In defense of the passage of the ACA...

[kentuck]

Healthcare reform was a big issue during the 2008 campaign. Democrats expected reform of the system. It was almost written in stone.

Then, the big economic collapse happened. In hindsight, it may have been better to have put healthcare reform on the back burner and concentrated on more urgent issues?

But Democrats spent months trying to get Republicans to agree with some reform of the system. After the Tea Party became a threat to the Republican establishment, no Repub was willing to work with the Democrats and the ACA was accepted by default.

Democrats had so much time and promises tied up in healthcare reform that they could not retreat on the issue. Republicans won the House in 2010 by campaigning against the ACA. Some may argue that the Democrats fought the wrong battle at the wrong time?

[YarnAddict]

1. You make it sound as if

the ACA was some kind of a compromise with the Republicans.

It wasn't.

The problems was the Conserva-Dems.

And, yes, it would have been a better decision to devote that much time and energy to the economy.

[kentuck]

4. There were 4 Repubs that had joined a "gang"...

..to help Democrats come up with a plan. But they dropped out one by one as the Tea Party grew in influence within the Republican Party. Democrats were left with nothing unless they agreed with Joe Lieberman. So was born the ACA.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. The ACA has warts, but the nation is better with it.

Democrats and the President also fought with Republicans over how to fix the economy. The fight was inevitable. The subject of disagreement was not.

The turnout in the 2010 election looked quite similar to that in2014.

An older, more conservative electorate turned out. Younger vote, minorities, and poorer democrats critical in 2008 and 2012 stayed home.

This is not a new trend. Midterms always see a drop in voters.

Democrats need to find a better way to get Democrats out to vote in midterms where there is no charismatic leader at the top.

[kentuck]

5. Perhaps true, but..

...there was a political price to pay.

[Agnosticsherbet]

6. Kentuck, everything has a cost. The most important things are paid in a currancy other than money.

President Obama did not have nearly as much political capitol as people thought. In my opinion, the fact that he was black somewhat impoverished his political capital gained from his incredible win. We are better for the way he spent it.

I remember the stories after the whipping Republicans took in 2006 and 2008 where people wondered if they would even continue to exist.

Those stories turned out to be as false as rumors of Twain's demise.

We live in a dynamic political system that has taken on the hard edges of a war since Clinton. In that war, the ACA is a win that will return dividends for decades.

[kentuck]

7. I guess I would disagree...

...that the President did not have much political capital after the collapse of the economy in 2008. I think the President was in a position to have the American people behind him with anything he wanted to try and save our economy and jobs and savings. I think he was much too timid in that time of crisis.

[Agnosticsherbet]

19. Political capital is really just a peception of public approval and can only be spent if the other

side cares about public approval. Republicans don't give a damn for public approval or popular demand.

They parleyed the most unpopular, do nothing Congress in our history to Control of the Senate along with Control of the House. This was not because they gave a damn about what the people wanted. I can not think of one of he few pieces of legislation they passed that were done because the bulk of Americans wanted it.

They only care about what Conservative voters want, and that is because the conservative leadership tell conservative voters what they want. They successfully got those conservative voters into the ballot box.

Democratic constituencies did not show up.

I don't think he was timid. I think President Obama really thought Republicans were interested in governing. He thought that they would be willing to negotiate for the good of Americans. It took the President almost six years to realize that Republicans don't give a damn about the average American or governing if there was a Democrat involved. They would not even pass something that was one of their own ideas when it carried Obama's name on it or the Democratic Party name on it.

So I don't see him as timid. I think that Obama did not understand the nature of his political opposition until very recently.

[YoungDemCA]

21. +1

Good points.

[TheKentuckian]

29. Timid would be more acceptable than utterly stupid which is what someone would have to be

to honestly believe that the TeaPubliKlans had any serious interest in governance.

Not ignorance, not idealism, but plan old not enough sense to pass on yourself when your crotch is on fire stupid or maybe rubber room level delusional but in either event such a belief is completely and utterly unsupportable.
In fact, the evidence against to anyone paying any attention since the late 90's at minimum was staggering. Further, boldly and publicly they crowed that their primary missions where to make his presidency fail and to make him a one term President.

Not for a single moment had they walked back their crazy agenda nor did they recant a single plank of their philosophies that directly led to tremendous damage to the nation and our standing in the world.

This from not some kid or a political novice but a sitting US Senator with a front row seat to their shenanigans and then you're trying to say with a straight face that it then took another 6 years of complete fuckbaggery to finally get it?!?

