Jim Cooper, who helped sabotage reform in the '90s, is an Obama point man on health care?? Why??

[Karmadillo]

I linked to Open Left. You can also find the issue of Jim Cooper discussed at Talk Left at http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/18/14366/0610. Cooper was widely seen as an HMO industry spokesperson working against Hillary in the nineties. He was very obviously bad news back then and I can't for the life of me figure out why Obama would allow him to hook up with his campaign.

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4004

Jim Cooper Scares Me
by: Mike Lux
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 10:41

( - promoted by Matt Stoller)

I have been beating up on the Clinton campaign pretty hard lately because I haven't been crazy about the kind of campaign they have been running. And I will admit that my heart has been won by the enthusiasm of all those young and passionate Obama supporters.

But there are still certain things that make me really, really nervous about Obama. At the top of that list is the health care debate, where I think he's just wrong about the importance of universality, and where he's employed Harry and Louise-style tactics to argue against Clinton's plan. My concerns shifted into overdrive, though, when I noticed that the Obama campaign is now using Rep. Jim Cooper as a spokesperson/surrogate on health care.

I was part of the Clinton White House team on the health care reform issue in 1993/94, and no Democrat did more to destroy our chances in that fight than Jim Cooper. We had laid down a marker very early that we thought universal coverage was the most essential element to getting a good package, saying we were to happy to negotiate over the details but that universality was our bottom line.

Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position. I was never so delighted to see a Democrat lose as when he went down in the 1994 GOP tide.

Unfortunately, he came back, like a bad penny.

It is such a huge mistake for Obama to use a guy like this to defend their position on health care. The signal it sends to reporters, organizations, and activists like myself who know something about the old health care battles is that Obama truly doesn't care about comprehensive health care reform or universal coverage, and that the health care package you would propose if President would be a conservative, pro-insurance industry bill. The campaign ought to be trying to reassure folks who care about this issue, and using a guy like Cooper does just the opposite.

lots of comments follow...

[babylonsister]

1. Here's the whole history right here, and it paints Clinton very badly:

The Cooper Concerns

snip//

Cooper is one of the most thoughtful, cordial and well-prepared members of the House. In 1992, he came up with a health care reform plan that would go on to attract wide, bipartisan support. A later version had 58 co-sponsors in the House — 26 Republicans and 32 Democrats. It was sponsored in the Senate by Democrat John Breaux and embraced by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others.

But unlike the plan Hillary Clinton came up with then, the Cooper plan did not include employer mandates to force universal coverage.

On June 15, 1993, Cooper met with Clinton to discuss their differences. Clinton was “ice cold” at the meeting, Cooper recalls. “It was the coldest reception of my life. I was excoriated.”

Cooper told her that she was getting pulled too far to the left. He warned that her plan would never get through Congress. Clinton’s response, Cooper now says, was: “We’ll crush you. You’ll wish you never mentioned this to me.”

In the weeks and months following that meeting, the Clinton administration reached out to Cooper. As David Broder and Haynes Johnson wrote in “The System,” their history of the health care reform effort, President Bill Clinton invited Cooper to go jogging and play golf. Others in the Clinton White House thought Cooper was right on the merits, and privately let him know.

But Hillary Clinton set up a war room to oppose Cooper, who was planning to run for the Senate in 1994. As the Broder and Johnson book makes clear, Clinton and her aides believed Cooper was pursuing his own political agenda. They accused him of crafting his plan in order to raise money from the insurance and hospital industries. They said he was in league with the for-profit hospitals to crush competitors and monopolize the industry. They did this despite the fact that Cooper’s centrist health care approach was entirely consistent with his overall philosophy.

At one meeting in the West Wing, a source told Broder and Johnson, Clinton “kind of got this evil look and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this Cooper bill. We’ve got to kill it before it goes any further.’ ”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/opinion/05brooks.html?_r=1&em&ex=1202446800&en=71fcb9a2bceb4c8b&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

[MessiahRp]

3. Bravo...

Great response. That's how you crush baseless accusations and rumor mongering. :)

Rp

[jaybeat]

25. By quoting a leader of the right-wing punditocracy?

Funny, but I'm undecided between our remaining two, and quoting David Brooks sure makes me want to look the other way!

