In 2016, on one political organization board, I was literally the only Bernie supporter out of 18 people. I was not just a Bernie supporter. I was a passionate Bernie supporter. I drove over 100 miles just to be in the room with Bernie in Manchester, NH on that great victory night after the NH primary.
The two issues that were the source of my passion for Bernie were single payer health care and progressive federal taxation. Today there were a very few bitter Sanders supporters on social media, in what is hopefully just a distant echo of 2016, saying there was no difference between Biden and Trump, a transparently absurd proposition on issues from civil rights to international relations to race relations.
But it is the issue of health care this year that seems to cause the most passion. Let me say this about Joe Biden.
1. Joe Biden knows that he needs to unite this party, and he knows that a huge portion of his primary supporters are for Medicare for All;
2. Joe Biden is always underestimated because of his speech impediment and his style;
3. Frankly, this coronavirus crisis is going to shuffle our politics massively. I view my job as a strong supporter of Joe Biden as playing my part to have this country finally get Medicare for All.
It will happen. Biden knows this. He also knows we will not win without a “united” movement (to quote Bernie today) this November.
Biden is not a fool. He knows that this will not happen without the party being united on health care.
4. The smartest way to get there is to create a robust Medicare option that will naturally radically shrink the private health care sector.
I lived in Europe. Even in France, which has the best health care system in the world – and a single payer system – you can buy supplemental private health plans. We are making FAR too much if the issue of an alleged dichotomy between single payer and private insurance. We have to be politically smart to get this over the finish line. That’s what Biden is trying to do. That’s what Biden can do. That’s what Biden will do.
I don’t have the slightest doubt about it.
5. Anything that we all say about Joe Biden from here on out matters, and will be used by the Trumpists to damage him and drive a wedge between all of us.
There is a reason Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP. There were lots of midwestern and mid-atlantic region ‘white guys’ with ‘street cred’ with working class people.
But Obama picked Biden because Biden, like Lyndon Johnson before him, believes in actually PASSING laws and programs to help ordinary people, and Biden knows how to work the legislative process.
That’s how you make it happen. Those of us who believe in Medicare for All are in good hands with Joe Biden.
” To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without self – regard, and to love life fully.” President Barack Obama awarding Vice President Joe Biden the Medal of Freedom
I can’t wait to see President Obama and Michelle out there campaigning with presumptive nominee Joe and Jill Biden again.
What better universal health for all as a human right endorsement could you have than the author of the Affordable Care Act — President Obama — standing by your side?
You don’t need to gaslight us.
He does not support Medicare for All. Joe Biden does not support universal health care at all. His health care plan explicitly leaves millions of Americans without coverage.
He explicitly sh*t on Medicare for All about a week ago saying that it would not have helped during this crisis at all. Meanwhile, about six million Americans lost their coverage when they lost their jobs because of the lunacy of our current health care system.
If we are supposed to believe Biden will put us on the path to Medicare for All, then he should come out and support it. Frankly, his resistance to it and downright contempt for the idea during this time is all you need to know about Biden’s approach to health care. It’s beyond depressing.
Biden is awful. He would be a very bad President. He is still worlds better than Trump. That’s it. That’s the reason to vote for him.
And given that as the reason to vote for him, plus his weakness during this time, and his obvious mental decline makes it really scary about his prospects to actually get the job done in November. When Trump declares a national emergency before the election and resists moves to allow for all-mail elections, he will make this election completely illegitimate. Joe Biden ain’t the one to bring the fight to prevent that (keep in mind that he was saying less than a week ago that in-person voting in Wisconsin on Tuesday would be safe).
(And please, give us a break – Obama picked Biden to make sure white voters were less spooked. Nothing more. Nothing less.)
You’ll write this off as a mad Bernie Bro, but we have to be real about this. Joe Biden is not who you are saying he is and he is not a man in the shape to win a fight in 2020.
If we want to get rid of Trump it’s time to seriously consider picking someone else at the convention. Anyone. Not a leftist. Meet the “any functioning adult” standard, which at this point, does not include Joe Biden.
The leftist riff on Biden’s supposed mental decline is pretty lame, and not supported by what I’ve seen. Contrast to the blasé reaction to Bernie’s actual, non-hypothetical heart attack.
