If OBAMA Was A LIBERAL We'd Have A Better Bill

Here is a refresher in case you forgot their past campaign positions.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjA6eJ3R-UQ>


Candidate Obama was against mandates before Pres. Obama demanded them for us all. If Obama was a liberal he would have embraced mandates from the beginning, understanding that they go with the public option, which is the only way to offer choice to people while cutting costs. He didn't.


If Harry Reid was a liberal we'd have a better bill, because he wouldn't have played Let's Make a Deal host, with the biggest winner the insurance companies.


If Speaker Pelosi was a liberal she wouldn't have invited religious leaders into the room to craft language that takes rights away from women we won through the law decades ago.

Liberals wouldn't let something like this happen either:


... We're not changing our health-care system very much at all, in fact. Nothing happens in 2010. Or in 2011. Or in 2012. In 2014, when the bill really begins, the insurance situations of 18 million people change. A full 16 million of those people are uninsured. Aside from the small sliver of people who will pay a surtax on the final few dollars of uncommonly expensive insurance plans, the country simply will not notice this legislation.....


If Democrats today were like liberals of the 1960s, some Christmas gift deadline would matter less than getting legislation that offered choice to people, didn't hold them hostage to an insurance monopoly, protected women's rights that have already been enshrined in law, didn't tax the middle class, or penalize people and enforce by fiat mandatory rules to buy insurance inside a fixed market, wouldn't strap elderly and sick in a rigged system, all on the altar of getting it done before church bells ring on Christmas Eve.


If the Democratic majority was liberal, all of the above would be unnecessary, because the conference committee would be real instead of some (likely) arbitrary Senate rubber stamp.


If Russ Feingold was a liberal he wouldn't have waited until now to blame Obama for not backing the public option; but he'd also not have voted against women's preventative health measures.


If Barbara Boxer was a liberal she would have said no to compromises that offer less to women than are already in the law. Ms. Boxer, who said she'd never heard of the largest nurse's union in the U.S., when appearing on "Countdown" last night, if she was a liberal, would likely know their name.


If Tom Harkin was a liberal he wouldn't be trying to sell the Senate legislation that forces people into health care insurance that doesn't guarantee quality health care.


If Democrats in Congress were liberals, we'd at least have a front loaded bill that gave people goodies so they'd bond to the legislation.


If the progressive caucus, wherever they are hiding their spines, were liberals instead, maybe they would have drawn a line in the sand on principle instead of praying to the Let's Go Incremental gods while accepting "progress" in the name of capitulation.


And no liberal would ever believe that something as important as reforming health care has this chance and this chance only to make it happen. Now or never is a rallying cry for losers who don't have the breath for the long haul.


If we had more liberals in Congress, instead of blathering about perfection being the enemy of the good, we'd have heard a rallying cry that mediocre is the enemy of effective. The death knell of solutions at a time when action is required to save this country and its middle class from economic catastrophe at the hands of people who support a corpocracy over our democratic republic.


If we had liberals in the Congress, we wouldn't be levying a middle class tax for health care most families can't afford.


...and on that note, liberals wouldn't lie outright and say we were going to insure another 30 million people, when many of these people will likely have to pay the IRS penalty instead of buying the insurance, because the reason they don't have insurance in the first place is because THEY CAN'T AFFORD IT.


If we had a liberal in the White House who understood the middle class at all, maybe we wouldn't be giving the insurance companies a guaranteed new group of customers without any choice at all.


If we had a liberal Congress, they would surely know that once the insurance monopolies have their new Fish Meet Barrel customers there really is no incentive for them to do anything for them.


Honestly, if we had this bunch of legislators in the Senate during the 1960s, JFK's call to go to the Moon would have landed us in the middle of the Atlantic, falling well short of his vision.


You can't shoot for greatness if you won't use all of your powers.


You can't be a senator or representative and do your job for people in the Legislative Branch if you're more interested in saving the person in the Executive Branch, putting political party over what's right for We the People.


But if you're going to insist on a selling out to corporate interests and the insurance monopoly, like what Pres. Obama and the Democrats are doing on health care (just like what happened with big banks), the least you could do is give up the goodies to the people from the get go.


It's always better to give someone a kiss first.


Dumb and Dumber had nothing on this bunch.


