A Message for President Barack Obama

David Sirota wrote a May 11, 2009 article for Open Left which is very relevant in light of the Health Care bill which just passed the Senate.

This is a must read:

In light of the White House's big hand-holding session today with the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries today, let me take this moment to note that a cynic - or, perhaps, a realist - might look at President Obama's statements on health care and see a politician moving farther and farther away from his progressive roots and closer and closer to the Washington/money Establishment.

David Sirota :: The Move Away from Single-Payer

In 2003, Obama said he supports a single-payer health care system, and that the only reason we "may not get there immiediately" is "because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House" - which, of course, we have:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program...I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House." - Barack Obama, 2003

In 2006, I spent a day with Obama in the U.S. Senate, and he said he supports a "debate" on single-payer, but that he also had started having doubts, now that he was in the Senate:

I asked him to give me some specific examples of what he meant. Is a proposal to convert America's healthcare system to one in which the government is the single payer for all services revolutionary or reformist? "Anything that Canada does can't be entirely revolutionary-it's Canada," Obama joked. "When I drive through Toronto, it doesn't look like a bunch of Maoists." Even so, Obama said that although he "would not shy away from a debate about single-payer," right now he is "not convinced that it is the best way to achieve universal healthcare."

By last week, it became clear that Obama and his allies in Congress will use their legislative leverage to prevent even a debate about single payer. Here's the Associated Press:

Baucus and many others, including President Barack Obama, say single-payer is not practical or politically feasible.

"Everything is on the table with the single exception of single-payer," Baucus said.

My guess is that Obama still believes in what he originally says, because he knows the evidence about the supremacy of a single-payer system is irrefutable. But I'm also guessing that he's afraid of being attacked by moneyed interests that enjoy the status quo, and he's surrounded himself by Clintonites who, after the health care debacle of the early 1990s, aren't interested in antagonizing the insurance industry.

However, let me just echo Ta-Neishi Coates who recently wrote that "while a good politician accomplishes what is possible, a great one expands the realm of possibility - he doesn't simply accept the lines of argument as they're drawn and hew to the side with the most soldiers, he tries to redraw those lines to benefit his ideals."

The whole idea that single payer is the best option but politically "impossible" is simply unacceptable. Last I checked, electing an African American president was politically "impossible"...until Barack Obama went ahead and got himself elected president. The entire notion of "politically possible" and "politically impossible" is a canard that justifies the status quo. So while it's certainly terrific that Obama is fighting for some sort of universal health care system, and one with a public option (which could ultimately become a single-payer system), let's just remember: Nothing has been politically "possible" until it actually happened - and so if that's the major argument against single payer, it's not just a poor argument, it's a fraud.

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David Sirota thinks we should stop bashing Republicans and start pressuring Democrats.

Some folks have expressed exasperation that some progressive voices have spent lots of time pushing Democrats to be better on policy, rather than spending lots of time bashing Republicans. Their theory is that Republicans are the real enemy and Democrats are the real allies, and so therefore, criticizing, pressuring and cajoling Democrats is a destructive waste of time.

But here's the thing: Democrats control 100% of the votes to pass legislation through the House, 95% (57 out of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster) of the votes to pass legislation through the Senate and 100% of the single presidential vote needed to sign legislation into law. They also control the state house, state senate and governorship in states that comprise more than one third of the entire U.S. population. So that means despite the cable news paradigm that attempts to portray every political fight as an epic red-versus-blue battle between Republicans and Democrats, the real fight to pass concrete policy - at least for these two years - is mostly inside the Democratic Party.

Indeed, if most of us in the progressive movement consider ourselves Democrats or allied with Democrats, then Barack Obama was absolutely right when he said, "we are the ones we've been waiting for." We, the Democratic coalition, are the ones who have the overwhelming power to change things, or not change things, and barely a day goes by where we don't see evidence of Democrats - not Republicans - standing in the way of change.

During at least these two years (and hopefully longer), the fate of all of the potential bills that our country needs passed - from financial regulation to universal health care to a new energy policy - will be mostly decided by Democrats. So while I get that we've been programmed over many years to see things in the red-versus-blue paradigm, and while I certainly agree that Republicans are odious, let me offer this hypothesis: Spending most of our time bashing Republicans and not pressuring Democrats is a politically stupid waste of time.

If our country's fate will be decided mostly by the battles inside the Democratic Party, and if we as a movement instead focus most of our efforts waging battles outside the Democratic Party, then we are not really engaging in the most important battles of the moment - we would be wasting our time.

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