The daily (and hourly) news bulletins on health care legislation show volatile ups and downs. The public option is doomed. The public option is a sure thing. All Democrats are on board. Joe Lieberman is a lying shithead. Joe Lieberman is a lying shithead who will let a floor vote happen. Joe Lieberman is a lying shithead whose every move is unreliable and disgusting.
This volatility has produced a terrabyte's worth of manic-depressive diaries and comments around here, alternately celebrating or decrying the news du jour. Reading Dkos the past few weeks tempts secular ol' me to quote the Serenity Prayer. It begins:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
What does this mean in regards to health care? Some comments below the fold.
A disclaimer: I want -- in a perfect world -- a universal health care system on a single-payer model. My favorite experiences dealing with health care were as a resident alien in New Zealand. Getting in to see a doctor involved less red tape than it does on my current plan, and the fees charged were less than my copay for a routine visit. My experiences with American insurance companies and hospitals have been a good deal less pleasant than my experiences abroad.
That said, here's how the Serenity Prayer applies to how I think about health care:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
These things involve both policy and personality. First, policy: if single-payer was on the table right now, I would be stalking my Congressional representatives to get it passed. But it is not. As a fan of the system, I am heartened that the House is getting the CBO to score Anthony Weiner's single-payer proposal and have hope such a score might affect the debate in the long term. I do not despair that single-payer is not central to either the House or Senate proposals poised to go to the floor. Even social security wasn't built in a day.
Second, personality. The bipolar depictions of Harry Reid as either spineless or bold are pretty hilarious. We have seen -- and no doubt will see -- wildly divergent statements from Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and many others over the past few months. The Senate is as opaque a body as a legislature can be in a democratic society -- there is horse-trading and procedural wrangling in its halls that simply have no equal in other legislative bodies. The extent to which Harry Reid has (or Bill First or Tom Daschle or Bob Dole had) control over his caucus is both tenuous and difficult for outside observers to accurately discern. And our control over what any one of those members says is limited. I accept that I cannot change Joe Lieberman's capacity to say disingenuous shit that makes me recoil at the memory that Al Gore made his his running mate less than a decade ago. Saying nasty things about Joe Lieberman on the internet may be fun, but I don't harbor any illusion that doing so will change him (or anyone else in politics) one iota. It is effort without actual action.
Courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference
Here's the crux of why I'm writing. What I can do is exert whatever influence I have to being heard. Instead of ranting about Joe Lieberman, I can:
Donate to possible challengers to Lieberman in 2012. This, while tempting, has some immediate disadvantages. First, a lot can happen over the next couple of years to shape the race. We don't yet know who will be the best or most likely opponent to Lieberman. We also don't know that such a threat would sway Lieberman much today. But it is a form of action, and I don't begrudge any mobilizing to get Connecticut better representation in the future.
Call and write relevant members of Congress. It's a simple enough statement, but it's true: Congress knows the people care when the people contact Congress. (Finding their offices is easy; just go to senate.gov, look for the individual senator's page, and find their contact information.) Does that mean Congress will do the will of the majority? Not necessarily, no. But one of the things the religious right has been very effective about over the past thirty years is its mobilization of members to pressure politicians. We know this is true by how much the Republican Party is utterly dependent on religious extremists in the 21st century. The craven cowering on Terri Schiavo was due to decades of concerted pressure by citizen activists, not deeply-held beliefs on the part of Bill Frist or by his well-moneyed backers. Congressional representatives hear thousands of voices every week; why not add yours? They can't hear us if we don't talk to them.
Call and write your members of Congress. This follows from my last point: representatives are beholden to many interests, but ultimately if enough of the people who vote to keep them in office contact them, that's a pressure that is much stronger than if I (an Illinois resident) contact Blanche Lincoln's office. What I can do is continue to contact Dick Durbin and thank him for his stance. This reminds him that his decision is popular with his constituents, possibly adding resolve when he horse-trades with other members. We do not have the ability to control what senators want and ask for. We do have the ability to pressure our own senators on points dear to us. How that affects the horse-trading we cannot control, but it is action that we can control. (Finding contact information for your own representatives is even easier; OFA has a tool to do the work for you. All you have to do is call or write with a clear statement of what you want your representatives to know about your position on the issue.)
Call and write friends and relatives in other states to contact their members of Congress. We have the power to mobilize other citizens to contact Congress. You may not live in Connecticut, or Louisiana, or North Dakota, but maybe you know someone who does. Or you know someone who knows someone who does. Getting those people to contact Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, and Conrad is as powerful an act as we have. Getting more people engaged with Congress is one of the most powerful acts us non-billionares have in the political arena. (You can also call perfect strangers to reach out; OFA has another easy tool to do this.)
Keep at all this over the long haul. The wisdom to know the difference, for me, is the knowledge that no one action I take has the power to instantaneously change the political landscape. No one act, not Election Night last year, not the phonebanking of October 20, magically eliminates the established relationships and interests that have shaped the status quo in our politics. But each act helps enact pressure on the status quo. One voice one time may not mean much. One voice getting other voices to speak up over days and weeks and months? Well, that's the kind of work that got people like Carol Shea-Porter, Dave Loebsack, and Alan Grayson into the House. It's the kind of work that got people like Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, and Sheldon Whitehouse into the Senate. It's the kind of work that got a guy unknown outside of the city of Chicago in 2002 into the White House six years later. It takes patience, but it can produce results.
This is how I read the Serenity Prayer anyway. I'll close this with words from a couple of other people underscoring the value of contacting Congress. These are two men who know its value.
Harry Reid, speaking today:
"Anyone that cares about it, make sure you contact your representatives back here in Washington and push hard. We want a health care bill that has a public option that keeps the insurance industries honest and creates a level playing field."
Barack Obama, speaking Monday:
We are closer than we've ever been to passing health insurance reform -- closer than we've ever been. But it's not going to get easier from here on out; it's going to get harder. Now is the time when all the special interests start saying, "oh, this is really going to happen," and "we might lose some of our profits." And they start paying big lobbyists and they start, you know, twisting arms.
And that's why all of you are so important. See, you can't just count on change happening in Washington. You've got to make it happen. You've got push. (Applause.) I promise you, members of Congress listen to you a lot more than they listen to me. (Laughter.) And so the more that you guys are organizing and mobilizing and understanding that our job is not done, it's not -- it's barely begun, the better off we're going to be.
These are the people talking to the people who will vote directly on health care. They understand the potential power of constituents' voices. This is the action that goes beyond the daily news cycle. Focusing on it at the expense of what one senator says or does any one day provides more serenity and less gnashing of teeth than a thousand irate comments.