Primary Fights and Donation Advice

On DKos, the case of Jennifer Brunner:

The people who brought you Joe Lieberman are gearing up to knee cap the only Democrat who can win the US Senate seat in Ohio.

Bob Menendez, the head of the DSCC, is threatening to attack Jennifer Brunner if she is deemed to not have enough money in her primary against perennial loser Lee Fisher.

The DSCC has all but written her off, however, and the establishment has turned to Fisher. In fact, Brunner said when she spoke with DSCC Chair Bob Menendez in Sept., he first told her that he “didn’t want to see a Democratic candidate at the end of the primary with zero dollars,” and he followed up that his organization would go into the state to work against a candidate perceived as “being negative in the primary or not raising enough money.”

Brunner said she responded: “If you do that, the women of Ohio will never forgive you.” Menendez, she said, retorted: “I know you’re not scared of me, and I’m not scared of you.”

All because Lee Fisher has more money. Newsflash, Bob. Lee Fisher CANNOT WIN THE SEAT. He has lost his last two statewide campaigns, the most recent in 1998 to BOB TAFT, after OUTRAISING Bob Taft.

There's all kinds of juicy inside baseball nuggets from this interview, but the main point for this community is that Democratic Senate primaries are THE PLACE where we can most prevent Joe Lieberman from ever happening again. The Ohio US Senate primary in 2010 is the place where we can do that NOW.

We need to support Jennifer. She stood up for us, against DEATH THREATS from Republicans, to protect our votes in 2008. It's time we backed her up.

Please donate to Jennifer's campaign. Jennifer Brunner can beat George W. Bush's trade rep Rob Portman in the fall. Lee Fisher CAN'T.

UPDATE - Some folks are asking for more info about Jennifer. She's the Ohio Secretary of State who took over after Ken Blackwell in 2006. Ohio elections after Blackwell were a putrid, partisan, rat hole. Jennifer went about cleaning up Ohio's election processes to the point that she won the JFK Profile in Courage Award. It was her only priority. Here's a link to her campaign bio.

UPDATEx2 - Ohio blogs are weighing in, confirming that the establishment is coming after Jennifer guns blazing. Ohio Daily Blog.

The line from the people who really know her goes like this : "God help these f___ers if they don't take her seriously. She's a wonderful person. Don't get me wrong. She's caring and compassionate and I'd walk through fire for her. But God help these guys if they cross her. She's got ice water running through those veins and she'll take you down a brick at a time or blow your whole house down."

And that's from the people who not only really know her, but from the people who really respect her.

This afternoon, the DC publication Hotline ran a story that's chock full of every side story we've heard over the last six months, but could never repeat or report. At long last, the story about the behind the scenes look at the Jennifer Brunner for U.S. Senate campaign is playing out. In part, because Jennifer Brunner doesn't care what the establishment thinks anymore.

Just to unbury a link: if you want to support Sec. Brunner, you can do so through Actblue. I support pretty much anybody who is going up against the Democratic establishment this cycle; but someone who is a truthteller, a progressive, and the best shot at a pickup is an absolute no-brainer.

I'd also recommend avoiding the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC during this cycle. If you've donated to them in the past, they will undoubtedly email you for more cash. Don't give it to them. If you send them anything, send them a strongly-worded (but polite!) email explaining exactly why you have absolutely no intention of giving them a dime. Then hit up ActBlue and/or other direct-donation sites for candidates, and give them your money. If you live in-state, and find a primary opponent that you like, consider giving them a bit of your time as well.

Give the DNC et al your money, and they'll keep taking you for granted. Take your money away, and they'll stop. They need you. Exact concessions.

Mixed Results

The Senate apparently has the votes and has passed cloture. I'm disappointed in the liberal senators that voted the party line with little-to-nothing to show for it, and maintain that progressives should look very, very closely at possible primary opponents. Dean was right about the bill, and that hasn't changed.

But as I said, the discourse has changed. You need only look to Biden's NYT piece for proof.

I share the frustration of other progressives that the Senate bill does not include a public option. But I’ve been around a long time, and I know that in Washington big changes never emerge in perfect form.

Those in our own party who would scuttle this bill because of what it doesn’t do seem not to appreciate the magnitude of what it has the potential to accomplish. Howard Dean was head of the Democratic Party. I respect his leadership on health care, and I understand his criticism of the bill...

...If the bill passes the Senate this week, there will be more chances to make changes to it before it becomes law. But if the bill dies this week, there is no second chance to vote yes. What those who care about health insurance reform need to realize is that unless we get 60 votes now, there will be no health care reform at all. Not this year, not in this Congress — and maybe not for another generation.

The edited part was a bunch of boilerplate pro-Senate Bill talking points I won't repeat, including yet another "do you want to deny the poor and underprivileged" plea that is a bit grotesque, considering this bill will likely increase health care bankruptcies. But never mind that. Look at the rest.

Look at the "shared frustration" language. It's very different from what was heard even a few months ago, when nobody in the White House had a word to say about the public option. Yes, that might well be because they had little to no interest in it, and didn't expect it to pass the Senate... but one of their own had to acknowledge the anger.

Look at the comments about Dean. Howard Dean has been savaged by those who are infuriated that he dragged the "nutroots" into the Overton Window. Yet here is Biden playing nice with Dean, saying that he respects his leadership and understands his concerns. It was part of a "you don't understand how good the bill is" paragraph, but even then, they had to defend the bill from the left!

(THAT, folks, is what they do when they stop taking you for granted.)

Finally, look at that House/Senate bit. It is a bit disingenuous, since we can now be certain that LieberBaucusCare is undoubtedly closest to what the White House really wanted. It's also unlikely, considering both Conrad and Nelson were threatening to change their vote if the House isn't almost completely ignored. But the very fact that Biden is promising some progressive changes in the first place says a lot about where things stand right now. Progressives have a voice. A tiny one, to be certain, compared to their Republican counterparts...but they do have a voice.

Think about it. The progressives play ball, play nice, go along with things, raise money for the DNC/DSCC/DCCC like dutiful little fanboys, and they're treated like ants to be crushed underfoot. They start raising shit, and all of a sudden they're A Big Honking Deal.

There's a lesson in that. And if liberals learn it, if they start thinking less about Dems vs. Reps and more about what needs to be done to get the results that they want, if they stick to their guns and make a few incumbents very, very uncomfortable, maybe even throw a few bums out... then you'll see a change.

Nobody's going to save you. Nobody's going to carry you. Obama's election was the last gasp of that mode of thinking, and the last year proved it was ultimately useless. If you want results, you have to fight; and if you want to succeed, you have to recognize that you're going to be fighting Democrats and Republicans alike.

Obama was right about one thing, oddly enough. He said "we are the change that we've been waiting for". He just mixed up one word. YOU ARE THE CHANGE YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR, not him.

It's not "we". He isn't the agent of change. He never was.

YOU are.

Just To Reiterate a Point

(Edit: Fixed the comedy spelling in the title.)

I was reading Ezra's "hostage-taking" piece, and I wanted to clarify something.

The problem with the Democrats' and press' response to Dean is not that they disagree. That's fine. I'm actually with Krugman, Ezra, Yglesias et al in believing that the discussion is a good thing, and I will acknowledge that there have been improvements in Reid's manager's amendment. If FireDogLake can, then I would be remiss in not doing the same.

(That doesn't change the basic problems with the bill, or that it will be a disaster to campaign on, but there have been improvements. It is simply that there must be more.)

The problem is the nature of the response to Dean. The "centrists" and New Democrats have quite literally gone insane. They always hated Dean, not least for having saved them from their own exclusionary, base-hating instincts in 2006. I'm absolutely positive that Rahm's pettiness had everything to do with Dean finding himself on the outside looking in.

They don't hate Dean personally, though. They hate him for what he represents. They hate that he gives "official cover" to all those smelly DFHs out there, and forces the "nutroots" into the dialogue and into the public's eye. Even if the press does not understand why there is such anger over this bill from progressives and liberals, they do recognize that it exists. And by this existence, it completely changes the Overton window of acceptable debate on this issue.

