As is usually the case, the reason why the Democrats have failed to pass health care reform is staring at them right in the mirror. No, I'm not talking about the failure to take Scott Brown seriously. I'm talking about the actually pieces of legislation themselves.
The Christian Science Monitor has a very insightful piece explaining all of this quite well. People are tired of finding out that a party that is supposedly for the little guy is...well...not...really.
In what may have been a fateful move, some touted what they had won for their states. For example, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana announced that reports that she had won $100 million for her state in exchange for a healthcare vote were inaccurate. "It's not a $100 million fix. It's a $300 million fix," she said on Nov. 21.
Well, that's nice. I'm sure she is looking out for the "little guy" in Louisiana (part of her job) but not the nation as a whole which will eventually affect everyone in every state. And the word "fix?" Not good.
Of course, Milk Toast Boy didn't help out much.
"There are a hundred senators here, and I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said in a Dec. 21 press briefing. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it ... doesn't speak well of them. That's what legislation is all about: It's the art of compromise."
And therein lies the problem. You can't say you stand up for the American people and seek to improve a broken system when in reality what you are doing is looking after the interests of your own state with taxpayer money. Does Senator Reid want us to believe that every Senator doesn't give a shit about the rest of the country except their own little corner?
Health Care reform has to be looked at from a bird's eye point of view. The Democratic majority in both the House and Senate was suppose to do that but they didn't. They failed to realize that, in this new information sharing age, people were going to be looking at these bills with mucho scrutiny...as well they should.
So when Ben Nelson says...
This was never just about Nebraska. It was to be a placeholder to try to get [the Medicaid extension] fully funded for all states. My priorities are Nebraska first, Nebraska always – not Nebraska only.
...he's actually full of crap because his vote was secured by exempting Nebraska from paying a $450 million dollar fee over 10 years. People can find this kind of stuff out very quickly now. What was he thinking?
What were any of them thinking? This was their chance to fix health care. President Obama told them to get it done and they failed. It wasn't his Waterloo.
It was their Waterloo. And they're going to find out all about it this November.
17 comments:
The other part of the Democrats' problem is that they don't drive the fucking conversation-the Republicans do.
Ex: The right bitches about how many days it took for President Obama to issue a public statement regarding the crotch bomber yet it took twice that time for President Bush to respond to the shoe bomber. But the GOP got it out there first so they got to color the argument and the Democrats look like they were just responding defensively.
This would be why I will never be a Democrat: too many special interests paid for with government spending. What did you expect, Mark?
Finally, something posted. I've been trying to post comments for days only to have them lost by Blogger. I can anonymously but I know you don't like that, Mark. What's up?
Have you tried setting your browser to a lower security setting? That might help. If not, just email them to me and I will post them under your name.
Oh, and dick? Regarding your comment below...YOU spelled "color" wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-our.2C_-or
This is why all that noise about the Democrats losing their "super majority" when Brown was elected was nonsense.
The Democrats never had a solid 60-vote majority. They had, maybe, a 54-vote majority. Lieberman can never be counted on for anything, there's an independent who sometimes caucuses with the Dems, then there's Specter, and a few guys who just use their vote to extort pork from the rest of the Senate.
However, the reason that our legislators behave this way, Mark, is that this is what voters demand from them. When the health care legislation passed my sister's husband was screaming that Klobuchar and Franken didn't get anything for Minnesota. He seemed more angry about that than the actual content of the legislation. Senators and their staffs probably spend more time on "constituent services" than anything else other than fund raising.
Everyone, and in particular big corporations, expect the government to shower them with goodies in the form of sweet-heart contracts, tax exemptions, regulations that protect their monopolies and hinder their competitors and employees, and the like. People all want the benefits of big government: good roads, clean air and water, national defense, protection from terrorists, educated and healthy children, a good life for the elderly, a market that doesn't destroy the economy through its own greed, advantageous trade with foreign countries, etc. But few are willing to pay for those benefits through taxes.
We all talk the big patriotic talk, but we don't really care about America: all we really care about is our little piece of it. It's especially obvious when you consider the shabby treatment our veterans received all throughout the Bush administration while the rest of us were supposed to party on instead of actually paying for the wars. Bush chose to reduce taxes for the wealthy, creating the huge deficit we're now faced with.
The truth is that in this age of giant multinational corporations and countries like China, South Korea, Russia, and Venezuela that heavily protect their industries, making the US government smaller would be economic suicide. Dismantling the reviled "big government" would be unilateral disarmament in the Corporate Wars that will dominate the 21st century. Because there are only two kinds of corporations now: multinationals and the companies that are shaking in their boots that they'll either be swallowed up by the multinationals or crushed as they throw their weight around.
Holy shee-at, blk. That last paragraph is going to cause some heads to explode.
I am curious that in all this talk about spending and the ballooning deficit why is there no talk of how much we spent in Iraq and its value? Oil companies and defense contractors made quite a bit of money with our tax dollars and yet not a peep from the right in complaint. Only the social programs like health care.
"We all talk the big patriotic talk, but we don't really care about America: all we really care about is our little piece of it."
Two words: "fuck you"
The other part of the Democrats' problem is that they don't drive the fucking conversation-the Republicans do.
Presidency. Senate. House. All in Democratic hands, and little dickie boy has to cry about those big, bad, Republicans.
M is right that the Dems will pay for their mistakes this November, he's just wrong [partly] about what those mistakes were.
Thanks, Mark. I altered some of my security settings and it works fine now.
Thanks for posting blk but I can't comment on something unless I see your source of information.
I agree. What is the source for the assertion that Franken and Kloubachar did not get anything for MN?
Donald, please post the link that proves that you actually agree with me. Iowa kid, I'm also going to need a link from you also proving that your computer works better than it did the other day.
Well, I can see that the behavior on this site has degenerated into the third grade while I've been away.
Mark, one thing you might want to consider is that not all Democrats in Congress are the same. You are treating them in a monolithic fashion and it's really not very fair. There are good ones, medium ones and bad ones.
I also don't think that my state is going to "pay" in the fall. Alexi Giannoulias is going to beat Mark Kirk in the fall. We are not going to send a Republican to the Senate much to the ballyhoo of the media.
...not all Democrats in Congress are the same.
Yeah, the majority - particularly in the House - was made possible by accepting centrist candidates, not left-wingers. They happen to be the ones that aren't behaving as the lunatic left expected (i.e. they aren't obedient little critters).
What lunatic left?
The "progressives" if you prefer - the ones that thought because a bunch of centrist Democrats had created Congressional majorities that the country as a whole had taken a giant lurch to the left. The ones who expected to see the entire progressive agenda sweep through Congress and be signed into law by the Obamessiah.
Look, my politics run libertarian, so I know what is is to be on the outside of the mainstream looking in. The majority of 'dialog' about left and right here are from equally distant perspectives, but most of the left-leaning participants don't acknowledge that.
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