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Obama To Rally Dems, As They Clash Over Public Option
President Barack Obama
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President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats this afternoon, to build momentum as they enter the final stretch on far-reaching health care legislation. The rare visit to Capitol Hill comes as liberals and conservatives in his party clash over the contentious issues of abortion, and, especially, the public option.
Liberals, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) would like to see the President encourage moderates to support the health care bill in its current form. Conservative Democrats, meanwhile, are hostile to the public option and are threatening to filibuster the bill if it's not modified or removed. The two factions are currently discussing various compromises, including a variation on the "trigger" compromise, and a new initiative--distinct from a government insurance plan--which would give the federal government the power to negotiate private insurance premiums for some consumers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is currently huddling with his leadership team, and White House officials, and the two sides of his caucus will meet late this afternoon, after the President's visit, to continue negotiations. The flurry of activity suggests real developments are afoot. We'll let you know what happens.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 2:00 PM
"Conservative Democrats, meanwhile, are hostile to the public option and are threatening to filibuster the bill if it's not modified or removed."
Since there is strong public support for the public option, in every constituency on the map, it would seem that this selection from the article best exposes the real hold-up on progress.
While it will always be important to take Republican seats away, it is becoming a new imperative to put primary pressure on these mis-representative Democrats, who buck the public will, for reasons we all know and detest.
While the Republican leadership flaunts it's corporate protectionism, 'dog Democrats and "centrist" Republican apologists try to claim some moral objection to the public option, but it is inevitably a screen to cover their corporate connections. The corporate Republicans are, in a rare moment, the least hypocritical of these anti-option legislators.
While it is still simple logic that all Dems should eventually support whichever candidate their party offers, it would be the right time NOW to get actively involved with a bona fide local progressive, in any area where there's a Red Dog or a potentially vulnerable Republican.
It is the most effective and rewarding way to make a REAL difference, you can blog all day and send money and write editorials, all of that helps, too, incrementally, but nothing puts the pressure on a DINO like a progressive with an aggressive grassroots gang behind them.
Find a progressive you can support in 2010, and join their campaign volunteers, and you will be doing the most you can to move the fulcrum of our badly balanced political teeter totter to a better place.
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CranialRectalLoopback
December 6, 2009 2:32 PM
Obama doesn't rally "Dems". He browbeats Progressives and Liberal Democrats to support Lapdog Dumbocrats and their partners in crime "moderate" Pubelickens.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 2:44 PM in reply to CranialRectalLoopback
compare those first two comments...
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 2:50 PM in reply to JEP07
The second was more logical. The first wants me to primary somebody but vote for him in the general anyway. Makes no sense. Sure find a candidate you can support in 2010 but don't limit yourself to the two major parties if neither candidate represents YOU. You have only one vote. Do not waste it voting against yourself.
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lousgirl84
December 6, 2009 3:00 PM in reply to bluebell
That really worked well in 2000 didn't it.
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 3:07 PM in reply to lousgirl84
Watch it work the same in 2012.
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 3:09 PM in reply to bluebell
By the way, your 2000 candidate, Lieberman, tells us the President didn't mention public option today.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 3:10 PM in reply to bluebell
bluebell, it sounds like you are just promoting intentional futility in the progressive ranks, not your own ideology. I intended the comment at 3:07 as a response to you, so I'll paste it in here.
Agreed, you have to decide what matters, pleasing yourself or promoting progress effectually. If they are one and the same, all the better.
But if one is done in spite of or in defiance of the other, something's miss.
By all means, vote your conscience. Mine tells me party loyalty is still the best course, and until we have some meaningful alternatives with real political clout, I don't intend to waste my final vote on a wild-card just to prove something to myself and a small peer group of politically constipated idealists.
We can expect a great deal of "third-party" talk around here between now and the 2010 vote, some sincere and some contrived, lets just hope we can tell the difference.
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 3:23 PM in reply to JEP07
I've decided I've spent the last 40 years voting in utter futility. I followed your strategy and it hasn't worked. Consider we were voting to put Lieberman a heart beat away in 2000 and if there is anyone crazier than Cheney it might be him. That's what you do when you put compromise above everything.
Other voices need to be heard even if they can't win in the short term. It can't just be a choice between their favorite war and our favorite war or their favorite financial and our favorite financial.
