Is he just randomly resurrecting a dead proposal from ten years ago?
Even from the wonkish RANDy perspective he comes from, there's good research now showing major downsides of cost-sharing.
I do like the concept of AmeriCare as a way to move toward true universal coverage, though. Similar to how some European countries did it.
And whatever the cost, the transition would be incredibly messy, as millions of Americans who rely on private coverage switch to the new system.
Whereas increasing millions of people's deductible, spending cap, and coinsurance while cutting doctor's reimbursement rates would be totally smooth! Just look at all the problems in that other guy's proposal while you ignore all the problems with mine and you'll see that mine is much better.
I wonder if you could trace that proposal to the Center for American Progress.
I dunno that does seem like a good next move on the way to Single Payer, and a lot more doable than Bernie's plan. Still would obviously take both houses run by Democrats and a Democratic president to do, though, so it's almost as unrealistic.
People dying of treatable diseases because cost is a deterrent is what makes America such a dynamic economy, though!
I don't see the problem. What's wrong with having people pay for health care? As long as you cap or remove the copays for people with no money, which they seem to do. If that could hold the cost down enough to make for something that could replace the weird employer-centered system we have now, it seems more than reasonable.
The providers would blow all to shit if they had to take Medicaid rates for everybody, but that's a different issue.
(A.) There's one area that hasn't gotten a lot of attention in Sanders proposals that is particularly attractive to me. It's not really on most people's radar, but long-term care is a huge issue. Figuring out how to pay for that is a huge burden for middle class families who have to figure out how to become "poor" to get on Medicaid. Long-term care insurance as currently configured is not a great option. Managing this for my parents was absolute hell, and people just shouldn't have to go through that.
Bernie is focused on the class aspect, but for me this is also a major feminist issue. Women take on a disproportionate share of care-giving responsibilities, and it affects their careers. I don't have kids, but sometimes I wonder if it's more taxing (though usually people take care of their elders intensively for about 5 years - not 18). Long-term care would cost a fortune, but the current means-tested system is a disaster, and people work their whole lives only to see everything they built up get eaten by the cost of nursing home care or home health aids.
(B.) There are a lot of people - many with chronic diseases - who can not get it together to jump through hoops like the ones that Obamacare requires. My sister has some serious mental health issues, and navigating the system is just beyond her.
Basically, I want a system where the default for people who don't or can't make choices is pretty good. I don't even want premiums. You pay your payroll taxes, and it's just there.
(C.) Here's what I would do.
You pay your payroll taxes and you get Medicare automatically. You can opt out into some other plan with a higher deductible or a more limited network, or your employer could offer some kind of plan, but IF you did nothing you'd be in Medicare. Eventually, everybody else would probably go out of business.
I think that there might be special programs which continued to operate with narrower networks, but those would be opt-in programs. See, for example, the excellent PACE (Program of All -Inclusive Care for the Elderly).
Fuck cost sharing. "Lets give people a financial incentive to stay sick!"
12 is brilliant. You could be professionally ill!
Wait, Bernie promises free long-term care for all who need it? How does that not like quintruple the funding necessary?
Maybe not in your blinkered, carb-addled world, neb.
I've actually cut back my carb consumption a lot. My sourdough starter is almost certainly dead.
11: just to add a datapoint: my mom was in LTC for about 10 years, and it was being paid in part from some sort of Medicare (SSI? I don't think so) even though my dad made plenty of $$ and had no dependents. I mean, I don't think it came close to covering care, but I'm 95% sure it was a chunk.
Does this make sense? Is it possible it was different because she was injured, not aged? She wasn't in rehab/medical care at this time; it was basically old folks homes (the skilled nursing kind, but she was typically one of the only non-elderly in the facility).
I must say that Noodle Night certainly puts a crimp in efforts to reduce carbs.
OTOH, a friend got a smoker for Xmas, and Saturday I'll be part of a massive operation involving pork shoulder, a whole brisket, and possibly a couple chickens. There may be some bread involved, but not much relative to the 25 lbs of meat.
You can make not very good noodles from squash.
21: I tried those shirataki noodles that are made of yams and pass right through your gut (with no unpleasant side effects), but no one in the family liked them.
