Discussion for article #230656
Good on ya, Patrick! Speak truth to the fatuous Shmuck Chumer!
11 Likes
Schumer ā cheaper than a two buck upchuck.
2 Likes
Iām happy to see a discussion of what a Democrat on a Sunday morning gabfest had to say instead of the usual Senator McWar and petulant Aunt Lindsey.
17 Likes
Of course Schumer was wrong. He knows it and everybody else knows it.
Itās just that some people take longer to come off the Blue Dog high of November, 2014.
3 Likes
Good explanation from Mr. Patrick. I hope Democrats learn from his example of how to give a strong concise defense of their policies.
6 Likes
Here in metropolitan New Jersey/New York area I will keep you all informed who donāt live here,when Schumer will go to churches in Harlem again.
When he was running for Senator from New York he was up there in the front row trying to clap and sing to gospel songs that were being sung in that church.
He like a lot of Dems seem to forget where a lot of their votes came from.
3 Likes
This is funny. Awhile back I read a few news stories detailing how Schumer was one of the biggest impediments to passing healthcare reform with a public option. He was vehemently against it because he was being heavily pressed by his insurance company backers to thwart any bill with a public option. He even went so far as to threaten to tank the whole thing if the president wouldnāt stop stumping for a public option. Thatās why the whining that āObama didnāt fight for a public optionā is just so tired, stupid, and completely divorced from reality.
7 Likes
Looking back, it was amazing that the administration was able to pass a bill at all. It barely made it through and even then had to be tweaked to get it passed. And it passed despite the day one pledge by McConnell and his minions to establish a scorched earth policy on any administration initiatives.
If not then, name any time since then that a bill like this could have even gotten out of a house committee.
And even now, we have to wait to see just what the Supremes are going to do with it. The potential for mischief is tremendous, especially given a new Congress many of whom think they are operating on a mission from God to gut the thing in a back room.
8 Likes
Well we also had Max Bauccus, fresh from standing hip deep in trout streams with industry lobbyists who never let a public option get even a vote.
5 Likes
Well, this liberal is pleased the Affordable Care Act passed when it did. Iām four years younger than my husband, have preexisting conditions, am being covered by my husbandās health insurance - and he eligible for Medicare next April. I will be going to the federal exchange in December to purchase health insurance. We will also be purchasing insurance for our 24 year-old daughter who is working on a contract basis and would not otherwise have coverage with her current employment situation.
8 Likes
They caved on the public option, so instead we ended up with the largest government mandated transfer of wealth the health insurance companies in history. I thought it was the greedy health insurance companies that were the problem?
But you do have one thing right, the lack of the public option was to get enough Democrats to vote for it.
4 Likes
That was actually Lieberman, Plucky; Schumerās the one whoās always being pressed by his Wall Street backers.
1 Like
The GOP was going to claim that any Obama initiative would be catastrophic for the country, even if Obamacare was essentially Romneycare. If the Republicans were going to cry, Democrats should have given them something to cry about. Reforming campaign finances and corporate governance would have had a greater impact, and should have been given priority. If government had been returned to the people, other objectives could have been achieved more effectively. If politicians werenāt beholden to insurance companies and big pharma, we might have seen a public healthcare option, or perhaps even single payer.
1 Like
But the insurers are finally having to spend most of your premium dollars (80-85%, depending on customer size) on actual health-care costs; google āmedical-loss ratio.ā And yes, some insurers actually had to pay rebates to their customers last year; just one of the lawās many provisions (including all that long-sought patients-bill-of-rights stuff) that benefit everyone who has health insurance, whether they get it through an exchange, from their employer, or via any other route. Just for the record.
2 Likes
Schumer pretty much meant it was a political mistake for the Democrats to do it in 2010, and truth be told it was. It caused them to lose the House and now the Senate. Hindsight is 20/20, and he believes like many have stated before (heās far from the first one) they should have brought it up after the 2010 elections, not before and have waited for the economy to recover more.
However, weāre not sure it would have played out that way. The GOP essentially hates Obama because heās the black man in the White House. He could have come up with the cure for cancer, and they would have said he was violating religious liberty or some bullcrap like that. We canāt see the future, and they did the right thing by getting it passed when they had the chance to do it despite the political fallout that has ensued. It wasnāt a mistake when thinking that way.
2 Likes
Iām glad it was LBJ and not Chuck Schumer who had the Civil Rights Act on his desk in 1964.
2 Likes
I would have a lot more respect for people who criticize Obama for not fighting if they would ever, ever, in any situation ever, give him credit for the situations in which he did fight, fought hard, and just plain lost.
But no, whenever that happens - Gitmo closure, KSM trial in federal court in New York City, public option, indefinite detention in the NDAA - they come up with some stupid conspiracy theory about how he was actually on the other side, and actually wanted those outcomes the whole time.
Schumer ought to look in a mirror first off. And second, he is making a very strong presumption that Obamacare in any form wouldāve passed at a later date, especially considering that at a later date the Republicans were shutting down the government for no apparent reason.
Who is Schumer preaching to here? Iām not sure that it is possible to go retroactively spineless but Schumer is giving it his best shot.
2 Likes
You donāt get a public option without raising taxes targeted at offsetting the costs.
Thatās a big component of what it took to get guaranteed health care coverage in every country that has it.
And raising such taxes was neither possible, given post-collapse politics, nor smart, given the lessons of the past as divined by Keynes and as FDR & we learned together so dramatically in 1938.
Schumerās suffering here and elsewhere for the way this message has been delivered, but I donāt think it was a slip and it may actually do so good. If the impression left with some unknown number of millions of potential Democratic voters is something like, 'Obama did bupkiss for me and the Dems wonāt do bupkiss for me ātil after 2016, so why even voteā - and thatās what Schumer says IS a big impression out there and heās got polling numbers at least spinnable to back him up - then exactly how is the Dem party going to talk to those same potential voters between now and November 2016?
So, okay, it was put, uh, INARTFULLY. But Iām not sure even thatās so. It could have been put in a more SUBTLE NUANCED way - but then itād have been forgotten in 2 minutes, whereas the way Chuckster put it has sorta kinda won all the cycles this past week.
Iām not saying Schumer meant this way; I donāt know one way or the other. But heās in a position where he can get away with saying it, plus it sure aināt gonna hurt him and may well help him in getting re-elected a US senator from NY state. Heās not, after all running ānationallyā for his own seat, but he is, after all, rationally interested in empowering his own party. I donāt think his proposition or the fooferah thatās followed hurts either goal, and may well help both.