American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

boots riley gonna be mad

xp i think it's totally possible we'll have a republican president in a few years just because voters are fickle. republican house + senate + president, i don't think so, but they might only need two of those and a bunch of the usual democrats (see Bush II era)

don, your usa today link says nothing about single-payer that i can see -- it's a poll from last month (before the shutdown!) that gives numbers on approval and disapproval of "the health care law".

I can't find a poll where a majority of Americans want a single payer system (and yes, it might be hard to find a poll where a majority of Americans could even define what that is.) If there were even a majority of Americans clamoring for single payer, then pols would be much more inclined to start playing hardball with that and the pipeline. As it stands now, there's just not momentum for it.

But I'm pretty sure that if we just gave everyone a single payer system, it would enjoy the permanence of other social programs like SS.

don, i can't take rasmussen seriously at all, sorry

support for 1gle payer is (to generalize) inferred from a mishmash of polling and anec-data, i.e. those on the left who think o-care "doesn't go far enough" plus the frequently recurring stories of a tea-party type saying "why can't we get rid of obamacare and just have medicare and medicaid open to everyone?" <-- happened just today, but i'd have to dig thru twitter again for the cite

haha waht

it was some journo quoting an audience member at a townhall somewhere. sorry, i shouldn't throw that out w/o a direct quote

'support' doesn't exist in a vacuum, if the dems went full out on the issue a lot of dem-leaning people would find themselves 'supporting single player' (/learning what it was) and the tea party types would be informed that 'medicare for all' is not supposed to be their view on things

I read that one too goole, also forgot where

there's no way at least half of americans don't support medicare for all

I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

don, i can't take rasmussen seriously at all, sorry

I'm not a huge fan of polling, but killing a messenger like Rasmussen hasn't created a majority of Americans supporting single payer. And yes, we can "infer" whatever we want by combining whatever we want in order to "prove" whatever we want but most politicians can't get a vote through with that sort of methodology.

I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

OTM.

xp

FWIW I used to think single payer would never happen but now I'm nearly certain it will happen in my lifetime.

yeah, that's what i meant, support for single payer might be there in one way or another, but it's not "really" there enough to matter

idgi why are we any closer to single payer than before

xp

what party actors decide to do and how they react to each other is probably more important than any jane q. public's kneejerk response to distilled terms like "government takeover" or "single payer" or w/e

Shakey we're closer because Obamacare passed and in the next decade people are going to want something easier than this shitshow. Americans vote easy whenever possible.

xp

you are aware that that is textbook Tea Party conspiracy theory, yes?

personally I just don't see how the mechanics of that work politically - Dems would have to admit that ACA was flawed and now they want to replace it with something better...? the opposing talking points write themselves.

the messenger's already dead

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/?_r=0

http://www.examiner.com/article/rasmussen-reports-polls-get-the-election-really-really-wrong

always a good rule of thumb to take "conservative" talk in general with a grain of salt imho

agree that rasmussen's been a joke in the polling industry for at least a decade. still don is correct re:
I am sure plenty of americans support medicare for all and also believe the government is too involved in american health care

get your government hands off my medicare

always knew "iatee" was a sock, just wasn't sure who the puppetmaster was

nobody in the democratic party believes that the ACA was supposed to be the end game for american health care

xp

waht

I am teasing Shakey for making a post that looks like a misattribution of a quote

haha okay

Rasmussen's polling data for how the majority of Americans feel about single payer healthcare is barely deviant (if at all) from every other pollster. Or am I wrong about that? As Shakey pointed out, that's not really my point anyway.

Shakey the theory on single payer has been the "slippery slope" theory that conservatives have been advancing since, like, FDR.

(they use it for everything)

so you're saying that in this case their right? even if iatee is correct that Dems have a longer-term goal than ACA I don't see how they pass single payer, they couldn't get it done with both houses of congress AND a president with a huge mandate, neither of which they're going to have again in the next few election cycles.

don said in his lifetime

As I've noted here, I think the way in is by expanding Medicare. The system is already in place. They can re-name it, fake tweak it, and unleash it.

and yes, hopefully I'll live another 40 years or so.

I'm imagining FDR on a slippery slope – shit's dangerous!

don i'm curious what conservatives have against single-payer. i've never gotten a straight answer that would stand up. it's too expensive? it makes health care worse? it diminishes work ethic? it's bad for the economy? the american government (which should be drowned in a bathtub) can't be trusted to oversee health care? gut feeling? death panels?

It's socialism!!

The real answer: decoupling health care from employment means lazy people who don't make as much money as I do will get health care they don't deserve.

aahh, the old 'privilege versus right' binary

I can't really speak for all of them, or really any of them but typically those are the reasons. The economic concept of scarcity usually is thrown into the mix early. Reform efforts are perceived to be very difficult once the beast is unleashed...i.e. the biggest third rail of politics ever invented.

Also, a big one is that it creates a dependent voting class...which in this case usually means people will never "vote against their own self interest" or some such. And in this case, locks in a permanent Democratic majority. Or so the argument goes, anyway.

it will cost the gov't a lot of money to run it (oh no the taxes!), and they will do it badly (ie worse than the private sector)

xp

creates a dependent voting class.

this has never made sense to me. there are tons - TONS - of Social Security-receiving people that vote for the GOP, for ex.

I mean, after a certain point gov't programs do not become associated with either party and are just taken for granted, they don't influence votes either way

so don conservatives assume a priori it'll be an unwieldy beast . . . unlike, say, war in iraq? and to alfred's point, it says a lot about conservative projection that they assume people don't want to work for the sake of work, but are in it for the bennies

they also prevent the gop from 'reforming' ss etc. xp

Republicans seem well on their way to reforming the SS *rimshot*

The word "dependent" is so much bullshit. WE ARE ALL DEPENDENT ON THE GOVERNMENT TO DO THE THINGS THAT IT DOES. The small fluctuations in our levels of dependency between people and over time are MINUTE compared to, I dunno, not having government.

I'm with wide-eyed Sully: the threat of penalties will make everyone who needs to sign up for health care at the last minute, so the numbers now don't matter (which is why when traffic swells in December the site better be ready to handle it).

i think it's pretty well demonstrated that keeping ppl grossly ignorant and tribal will allow them to vote however they are instructed to do, regardless of economic dependancy.

They probably assume it will be unwieldy because social programs almost always are. By their very nature they (allegedly) lock in parts of the electorate.

I think conservatives probably would say that defending the US interest abroad allows for adventures in military; that is inherently Constitutional.

xp

i don't see any mention of iraq in the constitution. otoh, there's a lot of free healing going on in the new testament fwiw

it creates a dependent voting class...

Except if everyone gets treated the same, it puts everyone in roughly the same class in regard to health care, thus removing it as a political distinction.

...permanent Democratic majority...

This is true only if the Republicans permanently promise to dismantle any single payer that gets put in place. But after being punished enough for staying in this position, they would abandon it.