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OBAMA'S SINGLE PAYER SUPPORT.
Apparently, the McCain campaign has been touting Barack Obama's stated intellectual support for a single-payer system. Which sort of gets to the heart of the Obama campaign's inchoate approach on heath care. Obama can't argue that he's a centrist on health care with no plans for increased government involvement because he likes to say things like “if I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system." Other campaigns notice him saying those things, and they send the quote to reporters. On the other hand, he can't extract the maximum political advantage from his universal health care plan because he doesn't have a universal health care plan. As you can see in this Tax Policy Center chart that's been making the rounds, Obamas plan is better than McCain's, but it leaves a lot to be desired:
His plan manages to occupy an uncomfortable middle space where it's neither liberal enough to really fit into the sharp liberal argument nor centrist enough to protect him from attacks of being a traditional liberal. And that's not a point of abstract logic: In the primary, he got slammed for not being liberal enough, and now he's getting slammed for being too liberal. it's almost no surprise that Obama doesn't really seem interested in making health care a defining issue. It's not really worked for him thus far.
COMMENTS (10)
I think you mean "incoherent" rather than "inchoate." I bet Mr. Tomasky wouldn't have made that mistake!!
Posted by: Clara | August 20, 2008 11:18 AM
I think you mean "incoherent", not "inchoate".
Posted by: KCinDC | August 20, 2008 11:24 AM
I dunno, inchoate seems to work.
in·cho·ate –adjective
1. not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary.
2. just begun; incipient.
3. not organized; lacking order: an inchoate mass of ideas on the subject.
Posted by: luko | August 20, 2008 12:10 PM
You've talked about the relationship between policy and politics on this, Ezra, particularly when it comes to the Senate.
The Clinton legacy is that you can run on healthcare and create a target for your back, or you can have a broad commitment and be honest about what you'll expect to come out of Congress.
Means you can't run positively, but doesn't mean that you can't attack McCain's paper-thin bullshit plan.
Now, it might be possible to run on a meta-policy -- i.e. running against the Congressional sausage factory approach that works against substantive reform. It also means that the down-ticket candidates should be the ones running hard on healthcare.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | August 20, 2008 12:15 PM
Yep,
It's sorta like saying "I was for it before I was against it"
Or
"I opposed this war from the beginning" and then voting to keep it going on every senate vote.
Or
Saying you would vote against FISA if it included a provision that prevented prosecution of illegal wiretapping...and then voting for it.
Or
Touting the fact that you were a "constitutional professor" and then advocating the intertwining of religion and state.
Or...
Notice a pattern?
I could go on...but why bother, his supporters will never challenge Obama and he knows it.
I might mention, some people don't respect half-assed BS'ers.
Posted by: S Brennan | August 20, 2008 1:14 PM
Obama's health care strategy is broken, but this is the wrong diagnosis. McCain has plenty of quotes on the record about privatizing social security, but they don't really seem to hurt him. In fact, that's true across the board--McCain has radical, right-wing views on war, choice, entitlements, health care, taxes, and energy, but Obama just can't break through the haze and tag him on any of these. To look at the specifics of any one of these issues for a reason why Obama isn't winning is to miss the point--he's losing the argument on all of them even as polls favor his positions--because the race has become about Obama rather than about McCain's radicalism.
Posted by: Consumatopia | August 20, 2008 1:19 PM
Well, if the approach is inchoate rather than incoherent, I guess that provides hope for the future. I'm still not convinced that's what Ezra meant. (And at least we didn't pick on "heath care".)
Posted by: KCinDC | August 20, 2008 1:22 PM
"it's almost no surprise that Obama doesn't really seem interested in making health care a defining issue. It's not really worked for him thus far."
And after all, we should care about how the issues work for Obama, not how Obama works for the issues.
That's our Ezra! Careers matter and policy doesn't.
Posted by: Petey | August 20, 2008 3:29 PM
The funny thing about Petey is that he's not even a good purity troll, given his record.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | August 20, 2008 3:58 PM
Lesser plan proposed under political duress used to attack the very concept of universality
and you come up with 'almost no surprise'
Posted by: insightful | August 20, 2008 9:01 PM