Democrats had only limited options to move a bill ahead:

[NJmaverick]

• Reach an agreement with Lieberman, which would mean stripping out the provisions that have kept progressives on board. This would very likely cause problems on the left — maybe even defections — unless the White House steps in to persuade senators such as Feingold and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.


• Win over Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), but she has also voiced serious reservations about the Medicare expansion and has resisted Democratic pressure to speed up the bill.


• Use reconciliation, a procedural maneuver to get around a filibuster and the need for Lieberman’s vote. It remains on the table, but it’s not a viable option at the moment, the official said

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30601_Page3.html

[leftstreet]

1. Will they have this much trouble with war funding bills?

:shrug:

[NJmaverick]

2. Since they will be able to get some Republican support, I seriously doubt it

[NJmaverick]

3. To the unreccers- If you are going to unrecc explain the option that was missed

[leftstreet]

6. Option: They had no intention of a bill that would help Americans

It was all smoke and mirrors to pass the US Insurance Profit Protection Act

[NJmaverick]

10. proof?

[ima_sinnic]

15. how can you prove a negative?

are you intending to drive your car off a cliff? no? PROVE IT!

[NJmaverick]

16. This isn't a negative, it's a motive and if you make such an accusation

you are required to provide proof. Unless you two consider yourselves some sort of modern day Lamont Cranstons.

[LooseWilly]

18. Option: Put the public option back, and the medicare buy in too. Then make the fuckers filibuster.

On live tv. Get everyone talking about it. Feed news to the talking heads.

Hell, arrange a set up with some media outlets... have security on hand, call a Democratic Caucus meeting, and when Lieberman shows up, have security sneer and tell him "You're not welcome, asshole. Go Away!"... and make sure the cameras catch the look on his face.

Make a media sideshow & electoral performance out of the whole thing... because that's all that's left here.

The Senate bill is a piece of shit, worse than useless- and Lieberman still isn't sure if he'll support it!!
(My personal theory is that he's going to hold out until the Senate includes government subsidized trips every financial quarter for all Health Insurance execs, and junior execs, to Thailand along with a complementary week with as many hookers of whatever size, shape, gender, orientation, fetish, or even species said execs & junior execs care to "partake of".)

This bill needs to be killed... or the filibuster needs to be faced down. So face down the filibuster with a good bill, and let the Republicans take the blame with the public if they kill it.

(And by the by... if the Senate passes some Lieberman acceptable piece of shit bill, and the WH plan is to then re-insert the public option in the Conference Committee... turns out, the Senate can filibuster Conference Reports just as easily as the bill they're threatening to filibuster now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_conference_committee

"Conference reports are privileged. And in the Senate, a motion to proceed to a conference report is not debatable, although Senators can generally filibuster the conference report itself.")

[NJmaverick]

22. You don't think the right wing media would be going 24/7 how the Republicans saved the nation?

[LooseWilly]

29. I think the right wing media is already going on thusly 24/7. I think the rest of the

media might start to do more stories on the obstructionism, the filibuster, the history of the filibuster... the history of health care reform efforts... meanwhile, they'll be monitoring tweets... could a Republican slip and get caught walking into a scandal after having had to hold the floor for 4-6 hours to keep the filibuster going?...

Might the spectacle of the news media coverage be enough to catch the attention even of the apolitical?? If the polls are right, and there is a huge majority of the public supporting a public option.. if not outright Single Payer... wouldn't that attention... that willingness to fight for what they want...

Wouldn't that be good press for '10? Rather than the news that they gave up?

Or will the public prefer the news that all us independent contractors, all us underemployed, all the people trying to exist in the cracks between the corporate cubicles- that we're all going to be forced to buy health insurance from the HMOs... and that the Congress is now setting minimum standards of coverage that we have to buy, but with no limits to what the HMOs can charge?

Make 'em filibuster it... and make sure that the public knows that the Republicans and Lieberman killed Health Care Reform.

[NJmaverick]

32. Remember how the death panels meme worked? With that sort of environment

I just don't see any realistic chance of hurting or embarrassing the GOP (if they filibustered).

[LooseWilly]

39. The "Democrats are weak" meme will be far easier to sell, if the Senate sells out everything

to Lieberman to pass a worthless bill. Without Lieberman, they can't pass a bill anyway.

