Well, it's a race again: Polls have Obama ahead in Iowa, Hillary Clinton is in second, and Edwards is within striking distance. Heretofore, my own preferences have run toward Edwards and Obama. But now I'm starting to take another look at Hillary.
Don't move. Sit down. Hear me out.
See, for me, the most important issue isn't the war. Truth be told, I think all Democrats want the damn thing over with. Hell, most Republicans probably wish the whole nightmare had never begun. Rudy is the exception; he's the war-war guy.
Ah, but health care...
I've been reading (okay, listening to) Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal. His argument in favor of a single-payer system -- socialized insurance, not socialized medicine -- is compelling. Of course, nobody except Kucinich talks about about single-payer, because such an outcome is politically impossible.
I know that this worthy goal may not seem politically impossible to those dwelling within the progressive ghetto -- the fantasists who genuinely believe that large majorities favor the impeachment of Dick and Dubya -- but Krugman explains why the situation is the way it is.
(Oh, go ahead. Accuse me of being a reactionary because I listen to Paul Krugman. If anyone does that -- and someone will -- the progressive movement really has gone totally fucking nuts.)
He also argues that we can't let the best be the enemy of the good. The health care plans offered by by all three leading candidates are indeed quite good, even if they allow an unneeded and inefficient health insurance industry to linger on, albeit in modified and regulated form. Krugman believes that any plan which allows private insurance to compete with the government will eventually lead to a situation in which the private system withers away. The insect will continue to suck blood from the body politic, not forever, but for a time.
Fine by me. If, as conservatives argue, the profit motive always promotes better service at lower price, why not test that proposition in open contest? FDR vs Ayn Rand: May the best health care provider win.
My bottom line: After reading/hearing Krugman, and after glancing over what Ezra Klein has to say (here and here), I think Hillary is better than Obama on this issue.
Edwards is better still. Obama's plan is not truly universal.
And yet...many would argue that Obama stands the best chance of winning in the general. And yet...one should not overlook the fact that -- despite what the progressive fantasists will tell you -- Hillary actually has the most consistently liberal voting record overall.
Decisions, decisions...!
Unrelated note: We've had some rather astonishing revelations concerning the Great Coke Jet Mystery, which this blog has followed closely. I should have had an update this morning, but the material is dense and my life is a bit hectic right now. Very soon.
8 comments:
So far, this post has received but one comment, which I rejected. And guess what? It was the SIBPATS (Standard Issue Both-Parties-Are-The-Same) speech!
What really freaks me out is that every time someone gives the SIBPATS speech, the person who thinks that he is going to educate me (snicker!) genuinely seems to believe three things:
1. That I have never heard SIBPATS before, even though I first rejected it something like thirty years ago.
2. That I have never brought up SIBPATS in these pages before, even though anyone who comes here regularly knows that it's one of my bugaboos.
3. That SIBPATS cynicism will somehow accomplish something, even though the only "real world" accomplishment the SIBPATSers have on their resume is the election of Bush in 2000, which they brought about by supporting Nader.
The first point is the one that gets to me. SIBATSers really seem to think that the millionth time they deliver the message is actually the first time. In this, they are like fundamentalist Christians.
Every single time fundies have ever tried to "witness" to me, they have acted as though I've never before heard the doctrine of justification by faith. They really think that they are telling me something new, something that is just gonna blow my mind.
And they get REALLY pissed off when I finish their sentences.
Why doesn't it ever occur to these people to think: "Hey, maybe he's HEARD this rap before?"
As I've instructed you folks before: If you want to hit me over the head with a bag of cliches, try putting it in the form of haiku. Or an iambic pentameter couplet. An acrostic. Anything. Just freshen it up a bit, y'know?
Nobody considered the quirky insider caucuses of Iowa very important until the candidacy of Jimmy Carter made it a springboard for his election. Back in '88, the eventual nominee and presidential winner for the GOP, Bush the wiser, came in THIRD in Iowa (behind neighbor farming state Kansas' Bob Dole, and PAT ROBERTSON).
