Liberals: Altmire is stupak

Timothy McNulty | November 9, 2009

We posted earlier about Republican criticisms of Dems who voted in favor of health care reform. And now here's the flipside -- liberal Dems criticizing fellow Democrats like Jason Altmire for voting against it.

Much of the anger is over the Stupak amendment, which barred federal funding for abortion services (and which Altmire, Mike Doyle and Jack Murtha supported). It's even turned the word "stupak" into a new version of "stupid" (as in, "He is stupak.") Some of the progressives are saying Dems who voted nay deserve primary challenges next year, despite being in conservative-leaning districts.

DailyKos calls those who voted for Stupak but against HC -- thereby adding an anti-abortion plank to a bill they weren't supporting anyway -- "traitors."

From Maria at 2 Political Junkies (where we also got the photo above):

Who's going to run against Jason Altmire? (In the primary I mean)

Someone, please!

Not only did he vote yes on the Stupak Amendment, he voted no on the Health Care Reform bill.

Why exactly did anyone bother to vote out Hart?

From Philly's Chris Bowers at Open Left:

These Democratic members of Congress are a net drag on progressive efforts.  Not only do they vote to pass regressive legislation, and not only to they vote against any meaningful progressive legislation, but they vacuum up Democratic money in the process.

It does not matter that these members of Congress are from supposedly conservative districts.  What matters is that your money is being spent to elect these people to Congress.

And on the national level, Digby on why the bill feels like a loss for liberal Dems:

Health care reform is extremely likely to pass in some form. But let's not kid ourselves that it's passing because the Democrats and the public have seen the light and understand that we need to be a more decent society. It's passing because medical industry has been greedy to the point where it's now unsustainable. That presented an opening for liberals to enact some policies they have believed in for a long time. But they didn't do it by making the liberal arguments straight up and have created some kind of strange hybrid system for which the best argument is that it might lead to opportunities for more reform. It's better than nothing. But it isn't liberal and it wasn't designed to be. And just in case, the powers-that-be stuck it to the pro-choicers to make sure nobody got the idea that it was.