C&L: Frank Confronts Woman With Obama as Hitler Picture at Town Hall: On What Planet Do You Spend Most of Your Time?This quote from Rahm Emanuel is, I believe, the starkest admission yet from the White House that liberals may have been right to warn that Republicans had no intention of reaching any kind of genuine compromise with Dems on health care reform:
“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
This could — could — be a turning point in the debate. Up until now, the White House had been content to let its outside allies make this case while maintaining the posture that President Obama still held out hope for bipartisan agreement.
Indeed, liberals will respond by saying, “no kidding.” They’ve been arguing that the GOP leadership’s only goal was to kill health care reform at all costs since Jim DeMint said health care failure would be Obama’s “Waterloo.”
That said, it’s too early to conclude that the White House is now serious about going it alone. It could just be a tough-talking bluff at a time when more liberal opinionmakers are questioning whether Obama and Dem leaders are getting rolled because they’re refusing to acknowledge the ever-more-obvious reality about the Republican opposition’s intentions.
But such a stark assertion, coming from one of the President’s most important advisers, seems significant: It’s tantamount to saying outright that bipartisanship is dead. After all, if the White House believes that GOP leaders have made a strategic decision that icing health care reform is their primary goal, why continue striving for bipartisan compromise? It’ll be interesting to see where this goes from here. Driving the day, as they say…
By Heather Wednesday Aug 19, 2009 6:00amDon't ever ask Barney Frank a question if you don't want to know exactly how he feels about something. From Larry King Live, Frank is asked by a woman waving an Obama as Hitler picture at a town hall meeting why he is supporting his "Nazi policy" on health care. Frank didn't mince any words in responding.
Frank: When you ask me that question I'm going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?
[....]
You want me to answer the question? Yes. As you stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
Larry asks Howard Dean what he thinks about what he just watched. As Dean points out, this has nothing to do with health care reform and "this kind of anger politics has been going on for thirty years".
- from the Ballon Juice comments:
El Cid
You gotta love the complaint later on that Frank is insulting people. Someone stands up with a picture of Obama as Hitler and basically suggests that Democratic attempts to control the growth of health care costs means a Nazi Final Solution in which you murder the socially undesirable, and this in front of a real Congressman, not your “Red Dawn” movie poster, and you’re not supposed to be mocked for it. Right.
Demo Woman
The Today Show aired the part where Barney said “What planet are you from”. No mention of Obama as Hitler photo. This segment was before the discussion on whether or not Michelle Obama should wear shorts in 100 degree weather. Showing great restraint, I did not break the TV.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., dates his concerns about health care back to 1964, when he first moved to West Virginia as a VISTA volunteer.
"The town of Emmons was a place where nobody had health care. No one could get dental care. A doctor had never been in Emmons," Rockefeller said during a telephone interview on Thursday. "And many people are scared of hospitals."
Today, Rockefeller is an outspoken political leader seeking to create a public health plan and cut the profits made by private insurance companies.
"To me, there is nothing that ultimately makes more difference to Americans than health care.
"People often talk about 45 million uninsured Americans, but rarely mention the 25 million Americans who are underinsured."
Rockefeller estimates at least 100 million Americans face major problems paying for health care today.
"We can't count on insurance companies. They are just maximizing their profits. They are sticking it to consumers.
"I am all for letting insurance companies compete. But I want them to compete in a system that offers real health-care insurance. I call it a public plan," Rockefeller said.
Earlier this month, Rockefeller introduced the Consumers Health Care Act that would give all consumers the option to participate in a government-run plan competing with private plans.
Government-backed programs are big enough to bring medical costs down, Rockefeller believes.
"Back in 1993, all our Veterans Administration hospitals got together and agreed to buy prescription drugs as a group. The next week, the costs of those drugs went down by 50 percent.
"Today, the insurance industry runs this whole deal, spending $1.4 million every day to fight health-insurance reform. The government has a lot of power to lower prices," Rockefeller said.
Rockefeller also raised these issues during his Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday.