I rarely agree with Thomas Friedmann but I do think he has one thing right -- this country is in big trouble. It needs radical change in focus at home. I would go further and say it requires an even greater change in our over commitments abroad.
Party loyalty doesn't cut it. The problems are too serious. The need for fundamental change is too great.
I don't believe we have 40 more years to get at it.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 3:31 PM in reply to bluebell
"I've decided I've spent the last 40 years voting in utter futility."
At least you finally admit you are really a Republican, I thought all this time you were a Democrat...
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 3:07 PM
Agreed, you have to decide what matters, pleasing yourself or promoting progress effectually. If they are one and the same, all the better.
But if one is done in spite of or in defiance of the other, something's miss.
By all means, vote your conscience. Mine tells me party loyalty is still the best course, and until we have some meaningful alternatives with real political clout, I don't intend to waste my final vote on a wild-card just to prove something to myself and a small peer group of politically constipated idealists.
We can expect a great deal of "third-party" talk around here between now and the 2010 vote, some sincere and some contrived, lets just hope we can tell the difference.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 3:19 PM
For the record, while I do encourage people to support their local progressives in the primary stages, instead of the party standard (if that standard is not progressive enough), I also adhere faithfully to the party system.
With the same determination you put into a progressive candidate in the primaries, you should also support whichever candidate wins that primary in the general election, even if it isn't the progressive you wanted.
It is the way the game is played and won. Any third-party derivation in these dangerous times is careless and willful and invites failure on a party-wide scale.
All you need for proof is the teabaggers and NY23. At this fragile moment in history, such splintering only spells the demise of their mother party.
Watch what it does to the Republicans, but DON'T let it happen to the Democrats. We have the entire future to create new parties, until we wrest control of that future away from the greedy corporate interests and their well-paid accomplices in government, any intra-party divisions are just self-defeating, not self-edifying.
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 3:56 PM in reply to JEP07
Heck, some days only Bernie Sanders gives me the hope to fight the good fight.
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wbgonne
December 6, 2009 5:47 PM in reply to bluebell
There's also Brown, Whitehouse and Cantwell in the Senate. There are some solid leaders within the Democratic Party but they aren't in charge.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 10:36 PM in reply to wbgonne
"but they aren't in charge."
Considering the names on that list, that may be up for debate. They certainly seem to be making headway.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 10:41 PM in reply to JEP07
and watch Klobuchar, she's got something of the future in her spirit, too, like she is destined for greatness, the kind that leads to the power to make REAL changes. Her statemate Al is also proving his salt. Wellstone would be proud of both of them.
But we've only had the majority, and not a functional majority, for one season, we need to get more progressives on board so we can turn these baby steps into long, progressive strides towards a better future.
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wbgonne
December 7, 2009 8:09 AM in reply to JEP07
You are right about Klobachar. But you are wrong about waiting. Conditions are about as good as they will get for the Dems in the two-party system. The Dems will almost certainly lose power in the next election. That is why it is CRUCIAL that the public option be enacted NOW. And if the Dems fail to do so, they will be pummeled come 2012, whatever you might wish.
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ilovebacon
December 6, 2009 3:26 PM
Obama is a progressive pragmatist. I'm practically socialist but would compromise (as he is doing) as needed. ANY positive change is better than none. I'm not for deranged idealist elves like Dennis Koochsandwich and Nader.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 3:42 PM in reply to ilovebacon
Hey, Dennis is no kook, and Nader started right but became a spoiled spoiler, and they both have something to offer still.
Especially Kucinich, who may seem extreme to the current status quo, but the future will look back on him as prescient and influential, and symbolic in ways that would make the wingnuts simply livid if they were able to survive history's unforgiving requirement for the ability to adapt (which they aren't).
Life is a like race through time, and change is the pace it takes. Those who refuse to change are no longer in the race.
And yes, I just made that up.
But, apparently I'm monopolizing space, so I'll stop (for a while).
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unknowncitizen
December 6, 2009 5:10 PM in reply to ilovebacon
Why would you group Kucinich in with Nader? Kucinich has and will continue to have a near perfect congressional voting record for legislation I personally support. Do you have some plan to change policy in some other way than working toward electing a majority of representatives you agree with and hoping they vote their conscience? Well on that score his Ohio district is locked down tight.
