Will Obamacare Destroy the Democrats?

Maybe u prefer the Communist Party?

I think both parties sucks, but the Democrats are a tad more reasonable much of the time.

What do U prefer, instead of them, Ed?

Civility and honest debate

I prefer public servants, who put their constituents ahead of their personal gain. I don't see a whole lot of that from either side.

both parties need a major wake up call

and a third party wouldn't go a miss

The reason a third party fails is usually because of two things: 1. The most popular of their ideas get adopted by one or both major parties. 2. Defining specifics within the new movement reveals that the members do not have enough in common to work together.

Recommended link: Robert Reich: The Final Health Care Vote and What it Really Means

Reich offers a balanced take on what it all means. "Don't believe anyone" who says the health care bill marks a return to the Great Society and the New Deal, he writes. "Obama's legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon." But it does mark a sharp and important break with an era dominated by "the increasingly obsolete Reagan view that we don't need a strong and competent government."

Screw you you communist.

The local news just now cast the health care bill in the most negative light possible, while trying to appear neutral. What can ya expect from a state that elects Perry and Bush for governor.

What? Obama is giving us all free tickets to the Bunny Ranch?

Amazing the spin that can be put upon a supposedly factual news article. I see some on the same topic using words like 'historic' and 'acheivement'. Both are accurate, of course, but the exact opposite spin.

I'm going to go see what nimh linked us to.

Jonathan Cohn has another good take here:

Truman. Johnson. Obama.

Substantively, it doesn't actually make a very different point from Robert Reich's in its realistic outline of pluses and minuses in the bill; it's sober in its acknowledgement on the many counts on which it falls short of the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid tradition. However, as the headline suggests, it comes at the situation with more of a sense of fulfillment, and more optimism about the place that ObamaCare will eventually gain in that list.

The sense of satisfaction is well deserved too, considering the Herculean job Cohn has played, throughout the long slog of establishing this legislation, as the single most persistent and wonky of health care bloggers. When the left was panicking or deriding the bill as one big corporate giveaway, he kept pointing out the specifics of the legislation and exactly how it would be an improvement on the status quo; when conservatives and Republicans were taunting about how the bill was dead and buried, he kept identifying the underlying political fundamentals that made passage more likely than not.

Right now the Democrats are enjoying a sense of solidarity, and Obama has shown he can flex some political muscle and deliver on a major campaign promise to improve the health care system. Those are no small gains.

The Republicans better stop counting their chickens and start offering people something more than carping and obstructionism. They shouldn't count on the public to recoil in horror over attempts to improve the health care system because I don't think that's going to happen. If the Republicans want to win in November, they better start displaying some real leadership and offering some concrete alternatives. Most people want the partisan bickering to be toned down, and they want to see Washington actually accomplishing something. The Republicans aren't offering very much on either score.

I think the health care push was poorly timed, and the vitriolic nature of the debate was too intense and dragged on too long. Obama just learned that he is not a post-partisan President, he can't rely on getting Republicans to cooperate or even accept compromise, although I do admire the efforts he made in that direction. But at least he now has his own party more solidly behind him, he has accomplished a major victory, and he can, and should, now turn his focus squarely on the economy, because that is the issue most directly worrying and affecting most Americans.

The Democrats now have to sell this new legislation as health insurance reform rather than health care reform, and the language they are already using reflects that shift. They want this bill to be seen as increasing consumer protection, and in many ways it does do that. If people can be made to see an immediate benefit to the legislation, and many should be able to do that, the Democrats should not be ravaged at the polls in November. If Obamacare becomes synonymous with consumer protection, rather than encroaching socialism, the Democrats will win this fight because they will be able to connect with the average person. The Republicans will come off as seeming indifferent, or callous, or too protective of the interests of insurance companies. It depends on how both political parties play this out in the coming months.

Obama inherited an economic mess. His job, and the job of the Democratic party, is to convince voters that they have a better conception of how to turn things around, and that the economic fixes already undertaken are starting to pay off. November is still months away. If the unemployment situation improves, or the housing market picks up, that will certainly give them a tailwind. At this point, most voters just want to know that economic relief is on the way. If it seems to be happening before election day, the Democrats will score points. If it doesn't happen, people will take out their anger at the ballot box.

I have a novel idea, why don't we take some of that money from the wars we are supposedly not fighting. Blows my mind that when congress was spending trillions of dollars on wars that we should not be fighting, no one cared that it was pushing us into a deeper debt situation. Now that "some" of the congress is trying to actually help americans the same congress is now worried about being able to pay for this.

Its a question of SOME limit on funds available from American citizens.

I don 't see much point in continuing those wars.
I supported going there to overthrow Saddam.
I think that he is ALREADY overthrown ENUF..



WELCOME to the forum, American.





David

I agree completely with you, ignorant american. Why is Obama sending our boys to die in wars which we cannot win and have little to do with our daily lives. The President has had enough time to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. There should be no American troops in either of those countries. I knew Bush was a war-monger but no I am beginning to wonder about President Obama.

I agree with that, except and UNLESS
our military presence is necessary to safeguard the security
of American access to oil. I don 't know whether that is the case.
We got oil OK before we overthrew Saddam.





David

For the sake of this Constitutional Republic... I truly hope Obama destroys liberal democrats.

Om Sig David--I was only attempting to be ironic. I feel that our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is necessary. The repeated attempts( some of them, unfortunately, successful, as in the frightful train bombings in Spain and England by the Moslem extremists, and in the destruction of the Cole( I am sure I need not mention 9/11) of the radical fringe of Moslems to kill people in the West must be met head on.

However, I find it amusing that thefar left( like Move on.org or Michael Moore or The Huffington Post, do not exoriate President Obama as they denigrated President Bush for putting more American troops in harm's way.

Hypocrisy???