In fact, if you look at all this through that prism, the Dean pushback has been fantastically successful. The meaningful discussion over the past week has been between progressives and the bill's defenders like Krugman, Klein and Yglesias. Before, those three would be described as the hard-case far-lefties, and the debate would be juxtaposed between the horribly flawed bill that they're advocating and the madness of the teabaggers.

Now, though, those same people find themselves on the right of the debate. As powerful as the teabaggers have been in setting the debate, they really do find themselves in a very different position. They are still inside the Window, but it has expanded to the left so far that their old opponents are almost on the same side as them. Both are defending private health care, both are defending profiteering, and both are opposed to a public option as a necessary component to real health care reform. Both are defending the status quo of the robber-baron insurers; it's just simply to a greater or lesser extent.

(Progressives don't want the status quo. They want something better. They just believe that this system would make things worse.)

The fact that you're seeing Jane Hamsher on television has a lot to do with Dean. He made it possible. He stretched the window. He expanded the discourse. He gave the "DFH" crew a bit of space to work in. They're already changing things.

And, boy oh boy, do Rahm's boys HATE him for it.

Simple Answers to Esoterica

Yes, I overlooked a point by Steve Benin that's worth responding to.

Maybe this is an esoteric point, but it occurs to me that the quality of the policy debate between competing progressive contingents is infinitely better and more interesting than the policy debate between Democrats and Republicans we witnessed over the last eight or nine months. It's probably an inconsequential observation, but I think it nevertheless speaks to a larger truth.

Well, yes, it is. Benin is right in pointing out that Republican objections are nonsensical self-serving tactical twaddle, whereas progressive objections are based on real policy insights.

Here's the problem:

Republicans get respect. Progressives get shat upon.

What's the lesson, Steve?

Followup to the last Krug-Post

Okay, now this is just becoming comedy:

Matthew Yglesias makes a good point: The health care bill

represents a return, after fifteen years, of the idea that congress should be trying to pass major legislation that tackles major national problems. And even beyond that, it restores an even longer-lost tradition of congress trying to pass major legislation on specifically progressive priorities.

More than that, it represents a rejection of the view that the solution for all problems is to cut some taxes and remove some regulations. In that sense, what’s happening now, for all the disappointment it represents for progressives, is a historic moment.

No, it really doesn't. It's corporatist as all hell; Republicans love that, they just don't want to wear it. That's why they trapped the Dems, remember? I dislike quoting myself, but it seems appropriate here:

They knew, beyond a doubt, that Obama and the Senate Dems were aching for "bipartisanship" on this. Both have made a point of fetishizing it in the past, and both were likely to keep on doing it. They had to look hostile and recalcitrant in public, because they still always have to consider their base. But, in private, a few of them kept on playing at being just reasonable enough that it was conceivable that the Dems could get a few "R" names on the "yea" list.

It worked. The Dems thought they had a partner. Baucus sacrificed his credibility and became a laughingstock because of it. They hacked and hacked and hacked again at anything approaching tolerable policymaking in their legislation to bring some Republicans on board.

The Republicans didn't get on board. The Republicans were never going to get on board. They were just there to ensure that, sooner or later, the Dems would sacrifice so much that the legislation would be intolerable. It happened a few days ago, and we're seeing the fallout now.

No matter what happens, the Republicans win. If progressives—now so alienated from the party that they can barely stand it—support the bill, the Dems will all wear it. When it fails, when it creates this "financial and physical ruin", the Dems will be wiped out and the Republicans will gain control. Liberalism and progressivism will be discredited by their connection to this horror; the fact that this bill is antithetical to the ideals that animate liberalism will be completely washed away. The Republicans win.

Remember that the Finance bill that forms the backbone of this damned thing was practically written by Republicans. They're just too good at the game to have their party's fortunes ride on it.

As for "progressives causes" and all that...well, yes, that is lost, BUT IT'S LOST BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE AND ATTITUDES MATT IS DEFENDING. Politicians—especially Democratic politicians,—go where the gettable votes and election resources are. If they can count on the base no matter what, they aren't going to do anything progressive, now, are they?
That's what's been happening, and that's what we've been saying!

The only difference is that we thought that Obama was different, and discovered that not only is he not different, but he might be the purest example of the breed in decades. Then he filled that big ol' kennel at 1600 Pennsylvania with every other prime example of the breed as well! (That the second-purest was undoubtedly Clinton just makes this that much worse. He just hid it better.)

If you want progressive legislation, then progressives need to be a concern. If progressives never break away from the party, even when faced with the one of the most horrifyingly corporatist, destructive, and impolitic health care bills that a Democrat could possibly author, then they'll never be a concern, so you'll never see progressive legislation. "Centrists" will always be the ones that may walk, so they'll be lovingly catered to.

Opposing this mess not only helps save the Dems from electoral apocalypse, but teaches them that they can't take their base for granted anymore. And people wonder why it's happening.

As for Matthew, I'll just bring up one quote:

I don’t want to endlessly rehash the intramural argument about whether this bill is worth passing or not, since at the end of the day I’m looking forward to working with all the netroots activists of the world on more and better legislation in the future.

The conciliatory language is cute, but it shows that he still doesn't get it.

If you pass this mess as-is, there won't be better legislation.

And if the bill's defenders keep on strawmanning and mischaracterizing the progressive opposition, and calling Dean every name in the book, why on earth do you think everything will be all nicey-nicey any time soon?

Edit: Yglesias himself links to a Greg Sargent piece entitled "Journalists Cheerfully Urinating On Senate Bill’s “Ideological” Critics", which links to offensive bullshit like this piece from Ron Brownstein about how Dean and LieberCare's critics (critics!) are "limosine liberals". Which is, from what I've seen, manages to be the most offensively wrong thing that has been said about all this. Quite an achievement.

Whether the Senate bill becomes law or not, this is not going away.

Needless to Say...

...I disagree with Krugman. It does happen, and it's happening here.

That said, some of the arguments here annoy me — in particular the line I’ve been hearing from some quarters that progressives who say we should hold our noses and pass the flawed Senate bill are just like the “liberal hawks” who supported the Iraq war.

No, they aren’t. And I don’t say that just because, as it happens, I stuck my neck way out in opposing Iraq, and was more or less the only columnist with a spot in a major newspaper to say outright that the Bush administration was misleading us into war.

Look, I don’t know for sure what motivated the liberal hawks; you’ll have to ask them. Some, I hope, were genuinely naive: despite all the signs that we were being sold a bill of goods, they just couldn’t believe that an American president would start a war on false pretenses. Others, I suspect, were being careerists, aligning themselves with where the power seemed to lie; sad to say, their career calculations were justified, since to this day you’re generally not considered “serious” on national security unless you were wrong about the war.

What’s going on with health care is very different. Those who grudgingly say “pass the thing” — a camp I have reluctantly joined — aren’t naive: by and large they’re wonks who have looked at the legislation quite carefully, understand both its virtues and its flaws, and have decided that it’s a lot better than nothing. And there isn’t much careerism involved: if you’re a progressive pundit or wonk, the risks of alienating the people to your left are at least a match for the risks of alienating people to your right.

I'm honestly surprised that Prof. Krugman mischaracterized things so badly. No, it is NOT as great a risk to alienate the left as alienate the right. To even pretend to believe that is either disingenuous or naive, neither of which I'd usually call Paul Krugman, so I'll just assume he's having a bad day or is annoyed or whatnot.

Alienating the right carries serious, serious consequences for a politician or staffer. That's what is meant when people say "Washington is wired for Republicanism": the major institutions and players in Washington are still by-and-large right-leaning instead of left-leaning. At best, they follow that kinda-sorta-liberal attitude of "bigger safety net for the poor, but no challenge to the practices of the wealthy" that motivates the Obama administration's attitude towards the financial sector. Usually, you don't even get that much.

