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 Posted: Tue, Jan 19 2010, 10:27 pm EST Post subject: Mass Sen. Brown takes Kennedy Seat away |
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Although the race has riveted the attention of the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.
Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its citizens got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.
Although Mr. Brown vowed to scuttle the current bill, he voted for the Massachusetts health care bill, which was a model for it. He argued that the national bill would be costly and result in Medicare cuts for the elderly — in effect that some residents of Massachusetts stood to lose more than they would gain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/politics/20election.html?hp |
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| Posted: Wed, Jan 20 2010, 6:47 am EST Post subject: Re: Mass Sen. Brown takes Kennedy Seat away |
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People are tired of the one off gifts being given so that Health care can pass. Every Democrat who has not toed the party line ends up with a gift- i.e. full medicaid payments being covered, delays in implementing the health care plan, etc... In states where the Democrat Senators toe the line they get squat Mass, NJ, NY, etc...
This is a wake up call to the Democrats that they need to come more to the center if they want to keep control. Scary that some like Hank Kalet in his blog are saying it is because they are not far enough left. They don't understand that only a small minority is far left like a small minority is far right. To be successful everyone needs to be closer to the center. Going far left will cause even greater losses for us. Why? Because those Dems who voted Brown are centerists. The far left would never vote Republican. |
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| Posted: Wed, Jan 20 2010, 10:03 am EST Post subject: Re: Mass Sen. Brown takes Kennedy Seat away |
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| Guest wrote: | People are tired of the one off gifts being given so that Health care can pass. Every Democrat who has not toed the party line ends up with a gift- i.e. full medicaid payments being covered, delays in implementing the health care plan, etc... In states where the Democrat Senators toe the line they get squat Mass, NJ, NY, etc...
This is a wake up call to the Democrats that they need to come more to the center if they want to keep control. Scary that some like Hank Kalet in his blog are saying it is because they are not far enough left. They don't understand that only a small minority is far left like a small minority is far right. To be successful everyone needs to be closer to the center. Going far left will cause even greater losses for us. Why? Because those Dems who voted Brown are centerists. The far left would never vote Republican. |
I agree with most of what you wrote in principle but not the conclusion. Both the far right and left are fringe in proportion to the center. And it’s true the bill became a mess of special favors (like a vast majority of all national bills passed in the last 20+ years have unfortunately).
And while I don’t personally agree that “moving to the left” will work or is the morally correct thing to do, I also don’t believe “moving to the center” and more compromise will be successful in the current climate either. The problem is that while the Republican Party as a whole has plenty of smart, moderate, centralist members, none of them have influence with the party nationally right now. Any previous efforts at compromise have been utterly useless beyond procedural votes (i.e. you can get a moderate Republican, barely, to agree to not block debate, but they have to go with the party line of voting against any bill proposed by the current Democratic leadership no matter what). If Obama proposed major tax cuts tomorrow, the Republicans would still vote against him on principle. Even before a majority of the special dispensations in the current bill, this health plan was already a major compromise and still had no shot at getting any Republican support. And despite the rhetoric they never had the slightest intention of working with the Democrats on the bill and their alternative suggestions were really just for show and were fundamentally different objectives anyway.
So the root of the theory that they should move to the left and compromise less is that you are damned either way, so why compromise toward no result and why not try to at least pass an agenda by getting full support from a definable, cohesive group – the clear left – instead of inevitably failing to get the Republican half of the centralist majority to support you no matter what you do, short of full capitulating to a full right-solution?
