Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Obama vs. Clinton: Damnit Democrats, decide!

I'd thought Super Tuesday would be the end, and Super Wednesday would bring the true beginning of this awakened Democratic beast, readying in unison behind 1 candidate to tear the Republicans to pieces after 8-long-years of this nightmare. Instead we're split down the middle, while McCain has all but been crowned, and polls showing a close Republican contest if the national elections took place today.

Damnit Democrats, decide already!!! please.


Below is not an Endorsement, but Disclaimer on The Frog's Personal Vote

I do not endorse Obama, but I favor and voted for Obama. I will go no further to explain my decision because there is plenty enough of my braintracks on FrogBulletin, and I do not purport to have a clear & significant basis for having voted Obama; instead, I have been continually conflicted and uncontinually convinced (hear an audio interview of me about my conflicted-ness by the musician/political-blogger, Alexis Stember, that she post on her blog Wonder Land. Her post's title is "Honest Abe on Obama". Thanks.) due to the particular deficiencies in both candidates. On the bright side, on many other--and in fact, the majority--of Clinton's and Obama's characteristics I have been very impressed, and feel optimistic, hopeful, and energized.

For the sake of some sort, some purpose of transparency here, I had been meaning to tell all who mosey to this blog my ballot's preference for Obama, since content and remarks presented here (except the comments, which I encourage but are regrettably threadbare) are under my sole responsibility and discretion. But I chose not to publish this post until after Super Tuesday, since there are already a flood of meaningful and meaningless endorsements (American Apparel emailed a company endorsement to their customers, can you believe that? An annoyed friend pointed out, What if Wal-Mart began endorsing candidates??) bombarding everyone these days, and I did not want to add to that choir.

Next

What comes? I was briefly scouring some news sites for the latest, but instead of taking the currently bipolar swings of the media (at least on NYT, all articles there--Obama's monstrous new fundraising, Hillary's personal $5mil loan to keep afloat, Obama's superior electability, etc., etc.--are currently Obamamanic), here's a tidbit published just now on RealClearPolitics, that reminds Democrats of the ruthless Red-Blue dogfight inevitably ahead, no matter whether Obama or Clinton wins...
However tough the Democratic race, it's nothing compared to what the victor will face in the fall. The Clinton brand of hardball is no tougher than what the Republicans have played in every election in the last two decades, and what they will play against either Clinton or Obama.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Obama vs. Clinton: strong endorsements to each healthplan, for differing reasons

If you're reading at 12:13am the day of casting your Super Tues. ballot, you are a very pragmatic shopper or procrastinator. Here is an endorsement each for ClintonCare (unfortunately, this weakly made argument is the best one I could find) and ObamaCare.

  • Significantly, this has been the "most-emailed" NYTimes article today: Paul Krugman's ClintonCare endorsement: "new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost." He even spits at you these staggering numbers!: [a plan resembling Obama's] "would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year... An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700."

    Paul Krugman is a tricky fellow, though. The "new estimates" that he bases these shocking estimates come solely from a paper by respected economist Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. However, note all the "plan resembling" and "Obama-type" and "Clinton-type" phraseology employed by Krugman. Obviously, the average reader (I missed his rhetorical slight-of-hand on the first read, and was convincingly shocked, the effect Krugman was no doubt going for) with little time (fortunately though, I am as of now sadly unemployed!) would have glossed over these. However, Gruber's paper does not specify Clinton or Obama's plans, and as for his simulation of a plan with or w/out mandates (which Clinton has), those numbers are based on the assumption "that 95% of those who would not voluntarily choose to insure" indeed become insured through the mandate." Harold Pinter's critique of Krugman's article points out, though, that the Massachusettes Universal mandate has so far enrolled just over 50% of its previously uninsured.
  • Miles Mogulescu has been writing a series since October 10th entitled, "Why Not Single Payer," advocating for Single-Payer/Medicare for All, and has been blasting both Clinton and Obama (and previously, Edwards) for moderating, having no guts/foresight, incorporating the terrible private-insurance fiasco we currently have into their future plans, and for dropping the true universal healthcare policy that will also provide better medical care like an emberrassing step-child. In today's lukewarm endorsement of ObamaCare over ClintonCare, 2 points he makes resonate with me, especially the latter:
    1) ObamaCare will be "easier to run on against the Republicans in the fall, and to potentially gain enough popular support to get through Congress without too many crippling compromises." He explains,
    Here's what the Republicans will be saying in the fall: "If you're an uninsured family making over $40-$50,000 a year so you aren't poor enough for subsidies but can't afford insurance, Hillary will garnishee thousands of dollars of your wages since the average policy for a family of 4 is around $12,000." That should be enough to scare off millions of middle class families earning less than $100,000, and make them think twice about voting for a Democrat. The growing failure of Romney's Massachusetts plan will give ample evidence to back these Republican charges.
    2) He prefaces his endorsement of Obama as the closer-choice-to-"Medicare for All"-candidate with the pointed rebuke,
    Despite Obama's political calculation to the contrary, the combination of a President with Obama's extraordinary leadership skills and a budding mass movement already supporting [Medicare for All Bill] HR 676 (which includes over 235 union organizations in 40 states, including 60 Central Labor Councils, as well as many citizens and religious organizations) the American people can be convinced to support Medicare For All.
    He goes on to praise that under Obama as opposed to Clinton, the grassroots movement towards Medicare for All will gain even more momentum; if a state like CA tries to enact single-payer in their own state, Obama will be more likely not to block it; and lastly,
    Maybe I'm being naïve, but, in the long-run, the fact that Obama understands single payer and is not hostile to it as a concept, gives me hope that we might get there, or close to there, over the course of an 8 year Obama Presidency... A mass movement for single payer healthcare has already begun to take shape. My hope is that an Obama Presidency will help give it the space to flourish, and to push Universal Healthcare beyond the bounds of Obama's more modest proposals.
    Personally, as I stated before, I believe we as a country need single-payer/government/"Medicare for All"--whichever you want to call it--coverage, and Mogulescu's series, "Why Not Single Payer," as with other articles, conversations, books, reports, health care experiences, and observations I've come across, indeed convinces me so.