This is not a “leftist” riff, Charlie; the right is pushing it too.
Please no guilt by association–it only throws gasoline on the fire.
Also, it’s true.
Watch anything from 2008-2016 side by side with anything from 2019-2020. He’s lost more than a few steps.
Presumably, Biden’s fingers still work.
Bob, Biden’s fingers are working better than your brain.
He’s giving you the middle finger right now.
I love aspirational thinking. And I do think that sometimes great things are accomplished by unlikely people, pushed on by circumstance..
That said, as doubleman has stated: Joe Biden has explicitly campaigned against M4A. If this is done with a wink and a whisper, well, I’m not sure I’m getting the message.
But I hope you’re right!
I think this debate is more about politics than policy. I think realistically we end up closer to where Warren or Harris would have taken us had they been elected. A public option to start that gradually phases out private insurance and eases us into single payer. I am confident this is what President Sanders would have ended up despite his supporters rhetoric that Warren’s and Harris’ fully fleshed out plan was some form of betrayal. I am also confident this is where President Biden will be pushed towards, despite his consistent use of right wing talking points against public health care throughout the primary.
Frankly, my wife was too busy going to school and working two jobs to bother with the primary and ended up being too exhausted to come with me to vote in it. Right now her life is going to work with Covid patients at both jobs, coming home, getting sick, getting tested, testing negative, going back to work, and possibly getting sick again. She has no time or patience for this tiresome debate.
It’s going nowhere anyway with Trump in the White House, who is spreading dangerous lies about miracle drugs and downplaying the risks of the virus. She’s already seen far too many deaths that she’s becoming numb to them and has the thousand yard stare my old roommate who saw combat in Afghanistan had. We need to up nursing pay, cover all their education costs, and make permanent the easing of licensing requirements to deploy them in the field. After this is over they should get immediate access to veterans benefits and health care. This crisis was as traumatic as a war zone and the PTSD alone will be an enormous burden for these workers to carry.
Covid-19 shows the rest of the world that our private health care system is irretrievably broken. Otherwise viable hospitals that are needed to combat the spread (and take care of everyone else, we forget that cancer, gunshots, and heart attacks don’t wait for a pandemic to stop) are at risk of shutting down due to loss of profitability from elective procedures. Like restaurants and airlines and so many other sectors of the economy, they lack cash reserves and have wasted their profits padding the pockets of CEOs or investing in concierge amenities rather than PPE equipment for all of their staff. It’s frankly disgusting.
Biden is the nominee and our best hope to get anything done on health care. I agree with terry and Fred on that, but I share Charley and double mans caution that he is not being bold enough. This crisis gives him a huge opportunity to leap ahead of his primary competitors and the insane incumbent to do something we haven’t since FDR.
We need a lend lease program for hospitals. Buy out the failing ones and convert them into centers for public health innovation. Use them in the short term as Covid field hospitals, in the long term as a pilot for a public healthcare system. We can operate hospitals directly free of charge to the taxpayer and show the skeptics that national healthcare works. Biden should announce this step today.
Our best hope to get anything done on health care is having someone on the ticket in November that can lead and win and be strong. Do we really think that is Biden?
He can bow out for health reasons and the establishment can pick someone else.
This guy won’t get it done.
Unfortunately, I think doubleman is correct about this.
I’m very impressed with Andrew Cuomo. As I’ve said before, I know little or nothing about his history. I also tend to not care right now. Mr. Cuomo’s past history is unlikely to be any worse than Mr. Biden’s, and Mr. Cuomo isn’t carrying a huge fluorescent target on his back named “Hunter”.
I think that any Democrat who is elected will spend their first term fighting to put out the inferno that the Trumpists have torched under virtually ALL of our institutions and then beginning the tortuous task of repairing the damage.
I think that’s a full-time job. I think that will require not just a majority but a mandate in both houses of Congress. I think we will be fighting to save the existing Social Security and Medicare systems from literal collapse. I think we will be fighting to somehow address the staggering national debt that the literal theft of our national treasury by the Trumpists will leave behind. I think we’ll be using ALL of the resources of the DoJ to identify, investigate, and prosecute the legion of incompetent Trumpist moles this administration has intentionally spread throughout the federal workforce in EVERY federal agency.
