Each time I have criticized President Obama for his right-wing policies, I’ve gotten angry phone calls and letters. But facts are facts: True progressives cannot be allowed to pretend the things we abhorred when a Republican president did them (more wars, indefinite detention, torture, extraordinary rendition, gutting the poor, ignoring the EPA, etc.) are okay when a Democratic president does them.

The same thing should hold true for members of Congress.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is up for re-election in 2012. He was elected with an eight percent majority of the vote over then-incumbent and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum who most progressives, myself included believed was a political extremist who was damaging to the state and to the country.

Casey is indeed less dangerous than Santorum. But less dangerous shouldn’t be the litmus test. Effective for the state and in the federal government should be the criteria for re-election. On the basis of that criteria, Pennsylvanians of all party affiliations deserve alternative choices to Casey in 2012.

Those of us who grew up with clear distinctions between the Democratic and Republican parties have become increasingly disturbed in our middle age as the line between the two parties hasn’t just blurred but merged.

I and other progressives dislike the current Democratic Party because it has become virtually interchangeable with the Republican Party–that is, a party of corporations over people, rich over poor, wars over peace, torture over trial, restricting civil liberties versus supporting traditional American freedoms.

Casey symbolizes much of what is wrong with the Democratic Party in 2011. His politics are staunchly opposed to traditional Democratic Party platform issues. But because the entire Democratic Party has moved so far to the right, Casey is not perceived to be the extremist Santorum was, but only because we have now embraced extremism as politically expedient.

The most recent polls indicate that 35 percent of Pennsylvanians think Casey deserves re-election and 35 percent do not. The remaining 30 percent are undecided.

Progressives should want–and demand–a primary challenge to Casey’s candidacy. Casey is the kind of Democrat, along with Obama and many others in the Administration and Congress, dragging the entire Democratic Party to the right under the guise of “bipartisanship.”

Bipartisanship is a canard; it doesn’t exist in Washington. For nearly two decades bipartisanship has meant Democrats capitulating to Republicans on their core values.

Casey doesn’t need to capitulate as much as some, like Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. He doesn’t need to because he came to Washington with a set of core conservative values.

Casey is known for his strong anti-choice stance. He has said repeatedly that he opposes a woman’s right to abortion and supports legal protection of human life from conception.

He opposes abortion in all circumstances except rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. He wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and has pledged to do so. He opposes any tax-funded abortions or public funding of abortion, opposes embryonic stem-cell research and has voted against expanding stem-cell research. Casey also opposes laws that would “force pharmacists to fill a prescription contrary to their moral beliefs.”

While in the Senate, Casey has voted yes on restricting UN funding for population control policies, voted yes on prohibiting minors from crossing state lines for abortions, voted yes on defining the unborn child as eligible for the SCHIP health care program. He supports teaching abstinence in the schools.

Many voters say focusing on Casey’s abortion stance is single-issue. But Casey’s stance on choice is far from his only conservative view. Despite claiming to be pro-life, Casey is a strong supporter of the death penalty (unlike his father, who did not perform any executions during his years as governor) and opposes any gun control laws.

Casey voted yes on carrying guns in baggage on Amtrak and also voted yes on prohibiting foreign and UN aid that restricts U.S. gun ownership.

On the issues where President Obama has maintained the Bush Administration’s assault on civil liberties, Casey is in lock-step. He voted to keep former President Bush from being censured for domestic spying, voted to expand warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens, voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act, saying it is vital in the war against terror. He voted to approve both John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court–two of the youngest and most conservative justices.

His Catholic faith drives his “private and public life,” Casey says. Which is why in addition to his stance on abortion and related issues, he also supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools, teacher-led prayer in the schools and posting the Ten Commandments in/on public buildings. He does not support legalization of any drugs, including medical marijuana.

Casey also wants churches to be allowed to register as childcare providers covered by federal welfare payments. He opposes same-sex marriage and supports keeping DOMA in place, but voted to repeal DADT, which was dissolved last week.

Casey gets a rating of “moderate” by many political watch groups, but there’s nothing moderate about any of the views listed above. These are conservative views, not Democratic Party platform views.