The noodles aren't made of squash. They are squash. Which might be the same thing.
It just automatically turns to noodles.
Bernie Sanders is promising free Noodle Nights for all but without explaining how he'll pay for it.
Hillary Clinton is willing to consider a limited Noodle Night program for the poor, with rigorous means-testing, to be paid for with a special tax on billionaires.
Donald Trump's Noodle Nights are the best, classiest, hugest ever, and you're not invited to them.
The noodles aren't made of squash. They are squash.
Exactly. These so-called 'noodles' are the fibrous pulp of a squash. And while this fibrous pulp, when de-seeded and then roasted, sort of looks like 'noodles' (by which we mean 'pasta'), it does not taste like noodly pasta at all.
Apparently it is gluten-free, though, so there's that.
Ben Carson doesn't know what noodles are.
Ted Cruz is going to eat your noodles.
I assume the plan Matthews dug up, which may have been a serious proposal in 2006, is now functioning as part of an undercut Sanders strategy and will swiftly disappear if there's ever a Congress that could pass it.
31 might have worked better with Chris Christie, but fat jokes aren't really my thing.
"I'm not saying Chris Christie is fat, but if I told a joke about Christie it would be a fat joke" is kind of a fat joke.
Under Berniecare your sourdough starter would have had free long term care.
That was supposed to be:
"I'm not saying Chris Christie is fat, but if I told a joke about Christie it would be a fat joke and I don't tell fat jokes."
Those are false-noodles. Do not be deceived.
36: The actual truth is that I didn't think of the Christie fat joke until after I'd already posted the very similar joke about Cruz.
It's true that I don't generally make fat jokes, but I'm willing to potentially make an exception for Christie because I hate him so much.
It's time to make America grate again.
Try finding American citizens who will grate cheese all day. You can't do it my friends.
Some plant breeder was Post-It level genius with the spaghetti squash, because all the other winter squash are bred to *not* be fibrous and noodly.
It's seed catalogue season. O Sweet Meat! O North Georgia Candy Roaster! O my, someone Has bred kakevto grow in little rosettes up a Brussels sprout stalk. Freaky brassica.)
Matthews' gimmick here is just a matter of framing. He could have written an identical argument built around the idea that Hillary's healthcare plan is insufficiently bold, were he interested in boosting Bernie instead of Hillary.
32, 44: Yeah, I've been somewhat skeptical of the argument that Vox is trying to blatantly knife Sanders, but it's hard to interpret this piece any other way.
17: Apparently dead sourdough starter can be revived years later -- the yeast cysts up and reawakens when you feed it. If you just let it dry up in the back of the fridge, it'll be there when you want it.
starter is tough stuff. you can dry it out and mail it to people, for example. and it's perfectly cool because mailing white powder is an old American tradition.
I've been somewhat skeptical of the argument that Vox is trying to blatantly knife Sanders
I think most of the "X person doesn't support Sanders, because s/he wants a job in the Clinton administration" arguments are nonsense. But if ever there's a case where I'm willing to believe it, it's with Ezra Klein. Krugman, too, I guess, though I tend to think his antipathy for Sanders comes from a more halfordesque place.
I think most of the "X person doesn't support Sanders, because s/he wants a job in the Clinton administration" arguments are nonsense.
How much does this happen? I mean, vocal supporters of one primary candidate getting shut out of the other candidate's administration when he wins. It's not a universal rule; I seem to remember that Obama gave a senior State Department post to one of Hillary Clinton's most vocal supporters.
44: Oddly similar to the Ta-nehisi Coates thing that way. Nothing wrong with the argument in isolation, but peculiar as a reason to prefer Clinton to Sanders.
Vox is a pox.
Maybe your curmudgeonly self just doesn't appreciate the privilege of having the news explained to you by a 20 something year old ivy leaguer through the lens of their expertise rigorously honed during 0 years of relevant experience. Think of it like Teach For America for the news.
51: Like Coates, Greenwald has been described this way when, for example, he says nice things about a guy like Rand Paul.
