William Greider -- "Squandered Opportunity"

[Armstead]

Squandered Opportunity

By William Greider
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/greider

After his brilliant beginning, the president suddenly looks weak and unreliable. That will be the common interpretation around Washington of the president's abrupt retreat on substantive heathcare reform. Give Barack Obama a hard shove, they will say, rough him up a bit and he folds. A few weeks back, the president was touting a "public option" health plan as an essential element in reform. Now he says, take it or leave it. Whatever Congress does, he's okay with that.....

...Barack Obama mainly did this to himself. To avoid the accusation of socialized medicine, he intentionally shrouded his objectives in bureaucratic euphemisms like "public option." What the hell does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. The vagueness allowed anyone to fill in the blanks and anxious people did so in apocalyptic ways. The original idea, after all, was making something similar to Medicare available to anyone between childhood and old age who was either shut out by high prices or abused by insurance companies policing the system. This approach--call it Medicare Basic--would in theory give government the greater leverage needed to control the price inflation and reshape the system in positive ways. If you told people "public option" was a Medicare equivalent, the polls would demonstrate the popularity. Instead, that objective is now at risk. The right still calls Obama a covert socialist.....

....In other words, this is really a decisive test for the Democratic party and its main constituencies. Will they go along with the president or push back and reject his misdirections? The burden will fall mainly on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority. They will be under intense pressure from the White House to stay "on message" with the president. Organized labor seems to be breaking out of the go-along passivity. Richard L. Trumka, soon to be president of the AFL-CIO, promises to blackball Blue Dogs or anyone else who double-crosses the working people who faithfully financed their election campaigns.

Taking the high road will be hard and divisive. But maybe this is at last the season when Democrats reveal which side they are on.

MORE

[omega minimo]

1. Why are you posting good stuff in here? How's anybody supposed to see it?

:hi:





:yoiks:

[Armstead]

2. I expect the bus to roll along any minute now, in 5,4,3.....

[omega minimo]

5. LOL

:spray:

[amborin]

18. LOL! K&R

[omega minimo]

19. sssshhhhhhh don't wake the cerberus

:scared:

[ProSense]

3. "Will they go along with the president or push back and reject his misdirections?"

Yeah, another person who thinks the President wave wands and Congress does whatever he want them to.

[Armstead]

4. ...2,1...Yes time to throw one of the smartest people around under that Greyhound...

[jonnyblitz]

6. what do they care? they have Peggy Noonan and the Wall

Street Journal!11 :crazy: :rofl:

[ProSense]

8. Did he think it was "misdirection" when

Obama worked with the House to pass a public option?

The burden will fall mainly on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority. They will be under intense pressure from the White House to stay "on message" with the president.

He praised that bill, were they "on message" with Obama then?

[Armstead]

16. The misdirection was, among other things, making the House think he was committed to a public plan

Obama changed his tune along the way from "I support a public option" to "well I never really wanted a public option anyway."

[nightgaunt]

25. And the smartest person is Machiavelli playing Gandhi?

"There is a more cynical interpretation of Obama's flexibility. He is coming out right about where he wanted to be. Forget the good talk, it is said, this president never really intended to do deep reform that truly alters the industrial power structure dominating our dysfunctional healthcare system. He just wanted minimalist reforms he could sell as "victory." Not until years later would people figure out that nothing fundamental had been changed."

That is how I see it though Grieder doesn't, at least not yet. But then he wouldn't have had a chance to be elected at all if he had been a bi-racial Dennis Kucinich (the Real Deal) now would he? Intelligence is value free but the person who has it isn't. Remember that.

What if Obama is a Machiavellian at heart? What could such a person do with full knowledge of our Constitution/Bill of Rights and use it against us. He has the backing of a whole cabal of the ultra-rich and ruthless who want our form of gov't to die and blame it for their machinations used to destroy it from within.

Our election system is so compromised from the top down that no election is truly free in the Ukrainian sense. Filled with crypto-fascists who want the Republic paralyzed and to eventually die while their corporate shadow gov't grows off its life's blood.

Kindly Chancellor is Darth Sidious was a fictional portrayal of such a person who feigns avuncularity but is really a ruthless bastard who would kill or torture anyone to get what they want.

