This is the Netroots' Waterloo.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

I take no joy in writing this, but I think it must be said.

At this point in time it seems reasonably clear that both the House and Senate have passed health care reform legislation which bears very little resemblance to the plans espoused by various interweb commentators, bloggers, pundits, and self-appointed keepers of the "progressive" flame. It is likely that the bill which emerges from committee will bear close resemblance to both the House and Senate bills, neither of which support a strong public option or an extension/buy-in provision for medicare for those 55-65. It is entirely likely that the resulting bill will be signed into law by President Obama. While we do not know the exact details of the final bill, some assumptions can be drawn from what has been delivered by the House and the Senate. This bill will do little to reduce health care costs - one of the primary objectives of this whole endeavour. It will expand coverage, while simultaneously putting a larger burden of the middle class for health care costs. It is a deeply flawed piece of legislation, which may end up costing a very large amount of money. Which is, as far as I'm concerned, what we were trying to avoid. In short, the efforts of the self-appointed "progressive" wing of the Democratic party have been a complete and utter failure with respect to this legislation. Even those members of the House and Senate most closely aligned with the views of the Netroots and progressives are likely to vote for whatever comes out of committee.

Why?

Let's go to the map. There are between thirty and fifty million Americans (depending on whose figures you use) who basically have no access to health care. Until recently I was one of them. And despite its flaws, this bill (provided it sticks to the roadmap given by the House and Senate) will make reasonable health care affordable to many who could not afford it before. It will remove the draconian restrictions on pre-existing conditions, set reasonable limits on out-of-pocket expenses, and begin to regulate the health insurance industry in a way which it has never been regulated before.

None of what is being proposed is as ideal as a single-payer plan. The lack of a public option is pretty shit. But at the end of the day, what has been accomplished here is little short of a miracle, considering the obstacles to its implementation. This is why nearly all of the progressives in both the House and Senate will vote for the bill, imperfect as it may be. And here I come to the point of this post:

The progressive blogosphere, DU, et al. have focused on the insurance industry to the exclusion of everything else. It may surprise you to discover that most people care about their own health and the health of their families more than they care for making a stand on a political position. People want to have access to health care. They want their children to have access to health care. That is the primary concern. Whether or not the CEO of BigHealthInsuranceCo gets his bonus payout this year is of little relevance to most people, provided that they have access to decent care.

Providing decent care is the driving force behind the current legislation.

Everybody hates health insurance companies. Hell, I hate them. But most people prioritize the health of their family ahead of their populist concerns about bastard healthCo executives. And unless it is totally gutted, the conference bill will provide better options for most people.

Which brings me to my last point...

The netroots has failed to recognize or identify with any of the above, choosing instead to focus on destroying the health insurance industry. This was never a widely popular position to begin with, and it is certainly less popular than ever when we are on the cusp of achieving the first serious health care reform in a quarter of a century. If you are wondering why your progressive heroes in the House and Senate have abandoned your fight, one need look no further than this. Destroying the for-profit health care industry was never much more than a pipe dream - one that has very little relevance to the average unemployed or self-employed person who would like little more than to be able to buy decent health insurance for a reasonable price. In terms of hitting the mark, the progressive netroots have aimed for Atlanta and hit Antarctica, and even their strongest proponents in Congress are willing to give this a try, lest we spend another ten or fifteen years in the wilderness.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Baloney

Our elected officials caved on this before the negotiations even started. To blame the netroots is ridiculous. We lobbied for health CARE, not insurance reform.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. I'm not blaming the netroots for anything.

I'm saying they have demonstrably failed. It's kind of hard to argue with that, seeing as most of them are saying exactly the same thing.

[Mithreal]

8. That we need to take corporate money let alone corporate welfare out of politics?

before any meaningful change can even be hoped

Who the hell sold us the hope of change before we fixed the underlying problem?

[coti]

12. We didn't fail. Obama lied. nt

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. Yes, yes, yes. Horrible. Terrible. Never before has a politician lied.

Please, spare me.

