broken records
Every American has her or his own response to the health care reform debate based on their (often gut-wrenching) personal experience. I’ve written about my own experience–which epitomizes in many respects what’s wrong with health care in America–both here and elsewhere. I am among the millions being gouged by a health care industry pretending to be non-profit. I am among the millions of Americans with a serious illness (read: pre-existing condition) who cannot afford not to have health care. And I am among the millions of Americans with health care who are constantly fighting to get the care they have paid for with ever more exorbitant premiums.
We see a lot of news reports of people who are angry with the idea of health care reform (although they are obviously really just angry that Obama is president). I’ve only met three of those people in real life. Each one of them–surprise!–is on Medicare.
What we don’t see are the millions of people like myself nowhere near Medicare age who are desperate for health care reform. Media bias? Or is it just that the supporters of health care reform are too sick to go to protest marches? Or both?
This morning moveon.org sent me an email with their latest poll results.
Member Vote Results:
93% Agree
We should refuse to support senators who help Republicans block health care reform.
I’ve written a lot about the one Republican bipartisan response to health care reform. I’ve also hammered home why we need not just the public option but also caps on premiums (my own monthly premium for an HMO is $900, double what it was five years ago). And why we should vote every Democrat who tries to block the public option (Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu) out of the Senate.
The moveon poll signals that this is a view most progressives share.
Still, this morning newsmax.org had this to trumpet:
Lieberman Will Back GOP Filibuster Opposing Public Option
Sen. Joe Lieberman says he will back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s healthcare reform bill because of its inclusion of a “public option” — a devastating blow to the Obama administration’s hopes of unified Democratic support for a healthcare bill with a government-run insurance program.
Harry Reid should be kicking himself for no stripping Lieberman of his power after Lieberman campaigned with John McCain, but as my friend DP notes, “He’s congratulating himself on maintaining that all important senate collegiality that the Democrats are so proud of.”
And therein lies the problem. Because DP is right. The idea of bipartisanship overwhelms everything else for the Democrats. It overwhelms fealty to their constituents most of all. And it’s not just the Senate. When Harry Reid announced that he was putting forward the public option in the Senate bill, CNN reported this:
An administration official went so far as to call Reid’s move “dangerous” but quickly followed by saying Reid knows his caucus better than anyone and will therefore have the support of the White House.
Well which is it? Is the White House (i.e., President Obama, for those who still can’t bring themselves to criticize him and attribute all his egregious acts of undercutting his base–like filing briefs against DADT and allowing Olympia Snowe to hijack health care reform) supporting Reid or is Obama undercutting the public option as the White House has been doing all along?
We think the latter. We think, as DP noted so succinctly, that this distorted and unreciprocated bipartisan yearning has been crashing and burning the Democrats for as long as we can remember. Listen to the tone of the newsmax squib–it’s crowing, chest-pumping, in-your-face, gotcha commentary. (Of course they are wrong that the Obama Administration is behind the public option, but then it is newsmax.)
Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama supporters argued–and many actually believed—that somehow he would be the magic that would make Republicans turn into “Obamacans” and we would all have a big buy-the-world-a-coke moment.
It never happened. It certainly has not happened in the Senate. The outrage among the strident Republican base is at a fever pitch. The Senate’s most “moderate” Republican, Arlen Specter, switched parties back in April and has been campaigning for health care reform ever since–cancer and brain tumor survivor that he is as well as being a long-time proponent of stem-cell research. Oh–and wanting to be re-elected.
I happen to think that “moderate” and “Republican” are oxymoronic and nothing the so-called moderates have done has disabused me of that notion, most especially Snowe’s hijakcing of the entire health care reform bill with the President’s approval and support.
The reality is, bipartisanship died during the Reagan years and anyone who thinks that the Republicans have any desire to make nicey-nice with the progressive side of the aisle haven’t read the decades-old writing on the wall. These are people who can’t even vote for an amendment protecting American victims of gang rape. Why woud they want to protect the concept of bipartisanship? Or give anyone else what they have?
We have to ditch the idea that we can bring Republicans along for the ride. We also have to grab the so-called Blue Dogs by the lapels and make them understand that if they don’t toe the party line, they will be knocked off committees, lose any bargaining power and ultimately get no support for re-election. Period. Hard line.
Moveon may not be the voice of America, but it definitely is a voice of progressive America. It’s a group that gets fealty from its base and its base is pretty clear: block senators who block reform.
Many of us voted for Obama because we could not imagine being on the wrong side of history–nor did we want to be. But with regard to the public option and other measures of true health care reform, it is Obama and others jonesing for bipartisanship who are on the wrong side of history. The only way to keep this from being 1993 all over again is to keep it from being 1993 all over again. Either you’re with us or you’re against us. And if you are against us, why should we let you play in our sandbox ever again?—-VAB
