What Obama Did Wrong

[IndianaGreen]

Eleanor Clift

What Obama Did Wrong

On health-care reform, the president didn't repeat Clinton's mistakes. Obama made new ones

Feb 12, 2010

The last big push for health-care reform had ended in failure when Hillary Clinton crafted a bill in the White House and congressional leaders treated it like an anthrax letter. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then chair of the Senate Finance Committee, held the Clinton bill aloft, all 1,342 pages, and let it drop to the floor with a thud, signaling what he thought of it.

Obama, taking the opposite tack, turned over the drafting of legislation to Congress on the assumption that powerful committee chairmen would have a vested interest in its passage. Now we know the opposite of an error is another error, and that Obama was too passive in his relationship with Congress. He didn't provide leadership to his allies on Capitol Hill, and the result was an extended period of stumbling that allowed reform opponents to gain the upper hand.

Kennedy died in late August, and when Obama appeared before a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9 to urge for health care's passage, commentators wondered if Kennedy's death would provide the last push to get the bill done. Republicans Orrin Hatch and John McCain spoke movingly at the Kennedy funeral mass about their friendship with the liberal lion, but Kennedy nostalgia did not dislodge a single Republican vote.

Disillusioned Democrats concluded Obama spent too much time chasing bipartisanship, and the yearlong horse trading and backroom dealmaking squandered the mandate he had from the voters. The fractious Democratic majority would only have acted on its own if Obama had cracked the whip. But he signaled early on that he could be rolled when he ceded too much power to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in putting together the stimulus bill.

If Hillary had been elected, would she have done things differently? Having been burned once with health-care reform, she probably would have approached it more gingerly, and she wouldn't have felt indebted to Kennedy. Those who know her say she would never have given up that much control to Congress, not so much for ideological or philosophical reasons, but simply because she's a more controlling personality than Obama. And she certainly wouldn't have wasted any time seeking bipartisanship. She would have accepted today's polarizing politics as a fact of life, something to be conquered, not changed.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233519

[niceypoo]

1. "Disillusioned Democrats concluded Obama spent too much time chasing bipartisanship"

'Spent,' is past tense. 'Spends,' is more accurate.

Now he seems to spend all of his time chasing the illusion of bipartisanship. Hey Obama, nobody remembers the process, they only remember the end result.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Have you ever seen a German Jew in the 1930s begging to be loved by the Nazis?

That's what bipartisanship has turned out to be in America! Obama wants to be loved by people committed to his utter destruction.

[tom_paine]

15. Well said, but few will hear you because the truth is too painful.

"Godwin's Law!" "Godwin's Law!" they'll shriek.

But our nation is in so so SOOOOOOOOOOO many ways, psychologically similar to 1930s Germany, it isn't even funny.

Only our relative economic health still masks it, plus any inertia left over from the Days of the Old Republic.

Or should I say, "the days when the American Aristocracy practicd their malevolent CIA freedom-destroying games on OTHER COUNTRIES and not so much against it's own Peasantry.

Now, they don't bother hiding it as much. With a nation so much like 1930s Germany, mentally but with much less violence (for now), why would they bother?

I continue to wonder if, in the long run, the American Aristocrats who called the new and improved, kinder and gentler Nazism into being will lose control as did the German Aristocrats who helped the originals into power.

To me, it seems inevitable, sooner or later. Because Inverted Totalitarianism must eventually lead to the "old-fashioned" kind of Totalitarianism if things start breaking down.

[Doctor_J]

21. Cogent as usual, tom

As you probably know, however, many of Hitler's modern-day fans (Marge Schott, for example) like to say, "he had a good idea, then he went too far". Indeed, if he had stopped with elimination of the Jews, and not tried to take over Europe, would the world have fought back?

At present, the Bush family are content with terrorizing Americans and engaging in some geographically confined military actions which enrich them and their friends, but don't draw the ire of the rest of the world. Maybe the 4th Reich is more savvy than the 3rd. THey have certainly been in power longer, and their propaganda apparatus makes Goebbels' look like a grade school newspaper in comparison. I recently scolded a DUer for threatening to write a strongly worded e-mail to Chuck Todd after a typical right-wing segment on one of the interchangeable GOP TV outlets. She replied that it's "good to let them know we're onto them". There is the major difference this time around - the German Jews didn't worship their oppressors.

[Kyril Enko]

19. It's like he's in denial.....

...despite what people like Jim DeMint and Mike Enzi have made crystal clear!

[sharesunited]

2. A 1 or 2 page bill reducing the age of Medicare eligibility to zero.

That is the main thing we need, and every other reform will flow from that improvement.

[Captain Hilts]

4. That's not so hard, is it? We've already got the bureaucracy in place and everything!

[vegiegals]

16. yes, and this one reason that Medicare for all would keep costs down.

[nightrain]

5. yep. Obama looks like a battered person in his chase after "bipartisanship".

Better at this point to craft a very good bill and pass it through reconciliation or ??-- Something like an improved Medicare for all.

[Captain Hilts]

Ollie Snowe really jerked him around. And went back home to Maine where health ins. rates rose 30+%

I hope voters kick her and Sue's asses. They fought against HCR and now their rates have jumped 30%.

