Jon Stewart blasts Democrats over public option

On the Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart blasted Senate Democrats for failing to get a public health care option through the Senate Finance Committee despite having a super majority.

Here's the clip via Comedy Central:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democratic Super Majority
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Democratic Party On Brink of Civil War

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-01/the-democrats-civil-war/?cid=hp:mainpromo5
With the defeat on Tuesday of the public-option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee, liberal Democrats are threatening an open revolt against the Obama administration. “If Obama takes the public option off the table, we’re looking at a civil war within the Democratic Party,” says Charles Chamberlain, the political director of the million-member Democracy for America (DFA), founded by Howard Dean, which has helped raise over $200,000 for TV attack ads against wavering Democrats and moderate Senate Republican Olympia Snowe.

Public Option Headed For Vote Tomorrow

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/24/public-option-headed-for_n_299232.html
The public option is headed for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) lamented on a conference call Thursday evening that the debate Friday would be the first time that the committee, since it began negotiating health care reform months ago, would be debating the public option.

"We're going to have a full blown debate in the Finance Committee," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a backer of the public option. While it may be an "underdog," Schumer said, "don't count it out."

Democrats Back At 60: New Massachusetts Senator Appointed

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003209878
Paul G. Kirk Jr., a longtime Democratic Party insider and associate of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy , was appointed Thursday by Gov. Deval Patrick as Kennedy’s interim replacement.

Kirk will be sworn in at 3:15 p.m. Friday and will serve until the Jan. 19 special election that will fill out the remainder of Kennedy’s unexpired term, which runs through the 2012 election. As expected said he will not be a candidate for that special election.

Sorry, Governor, New Yorkers Say They're Ready For Change

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/polltracker/2009/09/ny-gov.html
They want what Obama wants... Paterson GONE!

Why we're talking about race - again

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=690926
The Democrats have lost the healthcare debate.

For months now, polls have been showing that Americans don't want the massive new government controls, regulations, taxes, and spending that Democrats are pushing.

Latest Gallup polling shows 60 percent saying that President Barack Obama's proposal will not expand health coverage without raising taxes on middle-class Americans and without affecting the current quality of healthcare.



Forty-three percent approve of how Obama is handling healthcare and 52 percent disapprove.

You would be hard pressed to find a Democrat or Republican who does not agree that we can improve how we deliver healthcare.

So the logical conclusion we'd expect now from well-intentioned people would be that we go back to square one. We do what Obama promised but never did -- have a truly open, bi-partisan discussion, with all ideas are on the table, to generate the best possible product for the American people.

Why is this not happening? Because it's not about healthcare. It's about ideology.

Despite claims from our Democrat administration that it wants civility, it does not. It wants control.

This nation is already torn apart ideologically. In the last four months, we've witnessed two cold-blooded, ideologically motivated murders. An abortion doctor shot in a church, and a pro-life demonstrator murdered in a drive-by shooting in front of a school.

There are fewer and fewer "self evident truths" about which we all agree.

The current charade to paint ideological differences with our president as racially motivated dangerously pours gasoline on the burning embers of our differences.

But this is what Democrats want. They have lost the healthcare debate on substance, so they want to make it emotional. They want to intimidate. And nothing intimidates and polarizes like race.

Continued at the link:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=690926

Report: Obama Asks Paterson to Quit New York Governor’s Race

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20paterson.html?_r=1&hp
Well dayum!

Why can't he get tough like this with health care?

Democrats Run from Carter on Race Comments

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/27248
First Dems ran from ACORN, now they are running from former President Carter.

They sure do scare easily, don't they?

The Wrong Side of History

The all-white crowd gathered round, seething with anger about change, which they felt was being shoved down their throats.

Some pumped demoralizing signs into the air, others shouted down anybody they didn’t feel were on their side. It didn’t take long for the name-calling and insults to commence.

“Somebody started yelling. Lynch her! Lynch her! I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”

These are the words of Elizabeth Eckford. She is not talking about town hall protesters or tea baggers. Eckford, one of nine black students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., was recalling how hundreds of white protesters — with backing from powerful politicians — tried to block her and eight other children from entering a public school in 1957.

They became known as the Little Rock Nine.

Protesters faced by the nine youths repeatedly warned that if blacks were allowed into “their schools” (much like the “their country” sentiment currently being echoed) it would harm their children.

It is ironic that thousands of angry, mostly white protesters converged on Washington last weekend at the same time I happened to be reading Cooper v. Aaron, a 1958 Supreme Court case stemming from the Little Rock Nine. The case is about Arkansas Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus and his refusal to obey federal orders to integrate the state’s schools. His defiance caused Republican President Dwight Eisenhower to send in federal troops to force Faubus to follow the law.