Replace Casey’s name with that of say, Rep. Michele Bachmann and progressives would be up in arms, railing about the inconsistencies of being pro-gun, pro-death penalty and pro-war with the adamant position on abortion. The Intelligent Design issue would have progressives rolling their eyes and talking about “crazy ideas,” while the anti-stem cell research stance would garner “anti-science” comments and the same-sex marriage question receive grumbles of homophobia.

So which is it? Are these stands anti-progressive or they are all acceptable when the candidate is a Democrat, not a Republican?

And it’s not just Casey’s conservatism that is at issue. Other questions about Casey go to presence. Where has he been the past five years? During the health care reform debates Pennsylvanians witnessed then-Sen. Arlen Specter traveling statewide to defend President Obama’s health care plan. Where was Casey? Absent because it wasn’t an election year for him?

And where has Casey been during the brutal debates over the Marcellus Shale and fracking? Again–absent, despite a consistent pro-environment stand–his one liberal stance.

The first time Casey talked publicly about anything in recent months was when he spoke out against Obama’s latest jobs stimulus package, saying it needed to be paired down.

It’s just over a year until the next election. No one has come forward as a challenger to Casey–either among Republicans or Democrats. But that needs to change. Over his time in the Senate, Casey has failed to represent the state with any strength of voice or principle. What’s more, his conservative views on core Democratic issues are a cause for concern in an increasingly right-wing political environment. With over 13 months till the election, there’s time for other candidates to emerge. Pennsylvanians must ask what Casey has done for them, the state and the country. When the answer is “not much,” it’s definitely time for a change.

It also costs a fortune. Health care costs are the major reason for bankruptcies in America today. And according to industry statistics, end-of-life health care costs account for more than half of all health care costs in the U.S.

When the health care debate began in earnest two years ago, President Obama chose to retreat from the discussion, a mistake that cost him the majority in the House in the Nov. 2010 election. By allowing the right to take charge of the discourse on health care, with the drumbeat of “death panels” and “rationing,” all Americans ended up with a health care reform bill that addressed almost none of the concerns most of us have. What’s more, it handed the health-care industry–which is hardly based on altruism–everything it wanted and more. No premium caps, no single-payer, no tort reform, no cost-benefit options.

Nearly all of the changes in the Health Care Reform Act don’t even go into effect until 2014. It was a payday for the industry but one more assault on the average American who will, sooner or later, be sick and/or dying.

For my father, that time came sooner rather than later and as with every sick and/or dying person in America who is not a billionaire or millionaire (like the President and every member of Congress) or who has a great health care plan for life like members of Congress, it was a very costly final illness.

In the past four months my father was hospitalized six times. Each time he was in intensive care. Each time he required blood transfusions, IV antibiotics, visits from infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and hematologists, as well as his own physician.

Because my father was in his 70s, his health care costs were covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Every American worker pays into the coffers for Medicare and Medicaid. So it’s only fair that we get the benefit once we are old and sick. But why is it as costly as it is?

Last month I was treated in the ER for a breathing emergency. I was there for six hours. In that time I saw an actual physician for four minutes. I was on an IV with two drugs for several hours and I was given several nebulizer treatments by a nurse. Then I was sent home with the dictate to see my regular physician within 48 hours.

The cost: $17,000. In the ER. For four drugs, saline, and four minutes of physician care.

I have no idea how much my father’s week-long stays in ICU cost in Medicare and Medicaid dollars, but given my own HMO dollars, I am sure the sum was hefty. In the last four months of his life I have no doubt that the bills for my father’s various hospitalizations were $200,000 or more. Consider how many Americans over 65 are in similar circumstances and the costs are exponential.

Watching someone die makes you very aware of your own impending mortality. It also makes you aware of what works and what doesn’t in the health care system.

There’s not a lot that works and yet it’s all costly. What’s more, there is a great deal of treatment being given that the end of life that is meaningless: It’s can’t save the patient and often prolongs suffering, but it makes family members and doctors feel as if something is being done.

Is that really what we should be doing?

In most big city hospitals, the nurse to patient ratio is well below what it should be for optimal patient care. The concept of hourly rounding has been established at most hospitals, but is almost impossible to implement. I have been told by nurses giving medication at 10:30 that “this counts as the 8:30 medication.”

Two hours late is not hourly.

When it comes to end of life care, the amount of nursing time required is exponentially greater. Does that mean that younger patients with better outcomes are being short-changed?