And what about lobbying? Both politicians and their staffers, once outside of Washington, find their most profitable employment in convincing their successors that What's Good For [insert client here] Is Good For America. That is not generally a left-wing enterprise, and progressives don't see the same kind of paydays for doing it.

Meanwhile, taking potshots at their core supporters is something the Dems—ESPECIALLY Rahm Emanuel in his capacity as Obama's chief of staff—have developed into a hobby. Look at the reaction to Dean: instead of being respectful of the difference of opinion, they have been absolutely savaging him. And look at the treatment of House and Senate progressives: they've been turned into zombie-like reciters of talking points, because they can barely think for having been whipped so bloodily. In fact, that's one of the biggest reasons why all this is happening.

And, yes, this is also true for the non-politicos in Washington. Since so many of the institutions are conservative-leaning, and since belonging to the right groups and going to the rights events and having access to the right people are so important...

(...emphasis on the "right" there...)

...they aren't necessarily going to be that different. Sure, you want to take some potshots at the right, but if you go too far, you'll be labelled as "unreasonable" or "unserious" and will be ignored and/or shunned by the community. Torturing the "dirty fucking hippies" in the "nutroots" just isn't going to carry the same consequences, and Krugman should damned well know that. That's one of the biggest reasons this is happening.

The biggest problem, though, is that Krugman is misrepresenting this as a left vs. right issue to begin with. It isn't about left/right. It's about in/out. With Iraq, as with health care, you don't want to be identified with the "unserious outsiders". There's no money in that: there's no columnist gigs in the New York Times or Washington Post, no editor positions for the American Prospect or the New Atlantic, no cozy sinecures at corporate-funded think tanks. Careerism is absolutely connected to all of this.

I'd also like to return to this assertion above:

Those who grudgingly say “pass the thing” — a camp I have reluctantly joined — aren’t naive: by and large they’re wonks who have looked at the legislation quite carefully, understand both its virtues and its flaws, and have decided that it’s a lot better than nothing.

Does he honestly think that people didn't argue this during the Iraq war? THIS WAS THE EXACT SAME CLAIM MADE ABOUT IRAQ. Absolutely. 100%. They said "the Bush administration's plan is questionable and they aren't terribly competent, but getting rid of Saddam's possible weapons of mass destruction and creating a democracy in the region is worth it".

Throughout 2003-2004, this was the defense used by the supporters of the flagging conflict. Whenever a "DFH" pointed out that they were right, this defense was the one that they resorted to. "You go to war with the president you have, not the president you might want."

Prof. Krugman, I know you may not be as familiar with the "liberal hawks" as some (bizarrely...) but rest assured, there is no difference.

Except, perhaps, that since Democrats are wearing this, instead of Republicans, the spectacle of progressives' putative allies dropping trou and soiling the people who hold them up is just too much. I wish the Dems who are savaging Dean while fêting Nelson, Lieberman et al understood that. They are in for a nasty but well-earned shock.

Jeebus, Lookit That

You couldn't create a more perfect example of the Dems' patronizing, dismissive, abhorrent attitude towards their own base if you tried.

And people wonder why the reaction is "fuck 'em".

Greenwald on Corporatism

Just as a followup to the last few posts, here's Glenn Greenwald on American corporatism:

At its core, it seeks to use government power not to regulate, but to benefit and even merge with, large corporate interests, both for political power (those corporate interests, in return, then fund the Party and its campaigns) and for policy ends. It's devoted to empowering large corporations, letting them always get what they want from government, and extracting, at best, some very modest concessions in return. This is the same point Taibbi made about the Democratic Party in the context of economic policy:

The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants.

One finds this in far more than just economic policy, and it's about more than just letting corporations do what they want. It's about affirmatively harnessing government power in order to benefit and strengthen those corporate interests and even merging government and the private sector. In the intelligence and surveillance realms, for instance, the line between government agencies and private corporations barely exists. Military policy is carried out almost as much by private contractors as by our state's armed forces. Corporate executives and lobbyists can shuffle between the public and private sectors so seamlessly because the divisions have been so eroded. Our laws are written not by elected representatives but, literally, by the largest and richest corporations. At the level of the most concentrated power, large corporate interests and government actions are basically inseparable.

The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry -- regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry -- tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations -- and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model. It's undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can't get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well). If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor. But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign.

I hadn't really talked about corporatism in other sectors of the economy, but Greenwald is right in pointing them out.

All I'd add is that they don't generally work too well, either. One of the reasons why America has foundered so badly in its conflicts abroad is because private military contractors are both more expensive and more likely to enrage locals than actual uniformed soldiers. The soldiers haven't benefited much, either; I still remember the stories from "Iraq for Sale" about how KBR (allegedly) used filthy, contaminated water in Iraq. And certainly the Wall Street/Washington connection has been absolutely disastrous.

Of course, it works quite well if all you care about is enriching yourself or your friends. But, again, that's where that conflict of interests come in. The rest of us have no stake in that. If that's your motivation, we won't support you.

"Nothing Like the Netherlands"

One objection to critiques of mandates is that mandates work quite well in the Netherlands.

True. But the Netherlands implementation is quite a bit different, as Jon Walker points out. He even has a handy chart.

This bill is a sham BS imitation of a true universal health care systems built on the government guarantee of access to quality, affordable health insurance and an individual mandate. Countries like the Netherlands have important regulations ensuring all their citizens have access to quality, affordable health insurance, regulations that are completely lacking in this bill. Things such as:

Dutch Health Care System	Senate Bill
True community ratings where everyone is charged the same premiums	Very large age rating ratios that allow insurance companies to charge old people three times as much as the young
The government mandates only the sale of strictly defined high quality insurances and all basic policies must have identical coverage rules	Gives insurers wide latitude in design policies and allows for the sale of very low 60% actuarial junk insurance and “catastrophic plans”
Premiums are very affordable (roughly €100 a month for basic coverage)	People will be force to pay 9.8% of their income for a low value insurance plan
Extremely strong national regulator	Basically no direct national regulator
Deductible of €150	No maximum deductible but based on 70% actuarial values the deductible should be well over a thousand dollars for most silver plans
Extremely robust risk adjustment mechanisms that force insurers to compete based on quality and not risk selection	Weak risk adjuster that would not stop insurers from trying to game the system and cherry pick customers
Achieves near universal coverage with 98.5% of people in the country covered	Achieves only 93%-94% coverage
Allows for drug re-importation to keep drug prices low	Not permitted
Central government provider negotiator for most procedures	No central provider negotiator

Listed here are only some of the ways the system produced by the Senate bill falls way short of the Dutch health care system. If the government promised everyone access to well regulated, high quality insurance with a $200 deductible and monthly premiums of $150, I would definitely be supporting the individual mandate. The problem is that the Senate bill will force people to buy extremely expensive poorly regulated junk insurance. The individual mandate is morally and politically wrong until the government lives up to its end of the social contract. On that front, the Senate bill is a failure.

I'd say that the political context is the bigger problem. Jonathan Cohn seems to think that if you do something weak like this, then that's okay, because it will eventually be improved upon. But let's be honest: that isn't what happened here. The bill started out weak, then got weaker and weaker, to the point where the Republicans relish the opportunity to run against it and the public hates it.

Does Cohn really think it will be improved under those conditions? Has he been paying attention at all?

Liberal/Conservative Critiques of Corporatism (Edit: Response to Kilgore's Strategic Piece)

(Some edits are below.)

That title is a mouthful, but it gets to my reaction one part of an otherwise-decent piece by Ed Kilgore on the split over LieberCare.

He notes that the distinction is between liberals (I think I can discard "progressive" here) who belong to the Bill Clinton/Tony Blair "third way" camp of regulated private entities providing public services, and other liberals who distrust these sorts of arrangements and this sort of ideology. (Generally because it doesn't work, ends up costing more, and is usually privatization-by-another-name.)

Were this Britain being discussed, this would be simpler, since you would just describe this as the distinction between "neoliberals" and "social liberals". The problem in America is that Americans shoehorn in the useless word "progressive" where the proper label "liberal" should go. There's no such beast as a "social progressive" in the same way that there's a "social liberal".

