The response in Charley’s post, for me, is symptomatic of what progressives tend to do to ourselves time and time again. Our virtues become our vice; we cannot accept a victory when we see one because we are working to always fight the status quo, always move toward our ideal, always have a healthy skepticism of what people in authority say.
Instead, let’s define our success, celebrate and disseminate it when we achieve it, then go back to work. Here are some rules of thumb that help me define success. I’m not saying this is how we should all measure our political lives, but these help me.
- When you have a bill you’re hoping to become law, it will never, ever, ever be exactly what you want. Success means that you make progress towards your overall goals and you don’t sacrifice too much (however you define too much) to get there.
- Success means having measurable, achievable, and aggressive goals — and then meeting them.
- Once you have defined your measurable, achievable, aggressive goal, don’t “move the goal post” on that issue until you have properly celebrated and disseminated how you met that goal. There is always, always, always more work to be done. But let us start somewhere and move forward from a position of strength.
- If you are going to move the goal posts, do so strategically so that it will hurt your opponents. (See for example: literally everything the Republicans ever do in the spirit of bipartisanship.)
- When you legitimately fail, learn from your failure. Do not wallow. Voters, volunteers, donors, and frankly even your friends, aren’t attracted to wallowers. It’s a lot of fun to complain about how the world doesn’t work the way it ought to (and boy, it really doesn’t). But people will want to work with you if you act with confidence and grace, not when you question the intelligence or motives of the voters or legislators (even when you’re right).
OK. So let’s take two very different cases: health insurance reform as passed by Pelosi/Reid/Obama, and the pending tax cut/employment insurance compromise. I am a huge proponent of one, but not the other, even though a lot of my progressive friends see both as equally compromised. Obama himself said that the tax cut fight seemed like the public option fight all over again. It’s not.
I saw national health care reform as wildly successful — even without the public option and without single payer. It was the very first major upheaval in social legislation moving towards progressive ideals we’ve had since the 60s/70s. We know that the health insurance reform bill passed by Pelosi/Reid/Obama will help insure more people, eliminate pre-existing conditions, extend insurance for people up to 26 yrs old, create a more fair market for insurance in the exchanges, help protect consumers in any number of ways, achieve more equality for women in their health insurance, and more. Those are real accomplishments. Is it perfect? Hell, no. Did I want the public option? Yes! Yes I did. But it’s a great step in the right direction. Civil rights wasn’t passed in one bill. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1957, then a major reform in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And you know what? You can’t have real civil rights without voting rights, so they passed a law about that, too, in 1965. I think health insurance reform in America will be like that, if we can keep it.
Progressives should be championing this major victory, just like we in Massachusetts should be championing the fact that almost no children go without some form of insurance. It is a step, but it’s damn important. I also worry that if it is seen as a failure, then people will be less likely to want to do the hard work of defending it against Republican/conservative attacks. And should they become successful in dismantling it, we won’t make more progress on health reform because it will have “failed.” We certainly won’t have the public option and you can forget about single payer. Instead of saying that Obama caved, let’s talk about all the good that it does and will do and build on that.
The tax deal is altogether different. Ending the Bush tax cuts was a key part of Obama’s platform in 2008. We have a situation where Republicans are pretending to care about the deficit, but this will balloon it. And the argument on behalf of Republicans as to why they could not afford benefits for 9/11 first responders was — I kid you not — concern over how to pay for it, according to the New York Times.
Now, the new Speaker-Elect explicitly said that if the only option he had was to vote for tax cuts for the bottom 98% or nothing at all, he said of course he’d vote for it. This ad speaks for me.
If you can’t figure out the messaging that we need to pay for benefits to 9/11 first responders and hold down the deficit by not renewing Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest … I just don’t know what to tell you. Oh, and, by the way, saying that your agenda is being held hostage and then giving the Republicans exactly what they want is not going to deter them from holding the rest of your agenda hostage.
I know that everybody’s definition of “sacrificing too much” varies. But can we agree that compromising in order to pass the biggest piece of social legislation in decades is not the same as compromising to extend unemployment benefits and continue tax breaks and extend tax credits?
