Friday 11 September 2009

Is Obama faking us all out?

Firedoglake finally said aloud what I’ve been thinking for weeks, that Obama may be exhibiting a condition known as Munchausen by proxy, wherein an individual deliberately puts someone (or something) in jeopardy, and then jumps in at the last minute to “save” them heroically. Specifically, Obama has allowed his enemies (and the media) to create the notion that the public option is a death’s door, and in desperate need of last-minute rescue by Obama himself. Meanwhile, however, Obama has the 50 Senators he needs to pass the public option under budget reconciliation, and he’s had them all along, and public support for it has remained within the 60-80 percent range even during all the wingnut death-panel attacks.

Look at the facts:

--putting the budget reconciliation instruction into the budget bill verrrrry quietly in the spring with the October start date, so that even the Republicans didn’t notice;
--pretending that Obama really wanted the health bill in August so that the Republicans would have a fake target to shoot at, while simultaneously allowing Baucus to drag his feet for two months;
--allowing the Republicans to wear themselves out with their attacks during the vacation season when real non-Washington people weren’t paying attention;
--allowing the media to report that the public option was in dire peril even though Obama has the necessary support for passage;
--praising the public option without making a commitment to it, so as to avoid giving the GOP a clear target, while also praising the other options and the people advocating them;
--stepping in to make the big speech only when we were a month away from the reconciliation date, so as to begin building up momentum;
--Schumer quietly letting the media know how reconciliation would work;
--Obama’s secret meeting with the Senate Blue Dog Democrats, after which the Senators went to the media to claim that the meeting was really about program costs, rather than about the public option or reconciliation.

Also there seems to be a lot of what could call smokescreen activity – the kinds of things that could distract the screaming wingnuts for weeks while Obama works quietly behind the scenes to nail down the public option. Next week a House Democrat may introduce a bill to kill the Defense Of Marriage Act, which will drive the gay-hating wingnuts crazy. Meanwhile the global-warming-is-a-hoax wingnuts will be distracted by Tom Harkin’s hearings on cap-and-trade; Harkin, coincidentally, is a public-option fan. If they really wanted to distract and confuse the wingnuts, they would hold hearings on gun control, or on amnesty for illegals, or on banning NASCAR or chewing tobacky – or would that be too obvious?

I'm probably wrong about all this, but wouldn't it be cool if it were true?

2 comments:

marieDee said...

too cool!!!!!

HelloDollyLlama said...

We'll know in a few weeks...