These days, even the New Hampshire primary is no necessary win to achieve the nomination and eventually win the presidency (the Comeback Kid, Bill Clinton, 'won' NH by coming in second, and iirc, McCain won in NH in '00, but failed to win the nomination).
As for a health care position being critical enough to base ones support on as a single issue, I don't see it that way. I am suspicious of single issue voters anyway, and given that any reform would be better than what we have, and any of the Democratic nominee hopefuls' plans are all good and within a slight margin of each other, this simply cannot be a reason to vote for one or another of them.
About the only issue big enough for a single issue vote would be the war, or more generally, international relations overall. That's why the only candidates I've supported with a cash donation are Kucinich and Ron Paul. (I like Howard Dean's approach as DNC head, and so I've donated there as well).
....sofla
Let me see if I can disagree without raising the SIBPATS issue. I have heard Krugman and read Ezra Klein on this subject but am unconvinced. Certainly any attempt to improve the health care system that's worth the time to discuss will incur the well-funded wrath of the insurance companies, health care profiteers and others who benefit from the status quo. Throwing a sop to the insurance industry will hardly be sufficient to prevent them from spending billions to defeat a plan.
Since we can count on the "free-market" forces to fight tooth and nail against any rational reform, why not go for the gold? The problem Senator Clinton encountered in 1992 was largely due to the Clinton's inability to rally the progressive wing of the party, labor and minority groups to fight for the Clinton health plan. Part of the reason was that the plan itself was unnecessarily complex and it was difficult to determine how it might affect ordinary citizen's health care problems.
A single-payer system is very simple. Everything is covered for everyone every time. That could go a long way toward making the politically impossible possible.
Well, there're a couple of possibilities if you wish to examine your notion about private companies fading against government competition. Since I have a college-age child, the tuition loan industry sprang to mind immediately. Second, not to belabor the obvious, socialized medicine is already in place for part of the population - how do private companies do in those demographics (I'm referring to medicare/medicaid and to a lesser degree VA beneficiaries).
My reservation would be that when in power the republicans would stack the deck in favor of the private companies such that gains made under the goverment programs would be forced back, and the success would be leashed in. This has been certainly the case with the college loan programs in recent years.
Joe, I don't trust Hillary Clinton on healthcare. I think Edwards had a great point when he noted that, during a time when Democrats ran the show under Bill Clinton and this issue was proposed, it failed. Why is that?
However, that's not really the big issue with me for her. While you claim the war isn't the most important for you, when it comes to both Edwards and Clinton, it is for me as they are both lawyers. I'm a lawyer myself, as I've noted here before. Neither have the excuse of ignorance here. They know what is in Article VI, Clause 2 of our Constitution. They know that the UN General charter is a treaty that has been both signed and ratified and, when it comes to wars of aggression, doesn't run counter to our Constitution. Thus, when they gave into political pressure at the time to give a vote of confidence to allow Bush to launch a war if he felt it was necesary, which everyone knew he was going to do, they tacitly went along with a violation of law. I don't hold them responsible for the war. Nor am I naive enough to buy any of the hype that they will continue things exactly the same as Bush. But, I resent the fact that they, as leaders, refused to take the right and principled stand which would have put them on the right side of the law. Edwards has at least apologised for supposedly being hoodwinked. Clinton hasn't. Obama has been against it from the getgo.
In that regard, when it comes to the mess we are in right now, I'm leaning towards Obama because, aside from having been on the right side of the issue, he's put a heavy emphasis on dialog while also not going the extreme route of claiming he's afraid of comitting to confrontation if necesary. That, coupled with the fact that I think he's a much better speaker than Clinton, in addition to his voting record, is probably while I'll end up voting for him in the primary unless there's some big changes before that day.
At the same time, I'm not afraid of voting for Clinton either. I really don't want to see her there, largely because she rubs me as the most obvious opportunist that is about self-preservation, particularly when it comes to foolish positions where she grandstands about irrelevant issues like sex in videogames which runs counter to the first amendment, the war, and the hawkishness that won't take a nuclear option off the table. I find it a bit offensive. But, whatever. If she's the choice in the end, I'll vote for her. Once she's there in office, I think a lot of the tough talk will disappear and she will be fine for undoing a number of the damaging laws Bush has put into place, while also working to strengthen the American dollar. But, as it stands, every current Democratic candidate will do that. So, in the primary, she won't be getting my vote.