"I think the anger against insurance companies is going to spread," Rockefeller said Thursday. "But a public plan, run by the government, will make sure doctors get paid, hospitals get paid and people get good health care.
"Today, an extra 15 percent, 20 percent or 25 percent [of health-care costs] goes to pay private insurance companies. In a public plan, you just pay for what you get. There are no marketers, no people shuffling paper, no one making television ads."
On Thursday, Rockefeller admitted he expects little bipartisan support.
"There is a very small chance any Republicans will vote for this health-care plan. They were against Medicare and Medicaid [created in the 1960s]. They voted against children's health insurance.
"We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys versus the bad guys. I know it is not political for me to say that," Rockefeller added.
"But do you want to be non-partisan and get nothing? Or do you want to be partisan and end up with a good health- care plan? That is the choice."
Benen: TIPPING POINT....
By all appearances, Democrats have gone above and beyond in trying to secure at least some Republican support for health care reform. GOP leaders have gotten a lot of face time at the White House. Dems have signaled a willingness to make all kinds of concessions. When Republicans insisted the majority slow down, the process slowed to a crawl. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in late July, "Working with the Republicans, one of the things that they asked for was to have more time. I don't think it's unreasonable."This week, however, we seem to have reached the tipping point. A variety of party leaders explained that Dems could drop the public option altogether, and it wouldn't make any difference. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who's become increasingly belligerent about the very idea of reform, said he's prepared to vote against his own compromise bill. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) announced that Republicans will reject reform no matter what's in the bill.
By late yesterday, it seems Democratic leaders had seen enough.
Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority's cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.
Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans' purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month's Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.
"The Republican leadership," Mr. Emanuel said, "has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama's health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day."
That is painfully, obviously true. Negotiating health care reform with politicians who oppose health care reform doesn't make sense. Negotiating reform with politicians who've vowed to vote against reform under any circumstances is insane.
At this point, keep two angles in mind. First, should Dems follow through and go it alone, watch to see who gets blamed. I think the majority has a very compelling case: "We tried in good faith, to reach out and compromise, but the 'party of no' slapped away our outstretched hand." They'll be able to point to this week -- Grassely, Kyl, and the GOP reaction to scrapping the public option -- as the point at which bipartisan reform died.
Second, going for an all-Democratic bill won't necessarily make reform easy. Easier, sure, but not easy. In the House, there are a whole lot of Blue Dogs who, as you may recall, were ready to kill reform in July. In the Senate, there's a core group of about seven center-right Dems who support reform in theory, but have balked at many of the key provisions, including a public option.
That said, giving up on Republican outreach gives Democrats a historic opportunity to finally get the job done.
- Aravosis: Somebody at the White House needs to be fired
Apparently, the health care reform issue has caught the White House by surprise. They had no idea that folks on the left cared about the public option, they're now telling the Washington Post.
What?
They had no idea, they say, that it was a make or break issue for people.
Again, what?
That is either a lie, or the president is being staffed by idiots.
How many times do we have to tell people in the White House that their lack of outreach to Democrats is going to bite them in the ass?
Read this in today's Washington Post, about the uproar over Obama caving on the public option:"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."
"The left of the left." That would be people like me, a former Republican, Markos, former military and a former Republican, and Arianna, a former Republican. Yes, we're such wacky tree-hugging liberals, all of us. That would be all of you who read the progressive blogs. And all of you who are members of unions like the AFL and SEIU. And all of you who belong to MoveOn, or who are members of any of the myriad non-profits around town who are working on the health care reform issue. All of you, to this White House, are "the left of the left." The crazies. The wacko fringe. But next election, Barack Obama will be happy to take your money and your votes, just like he did last time for promises that not are now too wacky to keep.
"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."
Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president's sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.
"It took on a life of its own," he said.
