"Democrats chose the best policy, & Republicans chose the best politics. I'm happy with the choice."

[Pirate Smile]

Was It Worth It?



Ross Douthat assumes that health care reform played a key role in the debacle, and asks:

Was the 111th Congress’s flurry of legislative activity worth the backlash it helped create? Were the health care bill and the stimulus worth handing John Boehner the gavel in the House of the Representatives? Did it make sense to push and push and then keep on pushing, even after the polls and town halls and special-election outcomes made it clear the voters were going to push back?

I don't think that the decision to pursue health care reform was a bad one. Obama ran on health care reform. This was the holy grail of Democratic policy for 60 years, and if Douthat wants to imagine the base's response to Obama deciding not to do it with huge majorities in each house, he should imagine a Republican president appointing an openly pro-Roe v. Wade Supreme Court justice when they are 4 votes to overturn the decision. And the public as a whole demanded it as well. In February of 2009, the public by 59%-12% favored health care reform. They may have turned against the bill as it dragged through Congress, but they always insisted that some kind of reform happen. (That's why Republicans had to disingenuously couch their opposition as a plea to "start over.")

But let's accept Douthat's premise for a moment that the decision to pursue comprehensive health reform hurt Democrats. Would I accept the trade-off? Yes, I would. Chances like this simply don't come along very often.

I'd also note that the decision to pursue a comprehensive plan was as much a GOP choice as a Democratic choice. Numerous Democrats in the Senate were desperate for bipartisan cover and only mildly committed to comprehensive reform. If any Republican Senators had put a deal on the table, almost any deal at all, however puny, at least one of those Democrats would have jumped at it. But Republicans were following Mitch McConnell's astute analysis that any bill with bipartisan support would become popular, and thus that withholding bipartisan support would hurt the Democrats but not Republicans. Republicans persistently followed an all-or-nothing strategy, and Democrats took all.

Which is to say, if Douthat is correct about his political premises, both parties had to choose between politics and policy. Democrats could have minimized their losses at the cost of sacrificing the health reform they wanted. Or Republicans could have minimized the scope of health care reform, at the cost of minimizing their potential wave. Democrats chose the best policy, and Republicans chose the best politics. I'm happy with the choice. Mitch McConnell won his election, and Democrats won health care reform. The latter is going to around a lot longer than the former.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/78910/was-it-worth-it

Skinner made this point himself today.

Skinner ADMIN (1000+ posts) Wed Nov-03-10 02:35 PM
Response to Original message
6. If health care cost us the election, it was worth it.
That is the single most important piece of legislation since the Great Society. Presidencies come and go, but health care is here to stay. It will be his legacy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9466796&mesg_id=9466848

They are both 100% correct.

If you want a party that will choose politics over policy, you'll have to find a new one. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid all picked policy over politics and electoral safety.

When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, striking down Jim Crow in July 1964, he famously remarked to his young press secretary, Bill Moyers, "We have lost the South for a generation."

It is the hard but right things Parties do which may come with a political cost but we are most proud of - it is what builds a legacy.

[xultar]

1. Did we lose both the house and the senate in 1994?

[Pirate Smile]

3. Yes. Bill lost both in 1994.

[xultar]

5. The way I see it we are ahead. But we still need to open a can

of extra strength whoop ass on the fucking cons.

[Pirate Smile]

6. I agree 100%.

:)

[elocs]

2. I don't know, is health care reform here to stay?

Time will tell.

[DrToast]

4. Obama said, "I'm not just worried about the next election. I'm worried about the next generation."

[Pirate Smile]

10. He actually acts like it too.

[Cha]

7. Thanks Pirate

:) Another one of those big pictures that the US corporatemediawhores=gop made sure was a wedge issue and so many idiots bought in to it. Not here in Hawaai'i though where the Dem Swept the Election!

[Pirate Smile]

8. De Nada, Cha.

:hi:

[GeorgeGist]

Skinner is grossly uninformed.

[GeorgeGist]

9. Skinner is grossly uninformed ...

on healthcare.

[backscatter712]

11. For all the talk about how Obama "sold out" on health care reform...

there was a faaaaar easier and less painful way to sell out - by not doing health care reform.

The insurance lobbyists would be happy, the pharmcos would be happy, the only people not happy are the voters, who could have been placated with "We promise, we'll do health care reform next year!" Not doing it at all would be far less painful than what they actually did.

Let's face it. Every single Dem in DC with a slightly political bone in their body was going "FUCK ME! WE'RE DOING HEALTH CARE REFORM?!" when Obama announced it.

They're not stupid. They knew that health care was going to be a bitch of a fight and cost them dearly, and it did.

But they did it anyways.

It was a huge risk, and didn't get as good of a payoff as they and we would have liked - the resulting bill got some good reforms, but fell far short of expectations.

You have to give them credit for trying though. It would have been far easier for them, and we might still have a Democratic House today if they didn't.

Ever see a Republican choose to put governance ahead of politics, at significant political risk? The only ones they'll do that for are the billionaires and banksters. The GOP won't do that for us. The Democrats did.

That's why I'm a Democrat.

[Pirate Smile]

13. Exactly.

The crazy bastards actually mean it when they say they view it as a moral imperative. I think that is why they are Democrats.

[unc70]

12. Real health care reform would be worth the political costs, what passed is not worth it

As most DUers are painfully aware, Obama never pursued true HCR, removing single payer from even being an option to discuss. No public option to compete with the private insurance companies, no Medicare for All, not even Medicare for More (e.g. over 50's can buy into Medicare).

Many of the so-called patients rights provided in the HCR are shams, with so many loopholes and gotchas that the insurance companies will actually have more power, more profits, and less accountability under the bill than they had before it.

Think of HCR as sort of like what happened following enactment of Federal "consumer protection" regarding credit cards. The credit card companies were no longer subject to those pesky state laws, oversight, restrictions on industry rates and fees, consumer rights of all sorts. In an instance, fifty years of state legislation protecting consumers and restraing abuses by CC companies and banks -- all gone. Now wasn't that easy, don't you feel better.

Time after time we pass with great fanfare a bill to reform some industry, regulating and restricting practices whereby they had preyed on consumers of all types using various loopholes in previous legislation.

The special interests, the lobbyists, the staffers, and the elected officals are several large steps ahead of us. When the "reform" legislation finally passes (or is allowed to pass) it disallows things that are nearly obsolete, nearing replacement even lacking legislation. But guess what? Buried deep within the legislation lie the loopholes and the protection for the next generation of legally sanctioned criminal activies.

Obama was and is the most conservative and corporate of the Dems that ran. with roughly the same policies as HRC, slightly more aggressive with using American troops in Iraq (anti-terrorism, not combat operations), in Afghanistan dramatically more troops and mercenaries, and most troubling to me, in Pakistan we continue our bombings and killings somehow expecting that killing more familes, more civilians, more tribal leaders is somehow the path to peace. This has not worked so well for the Israelis with Gaza.

When we are faced with actions and other facts that defy any simple explanation, we must revert to the most basic questions. Follow the money, discover who lost, who gained, and who was blamed. For example, the profits derived from the North Atlantic slave trade did not go to anywhere in the South. The profits from the slave trade actually went to the ship owners in Newport RI, Boston, or NYC. The slave trade provided the "old" money in New England, the super rich in Newport, the banking and insurance industries, and the endowments that supported the elite schools in the Ivy League: Harvard, Brown, Yale, ...

[Pirate Smile]

14. kick