It's amazing to me how the candidate of "hope" -- the one who wants to "change politics as usual" is engaging in the SAME politics as George W. Bush! Am I the only one bothered by this?
The Obama campaign is back with the 2008 version of "Harry and Louise" -- a tactic straight out of the Rove play book. Which is, when you have little to offer voters, slam your opponent with lies and distortions! Hey, it worked for Bush/RoveCo.!Obama must still be stinging from the excellent closing remarks by Sen. Clinton in the debate. Why else would he be dragging up this garbage? And why else would he sit on a stage and call charges of plagiarism "silly politics" and then ENGAGE IN IT HIMSELF within minutes of the debates ending?
You can't have it both ways "Mr. Hope" ... it's either "silly" or you are a hypocrite!
If you are going to run as someone who is going to change the way we do politics in this country, then buddy you need to be leading by example -- and right now you're not!
Senator Clinton has every right to call you out on your lies.
On February 3 Irwin Redlener, M.D., posted a response to Obama's campaign tactic.Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that a pair of mailings sent to voters by rival Barack Obama's campaign criticizing her health care plan and trade views are false, misleading and a betrayal of his pledge to practice a new style of politics.
"Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public — that's what I expect from you," Clinton said angrily, waving the mailings in the air.
"Meet me in Ohio, and let's have a debate about your tactics," she added. [...]
Obama Hires 'Harry and Louise' to Attack Hillary's Plan for Health Care: Republicans Thrilled!Haven't we had a "Liar-in-Chief" long enough? Can we afford to elect another? I think not!
Here's a top contender for the most egregious political strategy of the current campaign season: the Obama Campaign is now circulating a mailer that resuscitates the images of "Harry and Louise," the notorious stars of a political ad that was part of a $300 million campaign by the health insurance industry and others to bring down the Clinton administration's health reform proposal in 1993. The photograph of a middle-aged couple looking troubled as they pour over a pile of papers on their kitchen table adorns the first page of the Obama mailer -- but it looks like it could have been a screen shot taken from the original Harry and Louise piece.
But there's more. The accompanying copy in the mailer is nothing more than a list of untrue assertions and seemingly deliberate misrepresentations of Senator Clinton's positions on health care. It is simply false that Senator Clinton's plan would "force everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it." In fact, Senator Clinton's plan not only includes nearly twice the resources for health care tax credits as the Obama campaign but would cap premiums at a low share of a family's income, to ensure that everyone could afford to be in the system. And according to the Commonwealth Fund, the best way to maximize cost reductions in health care is to make it truly universal, with an individual requirement as part of the shared responsibility needed to make the whole system work.
Yet if Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, the Obama campaign has just packaged an ad that could be used, essentially unedited, by the Republicans next fall. To make matters worse, Barack Obama's resuscitation of Harry and Louise ad also helps bolster the cause of those who, at all costs, oppose meaningful health reform. [...]
While we can only speculate on Senator Obama's personal motivations, what is perfectly clear is that he ended up proposing a plan that would not require individual citizens to do anything and, according to many independent experts, would leave at least 15 million Americans out of the system. That means 15 million people out of the insurance pool, jacking up costs for the rest of us. It also means millions of people still crowding up the emergency rooms, getting care that, to them, is "free" but actually gets paid for by the rest of us through tax-based support to the hospitals and doctors who actually provide care to the uninsured.
Senator Obama is a very smart guy, and I would like to think that he wouldn't mind a re-do on this issue. But, of course, that is a no-no in American presidential politics. So, Obama is left in the extraordinary position of now having to defend a position that most progressives would never embrace -- in essence leaving large numbers of people without health care. And to top it off, he's now attacking universal health care and making a reincarnated Harry and Louise to do the dirty work. I suspect that many Democrats will simply see this as a desperate "go Republican" strategy that could have the unintended consequence of setting back the cause of universal health care.
16 comments:
A quick trip to Obama's website can connect you to the document that lays out all his plans. Lots and lots of details. Plenty of stuff.
But so what!? His stuff is as meaningless as Hillary's stuff.
They both offer "solutions" that are politically impossible. Neither one of them has ever had an original idea, or even a good but underutilized used idea.
Hillary, in her first senatorial run, opposed legalized gambling around the state of NY. She opposed the development of casinos. Instead, she said she didn't want "those kinds of jobs", but rather, she wanted "new 21st century high tech jobs."
Well, since that bit of brilliance, billions of dollars have left NY for casinos in Canada, Connecticut and New Jersey.
Like it or not, casinos offer paying jobs and casino companies are begging for the chance to open their doors in the state of NY. Finally, after a few decades of economic decline, Monticello is getting a casino.
