( – promoted by buhdydharma )
“I don’t think the White House recognizes how much trouble they’re in,” said one former Democratic official. “I think they’re miscalculating what’s happening with progressives and the left.”
Failing to understand the intensity of progressive anger, dismissing it with condescending arrogance is bad enough, but that’s not all they’re miscalculating. Obama and Democrats seem to think they’re securing the long-term support of the corporate establishment, they think they’re consolidating their power, but they’re walking right into a trap. They’re being set up to fail, they’re being set up to take the blame when everything implodes. The corporate masters of America and their GOP enforcers expect that this trap, this setup will result in a Presidency so disastrous and unpopular, in a Congress so despised, in a political system so divisive and dysfunctional that when General Petraeus arrives on his white horse to save America in 2012, he will win every state, Republicans will take Congress back, and the Permanent Republican Majority will be here to stay after a rather unsuccessful first attempt.
If that doesn’t happen, it won’t be because the designated scapegoats with the (D) after their names in the White House and Congress didn’t play their assigned roles. They are. To clueless, halfwit, suicidal perfection. Democrats are jubilant that they’ve managed to clusterfuck their way to 60 votes in the Senate, but they won’t be quite as jubilant when the healthcare crisis keeps intensifying and unemployment keeps getting worse and banks keep failing and the dollar tanks and the war in Afghanistan keeps getting bloodier and the commercial real estate market implodes and takes what’s left of the economy down with it.
Obama isn’t playing 12 dimensional chess, he’s playing Russian Roulette with a bullet in every chamber.
He loaded the Wall Street Bailout bullet, he loaded the not enough stimulus bullet, he loaded the Bernanke back to the Fed bullet, he loaded the deficits are bad bullet, he loaded the Afghanistan escalation bullet, he’s loaded every bullet the corporate masters of this country handed him and keeps pulling the trigger.
Digby explains the mandate bullet . . .
an individual mandate is an order to you to go out and buy some product from some private profit-making company, that in the case of a lot of moderate income people, you can’t afford to buy. And the shell game here is that the affordable policies are either very high deductibles and co-pays, so you can afford the monthly premiums but then when you get sick, you have to pay a small fortune out of pocket before the coverage kicks in. Or if the coverage is decent, the premiums are unaffordable. And so here’s the government doing the bidding of the private industry, coercing people to buy profit-making products that they can’t afford and they call it health reform.
That’s going to go over real well. It’ll go over about as well as the scorched earth tactics Obama’s using against the entire progressive movement.
Digby . . .
the late dangling of a swap on the long held dream of a Medicare buy-in, getting liberals to sign on and then allowing the loathed Lieberman, of all people, to capriciously snatch it away that was the real gut punch. And admonishing them to “get with the program” within minutes of that outrage while Lieberman preened that the president thanked him was gratuitous.
“Gratuitous” isn’t the word for it. Despicable is much more accurate.
When the Obama White House launched personal attacks on Howard Dean they were sending a message to every progressive. That message was “shut the fuck up.” When they smeared him, when they slandered him as “irrational, irrelevent, and insane”, they were smearing and slandering every progressive.
Howard Dean developed and implemented the 50-state strategy. His strategy of competing in every state is one of the major reasons why Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. Obama should have listened to him, Obama should have conferred with him, Obama should have treated Howard Dean with the respect he deserved. But Obama didn’t do that, Obama trotted out Gibbs to slander and smear him.
Millions of us volunteered, we phonebanked, we canvassed, we contributed money in record amounts, we got out the vote, we handed them an electoral college landslide, we handed them a nationwide mandate for real change. When Obama needed us we came through for him, we gave him the presidency. But he doesn’t need us now, our views no longer matter. We got punched in the teeth just like we always get punched in the teeth. It’s a Beltway tradition. As healthcare reform died, Obama praised the people who killed it and slandered the people who elected him to achieve it.
Insurance company stocks reached a 52-year high after this “reform” bill got its 60th vote. The Wall Street warlords of the health insurance cartel are celebrating, even their logos are celebrating . . .
Yes. They want us to know. Corporate power must not be challenged.
Pay no attention to their soaring stock values, irrational progressives. Barack Orwell has spoken. The death of healthcare reform is an inspiring victory for healthcare reform.
Sanity is Insanity. Relevance is Irrelevance. Rational is Irrational. Groupthink, Doublespeak and Newspeak are here to stay. Get with the program. Anthony Weiner got the message. Al Franken got the message. They agreed that “the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.” They caved. If they wouldn’t have caved, the Obama White House would have smeared them too.
After witnessing the Obama White House’s brutal assault on progressives, after seeing Lieberman preening, after knowing Obama thanked him for his treachery, how can any progressive support that fraud of a president? I’d ask anyone here, anyone anywhere who still supports Obama to please explain to me what’s occurring in what’s left of your mind, but it would be a waste of time. If this blatant betrayal hasn’t opened their eyes, nothing will.
When the GOP/corporate media’s Blame the Democrats campaign hits the airwaves, when that blamefest ingites and burns like a blowtorch nationwide, when there’s nothing left of the Democratic Party but ashes, only two choices will remain–salute the man on the white horse as he rides into Washington, or head for the barricades.
