waiting until the very last week when your poll numbers have already crashed won’t cut it.  She lost this race the second she won the Democratic primary and assumed that the election was already over.

I mean , really:

A Republican Congress and a Republican President, fresh from an election victory, couldn’t even TOUCH Social Security and you’re convinced a Democratic Congress and President will move to end it by 2040?  Because an anarchist said so?

Jesus, I need a break from politics and blogs for a while…

Ben D. I don’t think we’re screwed because we lost one seat or because Blackbloc said so, I think we’re screwed because the President and both houses of Congress are saying so. If they roll over and play dead then we’re pretty screwed.

Well I wouldn’t call passing the Senate bill in the House as is “rolling over and playing dead”.

Fix the problems in that bill at a later date.  Social Security was a compromised mess when it was created, too, and at the time borderline racist in how benefits were paid out. We were still better off for passing it, and the problems were fixed later.

Thlayli—

Still, she’s going to have a special election as an incumbent on the regular election day. The Republicans don’t have a turnout advantage there.

I agree 100% but that’s not the narrative coming out of the White House and Congress. Obama is saying we need to wait for Brown to be seated then scale the bill down even more to only focus on the “popular” parts of reform, whatever he thinks those are. Pelosi, Frank, and Weiner are all saying that they don’t think the house has the votes to pass the Senate bill.

I think ping-ponging the Senate bill to the House then to the President’s desk is brilliant, but the powers that be seem to disagree on the viability of that strategy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/obama-to-dems-dont-jam-th_n_430134.html

Pelosi, Frank, and Weiner are all saying that they don’t think the house has the votes to pass the Senate bill.

Weiner and Frank bluffed that they were going to vote against the original House bill but, then, surprise surprise, voted for it in the end.

I’m glad this is all in Nancy Pelosi’s hands now. If there is anyone in Washington that can get this over the finish line, it’s Nancy Pelosi. She’s our Lyndon Johnson of the House—she just needs to start twisting some arms.

Well I wouldn’t call passing the Senate bill in the House as is “rolling over and playing dead”.

No, that’ll happen after the Senate bill is passed, when all the Dems involved say “hey, we passed health care reform,” give themselves hearty pats on the back, and then make absolutely no changes to this craptastic legislation for the next 25 years.

That said, Amanda is right: something is better than nothing, so they might as well go with it. Not that it’s a sure thing, either—Nancy Pelosi seems to have a masochistic affinity for laying down and taking kicks to the head from the opposition. All in the name of “comity,” of course!

I’d take anything coming out of HuffPo with only a slightly smaller grain of salt than you would take with whatever comes out of FDL. That website has taken a turn in the last month.

Nancy Pelosi seems to have a masochistic affinity for laying down and taking kicks to the head from the opposition. All in the name of “comity,” of course!

I think you mistake Nancy Pelosi for Harry Reid. Pelosi has been, by far, the most effective leader we have in Washington in the past year. And that’s not damning with faint praise—she’s not effective in comparison to Reid and Obama, but she’s just effective.

I’m glad this is all in Nancy Pelosi’s hands now. If there is anyone in Washington that can get this over the finish line, it’s Nancy Pelosi. She’s our Lyndon Johnson of the House—she just needs to start twisting some arms.

Yeah, like she did with the Blue Dogs in the House. Please—that’s an insult to LBJ, who knew how to crack the whip and make ‘em jump.

In Britain, Canada, France, nobody talks seriously about abolishing national healthcare.

You are completly out of it. They talk about it all the time. They just call it public-private partnerships or other such euphemisms.

The Dems won’t be able to pass any meaningful reforms. Most of their time will be spent trying to balance the budget. When the GOP comes back in power they will run another huge deficit, dump that money into corporate hands, and privatize more of the state for a pitance. Then the Dems will come back in power and be unable to pass more reforms, again, and have to balance the budget. At some point in this back and forth, Social Security or Medicare or some other sacred New Deal cow will have to be slaughtered, or taxes raised. And nobody will raise the taxes.

It happened this way last time under Clinton. It will happen again next time under whoever is elected on the Dems side after the next Republican win. It happened in Europe, it happened in Canada, it happened in South Africa, it happened in Latin America.

These are multinationals. If America falls, all that will matter is how much they can scavenge out of it before restarting in the next country. The Empire has gone post-modern. It’s a global international network, and has no national ties. Nation states have been obsoleted.

Gracchus, she’s passed more progressive legislation than Reid or Obama has.

And nobody will raise the taxes.

Clinton raised taxes to reduce the deficit, without gutting Social Security or Medicare. So, you’re wrong.

And we don’t even have to “raise” them. Just let the Bush tax cuts expire and block anyone from extending them.

Ben D. I agree, HuffPo is not a bastion of political sanity, but that article has the transcript of Obama’s interview answers, and they aren’t promising. I do think if anyone can get this shit done it’s Pelosi because she’s a rockstar and doesn’t often take no for an answer. At the same time, because she’s so tough, I worry even more when she questions her ability to get the votes she needs.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats will continue to try to reconcile the House and Senate health care bills, setting up a possibly very risky second Senate vote.

Yeah, very effective. If she’d been in JFK’s place during the Cuban Missle Crisis, she would’ve been saying “hmmm, maybe we should consider the terms of Khruschev’s second telegram after all.

What I don’t get is:

The Democrats who voted for the first bill have ALREADY taken a political hit. If they’re in a conservative district, the conservative will run ads saying they voted for OMG OBAMMUNIST TREASONCARE even if they vote against the final bill. Because their explination of “oh, I voted for the first version of the bill, but then I voted against final passage” will go right over the head of Cletus McMustang Six Pack.

So why don’t they just vote for this thing? They’re screwed anyway, may as well vote for what your party believes in.

Gracchus, she’s passed more progressive legislation than Reid or Obama has.

I thought you said that you weren’t damning her with faint praise.

To be clear, I’m not picking on her in particular. Her approach is symptomatic of the party as a whole.

I think BlackBloc is perhaps writing from Teh Future. Or something. An alternate future where Clinton was someone else?

Clinton raised taxes to reduce the deficit, without gutting Social Security or Medicare. So, you’re wrong.

I’m not wrong. He gutted welfare instead. Welfare reform, remember?

may as well vote for what your party believes in.

I think they ARE voting for what their party believes in. It’s just that their party isn’t our party.

So why don’t they just vote for this thing? They’re screwed anyway, may as well vote for what your party believes in.

The party doesn’t excercise real discipline, and hasn’t for decades. Furthermore, its “big tent” makes room for politicians who are deeply antipathic to one or more of the party’s stated core values.

Welfare reform wasn’t done for fiscal reasons, it was done because the old system was broken and unpopular.

TANF and food stamps are paltry part of the federal budget, you could abolish them tomorrow without making a dent in the budget deficit.

I think BlackBloc is perhaps writing from Teh Future. Or something. An alternate future where Clinton was someone else?

Clinton was responsible for passing NAFTA and was part of the process to bring in the Multilateral Agreement on Investments. He’s as much a part of the corporate crony squad as the GOP.

Well, what? and Gracchus—

I’m talking about people that voted for the first House bill but are uneasy about voting for final passage on the Senate bill. Not Blue Dogs and DINOs who didn’t vote for either.

