• CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    What more should Obama have done on the front of universal healthcare than to draft a universal healthcare plan and try to get Congress to pass it? Which is what he did. They didn’t have the votes and the president doesn’t write laws. They got healthcare reform as far as they could with a few asshole Democrats and a totally stonewalling GOP. Also how is that platform radically leftist

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      He had huge majorities in both houses, and he had a 57% approval rating at the time. Had he wanted to, he could have twisted some arms and gotten the public option through. He just didn’t care. And as I said in another comment, I was being a little hyperbolic with, “radical leftist,” but he ran farther left than anyone in 20 or 30 years and governed center-left to center-right.

      • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Ah, so you’re another person speaking from ignorance with great confidence. In order for major healthcare reform to pass, it had to overcome a Senate filibuster. That requires 60 votes, and the Senate had exactly 60 non-GOP votes for all of 2 months and some change in 2009. And one of those 60 Senators (who later left the Democratic Party) wouldn’t even support the public option on the ACA. They were barely able to get the ACA voted for before Ted Kennedy kicked the bucket and they lost vote 60. They then had to use the bill they did manage to pass along with reconciliation to get the ACA signed into law. It was by the skin of their teeth.

        But based on your confident ignorance I’m sure you’ll just give some excuse and completely gloss over or ignore the fact that you are just factually wrong about the specifics of your criticism.

        He had huge majorities in both houses, and he had a 57% approval rating at the time. Had he wanted to, he could have twisted some arms and gotten the public option through.

        Ignorant bullshit!

        • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I wish I could find the tweet to credit the guy, but someone once said something to the effect of, :“The number of Democrats needed to do anything is N+1, where N is number number of Democrats currently in office.” 50 votes in the Senate? Well, nothing can get done because of Joe Manchin. Need one more. 60 votes on the senate? Well, that’s barely a super-majority, need one more. Oh, Ted Kennedy died! Need one more so we can have a super-majority again! Could the Democrats eliminate the filibuster? Don’t think about it! Elect one more Democrat.

          You can call me ignorant all you want (I’m not by the way, I lived in MA at the time, I remember Scott Browns election better than you), but at the end of the day, these are just more excuses. Two houses, a President with a strong mandate, and a year of filibuster proof majority, and they couldn’t pass their own agenda. Either it wasn’t important to them or the party isn’t fit to govern.

            • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              LOL, wait, do you think the thing I cited is supposed to be a fact? You get that it was a joke, right? I’m trying to credit a guy who made a good joke about how Democrats always have an excuse not to do anything. Bro really thought it was a real mathematical formula 💀