No, you can’t have a health care mandate. Not yours.
“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void,” Vinson said.
Unpopular, untenable, and unconstitutional. No wonder Obama wants to declare the health care debate over. He’s losing it. Badly.
A few links of potential interest for a lazy Sunday:
The deal Obama struck to extended all the Bush tax cuts is good for America, and also good for the Republican Party. When it was struck, however, the liberal howls of outrage made me think of one other outcome which, while not as good for the nation, would be even better for Republicans: If Nancy Pelosi blocked the deal, the Bush tax cuts (and long-term unemployment) temporarily lapse until the new Republican House takes over in January, at which point they pass a tax cut extension at least as strong as the Obama deal, and probably stronger. So in order to make the point how opposed Democrats are to letting rich people (or “rich” people) keep their own money, they’re willing to let the long-term unemployed stop getting checks for a month (and probably longer), delay economic recovery at least that long, let Republicans pick up an even bigger victory and take all the credit for the deal, make Obama look weaker and make the Democratic Party in general, and Pelosi’s House Democrats in particular, look even more petulant, shrill, and extreme.
That appears to be exactly what’s going to happen. It’s like some perfect storm of liberal fail.
The reasons why House Democrats are undertaking such counterproductive and self-destructive behavior probably requires the insights of a psychiatrist more than a political scientist. In the 2010 elections, voters rejected the liberal agenda about as thoroughly as any domestic political agenda has been rejected in our lifetimes. After two years of trying to push the most liberal agenda since LBJ’s “Great Society” expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s, Democrats suffered massive losses, most dramatically in the House, for a switch of 63 seats. For a graphic depiction of how thoroughly liberalism has been rejected, take a look at this Real Clear Politics map of incoming House seats:
Not only are liberals unwilling to consider why their agenda was rejected by voters, they’re unwilling to even consider that their agenda was rejected. Rather than face up to that unpleasant fact, the nutroots have embraced a far more psychologically satisfying (if political suicidal) explanation for their tidal wave of defeats: Democrats lost the 2010 Election because they just weren’t liberal enough:
I’m sure I could come up with 10-15 other examples. It’s like that episode of The Critic where Jay Sherman remembers being rejected by a woman he was trying to pick up: “Eww, I don’t like that memory at all! Let’s look at it again through the magic of self-delusion!” All those congressmen lost because they just weren’t as awesomely liberal as I am! High five! Inside the liberal reality bubble, the Democratic Party’s biggest mistake was getting Blue Dog Democrats to run in marginal districts in the first place, and if they had just run people with positions closer to Nancy Pelosi or Alan Grayson in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, they would have done better.
Of course, outside the liberal reality bubble, this idea is a laughably naive exercise in vainglorious wish fulfillment. It’s also easily disproven. Take a look at the contrasting fates of Tom Perriello and Jason Altmire.
Perriello was the golden boy Democratic freshman Representative from Virginia who was not only the darling of liberals, but also loftily declared that he would rather vote for ObamaCare and be defeated than vote against it and be re-elected. Democrats pulled out all the stops to save his seat, sending him $1.6 million over a 10-day period and having Obama appear personally on his behalf. If the nutroots theory that liberals just needed a candidate worth fighting for to lure them to the polls to assure victory were correct, Perriello should have been a shoe-in. He lost.
Altmire, by contrast, was one of those loathsome “Blue Dog Democrats” that so many liberals feel are merely Republicans in disguise. He voted against ObamaCare. If liberal theories were correct, disheartened liberals should have assured his defeat. He won in a year that fellow Blue Dogs who voted for ObamaCare were being slaughtered.
So the current Pelosi-lead liberal temper tantrum is impossible to explain given the objective political needs of the Democratic Party. However, it’s all too easy to explain given the psychological needs of liberals.
For years liberals have believed that majority status (like The New York Times and black voters) was their unquestioned birthright. Never mind that between 1968 and 2004, a Democratic Presidential candidate had topped 50% of the popular vote exactly once (the post-Watergate Jimmy Carter, who managed to garner a whopping 50.08% of the popular vote in 1976). For them, Republican victories were aberrations from the supposed norm. They truly believed that America was a “center-left” nation, despite polls consistently showing twice as many Americans identified themselves as conservatives rather than liberals. They believed people like John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira who assured them Democrats were the natural majority party, and would take over their natural role as lords of the earth any day now.
