Contra Nate Silver:

Over at FiveThirtyEight, Silver has a list of questions for those who are disenchanted with the Senate health care bill. I want to focus on one of them:

9. If the idea is to wait for a complete meltdown of the health care system, how likely is it that our country will respond to such a crisis in a rational fashion? How have we tended to respond to such crises in the past?

See Great Depression / New Deal: securities regulation, Social Security, minimum wage, bank reform, farm programs, public utilities.

UPDATE: Kos has a reply to all 20 questions. His reply for #9:

No, the idea is to get the best possible legislation today. We may not be able to get something with reconciliation before Obama's State of the Union Address, but I don't think something this important should be beholden to something as trivial as a speech, even one as important as the SOTU.

Speech-based deadlines seem foolish. The White House is of the opinion that an Obama speech results in substantial change. Maybe on the campaign trail, but this year have the Cairo, September-health-care, or Oslo speeches resulted in anthing tangible?

The Kos post is worth a read. Succinct answers to each of Nate Silver's questions.


posted by Quiddity at 12/16/2009 07:44:00 PM