That would be political suicide. I don't think the dems, as a whole, are that far out of touch. People are unhappy with this bill, the way it was written, buying of votes, lack of transparency and not keeping the promises that got him elected. Scott Brown won because of this, not because of the dems failure to pass any meaningful legislation.
Will Scott Brown Kill ObamaCare?
- Thread starter madanthonywayne
- Start date
That would be political suicide. I don't think the dems, as a whole, are that far out of touch. People are unhappy with this bill, the way it was written, buying of votes, lack of transparency and not keeping the promises that got him elected. Scott Brown won because of this, not because of the dems failure to pass any meaningful legislation.
But Joe, you're completely missing the point. What makes for "cramming it down our throats" is the fact that the public is in an uproar screaming that they don't want it. The amount of time spent is irrelevant. If the people don't want it, and you pass it anyway (especially thru some legislative gimmick), that's ramming it down our throats.
They may not want this particular bill, but they sure as hell don't want what the Republicans are selling. The people of Mass are going to regret their decision. Does it make any sense to say if the Democrats are accomplishing nothing, vote someone in who will help give us more nothing?
That would be sucide with the industry backers (Republicans) but it would not be sucide for the general public. It would show people that someone in Washington has a freaking backbone.The problem with the bill as it is written, is that not enough of it has been promulgated to the general public. There has been too many lies spread about the bill. Out of the 2000 page document there are 600 pages dealing with coverage expansion and balance of the verbage deals with cost and quality contrainment issues and incentives. There is a novel idea embedded in the bill, public metrics on providers. So we can see a providers track record. Better pay for better outcomes. That all sounds pretty good to me.
Once the public sees what the bill does and does not do, all of those lies currently embedded in the minds of voters will quickly fade. And those in the industry know this, hence all the scare tactics.
Bottom line, this industry needs more clarity and more competition.
Not really. Outside of the teabaggers, I haven't seen much "uproar" or "screaming." Nor am I convinced that anything like a plurality of the public has the slightest idea what is in the bill, or how it would affect anything. Which is to say that, to the extent the public is expressing opinions on those subjects, they are uninformed ones. That said, public approval of bills like this tends to be more about the process than the actual contents of the bill.
But let's see what people think is wrong with it:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/11/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6084856.shtml
As we can see from the charts, the public overwhelmingly thinks the bill doesn't do enough to control costs or regulate insurance coverage. And more people think it doesn't do enough to expand coverage than those who think it does too much.
So the public's complaint seems to be that the bill is a sell-out to corporate interests - private insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical corporations, specifically: the precise lobbies that the Republican obstructionism is designed to cater to. The disapproval of Obama's handling of the issue, then, amounts to a perception that he's failed to stand up to discredited Republicans and the corporate predators that underwrite them.
Which is to say that I wouldn't get to giddy about the impact of this stuff on elections next year. Disappointment that Obama hasn't steamrolled the Republicans on this issue might keep some voters at home, but it isn't going to make them vote for Republicans. It might even motivate them to elect more assertive Democrats. Even if it results in improved performance for the Republicans in the midterm elections, it doesn't indicate alignment between the public's agenda and the Republican one, and so is probably a long-term liability for the right. Increased power to work against the public's agenda isn't going to put the public on your side; it's just going to shift their ire from the spineless Dems to the craven Reps.
You mean nowhere near accurate, and the residue of deliberate attempts to mislead you. Really: get thee to reality based news sources, if facts are what you want.navigator said:
Here: http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleenr/enridx.htm Goes to 2004, hasn't been much shift since.
The truth is that the Republicans in Mass have been running such lousy candidates that they can't swing the votes from the independents, which make up the largest category of registered voters.navigator said:
Wow are you in denial. Republicans now hold an 8 point lead in the generic congressional ballot. Unless something big happens between now and November, the Dems are going to be nuked. Here's an excerpt from an interesting article on the Democratic decline:
Since those heady days, however, the Democratic realignment has stalled. By every polling measure the party is losing ground. Obama’s favorability ratings continue a steady downward trend. These movements are not the result of restored public esteem for the Republican Party. The stature of the GOP remains low, with its favorability ratings still 11 points behind those of the Democratic Party.
