Month: August 2009

Article Of Faith

by digby

Harold Pollack has written a thoughtful response (much more thoughtful that she deserves) to Sarah Palin’s claim that health care reform would result in the euthanizing of baby Trig. But Pollack attributes the talking points for this trope to Betsy McCaughey’s op-ed piece, which may be true for policy and political elites, most certainly isn’t for social conservatives likie Palin. As I wrote earlier, health reform resulting in euthanasia is is a strong article of faith among the right to life movement and has been for many years.

This isn’t the most important thing in the world, and Pollack’s article focuses on the role of Ezekial Emmanuel, which is directly related to McCaughey’s piece (and whose work is being misconstrued and used to spam blogs.) But I continue to find it a bit surprising that people didn’t see this particular line of attack coming since it’s been out there for so long — and we just endured the Schiavo circus a few short years ago.

This stuff is so fully absorbed into the psyche’s of the social conservatives that all you have to do is whisper the word “euthanasia” Manchurain Candidate-style to activate the freakshow. Op-eds in the Washington Post are for the villagers, not the folks.

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Scary Times

by tristero

Sara Robinson, on Dave Neiwert’s blog, has an important post (the first of a series) about whether the term “fascist” applies to the escalation in disruptive, even violent behavior from the right now that we see open encouragement of that behavior even by the more “moderate” national leaders of the GOP and corporate interests.

The pessimistic conclusion of Robinson’s analysis strikes me as overly dependent upon a “clockwork” notion of history. I don’t think human events and politics works like that; yes, there are rough patterns, but there is also a lot more contingency than most schematics I’ve encountered appear to take into account. That said, what Sara writes is deeply troubling and I don’t think she’s wrong: far from it.

Here is the main point, but you really must read the whole thing.:

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips’ Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas — the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer — being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We’ve seen Armey’s own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process — and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We’ve seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to “a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress.”

This is the sign we [scholarly experts who track the growth of fascism] were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won’t do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It’s also our very last chance to stop it.

She promises that in a future post, she will describe how we can pull back from this awful brink. Can’t wait.

I Know You Are But What Am I: Part 2,778

by digby

Lou Dobbs today:

“President Obama will take full responsibility for what happens here. You heard his voice in Virginia. This is a — I mean, he’s fanning the flames of a mob. He’s not a president trying to bring some sort of sensibility and order to a public debate.”

I know. This kind of full-on psychotic projection is disorienting and weird. I’ve never been very good a dealing with this particular wingnut tactic and I don’t think anyone is.

But Lou’s just one of many. These people now fully believe that they are being victimized by violence.Here’s how it works:

According to a Fox News report, White House officials yesterday promised skittish Democratic Senators preparing to go back home to face their angry constituents that the Democratic Party and its “allies” (read labor unions, AARP and big business interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries) would “respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising.”

Hysterical comments from other top Democratic Leaders yesterday gave the distinct impression of politicians becoming unhinged in the face of serious criticism and resistance from the American people over Washington’s plans for health legislation. White House talking points being regurgitated by Democrats across the country accuse ObamaCare critics of engaging in and sanctioning “mob tactics.” ObamaCare supporters have even pulled out of mothballs the favorite epitaph used by Soviet officials to demonize critics of the Soviet regime—“hooligans.”

Contrary to all logic and empirical evidence—the clear indication of a propaganda machine in full spin mode—the White House accuses grass roots organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks of being corporate stooges when in fact it is the White House and congressional Democrats that are cozying up to big corporate interests, including the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. All of the big corporate money is being spent to convince the American people to support some version of national healthcare, not defeat it. For example, Harry and Louise are back on the air, still being paid for by the insurance industry but now supporting legislation that would put healthcare under the control of the federal government and its agents.

But logic and reason don’t count for much when politicians have the fear of God thrown into them by angry constituents. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada went so far as to accuse protesters at town hall meetings of trying to “sabotage the democratic process.” “Democracy” in Senator Reid’s book, it appears, consists of voting every two years and keeping your mouth shut in between.

If citizens protest what their Representatives and Senators are up to, they get stigmatized as “hooligans.” The White House has even asked its supporters to be on the lookout for “fishy” statements about ObamaCare and to submit them to a White House watch list at Flag@WhiteHouse.gov.

