12/16: A Divided Left

As Greg Sargent and Steve Benen have both observed, the liberal blogosophere is currently embroiled in a debate between the "activists" (who generally oppose the Senate health care bill) and the "wonks" (who generally support the bill). Now, it's important not to overstate the distinction between these two groups, since many of the activists are well-versed in the policy details and many of the wonks are cognizant of the political considerations. But it's fair to say that the bloggers who focus more on political organizing (such as Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas) are lining up against the bill, while the policy-oriented bloggers (such as Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias) are supporting it. The former group sees the bill as a massive giveaway to "poorly regulated, massive, for-profit health insurance corporations," while the latter group sees the bill as "the most important social policy achievement since the Great Society." It remains to be seen which group will win the day...

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Benen, BooMan, Bink, Bowers, Black, Coates, Fang) are disgusted but not surprised that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) apparently decided to reverse his position on the Medicare buy-in provision after witnessing "the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals."
• Conservative bloggers (Morrissey, Mirengoff, Malkin) are buzzing about Michael Goldfarb's claim that "the [WH] is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list" if Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) filibusters the health care reform bill. Meanwhile, righty bloggers (Perrin, Allahpundit) are excited that some of their lefty counterparts are now opposed to the bill.
• Conservative bloggers (Erickson, Lopez, Lowry, Geraghty, O'Connell) are excited about the new Rasmussen poll showing ex-FL House Speaker Marco Rubio tied with FL Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP SEN primary. Allahpundit predicts that Crist will soon "switch to the Democrats a la [PA SEN Arlen] Specter."
• RedState editor Erick Erickson declares that IL SEN candidate Mark Kirk (R) "is not a conservative" and urges his readers "to take one more look at Patrick Hughes before getting into bed with a man they all admit will knife them in the chest with a smile once he gets to D.C."
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Johnson, Rubin) are criticizing the Obama admin.'s decision to transfer a limited number of Guantanamo detainees to an empty "supermax" facility in IL. On the left side of the blogosphere, Glenn Greenwald thinks it's a purely cosmetic gesture, since the detainees "[will] have exactly the same rights -- or lack thereof -- as they have now at Guantanamo."

HEALTH CARE REFORM: A Bridge Too Far

Now that the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions are gone, liberal bloggers are pouring criticism on the Senate health care bill:

• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "I can't imagine a worse development than mandating private insurance alone and calling that reform; what a political and PR nightmare."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "The bill does nothing to curb costs, allows insurance companies to place caps on payments, bans drug re-importation, does nothing to foster competition. Basically, unless I am missing something, this is basically the gift of 30 million or more customers at the cost of, well, very little. Maybe Dean is right."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Progressives keep seeing provisions they support removed from the health care bill. Yet, the drug industry's deal remains intact. So, consumers get screwed again as a big industry with money and lobbying clout wins. That's not exactly change."
• digby: "What this huge electoral mandate and congressional majority have gotten us, then, is basically a deal with the insurance industry to accept 30 million coerced customers in exchange for ending their practice of failing to cover their customers when they get sick --- unless they go beyond a 'reasonable cap,' of course."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "[I]f this passes and Republicans start working their toxic magic (with of course little or no organized effort by Dems to counter their lies and sell it to the public) I expect this will be as unppular as [George W.] Bush's bailout of the big financial firms, which the Republicans have largely engineered the public into thinking was Obama's, just as they did with the Bush deficits. So I think that when all these factors come into play for the next election, passing this will turn out to be suicide for the Democrats who hold office."
• BooMan: "I think the current Senate bill is the political equivalent of self-injury. People will hate being mandated to buy insurance from for-profit corporations that have an anti-trust exemption. If you want to give people something really worthwhile and get absolutely no credit for it (actually, be hated for it) then the Senate bill is a good way to go."

HEALTH CARE REFORM II: Kill It And Start Over

Several liberal bloggers are going beyond merely criticizing the Senate bill; they're actively opposing it:

• Firedoglake's Hamsher: "From what we know about the bill, it is worse than passing nothing. [...] If I wanted Joe Lieberman writing a health care bill, I would've voted for John McCain. Howard Dean is right. Kill LieberCare."
• Firedoglake's Jon Walker: "Without the public option (or similar powerful tools to guarantee access to decent affordable insurance) passing a bill with any type of an individual mandate would be a moral and political tragedy for Democrats. Progressives should fight with any means available to stop Democrats from imposing a private tax that would use the IRS to steal huge amounts of money from the pockets of hard working middle class Americans, and force them to hand it over to poorly regulated, massive, for-profit health insurance corporations in exchange for near-worthless junk insurance."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "If you don't want Democrats to ever keep their promises, if you want Barack Obama to sell out your constituency from the git-go and undercut your effort to hold him to his promises every step of the way, then please do heartily endorse this health care reform 'compromise.' I'm sure the bill helps some small fraction of Americans somewhere, maybe. But I know that it's going to screw my people when our issue comes up for a vote, and it'll screw yours too."
• Open Left's Mike Lux: "I understand all the reasons the White House and [Senate Maj. Leader] Harry Reid don't want to go to reconciliation at this late date, and have been inclined to support them on that up until now. But at this point I think House progressives simply need to say hell no to this deal. If Lieberman was willing to negotiate at all, I would be inclined to try to negotiate in good faith, but with him saying taking it or leave it, I say progressives should leave it."

