Insisting On A "Progressive" Parade Could Hurt Chances Of Passage Of Health Bills

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics
Posted on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:18:50 PM EST
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The Village Dems are engaged in a strange exercise today - insisting on a "Progressive" parade in favor of the health bills. It is strange because all of the progressive votes have already been rounded up - the President patted some heads. At this point, insisting on proclaiming that the health bills are great progressive achievements actually undermines the drive to pass the damn bills - the Blue Dogs will be less inclined to vote for it.

Seizing on Chris Bowers' defensive post (Chris fancies himself a left wing stalwart) extolling the progressive virtues of the bills, such as they are, is counterproductive to passage of the bills. Better to point to the 'dirty f*ckin hippies' discontent, not punch them for it.

The only line of critique that seems logical is the Theda Skopcol attack on feminists - properly endorsed by Village Dems Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum. After all, the progressives still have one more devastating punch in the gut to take - the Stupak Amendment.

Speaking for me only

< The Progressive "Victories" In The Health Bills | Monday Night Open Thread >

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Insisting On A "Progressive" Parade Could Hurt Chances Of Passage Of Health Bills | 36 comments (36 topical)

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Please feel free to pass along (5.00 / 2) (#1)
by cawaltz on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:31:20 PM EST

there will be snowballs is Hades before I capitulate on Stupak.

I will actively work my backside off to annihilate anyone who votes for it-

Tom Periello is already in my sights and on the top of my list. He conveniently lives in an area where my hubby works.

Yup, in the poor house (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by Militarytracy on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:54:56 PM EST

hopefully we can come up with enough antiseptic for however many need it for the last wire coat hanger we can all scrounge up. I'm done. Half of our kids won't even have the security of knowing they will have a roof over their heads next year. As if the number of children who have freshly entered poverty in the past year isn't bad enough, these people have no shame. Take the Stupak amendment and wed it to the current economic reality and you have nothing greater than wholesale abuse of women. They can officially KMA at this point. I am done. If Stupak goes through, not only don't I care anymore....I am violently opposed.


: What will it take to kill this bill? (none / 0) (#21)
by itscookin on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:03:31 PM EST

Silver bullet? Stake in the heart?

This might seem a strange comparison... (none / 0) (#33)
by Raskolnikov on Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 04:33:21 AM EST

...but after I spent a few days in jail, I had a sort of a enlightenment as regards access to abortion. My parents are liberal, my dad was a member of the socialist party in England, I have liberal views (whatever that means, right?) and am ardently pro-choice, but it wasn't until I had my freedom taken away from me that I really started to understand a little bit how it would feel for a right like that to be restricted. For anyone who hasn't spent any time in jail, it is almost impossible to understand viscerally what it means to be locked up, where you are absolutely powerless to affect your station: its easy to write about and emphasize with, but difficult to truly understand. And I realize the comparison is crude, and obviously not A to A so I apologize and absolutely mean no offense, but something clicked with me after that, and I saw the sheer terror of being denied freedoms like that. The idea that you could have something in your body that you have no legal ability to do anything about, is terrifying.

It's strange, and so it goes with life...you often understand something logically, reasonably, can argue in its defense, but once you actually get put in a situation where you're on the other side, you simply [i]understand[/i].


: Back in the 60's (none / 0) (#35)
by NYShooter on Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 05:53:31 PM EST

....there was a Navy psychiatrist who was studying sensory deprivation. Realizing that removing all sensory stimuli from a human could be dangerous he decided to use himself as the only subject for his experiments. The "trip" he took was so epiphanous; it took him way beyond any experience he had before. (He was a leading expert in this field, including experiments with mind altering drugs like L.S.D, peyote, mushrooms, etc.)
Anyway, and to your point, he concluded that people could "imagine" other people's experiences, but they could not "experience" their experiences without actually "experiencing" them.
And that's one reason we tolerate so much cruelty and inhumanity all around us; we can "tsk, tsk, tsk, that's so bad," and then forget about it, but until we "experience" the action we don't know nothing.
(He wrote a book about his experiences, "The Day of the Dolphins," but I'm sorry I forgot his name.)