I think that whatever needed changes come to our health care system will be a result of immediate emergency responses to catastrophic and immediate collapse. While bodies are literally being buried in Central Park and victims of normally-routine heart attacks, strokes, and trauma are dying because the hospital system has collapsed, nobody — NOBODY — is going to have time to argue for M4A versus expanding a public auction.
This is the fallacy of Ms. Pelosi’s blunder of attempting to launch hearings into the federal government’s mishandling of the pandemic. Yes of course that needs to be done. It is absurd to start that in March or April of 2020.
Joe Biden is just not up to this task. He just isn’t. In the absence of this pandemic, he might have gotten through one or even two terms — Ronald Reagan, after all, managed to hide his accelerating impairments throughout both of his terms. This pandemic is not going away, though. We haven’t even begun to feel the economic consequences of the criminal behavior of the Trumpists.
These are extraordinary times. They absolutely demand extraordinary responses.
I think Andrew Cuomo would be a far more effective President in February of 2021 than Joe Biden. I think Mr. Biden should step aside “for personal reasons” in favor of Mr. Cuomo.
Say it ain’t so, Tom. You’ve got to be kidding.
So, let’s see. And please correct me if I’m wrong.
First, you supported Warren, then you supported Biden and now you want to draft Cuomo.
Talk about a fair weather friend.
My friendship with you has nothing to do with the candidates either of us chooses to support or oppose. I like your passion, I like your candor, and I admire your persistence.
I still think that Ms. Warren is the best prospective president I’ve seen since this whole thing began. I still prefer her. She’s not going to run. As much as I like her, millions of Americans — especially black Americans — did not. I can’t change that, I can only accept it.
When Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders were the only two choices, I made my peace with Joe Biden. I’ve never been enthusiastic about him, and never wrote differently. I continue to think he’s a far better choice than Mr. Sanders.
Nevertheless, “better than Bernie” is not necessarily enough to meet the challenges we face.
I think Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump. I still think that.
Here’s my problem: I don’t think Joe Biden can do what needs doing for the next four years. Yes, he won’t be as bad as Donald Trump. I think America needs more than that very low bar.
I am sorry to say that it appears to me that Joe Biden is heroically striving to overcome increasing cognitive challenges. I don’t say that to attack him, I say it because I just can’t deny it any longer.
If Joe Biden is our nominee, I’ll vote for him. If that comes to pass, I’ll do so at least fearing — even if not knowing — that he will not be capable of doing the job.
The burdens of the Oval Office notoriously weaken even the strongest occupant. Every President leaves office more gray, more frail, and far older than the mere passage of time implies. Look at Bill Clinton in 1992 compared to 2000. George W. Bush in 2000 vs 2008. Barack Obama in 2008 vs 2016.
I fear what those burdens will do to Joe Biden.
Joe Biden got in this fight to restore the soul of America.
I believe we must overcome all our fears to help him keep that pledge.
Have any of you lived through the tragedy of a loved one with Alzheimer’s or delerium? Demanding that they hide their symptoms and continue to maintain the standard of performance they set before the onset of the disorder is an act of torture, not love.
@I believe we must overcome all our fears to help him keep that pledge:
Not if that means ignoring or denying symptoms of an actual disorder.
I think that replacing Donald Trump with a man or woman plunging into the abyss of Alzheimer’s or dementia is at best a marginal improvement.
I think we have to stop attacking friends and allies who raise legitimate concerns about a 77 year old man — no matter how much we love that man.
Congratulations for promoting the same meme as Putin’s Pinocchio and Russia.
If the intellects are drinking the Kool-Aid, what is the average Joe doing?
@Congratulations & Kool-Aid:
Fred, you’re being stubborn. You flatly refuse to admit that Mr. Biden might be declining. Surely you remember Mr. Reagan’s abysmal performance in the debates during his re-election campaign. It was obvious that he was not all there.
Were those of us who noticed that being hyper-partisan anti-American communists for talking about what everyone could see?
If the concerns are well-founded, than it doesn’t matter who voices them. That’s the reason why truth is ALWAYS an effective defense against slander and libel.
Better a fair weather friend than an ass kisser.
Hey Bob. GFY.
So Bob. Not that I give a flying muck buck but who are YOU voting for president, pray tell?
