The thread had been going well for awhile. If the recent temperature keeps rising, expect to see a forum re-direct.

But people thought that they at least cared about not passing a bill that the majority of the country doesn't want.

A majority of the country wanted at least what the bill had. About a quarter of the opposition to the bill was from people who wanted the government to do more than what the bill proposed.

The will of the majority was for the government to take action. Most Democrats cared to do what the majority of the country wanted, at least directionally.

Huh? Are you claiming that this bill is popular?

Yes. Each individual element in the bill is popular, and the bill as a whole is popular when the contents are described.

It's only when low information voters are asked about a bill that they've been told takes us down the path to socialism that they find it objectionable. Shocking, that when people are lied to, they say they don't like something.

(inb4Obamalies)

David --

Is there any chance that this boondoggle is held up in the courts (such as certain states combating the mandate), or is that just non-liberal wish-casting at this point?

More stuff on how the individual elements of the bill is popular. The only parts that people really don't like are, predictably, the parts where they have to actually pay for what they want. However, when you put all the things people like together, it becomes socialism, and popularity drops. Go figure.

The actions of the Stupak gang is a real head scratcher. Stupak & Co were satisfied by an executive order, which provides no assurances of anything? Huh? Surely they can't be that ignorant.

Guys, I'm in favor of the bill as far as it goes. I just don't have much confidence that the "subsidies" (which I can't seem to find out anything about) will apply to me, who will earn about $7,000 this year and am a 30 year-old male with no dependents.

However, when you put all the things people like together, it becomes socialism, and popularity drops.

You tell me what it is, then. The government is forcing its people to buy a product. That definitely fits under the definition of public control over the allocation of resources.

Call me crazy, but the government's been forcing me to help pay for lots of things I didn't want to pay for. If you're only getting mad now, you haven't been paying attention before.

Ah, so it's the taxing = forced contract argument. Gotcha.

We always knew that Democrats didn't care about liberty, the Constitution, or economic sanity.

Like the Republicans do. All any of them care about is re-election.

Btw, Ray, the left mostly opposes this bill, primaeily because it's a huge subsidy for private corporations - in effect, the IRS is going to force you to buy private insurance. Call it National Socialism.

The truth about the health care bill

I'm seriously considering moving abroad. The political backlash to this will be a tsunami.

I'm not making that argument — to make it would be to, you know, NOT pay my taxes. I pay my taxes even though I recognize that I'm not going to like everything my tax dollars goes to, that some people are going to want to spend my money on things I would deem unworthy of my money. Health care isn't one of those things. YMMV.

Not that hypocrisy should be any surprise, but its shocking how much this bill shares with the 1993 Republican health care proposal.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-Comparison.aspx

TL;DR: back then Republicans wanted to force you to buy health insurance. SOCIALISTS!

edit- typos! Im writing with one hand right now...

Sure. Because lord knows, fluctuations in daily tracking polls that sample a few hundred Americans at a time are a more accurate reflection of what the majority of the country believes, than the 53-percent of the electorate who actually cast a ballot for candidate Obama, who actively campaigned on many of the elements contained in this bill. Not to mention, the strong majority of voters who, only 17 months ago, elected Democrats to congress in 253 or 435 seats- a party which has long promoted universal healthcare as a fundamental platform.

1) There are no "daily fluctuations." Obamacare has consistently polled below 50% for quite some time now.
2) Yes, polls on a specific subject are a more accurate reflection of what the majority of the country thinks about that subject than an election of a candidate.

Also, it's quite disingenuous of a libertarian or anyone whose argument is principle-based to appeal to the majority opinion as a reason why his opponent is incorrect.

That would be disingenuous, if it had happened. But of course I did no such thing, as even a tiny bit of reading comprehension would reveal. I didn't appeal to the majority opinion as a reason why my opponent was incorrect; my opponent is incorrect because Obamacare is both immoral and a fiscal disaster. Rather, I pointed to the majority opinion as a reason why many people thought the Democrats might change course, in spite of their radical ideology.