Let me get back on track for a moment. The tax cut deal doesn’t meet my criteria for success. It does not fit in with our aggressive goals, it sacrifices too much now and in the future, it doesn’t put us in a position of strength, and Obama and progressives are both wallowing over the deal.
We need to find a way to move forward productively. The stakes are too high these days to sit around criticizing ourselves and therefore weakening ourselves for the next go round. I’d love your feedback on how you define progressive success.
I’m not arguing that it is in the case of health care — it’s not really my area of expertise around here.
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p>Here’s the thing though: it’s fare easier to fight a fight on behalf of yourself than on behalf of somebody else. IF the group which is marginalized is sufficiently small, their issue will never be taken up unless they gain major sympathy form the majority. Medicare is a great example. Not many seniors are fighting to expand medicare, but plenty fought when they thought that their medicare was threatened by the health care bill.
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p>This bill did achieve a number of progressive goals, and made progress on others. But what if passing it in fact makes it harder to make more progress precisely because fewer people are in trouble, making those who remain further isolated? This is a risk with all progressive legislation, and I think it’s important to be sure that when you make progress you ieave the next few steps available. I’m not sure that they did (or that they didn’t) with the health care bill.
My concern isn’t what was accomplished as much as what could have been. Had this health bill emerged in 2006, I’d have been impressed.
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p>The main concern for me is the opportunity that was squandered. It has been about 50 years since Democrats so thoroughly dominated the Legislative and Executive branches, and I’d hope for something beyond a Republican plan from 1992 — and that’s the high point of the last two years! If this counts as progressive “progress”, why would anyone vote progressive?
How do you know that they could have done better? With what Congress? With what Senate?
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p>When you win more seats, you almost necessarily dilute the brand. More Democrats in marginal districts = more marginal Democrats.
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p>You’re always talking about what could have been, Sab. Everything’s always a disappointment and a disaster. Show me something else.
We WATCHED as the President gave away the public option before negotiations even began. We WATCHED as single payer was declared off the table without being brought to a vote despite a bill (HR 676) already being drafted. We WATCHED as the White House was more concerned about cutting a deal with Pharma only for that interest to oppose it anyway. Sabutai’s right – if not this outgoing Congress, who? If not during the last two years, when? You want us to show you something else, show us a better Congress!
Since 1980, the conservative anti-government ideology has pretty much run the show. That is to say, the dynamic has overwhelmingly been that we must make government “smaller” that it cannot be a place for good, for people to come together to solve big societal issues. When Clinton was in power, his big initiatives (read: welfare reform) certainly played into that. He even said so (remember “The era of big government is over.”)
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p>The health care law and the recovery act are the first pieces of major legislation that specifically go against that dynamic. It sets the stage for moving in another direction – that of pragmatic government intervention. They aren’t the end all be all. But they got us moving in the right dynamic, at least until the 2010 elections.
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p>That’s why the tax cut deal, to me, is so devastating. It helps prop up the exact wrong dynamic and narrative.
We could still pass a public option, via reconciliation, before the lame duck ends. Anyone prepared to hold their breath?
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p>If we get all excited about plastic cards and horse manure, and aren’t prepared to challenge this kind of legislation, it’s not going to get better anytime soon. On the other hand, if we go back and say, “this is unacceptable,” we can get something better.
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p>The ‘patting ourselves on the back’ syndrome becomes ‘let’s take a little break on this issue,’ which becomes “you seriously want us to tackle that again?” If people confuse MA ’06 health care reform as good, because lots of people have plastic cards now, and people confuse the national bill as good — because it’ll print up record numbers of plastic cards — then we’re poised for “patting ourselves on the back” to become “you seriously want us to tackle that again?“
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p>All those promises of ‘don’t worry, we’ll get you guys a public option soon,’ goes poof. Meanwhile, more and more people are being marginalized, more and more people are going bankrupt when they do get sick, and fewer and fewer of us are willing to do anything about it.
Show me the persuadable Senators, not just campaign platitudes that would make Tim Kaine blush.