Yes Blackbloc, because in the year 2000 this country was just as bad off as it was after Bush left in 2008. The 3.5% unemployment, the rising median incomes (the only period this has happened in since 1972 was 1994-2001), growing GDP, millions of new jobs..yeah, JUST LIKE the GOP!

Welfare reform wasn’t done for fiscal reasons, it was done because the old system was broken and unpopular.

Bullshit. It was ‘broken’ in that the state was giving money to the needy and not corporate welfare checks. It was ‘unpopular’ with free market ideologues who think everybody should lift themselves by their own bootstraps.

The narrative is that in the House we’ll lose the Stupak amendment votes and the more progressive votes because the Senate bill doesn’t effectively punish women and is too corporate friendly. I have no idea what numbers we end up with if we lose progressives and panty sniffers, but Pelosi and others in the House seem to think we lose to many votes to pass the bill.

It’s not so much “you voted for it before, vote for it again!” Rather it’s the rather small differences losing votes. Which makes it look like lazy excuse making.

Without going down into a rabbit hole about welfare policy with you, BlackBloc, the old system was unpopular

Social Security and Medicare are WILDLY popular. Ask Bush what happens when you go after them—that was the beginning of the end of his Presidency.

Ask Bush what happens when you go after them—that was the beginning of the end of his Presidency.

Last time I checked, his presidency ended because of term limits.

The old welfare system was unpopular due to Reagan’s imaginary welfare queen poisoning the public discourse. My peers (baby X-ers and older Millenials) have been joking/bitching for years that Social Security and Medicare will be gone before we reach retirement age. That narrative had to have come from somewhere. I imagine it was probably started by people who hope those programs are gone before we reach retirement age.

Of course things were better before Bush: things have been going worse without stop since Nixon. The Clinton years only slowed it down, it did not reverse it.

Last time I checked, his presidency ended because of term limits.

Are you really that dense?

“Beginning of the end”” figuratively speaking in the sense that he got none of his agenda through after that, even when Republicans controlled Congress. No more major legislation Bush campaigned on was passed. Yeah, he sat in the Oval Office until January, 2009, but he didn’t get any more domestic legislation he campaigned on passed.

And Republicans don’t even make a squeak about doing anything to Social Security anymore, ever notice that?

They touched the Third Rail and were burned. That part of the New Deal will last as long as the United States lasts.

Ben D. -

While I lean more towards your thinking about whether or not the end of SS is an imminent possibility, I’m just not getting how you can take this loss as no big deal.  Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states in the country.  I don’t care who they vote for in gubernatorial races, the fact is, Democrats have won 21 out of the last 24 U.S. Senate or Presidential races in that state until last night.  Last night was only the fourth time in the last 40 years that a Republican won a statewide election for federal office in the Bay State.  Remember how big NY-23 was for us?  Well, in terms of the power of the office, this is an even bigger win for the teabaggers.  One senator has a ton more power than one congressperson.

While we can put the bulk of the focus on the absolute shoddiness of Coakley’s campaign, there are bigger problems going on here.  The White House and Congress hold responsibility for this loss as well.  People’s lives on Main Street are not much better than they were at the end of the Bush Presidency, and for all of the people who have joined the unemployment ranks this past year, their lives are objectively worse.

This ship is on the wrong course, and the frustration stems from the fact that the Democratic Party isn’t being nearly bold enough in delivering the promise of hope and change.  If U3 still hovers at 10% by this November - and let’s not kid ourselves, yes that is a definite possibility - the Democrats are going to get crushed at the polls.

A few months ago we laughed at the teabaggers and assumed that they had no real power.  We thought Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were impotent circus clowns.  Well, who’s laughing today?  One of the most liberal states in the country just elected a Republican to the United States Senate who got there by courting the teabagger movement.

The opposition is winning the message war right now.  And they are winning because when the lives of uninformed voters remains shitty, they blame the people in charge.  Guess who is in charge right now?  Not George Bush.  Not the Republican Party.  Sure, the Republicans are effectively running the show with a <strike>40</strike> 41 seat Senate minority, but at the end of the day, when non-wonkish people want to blame Washington for their troubles, it’s not Republicans that they are gonna blame.

Shit has to change.  Lives have to improve.  Things have to get better.  If they don’t, we’re toast in ten months.  That’s a fact.  The same fools who thought we could never lose a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts a month ago are whistling in the dark telling themselves that everything will be OK in November, because gosh, Republicans are so much worse than us.

Running as the “lesser of two evils” party is gonna get the Democrats asses kicked bad in November.  I hope they wake up and figure that out before it is too late.

Busj signed the “conscience clause” into effect within months of leaving office. That’s not nothing. Pardon, it was signed into law by Bush the DAY Obama took office. From CNN:

“The Provider Refusal Rule was proposed by the Bush White House in August and enacted on January 20, the day President Barack Obama took office.”

I think they ARE voting for what their party believes in. It’s just that their party isn’t our party.

Or more to the point, the core values of our Democratic Party (the ones they play up) are very different from the true core values of the Democratic party establishment: neoliberal-lite globalist economics, preservation of the status quo when it comes to large incumbent corporations (be they i-banks or insurers), and continuance of the Human Resources/4th Purpose Culture.

To a certain extent, the Dems constantly try to con us in the same way that the Republican neoCons try to con their Know-Nothings. The Dems may be less successful in that endeavour, but it’s not like we have any viable alternatives in a two-party system.

What I’d like to see are more efforts like the ActBlue targetted-primary campaign Pam mentioned the other day—speak to them through money, and they do tend to listen.

If the Dems run another conservative Dem in 6 years, they can probably expect the same result.

Three years.  The only thing that makes Brown’s election less infuriating is the knowledge that he’ll have to defend his seat again in 2012… he won the remainder of Kennedy’s current term, which began in January 2007.  So he’ll have to face the voters again in November 2012.

He couldn’t get Medicare and Social Security. Obama got elected instead. Then the market reacted. Badly. People are now out of jobs and homes, and pissed. They’ll vote Obama out because he can’t do shit (because the economy is strangling him), just like the ANC didn’t do shit (and now the life expectancy of blacks in South Africa is lower than under apartheid), just like Solidarity in Poland didn’t do shit. People will see it as a betrayal. Free market gurus will come back in and say we need more economic stimulus in the form of lower taxes, slashes in government programs, and privatization. That this will stimulate the market. And it will. Because whenever you downsize a firm, the stock soars, and when they downsize America and unemployment hists 30+% the market will be ecstatic and ask for more.

If you want to see the future of democracy, look at Iraq. Look at China. Look at Russia.

rebelliousjezebel wrote:

This whole bit about a 40 seat minority being able to shut down the Senate at every turn never seemed to come up during the Bush administration.

Have you forgotten Miguel Estrada and all of the other judicial nominees President Bush was unable to get confirmed, despite majority support, due to Democratic filibusters?

I did Dana! Thanks for reminding me that Dems can sometimes be effective.

I’m talking about people that voted for the first House bill but are uneasy about voting for final passage on the Senate bill.

Ok. Those are what we call poltroons. I’d expect many of them thought that any Senate bill that passed would be so watered down by the Republicans that it would be risk-free, and that voters would focus on result more than process. What they didn’t count on is that the Republicans would complain loudly about any health-reform bill pushed by Obama, and that the Villagers in the MSM would transform those complaints into “the American public’s mood.”

