Did Pete Stark turn out to be wrong, or was Obama?

by: Adam Bink

Tue Nov 17, 2009 at 15:00


Here's Pete Stark from December 2008 on the prospects for health care reform:

Interest groups, too, deserve opportunities to make their cases, Stark said. He singled out the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

The health insurance industry, Stark predicted, would never support a Democratic health reform effort, but he said they could be easily overcome.

"They're going to be easy to roll because nobody likes insurance companies," he said.

Hmm. That one didn't quite work out.

As you might have noticed lately, I am big on accountability, learning from our mistakes, and improving tactics. What is interesting to me about health care reform in the case of insurance companies is whether the game was fixed, or an opportunity was missed.

On the one hand, you could make the game was fixed argument that insurance companies are more moneyed and powerful, have more lobbyists and connections, etc. I've also heard the campaign finance argument, which is we'll never achieve fundamental reform not just on health care but on lots of other issues until we have fundamental campaign finance and lobbying reform to establish public financing of elections, eliminate the revolving doors between members of Congress and K Street, and so forth. Therefore Pete Stark is wrong that they could be easily overcome because he forgets that issue.

On the other hand, I recall that when Obama gave his late October radio address ripping insurance companies, the first thought in my head was "it's about time". Other friends said that with his cutting of all these side deals with pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, insurance companies to find cost savings, he in turn agreed to shy away from such rhetoric, which was a mistake. Therefore Pete Stark was right that insurance companies are easy to demonize, it's just that our side never took advantage of it.

I tend to think it's actually something of both, but it's worth thinking about for future fights.
Adam Bink :: Did Pete Stark turn out to be wrong, or was Obama?

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Did Pete Stark turn out to be wrong, or was Obama? | 21 comments
"Obama gave his late October radio address" Wow! A speech! (4.00 / 1)
Yeah, this was a sure sign he really meant it, right?

Sry, Adam, but does this mean that 3 weeks ago you still didn't see that the guy is all talk an no action? Despite still waiting for him to get rid of "Don't ask don't tell", eight months after becoming president?
:-/

Not the point (4.00 / 3)
I didn't say I'm happy about his actions. I'm saying he trashed insurance companies in his radio address, and perhaps should have been hammering that for months. That in and of itself is an action, a tactic, to build support for health care reform.

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[ Parent ]
Of course they're easy to demonize (0.00 / 0)
Overcoming their obscene financial advantage is quite another matter.

At one point they were throwing a million dollars a day at Congress. Even if they did that every day for two years, it would still be a great investment given the many billions they stand to make off of mandates.

That's what we're up against. Doesn't matter how many pretty speeches you make, it's the M-O-N-E-Y that's the problem.

Unfortunately they might not even be that demonize-able (0.00 / 0)
what with right wingers and teabaggers constantly squawking about the infallibility of the "free market" and the captains of private enterprise.

The reality of their claims is irrelevant, because if you repeat something enough times to enough people it becomes true.  Hence why private, for-profit megacorporations are considered to be so good and government is so bad, when just the opposite is true.

[ Parent ]
We can only imagine what Stark would have done (4.00 / 3)
given Obama's mandate, how angry and ready the people were, and how weak and reeling the enemy was.

I think the road was wide open to publicly denounce the insurance racketeers as the criminal gangsters they are. A president with that mandate, under those circumstances, who truly looked at health care reform as his crusade, who was truly dedicated to Change, would have used a dual top-down/bottom-up vise application.

He would have riled up the base and the people to pressure lawmakers, to promise them defeat if they betrayed the people on this one.

Meanwhile he would've ruthlessly twisted arms, made every threat and any necessary promise, but made it absolutely clear he'd smash anyone from his own party who tried to defy him on his great issue.

Surely that should've been enough to get 51 votes for single payer, if that's what a strong, honorable president wanted? If that's how he wanted to show his faith in the people, his will to fulfill his promises to them?

I don't think it would've been anywhere near as hard as people think. That's sure what I would've done under those circumstances.

We know the Dem establishment never wanted reform, but only to further entrench the status quo. Finding that Obama was also not going to take action, they seized the opportunity and filled the vacuum.