Do you associate with a lot of people with profound learning disabilities with little exposure to normal cognitive function to think such is normal or even sane?

No way someone of his accomplishments, coming from his background with the benefit of his experiences could be so stupid, gullible, or naive.

Hell, I doubt almost anyone honestly believed any such thing. We're you expecting TeaPubliKlans to become interested in governing and anything like having the best interests of the people at heart and if so WHY?

I think this is a rationalization of the 1st magnitude.

[Agnosticsherbet]

30. From day 1, Obama has tried to negotiate and make deals as all other Presidents have done,

both Democrat and Republican. That is how he has acted.

He never acted timid.

And he isn't stupid.

I expect nothing from the Tea Party or the Republican Party.

Clearly, he expected some desire to govern, which is the purpose of the wole damned government.

The problem he has faced is hyper partisanship that has developed since Clinton's administration.

He faced the very real fact that Congress is absolutely fucking necessary to govern the country.

As a Constitutional Scholar, he knows that our system of government absolutely requires compromise to fucking work.

He has, in fact, worked the Presidency as if he were a Community Organizer whose job is to get people together and hammer out compromises.

And we knew he was a community organizer when we elected him.

[TheKentuckian]

31. If you expected nothing as a common citizen then why would he expect anything?

You acknowledge this has been going on since Clinton and we saw what they did to the country and had been doing for decades.

You say he clearly expected some desire to govern but on what basis? I didn't believe any such thing, why would a sitting Senator. Even if one suffered from such a delusion what would keep them in the dream for six fucking years? Are you trying to say such a slow learning curve for someone of such intellect is even plausible?

This leads us to stupid, delusional, or complicit. You can holler "community organizer" all you want but it doesn't change shit, community organizer is a license for living in a wild fantasy.

THEY PUBLICLY STATED THERE GOAL WAS TO MAKE HIM FAIL AND THEY WENT INTO TO OVERDRIVE TO PRO IT.

IF IT TAKES YOU SIX YEARS TO GET THEY MESSAGE THEY YOU ARE A FOOL.

Six months, I'll grant. Six years is insane no matter what jobs you have had in the past. You knew better. I knew better. Plenty of regular people knew better.

Hell, the Republicans knew better and said so over and over and over again.

Six years to get it from that perspective is bullshit. Unadulterated wiping and dangling.

[Agnosticsherbet]

32. Bullshit is thinking President Obama must be either timid, stupid, foolish, insane (your words)

because he did no do things exactly as you would have done them had you been elected to the office.

What they publicly stated was irrelevant, because only the Congress can legislate or raise funds or give final approval to Presidential appointments.

Any liberal program must be passed by Congress, so it was necessary to deal with those people, to negotiate with those people, to work with those people. Only Congress can fund the day to day operations of the US Government so it is necessary to deal with those people.

The President can not run the Country without the Coequal branch of Congress.

We are a Republic not a Dictatorship.

[TheKentuckian]

34. Apparently not so much. We got nothing or near nothing on the heavy lifting

One vote from the lucky beneficiary of running against a guy with a freezer full of cash in the House and a fat zero in the Senate despite accepting way over a hundred of their amendments (aka timebombs).
Nary a vote and still we get GingrichCare.

We got what 3 votes on the stimulus after watering it down and making it mostly tax cuts.

Haven't had a budget pass.

They shut down the fucking government.

They got us on the sequester.

We have continued the lion's share of the Bush now Obama tax cuts.

We left the 99'ers to die and then everyone.

The fuckers were apologizing to BP during the blowout.

All that taint licking bought jack shit and you are attempting to change the subject from his expectations of cooperation in governance for six years to the way the government is structured. One has little to nothing to do with the other.
Sure it matters what they say, it is an expression of intent and orientation. That is some desperate excuse making there that doesn't make a lick of sense.
How can you make such an argument when the statements were clearly accurate?

Why are you trying to argue that it was not absurd to expect the damn TeaPubliKlans to act differently than they publicly swore to and continuing on the same trajectory they have established for years going back at least to the Clinton administration where they acted a complete fucking monkey going all the way to an impeachment?

You have yet to explain while the tact was reasonable and rational in context, even stating that you had no such expectations yourself already.

Your argument makes no sense and has now taken to running from its self in a desperate effort to change the subject it seems to me.

