The reason I keep hounding Warren on Medicare for All is that I think she's being fundamentally dishonest about her position, and is trying to muddle the debate and string people along, self-servingly.
It's hard to watch her events or interviews and not get the clear impression that:
– she doesn't prioritize it, and rarely mentions it in her stump
– she defines it simply as universal healthcare, and "the best coverage for the lowest price"
– she doesn't have a "plan" posted
– she doesn't ever talk about policy specifics, as if she doesn't want to give up a soundbite
– she doesn't define the transition or timeframe
– she doesn't define the coverage
– she pivots to a criticism of insurance companies (good, but… deflection from an affirmative policy)
– she frames it as a "goal" or target in a distant sense, less a specific concept
– she never, ever says "single payer"
– she has repeatedly said, this cycle, that she wants to center people with private coverage "at the table" to figure out a "solution that works for everyone"
– many professional opponents of single payer keep noticing the wiggle room she leaves in her 'advocacy' and doubt her fidelity to Medicare for All, or remain stubbornly supportive of her candidacy
– she had been avoidant in answering questions about 'ending private insurance'
– she's already laid out a framework for a governing agenda that seems to foreclose on a big healthcare fight with any immediacy (see her Laconia rally, how she talked about winning over Trump supporters, particularly in relation to her "just three things" frame)
Once again, Warren refuses to talk with any specifics about Medicare for All.
“as we negotiate the pieces to get there”
“to a system that is sustainable”
“everyone at the table”
“the transition is really important”
“start by setting a goal and aiming toward it”
She's a cosponsor of a bill with a 4-year transition, does she agree with it (y/n)? If not, what timeline (years, decades?), what transition, to what kind of system, private coverage or not, what role for supplemental, what role for Advantage, etc.?
Her brand is being SPECIFIC.
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Haaretz reporting that the Israeli government paid for an online disinformation influence op aimed explicitly at Black US lawmakers, and flooding their posts with fake news links about mass rapes and the UNRWA being controlled by Hamas.
also leaning on islamaphobic accounts in Canada, and trying to push narratives to young Americans and Canadians that a Palestinian state would be antithetical to the progressive cause ‘because Arabs were slave traders’
they also used fake news sites and tons of fake avatars to promote campus antisemitism stories
@jmart Could’ve tried a ceasefire, but I guess instead we’re gonna get a bunch of easy chinedu sock puppets rerunning the last decade of ultra cynical liberal identity politics.
Still wild that the NYT piece cited this guy, who was fact-checked by Haaretz two months ago as having fabricated a viral claim about a pregnant woman with the fetus cut out of her. He was a major source for a lot of disproven viral claims about Oct 7.
I watched this guy give interviews to like 4-5 different foreign tv news channels (Israeli, US, UK, France, India) back in Oct, and he kept changing and embellishing key details. That definitely struck me. In early Dec, Haaretz debunked several of his widely shared claims.
I don't hold some ultra-orthodox volunteer for a burial charity responsible for factual. He's not a trained ME or forensic expert. He's just some dude. But it was extremely irresponsible for a lot of early journalism to take him on face value. Even crazier to do that in late Dec.
vetoed a dead-ended messaging bill, but agreed to gimmicky hostage politics to end something substantial. it’s very good that his admin agreed to the extensions and relief, whatever the debate about legal argument, means, etc. but don’t bullshit people with this kind of spin.
Covid reality: everything is open, 2k are dying per day –– 450k+ in the past year, few if any mitigation measures in place (a few cities with vax/pass, masking in some schools, stores, planes), immunocompromised totally exposed, rolling waves of staffing crises, mass infection.
The real debate is like hey, maybe we should do some mitigation measures proactively, give people social assistance, try to slow the spread of a historically transmissible virus, and protect our hospitals, workers, and vulnerable. And that's been met with pundit class fantasy.
A chattering class addicted to posturing against a fictitious 'addiction to the pandemic' framed like a lockdown (that mostly never was). So every even minor positive is a sign for the desperate urgency of an offramp. Again, the only people living in fantasy are pundits.