Rally the Troops!

You really have to hand it to President Obama. This guy gives a great speech. So good, in fact, that he almost makes you forget the total disconnect between his rhetorical ability to point out the problems facing our nation and his unwillingness or lack of cojones to try and solve them. We saw his amazing oratory skills on display last week in his speech on health care reform to Congress, as well as a follow-up at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh and one today at the University of Maryland. You can't help but get swept away and feel all "fired up," but almost nine months into President Obama's term, what do we progressives have to celebrate? No doubt he's done some good work, but he's far too comfortable with status quo policy ideas for my taste. It's not like I expected him to govern like Dennis Kucinich once he got into office, but I was hoping these troubled times would push him into bold, new, progressive ideas and away from the failed policy's of the last thirty years. Instead we get Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers. But I digress...

Many of my liberal friends interpreted Obama's speech to Congress the other night differently than I did. I didn't see a call to arms, I saw a wink to Congress to proceed without the public option. Whether the Obama administration likes it or not, the public option has become the line in the sand for the progressive agenda. If he's not willing to fight for it then we should be. I don't want to be all doom and gloom -- there were some great moments in his speech. He finally clearly articulated the moral component of the argument for health care reform. Health care, after all, should be thought of as a basic human right and part of the struggle for social justice. That's one of the reasons why this fight is so important to the left.

Why are progressives made out to be the rigid ideologues in this debate? After all, we wanted Medicare for All or single payer so a public option that only covers an estimated 5% of our population was already a huge compromise. Maybe this explains the anemic response thus far from the left. After all, why would we be "fired up" to rally the troops for a handful of new regulations and a government mandate? We haven't done anything that's caught the attention of the main-stream media on par with the far-right disruptions of Democratic representatives town halls and the 9/12 March this past weekend.

The good news this week is that the long awaited Baucus bill was finally unveiled and in a rare, truly bi-partisan moment was roundly panned by Republicans and Democrats. In a failed attempt to garner a few Republican votes, Senator Baucus even strengthened the language in the bill against allowing illegal immigrants to purchase insurance and exclude federal funds from paying for abortions -- an obvious capitulation to Republican lies about things that weren't even in the bill to begin with! Let's hope that whatever the Senate finally passes bears little resemblance to this milquetoast payout to the insurance industry. Will the Progressive Caucus in the House have the courage to block a bill without a public option? If they did they would no doubt be smeared as the radicals that ruined health care reform. Senator Harkin recently said that the final bill will "have a strong public option" so hopefully we won't have to find that out.

Outside of all the obvious moral and economic reasons for having a robust public option as part of the health care bill, and in light of the fact that the Federal Government is the go-to boogie man for Republican scare tactics -- doesn't it seem like incredibly bad strategy for the Dems to pass legislation with a government mandate to buy health insurance from private insurance companies? If the corporatist Democrats are more interested in consolidating power and winning elections than the common good of the American people this seems like a short sighted way of achieving that goal. Also, regardless of what certain polling data suggests, I don't believe for a second that most Americans like their health insurance companies any more than they like their phone companies, the bank that holds their mortgage or any other massive corporation they have to deal with. People like their doctors, so as long as a reform bill didn't disrupt that then I can't imagine there would be any uproar over changing the logo on the insurance card.

What a strange summer it was with the ongoing spectacle of angry, mostly-white Americans protesting (often with guns!) a president and his policies that would in all likelihood improve their quality of life. It's interesting to see all these apparently reformed fiscal conservatives out there because I don't remember any conservative uproar when W. was cutting taxes for the rich and sending us into war on false pretenses -- both of which dwarf the cost of health care reform. For all of Obama's desires to be post-partisan and above the fray there is a segment of our society that will never accept him or his ideas. Let's not worry about them. Facts and reason hold no sway with these people. They scream things like "get your government hands off my Medicare." They are dangerous and silly people, but the powerful interests that stir these folks up are incredibly skilled at getting headlines and maintaining more than their fair share of the media spotlight. Anyway, we shouldn't be trying to change the minds of the Republican opposition or a wingnut minority of our population, we should be trying to get the attention of the corporatist Democrats who are actually blocking reform.