Also, if Jim Cooper really is a Blue Dog who deep-sixed the Clinton health-care plan (Bill's plan, BTW. He just thought Hillary would be the best person to move it forward.), because it insisted on universal coverage (through an employer mandate, which makes sense to me), so he could show his HMO lobbyist buddies how he was on their side (instead of the side of the American people), AND, as a result, we've lost out on what could have been 14+ years of better, cheaper, more universal healthcare in the country, then FUCK HIM.

And if Obama listens to fuckheads like that, then that sure pushes me away from Obama even more.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

39. you need to educate yourself about what went down in the 90's

[Straight Shooter]

41. It was PFB.

Pretty f'ing bad.

Condemn the Repubs, not Hillary.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

43. I know

[jackson_dem]

45. We've seen a lot of rw talking points used against the Clintons from Obama "Democrats"...

[Karmadillo]

51. Hard to understand why so many "progressives" approve of that.

nt

[AtomicKitten]

4. Zing!

:)

[Karmadillo]

7. You're citing David Brooks for the "whole history." How sad.

For an alternative view of Brooks:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/25/brooks/index.html

Tuesday September 25, 2007 06:37 EST
David Brooks and the deceitful tactics of the Beltway pundit
(updated below)

As I've noted many times before, virtually every column David Brooks writes is grounded in one of two highly misleading tactics and, on special occasions, like today, are grounded in both. That's all there is to him. He just re-cycles these same two themes over and over in different forms.

The first tactic is merely the most commonplace conceit of the standard Beltway pundit: Brooks takes whatever opinions he happens to hold on a topic, and then -- without citing a single piece of evidence -- repeatedly asserts that "most Americans" hold this view, and then bases his entire "argument" on this premise. Thus, the only way for Democrats to have any hope of winning elections is to repudiate their radical, rabid Leftist base and instead follow Brooks' beliefs, because that is "centrism." This is actually a defining belief of the Beltway pundit, and it is as intellectually corrupt as an argument gets.

more...

[babylonsister]

10. So what? Do you think he lied in the NYT article? I imagine I can find

someone else's take on that day that would be quite similar. And BTW, he's quoting David Broder and Haynes Johnson from their book. Are they off limits, too? Kill every messenger that doesn't agree with you? :eyes:

[Karmadillo]

12. Try not to project quite so much. And now you're citing Broder? O Brave New Progressive World!

Read the article I posted if you want to know how reliable Brooks is.

[babylonsister]

13. Clinton has been portrayed as a ruthless witch; so sorry, but that's

certainly not beyond the realm of possibility imo. And I'm apparently not alone.

[Karmadillo]

14. Hillary's a "ruthless witch"? Wow. Are you the change you want to see?

nt

[babylonsister]

19. I know who I want to see, and she isn't it. nt

[elixir]

49. Babylonsister, is the change we've been waiting for.

[rinsd]

11. David Brooks joins Peggy Noonan and other conservative stars on the Obama nation's must read list.

:eyes:

[bigtree]

29. heh

:rofl:

[KaptBunnyPants]

17. If it didn't include employer mandates, what the hell did it do?

How would it have been an improvement on the current travesty? This patchwork garbage of only caring for wealthy sick people and the 40% of the ill who qualify for government assistance is an affront to God and the good spirited. I'll give points to Hillary for this, she tried to create a universal health care system. This Cooper asshole apparently opposes universal healthcare, or at least he's not willing to do what it takes to get it. If Hillary was too far to his left in 1993, why would I want to vote for someone who he thinks is in the "Center" now?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

18. Hillary went to court to keep health care meetings secret from public

Hillary Clinton herself went to court to keep meetings of her Health Care Task Force secret from the public, something conservatives were quick to point out when leftists criticize Vice President Cheney's similar efforts to keep meetings of his Energy Task Force secret.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/123103.html

[Coexist]

33. If Cooper had been in charge - and Hillary agreed to work with him

we would already have healthcare reform.

[babylonsister]

36. Exactly. She shot herself in the foot. nt

[Barack_America]

2. One man's non-objective opinion.

Noted.

