Now we get to see just what it looks like when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. The audacity of hope versus the tenacity of fear. That fear doesn't just drive the opposition to a frenzy of fanatical rejectionism. It also clutches at the throats of Obama supporters, especially those of us from the "Moses" generation. We've seen the mirages, the "just over the next hill" promised lands. Better to stay in the wilderness, too many of us feel, than to risk the heartbreak of being fooled again. This old dread chokes the righteous outrage over our current travesty of a health care system. We fear the sell-out and the too real possibility that our desire for change will only wind up enriching the very insurance companies responsible for this murderous mess in the first place. As in, "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
Nothing matters more than getting health care right and Obama knows it. The dirty little secret of Medicare was that it contained a ticking time bomb that would blast the federal budget to smithereens unless there was comprehensive reform by the time the baby boomers qualified for it. That seemed like a safe bet for the Democratic leadership in the 1960s when the words "fiscal conservative" and "Republican" were virtually synonymous. No one could foresee the rise of a right wing anti-government ideology so rabid that bankrupting the federal government was not just an acceptable outcome but actually a strategic objective. But preventing fiscal meltdown is only one of three birds that meaningful reform would hit. Of course there's getting decent, remotely affordable health care for all Americans. That's obvious. What Obama can't say is that this is a jobs program for the poor and an economic stimulas for the nation. All of these are necessities and this is one of those rare and remarkable moments where necessity, what must be done, coincides with the ideal.
Obama's wavering signal on the public option exposed the Republican position perfectly -- no reform whatsoever is acceptable to them. Nice work. He simultaneously placed himself in the shrinking but critical middle of the American political spectrum, painting himself as the non-ideological pragmatist who just wants to get the problem solved, not the flaming socialist of the Republican narrative. It's important to let the right keep painting themselves into an ideological corner and no less important not to join them there. The Democratic base rallies to prevent the public option from being sold down the river. Uncle Teddy pulls the plug on himself and the battle is joined. He'll be lobbying for certain Senators' souls on a much higher plane. Obama gives yet another do-or-die best speach of his career. So far, so good. Everything is going according to plan -- except the Henry Lewis Gates distraction, probably.
Health care is as racially loaded as any social issue in US history. I spent a bit of time early this year at an intensive care unit in an assisted living facility in Baltimore County, where my mother was dying. The patients were all old and white, the health care workers all young and black and/or immigrants. The institution was completely segregated by Jim Crow's last line of defense -- age coupled with income.
My mother's little all had come to her -- in perfectly fitting fashion for the liberal lioness she was -- from a class action suit for job discrimination at Voice of America in which she was a star plaintiff. As a single working mother of many years, she had no issues about surrendering power to anyone in exchange for their taking care of her. As she sank deeper into senile dementia she became more childlike and trusting, her old battle axe from many wars waged dropped away. Watching Obama win as her lights went out was deeply satisfying to her. It reinforced her basic Panglossian faith that things ultimately do work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Watching the impact of the election on the mood of the Roland Park staff was pure joy. But the reaction of some of the old southern matrons in their care was very different. I didn't recognize their response at the time. It was pure, existential racial dread.
"Sometimes life is funny" were the last words Judy Neiman spoke. Funny how things do work out. We have all of these people who so urgently need jobs and happen to be from a culture that is warm and physical and loving at the exact moment we have all these seniors who need someone to give them loving care. It is truly a blessed country, however little we may deserve it. But to be well cared for, even by the best and most loving providers, you have to surrender power. And a lot of those white folks just weren't prepared to do that. It was most obvious in the ICU. There you had the wailing demented, gasping and screaming up and down the halls that their nurses were trying to kill them. At the time, I never imagined that this would become the Republican battle cry against health care reform. The old white people's party is suffering from early onset senile dementia. They are locked in a hell of their own imagining, a self fulfilling prophesy of an Alamo Armageddon where their final caretakers appear to them as demonic torturers and would-be executioners. The tenacity of their fear will lead this remnant to clutch to life when all that remains is a living hell, self-created by their own fear and intolerance. The seemingly over the top rhetoric about Nazis and death panels is just a reflection of the deep seated fear that justice is upon them.
It's a sad and interesting ending for the old party of Lincoln, whose abolitionist soul was sold out in favor of the moneyed interests many eons ago, and a cautionary tale for Democrats. The "malefactors of great wealth", as the last great Republican Roosevelt called them, are more well heeled than ever and desperately need a new vehicle, since their grand old Republican Party appears stuck in a tiny exurban cul-de-sac. All that wealth is now focused on just a handful of moderate Democratic senators from marginal states. Not a very hopeful prospect.
But maybe, just maybe, the sweet deal the Obama crew cut for the pharmaceutical industry and the prospect of 40 million newly insured consumers for their products will pit greed against greed just long enough to loosen the throttle-hold the health insurance industry has over the wealth (and health) of the nation for a reform bill with a public option to squeak through Congress. PhRMA & the SEIU have a multimillion dollar joint ad campaign for health care reform in the strange bedfellows act of the year. Big Pharma saves the day on health care? Well, snake venom is the antidote for snakebite. Could be just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes, life is funny.
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