So the only question, if it matters, would be if Obama too was always this pro-racket corporatist, or is he simply craven and feckless and incompetent and stupid? (I've only added that last one since they started talking about deficit reduction as a focus.)


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I'm gonna go with the latter (4.00 / 2)
simply because if he really was an evil corporatist, he could've done a lot worse, both in his campaign and as President.
[ Parent ]
I don't (4.00 / 1)
Watching the House this year I don't think any amount of speechifying, demonizing, denouncing, whatever would get a majority of the House, or of the Senate.

That is, however pro-corporate or feckless or whatever you think Obama is, there are a minimum of dozen Democrats in the Senate and four dozen in the House who are worse (and that's a minimum.) So I don't find your theory convincing.

But of course we'll never know.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

[ Parent ]
You're claiming (0.00 / 0)
their behavior is some monumental stand of principle on their part. "Here I stand, I can do no other."

But you're basing that on a political environment where the energy of the people was allowed to go to waste.

I think prostituted lawmakers are basically path-of-least-resistance cowards (otherwise they wouldn't be what they are), and if Obama had really come in with the goal of imposing the Shock Doctrine in the other direction, on behalf of democracy for once, it's hardly unlikely that most of the corporatist resistance in Congress would've caved.

This was an extraordinary opportunity. Emanuel knew what he was doing when he said "Don't let a crisis go to waste". He wanted people to think that meant they would indeed use the opportunity for radical reform. It was meant to encourage the 11-dimensional chess delusion.

Of course we now know that what they really intended was to use shock in the same old predator way.

I think things could've been very different. But as you say, we'll never know.

Historians will say Obama missed the last chance anyone had to try to reform this system. They'll never know if he could have succeeded, but he missed the last chance to try.

From here on things will be far worse, and far more radical.  

http://attempter.wordpress.com

[ Parent ]
Operationally it makes no difference, (4.00 / 1)
but I don't think he is a cynic or a hypocrite.

The best salespeople believe their own pitch. If the guy hadn't been sincere, there's no way he'd have gotten elected after Bush engendered so much distrust and cynicism in our politicians. Nor would he have inspired the kind of personal devotion he did.

He's smart, but deluded. He very deeply believes, in an almost religious fashion, that these important issues can be resolved in a conflict-free manner. That just is not the way the world works. All progress throughout history has come at the price of strife and struggle, and all great leaders made powerful enemies.

His delusion will soon be shattered against the hard rock of reality, and we'll see if he can adjust to reality, or whether he can't.


[ Parent ]
How so? (0.00 / 0)
"His delusion will soon be shattered against the hard rock of reality, and we'll see if he can adjust to reality, or whether he can't."

If Obama gets a health care reform bill passed, no matter how watered down, he'll give himself a pat on the back and call it a win. Same for future legislation regarding climate change or banking reform.

As of right now, I doubt that Obama would admit that he's lost much of anything by being "pragmatic".


[ Parent ]
I think Obama got it right actually. (4.00 / 1)
Yes, it's easy to demonize the insurance companies, but it's even easier to strike fear in the hearts of 50%+1 of the country. And there are few fears more effective than the fear of losing medical care and dying. That attack doesn't work among the uninsured, but it's highly effective among those who are happily covered by employer based plans (or Medicare).

So, Obama bought off the existing players, and assured the already-covered that they can keep what they like. Buying off industry may feel dirty (and it is) but maybe it worked. Consider just how anemic the industry opposition has been.

As long as we get a public option in the final bill, even if it starts off as too meager for our liking, we'll have real reform that can be expanded over time. (Of course, a mandate without a public option doesn't count as reform, no matter how good the subsidies and regulations are.)

Two things (4.00 / 2)
1. Obama bought them off, and they still worked against the bill, trashed the public option, released that crap report. So it wasn't necessarily effective. I have trouble seeing how cutting that deal in exchange for non-demonization (if that's what happened) worked.

2. We agree it's easy to demonize insurance companies, easy to strike fear. My question is whether that should have actually been done more to push back against the insurance companies striking fear. You have to fight fire with fire.

