SmartRemarks

As the health care reform debate enters what appears to be the home stretch (albeit not for the first time), what Washington is offering us (the citizenry) boils down to a choice between bad and worse. The legislation now under consideration, both the Senate bill and the slight variation on same presented as “Obama’s bill,” is the end result of a process that has methodically stripped away almost everything that made this reform effort worth undertaking in the first place. They’ve thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater.

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Tags: Alan Grayson, Bart Stupak, Blue Dogs, Congress, Democrats, Dick Durbin, health care, insurance, Max Baucus, Obama, Pelosi, progressives, Rahm Emanuel, Reid, Republicans, Senate

Yesterday’s inbox contained a political e-mail message forwarded by my girlfriend’s parents. They’re not especially political people; their sensibilities (to the extent they’ll even discuss them) tend toward a somewhat mushy moderate conservatism, the kind of folks who instinctively vote Republican, even though the party’s center of gravity has moved far away from them. Indeed, they even said as much in the forwarded message—”you’re much more interested in politics than either of us”—yet they invited a response, practically asking for an informed rebuttal even as they implicitly treated the viral message as credible and worthy of attention.

Which, once I read it, was really hard to believe.

This is the message they forwarded, word for word:
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Tags: Congress, conservatism, Constitution, e-mail, government, health care, insurance, Medicare, Michael Connelly, Supreme Court

(And thank heaven for that.)

So Sen. Max Baucus’s Finance Committee has finally released a health care “reform” bill, months after every other committee charged with the task. (Or a “Chairman’s Mark” version of one, at least—i.e., something actually readable by laymen [pdf]).

The predictable result? It’s awful. Any Democrat who would vote for a bill that looks like this has absolutely no political sense whatsoever, much less policy sense, and should be drummed out of office on general principle.

Fortunately, most of them seem to realize that.

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Tags: Democrats, health care, insurance, Max Baucus, Republicans, Senate

So, where did I leave off?

…That’s right, there was a speech Wednesday night. A pretty significant one, in fact, for reasons I described at some length.

What of it, then?

I can’t deny that it was a very, very good speech. Rhetorically powerful. And yet, what it says about the direction of health care policy, and thus about Obama and the Democratic Party itself… still remains substantially up in the air.

(Even as every pundit who can string three words together attempts to read the tea leaves and tell us otherwise.)

I’ll try to avoid that kind of divination. But opinions? Analysis? I have those.

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Tags: Blue Dogs, Congress, Democrats, government, health care, insurance, Obama, progressives, Rahm Emanuel, Reid, Republicans, Senate

Even as Dick Armey’s dick army continues to do the disruptive dirty work of its corporate-funded organizers (an onion Rachel Maddow has ably peeled for public view), even as its footsoldiers continue to spout fear-drenched talk-radio-esque bullshit about euthanasia, baby killing, and the evil plans of that Fascist Socialist Muslim Negro in the White House (who’s really from Kenya, you know!), even as they’re devoutly convinced they speak for Real America notwithstanding the fact that most real Americans are repulsed and embarrassed by what they see these people doing (and oh, yeah, disagree with them on the issues, too)…

… some folks at the top of the Establishment, those who understand the real interests at stake here (hint: it’s not the footsoldiers) and who are actually capable of making calm, methodical arguments (i.e., they don’t think whoever shouts loudest wins), are showing their hand just a little too boldly.

Case study: Fortune Magazine editor-at-large Shawn Tully’s recent pieces attacking what he dismissively terms “Obamacare.” Just as the right-wing culture warriors are perpetually projecting onto the left their own penchants for intolerance and bullying, likewise class war in America is almost always a top-down phenomenon, even as its practitioners try to cast it as the exact opposite. And Tully’s offerings on this subject demonstrate that phenomenon writ large, in glowing red letters.

Note that I acknowledged his writing only as calm and methodical. I didn’t say it was logically sound. Let’s delve into the details…

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Tags: class war, health care, insurance, McCain, Rachel Maddow, Shawn Tully

One could go on at literally exhaustive length about the ins and outs of the current “health care debate” in Washington, but I’ll try to avoid that. The media and the blogosphere have provided a constant play-by-play in terms of both substantive policy and, even more, political strategy. (Jonathan Chait at TNR has been particularly diligent. Meanwhile, much of the MSM seems content merely ringing premature death-knells for reform.) Me, I’ll just try to provide a few observations from a mile-high view.

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Tags: Blue Dogs, Congress, Democrats, health care, House of Representatives, insurance, Medicare, Obama, Paul Krugman, Rahm Emanuel, Republicans, Senate