And yeah, there are similarities, but I think the differences are more important. I don't think Coates was critiquing Sanders as much as he was criticizing America.
Among some "intellectual" Sanders supporters, there is a blinkered view of racism that I don't believe Sanders shares.
Related: I never read Jacobin unless I'm following a link from some liberal praising an article there, and everything I read in Jacobin sucks.
I'm not sure if I'd describe Coates as in the camp for Clinton. This article is hardly a rousing endorsement.
Hillary Clinton has no interest in being labeled radical, left-wing, or even liberal. Thus announcing that Clinton doesn't support reparations is akin to announcing that Ted Cruz doesn't support a woman's right to choose.
Many Sanders supporters, for instance, correctly point out that Clinton handprints are all over America's sprawling carceral state. I agree with them and have said so at length. Voters, and black voters particularly, should never forget that Bill Clinton passed arguably the most immoral "anti-crime" bill in American history, and that Hillary Clinton aided its passage through her invocation of the super-predator myth. A defense of Clinton rooted in the claim that "Jeb Bush held the same position" would not be exculpatory. ("Law and order conservative embraces law and order" would surprise no one.) That is because the anger over the Clintons' actions isn't simply based on their having been wrong, but on their craven embrace of law and order Republicanism in the Democratic Party's name.
How much does this happen? I mean, vocal supporters of one primary candidate getting shut out of the other candidate's administration when he wins. It's not a universal rule; I seem to remember that Obama gave a senior State Department post to one of Hillary Clinton's most vocal supporters.
I don't think Ezra has as much of a constituency in the Democratic party as Hillary did in 2008 that would make fence-mending worth it. I could be wrong; I haven't seen hard numbers.
54 hints (probably unintentionally) at one explanatory dynamic: no one is going to click on an article attacking Ted Cruz from the left for not supporting a woman's right to choose, but lots and lots of people will click on an article attacking Bernie Sanders from the left for not supporting reparations. A journalist who can't get clicks is ultimately not really a journalist at all.
56
Right, there's a bit of a "dog bites man" element. I do think Coates is sincere though, in his desire for reparations and his correct judgment that Bernie Sanders is the only politician even the remotest possibility of supporting them.
Think of it like Teach For America for the news.
I love this line.
57: KDrum, though, did make the point that what TNC means by 'reparations' is not what anyone else means by 'reparations'. In common usage it means 'paying money to compensate for previous harm done'. TNC uses it to mean a sort of general official acceptance that injustice was done, and specifically rejects the idea that just paying money would do.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/should-bernie-sanders-support-reparations
Somebody pointed out (thought it might have been Drum, but doesn't seem to have been) that THC's riff quoted in 54 is kind of bullshit, since A. the Clinton crime bill was officially supported by the Black Congressional Caucus, and B. the thing he's referencing with the "super predator" line was a speech she gave a year or two after the bill passed.
I broke the law a whole bunch less in 1994 than I did in 1992. I think Clinton's plan worked.
I do think Coates is sincere though, in his desire for reparations and his correct judgment that Bernie Sanders is the only politician even the remotest possibility of supporting them.
I was thinking about Coates, after reading a criticism of him in Jacobin. I wonder if part of what he's reacting to is the feeling that politicians sometimes frame things as, "here is the first best policy option, I will hold that as my vision" (with an implied parenthetical, "though it may not be achievable") and other times frame things as, "I have a specific plan, which may not be the first best policy option, but is something that's worth fighting over through the legislative process." (and, for obvious reasons, politicians like to blur the lines between those two rhetorical positions).
Each of those insulates the position from some lines of criticism. In the first case, it is designed to be insulated from the attack, "can this actually pass" since everybody knows it's just aspirational. In the second case it cuts off, "wouldn't the ideal be better than that."
But it's not fair to try to preemptively blunt both of those attacks.
I think what Coates may be saying is that if Sanders campaign is putting itself into bucket (1), then it's too convenient for him to slide over to bucket (2) as a way to avoid answering questions about first best goals that he doesn't want to. And that's why it's fair to make the criticism of Sanders and not Clinton.
I don't know if that's his thinking, but it seems plausible.