I understand that our side has been outmaneuvered so far in this debate, but I don't understand why it's taking so long for us to show up. What have progressives been waiting for? Where is our movement? We need to take to the streets, make the main-stream media pay attention and prove to the Democrats in Congress, as well as Obama, that we want real health care reform in this country now, and we'll support the politicians that support us.

I noticed that there are going to be some big rallies next week around the country organized by MoveOn.org and Health Care For America Now. Let's all get out there and show our support. The time is overdue for our movement to get moving.

 

 

Follow Chris Shiflett on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChrisShiflett71

Comments

[wildedge]

With Obama appearing more and more like a Beltway insider - which phenomenon itself dispirits his progressive base - , the progressive movements have no leadership right now. Most of the srongest progressive voices in politics have either never sought leadership positions, like, say, Barney Frank, or they flirted with such positions and then got squeezed out one way or another, like Howard Dean. And since such leadership would have to operate within the political process, it's not clear progressives really want a party leadership anyway.
A weak majority party and a noisy loony minority party - if I hadn't lived through the Bush years (with its noisy loony majority party), I might be tempted to call this the worst possible political scenario.

[RDREAM]

A plea to the progressives to abandoned the idea that the federal government is a sensible vehicle to accomplish anything other than infrastructure and defense. The federal government will, by default, always use coercion to achieve its ends. There is nothing moral about a public option and the utter corruption that will certainly follow if we go down this road. It is ironic that President Obama cites a probable source of funding to be the elimination of fraud and waste in medicare. If history teaches us that government programs are 1. Always more expensive than originally thought, and 2. Wrought with waste and corruption, why do you think it is moral to have federally mandated public option, laden with so much crap? Sorry Chris, love your music but your historically and philosophically just wrong. There is not a right to health care.

[Pema]

chris...excellent blog. ..obama...he really should read this instead of serving tea and cookies to the blue dogs and social conservs.
the base has fractured. we will go onto our goals with or without obama. it should always be policy and not personality.
we also need to send the blue dogs a message. get on board or we will not vote for you next time. make hcr with the public option or dont count on my vote next time.
GET UP STAND UP, DONT GIVE UP THE FIGHT...

[Knoxymama]

I know how excited you were about Obama, Chris - you championed for him before the election and anticipated greatness afterwards. I am also disappointed in him. I hear you loud and clear, dude.

Great writing - keep it up.

[unitron]

"Where's the guy I voted for?"

[fya]

He noticed that there are some health care rallies taking place in the next few weeks. Will he be at any? I'm so tired of people complaining about the Obama administration yet do nothing. 60,000 - 70,000 people protested on 9/12 in DC against health care reform. Why can't progressive organize thousands pro health care reformists in DC. We are unorganized and undisciplined.

[Pema]

FYA...we are because we dont have a leader. we arent just complaining we are trying to do something but it is impossible when the person you thought was leading you is shifting faster than sand dunes. what are we to fight for? one week its one way then the next he is snugging up to the very people who work to defeat this. we will fight, but we need some "thing" to fight for.

[escorpion]

While the right wingers were getting boat loads of publicity by marching, shouting and raising a ruckus, progressives demonstrated their committment by...writing really angry blogs. Could it be possible that the White House would have moved more to the left if the left had organized, mobilized and actually put pressure on them to do so?

Just a thought.

[fya]

+1

Thank godness, someone with some sense here.

[fya]

+1

[FearlessFreep]

When leftists put pressure on Obama, they're being disloyal; when they don't, it's their own fault that he ignores them.

[Bobotheclown]

"What have the progressives been waiting for?"
The progressives put Obama in the white house and expected the same payback that the right got when it put W in the white house, a full court press that walked all over those politically out of power. Instead they got pretty speeches from a do nothing President. The progressives are too much in shock now to do anything. Obama's continuing inaction across all liberal policy areas is stunning. But couple that with his wholesale continuation of Bush people and policies has turned him into a strange creature indeed. A Democrat who clearly articulates liberal ideals while destroying them through conservative policies. It is clear that we have entered an Alice in Wonderland age and that no amount of liberal demonstrations will move this President to action. This was sadly another stolen election.

