This article from the Kansas Free Press is from yesterday, so I wonder what he would have to say about Lieberman's shenanigans today?
Speaking with Howard Dean are Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert Scheer of Truthdig in the LA Times.
Report from The Nation Cruise: Interview with Howard DeanVanden Heuvel then asked what the chances were for real health care reform. Congress isn't going to reform health care, but what he hopes is that the bill will provide the American consumer with real choices that allows us to reform the system ourselves through those choices. "Change comes from the bottom up," he said.
Citing the disgruntle opinions most progressive have of what the health reform bill working is way through the Congress she asked: "How do people compromise?"
Dean said the progressives have to remain engaged. "The expansion of Medicare (lowering the enrollment age to 55) will be a step in the right direction and will lead us to where we need to be in 30 years," he said.
Assume he is not aware yet that Lieberman axed the Medicare buy-in. Dean considers Medicare as a public option, but has recommended doing both Medicare and a public option side by side.
And with no public option?
For Dean, if the Senate passes a bill with no public option of any sorts in the legislation, then the bill needs to be killed and the American people have to hold their elected officials accountable. What he hopes is that the Senate provision that 90% of health insurance company revenues need to be spent on health care will remain, but people have to fight to make use it does.
Scheer asked him about correcting the mistakes made during the Clinton administration about deregulating capitalism.
Dean responded by saying that "capitalism is great, if you have a referee on the field and we don't." As for reforming the banking system, Dean stated that he "didn't know what happened to Obama."
In evaluating the current state of affairs, Dean said that "we learned a lot from the (Great) Depression and we had a good model; now we have a casino for a financial system." He went on to say that he did not understand why we were not fundamentally changing the financial system to which Scheer pointed out that Robert Ruben and the lobbyists took American mortgages and "reversed FDR to allow capitalism to be run by its own greed" implying that they were still calling the shots and were in no mood to change their greedy ways. We have the people who cause the crisis still running the entire sector.
She asks him about having a primary against Lieberman.
Dean responded by reviewing some of the changes he had brought to the party, such as the 50-state strategy, which he credited with reviving the party. He felt strongly that "the party shouldn't choose who is going to win in primaries," saying that primaries were good for the party and enable people to put forth candidates who were responsive to their local constituency. However, he felt that no money should be given to those incumbents who oppose health care reform.
To his credit when he was chairman, the DNC..unlike the DCCC and the DSCC...did not interfere in primary races.
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