In any case, here's Kilgore:

To put it more bluntly, on a widening range of issues, Obama's critics to the right say he's engineering a government takeover of the private sector, while his critics to the left accuse him of promoting a corporate takeover of the public sector. They can't both be right, of course, and these critics would take the country in completely different directions if given a chance. But the tactical convergence is there if they choose to pursue it.

Ed, these aren't antithetical. What we're discussing here is corporatism; a kind of synthesis of the public and private sector, creating private monopolies and cartels with enormous government-granted power. Honest conservatives (there are a few) hate it because they don't like government interfering with private enterprise; and social liberals hate it because...

...and let me just emphasize this...

...CORPORATISM IS A REALLY, REALLY BAD IDEA.

Look, everybody knows that patent, trade and copyright laws are pretty much broken, right? Under the guise of "intellectual property", you have everything from infinitely-extending copyrights to patent "vultures" stifling innovation to Disney suing daycares for daring to put Mickey on the wall. You have pharma corporations tossing man-eating lobbyists at everybody in Washington who even looks at 'em funny, Sony breaking your computer to keep you from putting a CD on your iPod, the horror that is ACTA, and people dying of easily-treated diseases in the third world because of bans on the production of generic drugs.

Well, copyrights, patents, and trades are government-blessed monopolies over copying or producing something. That's all that they are. "Intellectual property" wouldn't exist without the power of government backing it up. While it may have been a good idea to help creators out a bit, we've seen that without very, very careful treatment, it can lead to corps running absolutely wild, and ruining a lot of lives in the process.

(There's nothing unique about this, either. Privatizatized, exclusive providers of public services have spread across the developing world like weeds, thanks to the enduring legacy of the Washington Consensus. They're generally disasters there, too.)

LieberCare is a bit different. Nothing in LieberCare dictates that there must be regional or national monopolies on delivering health care, like with trademarks et al. But that is the logical endpoint of mandated insurance, since it still uses government's power to FORCE contract with a private enterprise. You still end up with government-blessed monopolies stomping on the bank accounts and rights of Americans, but this time in a far more important sector of the economy.

Neither social liberals nor honest conservatives would want this to happen. Conservatives don't want to be forced to contract to anybody, and social liberals want monopolies to be held only by governmental organizations that are ultimately responsible to the public, instead of the shareholders. But this is what will happen, sooner or later, under the Senate's plan.

That's why the public option was so important. This was always a problem. ALWAYS. That has never changed. But as long as there was a public option, even a weak one, one was not forced to contract with a private enterprise. There was always going to be an option, even if all the private companies tried to flow together into cartels and monopolies. There could be no monopoly, as a matter of fact, because there was going to be one stubborn player that would not go with the plan. It was the one thing that made this tolerable.

Now it's gone. Now the game has changed. Now America is looking at decades of mandated corporatism, in the exact period of time where medical care is going to be more important than ever before. "Exchange regulation" isn't going to solve that, any more than hiring more patent examiners would. People need to always have a choice: whether it's at the ballot box, or at the insurance exchange.

Under this plan, sooner or later, they won't have any choice at all.

Edit: Kilgore says that "we don't have the time or energy to spare in dialogues of the deaf wherein we call each other names while getting ready for the elections of 2010 and 2012".

I don't think he quite gets what's going on here.

If there isn't change, and soon, there is no"we". If liberals and progressives aren't convinced that they have a voice in the Democratic party, they are not going to "get ready for the elections of 2010 and 2012". They won't be helping you. At best, they'll be gearing up for as many primary challenges as they can muster. You will be the enemy, not a "we".

That's how bad it has become, it was a long time coming, it transcends this one terrible bit of policy, and you aren't going to paper it over with blog entries.

Re-Edit: Ah, he has a better take on these issues here. He misrepresents Taibbi's critiques, but he seems to understand things better. The biggest problem is that he does not really get into diverging interests. That is the real core difference between Democratic "Villagers" and liberals outside Washington.

The main thing animating the Democratic Villagers is their interest in retaining control of the White House and Congress, since there is an absolute flood of power, influence and (eventually) money that comse from that position. Even if you aren't in politics per se, your "think tanks" and magazines and journals and "Institutes" and whatnot will be far better off with your side in ascendancy.

Progressives and Liberals outside Washington aren't going to enjoy any of this. They aren't going to benefit from this influence. They aren't going to get the front page journal articles, or the sweet lobbying gig, or the shot at a House seat down the road. They have no stake in any of that crap. Their interest is policy, whether it's foreign, economic, or social policy.

If the Dems make it clear that they will sacrifice progressives' policy goals to retain their power and influence, then it only makes sense that progressives and liberals should threaten to sacrifice the Dems' power and influence to achieve their goals. The Republican base already does this; progressives are realizing that they need to as well. If it takes losses in an election cycle or two to convince the Dems that they have to take progressives into account, and the Dems learn the lesson and change their policymaking calculus for the next twenty cycles, progressives will ultimately be better off.

(So will Dems, of course. But that's a whole different issue. As is the irony of this article being posted in The New Republic, of all places.)

Still Disappointed in Ezra (Edit: Reps on the Line)

...who seems not to understand what a merger is. Or collusion, for that matter.

Yes, Ezra, competition would reduce the extent to which insurance companies gouge their customers under a system of mandated insurance. But mandated insurance would provide enormous incentives for collusion and monopolization, so much so that it would almost be required to merge under simple fiduciary responsibility. And remember, they aren't going to be subject to anti-trust laws. That got taken out.

He also points out the "cadillac tax" and exchange regulators as agents who could keep prices down:

But the exchanges actually have a fail-safe solution, too. Rewind the tape to BCBS's decision to jack up premiums. Imagine that BCBS insures 420,000 people in California's exchange. As directed by law, they duly submit a notice to the Exchange Board saying they're increasing premiums. The exchange sends a letter back noting that underlying health-care trends don't justify that increase, which they're allowed to do under the law. BCBS says it doesn't care. The exchange, which doesn't much feel like being bullied, says fine, you're decertified. BCBS loses more than 400,000 customers, and has to reapply the next year.

And then, of course, there's the excise tax. Jack up your prices enough and suddenly you're paying a 40 percent surtax on the plan you're offering. Now you're way more expensive than the competition, and you're hemorrhaging customers.
Health-care reform isn't creating a monopoly market. There are other industries where people need to patronize some for-profit company. Food, for instance. But if there are a variety of companies competing for customers, monopoly problems don't emerge.

Two problems with that. First, there is no definition here on what is or isn't "justified". I suppose the exchanges will have to determine that for themselves. If the exchanges are staffed by anybody but the most dedicated public servants the Union has to offer, some of them are going to flub that decision; Especially when faced with a regional monopolist with deep mandate-fattened pockets. armies of lobbyists and pet politicians.

Second, do you honestly think that regulation and punitive taxation is going to deal with this problem? Your Democratic friends have already had their clock cleaned by the Republicans, America is already in this mess because Democrats can't pass legislation that isn't terrible. What the hell makes you think that the regulations and "cadillac taxes" won't get gutted by the Republicans, or even the ConservaDems, between now and 2013?

Especially when the most powerful lobby on the Hill—and it will be after this—is doing everything it can to water down the regulations, which has already been watered down to begin with? There WAS anti-trust reform in the bill. That got taken out, and language allowing these mandated insurers to get out of providing care was inserted in.

There is no reason to think that this process won't continue. There's no reason to believe that the regulations will stand. There is no reason to trust these exchanges to be immune to lobbying. There is no reason to expect the "cadillacs" to stay as they are. There is no reason to believe the lobbyists won't run rampant. There is no reason to believe that the Republicans and ConservaDems will ever improve this exercise in naked corporatism.

It will just get worse.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my question. Is there a bill these people wouldn't support? Is there a line they wouldn't cross? When women's health and safety are sacrificed to get Ben Nelson's vote, is that still not going to convince them that some things are indefensible?