After watching both my parents be “saved” by doctors who felt the need to do something rather than nothing (and also protect themselves against potential lawsuits), it seems that hospice care is woefully under-utilized. Patients’ families are not told the truth about their loved ones’ actual prognoses and what all this treatment means in terms of actual extension of life.

For example, while medically speaking a dying patient’s pneumonia can be cured, it doesn’t mean that she/he will actually survive the treatment or get “better.” Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to not treat someone who is already at the end of life and allow them to die peacefully, rather than continue to treat with drugs that impact the quality of life without actually extending life.

As clients of the health care industry, we all, regardless of our ages, need to start taking responsibility for the truth about our own health and that of those we love. Sometimes people can’t be saved or they can survive, but with such a diminished quality of life that death would be preferable. Technological advances in health care have made lots of things possible, but they haven’t always caught up to the actual issue of how we want to live and just as importantly, how we want to die.

Most of us should not die in the hospital–that’s for people who have had traumatic injury and can’t be moved to hospice care. But the rest of us should die at home, surrounded by and at peace with the surroundings that give us comfort. Those last days in a hospital don’t just cost in terms of health care dollars, they cost in terms of a peaceful death. Hospitals are loud, too bright, smell antiseptic. Despite the plethora of medical staff on hand, they rarely make us feel “safe” or comforted.

The health care debate needs re-framing on many levels, but the most defining is end of life. More than half of all health care dollars go into end of life care. But if we were all willing to accept that death is inevitable and that coming to terms with death and having a comfortable death were primary issues, then we could make hospice care pre-eminent for the last six months of life. That wouldn’t just save billions, it would also facilitate better dying for almost everyone.

None of us wants to die or watch our loved ones die. But there are good deaths and bad deaths and the current system supports doing something at all costs–literally. That isn’t the way any of us wants to die and it’s costing us more than we realize.

According to the Republicans, their raison d’etre and the alleged mandate from the electorate after the November 2010 election is overturning health care reform.

Only problem: There is no health care reform. The most important elements were a public option, a premium cap and a mandate for everyone to have health insurance. Not one of those vital elements was part of the final health care reform package. The Democrats–despite having had a majority in Congress and the White House when health care reform was in play–capitulated at every turn with the end result being no public option, no premium caps and no mandate.

Instead, health care reform devolved into an handful of changes that don’t even go into effect until 2014 and 2015, respectively. In the interim, there are still 52 million Americans who are uninsured or under-insured. Throughout the country health care premiums are doubling and tripling, which will eventually mean even more uninsured, not fewer.

One of the major tenets of health care reform was supposed to be a clause the disallowed health insurers from refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Except that clause doesn’t go into effect until December 2014–a full two years after the next election and more than three and a half years from now.

This gap allows health insurance companies free rein to raise premiums, cut or refuse insurance to people with pre-existing conditions and make myraid changes in health care plans altering coverage.

And how many Americans even know that health care reform is in the future, not already in effect?

In January, my health insurance premium went up as it has every year for the past 11 years. I have a standard HMO from one of the nation’s two largest insurers. I do not have dental or eye, but I do have a prescription plan which raises my premium. I pay more than $1,000 a month–a month–for the HMO.

In December 2010, my co-pay to see my primary care physician or any other doctor in the system was $5. I had no co-pay for X-rays, a $35 co-pay for a trip to the ER and a $5 co-pay for my prescriptions.

No more. It seems that in addition to raising my premium in January, my insurer also raised the rates for everything else–even though the higher premium is supposed to cover those things.

I found out about these hidden increases the hard way: By having to pay. In February, I received a call from my insurer telling me that I was late paying my bill. I explained that I simply hadn’t had enough money to pay for it yet and was there a way I could pay less.

I was told there was a far lower rate–I just had to have a thorough phyiscal to make sure I had no pre-existing conditions. I said that wasn’t legal anymore since health care reform and was told that didn’t go into effect for several more years: December 2014.

Then there were those hidden fees. At the doctor’s office the co-pay was now $20. Then yesterday I went to pick up one of my heart medications at the drugstore only to find that I could only get 30 pills at a time instead of 90. In December, I paid $15 for those 90 pills. Yesterday I paid $35 for 30.