Meanwhile, high-tech companies are not showing the same enthusiasm for operating in NY. I wish they would, but that can't happen until the economic climate for those companies improves. That means lowering business taxes, one item among a long list of obstacles.
Meanwhile, if Hillary or Obama really cared about the plight of blacks, they would both fight to eliminate most penalties for most drug crimes and treat drug issues for what they are: medical problems.
Blacks will never fully arrive in the US if such large percentages of black males spend so much time in prison. But neither candidate is honest enough to discuss this problem in accurate terms.
This kind of petty divisiveness is a distraction at best and smacks of desperation.
Contrary to what many people believe I know Obama to be what he is, a politician. He is not Jesus. He is no hope-laden Messiah to rescue us from ourselves. But he is a better politician than she is and has simply stolen her thunder.
Lament it all you like. Party unity is what we need right now and recent comments and posts that both you and I have made are really not healthy for the good of the country.
So I'm going to try really hard not to make any subsequent attacks on her but being that I am a human being I will probably be mightily tempted.
You know, I seem to remember another recent presidential candidate offering change and hope as his platform... Who was that... I'm sure it couldn't have been a good president, not if the most recent one to espouse those words was W...
And what sort of candidate would stoop to attacking a fellow democrat on health care(pdf)?
And she did have a great closing remark at that debate in Texas.
/sarcasm
Haven't we talked about this mailer before? You still haven't answered the question I asked about it - Is what it says true? Will Hillary fine people who can't afford to get her health plan?
As for the NAFTA thing, her book does count it as one of Bill's "legislative victories" and a "success." It's kind of hard to argue with your own words.
It is completely consistent for him to criticize her on policy matters. Both of these are policies that she either has espoused or currently espouses. He has very different views on these issues, do you want him to stop pointing out his policies?
Pointing out her blatant plagiarism of Edwards's speech was done to show the hypocrisy of her own attacks, not to mount an attack of his own.
Thank you so much for articulating the inherent hypocrisies and frustrating vagueness of the Obama way. I'll stick to real results over false promises, thank you very much. If Obama had two X chromosomes, nobody would consider that flimsy resume as worthy of the presidency.
John - It would appear that Hillary is not the only Clinton that Obama has "borrowed" talking points from. Can this guy think of anything on his own?
Obama is undermining universal health care in 2008 in the same way the Republican slime machine did in 1993. Hillary is pointing out that Obama's plan leaves out 15 million people. There is a big difference.
Hillary has stated on more than one occasion that her plan will be affordable for everyone. She is going to cap premiums, and offer coverage on a sliding scale. There is a lot of waste in the health care industry, and Clinton intends to streamline the process.
Obama mandates coverage for children; if parents don't insure they children will they be fined?
And I will repeat again that Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton.
I want Obama to stop undermining basic Democratic ideas, and stop handing talking points to the Republican party for the general election.
So leveling charges of plagiarism are "silly politics" if they are coming from Clinton, but are fair game if coming from Obama? Talk about hypocrisy.
Kevin - You're welcome.
BAC
Obama's plan does not "leave out" anyone - it is ESTIMATED that 15 mil people will CHOOSE not to participate. Hillary's plan will instead fine those 15 mil people (or garnish their wages and put them in whatever plan the arbiters of this system see fit).
She has "said" that she will make it affordable. But she will not make it free to everyone, so it will not be affordable to some. We've been over this already. Their plans are almost the same; I did this research already and Obama's plan as more action items to reduce buyers' costs. But neither plan can hope to claim the mantle of "universal."
Obama does mandate coverage for children. The parents should be forced to take proper care of their children as those children don't have a say in whether they will be covered. In both plans, SCHIP will be extended to those making $50k or less, my income bracket (or it was last year, lets hope I get that raise this year...). I could afford health care for my son under either plan making what I make now. I would expect with the subsidies in both plans that I would be more able to do so. It would be neglectful of me to not have him insured.
I never said Hillary is Bill. I'm not sure where you got that from, but if it is the NAFTA comment, those were her words in her memior, not mine nor Bill's.
He isn't leveling charges of plagiarism, he is pointing out the hypocrisy of her argument. It is silly politics and he is proving that point (although I never heard anything from his campaign about it, only comments from political commentators watching the debate).
I don't know what "Democratic ideas" Obama is undermining, but if it is Hillary's health care plan, that isn't a Democratic idea, that is her idea. Universal health care, a true safety net, is (in this context) the Democratic idea. Neither candidate is pushing for that, to my great disappointment.
