The public option: by hook or by crook (continued…and continued…)
In the last couple of days I’ve noticed a new strategy from certain Democratic pundits, bloggers, and commenters: act as if the public option’s a done deal, or very close to it.
It’s the power of positive thinking in action. Therapists sometimes use a similar technique with clients to spark positive change—attempting to verbally frame things in such a way as to try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy and a sense of near-inevitability. In this case, the aim is also to get opponents to give up and maybe even climb on board.
Here’s just one example of an article that uses this method, by Froma Harrop in the Providence Journal. Here’s what passes for thinking from Ms. Harrop:
…Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has included the opt-out clause in the bill. He’ll do whatever it takes to calm a few phantom-obsessed Democrats…
Well, I’ve been going on and on and on and on about this public-option business for months. The least pleasant part has been countering the rumors of torch-bearing masses defending the honor of the private insurers.
But it will soon be over. I now hear the cock crowing with the dawn. Let us toll the bell for the phantom of the option.
Pretty funny stuff, eh?—and simply dripping with contempt for those stupid uninformed torch-bearers, upset with all the imaginary problems the public option cannot possibly cause (if you say so, Froma).
That article’s tone may be a tad more condescending than most of its genre. but it follows the general rule of saying the public option is a done deal. In contrast, we have this sort of thing from the WaPo—a paper I’ve noticed presents some fairly objective articles now and then. In this one, Dana Milbank reports the following exchange between Harry Reid and an intrepid CNN reporter (I can’t believe I wrote that phrase: intrepid CNN reporter) [emphasis added in bold]:
…”Do you feel 100 percent sure right now that you have the 60 votes?” CNN’s Dana Bash inquired. Reid looked down at the lectern. He looked up at the ceiling. He chuckled. He put his palms together as if in prayer. Then he spoke. “My caucus believes strongly there should be health-care reform” was the non sequitur he offered.
Bash reminded the leader that she had asked him “particularly on this idea of a public option.”
Instead of answering, Reid, with a Zen expression, looked to the back of the room to solicit a question from somebody else. But Bash piped up again. “Senator Reid, with all due respect, is it possible to answer the question on whether or not you have the votes?”
“I believe we clearly will have the support of my caucus to move to this bill and start legislating,” he replied, which also didn’t answer the question.
By this time, Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley, had one foot on the podium, as if he were ready to rush the stage and whisk his boss to safety.
Of course, everybody knew that Reid didn’t have the votes. That’s why he was standing there alone, a Gang of One.
Well, from my perusal of the blogosphere and certain liberal columnists such as Harrop, “everybody” certainly doesn’t know that (or at least they’re pretending not to know it). Milbank suggests that Reid knows, though. He writes that Reid’s proposal for an opt-out clause is really an attempt to placate liberal in Nevada and preserve Reid’s own re-election chances.
My favorite quote from Reid just might be this (try to imagine another Senate Majority Leader, the famously arm-twisting LBJ, uttering these words):
The Post’s Shailagh Murray asked Reid another question about the lack of a consensus in the Democratic caucus, but by this time the majority leader had grown exasperated. “We all hug together and see where we come out,” he answered.
I didn’t hear the interview, so the description of Reid as “exasperated” makes me think that perhaps he was being sarcastic. I certainly hope so.
It’s not surprising that Reid was mum on the details of how states could go about opting-out, and what it might cost them to do so. Perhaps this is an indication that the opt-out provision in the bill isn’t really meant to be a serious one. Or perhaps it’s just characteristic of the smoke and mirrors approach to legislation that’s become so popular in Congress. Transparent as mud.
Reid’s ploy doesn’t seem to be attracting the wavering moderates, though. RINO Olympia Snowe seems to be hanging tough in the fiscal conservative camp (I emphasize the word “seems”, because you never quite know with Olympia Snowe—hey, that’s catchy enough to be a campaign slogan). She says she was “deeply disappointed” by Reid’s decision, although she still favors a trigger. Snowe’s twin RINO Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, issued a statement opposing “a taxpayer-subsidized, government-run health insurance company.” And Joe Lieberman isn’t buying, either.
Yesterday I wrote that the Democrats seem determined to get some sort of public option by hook or by crook. Commenter “davidt” quipped, “by hook AND by crook.”
I’ll leave it to you to decide which are the hooks, and which the crooks.
The New Yorker used to run fillers quoting florid, overwritten articles under the heading “Block That Metaphor!” They could have come up with a year’s worth of material from Harrop’s article alone. Earthly forms, specters, Democrats held captive by “tales” of voter anger, ghost stories, phantoms, more phantoms, a “bizarre political dance,” a creepy violin playing Saint-Saens, traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles by changing planes in Hawaii (what?), torch-bearing masses, cocks crowing with the dawn, tolling bells . . . and yes, another phantom!