Who was on time for this crisis? Biden or Cuomo?
Joe Biden, JANUARY 27, 2020
“The President has blithely tweeted that ‘it will all work out well.’ Yet the steps he has taken have only weakened our capacity to respond.”
“The outbreak of a new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 2,700people and killed over 80 in China, will get worse before it gets better. Cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. There will likely be more.
Diseases don’t stop at borders or walls.”
“I will ask Congress to beef up the Public Health Emergency Fund and give me the power to use the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to declare a disaster if an infectious disease threat merits it.”
Andrew Cuomo, MARCH 8, 2020
“Remember what we’re really trying to do here is avoid the massive disruption of closing everything down for two weeks, the way China did, the way Italy is doing.”
Should mass transit be shut down as a precaution?
“At this time, there’s no reason to close down mass transit. We haven’t had — to the extent, we have big numbers in New York, it’s actually in Westchester, which is a suburban community, as you know, where you have a cluster of cases.”
“And once you get that cluster, they tend to exponentially increase. And that’s what we’re dealing with in Westchester. But, in New York City, we have a relatively minor number so far.”
Cuomo was slow. Very slow.
To say that his early response is superior to Joe Biden’s would be laughable if people were not dying unnecessarily, however admirably he is now performing.
Who DID show the timely leadership so critical to saving lives??
Gov. Inslee (WA)
Mayor Breed of San Francisco
Gov. Hogan (MD)
Gov. Newsom (CA)
and
Vice President Joseph R. Biden
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/nobody-expected-the-coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-did.html
A week ago.
“That’s for the Wisconsin courts and folks to decide,” Biden said. “A convention having tens of thousands of people in one arena is very different than having people walk into a polling booth with accurate spacing with 6 to 10 feet apart, one at a time going in, and having the machines scrubbed down.”
The day after the Wisconsin primary.
“My gut is we shouldn’t have had the in-person election in the first place,”
And how he views preparing for November and a potential delay to the election..
“No, it shouldn’t creep into your mind,” he said. “We had elections in every major crisis. We can take care of our health and our democracy. The idea of postponing an election should not happen. It is not possible.”
“I’d much prefer to have on — you know, in-person voting, but it depends. It depends on the state of play,”
We know the state of play right now. We need to be pushing for full mail-in voting for every election happening this year. If we do not start preparation now, it will be a disaster.
COY : slyly hesitant to reveal one’s opinions, make a commitment or take a stand.
So, doubleman. Once again, who are YOU voting for president?
I’m not talking about dueling press-releases.
I’m talking about day-to-day presence and communication. I’m talking about the difference between facing a gaggle of reporters and approving a staff-written piece for publication on a website.
Donald Trump and the Trumpists are out of control. The media can’t keep up with their lies. Andrew Cuomo is one of the figures who I’ve learned I can rely on when I see a clip or piece in my news feed.
The other names you mention are as well, and I like each of them. I would add Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, to that list.
Joe Biden has, as nearly as I can tell, fallen completely off the radar screen.
I think if you are not inside a very small bubble, you have not heard from Biden in weeks.
You may not even have heard anything about him.
That may be just fine for the general election, I don’t know. But he has not emerged as anything like a leader. this spring.
Terry depiction is just out of touch with reality, if what people actually perceive matters rather than what they “ought” to perceive.
Terry presented facts. You’re presenting tortured logic.
Hard to know what to say … thinking of you both and for your safety. It is an intolerable situation, and I amplify the voices of these frontline workers in this story:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/09/doctors-fume-at-government-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic/
I appreciate it Charley and this quote in particular from that article is a good summary of my wife’s take on this whole thing:
That really hits the nail on the head. All I can say is I’m very grateful to friends near and far who have sent supplies. Old neighbors from Cambridge and a former co worker from Chicago gave us masks. My niece in Florida is sending up some N95’s and my wife’s sister in Kentucky is sowing masks to send to Florida to return the favor. Even though they only met in person once. So we are all pulling together. It’s one of the rare times internet and social media have been more helpful than harmful. The Zoom sessions with my students have honestly more cathartic and supportive than academic, but they have become vital to my sanity.