Agreed on the politics of this (5.00 / 0) (#2)
by andgarden on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:36:25 PM EST

Proclaim it the most progressive bill EVAR today, and tomorrow Jason Altmire will insist that you reduce the subsidies in order to get his vote.

: Or they envision a showdown on (5.00 / 3) (#10)
by inclusiveheart on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 04:40:36 PM EST

Stupak and are trying to convince progressives and liberals that this bill is so worth it that even throwing abortion rights under the bus would be worthwhile.
All I can say is that they should have made the pot a whole lot sweeter for progressives and liberals if they really need these folks to ignore the question of choice.

It already happened with the Medicare buy-in... (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by magster on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:39:27 PM EST

...formerly supported by Lieberman until progressives praised the idea.

John Cole (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by Jackson Hunter on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 04:19:11 PM EST

is part of the chorus demanding a parade. How does he type with the blood of so many Iraqi children on his hands? I love how a two time Shrub voter is doubting MY Dem credentials. Yeah, he is the Progressive ideal though. Jeebus

Jackson

Obama is to Progressives as Bush (5.00 / 4) (#8)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 04:24:26 PM EST

was to evangelicals: They just know he's one of them, no matter what.

I am so tired (5.00 / 4) (#22)
by Zorba on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:15:30 PM EST

of the "progressive" this and the "progressive" that. I refuse to use the term any more. We need to reclaim the term "liberal." I am a LIBERAL and proud of it. More than that, you can call me a "left-of-the-left pinko hippie socialist-populist radical-leftist lib" if you want.


Sure, I agree completely. (5.00 / 1) (#23)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:23:29 PM EST

On the other hand, maybe the Progressive caucus should start saying that Obama is too liberal---he needs to be more progressive!!


LOL! (none / 0) (#24)
by Zorba on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:31:39 PM EST

Okay, observed, if that would work to move Obama to the left, I would be all for it! Maybe if we send Barack some ponies or something. Anything. ;-) And, meaning no disrespect to BTD, who is a very smart guy and whose opinions I greatly respect, I have had it with the "big tent" idea for the Democratic Party. The Blue Dogs and DINO's have far too much influence, up to and including Rahmadamadingdong and Obama, and maybe it's past time for the Dems to get back to (okay, I'll use the term, just this once) true progressiveness. Gene McCarthy. Ted Kennedy. Paul Wellstone. That kind of Democrat.


how about some Wellpoint democrats? (none / 0) (#25)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:38:00 PM EST

: No! No! (none / 0) (#26)
by Zorba on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:52:54 PM EST

A thousand times no! There are already too many "Wellpoint" Dems! ;-)

I look at it this way: (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by mentaldebris on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 04:26:13 PM EST

It makes those co-opted by the establishment easier to spot...and ignore. I should invest in lipstick -- there's liable to be a shortage after all the tubes they are and will be using to put on this pig.

Trickle down pats on the heads. Oy vey.

In my humiliated frustrations (5.00 / 1) (#15)
by Militarytracy on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:21:00 PM EST

I was reading around, as if I'll find an answer in the leftosphere :) Anywho, was reading that Booman has no insurance personally but what insurance the family does have just went up 39%. But Booman goes on talking about how good some things are that Obama is getting for us. Commenter Brendan brings up how when Bush said we were going to Mars though we all made fun of him, but when Obama says things just as insane we are all supposed to cheer and in fact many lefty bloggers do. Except that Brendan says that what Bush said was, "Mars B*tches" and all of us Liberals died laughing. But now when Obama says, "Mars B*tches" we are all supposed to cheer. That just cracks me up something fierce. Next Obama schmooze address, I'll probably laugh all the way through it hearing different shades of "Mars B*tches!" the whole time.

Wait til Obama hits his stride (5.00 / 1) (#16)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:22:38 PM EST

on global warming and you'll wish you were going to Mars.


See, I can't even think about that (none / 0) (#17)
by Militarytracy on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:25:21 PM EST

right now because we are already effed in every other way.


