2010: The VeryVery Bad Year for Incumbents

At last an elected official says something sincere we can all agree with, even if he had to do it anonymously :

With all of these issues at a standstill, tensions are growing between the two chambers. Several House lawmakers have voiced frustration with Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) over concessions and special deals they cut in the Senate version.[of the healthcare bill.]

"The Senate is just a pain in the ass to everybody in the world as far as I can tell. I'm so angry that I just wish from now on that we'd just find out what it is that Lieberman and Nelson will let us have," the senior lawmaker said. "But we're not giving up on anything in the House."

Click to expand...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/senior-house-democrat-sen_n_421698.html

http://dailycaller.com/2010/01/14/harry-reid-joe-lieberman-clash-over-letter/

I wonder if this refers to the same tirade…
==================
Also, I thought this was relevant as a bit of a bellweather:
http://dailycaller.com/2010/01/14/a...ascent-in-the-massachusetts-special-election/

I thought this comment was really strange, though. Whooda thunk a rightie would ever be able to pull off a "down with the establishment" message? Talk about co-opting the opposition's touchstone…

“They respect [Brown] in this pickup truck driving around. Everybody identifies him as this upstart candidate in a pickup truck who’s taking it to the establishment.”

Click to expand...

That's quite a non-frothy article dte. I was able to read the whole thing without any change in blood pressure.

Yeah, Brown is emerging as a very credible candidate, I think. He's got a little more charisma than your average republican, he's damn good-looking(on a personally appreciative note, I would never hold a man's appearance as a centerfold in Cosmo against him ) and he's running a tight issue-based campaign. Some lefty talking head yesterday made the point that healthcare reform is pretty much a non-issue in Massachusetts as they have their own state-run healthcare that has a very high rate of coverage and voter satisfaction.

IOW, for the citizens of Mass, passing HCR would be about them paying more taxes so the rest of the country could have the kind of healthcare they already have, plus they're a donor state, already giving more than they get to the Feds. So he's picked a very good solid plank to run on when he says he'll be the 41st vote that brings healthcare down.

Even Nate is now saying the race is a toss up:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/ok-its-toss-up.html

magerette said:

IOW, for the citizens of Mass, passing HCR would be about them paying more taxes so the rest of the country could have the kind of healthcare they already have

Click to expand...

But is it really this simple? The new HCR would cover them too, logically, so then they'd be able to have some of their own health care taken over by the new reform so that this wouldn't really affect them all that much?

Übereil

If the new healthcare were perceived as being an improvement, yes, probably, but it isn't. If this program sets up side by side with the state one, there may not be any improvements over what they already have, other than possibly the federal subsidies helping out a bit—but in return, they get to pay twice for their existing program in existing state taxes and then for the new plan in new payroll taxes and federal taxes on health plans that currently don't exist. AFAIK, the federal plan won't supersede what they already have.

I just got this freaky idea. Maybe the goverment should look at what Mass has done and try to implement something similiar. Possibly by not doing anything on state level apart from dedicating responsibility for it to the states, who are to set up health care using Mass as a model (how did they start it, what worked well, what worked poorly etc). I'm no expert, but this might end up as something pepole would like, since it seems to be working relativly well in Mass. And, you know, they would have an example of this system working somewhere in the States.

Übereil

You'll have a tough time selling an East Coast Liberal plan (MA is pretty much the pinnacle of East Coast Liberalism) in Texas. Different expectations, and different financial approaches.

That would be too logical for us, Ubereil.

Actually, it has been looked at quite a bit. It's not without it's problems, particularly where costs are concerned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform
Oregon also has one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Health_Plan

Bottom line is funding, and how to deal with the actual costs of providing health care in terms of how much more all aspects of it are costing every year.

dteowner said:

You'll have a tough time selling an East Coast Liberal plan (MA is pretty much the pinnacle of East Coast Liberalism) in Texas. Different expectations, and different financial approaches.

Click to expand...

It's not so much the political aspects; though I agree, Texans are not about to build any memorial statues to Teddy Kennedy's healthcare legacy; but the money.

I'm not sure if we're talking about the feds encouraging states to run their own programs like the one in Mass, or about the feds setting up a country wide program like the one in Mass, but Texas, Oklahoma and all the other states who need it the most can't afford it unless the Feds provide the cash.

