2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress

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The Firestarter said:
Even if elected Bernie wouldn't be able to deliver it without both houses on the same wavelength.
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This is true, which would sort of negate the benefit of electing him when half the Dems and all the GOP would reject his policies.
 
Cheesy said:
Obama didn't deliver it and it Hilary didn't run on a platform including it. There's an argument to be had with pressure and the threat of a primary in 2020 she'd have perhaps considered it, because her political views have typically always been very flexible, but however you view her she didn't actively support universal healthcare like Bernie has.
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https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/
 
Silva said:
the ACA only covers 20 million people? how the feck does anyone boast about that in a country of 320 million
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20m people that were previously uninsured.
 
Eboue said:
The benefit is having someone in power who forcefully pushes for it. It's called the bully pulpit for a reason
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Forcefully pushing for something that will never happen isn't really accomplishing anything. The Dems still need to actually make single payer part of their platform and figure out how to pass the law against a tsunami of corporate Dem and GOP opposition.
 
Red Dreams said:
this is speculation.

A president winning on a platform will fight to deliver. Compromise perhaps.

Bernie said he may consider a public option.
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This needs to get resolved before he or any other supporters of similar policies decide to run. If the Dems run with a loosy goosy policy of not really having a unified policy then it will backfire spectacularly.
 
Eboue said:
The benefit is having someone in power who forcefully pushes for it. It's called the bully pulpit for a reason
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Ironically, Trump’s use of Twitter is very much similar to FDR’s fireside chats in how they bypassed the usual avenues to pitch their ideas to the public, one of the few tools available to the ‘bully pulpit’. Obama abandoning the grassroots movement he cultivated during the 08 campaign, including the innovate use of Facebook at the time, ended up a significant blunder that ceded the control of the narrative to Fox News and conservative media.

You have to wonder if the failure to include a public option in the ACA could’ve been averted if Obama was able to pitch it directly to the public, although I suppose the breach of trust from not prosecuting Wall Street executives casted a big shadow over his efforts.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
Ironically, Trump’s use of Twitter is very much similar to FDR’s fireside chats in how they bypassed the usual avenues to pitch their ideas to the public, one of the few tools available to the ‘bully pulpit’. Obama abandoning the grassroots movement he cultivated during the 08 campaign, including the innovate use of Facebook at the time, ended up a significant blunder that ceded the control of the narrative to Fox News and conservative media.

You have to wonder if the failure to include a public option in the ACA could’ve been averted if Obama was able to pitch it directly to the public, although I suppose the breach of trust from not prosecuting Wall Street executives casted a big shadow over his efforts.
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Would Joe Lieberman have given a shit, though?
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
Ironically, Trump’s use of Twitter is very much similar to FDR’s fireside chats in how they bypassed the usual avenues to pitch their ideas to the public, one of the few tools available to the ‘bully pulpit’. Obama abandoning the grassroots movement he cultivated during the 08 campaign, including the innovate use of Facebook at the time, ended up a significant blunder that ceded the control of the narrative to Fox News and conservative media.

You have to wonder if the failure to include a public option in the ACA could’ve been averted if Obama was able to pitch it directly to the public, although I suppose the breach of trust from not prosecuting Wall Street executives casted a big shadow over his efforts.
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That's not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to pin blame on a few individuals & meet criminality for reckless behavior that damaged the economy. It is mighty difficult for prosecutors to get convictions in those cases. As much as the public wants blood, unfortunately it's nigh on impossible.
 
Ubik said:
Would Joe Lieberman have given a shit, though?
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There were many reasons, not least of all Ted Kennedy kicking the bucket at the most unfortunate of time. As the party leader though, he clearly didn’t keep in touch with the base, opting for protocols and decorum. In the end though, they went with reconciliation anyway so all those months of negotiations were simply precious time wasted.