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The bribing of states was needed to enforce the current destroyment of American health care plan. In a sense it signals the breakup of the United States officially.
i ♥ you!
the ASSHATS over at DK are already finding new ways to bend over farther and take some more .
So, it depends upon what a progressive is, and how many there really are as to whether the Dimocrats are in trouble from groupthink liberals or not.
counter-insurgency measures themselves. I’m holding out for the bribes myself.
what Ive felt, suspected, known, for a very long time. Many of us have talked about it all these past few months, dancing around the edges. Its been coming along in bits and pieces like a big puzzle that I dont want to put together. I dont want to see the final complete picture because it is so horrific. Diabolical. Insideous.
I had commented a couple of months ago I think… my sense was that Afghan and Health Care Reform would seal the deal, and make it painfully evident exactly where we stand. War, well, thats what they do. But I swear to gods I never thought HCR would be this bad. The Bill itself sure, but all the huzzahs from the very people, the middle class, and progessives, who have the most to lose here, and who will be most devastated by the ultimate effects…. shudder. Its….. whats that called … stockholm syndrome?
Thank you for this excellent essay.
over this thing, especially the mandate!!
Not only is there a mandate to buy junk insurance, you get fined if you don’t, if you HAVE good insurance, they’re gonna tax that!
It’s lose-lose! For everybody but Big Insurance.
The backlash on this is gonna destroy the Demoratic Party.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
We need a new party anyway.
All this harping about “the left” is just MORE bullshit coming from the Gang-That-Couldn’t-See-Straight known as the Idiot Media
AIG/Goldman Sachs et. al. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
MIC et. al. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Big Insurance et.al. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The People 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
… it is Stan, isn’t it? Still looking for the Great Orange Laurel …
Why the Individual Mandate apologists aren’t serious, Made Simple
Stirring the pot when its boiling – I think I’d want a longer handled spoon, if there was, after all, a spoon.
to think about what happens next.
trying to drug myself with film.
it isn’t working.
The Lieberman and Nelson Insurance Industry Tax & Transfer and Woman’s Health Care Prohibition Act bill does the following:
1. Transfers wages, wealth, health care resources and tax revenue from the middle class to health insurance companies.
2. Does NOT increase access to health care – just access to health insurance costs.
3. Leaves the middle class just as vulnerable to financial ruin from the cost of accessing the health care system.
4. It does not control costs and it does not unburden U.S. business from the costs of employee health care. It does not address the systemic competitive disadvantages the private health insurance model imposes in the competitive global marketplace.
– Bottom line: unregulated health insurance does not create access to health care. Private health insurance is just as likely to be an impediment to health care as an avenue toward it.
– The goal is access to health care, not access to a Cigna Plan. It’s that simple. It’s that basic.
The Senate Bill is a punt. It is a lost opportunity. It is walking away from an opportunity to give Americans access to health care and to protect them from financial ruin at the hands of the health insurance industry and a vastly overpriced health care industry.
…will only empower and entrench the insurance and drug companies even further. They will grow stronger. The apologist supporters say this bill will serve as a base or platform from which to work for the real improvements we all really want.
Nonsense! We will not find a base from which to work. We will find another quagmire of quicksand in which we are stuck as health care and the Almighty Insur-Pharma Industry continues to bankrupt citizens and the country, as Medicare and Medicaid are gutted…And we sink deeper…
Rusty, you did a great job in laying out exactly what is happening. OMG!!! Time to move my sig line along.
this is why the progressive left must say no to the President now. Otherwise it will be discredited by the country along side the mainstream Dems. Now, most of those mainstream Dems in Washington are and will continue to be wealthy operatives and they will not suffer in anyway when the GOP takes over. They will be and are being well-paid to betray the left.
The progressives need to utterly divorce themselves from the Democratic Party as soon as possible and reach out to the populists on the right as the only possible allies — at least you know where you stand with them.
Someone or something got their “claws” into Obama early on. He started out strong and gradually and steadily backed away from his original stances and then, it seemed more and more that he had and has no power — or is simply too weak to say “NO” in the face of it all. Of course, given our history, anyone who tries to buck the system seems to get it in the end. I think the CIA and Cheney, plus the corporatists are having a field day. And so many in Congress, go right along with it all, because it’s uh, hummm, advantageous to them, as well, as we are seeing by the day.
Would you believe that Dean caved?* When you think of those who have come out strong, like Wexler, Kucinich, etc. “Something” seems to “silence” most of them, except Kucinich, Sanders, and a couple of newbies.
I do know one thing, while investigations and prosecutions were a hot and heavy issue — non-stop — with the debate over health care reform and the Afghanistan escalation, while the likes of David Swanson, and a few others, the subject has become all but moot.
Incidentally, remember the other day when I suggested Americans should start up their own health care program (here)? Well, listening NorMAN GoldMAN, who was sitting in for Ed Schultz (on radio) yesterday, said the exact same thing — and that we could get someone like Wendall Potter, to get the right Administrator, keep costs low, and get it going, which would take a lot of work, but it could be done!!!!!
*Howard Dean Walks It Back