The last time it came up that Vox was in the bag for Clinton, MY posted an aggressively anti-Clinton, pro-Sanders article the very next day. I see that didn't move the needle*.
Meanwhile, it's exactly stuff like calling Krugman in the bag that turns me off so much about Sanders supporters: nobody has bona fides, and the only way anyone could fail to agree with Sanders is if they're hacks or sellouts. Obama fans freaked out when Krugman pointed out that his 2008 health care plan was unworkable without an individual mandate (remember his son who worked for the Clinton campaign?), but we know exactly how that played out: it was a technical issue, Krugman was right, and Obama flipped as soon as the primary was over. But until Obama flipped, obviously PK was being a hack.
*Vox as a whole being more Clinton-friendly doesn't surprise me, given the roster. I don't see anything nefarious about it. Their whole deal is being in the center-left mainstream of the Dem Party, which is exactly where Clinton is. If Webb were her most serious rival, I'd expect Vox to attack him from the left
Great twitter fight right now between CT's Henry Farrell and Timothy Burke over Harry Potter, yes, that's right.
I agree with 61. Sanders sin't a 1-issue candidate, with standard, incrementalist views on everything else. He's calling for a revolution, for increasing the electorate by 20% through his rousing call for completely different politics, but on certain issues he seems to have farmed out his positions to Mark Penn.
Sorry I forgot the pause play bit but what the hell, Dylan Matthews is a noxious fuck.
It started about 5 hours ago and then restarted about a half an hour ago. Maybe best to just look at their feeds for that time period and click in given the way twitter has messed up following conversations lately.
https://twitter.com/swarthmoreburke/with_replies
https://twitter.com/henryfarrell/with_replies
And of course there are the links to the respective blog posts:
http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2016/02/04/on-uagadou-the-african-wizarding-school/
I was so hoping this was about Ron being a time-traveling Dumbledore.
OMG. Naunihal went to high school with me.
I haven't followed the links, including to Coates' post, so this is an even less informed than usual comment, but if the 1994 crime bill is the issue it was passed with overwhelming black support (against Republican criticisms that it dared to include things like "midnight basketball") and IIRC Sanders also voted for it. Attacking it seems totally fair as an attack on America or Democrats generally or the 90s as being insane on crime issues, but as a specific guide to Clinton v Sanders right now I don't get the relevance.
He was great. Incredibly tall and skinny from about eighth grade onward.
63: I know! I can't believe that the first acrimonious twitter spat I've seen Burke be a party to is about Harry Potter.
62
I don't have any problem with Vox supporting Clinton, as long as they are honest about it. If they wrote, "We're supporting Clinton, for X, Y, and Z reasons" that would be fine. My problem is that their very often obvious Clinton bias is framed as a "here's a totally objective 'just the facts' perspective." Also, their issues with Sanders's policies is generally total hackery.
There are reasonable concerns about Sanders. RT's concern about bureaucratic appointments, or having the connections and political capital to run the government are valid. Concerns over the political feasibility of raising taxes are valid, or concerns over whether the math works out on tuition or healthcare are all valid. Pointing out that switching to a medicaid reimbursement scheme is going to encounter incredible resistance from doctors, some unreasonable but some due to giant med school loans, is also valid.* Reasonable people can disagree, but these are all issues with Sanders.
Calling Sanders's policy a "pie in the sky fairytale" because the current plan doesn't account for acupuncture, or non-medically valid treatments is hackery. Calling his tuition plan unworkable because "who know if people will graduate in 4 years" is also hackery.
*Vox gestured towards this in an article, but then veered off into hackery by lumping actual predicted administrative savings in with doctor/hospital cost control and dismissing them all as impossible, or arguing that there's no advantage to single payer that isn't simply medical cost control, which is false.**
**There are also real world work arounds to the med school debt issue, like debt forgiveness programs, which already exist on a smaller scale for med and law school.
73 It made me wistful for the old days of academic spats in the letters pages of the NYRB when scholars attacked one another over Derrida and Heidegger's Nazism and insulted one another's French.
63
I tended to blame the Graeber/Farrell dispute mostly on Graeber, who is a known unreasonable hothead, but now I'm wondering if the same might be true of Farrell as well. What they say about drama and all.
