Howard Dean says vote "no" on the Lieberman Bill

"There's no cost control of any kind. You're going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that's gonna take, on average, 27% of your money so they can pay CEOs 20 million dollars a year, and so they can have return on equity for their shareholders, and there's no choice about that; if you don't buy that insurance you gonna get a fine. This is a bill that was funda,entally written by staffers who are friendly to the insurance industry, held up, so it was friendly to the insurance industry by senators who take a lot of money from the insurance industry, and it is not health care reform. I think it is too bad that it has come to this."

On passage of this bill, vote yes or no?

"No, absolutely not. You cannot vote for a bill like this in good conscience. It costs too much money, it isn't health care reform, it's not even insurance reform. Take for ex this, there's a lot of talk about people who have pre-exsiting conditions can get health insurance. Well, not exactly. The fine print in the senate says, the healthcare industry gets to charge you three times as much if you are older as if you are younger, and they get to write the rules. That's in the senate bill. This bill is no longer reform."

After that no vote, strategically, where would you say the Democrats should go?

"I don't think this will happen, if it were me I'd kill the bill all entirely and have the house start reconciliation, which is what they should have done in the first place. So, to be held up by four senators, a minority of forty, who are totally uncooperative, which is the Republicans, and then four senators who are beholden to the insurance industry I think is wrong, but that's what's happend. So, the other thing you could do is pas the good stuff, pass the exchanges, pass the money for the prevention wellness, pass the community health care center money in a small bill, don't run our children into debt and come back and do this two years later. I disagree with the administration when they say a president won't take this on for another twenty years.

We're in crisis here, this bill I think is more likely to make the crisis worse than it is better because it is so expensive. We can come back with a new congress -- which unfortunately as a result of all this will have fewer Democrats, but it'll still have a Democratic majorities -- we can come back wuth a new congress and we could pass a bill, which we had on the senate floor last week, that would insure people faster, even though it is delayed by a year and a half, than the bill that's going to be passed in the senate."

Keep on fighting. Keep on fighting for real health care reform, he says.

Why not pass a really incremental bill, in other words, one with the small and good stuff and build the legislative coalition required to pass the bigger stuff -- preexisting conditions, a real public option -- in the next phase of legislation.

Who said it had to happen now? Who said that making President Obama go down in history is more important than getting the right legislation passed? We didn't start out Social Security and Medicaid in the hopes of making FDR or LBJ heroes of history. We didn't worry about their legacies. We legislated with intelligence and heart according to need and moral courage for the benefit of our society.

Who says that doing it this way won't send President Obama down in history as a great American president?

Perhaps today we are making the electoral progress necessary to obtain the legislative representation that is necessary to pass the true health care reform so necessary to our country and it's citizens, to the benefit of everyone, and not just the insurance companies.

Maybe we need to tend to first things first, as we put together a coalition of representatives like Weiner, Grayson, Sanders, and a long list of others who are ready to work to do what's right.

Feel free to share your opinion.
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Firedoglake congressional accounting

If this pressure was exerted from within the progressive caucus, it would be one thing. But it wasn't. This was created externally, by a true grassroots movement, without the support of MoveOn, HCAN, the unions, the think tanks, or any of the other normal well-funded progressive validators living in the veal pen, who have been AWOL through the whole thing. Rahm told them to sit on the sidelines, and they have.

Does anyone think that intensity of feeling is just going to go away? That people will simply accept Obama's "goody bag" of health care toenail clippings which delivers nothing but a political victory for him, and give up on their dreams of delivery from the current health care system? Taibbi's right -- this will be to Obama what the Iraq War was to Bush.

But instead of repeating the mistakes of the Republicans, who allowed their representatives to line up behind George Bush and walk their party over the cliff, grass roots progressives are the ones who are taking control of the health care debate. They have rejected the discredited progressive leadership of the veal pen, and they are telling their progressive members of Congress that they will not accept a health care bill with a co-op "bait and switch."

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, If Progressive Members of the House Think We’ll Accept Co-Ops As Public Plan, Think Again

Which all brings me back to my Atul Gawande post after yesterday's glow in light of (no pun intended) Howard Dean's remarks on Morning Joe about how the Public Option will make it through in reconciliation with only 50 votes needed. How will this happen? Because progressives will have held enough feet to the fire with their online donations and support (blackmailing, I dare say some of those enjoying their seats in the House are thinking about now as it starts to get really hot for them with their colleagues ready to do business with Rahm and the WH, President Obama, alas) to force them to put it back in and force the Dogs hand.

Well, there are two issues here. One, is whether or not Dean is right and how much influence the netroots nation -- Hello! -- really has. The other is all about our President and of what he turns out really to be made.

For me, that won't be decided by a Middle East peace agreement and good relations with the North Koreans (who might have been begging for them, bizarrely I'll admit, with their nuclear shows over the Pacific in some pretty aggressive, schoolroom acting out strategy).

No, where our President -- a man who made me want to believe that Hope was possible for a just society in America, all while having a slight qualm after reading Audacity of Hope (I wasn't as convinced of his authenticity as I'd fully expected to be, but I figured I'd give him some slack, and I definitely wasn't so enthusiastic about his centrist politics (read legislative success-at-any-price, or what others called "pragmatism") -- will show me of what he's made will be if he throws off the gamesmanship and deal-at-any-price counsel of Rahm Emanuel (some Plan for America, by the way, Rahm) on his shoulder and steps up to the plate of moral and intellectual honesty to call for and defend a Public Option at the very least.

Oh, I can hear the pragmatists saying, "At the price of getting legislation passed? We've seen that before. Live by your ideals, be prepared to die by them."

Well, as the other extremists (ha) say, "Give me Liberty or give me Death." I'll take legislative death over corporate welfare any day. If it comes to that, I'll take a pass -- and my chances -- and wait for the progressives to get madder still.

Am I ready to say I wouldn't vote for him for a second term if he fails to do so? No, not if Sarah Palin and her running mate Newt Gingrich are my only choice, but I would do it without enthusiasm and with only a hope of not seeing things worse still.
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This is just a great day, if Howard Dean is right

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I'm laying a bet that he's right. How about cagey, too, our pols? Let us hope.

The thing of it is, if he is a thorn in the White House's side, then how does his saying this -- and with such confidence -- work at all? The rub lies there.
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