Obama got elected instead. Then the market reacted. Badly. People are now out of jobs and homes, and pissed.

Really? Nothing was fucked until Obama got elected. Really.

I dunno about you, but my coworkers and I all started losing our jobs wayyyyyy before November, 2008. And that handy little market crash? Also happened before the election. You are trying to draw a straight line between…what? The continued existence of Medicare and SS, and the stock market crash? You don’t think that might have had anything to do with, I dunno, bad banking and investment practices? That whole mortgage crisis thing?

Those of us with brain cells to rub together remember that we’ve been badly off for YEARS now. That some people are easily tricked into thinking otherwise does not mean that Obama’s election caused the collapse.

DTG- I agree with you and I was laughing too.  Digby wasn’t and she was always writing about how we have to watch the teabaggers because they could tap into this populist anger which Obama wasnt’ even trying to do, and they could gain power.

I think I even once told her to talk about something else because her nonsense was getting on my nerves.

Shows how smart I am.

If you want to see the future of democracy, look at Iraq. Look at China. Look at Russia.

None of those countries had a robust democratic tradition to begin with, so it’s hard to take seriously their contentions that their current sham versions are in fact democracies.

That said, I do think the future of America’s robust, 225-year old democracy is in the process of incorporating the worst features of those countries cargo-cult “democracies”: Iraq’s ethnic tribalism and religious sectarianism; China’s crony-capitalist regulatory capture; and Russia’s long-standing approach to dealing with political opponents.

OMG Blacbox is actually making sense to me.  I’m terribly afraid that he is exaclty right actually.

He couldn’t get Medicare and Social Security. Obama got elected instead. Then the market reacted.

The market went pear-shaped before Obama was elected. And while he was handed a platter of shite, anyone who thought he was anything other than a centrist neoliberal globalist straight out of the Chicago School was fooling himself.

That doesn’t make Obama the equivalent of a Republican by a longshot, but add in the nature of modern American government (see #133) and you will end up with no-accountability bail-outs for i-banks and health insurance “reform” tailor-made for insurance and pharma corporations.

Ben D wrote:

So why don’t they just vote for this thing? They’re screwed anyway, may as well vote for what your party believes in.

You sure their party believes in it?

The polls indicate that a majority of the public are opposed to whatever health care reform package is on the table now, and these moderate Democrats representing conservative-to-moderate districts wouldn’t be in political trouble if their constituents supported the bill. 

I know that my good friends on Pandagon think that just everybody except for a few Wall Street big-wigs supports health care reform, but it just isn’t so: on virtually any issue, you’re going to find at least 40% on opposing sides; it’s only the 20% in the middle with which you have to work.

In a very general sense, the public support a vague concept of health care reform; they want the government to “do something” about it.  But when they see the actual details, support wanes.

Dana -

You know goddamned well that the reason support for healthcare “reform” waned is because it lost substantial support from progressives.

You know what had popular support?  The public option.  Sweeping changes to the system.  All the great progressive ideas that were being talked about when the discussion began.

The reason that support for HCR went in the tank is because the left started to look at all of the things that were being stripped out of the bill and said, “Wait a second.  The public option WAS the compromise.  Now we don’t even get that?  Count me out.”

If we could turn back time and put forth a truly progressive bill on the table, this thing would still be enjoying the support of over 60% of the American public.

People don’t hate the bill because it leans too far to the left, they hate it because it doesn’t lean nearly far enough to the left.  When the biggest beneficiaries of the bill went from being the American public to the executives and big shareholders of the health insurance industry, that’s when people turned on the bill.

And you damn well know that.  Go cite some polls on healthcare reform when the public option was still looking like it was gonna be part of the deal.

HCR didn’t go from 70% support to 30% support because it got too progressive - it went that way because the most progressive elements got gutted as the bill moved through the sausagemaker.

Lieberman’s role in gutting the public option led to his poll numbers nosediving even further in Connecticut.  His constituents weren’t saying, “Oh thank you Joe for saving us from that awful government-run public option!”  They were saying, “Fuck you, you ginourmous bag of douche for putting your insurance lobbyist buddies’ interests above ours!”

The only upside to Lieberman doing what he did is that he has now absolutely guaranteed that his Senate career will end in January 2013.

Yes, the Dems want to lose.

Relieved.

If Scott Brown is the cost of us taking on this attitude and having a real discussion about what it means, then it was cheap at twice the price.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/progressive-coalition-war_n_430284.html

It appears I’m not the only one who worries that the “Deficit Commission” as proposed intends to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The largest unions, major progressive organizations, and other groups sent out a letter saying the same thing.

Guh.

Punditus @ #138:

If that Senate Staffer’s prognostication is right, and the Democrats use last night as an excuse to govern even more spinelessly in 2010 than they did in 2009, I’m seriously thinking about getting my affairs in order to get the fuck out of this country.  Speaker Pelosi will go back to being just Rep. Pelosi and Harry Reid won’t even have a job this time next year if the Congresscritters don’t get their shit together.  And Barack Obama may well be headed to becoming what the teabaggers have been calling him since his inauguration - the 21st Century Jimmy Carter.

Bill Clinton was right in his comment in the staffer’s letter: “People will always follow strong and wrong before they follow weak and right.”

The Democrats may be right and the Republicans may be wrong, but right now, we’re weak, and they’re strong.  And strong will always defeat weak, regardless of who is right or wrong, as was seen last night in Massachusetts.

God I want to fucking punch Lanny Davis in the mouth right now.

I hate these fucking Democratic pundits on the air telling us that we lost last night because we weren’t conciliatory enough to Republicans.  That we lost because we’re trying to get too much progressive policy passed.

Come live my life, you fucking ivory tower consultant class asshole.

Lanny Davis said that really?  We have to be more conciliatory to republicans?  Wow, that’s amazingly stupid.

Yeah, it was on The Ed Show a little while ago.  Schultz pushed back and told him the reason we lost is because we aren’t getting nearly enough done, and people are frustrated.

I lump Davis together in the group that I call “Fox Democrats”... if you’re a Democratic consultant and you regularly get asked to provide your analysis on any Fox News show, I take your analysis with a grain of salt.

Fox loves Democrats like Lanny Davis and Harold Ford, because when Hannity or O’Reilly wail about how evil Democrats are, they always respond by saying, “Yeah, we are kind of evil, aren’t we?”

LOL, I hear you.  I didn’t put anything on tonight, I couldn’t bear it actually.  I am waiting for Keith and Rachel.  That’s all I can take tonight, and even then, I may not make it through.

DTG wrote:

You know goddamned well that the reason support for healthcare “reform” waned is because it lost substantial support from progressives.

You know what had popular support?  The public option.  Sweeping changes to the system.  All the great progressive ideas that were being talked about when the discussion began.

Really?  I wonder why all of these Democrats in office, people who got where they were because they had actually won elections, couldn’t see that? 

To accept your argument, I would have to also accept the notion that successful politicians, most of whom had won several elections, suddenly became completely clueless as to what the public wanted, had no idea what their constituents favored.  You keep telling yourself that, and you’ll still be wondering what happened, in 2011 and 2012 and 2013.