Obviously the Dems are never, ever going to have a line that they won't cross, because they're terrified of the possible consequences. But that's why they supported the Iraq debacle, too, in all its destructive horror. The LieberCare hawks are primarily the "Liberal hawks" of 2002-2003. Have they learned anything? Have they changed at all?

IS there a line?

Edit: I'm wondering whether or not this has less to do with policy and more to do with pride. There are no small number of LieberHawks who have poured a ton of time and effort, now, into defending this crap. Convincing progressives that the bill is actually defensible is one thing: ultimately progressives want to be convinced, because they don't want to believe that they now have to take up rhetorical and political arms against the people that they had worked so hard to elect only last year.

Convincing the "wonks", however, is going to be much harder. (I scarequoted "wonks" because it is insulting to argue that the critics don't understand the legislation, but that's what its supporters insist.) If people like Ezra and Yglesias and Drum turn on the legislation, they're in deep, deep trouble. The Dems will shun them, because the Dems believe that their electoral fortunes will be better if they pass it than if they don't. (They're wrong, but it's a question of belief.) The Washington Establishment will probably shun them, too, because they'll have associated themselves with all those nasty dirty hippies, and irritating pseuds like me and digby and atrios. And progressives probably won't be terribly supportive, either, since this is twice now that they've been yelling at us for speaking Truth to Dems.

It's a hard place to be in. But, remember, we didn't put you in that place. They did.

"The Perfect Stom of Financial and Physical Ruin" and the Republican Trap

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Feldman has written a very, very good piece about what mandates to buy private insurance without a public option would look like:

The big change will be for the rest of the country that would suddenly be faced with an unprecedented and up-to-that-point not understood requirement.

Everyone would be required to buy an annual health insurance policy for ourselves and our family members--dictated by government to purchase a private product.

Now, advocates for a mandate assure us that it would lower costs because it would plug the "leaks" in the insurance "pool." They also claim that there is already a mandate in the auto insurance market, and it has not caused anybody any harm.

In reality, there is no such thing as a coverage "pool" that does not leak. In the current situation, for example, undocumented immigrants will not be covered (of which there are, ehem, one or two in America). So at first, undocumented workers will be the biggest, identifiable and substantial "leak." Even after a mandate went into effect, emergency rooms would still be treating new arrivals to this country who live at the margins of our system, but need medical care just the same. Mandates without coverage for immigrants would mean that the cost of private insurance would still go up. Leaky pool.

As for the comparison to auto insurance: it does not hold. Consider, for example, the everyday scenario of an American who decides they need to buy a car. They shop around, then calculate whether they afford the purchase or lease expenses, fuel, maintenance, parking, and--insurance. At this point, many decide not to buy a car, thereby freeing them from the mandate. Others decide that they can afford a car, but cannot afford both liability and collision insurance. So, they get minimum coverage, exposing themselves to great financial risk.

In a mandate health insurance system, the same scenario would likely arise: forms of private insurance would arise offering coverage that satisfies the mandate law, but leave the individual exposed to so much financial risk that any real health crisis will be a guarantee of financial ruin. At least when it comes to buying a car, we can evaluate this risk and decide to take the bus. With a health insurance mandate, there would be no "take the bus" option.

Since no government can require people to spend themselves into poverty, the result of the mandate will be that a large chunk of the American middle class would choose to expose themselves to enormous financial risk in the long run in order to avoid spending all their money on health insurance in the short term.

The private insurance industry--probably the most sophisticated industry in history--will have no trouble developing precisely the kind of products that will feed off the short term concerns of middle class families. Families of four that earn enough money to feel like they are doing well, but not enough to pay $10,000 for a health care policy, will be enticed to buy policies that help them "save money," "control their costs," "take control," "get rich." It does not take much imagination to see how well these kinds of late-night-TV products would succeed. They would be the junk bonds of health insurance, the sub-prime mortgages of health care, the "Rich Dad" videos of the mandate era. They would fuel a health care bubble, and then, inevitably: a health care bust.

Five, maybe ten years, after the system started, we would be faced with our first financial crisis brought on by the mandate.

In such a crisis, the government would be faced with a rise in personal bankruptcy caused by fraudulent health care products that would make the housing crisis look like a tame night at the canasta table. Tens of millions of Americans would be in financial ruin because the policies they chose to buy to satisfy the mandate had left them exposed to crippling health care expenses. They bought a policy, as mandated, but because there was insufficient regulation to protect the consumer from junk policies--bankruptcy, all over the country, in every corner, over every hill and dale, bankruptcy....

...Meanwhile, with the personal bankruptcy and financial market crises unfolding in a perfect storm, talk would begin of the most shocking news of all: how unhealthy Americans have become since the mandate took effect.

Unhealthy with health insurance?

Think about it: What would be the one way to guarantee that your insurance premiums would not rise--a common method that millions of Americans use every day? Carry insurance, but avoid any situation where it would come into play.

So, even though these Americans at risk had insurance, millions would have figured out that the best way to avoid a personal financial crisis would be to avoid the doctor and hospitals altogether.

It would be a strange new world, indeed: a world of unhealthy people with health insurance--people whose solution to the financial dangers imposed on them by the mandate and an unregulated private insurance market would be to shift the risk from their household balance sheets to their medical files.

A mandate would mean health insurance, but bankruptcy--coverage, but bad health.

Even if it takes another few months, we would be far better off sitting back down and making sure we do not set in motion the mandate crisis of the future.

All in favor, say "Aye."

Bolding is mine.

Again, for the Yglesiases and Kleins and Cescas and other strawman-erecting "Senate bill hawks" out there:

PEOPLE ARE ANGRY BECAUSE THIS IS RUINOUSLY BAD LAW.

This is also why the Republicans have been playing the games they have. They knew, from the beginning, that well-crafted health care reform could be the end of their party as we know it. Their party is built on apologies for the excesses of private enterprise, and the instinctual loathing of collective action. If there had been well-made government-led health care efforts, people might realize that collective action to protect individual rights wasn't such a bad deal afer all.

So they led the Dems into a trap. They knew, beyond a doubt, that Obama and the Senate Dems were aching for "bipartisanship" on this. Both have made a point of fetishizing it in the past, and both were likely to keep on doing it. They had to look hostile and recalcitrant in public, because they still always have to consider their base. But, in private, a few of them kept on playing at being just reasonable enough that it was conceivable that the Dems could get a few "R" names on the "yea" list.

It worked. The Dems thought they had a partner. Baucus sacrificed his credibility and became a laughingstock because of it. They hacked and hacked and hacked again at anything approaching tolerable policymaking in their legislation to bring some Republicans on board.

The Republicans didn't get on board. The Republicans were never going to get on board. They were just there to ensure that, sooner or later, the Dems would sacrifice so much that the legislation would be intolerable. It happened a few days ago, and we're seeing the fallout now.

No matter what happens, the Republicans win. If progressives—now so alienated from the party that they can barely stand it—support the bill, the Dems will all wear it. When it fails, when it creates this "financial and physical ruin", the Dems will be wiped out and the Republicans will gain control. Liberalism and progressivism will be discredited by their connection to this horror; the fact that this bill is antithetical to the ideals that animate liberalism will be completely washed away. The Republicans win.

If progressives oppose it, the Dems will be forced to defend it more and more vigorously against their own greatest supporters. Sooner or latter there will be one too many Democratic partisans crying "SCREW YOU YOU DIRTY HIPPIES" in their desperate attempts to defend the indefensible, and progressives will wash their hands of the party entirely. The Dems won't survive that. As the Canadian Liberal party learned to its great sorrow, a party cannot survive without a committed base. The Republicans STILL win.

No, the only way that the Republicans don't win is if the Dems do something, ANYTHING, to make this bill less terrible. Removing the mandate might help, but it really will screw with the economics of it. Passing some sort of medicare expansion or public option would have helped, but the House bill that includes a public option won't even get a chance at reconciliation, because neither Obama's Senator-packed White House nor official Washington could give a rat's ass about America's Representatives.