Chaos erupted. Vitriol and rowdy demonstrations spread not only throughout Arkansas, but across the country.

The nation was so polarized that it was nearly impossible for most people to foresee what many now take for granted: Integration would benefit the whole country, not just a particular demographic group.

We also now know that those screaming protesters were on the wrong side of history.

Some may ask what the Little Rock Nine story has to do with the current health care debate, especially when the apparent villain in the case was a Democrat and the hero, a Republican.

Here’s a clue: This column is not really about race. It’s about the way history repeats itself, and about our place in it.

Faubus’ opposition to allow black children to integrate Arkansas schools was politically motivated: He risked losing political support if he sanctioned integration, even though it was the right thing to do. Just like Republicans now risk losing political support if they show agreement with President Obama’s health care ideas — or any of his ideas, for that matter.

Click here to continue.

Hoyer Says Public Option Can’t Be Allowed to Scuttle Health Bill

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=cqmidday-000003197653
Paving the way for what's to come....?
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House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday that while he supports a public option in a health care overhaul bill, he doesn’t think its omission should scuttle the top domestic policy priority of President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Even without a public option, emerging health legislation includes much “that is very good, moves us forward, enhances very substantially accessibility, expands greatly the number of people covered by insurance and provides for very, very broadly supported insurance reforms,” he told reporters as the House returned from its long August break.

Obama, Give Us the Diagnosis Straight

There’s a no-nonsense woman on Capitol Hill who trains newly elected members of Congress on how to become legislators. Her name is Judy Schneider, and one of the first lessons she teaches is that to move legislation, members need to be intimately familiar with the bill’s politics, policy and procedure — especially procedure.

She also tells newcomers that if lawmakers aren’t skillful in all three of these areas, the policy is always the first to go. (I know this because I took her class as a legislative fellow a year ago.)

Looking at how President Obama and other Democrats have handled the current health care debate, it appears a lot of them might have missed Schneider’s class, or at least are in need of a refresher course.

This week, Obama will address a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, in which he will try to get his health care efforts back on track.

It’s about time, too.

The past month has been filled with rancor, half-truths and outright lies — all from opponents. Part of the reason Obama and Democrats have been unable to frame the debate on their terms is because the majority party failed to understand the politics. They also have been unable to introduce a single plan or resonant message of its own. The void has unfortunately been filled by a vocal minority, well-financed by the health care industry.

The number of plans being talked about in Congress has only added to the confusion.

The result: Two out of three Americans say they are confused about the health care options being discussed in Congress, according to a CBS News poll. Only 36 percent of those polled said that government would do a better job than private insurers in providing medical coverage, down from 50 percent in June, the Christian Science monitor reported.

So, what should Obama say this week to Congress — and by extension the American people?

First: The president needs to shoot straight with the American public and tell them the public option is dead. His administration has been signaling this development for weeks, but nobody has come out and stated it directly; instead the administration has waffled. Disclosing the truth — that the option is off the table — will stop liberals from walking around with false hope, and at the same time give conservatives less to complain about (not that they really will stop, but the less the rest of us have to hear about “socialist medicine” and “death panels,” the better).

Continued Here...

Pace of Change Under Obama Frustrates Unions

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/politics/07labor.html?_r=1
For eight years under George W. Bush, union officials barely set foot inside the White House. But 10 days after President Obama took office, the nation’s most powerful labor leaders mingled in the Blue Room, moments after the new president, a man they helped put there, signed a string of executive orders undoing Mr. Bush’s policies.

The mood was euphoric. Today that euphoria is giving way to a mixture of frustration and unease, as union leaders are growing concerned that the Obama White House has not delivered as much as they had expected.

Experts see double-digit Dem losses

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26393.html
Not good news at all for the president's party.

Down With the Senate

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0cec8e5a-e6d4-428c-8a34-cc5569ce217d
Down With the Senate

The sense most people have of the health care debate is that it's great drama in which President Obama is the central player. All the big news has centered around hints and whispers about what the White House wants. They're abandoning the public plan! They're standing by the public plan! They're giving up on bipartisanship! The press has covered the story as if Obama is Moses and we're waiting for him to come down from the mountaintop.

This is totally wrong. The Senate is what controls the process. That's the chokepoint for any health care bill. The question isn't how badly Obama wants a public plan, or how much he cares about bipartisanship. It's whether moderate to conservative Democrats in the Senate will filibuster a bill that has a public plan or lacks GOP support. Everything else is details.

...


