Via The Caucus:
The California senator had set up two chairs facing each other. She served them water. Nothing else. Two aides were sent to Mrs. Feinstein’s study. And Secret Service agents stayed outside.
“I can speak, I think, for Senator Clinton. She wants to do everything she can to bring the party together,” Mrs. Feinstein said. “She wants to do everything she can to see the people who voted for her have their voices heard and that’s reflected in credentials, platform. And she wants to have a working relationship with Senator Obama, and I think it’s a very positive thing.”
“They talked for about an hour,” she said. “Just them. No staff. There were no press, no staff. They had one person from each campaign that was in my study separately and I guess the security people outside. They got along very well.”
“We [Clinton and Feinstein] had obviously talked several times and, you know I lost, as you know, a campaign for governor, and I know you have to talk,” Mrs. Feinstein said. “And it was, they want this opportunity privately, you know. You all know what it’s like, I mean, you go out, you have to make a statement, and there are press, and everybody is critical of it. And they just want an opportunity to meet together alone. And you know, this is a deeply personal time too. You are sorting out your feelings. Hillary’s is going to be giving a big speech tomorrow. Barack is trying to put things together for a major presidential campaign. So, there are a lot of decompression, nerve-endings, all these things that need to kind of come together and I think the opportunity to sit down, just the two of them, have an hour together was positive.”
“I didn’t urge anybody to do anything. I know it’s a natural instinct. People, particularly in this case because Hillary represents a very large block of voters — the largest ever for anybody that has come in No. 2, and has the popular vote. She is I think desirous of protecting the issues that she cares about to the extent she can, seeing that the people are represented in this administration and certainly in the convention. And also to help with the ticket, and I know she feels that way because we have talked about this.”
There was one sentence that jumped out at me, and it’s interesting, because I think DiFi is likely to represent conventional wisdom on the Hill:
Hillary represents a very large block of voters — the largest ever for anybody that has come in No. 2, and has the popular vote.
And we get?
Front page
Universal Health Care
The smartest thing Obama could do at this point is say, “Well, when we sat across the table at Diane Feinstein’s and Hillary explained it to me, I realized that her plan really is the more workable. So I’ve tasked her with writing the legislation to enact Universal Health Care exactly the way she envisions it. I’ll campaign on it; as president I’ll work enthusiastically to get it passed in both houses; and I’ll sign it into law in front of the whole nation, with Hillary standing by my side!
HR 676
HR 676 is MUCH better than Hillary’s plan.
That's crying out to be a post DCB....
Shoving the Overton window left….
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
don't forget Edwards got bupkis
from endorsing him—Obama didn’t at all ever talk or push Edwards’ concerns.
It's nearing the Convention: Voters of American, do you know
where your candidate’s stands are?
And Don't Forget
That some Dems have already labeled UHC DOA.
So yeah…
you gets nuthin man!!
concerns about dominance
reading rezkowatch
i ran across an “update #2” at rezkowatch referencing a story on the obama/clinton meeting by nytimes’ jeff zeleny nytimes :
“…The face-to-face meeting, initiated by Mrs. Clinton, illustrated how the hierarchical roles of the candidate’s relationship suddenly were changing. While Mr. Obama agreed to meet Mrs. Clinton on her terms — at the location and time of her choosing — he was doing so wearing the title of a presumptive nominee, eager to get their first session out of the way and move onto the general election. […]”
writing in the atlantic,
the atlantic marc ambinder wrote:
“Questions About The Secret Meeting — Now, With Answers
05 Jun 2008 09:19 pm
There was a meeting. … Obama wanted to talk about bringing the party together.
1. Who asked for the meeting? Barack Obama.
2. Which side leaked the existence of the meeting? Unknown.. After originally refusing to answer reporters questions, the campaign then confirmed that there was a meeting but said they would never divulge the details; then they divulged the details.
3. Which side speaks first about the content of the meeting? Not clear.
4. When was the invitation proffered? Sunday and Monday…”
in the zeleny piece i fancy i sense a concern (not necessarily by zeleny himself)
about “who’s boss”, about dominance, a concern i have sensed often in statements from the obama campaign and, more frequently, obama supporters.
the sense i get is that the obama nation has a sizable number of denizens who are very concerned that sen clinton not appear dominant vis-a-vis sen obama.
or, what’s the same, that sen obama not be or not be portrayed as submissive to sen clinton.
analytically, i suppose i could make some sense of this, but just speaking personally i find it peculiar and unnecessary.
why is it necessary to think or write or frame the news in “dominance/submission” terms.
yet throughout out the democratic nominating campaign some press reports and comments have carried this undertone of concern about sen clinton’s “dominance” and about sen obama’s “being dominated” or “appearing submissive”.
odd.
