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"Progressives" In The Village

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Media
Posted on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 07:43:35 AM EST
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I very much appreciate Kevin Drum but this post and this post really can not be reconciled. Kevin writes:

[T]he reform bill we ended up with is very similar to both the 1993 Republican counterproposal to Clintoncare and to Mitt Romney's healthcare plan for Massachusetts.

Just below that post, he wrote:

Glenn Greenwald commends to us Jeremy Scahill's take on healthcare reform:

[I]f you look on the liberal blogosphere, people like Jane Hamsher are attacked mercilessly for having the audacity to stand up and say "this is a Democratic sellout."

I've got nothing but props for Scahill's work, but this is just wrong. [. . . M]ost of us who supported the current healthcare bill — warts and all — did so because it was, plainly, not only an enormous first step1 forward, but the only way to make that first step.

Scahill and Greenwald's point is not about supporting the legislation - it is about pretending the legislation was the greatest progressive triumph since Medicare. Drum (and every other Village blogger) says the legislation is conservative reform in his next post. And yet he and they also say this is a progressive triumph. It isn't. Maybe it will evolve into one, as Drum predicts in this piece. But the ACTUAL legislation is, IN THEIR WORDS, conservative reform. And people have been attacked for saying so.

Speaking for me only

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    "Progressives" In The Village | 22 comments (22 topical)

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    Yes, the actual legislation (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by Militarytracy on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 08:14:10 AM EST
    is conservative reform.  If this were a progressive triumph Americans would not still be dying needlessly in the name of making a profit.  If this is a progressive triumph for the citizens, then the only things missing are the coliseum and the lions to deal with the pains and the inconvenience of the capitalism untouchables.

    Yes, indeedie (5.00 / 1) (#5)
    by david mizner on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 08:31:20 AM EST
    This is the contradiction at the heart of the effort of Village progs to sell the bill. Jonathan Chait is especially guilty of incoherence.


    What has emerged from that machinery is not merely "better than nothing" or "a good start." It is the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades.

    http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/just-noise?page=0,1


    Obama's plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within their party's mainstream: The first is the 1993 Senate Republican health plan, which is compared with Obama's plan here, with the similarity endorsed by former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger here. The second is the Bipartisan Policy Center plan, endorsed by Bob Dole, Howard baker, George Mitchell and Tom Daschle, which is compared to Obama's plan here. And the third, of course, is Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan, which was crafted by the same economist who helped create Obama's plan, and which is rhetorically indistinguishable from Obama's.

    http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/obamas-moderate-health-care-plan

    Now, for Chait perhaps there is no contradiction: he believes that it's a Republican plan can be a grand progressive achievement. But for progressives who are actually progressives, the contradiction is blatant.

    "progressives" with shudder quotes... (5.00 / 2) (#10)
    by lambert on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 08:45:30 AM EST
    ... is propagating,  I see. Haw.

    "Progress" toward what, one might ask? HCR (Higher Corporate Returns), apparently....

    This "Progress" (5.00 / 2) (#15)
    by TeresaInSnow2 on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 09:12:57 AM EST
    would never have happened under a Republican.  Democrats would have fought this very legislation tooth and nail for what it is