in all honesty it was the right that was blowing this up. Once the progressives jumped behind her and got quite a lot of concessions the moderates had nothing.
Quoting Smurfy from the other thread
smurfy posted:
I'll say this in defence of Pelosi: the last time she was Majority Leader, it was the most productive Congress since the 1960s.
Don't underplay Obamacare, either. Yeah it was a unified Dem government, but people forget how vicious the push against it was. The House only passed the bill by 5 votes, and I'm sure Pelosi had to do a ton of work to get to that number. A less capable Majority Leader might have had to make greater concessions to conservative Democrats to get the bill through.
The 2009-11 unified Democratic Congress is the congress that the 2017-19 unified Republican Congress's partner tells it not to worry about.
I think few people want the job anyway, on either side of the political aisle. Seems like it's skin to herding cats.
I'll take it. All I have to do is play golf to work in the government. After all that's all the boss does so why not lol.
I can't remember a time when the Speaker of the House wasn't universally hated.
Yeah I saw people saying that Pelosi compromised too much but then I've also heard that she is good at twisting people's arms.
I literally don't see what the problem is with Pelosi. All I ever get in response is vague conspiracy theories
Or using unfortunately very good political psychologically to make further left-wing Democratic politicians to supporting her semi-unrealistic ways to get bills (either seemly center-left or centrist) done even they sacrificing their ideology to their supporters who hates her (without any Republican influenced in this endless partisan tribalistic crap and from their own interpretation).
She's said some pretty awful shit in the past and stood against a lot of progressive values.
That said, she's one of the most qualified people for the job as Speaker. As Raidyr and Smurfy have pointed out, she also got congress to actually work last time she had the job.
I think it hilarious that one bipartisan issue everyone can agree on in 2018 is fucking loathing Pelosi. Least we have common ground.
What I think is interesting is one side doesn't think she is progressive enough to represent American's while at the same time pre-emptively looking to cut deals with the Republicans, while the other side thinks she is intractable and desires only to transform America into a socialist hellscape.
If Obamacare actually worked, you'd have a much stronger case; the problem there is insurance companies basically run legal rackets and until that changes, any universal system will be plagued with issues. Passing highrisk low pay-in participants on to middle class families isn't ever going to be popular and you can forget the people that actually afford the method every saying yeah charge me more until the government carefully and delicately explains that this is the motherfucking law, like in other countries.
I can't fully make sense of the middle/end parts of this post, but to be clear, it was politically impossible to go any further with healthcare reform in 2009. The 'public option' had to be jettisoned to get the bill through, and one weird procedural trick had to be used to hurry the bill into law after the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate and the entire bill was out at risk. Medicare For All is an idea whose time must come, but the greatest legislator in the world could not have made it happen in 2009.
Just to be clear, smurfy pointed it out, I just largely agree with it and he put it in better words than I could so I just opted to quote his post
It was politically impossible because Obama waffled on aggressively pushing policy for three and half years, instead of making the decision say 6 months into his presidency that perhaps waiting for the republicans to "come to the table" was stupid, especially given the circumstances of his election.
As for why it could not have happened in 2009, the fact that insurance and drug lobbyists together outnumber senators and congresspersons almost 5:1 might have a little to do with it, probably quite a bit more so than the fact Mitch McConnel is a clinically diagnosed asshole.
Universal Medicare's time came during the depression, but as long as the rich says the middle class have to take the burden, it's never going to happen in a country where medical price gouging is not only expected, but legalized.
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