[kentuck]

35. I do think that if he had been more aggressive in defending his agenda...

..and encouraged his Party to do the same, rather than let Repubs attack and define his policies from the get-go, then we would be in a much stronger position in the House and Senate today? We cannot expect voters to defend a President's agenda if the President is too weak to defend it himself. I think that is the reality of what has happened in the last six years.

[Agnosticsherbet]

36. He had two years when he could do something. He did health care and initiated policies to rescue the

economy. It took time, but the economy is now running smoothly, even if a majority of the benefits go to the top.

Since 2010, Republicans have set the agenda in the House, and a narrow majority in the Senate allowed disciplined Republicans to limit what the Senate can do.

With Republicans in charge of the House nothing was gong to get done, which was exactly what happened.

Legislation must pass the House and the Senate. The House runs on a simple majority, and they are really disciplined about voting party line, even with Boehner, who is probably the worst Speaker in US History.

The Senate runs on arcane rules, and those rules are set up to give a determined minority power to limit what a majority can do.

The founding fathers were scared shitless of what they called "The Tyranny of the Majority."

After 2010, nothing was going to get done. Hopefully, a Democrat with coat tails will win in 2016, or we will continue to see nothing get done.

[kelliekat44]

27. You think there was no political price to pay for Medicare, Social Security passage?

The simple fact is there are people who are in power who believe in helping working men and women and the poor AND there are people in power who only want to help the people who are members of the corporate, wealthy class. That is all.

[Agnosticsherbet]

33. Medicare, Social security, the Equal Rights Act, and Title IX

came at the enormous expense of political capital.

The Equal Rights Act led directly to Democrats losing the South and the current permanent political Shit Storm. (Southern Democrats refused to vote for it, so it was passed with the votes of a lot of socially liberal fiscally conservative Republicans. The heirs of those Southern Democrats is the Republican South. Those heirs of those Northern Republicans that voted for it, well they are now Democrats. The parties were not so partisan back in those days. For that we can thank Reagan and Gingrich.

[Hoyt]

3. I followed it daily. The obstructionists forced a lot a work-arounds to get something passed.

It was absolutely necessary to get something passed. Another defeat like Hillarycare in the 1990s would have been a catastrophe, and it might have been decades before anyone proposed any kind of reform.

The ACA needs a lot of improvements, but I think any other Prez would have given up in the middle of the mess to avoid the criticism he's getting now.

Sad fact is, more than 50% of Americans are too stupid to realize how badly we need healthcare reform. A lot just don't care.

[jwirr]

8. Thank you. And people forget that we have been fighting to get this thing passed since Harry Truman.

The entire medical care system in this country has come to use one program at a time. The ACA is another part and needs to be refined just like all the others did. Someday we will be strong enough in Congress and the WH and SCOTUS to be able to get them consolidated and throw the insurance corporations out. Until then I for one will never be sorry that we finally got it passed.

[kentuck]

9. If it is used as a conduit for further reform..?

...then it will be a great achievement.

Otherwise, profits-motive will over time rule the insurance industry. I think the present state of healthcare in this country is only temporary. We need more reforms to make it worthy over time, in my opinion.

[jwirr]

12. I agree but I do not see us getting it if we continue to let the Rs win. We are just heading

backward in the next two years if they have their way.

[kentuck]

13. one event is not necessarily independent of the other.

There is a political price for the ACA.

[Dawgs]

10. Sounds more like excuses..not defense. n/t

[kentuck]

11. perhaps?

[NCTraveler]

14. The ACA isn't an overhaul of the healthcare of health insurance industry.

I really don't like the way it was sold as being that. The more liberal ideas of the bill could have been written on a couple of pages, the rest is simply how to entrench insurance companies further. This was an overhaul of nothing. Now elected democrats have to fight as if it was. How long are they going to have to claim this as a great victory? They are in a position now to have to defend it as grand legislation. Not the little piece meal bill it really is. My opinions on the ACA aren't very well received here. It is clear on face value that the basis is borne out of conservative ideology, with a couple of "progressive" bones thrown in. I am truly surprised how few here find the same faults I do. I think it is based off conservative ideology yet I would be considered a centrist here. I would think du, overall more left than I, would be up in arms about the ACA.

[kentuck]

17. Either you are with us or you are against us....

...type of ideology.

[Autumn]

23. Obama himself called it insurance finance reform.

[NCTraveler]

24. He also called it health care reform along with about twenty other things.

It was sold as different things depending on the audience. To claim he called it "insurance finance reform," and to ignore all of the other things he labeled it, would be inaccurate. Shortsighted at the least.

