What Public Option Supporters Won

[babylonsister]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/what-public-option-supporters-won


What Public Option Supporters Won
Jonathan Cohn


The public option is dead this morning. And this time, it isn't coming back to life. The Senate isn't going to include any version of the idea in its bill. And while the House can still demand a public option in conference, nobody I know expects the House to prevail.

The primary causes of death were the fierce opposition of special interests and the institutional habits of the United States Senate, in which a clear majority of senators representing an even clearer majority of the people lack the power to pass a bill. The time of death? Somewhere around 6:30 p.m. last night, during a meeting of the Democratic caucus, in which Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the votes for a public option just weren't there--and that passing a health care reform bill, as quickly as possible, was too important to risk further debate and delay.

After the meeting, even stalwart public option defenders like Sherrod Brown and Jay Rockefeller signaled their grudging agreement. And that's because they knew Reid was right. The Majority Leader had spent most of the last month trying to round up the votes for a public option and, when the votes weren't there, he put negotiators in a room to come up with an acceptable compromise. They did, only it still wasn't acceptable enough for Senator Joe Lieberman. And without Lieberman, the Democrats couldn't move forward, at least not without great risk to the broader project. At the end of the day, Brown and Rockefeller and their allies simply care too much about people struggling with their medical bills--people who would still benefit, clearly, from reform without a public option--to mount further resistance. Lieberman, by all appearances, felt no compunction to put people over pique. That's why he won.

Disappointed progressives may be wondering whether their efforts were a waste. They most decidedly were not. The campaign for the public option pushed the entire debate to the left--and, to use a military metaphor, it diverted enemy fire away from the rest of the bill. If Lieberman and his allies didn't have the public option to attack, they would have tried to gut the subsidies, the exchanges, or some other key element. They would have hacked away at the bill, until it left more people uninsured and more people under-insured. The public option is the reason that didn't happen.

And if public option supporters lost in the Congress, they won in the country as a whole. The underlying political problem for liberals remains what it has been for a generation: profound and widespread distrust of government. But polls consistently showed voters thought the public option advocates were right--that, at least when it comes to health insurance, government can be trusted. It was a small victory, but it's on top of such small victories that political movements are built. Someday in the future, that movement may be powerful enough to win more sweeping changes. Who knows, maybe those changes will include a government-run insurance plan.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Thin gruel.

[ElboRuum]

2. Already unrec'd into the negatives.

Whether you agree with this or not, people need to give this a read.

[NJmaverick]

3. I think so people are becoming anger and indignation junkies

[derby378]

6. It's an interesting viewpoint, but it doesn't change the basic fact...

Under the bill, we are all shackled to the leash of Big Insurance, and if we don't want to play along, we face fines and/or imprisonment. Your health insurance company just became a unaccountable, privatized, subcontractor branch of the Federal government.

[ElboRuum]

22. As I said...

It needs to be read. Too many around here are discounting opposing views. And I don't doubt that you are right, I largely disagree with myself with this point of view. But the idea that something should be buried because of disagreement (at least that's what I take unrecs to mean) means that DU is becoming less a group of intelligent, well reasoned people who welcome challenge to their viewpoints and hence relish the opportunity to make them stronger, and more a left-wing echo chamber, which by definition weakens the left and movement toward progressivism.

I nearly shit myself the other day when I saw a particularly scathing critique of a positive view of Obama and his policies. It was a well reasoned critique, and it was in the greatest tradition of discourse that can be found here. Replies to this critique? 'Ditto'. I shit you not. I know several someones were trying to be funny, but I didn't find it at all amusing. The idea that the weakness on the left is the fact that we don't have any 'dittoheads' is laughable, and that somehow factionalization of view and sterilization of discourse is somehow advantageous is ludicrous in the extreme. And while it may be offered in a sarcastic fashion, it has been suggested with some seriousness around here that we fail because we are NOT pure of purpose.

DU's problem isn't Obama, nor is it the Dems in Congress. Nor is the left's problem in general these things.

We cannot continue to present ourselves either here or out in the larger world as intelligent, well-intentioned, reasonable people who understand the need for change and would like the opportunity to lead this country toward it, unless we understand that we cannot claim to have principles commensurate with such if we are simply going to indulge lizard-brained reactionary stupidity amongst ourselves while we make that claim.

