what are barack obama's flaws?

the better extract in that Nation piece is from Dr. Marcia Angell:

As for healthcare, my area of expertise, the reform bill Obama is cobbling together wrongly retains the central role of the private insurance companies and requires millions of people to buy their products at whatever price they charge. True, some of the industry's discriminatory practices would be outlawed, but if that adds to their costs, they can simply raise premiums. The pharmaceutical industry can also continue to charge whatever it likes. If the bill is fully implemented (which I doubt), it may restrain the growth of government health spending, which is all the CBO cares about, but it will surely increase inflation in the rest of the system. Obama knows that a single-payer system is the only way to provide universal care while controlling costs, but he was unwilling to throw his weight behind it. All he seems to want now is the political victory of getting a health bill passed--any bill, no matter how untenable.

My sharpest moment of disappointment came when the administration supported the prohibition against buying lower-priced drugs from Canada and Europe. During his campaign, Obama promised to end this absurd restriction, but now he's siding with the pharmaceutical industry.

It's not enough to understand what needs to be done; the president has to be willing to fight for it and, yes, take political risks.

The biggest laff in the Nation piece, published about 12 days ago, is the handful who said Obama's apex is, of course, enacting healthcare reform. (Just one thinks to throw in "Assuming...")

well if I'm hauling out my cynic hat my favorite was the bit from the New Yorker editor whose gravest disappointment in the first year of the Obama admin is ppl who are mean to Obama

Obama can "take political risks" all he wants but if Congress won't pass it what the fuck's the point? I agree with every word Angell says except for this idea - which seems widely shared - that if Obama just somehow exercised his will more effectively, Congress would transmogrify into an assemblage of people who would actually vote for single-payer

"Why doesn't he use the magic wand?? I know he's got it in his pocket.. he just won't USE it!"

so we're back at "asking a guy to put himself on the line about something" = "asking for miracles"

plus ca change

I learned that from a Rush song btw

That's all takes I guess - all he has to do is "put himself on the line" and Congress will just fall like ninepins! Why won't he use the magic wand??

yup...zero people actually saying that, but if it makes you happy, I'm happy

well if I'm hauling out my cynic hat my favorite was the bit from the New Yorker editor whose gravest disappointment in the first year of the Obama admin is ppl who are mean to Obama

ugh hendrik hertzberg fuck him

I mean J0hn I could "put myself on the line" for a $20,000 raise this year, but it's not within the realm of the doable. Do you honestly believe that we would have gotten better results if Obama had started out demanding single payer? He would have fallen at the first gate. He would have been called a fantasist. It would have made this summer "Communism" stuff look tame. I don't think that's a stretch. And I can't see how that would be preferable.

Food for thought.

-- Josh Marshall

not "exercise his will," Tracer -- package and put makeup on his ideas, the way so many goddamn extremist GOP ideas got Dem votes for 8 years cuz they were so fundamentally American. Except I don't happen to think BHO has enough ideas, or the right ones.

(BHO doesn't even believe in single payer, despite his few limp words -- "if we were starting from scratch" -- to the contrary)

morbius you are asking for things only a magician could do! obama can do nothing! he is completely powerless forever!

not to re-rehearse this argument all over again, but i just do not see how this political system can or will enact the nationalization of health insurance companies. i can't see a course to even starting on the path to doing so.

curiously, i've never seen anyone take on this question: how happy are canada and europe with the prospect of subsidizing US drug consumers?

xps tracer otm

j0hn try again wtf

Do you honestly believe that we would have gotten better results if Obama had started out demanding single payer? He would have fallen at the first gate.

Maybe. I don't think so. "Single payer" isn't a monolithic concept. How do you imagine "single payer"? what does it mean?

one of the things Tracer won't address

My sharpest moment of disappointment came when the administration supported the prohibition against buying lower-priced drugs from Canada and Europe. During his campaign, Obama promised to end this absurd restriction, but now he's siding with the pharmaceutical industry.

of course, since he can't singlehandedly do this, asking for any movement at all on it is asking for miracles, and as we all know, he can't work miracles. so let's all be quiet about this.

I'm just really confused about what exactly "putting himself on the line" entails. And additionally how that - whatever it is - would have changed the dynamics in Congress.