>>Hillary represents a very
>>Hillary represents a very large block of voters — the largest ever for anybody that has come in No. 2, and has the popular vote.
If only it were indisputably true - and even then, what would it mean? This claim is at best contested, and it doesn’t mean much. We don’t have to argue about it. Hillary got somewhere between 49.9% and 50.1% depending how you slice it. Essentially it was a tie. That and four bucks will buy you a Starbucks.
Surely we know by now that that doesn’t count for too much in our “democracy” - or any democracy I know of. So why spend more time pissing and moaning about it instead of getting to work on pressuring Obama and the enlarged Democratic congressional majority that seems likely to be elected to shove the health care Overton window - and why NOT single payer while we’re at it?
Though Hillary’s health care position is stronger than Barack’s, this fight would have been inevitable in either case.
———————————————————————————
Just because YOU “wouldn’t put it past ’em” doesn’t prove THEY did it.
Dominance? Or Macho Bullshit?
Like that show against Lieberman yesterday.
The more I think about it, the less impressed I am by Obama backing Lieberman into the Senate wall. Let’s see, to show what a big powerful man he is, he went and picked on a guy who isn’t a Democrat anymore, who all his supporters loathe, and who is already doing everything he can to try to hurt Obama’s campaign. There’s no risk in that and it won’t gain him anything. Does anyone think Lieberman will fall in line now that Obama has put him in his place?
Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but this campaign has released a lot of misogyny, often expressing itself in bulling on the internet and in person (see Iphie’s post on the Clinton rally). My biggest fear about the campaign is that that kind of hatred, that kind of lust for dominance, is going to be very hard to put back into the bottle, especially since it’s not new, you can see it in other parts of the culture it’s just been allowed to run loose, unfettered now through the political landscape.
So what does Obama do to show he’s the new boss on his very first day? Goes and physically dominates a guy smaller than he is on the Senate floor so all his Blogger Boiz can cheer what a man he is. If that’s not a signal that the bullying isn’t going to stop, then I don’t know what is. Because Obama wasn’t going after Lieberman, he was sending a signal to everyone that he’s the alpha male, so get in line.
OrionATL, point well made but not that surprising. The rheotoric
has quickly turned from WWTSBQ
to dominance/submission starting w/ Tweety and Olbermann at MSNBC ala “will she obey?”
I’m kinda glad to see it because they’re running scared. Senator Clinton got the popular vote and the electoral map over Senator Obama. They had to rig the RBC meeting and give him four of her delegates from MI. AAAAnd, she’s not going away. They should be scared. They should be scared shitless!!
I love this job!
sTIVo, your not worried about a candidate who has 49 to 50%
of the electorate (I’ll use your figures for the sake of discussion) and controls the electoral map? We both know that Obama has no intention of sharing anything with Clinton, she’s too strong, he wouldn’t be able to appear to be the leader if he included her in anything. I anticipate that he’ll try to throw her a bone and then turn on her just like he did Edwards. That’s his MO.
She should suspend, continue to travel and make policy, start some new initiatives, continue to collect cash and see what happens. It’s his to lose and I think he will.
I love this job!
Well done BDBlue. I knew something didn't smell right about
that dance on the Senate floor. That’s the MO of the campaign, bullying. Whether it’s on the blogs, at the RBC meeting, in the caucuses, on the campaign trail or the Senate floor - intimidation and bullying. I love this post partisan politics, it’s so retro.
I love this job!
Go for it DCB
Whoever goes to the White House next November, all the Democrats in Washington will have to be pushed as hard as possible in the direction of single-payer. Nobody can or will do it for us, because they’re all dependent for survival on corporate money. Not that I believe we’ll actually get there soon, but maybe we can put the country on that path.
Don't make any deals with this guy
After all, when he got to the U.S. Senate he told Hillary he would not run against her in 2008. His word is no good, especially, I suspect, when given to a woman.
Link, please
Lest you be suspected of ratfucking, please provide link AM5. Danke.
Link, please
Can’t do that, Auntie Meme, but I know I saw it on several sites, and never saw a denial or contradiction from any source. But okay, I’ll drop it. But I still believe he can’t be trusted to keep to a deal, especially with a woman.