The public liked the public option. We were chasing Nelson, Lieberman, Lincoln, and Landreau, and the 60-vote syndrome. Reid could have forced the issue in the Senate and the President could have pulled a Reagan and gone to the people. Charley you HAVE to push sometimes if you want to get something done, especially in the Senate which is designed to be slow.
reconciliation. Right now. It’s there if we wanted to take it.
Right on this site we had a conversation about how you can only use reconciliation once a year and we already used it.
this was and is a part of that one thing (health care), it can be used again. So, in the context described in the post you linked to — taxes — you’re absolutely right, reconciliation this year would be a no go.
It used on the bad health care bill. If we’d gone for a good health care bill, we could have used it on that…
Bill Halter could have made it to the Senate. But Democrats went in to ensure that Blanche Lincoln won the primary. Why? We are a self-defeating party.
that’s it’s frustrating to see, whenever we build that momentum to make a great change, we always get capped in the knees by ‘the other side’ of the party and their apologists on our own, or the wonks who see pools but not the people drowning in them.
You believe that Obama gave in too much on healthcare. Fine. You have that opinion, I’ve got mine.
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p>So let’s suppose for a second Obama had fought for the public option and suppose further that he got it. Would that be your definition of a successful health reform bill?
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p>If yes: I think you and others have said that single payer is really the system we should work towards. Why can’t we apply the same arguments that you make towards that situation? Couldn’t we still say, “The public option is a compromise that doesn’t really solve the problems we need to address. We need to have a single payer system and now people aren’t going to want to tackle this issue again.” What, specifically, makes our bill + public option a success and not the bill we got?
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p>Single payer was never going to pass. I think you agree with me on that. So, we have to have some measure of success that fits within the range between “not quite single payer” and “total failure to pass a bill.” I say that what we got is in fact progressive success. Yet the way folks here are reacting it seems like I’m a total sell out. How do you define where to make your line in the sand?
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p>If no: Aren’t we just setting ourselves up for failure?
…that “single payer was never going to pass”. It has 88 cosponsors from the starting gate, roughly 40% of the way to majority already in the House. We can never know whether it could because we didn’t try. There was no barnstorming the country leading on this issue. The lame duck Congress is probably the most sympathetic we’ve seen in a while. We should have brought it to a vote after publicly campaigning for it, and THEN in the event of failure try for the next best thing.
I disagree that single payer could ever have passed. But that is irrelevant to the conversation at hand because my question still stands. Let’s suppose as you suggest that Obama had proposed single payer, he didn’t get that, then he put forward the public option and won that fight. Would the law we got + public option be considered a success?
…and more success than what we ended up with. The key difference is I would have been satisfied that we tried and fought.
than to never have loved at all.
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p>I think that saying should be taken up as a mantle for the democratic party. We may not win everything we fight for when we decide to take on a huge challenge, but we sure as hell aren’t going to win it if we never fight for it at all. And while we may never get the pretty blond supermodel of legislation, if we fight hard enough, maybe we’ll impress her pretty brunette best friend?
I want to fight the good fight. But if you don’t think there was a very good chance that fighting the way you wanted could have made us lose everything, just take a look at Bill Clinton’s attempt in the 1990s. It’s not that we “may not win everything,” it’s that we may not win anything at all. Your entire argument assumes that one of two things would happen: either we would win the fight for single-payer or the public option, or if we lost then we would have gotten what we have now. I don’t think that’s the case.
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p>And Ryan, you still didn’t answer my question. I agree that the public option would have been more successful. Why is getting the public option “success” relative to getting single payer, but what we got is not success? So far, the only answer seems to be that “we would have fought!” But that’s simply not correct. We are talking about ends, not means. I don’t think the definition of success is fighting for everything, come what may. Results matter. It’s impossible to win with you because nobody has yet told me what winning means.
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p>One more thing. I agree that Obama didn’t fight for the public option. But he did fight hard for health reform. He just didn’t fight for what you wanted. That doesn’t mean he didn’t fight. Sorry.
…Clinton didn’t fight super hard either, though moreso than Obama. I also would have respected Obama more if he just said that the public option isn’t my cup of tea, but here’s what I will fight for. Instead he just let the public option go rather than publicly defend it at all.