I stood at the prescription window arguing with the pharmacy assistant who called the insurer. The change had been made in January. I just never knew about it.

Between January and now, I have spent more than $1,000 in these hidden fees added to my already raised premium.

I know I am not alone in this. Nationwide the increase in premiums has been as much as 60 percent in some states, like California and New Jersey. Meanwhile, how many hidden fees have been added to each plan? 

A totally non-scientific polling of close friends and family found that more than two-thirds had had an exponential increase in both their premiums and those hidden fees.

So for all those congressional Democrats out there crowing about health care reform—you have a lot of nerve, given your own stellar health care coverage paid for by me and other Americans. And for those Republicans still whining about health care reform–read the bill. Nothing’s happened yet.

Both parties should remember this: November 2012 is an election for everyone. And for those of us who will have paid thousands of extra dollars in the interim, or have lost our health insurance or still been unable to get it due to the fact that health care reform isn’t, do remember: We vote. —VAB

Tonight she proclaimed that President Obama had delivered a “smackdown” to GOP governors by moving up the date of the health care reform opt-out to 2014. This, she proclaimed, meant that health care reform was off the table for the 2012 election and thus no Republican governor could challenge Obama on that issue in the election.

Huh? This is still missing the point entirely, alas. But then I find the Obama apologists not much different from the Bush apologists. Except it’s always more disappointing to see people we like and admire so taken in so easily. 

Republicans don’t need to make health care reform an issue for 2012. They made it an issue for 2010 while Obama literally went on vacation and let the Republicans control the entire debate and run the table. Then he topped it off by ignoring the economy and as a consequence Republicans won overwhelmingly. 

That was a smackdown. 

All the problems we have now with the Republicans are a direct result of Obama not saying any of this in April 2009 when it mattered. When it could have made a difference. When it could have saved actual lives, since this isn’t just a little blogosphere debate between the bad Republicans and the heroic President. Yeah, Obama sure put the smackdown on them. Two years too late. Meanwhile health care reform–such as it is–will likely be dismantled by the Republican controlled  and Democratic ignored Congress by the time the election rolls around. Starting with women’s reproductive rights about which Obama has said not one word and about which Harry Reid has said not one word and about which Nancy Pelosi has only talked to her choir on the center left blogosphere.

And about which our Rachel has not held Obama responsible for one minute like he’s only the president when we like what he does but we don’t need to hold him accountable for inaction. If only all these people would apply the same standard to Obama that they did to Bush, we might get an actual Democrat as a challenger for 2012. If only.

I’m trying to become resigned to another term of Obama. But I certainly do not have to be gleeful about it like Maddow was tonight. Because some of us have memory and Obama sure didn’t smackdown the Republicans on tax cuts for the wealthy or on the budget he signed today. Somehow it’s difficult for me to see how cutting $2.5 billion in LIHEAP grants to the poor is a smackdown to the Republicans. 

It’s time to stop looking for the silver lining and tell it like it is. Which is nowhere near a smackdown to any Republican by our Republican-lite president.—VAB  

Prom night at the Capitol with everyone wearing ribbons in support of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Republicans and Democrats sitting side-by-side in a show of the most faux bipartisanship in recent memory was more enchanting for the punditry than it was for most Americans who actually listened to what President Obama said in his 61 minute speech.

Most of us have come to expect good speech from Obama. We didn’t get that from the State of the Union speech, which was arguably the most lackluster and uninventive of Obama’s loquacious career.

Here’s what wasn’t  in the speech: No mention of the massive housing foreclosure crisis which is currently impacting one in 30 Americans who own houses. One in 30. That includes people who are actually in foreclosure or who are on the verge of foreclosure or are more than two payments behind on their mortgages.

No mention, either, of the millions of Americans–one in ten—who are unemployed. To hear the President tell it, the “recovery” is firmly in place because the stock market is cresting near 12,000 again.

Of course what Obama neglects to mention here is that one of the reasons the stock market is doing so well is because of all the cash his administration funneled into Wall Street at the expense of average Americans. Many of the top 500 S&P companies are indeed showing record profits. Alas, they aren’t hiring. 

