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You can buy the stories.
Or you can consider that the stories are being shilled by a mix of cooperative media serving the health insurance industry and dupes who just stenographically pass this health care company asymmetric media warfare propaganda along.
On Friday, after Politico's Mike Allen shilled a story for the insurance industry, Nancy Pelosi was forced to come out and debunk it. And Sunday night, after reports that Obama was settling for the trigger while Harry Reid was going for a state opt-out plan for a robust public option, the White house issued a statement that it was "absolutely false" that Obama and Reid aren't on the same page.
If you conclude the latter, that the media is shilling for the health care industry, then figure there are democrats in congress and the White House enabling these stories. My first pick for such an enabler is Rahm Emanuel, who played a major role in putting the blue dogs into the congress in the first place. Repeatedly, Emanuel intervened in Democratic primaries, giving huge funding to bluedogs so they could defeat viable progressives.
But Emanuel wasn't alone. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton often played a role in the senate, bringing weaker, more malleable right-leaning moderates, by backing and funding them to oppose solid progressives.. Still, there are only three Democratic senators preventing a filibuster-proof senate case for the public option.
So, is Obama shooting for the trigger? I don't think so. If he came out for the trigger, it would make him a one term president. He will lose the liberals, lose the progressives, ie., the people who got out and knocked on doors for him.
Now Obama may settle for the trigger, but this is the same old good cop bad cop game that Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer and company have played before. Obama will be the good guy and these repeat offenders who have enabled bluedogs will try to get their media buddies to sell the narrative that only a threshold will pass.
Now, let's be clear about the threshold. It's a total sell-out to insurance companies, a complete fraud. If the Democrats simply go with a threshold, that can't even be invoked until after 2013, they will have totally betrayed the people who voted for them.
I say vote against any legislator who allows the threshold to pass. That's right. It is so bad, every legislator should filibuster and oppose it. Now, will the more left leaning senators-- Sanders, Franken, Leahy, Feingold, Brown-- stand up to Obama's bad cops? Even Arlen Specter may determine through polling that it gives him an edge in the tough election he faces.
It will be tough. By standing up to the can't do Democrats, they will be characterized as socialists and extremists who don't play ball. But if they don't have the courage to filibuster the "threshold," they will fail the Democrats. It tooko liberals and progressives to give the Democrats the Whitehouse, the House and the Senate. It will take lefties to save the Dems from themselves. If the threshold passes, Obama will be gone in 2013. Reid will probably be gone and certainly Rahm Emanuel will be gone.
If the progressives in the senate stand up and fight, and force the three DINOs to stand down from enabling a right wing filibuster, the Democrats will have a solid shot at continuing to hold their power bases. If they hold, and they do the job of bringing about serious reform, then they will have defeated the defeatists, the, as Spiro Agnew once described, "nattering nabobs of negativism" who were working for the insurance industry.
The Democratic party's goal should be to eliminate the insurance industry-- to wipe it out and kill it--
A Time To Kill the Killers.
Single Payer universal health care is the system that the US needs and deserves. Compare the trigger to the bank and financial industry bailout, where the congress gave hundreds of billions of dollars, and the Fed gave trillions, without caveats or terms. Legislating for a trigger to kick in is a total, TOTAL sellout. Olympia Snowe is working for the health insurers as are all the legislators opposing serious health reform legislation.
If health reform legislation does not at least start taking the insurance companies down a few pegs, with a solid public option, it will be clear that the Democrats sold out. If you think about it, all it will take are a few Democrats in the senate, or the progressive caucus acting from their strength in the house to tell the Democratic cowards and corporate sellouts that they can not sell out America AND the Democratic party. When the dust settles, if any Dem senators fail to prevent the filibuster and allow an up or down vote, every one of them should be targeted for primary opposition with major funding from the Democratic party. It's that simple. If they don't help pass the most important legislation in decades, they are not Democrats. They should lose their committees and if they chose, let them go to the republicans if need be. It won't affect committee slots. And clearly, they will have failed the ultimate test.
Meanwhile, be very skeptical of all the media reports that the trigger is inevitable. The insurance companies have been beating that malodorous drum for months. They want you to believe it. They want you to think it is inevitable, the best we can get. It's a lie.