The Republicans are better at the game. I've said it for a long time now. It's still true. Obama beat them, but only because they're terrible at governing, and because the Obama that we saw in the campaign was someone that people could support. Over the last year, that Obama has been wiped away, and replaced with the worst Rubin-esque elements of the Clinton administration. The dream of a new FDR or LBJ lies in ashes, along with any remaining hope that American progressives might have once had for their country.

They knew your weaknesses. You didn't remember their strengths. That's why they won. And That's why you lost.

Strawmen Marching As to War

Once, just once, I'd like to read a blog post defending LieberCare that actually addressed the substantial critiques of it.

Instead, you get the spectacle of people like Bob Cesca erecting so many strawmen that a fire marshall probably needed to be present in his office.

People aren't opposing the Senate bill because they're angry. They're opposing it for the same reason that they are angry, which is because it is absolutely terrible.

That DailyKos piece was right. This is exactly like the Iraq thing. The new "liberal hawks", when challenged, have retreated to the same-old, same-old tactics. That this blew up in their faces last time seems to escape them completely.

Bernie Sez "No"? Also: The Assault on Rep By Pop

I'll believe it when I see it, but as of right now, Bernie Sanders is apparently not going to support the Senate "Health Execs Will Need To Build Bigger Parking Lots For All Their New Stretch Limos" Act of 2009 :



It'll be difficult to whip Sanders, as he's an independent from a very progressive state. But I'm sure Rahm et al will try. It's not going to look good, though, when America sees them whip one recalcitrant Independent but let the other get everything he asks for.

That reminds me of something else about this nonsense that bothers me. There is a Bill with a public option out there. It passed in the House, remember? 50.5% and all that? Yet it's being completely ignored in favor of the Senate's POS legislation.

Never mind all the crap about cloture and whatnot. Think about what this says about you. By only paying attention to the Senate and ignoring or subduing the House, as the White House has been doing since they first got the keys to the place, they are saying "we don't give a rat's ass about the representatives of the people. We only care about the representatives of the state".

"But Senators are elected!" you cry. Yes, they are. But they aren't really democratic: the number of Senators has nothing to do with Americans per se, just the fifty states that make up the union. That's what they represent. There's a reason they weren't even elected by the public back during the early years of the Republic; the Senate was never intended to represent the wishes of the people.

And how could it? A few Senators from a few low-population states can dictate things to the rest of the the country. As more and more people move to fewer and fewer states, that's only going to get worse, and it was never great to begin with. That's fine if all you care about is having each State have its representation. But it doesn't help most Americans much.

No, your representative is your Representative. That's what the House of Representatives is for, just like the House of Commons in a parliamentary system. It ensures that each and every American has an equal voice in at least one body of their government. It's the foundation of American democracy, in fact; if the Revolution were just about protecting the interests of nobility, then America could have just reconfirmed the Magna Carta and been done with it. They fought a revolution for Rep by Pop.

(That's also why bodies like the Canadian Senate and the British House of Lords aren't elected at all: because like the American Senate, that's not what they're for.)

So, when the media and the White House ignore the House, what's really going on is that they're saying "representation by population is a completely crock." It's almost a Confederate view of America, since it privileges the interests of states as unique bodies, instead of the interests of Americans AS Americans. And as individuals. It's "state's rights" by another name.

The House has their bill. Their bill has a public option, and is (bluntly) a far more tolerable bill than its Senatorial counterpart. Giving it up to get Senatorial votes might have been acceptable if Obama et al had shown the House that they respect the body, its members, and its consensuses; but since no respect has ever been shown, House progressives should (politely) tell them to go piss up a rope.

Sure, Sanders is important. I hope he sticks to it. But as Americans, you cannot forget that the Senate does not truly represent you, and never will.

Edit: Just to make it clear what the American PEOPLE want: A Washington Post/ABC poll asked people what they thought about extending Medicare to people 55+. By a THIRTY-point lead, they agreed with with it.

America has said what it wants. Its representatives have acknowledged that. But the Senate, and the White House, doesn't appear to care.

Well Isn't This Interesting...

I hadn't thought about this, but Jake McIntyre makes an excellent point:

Has anyone else noticed that the split in the progressive blogosphere between those who are saying "it's a good bill in spite of everything" (Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, to name a few) and those who just can't bring themselves to support Liebercare (Markos and Digby come to mind, among bloggers who have been at it since 2003*) is eerily similar to the split between those who grudgingly backed the invasion of Iraq and those who fought against the war seven years ago?

To a large degree, it's the same cast of characters, with the same tone to the arguments. It's the policy wonks versus the activists. On the wonky side, there is (and was, in 2003) a resigned sense that this isn't an ideal action, but that we don't live in an ideal world, and that consequently we should suck it up and support an imperfect initative. On the other, there is (and was, in 2003) a resistance born of an awareness that Congressional Democrats will more often then not -- and often unintentionally -- screw themselves and the country, out of a misguided belief that powerful forces with agendas very different from that of the Democratic Party can be managed and trusted.

It's been long enough since the invasion of Iraq that the two camps - the credulous wonks and dirty fucking hippies - have reconciled (and even interbred), but the dynamic that separated us in 2003 is the same. The fundamental difference in approach is still there. When all is said and done, the wonks trust Democratic politicians to protect our interests. The activists don't. That doesn't mean that we don't like certain Democratic politicians, or that we don't cherish our wonky brethren. It just means that we're not willing to get fooled again.
______________________

*I imagine that Jane Hamsher and most of the other bloggers calling for opposition to Liebercare also opposed the Iraq invasion, but Jane et al weren't blogging way back then, at least as far as I know.

I've been around since 2002, Jake. I remember. I'll never forget. I remember, for example, that the "policy wonks" were not basing their arguments on policy per se. They were basing it on a particularly innocent and none-too-successful kind of politics: the kind that says that you can always take progressives for granted, and should therefore do whatever you can to ingratiate yourself to conservatives. That isn't precisely what's going on here, but what is going on here is motivated by much the same thing: adherence to the groupthink of "experts" and "leaders" and "wisemen" whole bunches of other fatuous gasbags who richly deserve scare quotes.

What they didn't get then, and don't get now, is that while the perfect may be the enemy of the good, the terrible is the enemy of both. That a policy isn't perfect doesn't make it good. It may include so many horrible things that they wipe out any and all good that might have been done. It may also leave doors open for terrible things to be done in the future that do much the same thing.

That was the case with Iraq. Getting rid of Saddam was a moral argument, since Saddam was a terrible man. But the people responsible were terrible enough, the plan was vacuous enough, and the consequences terrible enough that it was transparently going to do more harm than good. That is exactly what happened: the side effects were horrible, and the execution worse.

That is also the case with the Senate HCR proposal. Expanding Medicaid, regulating insurers, and getting everybody health care are laudable goals. But it is transparently obvious that these things will come at the cost of forcing people to buy terrible insurance, and taxing away even the possibility of decent insurance. Anything even remotely moral, like the subsidies for the impoverished, will almost certainly be removed by a future Republican administration, leaving nothing but the terrible parts behind.

The only difference is that both parties got to wear the Iraq debacle. The Dems, however, will be forced to stand alone on HCR. That's why Ezra et al are dangerously wrongheaded. They think that passing this bill will help the Dems next year and in 2012. But the polls are very, very clear. It won't. They may have traded foreign policy groupthink for more general Washington groupthink, but that groupthink is wrong.

(I will refrain from discussing how being wrong on Iraq was a smart career move, and question what sort of career moves are involved in being wrong on this one. After all, I still feel somewhat responsible for Ezra. That's probably why I'm not even angry at him. Just somewhat disappointed.)

digby Could Use Your Support

Go here and read this.

The Best Blogger On The Internet(tm) needs some help. You like good bloggers, I'm sure. So go help.