[Pema]

stolen???? never. we are talking hcr. he has brought us back form the brink of depression, and finally women have legal right to equal pay. if you think dancing on a pretend grave is going to get the left to see things your way, your flat wrong i'd rather have 1 obama than 50 of the repubs working on anything.
we wont give in! we wont give up! we are fighting for the lives of americans.

[TinRoofRusted]

"What a strange summer it was with the ongoing spectacle of angry, mostly-white Americans protesting (often with guns!) a president and his policies that would in all likelihood improve their quality of life."

You are putting the cart before the horse. If we end up with a gov't mandate that everyone must buy insurance from one of these huge insurance companies -- and no public option whatsoever -- those very insurance companies will not be interested "quality of life" for anyone except their soaring bottom lines.

You said it yourself. "I didn't see a call to arms, I saw a wink to Congress to proceed without the public option."

[Helzapoppin]

Obama has become everything I was afraid he would be. . . an empty, waffling capitulator who talks a good game but never puts his money where his mouth is.

[PaxEterna]

Agreed . . and the reason the progressives aren't showing up in opposition to the President is because HE is their man . . . the left has become impotent by all the betrayals of the agenda that POTUS has shown to date.

[CTJack]

Great, thought-provoking article. Missing, however, are several of the points that have been emphasized by patient-advocate Betsy McCaughey (e.g., dangers of government health care takeover and rationing of medical care).

[lastpost]

“Foo Fighters”

Reported observation, which may have no actual basis in fact. Or just possibly, be something so alien to mundane perspectives of reality, that it is impossible to conceive of its complexity.

[NC4Obama]

Iam tired of people bashing Obama, because they don't understand how politics works. If you support the public option and want a stronger bill then bashing Obama isnt the way to go. Just cause Obama talks about bi partisanship all the time doesnt mean he is going to degraded the bill to get more republicans votes if they are already at the 60 vote count. It is congress that is holding up the bill, specificly atm its a few blue dogs in the senate finance committee.

I swear its not that hard to understand. If Obama went around flipping off Republicans because they are mo rons then he would be doing the Republicans a huge favor.

[LBaby]

Agreed - love the band, but tired of the same whiny, defeatist, "can't he just executive order health care" response - it is as predictable as the right wing bashing...and just as useful....

[FearlessFreep]

It's Obama's defenders who are being whiny.

[Inquisitr]

Really? Cuz it looks like that's exactly what Obama is dfoing. He hasn't shown any leadership on this at all.

[Awake-and-Sing]

I am tired of the Obamaniacs apologizing for the President when he has demonstrated through his action that he was either a fraud during his campaign or filled with cowardice this year.

At no point did he draw a line in the sand or threaten to use his veto pen.

The apologists have endless excuses for the President's lack of leadership.

[Pema]

awake-and-sing. love the sn and love the post even more. you said what needed to be said.

[Marcospinelli]

The problem with Obama's "public option":

Obama says that he won't sign a bill with a public option that isn't self-sustaining (paid for completely by those people in it).

If people get to pick and choose what plan they join, then the most impoverished and sickest people will pick the public option because it will cost them the least amount of money.

If that happens, then that option will not be self-sustaining.

Any insurance plan that draws an ever-increasing percentage of its membership from the very sick finds itself in a de@th spiral. It cannot sustain its expenses through membership fees.

[Marcospinelli]

Incidentally, the left come to the table already having compromised our position, BEFORE Obama conceded it away. Single payer universal health care IS (or was) our compromise position, not Obama's "public option", which isn't anything at all like a public option that most people think a public option means.

Single payer universal health care isn't our first, best proposal. We've already have been denied our first best proposal - A level playing field where we all could rise and share in the obscene corporate profits that come at the expense of so many people's lives. We've lost to a corporate mentality that it's a 'dog eat dog'-world, where making a living isn't enough (or even possible); only 'making a killing'.

Had Republicans never been in power these past 35 years, free education through college, access to nutritious, clean and safe food and water, and affordable health care for everyone would have been the bare minimum standard of living for all Americans. But greedy OILy conservative politicians entered our lives and our government, and we're now on a fast track to THE END.

Single payer universal health care is the best and only solution left, in order to provide most Americans with quality and affordable health care.

[Sammyofish]

How would have you paid for that?