While I’d rather be voting for Sanders in November, it’s good that he recognizes political realities.
“I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president,” Sanders said at a joint rally here. “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that.”
The 74-year-old self-described democratic socialist, who has been a thorn in Clinton’s side over the last year, pledged his support to his former rival: “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.”
And, I hope, do everything he can to chivvy her in the direction of progressive reform.
He’s already done a lot to push her to the left, in ways that she can’t back down on now that she’s gone there. Just a few examples are: her support for a $15/hour Federal Minimum Wage (she once advocated for only a $12/hour FMW), her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (she helped negotiate its initial stages), increased bank regulation and an end to “too big to fail” banks (which she once opposed.) Basically, Bernie has forced her to tack progressive in the primaries and she has very little room (or need, running against Trump) to tack back in the general. In many ways, Sanders has won much of what he set out to accomplish, despite losing the nomination, and it’s been a good thing for the country that he has.
Good for him – very good outcome for a protest candidate.
This is the right move on the part of Sanders – he has chosen the ideal moment to cash in the political capital he built up during his election run to both head off a potentially disastrous Trump Presidency and nudge Clinton in a more progressive direction at the same time. Hopefully, he will get a place in Clinton’s administration if she becomes President, from where he will be well placed to continue pushing an enlightened agenda.
He seems to be an excellent mix of progressive ideals and political pragmatism, the kind of social liberal who can get things done that the US, and much of the rest of the world, desperately needs right now.
@1 – I’m skeptical that Clinton will have any interest in accomplishing most of those goals. She can say she wants a $15/hour FMW, but I think she’d probably be comfortable settling for $12 if that’s what the Republicans offer without too much debate. The TPP has been negotiated. If Congress passes it, she might well sign it saying that it’s a better deal than she realized now that she’s in office or that there are more important things to deal with right now than arguing TPP. Bank regulation will likely stall in Congress making it a moot point.
I’m more interested in having a non-Republican available to appoint Supreme Court justices.
If the example and support of Sanders could shift the part of Congress elected on November to the left, she’d have to deliver some of her promises. That’s a big if, granted.
I just hope Sanders doesn’t get too much influence on her immigration politics. That is one of his problem areas.
I hope he stays away from gun-control policy. He might turn every state into Vermont, which has the most permissive gun laws in the country.
@6 and 7, as a Sanders supporter, the bright side of his losing is that he’s only likely to have influence on the issues his supporters were most passionate about – meaning he won’t hurt immigration and gun control while he helps on the minimum wage, health care and education.
You know what will push Clinton (or whoever gets elected) towards more progressive policies?
Electing more progressive people to Congress.
Electing Clinton, or Sanders, or Jill Stein as president is, at best, a holding action. As long as Congress is controlled by right-wingers, nothing that those congresspeople see as “liberal” is going to make it into law. Clinton, in particular, is into the “art of the possible,” so as long as right-wingers run Congress, her policies will be ones that she can squeeze past them.
If you want progressive policies, find the progressive candidates for U.S. Senate and House, and send them money and, if you can, go and campaign for them. And while you’re at it, help progressive candidates for state legislatures, since they’re the ones who control redistricting and thus who has a chance to get elected.
Sanders did his part in shaping history, whether or not it was truly his intention to act as a liberalizing influence on the Clinton campaign instead of actually winning (which I DON’T believe.) Now he should vanish into the ash heap of history where he belongs.
Had Saint Sanders really won both the nomination and, even more unlikely, the Presidency, he would have ruined America through his utter cluelessness how to do inter-/national politics. Face it, Bernout is the left-wing Trump. A grandstanding nincompoop.
After all, if he weren’t an incompetent in decision-making, how come in his decades-spanning career (such as it is) as a Vermont politician he did accomplish Not. One. Thing. Of importance?
Therefore I heavily hope he stays as far away from President Clinton’s cabinet, so as not to muck up national policy.
@9 AMM — Yes! Obama has started to shift beyond what is possible in order to tee up what might be possible in the next year or two — notably, expanding Medicare closer to a single-payer system and dramatically reforming at least the implementation of of immigration laws. Raising minimum wage and social security are on the table too. This is not pie in the sky, it’s pie on the menu. Let’s eat!
Congratulations! Hillary won, and she will go on to trounce Trump. For me, though, last night was about Bernie and the progressive future of the party. Bernie had clearly earned the right to set the timeline for his rousing endorsement of Hillary. Personally, I’ll offer that I am beginning to relish the thought of a fresh and unified commitment towards a Hillary presidency. Even still, it remains that a few of the steeliest correct-the-record shits will probably continue to swarm too-close, offering nothing but poison, so to them I’ll offer a preemptive “fuck right off.”
Getting back on topic, I can guess what was probably the last little impetus behind Hillary and Bernie both mounting the shared stage last night. That final nudge was that we are finally seeing that Hillary’s and Debbie’s Platform Committee appointees are learning to behave themselves, quitting with their overt contempt for all-things-Bernie. I think that this overdue attitude correction could only have occurred if Hillary herself or else a trusted surrogate within either the DNC or her campaign had recently conveyed a slap-down from the top, telling everyone to, “Cut the shit. Do it now.” Leadership such as this is what we need to see if Democratic Party unity is going to happen this year.
Don’t worry, she’ll be just as big a disappointing sell-outs as her husband and Obama have been.
Take a good hard look at the House of Representatives, presently run by Speaker Ryan. How much progressive legislation will be passed with him and his party in charge?
