It's not easy to be a lone voice on a central issue that defines a political party, and this group in particular. Frank Rich's N.Y. Times column just made an argument that the anger of the teabaggers over this bill is totally explained by racism, hatred of African Americans, and that explanation has been affirmed here by a diary now on the Rec list.
I just went on Michael Moore's web site, since I was going to title this diary referencing him as the last liberal who still opposed this bill, even after it passed, but I can't do this. It looks like Moore is now congratulating himself for pushing his representative to vote FOR the bill.
But I had remembered seeing him castigating the same bill quite recently, or I thought I had. First there was this article from a month ago about the shortcomings of the bill. Now my memory is not the best, as the years are flying by, but I couldn't have been that wrong. Luckily I still had the page on another browser, and it can be read hereunder Michael Moore's byline, written on March 17th, all of 9 days ago, with the rather unambiguous title, The Pure Greed of Obama's Phony Health-Care Reform
Within days the House of Representatives will vote to pass the Senate health-care "reform" bill. This bill is a joke. It has NOTHING to do with "health-care reform." It has EVERYTHING to do with lining the pockets of the health insurance industry. It forces, by law, every American who isn't old or destitute to buy health insurance if their boss doesn't provide it.
snip
Well, the insurance companies—get this—don't like the Democrats' bill! That alone should be reason enough to vote for it.
Now, you would think these thieves would love this bill—but they are actually fighting it. Why? Because it doesn't give them ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of what they want. It only gives them... 90%! YOU SEE, pure greed demands all or nothing.
snip
But don't insult me and 300 million Americans by calling this "health-care reform." At least you've stopped calling it "universal health care." We will not have universal health care or anything close to it. I wish the president and the Democratic leadership would just stand up and say, "We're sorry, America. We didn't get the job done you sent us here to do. We're weak and scared and unable to communicate the simplest of messages to the American people. Therefore, our bill will guarantee that 12 million of you will still have NO health insurance. And that's because we have decided to leave the greedy, private insurance industry in charge of our system. Forgive us for this and for continuing to allow profit to be the determining factor as to whether a patient gets the help she or he needs."
Please, Democrats—just say that—then pass this poor excuse of a bill.
Pass it because, if President Obama takes a fall on this one, I don't know if he'll be able to get back up. And then NOTHING will get done. We can't have that. (And thank you Dennis Kucinich for hanging in there right up to the end and being the only one out of the 435 members to speak the awful truth.)
A week ago Michael Moore could express his outrage at this bill, but now he writes with pride how he helped to get it passed. Oh, and then he promotes his latest movie, "Capitalism, a love story"
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party
Sorry, unlike Michael Moore who still has tickets to get sold for his films, and Kucinich who wants to continue to remain in Congress, I have no such incentive.
The bill that has just been signed into law is the exact same bill that was vigorously opposed by Harold Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and Michael Moore. As Moore said, "And thank you Dennis Kucinich for hanging in there right up to the end and being the only one out of the 435 members to speak the awful truth" where does this leave the rest of us. Do we now stop talking about the "awful truth" as Moore described it nine days ago.
Has reality changed, or has the entrance fee for being on Dailykos just been raised precipitously. There are harsh realities about this bill that are never discussed here, realities that are grave indictments of the Democratic party, that would never have been tolerated if the Republicans were in power.
My participation, and the pleasure I have gotten out of being on this site was because at the time the Democrats were the "reality party" who were dedicated to dispelling the falsehoods of the party in power. Out of this dedication to exploring and explicating such truth, came diverse opinions and widely varied essays and conversations. I could enjoy them and be challenged by them, all based on my presenting my own experience, knowledge and conclusions.
Just today, I was talking with a friend about my disturbance over the HCR bill, and sensing that I was now on his side, he ripped into the student loan bill that was also passed. Without hesitation I cut him dead, saying that the Democrats were right to end subsidizing this agency that was increasing cost to kids while taking no risk. This big time retired tax lawyer, backed down with a contrite, "yeah, you're right."
There is nothing sacred about a political party, whether of the left or of the right. Those who control it have the same venal instincts as other mortals, and can be blinded by their own ambition that distorts ideology into bad policy. There are also commonalities between a party and a religion, in that the greatest threat that can be made against a member is ostracism, shunning, being placed outside the fold.
The Democratic party may still be the better of the two, but that does not mean that this health care bill was other than what Michael Moore described a week ago, or how I see it in my own essay. But one thing does seem clear to me, and that is if this political party, and blogs associated with this party ever requires an orthodoxy that prevents the open acceptance of diverse opinions, it will have lost the advantage over the other choice.
For me the clincher was this. On the senate floor, as shown here, John McCain asked Max Baucus, the manager of the bill, whether the CBO calculation that concluded that this would lessen the deficit was based on false information. Baucus replied, with a smile, "Of course we will not really reduce the payment to doctors that the CBO calculated"
The next speaker was Majority leader Harry Reid, who read from his prepared notes. He simply ignored what had transpired the previous five minutes, and reiterated, what was now described as untrue by the Democratic manager of the bill:
"According to the non partisan CBO, this bill will cut the deficit for the next ten years and even more in the following decade."
Neither Harry Reid, Barack Obama, or any Democratic official had felt the need to accept a reality that Baucus had just affirmed, that the CBO was fed phony data to arrive at the conclusion that this expansion of health care was to be achieved with no financial sacrifice at all.
Reid knows that few people followed the actual long Senate debate, and that this dialog would be construed by Democrats as "obstructionism" So, he could simply weave a myth, without any concern for the reality of the issue.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.
No. It's time for the party to acknowledge the violence that was done to those who had a different vision for health care in this country. It's time for this party to acknowledge that the methods used to get this bill passed, perpetuation of denial of deals made and misleading information, exacts a high cost to the common values that hold our country together.
The argument that the Republicans started it, that they are even worse, is no argument at all. We are Democrats, the party that accepts the difficult choices in governing, and has faith that the people can and will rise to challenges that have no easy answers.
There are certainly those who hate Obama because he is black, and hate the HCR bill because he is associated with it. It does not follow therefore that except for such racism the bill is desirable.
It could be that this site, and perhaps this country has passed the point of no return. That the attempt for productive discourse with the other side has now become treason---as has clearly occurred in large part in the Republican party. It could be that all that is left is a choice of sides.
We associate the word "war" with guns, bombs and the clash of powerful instruments of destruction. But War can also become a reality of societies, where all are divided between friend and foe, and total victory is seen as the goal, with compromise equated with appeasement.
Frank Rich escalated this culture war a bit today, with his focus on those who only express themselves with placards and shouts, and equating them with the actions by Nazis during Kristallnacht. The constitutional right to peaceably assemble to redress grievances be damned, when it is used by those whom he disagrees with.
Over time, when I have written comments and diaries similar to this, I've recieved some support. Now, I don't know how many are left. There are no political figures such as Kucinich, Dean, or Moore to point to for support. They are all gone, and sometimes without even tying together loose ends. Keith Olbermann, having given his long rant of proclamation of civil disobedience, "Jail me if you must!" now simply says his objection was obviated by elimination of mandates, which never happened. He like the others mentioned have all fallen in line.
And no one asks these hitherto staunch opponents what has changed, why they are now silent, or worse, self proclaimed fathers of the success that all want to sign on to.... in retrospect.
It's still a terrible bill, for reasons that I copiously describe in my essays linked above. At least those who supported it all along have been consistent, have made their augments, adjusting along the way, as the bill became more and more corporate based, but stuck with their core beliefs.