The Public Wants its Option

Now the polls are out on the public-optionless Senate bill. They ain't pretty:

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll coming out later today will show opposition to the health care bill growing -- mainly from disappointed liberals, who are very much disappointed to see the public option getting thrown out.

The poll has 47% saying the Obama health care plan is a bad idea, to only 32% who say it's a good idea.

Chuck Todd writes on Twitter: "Most of the movement on the 'bad idea' comes from some of the president's core support groups, folks upset about lost public option." He also writes: "Still, large majorities of the president's core support groups believe his plan is a 'good idea,' but the margins have shrunk."

In addition, 44% now say it's better to not pass this bill -- seemingly a large bloc of conservatives, plus some liberals -- to 41% who say it's better that something pass: "First time NBC-WSJ poll had that upside down."

This is with medicare buy-in. With that removed, expect opposition to spike dramatically.

I'd expect it to stick, too. With the public-option or medicare-buy-in versions of the bill, at the very least there was something positive to point to, and something that could be expanded to keep progressives on board and defray the negative reaction to the mandates among the general public.

As it is, the only people defending the "force you to buy private health care for Joe Lieberman's sake" Act of 2009 are Democratic team cheerleaders. They aren't going to get that much traction. Not with this nonsense.

Edit: Jed Lewison brings up something that I've been concerned about, too:

he central argument made by proponents of the Lieberman-wrecked health care reform bill is that it would expand coverage to 30 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. It would accomplish this, they say, through subsidies, subsidies that comprise the bulk of the bill's $800+ billion price tag.

Given the centrality of those subsidies to the expansion of coverage, one of the biggest questions about this reform effort is whether the subsidies are politically sustainable. Unfortunately, history suggests they may not be. While Medicare and Social Security have broad-based support because everybody benefits from them regardless of income, means-tested welfare programs -- including Medicaid and even health insurance for children -- are constantly at risk of being cut, entirely dependent on the prevailing political winds.

The important point here is that because the mechanism for making coverage affordable is subsidies for low-income Americans rather than systemic reform that would apply across the board, the subsidies will constantly be on the chopping block -- and the expanded coverage that is the goal of this bill will always be at risk.

Moreover, because subsidies don't kick in until 2014, it's possible that in a nightmare scenario, they could be dramatically cut or even eliminated before seeing the light of day. In the absence of any systemic reform, then, we face the unpleasant possibility that with a realignment of power in Washington, DC, we could end up with a mandate -- and fewer, or even no, subsidies.

This is why the political and policy arguments against this crap are inextricable. If the Dems lose seats because of this bill in 2010 or 2012, and if the job market and deficit situations remain moribund, the health care subsidies are going to look like a more and more tempting target for Republican or ConservaDem cuts. Poor people don't vote for Republicans, after all. They disproportionately don't vote at all. So why not screw them?

This is just about the only place in which the interests of the health insurance companies and the poor intersect. The corps will want to keep the subsidies flowing, because it will line their own pockets. That might keep the more corporatist Dems on board, but the crazy teabagger Republican party that is poised to seize control may have to sacrifice the corps' support to keep their base happy.

(Republicans, you see, have to do that. I know it may be confusing to Democrats and their apologists. "Strong" and "base" are not words that usually go together in the Democratic mind. But Republicans are different.)

Then again, maybe the corps have nothing to worry about. All that money is going to buy a LOT of lobbyists. If you think Pharma and the health insurance corps are bad now, just wait until they gets funneling those big mandate dollars into lobbying firms and "pro-market think tanks".

America will be lucky if the Lincoln memorial isn't "brought to you by GlaxoSmithKline and Wellpoint" by 2015.

Bernanke "Person of the Year" (And More Broken "Democrats")

This is farce. There's nothing more to say about it. Except, perhaps, to link to Taibbi again.

And I'd praise Matthew Yglesias for his justifiably skeptical response, except that what he wrote about upcoming elections is farce, too, arguing that "if you give up on the Dems, wouldn't that mean more Republicans? Wouldn't that be worse"?

Matt, you don't get it. All politicians cave. All politicians fear for their jobs. And all politicians will walk all over the people that they take for granted. If people walk away from the Dems in 2010 or 2012, that may mean more Republicans in Congress. But as we've seen, it doesn't make a difference to progressives' goals. At least terrible Republican policy help discredit conservatism. Terrible Democratic policy does nothing good at all.

If they need to lose, if they need to realize that primaries aren't a formality but something to be sweated over as well, if they need to realize that they have to temper their race into the arms of conservative voters with the knowledge that they must retain progressive/liberal ones, then the solution is clear: primary them and, if necessary, give your general-election vote to a third party.

I know "Democratic" Villagers like you, Matt, won't like that. You have friends you see every day in the party. You know people who will lose their jobs. And, to be brutally honest, YOUR power as a progressive commentator and writer will be severely diminished if the Dems take a serious hit.

But, and I'm sorry for saying this, progressives and liberals have no real option left. They can no longer be mocked, denigrated and then ignored by your Washington coworkers and colleagues. They can no longer endure the Republicans and conservatives getting a place of prominence at the President and Congress' table, while they look in from the cold. They sure as hell won't put up with idiot sheep bleating about how the Democrats need 60 votes for a bill, where the Republicans only needed 50, because people like Lieberman were propped up by Washington on the sole grounds that they're part of the Village "family".

You may be getting comfortable as a new member of that family. Good for you. But that doesn't mean progressives will keep propping it up.

Edit: Hey, Matt. Look. This absolute nonsense? This is what I'm talking about.

If this bill passes, it will not be because Lieberman was pacified. It will be because senators such as Rockefeller, Wyden, Schumer, Harkin, Brown and Dodd swallowed their pride and their passion and allowed him to be pacified. They are the heroes here, and beneath it all, their quiet determination made them the key players.

Let me make it perfect clear for Matt, Ezra et al: ENABLING MASSIVE WEALTH TRANSFERS TO HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES IS NOT HEROISM. The only reason their determination is "quiet" is because they all know this bill is absolute crap. They campaigned against it, their constituents hate it, and it will backfire in truly amazing ways.

They're being quiet because they're hoping they won't get blamed when it goes south. And they aren't being credited because, yes, they are being taken for granted.

(At least try to keep up.)

Oh, and if you're wondering what Democrats enabling Republicans and an insider mentality has to do with Ben Bernanke, then you probably need a nap or something. You ain't thinking straight.

Re-Edit: Then again, one of the most disappointing things about, say, Ezra Klein or Kevin Drum on this is the sheer volume of strawmen involved. They don't engage the actual arguments against the bill or the reasons why, thanks to the mandates, it might well end up being worse than the status quo.

That's why I'm starting to think that people like Matt, Ezra and Kevin don't think any better of this nonsense than Dean or the obviously disgusted Brown et al. They can't respond to the specific criticism. So they don't.

Dean on LieberCare

Jane mentioned it, but I thought I'd personally link Howard Dean's interview on MSNBC here.

Kill LieberCare or You Will Kill the Democratic Party

So sez Jane Hamsher:



Key quote:

What the President said in September:

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.

But while nobody was looking, Harry Reid slipped in an “arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year”:

A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

The President Obama also said that “what ever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce cost for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.” Not true either.

As we speak, Frank Lautenberg and Kay Hagan are destroying Byron Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment by making a bunch of bullshit claims about drug safety. The danger of transferring drugs from a CVS warehouse in Canada to a CVS store in the United States? Zip. But they’re pretending that everything is coming from Chinese counterfeiters to keep something that could save the government $19 billion and the public over $100 billion from passing so the White House deal with PhRMA can be upheld. The Dorgan amendment could have been a way of honestly bending the cost curve, something the President campaigned on.

Instead, the “bend” comes from taxing middle class insurance benefits, which makes them worse. According to the CSM report released last week:

In reaction to the tax, many employers would reduce the scope of their health benefits. The resulting reductions in covered services and/or increases in employee cost-sharing requirements would induce workers to use fewer services. Because plan benefit values would generally increase faster than the threshold amounts for defining high-cost plans (which are indexed by the CPI plus 1 percent), over time additional plans would become subject to the excise tax,prompting those employers to scale back coverage.

