Part of the problem, too, over the weekend was the monumental sense of self-congratulation: as much as there's a significant milestone in having a close vote to pass such an enormous element of the ultimate reform package, too much of the lauding of Nancy Pelosi and Democrats celebrated what hasn't happened. And, to my chagrin, people who've held out admirably against the Obama-era vogue for celebrating in the future tense succumbed to it.
Missing from most laudatory comments was any sense of perspective, and almost any sense of balancing the problematic with the historic. As I said earlier, too many posts (usually men) did a "yes, but" with the Stupak Amendment... but that was simply one aspect. Just as often, few mentioned that the House vote suggested more bad news than good, given that Pelosi struggled, more than anyone expected, to find a bare majority of her members, losing 39 of the 40 votes she had to cushion victory. And not just, as many noted, losing "Blue Dog" conservatives: Dennis Kucinich voted against the bill, noting that if you are truly a progressive who favors single payer... there was nothing to like in the utimate compromise.
Kucinich made a good, sensible point that underlined how much liberals and progressives have given over to the politics of the process in DC and abandoned the very goals that "healthcare reform" was meant to accomplish. As I've said all along, fetishizing a "public plan" which was always a modest adjunct to other, far more crucial, aspects of change, made a hash of the whole bill. And as a result, people got swept up in the MSM presentation of "historic moment" journalism over good sense, I'm convinced.
Since his election, there's been a sense of artificially set pressure by the Obama folks to accomplish major change in a short time frame. And that pressure has served, too often, as an easy out to make bad compromises and weak hash. Too few progressive activists have asked the questions that matter about how this process has unfolded - why was it being done in secret, behind closed doors? Why wasn't more effort expended, earlier, to better explain the need for certain reforms and lay out responsible proposals for public debate? Why are we just accepting that every bad development is a necessary, if regrettable, watering down of a previously bad choice?
Nancy Pelosi and the - largely male - leadership team she's assembled did not, miraculously, go from the middling, not altogether effective legislators they've been all year to geniuses on Saturday; Pelosi has, all along, been able to deliver most of her majority to pass almost anything she wants. What she has been less good at, and always has been, is in rising above political gain to defend important principles. Everything, ultimately, is in service to winning and maintaining political control of the House. And if that means watering down a public option, or turning back years of progress on women's reproductive health... oh well. Maybe later, we can fix that. Look... it's history!
Sober reflection, I think, would have tried, harder, to put what happened over the weekend into perspective. Yes, it's exciting to see the potential for modestly positive developments in some reforms in healt insurance make some siginificant progress. But we are nowhere near the final result of an actual bill, agreed to by both houses, that makes sense and ought to be signed into law. And just as importantly, many of the bad compromises that have been made to achieve that result - including a cynical expansion of Medicaid eligibility without addressing the embarrasingly low reimbursement rates of the program, the failure to truly recognize or cover the costs of the reforms proposed, and the vague, poorly thought through notions of "improving" Medicare without making hard choices - all of these are reasons for serious, continued concern about just what it is "reform" is actually amounting to in the end.
Rather than get swept up in trying to write historical progress before it has actually happened, and to play the contorting game of patting one's own back too hard, I'd feel better if progressives didn't exhale and let up just when the pressure is needed most. Ask yourself... is this really the reform we said we favored? Are these the goals that progressives set for reform at any point in the process? Does this bill really offer the necessary pieces of progress to improve health care access, make it more affordable, and ultimately improve quality of care? Too much of what we're getting doesn't remotely meet these goals. And if that's case... why is that hand of yours still reaching over your shoulder?
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