BTW, in reading your comment on SIBPATS, while this led you to insulting me before, I hope we can respectfully disagree here and you will at least listen to me.
I'm one of those people who voted for Nader in 2000. In the end, it didn't really matter as Gore won my state anyways, but the Green party got enough of a percentage of the vote to have greater influence in the game later. I didn't vote for Nader because I thought Gore was exactly the same as Bush. I voted for Nader because he had adopted policies, which I was used to being long standing Democratic issues, which Gore had walked away from.
In the end, had Gore not walked from those issues, he would have secured the votes from a number of people like me. I'm a person who feels a candidate has to earn my vote. If enough of their policies bother me, I won't vote for them. It would be no different this time around. However, as a direct result of Nader in 2000, even if a number of the Democratic candidates aren't exactly what I want them to be, they hit on enough of the important issues for me that they have earned my vote. I think it is important for fellow Democrats to stop demonizing Nader voters from the 2000 election, and recognize that a lot of us voted for Nader, not because were naive enough to think that both Democrats and Republicans were the same, but because Gore, in an effort to distance himself from what he thought was the damaging Clinton scandals, took on policy positions that we just couldn't get behind. In the end, that's not our fault. It's Gore's. Thus, it is very unfair to blame us for the election of Bush when that example in history really falls on Al Gore.
Hillary is the most-like FDR presidential contender the Democratic Party has had since 1944, and her very long political career is not unlike FDR's had been before he ran for the presidency -- if you allow that her opportunities were somewhat culturally bridled. Actually the parallels are eerie as well as coincidental. I don't mean to say that Hillary is another FDR, I only mean what I said. Plus, I love Hillary, and FDR wasn't around for me.
I like Edwards but I don't want him when we can have Hillary. I wish Edwards would stop giving his stump SIBPATS speech because he's not a progressive purist. He's morphed his "two-kinds-of-America-but-it-doesn't-have-to-be-that-way" speech into his new "one-kind-of-broken-government-controlled-by-corporate-lobbyists-that-won't-get-fixed-if-you-exchange-a-corporate-Republican-government-with-a-corporate-Democratic-government", hint-hint.
Obama? I know times are different, but the South still has not forgiven the Democrats for LBJ's betrayal of their virulent states' rights bigotries, and they haven't voted for a Democrat since 1964, except for two favorite sons, Carter (only oncet, and Clinton only sort of, he didn't carry the South in 1992, I think only AK and TN, the candidates' states); so it's hard to imagine that Obama can be elected. His youth? JFK was younger, JFK gave speeches about eliminating nuclear weapons, not about using them "... where even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth".
It's gonna be really bad and really really tedious if the Democratic candidate has to waste campaign time, exposure, and advertising on micro-explaining (the inevitable and near) universal health care. Krugman must be the guy who explains it to the candidate and advises the way to stump it: just call it 'universal health care -- it means everyone has the same care, everyone, without exception', and if Tim Russert demands an explanation, he should be told to fuck off, go work for Fox News, and apologize for leading us into war 5 years ago.
The primaries are very important -- they select the voting delegates, usually according to the results but sometimes as winner-take-all; and they determine (1) who will continue to get campaign contributions, (2) how the DNC will allocate the money pot, and (3) how the MSM with pundit garnishes will interpret the newest polls with regard to hindsight, the present, and the future. The unquestionable importance is that the ballot threshold has been crossed, and the voters get to vote. Voters take them seriously in their own states, more than anyone else.
keep in mind that Rupert Murdock and executives at theFox News corporation are big contributers to the Clinton campaign. The last amount I read was about a total of $120,000.
I guess if your a supporter of Fox news and Murdock then Hillary is probably your democratic candidate. If anyone thinks this info is bogus then just google it and you'll find some articles about the subject.
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