Late last night reports also began to leak out that Democratic dirty-tricks operatives in districts where emotions are running the highest are actively using black-op tactics to provoke incidents in which protestors clash with police and other officials, which would provide ObamaCare supporters under the most pressure a pretext for cancelling all town hall meetings in the name of pubic safety and security.

So, the White House counterattack has begun. Critics of ObamaCare are about to experience first hand what happens when the Neighborhood-Organizer-in-Chief has at his disposal the full propaganda apparatus and police machinery of big government.

From the email traffic circulating among the many grass-roots activists it is apparent that Saul Alinsky’s classic manual Rules for Radicals is enjoying a revival. Anti-big-government activists also would be well advised to re-read their Mahatma Gandhi. This battle is just beginning, and the power elite will pull out all the stops to win it. It will require cool heads, stout hearts, courage and perspicacity to stand down the continuing big-government takeover of America.

Very soon another generation is going to learn the lessons that previous generations learned when they did what needed to be done to win freedom from overbearing government acting immorally and illegally with the threat of violence under the color of law:

“Get your hand on the freedom plow . . .

Don’t take nothing for your journey now

Keep your eyes on the prize . . . hold on!”

I don’t even know where to start. I’m stuck on the idea that the insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce want a government takeover of health care and that the Democrats are creating a mob scene so they will have to cancel all their events.

It’s like listening to Sarah Palin, which I find akin to listening to a pre-verbal toddler just before they get the hang of the real thing. They’ve got all the expression down, the lilt, the emphasis and the cadence and if you didn’t know better you might think they were speaking a foreign tongue. There are even a few phrases and ideas in there that are true enough to have you trying to piece together some logic in it all. There is none, of course — it’s infantile gibberish, but they say it with such confidence that you are almost convinced that they know what they’re saying.

For people who are awash in wingnut speak, that screed above sounds perfectly reasonable, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. But it gives the rest of us a searing headache just trying to wrap our minds around how to rebut it. It’s just too … well … you know. Sigh. I’m tired.

Speaking of Palin: She’s a hard core, right to life zealot. She’s now claiming that Obama’s plan (whatever that is) will require that Baby Trig be euthanized.

*The person who wrote that post is the chief of the “Social Security Institute” some new “grassroots” organization allegedly devoted to helping senior citizens keep their social security and medicare. Here’s his history:

Dr. Lawrence A. Hunter is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation and Chief Economist for the Free Enterprise Fund. [1] He was previously Chief Economist at Empower America and FreedomWorks. [2]

Hunter “works closely with the Congressional leadership, testifies before Congress, speaks frequently before business and citizens groups, is quoted often in major newspapers and makes frequent television and radio appearances.” [3]

Hunter “served as a member of Presidential candidate Bob Dole’s Task Force on Tax Reduction and Tax Reform. During the 103rd and 104th Congresses, Dr. Hunter served on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee, first as Republican Staff Director and later as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice Chairman where he was the lead staff person in charge of putting together the economic growth and tax cut component of the Contract With America.” [4]

Hunter was with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “for five years where he served first as Deputy Chief Economist and later as Chief Economist and Vice President” prior to joining the Joint Economic Committee staff in 1993. [5]

Far be it for me to suspect that someone with this history might not be on the up and up when it comes to “saving social security and medicare” or that his populist anti big business rhetoric might be a tad disingenuous. Elsewhere he takes his arguments to their logical conclusion:

Obama’s chief of staff said that one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama’s goals is to adopt a mechanism under which a public plan is put into effect only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own.

This is precisely the trigger mechanism Republicans used when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. Any part of such a deal between the federal government and big insurance companies, of course, would have to entail a guarantee that the insurance companies be sheltered from paying the costs of the plan by shifting them onto healthcare consumers.

And guess who will pay? SENIORS FIRST. That is why it was no coincidence that the $155 billion “cost-saving” deal Obama struck with hospitals entails a decade’s worth of reductions to Medicare and charity-care payments for hospitals.

So there you have it: A stealth government takeover of big insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and even private employers along with more cuts to Medicare. When the government and private industry go into partnership, it is invariably the people who get kneecapped. The fascist healthcare system being teed up in Washington will be no exception.

