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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
My original post was to learn what, if anything, is being done to unite people under the Democratic banner.  Even if I agreed with ACA, in whole or in part, the way it was passed was divisive, and ultimately counterproductive as efforts were/are under way to throw the baby out with the bath water.  The way it was handled was a huge turn off to me as a voter.  GOP has done similar, and they don't get my vote either.[/quote]
I think that to answer your question, one needs to understand what you dislike about the ACA's legislative process and specifically the Democrats handling of it. From my perspective, the Dems spent 15 mos trying to negotiate with Republicans (and in many ways watering down the bill), only to have the Republicans to whom they offered explicit concessions still refuse to vote for it. The only alternative to the way the bill was passed  would have been not to pass any healthcare legislation at all. The Republicans did not have an alternative then, and they don't have one now.  But your originally argument that it was rushed through without bipartisan discussion and debate and without the opportunity to see what was in the bill is simply not true. I was working on the Hill for a Democrat at the time (not on healthcare issues), and while I personally dislike several aspects of the ACA the one criticism that just does not hold water is that the bill was rammed through without discussion. That's what is currently happening with the AHCA.

You may be arguing that the Democrats should not have passed healthcare legislation as long as the Republicans were going to refuse to vote for any attempt to do so, including the bills that reflected their own amendments. That is not an unreasonable position. But it is a position that is unlikely to lead to much happening in Congress.[/quote]
PP -- Some people put too much stock in how many laws are pushed through Congress.  If Congress passes more laws than usual, are we supposed to cheer without any regard to quality, cost or scope of improvement?  In this environment in particular, I would think a lot is happening in Congress if they were actually talking to each other rather than past each other.  Lately, it feels like we the people are cheering for only one side of a single football team (defense or offense), and the two sides are working against each other more than trying to win together.

When I see that a bill passes without any votes from one side of the aisle, then IMHO the hard work has not been done yet.  This is true not only of ACA in 2009, but also with the GOP proposed changes in 2017.   (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/04/us/politics/house-vote-republican-health-care-bill.html)  Costs were soaring no matter whether ACA passed or not. The public will unnecessarily endure how healthcare is delivered/processed (you're covered, no you're not, you are, you aren't), and/or unnecessarily get riled up about what the other side might do next time they are in control.  Tweaks to passed legislation are inevitable, but I think more needs to be hashed out before bills like the ACA (and whatever bill the GOP manages to spit out) are passed.  
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I understand your point, but I fundamentally disagree with it for two reasons. One of those reasons can be viewed as partisan (though I think it's empirically not), but I don't think the other one can:

1) Sometimes legislation needs to be passed with some urgency. This includes raising debt ceilings, passing appropriations bills, and stuff like the TARP bill to help stem the downward economic spiral we were facing in 2008/2009. So even if Congress can't work out all of their differences, the imperfect bill might still be better than no bill at all.

2) What I think is an empirical observation but you may dismiss as partisan is that one party has been far less willing to negotiate in good faith than the other when it comes to policy. Again, using the ACA as an example, many aspects of it were more or less the policy proposed by Nixon and implemented in Massachusetts by Romney. And many concessions were made over that 15 month period to Republicans, but ultimately my view was that the negotiation was in bad faith since despite the bill being amended to reflect Republican asks, none voted for the bill. A similar thing happened in ARRA, where the bill had many more tax cuts than Democrats would have preferred, but despite losing the WH and holding minority positions in the House and Senate no House Republican voted for the bill because they felt they should be able to dictate the amount of tax cuts. What I've observed having worked on the Hill and the WH is that there is far less willingness to compromise from the Republicans than the Democrats. And the Republican intransigence is coming not from political ideology but instead from an us-vs-them mentality...how else can you explain that they don't have a HC policy ready to go after 8 years of opposing the ACA? The closest thing I've seen on the left is the political litmus test around things like the Iraq vote, which I think has been harmful to the party. But that kind of all-or-nothing ideology doesn't seem to have seeped into how legislators approach their jobs...yet. But I suspect it's coming.

You can take or leave my observations, but I offer you this piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-destruction-of-political-norms-started-decades-ago-heres-how-it-happened/2017/06/18/0a963bf6-52d3-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html?utm_term=.29f4836dbf90

Yes, the writer is an unabashed progressive. But these words came from Gingrich:
[quote]“You’re fighting a war,” the future House speaker said. “It is a war for power. .?.?. Don’t try to educate them. That is not your job. .?.?. What’s the primary purpose of a political leader? .?.?. To build a majority.”[/quote][/quote]

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