Of Course I'm Right!
Who would you rather have as the next president?
Like many other Democrats I am looking at the two main candidates, Senator Bernie Sanders and Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and I am very close to making a decision on who to support. I am very interested in hearing what friends have to say about who they think wold make the better president.
Who would make the better president?
Total Voters: 17
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President Obama bet the farm on health care reform, then did nearly nothing to help its passage, and got what he deserved. Of course, we deserve better. We deserved a decent health care bill in the Senate that wasn’t held hostage by Senator Nelson. We deserved something that improved the circumstances of a good chunk of 45 million Americans, just as many are put at risk because of lack of health care, thanks to 10% unemployment. Here’s a little math: 10% of 320 million people that live in the U.S. = 32 million people right there.
Shame on Democrats for not getting a bill through. Great shame on them.
Now we have nothing. If the situation remains as is, if we get nothing by the election, then no party is going to touch this issue with a 10 foot pole for our lifetimes. How good that must be for insurance companies! If we get nothing, our elected officials deserve less. I say THROW THE BUMS OUT, ALL OF THEM, Republicans AND Democrats.
Including President Obama.
CNN reports today that Senator Max Baucus has been targeted in an ad campaign over his current health care proposal. As I live abroad it is hard for me to express strong feelings over the current debate, other than to say that the fastest way to hand Congress to the Republicans is for Democrats to kill health care reform. We can argue over the wisdom of Obama putting this issue front and center, but now that it is, he and the Congress have to deliver or there will be very serious consequences next Fall. In fact, it would be a repeat of 1994, only here the consequences would be worse. Back in 1994 President Clinton didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Senator Dole took advantage of that fact.
Open, honest debate is good. It should be something that everyone allows for, and it was something that Republicans have traditionally suppressed. However, that debate needs to be respectful, with a recognition that there are many sides to this very complicated issue. Having seen several national health care systems up close and personal, I’ll just point out that each has its problems. You cannot have both universal healthcare and the choice of every healthcare option for everyone. The numbers just won’t add up. I’ll also mention that in America the argument is not between the government choosing and consumers choosing, but rather between government-regulated insurance choosing and insurance companies choosing. Consumers already have very few choices, and 46 million people have none.
In general it is considered to be in extremely poor taste to talk about the politics of other peoples’ suffering, especially while they are suffering. And so I will do so. This week both the Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to make hay of the trek of, and losses by many thousands of people fleeing New Orleans, again. The Republicans are in interesting position. On the one hand they can’t be seen as making hay, and so they have postponed the beginning of their national convention. Moreover, if things go wrong, like they did with Katrina, it will leave a clear impression that they cannot govern. And so things won’t go that wrong. This is also the perfect opportunity to keep President Bush and Vice President away. They’re already wildly unpopular, but it is a very difficult thing to not have the elected heads of the party speak. Gustav provided the perfect excuse.
The Democrats have fewer options. The best they can do is stay quiet, because anything else will seem like making hay. They can also hope for the storm to dissipate quickly without much damage, as can we all. Aside from the human relief that would bring, the Republicans would have lost the spotlight to a non-event. Sadly that seems unlikely.
And so in this case human suffering will serve Republicans – to a point.