DamnYankee
No Neg Policy
- Apr 2, 2009
- 4,516
- 441
- 48
Obama aims to fix rift within his party
The president searches for a way to reclaim his top legislative priority after an intraparty dispute over a proposed public health insurance program. Full story
Obama aims to fix intraparty rift - Washington Post- msnbc.com
Talking heads bite Obama
By: Mike Allen
August 18, 2009 10:52 AM EST
Talking heads bite Barack Obama - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com
When you're Barack Obama and you've lost Jon Stewart [http://www.politico.com/politico44/...ot_8ef3d438-b8fc-4410-a12d-8e5d5f14c64e.html], you've got a problem.
Mr. President, the Daily Show host said Monday night [http://www.comedycentral.com/], I cant tell if youre a Jedi 10 steps ahead of everything or if this whole health-care thing is kickin your [rear.]
White House officials, by acknowledging that a public option (or government plan) is not essential to achieving health care reform [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26192.html], may have improved their chances of ultimately getting a bill.
In the meantime, though, they have touched off the most ferocious backlash among liberal talking heads since President Obama took office.
The president and his team insist they focus on big, long-term goals and dont obsess about cable chatter or newspaper chin-stroking. If they did, theyd be worried to watch reliable allies turn on them in the midst of battle.
In The New York Times []- POLITICO Topics - POLITICO.com, columnist Bob Herbert [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/opinion/18herbert.html] scolded the president under the withering headline, This Is Reform? Why the insurers and the drug industry are smiling: f we manage to get health care reform this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary. If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan well, that's reform the insurance companies can believe in. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind.
And so it went, on the air and online, with the Huffington Post bannering a backlash story: CODE BLUE: Rockefeller, Feingold, Pelosi Call Public Option Essential.
Ezra Klein [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/the_liberal_revolt.html], the economic and domestic policy wunderkind at The Washington Post, finds the ire somewhat misplaced. He wrote in a Tuesday morning blog post titled, The Liberal Revolt:
Monday was the day of the liberal revolt on health-care reform. What's been striking, however, is the ]argument that this is somehow a simple failure of liberal will. The unifying idea here is that someone can just go into a back room and torture (the Senate Finance Committees) Max Baucus and Kent Conrad. But how? [H]ealth-care reform is not a negotiation. It's a campaign. Winning it will require persuading the key votes to change their mind, either by offering them other inducements in the bill or applying direct and aggressive political pressure (identifying a lot of viable primary challengers and creating a credible promise of funds, for instance). Trying to say no for longer than they can will simply result in reformers losing everything they want, and opponents getting exactly what they demanded.
In the meantime, conservatives could enjoy watching MSNBC on Monday night. A parade of Obama-friendly anchors opening their shows with essays of dismay:
Rachel Maddow [:]Maddow: 'Fox is so dominant' - Michael Calderone - POLITICO.com [W]hen you have a weekend like that, its no real surprise when Monday turns out to be a great day for health insurance stock prices. We got here through a collapse of political ambition, and the resultant downgrading of expectations for this once-in-a-lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing this system [W]hy is the public option dying now? Its dying because of a collapse of political ambition. The Democrats are too scared of their own shadow to use the majority the American people elected them to in November to actually pass something they said they favored.
Ed Schultz: [T]he White House, I think, is dazed and confused They dont know what page theyre on. I mean, they dont have a playbook. You cant go over to the White House and say, can we have your plan for health care, and boom, theres a 200-pager right there. They dont have that. Now, what they have is a bunch of bullet points and a bunch of ideas, but the bottom line here is that the president I think needs to be more direct and start doing some arm-twisting with some folks that arent listening to him.
Keith Olbermann: The White House is claiming almost simultaneously that the public option is not essential and that nothing has changed. These would seem to be mutually exclusive.
On the op-ed page of The Washington Post on Tuesday, three of the five articles contained harsh Obama-bashing from the left:
Columnist Eugene Robinson [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702178_pf.html], under the headline, Where's Mr. Transformer?": "Giving up the public option would send many of Obama's progressive supporters into apoplexy, yet the administration has sent clear signals that this is the path of less resistance it's prepared to take. ... What the president hasn't done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who's president and who's not. Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one."
Columnist Richard Cohen [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702177_pf.html]: Health-care reform provides [Sarah] Palin [an] opportunity. The klutziness of Obama's effort people think they know what they can lose but have no idea of what they can gain again raises the specter of invisible forces that will take but not give, dictate but not listen, tax but not provide.
Robert Kuttner [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702363_pf.html], co-editor of the American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos and the author of "Obama's Challenge: Even now, he won't make clear that the private insurance industry is the problem. Recent administration statements on the public insurance option have been classics of mixed messaging. Obama's economic team is far too cozy with Wall Street, fanning populist suspicions.
On The Daily Show, Stewart went on to deliver a double whammy: He complimented the Bush administration for comparative political acumen, and questioned Obamas idealism.
Remember the Bush team? Stewart said. Little bit of discipline, little bit of repetition. They sold us a WAR nobody wanted and nobody needed. Salesmanship! Those guys could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. The Democrats, I dont even think could sell Eskimos BEEP they need insulation, heating apparatus. Yes, we can! [pause] Unless you dont think we should!