I feel like we are all being punished for incompetence at the top. There really is no excuse for needing all these drastic measures when we were able to nip other pandemics in the bud without them, especially doing such things as a first resort when they should have been the last resort.
That’s the correct take! And we saw this for months happening in Wuhan and did not do anything to prepare ourselves for it coming to our shores. It’s negligence that borders on criminal. My niece was telling my rumors of a ‘body bag’ floor at the top of her hospital. They are just stacking them until it is safe to move them. There are mass graves in Spain and Italy you can see on satellite. This is Trumps legacy, whether his delusional supporters are willing to admit that or not.
Listen, I think we have to be real about Biden’s views on Medicare for All. He specifically said that, even even if Congress voted it through, he, as President, would veto it on cost grounds.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/biden-says-he-wouldd-veto-medicare-for-all-as-coronavirus-focuses-attention-on-health.html
This fits well within his record as a legislator and as vice-president. Arguing that a Biden presidency would advance Medicare for All as a cause does not fit well with his record, and strikes me as wishful thinking. Schumer doesn’t want it. Neither does Pelosi. They would only have been dragged into supporting it with a vehement M4A supporter in the White House.
Biden’s big outreach to the Bernie folks on this issue is to suggest expanding Medicare eligibility from 65 to….drum roll…wait for it…60. Even Clinton, back in 2016, offered 55. Again, this is of a piece with Biden’s record, which is more conservative on this and many other issues than Clinton’s. He simply doesn’t have much issue with the current system, and, with a net worth somewhere north of $9 million, he probably doesn’t have many concerns about how the current system will treat him and those he loves.
It would at this point be extraordinarily cunning politics for Trump to outflank Biden to the left on this issue, as he is trying to do with student loans. There’s enormous room for maneuver for a Republican president in a national health crisis. If he did, Trump would likely win independents, and with them, re-election. And that goes with my general impression that by settling for Biden, Democrats are taking an extraordinary risk with the November election and the future of this country.
So elect more Democrats who will push for Medicare for All at the local, state, and Congressional levels. Biden is a first and foremost a party man. When the center of the party moves, he moves to meet it. Whether that was to the right in the 80’s and 90’s or to the left in the 2020’s. Is Bernie more consistent? Is Warren? You betcha. It’s why I voted for him and donated to Warren. I would be much happier with them as the nominees, but the reality is neither of them were able break through to the black voters who determined this nomination.
Short version. We can push Biden. We cannot push Trump. That is the choice in November.
We are looking at 30% unemployment, at least a hundred thousand preventable deaths, and a historically botched response. Republicans are the ones getting nervous. We do not need to be. All that Biden needs to do is stay alive and he will probably win. That does not mean we should be complacent. That does not mean his VP pick does not matter. That does not mean the Republicans will stop trying to steal the election. What it does mean is that we should stop whining our man did not win and get to work making sure Biden wins and does what we tell him to do when he is in office. Trump was not the first choice of the majority of Republicans, but they stuck with him since they needed him to sign their bills. We need Biden to sign ours. That’s the game. Time for Democrats to fight the GOP instead of one another, or worse, cowering in the corner or elevating Trump into an unbeatable Lex Luthor. He ain’t that popular, he ain’t that rich, and he ain’t that smart.
This perspective, that “all that Biden needs to do is stay alive and he will probably win”, IS “complacent.”
Trump is terrible at being president, but he’s a skilled campaigner. He has already won once. He’s an incumbent president with a vast cash-on-hand advantage. He has a fetid and effective propaganda network. His base is markedly more enthusiastic about him than the Democratic base is about Biden. In the context of the pandemic, the real dangers of in-person voting provide scope for electoral shenanigans in swing states on a scale never yet seen. Truthfully, Trump doesn’t need to be personally that rich, smart or popular. He just needs to be less unpopular than the other nominee, which is exactly how he won last time.
This sense of complacency – that Trump is so obviously appalling that any warm body with a D next to their name will beat him – is exactly what has led to Biden being nominated. Trump can easily paint Biden as an ineffectual corrupt sexually-harassing barely-functional dementia patient, and then simply let his more enthusiastic base propel him to re-election. The attack ads almost write themselves.