ErranMorad said:
That's not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to pin blame on a few individuals & meet criminality for reckless behavior that damaged the economy. It is mighty difficult for prosecutors to get convictions in those cases. As much as the public wants blood, unfortunately it's nigh on impossible.
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Something more punitive than Dodd-Frank for future failings and oversight over the bailout to prevent the golden parachutes would’ve done much to lessen the swing in public opinion in the lead up to 2010.
 
shamans said:
Don't get me started on all the Bernie voters who voted Gary Johnson instead of Hillary because their guy wasn't on it. Ridiculous. Hillary was a fine candidate and all the mudslinging, and equating her to Trump (even by liberals!), cost us all big time.

We're all feeling the bern right now with cheeto in chief building walls.
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She lost to Donald fecking Trump. A fine candidate doesn't lose to Donald fecking Trump at a time where demographics favor Democrats (with the number of Afro-Americans and Latinos increasing).
 
@Ubik @InfiniteBoredom
2 articles I recently read makes me think Obama and the Dems intentionally blew it, not Lieberman blocking it - the Dems could have used reconciliation.
They are willing to bravely support any progressive bill as long as there’s no chance it can pass


Politics Daily, October 4, 2009:
Jay Rockefeller on the Public Option: "I Will Not Relent"

Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He's [] a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor -- and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

"I will not relent on that. That's the only way to go," Rockefeller told me in an interview. "There's got to be a safe harbor."

President Obama often says a public option is needed to drive down costs and keep insurance companies honest. To Rockefeller, it's both more basic and more vital: The federal government is the only institution people can count on in times of need.
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The Huffington Post, yesterday:


Rockefeller Not Inclined To Support Reconciliation For The Public Plan

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .

"I don't think the timing of it is very good," the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. "I'm probably not going to vote for that" . . . In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.
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The Obama White House did the same thing. As I wrote back in August, the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it). Yesterday, Obama -- while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary -- finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include? The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted: Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just don't have 60 votes for it; what can I do?. As I documented in my contribution to the NYT forum yesterday, now that there's a 50-vote mechanism to pass it, his own proposed bill suddenly excludes it.

Basically, this is how things have progressed:

Progressives: We want a public option!

Democrats/WH: We agree with you totally! Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don't have 60, so we can't have it. Gosh darn that filibuster rule.

Progressives: But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists: Hey progressives, don't be stupid! Be pragmatic. It's not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. None of this their fault. It's the fault of the filibuster. The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they're powerless, and they just can't get 60 votes to do it.

[Month later]

Progressives: Hey, great! Now that you're going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you've said all year you have that!

Democrats/WH: No. We don't have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller). Besides, it's not the right time for the public option. The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill -- which polls at 35% -- unpopular. Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we're going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.
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This is why, although I basically agree with filibuster reform advocates, I am extremely skeptical that it would change much, because Democrats would then just concoct ways to lack 50 votes rather than 60 votes -- just like they did here. Ezra Klein, who is generally quite supportive of the White House perspective, reported last week on something rather amazing: Democratic Senators found themselves in a bind, because they pretended all year to vigorously support the public option but had the 60-vote excuse for not enacting it. But now that Democrats will likely use the 50-vote reconciliation process, how could they (and the White House) possibly justify not including the public option? So what did they do? They pretended in public to "demand" that the public option be included via reconciliation with a letter that many of them signed (and thus placate their base: see, we really are for it!), while conspiring in private with the White House (which expressed "sharp resistance" to the public option) to make sure it wouldn't really happen.
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From another article:
In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two "working assumptions." "One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans," Daschle writes. "The other was that it would contain no public health plan," which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

I asked Daschle if the White House had taken the option off the table in July 2009 and if all future efforts to resuscitate the provision were destined to fail:

DASCHLE: I don’t think it was taken off the table completely. It was taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others. I mean I think that part of the whole effort was based on a premise. That premise was, you had to have the stakeholders in the room and at the table. Lessons learned in past efforts is that without the stakeholders' active support rather than active opposition, it’s almost impossible to get this job done. They wanted to keep those stakeholders in the room and this was the price some thought they had to pay. Now, it's debatable about whether all of these assertions and promises are accurate, but that was the calculation. I think there is probably a good deal of truth to it. You look at past efforts and the doctors and the hospitals, and the insurance companies all opposed health care reform. This time, in various degrees of enthusiasm, they supported it. And if I had to point out some of the key differences between then and now, it would be the most important examples of the difference.

