I think the overall strategy is to build a movement large enough, representative enough, and radical enough to do all of the above. The rest is tactics.
>And what's the strategy vis-a-vis McCain, Clinton & Obama?
During election season, to criticize them all for not doing what the U.S. public wants, and to continue to demand that the insurance companies get out of the way of our healthcare. McCain proposes roughly nothing, so the Dems are easily better than that. Clinton and Obama are trying to make the insurance companies happy and rich while they expand coverage. That won't work. So, as I mentioned, Healthcare NOW is attacking the whole mandates approach by holding hearings on what happens when it's instituted (Mass. being the example.) In addition, I think we should have immediate post-election day rallies demanding national health insurance / no more health insurance companies.
>[...] OTOH, if Obama or Clinton are in
office, the the Dem leadership is going to be even more reluctant to
give HR676 a shot - all the oxygen will be sucked up by the non-
single-payer proposals the new Dem Prez brings to the Hill.
There is very little oxygen available for the single-payer proposal now, due to the man-to-man coverage the insurance and drug company lobbyists employ against Congress. (One-to-one coverage? Shill-to-rep coverage?) The only way to create more space is to continue to build, to argue it out, and not engage in Krugman-like capitulation. What possible incentive would Obama/Clinton have to improve their plans if they are the leftest possibility? What incentive would insurance companies have to compromise if there's no single-payer threat?
>So what do CNA et al. propose to do if O'Blinton/Clobama wins?
I don't know, but they did block a miserable compromise in California, and fighting against miserable compromise is a decent tactic right now.
Jenny Brown