You don't hear similar criticism coming out of the White House about the crazy teabaggers shutting down the town hall meetings and accusing Obama of being a socialist, and Hitler. You don't hear senior White House officials calling them the right of the right, or questioning their dedication to the cause. No, they're patriotic Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, White House officials tell the press. And Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who's been running around the country telling people that Barack Obama plans to put millions of elderly to death - never a bad word from the White House about him either. The only people that Barack Obama's White House feels comfortable deriding and dismissing in the media are the people who put him into office in the first place. Democrats.
Yes, the same way the smartest people in the world over at the White House were mystified that a simple issue like comparing gay marriage to incest and pedophilia would cause an outright rupture with the gay community, after we warned them for months, publicly and privately, that there would be such a rupture, here we go again with the surprise over the rupture over health care reform. No one could have seen it coming. Right.
And, a senior Obama aide has the gall to suggest that "we're forgetting why we are in this"? Et tu, Brute? You people have forgotten why you were elected in the first place. You've forgotten promise after promise that your boss made to community after community on the left. And now you have the nerve to criticize us for trying to hold you accountable for your growing string of broken promises after we busted our asses getting your boss elected.
President Obama's White House simply doesn't care about having a real relationship with actual Democrats. They don't like anyone they can't control. They don't like non-profit advocacy groups, and have been actively working to defund them (just as they did with the 527 during the campaign), and they don't like the blogosphere, so during the campaign they instead created their own blogosphere.
Yes, yes, they send us emails and do call to check in from time to time. And we appreciate that. But there is no effort made to include the blogosphere in any kind of larger strategy on issues ranging from the stimulus to health care reform. As a reader of ours noted a few months back: Can you imagine the Republicans pushing their top agenda items and not asking talk radio and FOX News to help them out?
And all that leads to a situation where a key component of the health care plan, that even Joe and I (who are hardly experts on health care reform) knew months ago was going to cause an uproar among Demorats if it wasn't included, gets dropped by Obama, causes an uproar, and senior White House aides talk about how they never saw it coming.
Can you say "Heck of a job, Brownie"?
And then, in classic Obama White House style, when you get upset about President Obama backing off a major campaign promise, you're the bad guy for expecting Barack Obama to keep his word and do the thing he promised he'd do in exchange for your vote.
To some degree, it's understandable that senior Obama advisers are giving quotes like this to the Washington Post because you'd have to be seriously out of touch, and a bit of an idiot politically, to have gotten an overwhelmingly popular president, with control of both houses of Congress, into this mess in the first place.
How many times do we have to have the same blow ups with Barack Obama's people, for the same reasons, before someone in the White House realizes that they have a serious problem on their hands? Is this what the next four years are going to be like?
As recently as June, the public support for a public option as part of health care reform seemed very strong. An NYT poll found 72% of Americans -- including 50% of Republicans -- favoring such a plan. An NBC/WSJ poll found 76% of Americans believing that it's important to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance."Over the last two months, right-wing attacks have changed the landscape considerably. A new NBC poll shows support for a public option falling behind opposition for the first time.
In the poll, 43 percent say they favor a public option, versus 47 percent who oppose it. That's a shift from last month's NBC/Journal poll, when 46 percent said they backed it and 44 percent were opposed.
There is, however, a catch -- NBC changed the wording of the question. Respondents were asked, "Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?" Opponents outnumbered supporters.
In June, the same poll asked, "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance -- extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?" In this case, 76% thought it was important to give people a choice.
The wording, then, makes all the difference. A Quinnipiac poll from two weeks ago asked, "Do you support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans?" A 62% majority supported the public option. An NYT poll from late July asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?" A 66% majority approved.
It's probably safe to assume the conservative attacks on reform have had an effect, and support for a public option has fallen in recent months. But I suspect we'll hear a lot of talk today about the NBC poll, with most of the commentary concluding that the public has soured on the idea. It's not quite that simple.
DemfromCT (Daily Kos): NBC poll: Health Care In The Spotlight, Republicans Not Trusted At All
The new NBC poll (MoE +/-3.5) takes a close look at health care. From First Read:
...according to a brand-new NBC News poll, 47% of Americans -- a plurality -- oppose the public plan, versus 43% who support it. That's a shift from last month's NBC/WSJ poll, when 46% said they backed it and 44% were opposed.