As much as I would like a single payer medical system, it won’t happen until the republicans no longer have a stranglehold on the House.
Cue Twitter being full of fools like @applehead here, who have no grasp of reality, politics, policy, government or history. Oy with the poodles.
While I’m more than happy to vote for Hillary in order to keep Trump out of the White House, the consistent gloating and attacks (up to and including repeated misgendering) from some people, even on this very blog, has made it hard to feel at all celebratory about that.
Congrats, you won, mind not calling me a white male and asserting that I’m undemocratic for not wanting to start off supporting someone with a long history of opposing my rights, now?
@ #9 AMM wrote:
Exactly right. And that is a far more difficult road than merely electing a Democrat as president. Given the current state of gerrymandered congressional districts, not to mention the rate of incumbency re-election, it may be long time before the House looks much different.
Others might not agree with me, but I think that this day has been a proud day for Democrats. This morning, I watched as both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spoke and felt very proud of both. Bernie was gracious and pledged his support of the presumptive nominee in defeating Trump and bringing about the reforms that this country sorely needs.
I think that this morning’s speech by Hillary Clinton was one of her finest. I certainly found myself clapping and yelling “Yes!! Right on!!” from my recliner several times. (Don’t judge – I’m stuck in the recliner due to a failed back surgery).
Her speech was full of bumper sticker slogans and talking points that I feel we as Democrats should be rallying behind. I don’t doubt that she wants to raise up women, children and families. She’s been working for those ever since her career began, before she met Bill. She was very correct that we need to begin all of those measures at once – doing it incrementally doesn’t work for those who are in desperate need. Hillary, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, John Lewis and all of our Democratic heroes will not be able to successfully make those changes all at once unless we the voters give them a Congress that will work with them, rather than against them. We need to vote with this in mind this fall.
I just finished watching President Obama’s speech at the memorial for the fallen policemen in Dallas and I was brought to tears. This president has had to be “consoler-in-chief” far too many times during his presidency. He was so eloquent, and brought up some of the same points that Hillary made this morning. I was also pleased that he brought up the names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as men whom we should also be mourning today. He also made the point that BLM is NOT a group of thugs, but rather a legitimate group of people with a legitimate message that we all need to take time to actually hear.
After hearing all three of these great Democrats speak today, I think that we should be ready to roll up our sleeves and work to solve, or at least improve upon the problems that we are facing.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but I remember back in 2008 when Obama promised health care reform, an end to the wars, closure of Guantanamo, and financial reform.
After he was elected, his response was, essentially: “Ha ha, I lied.”
I’m not sure what universe you’re living in where you think Clinton can’t do the same.
She’s already finagling to get it passed during the lame duck session.
Oh, so it passed in 2009? Great! Where do I sign up?
@19: “‘Maybe I’m just getting old, but I remember back in 2008 when Obama promised health care reform, an end to the wars, closure of Guantanamo, and financial reform.
After he was elected, his response was, essentially: “Ha ha, I lied.”‘
This is, I am sorry, stuff and nonsense. He was elected with a congress which, democrat or not, was largely very conservative including a majority of “centrists” or in other words “conservatives”, and Republicans implacably opposed to everything he stood for.
That he got even the little he did get was an impressive feat. His failure, but mostly the Democrats failure, was to lose the house in 2010 to a majority of not merely conservative, but downright crazy tea party loons. After that and the loss of many governorship races to people who proceeded to totally gerrymander the house, it wouldn’t have mattered if he was Roosevelt, Lincoln, or Jesus Christ. Put blame where blame is due.
Sure Obama has his multitudinous failings, but if Bernie became president with the congress we have now I bet he would fail even worse. The Democrats have to campaign for more than just the presidency or whomever the elect will be a failure.
Except of course Trump – he would be a major success in bringing about the new feudalism in the USA.
You want that?
You may not recall 1993, when Hillary Clinton was, in fact, the champion of health care for all. She put all her chips down on a plan that probably would have done far more for the health of this country than what we eventually got. And she got savaged for it, including by her own party. It sent her into a deep depression, and was probably instrumental in transforming her from a bold progressive to the ruthless pragmatist she is today.
Careful now. Admitting that many Democrats are indistinguishable from Republicans will earn the ire of the many Democratic loyalist trolls in this thread.
That said, the main power of the Presidency has always been the ability to influence one’s own party— the so-called bully pulpit. It’s a constant refrain here that the Republicans are a single amorphous mass, completely united in every respect and yet the Democratic Party can’t even convince a handful of recently-elected representatives to support a wildly popular policy?
Of course, those of us who were around in 2008 remember that Obama damn well knew how to use the bully pulpit— he was the one pressing progressive Democrats to abandon health care reform in favor of his worthless Romneycare proposal.
And why, pray tell, do you think they lost the House? You act like it just happened entirely on its own accord— that the Democrats were given absolute control of government only to flip off the people who elected them and spend two years doing nothing while the country burned had absolutely no impact on people’s decision to vote against them.
Am I the only one here whose calender doesn’t skip from 2008 to 2011? There was an entire Congressional term in which the Democrats had absolute control of the federal government and yet people are still trying to claim it’s somehow all the Republicans’ fault.
What if he became president with the congress (and senate) we elected in 2008? The congress we have now is the result of Obama’s failings.
Gee, really? Last time I checked, I can support multiple things at the same time.