And then the 2006 and 2008 election seemed to confirm the theory. Yes! This was it! This was their moment! Finally all of their dreams would come true! Obama was one of them, and with the House and Senate firmly in Democratic control, he would completely replace all the intolerable policies of his predecessor, “that idiot Bush.” He would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, close down Guantanamo Bay, legalize gay marriage, use Keynesian economics to fix the economy, and nationalize health care. The liberal moment had arrived at last. It was so close they could taste it.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the liberal nirvana. What the rest of us call “real life,” and what liberals attributed to an ever-expanding cast of villains (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Rasmussen Reports) they lumped together as “the right-wing noise machine” inexplicably rose up to thwart their righteous will. The economy stayed broke, and if the Stimulus did anything it made it worse. The Tea Party happened. Cap-and-Trade went down in flames. Obama figured out that Bush’s anti-terror policies weren’t bad at all now that he was the one who had to deal with the problems. Democrats managed to pull the Zombie ObamaCare over the finish-line despite widespread opposition, but it was a far cry from the glorious platonic idea of a fully nationalized, single-payer system that existed in their mind’s eye (and nowhere else). Then the voters, the same voters liberals believed in their heart of hearts was naturally liberal, rejected them. They were like a football team a mere quarter away from winning the Superbowl, only to have the opposing team rack up three touchdowns on them in the last five minutes. How can this be happening? What did I do to deserve this?
When a party gets walloped in an election, usually it takes time to reflect on why voters might have rejected its message, and what parts of that message (and the party) need to be changed. If you’ve seen All That Jazz (and if you haven’t, you should; it’s a great movie), then you’re probably familiar with the Kubler-Ross grief cycle: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Obama has moved on to at least the third stage, but House Democrats and the nutroots can’t get past the first two.
Conservatives have many interests that might supersede politics: Family, jobs, religion. But for many liberals, the political is personal. As far as they’re concerned, there’s Good (represented by Big Government run by liberals and doing the things liberals want it to do), and there’s Evil (big business (unless its unionized), rich people (unless they went to the right schools), Fox News, etc.). They believe the same things all their Facebook friends and newspapers and TV shows and NPR agree with! It’s inconceivable to them that people of good will might disagree with them.
After all, they’re Good! The other side is Evil! That’s why they write books with names like What’s Wrong With Kansas? rather than Why Can’t We Convince Kansas To Embrace Higher Taxes and Bigger Government? They’ve spent the last 20-years believing that voters are liberals, so it’s impossible that voters rejected liberalism itself. That would be tantamount to voters saying they rejected them personally. That’s unpossible! After all, they’re awesome! No, this could only have been happened because the voters have been tricked. Liberalism didn’t lose, liberalism was stabbed in the back. Hence the hunt for traitors and scapegoats that snatched away their prize at the last moment.
To actually listen to what voters were telling them would mean abandoning the worldview that they’ve clung to so fervently for so long. Thus every bit of cognitive dissonance only makes them cling more fervently to the belief that voters haven’t, didn’t, couldn’t reject liberalism itself. After all, they’re awesome, aren’t they? Aren’t they? Voters sent them a message good and hard, but they have to deny it, because their denial is all they have left. Liberalism can never fail, because whenever it appears to, then ipso facto it wasn’t really liberalism that was failing, just like Communist apologists claim that all those failed Communist states weren’t really Communist, because communism never fails inside the platonic fantasyland of their Marxist imaginations.
And into this seething cauldron of anger and denial comes Obama, blithely announcing the deal to extend the Bush Tax Cuts. After all, Obama still has to govern the nation for the next two years. Clearly the economy is isn’t responding to Obamanomics, so something else needs to be done. And if the Bush Tax Cuts expire, Obama knows that Democrats are the ones that will get the blame for the biggest tax hike in history. So he cut the best deal he thought he could, knowing he would have even less leverage after the Republican House took over in January.
In essence, Obama was saying that voters had indeed rejected liberalism. He was ruining their denial! Here was their traitor at last: Obama the secret Republican.
So the House, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, decided to stand and fight on the only issue that seems to unite their base: Their hatred of the wealthy, and their love of other people’s money. The idea that money might belong to the people that actually earned it, rather than the federal government, fills them with rage. Here was their line in the sand: We have to screw the rich, even if it means screwing the poor and the middle class in the process! Even if it makes them more unpopular. Even if the Republicans will just pass a deal even less to their liking in January. So they have to oppose extending the Bush tax cuts, even though it will make the rest of the nation think they’re even more petty, vindictive, and out-of-touch than they already did. When it comes to preserving their wounded egos, rationality goes out the window. If it comes down to voters rejecting liberalism, or liberals rejecting reality, then to hell with reality. It’s no longer about policy, it’s about pride.
And pride goeth before a fall.
So says federal Judge Henry E. Hudson ruling on the individual mandate.