I still think there's a pretty good chance at passing significant health care reform. But if health care reform fails, liberals need to understand who to blame and how to fix it. They need to start knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman, who seem to be trying to kill health care reform, even if this temporarily costs the Democrats some seats. They need to commit the party to reconstituting the rules of the Senate along majoritarian lines--yes, even if this helps Republicans pass their agenda when they're in charge. If health care reform can't pass now, then a filibuster-proof Democratic majority isn't worth having. At that point you have to consider blowing up the party and waiting a decade or two to rebuild a new one that's able to address the country's actual needs.

unfortunately if this fails, it's pegged on Obama because it's his campaign promise and the reason why people voted for him.

Op-Ed Columnist - Don’t Blame Obama - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24douthat-1.html?_r=2
yup. it's dead, jim

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s most loyal constituencies were the national press corps and the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Those on the left loved him because they thought he was one of them. They tolerated all the happy talk about bipartisanship because they were sure that deep in his community-organizing heart Obama shared their premises, their passions and their goals.

The media loved him because he was a great story and a great campaigner. The press favors dreamy liberals, but it worships success, and Obama was the best of both worlds — a soaring rhetorician with a ruthlessly competent political machine.

But now both groups are turning on him. As the health care debate enters its decisive weeks, the left doubts President Obama’s commitment, and the press doubts his competence.

For MSNBC-watching, Huffington Post-devouring liberals, the administration’s fancy footwork on a public health care plan (maybe it’s out, maybe it’s in, but either way it’s negotiable) is just the latest example of the president’s unseemly unwillingness to steamroll the opposition. He has been too solicitous to Republicans, too hands-off with Democrats, too detached and technocratic — even as a once-in-a-generation opportunity is passing liberalism by.

Where the left sees betrayal, the press sees ham-fistedness. The White House’s messages have been mixed — fiscal hawkery one day, moralism the next. The administration has allowed distractions like the Skip Gates affair to crowd out his agenda. It has overlearned the lessons of the Clinton-care debacle and given Congress too much leeway. It has underlearned the lessons of the Bush-era Social Security debacle and gone to war before there’s an actual piece of legislation on the table.

Some of this is true — but some of it is overstated. And at its worst, it’s an example of the bipartisan derangement that Gene Healy of the Cato Institute has dubbed “the cult of the presidency.”

To the disciples of this cult, the president is the government. “He is a soul nourisher,” Healy writes, “a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns and spiritual malaise.” Anything that happens on his watch happens because of him. And just as important, anything that doesn’t happen can be pinned entirely on his mistakes.

President Obama has been turning these quasi-messianic expectations to his advantage since he first entered national politics. But that doesn’t make them any less unrealistic.

To listen to the chatter about where his administration has gone wrong, you would think that the rest of the Democratic Party had no agency — that Democratic office-holders are slaves to poll numbers that only the White House can control, and that the way a Max Baucus, a Ben Nelson or a Blanche Lincoln votes is entirely determined by whether the president of the United States twists the right arms and hits the right rhetorical notes.

In reality, the health care wrestling match is less a test of Mr. Obama’s political genius than it is a test of the Democratic Party’s ability to govern. This is not the Reagan era, when power in Washington was divided, and every important vote required the president to leverage his popularity to build trans-party coalitions. Fox News and Sarah Palin have soapboxes, but they don’t have veto power. Mr. Obama could be a cipher, a nonentity, a Millard Fillmore or a Franklin Pierce, and his party would still have the power to pass sweeping legislation without a single Republican vote.

What’s more, health care reform is the Democratic Party’s signature issue. Its wonks have thought longer and harder about it than any other topic. Its politicians are vastly better at talking about the subject than Republicans: if an election is fought over health care, bet on the Democrat every time. And for all the complexity involved, it’s arguably easier to tackle than other liberal priorities. It’s more popular than cap and trade, it’s less likely to split the party than immigration and it’s more amenable to technocratic interventions than income inequality.

If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first, poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.

You have to assume that on some level Congress understands this — which is why you also have to assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.

so if the election meant that the republicans were dead and healthcare means that the democrats are dead - what does this mean for America as a whole?

What If Democrats Behaved More Like Republicans?

Cash for Clunkers to end on Monday

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090821/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cash_for_clunkers
Wildly successful or poorly planned/run?

The Coming Liberal Suicide

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-20/the-coming-liberal-suicide/?cid=hp:featureline
As Democrats blast Obama over the public option, they risk destroying the policy they’ve been hoping for for years.

Ezra Klein: Co-Ops Solve Political, Not Policy Problems

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/co-ops_as_an_alternative_to_th.html
IIRC Blue Cross started as a co-op - then turned itself into a for-profit!

Ezra Klein - Co-Ops as an Alternative to the Public Plan

The theory of the public option relies on the insights of the single-payer folks and the demonstration of Medicare, not to mention foreign systems: A robust public insurer can do a better job holding down costs and delivering access to high-quality care than a fractured private insurance system.