John – Did you watch the debate? It was Obama who said charges of plagiarism were “silly politics” – probably at the same time his campaign was engaging in them. I am surprised that a bright guy like you can’t see the hypocrisy of this.
As for the heath care discussion, again I simply don’t understand how you can defend Obama’s egregious action.
I suggest you read this:
Obama Hires 'Harry and Louise' to Attack Hillary's Plan for Health Care: Republicans Thrilled!
Irwin Redlener, M.D.
Posted February 3, 2008
Here's a top contender for the most egregious political strategy of the current campaign season: the Obama Campaign is now circulating a mailer that resuscitates the images of "Harry and Louise," the notorious stars of a political ad that was part of a $300 million campaign by the health insurance industry and others to bring down the Clinton administration's health reform proposal in 1993. The photograph of a middle-aged couple looking troubled as they pour over a pile of papers on their kitchen table adorns the first page of the Obama mailer -- but it looks like it could have been a screen shot taken from the original Harry and Louise piece.
But there's more. The accompanying copy in the mailer is nothing more than a list of untrue assertions and seemingly deliberate misrepresentations of Senator Clinton's positions on health care. It is simply false that Senator Clinton's plan would "force everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it." In fact, Senator Clinton's plan not only includes nearly twice the resources for health care tax credits as the Obama campaign but would cap premiums at a low share of a family's income, to ensure that everyone could afford to be in the system. And according to the Commonwealth Fund, the best way to maximize cost reductions in health care is to make it truly universal, with an individual requirement as part of the shared responsibility needed to make the whole system work.
Yet if Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, the Obama campaign has just packaged an ad that could be used, essentially unedited, by the Republicans next fall. To make matters worse, Barack Obama's resuscitation of Harry and Louise ad also helps bolster the cause of those who, at all costs, oppose meaningful health reform.
I can only imagine a clutch of smart, experienced health care policy wonks, a few political advisers and Senator Obama trying to come up with a plan that would address the uninsured, the under-insured, the mind-numbing bureaucracy, the $2 trillion of costs now attributed to U.S medical care and the rest of problems that have led most people to understand that the system is in crisis.
You can almost hear the advocates for genuine reform telling the Senator that you can't fix the problems of the uninsured and bring costs under control without making sure that everybody was covered. And there were just two ways to go, the advisers probably pointed out: either a single-payer system, a la Canada, or individual requirements for every citizen to buy coverage. The latter approach, of course, would also need serious cost controls, big-time regulation of health insurance practices and subsidies to help low-income families. This is the direction that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards took.
Maybe Senator Obama got all of this. But then, one of the political advisers must have said something on the order of "No way. Single payer or individual requirements will never sell...Americans won't buy it." In fact, The New Republic explained that Obama advisers were concerned about "excessive ambition" and feared that a "mandate sounds scarier to the public, particularly middle-class voters."
While we can only speculate on Senator Obama's personal motivations, what is perfectly clear is that he ended up proposing a plan that would not require individual citizens to do anything and, according to many independent experts, would leave at least 15 million Americans out of the system. That means 15 million people out of the insurance pool, jacking up costs for the rest of us. It also means millions of people still crowding up the emergency rooms, getting care that, to them, is "free" but actually gets paid for by the rest of us through tax-based support to the hospitals and doctors who actually provide care to the uninsured.
Senator Obama is a very smart guy, and I would like to think that he wouldn't mind a re-do on this issue. But, of course, that is a no-no in American presidential politics. So, Obama is left in the extraordinary position of now having to defend a position that most progressives would never embrace -- in essence leaving large numbers of people without health care. And to top it off, he's now attacking universal health care and making a reincarnated Harry and Louise to do the dirty work. I suspect that many Democrats will simply see this as a desperate "go Republican" strategy that could have the unintended consequence of setting back the cause of universal health care.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irwin-redlener-md/obama-hires-harry-and-lo_b_84716.html
BAC
Gee this post makes Obama seem as bad as Bush - Folks Lets get some perspective and stop all this namecalling. Time for Unity!
Mike from New Zealand
Mr Platform: How much do you know about gambling law in New York State? Or the position the US Attorney for the Southern District takes on the subject of Federal gambling law?
Gambling law in New York State is probably the most complicated and contradictory in the world. The New York Racing Association (NYRA, Aquduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga) is along with Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, Del Mar, Keeneland, Churchill Downs, Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood, Longchamp, Deauville, and Leopardstown part of the finest thoroughbred racing in the world.
One question: in NYS criminal law is thoroughbred racing legal or illegal? IT IS ILLEGAL. That's the kind of mess she AVOIDED.
