Dean, the man who should have been president:
“The biggest time bomb in the short run is the Public Option. Without a Public option, basically the activists of the Democratic party sit on their hands in 2010. Obama is not on the ballot. There’s no reason to go out and vote for a Democratic Congressman or give them any money if they can’t pass a healthcare bill that’s worth anything. And that’s a huge problem for the Democrats if its not in there and so it looks like some of the, a few of the folks aren’t going to let it in there. [snip] [The Public Option] has been watered down, it’s about as as watered down as it can get and still be a real bill. So there’s not a lot left in this bill. For example, there’s really no insurance reform in this bill. … I think Sanders has got the right idea. You might as well kill this thing because the people are going to be furious if it passes if it doesn’t have a Public Option.”
Dean has carried a lot of water for Obama on health care, despite Obama’s blatant disrespect of Dean when he stepped down from DNC. For him to being saying this is… interesting… He’s also made the point that if Democratic Senators won’t vote with their party on procedural votes, it’s the death of fundraising for the DSCC—for years they’ve talked about getting to 60, now they have, and they still can’t pass anything that isn’t crap. What next, 65?
2010 is shaping up very nicely for the Republicans. Their base is motivated, the Democratic base is less and less motivated, and by 2010 will be demoralized. The economy will not have recovered by the time of the election, Republicans have effectively demonized stimuluses and deficits, so no new meaningful stimulus is likely to pass, so there’s nothing Democrats can do to fix the job situation. Of course, 700 billion of stimulus, done right, would have created a lot more jobs than the lousy stimulus bill Obama put through.
Not doing things right when you can, has consequences.
Imagine that.
As you sow, so shall you reap. Pity Obama and Democrats incompetence, venality and cupidity will cause so much real world suffering. But in 2011 at least they’ll have a good excuse for doing nothing or passing only conservative bills. Which is good, because whenever they do something they screw it up anyway. As with Bush, if you believe in a policy (say stimulus) the last thing you want is for Obama and this Democratic Congress to do it, because they’ll screw it up beyond measure and thus discredit it.