> One of the reasons the right has been so successful is that they don't
> mind driving the train off the rails, or threatening to. I admire
> their maximalism in defense of their principles.
I do too. But right-wing politicians feel the same pressure that Dennis Kucinich does not to make things "worse" (from their constituents' point of view) out of concern for abstract principle. Case in point was the Vietnam war, where Goldwater &c swallowed huge amounts of very objectionable stuff from Nixon because the alternative, as they saw it, was a bug-out in Vietnam. William Rusher denounced them for their spinelessness but eight years later their dawn arrived.
> Liberal Democrats lack the same instinct. So, yeah, kill the fucking
> thing. It sucks.
Boy, that's easy for you to say. All you have to do is come up with arguments on an email list or a newsletter. You don't have to be the one to take a vote that leaves you forever open to the justifiable charge that you willingly deprived millions of people health insurance. And I know all the counter-arguments.
> An impressive list of reasons why this bill sucks and should fail:
>
> <http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/fact-sheet-the-truth-about-the-health-care-bill/>.
I've long thought it's unfortunate that FDL is, apparently, the leading voice of opposition to the bill from the left. I don't find their arguments all that impressive. I think they're usually full of holes and I have to confess I don't really trust them to get their facts right. In this list they don't cite any sources or define any of their terms.
One point that should be remembered is that requiring people to pay up to 8% of their income could perhaps end up being a serious hardship for some, but that argument might apply equally to PNHP's single payer plan, which has a 7% payroll tax (ostensibly paid by the employer) plus a 2% income tax. Obviously there's no moral equivalence here, since the PNHP plan is infinitely more rational and humane and offers better insurance. But the financial hardship argument seems like a desperate attempt to portray this as taking something away from people when in fact it gives them something (them and the inscos, of course), however needlessly shoddy.
If you look in the archives you'll see I said a few months ago I hoped the bill would die. I meant that. But that was just after Scott Brown's election, when it looked like the bill would collapse from its overwhelming lack of support from anywhere on the political spectrum. If that had happened, "we" could plausibly claim afterward that a key ingredient that killed it was its failure to generate any real enthusiasm on the left, due to its crappiness. The appropriate lesson to draw would be clear.
But now is different. They've already lined up all the votes they need to pass it, unless the progressives vote no. To demand that Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney make themselves the agents who singlehandedly killed a bill to give 30 million people health insurance is ridiculous. It's an expression of frustration, not a serious political calculation. The fallout would be so tremendous I would be shocked if the nay-voting progs didn't face centrist primary challengers who pandered to people without health insurance: "Joe Prog claims to be a progressive, but then he voted to deny you insurance out of some eccentric left-wing obsession."
Obama's victory laps will be nauseating to watch, but there's no reason to give up. The day the bill passes should be the beginning of a long campaign to point out how much it sucks and why we need single payer.
I'm not as depressed about this as others are. Paradoxically, the last two years have actually shown how unexpectedly strong the single payer forces are. In the early months of the 2008 primaries, John Edwards concluded that single-payer was politically valuable enough that pandering to its supporters (recall that he pointedly stressed that his public option could lead naturally to single payer) would pay off. Obama and Clinton thought he was right and were forced to adopt Edwards' plan, including the famous public option. Then, amazingly, throughout the long debate, the public option - a sort of single-payer proxy in many people's minds - became this hot-button, emotional rallying cry for liberals. Fine, ridicule it, but nothing like that had happened in the previous 15 years. The main national single-payer action coalition (Health-Care Now) - very smart, dedicated people - said on a recent conference call with their local activists that this whole health care debate generated more fresh interest in and support for single payer than they had ever seen. All those Salon-reading pwogs who were barely aware of single payer three years ago now consider themselves die-hard single payer supporters.
Ok, so this shitty bill passes. So what? On Day 2, start highlighting how bad it is. When the mandate kicks in, find people who can't afford to pay and publicize them. When the subsidies start, find people who get sick and still go bankrupt despite being "insured" and publicize them. Point out how much the drug companies are still ripping people off. Play up the nefarious consequences of Obama's secret deals with Pharma and the hospital groups.
Once the bill passes, the moral blackmail that the pro-Obama camp is currently able to wield - support our bill or millions suffer - disappears and suddenly it will be *they* who have to explain why, despite abundant evidence of the bill's crappiness, they still refuse to support single payer.
SA