Democrats blow the golden moment

[seafan]

Tonight's breaking news over at The Hill:

Reid to give in to centrists on healthcare, senators say

By J. Taylor Rushing and Alexander Bolton
12/14/09 07:23 PM ET

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is prepared to give in to demands from centrists in order to pass the healthcare legislation before Christmas, senators say.
Reid indicated at a closed-door Democratic Conference meeting on Monday that he would drop a controversial Medicare buy-in provision, which was offered as a replacement to the government-run health insurance option, to win the votes of Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

The two centrists said over the weekend they would join Republicans in filibustering the bill if it included either the public option or the Medicare buy-in for those between the ages of 55 and 64.

Reid held a news conference after the meeting with senators, but took no questions and gave no indication of what his next move would be.

But Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said the general consensus at the meeting Monday was that dropping the Medicare buy-in provision was “necessary” to salvage the rest of the legislation.
“The general consensus was that we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, and if we’re going to get all the insurance reforms accomplished and a number of other things dropping the Medicare expansion was necessary, well then that’s what should be done and it appeared that would be necessary to get the 60 votes,” Bayh said.

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), two leading proponents of the public option, also confirmed the Medicare buy-in would be dropped and said they would rather have legislation that expands coverage than nothing at all.
“At some point you have to switch from the sentiment, the emotion of the words, to the facts,” said Rockefeller . “And then you’ve got to decide, ‘If I didn’t get what I want, in the form that I wanted it, am I willing to cashier 31 million Americans? I want a bill.’”

Harkin, head of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said the loss of both provisions was “reality.”
“But there’s enough good stuff in this bill that we should move ahead with it,” Harkin said. “That’s just reality. You play the hand that’s dealt you.”
Lieberman told reporters Monday that he still supports passing legislation — on his terms.

.....

:puke:


Despair is such a constant companion these days.



Brent Budowsky writes:

.....

Voters in 2006 and 2008 spoke with a thunderclap demanding change. They elected a Democratic president with huge popularity and a Democratic Congress with huge majorities.
Today there is a surge of despair among grassroots Democrats across America. 2010 threatens an almost biblical exodus of voters who will stay home, as many did in 2009, concluding that politics does not matter.
At the Inaugural in January 2009 (doesn’t it seem a decade ago?), Democrats began one of those golden moments that comes once in a generation. They had a highly popular new president and the seats in Congress to pass a program with the support of a grateful and hopeful nation.

Now: From both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats are blowing their golden moment. If they can’t move the nation with huge majorities in Congress, what if they lose seats in 2010?
Well before the 2009 elections, I repeatedly warned of growing depression among workers, small donors and voters who fought their hearts out to elect a Democratic Congress and president who campaigned with banners that read “Change we can believe in.” Accepting his nomination, the president said great change only comes when large masses of people rise up.

Now the president greets news of real unemployment over 17 percent with hugs in the White House. Democrats have been obsessed for the entire year with an unpopular healthcare bill while doing nothing to create jobs, while the Senate destroys a popular public option that would lower the deficit everyone claims to want reduced.
Democrats around the nation despair. The great uprising in Washington is not voters achieving change but lobbyists and campaign donors destroying it.

.....

November 2008 brought a massive and sweeping Democratic victory and a powerful mandate for dramatic change.
2009 began with talk of a long-term realignment of American politics behind a solid Democratic majority, and ends with debate about whether Democrats will suffer a catastrophic defeat in 2010. Grassroots Americans who surged to work for change and sacrificed family dinners to make small donations to Democrats now stay home with resignation and shake their heads with sadness.
There is a weird symmetry between the president receiving a Nobel Prize for doing nothing and his journey to the Senate last weekend, saying nothing.

Politicians can host job summits that don’t create jobs, but at the end of the day, the real jobless rate remains over 17 percent.
Politicians can pass credit card bills that promise to end abuses, while abuses are greater than ever. They can make deals to lower drug costs, while companies raise drug prices by 9.5 percent. They can offer bills that will let insurance premiums rise, when voters want premiums to fall.

Whom do they fool?

Politicians can offer public options that aren’t public options, promise Afghanistan deadlines that aren’t deadlines, promise banking reforms that don’t reform banking, promise to end Wall Street speculation that continues unabated, promise to restrict despised bonuses that are now larger than ever and say that banks should not be too big to fail, while taxpayers pay to make them bigger. Whom do they fool?

Democrats are blowing one of the great golden moments in political history, the kind that comes once in a generation.

.....

And just as surely as George W. Bush squandered the opportunity after September 11, 2001 to unite the world against the forces of destruction perpetrated by a small number of determined extremists, history is repeating itself with his successor in the form of shattered opportunity to transform the lives of American families.



The merging of Big Corporations and Government is nearly complete.



This outcome will be catastrophic for the future of our country.

[varelse]

1. Re: "The merging of Big Corporations and Government is nearly complete"

It was completed some time ago. This is the unveiling. Because they don't need to cover it up anymore.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. +1

[Nikki Stone1]

4. +2

!

[msongs]

2. if your domestic policy mantra is bipartisan at any price, welll nt

[jberryhill]

5. He didn't say we could have a REAL pony!

[tonysam]

6. It's 1993 all over again.

We are going to get screwed over again next year.

What'll happen next? Another bogus impeachment campaign?

[WeDidIt]

9. This time it'll succeed. n/t

[spanone]

7. changing the President is not enough ....congress is corrupt to the core

[kenny blankenship]

8. Kill Bill.

[SharonAnn]

10. They are NOT "Centrists". They are Conservatives. Very conservative.