I mean, I realize that the actual topic of the dispute is representations of Africa, but still.
All I know about Graeber is darB kept attacking him for a really long time. Like months. I don't remember why, but I assume he had his reasons.
Having followed Graeber for a bit on twitter I put it all on Graeber. An incredibly thin skin combined with a tendency to blow things up out of proportion and a propensity for misapprehension do not a good combination make.
Shut up Graeber never really meant to say that Bill Gates invented debt with Al Gore in 1995 HE MISSPOKE IS ALL.
And I am or at least used to be much closer to Graeber politically.
It's pretty clear that Klein and Yglesias would prefer to see Clinton as the nominee over Sanders. But I don't think they've been mendacious or one-sided in their coverage. Is there some special reason to think they're writing in bad faith? Note: I personally plan on voting for Sanders because I like his voting record better and I think that a primary victory would be strong revealed evidence of his viability in a general election.
I don't know Graeber personally, but I know people who do, and they say he is totally unreasonable and impossible to work with. He also is rude and abusive towards people in positions that are structurally below him.* I'm politically sympathetic, but he sounds like a nightmare.
*I know professors who are assholes to their colleagues, but quite supportive of graduate students (even those whom they think are doing terrible work), which is something I respect a lot more than the reverse.
74.1 My problem is that their very often obvious Clinton bias is framed as a "here's a totally objective 'just the facts' perspective."
I thought (with my slight edit) that that was Vox's entire business plan.
on certain issues he seems to have farmed out his positions to Mark Penn
Shame on me for asking, but what in god's name are you talking about? Aren't you the one annoyed about people saying stupid shit on the internet?
since A. the Clinton crime bill was officially supported by the Black Congressional Caucus
Not an excuse, but just for the record, not on the merits but as part of horse-trading. From my tabulation, in the final House vote, CBC members went 24 yea, 12 nay, 2 no vote, and the five most senior members (Conyers, Clay, Stokes, Dellums, Rangel) were all nays.
Well his position regarding working for the Clinton campaign is almost identical to Penn's current position - except even more extreme!
86 makes me glad I never bought his book.
Decent article in Bloomberg - what good is private insurance? Sanders Overtonning?
The problem with Krugman is he fails to confront the arguments of Sanders supporters, beyond the random nuts that he gets stirred up. He's nutpicking, and he's trolling.
Contrast this with his treatment of economic conservatives, where he brags - accurately - that he selects for rebuttal the arguments of the conservative intellectual elite, or of the powerful politicians.
To see how someone approaches this debate with intellectual honesty, look at Marcotte, a Clinton sympathizer who actually listens to the arguments of Sanders supporters.
Like Krugman, she criticizes Sanders' pie-in-the-sky rhetoric:
[Sanders' talk of a revolution] is silly. Sanders is a charming, inspiring politician, but he's not a wizard. There's increasing turnout and there's doing it enough to actually change the makeup of Congress, and there is no evidence that Sanders can do the latter. Even Barack Obama, who has charisma to burn, wasn't able to create a revolution at the polls.
This is Krugman's point. But Krugman stops there, presumably because he doesn't have any response to the actual arguments of Sanders and his supporters. Marcotte pushes on:
But point this out, and Sanders and his supporters immediately pivot to talking about how good he is at compromise. Sanders did this during the town hall, talking about how he compromised and massaged his veteran's health care bill in order to get it passed through Congress. Which is an admirable political skill, but is also the kind of behavior Sanders portrays as capitulation and corruption when it comes to every other Democrat out there, but especially his opponent, Clinton.
It's too bad Marcotte stops here. She could take it a step further and ask why Sanders supporters might regard abandoning liberal goals as "capitulation and corruption," but nonetheless believe that compromising on legislation is okay.
Still, Marcotte is actually attempting to grapple with the pro-Sanders argument. Krugman is not.
One argument I haven't seen much of is the fact that a Sanders Presidency kills TPP dead, whereas I'm confident Hillary would sign off on it.
Graeber is unnecessary when you have Michael Hudson pushing out a book every year in his 80s. Direct Action is the only Graeber you might want.