The cost curve gets “bent” by making the insurance you have through your employer worse. Remember Harry and Louise? They killed health care reform during the Clinton administration by making this claim. Well, now it’s actually going to be true.

Congratulations, President Obama. This is the “win” you’ve been working toward. Joe Lieberman kicks the entire Democratic party in the teeth and you thank him for it. He writes the bill, and you go on national TV and have to misrepresent what’s in it in order to find anything good to say.

And Ben Nelson isn’t even done working his Bart Stupak magic.

If I wanted Joe Lieberman writing a health care bill, I would’ve voted for John McCain.

Howard Dean is right. Kill LieberCare.

Look, let's leave aside the fact that it "covers all Americans" by forcing them to buy unaffordable insurance from soon-to-be-monopolists, and is therefore an absolutely terrible bill to support in its own right.

Let's just look at the politics of this.

At best, the bill is a fixer-upper. Even the supporters admit that, when they say "pass something". They're claiming that once the initial foray is made, it can be built on as a foundation of policymaking. Were it something like the House bill, that might be true. Nothing in this bill is worth building on, so it isn't true.

That means that, come 2010 or 2012, it will have sunk in that the Dems have, somehow, made things worse. How do you think the public will react to that? How do you think the Republican machine will spin that? How will both react when the letters go out saying that you must buy insurance? How will they react when the first people start getting fined, and have their sob stories about choosing between unaffordable insurance and punitive fines played up for all they're worth in the press. How will they react when the Republicans start screaming about "government forcing you to buy health care?"

(Yes, that would be illogical of them. No, that doesn't matter. Rejection of logic is a strength of Republican messaging, not a weakness.)

I'll tell you what the public will do. They'll take one look at this, yell "THIS IS HORSESHIT", and turf out each and every politician who voted for it. It'll make the razing of the Dems in 1994 look like a gentle Victorian tea party. It may well wipe the Dems out as a party, if the Republicans get their act together between now and 2010. (Or, perhaps, 2012.)

Republicans can get away with creating terrible laws, because they have the messaging and funding to spin it away until the media gets bored and moves on. The Dems do not. They live and die by the quality of their governance and lawmaking. They showed no governance on this, and have made execrable law. They will have absolutely no defense or recourse.

Yes, dropping this will mean Republicans crowing for the next year. It may even mean losses in 2010. But I guarantee you that these will pale in comparison to what will happen to the party if it puts its stamp on this nonsense.

(Edit: Jon Walker at FDL explains how LieberCare will make existing insurance much, much worse, by adding an excise tax that discourages employers from offering better plans. Those with good plans will quickly be moved to mediocre ones; those on mediocre plans will quickly be moved to plans that offer sweet fanny adams. It doesn't just affect "cadillac" plans, as the hype suggests; because it isn't indexed, it will affect everybody.

Though, naturally, there will still be "cadillacs". Health insurance executive parking lots will be choked with the things.)

A Simple Question for The Defenders

Matt et al, I have one single, simple question:

Is there a Democratic bill that you wouldn't support, as long is it was labelled "Health Care Reform"?

I ask because the "grow the fuck up" contingent seem to honestly believe that the content of the bill doesn't matter, not anymore. It stinks, absolutely STINKS of the sort of desperation that Rahm brought to Reid's office when he told Harry to do whatever Lieberman wanted. The bill before the Senate is almost maximally terrible, a gigantic transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to insurance companies, one that will almost certainly lead to consolidation, regional monopolies, and premiums that make the current extortionate ones seem almost reasonable. It doesn't even really protect against Rescission, since they'll just hide behind the "fraud" excuse.

Still, even if it isn't maximally terrible, that isn't the thrust of the argument. They aren't arguing in favor of this bill, they're arguing in favor of any bill. Which raises the aforementioned question.

Is there a line? If there were a bill called "health care reform" that consisted solely of "everybody tithes 10% of their money to Rupert Murdoch", would they still support it? If THAT were all that Joe Lieberman, Nelson et al were willing to vote for, would Rahm head on down to Reid's office and harass them to pass the Health Care/Buying Rupert Murdoch Big Yachts Act of 2009?

And if they wouldn't support that, if that's a line they wouldn't cross, THEN WHY THE HELL SHOULD THEY BE SURPRISED THAT THERE'S A LINE EVERYBODY ELSE WOULDN'T CROSS EITHER?

So Sir Charles can take his "grow the hell up" and blow it out his ass: him and everybody else singing from that ridiculous hymnbook. The Senate bill is a terrible bill, they all knew it was a terrible bill when it was the Finance bill, and the only reason anybody is supporting it is because they're transparently trying to stave off next year's electoral bloodbath.

Well, sometimes you deserve to lose an election. Sometimes you, and your apologists, need to be taught that you can't take the "supporters" for granted.

And Now It's Even Worse

The one tolerable element of the Senate health care bill, expanding Medicare to people between 55 and 65, has been vocally opposed by Joe Lieberman. Apparently Medicare is a wee bit too close to socialized health care, so apparently it's only appropriate for people over 65. For some reason.

Everybody, including Harry Reid, thought Lieberman was being an obstructionist ass. Unfortunately, as the Huffington Post said, Lieberman won.

Joe Lieberman has forced his will on the Senate Democratic caucus and the nation as a whole. After the party reached a compromise last week to effectively drop the public option in exchange for allowing 55- to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare, that compromise is now in doubt.

Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, told Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Sunday that he will block any bill that includes the buy-in. As the 60th vote needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, he can do that.

Following a caucus-wide meeting Monday evening, the measure was all but scuttled.

And why was it scuttled, when it itself was a compromise from the public option that the House passed and that progressives have been stating is a basic requirement of any bill?

Guess.

Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation told the Huffington Post.

Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, has long been identified as leading a faction of White House advisers who have been pushing the Senate simply to pass any health care bill, no matter how weak.

His direct message to Reid (D-Nev.), according to a source close to the negotiations: "Get it done. Just get it done."

People in the know have been saying that the Obama administration no longer cares whether or not the bill is good, or even tolerable. That's fortunate for them, because everybody knows that the Senate bill is, at this point, absolutely intolerable. Without the Medicare expansion, it is literally nothing more than a billion-dollar handout to the health insurance industry. The protections against rescission are tissue-thin, the subsidies for the impoverished are weak at best, and the protection against collusion and regional monopolization is laughable. Becuase it forces Americans to buy whatever terrible insurance is offered to them, it is almost certainly worse than the status quo.

The Senators know it's terrible. Dodd said "It's always easier to envision the legislation that you want, than to pass the legislation that you need". Sherrod Brown said "I want to see health care reform. I want to see health care reform." Jay Rockefeller said "Can you just simply fail to govern because you couldn't get everything you wanted so you just opt out of it." Those are barely even talking points. They're babble. They're mush. They're reactions to the indefensible, forced upon both the Congress and the nation by one of its worst members.

And Lieberman didn't base this on principled opposition, as Ezra Klein said. At best, it was based on "torturing liberals", in Klein's words. But since Lieberman's wife has long-standing connections with the health care industry, it's quite possibly yet more featherbedding.

In any case, even if progressive Senators somehow think that this can end, House progressives have no reason to support this. They need to keep their Democratic support up or face primary challenges, and there is no reason for any Democrat to support any House or Senate member who would actually vote for this nonsense. Non-progressive House members would be wise to avoid it, too: they endure the greatest blowback from bad laws, and the blowback from something this bad will be tremendous. 2012 will be a bloodbath.

Lieberman doesn't care. Lieberman never cared. He didn't care when everybody was campaigning for him against Lamont, and he certainly doesn't care now. He never really give a rat's ass about the country or its interests. He's the worst kind of "Democrat", and the worst kind of American: the kind who would let the entire country burn just to feed his own vanity and greed.

(I won't even try to describe what I think about Rahm 'n co right now.)

So God Save America. Nobody down here will.