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p>To have the mandate with no public option was at best a very hard to swallow “success”.
pushing from that angle — and gaining public support for it — would have scared the living hell out of the GOP. THAT’S how you move the Party of No into compromise… scare the living wits out of them, so they support a much better compromise… not by bargaining with yourself before you ever bargain with the opposition.
would have made it much easier to defend this piece of legislation. You will note that it is currently unpopular politically. That’s because it takes too much work to defend it.
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p>And yes, it’s an improvement. Possibly a big improvement. But if it can’t win politically, it will get repealed.
defunded.
..I think single-payer would have been easier than that even though it sounds most radical. Such a system would take the onus off businesses to provide coverage for their employees, so every industry other than health insurance itself should be able to get behind it. We continue to have a competitive disadvantage as long as businesses are expected to take on this burden.
Whether that system would be a true single-payer, or not, doesn’t really matter. Germany isn’t single-payer, but they have a health care system that is heads and tails better and more efficient than our’s. While I support single-payer, I don’t think it’s going to be the model we use in this country; I think it’s going to look more like Germany’s — a good public option for most of us, but the ability to opt out and buy even better (or supplemental) health care on the private market.
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p>So, yea… I think if we got a public option, I would have labelled HCR a success. And I have not a single doubt in my body that, if Obama fought as hard all along as he did in those final weeks, that we could have gotten it.
You think that taking a break means that more reform will be off the table. I think it means the opposite — in order to change the bill once it has been implemented means that we’ll have yet another opportunity to take another progressive stab at it. Why? It’s hard to take away entitlements from people once they have them.
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p>If Republicans seriously want to take up health reform when they are in power (having a majority in both the House and Senate, and/or holding the Presidency), then they’ll have to also explain why they want to go back to allowing pre-existing conditions to go uncovered, why 26 year olds shouldn’t be able to stay on their parents plan, etc. And they’ll have a hard time to just go after the mandate, because that’s the bargain we’ve made to get those pre-existing conditions covered.
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p>But even more importantly than that, health reform has brought everybody to the table to renegotiate within a set of ground rules. When the stakeholders — insurance companies, providers, consumer groups, doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc — want to make a change they’ll have to do it together and not start from square one. And most of those groups don’t want to go back to square one. Call my idealistic, but I have a lot of faith that the law will get better, not worse, once implemented.
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p>I’m not saying “don’t worry, we’ll get the public option soon.” I’m saying it is progress to get more people insured. You know, “hope for the best and work for it” kind of stuff.
for people who can’t afford them “entitlements?” That’s absolutely ridiculous. That would be like calling social security an entitlement if people weren’t allowed to cash the check. It’s not an entitlement… it’s a tax on the poor to help make health care more affordable for everyone else.
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p>No, Stomv was right on this one, all we’ve done here is include a few more people in the Cool People table, which means everyone else is going to have a much harder time convincing anyone we need to additional health care reform.
I didn’t claim it, I asked if it was true. In that sense, I wasn’t “right” nor “wrong.”
but I think your claim is spot on.
“plastic cards that don’t do anything”? You have really found your catchphrase, haven’t you?
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p>Please demonstrate, specifically, how this is the case. My understanding is that the plastic cards cover a great deal of first-dollar expenses, and in spite of co-pays and other cost-sharing, make continuous care possible.
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p>I mean, I don’t think you can back up that claim that the cards do nothing — or even that they don’t cover people significantly against financial catastrophe in the case of illness. The studies that you’ve cited heretofore hint at that, but don’t prove it.
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p>Come on Ryan, stop insulting us just long enough to bring us up to speed.
their plastic cards are worse than useless — a colossal expense that doesn’t meet their most basic of needs.
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p>The only people who should be insulted are the 1 in 5 (and growing) amongst us who can’t afford to use the health care they pay damn good money to have access to.
Ryan, you just don’t understand.
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p>The plastic cards mean that you only pay a few thousand a year for health insurance so that you can pay a few thousand a year for health care.
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p>Without them, you’d have to pay MANY thousand a year for health insurance so that you can pay a few thousand a year for health care.
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p>In my neck of the woods, we call that game “heads I win, tails you lose.”
