Dean's Facts

I guess people can tell that I'm not a big fan of Howard Dean...I think I called him the liberal comp for John McCain recently, and I'm happy with that comparison.  I'm not say that Dean is a self-important, irresponsible showboating blowhard who doesn't bother to learn the substance of the policies he claims to care about...but I have heard people say such things about John McCain. 

I'll also note that according to Ezra Klein, one of Dean's chief complaints of the Senate bill was a particular provision, the absence of which was so important that he took to the pages of the Washington Post and to the airwaves to urge Senators to kill the most significant liberal achievement since the Great Society, is actually something that's...in the bill. 

I'll add that Ezra's a trustworthy and responsible guy who would immediately 'fess up and apologize if he got something like this wrong.

Dean's Logic

So, Howard Dean now explains his principles:

Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform.

Obvious follow-up question:

Does Howard Dean and do other progressives who stand with him against the Senate bill now oppose COBRA, and urge Congress to reject the current enhanced COBRA extension?

COBRA certainly "expands private insurers' monopoly over health care" even more than does the reform bill (since the reform bill moves some people to medicaid, while COBRA presumably winds up keeping some people off of medicaid; both move people from no insurance to private insurance), and certainly "transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations."

Just asking.

Stapling machine, Mr Clarke

Gotta wonder how less successful presidential candidates feel about the continued prominence of buffoonish former candidates Howard Dean and John McCain. Both are back in the news this week. Dean is pushing an utterly preposterous argument on the public option. McCain...well, where to start. There's his leadership in the "don't cut Medicare because we need to cut Medicare" drive -- this article assumes that he and the GOP were merely being hypocritical and opportunistic by switching from supporting cuts in Medicare to opposing them, but the floor debate made clear that the GOP hasn't flip-flopped: they're actually arguing that Medicare will go broke unless cuts are made, and that cuts can't be made because they'll hurt beneficiaries. Confused? John McCain isn't; his brain is made for that sort of thing. But that's not all! There's also Afghanistan...I think this one is just garden variety flip-flopping, but this one shows McCain in all his Mrs. Zambesi glory.

I hadn't previously thought of Dean and McCain together, but I think it makes a lot of sense; both of them seem to feel that their certainty overrides not only the facts, but even any need to bother learning about the facts (or at least speaking as if they knew the facts). Dean was guaranteed to produce at least one whopper per debate when he was running for the nomination in 2004, and McCain, you know about. And yet both seem to keep their reputations as somewhat serious policy-makers.

Kudos and thanks to Yglesias for staying on top of McCain's latest foibles.