[coti]

14. It blows my mind that that's just cool with you. nt

[laughingliberal]

15. Politicians do often lie to get elected. It does not mean they don't pay a price for it

How high a price depends on many factors. One of the paramount factors is most likely to be how much the people who elected him were invested in that promise. Many politicians say they will not raise taxes and then do raise taxes. Many pay little price for it. Breaking that promise, however, was the downfall of Bush the first because the people who elected him saw it as central to the job for which they elected him.

[Cronus Protagonist]

16. +1

Total unadulterated bull shit.

[leftstreet]

3. Obama: "I want to cover everybody"

I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is unless you have what's called a single-payer system in which everyone's automatically covered, you're probably not going to reach every single individual. Barack Obama, July 22 2009



Transcript: Obama's News Conference

President Talks Health Care in his Latest Prime Time News Conference on July 22, 2009

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/23/politics/main5182101.shtml

:eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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

[Egnever]

5. I agree and dissagree.

I think the netroots if you will has lost its friggin mind personaly, However their loud voice has had its effect and has pushed both bills if not where they wanted them to be, at least a little more in the direction they would have liked them to go.

It is unfortunate that they cant see the small victories they have won and be proud of them instead wailing that the end result wasnt the perfection they had envisioned.

[Mithreal]

9. end result? egn, there has been no final result yet

it is too soon to be celebrating, get real

[Egnever]

17. True enough there is no end result yet

Am I celebrating?

[Mithreal]

25. "instead wailing that the end result"

[madfloridian]

6. Can you wait 4 years to have pre-existing coverage?

Because it won't be there for adults until then.

[Egnever]

18. would it be there sooner if we did nothing instead?

[depakid]

7. Oh, people are really going to enjoy the high deductible. high copay, junk insurance

that they're going to be forced to buy- even as it increases steadily in costs well above the rate of inflation (and the ability of wages to keep up).

And yep- they're going to blame all those folks in the netroots who tried to warn them about the fleecing (and continuing claim denials) they're about to get.

:rofl:

[Egnever]

19. Can you point us to one reliable source that predicts anything you say here?

My bet is no.

[JDPriestly]

10. The Netroots movement toward a public option will eventually prevail.

For the moment, Congress is passing a second-rate bill without effective cost controls and only partially effective regulations. States, however, will have the ability to increase regulations, and, when the costs for covering the heretofore uninsured start to rise, as they will under this toothless bill, some means of pressuring insurance companies to cut profits will become necessary. At that point, we will get either a public option, single payer or some other effective cost-cutting measures.

So, the OP is taking a momentary set-back as a loss. It isn't a loss. It is a momentary set-back. Congress votes once. We in the Net-roots keep working and working. We know what is right for this country. Oddly enough, many members of Congress do too. They just lack the backbone to do what is right. It's called corruption. The Net-roots is not corrupt. The Main-Stream Media and Congress are corrupt. There isn't as much money at stake in Net-roots' movement. That is why it is not corrupt.

[Egnever]

20. Now thats what I am talking about!

Time and again the voice of sanity comes from the old time posters.

[coti]

11. I'm with you- "most people" care about health care costs.

And controlling those costs is exactly what this bill does not do. Instead of using the power of the federal government to compete with the industry in order to keep costs down, we're attempting to impose regulations them. Even to regulate them so weakly we've had to concede a mandate to them- customers guaranteed under federal law. So we've committed, from now into the indefinite future, to private insurance companies being the centerpiece of our healthcare system without any substantial tool for controlling costs.

So, I agree with you. I think that what you're missing is that, ten years from now, "most people" aren't going to be pleased about their healthcare premiums having doubled again. But by then we'll already have committed to reform through the private sector and the insurance companies will have gained such a lobbying stranglehold in Washington that there won't be a whole lot anybody will be able to do about it.

This will not be the netroots' Waterloo. As I posted before, it will be Obama's Iraq. Worse than Iraq, even. We'll be trying to dig ourselves out of this hole we're digging deeper and deeper into for many decades. We'll be long gone out of Iraq and Afghanistan by the time we get back on the right track again in our healthcare system.

[girl gone mad]

21. Obama is throwing the netroots under the bus..

to pass reform which doesn't even have popular support, won't control costs, doesn't guarantee health care (merely insurance coverage), will force already strapped young people to spend a big portion of their pay on a product most of them will get little use from, and looks to all the world like another huge corporate bailout paid for on the backs of the middle class.