Hunter is associated with Freedomworks, which you should all know by now is a leader in rightwing astroturf operations.

This guy is writing very clever stuff designed to redirect the populist anger at bailouts and business and he’s started an “institute” that is completely disingenuous considering what he writes on its blog. If you have an elderly relative keep your eyes out for any direct mail coming from the Social Security Institute.

h/t to RP

A Fallacy That Should Have Been Caught

by tristero

[UPDATE: Through a bizarre comedy of errors, I inadvertently posted a rough draft before this post was done. That said, I stand by the post, even if I expressed myself less effectively than I hoped. At the end of the post, there’s another update which hopefully, will clarify things.]

If my much-loved philosophy professor Sid Morgenbesser had read this awful post by Matt Yglesias, he would have flunked him – and Professor Morgenbesser gave everyone A’s on principle::

Tyler Cowen’s attempted characterization of American progressive politics involves at several points basically the claim that American progressives want to make the United States more “like Europe.” There’s clearly an extent to which that’s true…

There’s a technical phrase in the philosophy business for the kind of logical fallacy at play here: total fucking nonsense. I’ll illustrate by analogy:

If an American composer, say his name is, oh I don’t know, Steve Reich, learns that the Balinese have a fascinating music called “gamelan” and the concepts of gamelan are helpful in working out problems in his own music, that doesn’t mean there’s clearly an extent to which it is true Reich wants to write gamelan. And indeed, he never has. His music entirely transforms some very simple concepts and his music sounds absolutely nothing like gamelan. That’s because he’s one smart fellow (and by the way, he was a philosophy major).

Progressive politics is the politics of liberals, who through long tradition are active seekers of knowledge and information, both old and new. In addition to generating new ideas, progressive politics seeks out good ideas from anywhere and everywhere to transform and adapt to 21st Century American problems. Of course, liberals find much to admire about European cultures and societies: there is much greatness there. That in no way means we want America to be “like Europe.” Of course, liberals find much to admire in Athenian democracy. That in no way means we want America to be “like ancient Greece.”

I don’t know Tyler Cowen’s thought beyond this post and based on it, I don’t feel impelled to learn more. He sounds like a typical right wing operative of the pseudo-intellectual sort. He isn’t interested in serious argument but in setting up utterly ludicrous strawmen so he can pretend to trash liberalism and progressive politics without truly engaging them. If he was serious, he would never engage in utterly dildo assertions about progressivism such as:

There exists a better way and that is shown by the very successful polities of northwestern Europe and near-Europe. We know that way can work, even if it is sometimes hard to implement.

You can’t argue with this. You can only laugh at it. In fact, arguing with it is dangerous, because you elevate this nonsense to the status of serious discourse. These are precisely the mistakes made by some liberals, including Matt, during the runup to Bush/Iraq – taking truly stupid ideas seriously and accepting fallacious arguments – much to Matt’s later regret.

It really is time to ignore ideas like Tyler Cowen’s. And Matt, I truly wish you were in Sid’s class. I’m no philosopher, but he taught me how to recognize unadulterated bullshit when I read it.

[Briefly, I wanted to make two basic points in this post:

1. Cowen’s notion that liberals want America to be more “like Europe,” which Matt simply accepts, is illogical nonsense. We don’t want America to be “like Europe.” We simply want America to be a better country. As Henk says in comments, we’ll take good ideas wherever we find them, and transform them into proposals that are specifically American.

2. Cowen’s characterization of progressive politics is not fair and balanced, as he claims, but blatantly dishonest. It’s a rhetorical setup. For example, if you accept, as Matt does, that progressives basically want America to be more like Europe, then you are almost begging to be refuted by a long list of the many specific failures European states have with their domestic and foreign policies. Furthermore, if you accept Cowen’s premise and still declare yourself a progressive, then you are also obligated to make embarassingly lame defenses of America in order to demonstrate that you don’t reflexively hate the American Way. In fact, that is exactly what Matt did in his post; he’s already playing defense and Cowen hasn’t even started to attack!