It appears I’m not the only one who worries that the “Deficit Commission” as proposed intends to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The largest unions, major progressive organizations, and other groups sent out a letter saying the same thing.

“How about raising taxes on the rich to pre-Reagan rates?”

(Stunned silence)

“Nah, just kidding.”

(All): “BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH”

I’m sorry, but Martha Coakley didn’t just run a bad campaign, though she did that; she was a bad candidate.  She is neck deep in the messy, corrupt politics of MA and has been in with the protectionistic insurance racket Deval Patrick managed to crack and selective prosecutions in her current position.  I voted for her, but damn I didn’t want to by the timne the election rolled around.

The big thing Brown did right?  That seat didn’t belong to Kennedy.  There was already resentment about that.  All you people talking about “Ted Kennedy’s seat” are putting your foot in a big pile of resentment.  He only held it so long because the GOP wouldn’t run a candidate, a real one, against him.  Seriously, I know people who admit they wrote in Micky Mouse rather than vote for him.  Even people who did vote for him often resented that they didn’t ever have a real choice to pick him over.

The New Deal was a compromise by the elites between capitalism and communism. It was designed to stop defection to a competing economic system.

Ergo, there is no longer a need for the New Deal according to the masters of the world. It is a costly programme that needs to be dismantled. There will not be a new New Deal, ever, unless some new model rises enough in prominence to challenge the capitalist system.

Pardon me, but “capitalism” is not a monolithic political system. The European systems are by no means perfect, but they stand as credible alternatives as the American form of elite crony-capitalism drags your country further and further down.

Really?  I wonder why all of these Democrats in office, people who got where they were because they had actually won elections, couldn’t see that?

Okay, Dana, I realise you’re just engaging in your usual trolling but let us just throw up the words “campaign contributions” to watch you splutter and play stupid a little while longer.

Those systems exist precisely because of the threat of actual and effective communist parties.  Those systems are also being unwound, just check out the “school reform” ideas of Berlusconi!

I think the Brown victory is an urgent reason why we need to end the fucking filibuster.  It’s stupid and undemocratic.  51 should be the majority, not 60.

Dana -

I don’t have the fucking patience tonight, you fucking annoying piece of shit.

Go to hell, asshole.

PiaToR @ #148 -

I think you might be confused about BlackBloc’s nationality… he lives in that cold country to the north of the U.S. that still has a symbolic allegiance to a centuries old monarchy in Europe.

I thought Dana might arrive to condescend, but I figured it would be more like, “Come now.  Republican victory in 2012 wouldn’t destroy the country; we can sustain several trillion more in debt and at least two more wars.”

Dana, if you’re going to offer a poll that purports to say that people oppose health care, you should do it among a group of people who aren’t familiar with that bullshit and can’t refute it, or at least ENSURE YOUR LINK ISN’T SELF-REFUTING:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/december_2009/what_voters_like_about_the_health_care_plan

Seventy-eight percent (78%) favor the creation of an insurance exchange where people can shop for competing insurance plans. That figure includes 45% who Strongly Favor the exchange and is consistent with earlier polling showing that people tend to see competition as the best way to bring down the cost of health care.

Seventy-four percent (74%) favor imposing new rules on insurance companies and forcing them to accept all applicants without regard to pre-existing conditions. Fifty-two percent (52%) Strongly Favor this aspect of the reform plan.

Three other provisions of the plan attract majority support. Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor providing subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance and expanding Medicaid to help the poorest get insurance. Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters favor a ban on abortion coverage in any health insurance plan that receives federal subsidies. Finally, 51% are in favor of requiring nearly all employers to provide health insurance for their employees or pay a penalty.

Yes, America “opposes” the health care plan.  Even as it supports every part of the health care plan. 

In a very general sense, the public support a vague concept of health care reform; they want the government to “do something” about it.  But when they see the actual details, support wanes.

Your link shows the exact opposite. 

Otherwise, what Ben D. said about Pelosi.  If this bill had still been in the Senate, this would be over; Reid couldn’t lead a prayer.  But Pelosi?  As Matthew Yglesias noted a bit back, if we had a parliamentary democracy, Pelosi would be our Prime Minister and would have enacted a stimulus bill, a jobs bill, carbon cap and trade, financial regulatory reform, and health care reform by now.  We’d have moved on to, I dunno, immigration reform.  We’d be arguing over whether they were as good as they could be, but we wouldn’t be worried that they’d ever be done.  Pelosi gets shit done.  And so I have some hope that they won’t squander the largest majority in a generation, or at least not so badly as to fail even on health care.

To accept your argument, I would have to also accept the notion that successful politicians, most of whom had won several elections, suddenly became completely clueless as to what the public wanted, had no idea what their constituents favored.

You know, Dana, it is funny to see right-wing activists simultaneously claim that Washington is in the thrall of bankers and lobbyists while at the same time saying, “oh, the politicians knew that a public option was opposed by their voters, because they’re such smart, smart politicians!”

Seriously, we’re not as stupid as your friends and relatives as to think that your glib talking points are actually informed or sincere. Or, frankly, anythingother than the ravings of a Bush supporter who spent eight years shilling on behalf of a morally sick ideology that belies his claimed religious value system in an attempt to put on class airs yourself.

Really? Nothing was fucked until Obama got elected. Really.

I didn’t say that. Obama is not the cause, no matter what the teabaggers say. The cause is Wall Street. Now to the Fox News contingent whenever the investors take their balls and go home (like with the worst drop in the stock market in two years when Obama won) that’s ipso facto a demonstration of the inexperience or inability of Obama to rule, and the stock market in its infinite wisdom detects that and is afraid. No. It’s a demonstration of power. Think of it as a form of mass torture. If a prisoner won’t do what you tell him, you give him a zap with a cattle prod. Capital flight is an economic cattle prod.

I dunno about you, but my coworkers and I all started losing our jobs wayyyyyy before November, 2008. And that handy little market crash? Also happened before the election. You are trying to draw a straight line between…what? The continued existence of Medicare and SS, and the stock market crash? You don’t think that might have had anything to do with, I dunno, bad banking and investment practices? That whole mortgage crisis thing?

There was no crisis in the sense you’re using the word. It was not bad banking, it was deliberate. Nobody ‘important’ lost their money. They sold short, or they bankrupted their shell companies while taking millions in bonuses, then they went and begged for a bailout because the paper mask of a corporation they run was now in the red, even though the people who actually own it are flush in cash.

The European systems are by no means perfect, but they stand as credible alternatives as the American form of elite crony-capitalism drags your country further and further down.

New Labour. Sarcozy. Berlusconi. Vladimir Putin. The only country that is not a complete disappointment in Europe right now is Spain, maybe. I haven’t seen any indication that their left-wing was able to extract meaningful improvements from the financiers who run the world. IMO the social democratic experiment has shown itself a failure, from a pragmatic standpoint. Even if I was in favor of the model of government it proposes, it seems the praxis is unable to get from the current point to the end game, as any social democratic reform is killed in the egg by market reaction, attacks on currency and capital flight.

If you want statist models for hope you probably need to look at Latin America right now.

