Amy Sullivan, Time, online Sat., Nov. 7, 2009, date of the House passage of H.R. 3962; this link; no excerpt.
Basically the argument is that Nancy Pelosi was too insensitive to Dem anti-abortion factions until the end when the nose count pushed her to a floor vote on the Stupak amendment where all the GOP types who voted against the bill were for the amendment and too many Dems were also scared of losing their seats. Mismanagement of leadership is the argument.
My feeling is Pelosi was too insensitive to the pro choice people to have not made it difficult to impossible for the Oberstars and Petersons in the House to act as they did.
Peterson, he arguably is less secure although Minnesota farmers voting out the Ag. Committee chair is hard to contemplate - can they be so stupid?
Oberstar, he's been there long enough. Baak is seeking the wrong office.
My feeling is the Dems have to regard and treat those who forced the Stupak amendment into being the way Humphrey regarded and treated the Dixicrats. Regardless how powerful in the party machinery -- Get rid of them, under any terms, clean house or suffer worse consequences for being too lenient too long with too many, long term.
Similar to the Ned Lamont - Joe Lieberman situation. Ned Lamonts, we need more of them and we know where. The Stupak amendment drew a roadmap.
Being outside of the Minnesota DFL as I am, because they are too middle-of-the-road for me to commit, I could enjoy more Ned Lamonts nationwide and in-state, and seeing more support for them.
Let all the anti-abortion forces seek to coalesce and seek refuge in today's GOP.
Unless they also drink the other nasty extremist Koolaid there, they will be unwelcome - as RINOs, or RINO wannabes.
It is, however, time that reproductive rights are viewed as non-negotiable within the entire Democratic apparatus; and that entire sorry pablum pro-insurance industry bill could have been assigned to the scrap heap as no great loss, but passing it as awful as it was AND adding the extra insult of the Stupak amendment - that should strike every progressive in the nation as intolerable.
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See this Crabgrass link, for a concise presentation of what the problems of the bill as passed are.
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Try this on for size, sports fans: A cynical view, but then how all this healthcare stuff was handled yearns for cynicism and distrust of the politicians and the political process, with only the lobbyists' ingenuity to be seen there as a beacon of having clearly defined profit-oriented goals and getting them addressed.
Just suppose - a hypothetical of course - but suppose the dark forces in Congress [at this point you need to ask are there any others]; suppose those dark forces want this sorry and unnatural bill stuffed with pro-insurance industry goodies to pass under the attention span of the public.
So the leadership discussions then are about how to best deflect attention from the way the bill disadvantages all citizens every-which-way instead of fixing things - aka, how it dropped from the start "single payer" good sense and then had the August side shows, the Baucus and Snowe job, etc.?
You want to deflect attention and the answer is so easy. You simply put the reproductive rights issue in there, and posture it against good sense and decency, of course.
And, lo, that's precisely what they did.
It immediately becomes a red flag and lightning rod and way to get an outcry over one narrow but quite important part of things, engendering a groundswell of indignation to later allow the politicians to artfully lessen the obscenity of it somewhat and have folks then saying, "Oh, good ... good sense prevailed ...", and lo, attention is diverted and the entie rest of the garbage is ignored, swept along without real notice or protest, because the big monkey, the reproductive rights issue that is so major, will somehow be taken off our backs. And we then will be expected to be thankful and unquestioning in any further substantive direction(s).
"Oh, that's a deal killer, but wait - we can fix that ..." will be the jolly reassuring tune.
Great.
Deal's fixed.
Moving on, Afghanistan is looming, people lack jobs, ... at least we reformed healthcare ...
Is it a hosing or what?
Is it our politicians in Congress at work, or what?
Is it cause to respect the process and the people in it?
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Doing it that way, polarizing healthcare with the reproductive rights debate means the 2010 citizen attention will be drawn from the dire economic things that have happened (and been done during lame duck Bush times and onward) - and lo, it will be emotion laden divisiveness, of all things, with the economically disadvantaged masses howling back and forth at each other from opposite sides of the reproductive rights issue, again doing it, and the puppet masters and propaganda purveyors will laugh and laugh.
Under the guise of working "that one difficulty" out in the course of healthcare "reform," a host of obscene pro-insurance firm mischief gets dumped on our society's sorry distracted heads.
Protect yourselves. Wear helmets. They are about to dump lots of gross stuff watching it trickle down, onto your heads. Trust me, it will happen. Look beyond the headlines and distractions of the moment, and ask, why not single payer, it makes all the sense in the world and the polls have always reflected the public wants single payer and trusts single payer when asked in unbiased ways with fairly worded questions and not under this flood of ongoing distracting propaganda.
So --- Heads up. Watch out. That is my best guess of how the drama will be played out. How the propaganda will be slung.
Or maybe not. And I am seeing ghosts.
Let us wait and see.