WHY ARE THESE WOMEN LAUGHING?

[sharesunited]

11. I'm afraid those rate increases will be spun as necessary due to the THREAT of HCR.

[Enthusiast]

22. They are laughing because their

Cayman Island bank accounts are overflowing.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Single Payer bill, HR676, was only 15 pages long

HR676 would have expanded Medicare to all Americans.

[Captain Hilts]

3. I think she would have spent less time trying to act nice, but the results would probably have been

the same as O got. Sad, but true.

[sandnsea]

6. Eleanor Clift? Really??

Boy you'll just post anything to attack Obama. Obviously Eleanor Clift would praise Hillary whether there is any basis in reality to do so.

Hillary wasn't going to do health care until her second term, a detail Clift seems to have forgotten. Which means there wouldn't have been any health care at all. Not that it matters to the punditocracy who never have to worry about such trivial things.

[tridim]

7. Unrec for past tense descriptions of things that aren't past history.

HCR is not going to fail no matter how badly the media wants it to.

[bvar22]

12. HCR failed...

..the day The Democratic Party Leadership shit canned the Public Option.

"Without a Public Option, there is no reform."

"I did not campaign on a Public Option."


What we are left with is something called "Insurance Reform" that may actually be worse than nothing at all.

[tridim]

13. You're welcome to keep paying your rising status quo rates even after HCR passes.

Not my problem.

[bvar22]

14. I haven't been able to afford Health Insurance for 8 years.

I will also be "entitled" to a hefty subsidy in the current package.

i STILL oppose these "reforms" because they enshrine the For Profit Insurance Industry as the gateway to Health Care in America, and channels BILLIONS (Trillions?) of Public Dollars into the For Profit pockets of one of the most immoral Industries the World has EVER seen.
I would rather see these dollars provi de Health Care than Summer Mansion and Yachts for Billionaires.

The Individual Mandate to purchase Insurance that most will be unable to afford to use (High deductible, high co-pay)ensures a Blood Bath for the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012, and possible minority status for a generation.

This "Uniquely American Solution" is an insult to every American who Works for a Living.
Simply compare this plan to those in every single other civilized country in the World.
The "Uniquely American Solution" is a step AWAY from effective reform.


Passing the Senate Bill through reconciliation is an open admission that the Democratic Party no longer represents the Middle/Working Class of America.
It IS that simple.
Lieberman is no longer an excuse.
"Obstructionist Republicans" are no longer an excuse.
THIS is a completely DEMOCRATIC Bill.
It WILL contain what The Democrats WANT it to contain.

In 2008, The American People gave the Democrats:
The White House
The Senate
The House
AND a STRONG Mandate for CHANGE.

If THIS is the BEST they can do,
then THIS is the BEST the Democratic Party WANTS to do.

The responsibility for the betrayal of the Middle/Working Class lies squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party Leadership.

No.More.Excuses.

LESS than 35% of ALL Americans support Mandates without a Public Option.
Good luck selling this piece of shit to the American People.

"By their works you will know them."

"When given the choice between a Republican, and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, the voters will choose the Republican every time." ---Harry Truman

QED Massachusetts

"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[nightrain]

17. I find it amazing that some DUers still think that it is the insured who are

critical of this bs health "reform".

I heartily agree with your post. Whatever bill comes to Obama's desk will be what he wants, and mostly likely will be protecting corporations over ppl. Unless he has some sort of conversion experience.

[truth2power]

25. You are so correct...

"Without a Public Option, there is no reform." HCR has failed.

I'm so tired of people trying to give Obama a pass on this. It's on him. Epic fail.

[KG]

27. HCR failed...

the second rahm was appointed CoS.

[bvar22]

28. The writing was certainly On the Wall for everyone who chose to see....

..the day Rahm was appointed CoS.
There were those of us who read the message to the rest of DU on that day...
The "Fucking Retards" of DU!...LOL
THATS a label I will wear with PRIDE.


The DLC New Team
Working Class Democrats Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

”I am a New Democrat!”---Barack Obama
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=254931&kaid=85&subid=900184

So OBama is a "New Democrat".
Thats too bad, because I'm an "Old Democrat", like FDR, JFK, and LBJ.

[madmax]

10. First time for everything

My first unrec.

[Tutankhamun]

18. Every now and then, someone chimes in to remind us what REALLY went wrong on health care:

Obama, along with too many other Dems had already taken large sums of money from the insurance and pharma industries. Because of this, they couldn't afford to enact real reform so they used the Republicans as cover for their deliberate failure to get us the health care we were promised.

That is what REALLY happened.

[Enthusiast]

23. You have the correct answer.

It is foolhardy to believe otherwise.

[Vidar]

20. K&R.

[depakid]

24. "he signaled early on that he could be rolled when he ceded too much power "

He signalled that when Lieberman kept his chairmanship after campaigning for McCain.

[Chisox08]

26. He tried to be bi-partisan with people who wanted to Wartloo him.

The Republicons stated that they were going to break him. They said that HCR will be his Waterloo. Obama either didn't listen or didn't believe them when they said that. He needs to stop being nice to them and ram HCR down their throats.