Misleading Names: My Current Facebook Status

Names can be misleading. The Tea Party doesn’t promote the views of the American Revolution any more than residents of the Virgin Islands necessarily promote virginity.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    demdem says:

    hey im curious – how did you hypocrite these words away.
     
    Obama presented a health care plan which is superior to Clinton’s. Rather than honestly discussing the plans, the Clinton campaign, and Krugman, again relied on distortions by attacking Obama for not including a mandate. What is important is the quality of the plan to improve access to health care to those who want coverage, not whether Clinton can force more people into her plan by making it mandatory. Again Krugman claims that Obama is raising right wing frames, but freedom of choice is hardly a right wing position. Freedom is a fundamental liberal value.
    Using mandates to achieve universal coverage seems like quite a cop out to me. Regardless of whether the plan is good or the plan stinks, universal coverage is achieved because the government forces you to join up. In contrast Obama takes on the challenge of offering a plan so good that virtually everyone will want to participate to receive health coverage. There is also a clear philosophical difference here in that Obama isn’t obsessed with having every single person sign up. In contrast, a self-proclaimed government junkie like Hillary Clinton just can not live with the fact that somewhere, someone decides they do not want her help.

    I know Clinton supporters will scream that I’m using right wingThe real political reality is that if you define health care reform as an intrusive government program, Americans will not go for it. If you offer a voluntary program which Americans find beneficial, then health care reform has a chance.
    frames here, but again I must point out that freedom and choice should be considered virtues, not right wing frames. Liberty is what liberalism is ultimately all about, which explains whey Clinton prefers to label herself a progressive and not a liberal.
    Some on the far left claim that Democrats lose when these alleged right wing frames about freedom are employed. They got it all wrong. Democrats lose when they concede traditional liberal values such as liberty to the right. If an election is framed so that one side is allowed to be defined as the party of freedom, that party will win virtually every time. Democrats have lost so many elections not because of using right wing frames, but because of conceding values such as freedom to conservatives, even though conservatives talk about freedom without really supporting it.
     
     
     
    dude…

  2. 2
    Leslie Parsley says:

    LOL. That’s a fact and therein lies the problem.

  3. 3
    Ron Chusid says:

    This is very similar to the argument in a partially completed post on what the Democrats did wrong, assuming that the midterms go as the pundits predict. This includes not presenting a consistent pro-liberty message, and not being consistent in terms of policy. While a mandate (initially a Republican idea) made writing health care reform easier, reversing Obama’s campaign position opposing mandates blurs the differences between the parties on freedom. While more complicated, there are ways to offer benefits to those who sign up, and penalties to those who try to game the system by purchasing insurance only after they are sick, which would avoid the perception that health care reform is a scheme to impose a huge government program on everyone.

    I encountered that claim that this is employing right wing frames many times during the primary battle. The real problem is not that freedom is a right wing frame but that Democrats allowed the right wing to falsely claim to be the ones supporting freedom.

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