Bush Latte: Obama's rightward slide continues with Harry and Louise style fake health care plan

Submitted by lambert on Fri, 2008-02-01 18:37.

Barack Obama

God. Paul (Yes, I know he’s is an OFB hate figure here’s why that is) Krugman writes today:

The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don’t buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed.

Update: Ezra Klein adds a screenshot of the original Harry and Louise ad — they’ve obviously deliberately copied it. Just to remind everyone, Harry and Louise were the center of the vile smear campaign the insurance lobby waged against health care reform in 1993 — and this time a Democratic candidate is doing the smearing for them.

Ezra— who is no Obama hater—summarizes how dishonest and manipulative America’s favorite baritone really is:

The Obama campaign kept [the Harry and Louise] hairstyles and barely even changed their clothing — which is really quite unfair to Harry and Louise, who probably let go of the plaid years back. What’s worse is that the argument they’re making is applicable to any kind of universal health care arrangement, including the arrangements Obama himself will eventually have to adopt.

Lovely. But not unexpected, eh?

At least by the alert readers of Corrente.

But I’m sure Obama’s new special friend, Paul Volcker, likes it just fine! After all, with austerity on the way, we—and by “we,” I mean “not us”—won’t be able to afford every little luxury. Come on, people, let’s be reasonable.

NOTE Then there’s the whole thing of the Obama campaign citing campus newspapers as authoritative sources on health policy. Isn’t that carrying the youth movement thing a little too far? Hey, who wants to bet the quote was planted by a fan and then recycled into the campaign flyer? I’ll have to go look…

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it's really astonishing,

Submitted by amberglow (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-01 19:59.

and the spin his supporters are trying is just pathetic.

I want to smack him and say “what are you thinking?!?” but i know he’s no progressive or liberal so it’d be a waste of time.

I want Edwards back more than ever.

Between his disingenuousness, his

Submitted by output (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-01 21:42.

groundless reputation for ethical purity, and the teflon treatment from the press, his popularity is built on a house of cards. Like Bush, when they finally caught on to him, Obama’s in for a huge fall if he makes it to the general election. Not that Hillary’s likely to fare any better.

I’m afraid that our fate was sealed when John Edwards bowed out. Thanks, M$M, for leading my not-so-bright fellow Dems into this corner. I hope you enjoy your president McCain.

Obama and the future...

Submitted by lambert on Fri, 2008-02-01 22:03.

One thing I’ve noticed is that all of Obama’s rhetoric is about the future; “change you can believe in” for example.

But the only concrete thing speaking for him in in the past: The Iraq vote. (That and a thin record at the state and federal level that the OFB necessarily exaggerate.)

So, speaking of the future, then: Is Hillary going to get us into another Iraq war? No. Will anyone get us out any faster than the other? Probably not. So on that, they’re a wash.

But on the future I care about, Obama’s slide rightward slide really concerns me. The disgraceful Harry and Louise ads are just the latest, and it started with a dogwhistle to the Social Security privatizers. For my own future, I don’t trust the man a bit. I don’t trust Hillary entirely, but I trust her more.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

What Every Used Car Salesman Knows

Submitted by output (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-01 23:33.

One thing I’ve noticed is that all of Obama’s rhetoric is about the future; “change you can believe in” for example.

I remember from my study of contract law that when you’re selling goods, representations or promises about things that will happen at some later date (“if you buy this car you’ll probably get another 100k miles out of it”) are understood to be “puffery” because no one can predict the future. Such promises are not considered to be part of the sales agreement and are consequently unenforceable.

By staying strictly with the future-oriented rhetoric, I think Obama is deliberately avoiding giving us any promises to latch onto; giving himself plausible deniability in the (for now unlikely) event that anyone ever tries to hold him accountable.

Obama the Used Car Salesman

Submitted by bringiton on Sat, 2008-02-02 00:36.

A potential meme if ever there was one. When last raised, along with the construct that Republicans then are car thieves, the ever-strict Sarah demanded to know what that made Libertarians. They are, I think, drunk drivers, exercising their individual right to do whatever they damn well please; if someone innocent gets hurt in the process well, that’s just the price of freedom.

Ah! We take unity seriously, but it's just puffery!

Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2008-02-02 01:18.

Gad.

This is way, way too meta for me.

I pray that Hillary wins this thing. They really will be able to take Obama apart. The flip side of him being such a blank slate is that they can project on him too.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Bringiton, I think you've got it!

Submitted by Sarah on Sat, 2008-02-02 01:32.

More importantly, I think you can sell it.

Yes, the Libertarian is the champion of the Anti-MADD brigades.

They’re the folk who want us all to have to breathe second-hand smoke.

They’re the folk who don’t understand why drunk drivers are a menace to more than their own slovenly lives.

They’re the folk who don’t care, period.

They just want.

And then they project, aided and abetted by “welfare queens in new Cadillacs”.

Seriously, it’s sickening to contemplate what the cretinous alliance the Republicans cobbled together in 2000 has wrought.

But soon it will come home to roost.

On the other side of the Depression ahead of us, one of two things will happen: a president whose policies are like FDR’s (I’m looking at you, John Edwards! You were the only one who could, demonstrably, beat any GOP candidate apt to run in November. I know you’re out of time and out of money, but I know you’re not out of passion or out of hope!) or the dissolution of what remains of the USA.

Either way, things will get worse first, and then at least for some people some things will get better.

We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

“Unity” is a scam

Submitted by bringiton on Sat, 2008-02-02 01:57.

He’s being all things to all people and who knows if he’s earnest or not, really, but it’s either pathetically naïve or a pack of lies, take your pick. Where, exactly, is the common ground between the greedy, vile, lying Republican Party and their criminal backers and the rest of us? There isn’t one, but Obama keeps insisting there is; sooner or later someone is going to be disappointed, and angry, and vengeful.

One more example of Obama wanting to kiss up to an audience but still have things both ways:

“I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws, but I’m not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana.”
Obama to Northwestern University students, 2004

Where, exactly, is the magical place between “decriminalize” and “legalize”?

That’s ObamaLand!

The future is a pileup

Submitted by bringiton on Sat, 2008-02-02 02:35.

Sarah, you’re so easily amused. :-)

The next administration will have to deal with endless disaster. With a Democrat, any Democrat, in office we can avoid the worst of it in the appointments in the courts, but everything else is going to be horrible. It will be vitally important to pin the blame for the mess where it belongs, on the criminal, treacherous, traitorous Republicans and their co-conspirators. Letting bygones be bygones is not a winning plan.

Obama and The Future

Submitted by Raejean French (not verified) on Sat, 2008-02-02 02:48.

A thin and exaggerated record is the least of it. I generally don’t trust the man to be well-schooled on most major policy issues, rather than the latter day hallelujah product of what is being fed to him by his handlers and advisers.

On this specific issue under criticism, I profoundly trust Hillary Clinton over the unseasoned Barack Obama when we are talking health care policy.

David Cutler on health care

Submitted by the farmer (not verified) on Sat, 2008-02-02 04:42.

On this specific issue under criticism, I profoundly trust Hillary Clinton over the unseasoned Barack Obama when we are talking health care policy.

David Cutler is the guy in charge of Obama’s health care plan. Same David Cutler who was a member of Hillary’s health care team (failed attempt to put together a health care bill) back in the 90s.