Um, no, says Nate Silver, one of the most keen and thorough minds in progressive American politics. More of Silver’s case here. And here. Rather than rehash his analysis I’ll just quote his conclusion: that the Senate health care bill, even with all its considerable shortcomings, could be “the largest social welfare program to be implemented since the Great Society.”
And yet I just listened to Keith Olbermann, in a typically melodramatic “Special Comment,” urge progressives to work against it. And far from stopping there, Olbermann brayed about the prospect of a 2012 primary challenge to President Obama.
Look, there’s a lot about Olbermann I respect. But this is reverse-Limbaughism, I’m sorry. From the self-enamored delivery to the spewing of what amounts to misinformation. (Again, read Silver.) As we near the one-year mark of Obama’s term, progressives need to start thinking past tantrum politics and stop feeding what could amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy on Obama’s failure. Jonathan Cohn said it best: the left is playing with fire.
3 Comments
Obama is no progressive. Why should progressives support him? He prefers Blue Dogs. Let him lie with them. This bill is totally immoral. The idea of forcing people to pay a tax that is more or less an equal poll tax like sum for each person no matter how rich or poor they are and sending it to a private corporation to pad the bottom line and the bonuses of billionaires is the most regressively evil and corrupt idea I have seen ever seen. While under Bush the idea that the government is a cash cow for well-connected "contractors" became entrenched, this is taking it one disgusting step further. This is the ultimate in corruption and immorality.
By the way, I object to the use of the word "post-tantrum". Why is nothing that Lieberman ever does considered to be a tantrum. Here we are again, the Church of the Savvy again. The role of the progressives always is to lose even if their ideas are overwhelmingly popular with the electorate. After all, the ultra-powerful want their pound of flesh and in the ultra-corrupt American system they must increase their share for them to OK any reform. People who object to this and say this is wrong are naive, we are told, and the savvy understand the "realities" that prostitutes such as Liebermans are to be catered to and progressives are to vote for an evil bill that they hate and shut up.
You're right, how could I have accused y'all of throwing a tantrum? What was I thinking?
Seriously, take a valium and read Nate Silver, Ezra Klein and today's Paul Krugman column. There are problems with this bill, but you're ill-informed and a fear monger.
Before, it was Sarah Palin and the teabaggers calling health care reform "evil." Now it's the nutbar left. You even used that very word.
No one's defending Joe Lieberman here. But you're just as willing to scuttle reform as he is.