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[ Parent ]
One opportunity lost (4.00 / 1)
was that there was no harping on the anti-trust angle of this.  People get that there is no competition in our current market.  If it had been pointed out that we had, at most two or three choices in a particular area, then this whole thing may have gone much more easily.
[ Parent ]
Why? (0.00 / 0)
Of course, a mandate without a public option doesn't count as reform, no matter how good the subsidies and regulations are.

That sounds very much like how I understand the Dutch system (universal coverage, but entirely by private, mostly for-profit insurance companies) works, and it sounds pretty damn good.  The problem with no public option is that I don't see the subsidies and regulations being good enough, but at least in theory they could be improved too.  I'm not sure how the politics would play out.

I'm a strong supporter of single-payer, but it's not the only way to run a good health care system.  The government has to be deeply involved, but need not be a provider itself, either of care or insurance.

[ Parent ]
This talking point is invalid (0.00 / 0)
because America is not the Netherlands or Switzerland or any such place.

Their systems arose under completely different circumstances. They developed gradually among people who were basically acting in good faith with one another.

That's obviously not the same thing as trying to superimpose an ivory tower template on a bunch of vicious gangsters who see the people as nothing but prey.

Yet that's what this bill absurdly claims it will do.  

http://attempter.wordpress.com

[ Parent ]
You have a point (0.00 / 0)
I don't know the histories in the Netherlands or Switzerland, and they definitely have a different ethos on the right, at least now, but they certainly had their share of vicious gangsters too.  And I'm not talking about the current bills -- they're clearly insufficient as a long-run solution.  But I think your description of the U.S. situation is also not based on hard evidence.  The U.S. is different from Europe, but not a different planet.
[ Parent ]
Well, my hard evidence (4.00 / 1)
would be the domestic regulatory history of the last several decades, especially the last ten years.

When we look at what happened with the finance sector - almost total deregulation and the non-enforcement of what vestigial regulation there was; how this year we've seen nothing but a complete lack of will on the part of the government to do anything against any racket; the anti-reform which is Orwellianly called "reform" where it comes to both the banks and the health rackets; the proven psychopathy of those rackets, how both the banks and big drug are rushing to jack up credit card rates and drug prices before any new bills take effect, and how the insurance racket has issued extortionate threats about how they're going to punish any attempt at reform with their own increases; how utterly hostile both corporate parties are toward regulation or reform...

..When we consider all that, I just can't understand how anyone could possibly rationally think that this same government is going to "regulate" these health rackets in any way that could possibly increase coverage or prevent exploding price increases. Especially now that as written the bill (which does not have a real public option), through the mandates, would remove even non-participation as a competitor to this extortion monopoly.

The evidence is dispositive. It's not possible to regulate entrenched rackets. They have to be smashed.


http://attempter.wordpress.com

[ Parent ]
Stark Was Right (4.00 / 1)
It would have been easy for anyone with Obama's talents to pull off.

Anyone except Obama, that is.

Obama is a prisoner of David Broder's ideology.

Which totally precluded him from even dreaming of doing any such thing.

But how was Stark to know that then?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Stark said they would be (4.00 / 1)
"easy to roll because nobody likes insurance companies," not that the Democratic Party was willing to attempt to roll anyone.  

Obama might dream of doing such a thing, but he won't go against the grain of the caucus (indeed, he keeps reinforcing it.) If Stark could get enough of the other members of the caucus to share his approach, Obama's behavior would change (not enough for my liking, but it would change.)

Stark was here when Rahm was building the party of small ball / Republican-lite - there is no reason he should have been surprised by this.

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[ Parent ]
Wow, here goes my LACK of Big Edu-Cred ... We (0.00 / 0)
support sell outs,
we support people who are politically incompetent,
we support people who are a mix of both,

and they sell us out, OR, they fuck up unbelievable oppotunities to fundamentally change the rules for the better for all of us, OR, it is mix of each.

Support sell outs and fuck ups, get a bunch of fuck ups and sell outs.

We REALLY need 7 part diaries to grok this?

rmm.  

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way

Did Pete Stark turn out to be wrong, or was Obama? | 21 comments
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