Nor is Biden a weathervane who can be pushed in whatever direction; he has a clear and consistent record spanning nearly five decades in politics. He will positively enjoy using AOC, Pressley and others as a foil and a punchline to prove his bona fides to far-right Republican legislators, just as he always has. Why anybody thinks he’ll behave otherwise in the Oval Office beggars belief. I wouldn’t bet a single dollar on Biden following through with the promise to introduce a public option.
Where I do agree is that we should work to get candidates elected at lower levels who are seriously committed to progressive policy issues. We have some great local elected officials. Just don’t expect any of them to have more influence over him than, say, the WSJ editorial page. They won’t.
I made a similar argument during the primary. The problem with your theory is, Bernie couldn’t even beat Biden, so how can he possibly have done better against Trump? What other candidate would beat Trump who flamed out against Biden?
Post-2016 there was a theory I believed: in right through the 2020 Michigan primary. There there was this swath of persuadable white working class voters ready to elect a populist progressive like Bernie. Turns out, I was wrong. Bernie consolidated the anti-Hillary vote in 2016 and did a lot better one on one against a polarizing woman than he did one on one against a unifying man. It helps that we now have evidence that Trump is a demonstrably bad President.
So the progressives have now had two cycles where they had ample opportunity to beat moderates in a primary and beat a Republican in the general and they have largely failed. The moderate bland candidates outperformed the populists in the 2018 election (Ojeda, Randy Bryce, and Ron Quist all failed. Abigail Spanberger Gretchen Wilson, Tony Evers, and Elissa Slotkin all won) and inarguably Biden outperformed Warren and Sanders, even in this state.
So this election is different. It’s no longer a referendum on the Clintons and their collective baggage, but a referendum on Trumps failures as president. It worked in 2018 and it will work in 2020. Already WI turnout, despite GOP voter suppression at every level of government during a once in a lifetime pandemic, easily ousted a Trump judge. Every special election has been a boon for Democrats. So the turnout issue is not going to be a problem, unless Bernie supporters defy their candidate en mass or vote for a fascist to spite the moderate Democrat. Bidens willing to play ball and meet you halfway, if you want to participate in governing rather than just bitching you should meet him there.
One for president would be nice.
As FDR once supposedly said, make him do it.
We would like to! Spinning stories about how “He’s already doing it” and “It’s Congress’s job” and “shut up or you will elect Trump” doesn’t help.
I say between now and November rally around him no questions asked (and help give him Dem majorities in both chambers), then after January do the legislative and policy pushing.
Anytime somebody says “no questions asked”, all my alarm bells ring and I go to red alert.
We already have a President who demands that no questions be asked. I’m not ready to voluntary sign up for the same policy from a Democrat.
We’ll need a supermajority in both houses to override his promised veto of M4A.
Is that our best option in a post-pandemic world?
At the moment it’s the option we have. I have no expectation that your fantasy of nominating Cuomo from the convention floor will come to pass, and plenty will cry foul if it did.
I realize that Christopher’s remarks were in response to Tom’s. But I feel compelled to note that one choice we retain is to be honest with our allies and ourselves,
It’s the right choice, if sometimes difficult, and one that distinguishes us from our opponents.
Saying that our nominee apparent is in favor of a Medicare-for-all policy does not fill the bill. That’s as big a fantasy as Cuomo as dark horse savior.
I am not saying Biden is for Medicare for All, I am saying the voters had a choice between several candidates who favored it and several who did not and they choose the one who did not. Despite polling showing 70% of Democrats still favor the policy. So that’s 70% of the party Biden will have to answer to in order to win and in order to govern. He was also against MFA when times were good. They are not now, and there might be wide room for what once was radical to be mainstream today. When conservative Republicans are calling for full employment backed by government money, we know we are in the midst of an ideological realignment.
I’ll second Christopher’s FDR quote. We forget he ran as a deficit hawk attacking spending and promoting a balanced budget to get us out of a Depression:
As soon as he came in and his economists said the New Deal was going to be more expensive he gave up on the deficit hawk and became one of our biggest spenders in history, for good reason.
So if it helps Biden win the suburbs to be for a public option, the far left proposal just ten years ago, than I’ll call a mulligan worth taking to pass something bolder in office. If Biden is signing Warren and Sanders bills into law, I’m happy.
