Last night, Keith Olbermann had Lawrence O’Donnell on to discuss how President Obama and his White House team have completely flubbed the national debate on health care. Olbermann began with the clips of Iowa Republican Senator Grassley saying he is not going to vote for reform no matter what concessions are made. As O’Donnell observed, "this does not sound like someone coming back [willing] to negotiate in September."
Olbermann noted that in the President’s op-ed in the New York Times this past weekend, Obama made what appears to be another appeal for bi-partisanship, and asked, "Has he misjudged who he is dealing with in this equation?" To which O’Donnell replied:
He has completely misjudged it, but so has the White House. This is not [solely] his fault. He is following the conventional wisdom of the leaders in his party, in the House and in the Senate, and his staff in the White House. And the lesson that they don’t get is, uh, they compromised at the outset. They didn’t go for the best bill at the outset. The President said that if he was doing this his own way, it would be single payer, it would be effectively Medicare for all. . . But he compromised right off the bat, to go to something that would preserve the private health insurance industry, and then tortured that . . . into a shape that they thought would be acceptable to the middle of American politics. All in the fear that if they went for Medicare for all they were terribly afraid they would be called socialists. Well, we see where that got them. Trying to go over in this direction, in supporting an industry that does not work, they are still called socialists for having preserved the medical health industry.
Now we have a recced diary praising Representative Anthony Weiner for effectively befuddling Joe Scarborough by asking the simple question: what good do the insurance companies bring to national health care.
I would add that Jane Hamsher has also been very effective by pounding home the point that when you’re dealing with a life and death issue like health care, it make no sense to have one third of your money go for administrative overhead and profits, especially when you have an alternative system that only needs three percent.
On the other hand, we have Nate Silver – who has a remarkable record of polling accuracy – flatly stating that there are not enough votes in the Senate to get even a public option, let alone single payer.
My idea is this: Let’s move the Overton Window by starting a renewed campaign for single payer. Screw compromise. Screw bi-partisanship. Screw the Republicans. Screw the common wisdom. And screw Rahm Emmanual.
So, my question: Is it a forlorn hope, with single payer having been taken off the table at the very beginning, to try and get it back on again, even if only as a bargaining chip? Or is it possible we can walk back and pick up single payer again and use it as a means of moving the national debate back in our direction?