But the thing is the 1 in 5 can’t use that health care unless it’s an absolute emergency — at which point they would have been able to go get treatment regardless.
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p>Yeah, they may get a free yearly checkup out of it, but that’s about it. If they’re sick, really sick even, they’re not going to go to the doctor or hospital unless they’re about a few steps from the grave, or they see that bone peaking out of their skin.
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p>You know… I had a friend in college who thought she broke her arm and didn’t go to the hospital because her copay was $250 and she was a broke college student. She decided to take her chances. I, then still on my father’s health insurance (who was a part of the teacher’s union and had great health insurance), once got very sick and had no idea what was wrong with me — intense pains in my stomach area.
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p>I went to the hospital and got a $25 copay. Had my copay been $100 or maybe even $50, I probably wouldn’t have gone — and while the doctors never figured out what was wrong, and the pain went away after a while, they did (through bloodwork) find a particular condition that I had which needed further testing and is still something the doctor checks up on yearly that otherwise wouldn’t have been detected.
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p>Having good, affordable care matters. If people can’t afford it, they aren’t going to use it… and if they aren’t going to use it, it’s useless to them when we live in a society where hospitals legally can’t refuse to treat people who have health issues which are on the scale of life-and-death.
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p>Please be aware… I’m not actually advocating people not to get health insurance. I’m just advocating for a better model for those who can’t afford the health care they have today… and I’m illustrating the reasoning of why, to some people, it may not make sense to get insurance… even if that’s a position they’d never want to be in.
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p>Finally, it’s critical we point out the flaws in our system that no one is talking about. The story about our health care reform shouldn’t be the 98% of people who have a plastic card; the story should be about the 1 in 5 who can’t afford to use it, even if they are seriously sick or injured and think they need treatment. This is something we ‘liberals of BMG,’ need to understand. Many of us — perhaps even most — have never been in the position of being in that 1 in 5, at least for very long. It’s these sorts of things which enable the Howie Carrs of the world to label us as “elitists” and “snobs,” and it’s why — while I sometimes float around the ‘wonky’ side myself, I occasionally beat back against rank-and-file progs on these sorts of issues. Too many of us just haven’t been in that position, or forget what it’s like to be in it. If we can’t be grounded in reality when we’re talking about these issues, we can’t call ourselves the Reality-Based Community.
Progressives have a right to expect a president who was elected with substantial progressive support to enunciate and fight (has fight become a dirty word?) for the values and legislative ideas he campaigned on. We have right to be angry when he then backpedals on the public option, on reigning in “too big to fail” and on curtailing tax breaks for the wealthiest. It is especially understandable for any American to be royally ticked off when it was members of that same very wealthiest class who were instrumental in causing the Great Recession we are now suffering. To reward them at this time with continued tax breaks is unconscionable and could have been avoided if the president had just said so.
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p>The health reform package is a net positive. Saving the economy from imminent immolation was good. Extending unemployment benefits and a few other squiggles in the current tax deal are good.
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p>But all these accomplishments are tainted because Obama hardly fought for them or, in the case of health reform, only during the last two weeks. Those last two weeks when he barnstormed for health reform passage, by the way, was the only period I can remember where he stood up and acted like the president I wanted to see. It was half a loaf but he finally stood up and fought for something.
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p>Put another way, if the health bill we got, the financial reforms we got and the tax deal we got, were the best results he could obtain after an obviously strong effort to snag the most far-reaching reforms possible, I would have said, “OK, he put up a strong fight but the opposing forces were just too powerful, so I will be satisfied with what he was able to get.
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p>In reality, however, the lost opportunities, due to Obama’s unwillingness to go to the mat, seem enormous and I am disillusioned with this president. The country is not in good shape and we needed much more from a Democratic president, especially when both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats and the people were behind progressive reforms.
…we should ask ourselves how much fight we should have expected based on Obama’s campaign style. He never used the language of fight, always the language of bringing people together. Problem is he meant what he said and hasn’t taken in to account the game the GOP has played. Working together takes two sides. Even on the tax deal. Mitch McConnell one day this week lectured the House about the importance of not tinkering with a settled deal, but then the next day indicated Senate Republicans were going to try to improve it to their liking.