If the Democrats in the Senate can't pass anything worthwhile, they might as well at least make a spectacle out of Republican obstructionism by means of a filibuster. At least that way they will have a chance to sell the "We fought for what the public wanted." meme.

And as for the death panel meme... I don't think that it "worked", rather I think the press covered it like they did because of the background spectacle of the townhall meeting chaos. It wasn't the "death panel" meme that was "selling", it was the spectacle. Force the Republicans to filibuster, and you create another spectacle. The media loves a spectacle, and they'll cover it... only this time the focus won't be the "death panel" crap the GOP was pushing, but rather it will be the Public Option and the Medicare Buy In. Policy wonk talk may not generate interest with the public, but put a spectacle in the background, and the public will eat it up.

The alternative is for the Democrats to cave ignominiously, and then the Republicans will be able to control the media message... because their boy Lieberman will be the "spectacle" that the media can sell- which means that it will be Lieberman's talking points that will be the center of all media coverage.

Or the Democrats can pass the Lieberman Health Care Reform, and the "spectacle" that is the center of the story for the media will be all the uninsured suddenly being forced to buy into an unregulated Health Care market... and the story will inevitably center on the bitterness and hardship that the Democratic "Reform" will generate.

Or, the Progressives can kill the bill, and then the "spectacle" will be the split in the Democratic party, with the Center at odds with the Left, and the arguments here on DU between the two factions will play out as a National Media story... and the media will inevitably blame the Progressives for killing "Reform" (which really isn't reform, but the wonkish details will be lost to the "spectacle" of the "Party Split")... and party morale will take a beating which will probably be reflected in '10.

As I see it... the only "pragmatic" option that isn't a public opinion drubbing for the Democrats... is to make the Republicans filibuster.

[saracat]

4. They shouln't move forward then. They have a garbage bill.

[MrCoffee]

21. Victory is yours.

[saracat]

42. I think not. Real HCR would be a victory for me, but we aren't going to get that.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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

[Name removed]

7. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AllentownJake]

8. NJApologist should be your name nt

[NJmaverick]

11. Name calling, sad.. Then again you have shown that is pretty much all you can offer

To think you actually thought I would buy your claims that you were some sort of world class professional debater. :7

[AllentownJake]

25. Have fun shilling tonight nt

[laughingliberal]

9. The OP assumes passing the bill is preferable to not passing it

As it stands now, it is not. Right up until the Medicare buy-in was killed by the newly anointed King of America, Joe Lieberman, I was willing to say there was a basis for expanding reform in it and it could, possibly, be improved if we maintain majorities in the midterms. There is not one provision in this bill which could be expanded to make it more affordable or helpful for working and middle class Americans. What are we going to expand? The fines for failing to afford private insurance?

Take the damn thing down. I see very few people, even on here, that realize what a nail in the coffin of the American working and middle classes this is. God help us all.

[NJmaverick]

12. No assumption these were the options the Dems faced

if you feel option one leads to a bill that is not worth passing, that is a reasonable position. However you are incorrect in your original assertion.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. BULLSHIT

A year ago, if we had a leader who wanted this and used his bully pulpit to talk about what HE wanted the congress to do, he'd have gotten it. last summer, when the teabagger assholes started, if we had a leader who called them out on their LIES, we could have gotten it.

This is a failure of leadership.

The issues you cite is where we are today. they simply ignore what could have been.

Plus its from Politico. Might as well cite Drudge.

[NJmaverick]

14. A year ago Bush was in office I doubt he would have done your bidding

Obama has put all sorts of pressure on Liberman, as has progressives, and how did that work out?


In the end Obama can put pressure but there are only 59 Senators who care or would listen. That's a fact, no matter how unpleasant and how much you wish to try and pretend it isn't.


In the end you haven't offered up a single viable option, just a lot of misdirected rage.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. Here's a sampler for ya

Chew on these thoughts .....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7235002

[ima_sinnic]

17. +++1 where was the "leadership" when Baucus was plotting with the insurance companies to rob us?

where was the "leadership" to back up that LIE that "all voices would be heard"?
where and when was any kind of specific "reform" ever described by our "leader"?
and I'd forgotten about the failure to smack down the teabaggers. I remember now how dismayed I was that they were barely addressed or called out. There was some lip service given to "calling out" people who lied, and Joe Wilson was "made an example," but that's as far as THAT went.