There is also Maurizio Lazzarato on debt.
86:
Ugh. That's just depressing. It really blows my mind how often supposedly liberal academics are downright abusive and completely unsympathetic towards people making $20k per year. The way the relationship between adviser and student works seems just totally broken to me. I'm almost willing to go back to my terribly podunk undergrad institution (if I go at all) just because I could pick an adviser that I know going in is a decent human being.
For some reason, my dreams of a liberal administration haven't yet been completely crushed. I fantasize that a Sanders administration would not be cutting deals with Westlands Water District. I don't know why the Obama administration is.
97
In fairness to Graeber, I don't know how he treats his advisees. I had a grad student friend who worked in a low-level position at an academic press publishing something of Graeber's, and Graeber treated him like garbage (unreasonable demands, tantrums when not having them met). Maybe he's nicer to his advisees.
But I don't want to say too much more.
93
I think, speaking for Sanders supporters, that there's a difference between compromise between people whom you think have your best interests at heart and those who don't. With Sanders, one is reasonably sure he made a good faith effort. With [insert mainstream Democrat here], it often feels like the capitulation happens with nothing more than a perfunctory attempt to get something through. A lot of us felt that way about the public option.
A lot of us felt that way about the public option.
Aha! An actual naive Sanders idealist, spotted in the wild.
When Joe Lieberman - who did not, in fact, consider the public interest paramount - says the ACA is a no-go with a public option, what do you do? Threaten to primary him? Been there, done that. At this stage, he's not even an elected Democrat, and owes his seat in the Senate to Republicans.
No, what you do is you cut a deal, even if that means capitulation to an asshole. If you're supporting Sanders because he wouldn't cut a deal in that situation, then you and I are supporting Sanders for different reasons.
Krugman's criticisms are basically anodyne, and it's crazy to me that anyone is offended by them. He prefers Clinton, and he says why.
I do think that a strength of Sanders is that he's willing to engage in politics, including things like compromise. Years ago I heard a radio interview with him on NPR, where the interview said something about how the whole political process was corrupt and there was no point in engaging, especially if you were in a Republican district, and Sanders' reaction was basically "You moron."
101
It's funny that ways to get around a filibuster could be implemented by a bare Democratic majority for other issues, but not the ACA. The nuclear option?
What other ways to get around a filibuster have happened?
Yeah, the fucking filibuster. So much more would have been possible if they'd been willing to work around it. I guess that's why "only the stupid convoluted system we devised would have convinced Ben Nelson" type arguments fall flat with me.
To me the issue is that Clinton is more along the lines of - yes, the public option would be nice, but we will never get there so why put any effort into it. Sanders on the other hand is continually bringing it up as an important issue and keeping it in the public conversation so eventually people will get used to the idea and start wondering why we don't have a public option.
The nuclear option for appointments strikes me as fundamentally different than for laws.
In fact, I recall they actually ended up weaseling around it a bit after Ted Kennedy died and that centerfold dude got elected to his seat. If Obama hadn't had his heart set on bringing the country together in giant purple harmony, maybe they could have started weaseling earlier.
There wasn't close to a majority of the Senate in favor of abolishing the filibuster in 2008-2010, and no way for Obama to have ended the filibuster, and thus no way for hypothetical time-traveling Obama-replacing President Sanders to have ended the filibuster at that time, and ... what the hell are we talking about again and why does it have anything to do with any reasonable assessment of US politics?
There wasn't close to a majority of the Senate in favor of abolishing the filibuster in 2008-2010
There could have been, but Harry Reid was agin' it, so it never happened.
How was it that LBJ got things accomplished? Did the house and senate just fall all over themselves to pass progressive legislation?
How was it that LBJ got things accomplished? Did the house and senate just fall all over themselves to pass progressive legislation?
One of the challenges in arguing about the use of the filibuster is that the filibuster has changed drastically in recent decades, but it's done so quietly. Quietly enough that people don't really understand that it's changed at all. That leads to an understandable complacency: If we've always had the filibuster, and we've done pretty well thus far, then maybe the filibuster isn't worth mucking with.
...
