The health care reform process has been likened to Waterloo, both by Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) who hopes its failure will "break" President Obama and by progressives who hope its passage will break the GOP. Of course it's not Waterloo. That war-based metaphor is silly. Sports-based metaphors are more reliable, so this is our Mont Ventoux.
Of course it helps if the metaphor is from a sport most people recognize, but we'll get to that below the fold....
Health Care, Our Mont Ventoux
The Tour de France is a 3500-km bicycle race spread over 21 days. This year's race will have its traditional finish on the Champs-Élysées in Paris tomorrow. But to get there, the riders still have to climb the beast known as Mont Ventoux today. It's a mountain that can break even the best. Lance Armstrong famously lost on Ventoux both in 2000 and 2002, though he won the maillot jaune (for best overall time) in both years. He has said he has "unfinished business on Ventoux." Count him among many who feel that way.
Mont Ventoux has been described as "a god of Evil." The Tour course doesn't include the same mountains every year, but Armstrong has ridden all of the monsters and considers Ventoux "the hardest climb on the Tour, bar none." Coming at the end of today's 165-km stage, its vertical ascent is over a mile (5427 feet). It's a barren rock, with no trees to offer shade from the expected 95° heat or the swirling winds. It will take over an hour of constant sweat and pain for the riders to complete the climb.
Riding up Mont Ventoux has been likened to sprinting all the way up the stairs of the Empire State Building, probably by some writer who's never done either. That's how metaphors usually work. As I didn't fight at Waterloo, haven't sprinted up the stairs of the Empire State Building, haven't ridden up Mont Ventoux, am not directly engaged in the health care deliberations ... but am a writer ... I can confidently declare that the health care bill is our Mont Ventoux.
It's going to be a grueling climb.
We all know the health insurance and related industry lobbies are going all out to block meaningful reform. They're reportedly spending $1.4 million a day in lobbying, on top of the tens of millions in campaign contributions over the past few years to key members of the House and Senate. They'll launch an all-out media blitz during the August recess, blanketing the airwaves with ads to turn Americans against the plan, no doubt coupled with push-polls to show their blitz is working, which will be echoed by the corporate-owned media as proof President Obama is "out of touch with middle America." MSNBC host Ed Schultz has spent most of this week warning that public support will fade under such an onslaught.
If that's true, it won't be President Obama's, the GOP's, or the Blue Dogs' fault when we don't get meaningful reform. It will be ours. The political reality is that if we can't hold public support for health care over the next month, the public support wasn't that strong to begin with. Complaining about the health insurance lobby's money and their media blitz is like complaining about the slope on Mont Ventoux. It is what it is, and we have to overcome it.
The odds are against us.
Now that the health insurance lobby has more time to run its blitz before the Senate passes a bill, the chattering class - and a lot of diaries here - are saying we're doomed. The insurance companies and Big Pharma own the Senate, or at least the key senators. They have the money. They control the media. They're 1/6th of the U.S. economy. We've been fighting this same fight since the Truman administration, and they've won every time. No reason to think it'll change this time.
Maybe so.
But before you give up hope, consider this: the odds were against Barack Obama too. The so-called smart money said Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee in 2008. She was the insider and had all the party power brokers behind her. She'd get this state's primary included and that state's caucus discounted, and even if she couldn't - no matter how we voted - she'd still get the "all-important super-delegates." Oh, and did I mention his middle name? And he's black.
What the so-called smart money and the pundits and the insiders never counted on was the passion of ordinary Americans willing to donate their money and time to deliver an electoral mandate. They forgot about us, just like they're doing now.
But President Obama didn't, and isn't. He's planning his own campaign over the next month, and it's all about us. He's asking us to organize, phone bank, donate, and do all the same things we did to help him climb Mont Ventoux in the primaries and in November.
In the jargon of cycling, we're President Obama's domestiques. We're the unsung work horses who carry the water bottles up from the team car, pace our leader back to the head the peloton after a problem, then get out in front and ride into the wind so he can draft in our slipstream until it's time for him to claim "his" victory. The domestiques rarely get to stand on the podium, but no winner gets there without their hard work and sacrifice.
We're heading toward Mont Ventoux on health care, and our team leader needs our help. He's asking for a one-month sprint on health care.
So please take two minutes and listen to the video below. Don't watch it. Just click the play button, close your eyes, and listen. The odds are against us. But we've beaten the odds before.
UPDATE: I found Versus TV's own posting of this ad on YouTube, with working embed code. If you haven't listened yet, please do. It is simply one of the most inspirational two-minute recitations I've ever heard.
Note: A transcript of the video is in the tip jar.
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Happy Saturday!