Markos Moulitsas Zuniga: Obama's Idiocy

Daily Kos: State of the Nation: I get spam:

We will not back down

From: President Barack Obama to Markos

Markos --

As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo. So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down. But do not doubt -- the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you to fight alongside me. We must continue to build out our campaign -- to spread the facts on the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep this 50-state movement for reform going strong.

Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today: http://my.democrats.org/...

Let's win this together,

President Barack Obama

Really? All we have to do is send the DNC $5 and we get ponies? The same DNC that is enabling corporatist Democrats to water down and destroy any hope for health care reform? That DNC?

This is so freakin' obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a "reform" package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money?

Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he thinks we're supposed to get excited about whatever end result we're about to get, so much so that we're going to fork over money? Well, it might work with some of you guys, but I'm certainly not biting. In fact, this is insulting, betraying a lack of understanding of just how pissed the base is at this so-called reform. The administration may be happy to declare victory with a mandate that enriches insurance companies, yet creates little incentive to control costs or change the very business practices that have screwed so many people. But I'll pass.

Democrats are demoralized, and have little incentive to turn out next year. The teabaggers will turn out. If this is how the Obama camp thinks we can energize the base -- by promising them a health care pony for $5 to the same Democratic Party that is home to the likes of Baucus, Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman, and the rest of the obstructionist gang -- then we're in for a world of hurt in 2010.

Comments

[Robert Waldmann]

If this is what I read on egregious moderation, I think I won't check out egregious overstatement. I'm glad that Kos isn't a bill killer (in context "potentially worse than the status quo." means definitely better than the status quo). However, his idea of "little incentive" is "not as much incentive as Marcos Moulitsas would want."

Many of the business practices are banned. Community rating is a simple rule -- hard to play with. The minimum limit on medical loss ratios gives the companies an incentive to cut administrative expenses and makes much of the effort to get around the rules unprofitable. The exchanges could (probably will) solve the huge problem of adverse selection in the individual market.

Republicans are swearing to repeal the bill -- all of it. That is not cackling with glee. Kos's view is clearly that it is unacceptable for Lieberman to win. Lieberman clearly cared about humiliating Kos et al. Their obsession with who won the political bragging rights and indifference to the specific content of the actual bill is strikingly similar.

I'm going to type it. Markos Moulitsas reminds me of Joe Lieberman. For them it's about them.

Unless, of course, Kos is just using reverse psychology on Lieberman in which case he's brilliant.