There is a story out which highlights a big divide we see in this campaign battle. Bernie Sanders and single payer, Vs Hillary and most Democrats.
www.cnn.com/…
Hillary Clinton on Friday cast Bernie Sanders' plan for single-payer health insurance as an "idea that will never, ever come to pass."
She in recent days was backed up by Nancy Pelosi.
www.cnn.com/…
But then Pelosi took another pointed swipe at Sanders' plan, saying, "It's no use having a conversation about something that's not going to happen."
Now on this site, there appears to big a big backlash against the ACA. “Some” have gone as far to say that the public option would have passed if left in the ACA. Some say we can pass Single Payer if we are only “courageous enough” to try.
This is what appears to be a lot of revisionist history.
Let’s start with some useful facts….
The entire Senate (including Bernie Sanders) voted for the ACA. YAY!!!!!
But wait….
The House passed the Senate bill by 219–212.
34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voted against it.
Right there is the crux.
They had to remove things like the public option in order to get enough Democrat votes for it to pass, and they still had 34 against it!
Of those 34 who were in red or purple states, 30 of them are no longer in office. In part for guess what? Yep, the ACA passing in it’s current form. Those seats moved to Republicans.
despite voting against the most prominently liberal legislation of the past decade, few of them have been able to hang on to their seats in the ensuing Republican wave:
www.slate.com/...
The idea that going single payer instead, or that having the public option, would have had any chance of passing is naive. It is also dishonest to imply that it would have.
Many, it seems, argue from a position of thinking that half the country isn’t Republican. It is. Do those Republican voters hate healthcare? Some maybe. Quite a few of them just hate the government being involved in anything. Some hate the government using tax dollars to fund things like healthcare.
Big Wave of a Revolution that changes the electoral map? Yep, absolutely. Except, it wasn’t on our side. Republicans won big, and they won big going against just the watered down ACA.
So I get it, I see the path to single payer. However, there is no chance of us putting “true” progressives in those purple and red states. It isn’t the leadership. It’s the voters. And that right there is the biggest revisionist lie that faces us in this election. The notion that they don’t exist, or will all of a sudden come around and agree as soon as you give them a choice.
If demographics are something you still want to be blind to that is fine. You can just look instead at the enthusiasm factor. Donald Trump far exceeds Bernie in crowd sizes and followers. Why don’t his followers go to Bernie instead? I mean they are both anti Establishment and against the 1% right? It’s easy...most of his followers are not only not progressives, they are not even Democrats.
Healthcare for everyone was a dream. Under President Obama’s leadership though it became a reality. But it did so because he was wise enough to do everything he could to give the country what was actually possible. There are ideals and visions for something better. And then there is political reality. Yon’t have to be a defeatist to say something is not possible. You could be someone, like President Obama, who is very intelligent and recognizes that to achieve your dreams there are certain paths to take.
Hillary Clinton is from the exact same mold. She wants to expand the ACA and provide more care, for more people and make it cheaper for everyone. She will fight like hell to make that happen, just like Obama, and she will win.
Saturday, Jan 30, 2016 · 1:51:58 PM +00:00
·
sholmberg
Quick correction. Trump does have by far last tally bigger crowds. There is no current reliable measurement of total actual followers. Based on some rough patchwork math I am going to hypothesize that Bernie has a bigger following. However, that is based on no actual scientific or provable formula.