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December 04, 2014

#Obamacare: If Chuck Schumer is a 2016 Democrat, I'm more Green than ever (updated)

So, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) is saying that Democrats in 2008 didn't have a mandate to pass Obamacare?

Really? I could have sworn that I heard both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton discuss national health care ideas of some sort or another in multiple Democratic debates and their campaigns in general. I could have sworn I heard Obama mention something about it in the general election.

As for not tackling the recession? Hey, Chucky boy, did you push Obama to keep his stimulus package below $1 trillion? Yes, as the survey shows. Even worse, we know you pushed Obama to name one of the chief architects of the recession, Tim Geithner, as his Treasury Secretary.

Either admit that you, like Obama, didn't take the Great Recession as seriously as you should have, or shut up.

Right now, you're blaming a non-issue as part of the cause of a problem which you helped cause.

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Update, Dec. 4: Michael Hiltzik answers Schumer, his inside-the-Beltway supporters, and, indirectly, other Senate Democrats.

He says the problem isn't with Obamacare, but with Senate Democrats who ran away from it and let the GOP define it.

Fair enough, as far as it goes, Michael.

But, some of that criticism needs to attach to The Not So Great Communicator himself, Dear Leader.

This is Hiltzik's second column on this issue since Schumer spoke out.

In his first, he gave Schumer a paddling for "spinelessness."

He adds that O-care benefits the middle class as well as the poor.

Then, there's this.
(L)eaving aside that Congress and the White House should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, the notion that the pursuit of healthcare reform resulted in the abandonment of economic growth policy is bizarre.

True that. On the other hand, since his first six months in office, at least on major issues, sometimes it does seem that this is the case. 

Hiltzik does also remind us that Schumer apparently lost his 2009 legislative calendar somewhere:
As Brian Beutler and Scott Lemieux cogently observe, President Obama had already gotten the Recovery Act through Congress before work began on the healthcare law, and he wasn't going to get more stimulus from the GOP on Capitol Hill no matter how hard he tried.
Charles Schumer, pandering idiot.

Doorknob help us if this is the opening salvo in challenging Harry Reid as Senate Democratic leader. (I suspect it is.) 

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