Texas is the opposite of a donor state, getting far more in benefits from the Feds than it pays in taxes. Likewise, the huge number of uninsured and what it would cost to upgrade the staggeringly primitive level of medicaid health care here in Oklahoma—I think we're like 46th in the country—would make the whole point moot. It's just unaffordable for areas like us, even though we do have a solvent oil and gas industry that's keeping us afloat atm.

But in many ways it is like a different world ... heck even in western NY I feel like it is very different from Mass ... I would never have sat at a table of engineers discussing their gun registrations before ...

I have a chicken fried steak and a shotgun waiting for you here any time, Mike.

Edit: Having lived there, don't suppose you have thoughts about the healthcare thing to share?

http://dailycaller.com/2010/01/18/obama-visit-fails-to-slow-scott-browns-momentum-in-massachusetts/

Looks like Barack's coattails are incredibly short. I find the broader implications of this state election to be far more interesting, though.

Massachusetts secretary of state, William F. Gavin, could delay the counting of absentee ballots long enough to give placeholder Sen. Paul Kirk, a Democrat, a chance to vote in favor of a health-care bill. That approach would set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill and would likely draw legal action from Republicans, who believe they have grounds to bar Kirk from voting if Brown is elected.

If Brown were seated before any bill were passed, getting it through likely would involve trying to pass the Senate’s version through the House without any changes to avoid another vote in the upper chamber. White House officials acknowledge privately that would be a difficult task.

Click to expand...

That would be some dirty pool. I wonder how the lefties would spin that one. I think they'd almost have to play that card, though. If Obamacare gets shot down, that will be devastating to his party and his presidency. I'm thinking worse than the Hillarycare debacle that hamstrung Slick Willie for several years.

Saving face for the president, following such a dramatic rejection by one of the country’s most liberal states, would mean arguing that Coakley lost because of state issues in Massachusetts and because she was a bad candidate. The White House and its allies have already begun making both of those cases.

Click to expand...

Let the distancing begin!

This is going to be a very very big deal if Brown wins. They're actually talking about reconciliation again, which, as that article points out is just one of the dirty tricks-style options that might get called into play. More political pressure plays, power games and manuveuring is not going to help Obama, whose administration is already seen as hand in glove with Wall Street and big corporate interests. Obama=the new Nixon? Hard to believe, but stuff like this, along with Geithner and AIG riding his coattails, could make it happen. So far his personal popularity has kept him somewhat distanced from Washington, but I think that's unlikely to continue indefinitely.

While I don't think the HCR fiasco has made repubs look exactly golden, by far the worst of the fallout is going to hit the dems. The country, which initially was polling pretty much in favor of some kind of reform, has been totally alienated to the point where the whole issue is going to be politically radioactive for another twenty years. If Brown gets elected(and I'm betting he will but who knows) it will say three things imo:1) populist rage and the extent to which the average voter is angry at government can't be under-rated; 2) the dems have blown their best shot at appearing competent and able to govern, and 3) Obama will have to completely restart his presidency to get anything done let alone get re-elected.

But I wouldn't say that it (option #3)can't be done—it just will be a very daunting task.

All other stuff aside I actually like martha coakley quite a bit from all of my years in mass

Massachusetts Voters Deluged with Calls from Nation's Political Activists
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...-from-nations-political-activists.php?ref=fpb

Another interesting thing to watch about this race will be the intrusion of national political figures into state/local politics. Both sides are getting support from outside
the state at record levels, with the all the really big names in the democratic world showing for Coakley. If she loses in the face of Obama, Clinton and Vicki Kennedy's vocal support, it puts a somewhat different face on the NY 23 race where the tea party candidate lost to the local favorite after a big push from national conservatives from out of state. The conclusion just may be that people at the local level don't trust the higher ups on either side.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/01/21/court-rolls-back-campaign-spending-limits/

I think the SCotUS just stuck it to us. This just makes politics even more of a money sport. I understand the whole freedom of speech angle, but this harms the democracy, which is every bit as "anti-constitution" as caps on free speech in the political arena.

Did anyone say "conflict of interest"?

Übereil

This marks the end of the era of the individual, and the completion of the takeover of the US government by corporate facism.

Careful with the whole corporate fascism accusation, Thrasher. The SCotUS is currently controlled by your liberals, who supposedly don't support evil corporations. I do largely agree with the part of your comment before the comma, though.

Guess what corporate fascism is blind to partisanship. Just look at the health care bill. It was the blue dogs and Lieberman (read: more conservative than leftie Democrats) that wrecked it.