Obama vs. Clinton: Iraq, Healthcare, & Go Vote Tomorrow!

Super Tuesday is tomorrow. We may know by nighttime who our next president will.. I mean, our next Dem candidate will be.

On the pre-invasion Iraq votes, & future Iraq plans, in their own words:


[From Friday's debate, Hillary explaining the issue of her "judgment" on voting to allow Bush's invasion of Iraq]


[a very sleepy account, Obama tooting his own horn, (sleepily), on his foresight in voting against Bush's invasion of Iraq]

Pamela Leavey's article on "The Clinton-Obama Iraq Feud" argues that despite all the hoopla about Obama's pre-war vote, after the war began, Obama did little to "back up his call" and his voting record is as Democratic centrist as hers. Maybe (or maybe not) we're focusing too much on blamegame of the past: who has a more solid plan for the future withdrawal and stabilizing of Iraq?? You can read and decide for yourself at their campaigns' websites here,
* Hillary Clinton’s Plan to End the War in Iraq as President
* Obama’s Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Healthcare, damnit, who'll realistically get us to better, Universal coverage?

First off, the well-respected Commonwealth Fund, in a January 15th article, "Envisioning the Future: The 2008 Presidential Candidates' Health Reform Proposals," confirmed my, and for-all-practical-purposes everyone's unanimous hunch that the Republicans (except maybe Romney, who pushed through Massachusetts's' universal health coverage) are kooks in terms of understanding how to improve healthcare, and in contrast the report concludes,
the mixed private–public group insurance with a shared responsibility for financing proposed by the leading Democratic candidates and the public insurance reform proposals put forward by Kucinich have the greatest potential to move the health care system toward high performance... [these plans] have the potential to provide everyone with comprehensive and affordable health insurance, achieve greater equity in access to care, realize efficiencies and cost savings in the provision of coverage and delivery of care, and redirect incentives to improve quality.
Since the lovable little Kucinich is out of the race, you can compare the detail differences of Hillary vs. Barack plans in this exceptional Commonwealth Fund chart.

In this sloppy article, Jacqueline Fox makes the same points that other Obama supporters have made: that Clinton's " mandate would be meaningless in practice.. [because] she’s proposed no enforcement mechanism"; that both successfully propose expanding Medicaid & S-CHIP, cost control, affordability and subsidies; that somehow, "there’s good reason to expect Obama’s plan will cover more people more quickly." (article doesn't elaborate on why Clinton's plan is inferior on this front). What I don't get is the simplifying characterization (made by many writers like Fox and even Obama himself) that Hillary's plan forces people to buy their currently unaffordable insurance--the way I understand it, it is obvious that she also couples the mandate with other measures to make healthcare more affordable. Somehow characterizing her mandate as "callous," I believe is misguided, and throws off the discussion from the real issue of Whether the mandate get us to better & universal healthcare.

In a very readable analysis that is as well-researched, organized, and articulate as any I've seen about healthcare and the Clinton v. Obama debate, Abhas Gupta concludes:
Like I said before, both candidates' plans are very similar, yet I am inclined to more strongly support Senator Obama's plan. I firmly believe that greater private competition in a public-defined playing field is what's needed to improve our health care system--the Obama plan's National Health Insurance Exchange most closely captures this sentiment. I also strongly oppose a mandate as a matter of principle, but more importantly, because we are likely facing a recession and a mandate would only serve to exacerbate our economic troubles.

Definitely read over his short article to realistically understand more about the issues facing healthcare, and the facts and figures beyond all the political mumbo-jumbo these days.

Lastly, here's an issue and viewpoint cautioning Obama's rhetoric regarding healthcare that has surfaced in the past few days. Ezra Klein points out:
Obama not only has a mandate for kids in his own health care plan -- what if the parents can't pay, one might ask? -- but he said, in last night's debate, "If people are gaming the system, there are ways we can address that. By, for example, making them pay some of the back premiums for not having gotten it in the first place." That, of course, is exactly what a mandate does. Gaming the system, in this context, means not purchasing health care. And Obama is now threatening to force them to pay back premiums. That's a harsher penalty than anything Clinton has proposed.
Also, Klein believes that while Obama's campaign has recently sent out mailings stating that "Hillary's healthcare plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it," Klein guesses that Obama's healthcare plan, if he's elected president, will eventually need to be reformed to include a mandate (in Gupta's article: "Obama's advisers have stated that a mandate may be a possibility later when health care costs can be controlled."), and so he's shooting himself in the foot right now with his mandate-slandering.
...he's decided to respond to the inadequacies of his own policy by fear-mongering against not only better policy, but the type of policy he's probably going to have to eventually adopt. It's very, very short-sighted.
As for tomorrow...

Go vote! I missed all but the last 5 minutes of the SuperBowl, so maybe I'll get some buffalo wings as I watch tomorrow's anticipated results come in...