Just saying, ten years ago the “far left option”, as it is today, was Medicare for All; the many people advocating it were consciously, and purposely, frozen out of the negotiations to conciliate Big Pharma, and in a futile attempt to get even one (1) Republican cosignature on the Affordable Care Act. Then, in the same futile pursuit, the public option was abandoned; it made no difference to the vote at all.
The only lesson Biden will draw from victory, if he manages to win, is that he doesn’t need the left in order to win. Instead, he’ll take it as validation that is particularly incarcerative brand of pre-capitulatory centrism is what America Really Wants. Based on his prior record, I’d expect his core issue as soon as the coronavirus crisis is over to be The Deficit, and a politics centered around a Grand Bargain including cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
You don’t see him bending over backward to keep Bernie or Warren supporters in the fold? I do. He’s even repudiated himself on bankruptcy reform. Sanders and Warren were not cheap dates for Obama and they were not for Biden either. He had to earn their endorsements and he has to earn the support of their supporters. I do not see him taking a single voter for granted this election. He has no choice but to reach out to every voter.
It takes a coalition to win the White House. Bernie could not win the nomination without black voters and Biden cannot win the general without the high turnout of young people and Latinos. So he will need to meet them in the middle, and I think he is.
There were not enough votes in a Democratic Congress ten years ago for a much weaker public option, how on Earth do you think single payer would have passed?
ACA isn’t nearly good enough on its own, but it kept me insured for a year where I didn’t have coverage through employment, and it kept friends and family insured too. So if we want to talk about saving lives we need to start with the fact that an ACA that passed in 2009 and has been on the books for ten years saved far more lives than a single payer bill that would have failed to pass the House, even if Obama has endorsed it and campaigned for it.
I really think it’s important our side maintains reality based approaches to public policy, otherwise, we are just the left wing Tea Party voting 99 times on a bill that cant pass to make our base happy. What’s different about my party, at least what I thought was different, was that we actually care about governing and helping people through policy. The other side only cares about winning elections. So I really hope we can promise policies we can actually deliver on.
I voted for Sanders twice. I voted for Warren twice and gave her more money than any other candidate in 2020. My wife is on the front lines and she’s cracking under the strain of our inadequate health care system laid bare by this crisis. I want single payer. We are not going to get there until we have the votes, and we aren’t going to get there with Trump in the White House. So get another Democratic trifecta and persuade the Democrats on the fence that there are more people for it than against it.
What I respect about the religious right is that they play ball with whomever will sign their bills, even an immoral charlatan like Trump. They fight like hell for school committee races and state houses. They didn’t go home or vote for Dukakis to spite Bush for beating Pat Robertson, the man self anointed by God to win the presidency in 1988. I feel like too many Bernie supporters are ready to do the 2020 equivalent of that, and are unwilling to take his movement beyond his candidacy and down the ballot where it can really make an impact.
I don’t think anyone is claiming Biden is for MFA. He has said many times himself that he is not. However, he does share the goal of universal coverage.
https://joebiden.com/healthcare/
(Is it no longer possible to hyperlink text in comments?)
This is not true. It’s clear on the website you linked to.
He does not support M4A nor does he support a public option program that would provide universal coverage.
His plan would leave nearly 10 million people uninsured.
Biden clearly supports a Medicare buy in public option:
The website goes into greater detail, but if passed it would be the most progressive expansion of health care in history. I suspect most Americans if given a choice between a public plan that works and a private plan that does not work, will choose the public plan. This is the most feasible way we get to Medicare for All in the near future. Even AOC conceded that. I believe elsewhere you conceded the same, that pushing for MFA from the gate makes the public option more likely. I agree with you from a negotiating standpoint that it’s better to start with MFA. Biden is concluding, and the voters apparently agree, that it’s too big of a change and would shift the general election from a referendum on Trump’s assault on a now popular ACA to a referendum on a new and less certain program.
The irony of this crisis is that our private health care system is now in danger of insolvency. Biden and Bernie in their last debate were both arguing policy from a 2019 perspective rather than a 2020 perspective. The reality is, the Covid outbreak could severely endanger the long term profitability of private health care anyway. This is a golden opportunity for the government to buy hospitals, build hospitals, and create a triage public system on the fly. I think Biden should embrace it.