There's certainly some amount that the President can influence things. But single payer? I wholeheartedly believe it is the only way to get affordable health care that covers everyone. I also wholeheartedly believe that there is no freaking way in hell that Congress - especially the Senate which basically includes no moderate Republicans at all - would touch it with a 10-foot pole. How smart would it be then, to put yourself "on the line" for a guaranteed losing position? That doesn't get you to some halfway point in which the goalposts have moved leftward from what we have today, that gets you sacked.

That's where we're at, Tracer.

The devil you know, etc.

"the president could have done this if he wanted to. since it isn't happening he must not want to"

^^ this argument makes too much of presidency to begin with, and the second clause presupposes the first.

frankly i think we'll never get single payer in the US, not because enough liberals don't want it badly enough, or because the Dems are too weak, but because the enemies of single payer are extremely powerful.

I'm just really confused about what exactly "putting himself on the line" entails. And additionally how that - whatever it is - would have changed the dynamics in Congress.

kinda straining for gnats here, aren't you? "putting oneself on the line," politically, means spending your camera time, and your stump time, and your committee time on an issue - attaching your name to it, so that when you're in the news, that's part of what you're in the news about. the amount of effort this would take from the president would involve one meeting with his staff in which he would tell them that this matter is a priority, and that they're to treat it as such.

such a meeting could only take place in a magical wonderland where human beings can fly & unicorns roam the meadows though, this thread has taught me that, so I'm realistic

You honestly think that single payer is a possibility in 2010 America

i do

Even Joe Namath couldn't get it passed with this Congress

Or, if we're being honest here, with this American public

joe namath, legislator

something like half country, a whole political party, most of its media, and every single last one of the winners in the current health care game, is skeptical to outright warlike against the idea of single payer health care. and yet, because we aren't talking about it, it must mean, obama is just too weak. "weakness" doesn't seem like the operative problem here.

how about something between single payer and the pathetic compromise of a compromise they wound up with, BEFORE Massachusetts Brown?

like the house bill? sounds good to me!

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie-gallery/albums/userpics//DreamerPoster.jpg
l-r: morbs, j0hn D.

morbs maybe you could call chuck schumer and tell him to get on it

xp

Bam's the head of the party -- he calls in every member of Congress on January 21, 2009 and says "If you won't support me on this, we'll find a candidate in yr district who will." It'll cost you seats? What does that change, given that you can't get anything good through WITH 60 votes??

curiously, i've never seen anyone take on this question: how happy are canada and europe with the prospect of subsidizing US drug consumers?

we always get told that US insuerance-buyers are subsidizing us! US big pharma does all the heavy lifting, they say. which is a bit uh imo coz the big pharma companies... some of them are non-american im guessing. probably multinational now, idk. ici bitches.

not "exercise his will," Tracer -- package and put makeup on his ideas, the way so many goddamn extremist GOP ideas got Dem votes for 8 years cuz they were so fundamentally American.

yes, the far-flung future dream of anything less than constant capitulation

you big dreamer you

next thing you'll be saying Democrats should vote with their party

How smart would it be then, to put yourself "on the line" for a guaranteed losing position?

^This is really really really cynical

this conversation is boring. I'm bored now.

I can't believe anyone actually thinks single payer, with this Congress, and this American public, is anything other than that

I mean wow

shut up Tracer you're boring Shakey Mo

Didnt most people that voted for Obama think he was gonna bring the universal health care? Wasn't that a huge selling point in 2008? Before the Fox News misinfo shitstorm of summer 2009?

sometimes i think the dems are completely tone deaf and clueless and the repubs are sociopaths. only sometimes, strangely.

srsly tho you guys have boy-who-cried-wolf the "you're asking him to work magic!" line so bad at this point - anybody's disappointed with the president about anything ever, the go-to line is "you have unrealistic expectations of the president." so I put it to you Tracer! what can one reasonably ask of a president? what can he do? what ought one expect of a president - what are the things one's support can reasonably be thought to depend on?

The main thing I expect the President to do is not say or do things that will get us blown up. Anything he/she does beyond that that I agree with is pretty much icing on the "don't get me killed" cake.

so how did W work out by that standard? (for the last 7-1/3 years)

lol Dan every president save one has a perfect track record then & we can pretty much just vote for whoever as long as we don't elect Bush again

I can get down w/that actually

Going into subway now J0hn but I'm gonna come up with something real good

(actually along with "don't get me blown up" is "don't get my job taken away", which aside from political philosophy goes a long way towards explaining why I like Clinton and dislike Bush II)