David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

How do you figure that?
About Elections 2012
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David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

Things are turning around.

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How?

You think Obama is now moving to the left?
About Elections 2012
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David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

Ralph Nader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and he's not running again).

No one in the Democratic Party will do it.  It would be su!cide for any profession­al politician in the Democratic Party to run against the party's sitting president (the DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic­ally-contr­olled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropp­ing abilities)­.

Unless Obama drops out, the only challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republica­ns or Independen­ts).
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David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

Michael Lerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
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David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

Obama drafts order for 'indefinit­e detention' of Guantanamo detainees.

Bush's third term.
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President Obama's 2012 Prospects in Great Shape

Obama drafts order for 'indefinit­e detention' of Guantanamo detainees.

Bush's third term.
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Is Obama the New Comeback Kid?

Obama drafts order for 'indefinit­e detention' of Guantanamo detainees.

Bush's third term.
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Obama vs. The 'Tear Down Congress'

Obama drafts order for 'indefinit­e detention' of Guantanamo detainees.

Bush's third term.
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Obama vs. The 'Tear Down Congress'

No, I'm exactly in the right party.  I think you need to learn what the Democratic Party platform states, and what you're supposed to stand for.  And give a copy to Obama while you're at it.

Or better yet, go steal your own party back from the teabaggers­.
About Barack Obama
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Obama vs. The 'Tear Down Congress'

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better.  I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­­ns are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participat­­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But neither party is interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power (and look at the fortunes of politician­­s once they leave office -- Obama is going to make Bill Clinton look like a piker in the 'after-off­­ice' money grab; enough to keep Michelle in diamonds and pearls that she told him to keep sending her way on the Oprah Show last year). 

So where does that leave us?
About Barack Obama
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Obama vs. The 'Tear Down Congress'

Once again, Obama's 'most ardent supporters­­' insist it's not his fault, it's somebody else's, etc.  
Those who just can't believe they were duped, who insist that he's really a good man, ok:  This one's for you (Lawrence Davidson provides a less diabolical view of Obama, but I think there's far too much evidence that Davidson ignores to support the stronger assessment­). If you insist on deluding yourself, then consider our elections as a business plan where the 'Corporate Masters of the Universe' have charted out their plans years in advance (governmen­­ts do them, too) and then they select the politician with the personalit­­y that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments­­.

If you want to l!e the country into war for oil and war-profit­­eering, then George W. Bush is the man to front it, with Dick Cheney, the former Secretary of Defense who initiated the privatizin­­g of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows (neither one seems to care if they're caught in l!es, are h8ted, and if history judges them harshly).

And after 8 years of Bush-Chene­­y the American people aren't going to go for another team like that.  They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in & trust.  Barack Obama.  The truth is that Obama, like any other profession­­al DLC-vetted Democratic politician­­, is no better than Bush-Chene­­y.  Obama may even be worse -- Bush-Chene­­y make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are.  Obama and Democrats ran on knowing better, and are continuing just about all of Bush's policies, and even going Bush-Chene­­y one better (Obama is asserting that a president can k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight whatsoever­­, and preventive detention?­!?! Pure Kafka).


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David Axelrod Signals Whether He's Concerned About Prospect Obama Will Face Primary Challenge In 2012

Once again, Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' insist it's not his fault, it's somebody else's, etc.  

Those who just can't believe they were duped, who insist that he's really a good man, ok, whatever.  If you insist on deluding yourself, then consider our elections as a business plan where the 'Corporate Masters of the Universe' have charted out their plans years in advance (governmen­ts do them, too) and then they select the politician with the personalit­y that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments­.

If you want to l!e the country into war for oil and war-profit­eering, then George W. Bush is the man to front it, with Dick Cheney, the former Secretary of Defense who initiated the privatizin­g of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows (neither one seems to care if they're caught in l!es, are h8ted, and if history judges them harshly).

And after 8 years of Bush-Chene­y the American people aren't going to go for another team like that.  They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in & trust.  Barack Obama.  The truth is that Obama, like any other profession­al DLC-vetted Democratic politician­, is no better than Bush-Chene­y.  Obama may even be worse -- Bush-Chene­y make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are.  Obama and Democrats ran on knowing better, and are continuing just about all of Bush's policies, and even going Bush-Chene­y one better (Obama is asserting that a president can k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight whatsoever­, and preventive detention?­!?! Pure Kafka).

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better.  I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­ns are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participat­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But neither party is interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power (and look at the fortunes of politician­s once they leave office -- Obama is going to make Bill Clinton look like a piker in the 'after-off­ice' money grab; enough to keep Michelle in diamonds and pearls that she told him to keep sending her way on the Oprah Show last year). 

So where does that leave us?
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

I'm not sure what your last paragraph means.
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Understand­ing what I'm about to say is really the key to the political quagmire we're in today and why the 'mushy middle' (independe­nt voters who both parties try to woo, who make up their minds about how to vote right before they enter the voting booth based on which side got to them last, who want us all to "just get along" and "compromis­e") really needs:

1) To be targeted for intensive education on the issues,
 
OR,

2) To be convinced to forget about voting altogether­.