The actions of the Stupak gang is a real head scratcher. Stupak & Co were satisfied by an executive order, which provides no assurances of anything? Huh? Surely they can't be that ignorant.

It's called saving face.

Stupak's whole claim was that he wanted to protect the status quo of no federal funding going to abortion, but his amendment actually went further than that. The Nelson amendment in the Senate bill did everything Stupak claimed to want. The executive order simply restates the status quo, which was never in jeopardy (or at least not the jeopardy Stupak was worried about).

So he gets to vote for the bill while claiming he got a concession to maintain the status quo.

Not that hypocrisy should be any surprise, but its shocking how much this bill shares with the 1993 Republican health care proposal.

Newt Gingrich is happy in more ways than one.

Not that hypocrisy should be any surprise, but its shocking how much this bill shares with the 1993 Republican health care proposal.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-Comparison.aspx

TL;DR: back then Republicans wanted to force you to buy health insurance. SOCIALISTS!

"Look! The people over there did something similarly stupid. Therefore, you can't call us on our idiocy!"

Don't forget economically disastrous.

Just like Clinton's 1993 budget. Funny how all of the economically disastrous things Democrats do end up helping the economy.

1) There are no "daily fluctuations." Obamacare has consistently polled below 50% for quite some time now.

As pointed out before: when you call it Obamacare, it polls poorly. When you ask people about the components of the bill, they like it.

Hmm, I wonder if misinformation has come into play here?

David Frum's initial reaction:

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.
...
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

And then he goes on to trash Limbaugh, right-wing radio and Fox News.

Both Frum and Matt Miller (who worked in Clinton Administration during their stab at HCR) have noted many times that many elements Obama's pushed for HCR mirrored the GOP counters from 16-17 years ago, and have asked, why is this so terrible? More to the point, why would Obama's plans have engendered such vehement opposition when his plans so closely mirror the GOPs own plans from the past?

This bill could have been a lot better with GOP input. I don't blame Obama for this not happening.

"Look! The people over there did something similarly stupid. Therefore, you can't call us on our idiocy!"

Yea, no. The point is that their overwhelming opposition is complete fabricated nonsense.

1) There are no "daily fluctuations." Obamacare has consistently polled below 50% for quite some time now.
2) Yes, polls on a specific subject are a more accurate reflection of what the majority of the country thinks about that subject than an election of a candidate.

It will be over 50% in a week. People like winners. When the Republicans seemed to be winning the argument, it was unpopular. Now that the Democrats prevailed, it will be popular.

Polls don't matter. Elections do. The Democrats won a massive congressional landslide in 2008 and won the presidency. This is what they were elected to do. They did it. If the public decides they were wrong, they can vote them out in November. This is how our government works. We're not a direct democracy. I think you know this.

Now that this squabble is over, the Prez can get back to slaughtering innocents in Afghanistan.

Covert troops killed two pregnant women, teenage girl

Yes. Each individual element in the bill is popular, and the bill as a whole is popular when the contents are described.

No. The fact that "individual elements" in the bill are popular in no way implies that the bill is popular. (Nate Silver keeps making this logical error, too.) A bill -- any bill -- is a package of costs and benefits. The fact that people like particular benefits in isolation does not mean that people like the package, including the costs. As for the bill being popular "when the contents are described" -- when they're described by whom? By its proponents? Well, sure. Gee, what a shock -- Democrats can make a Democratic bill sound good when they talk about it. Big deal. That's pretty much the defining characteristic of a politician. (At least one who has gotten elected.) But when the contents are described by both sides, then the bill is unpopular. (Yes, I know, that's because the voters are stupid and are fooled by evil Republicans. Democrats never lie and claim that a bill is going to reduce the deficit when it's really going to massively increase it, or claim that a bill will reduce health care costs when it won't.)

Is there any chance that this boondoggle is held up in the courts (such as certain states combating the mandate), or is that just non-liberal wish-casting at this point?