Here’s the actual opinion. It’s not searchable, and I haven’t read the whole thing, but I do note he rejected the risable notion than the individual mandate was a “tax” rather than a “penalty.” His ruling that the individual mandate is in fact “severable” from the rest of the bill seems to contradict most of the analysis I’ve read.
Remember Steve Driehaus, the Ohio Democratic and Stupak-bloc flipper who went down in flames in November? You probably thought you’d seen the last of him.
Think again.
Driehaus is filing a lawsuit against the Susan B. Anthony List for “defamation of character” for billboards that: A.) Told the truth about him, and B.) Were never actually put up.
And the truth is: Steve Driehaus voted for an ObamaCare bill that provided public funding for abortions. And that’s a major reason he lost the election. No amount of litigation is going to change that fact.
Though the lawsuit does require adding one more description to Steve Driehaus: sore loser.
I haven’t been covering the Wikileaks story much because, well, there’s just too much to cover. Obviously, many people in charge of government data security need to be fired.
Dr. Alieta Eck of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons points out that the same people who couldn’t keep secret diplomatic cables private are asking you to trust them with their medical information:
In ObamaCare, the federal government is offering every physician $44,000 in taxpayer dollars to set up a new electronic medical record system. And if this is not enough of an incentive, Medicare is threatening to cut doctors’ pay in the next few years if they do not sell out their patients’ privacy. One of the specifications will be that these records be accessible online to “authorized users,” most notably the government. We are promised very strict privacy measures so that the records can never fall into the wrong hands. Oh, really?
(snip)
So why does the government want to see your medical records? Might it be planning to limit your care once you reach a certain age or develop a certain level of mental deficiency? Knowledge of recent history suggests that governments can use such information to blackmail and smear those considered troublemakers or enemies of the state. Now it is offering to pay for access, but later the government could make your doctor’s license to practice medicine dependent on complying with the EMR mandate. History tells us it is not a good thing when a government has total control of physicians.
(snip)
Do not depend on the government to protect your medical records. Under ObamaCare, the government seeks the right to mine your most private information just as it wants to peer under your clothing in the airport. This is another important reason why ObamaCare must be repealed.
Just think, thanks to ObamaCare, your private medical records will soon be treated with the absolute sanctity afforded the tax records of the Koch Brothers or Joe the Plumber.
Or “Democratic House Members Held Hostage: Day 15” (Imagine dramatic Nightline opening theme music here.)
You might have noticed we had an election a couple of weeks ago. Democrats didn’t do so well. Especially in the House, where Democrats lost 60 61 62 seats and counting. The House lead by Nancy Pelosi. The Nancy Pelosi who forced ObamaCare through despite widespread public opposition, a huge contributing factor in the democrats’ electoral slaughter.
Given that, common sense would suggest that Pelosi step aside and not run for Minority Leader. But Nancy Pelosi has never been one to let common sense stand in her way.
The voices are growing louder asking for Pelosi to step down.
On the other hand, her hardcore liberal supporters are rallying around her: “Her talents are unique.” Well, yes. Not even Tom Foley managed to lose 60+ seats in 1994. That takes the special kind of high-handed, self-righteous, tone-deafness that Pelosi excels in.
Blue Dog Coalition member Heath Schuler is threatening to run against her. Then again, if House Democrats are picking their next quarterback, maybe they’ll want someone with a higher lifetime passing rating then 54.3%.
The Congressional Black caucus has decided that they may not want to be lead by Pelosi.
Pelosi says it’s not her fault:
The California Democrat attributes the loss of at least 60 seats to high unemployment and “$100 million of outside, unidentified funding.”
“Any party that cannot turn (9.5% unemployment) into political gains should hang up the gloves,” she said.
But now Democrats seem poised to elect her to Minority Leader later today. Republicans are already licking their chops over 2012 attack ads…
I’m sure the average BattleSwarm reader came to this conclusion heretofore, but Derek Thompson provides a statistical roundup in The Atlantic that proves it. They also find lesser effects for the other three votes I’ve highlighted here (Stimulus, TARP, and Cap-and-Trade):
For Democrats in the least Democratic districts, the model suggests a loss of about 4 percent for every yes vote. If vulnerable Democrats hadn’t voted for any of the four bills, he concludes, Democrats would have won 32 more seats, enough to retain control of the House. Even after you remove TARP (which was a must-vote in scary times), the three-vote impact was 24 seats — not enough to keep the House, but close.
Although at least one study he cites shows no effect for the last that can’t be explained for the other three.
But it all comes back to what all non-liberal Americans have been telling Democrats for a year or longer: It’s the ObamaCare, stupid.