“Bringing about?” It’s already here. Nixon dug the foundation, Reagan built it, (Bill) Clinton endorsed it, Bush opened it, Obama legitimized it, and both (Hillary) Clinton and Trump plan to reinforce it.
Frankly, if you really want to get rid of feudalism, we’d be better off with Trump than Clinton— both plan to reinforce it, but Trump is an incompetent baboon who is more likely to fail. Just for starters, his absurd isolationism leads him to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership which Clinton supports— and if the TPP is passed, it’ll take a lot more than a new president to undo it.
Actually, she supported a half-measure; not “health care for all,” but perhaps “some health care for most.”
The Republicans proposed an even weaker half-measure (a quarter-measure, perhaps) that would have been at most “token health care for many.”
And in 2009, Obama considers passing the Republicans’ bill to be his signature achievement.
Being a coward doesn’t earn anybody points. “Give us rights or we give you riots” is a rallying cry; “give us rights or we’ll settle for whatever you do give us” is decidedly not.
@Vivec, #16
1) I’ve read a lot of your criticisms of Hillary Clinton here and agreed with them, even though I didn’t say all that much on the time.
2) I do agree that the way that you’ve been treated here has been unfair.
3) I’m probably going to be nowhere near eloquent enough to say this without being offensive, and I’m already sorry in advance for that.
4) With all of that being said, if you’re still going to support Hillary Clinton anyways, after everything they all do is more or less a torrent of abuse aimed at you basically for being right, then aren’t you validating the perspective of everyone who was wrong by saying, in the end, that you’ll just do what they want regardless of how all of them act? Nothing is ever going to change when the status quo consists of sticker shock after Hillary Clinton reveals that she was Hillary Clinton, a lot of beautifully written criticisms when it doesn’t matter at all-and then dropping all of those criticisms and then retreating into groupthink mode the instant it looks like a Democrat might lose.
“Frankly, if you really want to get rid of feudalism, we’d be better off with Trump than Clinton— both plan to reinforce it, but Trump is an incompetent baboon who is more likely to fail. Just for starters, his absurd isolationism leads him to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership which Clinton supports— and if the TPP is passed, it’ll take a lot more than a new president to undo it.”
What can I say? I think you are just delusional. The far left is as crazy as the far right, either will bring us to ruin. I have no vote, being a citizen of Canada, but if you think you are already living in neo-feudalism you just aren’t, to my mind, in contact with reality. You are like the Germans who voted for Hitler because how could he be worse than what they already had? Well, they found out. As you would.
@#1, stwriley
Don’t be absurd. Obama demonstrated very thoroughly that a president can shrug his shoulders and say “sorry, folks, the Republicans control one side of Congress so I’m not even going to give speeches in favor of the things I promised” and the Democratic Party will forgive them because, not to put too fine a point on it, the Democratic Party is filled with gullible fools.
Already backtracked to $12 again, by way of her proxies on the panel putting together the platform.
She is already pushing for it to be passed by Congress, and Obama already signed (at the conference where it was made official) so the Congressional vote would be binding.
So she flip-flopped again since the debates? Because during the debates she said the banks were already as regulated as they needed to be, and the new derivatives bubble which the financial press is getting antsy about is not a problem, even though it’s bigger than the last one. If she has adopted that position, then I doubt her sincerity very, very much.
Meanwhile, she’s still on track for a no-fly zone in Syria (where we’ve been funding war crimes, according to Amnesty International’s report), the whole NATO revving up of hostilities with Russia, the $1 trillion for new nukes thing, and putting Bill “in charge of the economy” (which is like putting someone with 15 DUI convictions “in charge of driving the car”). The more of her policy proposals I read, the more I think she is exactly as disastrous as Trump. No worse, but no better either.
This election season is truly amazing; for the first time in my life, it’s the Democrats who are running a campaign based entirely on fear (with Donald Trump as the bogeyman to scare us into voting for a candidate whose entire history is made up of wrong choices on major issues) with no actual substance, while the Republicans — though they are obviously continuing to be very focused on fearmongering — occasionally, in a dim, tadpole-trying-to-understand-quantum-physics way, mention actual issues. (If they hadn’t spent the last 40 years demonizing education and intelligence and driving away anyone with the necessary skills, they might actually be able to make a cogent argument.)
@#20, Ed Seedhouse
If Obama were actually left of center as you claim, his first act would have been to oppose the banks. At the time there was 90%+ demand for it across all Americans, including Republicans. Anyone opposing that would have been facing a mob with pitchforks and torches composed of their own former supporters. After breaking up the banks, Obama could have asked for just about anything he wanted and had the political capital to get it.
Instead, he deliberately decided to switch over to “health care reform”, which wasn’t a campaign issue at all, and which was really “health insurance reform”, only Obama changed it into “a health insurance mandate (with a few minor reforms tossed in)”. He managed to pass a plan originally proposed by right-wingers which he even succeeded in watering down along the way so it was even more right-wing than in its original version. As planned, the whole mess distracted the public from the fact that the Democrats were refusing to do anything about the banks and had the bonus payoff that the Republicans got enough momentum to take a house of Congress in the very next election, which then let Obama blame absolutely everything on the Republicans for the next 6 years — and continue to conduct military adventures because, apparently, separation of powers just Isn’t A Thing any more.
@#21, brucegee1962
I recall 1993, and I have to ask: how so? Her plan was also a mandate, rather than single-payer, and also had no effective cost controls.