In a follow-up question explaining the benefits and disadvantages associated with a public plan, 45% said they agreed with the description -- by supporters -- that it would help lower health-care costs and provide coverage for uninsured Americans.
But 48% sided with opponents who say a public option would reduce access to their choice of doctors, and would lower costs by limiting medical treatment options.
And from MSNBC, more specifics suggesting stability amid uncertainty:
A plurality believes Obama’s health plan would worsen the quality of health care, a result that is virtually unchanged from last month’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. What’s more, only four in 10 approve of the president’s handling of the issue, which also is unchanged from July.
And a majority — 54 percent — is more concerned that the government will go too far in reforming the nation’s health care system, while 41 percent is more worried that the reform will not do enough to lower costs and cover the uninsured.
But amid the soft numbers for Obama, (51% job approval, 41% approval on health care) are these startling numbers:
But if the country is cautious about Obama’s health plans, it doesn’t seem to trust the Republican Party at all on the subject. Just 21 percent approve of the GOP’s handling of health care, versus 62 percent who disapprove.
Many of the doubts about the WH plan have to do with misinformation and mistaken ideas.
Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants; would lead to a government takeover of the health system; and would use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions — all claims that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue about the legislation that has emerged so far from Congress.
Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.
That also is untrue: The provision in the House legislation that critics have seized on — raising the specter of "death panels" or euthanasia — would simply allow Medicare to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, if the patient wishes. [see Daily Kos Research 2000 poll on these issues]
There's little in the poll to contradict this conclusion: Substantive Health Reform Still Can Persuade The Public (link). It'll take a concerted presentation of accurate information to persuade the persuadables. But don't count health reform out yet.
Still, the country appears to be receptive to some type of health care reform. A combined 60 percent of respondents say the system needs either a "complete overhaul" or "major reform." (Yet that combination has declined 10 points since April, and the percentage wanting a "complete overhaul" has dropped 12 points since that time.)
That's all the wiggle room the WH needs.
As an aside, HCAN takes issue with the poll's wording on public option (removing "choice" from the question after the June poll.) In this post, we looked at July and August where the wording is the same. More here with a comment by the pollsters:
NBC pollsters Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R) released the following statement: "The only agenda that we have is to accurately measure changes in public opinion. To that end, we selected two questions which we think are the best barometers of how and if attitudes on health care are changing in view of the robust public debate that is occurring."
More numbers (July numbers in parentheses), MoE +/- 3.5:
Obama job approval 51 (53)
Obama on health care 41 (41)
Complete overhaul/major reform 60 (70)
Obama's plan good idea 36 (36)
Obama's plan bad idea 42 (42)
Plan will make yours worse 40 (39)
Plan will make yours better 24 (21)
Favor public health plan 43 (46)
Oppose public health plan 47 (44)Has what you have seen, read, or heard about these town hall meeting protests made you more favorable toward, less favorable toward, or made no difference in your feelings about President Obama's health care plan?
More favorable 16
Less favorable 19
Made no difference 62
Not sure 3
- Steve Benen adds:
It's hard to overstate how difficult, if not impossible, it is to have a meaningful national policy discussion when one side launches an aggressive misinformation campaign, and the public struggles to separate fact from fiction.
In this case, 55% believe illegal immigrants will get coverage; 54% believe there will be a "government takeover" of the health care system; 50% expect to see taxpayer-financed abortions, and 45% believe reform will "allow government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly."
That last one is especially jarring. If the poll is accurate, nearly half the country seriously believes government officials seek the authority to pull the plug on grandma. That's insane, and it points to a political discourse that's badly broken.
But more than anything, it creates an enormous incentive to lie, blatantly and repeatedly, to the public. There are no real penalties, and the number of Americans who'll believe nonsense skews the debate in the liars' direction.
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