Whether the farthest of the left realize it or not, they could learn a thing or two from people who differ, as much as that might bake their noodles. To bury opposing views is to render oneself ignorant of them. And once one ensconces oneself in a place where only people who think in lockstep abound, those views become insular. Once insular, they become dogma. Once dogma, a person who holds them forgets the reasons for holding those views in the first place. Much like religion, it then just simply becomes immutable truth, easy pickings for people who are still not convinced of its wisdom and can say clearly and concisely why. And finally, since no group of people who find themselves as a minority view can exact an agenda without the assistance of a sympathetic majority, and since they no longer have the words to convince others, their view, no matter how correct, noble, or wise, becomes nothing greater than a philosophical abstraction which never finds expression.

[beaglelover]

4. We didn't win anything. n/t

[Old Codger]

5. The time of

death of this republic will follow shortly after this... we are definitely circling the drain, the new name of this country will be something on the order of "The Corporate States of ?" . The United States of America no longer exist as a recognizable entity.

[beaglelover]

7. I agree. The USA is owned by Wall Street. :( n/t

[global1]

15. Somebody Should Re-Name Each State With A Corp Name That Is Most Prominent In That State........

The Corporate States of America - and each state name changed to a Corporation. For example: Conn = Aetna.

[yurbud]

8. I don't like subsidies unless they are tied to strict price controls on premiums and

limits on the percentage of premiums that can be spent on overhead.

[laughingliberal]

14. Have to agree. Same applies to mandates for me nt

[yurbud]

19. Obama is so smart, I can't believe he would do something so politically suicidal

[enlightenment]

9. My, my.

"They would have hacked away at the bill"

Would have? They did.

"Maybe someday." "May be." "maybe."

I'm so thrilled to be part of this amazing social change.

woohoo.

[Cleita]

10. We have a workable government run insurance program. The problem is

that it needs to cover everyone, not just seniors. This war isn't over yet. We have lost a battle, but people are worked up enough now that they aren't going to give up.

[laughingliberal]

11. Great, so we convinced most of the country the PO was needed then we failed to get one for them

I'm encouraged.

The first glaring problem with this article is we should not have needed to push the bill to the left. It should have started out with single payer on the table and public option (a fucking real one) would have been a compromise. We started with acceptable public option and have negotiated it down to a bill which will enrich the insurance companies with tax dollars and the last pennies middle and working class families are managing to hang on to.

[mike_c]

12. sprinkling sugar on a shit sandwich....

Ugh.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

16. typical New Republic pile of stinking dog shit.

[still_one]

17. The leadership never intended a public option or medicare buy-in, we were played for suckers

Let them prove me wrong. They can bring it back under reconciliation

[damntexdem]

18. Approximately ...... zilch.

And it had better come back in some form, at least a Medicare buy-in, or there will be hell to pay for Democrats in Congress.

[kenny blankenship]

20. Cost Plus 10 is how Halliburton ran their Iraq scam.

Watch Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers.

hey, if it was good enough for Halliburton, it should be good enough for the insurance mafia, right?

[FormerDittoHead]

21. They would have tried to gut the subsidies?? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THEY *WANTED*???

Nice try. Gov't money going directly to insurance companies. Yeah. They were going to fight that part. :sarcasm:

[RoyGBiv]

23. And ... one more kick

That exhausts my links I was going to post this morning. :)

I was off the grid yesterday and so had a lot of catching up to do.

[placton]

24. I call this a Native American argument

"moving you to the reservation, and killing millions of you native peoples will benefit your descendants" and voila' - gambling!

[bigtree]

25. christ

It's bad enough without these weak excuses, trying to convince that piss is rain.

And, 'someday?' I heard something during the election about 'the urgency of now'.

[ipaint]

26. Keep people stupid and obedient. Cohn is a toady.

"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

George Carlin.

[Tailormyst]

27. We won nothing

The Insurance companies and the politicians they own are the big winners.

[QC]

28. Pearls of wisdom from The New Republic(an). No thanks. n/t