Dem healthcare infighting intensifies

[babylonsister]

Alienate liberals? :wtf:


Dem healthcare infighting intensifies
By Alexander Bolton and Jeffrey Young
Posted: 07/28/09 08:11 PM


A House fight among Democrats on overhauling the nation’s healthcare system has spread to the Senate, where centrists and liberals are clashing over the direction the legislation should take.

Trouble is brewing now that a bipartisan group of senators — led by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — has signaled it will exclude a government-run insurance option from the committee’s draft legislation that could be marked up next week.

Leaving it out would be a major step toward attracting Republican support for President Barack Obama’s signature issue. But it also would alienate liberals, who say the effort is wasted without it and are preparing a barrage of amendments for the Finance markup.

The House legislation has divided Democrats in that chamber along similar lines and is built around a public option to be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, an idea that has almost no chance of winning GOP votes. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee this month voted along partisan lines to approve legislation with a public option at its core.

Infighting among House Democrats has led to an impasse at the Energy and Commerce Committee that is expected to prevent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from meeting her deadline of completing work before the August recess.

And on Tuesday it prompted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) to hint that more liberal members of the party should consider challenging centrist Blue Dogs in next year’s primaries.

more...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/infighting-intensifies-2009-07-28.html

[notesdev]

1. Having a majority

was interesting while it lasted

[babylonsister]

2. Did you even read this? Reading probs?

:shrug:

[notesdev]

4. Yeah

and?

[DonCoquixote]

3. OK

I have been sympathetic to the need to not act like Don Quixote and charge into a windmill. Sixty votes or not, if Obama were to slap heads beforehand, the MSM would do their best to play it as "those scary lefties and their n-----s coming to collect" which is the same tune they played in 1993. However, this time, the GOP cannot play their martyr card, as there was an honest attempt to let them abandon the sinking ship of right wing ideals. If they still want to hardball, now is the time to be brutal. However, the only way the MSM will allow Obama to do that is if he does the smart thing, get on the media, and say why there must be a public option. He also needs to unleash the Michael Moores, the Howard deans, and Dennis K.s and tell the right wing (ok, you did not like our compromise, so now you Blue Dogs can enjoy talking to Dean and Dennis over here at the table, after all, you cannot truly be said to represent the people's interests anymore, even the scared timid people that tend to vote conservative, since they are, unlike YOU, wise enough to jump ship." Hit the media, they want a show, give them one, drown them with the sort of propaganda only the bully pulpit and Hollywood can make, because it is the only voice that has a chance of drowning out corporate propaganda.

[babylonsister]

6. The only problem with that is, who owns the corporate media?

All r/wers. We hear what they want us to hear, which is a big part of the problem.

[DonCoquixote]

9. True

And indeed, if Obama was to read a script prepared by Rush, Fox would still spin it. The fact is, Obama and the rest of the left need to circumvent the media. Obama did this in the campaign, now he needs the equivalent of FDR's "fireside chats" which were using radio (then a newer medium) to circumvent the papers. Simply put, we need the internet to overide the MSM.

[babylonsister]

10. He already does that. Every Saturday a.m., check out

youtube on DU. It's there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Reed realizes that there are ways to pass this crap with a 51 majority right?

He did read the damn fucking manual, RIGHT?

Majority my ass, they are allowing a few to still drive the buss.

What will it take? Millions in the streets? Absolutely... that is what it will take. Why the fucking vote anymore?

[rucky]

7. Waters is right. And Van Hollen is a strong advocate of the public option.

so the DCCC may actually do the right thing in '10, and fund challenges to those Blue Dogs (in the House, at least).

[Warpy]

8. Those FOOLS need to know that Republicans won't vote for it

no matter how much they gut any bill to preserve the holy insurance companies.

Republicans will NEVER VOTE FOR A DEMOCRATIC INITIATIVE. Period.

Somebody needs to remind these conservative dolts what happened to them in 1994. If they foul this up, they'll be thrown out of office the way the weak, ineffectual, spineless Democrats were in 1994 and for the same reason.

Maybe Blue Dogs LIKED meeting in the basement and being shut out of committees.

[babylonsister]

11. We know. They know, too. That's what's odd to me. nt

[Oak2004]

12. Welcome to the birth pangs of America's next two-party system

I believe the Republicans are a dying party, going the way of the whigs. That however does not mean we'll get a Democratic golden age. I've been predicting for some time now that the new two-party arrangement will come, not out of a revived Republican Party, which is working extra hard to turn itself as rapidly as possible into a fringe third party, and not from the formation of a new party ex nihilo, but out of a split between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party.

The Republicans were, in effect, the glue that held together people as different as Dennis Kucinich and Evan Bayh. Without the glue, the Democrats are destined for a Progressive/DLC-Blue Dog split. The two wings of the party are truly two0 opposing parties in everything but name.

[notesdev]

13. Which is basically what happened to the GOP

"fiscal conservatives" and "social conservatives" had little in common other than that they opposed the Democrats. Once the GOP actually attained power, they immediately set about destroying themselves. The natural corrective action should have taken Bush out of office in 2004, but we all know what happened there. Ironically, though, that gave the GOP four more years to tear itself to pieces.