"We would win by a vote of 55 to 45." Phil Schiliro would not write that letter to David Plouffe today. There would be no vote of 55 to 45, because the filibuster would forestall the vote. The fact that 55 Democrats support a controversial bill would be immaterial unless there was some strategy for attracting five more senators to the side of the administration.
But in Johnson's time, it wasn't that way. And good thing, too. Until 1975, it took 67 votes, not 60, to break a filibuster. If the Senate had operated under a de facto 67 votes rule, little would have been done, because so much could have been stopped. Medicare eventually passed with 68 votes, but that was in part because it was going to pass, and bills that pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. (It's also, as political scientists argue, because the country was less polarized, and the minority did not see blocking legislation as its primary path to power, or as the primary demand of its base.)
Didn't he like do a really big war on the side?
111: NickS is more insightful, but I'll add this anyway:
Wikipedia says that the 89th Congress had a 67-33 Democratic majority in the Senate and 289-136 in the House.
That's way oversimple (Many Democrats were racist assholes, some Republicans were less so), but the point is: Conditions were different.
I just listened to volumes 3 and 4 of Caro's LBJ work. Best driving audiobook ever.
According to Caro, LBJ got things accomplished by sucking up to legislators with more power, personally and bodily bullying legislators with less power and horsetrading aggressively. Given my interests, I wish Caro had specified which dams he gave to western congressmen to get the Civil Rights Act passed.
It's far from clear that there were even 50 votes for a public option in a majority rule Senate. The 54 Senators who nominally supported the public option included at least six, maybe as many as 12 who were hiding behind the filibuster. Posturing against the insurance industry is one thing; voting against the mobilized interests of doctors and hospitals is quite another.
Many Democrats were racist assholes
Many still are.
But not enough racist assholes are Democrats.
Good freaking lord. I am wondering if one of her campaign strategists is actively trying to sabotage Clinton's campaign.
Young voters' support for Mr. Sanders has created a quandary in Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, where millennial staff members have tried to persuade their peers to back the former first lady, using social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram.
"I'm very close to Jamie Lee Curtis and I know she was there, but she's not young anymore," Rosalind Wyman, a prominent Democrat in Los Angeles, said of the 57-year-old actress and spokeswoman for Activia yogurt, who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton in Iowa.
For the next endorsement, it turns out the Depends spokesmodel was also not persuasive to younger voters, but the viagra and metamucil people are really going to give it their best.
On the phone call, Marlon Marshall, the director of state campaigns and political engagement, tried to assure the group that the Clinton operation would be using more youthful surrogates, including Mrs. Clinton's 35-year-old daughter, Chelsea, and would continue to talk about issues like college affordability.
Also, Marie Antoinette will talk about the rising costs of bread.
"According to Caro, LBJ got things accomplished by sucking up to legislators with more power, personally and bodily bullying legislators with less power and horsetrading aggressively. Given my interests, I wish Caro had specified which dams he gave to western congressmen to get the Civil Rights Act passed."
This is what I was getting at - It sure doesn't sound like Obama. So what about Clinton and Sanders?
Roz Wyman is so old that she is the person who brought the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Literally.
I'm sure Sanders' (or Clinton's) aggressive horse trading and master of the legislative ways of Congress will be sure to get a lot of his agenda passed.
Also, why can't I use italics for my quotes?
This is what I was getting at - It sure doesn't sound like Obama. So what about Clinton and Sanders?
Parties have become much more disciplined, and Senators are less likely to go against their party even when offered soemthing that they personally want. Let me quote Ezra Klein again.
What Leverage Do Republicans Have on Olympia Snowe?
...
According to a variety of sources, Olympia Snowe could pretty much write the bill at this point. According to a variety of sources and her record, she believes health-care reform to be a good and necessary idea, at least as she would compose it. But she's concerned about being the only Republican to vote for Barack Obama's health-care reform plan. Right now, the Obama administration is in intensive negotiations with her office, and the outcome is, according to all involved, uncertain. But why?