The latter, unfortunately. Barring a nuclear explosion wiping out DC before Obama signs the bill, we're stuck with it, at least until it bankrupts the country.

"Look! The people over there did something similarly stupid. Therefore, you can't call us on our idiocy!"

I think the post was more about pointing out the cries of "America is doomed forever!" is over-the-top rhetoric.

I thought the Democratic Party was the party of cynicism & jaded pessimism. Now I know what I sounded like after the '04 elections...

Politics is the seedbed of social enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, morbid ambitions, and disrespect for the individual. Name anything bad in man, and it is precisely in the soil of political struggle that it grows in abundance. - Maxim Gorky

at least until it bankrupts the country

Bush already bankrupted the country, we just haven't finished paying all of his bills yet.

Not that hypocrisy should be any surprise, but its shocking how much this bill shares with the 1993 Republican health care proposal.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-Comparison.aspx

I'm not quite sure I understand this use of the term "hypocrisy." Assuming that the underlying claim is true, in what way is that "hypocrisy"?

How is opposing a different bill than the one <strike>you</strike>a different group of people who happened to be in the same party as you supported years ago under different circumstances, but that has some elements in common, "hypocrisy"? (Even if the bills were identical and the circumstances were identical, and even if it were "hypocrisy" to support something at one time and then change one's mind later, only 5 people who supported that bill are in the Senate now. But of course the bills aren't identical; once again we come back to this weird notion that a bill is defined by a list of bullet points of "individual elements" rather than actual legislative text with all attendant costs and benefits. And circumstances aren't identical; the fiscal situation is much worse now. And it's not "hypocrisy" to change one's mind anyway.)

It's called saving face.

More than that. Since the American federal government already prohibits itself for funding abortion, he wasn't really after anything in the first place. Now he can woo the anti-abortionists, and the various progressives on the "I worked to make the healthcare situation in America merely terrible, rather than a complete disaster." It's smart politics. (If, uh, two faced, deceitful and contrary to the popular good. Like most smart politics.)

Frankly, I'd say "come back when you have single payer", but that'll take longer. Perhaps now some relative nondumb state could set up a single-payer bit through some publicly owned insurance company, and let Americans see how single payer works, so they show up with pitchforks and torches demanding it.

And circumstances aren't identical; the fiscal situation is much worse now.

Thanks in part to health care costs.

I'm curious, and this is not meant as a gotcha moment, but, David, why do you think people voted for Obama? Do you think healthcare had anything to with it? And if so, what specifically do you think they thought Obama was going to do about it? Again, I'm not trying to be antagonistic. I happen not to like this bill for entirely different reasons than yours, but that's besides the point.

Bush already bankrupted the country, we just haven't finished paying all of his bills yet.

Uh, if he bankrupted the country, then we can't finish paying off his bills. That's sort of the definition of bankrupt. Gotta work on those metaphors.

"I know you like health care and I know you want to compromise with Bill Clinton, but if you let him pass anything, Democrats will be a majority for a generation..."

- great metaphors in the bankruptcy of the conservative worldview...

I'm curious, and this is not meant as a gotcha moment, but, David, why do you think people voted for Obama? Do you think healthcare had anything to with it? And if so, what specifically do you think they thought Obama was going to do about it? Again, I'm not trying to be antagonistic. I happen not to like this bill for entirely different reasons than yours, but that's besides the point.

I think people voted for Obama because of (a) Republican fatigue -- there's almost always a party switch after 8 years, (b) two wars that were no longer popular, and (most importantly) (c) the economy was in very bad shape. We've had this discussion here on BBTF before, but I believe structural factors are the primary explanation for election outcomes. I think that the Democrats could have nominated anybody short of Dennis Kucinich and would have won in 2008. I don't think specific policy proposals move the needle. (That's not to say, obviously, that there are no individuals who vote based on specific proposals; I'm talking at the macro level.)

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