“That’s where the problems begin.  What’s wrong with causing a showdown that embarrasses Republicans?  That’s what I don’t get.” Comment 18

Amanda the problem is I’m not sure it embarasses them at at all. If Reid and Obama said, “put up or shut up” and the republicans filibuster it probably goes something like this. You have 48 democrats whining about what meanies the republicans are while looking utterly ineffectual while the republicans look smug. The democratic base in a very brief period has it proved to them that their votes don’t count for shit because they can’t even get a crummy version of what they want. It would be like the last year but in the space of about 2 weeks except without Rahm, corporatism, bipartisanship and spinelessness confusing anyone. On the other hand the republican base would have their biggest shit eating grins on because they like nothing more than being the belligerent asshole who spoils everything for everyone. It gives the republicans the momentum because everything now is about what they are doing and swing voters go with the momentum.

Then the democrats blink first. They blink first because sane people do not play chicken with the fate of a nation, they blink first because Harry Reid can’t hold his scumbag bluedogs and independent democrat together, because bluedogs start to defect, because you get civil war in the caucus because one third of the government is inoperative and three fifths of them have zero interest in passing it, because the voters are at best ambivalent about the bill so even if they win its a pyrric victory. They blink first and yank the guts out of the base for the next ten years.

The republicans won’t blink first because they don’t care, least of all about their constituents. If they do blink they don’t get that cushy job from the club for growth or an insurance company. If any of them do they are now a pariah, will likely be primaried and its time to use those bootstraps they have spent so long avoiding. If they don’t their base will love them for standing up to that negro socialist. The only way some of them peel off is if Obama says to them in private “cut the shit if your state wants funding in the next 7 years” but then again they don’t care and even then you can guarantee at least one of them will broadcast to the world that the facist bullied them. They get to be on Fox news. They are not only relevant they the top show in town.

Now the media might try to shame them for disrupting the functioning of the government but then again they might want an underdog story this week. Its most likely they will go with the horserace. Democrats say x, Republicans say Y and now pundits talking in right wing memes for five minutes and after the break Hulk Hogan wrote a book.

So yeah, looking like wimps by bending over backwards every time they threaten filibuster is a bad move but it probably isn’t as bad a move as letting them set up their freakshow in the senate.

In other news how do you get the italics for quotes working?

Heh…BlackBloc, Spain is in for huge trouble with the housing bust and the completely turgid manufactoring core…

I do absolutely agree with you about South America.  Those guys are absolutely in the best position to grow as a power, especially if US geopolitical power is dimmed.  That’s pretty much the big point—Globalization has been the main reason why SA punches underweight.  They were never really allowed to industrialize and some of their attempts to, via import subsitution, were fustrated/incompetently carried out.  However, it seems like the political guys down there are building enough institutional framework to really get going.

”Lanny Davis said that really?  We have to be more conciliatory to republicans?  Wow, that’s amazingly stupid.”

Every thing that comes out of Lanny Davis’ mouth is amazingly stupid

BlackBloc:

While I think your argumen has some merit in general about the market overlords pushing the politicians in power, there is something you wrote that’s factually untrue:

(like with the worst drop in the stock market in two years when Obama won)

Now I’m not sure whether you are referencing Nov. 5, 2008, the first trading day after Obama was elected, or January 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, but neither of those days saw “the worst drop in the stock market in two years”.  Neither of those days even make the top 5 of worst single day point drops in the past 2 years.

Here’s a list of the 8 worst single-day market drops from 01/20/07 - 01/20/09:

September 29, 2008: -777.68
October 15, 2008: -733.08
December 1, 2008: -679.95
October 19, 2008: -678.91
October 22, 2008: -514.45
October 7, 2008: -508.39
September 15, 2008: -504.48
November 5, 2008: -486.01

Now, while the market did take a pretty big dive on November 5, 2008 - the day after Obama won - there were 7 other days in 2008 that saw bigger drops.  And 6 of those days were BEFORE Obama won the election, including a few days in September and early October in which McCain was leading in the polls for a brief period.

I don’t think the crash of September-October 2008 had much of anything to do with the election, and a lot to do with the untenable housing bubble finally bursting as all of the big banks started screaming “Fire!” in unison.

In other news how do you get the italics for quotes working?.”

< i > text goes here < /i >

Take out the spaces

thanks for that jefft

What is that mechanism Mandos?  What could keep that kind of power in check?  Other than a guillotine, which I am not opposed to, and in fact could be convinced to actually take up knitting if it comes to it.  What mechanism?

Will capitalism be sufficiently foresighted to forestall this with another New Deal, or are we all condemned to dystopia.

I don’t think any sort of dystopia would be permanent.  If and when conditions get sufficiently bad enough for a large enough group of people, the proles tend to rise up and start cutting heads off of rich people and eating their children.  Or at least, that’s basically what has happened in every superpower society in which wealth disparity has become completely untenable in human history.

We aren’t anywhere near that point, nor do I believe we’ll be there anytime in my lifetime.  Not enough people who are literally homeless and starving yet.  Our lifestyles may be propped up on permanent indebtedness, but most of us, in America anyway, still have a roof over our heads and food to eat.  When you start seeing more than 10% of the U.S. population literally sleeping in the streets, then you’ll start to see the beginning of the end.

I do predict that if we continue down this path for another 20 years or so, you’ll read about some high-profile fatcat CEO being dragged out of his limosine and publicly hung by an angry mob who had enough.

DTG: The problem is that when the proles rise up they don’t always cut the right heads. Think hyperinflation in Germany after WWI. I don’t subscribe to insurrectionist fantasies. People’s anger will be justified, and it will swell and explode, but the victims may be innocents and not the vultures who preyed (and prayed) on the people.

People’s anger will be justified, and it will swell and explode, but the victims may be innocents and not the vultures who preyed (and prayed) on the people.

I subscribe this completely. Basically, this is more true then ever before in our country. We’ve seen how effectively anger was misdirected throughout this year. Frankly, if we were to witness some kind of uprising, I strongly suspect we wouldn’t like it one bit.

er, truer than ever before.

DTG: The problem is that when the proles rise up they don’t always cut the right heads.

Mmm - the teabaggers - “liberals are to blame…”

Take a look at Dana and his oh so glib attempts to sound innocent.  He’s nit the worst of the crowd at his blog, but I can just see someone like him in Germany arguing that the cattlecars loaded with Jews were headed for a place where they could be safe and work hard for the Reich…

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“Or the Democrats wake up.  *pulls self off the floor after hysterical sobbing laughter*

——-

Jesus, this is so far over top - you should try out for Glee, Amanda.

Where’s your backbone in all of this? Change is hard, and it take years, especially in the rotten economy we were handed. Declaring that it’s all over, that the Dems are toast because of one election decided by 100k people - that’s insane. Now is when we need our voices to be heard most, but you’re saying give up, it’s hopeless. We just elected more progressives than in any recent history, but you want everyone to just buckle under and accept failure.

If states can allow gay marriage to exist for a few months, and then yank it back like nothing at all, we can fix all the crap that’s in the Senate bill after it passes. Why not pass it? Why treat it like it’s Dick Cheney’s own personal torture recipe? It’s still progress…

You so-called liberals cant even wait it out a year before you abandon ship. This hurts the progressive cause just as much as Evan Bayh and Lieberman. Get some perspective. Pick yourselves up. Stop saying that Obama’s the enemy, when MA just elected a guy determined to shut down the US Congress.