There are other points i wanted to make, the most important being that liberals and progressives who are interested in serious, thoughtful discussions of different political philosophies, should not, as a rule, accept characterizations of liberal positions by those who are, by their own admission, hostile to the very notion of liberalism. These are not honest intellectual opponents, interested in the serious give and take of ideas, but political operatives. Of course, there are very important critiques of liberalism and progressivism that can be made. However, the ridiculous notion that we want America to be more like Europe is not one of them. Something like that should be a tipoff that the discussion is being rigged. ]

Normal People

by digby

You know the wingnuts are back in business when Peggy Noonan stops opining about how we should avert our eyes from the past and gets back to unctuously defending Real Americans (who she personally avoids like the plague.) Here she is at her lugubrious worst:

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis. Then came the Democratic Party charge that the people at the meetings were suspiciously well-dressed, in jackets and ties from Brooks Brothers. They must be Republican rent-a-mobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that people are “storming these town hall meetings,” that they were “well dressed,” that “this is all organized,” “all planned,” to “hurt our president.” Here she was projecting. For normal people, it’s not all about Barack Obama.

Noonan is just lying about the Nazi imagery. She is surely aware that the tea baggers have been showing up at events with Hitler on their minds for months, and there’s been plenty of it at the Town Halls as well. And you don’t have to wonder where it’s coming from:

According to Noonan, the people who believe that sort of thing are the “normal people.”

Noonan says that the real danger lies with Democrats claiming these protests are organized by the Republican party and Big Business which does damage to our civility and political tradition. And Charlie Cook seems to agree with her, although he does grant that the Republicans haven’t been helpful either. Here he was on MSNBC earlier:

Monica Somebody Novotny: So independents, we hear now, are more likely to believe Obama has made progress in changing Washington that they think he should have. How big of a problem is that?

Charlie Cook: I think it’s two different things. Independents early on were very supportive of anything and everything Obama wanted to do. And they’ve been souring overall on his overall approval on just about any question they want to ask. A lot of independents have lost faith in president Obama. And you see it on this question as well.

This problem of the poisonous partisanship that you see in Washington, it wasn’t created overnight, it’s not going to end overnight. But to use a cliche, it takes two to tango and I don’t think either side is making much of an effort.

The president is talking the talk but not so much walking the walk and the Democrats in the House and Senate, there’s not a lot of bipartisanship there and the Republicans aren’t either. So I’d say both sides are at fault here.

Monica: So you don’t think that one party then is more to blame than the other? Just loking at some of the numbers here on tone and civility. Since April many more Americans say the tone of civility between Republicans and Democrats has gotten worse, from 24% to 35%.

Cook: That’s the view from out there. But the view from having lived in Washington since 1972, this kind of partisanship started getting ugly an in the mid 80s and it’s gotten worse and worse worse since the mid-80s and it doesn’t matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge it’s just a long spiral downward.

Right Charlie. “Out here” we see that there is one party that has gone apeshit insane and has unleashed a bunch of bloodsucking zombies all over the country and another party that even with the best interpretation available, is so ineffectual it can’t hit water if it falls out of a fucking boat. I guess you can say that they are both to blame, but I don’t think my solution to that problem would be to his liking.

Cook believes that if only Obama had only reached out to these people who think he’s a Nazi/Commie/foreign usurper, they would have responded in kind. It takes two to tango — and the Republicans apparently love to dance. (Well, maybe not. Isn’t the tango an illegal alien dance?)

Cook went on to explain what really went wrong:

Cook:The thing is you have a non-bipartisan approach it’s like waving an empty gun around, an empty threat they really can’t do it.

But the bottom line is that they’re going to end up having to compromise to the point where if they’d started off dealing with Republicans in the very beginning, will probably end up in the same place, but they will have lost a lot of altitude in the process.

Since the Republicans want total failure, that’s obviously what he thinks we’ll get.

I’m not convinced of that. We’re in crazy August where sharks and swift boaters rule the airwaves. But I can’t say that these mobs aren’t going to have an effect. The zombie right is flexing its muscle and since the villagers still think these nuts are Real Americans — or as Noonan calls them “normal people” — they affect the media narrative and that affects public opinion. We’re already seeing it.

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Fear And Loathing In Arkansas

by digby

The woman crying and wailing “I’m scared” is a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier. People are scared. And the right wing is willing to name names and tell them who’s at fault. Indeed, after decades of conservative propaganda, blaming Obama for their woes — the liberal black man who represents the government — makes perfect sense to them. Rush is telling them so every single day.