In practice, the decline of Democratic fortunes coincides with the growing perception that Obama’s three primary legislative initiatives--health care reform, cap-and-trade, and increased regulation of the financial sector--have failed to improve the daily lives of most voters, voters who are impacted by the worst economy in 70 years. At a time when many voters are frightened by unprecedented deficits, the threat of escalating health care costs and the likelihood of tax increases to pay for all this--Obama is being perceived as governing like a “tax and spend liberal.”
The Pew Center has been tracking key public attitudes toward Obama and found that over the year the percentage of voters saying he listens to liberals in his party more than moderates grew by 9 points, from 34 percent to 43 percent, while the percentage saying he listens more to the moderate wing fell by 13 points, from 44 percent to 31 percent.
And, so now a Democratic Party that seemed poised for electoral greatness has reverted back to the debilitating political condition that ailed it during the 1970s and 1980s. It is increasingly perceived as too liberal. It must convince the white working class that it will protect its interests—not just those of the very rich and very poor. Electoral success blinded the party to these nagging problems. Festering old perceptions have come back with a fury. That’s why Scott Brown and his pickup truck managed to drive such a large hole through the very center of the president’s agenda.
In practice, the decline of Democratic fortunes coincides with the growing perception that Obama’s three primary legislative initiatives--health care reform, cap-and-trade, and increased regulation of the financial sector--have failed to improve the daily lives of most voters, voters who are impacted by the worst economy in 70 years. At a time when many voters are frightened by unprecedented deficits, the threat of escalating health care costs and the likelihood of tax increases to pay for all this--Obama is being perceived as governing like a “tax and spend liberal.”
The Pew Center has been tracking key public attitudes toward Obama and found that over the year the percentage of voters saying he listens to liberals in his party more than moderates grew by 9 points, from 34 percent to 43 percent, while the percentage saying he listens more to the moderate wing fell by 13 points, from 44 percent to 31 percent.
And, so now a Democratic Party that seemed poised for electoral greatness has reverted back to the debilitating political condition that ailed it during the 1970s and 1980s. It is increasingly perceived as too liberal. It must convince the white working class that it will protect its interests—not just those of the very rich and very poor. Electoral success blinded the party to these nagging problems. Festering old perceptions have come back with a fury. That’s why Scott Brown and his pickup truck managed to drive such a large hole through the very center of the president’s agenda.
The New Republic
It's the economy stupid.
Just to interject: press designations of how "blue" (or "red") a state is are typically based not on voter registration but margins of victory (or defeat) in the most recent presidential election. And by that measure Massachussetts is indeed the bluest state (and probably has been for a while).
The emphasis on national results - to the exclusion of local ones - points out an important consideration when examining state election results in a national political context. Namely, state-level Republicans - and Republicanism - are different beasts than their national-level namesakes. Hence all the Republican governors in Massachussetts, the considerable Republican voter registration, etc. coexisting with a strong preference for Democrat presidents.
Congressional elections provide an interesting bridge between the two categories: one the one hand, Congressmen are federal office-holders and so bear on national politics. On the other hand, they are elected to represent the interests of the state of Massachussetts specifically, as opposed to a President (or Supreme Court Justice), who are responsible to the nation as a whole. So they tell us something about how a particular state would like to impact national policy, but do not necessarily indicate alignment with the broader national platform of the party of the electee. That latter implication depends strongly on the alignment of the candidate in question with his party's broader agenda (and how Brown's approval fares in the face of an RNC bent on party discipline should be revealing in that regard).
All that said, I don't think there's a lot of inference to be drawn from Brown's victory. People seem eager to view this election as a proxy of larger national issues (which is typical of special elections), but the reality of the election has more to do with the Coakley's incompetence than any decisive contest of partisan ideology or views on health care reform. It was less a referendum on Obama than a one-off freebie for Brown. To suggest that this result is a good predictor of the midterm elections is to imagine that every Democrat running for Congress next year will be comically incompetent.
As I understand, Clinton didn't have a good first year, either (guess why). But by the time he left, the deficit turned into a surplus and the economy had converted from recession to growth.
As for GWB, it took 9/11 to turn his fortunes around. As for America's fortunes during his era, that's a different story.
As for GWB, it took 9/11 to turn his fortunes around. As for America's fortunes during his era, that's a different story.