Here's one
Nov. 3, 2004, Chicago Tribune
On Wednesday, Obama declared flatly that he would not run on a national party ticket in 2008 _ and he lectured reporters to stop asking him about it…
“I am not running for president. I am not running for president in four years. I am not running for president in 2008,”
Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!
dcblogger
to reinforce lambert’s request -
i haven’t the foggiest what hr676 is, other than the obvious, a bill pending in the h of reps.
why so much better?
what are the differences vis-a-vis clinton’s health plan?
who’s on the sponsor’s list?
i need to start paying attention to this stuff,
as i’m getting old.
HR 676
HR 676 is medicare for all, a single payer system. Sometime this weekend I will write a post about why it is better than any of the other proposed health plans.
in the mean time, check out the videos
HR 676
Is a single-payer system that, if I understand correctly, would do away with the current private insurance nightmare. A true universal system.
I always thought Clinton’s plan was a Trojan horse for single payer. Assuming she ends up not leaving the Senate for some other job, I wonder what she’ll do. She may have no need to temper her positions quite so much with no impending presidential election. Certainly the people of NY are not going to vote against her for pushing single payer.
I have a hard time believing anyone could have been through what Clinton just went through and not be changed. She’s spent a year listening to people’s horror stories about healthcare and the economy and them asking her to help them. How could anyone not be changed by that. She certainly looks changed. Even as it was over, I thought she glowed on Tuesday night. She’s been glowing a lot lately. I don’t know, she seems more confident, stronger, more sure of herself these days. We’ll see if that translates into her work in the Senate.
Single Payer
I’ve always been for single-payer. For-profit Health Insurance has an inherent conflict of interest that cannot be gotten around.
If Hillary Clinton wants to make single-payer the rest of her life’s crusade, I’m with her. I see no particular sign of this, but I wouldn’t rule it out, either. If she wants to nudge, push, cajole, nag, whatever verb you choose to push Barack Obama in this direction, more power to her.
Single Payer doesn’t appear to be a political winner, however, given the existing corporate domination. Clinton, Edwards, or Obama, or any of the others could have chosen to make this their issue. None of them but Kucinich did, look where it took him.
Paul Krugman is of the opinion that non-single-payer universal health insurance can be a step in the single-payer direction (a foot in the door) - if government health insurance is allowed to compete with private. A fair competition between public and private health care is one that private can’t win. It’s never been allowed to happen. That is the only theoretical justification I know of for the halfway measures that Clinton, Edwards and Obama all advocated. I’m not sure I believe it, but it has some plausibility.
I’m not sure that Krugman believes it anymore, either. In his book, Krugman argued for the halfway plans as steps along the path. His advocacy of Clinton’s plan (primarily how much more cost-effective it was than Obama’s) seemingly abandoned the foot-in-the-door idea, in favor of the idea that whatever any of them got passed would likely be the end and not the beginning.
I’m not sure how you’re all sure that Edwards and Hillary have gotten nothing for their concessions. To me, this remains an open question that none of us knows the answer to yet.
As Chou En-Lai said when asked about the French Revolution, he said “It’s much too early to tell.” Seems to me that we could put off knowing how all this is going to turn out until after the election.
———————————————————————————
Just because YOU “wouldn’t put it past ’em” doesn’t prove THEY did it.
Yes, I've been reading the news lately...
… and I’m aware that the popular vote is contested.
That’s why I wrote that DiFi was expressing what I thought was the conventional wisdom on the popular vote: That Hillary had won it.
However, obviously that made no difference.
Either to DiFi or, apparently, to Stivo, who doesn’t or can’t respond on point…
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Obama's pretty light-weight, physically
so it may be that Joe Lieberman is, in fact, the only person on the Senate floor that he can physukiically dominate.
Except for some of the women, no doubt, but he’s far too sensitive to do that.
Nice interpretation. Better than my kabuki interpretation, though the two could be combined, of course.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Great, DBC
Looking forward.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Lieberman's Also
the only “Democrat” that Obama can do this to with no repercussions. He’s not a Super Delegate, now is he?
And it was theatre of some sort, lambert. He made sure to put on a very public show, no pulling Lieberman aside in a back room.
Obama's commitment to Edwards was for the general
A poverty tour with Obama, according to Greg Sargent.