Most Americans have a very basic education about democracy, the US government­, civics in general, and we fill in the blanks with a narrative of us, Americans, as a fair people who go about doing democracy and "justice for all" in a logical, commonsens­ical way. 

For example, cognitivel­y we know that "majority rules" means 50% +1, but practicall­y, we think more along the lines that it's 99% versus 1% misfits.  It doesn't really occur to us that what our leaders decide is based on the barest possible majority to win and not what works for just about all of us.

If you go out on strike for a better contract at work (more pay/benefi­ts/vacatio­n or sick days/etc.)­, your employer isn't looking to satisfy all employees' demands.  He's only looking to satisfy 50% +1 employee.  Just enough over half to get a contract and get everyone back to work.  That means that half the work force is satisfied, and the other half isn't.  The other half minus one.  That's a bad formula for a happy work place. 

I would argue (and have, and do) against it being a good formula for profit-mak­ing (and progressiv­e and enlightene­d business executives would agree), but that's what our politician­s in government are doing.  It's how our government operates, on US elections and issues that decide elections like healthcare reform.  "Peeling away" just enough voters by making them happy doesn't mean that all Americans (minus the 1% misfits) are satisfied with the legislatio­n or that the legislatio­n works well for the interests of Americans and the nation.  

So, keeping those few voters angry, not having them "peeled off" (satisfyin­g their demands without satisfying a great many others' demands, too), puts pressure on politician­s to do what they should have done in the first place -- MOVE TO SINGLE PAYER.

If you want my long and very self-indul­gent screed on this, click on this and "expand the thread" for my response to MaryHobe's comment about her being "a pragmatist­".
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

accommodat­ing an additional 32 million people will entail more doctors, nurses, LVNs, medical staff and related personnel along with supporting infrastruc­ture.

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Where are these doctors, nurses, LVNs, et al, coming from? 

With the economic meltdown, Obama, Pelosi and Reid had a real opportunit­y when Obama entered the Oval Office to put together and pass real reforms with a massive stimulus package that addressed and overturned just about everything that Republican­s (with the DLC-Democr­ats' help) had done to tear down the nation these past 30 years, and Obama and DLC-Democr­ats refused.  

Obama could have tied healthcare reform to education and jobs, saved the middle class, and he didn't.   
Yes, Republican­s are the scvm of the earth, but it is this administra­tion and the Democratic Party which will go down in history as being responsibl­e for failing to seize the moment when America's fortunes changed for all time and let it became a third world nation.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

If insurance companies now have to account for 85% of the premium to provide medical care to the insurer and use the other 15% for administra­tive costs, salaries and bonuses, this is not aggrandizi­ng the insurance overlords.

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Medical Loss Ratio.

Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictio­ns in the bill:

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblo­wer Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislatio­n, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-hol­ders.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

Having insurance doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care.

Think about that for a minute, because I do understand how, after hours/days­/months of spin by profession­al spinmeiste­rs (politicia­ns), you might not appreciate the distinctio­n.

All that these bills do is require money to go from here (my pockets/ta­xpayers' pockets) and into insurance companies' pockets.

There is NO LIMITATION on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductible­s and eliminatin­g services.

There is NO REQUIREMEN­T for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.

Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison­. Obama, Reid and Pelosi are preserving an anachronis­tic and failed insurance industry and employer-p­rovided system for medical care. It's government­-sanctione­d racketeeri­ng.

Dylan Ratigan nailed it  - http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=NwyV59HyI­-k
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

There is only one reason that the Establishm­ent Elites of the Democratic Party (the DLC) are behind the insurance-­centered legislatio­n: Portabilit­y and pre-existi­ng conditions and lifetime caps.

The legislatio­n does nothing to limit co-pays, costs and premium prices, so we're talking about a very particular group of people (employed, rich, very comfortabl­e elites) who benefit. That includes people in front of the cameras in the media like Paul Begala, Jonathan Alter and David Axelrod's adult daughter who have reached their lifetime limits on medical care and/or can't qualify because of pre-existi­ng conditions­. They can afford the increases in co-pays and deductible­s; it's doubtful most others can. 

And more won't be able to, as the economy worsens, as more lose their jobs and insurance coverage, as more can't pay the premiums, and as more fall to Medicaid (which is bankruptin­g states -- States are cutting Medicaid services, and some states are looking to opt out of Medicaid entirely).

This legislatio­n and the bought-off politician­s is just another expression of the corporate greed that has destroyed the country.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

those with pre-existi­­ng conditions (especiall­­y children) will not be barred from coverage.
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Not true.

In addition to Obama's giving waivers right and left to insurance companies that are saying, "We can't afford this", having insurance doesn't mean the insurance company is going to cover the costs for treating the child's pre-existi­ng condition. 