The other problem with health care reform, from the start, was that there was a disconnect between what the President and Democratic Congressional Leaders wanted to accomplish and what the majority of the public wanted accomplished, though the typically ignorant majority electorate didn’t seem to understand that despite Obama having been very clear about it during the election. The issue is there are two fundamental problems with the U.S. Health Care system, with hundreds of contributing problems. The two main issues are: 1) 15% of the country is uninsured and many more are under-insured; 2) It costs far too much and costs will continue to rise vastly disproportionately to inflation. For 85% of us, the second issue is what we consider the real problem with health care in this country and what we have a vested interest in having fixed. We also reason, partially correctly, that if it were more affordable it would reduce the magnitude of the first problem, though never eliminate it. However, what Obama primarily campaigned on (with some lip service to the second issue), and what the far left leadership is focused on, is the first problem. So from the start the bill we were bound to get was not going to be exciting to most of us. I think the majority would have been fine to address the first problem if the second issue was also meaningfully addressed. But a bill that is for the most part neutral to the second issue is doomed to lackluster public support, except for the far left.
The other problem with health care reform is that the majority of national politicians in BOTH parties have no real interest in solving the larger, second problem of costs. They pay lip service to it but at the end of the day both parties are in the pockets of the massive interest groups (and there are many from the pharmaceutical companies, medical devices, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, insurance companies, etc.) that have a stake in not fundamentally solving the cost issue. Any given one of those groups would be happy to improve it in token ways at the expense of any of the other interest groups but theirs, but none would accept the more fundamental shifts that would meaningfully correct the issues that cause our health care costs to be among the highest in the world despite a lesser quality of coverage. We pay more for less.
So health care reform was doomed from the start. Whether this bill passes in some form or not is ultimately immaterial. Either way it doesn’t solve the real problem of costs that will continue to have more and more consequences over time.
The other problem for Democrats in particular is that the Republican party has always been vastly superior at everyman messaging. They know how to play on sound bites and slogans and ideas that while usually not true or at least highly out of context seem like common sense and compelling truths. The Democrats have never had this talent and their agenda is less inclined to benefitting from it anyway. Pick any given issue and you can see this reality. Health Care. The fact is that vast MAJORITY of every person receiving health care benefits in this country is already the recipient of government-run plans, and in terms of total volume the government accounts for over 50% of all benefits. So the irony is most of the people standing with signs protesting to “keep the government out of health care” either don’t recognize or don’t mind the conflict that they already benefit from government-managed health care. In fact, at the same time that the conservative messaging convinces people that government-run health care naturally would be a disaster because look at how inefficient they are, they also scare some of those same people by suggesting that the bill might mess with their Medicare (i.e. government-run) benefits. Beautiful irony.
Or pick the economy. It is true that we have a staggering debt level now and it is a serious issue. But it is fascinating how easy it was for the Republicans to claim that issue despite the fact that they are responsible for the vast majority of that debt. Our debt problem wasn’t created overnight by the stimulus package and bailouts (a vast majority of the latter created by the Republicans). It has been building up since Reagan and was mushroomed by both Bush’s. The only time it was reduced was when Clinton was in office, and Bush 43 quickly reversed that benefit and kept going-and-going. They like to call the Democrats the tax-and-spend party and that is at least somewhat fair. But the fact is the Republicans are the debt-and-spend party, since hiding their spending behind debt instead of taxes. It’s spending either way, and they spent way, way more than the Democrats. Now they are complaining that the very debt they built-up over decades, the debt that Reagan said was healthy for the economy, is the problem and somehow the Democrats are completely responsible for it. I admire their ability to pull off this messaging. It’s just too bad that it speaks to the ignorance of the majority of the electorate.
Net result is I find none of this surprising. It was predictable from the start. We like to revere our system of government. And while I am a patriot who believes in our success and our fundamental values, objectively the actual functioning of Congress as an institution for lawmaking and national budget control has all but completely broken down. And not just because the left or the right are in power, but more fundamentally. I personally think it is beyond repair, which is not to suggest that it won’t go on and on indefinitely. But it has become, primarily, an institution for the preservation of the status quo, by default, because it is no longer functional as an institution for change. So by definition change will occur only one of two ways: 1) Very gradual shifts of inertia; or 2) Sudden shifts in reaction to crises. That is the reality. It won’t change even if the Republicans regain power. It is party neutral at this point. |
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