In a nutshell, StephenAG.

Good. Grief.

…
NIGHT OWL: On health care more generally, Obama told Ryan he stayed up to watch the Senate’s early-morning vote on a health care bill and said he’s confident Congress can work out the “five percent” difference between the House and Senate bills.

“I was up because I wanted to make sure that I was watching what could end up being an historic moment,” Obama said.

The president sought to downplay the lack of a public health insurance option in the Senate bill, saying: “There is so much good in this bill, and I’m now confident that it’s going to pass.”

“I think people need to understand just how significant this is,” Obama told Ryan.

The public option, he said, “is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights.” But, Obama added: “As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect of this bill — the House bill or the Senate bill.”

Only “a few million people” who buy into the insurance exchange set up in the bill would have benefited from the public option, he said.

“So it wasn’t like suddenly everybody would just go out there and buy a government-run plan,” Obama said. “Most people will still get health insurance from their employers.”.
…

Now, this interview was given to American Urban Radio Networks’s April Ryan. He’s telling us black folk that the historic nature of all of this was keeping him up late at night (similar to the historic nature of his candidacy and presidency – which a lot of my contemporaries are still pretty juiced about). But do you see how dismissive he was of the public option (“symbolic of a lot of ideological fights”)? This, in my opinion, helps to clarify what Drew Western talked about in the aforementioned HuffPo link. Please understand that Barack Obama is not weak. He just won’t fight for you or me. Black, White or whatever. But he will run over pretty much anyone that will threaten his place in history.

I would love to see him fight for the little guy. But Big Pharma and Wall Street have him by the short hairs. Oh well.

GaBuck
Bet Dr Westin isn’t the least bit concerned

The best line for me was the following:

“Teddy Roosevelt was clear that capital gains taxes should be high relative to income taxes because we should reward work, not ‘gambling in stocks.’”

For too long the working person in this country has been getting stiffed. It’s time we returned to the old values of rewarding the working class with an honest return on their work.

Thanks for this link, whitepaw.

doubt Dr. Westin will be getting a White House Christmas card

Oh. Good. Grief.

whitepaw says:
21 December 2009 at 12:12 pm

That’s today’s must read, whitepaw.

‘But you have to believe something.

I don’t honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn’t figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he’s not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he’s going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they’re seeing right now is “liberalism,” and they don’t like what they see. I don’t, either.

What’s they’re seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That’s a recipe for going nowhere fast — but getting there by November.’

http://tiny.cc/MfQc1

snip:

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It’s that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky “leftists.” I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

Leadership, Obama Style

Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.

Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn’t mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

Your comments reflect my concerns. I’m worried that people won’t be able to pay for tests and other medical treatments. My daughter is already experiencing increased co-pays and tests that were formerly covered by her insurance, but aren’t being covered now. As I’ve always commented to people “20% of 0 is fine, but just wait until you have a serious condition and you have to pay 20% to each provider and they want payment NOW”! The #1 cause of bankruptcies is medical care.
Many people take good health for granted.

I keep trying to remember the details of that old parable about the group of people stranded in the woods on a freezing night. Each had a piece of wood to build a fire, but would not share it with the group for his own reasons. They all ended up freezing.

It seems to me that this is the core problem in so many of the hard problems this country faces.

Like Jane I have good insurance and a very livable retirement income. I live in a wonderful bubble with my daughter and her family across the lake,in a beautiful rural setting 40 minutes from a city. It is affordable to live where I live and I know and love my neighbors and my community. I am thankful beyond measure for all of that. However, it pains me greatly that others do not have the same good fortune and I worry that ignoring this is going to bring us all down.

And speaking of Feingold, where the hell were these comments in June? Or September, or a week ago? He may as well just kept his trap shut for all the good this does after the fact. Why wasn’t he putting pressure on the WH then? Trying to put the onus on the WH for his ineffectual efforts to fight for a public plan does not wash the s#%t from his hands. Sorry Russ, I aint buying.

Mandates are gonna kill this majority. About the only hope left is that the dismal polling numbers on the bill scare skittish members into voting against it.

I find it laughable that there are still Democrats, bloggers etc. trying to pin any of this on Republicans. Their smartest move was to oppose the whole thing. Now they have nothing on their hands.

I don’t have health care insurance. I don’t have any real hope, either.

And whatever any and all celebrate, I wish you the best possible.

Oh, by the way “Merry Christmas.” To one and all. I wish I felt merry. I just feel sad.

Stating the obvious: the recent history of this “historical” heath “care” “reform” effort shows a consistent downward direction. When single payer was never considered; when “public option,” “robust” or watered-down, was used as a game piece and discarded when it no longer served gaming purposes; when it became clear that “mandates” would basically serve as a profit funnel for the health insurance industry; when Democratic Electeds allow a decidedly un-”progressive” philosophy to drive politics, process, policy and pragmatism — to me that and more all mean that we basically have what was more or less planned all along.

The Republicans play their “No” role, for their own reasons; the Democrats play their self-proclaimed (supported by much of media, pundits and “experts”) “historic” role. Whatever eventually comes out of putting the Senate and House bills together — though almost certainly the Senate bill will largely prevail — we can find bits and pieces that, in fact, bring some decent changes, but the mandates to purchase insurance in the private sector, and the despicable anti-abortion measures will be historic only in their blatant and unapologetic decision, I think from the beginning (think campaign financing), to allow the health care industries to be the most important player, and the constituents of supreme concern, in the entire process.

I’m prepared for more “Be very afraid” and “The Republicans are worse!” tactics by the Democrats, based on “You have no where else to go” assumptions.