Blog for Democracy

Go, Howie, Go!

David Sirota, Friend of BfD, says:

I want to take a moment just to recognize what has been recognized before, but needs to be recognized right here and now one more time: Howard Dean is a genuine hero.

In coming out against the Lieberman-gutted health insurance “reform” bill, Dean is leveraging every shred of power he can muster to create the political space for the final bill – whether passed now, or later after going back to the drawing board – to be better and more progressive. He has made a compelling case that the bill “would do more harm than good,” as he says in his Washington Post op-ed today – and in doing that he has made the power struggle between Joe Lieberman’s Palpatinian forces of insurance/drug industry darkness and the progressive movement far more symmetrical.

Besides being right on the money, I love that David uses the adjective Palpatinian. Nerd Power!

h/t Tim!

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PaulaG

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25 responses to “Go, Howie, Go!”

  1. innerredneckexposed Avatar
    innerredneckexposed

    I’m quite serious, they are going to instigate a genuine civil war! This is freaking treason and they are freaking traitors!

    I think many of you have never believed it possible, but it is now not only possible, it’s becoming dare I say, “likely!” I’m seeing the things that they have snuck back into this bill including the death panels, they know that this thing will kill seniors, and not just a few here and a few there, but across the board!

    They of course are exempted from having to comply with their own law….

    This is a coup de’tat …

    MOAR!

    http://glocktalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14404586&postcount=5

  2. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    probably

    heres my christmas present to Obama

    http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/22/obama-repeatedly-touted-public/

  3. JerryT Avatar
    JerryT

    I don’t know. Maybe you’re a proto-bourgeois counter-culture elitist urban farmer.

  4. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    Am I an evil beltway insider or am I a wild-eyed DFH who realizes the obvious truth that there’s two chambers of congress, a conference committee, and a reconciliation process for a weak-ass public option (the best we can seem to get)? Make up your minds dudes.

  5. J.M. Prince Avatar
    J.M. Prince

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/21/817765/-Sad-News:-Ann-Nixon-Cooper-Passed-Away-at-107

    News Note: 107 yo Ann Nixon Cooper from Atl passes. Via the DailyKos & CNN.

    JMP

  6. J.M. Prince Avatar
    J.M. Prince

    Yeah I’m with Ruby D here. Dean’s a prophet w/o a proper audience inside the beltway evidently. Always has been actually. It’s amazing he’s lasted this long in the deep miasma.

    And if Z thinks he can find a way to magically smuggle in the enchanted racing ponies & the public option and Not have it all blow up when it needs to be voted on again by the Senate? That would be a fine trick indeed. And something no one has evidently seen as a likely possibility. Despite many many folks outside the beltway also ‘thinking hard’ about getting a better HCR bill enacted. You know all those evidently lesser minds & folks who might know some real legislative history here & have worked in past ‘activist’ administrations? The ones who’ve studied the issue for longer than you’ve been drawing breath? The ones who were fighting these battles while you were blissfully napping in a crib someplace? Yeah, all those multi-degreed, talented, smart folks who just happen to not get paid for their political opinions? Yeah them. They’ll still want to lecture you. Then there’s the Uninformed lot too! Get used to it.

    And oh, BTW? Most of those self same DFH’s who were prescient & mostly right about the Iraq war? Yeah, decidedly Non Beltway denizens. But surely, they’re also to a person certainly less heroic and ‘knowledgeable’ that yourself. Because why? Remind us again.

    JMP

  7. Mouth of the South Avatar
    Mouth of the South

    you think you will get the public option in through the conference committee? I doubt that, but if you do, then fair play to you. Well done.

  8. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    Hey MOTS I’m really happy, and Imma let you finish, but there’s this thing called conference committee that produces a bill that can’t be filibustered that is the best thing ever!

  9. Mouth of the South Avatar
    Mouth of the South

    There is important protections for working people in that bill. People need the support that bill provides to get health insurance. I think it is pretty clear you will not be able to do better this session or maybe at all in the near future. There are people without health insurance and this will help that. Of course, many more people die from medical negligence than not having health insurance…

  10. Rubyduby Avatar
    Rubyduby

    I’m just wondering how many times and in how many ways will Howie have to be proven right before someone asswipe in Washington (yeah I’m talking about you Rahm) has an epiphany and thinks maybe we should do what he says because he’s always right and we always end up having to do what he says when we’re correcting our mistakes that wouldn’t have happened if we had just listened in the first place.

    Wow. That sentence is so long…

  11. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    To clarify, I called you an ass because I’ve spent the last 6 months of my life working about ten hours a day to get a good health bill passed, so I don’t want to be lectured by some monday morning you know whats

  12. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    Um, comparing this to the stimulus is kinda lame.

  13. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    MOTS I always know what that guy’s talking about, on the other hand. I also know he’s an ass.

  14. innerredneckexposed Avatar
    innerredneckexposed

    “You guys aren’t here in the beltway”

    No and I’m probably better off for it.

    Later dudes, off to a week in the redneck riviera.

  15. Mouth of the South Avatar
    Mouth of the South

    Zaid,

    I am surprised that someone is employing you.