Obviously, a lot of people don't like these ideas. Among them are insurers, Republicans and, crucially, providers like doctors and hospitals, who fear that a large public insurer will hold down costs, which will in turn hold down incomes. They have argued, credibly, that they can unite and kill a bill that contains a strong public option.

In early June, Max Baucus asked Kent Conrad to solve this argument. Conrad came up with the co-op proposal. And I literally mean "came up" with it. Conrad told me that the idea emerged "out of conversations in my office after we were asked to see if we couldn't come up with some way of bridging this chasm." To put it bluntly, the co-op does not solve a policy problem so much as it solves a political problem. That political problem was, "How do you finesse a compromise on the public option?"

Seems like the Dems are finally switching strategies now that it's clear that co-ops won't work for anyone but Kent Conrad.

man all this healthcare angst is gonna be the death of me!

Obama Considering Nuclear Option!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration is looking hard at pushing through a health care reform bill without Republican backing, top Democrats close to the White House told CNN.

Democrats say Republicans, particularly Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, aren't serious about striking a deal.

The Democratic majority in the Senate has been stymied in the health care debate by Republicans and conservative Democrats, leaving them short of the 60-vote filibuster-proof margin needed to pass the bill.

Democratic success could depend on an obscure tactic called reconciliation, a type of budget maneuver that requires only a simple majority -- 51 votes -- to pass.

Congressional Democrats authorized the maneuver specifically for health care reform legislation during the debate over the 2010 budget, which passed in April.

One top Senate Republican warned at the time that using reconciliation to pass such a measure would be "like a declaration of war."

Going it alone could be risky for Democrats, not because they couldn't raise the votes, but because Republicans could cast it as a power play, accusing them of failing to win bipartisan support. A Quinnipiac University survey released two weeks ago showed that 59 percent of registered voters nationwide oppose passage of health care legislation if the bill fails to win bipartisan support.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted Wednesday that President Obama has not yet given up hope for a bipartisan plan.

"The president has said countless times he will work with anybody and everybody who wants to work constructively on health care reform," Gibbs said. "We continue to be hopeful that we can get bipartisan support, and we'll continue to work with those that are interested in doing that."

But moving ahead on a more partisan basis might ultimately be a strategy Democrats are willing to employ.

"If we have to push it through this way, no one is going to remember how messy it was," a top White House adviser told CNN. "At the end of the day, they'll remember we got health care reform done. A win is a win."

Don't Miss

• Getting past the lingo of the health care debate
• Fears fuel emotional health care protests
• In depth: Health care in America

White House officials are beginning to lay the groundwork for such a move, telling CNN that they'll have to take drastic measures if there's no movement.

Sources from the administration and the Democratic side of Capitol Hill have told CNN that they're becoming increasingly convinced that Republicans -- particularly Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley -- involved in the negotiating process aren't serious about striking a deal.

Grassley is one of six members of the Senate Finance Committee -- three Democrats and three Republicans -- negotiating the only bipartisan health care legislation so far.

The six negotiators are not considering a government-funded public health insurance option favored by Obama and Democratic leaders but are looking at nonprofit cooperatives that would negotiate collective polices for members.

Grassley warned at a weekend town hall meeting that the months of negotiations may fail to produce a bill he can support.

"I've said all year that something as big and important as health care legislation should have broad-based support," Grassley said Wednesday. "So far, no one has developed that kind of support, either in Congress or at the White House. That doesn't mean we should quit. It means we should keep working until we can put something together that gets that widespread support."

Gibbs said there are "Republicans on the Finance Committee and others that we believe are working in a constructive way to get reform through the Senate and ultimately to (the president's) desk."

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, also insisted in a statement Wednesday that "bipartisan progress continues. The (committee) is on track to reach a bipartisan agreement on comprehensive health care reform that can pass the Senate."

If Democrats choose to go it alone, the public health insurance option is likely to be back on the table because there would be no need to win the votes of Republicans or conservative Democrats. But it would be a change in tactics after the White House appeared to shift its stance on the issue over the weekend.

On Saturday, Obama said the "public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

Then on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said a public option is "not an essential element" of overhauling the health care system.

Their comments were interpreted in media reports as a softening of the administration's support for the public insurance option.

However, Sebelius denied Tuesday that anything had changed in Obama's policy.

"Here's the bottom line: Absolutely nothing has changed," she said at a Medicare conference. "We continue to support the public option. That will help lower costs, give American consumers more choice and keep private insurers honest. If people have other ideas about how to accomplish these goals, we'll look at those, too. But the public option is a very good way to do this."

Gibbs said Obama and Sebelius have consistently called for making health insurance affordable to all in a competitive market, and that they think a public option is the best way to do so, but were open to other ideas.

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Now, will conservative Democrats get on board is the REAL question.