Speaking of Waterloo, this bill is about as tactical as amputating your leg to save your foot.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

36. There is no bus.

to pass reform which doesn't even have popular support

Yes it does.

won't control costs

I think most people agree on that.

doesn't guarantee health care (merely insurance coverage)

It guarantees a basic level of service.

will force already strapped young people to spend a big portion of their pay on a product most of them will get little use from

What would you suggest, exactly? Allow people to buy insurance only when they get sick. That'd be a neat trick. I'd love to be able to buy car insurance after I've had a crash.

and looks to all the world like another huge corporate bailout paid for on the backs of the middle class.

Yes, providing insurance to poor people is a horrible, terrible burden. Which is what happens in all of those countries everybody loves that have universal health care. Really, who did you think was going to pay for this?

[rwheeler31]

22. I do not put nuts in pie.

Let them mix it up.

[rockymountaindem]

23. How can it be Waterloo? We've never even had Jena and Austerlitz.

The "netroots" still hasn't ever really won a battle. It can't be Waterloo if we've never won anything. I'm not a big fan of protesting because I think that for whatever reason "taking it to the streets" doesn't seem to accomplish much in this country (the Civil Rights movement being a prominent exception), but typing on the web and signing online petitions has to be the biggest waste of time ever.

I'm only here because I enjoy debating (sometimes arguing). I have no illusions that this is going to change anything.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

24. Thank you for the OP.

You've respectfully made some good points. Everyone's patience has been exhausted after years of being treating as in significant members of society, many after
working so hard to change the status quo. It's going to take baby steps. We are not going to get the sweeping changes we were lead to believe we would see.
Somehow we have to find a way to work with that. What I'm personally not going to do is abandon the party or allow myself to become bitter and apathetic. I totally
understand though people that have just had enough and choose a more radical approach.

[TreasonousBastard]

26. The "netroots" (however you define it) seems to have tried to...

become the intellectual foundation of the left, but it's often as sadly lacking as the rightwing forums and gasbags.

Discussing what should be has been confused with demanding what must be.

There are cogent points to be made for healthcare being a right and how the society should secure this right. Single payer, regulated insurance, savings accounts... all, and more, can be discussed and have their points, but not only have far too many bloggers and blowhards insisted that they have the only way (without backing it up properly)they have ignored the political realities of how anything gets done in this country.

Lost in all the pontificating, proseletyzing, and finger-pointing is the simple concept of universal access to affordable healthcare. If expanding Medicare to everyone would work, well, OK. If expanding insurance company rolls would work, well, OK, too. The point is to get the care at reasonable cost.

A major problem is that too many are making assumptions about what would or would not work without anything to back it up.

[Wardoc]

27. This is the Democratic party's Waterloo. So many of the base are going to stay home, go 3rd party,

and they will be right for doing so. This bill will require people to purchase a product they disagree with. You claim it will be affordable, but you don't know the finances of other people. It is not entirely subsidized. It will be at BEST an additional cost burden to a lot of families. For many others, they will simply have to be in violation of the law because they can't afford it.

This bill would be vetoes by BO if Republicans controlled Congress and had crafted the identical thing. This bill is not simply flawed, it is a net loss. Coupling this with the obscene decisions on other matters and many of us are really, truly backed into one corner - we need to make the party bleed a little to realize they can not take us for granted anymore. It seems time for the yucky medicine.

Ideology comes before party loyalty. Purpose is more important than who gets a signing ceremony.

No money, no vote in 2010.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

37. Hey, fine. The teabaggers are saying exactly the same thing.

So if the teabaggers and the netroots stay home in 2010 they basically cancel each other out. Have fun stormin' the castle.

[FrenchieCat]

28. I agree with many parts of what you say.......

However, I do believe that folks here, the netroots, expected a lot, and now are exhausted and feel they need to see, touch and feel a definite win. Some do not see it in this bill, and yes, it is and ideological win they want. At some point, they may see it differently, but they don't see it now. Over time, I think the progress that we are slowly making will be come more clear to more than at the present. But it will take a long time to heal deep scars of cynicism, suspicion and of abject disappointment......because to an extent, that is all that we have experienced for years now.