What is stopping those 10 million people from enrolling in the public option? You also forget that Medicaid and Medicare expansion has been made a state issue thanks to John Roberts, and it’s likely even an MFA would be vulnerable to court and implementation challenges and leave red state citizens behind.
This has to be a bottom up shift in power order to work, the left has to stop relying on top down leadership and copy the right by taking back state houses. WA already is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the country in embracing a public option. CA probably has the scale to start single payer.
If it’s like MA then there will be a few who aren’t provided it but are also make little enough to not have to purchase it. I believe MA has 98% coverage, but I am one of the other 2%. I still think of us as a universal coverage state.
I think there’s a difference between genuinely asking Biden about certain policy commitments and then just nitpicking everything about his record to feed this false narrative that he’s the same as Trump. Many in the Berniesphere online have done this. Same folks resorting to a discredited accuser to try and equate him with Trump. The former is what the left ought to do to keep Biden honest, the latter is what Vladimir Putin wants us to do to re-elect his pawn in the White House.
I don’t see anyone doing that here. I think there are reasonable critics like you and Tom and unreasonable ones willing to burn Biden and elect Trump to spite the wing of the party they do not like. We tried that already in 2016 and it was a disaster.
President Clinton would not have pushed for single payer but she would have got enough PPE to protect my wife and niece during this crisis and she would not have deported the parents of my students. Those may seem like low hanging fruit issues to the Bernie or Bust crowd, but it’s life and death for people I love and people I am charged with keeping safe.
The voters felt otherwise this time around. Polls show they support it overwhelmingly and yet they picked the candidate who was probably the least ambitious on the issues. Least ambitious being relative, since Biden’s plan is more ambitious than at least the last eight Democratic nominees. One has to win the White House first, and the candidates who supported MFA could not even win the nomination of a party that overwhelmingly supports it.
Biden can unite the party, and improve his chances of winning in the Midwest by choosing Tammy Baldwin as his VP running mate. She has been a long time supporter of single payer health care and as a House member opposed the invasion of Iraq. Want to convince progressives you are serious about moving towards single payer without actually running on it? Select a single payer VP running mate who may well become president. She has serious progressive credentials that will appeal to the Sanders/ Warren left of the party. At the same time, she was twice elected to the Senate from Wisconsin facing tough Republican opponents, demonstrating she also has crossover appeal.
My main objection to Baldwin is that we would risk her Senate seat in a special election. She is the rare candidate who would check off all the same electability boxes as Amy Klobuchar while moving Biden to the left on policy. A solid choice-if we can defend that Senate seat.
Agreed.
Is Wisconsin a special election state or a gubernatorial appointment state for Senate vacancies? If the latter then there is a Democratic Governor so less concern for us.
It’s a special election state, hence my concern about the special election to replace her. A lot of states adopted those laws after Blago.
Handy list for all 50 right here:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vacancies-in-the-united-states-senate.aspx#Special
I understand the concern about a special election to fill the seat. I think it’s risk worth taking.
We won’t know until later in this cycle. I think it’s not worth risking the Senate Majority over the Vice Presidency, especially since other candidates fit the bill (Duckworth, Whitmer, Harris, and Abrams come to mind) that can bridge the progressive/moderate wings and appeal to swing voters. Granted, if it’s the difference between winning WI and the WH and having 46 instead of 47 seats it’s a different equation. We could also always win the special. So I see it from both sides.
I think the most recent evidence suggests we definitely can win a statewide race in WI.
That race is really good news for the fall. I’m more bullish on Wisconsin than I have been since before 2016.
We disagree on the risk involved with Wisconsin. However, I think all of the other candidates you mention are problematic. Start with Harris. Given her performance in the primaries it is unclear she will help all that much with African American turnout. Even though she is way out on the left, a lot of the left doesn’t like her. In part because she fumbled badly on health care. Doesn’t appeal to any other demographic group, Abrams simply does not have enough (any) national experience. She may motivate African American voters more than Harris, but unlikely to excite other groups nationally. Witmer has been a Governor for just over a year. She’s not progressive. Again not any national experience and not an effective Governor in the short time she has had. You didn’t mention Klobuchar, who would have been my choice to lead the ticket. That said, I don’t see her as someone who could help Biden unite the party or excite turnout.