Politics with Marc Ambinder

« Where's the Hope? | Main | Interview: The Club For Growth Ascendent »

Nov 5 2009, 4:16 pm by Chris Good

Liberals Pledge $3.5 Million Against Dems Who Filibuster

The left's pressure on centrist Democrats has steadily grown since the health care debate began but MoveOn.org and Democracy for America today launched the most direct threat yet: together, they've secured commitments from 66,000 members to donate a total of $3.5 million to support primary challenges against any Democratic senator who joins a Republican filibuster to block an up-or-down vote on health care reform. The groups announced the commitment in a fundraising email to supporters today.

:: Comments (14) :: Share This

Comments (14)

market karma

but wait a minute......

I thought it was only the Republicans who were in some ideological civil war.

Dave (Replying to: market karma)

As one of the people who pledged, I didn't pledge for ideological reasons. I did it because I and my family are knee deep in health insurance hassles, and are sinking further. I'm distressed to see meaningful reform being diluted and reduced to something about as ineffective as the old anti-crime bills or the CAN spam act. There is currently in this country no private model for providing health coverage which works as efficiently and as cost-effectively as the current government provided models.

I'm not a champion of big government, and I'm not a hater of capitalism. I just know what works and what doesn't right now, and without a meaningful public option, we are going to have government sanctioned more of the same. Just as the CAN spam act gave us government sanctioned spam and anti-crime bills gave us government sanctioned crime.

jpmurray (Replying to: Dave)

Dave, as much as I sympathize with your personal situation, it makes no sense to design a multi-trillion dollar perpetual system for all of the rest of us based on your woes. The government does not know how to run businesses or markets or to deliver cost-effective services. If you don't understand that, then you haven't looked deeply enough. Medicare is a mess--I know having worked in a business that served largely Medicare patients--but it now has such a strong political constituency that it is sacrosanct. Decisions about what to cover, how much to pay, what claims to deny, etc. are made irrationally based on political considerations. Have you looked at the Medicare cost line? It's up 8% year-after-year. Nobody that I know, and precious few companies, can claim that their salaries or earnings rise at anything near that level. If unchecked, Medicare will gobble up all available earnings from you and me, and then some--and ObamaCare will do nothing to prevent that. It will only replicate, on a larger scale, the fiscal entitlement disaster that is Medicare.

There is no question that elements of our healthcare system are imperfect, but the diagnosis of what is wrong has been shallow and partisan. The Democrats have successfully framed the debate as being about the uninsured, who represent 13% of the populace. They would have the entire system overhauled based on that. Yet the 83% with insurance are largely satisfied with their insurance and their care; why disrupt that?

The recently advanced Republican plan is a better alternative. It would address a number of the distortions that have been introduced into the market, mostly by Democrat policies, at no cost to citizens. Take a look at that.

Paul in Athens


You know, it's good to see them make threats against their own. Shows them up for what they are. All the more reason to vote this bill down.

Brian Despain

Ok this is a threat against Ben Nelson? Evan Bayh? Joe Lieberman isn't a Democrat anymore.
BSD
Motorcycle Parts Accessories

Brian Despain

Ok this is a threat against Ben Nelson? Evan Bayh? Joe Lieberman isn't a Democrat anymore.
BSD
Motorcycle Parts Accessories

Brian Despain

Sorry for the double post.

JAD1973

It's about damn well time Democrats did this. Of course, it's coming from activists, not Reid, who couldn't put pressure on anything larger than an ice pack.

RomanX

So it is not appropriate to vote against representatives who do not vote in an manner you disagree with or more accurately to run primaries against those individuals?

Paul in Athens (Replying to: RomanX)

You are free to vote any way you want.

But if they do this, campaigning against their own party members, what will happen, slowly of course, is the changing from a "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
to a government of the party, by the party, for the party.

Shouldn't your state decide who is best to represent all of the state? Or should the Democratic party decide who is the best person to represent them.....the party, not the citizens.


PacificCoastRon

As another pledger, I echo the comments of Dave. An hour ago I was thinking about walking on my good union job at the grocery store, where the owners/managers (who are getting the largest profits in their history and a generally high return on equity in the universe of American companies) won't give us the resources to do the excellent job they want us to do in a very tough big-city location(for a wage cost expenditure of $500-800/week they could probably get a sales increase of $2000-3000/wk in my department) ...

and then I remembered the health insurance on a good union plan that is paying for a bunch of stuff for my wife, my kid and me too. Of course the union was out today talking up all the health plan givebacks the employer wants in the next contract.

And to RomanX, yes, in the viewpoint of the Washington villagers and their local allies in the Democratic Party apparatus, yes it is inappropriate to challenge them. I say 80% of the Democratic party officeholders AT ALL LEVELS of government need to be replaced, as being far too allied with the selfish/lobbied-up/superficial-media-driven bad part of American culture.

I do see an ideological point in all of this. (But I don't make a big deal of it and interpret all historical events in terms of this analysis.)

It's all a big intelligence test, to separate out those who believe in some right-wing ideal of free-market culture at all costs, from the intelligent majority that understands that capitalism is wonderful, but that it's only relatively well-regulated capitalism that is sustainable. I've been a micro-businessman most of my life, including part-time now.

I've also been a historian. Do I get to be the very first to point out that despite all the right-wing wailing about "socialism" -- quite idiotic if you were actually educated in the history of European, American and Asian socialism -- that three periods of some of America's greatest growth were associated with GOVERNMENT-MANDATED CONTROL OF SALES & MARKET SHARE in the domestic economy in World War I, the main period of the New Deal, and World War II (using government & business elite management control boards in World War I, and adding union reps in the New Deal and WWII periods).

From 1917-19, 1934-40, and 1942-46 all major industries had their sales percentages parcelled out to the major companies with local control boards in the 48 states of the time -- AND IT WORKED!! And America grew and prospered.

Look it up, Glenn Beck.

atlpete

What we have is an imperfect trillion dollar bill America, that's we the people, can't afford. It's become an ego contest for egomanic president. I have never seen someone go after the media when they ask tough questions.
I have a tough question where's some tort reform?
I have an interesting solution for a lot of this health care mess.

If you want "free"( I love how everybody wants something for nothing)

Set up "free" government clinics for people without insurance. That way way they won't overwelm emergency rooms and they can get basic and essential care. There's your public option. Oh, and you sign a basic realease so you can't sue your doctor when he can't cure your hang nail and your finger has to be amputated. Think outside the box people. Throwing money at a problem IS the problem. How much have we spent looking for Bin Laden?

Paul in Athens (Replying to: atlpete)


I would hope there are "public health" offices in every county in the US. If we take the bill cost and divide that up among the counties, and I know it should be weighted by county population size, we come up with $31,847,133 per county (all 3140 of them nation wide per wiki) per year.

What would your county be able to do, what services could they provide to the low income folks, with $31 million per year?

The basic infrastructure is in place. The control and management functions are in place. They can immediately hire more people, buy more equipment, expand their facilities, provide more services for more hours to more people than ever before.

The dems bill, as it stands now, is insane.

Dan (Replying to: atlpete)

Wow. Just wow.

No one is asking for "free" anything. The public option is funded, like private insurance, by participants premiums.

Atlpete, if we can't afford to reform healthcare, can we really afford to be fighting 2 different wars on 2 different fronts?