I spent much of the morning watching “Washington Journal” on C-SPAN. Nutters are pisssssed. That said, most of the anger seems to be about the ‘process’ and the ‘back room deals.’ Now, I’ve seen no formal analysis , but based on what I know thus far, most deals were over policy and did not happen more than usual. I have to assume that people complaining about ‘process’ are new to watching legislation happen and either (a) don’t like our system or (b) don’t understand what is happening. Either way, fuck it, we have healthcare and that should...
Continue reading...senate
Enjoy your brand new Parliament!
So, I read Pop’s post on bipartisanship with interest, and I just wanted to add a comment or two. I mostly want to say that I think Pops is mostly right, but doesn’t go far enough. It’s true that it’s good to have varying viewpoints in the discussion, and he’s right to say that at least to this point that viewpoint has come from conservative Democrats rather than liberal Republicans, but I don’t think that’s due to some coincidence. The fact is that in the initial votes in the Senate and House, the controlling vote was owned...
Continue reading...A two-party system
If the recent debate over health care reform has taught us anything, it is that the U.S. does still have a functional two-party system. The two parties, however, are not the Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats and the Democrats. This is not to suggest that his is necessarily a bad thing—for the Democratic Party or America. The Republicans may have a substantial 41-member minority in the Senate, but being tied to their strategy of obstruction, just saying no, and refusing to cooperate or even compromise, have rendered themselves utterly and completely irrelevant. Consequently, the two teams...
Continue reading...Process stories
Interestingly enough, today’s New York Times front page contains only two mentions of “health care.” One is a letter to the editor, while the other is a link to a Paul Krugman blog post. I mention this, mostly because I discovered this odd fact while looking for yesterday’s piece which did appear on the front page (as well as page A1 of the print version): “Obama Turns Up the Volume in Health Care Bid.” And I mention this because the story, probably the most important story of the day on an issue that is arguably the most...
Continue reading...
Recent Comments