She also ran the whole campaign for her plan, according to every single person who helped her who has spoken out about it, as a very top-down, “Hillary Clinton knows best, so don’t try to argue” unilateral, nonnegotiable proposal, which alienated supporters and which bodes very ill for what she would be like as a president. At the time, she presented that as “pragmatic”, which is why I don’t take her seriously when she uses the term now.
@24
I suppose I am validating it, but I’d much rather a disappointing 4-8 year status quo than even 4 years of a Trump-led country.
The Vicar@26:”If Obama were actually left of center as you claim, his first act would have been to oppose the banks.”
When did I claim Obama was left of center? Oh, that’s right, never!
Anyway “left of center” isn’t enough. Throughout the developed world all the left of center parties are infected with “neoliberal” economics. In Canada last year the definitely left of center NDP promised to balance the Federal budget! Their other policies are definitely progressive and to the left, but if elected under the platform of balanced budgets they’d have been completely unable to implement any of it with balanced budgets.
Obama has plenty of progressive policies, but he too is infected with the neoliberal economism bug and even said that the United States of America, a sovereign nation with a fiat currency, which it can and does create out of nothing was “out of money”!
Anyway, in the USA we’re not talking about a choice between good and evil, we are dealing here with a choice between at least partially sane conservatives (Democrats, for the most part) and bat shit crazy conservatives – the Republican party. One way isn’t very good. The other way is insane.
But that’s the choice you have.
Vivec,
I dunno about others, but when I discussed Bernie Bros, I didn’t mean that ALL Sanders supporters were like that. Hell, I caucused for him. That didn’t change the fact that there were many, many white males shaming women and black people for supposedly going against their own interests.
Alkaloid,
Let’s flip that shit around. I’m not making excuses for the condescension of some Hillary supporters, but assuming Bernie had won, would you say the same for Clinton supporters who turned to him? Do you remember the Superdelegate Hit List? The harassment of black women who supported Clinton? There was definitely some racial and gender-based patronizing on the Sanders side as well.
Other than situations like Vivec’s, I have trouble feeling sorry for Sanders supporters. I’m sick of the implications that I’m not a true progressive if I don’t despise Hillary. I’m sick of the conspiracy theories.
I don’t recall who exactly made said comments, but there were a couple one-issue posters who would just pop in every 30 posts to be like “Lmao the white males in this thread angry that they can’t mobilize queer people and people of color”, even when it was pointed out that plenty of the people in said thread are one of those (or both.)
If you weren’t doing that, more power to you.
But like, here’s an example.
Applehead says this in reference to me
In a thread where they had previously said this
…and the other shoe dropped.
“Alkaloid,
Let’s flip that shit around. I’m not making excuses for the condescension of some Hillary supporters,”
Some of them? On a lot of the other boards I frequent the loudest, most obnoxious worthless little shits I’ve ever seen have been Hillary supporters who relentlessly refuse to discuss any issue in any substantive way and do nothing but gloat.
“but assuming Bernie had won, would you say the same for Clinton supporters who turned to him?”
It depends. If they had tried to be decent then no, I wouldn’t say that.
“Do you remember the Superdelegate Hit List? The harassment of black women who supported Clinton? There was definitely some racial and gender-based patronizing on the Sanders side as well.”
I agree with your last statement. I’ve certainly criticized some of them at times. In fact I’ve been willing to say that I actually liked Sanders more than I liked some of his supporters, and that he showed a lot more understanding than they did.
However, at the end of the day, that doesn’t really change that Sanders was a better candidate imo (even though he was in some ways far more conservative than I am) and that I fully believe that nothing that Clinton says (now, after being forced) will have much of anything to do with how she governed. You probably just bought a lemon.
“Other than situations like Vivec’s, I have trouble feeling sorry for Sanders supporters.”
Even when the Clinton campaign pulls stunts like rules changes to give themselves more delegates than they actually earned?
“I’m sick of the implications that I’m not a true progressive if I don’t despise Hillary. I’m sick of the conspiracy theories.”
Would those conspiracy theories include Hillary Clinton never having seen a war she didn’t like, telling Edward Snowden to “go through channels”, or the contents of her Goldman Sachs speeches?
@Seedhouse, #28
“But that’s the choice you have.”
But that’s the ‘choice’ we’ve always been supposed to have. Isn’t that the problem?
@34
well that’s as maybe but that is what we got.
Are there there any viable alternatives that will lead to a more progressive government?
you go to a restaurant to get something to eat because you are really really hungry and can’t cook anything.
You want fish and a salad but all they have left are
bacon-burgers or spam with fries
what do you do?
uncle frogy
@unclefrogy, #34
I set the menu down that isn’t really a menu at all, and I calmly walk back out the door.
alkaloid
12 July 2016 at 7:14 pm
“But that’s the ‘choice’ we’ve always been supposed to have. Isn’t that the problem?”
Where there’s a problem it’s up to us to find a solution to it. Electing a crazy psychopath is not going in even the direction of a solution. Giving up is an anti solution that just means joining the insane.
You might start by voting for as many people as you can who are at least partly in contact with reality. That won’t be a full solution but at least it’s a step in the right direction. There will never be an effective progressive president until there is a progressive majority in both the house and senate. And in the senate a veto proof majority.
I mean there may be a sane Republican out there but I have yet to hear from any of them, so I think voting Democrat across the board is about the only chance for at least a sane house and congress.
