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Posted at 06:01 PM in House and Home, J in Balto | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I...And back to our other big story: Who is killing healthcare reform?
Or rather, who isn't?
As entertaining as the spate of dramatic back-and-forth has been in the blogosphere the past few days, this latest version of "activist vs. pragmatist" going around misses a fairly obvious point: none of the people labeled either have any real influence over whether or not a healthcare reform bill passes the Senate.
And while there's a valuable discussion to be had in whether one should like the reform bill, or not like it enough to rather do nothing... that's not all that crucial either. Like it or not, there will be a bill, or there won't be. No one outside the Senate saying "Kill the Bill" is stopping anything. And no one trying to shout down the "Kill the Bill" types is any more of an authority, either.
And yes, that includes Howard Dean.
Posted at 12:48 AM in anger, Health, Issues, Money, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The observation I made the other day - that the Democratic Party has become the party of college educated professionals - got me some fresh attention, and some interesting feedback. I'm going to stick with discussing this for a bit, because the more I started looking at this, and talking about it, the more essential I think it is to understanding where we are in today's politics, and why, in many ways, the next couple of elections may be crucial moments in a new realignment of political interests.
First, I'm grateful to Susie Madrak for linking to the post and getting some interesting feedback. If you're not reading Susie regularly, I recommend it.
Tina, a commenter over there, objected to my suggestion that there was "an educated elite" unable to relate to the working class:
I take exception to the idea that a person with a College Education is automatically elite. Pres. Obama, like myself, was the child of a single parent home, had to work and win scholarships to achieve his degree. To say he doesn’t know what it means to struggle financially, that he doesn’t understand bread and butter issues is simply false. I grew up in a working class family, but have achieved financial stability. I remember, all too clearly, the struggle and empathize with the working classes. This very ability to remember and empathize is what makes a person “leftward” leaning. Calling myself and the millions of people out there like me and Pres. Obama elite and therefore unable to connect with workign classes, is simplistic and just plain wrong.
I also, much to my own surprise, got a response from Charles Lemos over at MyDD, whose piece I had quoted in putting mine together.
On Obama not being working-class. Perhaps not. But Michelle Robinson Obama most certainly is despite her Princeton and Harvard degrees. It is not one's education that matters but one's values. I've got Stanford degrees and still think myself working-class in terms of my politics.
I also suspect that the Obama coalition of 2008 is untenable for Democrats in the long-term. I think it a serious mistake for the party to eschew the Jacksonian wing of the party. Problem is that there is an increasing cultural divide that the GOP has exploited to their advantage. I simply don't believe that the being the party of an "educated, upper middle class elite" holds much political promise if the poor are abandoned wholesale.
Both of these comments - and specifically, the passages I highlighted in bold - point to, I think, both why there's been such a shift among the college educated voting demographic, and why that shift needs to be called out, identified and discussed. And the thing is, I think calling this out is key to energizing the left-side discussion of what we stand for, why we stand for it, and what we hope to accomplish. Without that examination, I think, we will invite a dangerous myopia - one that I think many well-meaning, educated Democrats don't see: that all the empathy, identification and concern in the world does not make you working class, however much one might see otherwise.
Posted at 01:34 PM in 2010 elections, 2012 elections, Inequality, Money, Politics | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
It's unpleasant to watch something die.
For months, I've held back writing about healthcare "reform" - at least, that's what those crazy kids in DC call it, these days - as much as possible because I felt, in my gut, that the likelihood of actually getting a bill was debatable at best. Thus, a great deal of time, energy and writing being expended on discussing bill particulars (remember when we were all anxiously awaiting the word from the Senate Finance Committee? Fun!) which in the end mattered little or not at all.
In a flurry of late developments yesterday, my stance became, fairly obviously, smarter than I could have guessed: when Rahm Emanuel walked into Harry Reid's office (allegedly, if you like) and said "cut a deal", what basically happened is that healthcare reform died. What we're watching now - the roiling about finding a workable deal, the finger pointing and wails of unacceptability - are the death throes of reform. It's already dead... but not everyone knows how to recognize that.
I don't care who's to blame. To me, virtually everyone who weighed in on the creation of this bill - from the craven interests in the health care industries, to the politically motivated Democrats who pushed slogans over substance, to the "progressive activists" who fetishized a "public option" over other, necessary reforms - all deserve admonishment. Everyone failed here; and few, if any, contributed the kind of substance required to make real progress (though, all of that said, one will have to ask at some point how what happened in the past year constituted "leadership" by the White House).
Since 1994, there's been an unfair and dangerous retelling of the history of our last effort at major health reform: it's the familiar story of how Hillary Clinton, in secret, formed an Executive Committee to foist massive changes in healthcare, which was promptly rejected by the public and by Congress. Out of that failure came the lesson that drove many liberals and progressives in this year's reform attempt: just don't do it the way they did before.
Well... that worked out swell.
There are two key misunderstandings of the Clinton healthcare efforts that have to be sorted out: the first is that you can't have a "reform" absent a clear definition of the problem; and second, that you can't run a successful reform process out of the public eye, or with a process that favors political gains over sensible, necessary policies.
Until we understand both these lessons, we can't have reform in healthcare. It's that simple... and that complex.
Posted at 04:23 PM in 2010 elections, 2012 elections, anger, Health, Issues, Money, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I've been wanting to acknowledge something from comments a few days back - Valhalla, one of a few visitors who's been kind enough to drop a comment here or there, pointed out on my healthcare post (where I mentioned blogs I read):
Give Corrente a spin, please. Lots of info, reporting on activism (esp. single-payer), and connecting the political issues involved in the health care debates with other current politcal issues.