Snowe is not up for reelection until 2012, so there's no immediate threat. Moreover, she's a wildly popular politician in a deeply blue state. If her party attempted to exact revenge, she could easily become a Democrat, or follow Joe Lieberman's example and emerge as an independent. She's the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, but surely the Democrats would let her keep that in exchange for her vote. She's moderate enough that the switch wouldn't be particularly jarring, and the fact that it came in the context of a policy priority rather than a primary challenge would make it a lot more respectable than Specter's defection.
Social pressure obviously matters a lot, and personal attachment, and there are probably other factors I'm not considering. But on the other side of the ledger is health-care reform! It's covering 40 million people, and saving lives, and averting medical bankruptcy, and making the system better for millions and millions of people. And it could be Snowe's legacy more than anyone else's. She could break the gridlock that has paralyzed this issue for decades. That's history-book stuff. Surely it's worth something.
124 - You can be sure none of the agenda would be passed if it is not attempted.
bodily bullying legislators with less power
That means he waved his dick at them or made them sit and talk while he took a shit. He was a huge asshole.
Also, horsetrading is now called pork, and it is more illegal than it was before. I don't remember the details, but it isn't as possible to slip a new dam or army base into a wavering legislator's district as it was then.
Seriously, articles like the one in 121 make me sympathize with Clinton. She probably has a ton of consultants telling her how to be "likeable" or "appealing to the youth" based on some market research they did, and she knows she has a problem but doesn't trust her own instincts enough to push back against their bullshit.
It would take another anomaly like LBJ to get similar results. I don't think either Clinton or Sanders would operate like that.
Now Cruz... maybe legislators would agree to vote his way if he'd leave their office immediately.
"That means he waved his dick at them or made them sit and talk while he took a shit. He was a huge asshole."
Are you saying this would be out of line with our current congress?
129. That's called "earmarks" and they are now nearly banned, because good government. "Pork" was euphemized a long time ago...
129:
I know a year or so ago I saw a piece by one of the Voxxers arguing that we really should bring back pork projects as a means of making deals, but I can't find it now.
See, that's why I wanted to know which dams LBJ traded for the Civil Rights Act, so I could decide whether I approved of the dealmaking.
121: Oh god. I would almost believe that the campaign people they quoted were secret Sanders agents hiding in her campaign if I didn't remember a weaker version of this exact thing in 2008. I sort of love the bit where it starts out talking about how Sanders' angry-grampa thing is striking a chord among young people because he looks like he's not pandering to them, and then moves immediately to people worrying if Clinton needs to put younger celebrities on stage with her in order to get support from young people. But...
Privately, Mrs. Clinton's supporters say that while being a youth icon has its advantages, the support of middle-aged and older voters is enough for her to capture the nomination.
This is the one I find most amazing: I mean, electability is a central thing and she's kind of decided to run on "No We Can't But There Are Consolation Prizes" as a theme. But so far Clinton's campaign has been trying to run attacks on Sanders that are essentially attacks on his supporters for being immature and naive. And now there are supporters and campaign people talking to the NYT about how she's confused about how to pander to them but it's ok because she doesn't really need the youth vote at all right now.
Also this is the most ridiculous thing ever:
College students wear shaggy white "Bernie" wigs on campus.
Now all I can think of when I think of Bernie Sanders is Hedwig.
That's called "earmarks" and they are now nearly banned, because good government.
That was another Obama fuck-up. If he hadn't been so righteous about pork, he could have used it to buy support for the public option.
134: Yglesias has definitely made that argument in the past. I'm inclined to agree; it's far from an ideal method for funding infrastructure, but it's way better than the new system of never funding infrastructure at all.
If he hadn't been so righteous about pork, he could have used it to buy support for the public option.
What do you expect, from a muslin?
The only way you get more progressive health care in 2009-10 is if some of the Democrats who were obviously* going to lose their next election if they voted for anything even resembling a scheme for universal coverage decided to go down voting for something stronger instead of holding out for the most watered down legislation they could get. But you'd need people in office who were at least as liberal as the constituents who elected them and not that concerned about what career opportunities await former members of Congress in the DC area.
*Except, apparently, to the officeholders themselves and to the leadership of the Democratic party.
I thought I read pork was slowly coming back in ways skirting the official bans 2009-2011.