Daily Kos' Moulitsas opposes the bill unless the mandate is removed: "My take is that it's unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly status. [...] It would effectively be a tax -- and a huge one -- paid directly to a private industry. [...] Strip out the mandate, and the rest of the bill is palatable. It's not reform, but it's progress in the right direction. And you can still go back and tinker with it at a later time."

HEALTH CARE REFORM III: If Not Now, When?

Other liberal bloggers argue that the bill is worth supporting despite its flaws:

• The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "On its own terms, the bill is the most important social policy achievement since the Great Society. It will save a lot of lives and prevent a lot of suffering. But moving forward, it also makes future improvements and expansions easier. A lot of the hard work of health-care reform -- in particular, the money for subsidies -- will finish this year. If reformers want to come back for the public option or more subsidies in a future year, they won't be doing it atop a $900 billion price tag that's being battered by tea parties and industry and everyone else. This bill doesn't have all the good stuff it should have, but reformers can stand atop what good stuff it does have and focus their energies on what good stuff is left to achieve."
• Think Progress' Yglesias: "The tax increases in the bill fall overwhelmingly on richer-than-average people and it also includes important reforms to the delivery system, promising ideas to reduce the growth in health care costs, curbs overpayments to Medicare Advantage, etc. Personally, I'd be happier with Swedish health care or what have you. But politics is about real impacts on the lives of real people, and measures that make things better are very good measures."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "I think the Senate bill in its present state is well worth passing. [...] If you don't like the Senate bill, fine. Don't support it. But in what universe will healthcare reform get revived anytime soon if it dies this year? 2010? With the legislative plate already jammed, healthcare reform probably polling in the mid 30s, and midterms coming up? 2011? After Republicans have gained a bunch of seats in both the House and Senate thanks to public disgust with Democratic disarray? 2012? A presidential election year? 2013? 2014? [...] If healthcare reform dies this year, it dies for a good long time."

Open Left's Chris Bowers dislikes the bill but discourages progressives from trying to kill it: "Despite the bill's unpopularity, Democrats don't get to escape from it if they defeat it now. There is historical precedent for this: an unpopular health care reform didn't pass in 1994, and that defeat did not save Democrats at the ballot box that year. Quite the opposite, really. [...] The primary rank and file is behind this bill. As such, if Progressive / progressive candidates break with the rank and file of the party on this, it will make our efforts to help those candidates win primary challenges much, much harder. [...] Finally, I don't even think we can defeat this bill. And, after apparently losing the public option fight, I am not particularly eager to immediately turn around and lose another health care fight."

Bowers continues: "I don't intend to help this bill pass. If progressives get backstabbed by Lieberman and then ordered to cave at the finish line, then as far as I am concerned the White House has made its own bed with this. They can try and pass the bill, but they are going to have to do it on their own. I'm not helping. [...] I am also not going to begrudge any progressive organization that works against this bill. Nor will I begrudge any member of Congress who is a co-sponsor of HR 676 and who votes against this bill. The last thing I am going to do is join in with the browbeating of Progressives. Again, if the White House wants Progressive votes and progressive support, then they have to do it on their own."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Was The Public Option Campaign A Success?

Yglesias:

"Probably not that many people feel this way this morning, but I think part of what we're seeing at the moment is that the organizing campaign around the public option has been an enormous success that did a lot to improve health care policy. [...M]y gut tells me that 'centrist' Senators weren't going to vote for health reform until they extracted a pound of flesh and did something to make progressives squeal. Initially I think people thought the center was semi-corruptly aiming for a substantive payoff, which is why the public option was quickly neutered to become the industry-friendly 'level-playing field' public option. Then they thought the center was maybe suffering electoral fear, so we got the various permutations of opt-in and opt-out. But even though an opt-in, level-playing field public option would do no real harm to the insurance industry, even that wasn't good enough. They wanted to win. And so they have.

But had the left taken the advice of the wonks and surrendered earlier -- in particular, had Harry Reid not included a public option in his merged version of the health care bill -- then I think Lieberman et. al. might well have dreamed up something else to oppose. As it stands, the level-playing field public option took a bullet for the team. And consequently, millions of currently uninsured Americans are closer than ever to having insurance and the rest of us are closer than ever to having a sense of security that if our own insurance goes away we won’t be left high and dry."

LEST WE FORGET: Captain Blackbeard's College Of Piracy -- Ye Olde Course Catalogue, Spring '10

McSweeney's contributor Christopher Robinson:

• ECON 212: Fluctuations in the Buillon market
• ENGL 442: Post-structuralist Decay and the Hermeneutics of Land-lubbing
• ENGL 515: Lawless Scallywags and Counter-hegemonic Narratives
• LING 224: Sign and signifier: Chomsky on Arrrrr
• LING 310: Semiotics of the Jolly Roger
• MED 458: Extemporaneous Prosthetics: Pegs and Hooks
• SOC 212: All Hands on Deck: a Marxist Approach to Piracy and Leadership
• SOC 469: Captain Jack and Captain Jim: Heteronormativity and the Modern Pirate