    I am not surprised you think you are heroic.

    I would be surprised if anyone else thought you were.

    It is always the easier thing to not support a bill like this; just like the stimulus, all the risk is in supporting it.

  16. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    I never have any idea what you’re talking about.

  17. J.M. Prince Avatar
    J.M. Prince

    No Z, you’re reporting on how & why Howard Dean spoke out. Which is a bit less heroic.

    But the ‘public option’ as included had its severe problems too. The simple Medicare buy in was actually a decided improvement here. But when seen as needed perhaps several years down the road, after the evidence of the operation of the whole system comes into better focus, it’ll be hopefully more acceptable to start anew & with a much stronger conception of the concept. Giving them (AHIP) the room to fail might be the better part of wisdom here, when dealing with the results. But yes, that was much less acceptable than a real public option, which was really unlikely to pass the Senate with the 60 votes now needed. Reconciliation should have been the 2 track solution here, but we’d probably still be at this way into the next year too with that track.

    And you’ll likely need to be piloting some drones to get the same quality heroics as Dean as fast. But hey, there’s an escalation on for the Hols too! Merry Merry & all that! JMP

  18. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    Howard co-wrote a book with my CAP colleagues faiz and igor basically declaring that any bill without a public option is not worth passing. Now that he’s come out with this stand, everyone at CAP (which has fallen to supporting the bill) and the White House and the DC circuit has turned Howard into a pariah. It very well is heroic. You guys aren’t here in the beltway and seeing the stuff Dean is facing for this. It’s very heroic, whether you agree with him or not.

    As for speaking out and they’ll fire you, well that’s what I’m doing right now oddly enough isn’t it?

  19. J.M. Prince Avatar
    J.M. Prince

    In the 2nd sentence of the 2nd paragraph that should have read: “Strangely enough, we got our first coherent, clear & honest appraisal of the bill as a work of policy in the entire, oh nearly 2 year long debate”. Sorry for any confusion. And yes, I know I’m actually off by about 100 years too. JMP

  20. J.M. Prince Avatar
    J.M. Prince

    Yep, Sirota proved right here as did Duncan Black & Digby who predicted that Lieberman would do anything to PO ‘liberals’ backing the bill, even if he had previously backed the exact same provisions for years. Cause that’s how the game is played. ‘Holy Joe’ probably not only double crossed his Senate colleagues on his prior commitments, but probably went further and triple crossed them. And yes, that’s possible. So there literally was nothing left to do but try and push back hard from the left.

    The result? Strangely enough, we got our first coherent, clear & honest appraisal of the bill as a work of policy in the entire, oh nearly long debate. Thoroughly adult & wonky as it was nasty & ugly at times. But mostly? It was respectful & actually edifying & instructive. A rare peek at some vanishingly rare rational debate in an age of screaming invective. And yes, that was desperately needed, and probably for a very long time too. Now successfully dodging bullets in Fallujah is not the only path to manly courage, and some days going up against Rahm & the whole dizzy WH crew might do it, but it really, desperately needed to be done by someone. And by someone with enough cred to ‘get it done’ too. I think it hurried things along down the path. That and the slipping time limit.

    So yes, people can describe you as heroic for doing something inherently useful against the tides of the opinion of the day. Especially when it’s up against the ‘official’ opinions of the Village/Beltway elites who’d dearly want this thing either killed or ‘failed’, again. Proof positive that BHO ‘isn‚Äôt all that’ and he really should have listened to them & ‘been more humble & respectful’. (Whatever that actually means, but I’ve heard it oh so many times by the ‘opinion elites’).

    And yes dear hearts we’ve come close enough to death to realize that there might be an advantage to even ‘somewhat living’. Optimal solutions? Don’t exist in politics mostly. Not down here & not in DC. Successful policies & programs might take decades of hard work to carefully craft & hordes of active & involved supporters to defend them against the forces of reaction & hate while the edifice is being built & occupied. It is ever thus.

    JMP

  21. Mouth of the South Avatar
    Mouth of the South

    I had to look up Palpatinian. Apparently Star Wars has passed me by.

  22. innerredneckexposed Avatar
    innerredneckexposed

    Because it is hardly heroic for someone who commands a following of liberal donors who very likely don’t support this bill to speak out against it.

    I might, *MIGHT* give him credit if his employer was saying “speak out or we will fire you and pursue legal action etc” or if people being beaten in the streets for speaking out against it (you know, what would constitute acts of heroism) but neither are happening. So no hero. Issuing a press release needs to be something truly above and beyond ordinary to be even classified as heroic.

    Now hero worshiping, that’s a different topic and this thread has it.

  23. Paula Avatar
    Paula

    IRE – I respectfully suggest that you, as they say on the internets, RTFA. If you still disagree, then go ahead and explain why.

  24. Mel Avatar
    Mel

    I love it that now when you google “Palpatinian”, this site pops up on the first page. Thanks Paula for raising our nerd stock.

    Seriously, it’s a shame Howie had to be the one to call it out, but he’s right. Better to start over than polish the Lieberman turd.

  25. innerredneckexposed Avatar
    innerredneckexposed

    How the fuck is dude a hero?

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