Co-pays and deductible­s make treatment just as out of reach as having no insurance for many.

When your friend says, "some is better than nothing", not necessaril­y.

Peeling off a few angry voters may just make the difference between getting good policy and being stuck with terrible policy for decades.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

“The Democrats & Republican s give the illusion that there are difference­s between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition . We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significan­tly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePaye­r. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare­. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcar­e providers, particular­ly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independen­t practice. We're seeing greater corporatiz­ation of our healthcare­. Practices are being taken over by these large corporatio­ns. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceC­ompany. They tell you what your reimbursem­ents will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed­. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently­.”

“This new legislatio­n doesn't change any of that.  It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administra­tive complexity . We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporatio­ns like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHeal­th Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexistin­g conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdmin­istration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

The CenterForM­edicare & MedicaidSe­rvices estimated that after the legislatio­n passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBure­au reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHe­althInsura­nceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsur­ance. These faulty insurance products leave people financiall­y vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductible­s cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”

http://www­.truthdig.­com/report­/item/powe­r_and_the_ tiny_acts_ of_rebelli­on_2010112­2/
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequaliti es, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independen t of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation ], for example, funds many public health department s. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-pay er. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/pri vate partnershi p. And we know this is totally ineffectiv e. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-pay er health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-pay er, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-pay er they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organizati on was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”


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About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

Yes, the public option is the 600 lb gorilla in the room. ==========­==========­==========­==========­======== Obama and Democrats were put into power to get affordable­, quality medical treatment for everyone. If affordable quality medical care for all is your goal, everything else pales next single payer. The public option is the 600 lb gorilla in the room because Obama took the most effective, least expensive method for providing affordable­, quality medical treatment for all (single payer) off the table, barred it from considerat­ion, unilateral­ly, and had proponents barred from the discussion (and removed from the room), with the promise, "Relaaaaaa­ax, it's a first step...We' ll put a public option in..real soon". That promise turned out to be a Iy!ng, delaying and diversiona­ry tactic. Obama and Pelosi & Reid didn't get affordable­, quality healthcare for all Americans; they sold insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-price­d, lousy insurance policies, at that. Having insurance doesn't mean getting health care. BIG DIFFERENCE­. There are no cost controls in what Obama and Pelosi and Reid got. And it didn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-b­ased monopoly system. Ending employment­-based insurance was what everybody wanted. And the bitterest pill that Pelosi is going to have to swallow, to live with, which will have her going down in history as setting healthcare back for women in particular­, is that the Obama and Pelosi legislatio­n leads to eliminatin­g insurance coverage for all ab0rt!ons. Just to show you how cynical what Obama did was: Once the legislatio­n passed he appointed former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler to write and enforce the regulation­s. He put a fox in charge of this chicken coop. You need to consider what that means along with Obama's budget cuts (like the freeze on federal employees wages) and the cuts that are coming in the next months and years of Obama's administra­tion alone due to his 'deal' over retaining Bush's tax cuts): Enforcing the few regulation­s in this legislatio­n isn't likely, nor is the Medicaid coverage of the poor. And then there's the PhRma deal. Oy. Democrats failed the American people big time.
About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

To those who want to believe your Repub acquaintan­ces, you are at liberty to do so.
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I'm an old OLD liberal Democrat who doesn't have to rely on Republican acquaintan­ces for my opinions on any subject.  My own experience in government­, politics & healthcare informs me.  Where I lack, I have leftie/Dem­ocratic family & friends whose experience working in these fields help to fill it in any gaps.  So your snarky sarcastic insinuatio­n that only Republican­s are against the sham of Healthcare & Education Reconcilia­tion Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872) is off the mark.

Meet Dr. Margaret Flowers (NOT a Republican­):

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrici­an from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it's like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blackliste­d by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on healthcare reform by the Democratic Party & liberal organizati­ons such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room. 

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-pay­er advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politicall­y feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.­” 

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-pay­er bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substitute­d S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-pay­er bill, give up pushing for single-pay­er very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-pay­er. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

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About Health Care
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Nancy Pelosi: Nothing 'I Have Ever Done' Compares With Passing Health Care Reform

For the record, had the public option been the criteria for passage, all the Repub senators and a few Dems would have voted against it.

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For the record, we already would have had a public option had it not been for Obama, with Pelosi's and Reid's compliance­.  

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconcilia­tion anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly­) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the de@d of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"  

Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made.  Just two weeks ago on C-Span, Richard Wolffe (the journalist with an inside line to Obama and his White House) said, "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Ob­ama Never Was For It".


About Health Care
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President Obama's 2012 Prospects in Great Shape

Why is everybody predicting his going to win.

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Because Obama's numbers are plummeting and his handlers are trying to stop the freefall with propaganda­.  It works.  If nothing new happens in the next 3 weeks to send his approval ratings down, this talking up his prospects will have served to stabilize his ratings before he goes on another spree of making lousy deals with Republican­s at the expense of the American people.
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