[Autumn]

25. His own words are not inaccurate.

[NCTraveler]

26. Please read again.

At no point did I call his own words inaccurate. If one reads what I actually wrote they would find that point in the sentence isn't even about him. You responded as if it was. I read what I wrote again and it seems extremely clear.

[Autumn]

28. Not enough coffee yet. eom

[Johonny]

15. I think they did what they knew they had to when they had to.

They passed in 2 years more reform than any other congress since the 60s. They improved the lives of homosexuals, women, and the poor. The passed a health care system overhaul that had lagged in congress since the 70s. They helped stabilize a crippled economy. They even managed to sign major arms treaties. They set the stage for helping to balance the budget down the road. They did a rather amazing job and their reward for it was to be voted out of office and to constantly hear from the people that should support them that "They didn't do a thing." And then people wonder why Democratic leaning voters don't vote. They wonder why their candidates don't run on their accomplishments. People go out of their way to work to undermine their accomplishments and to tell people change is imossible and they think that is helping. You would laugh but it is really a cry.

[kentuck]

18. The saddest part may be...?

....that those that were true believers in the ACA and President Obama were unable to counter the attacks against him and it?

If you truly believe in an idea, you must have the courage of your convictions, don't you think?

I think much of the criticism of the ACA and this President stems from the inability to communicate with the people? How could that be when he could draw massive crowds at home and abroad? How was he and they unable to communicate to the masses what they clearly supported? Were the critics just too over-whelming for the job?

Just as the new Republican Congress has already begun to define the President's SOTU message tonight, so it has been since this President was sworn into office. Just as they and the media, called the ACA "Obamacare" and were able to get away with it. And so forth...

[YoungDemCA]

20. Passing domestic policy through Congress is always very contigent....

....on the political environment/context facing the President.

Obama draws massive crowds at home and abroad because a lot of people believe in what his Presidency stands for-what the historic election of 2008 meant as a symbol and rallying point for people of color in the United States, and changing (or beginning to change, anyway) the perception of our country as America the Arrogant (brought to you by 8 years of Bush and Cheney) that damn near everyone around the world was sick and tired.

But, as we've seen time and time again, that strength doesn't necessarily translate to legislative success in Washington, D.C. If anything, Obama's election as the first black President angered and scared a lot of people-a lot of white people, that is-who, for whatever reason of prejudice or fear or bigotry or resentment, have dreaded the possibility of a black man becoming the President of the United States. Hence, the sheer spite and hatred thrown this President's way-which, to be fair, overlaps a lot with the generalized hatred of other Democrats and liberals/progressives, and even right-wing Republicans who are insufficiently dogmatic to the Tea Party and other neo-Birchers.

On domestic policy....Obama learned on the way to his Inauguration in January of 2009 that the ENTIRE Republican House Caucus had agreed to vote against the stimulus bill-and this was after the Democrats had agreed to the Republicans' demands for the stimulus to be heavily weighted toward tax cuts! That set the pattern for this Presidency's dealings with the GOP. And the corporate mainstream media-who gave an inordinate amount of attention to the astroturfin' assholes in the Tea Party-has hardly helped at all.

I don't know what the solution is. It's a fucked up political situation all around. But I do think that President Obama has done a hell of a lot better than most would in the same situation and under similar circumstances.

[Ms. Toad]

16. There has not been any significant progress on access to health care

since the 80s, when COBRA was implemented. (HIPAA in the 90s - and the portable insurance was a minor tweak to COBRA).

All COBRA did was make unaffordable individual policies available for 18 months to those who had insurance through work and lost their jobs. HIPAA extended it to roughly that same group, for lifetime - as long as they could keep it up with no gaps.

Unfortunately, the COBRA and HIPAA laws did not limit cost (so the insurance was unaffordable), and did nothing to address people who were not immediately previously insured through work.

Single payer was not feasible, and given the decades long failure to do ANYTHING, passing something which provided access to the health care to a broader portion of the public was mandatory. Doing nothing was unacceptable.

I don't care what the political cost was. The status quo was unacceptable and if something didn't change in the first two years of the Obama presidency, it wasn't likely to change for decades more. And realistically, if it hadn't been the ACA - they would have campaigned on something else.

[Autumn]

22. It was a promise made. It had to be done, the problem wasn't the republicans so much

as the blue dogs. My opinion.