Makes me sorry I discontined watching MSNBC.... Still enjoy reading the Post though....
The president searches for a way to reclaim his top legislative priority after an intraparty dispute over a proposed public health insurance program. Full story
Obama aims to fix intraparty rift - Washington Post- msnbc.com
Talking heads bite Obama
By: Mike Allen
August 18, 2009 10:52 AM EST
Talking heads bite Barack Obama - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com
When you're Barack Obama and you've lost Jon Stewart [http://www.politico.com/politico44/...ot_8ef3d438-b8fc-4410-a12d-8e5d5f14c64e.html], you've got a problem.
Mr. President, the Daily Show host said Monday night [http://www.comedycentral.com/], I cant tell if youre a Jedi 10 steps ahead of everything or if this whole health-care thing is kickin your [rear.]
White House officials, by acknowledging that a public option (or government plan) is not essential to achieving health care reform [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26192.html], may have improved their chances of ultimately getting a bill.
In the meantime, though, they have touched off the most ferocious backlash among liberal talking heads since President Obama took office.
The president and his team insist they focus on big, long-term goals and dont obsess about cable chatter or newspaper chin-stroking. If they did, theyd be worried to watch reliable allies turn on them in the midst of battle.
In The New York Times []- POLITICO Topics - POLITICO.com, columnist Bob Herbert [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/opinion/18herbert.html] scolded the president under the withering headline, This Is Reform? Why the insurers and the drug industry are smiling: f we manage to get health care reform this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary. If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan well, that's reform the insurance companies can believe in. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind.
And so it went, on the air and online, with the Huffington Post bannering a backlash story: CODE BLUE: Rockefeller, Feingold, Pelosi Call Public Option Essential.
Ezra Klein [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/the_liberal_revolt.html], the economic and domestic policy wunderkind at The Washington Post, finds the ire somewhat misplaced. He wrote in a Tuesday morning blog post titled, The Liberal Revolt:
Monday was the day of the liberal revolt on health-care reform. What's been striking, however, is the ]argument that this is somehow a simple failure of liberal will. The unifying idea here is that someone can just go into a back room and torture (the Senate Finance Committees) Max Baucus and Kent Conrad. But how? [H]ealth-care reform is not a negotiation. It's a campaign. Winning it will require persuading the key votes to change their mind, either by offering them other inducements in the bill or applying direct and aggressive political pressure (identifying a lot of viable primary challengers and creating a credible promise of funds, for instance). Trying to say no for longer than they can will simply result in reformers losing everything they want, and opponents getting exactly what they demanded.
In the meantime, conservatives could enjoy watching MSNBC on Monday night. A parade of Obama-friendly anchors opening their shows with essays of dismay:
Rachel Maddow [:]Maddow: 'Fox is so dominant' - Michael Calderone - POLITICO.com [W]hen you have a weekend like that, its no real surprise when Monday turns out to be a great day for health insurance stock prices. We got here through a collapse of political ambition, and the resultant downgrading of expectations for this once-in-a-lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing this system [W]hy is the public option dying now? Its dying because of a collapse of political ambition. The Democrats are too scared of their own shadow to use the majority the American people elected them to in November to actually pass something they said they favored.
Ed Schultz: [T]he White House, I think, is dazed and confused They dont know what page theyre on. I mean, they dont have a playbook. You cant go over to the White House and say, can we have your plan for health care, and boom, theres a 200-pager right there. They dont have that. Now, what they have is a bunch of bullet points and a bunch of ideas, but the bottom line here is that the president I think needs to be more direct and start doing some arm-twisting with some folks that arent listening to him.
Keith Olbermann: The White House is claiming almost simultaneously that the public option is not essential and that nothing has changed. These would seem to be mutually exclusive.
On the op-ed page of The Washington Post on Tuesday, three of the five articles contained harsh Obama-bashing from the left:
Columnist Eugene Robinson [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702178_pf.html], under the headline, Where's Mr. Transformer?": "Giving up the public option would send many of Obama's progressive supporters into apoplexy, yet the administration has sent clear signals that this is the path of less resistance it's prepared to take. ... What the president hasn't done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who's president and who's not. Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one."
Columnist Richard Cohen [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702177_pf.html]: Health-care reform provides [Sarah] Palin [an] opportunity. The klutziness of Obama's effort people think they know what they can lose but have no idea of what they can gain again raises the specter of invisible forces that will take but not give, dictate but not listen, tax but not provide.
Robert Kuttner [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702363_pf.html], co-editor of the American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos and the author of "Obama's Challenge: Even now, he won't make clear that the private insurance industry is the problem. Recent administration statements on the public insurance option have been classics of mixed messaging. Obama's economic team is far too cozy with Wall Street, fanning populist suspicions.
On The Daily Show, Stewart went on to deliver a double whammy: He complimented the Bush administration for comparative political acumen, and questioned Obamas idealism.
Remember the Bush team? Stewart said. Little bit of discipline, little bit of repetition. They sold us a WAR nobody wanted and nobody needed. Salesmanship! Those guys could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. The Democrats, I dont even think could sell Eskimos BEEP they need insulation, heating apparatus. Yes, we can! [pause] Unless you dont think we should!
Makes me sorry I discontined watching MSNBC.... Still enjoy reading the Post though....
Last edited:
