Kucinich's Brave Health Vote Vs. Obama's Failed Promise

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Sunday, November 8, 2009 by the Huffington Post

Kucinich's Brave Health Vote Vs. Obama's Failed Promise
by Lee Stranahan

Personally, I supported President Obama in the primaries and the election but do not support him on this corporate giveaway built on broken campaign promises. I voted for the Barack Obama who opposed the individual mandate, who said the negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and who campaigned against backroom deals with PhARMA.

Conservatives have expressed outrage for months about the way the health care bill was handled. Their anti-government anger is misplaced because the lets the insurances and drug companies who really helped drive this bill off the hook. But I understand their sense that this bill was passed despite the people.

Progressives should be every bit as upset that President Obama lied to us to get his historic health bill. The citizens of this country did not have a seat at the table. Proponents of the Single Payer didn't have a seat at the table. Under the guise of health care reform, we watched as the insurance industry got a bill passed that entrenches and enriches them.

Don't let anyone fool you that this bill is a good start. It's got a poison pill "Public Option" that is designed to fail. As the brilliant RJ Eskow wrote recently about the House bill's public option,

The plan will have low enrollment and little power to negotiate, causing the CBO to state as fact what I've long considered possible: That the public option could become a dumping ground where private plans jettison sicker people, while lacking the efficiencies of scale or negotiating power to get better rates or administer itself more economically.

As a result, says the CBO, a public plan's premiums might be higher than private insurance. While the CBO's word isn't gospel, it's entirely possible that they're underestimating the cost of any "public option" we're likely to see this year. The likeliest political outcome, once the House and Senate bills are combined, is a non-robust "public option" with a state-by-state opt out. The CBO didn't consider the opt-out when it came up with its shocking (to some) estimate.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/08-4

[54anickel]

1. Wow, that was one of the fastest unrecs I've seen!

[IndianaGreen]

2. They don't even bother to read, their heads are so far up in their collective asses

and there is an element of a personality cult at play as well.

[emilyg]

4. I think they sit

at the pc in their underwear and wait to unrec.

[bertman]

12. emilyg, they'd have to be nekkit or they wouldn't be able to put they heads up they asses.

[Go2Peace]

8. They would rather just trash progressives, misrepresent, and call DK names. I guess it is more fun

[emilyg]

3. I just rec'd.

[Go2Peace]

6. be prepared for the battle of the unrecs, but ultimately more on DU understand and support DK

[spiritual_gunfighter]

18. The cheerleaders unrecing these threads

have no idea they are supporting the corporate takeover of the party and the country in general.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. But...but...but...we've won...

There's a Democrat in the White House, and he believes in everything good and true, regardless of what he does or doesn't do. He's gooder than goodness itself and just you wait: he'll give us everything we want some day. It's just that now, fighting a fractious and enfeebled cadre of reactionaries, we can't expect him to make great strides in a partisan way.

Imagine what Lyndon Johnson would have done to the Blue Dogs. Yikes. He would have yanked them back into line and that would have been that. He'd have threatened to support primary challengers and he'd have quashed their pet projects. There's a big difference, though, and it's not just the difference in personalities (Obama has terminal Clintonitis, needing to be loved by everybody, whereas Johnson was a willful leader) it's that Obama really isn't on our side. Yes, I actually said that: he's not pushing real health care reform because he's beholden to and enamored of Medicine Incorporated. He will ONLY do what will also massively benefit THEM.

At some point, the consistent sucking up to private enterprise can't be seen as just political expediency, but must be seen as personal belief: he's a corporatist. He also hides behind Congress instead of calling for specific legislation, and this is embarrassing in its transparency: he doesn't have the strength of his convictions, nor does he seem to have concrete plans. It's all a broad-strokes whitewashing with vague sloganeering and breezy adjectives or calls for cringing, serf-like "hope" as we fritter away precious time and host vapid "Iron Chef" competitions at the White House.

Getting along with everybody may be slick campaigning, and it may typify the person you want at your holiday cocktail party, but it's NOT a good trait for a leader, especially when dealing with systemic evil like Medicine Incorporated.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Obama is not LBJ, except when it comes to escalating wars

And he learned the wrong lessons from the Clintons' efforts at health care reform (Clinton did propose a universal system).

[suzie]

9. So-called "progressives" and Dennis Kucinich adorers would do well to read a little about

history before constantly complaining about "Why isn't Obama more like LBJ?"

Had Dennis Kucinich voted against LBJ sponsored legislation, he would have been frozen out of office starting today. So-called "progressives" overlook the fact that Lyndon Johnson's reputation for legislative control had been made while Sam Rayburn also held the position of Speaker of the House. Rayburn had a rule that a congressman didn't have to vote in a way which would cause him to lose in his district.

But, if a congressperson was in a safe district and voted against a key piece of legislation, Rayburn promised them that he would see that the congressperson had a well-financed, good candidate opponent with all the support of the Speaker of the House come next election. And it was well-known that he had done just that to congresspersons who had crossed him--and that their names were only a memory.

Dennis Kucinich would be a lame duck congressperson starting Monday if LBJ were in office.

And as for sucking up to private enterprise, Lyndon Johnson was totally beholden to the oil companies and to the organization that became Kellogg, Brown and Root.

[PurityOfEssence]

10. All true, but HE gave us Medicare and Civil Rights Legislation

Lyndon Baines Johnson is a great model for defining our world as one of complexity; people HATE THAT. They run to religions and idiotic simplistic political beliefs like Libertarianism because they're scared beyond death of complexity. It IS scary if one is afraid of thinking or working with current assumptions instead of demanding things fit easily into categories of good or bad.

Landslide Lyndon was a son of a bitch in many ways, and a bully ("come, let us reason together...") but he also gave a damn and he wasn't scared of standing up and forcing something he believed in to a real resolution. Although very insecure, he also came to the hard realization that lots of people simply didn't like him, and it's extremely unfortunate that Mr. Obama has never had that reality to embrace; both he and Bill Clinton are cringingly in need of being loved by everyone, and they'll struggle to appease even those who are resolutely bent on their destruction. It makes me flush red with empathetic embarrassment to watch, and neither has learned the lesson. One amusing sidelight is that our one ex-actor President, Reagan, really didn't give a tinker's cuss about whether people liked him or not, when actors are NOTORIOUS for needing love from everyone. Now THERE'S irony. Reagan was a thoroughgoing asshole, though, so don't get me wrong; he is personally responsible for much of the selfishness and recklessness of the last three decades.

This episode is just in its formative stages at the moment, so it remains to be seen how it sorts out, but leadership is vastly different from successful campaigning, and Mr. Obama is still running his life like some endless campaign.

Life is complex. Any modeling of it for governmental purposes needs to accept that, instead of relying on the triumphal jingoism of the right or the sweet, sweet vagueness of our current administration.

[suzie]

16. Life seems full of complexity, except to the Kucinich adorers on DU, for whom

it is completely simple. Dennis is God and he can do no wrong. And anyone who says differently is DLC hater, corporatist.

Civil rights legislation was something that had been in process for a good long while before the bill we think of as "Civil Rights" was passed. An early version had been passed in 1957. But we wouldn't want anything like historical fact to get in the way of the Kucinich crowd's persistent Obama bashing. And LBJ comparisons work as well as anything.

It is always interesting that the Kucinich claque never mentions November in Dallas when using LBJ in their "it's all about leadership" screeds. You can call LBJ a bully, an SOB, whatever. He was a master politician, but one who had a dead president's legacy to help him out. Perhaps many on DU are so young that they don't understand that.

Others are just so disingenuous that they don't care. Because it's all about bashing Obama.

It just seems silly to me for the Kucinich crowd to crow about LBJ when he would have destroyed DK starting tomorrow.

[bertman]

13. HALLELUJAH!!! Somebody finally said it! Thank you, PurityOfEssence.

[Waiting For Everyman]

11. Kick

:kick:

[bertman]

14. Recs are at 14. Thanks, IndianaGreen.

[Dr.Phool]

15. Add another.

[ProleNoMore]

17. Recommended - I Support Dennis Kucinich

eom

[NorthCarolina]

19. This never was about what is best for America or the people

that part became obvious the instant single payer was blocked from even being discussed. The talk of being against a "mandate" was nothing more than taking a position opposite to a political opponent for political expedience. The conservatives are in control of our Government, and if you believe that you or your family matters beyond the rhetoric of the election cycle, then you are sorely misguided. American politics is about following the money, trading votes for gold. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course Kucinich is right. He has been right on everything from the never ending commitment to wars that fuel the military industrial complex, to the health care reform which is little ore than a big win for the insurance industry and big pharma. IT NEVER WAS ABOUT YOU, because in the big picture of DC politics, you don't matter. If the govenrment had any desire to ensure that DC worked for the people and not the corporations, then the first legislation on their docket would have been campaign finance reform and term limits. You will see neither of those, nor are you likely to see any huge cost savings from this new legislation. It's a band aid with an impressive title, except this band aid has no adhesive. You can ridicule Kucinich for his comments and vote if you so choose, but you are only denying the truth that he is attempting to open your eyes too. Your choice...everyones choice. May that some day we will choose more wisely.

[Doctor_J]

20. IMO this bill is not only bad for Americans, but will lead to electoral

disaster as well. Most liberals hate it, and thus will be less than enthusiastic about supporting Dems next year. Also, working class independents will see this as benefitting the rich (insurance execs) and the poor, but not them.

Combine those with the cave-in to the fundies at the expense of feminists, and you have a steaming turd.

This appears to be lose-lose