I have hesitated to post this, my first Daily Kos diary, because it does indeed cover ground that others have been covering recently. I have chosen to do so because I wanted to express at some length my growing despair with how both Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have been squandering the political capital earned for them in the last two elections.
The impetus was yet another Organizing for America email soliciting support for "President Obama's plan" for health care reform. But it could just as well have been the phone solicitation this past Saturday from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the call a couple of weeks ago from the DNC.
The receipt of this email coincides with reading a Jane Hamsher post at Firedoglake that Richard Trumka is meeting today with Rahm Emanuel. Hamsher, who has been dogged in documenting the sordid record of too many Democrats in dealing with the public option, expects Emanuel to pressure Trumka to drop his pledge "to back a public option and [threaten] to withhold support from Democrats who wouldn't vote for one." And Hamsher fears Trumka will comply. More..
I know there will be howls from some in this community that I should wait until the process plays out. Perhaps President Obama has some grand plan that we aren't privy to in which Rahm Emanuel's defense of Blue Dogs and the Administration's solicitousness to Republicans (and coldness towards progressives) results in passage of the health care reform of our dreams. Well, I'm 53 and I've seen this story from Democrats before. As Hamsher writes in her post:
I defy anyone to find me one single example of the White House twisting one arm for a public option. Just one. But when Rahm and Trumka meet today, it will be after a month of very serious threats to the AFL-CIO carried out at the highest levels. It's the kind of "arm twisting" that only the executive branch is capable of, and it has been done to crush support for a public option, not opposition.
I have yet to see any evidence that the Obama Administration will use its bully pulpit to go to the mat for progressive change. Yes, there are some half measures. Of course the Obama Presidency is an improvement over the Cheney junta. But almost anything would be. After 2006 and last November, we had reason and right to expect much more.
So when I got the email solicitation this morning from Mitch Stewart at Organizing for America, it was the last straw. I clicked over to the Unsubscribe page and articulated my reasons for doing so. This is what I wrote:
I am unsubscribing from the Organizing for America list because the Obama Administration has reneged on the promises of change it made in the last election.
My wife and I donated more to the Obama campaign than to any political campaign in our lives. For my part, I wanted true health care reform (including the option of a government plan along the lines of Medicare for all), a foreign policy based on diplomacy not aggression, a restoration of
civil liberties (and judicial accountability for those who violated the
Constitution) and an equitable economic policy after almost three decades
of trickle down economics.
Instead, President Obama is allowing the war criminals and authoritarians
who authorized torture and illegal domestic spying to get away scot free.
How come "let's look forward not backwards" doesn't apply to everyday
folks who commit crimes far less serious than those of Bush, Cheney, Yoo,
Bybee, etc.?
The Obama Administration has defended the "state secrets" argument used by
the Bush Administration to frustrate prosecutions. It has withheld the
torture photos--evidence of the horrific misconduct of the previous
Administration--from the public. It has not forsworn preventive detention.
There is more continuity from the Bush Administration's aggrandizement of
executive power than change.
When it comes to economics, the Obama Administration continued the
few-strings-attached bailout of the rapacious banksters. But for the auto
workers and auto worker retirees? It was tough love, without the "love"
part. And there is little evidence that the Administration has employed
any muscle or expended any political capital to pass the Employee Free
Choice Act. There would be no Obama Administration without the efforts of
the unions but apparently the Brainiacs of the Obama Administration's
political apparatus think that kind of enthusiasm can be conjured up out
of thin air again in the 2010 Congressional races and in the 2012
reelection campaign.
Finally, there is health care reform. I keep getting emails and phone
calls from Organizing for America asking me to give money and make other
efforts on behalf of the Obama Administration's health care reform plan.
But, for me and many many others, the robust public option is THE linchpin
of true reform, an alternative to the greed-driven, callous, inefficient,
expensive private health insurance system. It isn't hard to explain to the
public for any leaders committed to doing so: In those advanced,
industrial countries with government health insurance systems of varying
kinds, the results are better for less money. That is a VERY SIMPLE
MESSAGE. And a political winner for the politicians who deliver it with
conviction.
But the Obama Administration lacks convictions on health care reform. Rahm
Emanuel, the Administration's legislative enforcer, seems far more
interested in undercutting the proponents of the Administration's putative
plans (which supposedly include a public option) than in persuading the
Democratic Fifth Columnists (Baucus, Ben Nelson, Blance Lncoln, Kent
Conrad, Joe Lieberman). Emanuel has called out progressive groups who were
running ads against recalcitrant Blue Dog legislators as "fucking stupid."
Here is what is "f*cking stupid": Disempowering and pissing on your most
enthusiastic supporters and expecting them to continue to support you
regardless.
I'm in my early 50's. I have despaired since 1980, living under a
heartless, rapacious conservative philosophy that has ripped out the
economic heart of this country and coarsened the fabric of its politics.
The last two election cycles had given me hope. The elections of 2006 and
2008, I felt, validated the longtime convictions of progressives such as
myself that a principled and unapologetic articulation of core
progressive, liberal, small "d" democratic and Democratic values was a
winning electoral formula. That the American people could be appealed to
with an inclusive progressive vision and that they would respond with
their votes. In November, when Barack Obama had been elected President and
the Democrats had widened their Congressional majorities, I felt that
maybe there was a chance for real change, a chance that I might live out
the remainder of my life in a country with a decent, progressive political
values system.
That hope is mostly gone. The Obama Administration seems far more
interested in including Republicans like Olympia Snowe in its political
calculus than the progressive Democrats who put it in office.
It's clear that Administration insiders like Rahm Emanuel are far more
interested in the monetary contributions of banksters, Big Pharma and the
health insurance industry than the monetary and volunteer contributions of
people like me.
So stop emailing me and calling me to ask for money. I'd be "f*cking
stupid" to give it to you.
My donations will go through REAL Democratic organizations: ActBlue,
Democracy for America, Progressive Democrats of America.
Perhaps if they start to hear this enough they will get scared. More scared of the loss of our support than they appear to be that Republicans or inside-the-Beltway pundits might not like them. And maybe, if they stop taking the support of their progressive base for granted, they will start articulating the principles they claimed to have in the last campaign with passion again. And we will get the change they promised. Not the corporatist more-of-the-same we are getting now.
UPDATE: Some folks have suggested I update this diary to account for the report on Trumka's meeting with Rahm Emanuel. There is a short article about here at The Hill. TomP has a recommended diary that addresses the issue, titled "Trumka Meets with Rahm and Pushes Public Option (Updated, No Triggers)." Jane Hamsher has a post at Campaign Silo, "AFL Says No Deal Between Trumka and Rahm on Public Option," over at Firedoglake on this.
I reserve judgment on whether the AFL-CIO remains steadfast in its warning that it will withhold support from Dems who oppose the public option--and sink it. I wouldn't have doubted that Trumka would tell Rahm what the federation's position is. Would anyone expect him to come out of that meeting and say, "Forget our electoral threat?" What we don't know yet is whether Trumka repeated his warning to Rahm in no uncertain terms. We don't know that yet. That to me is key. As I noted in my comment to Jane's post, "When he left, was Rahm happy or worried? Because I need Rahm to be worried for me to be happy."
Either way, it doesn't change the overall point of my post. In the wake of the defeat of the public option in the Finance Committee yesterday--although the public option is by no means dead overall--I wanted to send a message to an official party/campaign organization that I'm not satisfied. It is a shot across the bow intended to get their attention and let them know that a failure to aggressively push the public option--and progressive priorities in general--could cost them in money and volunteers in the next two elections.