Nothing says Christmas like a blog war

The blog wars over the health reform bill are still raging. Last I heard, Jane Hamsher was on Fox and Friends promoting her kill the bill strategy. Nate Silver and Ezra Klein have been posting rebuttals to the FDL posts pretty much non-stop. And dozens of others have piled on for one side or the other. I admit, that part of my irritation is it all smacks a bit of hit whoring. As someone pointed out on twitter, blogwars are great for traffic.

At this point I just don't care anymore what anybody says. I realized it's pointless to debate the kill the bill people because they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of killing it. If they were that powerful, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, since we would have a Congress full of progressive legislators. And now that my irritation is passing, I'm thinking, to the extent that it might change the narrative a bit, let them rage on. Meanwhile, I do want to flag this ultimate STFU post from Alex Pareene. While I don't agree that anyone should be silenced, he did express my initial frustration really eloquently.

I do, of course, hate this bill so far. Mandating that people give their money to those bloodsucking insurers rankles no end. But context is everything and Bob Cesca delivers that.

I made this point on Twitter yesterday, but it bears repeating. 3x higher costs for senior citizens sounds insane and criminal -- until you present it in the context of the status quo. Without the Senate bill, seniors would be paying 11x more. Additionally, a family of four earning $60,000 will pay around 20 percent of their income to premiums and out of pocket expenses. Insane! Until you put in context of the status quo -- 41 percent of their annual income would go to health insurance without reform.

I guess in the end, that's what annoys me about FDL's hysterical approach. Without this context, all their other valid points are diminished and I think it contributes to the whole "unserious dirty hippie" meme that has plagued progressives forever. Not to mention, it smacks of wingnut blog tactics. Granted they're not making stuff up out of the whole cloth, but errors of omission aren't good either. I think they would have been more successful in moving the narrative if they had taken a more balanced and less strident tone. But what do I know? I'm just a B-list blogger.

Oh and one other point worth mentioning, assuming this passes without any GOP support, which looks likely, it could be the first time a major domestic initiative in the Senate was solely the work of one party, and was unanimously opposed by the opposition party. Not the kind of history being made that bodes well for future legislation. I have a feeling it's going to be another long year.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]