digby: Building The Mandate

[babylonsister]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/building-mandate-by-digby-heres.html

Building The Mandate
digby

snip//

...As Teddy Kennedy says, the most important thing is to get a public plan by hook or crook and then expand it. But I would love to know why this fellow and others like him believe that, all things being equal (the same presidential campaign, the same economic conditions) single payer could have been sold more effectively than a public plan. If the medical industrial complex pulled out all the stops with this far less radical change --- and managed to successfully erode support for reform already --- is it reasonable to think they would have been stunned into paralysis if Obama had introduced a real government run program?

...

I just don't understand why anyone thinks there was any kind of mandate for such a plan --- or that there has been any kind of grassroots, bottom-up effort to build one over the past 16 years when the Clinton plan crashed on many of the same shoals the current one is heading toward. There was certainly no demand for this during the last presidential campaign, despite the fact that the crisis was well known and plans were discussed constantly.

This reform debate has been going on for 60 years now and every time an attempt to do it fails, liberals purse their lips and say the plan wasn't sweeping enough. We say that no reform is better than reform that continues to allow insurance companies to exist anyway and comfort ourselves with the notion that single payer will be inevitable the next time. And then the politicians suffer from their political failure and get wary of tackling the issue again --- and we go back to complaining among ourselves for another 20 years until another president gets an opening for reform and the same thing happens.

This person actually seems to believe that if the current legislation crashes and burns that all the politicians have to do is brush themselves off and go back to the drawing board and we'll get a single payer plan in 2010. That is a fantasy. It does not work that way and anyone who has observed politics in this country for more than five minutes knows this. The politicians will learn their lesson about failed reform --- again --- and that will be that.

At this point the situation is so grave that taking another 20 years to build that single payer mandate is an untenable position. The economics as well as the moral necessity argue for doing whatever is possible. But, if you nonetheless believe that it's better to have no reform at all then go ahead and agitate for this plan to fail. Maybe this time, in 20 years things will be so horrible that they won't be able to avoid enacting single payer. Heck, maybe we can come back to it in only eight years this time -- if Republicans don't come back to power that is.

But if you take that position, I would certainly hope that at the very least, if this push fails, everyone who has been holding out for single payer will not sit around and congratulate themselves on their victory but instead immediately devote their lives with single minded focus for as long as it takes to building that mandate for single payer because that's what it's going to take. Otherwise, it simply won't happen.

[madfloridian]

1. Thoughtful post by digby.

Won't be appreciated here. recommended.

[babylonsister]

4. You're right, common sense isn't appreciated. And thanks. nt

[phantom power]

2. I love digby, but I'm not sure I agree with her on this point....

I think that liberals purse their lips and think "it was too sweeping" when the real problem is that they didn't sell Single Payer well enough. And they didn't play hardball for it. And they cared way way too much about making the GOP angry.

[babylonsister]

3. She says that here, RE: single payer:

I just don't understand why anyone thinks there was any kind of mandate for such a plan --- or that there has been any kind of grassroots, bottom-up effort to build one over the past 16 years when the Clinton plan crashed on many of the same shoals the current one is heading toward. There was certainly no demand for this during the last presidential campaign, despite the fact that the crisis was well known and plans were discussed constantly.

[glitch]

5. Good points. nt

[nosmokes]

6. FSM forbid we should actually fight tooth and nail for something.

Heaven help us if the left should actually take a stand and call the republicans the liars they are and expose them with the facts through personal stories of people who get great med care in the UK,Australia,Canada and folks who have had the wrong leg amputated here in the States. Perish the fucking thought that we actually lead instead of cowering behind the latest opinion poll and allowing the media to play us like puppets. No, the Democratic has to dance to the tune of their corporate masters. Well, everyone here bitched and moaned about the GOPosse putting party before country. just exactly how is this any different? Only in the details.