Dystopias aren’t stable.  It takes a great deal of external pressures to make one feasible.

I don’t think this situation is going to go the way of the Ming with peasant eruptions and strong neighbors.  I think much of this is pretty similar to what the Romans did at the end of the first Roman era around 200 AD.  Low literacy, played out resources, limits to transportation (expense of empire far from Medit and shipping), and swiss cheesed tax situation.  The primary sin here, at the very core, is an increasing Ginni coefficient.  Rising numbers of super-rich and vast urban poor/slave farm workers.  This drives inflation of important things (things that have to do with capital and land/manufactoring resources) so that yeoman can’t farm land and the only ones who can do so by slave labor.  Most cities are taxed out of prosperity because the rich can avoid taxation (and drive a necessity to-be rich as a means to prevent impoverishment).  Important infrastructure aren’t maintained because the implicit deflationary issues are aggravated by a political system that has to deliver concrete respect—lots of ivory elephants, fewer working bridges.

As with the Romans (and probably the lowland Mayans), these declines are noted for friggin’ speed (as well as proliferation of ugly statuary and worthless coins).  It didn’t really take very long from Marcus Aurelious’s death to all hell breaking loose ~45 not so good years.  It’s faster these days, check out how long from the death of Marshall Tito to the Yugoslav Wars.  About 10 years, mostly bad years that went to unimaginably worse.  The Soviet Union lasted well past its sell by date on the back of the high oil prices of the 70’s before its destruction.  There are plenty of other examples—the key takeaway is that these things happen when people decide that they don’t actually have to govern and make it work.  That was why I was stress eating like nothing today on the back of Barney Frank’s remarks last night.  Thankfully he backed off some.  However, in all deadly seriousness, we can’t go on like this—that nothing gets passed unless someone is getting pork or a tax break or some other stupid shit.  Bush got what he could because he didn’t care about actually having to pay for squat.  He couldn’t do SS reform or any other fringe wingnut program, but that says bad things just as much as it was a relief.  Peeps were talking about a jobs bill (probably as a diversion more than anything serious), but any jobs bill worth doing has real enemies.  Raising minimum wages?  Oh check out what happened when the President of Honduras tried that!  Creating new industries?  Only if it doesn’t compete with entrenched ones!  So no new green industries, but we’ll be entertained by the newest version of the hydrogen fuel cell car.  New enterprise zones?  Heck, only if you, like, suspend all worker-friendly rules!  Tax breaks?  Give ME a break!  How about some direct government loans to small businesses with the IRS to administer?  How about some nice usury laws that stop predatory financial behavior?  How about anything that reverses the trend that there is only safety in size and wealth?  From too big to fail banks to too big to fail billionaires, how about we just tax the shit out of them?  That’d finance a nice new national electric grid.  Shut down a few monopolies! 

...oh, am I getting a little too crazy and hopeful?

nm

Now is the time Democrats need to push back hard on Republican framing. I’m not convinced the media will stop tilting the scales towards the silly GOP narrative of winning the Senate 41-59, but they need to try. This tail between the legs nonsense is screwing us over.

The House needs to pass the Senate bill. The progressives need to suck it up and deal, because this is still the best bill that gets through the Senate. The situation didn’t just improve. If they don’t get that, they are fools. If they want to scrap everything, they are even bigger fools. Not passing HCR shouldn’t be an option. Shouldn’t be on the table. I get why prior to Tuesday why they’d still talk tough, but lose that shit right now. Put it on Obama’s desk prior to the State of the Union. If you don’t, you guarantee that your caucus suffers huge losses at the end of the year. Its that simple. Pass it and move on is the ONLY option at this point. No, its not perfect. But its progress. Bank the progress now because once its past, it becomes VERY difficult to undo. Yes, improvements will be tough, but not out of the question. Don’t wait on promises for reconciliation improvements, though. Just pass the bill now. How do they not get this? A vote should be scheduled for Monday at the latest. Failure can’t be an option. The Democrats already have made voters think they can’t get anything done. This needs to get done and they need to move on. You want to showcase Republican obstruction? Pass this bill and then push tough vote after tough vote on Wall Street reform bills that the public wants. They you go back to the voters and you point THAT out while not looking like a completely ineffectual buffoon by wiffing on Health Care.

JUST DO IT. This screwed them up 14 years ago. Do they not get that? ARGH! That’s what is frustrating me right now. The response to this setback is so frigging obvious and yet they are doing everything wrong. They need to get their act together and do it now.

People are doing their very best to get to no.

Put it on Obama’s desk prior to the State of the Union.

Somehow, I think the odds of me winning Powerball next week are greater than the odds of an HCR bill arriving on President Obama’s desk roughly 160 hours from now.

SOTU is on Wednesday, January 27, 2009 at 8PM ET.
I’m typing this post on Thursday, January 21, 2009 at 3:30AM ET.

Do the math.  It ain’t happening.  No way, no how.

President Obama himself said that the legislation shouldn’t move forward until after Senator-elect Brown is certified and seated, which won’t occur for at least 10 more days or so.

Tyro wrote:

You know, Dana, it is funny to see right-wing activists simultaneously claim that Washington is in the thrall of bankers and lobbyists while at the same time saying, “oh, the politicians knew that a public option was opposed by their voters, because they’re such smart, smart politicians!”

You won’t find any comments from me—either here or elsewhere—in which I claim that “Washington is in the thrall of bankers and lobbyists.”

Of course, if you believe that the public really, really want a single-payer system or something close to it, then I guess you’d expect to see a whole bunch of primary challengers to incumbents, of both parties, who support and are running on some form of single-payer plan, and a lot of them would win, right?

Seriously, if you believe that this is really what the voters want, shouldn’t it happen?  Politicians win election and re-election by promising—and sometimes actually delivering—what the voters want.

Yet, in the early 2008 Democratic primary campaigns, the only candidates who were running on single-payer were Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and they went nowhere. As the presumed top-tier candidates — Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton — were working hard and trying to differentiate and separate themselves from the others, why did none of them offer single-payer? After all, Mr Obama supported single-payer several years ago.

It’s not like the single-payer idea was never heard of by these people; if there was so much support for it, why have none of the serious candidates proposed it, and why have single-payer proposals gone absolutely nowhere in the Congress? These people are politicians, they survive and thrive on knowing what the public want and trying to give the public what they want. It isn’t that we evil reich-wing Republicans have defeated single-payer; it’s that the Democrats themselves haven’t thought there was enough support for it to even make a quarter-hearted attempt to bring it up.

pharmakos wrote:

The republicans won’t blink first because they don’t care, least of all about their constituents.

I wonder how they manage to get elected, then? 

Republicans have 18 Senate seats to defend in the November elections.  If I accept your notion that none of them care about their constituents, we ought to see a Democratic caucus with 77 members come January of 2011; anyone here think that will happen?

Right now, the Democratic leadership figures that they’ll lose seats in both the House and Senate in November, though they figure that they’ll still safely retain control of both chambers.

Of course, if you believe that the public really, really want a single-payer system or something close to it, then I guess you’d expect to see a whole bunch of primary challengers to incumbents, of both parties, who support and are running on some form of single-payer plan, and a lot of them would win, right?