[rockymountaindem]

33. That's 100% right n/t

[AuntPatsy]

19. sad that u spend so much time

making excuses for why the dems have forgotten they are supposed to be the party that cares what the majority of americans feel and want and do everything in there power to ensure those concerns take precedence over political game playing anyone not horrified that the peoples concerns are once again being ignored in favor of corporate interests are just displaying willful ignorance that we are being forced into a good cop bad cop scenerio all designed to keep us at war with eachother instead of the real people that deserve our outrage

[NJmaverick]

23. Please do not mistake fact for excuse

[GreenArrow]

20. The Democrats limited their own options

at the onset because, with the exception of a few handfuls of people, spread across both chambers, they were never serious about providing any kind of real health reform.

[NJmaverick]

24. They had 59 votes with out help of the GOP or Liberman, how do you get around that fact?

[Stinky The Clown]

28. You take the bully pulpit and go to the people

Or you talke the summer off while they run rough-shod over the debate and frame it THEIR way.

Remove your rose colored glasses. They look sillier and sillier.

[NJmaverick]

30. Rose colored glasses would be the eye wear of choice for anyone that thinks

the Republicans or Liberman was open to persuasion. Have you listened to the GOP lately? They are beyond all forms of reason.

oh and their is a certain irony on someone who calls themselves a clown going on about looking silly

[Dr Fate]

37. Obama & Reid could have gotten Blue Dogs to compromise with the rest of the DEMS.

Instead of working to get the rest of the DEMS to compromise the other way around.

I never even saw them try.

Yes- Blue Dogs and even Joe are open to threats against their power, but those threats against their positions, campign dollars, support, etc. were never even made, at least not to my knowledge.

It's a lie to say that there was nothing Reid or Obama could have done to threaten & then persuade conservative DEMS.

If I'm to judge soley on actions and the current outcome, then it's pretty safe to guess that the Obama & Reid are pretty much in line with the Blue Dog/Lieberman way of thinking.

That would exaplain why they never even needed to "compromise" with themselves.

[Stinky The Clown]

41. Desperation has a certain smell to it ......

.... and it often manifests as personal over intellectual. I'm a clown. Don't mock me.

[spanone]

27. make them filibuster...keep them there thru the holidays. embarrass the republicans if its possible

[NJmaverick]

31. The repukes would not be embarrassed, they would be crowing about saving America

and the right wing media would be cranked up to spread the message.

[Dr Fate]

40. Maybe the DEM leadership simply AGREED with GOP opposition the PO too much to call their bluff.

In other words, maybe the most powerful, centrist, conservative & Blue Dog type DEMS actually agree with the GOP that there should not be a strong PO.

Many of the top DEMS in leadership positions have come right out and said they agree witht he GOP on this point, have they not?

Why call the GOP bluff on a filibuster if like Joe, Max, etc, you are a conservative, DLC type DEM who agrees with the GOP and opposes the PO to begin with?

If they really wanted a public debate & spot light on a strong PO and GOP obstructionsim, calling their bluff would be one way to do it.

Hell, the GOP might not even filibuster if we had DEMS who opposed them enough to actually call their bluff on it.

[guitar man]

34. Yanking Lieberman's Comittee Chairs?

what's wrong with that option? :shrug:

[Dr Fate]

38. They seem to agree with Lieberman, and like him as chair. That is why it was not an option.

Plus, they will probably need Joe as their excuse/scapegoat for the next time DEMS need to sell out the base.

[sendero]

35. Blah blah and more fucking blah..

... a retard president with fewer of his team in power rammed legislation more sweeping and unpopular down our throats routinely.

Our president with a massive majority in the house and a solid majority in the senate cannot get jack shit done.

Hmmm.... doesn't add up.

[Dr Fate]

36. If Obama & Reid TRULY oppose Joes's plan, then reconcilation IS the answer.

But then again, this is surely just more "blind outrage" on my part. ;)

Blue Dogs and and many top DEM power brokers in the top commitees come right out and say that they agree with te GOP that there should not be a PO.

AGREEMENT with conservativees, not inability to oppose them explains the run-around beter than your excuses.