Howard Dean Won't "Vigorously" Support Obama's Re-Election Bid

[useful idiot]

I don't fault his principles...I have a lot respect for him and his ideas, but I consider the healthcare compromise to be a HELL of a lot better than nothing.

I think he's just being unrealistic and irresponsible.

For once I agree with him.........you can call it Health Care Reform til you're blue in the face.  That doesn't make it so.

What's wrong with it?

I think it's a pretty good market friendly bill actually.

The insurance companies aren't trying to kill it in its present form like they were.......

I agree with you GG in disappointment in the bill. However it's still markedly better than the status quo, and it's shortcomings have much more to do with Sens. Lincoln, Nelson and (especially) Lieberman than Obama.

Obama could have put them in line if he wanted to, but instead he chose to attack the left of the party. The guy hasn't even hinted at consequences for opposing the original bill. Bush was able to pass almost his entire agenda(save SS privatization) with 50 to 55 senators, and he did it by putting pressure on them. Can you imagine LBJ just backing down on Medicare or the Civil Rights Act without putting up any effort whatsoever? This is how the healthcare debate has gone:

Obama: I want healthcare reform passed

Conservative Dems: Not unless you make it a complete waste of the paper it's written on and a huge handout to insurance companies

Obama: Ok

Real Dems: This bill needs to be more progressive

Obama: You're irrelevant and should go away, you're blocking my chances of getting something done, even though it's pointless, so I can go on being the celebrity that I am and tout myself as the guy that finally solved the healthcare crisis.

He never wanted a public option and has been nothing but a disingenuous liar. This "reform" is something I could easily see coming out of the Bush administration, just like nearly everything else Obama has done in office. As long as he's in office he's making the Democratic Party look bad and squandering opportunities. I would happily vote for Dean if he was a third party candidate, because frankly...I can't see Romney being any worse and Palin wouldn't win anyway; I'd rather have a clear conscience than be a party to the massive fraud being perpetrated by Obama.

[useful idiot]

Dean needs to stop this. He knows very well the political reality of the health care situation. He showed that pretty clearly when he ran a primary campaign promoting universal health care that was similar, but ultimately worse than the current bill.

He also endorsed the Senate Finance Committee's version as reforming health insurance, albeit hesitantly due to its lack of a public option. Although the current Senate bill doesn't have the public option either, it is definitely better than what came out of the SFC.

Dean's shenanigans are just as tiring as the centrist Dems, but he isn't providing any substantive ideas and has no actual input in the process.

I hope that what he is doing now is simply an attempt to raise a fuss to prevent the further watering-down of the bill (the reverse of which led Lieberman to request the removal of Medicare buy-in) , rather than any sort of genuine opposition to health care reform or the Obama agenda.

No sustantive ideas or actual input? He says he wants to expand Medicare to cover all and do it through reconciliation. It's the OBVIOUS answer, because it's the most logical and simplest. It covers everyone, sends costs down, and cuts the insurance companies out of the loop.

If Dean doesn't have "any sort of genuine opposition to health care reform or the Obama agenda", then I'd be terribly disappointed. The Obama agenda: more war, handouts to insurance companies, opposing cheap meds to keep big pharma's profits up, not doing anything about gays in the military, making fun of people who want drug reform, shutting the left wing down on every issue, and general arrogance, dishonesty, and weakness.

This "reform" means the end of a viable left in the United States; the Democratic Party is certainly no longer the party of the poor. We elected a candidate that we thought was about as left wing as could be electable, and it turned out he's almost as right wing as his predecessor. Good news for him, it turns out a helluva lot of Democratic members of congress are just as right wing as he is. So now he can pass this farce in order to score cheap political points; isn't that what Bush did? Hurting the country to further his electoral prospects? Where is the difference here? If Dean adamantly opposed one of them, why the hell would he not oppose the other?