This lady doesn’t seem to think the unembellished facts would sell her point of view.
“act as if the public option’s a done deal…”
Whistling past the graveyard may salve the doubt but it might invite bad juju when the objective is… healthcare.
This close to Halloween I like to imagine Reid as a lonely old weaterbeaten scarecrow standing in his field with hundreds of buzzards slowly circling him and his DOA government run public option healthcare bill. 🙂
SAB – Fast forward your wonderful image to next after the scarecrow has gone through a non-globally warmed snow season and the Dems are choosing candidates for the next election. Add a Conservative in NY 23, two new Republican governors. Obama might have to call Palin to shoot those darn crows next year.
expat: I’m sure Palin can handle a shotgun better than Obama.
Reading about Joseph Lieberman and this Democrat makes me smile
http://thehill.com//blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/64971-mich-democrat-pelosi-not-happy-with-me
I wonder if Ceausceau said stuff like that in the runup to Christmas 1989.
Living as I do in Nevada (not the blue southern part, where Reid comes from and gets his support from displaced Californians) I almost feel sympathy for him. The radio waves are already filling with pro- and anti-Reid advertising (the pro paid for by the National Education Association, go figure) and it is clear that even with his high office and huge war chest he is fighting a bitter battle to hang onto his seat. Yet his position of party leadership requires him to do exactly the opposite of what he should be doing to convince Nevada voters he is their best candidate when the election takes place next year. As I say, I almost sympathize with him — but when all is said and done I don’t. He really does not represent Nevada any longer and I would be happy to see him defeated. Now the big question becomes, who is there to replace him? F
Look liberals,
Look at this
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/27/grooming-the-next-generation-of-entitlement-seekers/
Now – as I’m seething because you liberals are so dishonest and negligence.
SCHIP covers these children up to 400% above the poverty line.
Medicaid covers the poor
Medicare covers the elderly
No hospital can turn away ANYBODY. It is the law that hospitals must treat people.
Now. Re-watch those DNC videos and tell me. Why in the hell would you EVER EVER give another vote or dollar to Democrats again????
UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
“Now. Re-watch those DNC videos and tell me. Why in the hell would you EVER EVER give another vote or dollar to Democrats again????”
Well, not that I remotely approve of the govt run health care (it is not hard to find posts by me figuring that this whole mess is going to end in massive revolution and most likely the bloody kind), but I can tell you a story from one quite decent liberal I know.
That is someone who works with homeless people. These fall through the cracks in many ways. One is that while hospitals can not turn them away they also can not provide long term care (hospitals are by their very nature emergency care – for instance if you need two months worth of drugs – oh well). Further many of these things require an address and, well, being homeless you do not have one.
His example – and it is a gruesome one – was of an individual that had ring worms and those sores caused by said worms (one wrapping completely around his body multiple times) had a staff infection. Other than volunteers there paying for his treatment there was little choice – he could get a weeks worth of medicine in the ER but outside of that he had to have an address or cash. It took months worth of non-ER care to fix.
I, personally, am not convinced that any sort of govt run health care is going to help that individual much. Indeed, medicare should have yet didn’t. So I figure if govt run health care failed him here no reason it will not next time. Much of his issues were also self inflicted – namely too drunken/drugged to even live in welfare projects.
I do rather think that given how bad that particular incidence was (and how the story ended) that he would have done the shorter term care to get rid of that pain, but in the long term nothing we do will help that.
But, as is, there was no other option really out there. So, there are people fall through the cracks. There are people fall through the cracks of every system so nothing particularly special about that. To deny otherwise is simply untrue – same is true for those that preach the supposed Utopia of Govt Health care where all live disease free their whole lives at no cost!
Sadly I see no reason to choose the Republicans either. There are little to no conservatives in today’s politics – just a matter of screwed in the head from the left side or screwed in the head from the right side.
Wrong title, Neo. It’s Hook of Crook.
Irrelevant and semi off-topic, but if I get time this evening, that picture of HR calls for a black cape and fangs. It just does. “It came from big government…” 😛
strcpy, the problem with homeless people is that most belong in mental institutions, but cannot be forced into them owing to a 1975 Supreme Court ruling on involuntary commitment. Socialized medicine is not the answer. Many of the homeless don’t take their meds (or complete the meds course) unless supervised. It’s one reason we have them to thank for drug-resistant strains of TB.