You get what you pay for

Quid...:

A new figure, based on an exclusive analysis created for Raw Story by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that President Obama received a staggering $20,175,303 from the healthcare industry during the 2008 election cycle, nearly three times the amount of his presidential rival John McCain. McCain took in $7,758,289, the Center found.

...pro quo:

Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul.

I'm not sure exactly how this is Ralph Nader's fault, but I'm confident there's a liberal out there somewhere who could explain it to me.

Comments

[NomadUK]

I'm not sure exactly how this is Ralph Nader's fault

Clearly it's because he siphoned away enough progressive votes that it reduced the pressure progressives could apply on Obama to get him to do what he secretly planned to do all along but couldn't because without the progressive pressure to validate his innate goodness the relentless pressure from the Right sucked him helplessly away from his True Path.

It's simple if you just stop and think about it.

[Gnome Chomsky]

I once asked a thanksralpher why they spent so much time blaming the 90,000+ Greens in Florida for Bush's win rather than the 200,000 registered Democrats there who actually voted for Bush. The answer: those were just DINOs and Dixiecrats who never bothered to change their party registration. But since the typical Green voter is a lefty, they should have felt a natural affinity with the Democrats.

So, Democrats aren't really "Democrats". You know which people really are "Democrats"? The people who aren't Democrats.

Consider that koan, and perhaps you will achieve enlightenment.

(Or maybe you could ask TBogg, who was just complaining last month about how Obama and Rahm had "burned the base" with their attempts at health care reform. Yeah. That TBogg. Same one who hates Mumia, Nader, and anything else vaguely leftist.)

[Catherine]

It's simple, really. EVERYthing is Ralph Nader's fault.
Don't think about it, just repeat it.

Yeah, those crossover Dems from 2000 will be lost in the mists of history.

[John Caruso]

Chief, I demand the koan of silence!