California’s favorite moderate Democrat badly misinterprets the results of yesterday’s Senate election, as well as shows how little she understands the suffering going on here in California:
“You see anger. People are worried. And when they’re worried they don’t want to take on a broad new responsibility,” like health care reform, she said….
“I think we do go slower on health care. People do not understand it. it is so big it is beyond their comprehension. And if you don’t understand it when somebody tells you it does this or it does that and It’s not true, you tend to believe it, even though it isn’t true. It’s hard to debunk all of the myths that are out there.”
Shorter DiFi: since voters are stupid, we have to “go slower” on something they desperately want.
I don’t know what universe Dianne Feinstein is living in, but the health care crisis is very much a part of our economic crisis. It’s not some frivolous thing that we can wait until we’re flush with money. It is a major part of the reason why we are broke as a state, a huge element of the inequality that built up over the last 10-15 years, a major cause of household indebtedness and financial distress.
It’s just stunning to me, although not exactly surprising, that DiFi thinks health care is some minor side issue that isn’t important and doesn’t matter to people. The current health care crisis is a major drag on our economy. The US spends far more on health care than any other industrialized country and gets much less in return. It’s difficult to start new businesses because people can’t get affordable coverage on their own, and consumer spending is held down by concerns over ability to pay the medical bills.
In short, it is very difficult to see how California or the nation will experience any rapid or lasting economic recovery until we fix health care. It is a central part of economic recovery efforts.
And as national polls show, the public very much wants health care to be done. Anyone who thinks that doing less on health care, or kicking it even further down the road would be a good idea is fundamentally misreading public opinion.
Feinstein tops it off with a gratuitous slap at the public, which she essentially argues isn’t intellectually capable of understanding the issues. It doesn’t help that Democrats have done a very poor job of messaging and selling health care in 2009, but DiFi prefers to blame others for her own failures.
I suppose I should be thankful for this, though. With statements and political analysis like this, she is doing everything in her power to run a Martha Coakley campaign in the 2012 Democratic primary. Let’s hope there’s a good progressive out there willing to mobilize public opinion and finally put DiFi into retirement.
Robert Cruickshank were 35 years of age and constitutionally eligible.
42 percent of the voters for Scott Brown voted for him just because he was going to vote against the health care plan. In Massachusetts.
So I guess we have to primary Di-Fi again?
Amazing that the Rules Committee of the California Democratic Party opposes a requirement that CDP-endorsed candidates should acknowledge that they’ve even read the Platform, let alone stae that they would actually run on it.
This is a real motivator isn’t it?
Without a real platform and commitment to principles, we’re left with an elected establishment that is really an incumbent protection and empire building racket. Heck of a way to run a Party.
And you’re going to make them suffer to the tune of billions of dollars in taxes and reduced services for existing government payees, so people who are perfectly able to secure healthcare but choose not to either because they don’t want it or are poor managers of their own income can be given tax money? I don’t see it.
First, I would remind DIFI that MA has a universal health care system.
It works.
HCR from DC is not the lifesaver it is elsewhere.
Secondly,
I think these numbers show what really happened in MA on Tuesday.
The same voters who buried McCain didnt vote this time. They stayed home.
Sure there is a drop off to be expected from a presidential general election, but this was all over the air and papers. If people didnt feel betrayed they would have showed. Even if 15% of Obama’s margin had showed up, Coakley would have won.
Almost million MORE folks went to the polls in MA in 2008 and all of them voted for Obama.
Scott Brown got the same vote total as McCain, but Coakley got 900k fewer votes.
Dem turnout and independent turnout just disappeared.
MA Election results
2010 election
1,168,000 brown
1,059,000 coakley
20,000 others
2,247,000 total
2008 election
1,109,000 mccain
1,904,000 obama
100,000 others
3,113,000 total
Brown wins with about the same vote as McCain got.
Where were the 900k or so voters that didnt show up at all and who just a year ago gave Obama the win?
Brown ran identical numbers to McCain, but Coakley drew 900k fewer.
Dems and independents just didnt turn out.
Progressives and others — new voters — are mad or heart sick with Obama for talking tough on Corporations, HMOs, Big Rx, and Wall Street. But then playing kissy face with them.
There are about 1.5 million Dems, .5 million Goopers, and 2 million no party in MA.
is to let her run for Governor…
Not that I would vote for her in either race.
You know, and I know, that both Boxer and Feinstein will keep their seats as long as they want them but I can’t see anyone who would mount a primary challenge to either. They would be treated like DeVore is now.
is that:
1) The health insurance reform that was actually put on the table was extremely complicated, because everything had to be structured to satisfy and preserve the profits of the insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and economically pig-ignorant, legally corrupt, sanctimonious anti-woman Conservadems.
2) The Dems sucked at selling the pig’s breakfast that resulted (the Senate bill being far worse than the House, itself no prize) because they didn’t actually have a simple plan, or even simple talking points, going in (which is part of the reason the result was such a pig’s breakfast).