Forward the video above to around 1:55. Candidate Obama was against mandates before Pres. Obama demanded them for us all. If Obama was a liberal he would have embraced mandates from the beginning, understanding that they go with the public option, which is the only way to offer choice to people while cutting costs. He didn't.
If Harry Reid was a liberal we'd have a better bill, because he wouldn't have played Let's Make a Deal host, with the biggest winner the insurance companies.
If Speaker Pelosi was a liberal she wouldn't have invited religious leaders into the room to craft language that takes rights away from women we won through the law decades ago.
Liberals wouldn't let something like this happen either:
... We're not changing our health-care system very much at all, in fact. Nothing happens in 2010. Or in 2011. Or in 2012. In 2014, when the bill really begins, the insurance situations of 18 million people change. A full 16 million of those people are uninsured. Aside from the small sliver of people who will pay a surtax on the final few dollars of uncommonly expensive insurance plans, the country simply will not notice this legislation. [...] - Ezra Klein, The amazing disappearing bill
If Democrats today were like liberals of the 1960s, some Christmas gift deadline would matter less than getting legislation that offered choice to people, didn't hold them hostage to an insurance monopoly, protected women's rights that have already been enshrined in law, didn't tax the middle class, or penalize people and enforce by fiat mandatory rules to buy insurance inside a fixed market, wouldn't strap elderly and sick in a rigged system, all on the altar of getting it done before church bells ring on Christmas Eve.
If the Democratic majority was liberal, all of the above would be unnecessary, because the conference committee would be real instead of some (likely) arbitrary Senate rubber stamp.
If Russ Feingold was a liberal he wouldn't have waited until now to blame Obama for not backing the public option; but he'd also not have voted against women's preventative health measures.
If Barbara Boxer was a liberal she would have said no to compromises that offer less to women than are already in the law. Ms. Boxer, who said she'd never heard of the largest nurse's union in the U.S., when appearing on "Countdown" last night, if she was a liberal, would likely know their name.
If Tom Harkin was a liberal he wouldn't be trying to sell the Senate legislation that forces people into health care insurance that doesn't guarantee quality health care.
If Democrats in Congress were liberals, we'd at least have a front loaded bill that gave people goodies so they'd bond to the legislation.
If the progressive caucus, wherever they are hiding their spines, were liberals instead, maybe they would have drawn a line in the sand on principle instead of praying to the Let's Go Incremental gods while accepting "progress" in the name of capitulation.
And no liberal would ever believe that something as important as reforming health care has this chance and this chance only to make it happen. Now or never is a rallying cry for losers who don't have the breath for the long haul.
If we had more liberals in Congress, instead of blathering about perfection being the enemy of the good, we'd have heard a rallying cry that mediocre is the enemy of effective. The death knell of solutions at a time when action is required to save this country and its middle class from economic catastrophe at the hands of people who support a corpocracy over our democratic republic.
If we had liberals in the Congress, we wouldn't be levying a middle class tax for health care most families can't afford.
...and on that note, liberals wouldn't lie outright and say we were going to insure another 30 million people, when many of these people will likely have to pay the IRS penalty instead of buying the insurance, because the reason they don't have insurance in the first place is because THEY CAN'T AFFORD IT.
If we had a liberal in the White House who understood the middle class at all, maybe we wouldn't be giving the insurance companies a guaranteed new group of customers without any choice at all.
If we had a liberal Congress, they would surely know that once the insurance monopolies have their new Fish Meet Barrel customers there really is no incentive for them to do anything for them.
Honestly, if we had this bunch of legislators in the Senate during the 1960s, JFK's call to go to the Moon would have landed us in the middle of the Atlantic, falling well short of his vision.
You can't shoot for greatness if you won't use all of your powers.
You can't be a senator or representative and do your job for people in the Legislative Branch if you're more interested in saving the person in the Executive Branch, putting political party over what's right for We the People.
But if you're going to insist on a selling out to corporate interests and the insurance monopoly, like what Pres. Obama and the Democrats are doing on health care (just like what happened with big banks), the least you could do is give up the goodies to the people from the get go.
It's always better to give someone a kiss first.
Dumb and Dumber had nothing on this bunch.
Taylor Marsh, with podcasts available on iTunes.