I wanted to bring that forward, because I do read Correntewire (as does J in B), and I've greatly appreciated that blog (especially Lambert) offering supportive links and blog mentions... and I haven't had a chance to say it. The things is, I don't think of Corrente as a "health blog" per se, and I think it's important to make the distinction: there are places to get some important info on the shape of our healthcare crisis... and then there's places like Corrente, which do a brilliant job of breaking down the problems, specifically, within our lefty politics.
And I bring all of this up, because I've found Lambert's connecting of dots, around the realities of corporate interests, the media elite and the Democratic establishment, to be a good tonic for the "how did this happen?" kind of logic that's cropped up in the first year of the Obama Administration.
It's well past the time, I think, to admit that clearly we have not gotten what we needed from the Obama folks, a reality that I agree should have been apparent during the election cycle. People who seem surprised or disillusioned, now, are really very late; what has happened - on the economy, in terms of financial "reform", and surely in the healthcare debacle - were all in the cards well before we came down to Obama vs. McCain (a choice which, I'll say again, left only Obama as any kind of option for any sensible lefty).
This week has seen a, well, confluence, of events that point to the deepening disillusionment: whether it's the sinking poll numbers on Obama approval (a trend that seems all too real and clear, despite any number of denialists), or the incredibly dense tempest-in-a-teapot debate that's developed over an otherwise unremarkable piece from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone this week pointing to Obama's economic team as major-bank-connected-and-driven apologists... the sense that Democrats are in a problematic place and sinking can't be ignored or wished away.
But at the same time... there are no accidents: we're here for a number of reasons, not least of which is a reality that many observers, not to mention many ordinary Democrats seem to continue to deny: that the Democrats have become the majority of the educated, upper middle class elite. And what follows from that reality is, well, everything we've gotten from the Obama Administration - a concern for proposals and positions which benefit the Democrats true base, and pay lip service to traditional Democratic ideals.
Posted at 10:27 PM in 2008 Elections, 2010 elections, 2012 elections, Current Affairs, Inequality, Issues, Politics, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Yesterday wound up being a ten hour workday at Starbucks, mostly because of weather and unpredictability; it's odd, when you consider Westchester a part of New York City's environs, to realize that when you get 60 miles north of the city, the weather changes almost completely.
Thus a fairly rainy day in the City became an icy treacherous mess for northern Westchester, shutting most major highways, and even key connecting routes: unlike many suburbs, Westchester is not - by design - heavy with major roads, and thus traveling between towns, especially east-west, is accomplished on what can often seem like winding back country roads... except for the gated million dollar homes off of them.
Starbucks has a toehold in many of the towns of Central Westchester - more along the Harlem line than the Hudson, for those familiar with Metro North - and it's been a pretty successful strategy. Near, or even in, the train station hubs along the route, we get both commuters and the families who stay closer to home and visit the village hub to shop and, in the old fashioned sense, be neighborly.
So yesterday, while all around us was chaos, there was an odd, cheery welcoming feel to the workplace. Stranded travelers came in to wait out the storm, share stories and compare notes on the roads. Regulars hung out, some longer than usual, rather than brave the cold rain and icy sidewalks. But things were slow enough that we could operate on a bare bones staff, and accomplish some key tasks.
I mention this because it was odd to feel safe yet disconnected, unconcerned and yet worried, ultimately, about how I would get home. Everything we heard came through a filter - we saw no car accidents, witnessed no hours-long traffic tie-ups - but it felt very real and immediate. And thinking about it once I did get home - when the temperature rose and the rain was just rain - I realized it was nice to have a port in a storm. And to provide one, for others.
Posted at 10:32 AM in Work and Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Gay weboy doth not live by disco alone...
Posted at 12:08 AM in Gay stuff, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
If there's something to be said about Tiger Woods - and count me among those who think most of what's happened speaks for itself just fine without my help - perhaps the most indicative of the moment we're in is how reaction to his troubles is a reminder of the conservative crackup, particularly when it comes to the "values agenda."
For a long time, conservative moralism was one of the right's most successful weapons; agree or disagree with their "traditional morals" viewpoint, one had to admit that complaints of loose morality, enshrinement of poor values, and our general cultural interest in salaciousness did make a point, one that was hard to beat back.
And it's not, as some suggest, simply the steady drumbeat of conservative mess-ups that has undermined the morality play as much as the fact that the shattering of conservative unity has revealed that on the right, as much or more than on the left, there's no firm agreement on just what the "morals" are supposed to be, or when "bad morals" utterly disqualify someone from any defense of decency.
That muddle has been especially true in the days since Tiger Woods crashed his car outside his house, and a world of sneak around infidelities has been revealed. The question isn't who's trying to excuse Woods' behavior - since almost no one is trying to call it acceptable or okay - but the struggle to explain exactly what's wrong, and why, and what it's supposed to mean in a cultural context. And it's telling, I think, that just as no one wants to defend what Woods has done, over the years, few seem to be able to explain exactly why these public revelations should have an impact on his career in golf.
And the dirtiest secret on the morality front is... that's probably because they won't, or shouldn't.
Posted at 05:05 AM in celebrities, Nightlife | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 05:05 PM in flowers and gardens, J in Balto | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
..and aim for the New Moon in a Minute:
I have my issues with Funny or Die, but that's comedy these days - a lot of dopey (even offensive) stuff, and occasional laugh out loud moments. This really is New Moon in a nutshell.
Posted at 01:31 PM in Film, Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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