Once you’ve got rid of the insane senators and congressmen you can work on persuading those left to pursue progressive ideas. Until then you have no chance – insane people can’t be pursuaded.
And my I suggest a perusal of today’s blog from David Brin? I think it is apposite:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.ca/2016/07/political-insanity-and-disfunction.html
Jake Harban wrote:
What lie? He passed a health care reform (“Obamacare” may not be the one you wanted, but it did pass), Guantanamo Bay is down to 76 prisoners from 779 when Obama took office, and there were some meager financial reform laws passed (Dodd-Frank). He didn’t successfully end all the wars (the Iraq war almost was ended) and stop starting new ones, so maybe we can call that a ‘lie’. It’s fine to not like the legislation he worked on or not like the speed at which he’s working to accomplish them, but it’s not a lie.
Vivec wrote:
I remain unconvinced that applehead and a few of the other supposed Hillary supporters who spent all their time ridiculing Bernie and Bernie supporters are actually supporting Hillary. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen even one of them say something useful or positive about Hillary except when it could be used as a backhanded insult against Bernie. Their posts seem to be designed more to encourage Bernie supporters to sit out the election (directly or indirectly) or try to convince them that they might as well be Trump supporters instead.
There are legitimate Clinton supporters, but I’m just not convinced applehead is one of them. If applehead does actually support Clinton, they’re doing it horribly, tragically, hilariously wrong. Clinton isn’t nearly as bad as many Bernie supporters would have us all believe, but she certainly is a very mixed bag. For virtually every positive thing I can credit her with, I can often name something equally negative.
And before someone complains, yes, plenty of Berniebots have done the same thing.
@36
so you go hungry?
that is your choice but don’t tell me to go hungry
uncle frogy
If you think “the far left” exists in any meaningful capacity in the United States, then you’re delusional.
I’ve said many times before (and here’s one more) that I’m definitely going to vote against Trump in November. Claiming that voting against Trump is similar to voting for Hitler is an absurdity, though that doesn’t stop some people here from trying to claim that voting against Trump is actually the same thing as voting for him.
Actually, the choice is between a batshit insane competent conservative who will slowly but systematically strip the country down and sell the pieces to the highest bidder, a batshit insane incompetent conservative who will probably burn the country down but give liberals another shot at power in 2020, or a decent liberal of unknown competence who will make at least an effort at good government.
And a majority of Americans will say: “We support the third option, but we aren’t going to vote for her because she can’t win because we won’t vote for her.”
Go to a different restaurant where they have fish and a salad.
It may have passed, but it’s not health care reform.
If Obama signed a law giving $1 trillion in free money to each of the Koch Brothers, you’d probably praise him for “passing economic stimulus.”
Or in other words, it’s still open. He promised he’d close it. He lied.
Worthless half-measures don’t count.
Wow. He “almost” ended a war. Well, I guess that’s the best he could do. It’s not like he’s commander in chief of the armed forces.
Pakistan. Libya. Syria. All started by Obama.
So yes, I call that a lie.
I half expected you to cite that bogus study that claims politicians keep their promises by defining any half-assed reference to a promise to be “keeping” it.
I’ll be eating my fish and salad at the restaurant across the street, watching as you choke down your spam with fries and struggle to convince yourself that my food wasn’t a “viable” option.
The Vicar at #26
Actually, Obama rejected a Bush administration concession to write down mortgages. That gives me an idea of how “left of center” he is.
And, as for “health care” reform—although “progressives” were pinning their hopes on the so-called “public option,” Obama, in a speech to Congress on health care in September, 2009, said the following:
[emphasis added]
Let’s ignore the fact that Obama had previously made a secret backroom deal to kill the public option—that he was selling the plan on the basis of how few Americans would sign up tells me a lot about his view of whatever health insurance reform he was pushing.
I do not have any reason to believe that Clinton will be any better.
Obama bringing in Geitner was game over for any hope of the progressive revolution that should have occurred in 2009. They couldn’t even stop the bonuses to AIG.
Am I scared about the up coming election ? I should say so. Am I as scared as I was back in 1966 when I was standing in a line of draftees that had all passed our physicals looking at a Marine picking out new marines ? No I am not.
One thing I will not do is leave here and escape to some where else. Just where that place to go to is that does not have any very serious problems I have no idea? I will not let the bastards drive me out nor just role over, this is where I live and if I have to chose between two choices neither of which I prefer I will make the best choice I can and continue to do my part for a better society here and now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNp1kqnRw-U
uncle frogy
Re Obama and the ACA: There have been attempts to get universal health care insurance in the US since at least Truman. They have failed. Clinton tried in the 1990s to provide a more inclusive, more “liberal” health care reform. It failed. The ACA is the most cautious, most industry friendly possible plan that ever so slightly inches (micrometers?) its way towards universal coverage. It would be a terrible plan except for one thing: It succeeded. I’m ready to give it partial credit because of that. I’d prefer Medicare for all, but the US public is apparently deeply confused about what they want and I don’t see any reason to reject the not very good but at least existent in favor of the possibility of maybe some day having something better to replace it. Especially since people in the US apparently aren’t willing to do the one thing that would allow a reasonably good plan to be put in place: increase their taxes*. Why not keep the ACA until we can work out a way to get everyone covered by a universal health care plan?
*Though would more people be willing to have, say, a special Medicare tax that could be used only to support Medicare for all, analogous to the social security tax if they understood that it meant that they no longer had to pay for health insurance? The increased tax would probably be on average far less than what the average person pays for insurance, especially since taxes can be made progressive rather than the flat rate of insurance payments.