<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/if-obama-was-a-liberal-we_b_401407.html>

K & R

could have turned Liberman into a unicorn. He could have zapped Nelson with his magic wand and turned him into a newt. Plus he would have zapped all the Republicans and turned them into Democrats. Boy if only he was a magical liberal.

:fistbump:

in a new era of HOPE & CHANGE through his election. Magic he brought, he brought with him the good old magic dipsy-doodle campaign promises trick, ' now you see it, now you don't '. Where did it go?

instead all he got was a bunch of people sitting on the sidelines complaining.

that hurts working families.

with the loss of his chairmanships, and complete non-support for any further office, as well as refusing to back ANY bill submitted by Lieberman on any subject for any purpose.

Lieberman COULD be made irrelevant, if people had the will to make it so.

Politics is the use of the carrot and the stick, but we've only been using the fucking carrots. It's time somebody got the stick. Maybe, if Reid stuck it to ONE, the others would fall into line.

It's not magic. It's not even rocket science. It's politics - a lost art to the Democrats.

would just switch parties???? Give me a break. The truth is, unless the dems can get another senator elected, lieberman has them by the nads. Yet, all I see on DU on a daily basis is how, "progressives" are going to sit out elections. WRONG ANSWER.

It would still leave the repugs well short of a majority, and he would be no more of a spoiler as a republican than he is now as an 'independent'.

When dealing with partisan politics it is usually to your advantage to know exactly who is on the other side - we CAN'T continue to pretend that Lieberman is caucusing with the Dems, when he is voting with the Repugs on EVERY issue.

Fuck him. Cut him loose and let him sink. Give his chairmanships to Dems who deserve them.

and the GOP blocks every future bill with filibusters. Not a good idea.


maybe you need to worry more about your "fucking carrots" and more about realistic assessments of the situationl.

That's why dwelling on trying to determine a representative's ideological perspective sometimes misses the point; people set aside and compromise their values and beliefs in order to fulfill an institutional role ... and really, since the system by and large churns out like-minded types, indoctrinated into perceiving reality through a very specific lens, most, by the time they'd want to begin a career in these fields/social systems already hold to a mentality that of course favors the system's chief aims and interests, which is profits over people, but since we supposedly have a 'rep democracy,' are forced to be mired in all of this newspeak/doubletalk as to whose interests are being served first and foremost.

difference in what is reality and feasible between the two.

How can you sit there and APOLOGIZE for him?

Even if he did "promise," I'm not naive to enough to believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny either. :patriot:

wealthy elite.

This will never change.

party will never occur w/o change.

It's obvious the future of our country is liberal with the huge numbers of young people mainly going lib, but too many people here want it to be all liberal all the time starting 20 years ago. Change will come but it takes a long-ass time.

.... less sell-outs vis a vis what's considered the 'normal,' daily round of life. Without as many kissing ass to jump through hoops and climb ladders, there'll be a greater, sustained opposition to corporate rule.

It won't be the first time we've been betrayed by a once liberal generations.

We need to fight for our ideals here and now and not wait for some pie in the sky flood of new liberals to come along.

and force people to acknowledge that many things they take for granted were the result of the left pushing this government hard.

Then contrast that with policies of the moderates and conservatives.... we win hands down, a fact they can deny, but a fact catches up with deniers so its a bigger gamble for them.

have to force that liberalism in essentially unconstitutional ways as babyBush did, OR his demands would be in the bill and the bill would be stalled in the Senate forever, kind of like HillaryCare.

I don't like this bill anymore than anyone else, but to hold Obama responsible for the mis-deeds of BlueDog dems at this point in the process is foolishiness, imo.

Your position has been the Democratic Party's main staple diet for years on end which has allowed Republicans to continue framing Democrats as weak.

the party should do something to clean the BlueDogs out, but how? I don't know. I know that I'm pissed as hell that I voted for a Dem Rep and he's voted Republican on every issue. I think the Blue Dogs need to be scatted out of the way and the DNC and Dem committees need some tighter controls over whom they support. Won't happen, but I'd sure like to see it. BTW, the Dem was voted in by folks like me that just didn't want a Repub. He cleverly never actually had a stance on much.

Reid used every vote that exists at this time.

Oh, that's right - there WASN'T any filibuster.

and force a series of procedural votes in order to slow down the health care bill. I did not realize that the 60 40 vote meant that Republicans support the health care bill 100%. They opposed it so Democrats would not know that they really support it. Clever strategy.

If Americans were liberal, we wouldn't need a bill.