[Karmadillo]

5. Blue Dog Cooper voted AGAINST the Children's Health Bill in 2007.

http://cronespeaks.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/who-voted-against-the-children/
Who Voted Against the Children?
Posted on August 2, 2007 by archcrone

Last night the House passed the Children’s health Bill, 225-204. Ten democrats voted against this bill. Those dems are:

Dan Boren,Jim Cooper,

Joe Donnelly,

Brad Ellsworth,

Bob Etheridge,

Baron Hill,

Jim Marshall,

Mike McIntyre,

Heath Shuler,

Gene Taylor

Of these 10, only one, Bob Ethridge, is NOT part of the Blue Dog Coalition. As I had noted a number of times at ToaAW, the Blue Dogs are the democrats problem children. As Bowers pointed out, the BDD’s are more of a problem than the DLC’ers.

However, it is the combination of the anti-progressive BDD’s and the DLC’ers (yeah, I’m linking to the Great Orange Satan) that have largely held the democrats hostage. Take the vote on the Iraq withdrawal bill, or the bankruptcy bill.

more...

[babylonsister]

9. Final version passed on 9/25/07 and Cooper voted for it.

http://sharp.sefora.org/people/house/jim-cooper/

On September 25, 2007, the House passed the final version of the “Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act” (H.R. 976) with a vote of 265-169. This bill would have increased funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $50 billion dollars over five years. Opponents saw the bill as too costly and were critical of the funding methods for the program, including a cigarette tax increase (read the floor debate). Representative Cooper voted for this legislation.

[Karmadillo]

15. The scaled down version. Good boy, Blue Dog. Woof! Here's your Obamabone.

nt

[babylonsister]

20. Why are you trying to impugn this man's character? He stood up to

your gal; did that annoy you? That's just too bad. Oh, and he's an honest man with good ideas who is working for Obama. Must be hard to swallow, and probably precisely why Obama has him on his team.

[Hoof Hearted]

24. Cause he's a spoiled and spurned wanna-be who's motto is "NO WE CAN'T"

No we can't have universal healthcare.

[babylonsister]

37. It wouldn't have worked, and didn't. He used his brain instead of

trying to shove it down peoples' throats like Clinton did. Cooper realized bipartisan support was necessary and she gave him the cold shoulder because she wanted it done her way. Well, the results speak for themselves.

[jaybeat]

42. Repukes wouldn't have supported anything worth having

(Bill, btw) Clinton's healthcare plan didn't succeed because the entire corporate establishment joined with their lacky's the Republican Party to put up and knock down a straw dog called "government-run healthcare." Nevermind that it wasn't, and if it was, it would have been way better than the "corporate-run healthcare" we had then and still have today.

If the Clintons had decided to use every PR and bully pulpit at their disposal, they *might* have been able to convince Americans that greedy healthcare companies and their supporters in Congre$$ were the only things standing between them and affordable, universal health care. But they might have lost, anyway, and having lost, had no political capital left to do anything else, or with which to get re-elected in '96.

But with creeps like Jim Cooper trying to tell the POTUS when the corporations would allow him to take a crap, it looks like they made the calculation not to make this one a fight to the death.

Maybe this time, Hillary won't be so "nice."

If it is at the expense of Blue Dogs and corporate errand boys like Cooper, can't say I'd mind.

[Hoof Hearted]

48. NO WE CAN'T have universal healthcare huh? How strange for a progressive.

And how dare that Hillary, insisting on leading the way when she was in charge? Silly woman, she should have listened to that little DINO man who knew what was best for her. I'm sure the $300 million dollars (438M in todays dollars) and the ruthless media campaign waged against her personally had nothing to do with anything at all.

Hillary was a visionary who saw the crisis to come. Cooper offered nothing but the very antitheses of hope - unconditional preemptive surrender.

Cooper is a wet blanket and no friend of liberals.

[jaybeat]

26. "Stood up to her?" By standing up FOR corporate healthcare?

Sounds' like the man's character's way too far gone to be impugned by anyone else.

"he's an honest man with good ideas who is working for Obama"

Oh, really. He opposed the Clinton healthcare plan because his buddies in corporate healthcare didn't like its insistence on universal coverage?

Fuck him. I'm GLAD *Hillary* stood up to HIM.

Sounds like a Blue Dog Asshole. Not a Democrat.