Hillary talked about fighting, and Obama didn’t. People who voted in the Democratic primaries apparently believed that progressives were losing because they fought. I believe it was because they didn’t fight hard enough. Obama was clear (to me, at least) that he wasn’t much interested in taking on the Republicans throughout the season. I suppose some folks figured he was so charismatic and sincere that the right wing would reply in kind.
…most voters in the Dem primary were objecting to Hillary talking about fighting. They projected themselves onto Obama as wanting a new politics. I think many WANTED a fighter and assumed Obama would give it to them based almost entirely on his early opposition to our Iraqi campaign.
I don’t mean to re-fight the primaries, here, but I was never convinced that giving a good speech without having to back it up with any sort of action equalled “fighting”. Obama’s “new politics” to me, at least, represented the idea that with enough post-partisan talk and attitude, fighting would become superfluous. My main point is that I can’t regard Obama’s surrenderist attitude to be a departure from anything he’s done over the last several years (with the exception of the last few weeks of the Democratic primaries).
for “change,” and Hillary for Hillary… not because she talked about fighting.
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p>I think she would have been a much better President, but I don’t think your view on the motives of the general population’s votes were accurate. Plus, I’ll point out that Hillary got as many or more votes in the primary than Obama… Obama just walked into the race with a better game plan, winning vast majorities in states which almost never vote Democratic in the general anyway.
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p>(We in the Democratic Party would do well to make those states less important in the primary process… if they can’t win us electoral votes in the general, they shouldn’t be a major part of deciding who’s going to be our next nominee.)
Thank you for making this case. The “never good enough” syndrome is definitely a big problem for the progressive and liberal movement.
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p>It reminds me of Christmas dinner with my family last year, just after one of the major votes (can’t remember which). We went around the table, railing against the special interests and giveaways, baffled at how Senators could possibly vote against things like the public option. This went on for some time until someone pointed out that while all that was true, this remained the largest expansion and reform of health insurance since Medicare. And everyone paused in surprise before finding themselves agreeing.
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p>The progressive community as a whole never had this moment of realization, and I think it cost us badly in messaging.
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p>One point on the tax compromise-whether or not the compromise is good policy (I leave that to the more economically minded), the aftermath represented a huge strategic blunder. Watching the Dems caucus against the package, and watching Sen. Sanders was incredibly painful. Not because they were wrong on the issue, but because it put the Dems in the position of opposing middle-class tax cuts (or extensions). Whether or not you liked the compromise, once the President struck the deal, the political landscape changed, but it seemed like the Dems didn’t move with it.
I seem to remember that Congress is a co-equal branch of government. If the president strikes a lousy deal, Congress does not have to go along with it. Please don’t lecture me about realpolitik, that Democrats must stick together to be an effective party. Blah, blah. Would that more were like Bernie, not willing to go along with corporatist thinking that denigrates others as “purist,” sanctimonious” and “the professional left.”
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p>It’s not the results of health reform or the tax compromise that rankle. It’s the absence of a serious fight – right now in the present day – for better than a partial loaf. What is he saving himself for… a serious discussion of the tax structure over the next two years? Cooperation on START? I doubt it. We only have today and the country is in big trouble. Maybe you don’t agree with the last statement.
The “never good enough” syndrome is the problem?
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p>This party has not fought for one new damn thing of consequence in the past 20-30 years, without scrapping the democratic plan and moving toward the republican one. Not. One. Thing.
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p>The only thing we ever fought for — and coincidentally won — was protecting Social Security during the W’s reign. Funny how now Obama’s doing his damned best to kill it now that he’s President…
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p>Suggesting the problem with Democrats is that they fight too hard, because the bills they fight for aren’t perfect, is absurd… and not a reality-based opinion. What people like you don’t understand is that you can fight for progressive priorities without giving up the farm.
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p>We gave up $700 billion in tax cuts for the rich — that the majority of this country didn’t support — in return for $54 billion in unemployment benefits, which 72% of the country supports and which had won three times without needing to avoid hostage-taking scenarios. You win by fighting. Last time Obama faced a hostage-taking scenario — when pirates took hostages out in sea — Obama knew what to do: get the best snipers we have and shoot the bastards in the head. He should have done the metaphorical version of that in the political realm, too, because that’s how you beat the Republicans when they take millions of unemployed people and the entire middle class as hostages. You go after them so hard in the political realm that there won’t be anything left of them if they don’t give in.