Re Guantanamo, my understanding is that Obama didn’t lie, he failed. He made attempts to close it, but was blocked by Congress.
I’m sorry, but one of the fish and salad restaurants closed and put a sign in its window recommending you go across the street to the bacon restaurant. The other has never actually served anyone, doesn’t have a kitchen, has never caught a fish, and seems a bit uncertain about what exactly salad is, but they promise that if they ever do get a chance to serve you it’ll be luscious. In the mean time, if you don’t like bacon, there’s always the restaurant down the street which is offering live scorpions for dinner.
Vivec@27:
I agree. And I’d much MUCH rather have a disappointing 4-8 years of status quo nudged slightly to the left with a few extremely cautious reforms enacted than 2 years of Trump in which Trump solves global warming by bringing about nuclear winter.
AYFKM? The ACA is basically a government handout to the insurance industry that doubles as a way of crushing the push for health care reform by deluding some of its supporters into thinking they already got it.
Britain and Canada have had single payer since, like, forever. Why not here? Is America somehow defective as a country?
Are you willing to partially pay my medical expenses since I can’t get coverage under your precious ACA?
That’s the typical excuse, but it falls flat when you realize that of the many people who were complicit in torture there, the only one to ever be prosecuted was the whistleblower.
I am physically eating fish and salad right now. You can swear until you’re blue in the face that my fish and salad is not “viable,” that I’ll never be able to eat it, and that I’d get sick if I did but all your denial will not change the physical reality of the food that I am currently chewing or the restaurant that served it to me.
Enjoy your spam and fries. Maybe if you try really hard, you can convince yourself you didn’t have any other option. My food may be a bit lackluster, but it’s miles ahead of the crap you’re stuffing into your face and swearing you enjoy.
If you are then I completely misunderstood the analogy.
A reasonable question and yet every attempt to introduce single payer in the US has failed. Dramatically. As the article in the Atlantic points out, the majority of people in the US will say that they support Medicare for all if asked that and nothing else, but if you probe even a little they start to object to every detail that would make it possible. And they’re convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the British and Canadian systems are terrible failures. The British NHS does, indeed, have problems, but those are related to underfunding, not to the underlying system itself and, as far as I know, the Canadian system has comparable outcomes to the US, with some minor variation (better in some areas, worse in others.)
Is the US somehow a defective country, then? Well, it’s definitely a different country, between the use of the imperial measurement system, the gun fetish, and the lack of health care system. Whether that makes it defective is…oh, screw the being open minded and tolerant. Yeah, it kind of is. But it doesn’t have to be. The debate here, as I understand it, is how to remove as many of the US’s defects as quickly as possible.
Indeed, I do pay your medical expenses: unpaid medical expenses are eventually paid by the taxpayer. The ACA reduced the number of people without insurance and therefore reduced the number of people whose medical bills I’m partially paying, but I entirely agree that that number should be zero. What I’m not willing to do is deny coverage to the people who have gotten coverage under the ACA because it’s not covering everyone. Should we repeal Medicare and Medicaid too because they don’t cover everyone?
If you’re willing to discuss it, why can’t you get coverage? If you don’t want to discuss it, “fuck you that’s personal” is a perfectly reasonable answer.
What analogy? This is an absurd scenario about restaurants so completely disconnected from reality that it’s almost literally impossible to imagine.
So we give up and accept our country is just inherently defective? Strange that I’m forced to be the optimist here, but I think maybe we can eventually convince our government to fulfill the most basic obligations of governing.
Polls asking randos about detailed policy is a waste of time. The relevant questions are: How many people support single payer unprompted? How many people oppose single payer unprompted? How would people react to a single payer system being implemented?
Most people don’t know about policy or think about policy but they can see the immediate impact of policy on their lives. This is why Trump is considered a viable candidate— many people who don’t know or think about policy are aware that they are suffering, and they are (ineffectively, counter-productively) trying to fight back and they will not be convinced to vote for Clinton simply by telling them Trump Is Bad.
If the Democrats had passed single payer in 2009, they likely wouldn’t have lost in 2010.
Yeah pretty much. Half the people in this thread believe you remove systemic corruption by taking a hard stand against anyone tainted by it even if this means short-term pain while the other half believe you remove systemic corruption by determining which half of the corruption is less corrupt than the other and then pledging undying loyalty to it no matter how tainted.
My what a life of privilege you lead!
OK, here’s a quick explanation of life without health care: If I get hit by a bus and go to an emergency room, they have to treat me even though I can’t pay. That unpaid bill will ruin my life (more than it’s already ruined at any rate) even though the taxpayers will likely absorb it eventually.
However, if I get cancer, I’m basically fucked. The taxpayers won’t absorb my medical bills because I’ll never see a doctor in the first place. I’ll just die of cancer.
You can’t pay medical bills I’m never allowed to incur in the first place!
And since you consider me an acceptable casualty of the ACA, you think you could maybe pay for my medical care?
I’m not sure where anybody got this idea that we need to completely repeal the ACA before we pass single payer. Why can’t we just pass a single bill that automatically enrolls everyone in Medicare and phases out the ACA? Who says we even need to repeal the ACA at all when single payer would simply make it redundant?