[babylonsister]

35. How about for bipartisan support, which wasn't acceptable. If you are

really that interested in learning something, and want to know what went down, here's a lengthy article by The Atlantic. You could also google George Stephanopolous, who was there, or Bob Woodward. I trust those are acceptable sources...

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200611/green-hillary/3

[jaybeat]

38. Thanks for the link, which I will read.

But Stephie is a mainstream media whore who sold out his Clinton days to make a buck and now stands for nothing, as far as I can tell, and Woodward pimped himself to George Bush for access, and failed to blow the whistle on Bush's lies that got us into war until we were already in it!

So, no, I don't consider those sources "acceptable" but I will read the article.

Oh, and as far as "bipartisan support" is concerned, there's no way I would support any health care plan that could attract more than a handful of Republican votes.

On this and many other key issues, we need to DEFEAT Republicans, not cave into them. This is something that really bothers me about Obama. It does not seem to me as if he gets this.

Edited to add comments about "bipartisan support."

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

6. How many times did Hillary fail to get Universal Health Care?

2 terms. Oh thats right, Hillary isn't running on Bill's record, but she is running
on her record as first lady.

Still, it was Hillarycare that failed.

But wait - the Clintons said - elect us a second time and - er I mean Bill, and we will get you UHC.

[Hoof Hearted]

22. How many universal healthcare efforts has Obama led? That's right - ZERO.

[madrchsod]

27. he did alright here in illinois with kidcare.

i know that does`t count

[Hoof Hearted]

34. Not unless every resident of Illinois is under 18, and that would be a pretty strange demographic

'Cause, we were talking about universal healthcare. It's this whole other thing.

[OHdem10]

8. If you like Bush Conservatism--you will appreciate the Coopers

Conservative Democrats. Under Obama you will go to a lighter
form or a little kinder form of Conservatism --Democratic
Conservatism.

Has no one noticed the Democrats in Congress who really support
Obama???? Red State Democrats. These do not yield even to the
party==check their records on the important issues and you will
find they vote with GOP.

That report from National Journal that listed Barak as Liberal.
The people from National Journal said this covered one year only.
During that year--War Issues dominated the Congress. Yes, he
is Liberal on War Issues.

For some Democrats there are issues other than war.

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. Neither Hillary NOR Obama supports UHC. Quit impugning FDR's legagy

By implying that UHC has anything to do with mandates.

[madrchsod]

30. no they don`t

both plans guarantee the insurance companies will find more ways to fuck us over

[Hoof Hearted]

21. I utterly and completely unsurprised.

unfortunately.

I've read a few other things including some direct quotes of this man that leave me with the impression of a spoiled and spurned wanna-be. He wanted to walk into the middle of Hillary's healthcare efforts, take over, take credit and call the shots. Instead of placing blame where it belonged, with the giant pharma/insurance agencies and the Republican attack machine, in transparently petulant DINO style, he blamed Hillary Clinton alone it seems. Spurned and spoiled DINO brat.

[jaybeat]

28. Hoof, you're making me like Hillary more an more every day (nt)

[Hoof Hearted]

32. What a totally sweet thing to say! Thanks :-)

[ElsewheresDaughter]

23. nice find...so he played along with Bill Frist and Newt eh?

[jillan]

31. That's just great.

[karynnj]

40. The fact that Ted Kennedy and John Kerry trust him on this issue is good enough for me

Ted Kennedy saw every bill that happened in that time frame. The two Clinton autobiographies skirt around the problems in HRC's plan, but it is clear that it was enough of a mess that no Democrat on the Finance committee was for it and it was never submitted to the Congress. The Clintons then would not back any of the congressional alternatives including one offered by Bill Bradley.

Kennedy, in his position as Chair of the HELP committee (H stands for Health) and Kerry who is second to Rockefeller on the Health subcommittee of the Finance committe will likely have roles in designing the actual plan.

[AX10]

44. One must ask if Obama is another Dubya.

The media loves him and he is very close and willing to work with the big business mob.
He could be the perfect trojan horse.

[DesEtoiles]

47. OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

[DesEtoiles]

46. OMG! YOU'RE RIGHT! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

...............MG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is IT!!!!!!!!!!! This is THE issue!

MG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

[eridani]

50. Both candidates suck up to corporations on this

Why else do you think they are allowed to be frontrunners?