So what about Main Street, Mr. President? We were told in the last SOTU that the bailouts were to jump start hiring and pump up the economy. But unemployment—not mentioned in this SOTU address–is still hovering close to ten percent with an additional 15 million or so people falling into the category of 99ers. These are the people who have been unemployed for 99 weeks or more and thus are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits and are not counted in the unemployment numbers since those only include people collecting benefits. Which also means self-employed people who have lost work are also not included–these would include consultants and freelance writers and artists, among others.

The poor were also not mentioned in the speech. But then the poor routinely get forgotten when the economy is bad, which it is, despite the President’s platitudes to the contrary.

The President did, however, state that he was instituting a five year freeze on all non-defense discretionary spending–which will, of course, impact the poor and working class most directly. That no economist thinks this will do anything to help the economy but is merely a sop to the Republicans doesn’t seem to matter.

Depressing wages to improve profits is not the answer to the economic quandaries facing the nation. Nor, as the President seemed to imply with his excoriation of bad teachers and bad schools, is the fact that America ranks so low in the international educational spectrum. We didn’t get where we are because of some bad students. We got where we are through a Wall Street shell game perpetrated by the best and the brightest, not the dumb and dumber.

A few days prior to the SOTU, I received an email from Vice President Joe Biden via Obama’s website. In it the VP touted all the things that he and Obama assert the Administration has accomplished in the past two years. It was quite the letter.

Where the SOTU speech was lackluster, this email was hyperbolic. Among the rather outrageous assertions was the claim that “people say this Administation has accomplished more than Roosevelt’s.” Biden doesn’t say which Roosevelt, although it can be presumed he meant FDR, not Teddy. But either would be such an exaggeration as to at the very least raise an eyebrow, or in my case, raise a point-by-point refutation letter that I sent off immediately. Who exactly is saying this other than the Vice President and other Obama staffers?

One of the features of the SOTU was commentary on how well the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone. According to the President, it’s all gone very well. But what exactly did we achieve in Iraq? Can anyone explain that with any facility or clarity? And the war in Afghanistan has gone on for a decade and we appear to be no closer to “winning” that war than we were the day we invaded. The country is still run by a corrupt and largely ineffective government, many of the outlying districts are controlled by warlords or the Taliban or al-Qeada, the role of women is severely restricted in the nation, opium remains the one main growth industry in the country and poverty and illiteracy are pandemic.

Obama lauded the troops toward the end of his speech, but he didn’t mention how many have lost their lives to these two failed wars, nor how many tens of thousands of others are permanently disabled nor how many others still are mentailly ill with PTSD and other post-war stress. There was no mention of the high rate of suicide among returning soldiers nor the escalating levels of domestic violence among those personnel.

In the email from Biden, the Vice President asserted that 100,000 troops had been brought back from Iraq. Yet  at the height of the war there were only 92,000 troops there according to the Pentagon, which presumably knows—and between 50,000 and 60,000 still remain there. In the SOTU, Obama insisted that troops would begin to be drawn down in Afghanistan in July, which garnered rousing applause from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), one of the President’s chief critics on Afghanistan. But what will that draw-down actually entail? And will it be more fudging of the numbers like Biden’s claim regarding the 100,000 troop withdrawal from Iraq?

The President also claimed credit for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the SOTU, even though he spent the last two years thwarting every court ruling that attempted to overturn DADT. And in mentioning gay soldiers (lesbian military personnel have been discharged from the military at a rate of 3 to 1 for every gay man discharged, but were not mentioned), Obama was quick to assert that gays should go to their local ROTC and sign up post haste.

The President also lauded his health care initiatives and in one of the only jabs at the Republicans, suggested that no one wants to overturn the progressive moves instituted by the Health Care Reform Act. Using a man with cancer as a prop, Obama singled him out and the cameras panned to his chemo-bald head as the President explained that thanks to the HCRA, this man would no longer have to worry about his pre-existing condition interfering with his health insurance.

But there was no mention of the 42 million Americans who still do not have health insurance or the 18 million others who are underinsured. Nor was there mention of the fact that HCRA failed to cap premiums and as a consequence insurance companies have escalated premiums at exorbitant levels over the past few months. In California the average premium increase has been a whopping 59 percent while in New Jersey it has been 38 percent and in Pennsylvania 18 percent.