[freddie mertz]

9. Yeah, he's such a dope compared to Peggy "Silent Majority" Noonan.

Who is just as much a puke as Norquist is, and is being praised by the chorus right now in that "other" thread.

[glitch]

23. Ugh - glad I missed that. nt

[paulk]

24. that argument is BS - especially when you consider the majority

and the mandate Obama was elected with...

Glen Greenwald says it best -

"Now that they have a filibuster-proof majority, a huge margin in the House and the White House, the excuses continue unabated, as Democrats are now on the verge of jettisoning one of the most significant attractions for progressives to the Obama campaign -- active government involvement in the health insurance market. The excuses for "compromising" are cascading more rapidly than ever: We need Republican support to ensure it's bipartisan. The Blue Dogs won't go along with what we want. Centrist Senators will filibuster. There are similar excuses being made to defend Obama from accusations that he deserves some of the blame for the failure of the "public option." Matt Yglesias makes the typical case for shielding Obama from any responsibility:


I think there’s something perverse in the very strong desire I see among liberals to make problems in congress be about anything other than congress. It’s just not in the power of Barack Obama to make the senate anything other than what it is.


I'm really surprised that there's anyone, especially Matt, who actually believes this -- that the Obama White House is merely an impotent, passive observer of what the Democrats in Congress do and can't be expected to do anything to secure votes for approval of the health care bill it favors. As the leader of his party, the President commands a vast infrastructure on which incumbent members of Congress rely for re-election. His popularity among Democrats vests him numerous options to punish non-compliant Democrats. And Rahm Emanuel built his career on controlling the machinations within Congress. The very idea that Obama, Emanuel and company are just sitting back, helplessly watching as Max Baucus, Kent Conrad and the Blue Dogs (Rahm's creation) destroy their health care legislation, is absurd on its face."




Ok - now it's time to drag out the "Greenwald is an idiot/asshole/moron" or some other putdown from your bag of insults.

[freddie mertz]

7. Please put this up in GD as well.

It will sink here, and it is worthy of some "adult" discussion.

[Armstead]

14. Not legal for me to do it

but if anyone cares to find the article and post it there....

O8)

[SpartanDem]

10. I really like Grieder's solution to Nelson and Lieberman

Oh that's right he doesn't offer one, because that would require dealing in political realities. The Grieder's of the world of the seemingly would rather have compromised reform be rejected and no one helped so they can pat themselves on the back at how they didn't compromise.

[Vincardog]

11. The way to deal with Nelson and Lieberman is to make 55 the number of votes required to break a

filibuster. They can change the rules of the Senate. aWol never needed 60 votes.

[SpartanDem]

13. It takes more votes to change Senate rules

it 2/3 or 67 votes to change Senate rules although it's member voting and not members sworn as it is with other matters.

[Balderdash]

12. Compromise?

We're handing the Insurance companies and big Pharma everything they ever
wanted in *choke* Health Care Reform *choke*, if that is what compromise is
we're screwed.

[Armstead]

15. If you ever read Greider over the years you might realize....

that he has a very full grasp of "political realities"

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. K&R because it's true. n/t

[seafan]

20. Succinct, illuminating, and unafraid to articulate the truth. Thanks, Mr. Greider.

And thanks, Armstead, for posting this. After a while, the excuses for what is happening to us, quite simply, evaporate.



More from this piece, "Squandered Opportunity", by William Greider, from August 17, 2009

.....

The White House quickly added confusion to the outrage by insisting the president didn't really say anything new. He's just being flexible. He still wants what most Democrats want--a government plan that gives people a real escape from the profit-driven clutches of the insurance companies. But serious power players will not be fooled by the nimble spinners. Obama choked. He raised the white flag, even before the fight got underway in Congress.

He hands the insurance industry a huge victory. He rewards the right-wing frothers who have been calling him Adolph Hitler or Dr. Death. He caves to the conservative bias of the major media who insist only bipartisan consensus is acceptable for big reform (a standard they never invoked during the Bush years). Obama is deluded if he thinks this will win him any peace or respect or Republican votes. Weakness does not lead to consensus in Washington. It leads to more weakness. The Party of No intends to bring him down and will pile on. Obama has inadvertently demonstrated their strategy of vicious invective seems to be working.