She, unlike Obama, is for the Frank-Porter-Berkley-Wexler REPEAL of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that Bill Frist snuck into the 2006 Port Appropriatons Bill despite the objections of Donald Rumsfeld and John Warner of all people! Despite Bush's own Port Appropriations request for the last fiscal year -- $0.
Frank-Porter by the way is something that the Congressional Black Caucus, which Obama refuses to join, also supports.
Please do a little research on topics you don't know about.
Please.
Mike - It's hard to think about unity when Obama is taking his campaigning style directly out of the Bush/Rove playbook. Understand that if this were Obama using the Republican slime machine tactics against a Republican, I'd be cheering him on. But he's using them against another Democrat, and in the process undermining core Democratic principles. When "Mr. Hope" truly becomes "Mr. Hope" then I will think about it. Right now, I'm not convinced.
BAC
Wheras, the Obama camp's comments claiming that she's solely responsible for the Iraq war, and even part of the Bush dynasty (Bush-Clinton-Bush) are "unifying"? Give me a break.
What "dynasty"? Big deal...so another Anglo name gets added to the Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush pantheon...you think you DON'T live in a plutocracy?
At least with the Clintons you're seeing two MIDDLE-CLASS families making good and doing good. 10 generations down, people crying about "dynasty" MIGHT have a gripe. Obama's the ARISTOCRAT in the race, for crying out loud!
Right now, in Senator Clinton, all you have is the best candidate for president.
He did call the plagiarism claims of Clinton "silly politics." Showing that she is willing to engage in plagiarism practically in the same breath as she criticizes him for it was used to emphasize the irony and her hypocrisy - not to attack her personally.
I support his statement about her health plan because it is true. It is a fact that, one way or another, people who can't afford Clinton's plan will be fined. There is no arguing with that fact. I am surprised that you are willing to support her actual LIES about his plan and yet will attack him for telling the truth. I have supported her statement in the past that his plan is not universal - the problem is that neither one is.
I agree and disagree with the first anon: we do need to stop this idiotic name calling and debate on the actual plans. But we do not need to fall in line - everyone's opinion is important.
To the second anon, Obama has not said she is single-handedly responsible for the Iraq war - he has just questioned why she is unwilling to admit it was a mistake and take responsibility for her vote. Again, there is a difference between unity and blindly falling in line.
Kelso, how is Obama more of an aristocrat than Clinton? Obama was raised by a single mom and her middle class parents. He spent several (I forget the number right now) years working as a community organizer in lower Chicago - not exactly a high paying job. After graduating from Harvard, rather than working as a corporate lawyer he worked as a civil rights lawyer and Chicago area university professor - again, not exactly blue-blood. I don't know about Clinton's early years, but she was a corporate lawyer in the eighties and involved in a number of land deals, along with her husband, and just recently loaned her campaign $5 million. I don't think this really puts her or her supporters in a position to make the argument you just did.
John - I won't do your homework for you. Go look up Sen. Clinton's history and record.
You are simply wrong about her health care plan, but no amount of information will make you see the error of your comments. You know the old saying ... none are so blind as those who will not see.
I fear that by the time you open your eyes it will be too late.
BAC
Again, will people be fined when they can't afford to buy into her plan? Clinton has admitted that that will be the case. It has been proven the case in Massachusetts. You can't argue with facts.
And what are you talking about with Clinton's history? If it's Kelso's comments, I was pointing out the complete absence of facts in his statement. Obama paid of his student loans two years ago when Audacity of Hope sold. Clinton is a multi-millionaire and has been for a while now. I'm not criticizing her for this, just saying that Kelso's statement doesn't hold.
John, John, John ... you can repeat a hundred times that the sun doesn't come up in the morning, but that doesn't make it a fact. There is one fundamental difference between their two health care plans. Her's covers everyone and his leaves 15 million people out. BOTH plans have items that are mandatory, and BOTH plans have some sort of fine if people don't comply.
The cost saving measures in Hillary Clinton's plan, plus the tax incentives, will make it affordable for everyone.
John Edwards offered a very similar plan to Hillary's -- and the focus of his campaign was about ending poverty! The "two America's."
Face facts -- Hillary's health care plan is better than Obama's.
And I can't speak for Kelso, but it would seem that Obama's background and Clinton's background are not that different. It was only after Bill Clinton left the White House that they began to accumulate wealth. His speaking fees, and the sale of their books has very likely increased their personal wealth. But it's not like they've "always had it."
And finally, how long is it going to take you to realize that you are not going to change my opinion about either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?
BAC
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