If you have time to get through the whole thing, stay to the end to see the young man say he is a huge Obama fan (to huge applause, interestingly) and tell the evil Blue Dog Mike Ross that he was mad at him for selling out health care until he heard this crowd. I can see why he would say that. Ross couldn’t even convince these poor deluded souls that he wasn’t for single payer when he told them repeatedly that he wasn’t for single payer. But you can see by this how these demonstrations of crazy can change the political landscape, can’t you? That kid has a different view of what’s possible based upon the kooks that showed up to those town hall meetings.

That’s all the industry needs. It certainly all Mike Ross needs …

Update: I should point out that quite a few of these people are just plain old selfish assholes:

via Olbermann

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It’s like say 100 percent of Americans in America, 80 percent of them have insurance, might more. I’m saying, it’s just the general presence. Why do 80 percent of us have to change and get something that y’all, the government, President Obama, is turning in with an agenda? (CHEERING) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why does he have to change our way of life for that 20 percent? Congress’ job is mainly to protect us from terrorist, enemies, the borders.

Olbermann pointed out that this is just the old “I got mine, fuck you,” although he used nicer language. Jonathan Alter had a good reply:

ALTER: Well, first of all, she’s right that 80 percent, you know, have health care. Where she’s wrong is that somehow if they’ve got it, it’s going to be enough for them, or they’re not going to be in danger of losing it, should they lose their job. A lot of people nowadays are losing their jobs. So, what she’s not factoring in is what happens to people who have some sort of a change that happens in their lives? They get sick, they actually need health insurance, and it ends up being like homeowners, you know, insurance, where once you have a burglary, suddenly, they cancel your insurance. OLBERMANN: Right. ALTER: That’s what health insurance is like and people have not had big health challenges, I have, and others don’t understand that just because you’re insured doesn’t mean you’re protected. OLBERMANN: Right. ALTER: The second thing that she’s ignoring is the promise that President Obama’s made which is that, if you’re happy with your insurance, it’s not going to get taken away. I mean, if she loves her insurance company, God bless her. But she’s not going to have any problems with that insurance company, it’s not of any danger of going bust. They might jack up their premiums on her again, but…OLBERMANN: . or lower it because there’s competition from the public option.

I would bet money that the woman who said that considers herself a good Christian.

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“Classically Fascist”

by tristero

Dave Neiwert, who is not prone to use the F word indiscriminately:

No one has a problem with right-wingers marching in protest of the health-care plans. That’s certainly their right. And no one minds that they choose to participate in these forums. But town halls were never designed to be vehicles for protest. They have always been about enabling real democratic discourse in a civil setting.

When someone’s entire purpose in coming out to a town-hall forum is to chant and shout and protest and disrupt, they aren’t just expressing their opinions — they are actively shutting down democracy.

And that, folks, is a classically fascist thing to do.

Yep.

Where Are The Good Guys?

by digby

There’s a lot of navel gazing about why the tea baggers are getting so much traction while the pro-reform Obama enthusaisasts seem to be dragging their feet. It’scertainly true that as Atrios and others have pointed out, it’s pretty hard to get excited about a plan that doesn’t exist, while getting people off their couches to protest a government plan to euthanize old people isn’t all that difficult. Sausage making is one thing, but the enthusiasm gap is unsurprising when we are expected to get excited about a heaping pile of fetid, decomposing mystery meat.

But there’s more to it than that I think. The Democrats gamed out a strategy in which the bills would be done by the August recess and the pols would have something concrete to take back to their districts and states. That didn’t happen, thanks to Max and Obstructors. So, they are out there having to battle back an avalanche of bullshit with more vague campaign promises about “reform.” When it became obvious they aren’t going to get it done, they probably should have held everyone in town through August — if was the right thing to do on the merits and would have had the salutory effect of avoiding the sideshow we are seeing now.

But I think the big problem is that the country is in a sour, sour mood in general and kumbaaya just isn’t selling at the moment. I think it’s a miracle that Obama has a high an approval rating as he does under these circumstances. Americans are spoiled complainers in the best of times. In bad times like this, they get downright surly.