.....

There is a more cynical interpretation of Obama's flexibility. He is coming out right about where he wanted to be. Forget the good talk, it is said, this president never really intended to do deep reform that truly alters the industrial power structure dominating our dysfunctional healthcare system. He just wanted minimalist reforms he could sell as "victory." Not until years later would people figure out that nothing fundamental had been changed.

In this scenario, Obama has always been more comfortable with the center-right forces within the Democratic party--Senator Max Baucus and the Blue Dogs--and the Clintonistas of DLC lineage who now fill his administration. His real political challenge was to string along the liberals with reassuring talk until they were stuck with lousy choices-- either go along with this popular president's pale version of reform or take him on and risk ruining his presidency. This sounds a lot like the choices Democrats faced during the Clinton years. Candidate Obama said it was "time to turn the page." We are still waiting to see what he meant.

I do not subscribe to the manipulative, deceptive portrait (not yet), but you can find lots of supporting evidence in Obama's behavior. His response to the financial crisis demonstrates a clear desire to restore Wall Street power, not to change it. His war strategy in Afghanistan looks like the familiar trap of open-ended counterinsurgency. The trap may soon close on him when the generals announce their need for more troops. Will this president dare to say no? Obama negotiated a truly ugly deal with the pharmaceutical industry--a promise not to use government bargaining power to bring down drug prices. His lieutenants still yearn to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility' by taxing the health-care benefits of union members or whacking Social Security.

.....

Taking the high road will be hard and divisive. But maybe this is at last the season when Democrats reveal which side they are on.

AP Images
Many Democrats are concerned that the early promise of the Obama administration has given way to the politics of triangulation.



From Common Dreams:


December 23, 2009

.....

Well, a couple of days ago my eyebrows raised when I saw this CNN poll on health care. It indicates that Obama's popularity has risen since the public option was removed from the plan. More interesting is the fact that support for the Senate/White House plan rose too, even though the public option had been more popular than the Senate/White House bill by a wide margin.

The Obama White House managed to successfully triangulate against the public option by saying it was too "liberal," and presenting their corporate-friendly plan that gives Aetna and PhRMA everything they want as "centrist" by comparison. Because that's the left/right puke funnel that the media must feed everything through. So even though taking out the public option goes against public opinion, because "liberals" will be upset, it must be a good "sensible" thing to do.

Having Joe Lieberman act as front man was the perfect delivery mechanism for achieving that goal.

Obama is triangulating against you today. They want all those diaries of outrage by "liberals," so that right wingers will look on and think "good for him - like Joe Lieberman, he really knows how to stick it to liberals." It's the move of a deeply cynical politician who believes in nothing but shameless manipulation for political convenience. Meanwhile, the media will completely overlook the fact that this bill is nothing but a corporate giveaway written by sleazy greedy whores willing to hold the nation's sick hostage in order to pull off the biggest Shock Doctrine scam in world history.

When I saw that CNN poll, I realized immediately that this media dynamic must change. Dramatically. Because if it doesn't, Obama - and all his fellow corporatists - will use it to easily deflect any challenge to their continuing grand ambitions for a Bailout Nation.

So let's change it.

Here is an example of how we can change the media narrative:



December 29, 2009, WP:

An alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration -- if there were one.

Instead, the post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has held up President Obama's nominee in an effort to prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union.

DeMint, in a statement, said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged attempted attack in Detroit "is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA."

'Jim DeMint hates unions more than he hates terrorists.' (My title..)

[depakid]

21. Here's what's disturbing- and hearkens deja vu to many seasoned observers:

Obama is deluded if he thinks this will win him any peace or respect or Republican votes. Weakness does not lead to consensus in Washington. It leads to more weakness. The Party of No intends to bring him down and will pile on. Obama has inadvertently demonstrated their strategy of vicious invective seems to be working.

Pandering to the right didn't work in the 90's (and it brought us profoundly dysfunctional policies, to boot).

It won't work any better- and indeed, will likely prove even more detrimental today.

[amborin]

22. remember the stimulus? not one republican voted for it, after all the overtures