After Ripping Clinton And McCain, Obama Embraces Their Policies

After Ripping Clinton And McCain, Obama Embraces Their Policies

In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, President Barack Obama challenged his critics to identify any "gap" between what he campaigned on last year and the health care legislation Congress is on the verge of passing.

Critics, however, do have a few of his campaign pledges to point to. Most notably, Obama launched high-profile attacks against two of his campaign opponents for taking policy positions that are now reflected in the final Senate bill.

Obama made health care in general a major part of his campaign so that when he won, he could claim a mandate and push for reform during his first year.

In doing so, Obama savaged his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, for arguing that people should be mandated to buy health insurance.

"If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house," he said on a CNN morning show on Super Tuesday during the election. "The reason they don't have a house is they don't have the money. So our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident that if people have a chance to buy high quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. And that's what our plan does, and nobody disputes that."

Obama ripped into his general election opponent, John McCain, for supporting a tax on private insurance, blanketing swing states with mailers and ads saying that McCain was raising taxes and that his plan would lead employers to drop coverage.

"He gives you a tax credit with one hand -- but he raises your taxes with the other," Obama said at the time. "Many employers will drop their healthcare plans altogether."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/after-ripping-clinton-and_n_401270.html

Its the best way to pander to the most people. He is a politician. Not the Messiah.

Their end goal is to be elected and stay elected, and normally they pursue policies (or promise them) that appeal to 51+% of the voting population. But at the end of the day, it isn't important (to their end goal) of what they accomplish (or don't).

All that matters is how the population percieves what they accomplish and promise to in the future.

They lost, get over it.

I'm not an elected official.

People need to stop believing that posting on the internet is the same as governing and enacting policy.

You were against mandates before you were for them.

I could not care less about mandates. Bring down the cost and I don't care. The significant majority of Americans, including me, have or want health care coverage.

You want to have a hissy fit about mandates, go right ahead.

K&R

:kick:

those policies would most likely not be included in the health care plan.

Old hat.

Both were worse choices. Both lost. Time to forget and deal with the current situation.

If the same energies were injected into ensuring Democratic voting Democrats were selected to Congress than in running down the President, the US may move forward.

1) Congress put mandates in their plans - in the case of the Finance committee, it was at the recommendation of people including Verizon's CEO. Ivan Seidenberg, who was then heading the Business Roundtable. This recommendation with their firm support for the plan was very important. The fact is that many people said in 2008 that mandates could not pass Congress, with this new support of mandates, the reality changed.

The fact is that the people most angry here with mandates oddly enough were big Hillary and Edwards fans - who argued in 2008 that without mandates, a plan was not universal.

2) As to the tax on insurance plans, McCain's tax started at the first dollar, the Senate plan starts at $23,000. What that means is that someone with a MUCH better than average plan, gets $23,000 of it tax free. As the average plan is about $10,000 less than that, this is a PROGRESSIVE tax. The fact is that when introduced with a $25,000 threshold, the right spoke of union's and their plans. The fact is that none of the media found any that would be affected. So, they referenced plans around $21,000 and spoke of how over time if they increased, they would be taxed. To me this seems like the estate tax, where we were told of the poor family farms. No one ever found one affected. The people affected were people who died leaving large multimillion dollar estates.

Have a firm grasp on the lives of ordinary working Americans.

I actually thing that Seidenberg likely does. Unlike most CEOs, he started as a non-management employee at New York Telephone. His reputation at AT&T at an earlier part of his career was that he listened to and was very nice to people far below him in the organization.

But, that is NOT what I said. What I said was that one key group at the table, big companies which pay much of a very large proportion of people's insurance agreed strongly with the concept of a mandate. That had an impact on a very large number of Senators. Not because they were bought, but because the message was that without a mandate the costs for people with insurance could rise so quickly that some companies could no longer afford to offer insurance.

Note that I did NOT say that I was for or against a mandate - the fact is that I like Kerry's 2006 plan spoken of at a Faneuil Hall speech. He proposed NOT having a mandate at the beginning, but moving to it when the costs were driven down.

..oddly enough were big Hillary and Edwards fans - who argued in 2008 that without mandates, a plan was not universal."

I am sure that you can provide solid proof to back up this accusation, right?

To prove it would require a massive effort - examining the current threads, extracting the most common names and then using the search feature to get who they supported in 2008 and whether they wrote about mandates from 2007 to 2008. The fact is that even if I did this a serious study spending hours on both of these pieces and then wrote it up, many would simply point to one user for whom that were not true and think that disproved it. Even if conclusively winning a DU argument on this were worth it - which it isn't - I do not have the hours to spend as I am preparing for a flight.

I do have a reasonably good memory and there are an awful lot of people I knew as Edwards supporters on this thread - and they did repeat his accusations in 2007 and 2008.

:shrug:

So he signed off on mandates? Where is this published?

Did I get that right?

Pretty much capture the daily mud-slinging on DU?

...and it's believeable
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/