Well gosh, another week has come and gone and I would like to say that we made progress but it looks like we are at best, treading water. I say this because we are 2 for 6 in special elections with the two wins coming from progressives in state legislature races.
The Democratic Establishment went all in on the Ga 06 race and failed to find out, once again, that their vision for electoral success is seriously flawed. We ran a candidate who wasn’t even Republican Lite. He was against single payer, higher taxes and he said he would work with Trump. The Democratic Establishment was so impressed they rewarded him with record amounts of money on his campaign. He wound up losing by a wider a margin than Hillary lost in 2016. In an absurd assertion of alternative facts, our own Kos tried to make lemonade out of the lemons by tweeting a link to the Kos diary that posits that because the 2017 Dem candidate did so much better than the 2016 candidate we can look forward to winning a lot of House races in 2018. This analysis doesn’t take into account that the 2016 Democratic candidate ran against a popular incumbent, just like all of the Republicans on the linked list. Whoops.
The Democratic Establishment scored a major victory in California when Assembly Speaker, Anthony Rendon, used his power as Chair of the Assembly Rules Committee to shelve SB 562, the single payer, Healthy California Act. SB 562 had been passed by the California State Senate and was moving through the House when Rendon decided or more probably was told to torpedo the bill. In a classic case of blaming the victim, Rendon cynically complained that SB562 was “wholly incomplete”. Since 2010, Rendon, Senate Leader De Leon and Gov. Brown have received $3.4 million in campaign contributions from the Health Care industry. This is a classic example, one of many, as to how Corporate Democrats have crushed the Democratic Party.
In New York, single payer has some kind of chance of becoming law. Estimates by pro single payer Univ of Mass state that New Yorkers can save 15% on health care costs by going single payer. Senator Gillibrand has tweeted her support for single payer. New York City is still one of the greatest cities on earth. Wouldn’t it be great if they can pull this off? The economic and psychological gains would be substantial and when people see that New York didn’t slide into the ocean after passing single payer, they will be more open to it.
People need their government to stand up for them and their rights as human beings to exist. Plain and simple you will not live as long without health care as you will live with health care. Now many will say that SB562 was flawed and Rendon was justified. Ok, Medicare, Medicaid and ACA were also flawed but most people still like these bills. In fact, there is no concept in the entire universe that is not flawed in some way and improvement doesn’t depend on perfection to make things better. Other countries have used varying approaches to Universal Health Care for so many years now that it is patently ridiculous to say it won’t work here or that our current system is better for the people who receive health care. The biggest benefits of our system go to the people who profit from our fear of death. Their naked efforts to reduce our life spans so they can continue to make these profits is revolting beyond belief.
If we want to win at all in 2018, we must do more than oppose AHCA. We must offer an alternative and show people why it is better.