I looked back over Harold Meyerson's column from Wednesday's Washington Post: On health care: If not now, when? and I have to comment on it now, after the big "summit". My first though is that we are living in a surreal world. The real world is so hard to face that we deal with constructs instead. One really big illusion is that whole bunch of nonsense that falls under the label "bipartisanship". To have even pretended such a thing exists is the height of self-delusion. Worse than that, to not see what the reason the "other side" hold their ground is is blindness of the worst kind. Meyerson touches on some of this and is worth looking at again even if you read him Wednesday. There is more to be said. Read on below to see it.
Here's what Meterson said on Wednesday:
Unless the sun rises in the West tomorrow, Thursday's health-care reform summit will yield no bipartisan concord. Congressional Republicans remain unalterably opposed to health reform; the ideas they've advanced -- which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says would insure no more than 3 million of America's more than 45 million uninsured -- barely reach the level of piddling.
This is so clear as to need no test. Now one can ask how they can be so "foolish" as they gain strength. People are afraid. They very much go to leaders that seem solid whan they are afraid. This happens in their guts. The very fine arguments we make have no bearing here. We have demonstrated that we are unable to govern effectively. Now we want that very same ineffective government to run their health care. The picture was framed long ago. The old fromes still work. The republicans are getting the gut response they programmed into people over a thirty or more year program. George Lakoff and Drew Westin have given a complete analysis of why this could happen, but we let it happen again.
To say it another way, here's Meyerson:
Still, a number of congressional Democrats -- a small number, but enough to imperil the bill's passage, particularly in the House -- believe that giving up the fight may be politically prudent. They couldn't be more wrong. House Democrats who voted for the bill last year but are now having second thoughts, says California Democrat Henry Waxman, one of the bill's authors and a keen reader of electoral tea leaves for the past 40 years, "are asking for the worst of all possible worlds if they don't vote for it again. The Republicans will attack them for their first vote; some of their Democratic supporters will blame them for their second, if they vote no."
Some House Democrats are also balking at the process required for passing the bill, which is for them to pass the Senate bill and then trust their Democratic Senate colleagues to make the agreed-upon changes in a subsequent reconciliation vote. I bow to no one in my lack of admiration for the Senate -- its abolition as a body would be a boon to humankind -- but for health reform to perish on the altar of bicameral mistrust would compel all future historians of this process to conclude, "These guys were jerks."
Finally, for Democrats who question whether now is the time, I suggest they go back and read Harry Truman's November 1945 message to Congress calling for national health care. "The principal reason why people do not receive the care they need is that they cannot afford to pay for it," Truman said. At the time, the cost of health care accounted for 4 percent of the nation's income.
Truman didn't get his plan enacted, of course; no plan for universal care has been enacted since. The principal reason people don't receive care remains its unaffordability, but the aggregate cost of health care has since risen to 16 percent of the nation's income. Absent a universal plan, it will continue to rise.
Truman sent his message to Congress 65 years ago. The debate over national health care is old enough to collect Social Security. The question for timorous Democrats is: "If not now, when?"
Maybe I am off base in suggesting that the democratic party does not really exist ecept during election campaigns. Maybe I am off base for suggesting that once the party is used to gain office, no loyalty to the leaders of the party exists. Maybe I am off base to further suggest that this is perfectly obvious to the opposition and that they have used it beautifully to their advantage.
The American people are not as backward or stupid as our pundits seem to think. When we have no back bone they see it clearly. When we are really able to be beaten down by a bunch of thugs who work openly against the people's best interest they are able to see it. I am a Democratic Socialist. I am that because I have values and principles that I will never give up to play political fantasy games. My choices for what we need are simple: A Single Payer System. You know what? I speak out about this among the people I know. I am often kidded about the remoteness of ever seeing my ideas come to reality. I have no illusions about this. I can say one thing, among the people who know me I have respect that is almost totally absent for party democrats. I wonder why? Meyerson is one of us so he says things I really believe. If not now never folks...never. And who is to blame? Not the opposition. It is those who have accepted failure rather than get dirty in a fight.