CNN reports that the all-important independents loved the speech. Obama sold it. By extension he sold the centrists – in other words, the folks in the middle who will decide all this.
How?
Obama portrayed the far left’s quest for single-payer, and the far-right’s quest for eliminating employer-based coverage, as the extremes, and then portrayed the public option as the centrist choice which is the least disruptive and the least scary.
He offered bribes to the centrist deficit-hawks like Conrad and the supporters of the trigger option, by pushing back the insurance exchanges and the public option for four years. He also placated centrists by stating that the public option must be self-sufficient and would only be available to the folks with no insurance.
More gravy for centrists: the requirement to buy insurance, the ban on cutting Medicare coverage, the HHS test plan for tort reform which can begin immediately, the promise to listen to all ideas, the openness to discussing coops and triggers, the appropriation of McCain’s catastrophic health care plan.
Also, the centrists will have the entertaining spectacle of the Obama team finally coming out to slap around the GOP liars, and making fools of them. First victim: that idiot Boustany. He makes Jindal look like Demosthenes.
Meanwhile, the progressives who were threatening to desert Obama in 2012 were mollified – they said he knocked it out of the park.
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3 comments:
Were we progressives mollified? I've read a few comments that say otherwise. Based not on the speech, which I haven't heard or read yet, but on the "highlights" of the plan that Obama sent to his supporters, I see several points that give me pause. Obama is the only politician I've ever donated to, supported with lawn signs and spoken out strongly for. I've given to other progressives via ActBlue, but now I'm considering closing my eyes and heart and mind to politics forever!
I have respected your commentary here. You make a lot of sense. Thanks for providing a place I could go to escape some of the crazies surrounding me!
I should have said "Obama is the first politician I've donated to, the only one I've supported with lawn signs, etc."
Hang in there. Obama knows he has the votes for the public option via the reconciliation route, and it's what he wanted all along. He is dangling all this other stuff -- coops, tort reform, triggers -- to keep up the pretense of bipartisanship, until the Finance Committee deliberations make even clearer, the fact that the GOP simply isn't going to play.
If you clck on the "label" for health and the nose count, you'll see that Obama should have 50 votes for the public option. His main challenge is to allay the concerns of the Blue Dogs regarding costs.
The plan in its final form will, in fact, have things you don't like. That's just the way it is -- everybody is going to have to eat some broccoli to get this passed. But remember that this is closer to a solution than we've had in CENTURY of trying.
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