The only way he could have had a more positive impact is if he held a more influential office than Representative, and there's what Speaker of House, Senator, cabinet member or President? The only reason he hasn't risen into those positions (aside from very real but meaningless charisma and popularity issues) is the people do not like the policies he would attempt to enact as much as I do. Do you not like those policies (universal healthcare, defense spending reduction, etc) or do you just not like the opposition's caricature of his personality.
There's certainly nothing wrong with being happy with Obama as President, I am. But must you project the negative, subjective, description promoted by people who oppose Kucinich's policies? If Kucinich was the young, cool handsome full on liberal and Obama was the quirky unkempt dork compromiser it seems like that might affect your opinions of the two men's desirability as President.
What exactly are you calling deranged and kooky about Kucinich besides a few meaningless verbal or association gaffes that his opponents made into proof of insanity? Is it his steadfast advocacy of single payer health? Opposition to the Iraq war? Maybe his battle against corporate statism when he wouldn't sell Clevland's municipal utility? Obama's cred on those issues was completely weak compared to Kucinich during the Dem primary. Obama's popularity and inspirational abilities run circles around Kucinich for sure, but no one should knock Kucinich's real strength's because another guy carried the message more eloquently and widely. Call the guy limited or a disappointment if you must (I don't feel that way at all), but please don't accuse him of doing damage actual to the progressive cause like Nader or of mental defect, when the only other people who say that are our political adversaries.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 11:43 PM in reply to unknowncitizen
"or of mental defect"
If genius is a defect, Dennis is defective.
People used to talk about having a beer with Bush, I'd LOVE to sit down and down a few with Kucinich. I think if we'd grown up together, we'd have been great friends.
Franken, too, there's something about Al and Dennis that reminds me of my old high school gang, a dozen characters from Iowa's largest ever graduating class. Whitehouse and Feingold would have fit the gang pretty well, too.
Irreverent, extremely intelligent, and unfailingly progressive, but still capable of all the smarmy gentility necessary to completely charm those necessary associates from the status quo.
And though we were from Iowa, we all loved Wellstone.
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runfastandwin
December 6, 2009 3:39 PM
There isn't going to be any third party winners in my lifetime, or yours probably. There isn't going to be a grassroots uprising, or a citizen revolt, or the abolition of the Electoral College, or anything like it. Change is going to come incrementally in fits and starts, with steps backwards and forwards. Your only choice for now is between a Democrat and a Republican. Anything else is a wasted vote. Ask Bob Dole and Ross Perot, Al Gore and Ralph Nader, or Jimmy Carter and John Anderson (how soon we forget, were it not for John Anderson, Reagan never would have risen up form the depths of hell to cast the shadow of doom over us all.) I am not against primaries but when it comes time to vote, vote the party (just think, had we done that, Lieberman would be flushed down the toilet of history).
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bluebell
December 6, 2009 3:58 PM in reply to runfastandwin
You have written a fine summary of an authentically and classically conservative point of view. Some of us, all too few of us, are not conservative.
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midnight rambler
December 6, 2009 4:08 PM in reply to bluebell
It's not conservative except in the sense that fundamental change of the electoral system is very difficult. It works the same on both sides, just ask Doug Hoffmann.
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JEP07
December 6, 2009 4:27 PM in reply to bluebell
"Some of us, all too few of us, are not conservative."
well, by golly, that is hard to mis-misinterpret...
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runfastandwin
December 6, 2009 4:34 PM in reply to bluebell
Actually I am the most liberal person I know, it's just that I live in the world of reality not fantasy. I would love to see the Electoral College gone, as well as the Senate, which is really just the American version of the House of Lords, but it ain't gonna happen. Politics is about the lesser of two evils, always has been and always will be, to ignore that fact is to deny history.
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barth
December 7, 2009 9:52 AM in reply to runfastandwin
another way to put it is "good is better than perfect." I did not write that, but it is true.
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unknowncitizen
December 6, 2009 5:26 PM in reply to bluebell
Bluebell, I must have got a misprint of the "summary of an authentically and classically conservative point of view" from runfastar, mine said Reagan was satan incarnate, right on the screen. My US Senator has gone from Democrat to Socialist tp Progressive to Independent in his political tenure, and Bernie has told me personally that he'd gladly join the Democratic party again if he thought he had a shot at the Presidency. I suppose that's a little to John Birch for you.
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wbgonne
December 6, 2009 5:48 PM in reply to runfastandwin
Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet.
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