Dennis Kucinich’s Temper Tantrum or Why Progressive Should Enthusiastically Embrace HR 3962.
This is a long post. But if you want to know what’s in the bill, why progressive should support it and why they should not pay attention to Dennis Kucinich or other single payer critics of the bill, this is a good place to start. In one of the political traditions in which I was raised, one of the more useful epithets was “infantile leftist.” An infantile leftist was someone who took the most extreme left position even though it made little sense as either policy or politics. And they did it, primarily for internal political reasons—to win support on the left—or to show themselves and others that they are more pure or progressive or left than anyone else in the room. That phrase came to mind when I saw that Representatives Kucinich and Massa had voted against HR 3692 because it was not single payer and even more when… Continue reading