Although you’d think that Obama could have said something about this in the primary. Especially as his supporters were writing off Appalachia.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"answers"
Since you demand “answers”, lambert, here’s my answer. I don’t particularly want to go here but I will if you push me. When people don’t contest your every “boldly shrill” point it doesn’t necessarily mean that they agree. Nor does it mean they can’t argue. They just choose not to. Maybe they don’t have to.
It is NOT “conventional wisdom” that Hillary won the PV. It probably divides pretty closely to the 50-50 split of the actual vote. The Obama forces clearly do not accept this as true and many in the media do not either. Diane Feinstein still does. Bless her heart. No one’s going to read her out of the party for it. Odd that this, of all the points she made should be the one that jumped out at you.
Obama chose not to challenge it because he didn’t need to and is trying, haltingly, to get into conciliation mode. Arguing with Clinton supporters over this doesn’t get him there.
And so this canard retains more currency than it deserves. I myself don’t believe it. It all depends on assigning 0 votes from Michigan to Obama. That’s bullshit, IMHO. Or if you want to argue that it’s literally true (“Obama made a strategic mistake by withdrawing his name from the ballot”), then it’s a flawed measure that has and should have little weight.
If you’re a Clinton fan, it sucks that she didn’t win a few more states. Then the shoe would be on the other foot and Clinton would find herself in the exact same position that Obama is in now “How will she EVER attract back all those African-American and young white voters that she pissed off.”
I don’t want to argue this any more. We disagree. Reasonable people can and do.
I’d rather discuss the Health Care issue, frankly.
———————————————————————————
Just because YOU “wouldn’t put it past ’em” doesn’t prove THEY did it.
orion: hr 676 = medicare for all
hr 676 is a bill in the house to establish a national single payer health insurance system, administered by the government, instead of by greedy corporations. it’s very much like canada’s system, which they call medicare too.
hr 676 would be open our present medicare system to everyone in the country from the day they’re born [actually before they’re born, since maternity care is included] so that you don’t ever have to worry about how to pay for the health care you need. right now you have to wait until you’re old to get guaranteed health care.
physicians for a national health program has the best faq i’ve seen on single payer insurance.
90 representatives have co-sponsored the so far, and dcb has been keeping tabs on both the current co-sponsors and various other congressional candidates who say they’re in favor of it, so you’ll know who to vote for [or against!] in your district this fall.
Here's one
Thanks for finding that, Aeryl. Somewhere in the blogosphere there are statements about his promising her directly that he wouldn’t run, I just can’t find them.
Promising to write healthcare a la HIllary means SQUAT....
The reality is, there will be changes by the score before anything, if anything, gets done. And, it will be watered down and won’t result in any real change.
So, this is a worthless deal.
Hillary shouldn’t give much time this fall working for Obama. He doesn’t deserve it.
Be polite, then go on vacation. Then keep talkingto us. He may implode before the convention…
It's strange how you don't. Discuss the health care issue,
I mean.
We have daily posts about it. Today’s post, even.
Not one word on there from you. You only seem to show up to be antagonistic toward Lambert’s ’fandom’.
Frankly, if your posts don’t feature troll-like baiting, you don’t give a damn.
I thought the rule was that the new fish sought out
the *biggest* guy in prison, and took him out, so he could avoid being a punk.
And isn’t that supposed to happen on the *first* day of being out in gen pop? It’s sorta lame to wait for your richer, more corrupt friends to bribe your way to the better cell, and to not use those cartons of smokes to bribe all the weaker inmates to do your laundry.
[Don’t bother.
The Obama Golf writes itself….]
talkin' to me cg eye?
You don’t say so, but I find it hard not to get the feeling.
Please see up above about ten posts in this very thread (“Single Payer”) where I DO discuss Health Care at some length in a context removed from that of the recent primary campaign.
If you are going to cherry-pick from my posts that attack Lambert’s fandom (a fair characterization, actually) and ignore the rest, naturally, you will wind up with a distorted vision of what I’m doing here. My purpose here is basically that of Lambert’s original signature.
———————————————————————————
Just because YOU “wouldn’t put it past ’em” doesn’t prove THEY did it.
heh
[beat me to it…]
The Trogan Horse is the opt-in medicare option.
In Hillary’s outwardly non threatening Healthcare is the innocently offered option (for, only if you don’t like your Insurance)….
;-O,
;-)
…to opt in with us lucky folk getting CheneyCare)
Watch everybody just drain out of the private insurance system!!!