Unfortunately, it's time to start. (none / 0) (#18)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:31:23 PM EST

One can argue the pluses and minuses of Obama's approach on HCR. When we get to discussing global warming and solutions, his method is worse than madness---it's criminal.


Ticker tape (none / 0) (#20)
by waldenpond on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 06:03:25 PM EST

Do you think they will come up with a method of making ticker tape out of clean coal for the next parade?


No, a clean coal cement monument (none / 0) (#27)
by Politalkix on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 07:19:13 PM EST

to honor the gloom and doom prophets of the lefty blogosphere.


: I'm all for technology, but (5.00 / 1) (#29)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 07:37:24 PM EST

entertaining wish-fulfillment fantasies about finding easy solutions to global warming is useless.

Unfortunately its like (none / 0) (#34)
by Socraticsilence on Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 01:52:51 PM EST

the worst possible time to deal with Global Warming- there is no solution that wont dramatically effect the US economy- so-called "green jobs" are off in the future, and when something as pro-business as Cap and Trade is a dead duck I can't see what is even possible.


: So you're willing to condemn (none / 0) (#36)
by observed on Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 06:27:31 AM EST

billions of future inhabitants of the earth to misery, death---possibly even extinction---because it's too hard to do anything right now?
Wow.. talk about callous!

When Clinton said (none / 0) (#28)
by Politalkix on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 07:28:03 PM EST

"China B*tches", some of us nearly died laughing and some of you cheered him for his "wonkishness"...


: Huh? (none / 0) (#32)
by lambert on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 11:33:36 PM EST

Translation, please.

Not a punch in the gut to "progressives" (5.00 / 6) (#19)
by BDB on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:44:07 PM EST

It's a punch in the gut to women. Most "progressives" long ago accepted the fact that women weren't worth fighting for and that you could be a good "progressive" and still have no problems with misogyny or misogynistic policy.

Their typical strategic prowess (none / 0) (#4)
by ruffian on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 03:47:45 PM EST

They can't decide if they want credit for persuading progressives or backhanding them. I guess getting credit for beating them into submission is what they are going for. Sounds about right in this day and age.

Maybe it's 11 dimensional chess. (none / 0) (#6)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 04:16:50 PM EST

If Progressives don't want this bill, but don't want to be blamed for derailing it, then why not praise the bill to the skies, leading to a Blue Dog revolt? If the Blue Dogs are blamed for failing to pass this bill, then the Progressives will have more leverage in the next try.
Yes, that must be it.

He's making them take it and say they like it (none / 0) (#11)
by lambert on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:00:09 PM EST

What humiliation. I bet, DC being what it is, the "progressives" are loving it, too.

Hmm, actually I thought it was (none / 0) (#12)
by observed on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:06:08 PM EST

normal for DC pols to pay to be humiliated.


: Oh, they ARE paying (5.00 / 3) (#14)
by lambert on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:08:11 PM EST

They're just handing the bill to us.

Not many left-ish targets left in the House (none / 0) (#13)
by RonK Seattle on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 05:08:07 PM EST

Kucinich - a long shot. Oberstar - on Stupak's list?

But you always want to shore up the votes you "have" ... and this is the kind of campaign that generates encouraging message traffic from progressive constituents in conservative districts, without risking much of the suggested "reverse psychology" blowback.

Why don't (none / 0) (#30)
by NYShooter on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 09:32:41 PM EST

we just call ourselves "Conservatives?"

If the inheritance tax became the Death Tax we can become Conservatives. Let's face it, these fake interlopers today, calling themselves "Conservatives," busted the budget, expanded Government, appointed "legislate from the bench" judges, and became the "policemen of the world" interfering into everyone's business; they're just frauds.

We, on the other hand, want to "Conserve" family values, balance our budget, reduce the size of Government (starting with the military" and most of all, "Conserve the Constitution."

"Hi, I'm Dennis J. Kucinich, Conservative Congressman from Ohio."

I like it! Talk about "talking points," How many exploding heads can the teevee handle?

Good! (none / 0) (#31)
by sas on Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 11:21:28 PM EST

Let's insist on a parade then - these bills should be killed.