Obama is being largely blamed for the unhappiness and lack of satisfaction that many here feel. Sure, He wasn't going to remake America, but many thought that, well, he actual was. If we don't forget that injustices have been present since day one of this nation, and that they weren't going to melt away in a year's time, that could help perspective.


and no, we didn't elect a socialist communist radical who was going to go over the head of congress and close Wall Street, padlock the insurance companies, and give everyone subsidized healthcare in one year's time.


We are now on a slow road to mend, but it will be a steep climb and an arduous journey.

Unfortunately, some of us may not make it to the mountain top; only those who keep their eyes on the prize and understand that we really all want something similar, but the problem is the road to getting there. It's just not that easy. Nothing is. That really is the way that it has always been.

[Prism]

29. Democrats are about to fail where Reagan succeeded.

The netroots aren't much powerful as a stand-alone entity. However, they form the potential for a significant base and powerful electoral movement akin to the unholy marriage of the Religious Right and Ronald Reagan that created an ascendancy of conservatism that we are still living through to this day.

But rather than unite with this potential, the Democratic Party is continually attempting to divorce it. Somehow, the Republican created media frame that Democrats should fear liberalism has a firm grip on the imaginations of political advisers and policy wonks alike. Look at President Obama's appointments. His administration is loaded with Clintonite holdovers who never met a liberal policy they weren't afraid to distance themselves from in fear of electoral defeat.

Because the progressive core, the netroots, and the newly ascendant Democratic Party are such a natural, gravitational fit, it makes the party's continued attempts at distance create greater and greater amounts of tension. Rather than embrace a true movement and ride it to future victories, the party and President cower and bow before the palpably dying remnants of Reaganism.

This is all fear-based. This President fears. Our party's leaders fear.

The more they do this, the more tension they create, the more they attempt to divorce themselves and settle for being mere status quo politicians, the greater the chance that the opportunity to have a liberal form of Reaganism will pass this party by. Eventually, the progressive core and netroots will grow weary of being let down. They'll throw their hands in the air. And President Obama and the Democratic Party, rather than putting a stake through the heart of neo-conservatism, will have breathed new life and longevity into the Palinist portion of the Republican Party.

This isn't just unwise - it's dangerous.

And it isn't only bad for us, as we watch this President throw away the best opportunity we've had for reform in decades. It's bad for Republicans. They will never ever reform unless they have no other choice. Right now, the Democratic weakness is preventing that internal Republican reform from taking place as it normally would in this ebb of the political cycle.

So we end up with weak Democrats, no true movement to speak of, and Republicans with no cause to self-examine and self-correct.

This is really rotten for the entire country, for both parties, for all people.

But our leaders do nothing. It's almost unforgivable.

[aquart]

30. Killing the messenger?

Basically you are taking the Obama position, that the only way to get anything was to give away our strongest objective first. Bull cookies. Pasture pastry. Meadow muffins. Barn buns. Coprolyte cookies.

[madrchsod]

31. the bill is a cruel joke on the insured and unisured in this country

the bill does`t change the way insurance companies do business in the usa. in fact it creates a whole new taxpayer funded customers that will still face what those who have insurance now face and creates a whole new set of problems.

[notesdev]

32. On what planet is this true??

>Providing decent care is the driving force behind the current legislation.

No it ain't. Increasing corporate profits is the driving force behind the legislation. Is the bribery not open enough for you to see it?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

38. Uh, corporate profits are pretty high as it is.

Let us just say that the insurance industry is in no danger of going the way of the dodo, regardless of whether this bill passes.

[mmonk]

33. "Providing decent care is the driving force behind the current legislation"

Nope. There are many working models in the world that do a much better job at that than ours that could be copied.

[Odin2005]

34. Bullshit. The insurance industry IS THE PROBLEM!!!

[NoPasaran]

35. This has been a lousy year for me personally

But if it ends with Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington being confined on St. Helena, I'll have to change the rating for 2009 to "Not So Bad, All Things Considered"

[Edweird]

39. Get back to me in a year about that. And again in 3 years.

Rumors of the netroots demise are greatly exaggerated.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

40. Let's see how well O does next time --

he goes to the Netroots for the whole lotta do-re-me he will need for his next campaign.

Whose "waterloo" is that going to be again?