Note that Tyro said public option, and the reason that people believe that the public supports a public option is because poll after poll after poll has shown that the public does in fact support a public option.

It’s clear that you have a problem seeing any poll that contradicts your view of the world, but really, you should work past that rather than pretend they don’t exist.  Especially when you’re making arguments predicated on the popularity of your views.

The country has to be destroyed before it can prosper again. Democratic administrations just prolong the inevitable with incremental destruction, i.e. Clinton’s ending welfare as we know it, while the forces of wealth strengthen. A Palin presidency will ensure real change takes place. Not from its accomplishments, but from its failure.

I was born and raised a few miles from where Sen.-elect Brown is from and I have a lot of relatives out there, including my daughter.  There’s a few things you folks should thik about:

1) People didn’t vote for Obama because he promised to reform health care.  He won because he wasn’t George Bush (i.e., he’s young and articulate), the economy went into the shitter before the election, and it was a chance to make history and/or be able to tell yourself “Look!  I’m not racist!  I voted for a black man!”.  About 9% of people in exit polls for the 2008 election mentioned health care.  About 75% to 85% of people think their health care is fine.  So “Health care is a major crisis” was a pretty hard sell and was a classic case (from the electorate’s point of view, mind you) of trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

2) People give a shit about the economy and the war.  The perception is that the health care battle is taking away from the focus on those issues.

3) This election was essentially a referendum on state-controlled healthcare in a state that HAS state-controlled healthcare.  They just made radical change to their healthcare system.  They’re not eager to do it again, and they don’t trust what’s going on in the Congress with a bill that’s thousands of pages that nobody’s read, nobody understands and that is loaded with bribes to special interests (e.g., the Sen. Nelson/Nebraska Medicare deal).

4) As a District Attorney Martha Coakley has used the power of her office to keep innocent people jailed and wouldn’t prosecute a cop for child abuse (he was tried by her successor as District Attorney and convicted).  During her campaign she claimed that there were no terrorists in Afghanistan.

5) The Curt Shilling/Red Sox gaffe seems foolish, but even that gaffe was important because she reinforced the perception that she and the Massachusetts Democratic party viewed the Senate seat she was running for as an entitlement and that she was mostly a creature of and accountable to the party hierarchy and was out of touch with regular people.  Everyone talks about how well loved Ted Kennedy was but there were a lot of people who greatly resented him and his family’s sense of ownership and entitlement over that seat and were only too glad to turn it over to someone outside the inner circle of the establishment.

The Senate bill?  Hah!  It won’t even come up for a vote in the House.  A large number of House Reps have taken one look at this election and told Speaker Pelosi that their constituents don’t want either of these bills and that if a Democrat can lose in Massachusetts - in a special election, no less - then nobody’s seat is safe.  Ask yourself how many Reps will keep a seat that they would otherwise lose if they pass the healthcare bill vs. how many will lose a seat they’d otherwise keep if they pass it.  Inaction will make the Democrats look bad as a party but is more likely to enhance most individuals who are in swing seats than hinder them.

Now, while I’m from the area that Sen. Brown comes from I live in the Chicago area.  So as far as analyzing Pres. Obama and his abilities to act, consider that he spent most of his political life in the Illinois General Assembly.

1) He set a record in that body for the number of times a legislator voted “Present” instead of “Yea” or “Nay” on a bill.  This is not the hallmark of a man who stands up for principles and actions.

2) There are 4 people who matter in the Illinois General Assembly, the majority and minority leader of the House and Senate.  I live in one of their districts.  They control what gets voted on and what gets killed with an iron fist.  They do this because they control who gets how much campaign money from their parties, which are the source of a lot of the campaign money these folks get.  In fact, they just passed a law greatly restricting who can contribute how much money to campaigns as a “reform” measure - but they exempted themselves.  Oh, sure, everyone gets to pass a few bills and put their name on them and look important.  But those four people are the leaders.  Everyone else gets to give fine speeches (which Obama is damn good at, for sure) and then do what they’re told.  Obama was not one of those 4.

BTW - Brown has spent more time in the Massachusetts Great and General Court (that’s the legislature’s formal name) than Obama spent in the Illinois General Assembly, 12 years to 6.  When the 2012 election comes up Brown will have spent as much time in the Senate as Obama did when he made public his decision to run for President.  This could get interesting.

One other thing.  If you think that the people who support the Tea Party movement (and no, I’m not active in it myself) are all ill-informed poorly educated right-wing nut bags, you will committing the cardinal sin of underestimating your opponents.  That usually works out quite badly.  Just ask Martha Coakley.  Sen. Brown was supported by the Tea Party movement’s members but he differers with them on some issues (especially abortion) and is not their creature.  They came to him, he didn’t come to them and is not obligated to them.  It’s also notable that during his quite long victory speech one entity he did not acknowledge or thank was the Republican Party, who really didn’t support him until the very last moment.  When he meets with them it won’t be hat-in-hand.

President Obama himself said that the legislation shouldn’t move forward until after Senator-elect Brown is certified and seated, which won’t occur for at least 10 more days or so.

Sen.-elect Brown will be eligible to be seated when the U.S. Senate gets a letter from the Massachusetts Secretary of State stating that he has qualified for office.  That letter was sent yesterday.  Since the margin of victory was well above any differences that minor counting errors or absentee ballots would make there’s no need to wait for the Mass SoS to wait until the final exact vote totals are counted and validated (which is what the certification process is).  Sen. Brown can be seated tomorrow.

There’s precedent.  When John Kennedy was elected President a special election was held to fill his seat.  That election was won by Ted Kennedy (see what I mean about “entitlement”?).  He was seated in the U.S. Senate the next day.

I should explain for those not familiar with 1960 Mass. politics that John Kennedy had been elected Senator in 1952 and was a sitting senator when he won the presidency in the 1960 election.

When the 2012 election comes up Brown will have spent as much time in the Senate as Obama did when he made public his decision to run for President.  This could get interesting.

Only if you’re a rightwing fucktard moron who doesn’t understand simple mathematics.

Scott Brown will have served 34 months as U.S. Senator by the date of the next U.S. Presidential election.

Barack Obama had served as a U.S. Senator for 25 months when he announced his candidacy - in February 2007.  He had been a U.S. Senator for 46 months when he was elected.

For Brown to accumulate as much tenure as Obama did in the U.S. Senate before he announces a presidential candidacy, he would have to wait to make his announcement until February 2012 - one month after the primaries are already underway.

The “Brown will have served as long as Obama in the U.S. Senate” analogy would only be true if Brown began his Senatorial career in January 2009.

Get a clue… moran.

There’s precedent.  When John Kennedy was elected President a special election was held to fill his seat.  That election was won by Ted Kennedy (see what I mean about “entitlement”?).  He was seated in the U.S. Senate the next day.

Yes, the next day… when the United States Senate was out of session.  Not one vote would be taken in that chamber until two weeks after he was seated.

The analgoy only fits if Brown had been elected in the middle of a recess.

