Folks interested in the TNR-DLC-blog wars should check out Ed Kilgore's rundown of where the DLC differs from the list of policies Atrios thinks the blogosphere basically supports. Mostly, things stack up as you'd expect, with the DLC and the blogosphere concurring on near everything -- domestically speaking, the organization has pretty good policies, if pretty poor spokespeople. The divisions, however, are surprising.
Where Atrios thinks bloggers agree that Medicare should run the Medicare drug program, Kilgore dissents that the DLC "opposed the current plan, but [we] think the problem is cost and complexity, not the basic idea of offering choice and competition, a la the federal employees' plan." Of course, cost and complexity are absolutely intrinsic to the primacy of private insurers, so it's near impossible to separate their preservation from Medicare Part D's structure (and I'm sorry to see Kilgore buying into the GOP spin that terms privatization and insurance industry participations as "choice and competition" rather than inefficiency and profit-seeking). So far as I know, none seriously dispute that Medicare pays more for drugs than the VA, Canada, Britain, France, or any other socialized system because Medicare, unlike the others, is barred from using its market power to negotiate. The current king of the free market, Wal-Mart, dominates on cost and crushes the competition by throwing their size around. It's schizophrenic to value the free market but bar Medicare from adapting the tactics most successful within the market's rules.
This is, of course, what frustrates liberals about the DLC. There's no coherent policy reason to support a "choice and competition" structure. Even if they oppose the current arrangement (and it's not clear how they really can), holding those two values inviolable confines them to very similar programs. That makes for bad policy. It also relies on a willful decision to ignore all evidence from all examples of contrary systems that achieve better results. Whether you're looking at the tiny Veteran's Administration or the majority of developed countries, denying the superiority of centralized bargaining for pharmaceuticals requires slapping your hands across your ears and "la-la-la"ing till the other discussants put away the uncomfortable facts. Indeed, while I'd be interested to see a policy defense on this count from Kilgore, my sneaking suspicion is that it's an example of the DLC's fetish for opposing anything that smacks of old-school liberalism. And, in the end, no matter how many points of agreement we all have, it's hard for progressives to be safely allied with a group so totally committed to visibly distancing themselves, and thus discrediting, traditional progressives.