Yes, most Americans who are actually looking at what health care reform achieved are grateful for some of the changes, but they still don’t have anything like the comprehensive health care that Canadians or Europeans have. Or the President, VP and Congress.

And despite the call for unity and civility that the President began in Tucson two weeks ago, there was no follow-up on the issue of gun violence nor even on the fact that one in five Americans suffers from some form of mental illness and there is woefully little help available out there for people like the obviously mentally ill Tucson shooter.

Obama went hard for a solidly platitudinous wrap up to his speech, intoning again and again that America does big things: We do big things was repeated several times.

But what exactly are those big things? 

The Obama Administration could have done big things from the outset, particularly given the wave of international support and good-will that Obama himself enjoyed at the beginning of his presidency. But at every turn Obama has catered to special interests and to the Republican oligarchy.

America has done big things in the past, and as a consequence of some of those things, we have our first black president. But we have done no big things under Obama, unless whittling away at civil liberties with the abandon this president has shown is what we’re considering.

In one of the many commentaries by pundits post-SOTU, conservative money guru Ben Stein presented a fascinating editorial. Stein liked the SOTU because he found it redolent of Reagan with a soupcon of Bush 1 and a heavy air of Bush 2. He thought Obama was finally getting it–by which Stein means getting the conservative message.

Stein illumined point-by-point what a good Republican Obama has become—something I’ve been saying for two years now. He enumerated all the ways Obama has agreed with Reagan and the Bushes. And he also asserted that Obama is currently the most facile of all Republican voices in America and as such should run on the Republican ticket come 2012.

It was an intriguing argument and one no progressive should ignore.

The SOTU was definitely not the state of my union. Ben Stein may think Obama gets it, but then he and Obama have the same politics—pro-business, pro-wealth, anti-anyone making under $250,000 a year.

The SOTU should be a wake up call for liberals, progressives and old school Democrats as to who Mr. Obama currently is. This is not the guy to lead us into a progressive future where America does big things. This is a guy who will continue to sell us out to the Republicans and to Wall Street and to Big Business while unemployment remains at nearly ten percent and the rich–which Mr. Obama is himself—get richer on the backs of the poor, working class and middle class.

Where will the SOTU be next year, a few months before the election and days before Iowa? It’s anybody’s guess, but mine is we will still be in Afghanistan, we will still have no comprehensive health care reforms, we will still have a national hiring freeze on, we will still have massive unemployment and underemployment as well as foreclosures right and left and our civil liberties will still be being whittled away one warrantless wiretap at a time. 

If we want to continue to do big things, we need a leader who can get us where we need to go. So far President Obama has not shown himself to be that leader. And nothing in his SOTU speech said he ever will be.—VAB

It’s hard to know what to say at this point about health care reform. As a progressive I want it and as a person with serious health issues, I also need it. But the bill as it is currently presented is missing so many key elements that I really don’t know that this is the bill any of us wants.

And yet…is some bill better than no bill at all? Or is this a case of nothing being better than just anything?

Paul Krugman, who all along has asserted that health care reform will be a Rubican of sorts for Obama, is now saying  

Pass the Bill
by PAUL KRUGMAN

Al Franken (D-MN), the Senate’s most recent member and one of its most progressive, is saying much the same thing, arguing for the goodness of the Senate bill in its current state.

A Historic Step Forward: Why I’m Supporting The Senate Health Reform Bill
by Al Franken

I acknowledge being a strident optimist. I don’t know how cynics get by in life and don’t especially want to know. That said, I’m increasingly cynical about the current administration and its apologists.

Remember when we progressives were against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan? Remember when we thought the refutation of the rule of law under the Bush Administration was tantamount to if not an outright war crime? Remember when the Abu Ghraib photos first appeared in The New Yorker  and how shocked we were?

Cut to election night and the throngs in Grant Park and the tears and the cheering and the not having to wait for three days or three months to find out who was going to be the next president. Even if you weren’t a big fan of Barack Obama (I was a stalwart Hillary Clinton supporter, but voted for Obama in the general), you had to feel relief.

The enthusiasm and yes, hope, of that night is long gone. Now we are sitting right where we were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, eight years ago—listening to excuses for things that are inexcusable, listening to the Democrats explain yet again why they have no spine (not all of them, but certainly well more than a quorum), listening to a President explain how a troop surge (what else do you call 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan?) will “finish the job,” listening to what we found loathesome under George W. Bush and making excuses for why it is okay under Barack H. Obama.