It is somewhat personal, but I suppose I can give you the mostly-anonymous version with some minor details changed to obscure my identity. Basically, I’m disabled and can’t work which means I can’t afford to buy an ACA plan even with subsidies. In theory, I qualify for Medicaid, but in my state disability benefits are integrated with Medicaid status in a lot of complex ways and so I’ve been thrust into a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in which the entity that caters to my specific disability has an application process that seems purpose-built to be impossible to navigate with my specific disability.
Thus far, I’ve completed about half of the application process necessary to get a permit to file an application with a second entity that will entitle me to apply for an agency which will appoint a case worker who will help me get benefits, including Medicaid. I think. I don’t have enough spoons to keep track of this mess. Most of the forms and documents simply assume that the process is being handled by a caretaker/advocate/legal guardian; I’ve occasionally been stumped by questions asking me to specify my relationship to myself. And just the other day, I finally managed to complete the mandatory in-person interview, where a social worker spoke to me using baby voice and explained a number of mostly-inapplicable benefits in suspiciously simplified language before indignantly declaring that if I wasn’t interested in those then I was obviously just mindlessly rejecting everything I heard and shouldn’t waste their time. Luckily, the interview appears to be purposeless by design; as long as I can prove I was there, it doesn’t matter what actually happened.
Basically, the short version is that (as far as I can tell) I technically have coverage through Medicaid but I can’t actually use it because it’s administered through an outpost of the state disability office that I haven’t completed the process of qualifying for.
So we admit that holding our breaths until we turn blue isn’t going to get us anywhere and start making the reforms we can until we are at a point where the best becomes possible. I’d like to repeal the second amendment and greatly restrict gun ownership. That’s not going to happen so I’m willing to support laws restricting ownership of automatic weapons and rocket launchers as an interim step. I’d rather just adopt the Swedish health care model wholesale, but since no one else seems keen on the idea, I’ll support measures that reduce rates of uninsurance, even if they don’t bring it down to zero, as an interim step.
Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was “The ACA is basically a government handout to the insurance industry that doubles as a way of crushing the push for health care reform” from #49.
I’d be for it. But…it’s not happening. Bernie Sanders did submit a bill that, if passed, would provide Medicare for all to the Senate in 2013. So far, it has zero cosponsors and has been read in committee twice with no further action. In short, it’s not going anywhere. Vermont tried to set up a single payer system and had to back down due to lack of funds*. Colorado is trying it and they may succeed thanks to legal marijuana. If Colorado can show feasibility, it might be a model for a national single payer system.
If you get cancer then you go to the hospital, they treat your immediate symptoms, and your route to Medicaid suddenly gets vastly simplified. If the hospital’s social worker is competent, they should get your data with respect to diagnosis and lack of insurance coverage and then appear before you with a set of papers and say “sign here to get coverage” before you leave the hospital. Unless you’re an illegal immigrant. Then you’re screwed, unless you qualify for a clinical trial at the NIH. One of the things I found most disgusting in the initial debate over the ACA was that many people only supported it when they were reassured that illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered. Stupid, from both a public health and a humanitarian viewpoint, but it’s what people thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t support medicare for all unless it includes undocumented immigrants then?
Indeed, I have been fortunate to be able to work even with my particular set of disabilities. At least so far.
That sucks. I take it you’re not in a Medicaid expansion state?
*Single payer is ultimately less expensive but initially more expensive due to startup costs.
Actually, when I think about it, I have significant concerns about Medicare for all per se. Medicare is, at this point, riddled with private insurer involvement. This has led to things like the whole Medicare HMO (“part C”) thing. How do Medicare HMOs keep their costs down? They require that potential participants apply in person and have their offices on the 3rd or 4th floor of a walk up building. Yes, anyone who can do that is likely to be fitter than average and a good risk so the HMOs have excellent outcomes. Scuzzballs.
@Jake Harban #41
I’d just like to point out that the civil wars in the last two countries were by no means “started” by Obama, but rather the result of popular uprisings fueled by their respective dictators’ cruelty, disregard for their citizen’s needs and brutal repression of any protest. Obama, whatever his many failings, didn’t cause or ignore the consequences of the Syrian drought, relocate in desperation to slums in the capital in search of work, execute student protesters or personally take up arms to oust Assad. So yeah, no thanks Obama.
#=8)-DX, #54
I’ll have to concede that Obama started them might not be true. What is true, and what is not an exaggeration, is that in the case of Libya the US provided military assistance through the fig leaf of NATO to the rebels against Qaddafi, which led to his government’s essential collapse and among other disasters, gave fundamentalist Islamic terrorists more room to operate in Libya to the point where it seriously spills over into neighboring countries.
One additional point that came out with regards to Hillary Clinton is that she was one of the foremost advocates for Libyan destruction in the entire administration while she was Secretary of State.
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/02/even_critics_understate_how_catastrophically_bad_the_hillary_clinton_led_nato_bombing_of_libya_was/
“Sec. Clinton pressured a wary President Obama to join France and the U.K. in the war, the Times reported. Vice President Biden, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, among others, opposed the war effort. Numerous government officials recalled that her hawkish enthusiasm was decisive in the “51-49 decision.”
Similarly Obama’s role in Syria has been to prolong and exacerbate the civil war there by arming, up until probably fairly recently, factions that really aren’t that different from al-Qaida:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/17/obamas-moderate-syrian-deception
How does this relate back to Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton’s policy towards Syria is if anything _even more belligerent_. She wants a no-fly zone backed by American aircraft, even though Russia is still using its own aircraft there with the agreement of the Syrian government. Her policies make it dramatically more likely that an incident like the one where Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet will happen, except with the American military being directly responsible for it. Nobody in their right mind should want this to occur.