[VOLSKY]: Despite being "taken off the table" as a result of the "understanding," the White House continued to publicly deny claims that it was backing away from the provision even as it tried to focus on other aspects of the bill. "Nothing has changed," said Linda Douglass, then communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform in August of 2009 and many times thereafter. "The president has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals."
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It was a joint effort by all level of the party to keep capital onside, not one obstinate senator throwing a wrench in the works.
 
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As I type the top four threads on this sub-forum are to do with the USA. That's bloody depressing. The rest of us aren't colonies and the USA isn't the world's soap opera. Trump is an oaf but he's not the world.

The European Parlimentary elections are coming up. As a foreign anglophone I find it annoying that the UK media is lamenting Brexit after only having looked to the USA for decades. I watch UK panel shows; I listen to UK bands... where is - where was - Europe? Or for that matter the rest of the world.
 
shamans said:
Yeah, facebook meme voter spotted. You don't know shit about Hillary and are repeating the media/social media BS about "shit politician who wants power". Besides, "keep things how they were" meaning she would try to see Obamas policies go through. Yeah that's so bad isn't it.
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Don’t bother... I’ve been trying to reason with the Bernie bros for a long time and all but given up
 
Cal? said:
Don’t bother... I’ve been trying to reason with the Bernie bros for a long time and all but given up
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No, you keep posting your same opinion and ignoring the facts that are repeatedly posted back at you. You fail to answer anything and just continue on with the same old replies. Rinse and repeat with no substance.
 
langster said:
No, you keep posting your same opinion and ignoring the facts that are repeatedly posted back at you. You fail to answer anything and just continue on with the same old replies. Rinse and repeat with no substance.
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What about you Bernie bros? Repeating the myth that he was somehow cheated out of the nomination and how he'd definitely have won? :lol:
 
Cal? said:
What about you Bernie bros? Repeating the myth that he was somehow cheated out of the nomination and how he'd definitely have won? :lol:
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I mean, she did literally cheat. What the alternate timeline where she didn’t cheat would look like is anyone’s guess but she did cheat, that’s an inescapable fact.
 
Pexbo said:
I mean, she did literally cheat. What the alternate timeline where she didn’t cheat would look like is anyone’s guess but she did cheat, that’s an inescapable fact.
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How exactly did she cheat? The fact the DNC and most of the superdelegates prefer her?
 
Cal? said:
How exactly did she cheat? The fact the DNC and most of the superdelegates prefer her?
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You’re aware of Donna Brazile and the help she gave Clinton?
 
Cal? said:
You mean the primary debate questions? It's such a minor thing.
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You don’t think it’s much of an advantage to be able to set an entire team of researchers, analysts and script writers to work on a specific set of questions?
 
Pexbo said:
You don’t think it’s much of an advantage to be able to set an entire team of researchers, analysts and script writers to work on a specific set of questions?
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Yea, I'm sure the million more votes she got in the primary was all due to that one debate. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I don't see what the point of repeating this again.
 
ErranMorad said:
That's not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to pin blame on a few individuals & meet criminality for reckless behavior that damaged the economy. It is mighty difficult for prosecutors to get convictions in those cases. As much as the public wants blood, unfortunately it's nigh on impossible.
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But Obama didn't even try. He could appoint a special prosecutor, or a committee to formulate some plan how this can be averted in the future, or punished if it was repeated in the future, or something. He didn't do anything. He gave them money for free and that was that.
 
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