It’s not okay. It’s so not okay. Anyone who twists their integrity and logic around to excuse these inexcusable crimes—war, torture, recision of the rule of law, indefinite detenti0n—is simply lying:  to themselves, to the country, to the world.

This is not change. This is the status quo we have been listening to for nearly a decade. It’s what we spent years defending against under Bush.

I voted for change. I didn’t expect all the change that was promised. But I did expect some modicum of difference. I did expect that I would be able to discern at least a subtle if not tectonic shift in the political status quo. But instead I have been seeing a Democrat in Republican clothing where a progressive was supposed to have been elected. And almost everything I read in the left-leaning blogosphere keeps saying it’s all the Republicans’ fault.

How? Since they’re not in power, I mean?  

I have come to disbelieve that this President wants change. He keeps saying change is hard. But how would he know? He hasn’t effected any. Listening to this mantra of Obama’s that change is hard just sounds so very…Bush.

I don’t want another president deluded by his own power into believing that he  is the answer. Obama isn’t the answer in Afghanistan. You can ask “how many Afghanis does it take to change a lightbulb?” again and again but the answer will be the same–the Afghanis have to really want to change the lightbulb and move from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the present. 35,000 more American troops will not force that change. Cannot force that change. We need to leave. We need to let these people fail or rise on their own. We can’t give them a pill to end corruption, we can’t change their deep desire to entrust their futures to war lords and corruption and repressive religious theocratic dictatorships. We can’t force democracy. We can’t even force it in our own Congress.

I feel we are back to the shell-game politics of the Bush Administration: look over here! No–look over here! First it was health care reform, then a jobs summit, now Afghanistan. No one is saying these aren’t all pressing issues. They are. Nevertheless, it seems as if there is just an endless stop/start routine between the President and the Democrats in Congress that stymies any and all actual progress.

It’s depressing. It’s not hopeful. And it’s definitely not the change most of us who voted for Obama were expecting. Stasis is not change. Someone as smart as Obama has to know that. And if he doesn’t, someone smart who is close to him should tell him. Before it’s too late and his one-term presidency is sealed.—VAB

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

i signed, of course, but i just wonder: why are we still having this same argument and why is obama so lacking in clarity on this issue?

sen. olympia snowe (R-ME) doesn’t want the public option. she wants the trigger to the public option, which basically means if the planets align and the world is coming to an end and capitalism dies, we’ll get the public option, and she’s the only republican who has signed on to health care reform.

so what? why is the president–the democratic president who was elected by mostly democrats being held hostage by a republican from maine where, i will add, there is 16 percent unemployment and some of the worst health care in the country.

obviously i am not the only progressive getting mad as the proverbial hatter over this nonsense on the public option or i wouldn’t be getting emails about it first thing on a saturday morning.

that said, where is the progressive outcry and why are we allowing obama to shunt us and the public option aside for one republican from maine?

i live in the fifth most populous state and fifth most populous city in america. philadelphia is also, regrettably, the poorest of the top ten most populous cities in the country and our citizens have the least access to affordable health care as a consequence. i personally have to pay $900 a month for my HMO from blue cross and it is much more than i can afford. but i have pesky pre-existing conditions and so have never been able to allow my heath coverage to lapse for a second over the past 25 years since i first had cancer surgery in my 20s.

i want the president to understand that health care reform as it is currently written does not help most of us. not one whit. we not only need the public option, we need caps on premiums (my premium has doubled in five years–doubled).  we need the closest thing to universal health care that we can get and we need to stop caring about the republicans who won’t vote for it regardless calling it socialized medicine. the majority of them are on medicare anyway. which is, thank you FDR, socialized medicine.

most of us want what congress has. we want what keith olbermann has been calling “medicare for everyone.” i know i do.

explain to me who deserves not to have health care coverage and why?

there’s no excuse for us being stymied in the same way we were 16 years ago when hillary clinton was attempting to get these very same reforms through congress. it’s 2009. in a society where the majority of americans claim to be moral at their core, how do we justify not taking care of everyone equally?

right–we can’t. let obama and your congresspeople know, today.—vab