This is also hardly the only point where Hillary Clinton is disastrously far to the right. How many of the posters here remember the thousands long posts thread lamenting and being infuriated by the raw viciousness of Israel’s attack on the Palestinians two years ago? That’s not how Hillary Clinton sees it. You can just pay attention to her remarks at the AIPAC conference (which Sanders btw didn’t attend) to where she stands-or for that matter that she sent a letter to Haim Saban saying that she would support efforts against BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) if she got elected.
Nor is she alone in the Democratic party with that position. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order two weeks ago (because the legislature refused to support it) saying that the New York state government would refuse to do business in turn with any business that was swayed by BDS. Dianne Feinstein is trying to persuade the rest of the regents of the University of California to punish BDS-advocacy as ‘anti-Semitism’.
Similarly, these are hardly the only Democrats that are deeply abusive and corrupt. Look at Rahm Emanuel in Chicago with his racist mass school closings, conspiracy to conceal a police shooting not much unlike what happened in Louisiana last week, and the presence of a torture black site (Homan Square) in Chicago that the police use. San Francisco and Oakland, both overwhelmingly Democratic Party cities, are both utterly plagued by police brutality and gentrification issues and I think in the case of Oakland their mayor is likely to face a recall effort (and she absolutely should).
The overarching point that I’m trying to get at is that the problems with the Democratic Party don’t stem from just one particularly bad politician (and I’d say that Hillary Clinton is easily among the worst among them). The problem is that they have a general history of not caring about the better interests of their constituents who aren’t rich, much less what they do around the world to people who can’t vote at all, but they are extremely adept at manipulating the symbology and supporters into pretending that they do care. When this was all getting started I’d say in the late 1970s/early 1980s that being a Democrat was being redefined into having the war policies of Johnson and being a lesser evil domestically then this could’ve been stopped by rejecting just that generation of politicians (like the Clintons and the Gores). However, at this point they control so much of the Democratic Party that in all honesty the only way that they are going to be removed is by being willing to say that a lot of Democrats need to be regarded as permanently unelectable and need to lose accordingly.
Is this going to be painful? Yes. It’s going to be very painful. However, the status quo is already painful, and getting worse, and the idea that you’re going to change these people into being who you want by now, or for that matter, the Democrats, is so far removed from the facts that asking them to change often seems a lot more like prayer than anything else.
I think I’m personally of the “I want a more progressive option, but bereft of one I’ll still vote for the least batshit of the two options” camp at the moment.
I think if we actually want parties to run more progressive candidates, we should start with the local, state, and congressional elections, rather than being apathetic until the presidential election, where we all become ~teh biggest progressive evar~. That at least sends the message that there”s something viable at all about running a progressive platform.
In the meanwhile, I don’t feel any scruples about voting for the less bad option, so that at least my family and neighbors don’t end up without healthcare or deported in the interim.
#43, @Qwints
Exactly. Unfortunately, the question “Have Democratic Party voters learned anything from this” seems to have been answered for a lot of people with a resounding ‘no’.
@Vivec, $56
“I think if we actually want parties to run more progressive candidates, we should start with the local, state, and congressional elections, rather than being apathetic until the presidential election, where we all become ~teh biggest progressive evar~. That at least sends the message that there”s something viable at all about running a progressive platform.”
I’ve heard that said before. The problem is that the same essentially punitive, manipulative ‘logic’ of lesser evilism is going to be deployed there as well in order to prevent justifiably disgruntled progressive voters from choosing more progressive candidates then-as long as there is even the slightest possibility that a Republican might win. If Rahm Emanuel was challenged by a Republican (although it’s hard for me to see how a Republican could honestly be worse than him as compared to equally bad) he’d attempt to say that he was the lesser evil as well and that he had experience. That shouldn’t justify continuing to let him have a political career.
I guess we have different experiences, then. I can count on one hand the number of people I know offline that have even voted in Local/State/Congressional elections.
It’s not so much that they’re voting democrat for fear of a republican boogieman, it’s that they somehow think the president is the be-all-end-all of politics and voting for the others is a waste of time.
@Vivec, #59:
That’s possible that we have different experiences. Otherwise, I’m a really consistent voter. Although here in California we have a ridiculous top two option that leaves people with a choice of Democrat or Republican for some offices I’ll vote to support the Greens whenever and wherever I can, and I absolutely vote for all of the initiative contests. Some, like marijuana legalization, deserve enthusiastic support while others in the past, like Prop 8, I voted against and I wish that a lot more people had done so as well.
I think that one point where we might still agree is that if your state has initiatives or referenda, try and use them to do end-runs around both the Democrats and the Republicans.
“Of unknown competence?” Jill Stein is on the record promoting homeopathy and pandering to anti-vax kooks.
Well, I wasn’t considering voting for the Greens as they are non-viable, but that would definitely take any consideration off the table, as it is nothing but unscientific bullshit, and it hurts people.
@ #62
When asked:
Should the federal government require children to be vaccinated for preventable diseases?
Jill Stein’s answer: “No, fund public ad campaigns about the risks and benefits instead.”
This is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, and a practicing physician for 25 years.
*double facepalm* How very liberturdian.
alkaloid wrote:
A third of U.S. state legislature seats are unopposed. No one, from any party, runs against them. There’s no good excuse for that.