According to Rasmussen, which is well-known to produce results biased in favor of Republicans. That same Generic Congressional Ballot from Rasmussen had the Dem lead at all of 2 points at the last election, and the Democrats picked up almost 30 seats. So, to estimate based on that, I'd say that an 8-point Rasmussen lead would correspond to an expected outcome of the Democrats holding roughly steady.
I have to note that that article hardly sounds like a prediction of imminent electoral "nuking." The description is of a party stalled in its agenda, not so much one facing imminent loss of power. It's a long-term liability, in that the Republicans might get their acts together and bring up their favorability ratings over the coming years. But it's difficult to see how that's going to happen when Republicans are concentrated on obstructing issues that the public wants progress on.
Presidents rarely do, absent some kind of polarizing external crisis.
Which is why the recycling of populist rhetoric about how unpopular new Presidents are is so common from the opposition during those times. It's a cynical, calculated tactic that attempts to exploit the predictable deflation of a new President's approval ratings to aggrandize their own position in the minds of those ignorant of this trend.
Similar populist rhetorical strategies pop up in all sorts of predictable scenarios. For example in economic recovery, there is an expected, predictable delay between recovery of the financial sector and recovery of the labor market which is frequently exploited rhetorically.
The thing to note about populist rhetoric of this type is the condescension. Its target audience is presumed to be ignorant and gullible. Which, by the same coin, is the hallmark of elitism, and so a dangerous game to play. Tempting as it is to imagine the power of turning the ire of the proles on your enemies, it will backfire if the proles notice that you see them as inferior and are manipulating them.
Genuine populism doesn't have this problem, since it is based in substantial faith in and respect for the masses. It seeks to give the masses what they want, rather than pretend to speak for them.
The public is much more concerned about the economy and the budget deficit/debt than any of Obama and the Dems priorities. Healthcare, Cap and Trade, and Immigration Reform are all now losers. Independents, who typically decide elections, supported the Dems in 06 and 08 but now favor Republicans by nearly two to one.
Furthermore, Republicans are much more excited and energized right now than Democrats. Even Evan Bayh, the usually popular Democratic Senator from my home state of Indiana (he won his last election with 2/3 of the vote) is likely to face serious opposition ffor the first time in years.
I predict a Democratic bloodbath this November. Especially if they follow your advice and move even further left.
The economy is a major priority of the Dems. Health care is an aspect of that.
One of the more depressing aspects of all this is that a fair percentage of Americans think the economy is separable from the health care crisis.madanth said:
Health care is a bigger drag on the US economy than the bailout deficit, by far. It's killing the economy, especially manufacturing and other higher paid employment.
I'm sure Obama spent a few hours with his head in his hands, but he is smart enough to realise that this result indicates a complete rejection of his current policies.
Or the speed of them anyway.
He will make changes, and slow things down.
Or the speed of them anyway.
He will make changes, and slow things down.
So why did the healthcare "drag" wait so patiently for the collapse of the housing market in order to rear its ugly head?
Health care has been a part of the US economy for umpty-eleven years ...in good years and bad. So, ...how do you suppose that it suddenly leaped up and caused all of these problems at this particular time?
Baron Max
obviously I am guessing, but I think Obama is going to turn populist real quick. Until now Obama has tried to take the middle of the road approach. I would bet that he is going to take the gloves off now and come out fighting.
I expect him to come down hard on Wall Street. And instead of trying to pass big stuff through congress they will try smaller pieces of legislation designed to make to put Republicans and others who have sold their souls between a rock and a hard place. Look out, I think the gloves come off in the coming weeks.
I expect him to come down hard on Wall Street. And instead of trying to pass big stuff through congress they will try smaller pieces of legislation designed to make to put Republicans and others who have sold their souls between a rock and a hard place. Look out, I think the gloves come off in the coming weeks.
Your assertion is false, the healthcare issue did not wait patiently. It has always been there, it is still there. It has been neglected because of the special interests that dominate and profit from the current system as it is.
As time progresses and costs continue to rise, healthcare becomes more and more problematic because those costs are eating up more and more of the federal budget and adding to the debt.
Government by the way, already pays about 50 of the countries heatlhcare expenses. As more and more seniors start receiving Medicare, it is going to break Medicare. With politics as usual, that means higher Medicare taxes - a bandaid - instead of fixing the underlying causes. Healthcare reform is a mater of pay me today or pay me more tomorrow. It appears the country has chosen to the pay me ever more tomorrow option.