These town hall spectacles are organized political theatre to be sure, with most of it being cynically manipulated for political reasons. But the reason they have power and salience is because they are expressing a lot of the free floating anxiety and inchoate rage that’s out there generally, not just among the crazy wingnuts. Anger, fear and frustration (the real thing, not the Hollywood, 9/11 war porn kind of fear, which is actually titillation and excitement) are what’s driving people, not the uplifting “hopenchange” of last year.

I think it’s true that it’s very difficult to expect people to get excited and come out to Town Halls to support this multi headed hydra of a health reform plan that doesn’t even yet exist. But I have my doubts that even if they had a solid bill from which they could tout all kinds of promises that people would be any more enthusiastic right now. The zeitgeist is overwhelmingly negative.

That’s why you need villains at times like this. And it took the Democrats far too long to realize that.

Update: Jonathan Cohn has some thoughts worth contemplating on all this.

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Heroes

by digby

As I’m watching a firefighter rappel down the side of a sky scraper to rescue a window washer whose scaffolding failed it occurs to me for the thousandth time that these people are a pure manifestation of heroic good in our society.

And they are unionized, public servants, paid by the taxpayers, which also makes them dirt in the eyes of 30% of the country. or it would, if that 30% understood even half the absurd bile that comes out of their mouths.

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Goats

by digby

Ezra sez:

There’s been a lot of skepticism about the White House’s strategy of cutting deals in which industry players voluntarily promise to save money over the next 10 years. The skepticism is simple enough: If the pharmaceutical companies are willing to save $80 billion as a favor to Barack Obama, that suggests there’s a lot more than $80 billion that could, and probably should, be saved. As Nancy Pelosi told me, “The minute the drug companies settled for $80 billion, we knew it was $160 billion. Right? If they’re giving away $80 billion?” A few minutes later, she suggested that maybe those agreements weren’t inviolable. “The president made the agreements he made,” she said. “And maybe we’ll be limited by that. But maybe not!”A front-page story in today’s New York Times suggests that her optimism was misplaced. Billy Tauzin, head lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, hasn’t liked some of the cost-saving measures moving through the House. In particular, he’s worried about provisions that would allow doctors to negotiate prices with Medicare. So he sat down with a reporter and gave up the game. The deal that the pharmaceutical companies made with the White House wasn’t simply to offer up $80 billion in savings. It was to offer up $80 billion in savings so long as the White House promised to protect them from anything that would extract more than $80 billion in savings.

Tim Noah explains why that’s a problem:

It’s often noted that Obama’s strategy on health reform is the opposite of Hillary Clinton’s in 1994. (See, for example, “The Ghosts of Clintoncare” by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post.) Instead of hiring Ira Magaziner to draft a bill and then shoving that bill down Congress’ throat, the Obama White House is letting Congress write the health reform bill. This strikes me as a reasonably shrewd strategy. But when you very deliberately aren’t controlling the legislative process, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to cut deals with special interests about what that legislation will contain. Health reform has a thousand interconnected parts. Give in on something here, and you have to make alterations on something there. That’s why Senate finance Chairman Max Baucus keeps saying, “Everything is on the table” (even though that isn’t strictly true). Obama has taken tens and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars off the table by ruling out an elementary cost-saving measure whose rejection by the Republican congressional majority back in 2003 is an ongoing scandal. What did he get in return? The hope that other sectors in the health care industry would get on board with reform. But health reform’s principal target—the insurance companies—not only refuses to endorse the creation of a public-option government health insurance program, the one essential component to major health care reform; it refuses even to stop hunting for trivial reasons to cancel insurance for policyholders after they develop expensive-to-treat illnesses. (See “Why You Can’t Trust Your Health Insurer.”) Mr. President, you’ve been played for a sucker.

It doesn’t look that way to me. From where I sit, it’s the Dems in congress who got played. The president refused to produce a plan but cut a bunch of side deals, thus making sure the industry was protected while the congress gets blamed for being unable to make the numbers work.

That’s not to say that Baucus isn’t perfectly happy to go along. The White House simply saved him the trouble of doing it himself. But he’s going to be blamed by liberals if a plan emerges that pleases no one but the health industry, while Obama will have remained above the fray. The industry will know who their friends are, of course. They paid good money for them.

Update: The White House told Sherrod Brown that there was no deal with Pharma. I wonder where Pelosi got the idea there might have been when she talked to Ezra back in July?

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