Reader reactions at Firedoglake to a positive review of Obama's speech

brentspeak

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Thu Sep-10-09 09:58 AM
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Reader reactions at Firedoglake to a positive review of Obama's speech

These sum it up well:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/09/09/health-care-reform-democrats-can-honor-their-legacy-americas-will-and-also-win-elections/
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Did you see a different speech? I saw a speech where Obama threw the progressive base under the bus and put the thumb-screws to the progressive caucus. Fighting against Obama there’s just no way to get any bill worth a net positive out of this. The bill should be destroyed. Progressives won’t even be able to do that I bet.

Watching the talking heads it seems that nobody is even talking about the possibility of the progressive caucus holding firm. The discussion even on MSNBC is in fantasy land where Obama is a huge leftist again.
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"it will become a huge asset to Democrats by the time the 2010 election rolls around"

Get real. The effects of this bill will be so toxic…. well… lets just say there’s a reason Obama is putting off the effects until just after the 2012 elections instead of just before. That is the signal that he knows this is a terrible bill.

And what’s more I bet if the progressives do hold firm then some House Republicans will cross the aisle to secure a victory for the insurance industry over the public interest.
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Do you still watch main stream media and believe you will come away with some insight of reality. Obama, the politicians, corportations, and the wealthy, they are all the same.
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The only people who will benefit from the guidelines laid out by Obama tonight are the problem - the insurance companies. No bill will be better than this garbage.
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The man I voted for is a cold-blooded, calculating politician who doesn’t give a damn. It is all bells and whistles. He has betrayed damn near every principle he has allegedly stood for since he entered public life. I now fully understand why he called on Emanuel, who is the man he wishes he could be.

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Everyone at Kos is so busy howling for Wilson’s blood that none of them seem to have noticed that what they had been saying for weeks would be the worst of both worlds - a mandate without a meaningful public option - is now officially Obamacare.

Today I filled out the paperwork to change my voter registration to Unaffiliated. In 2012, I don’t care if the Republicans run a Cheney/Bachmann ticket. The Democrats are dead to me.

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Lane, you are writing about what Obama should do. Of course, what he should do is enact single payer, but he isn’t doing what either you or I want. Obama’s approval ratings are tumbling precisely because he seems determined to organize the biggest sellout possible to the insurance, medical, and drug companies. The public clearly isn’t buying it. And the speech tonight with all its vagueness and lack of a clear direction is not going to change the current dynamic.

The bottomline is that Obama was elected with a mandate of change and he is giving us the same old same old or worse.

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Obama did not invite the left to talk him into a public option more robust than the cramped model he rolled out. His version is only for the uninsured; it needs to fund itself; it’s for 5% or less, probably because it won’t piggyback on Medicare rates. In short, it’s a toothless, blue dogbitten tiger.

By contrast he extended a hand to the right to talk him down from his communistic excesses: co-ops or, as Scarecrow noted, triggers.

It was the Emanuel/DLC play in spades. Nothing here to celebrate whatsoever. We got exactly what the realists among us expected.

The only opening for a tactical move along Lane Hudson’s lines – other than ignoring him and ginning up the CPC – is to use his own words against him, make the case that his gutted option won’t even do what little he asks of it. For starters, it needs to be available to everyone under the mandate whether insured or not. Then it can compete with the privates and cherry-pick their rolls. That’s what competition means, isn’t it? The privates can sure as hell go after those under the PO (though I doubt they’d want to since the uninsured tend to be unhealthy).

It needs Medicare rates to vie with the insurance giants. Why shouldn’t it have this? It needs to be big enough for its reforms to change how medicine is practiced on people below age 65. It also needs to be big enough to win favor with hospitals and doctors, as private insurers are able to do. And so on. Obama would have us forget all this. Don’t. Don’t ignore drug pricing either. That may be shrinking the program’s scope.

You see the point. We should be driving a Mack truck through the gap between Obama’s stated goals and the option he sketched out. He tried to take away the keys, but so what? Let’s get on with it. Be sober, critical, and insistent. Learn the ins and outs of the option, see the more or less of it.

My first move will be to give my take to the people in Congress who claim to be mine.