There was an interim Senator between John F. Kennedy and Teddy. Benjamin A Smith II, US Senator from Massachusetts from December 27 1960 - November 6 1962. I don’t dispute that Ted Kennedy was seated the day after the election, but he did not immediately follow his brother into that seat. He ran and was elected like any other politician. That his brother was President was most likely helpful, although I imagine it would have been even better had his brother been Mass Governor *cough* Florida 2000 *cough.*

I’m always amazed when people like RonF make sweeping declarations about what this or that election was a referendum on without bothering to back it up with any kind of polling. Do you, like, read minds or something? Or are you (as is more likely) just making things up?

There are lots of reasons why Brown won, but according to all the polls I’ve seen (and you can check 538 for the information if you’d like) there’s no one particular issue that was animating the voters. It seems to have been a combination of terrible campaigning and entitlement on Coakley’s part, plus good campaigning on Brown’s, plus a whole host of things that, if anything, seem to indicate discontent with the general inability of Democrats to get anything done. Nowhere have I actually seen any credible evidence that this was a referendum on health care reform.

Tough week for you guys.  Scott Brown, Citizens United, HCR circling the drain, John Edward’s complete phoniness laid bare. Ouch.  Snicker, snicker

Ok, where’d all the trolls come from?

There are lots of reasons why Brown won

It seems pretty simple to me: one candidate campaigned and asked people to vote for him, and the other candidate didn’t do any of that at all. Under those circumstances, whom do you think is going to win?

When the 2012 election comes up Brown will have spent as much time in the Senate as Obama did when he made public his decision to run for President.  This could get interesting.

Lay off the weed, my friend. Sometimes, I think Drudge puts up headlines (“Will He Run For President?”) to see how foolish he can be and still get people to repeat what he says verbatim. So I commend him for taking it to the next level.

Ok, where’d all the trolls come from?

Well, Ben, when a mommy troll and a daddy troll love each other ver- um, when a mommy troll and a daddy troll are very, very drunk…

For Brown to accumulate as much tenure as Obama did in the U.S. Senate before he announces a presidential candidacy, he would have to wait to make his announcement until February 2012 - one month after the primaries are already underway.

Correct.  Which is why I phrased it as I did, rather than try to claim that he would have had as much tenure when it would be time for him to announce as Obama did when he announced.

Only if you’re a rightwing fucktard moron who doesn’t understand simple mathematics.  ...  Get a clue… moran.

Lovely.  Of course, I suppose that since you are having problems reading English you might also have problems expressing yourself in it.  Funny how people who complain so much about stereotyping groups they favor are so quick to stereotype groups they don’t.

Yes, the next day… when the United States Senate was out of session.

Actually, that appears to support my case.  If the Senate is out of session the Senators and the VP are going to be off and gone at meetings, fund-raising events, etc. around town or even back in their home states.  Whereas when it’s in session they’re bound to all be in town and in the Capitol building.  It’s got to be easier to swear in a new Senator when they’re in session than when they’re not.  Seems to me that Ted Kennedy got even more special treatment than I had thought.

it never occurred to me that the House can just give up and pass the piss poor Senate bill. Which is better than a kick in the head, so I suppose that’s exactly what they’ll have to do.

Except that Speaker Pelosi says that she doesn’t have the votes for this and it’s not going to happen.

There are lots of reasons why Brown won, but according to all the polls I’ve seen (and you can check 538 for the information if you’d like) there’s no one particular issue that was animating the voters.

Jerry, I’m not familiar with “538”.  What’s that?  And I had read before the election that exit polling was expected to be low to non-existent because the media had presumed this to be a walkover and had not planned to do them.  Did that change?

As far as what was animating the voters, I’m going off of the fact that Brown made his opposition to the health care plan a major point of his campaign and that (admittedly anecdotally) when I talked to my daughter out there she said that it was what everyone was talking about.

538 is shorthand for www.fivethirtyeight.com, a site dedicated to poll analysis. They’ve got lots of election data there and the breakdown is inconclusive at best and at worst (for your argument) actually cuts counter to the narrative you are trying to promote. The data in question refers to polls taken shortly after the election itself, which were not exit polls.

Anecdotes are not data, and your daughter and her friends are not a representative sample of the populace.

One thing to remember about Massachusetts.  People keep citing that Democrats outnumber Republicans 3:1 in the Commonwealth.  While this is true, it masks the fact that there are more people that consider themselves as independents than there are people who consider themselves either Democratic or Republican combined.  <a >Here is a chart</a> of party affiliation of enrolled voters.  <a >Here is another link</a>.  According to various polls Coakley kept the registered Democrats but lost the independents that Obama won.

Interesting site, that.  I don’t have time to read through it now, but thanks very much for the link.  I do note that right now they are projecting the Democrats to lose somewhere between 5 to 6 Senate seats in the November elections.  Of course it’s early yet.  This time in the election cycle no one outside of his district had heard much about Sen. Brown.

Phony repig populists driving around in pick up trucks are pathetic and transparent, but any fool knows; it fools a lot of fools.

From <a >Wiki</a>:

Brown’s father, C. Bruce Brown, and mother, Judith, divorced when he was about a year old. Both his parents have since remarried three times.

Brown has said that he “didn’t grow up with all the advantages in life” and that his working mother needed welfare benefits for a short time.  During various periods of his childhood, Brown lived with his grandparents and his aunt.

When Brown was 12 years old, he was arrested for shoplifting record albums and brought before Judge Samuel Zoll in Salem, Massachusetts. Zoll asked Brown if his siblings would like seeing him play basketball in jail, and had Brown write a 1500 word essay on that question as his punishment. Brown said, “That was the last time I ever stole, the last time I ever thought about stealing… The other day I was at Staples, and something was in my cart that I didn’t pay for. I had to bring it back because…. I thought of Judge Zoll.”

Brown has said the rescue efforts of Army National Guard during the Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 impressed him. He joined the Massachusetts Army National Guard when he was 19, receiving his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and attending Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) meetings at Northeastern University.  He has been active in the Guard for about 30 years and has risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Presently serving as the Army Guard’s head defense attorney in New England, Brown defends Guard members who have disciplinary difficulties such as positive drug tests, and provides estate planning and real estate advice to those who are about to deploy to war zones.

This guy did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth.  Driving around Wrentham in a pick-up truck is not out of line for someone of his background; I’ll bet he did it plenty as a kid.  I’ll bet he’s on the low end of the income scale for the United States Senate.

Oh, and he’s pulled this stunt before!

Brown again moved up the ladder of state politics to the state Senate in March 2004 when won a special election to replace Democrat Cheryl Jacques.

The phoniness of populism does not come from it being out of line with the candidate’s upbringing. It comes from the fact that the populism is typically a deceptive move to justify further transfers of wealth from the working class to the rich. It’s like wearing a flag lapel pin doesn’t make you patriotic; driving a truck to show how down-to-earth you are has nothing to do with whether your policies will help or hurt your constituents.

RE: 189.  Forgot about the death of Air America!

What’s wrong with causing a showdown that embarrasses Republicans?  That’s what I don’t get.

Because the GOP has absolutely no shame, they’re well aware that their base is willing to believe THE most outrageous lies about progressives & a compliant press corps. that it either easily intimidated into giving them favorable coverage & let their lies & misinformation stand w/o examination out of fear of being labelled “Librul” or they go directly to the Right-Wingnut Noize Machine outlets like Fox, Clear Channel, etc.

Simple really,