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p>The Republicans tried to filibuster unemployment benefits once before and were blasted in all corners of the country for it. The blow back was so hard that they gave up on that filibuster in about a week’s time. The same thing would have happened for unemployment benefits and tax cuts on the first $250,000k… if we were willing to fight for it. We win by fighting. Giving in to the hostage takers is only giving them cause to take more hostages.
For me much of the problem is the lack of a big picture here, some broad vision and strategy from Obama and/or the congressional leadership. People were excited about his election and his inauguration (I was there).
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p>Then he disappeared.
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p>He should have had a healthcare bill ready to go on Inauguration Day. His bill. Put it in front of Congress. Gone to the people, like FDR on the New Deal, Kennedy and Johnson on Civil Rights, Reagan on his agenda.
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p>Instead he disappeared. He let the GOP and, especially the Tea Party, take over the media. He let congressional Dems do all the sausage making in public; with a series of Senators holding the bill hostage for their own gain, just to get cloture. The bill became an ugly Rube Goldberg contraption, most of which won’t take effect until 2014.
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p>Then he claimed victory and went somewhere else. It was a pyrrhic victory, at best.
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p>On taxes, same thing. He let the GOP set the message and agenda. Let them position the debate window. Then he conceded his most important point (the tax cuts on the rich) before negotiations began. And that federal pay freeze was what?
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p>Then rammed it through Congress, or maybe not.
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p>Same on financial reforms. The stimulus bills.
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p>Half a loaf, or not. Best we could do, or not. A start, or not. Something to build on, or not. Largest expansion of the healthcare system, or not. A benefit to the middle class, or not. Strong financial reforms, or not.
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p>Maybe Obama has a great vision and strategy all figured out. Maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing, and doing damn good job of it. Maybe I am just too stupid to see that. Or maybe not.
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p>Maybe I am old school. But I like my president to lead. To articulate a vision and a program. To put the legislation together to achieve that vision and program. To come to the people to explain and promote that legislation. To work with the leadership to pass that legislation. Kick ass if he needs to, compromise if he needs to, take on the LIEbermans and Nelsons and Snowes and Collins’s and other hostage takers. But pass his program.
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p>The people voted for him and a broader vision of America. One with affordable healthcare for all, a pathway out of the economic meltdown, effective financial reform to prevent future meltdowns, without too big to fail corporations, an end to the wars.
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p>Maybe we would have ended up with no loaf. Maybe we would have ended up with what we got. Maybe we would have gotten our asses kicked.
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p>Or, maybe the people would have rallied to him and his program, and not the Tea Partiers. And maybe we would have won.
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p>You can’t win if you don’t try.
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p>
As I’ve seen pretty much elsewhere, one can say that he doesn’t have a plan and is getting beaten, or his plan is for a right-of-center government and is winning.
You know who came up with their own plan apart from Congress, and said to Congress, take it or leave it?
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p>Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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p>They didn’t get a health care law passed — AND they lost Congress for 12 years.
The Clintons shut the door on Congress – bad idea.
Obama left it entirely to Congress – also bad idea.
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p>Both allowed the opposition to frame the debate and watched their proposals go down despite polling well.
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p>If he wanted single-payer, for example, which he claims he would if we were creating a system from scratch, he could have it both ways. Announce that he would put the full weight of the White House behind HR 676. That way there would on the one hand be a bill that originated in Congress, but the White House could put the bully pulpit to good use.
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p>Besides, times changed a bit in 15 years.
The wounds of 1994 were so deep within our party — we were so traumatized by it — that we went so far in the other direction that 2010’s electoral results were even worse than ’94.
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p>The lesson of 2010 and 1994, to me, should be to avoid omnibus ‘change’ bills. We should have passed HCR (and other big bills) by piecemeal… one popular bill at a time, simple enough that we couldn’t let the Republicans muck up the message and cast us as death-panelists.